GTM After Hours

The Power of Customer Feedback in Marketing with Andrea Bailiff-Gush

• Mark Bliss • Season 1 • Episode 14

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In this episode of GTM After Hours, Mark Bliss chats with Andrea Bailiff-Gush, a seasoned product marketer with extensive experience in the cybersecurity sector. They discuss the challenges and nuances of product marketing, the importance of understanding customer personas, and the role of AI in content creation. Andrea shares her insights on effective event marketing strategies, the value of referral interviews, and the significance of customer feedback in shaping marketing strategies. The conversation also touches on the importance of building strong analyst relations, and the need for marketers to stay adaptable in a rapidly changing industry.

Takeaways

  • Product marketing is crucial for complex products like cybersecurity.
  • AI can assist in content creation but should not replace human input.
  • Customer feedback is essential for refining marketing strategies.
  • Event marketing should focus on creating memorable experiences.
  • Building analyst relations can enhance brand visibility.
  • Marketing and product teams should share the same persona data.

Sound Bites

"If your marketing team isn't talking to at least a customer a month, you are missing out."
"When I see some really positive reviews, I'm always more likely to stay engaged in the buying process."
"Crafting the time and carving out the time to do it, but having a CAB is I think more of an automated way to ensure you're going to have those connections with customers on a regular basis."
"Hannah Montana vibes, best of both worlds right there."
"Increasing the budget for an event by 10 to 20% might be the difference between getting ROI and not."

Support the show

Hi and welcome to GTM After Hours, a safe space for marketers, AEs, CSMs, and everyone else in that B2B SaaS Growth Hamster Wheel. Grab a comfy blanket, your emotional support animal, and your go to beverage of choice and join me for another exciting go to market conversation. All right. So I am stoked today. And yes, I'm going to pull out the, the nineties phrase stoked because I think that that fits perfectly for my level of excitement for today's guest. with me today on the podcast, have Andrea Bailiff Gush, who's a long time, like literally a decade in product marketing, running the show from that end. and has transitioned into running marketing teams and brings a really unique perspective, I think, because product marketing for a complex product like cybersecurity is incredibly challenging. And she's done it at multiple early stage startups. So, you know, there's going to be some fun tea on CEOs and executives who had their own opinions on product marketing and messaging and positioning and all that jazz. So it's going to be a fun conversation. I'm looking forward to it. And with that, I'll pass it over. Andrea, tell our audience a little bit about yourself. What is your career like in a nutshell? Sure, sure. And thank you so much, Mark, for having me. My name is Andrea and I am a product marketer at heart. And as Mark said, I've been in cybersecurity for a long time. I've been in product marketing for a long time. And what I love to do is to come into early stage cybersecurity companies, assess how things are, and then come in and build. I'm a builder at heart. And I have worked for companies that were seed round where there wasn't even a website or a brand in place all the way to companies who were later stage and looking to exit and be acquired. And my favorite stage I would say is around the series A or series B because it's fun. You get to test, you get to try new things. There's very much like a cultural team element to it. And I think that's really where the power of product marketing comes into play because you're trying to find product market fit. You're trying to generate brand awareness, find your unique place and position within the market. But as Mark said, I've been doing cybersecurity product marketing for over a decade. And I've worked through all sorts of different, all the categories, all the acronyms, the CSPMs, the SSPMs, the vulnerability management when that was a thing. But currently, yeah, I'm at a Series A company and that's where I'm thriving and just loving it. Okay, so on a level, we'll go from 10 being the highest and doesn't fucking matter at all at the lowest. How much do those acronyms actually matter? I don't think they should matter very much because not after learning the origin of the acronyms, but they do matter because of how CISOs and security teams buy. actually really do matter. There's a lot of that buyer type likes placement. that's why categories are so popular and so powerful. and cybersecurity and also CSOs like to talk to CSOs and you know, if their peers using a tool and they're happy with it and they're seeing a lot of, having a lot of success, then that's obviously going to leave a strong impression. So they shouldn't matter because again, knowing the origin and the source and the actual, the team that's behind it, but they do matter, especially in our industry. So you asked me to rank it at a scale of one to 10, probably a nine. Yeah, yeah. See, maybe it's because I'm coming at it from a different angle, but I find that those are very expensive search terms because they always mean something else. The cyber community rewrites their acronyms all the time. mean, like, like CCM is a perfect example of that in the general world, that also stands for contemporary Christian music. he does. that's that's a very different buyer. And it just, you know, it makes it makes me laugh. acronym yesterday actually. I'm like, Yeah, from an analyst. Yeah. And it was going to be for a category I know really well. They're trying to move products around. Yeah, just yesterday, a brand new category name. Yeah. And of course you have to pretend like you're really excited about this on the call I'm writing it down. We're going to leverage this. We're going to tire her. Keep me in the loop. Let's look at adoption for this. Yeah, yesterday I heard another one. I think it's cute that you're still going old school and writing things down. Do not write. Do not write things down. The I trust I trust the AI and the call recording to tell me everything I need to know about the no, I'm like, yeah, yeah, that would be a good poll to do like how many marketers are using pen and paper versus I'm sure it's a low number. Yeah. have, I have the same, the same set of post -it notes This has been on my desk for, since the pandemic. so yeah, like, like four or five years, same exact pack. Cause I never use it. Never use it. It's still, it's still sitting there. It makes it feel like a desk, right? yeah. Yeah. And occasionally I will use it. you know, difficult. Okay. The use case I would use, I would use a, posted note for is actually complete side hustle vibes. I sell a lot of like vintage audio stuff on, on eBay. you know, those who are listening to this audio only don't see my background. but. You know, I've got a lot of eight tracks and cassettes and records and things. so. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't like to take too many trips to the post office because then I have to like leave my house and see people. which is a, you know, you have, I have to be in a vibe for that. there's a moment there's a mood for leaving my house, and putting on like normal people clothes. so I'll stack up boxes, like I'll pack everything up and I'll stack it up in boxes and I'll use the post -it notes. to remind myself what's in what. fun, fun fact, I have, so this notepad, this is from the desk of Mark Bliss. This is from a sales job that I had back in 2007. wow, so you were in sales before marketing. yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got, I've got all the, the, the bruises and tears to, to prove it, but everybody. Yeah. right? There's empathy for the buyer. guess there's empathy for the sales team, for your food market. so much empathy for the sales team and everything they get they go through And I I think it makes me look at things a little bit differently I mean, that's probably why I immediately jumped in to you know demand gen and you know being Very focused on that side of the org throughout my career Do you get that a lot? We're, know, having been in product marketing for so long, when you go into lead and org, do you get that the, like, I don't know that the questions and, you know, really trying to understand what you know about demand gen. I do. I do. So when I started out, this was 2010, I'm aging myself a little bit. When I started out in cyber, I was in a broad role and I found product marketing like in 2014. And so that was great because I learned the lay of the land. I learned how you put on an event. I learned how you put together marketing plan. I learned how did you do demand gen, SEO, digital marketing. Then I I loved messaging and product launches and technology and personas and all that so much that product marketing was my place. But I think it's made me a good marketing partner because I know how to work with the content team. I know how to work with different agencies, et cetera. And so now that I'm in a broad role, sure, things have changed. Google is not indexing search the same way they were in 2010. AI, like all these AI assistants now, it's changed, but the foundation is still the same. And I do get that now in my broad role, like, like, we'll give you money to hire an agency. Don't worry about SEO. Don't worry about, which is fantastic because you get to work with really smart people who teach you things. But yeah, I think sometimes that gets lost in the, and you don't even have to come from a really broad role initially, I think to learn and get that perspective, I'm sure in your role as a demand gen. expert, you learned a lot about product marketing just from your peers because of your own curiosity. And so I think, yeah, I do get questions sometimes or given opinions about what should be done. And of course, you have to, yeah, if they want to help. Yeah. Yeah. and that, I mean, I think it just happens naturally. know, people want to put people in boxes, right? but it doesn't necessarily mean that they either never done it or they don't understand it. Mm -hmm. And they could have done it outside of work. Like, who knows what they're involved in outside of work that could have lend that expertise. And sometimes people just don't, you know, maybe their resume doesn't showcase what they know to the best of sense. You really have to dig in, especially when you're interviewing, and just like, ask questions and just dig in to really understand instead of just, that's why whenever I see a good resume during hiring come by my desk, even if I'm questioning whether It's a fit. always try to at least have that first conversation. Because again, like you'll just learn a lot more. Well, and it might. I mean, I don't know if this is necessarily a hot take or in the hot take category, but I yeah, I'll give it a go. But I think that the reason that referral interviews are so good, generally speaking, is because we come in with a mindset where we already trust that they know their shit. We already trust that it's a fit because somebody we trust told us that they are. Yes. those interviews are always better. And I don't know if it's necessarily because the person who told us about them actually knows that they're a fed or, or we've just given them more runway to prove that they are. Yeah, well, it's, I'm always careful who I refer. I'm sure you're the same way. It to be someone that I really enjoyed working with and can vouch for their skill set. But I think a lot of times too with referrals, if the person referring the candidate is someone you really enjoyed working with, I can just, yeah, just kind of assume. I actually interviewed someone today who was a referral and it was such a great conversation. And it just made me kind of excited because the person I enjoyed working with the person who referred this candidate and it was just that thought of like, maybe this could be like a similar experience working with this person as it was with the referral. So yeah, so I think there's just a lot, they're just stronger candidates usually when they come in through that channel. So yeah. really interesting because I don't think we put enough money into paying people to give referrals. Our own network. Mm Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, if a company is going to spend, 10 % of the salary on a recruiter, if you offered 10 % of the salary for a referral, more people would refer. The networks would disopen. Everything would open. Yeah. Yeah. People might actually log into LinkedIn more than once a year. common connections. It's always like, how are you building a network? Yeah. do you find that you're, you enjoy me on LinkedIn now than you did maybe five, 10 years ago? I find that I do. It's changed. I think, I think I might enjoy it less from the content side. think there, there used to be better content. mean, now it's all like, you know, I took my kids to soccer practice and here's what that taught me about B2B sales. Like, and you're getting, you're getting a lot of that type of content now. whereas, you know, we weren't before, you know, but the algorithm was kind of rewarding it. So I think from that perspective, I'm not as thrilled about it, but I also think that LinkedIn is a, what is it, to quote the new radicals, that song from the 90s, you get what you give. Yeah. I think that's LinkedIn in a nutshell. And, you know, I've been making it a point to post more and to comment on other people's threads. And, you know, it's been helpful. How much of that content do you think is written using AI assistance? How much? Because you can use it for anything for posts, for actual long -form content. You can use it for anything. How much of that do you think is used? I think overall it's probably a still a small number probably something like 25 percent but I think for GTM professionals, you're probably closer to 50. Yeah, it's, I'm maybe a late adopter of it. I still really value like putting in the work and putting together a really well -written piece of content that has, uses your brain voice. It's compelling. It's, you know, it's got a perspective. still really enjoy reading that. I feel like I can kind of suss out what's written using AI versus not. But I know that it's so powerful when you know how to use it the right way, because it can really help you scale a lot of the manual work. So just not quite there with adopting it. I have used it for outlines, or maybe if it's my first time writing a specific kind of email, or not having a template for something, I'll kind of ask for advice on that. But I think when it comes to actual content, I'm still... KG, I guess, around it. Yeah, what do you think? I'm a very big fan of it. I leverage it often, but I always tell people that it's never the final. And that's where people fail is they take it as, AI wrote this content, now I'll copy paste and put it in. No, no, no, that's not the use case here. Here's a great example of, you know, I was on a call. I had an SME on it and we were walking through and discussing a new feature that was going to roll out in the product. And, you know, we're just having this conversation between the two of us, but the entire thing was recorded. I took the recording, got an AI transcript, took the AI transcript, put it into Gemini because I, I'm a Google guy. I don't know. somebody messaged me and convinced me chat GPT is better. that's fine. But you know, I'll pop it in there and I will, I will ask what, what are interesting outcomes from this conversation or, you know, I'll ask, you know, what are, what are a few good blog ideas based on this conversation? And, you know, it'll come up with something, you know, half of its garbage, but the other half of it is a great starting point because then when they tell you that it's like, what would be a great outline for that? And now you have the idea, you have the outline, you have the quotes from your product leader. Like there's all of it's all built in. And it just makes that part of the job, I think, so much easier. Yeah, you're not having to take it from scratch. Yeah, but then you can take that and you can use that as a jumping off point to create something really memorable and unique. Yeah. you can even have it like, you know, write me the first draft of that blog. And then you just take that and take the pieces that you like and then maneuver everything else. The thing is, how does it fit in with your messaging and your personas? I don't care. You can write 300 blogs, but I'd rather take the three blogs that are a really great fit for the ICP. Yeah, but you know you can use AI to, with prompts, to train it to think like your persona and get feedback. So you could write a blog and you could, yeah, you could write a blog and you're... Yeah, and... have a voice conversation with your ICP through AI. You shouldn't. You shouldn't call your customers, people. Call your fucking customers. Don't use AI to avoid hopping on a phone call with your customer, please. But it's not perfect because I've heard of these apps where it could be like, it's like your AI friend, it's like your AI whatever, and it's not perfect because they can't reason or they can't, they don't know when they're wrong. It's not, doesn't, know, talking to a human is obviously the preferred thing, but I love that. That I love about AI is like, act like my persona, think like my persona. This is your role. This is the size of the company. This is your... how you're measured at work, this is your jobs to be done. like, once you paint that picture, it's like, you know, read this and like, give me kind of a response to it. love that. And then if you don't like what they give you, can say, like, think about that again, or not quite there, you know, you can, you can train it to respond a little more differently. And I actually love that about AI. You can use it for persona research. I really do. That's powerful. super helpful for all the tasks that creative professionals hate doing. Yes, yes, exactly. To your point, talking to customers is obviously the preferred way to do it. Why don't people do that? Like I hate, I'm throwing out a blanket statement, right? I'm, this is, this is not an everybody thing, but the amount of customer advisory boards in the industry that are barely ever leverage. just have like two meals a year and they're never leveraged for insight. They're never tapped for like, like how many people are building a trade show calendar without talking to their cab about what shows their team is attending. Exactly. exactly. Yeah. Anything like that that's industry specific, could be syndicating content. Like, are you reading dark reading? Are you reading hacker news? you, like, where do you go for your, for your news, you know, or to evaluate solutions, right? So you absolutely should be using your cab for that. I feel like a lot of times when I've done cabs, it's been product roadmap feedback, which is fantastic, but like let's leverage the marketing side of it too for messaging, just the whole, like we talked about with the trends around events and things like that. Yeah, cabs and their work, their work to put on, you've got to keep the cab members engaged. They need to make them feel like they're a design partner, really bought in. That's something that's on my H2 2024. less just kicking that off. we've got a good list of customers who are interested. Things will be fun, but it's just, just being prepared and getting the most out of it because they want to help. members really want to help. yeah. And they chose you. So like they, they decided to be your customer. And sometimes at an early stage company, you don't have many of those. So, you know, understanding even the, buying process, you know, like having a 20 minute interview with them on file about what they did during the entire sales cycle is so important. You could cut that up into a video and share it to every sales rep that ever comes in. Like, come on, you know, this, but hey, that's, that's the, a former sales guy. And so I had, I had, I had relationships with my customers and learning the things that they care the most about, you know, I, I suppose that's, that's the type of product marketer I am. You know, I over index on anything customer over anything industry. Yes. Yep. Because it's much more preferred what the customer is telling you than what you're kind of hearing from the, I guess, the big organizations, the big businesses behind these trade shows, behind these big publications, because it's better to fact check that with the actual customer base. the cab is a great channel to have this interaction with customers. Otherwise you're relying on your CSM, which is great, but I think having allowing marketing and to have that more of direct connection with customers is the preferred way to do it. CSM is another thing to work on. Yeah. if your marketing team isn't isn't talking to at least a customer a month, you are missing out. mean, even just the content ideas. I mean, back to the AI thing, like put the transcript in and find out what are some great content ideas from what your customer just told you in your conversation. Like this, this isn't this isn't hard, y 'all. And sometimes you can get those just by maybe having them, a lot of times they're thought leaders, especially they're CISOs, they want to like, you know, build their own personal brand. And so they would love to be on a webinar, be on a panel, participate in some kind of kind of program. And that's a great way, obviously, to learn more about your customer, but then get ideas for the next way to engage. So, but it's just, crafting the time and carving out the time to do it, but having a cab is I think more of an automated way to ensure you're going to have those connections with customers on a regular basis. Well, and record every conversation and my gosh, you need it because hey, if you've got video of them saying something really nice about your brand, sending them the video so they can get to approval for you to share that is way easier than saying, hey, can you provide me a quote? Can you write me a review on G2? Yeah, yeah. Much much easier like you you literally said this. This is you. This is your face. This is your voice and you said this. And if they prove it, can use it on your website. can use it in your cloud. Yeah, that's just... I, when I, as a buyer, you know, buying marketing tools, when I see, I always look at the reviews. You know, if I see some really positive reviews, not perfect reviews, because I'm always suspect about those, but some really positive, genuine reviews, I'm always more likely to stay engaged in the buying process. So it's really powerful. So would that be one of your, like if I asked you for your three biggest product marketing hacks that have made you succeed, would that be one? Would it be doubling down on third party review sites? Yeah, I would say that would probably be one. Yeah, it would be one. think it's something that you should start doing ASAP. Once you have like you're kind of in motion, you've found product market fit, you are converting customers, start that early on. I would say even before that, figure out what menu of testimonial options you want to give customers. Some may want to... serve as a reference. Some may want to talk to Gartner on your behalf. Some may want to do a webinar. It just depends on their own interest, like how much they love your product. Obviously, the logo that's like the one that you want the, it's the most prized, right, form of like testimonial. But I think building that out, putting it contractually in your contracts, because you don't want to, you know, you don't want to assume usage of certain things. You don't, you want to have that, you know, as part of the the sales cycle. and then, yeah, then just like making that the best experience for them. And then once you have the testimonial, utilize it, utilize it internally for enablement, put it on your website, share it with analysts. I always find the analysts are really impressed when you get some great testimonials from some great brands, use it for the competitive, takeouts. So there's, there's so many uses for it, but I think it's just starting early on. And again, presenting that menu doesn't have to just be the third party review site. You can offer a lot of different ways to have them engage with your brand and show credibility. Yeah. barrier of entry is so low. Like, it doesn't actually cost you money out the gate. And I mean, I guess if you're going to gift people to have them throw out a review, it'll cost a little bit. Yeah, for their time you should. You really should. Yeah. gets you a quadrant. So in the days where you're an early startup and you can't get into, know, the quadrant that's magic, you can get into a quadrant that is G2. you can get and they have their own reports like market guides. If your category, not every category has a buyer's report, that's what they call that. But yeah, exactly. If you're in something that's quite represented by Gartner, some of the bigger analyst firms, G2 maybe, know, perfect for you. There's other ones, there's Captera. There's some other ones, not just G2 and... Gartner, there's a game though, right? If you want it to be indexed for search, which is obviously how people are gonna find your review site, you have to at least 10. That's always the game is getting to that magic number of 10 and then you've got the SEO benefit as well. You know what we've started to do? my current company as a Gartner customer, I'll just say that, and we obviously meet with them regularly. We've got some analysts who just, we love working with, they give us great advice. They keep us on top of some of the trends they're seeing in the industry. They've started to come out with research that matches our category, which is really great. We've actually broadened our analyst's view. And it's been very interesting how this has has evolved because it's actually a jumping off point from events. So when you these bigger events, they give you the press list. The press list includes analysts and a lot of these analysts firms I have never even heard of. You reach out to them and you say, I'm going to be at the event. Do have time to sit down? I can tell you about my product or show you a demo. Sometimes they have time. Sometimes it's a no, I would love to talk to you. Let's schedule it for after that has just allowed our brand to just go above and beyond the Gartner. And now we're getting opportunities and reports that are about our category. Not that we're going to reprint them, but it's great, like competitive intelligence for us. It's great to know that our name is getting out there too. So I think there's, I think analyst relations is really powerful. think just having a really broad, casting a broad net is the way to do it. Well, and don't sleep on your booth attraction for analysts and PR. Like we did this thing where we had Dean Kane, the guy who played 90s Superman at our booth signing autographs. And, you know, we knew that was going to be popular. You know, we also had this nerd wall filled with like comic book memorabilia and stuff. So I knew when he was signing autographs, we'd have a pretty long line. Mm And so what you can do is send the invites over to these tier two, tier three, tier four analysts, come over during this time, we'll have a quick meeting and I'll bring you over and you will fast track you so you can get a quick autograph from Superman. And the cool thing is they walk up and you've got a giant line at your booth, like your activation is working, there's excitement around your booth. And that is the impression that they leave with, which makes a huge, huge deal. You know, it's a big difference there. And then they're more likely to show up too, because you gave them a reason. I mean, they're no different than, you know, the people in your ICP. You need to attract them to come to the booth first before you ever have a shot at selling them. No, I love that. there is, I think, feel like when you schedule moments like that in booth meetings with customers, with analysts, anyone you want to leave a really strong impression, think about those moments when you're likely to have the most activity and traffic. Like, I feel like the last hour for whatever reason of every conference is crazy, but the first few hours of the first day. So what I always do is try to have everyone from the company who's attending the conference There's no such thing as shifts. We're all going to be there for the first few hours to kick things off. When people see 15 people in a booth, they're going to be like, what's going on? There's so much activity going on in that booth. So it just creates a really, lot of activity. And that's when you want your customers to come by. That's when you want the analysts to come by when they just see like this buzz. So I just try to be really intentional around scheduling those moments because you want to leave an impression. love that. I mean, since we're talking about events, I mean, how, how do you as a veteran, we'll say, product marketing guru, how do you approach events and messaging and, know, ensuring that the sales team is speaking the language that you want to be spoken? And I'll throw in one more caveat on that. How do you get it approved from the leadership and the C -suite? It's starting early. Starting early is how you make all this happen. And I'm thinking about the events that I've planned as like, I'm more of this broad, you know, head of marketing role to in the past where I've been the product marketer who was like helping with the enablement, helping with the talking points, helping with the demos. I think you just start early. think getting I think the first thing is always understanding what is going to be your unique perspective. Is there something unique you're announcing at the event, something new in the product? Is there a new piece of research that you're launching? think just understanding what is the goal? What's our goal at this event? Is where you start from? then, I guess, It's always revenue. is always revenue, always revenue and retention. But, I think that's where I've always started from, but when it comes to training and enabling and rallying people around that, and then getting like buy -in from leadership, leadership is always part of all of the enablement in training that I've done. And I like that because they can, they, first of all, there's alignment with messaging and what and what they're going to be saying at the event is going to match how everyone else is presenting the brand. And then they can also interject and have their own kind of thoughts around that. And that's always really appreciated and respected. So I always do that. But I think when it comes to the pitch, that's the part where, and I've always tried to be open -minded, accuracy is important. know, making sure that you're at least describing the company. but everyone's gonna have their own flavor of pitch. I try not to have crazy guard rolls around that. I think it's just striving for accuracy. And like it's... do bullet points or is it a is it like a paragraph script? I've done both and I think having the paragraph script is really good for people who are not comfortable with like, how do you really craft a pitch? But having those bullet points for the folks that are a little more experienced, I think is preferred. I don't know what I always do is I always have an FAQ. So when you're at an event, you're going to get people who say, like, who are you? Are you like this company? Are you like this type of company? I'm using your competitor. How are you better or different than them? are you, can you work with public entities? how do you handle my data? Is my data safe in your product? How are you leveraging AI? Like all of these questions we get asked, not just the booth, just around an event. They always like to make sure people feel really like comfortable and prepared to, to answer those. Having an FAQ is really important and handling objections that someone, you know, kind of throws you a curve ball during a conversation. Like how do you handle that with grace and, obviously keep them interested in the product. So there's a lot of training that goes into it. I like to record stuff too. And I found that there's chemo, yes, record it, record the training. People will watch it when they're traveling on the plane to the event. Just record everything. Yeah. Edit, edit down a highlight reel. Like you could get it down to, you know, five to 10 minutes. like, I'm an, I'm an auditory learner. Like I listened to audio books. I don't, I don't read the physical copies. These are just for show behind me. So here's like when, know, when I'm even trying to learn and understand, mean, I will record myself giving the pitch and then play that back, you know? So like, it's so important to have the recordings. So important to use the recordings, have recordings. Yeah, so that's, and you can use Gong. Like I've always like found a couple of really good calls that maybe the more experienced sellers have done where they've just presented the product in a really compelling way. And I usually share those. The next step is giving the demo. That's always, I like to kind of. categorize the group going. You've got the folks who are going to be qualifying, pitching, trying to pull in the right folks to give the demo. And the demos, I mean, that should be done by the folks who give demos all day long. There are situations where you may be the only one person in the booth you have to give the demo. But typically, like to kind of, I want to set people up for success in those situations. Everyone kind of has a role. You're like, no, my role is to scan people. I'm a scanner. I'm a scanner. I'm hand out the swag. So I have to ask a lot of times on on podcast it's all like the flowery stuff and it's like you've painted this really great picture of everything working exactly how it's supposed to. I want to hear the horror stories like I think I think we've all had those moments where it just didn't work or the flip side where it was two months of arguing back and forth for like one line. my gosh. tell me tell me about that. Like give me give me a horror story or two where you struggled. You could succeed in the end. That's fine if you need to tell that narrative arc. But but I want to I want to hear that. I want to hear the failure. Like where were the tears? Okay, so the most recent conference I went to, won't say the name, was actually huge success for the current company that I'm at. And I didn't feel like there was a, it was a lot of pain and maybe a lot of like private tears like leading up to it was very painful to put this together. But the result like exceeded my expectations like you wouldn't believe. So I really have nothing, no pain at the actual event. was very good for us. But there was an event that in the spring that we went to, won't say the name of it, but two weeks before we went to a big industry event in cybersecurity and we saw a lot of these booths, small little booths, eight by eight, six by six, but they didn't just have the retractable pull -up banners, they had banners that had a lightbox behind it and they just glowed and they were beautiful. And our CEO got the idea that yes, the event in two weeks, we have to have that. We have to have that. And I thought, how am going to make this happen in two weeks? So I'm like calling every printer that I know. And he goes, it do it? And I'm thinking, I'm a product marketer. Why am I doing this? Monster displays. Yeah, monster. I just, we just went through like a local printer and we selected it and our graphic designer put together the design. We spent thousands of dollars on this. I didn't know it would be so hard to assemble. And it gave it this huge, heavy, like 50 pound metal box. And it arrives at our CEO's house. He says, and I'm not going to the event, it's the CEO and a salesperson. And they say, he says, What am I supposed to do with this? And I'm like, well, you have to take it to the expo and you have to assemble it. He's like, I'm not going to go to the expo until tomorrow. said, well, it has to be set up because tomorrow is when the show starts and he couldn't get in his car. And then in the end, it never even got, used at the event. So that I think was a big failure. Like just not, maybe we should have had conversations about that before committing to building that, but I am committed. and to using that at some point, that big huge light box. It will be useful going forward. yes, I think so. But yeah, you have these ideas and they send you it and then you don't realize, well, this is gonna take hours and multiple hands and people to put together and you probably need like electrician or someone who's really qualified. You don't think about that when you see it, know, just at a trade show and you think that looks really good. So that was a kind of, that was a fail. We weren't ready for that. So. I don't think anybody listening has ever been in that situation where an executive sent them a project to do in a very short amount of time and it didn't even get used. Make this happen. yes. yeah. I always try as like a leader and I would love to hear if you're the same way when I hear those requests. And this obviously I didn't do it in this situation because I just reacted and we ordered the light box, but just try to like suss it out a little bit before just jumping on it because just knowing that they're they're, you know, they're every day, their mind could be maybe in a different, different place. how to approach things like to take those urgent tasks with a grain of salt I think sometimes and just really think through them. Maybe ask others what they think but it's hard. Yeah. So I love taking anything and everything and putting it into a phase. So our booth is phase, it's not phase one yet. No, no, no. We have these terrible pop -ups that we got from Staples. It doesn't look good. So this is version shit .o. Hahaha And our light box booth is version two. So what do we need to do in between now and then for that to be successful? maybe you need a tutorial of how to put that thing together. I don't know. to do or hire someone or something. Yeah, get two weeks was way too fast to just, mean, I didn't know. thought it was just something simple that went behind it. But yeah, it's a whole, the whole thing. I, I feel, I feel like people respond really well to here's where we are. This is where we're going. This is the step that's in between it. And if they can kind of visualize it, it allows them to rationalize why it's not done immediately. Yeah. I will say sometimes it pays to take a leap of faith and jump forward a couple steps, but giving yourself time to do it right. I think that's the difference. cause I feel like as a scaling brand, you have these moments and these windows in time to really make a splash. And sometimes it pays to like, go from a six by six booth to a 20 by 30 and make a big splash. And then you're all of a sudden people are asking who's the new kid on the, on the block. It's this new brand. So sometimes it does pay to do that. that. I love the entire concept of taking a risk in the moment, doing something so different. I was at a trade show, I think it was the same spring trade show that you were talking about. I had everybody in the sales team coming in Hawaiian shirts because I wanted us to really stand out on the show floor. No. You know, something was missing, you know, the booth was stale and enterprise, but the vibes were fresh and modern. Yeah. I had startup vibes. And so I'm like, something's missing. got to like make the booth fit that I'm at target around the corner from that conference center. I, know, which could, you know, target and, and, and I'm there buying water. And I had the thought. I wonder what they have in like their pool area. So I spent like $200 worth of, blow ups like pool floaties and stuff that, that went all over the booth, myself and then, you know, one of the members of my team, you know, we were just shopping, like whatever ones look cool and we bought it, you know, Expensify that shit immediately. But, but it was. It was awesome. And you know, I had I had executives coming up like my poor boss at the time. Coming up, walks up to the booth and there's this this giant like in it. Yeah, there's a flamingo. I think there's a goat or something like there's a giant rubber ducky like like it was it was a vibe and he had no pre plan like that wasn't in a slide deck or anything. He just showed up and those things were there. And I tell you, the two major brands that were fighting over who gets to take that home to their kids at the end of the, it was so, so incredibly worth it. And it drew a lot of attention. again, you can't, you can't sell until you have attention. Yeah. And it's like, great for, going viral, I guess. Right. It's a great thing to like post on LinkedIn and Twitter and things like that. And it doesn't have to connect with your messaging. It doesn't have to connect with your brand. can just be a something. It can just be an experience, you know, maybe it's a vibe that you want to, you want to have. I don't think it always has to connect with what you're trying to. You can you can make everything connect. mean, how we were all like, you're going, you know, you're going on vacation and, you're able to do that with peace of mind because of our platform. Like everything, everything connects. If you think about it long enough, it's really just what can you do that's going to be different that hasn't been done and it will stand out and, you know, attract people's attention to you. You have to have that. Yeah, it's a reason to come around to the booth in the first place. And then when they learn how great your product is and all the problems you're solving for them, that's just, you know, that's icy on the cake. But yeah, it is kind of a reason. did this conference last week, which I went through the name, we had something like that. And it was, definitely got people in the booth. And it was this kind of crazy idea that was, we could make a connection to our brand, but it wasn't immediately. similar and people went from that activity and experience to, tell me about your product. I love it. actually see it. I'm thinking about the thing about I've had that problem and think about how I'm going to solve it. So it actually worked really well for us. So you've got to, but that's, part of just doing really good event marketing and, and, it's all about experiential marketing. That's what they call it. Branchal marketing. Yeah. there are two types of event marketers. You have the event marketers who overly index on creativity, might a piece of your booth may not arrive occasionally. Like, but, but you deal with it because they're the ones who are going to change the game. They're the ones who are going to come up with the concept. That's fabulous. And You know, they might miss a couple of things. They might forget that they ever needed to send an expense report in or like, you know, they're, definitely the creative minds, but they're always going to come up with something epic. Whereas the other side of the equation are, you know, the, I'll say very like project management style. Event marketers who it's all about the process. Eyes dotted, T's cross. When is thing, when are things going to arrive? Who's going to be there when, and like all, all of the event logistics. And so they over index on that. But then you end up with a booth that has nothing on it, here's some donuts. there's no flair. There's no attraction to it. And so I typically will over index and hire the folks who are highly creative. and we'll come up with, you know, really epic ideas. But I always have to remind myself to double check the details. yeah. It's yeah. If you are, that's the preference and the need just knowing, then there's gonna be that project management gap and you might have to come in and fill it. Alright, so I do have to wrap up. never like these episodes to go super long, though I don't exactly have a shot clock. I want to cover two more things with you. Okay, so the first one I want to understand and I want our audience to understand how you go about creating your personas and your battle cards and like, what are the intrinsic places you go for this information? Yeah. So for, I'll start with personas. So with personas, it's all about knowing who's part of your buying team. And so I think it's looking at, it's having the experience with those first few, not even customers, first few accounts. And then you get an idea of who's on the buying team. Who's your entry point? That's really important because that's who the BDR team is going to be prospecting to. who's an evaluator, who's a user, who's the budget holder who has to sign off on it. That's all very important to understand. I will say as a market matures, as you may change your go -to -market strategy and decide to go up market, it's gonna change. I think the understanding the buying team, I think it changes probably every year for an industry. So I think that's really important. And then when it comes to really understanding them, Who they are, their challenges, how they're measured at work, what do they care about, what are their jobs to be done? What I always do is through with persona research, you have to talk to them. And sometimes there's not enough time of the day to actually have a one -on -one meeting with them. Maybe you don't have a cab set up. So that's where things like Gong come into play. And it's so important to have, if you can as a company, make that part of your put that into your budget. It's just one of the most powerful tools and have it record every single external call with a customer or a prospect. And my current organization would do really good job of sharing, like just like, this is a great call. It was a member of the IT team was on it. Just listen to it. And I always find that I get really good nuggets for percent of research. Another channel I use is actually going out into the field to a conference and talking to people. It's really important. But personal research is never done. You always build on it. And who's on the buying team, their roles, I think always changes as well. And it's also important once you have a pretty good idea, share that knowledge internally. should be part of your onboarding process. It should be centrally located. It should be... We should be doing knowledge shares all the time. Like, just revamped the persona bios. So that's really important too as a go -to -market team. Can I tell you what always pisses me off when product marketing is doing all of that great work, but none of it is ending up in the CRM. Like, how are you going to pull those reports later on? Like, my gosh, like who is in what role in the buying committee should be in your CRM. A deal should not be able to close without that information. It should not be able to close without who else they're considering. Yeah. know, you can get your competitive research, you know, what are the objections that they asked in the call should be in your CRM like all of this? And it's, think I did actually just had a conversation with some new sellers today where we walked them through when you fill out at Crate, you convert a lead to an opportunity. These are the fields that you have to fill out and different stages, you have to fill out different fields. It's really important reporting. I think the way to make sure that happens is make those fields required. Cause I mean, I'm not going to remember, you know, to fill out everything, but if you make it required, you can't move on to the next. stop without filling it out. So I think that's one of the strategies we use currently. and have having Mops have a very tight knit relationship with product marketing. That's where the magic happens, because if you have a list of all of the things that you need in order to build out your personas. That list is gold for your Mops person. yeah, yeah. then they can put you in. you get long -term reports on how things shift over time. the data is magic, but so many, so many early stage companies just absolutely look the other way on that one. You you'll have, you'll have personas that, you know, somebody just guests and made up. And then you actually pull the data and you're like, no, You have to use the data. Yeah. So it shouldn't live in your Google drive and like a docket. You're right. It be actionable in a CRM. absolutely has to. And there has to be that, share that knowledge. Marketing is not the only team that uses personas. Your product team are using personas because they're building the product for those roles. So you can have silos. I've been at companies where you have a persona list that the product team uses and the marketing team uses a different, it shouldn't be like that. should be. It's the same people that were using the product or buying the product. So you have to have consistency and knowledge here as well. You mentioned battle cards. come yeah for competitive Do you do that in the CRM as well? Like are you big on tools like like clue and cram? So I'm not using Clue currently, but I have in the past. I love there's Clue and Crayon. They're both great. Clue is the one that I know the most, the best. Love it. It's great because it's actionable. It has that great integration with your CRM like Salesforce and other tools as well. But it's great because it's not just marketing or product marketing that's maintaining the battle cards. You can get information from all sorts of parts of the business. And it's easy to collect all that information. It's as easy as putting it in the right Slack channel. And then that information gets sent over to Clue and then marketing can just kind of decide what to do with it. But yeah, I've had a lot of fun with that. Obviously, it's full -time role in some organizations just doing competitive intelligence, especially if your industry is really big. But I think it's so important, especially when you're doing bake -offs with other competitors on a deal, just understanding. obviously you'll also get prompted quite a bit from prospects, how are you better than X, Y, and Z competitor? So yeah, so that's obviously a huge part of a product marketer's role. And what I've always done is just there's multiple channels you can use to get information. Obviously there's announcements that these competitors put out, LinkedIn, press releases. It's important to monitor that. There's product launches, there's new hires. That's a really interesting piece of Intel. Looking at their third party review sites and digging through those about what people liked about their product, what they weren't happy about their product. Going through Salesforce and obviously when folks are, when the sales team is... doing a bake off with a prospect, making sure that you have that information and you're putting it into Clue. But what's also great about Clue, and I feel like I'm advertising Clue, not promoting Clue, I just really like the tool. It's not a sponsored podcast for Clue. Yes, yes, Clue. What's great though about these tools for sellers is they can be in the moment preparing for a call. knowing they have to give some strong points against a competitor to a prospect. And these, the battle card through clue is right there for them in Salesforce. So I've always loved, loved having those integrations and making it actionable. and also having fun with it. Like I've done competitive newsletters once a month and you, everything about like, this is what we've learned over the month, highlighting and rewarding the sales team when they've done a really good job of combating a, a competitor. Doing closed one, closed lost analysis around a competitor is really important as well. So it's a big job. It's an important job. But I've always used like a multi -touch approach, channel approach to updating the battle cards. And then I think if you can't have a tool like Clue, make it actionable. It's the best way. I love having, I always put in a section called landmines. Ooh, yeah. yeah. That is probably the most consumed section of any battle card I've ever created. Because it's like, do I need to avoid? And if they mention this, how do I tiptoe around it? Yeah, yeah. Especially if if it's maybe it's a gap in the, in the functionality where you know it's, it's on the roadmap and we're going to get there eventually, but we've got to handle that objection and be ready for it. So yeah, so that's always a really important, section of a battle card is, the landmines. Yeah. And I think, yeah, there's different types of battle cards. Like I've seen some competitive battle cards that are so dense and there's a lot of different sections and you've got your pricing model, you've got objection handling, you've got, it's not just a SWOT analysis, but then just having a basic, sometimes I start with just a basic heat map, comparing our functionality to the competitors functionality and just doing like a heat map kind of style to show where there's strengths or weaknesses and that can be really powerful too, if you're not quite ready for the battle card. Well, and if you need AI to create a summary of your battle card, your battle card says too much. It's not actionable anymore. Sales can no longer process it. Nope. Absolutely agree. Yeah. You should be able to, and then maybe a heat map approaches the better way then for that way. Could you can glance at it and kind of get a, an idea of the, the areas where you're different and better or better. But to your point, if you need AI to summarize it, you've gone too far. Agreed. Agreed. so that way it's able to be used. All right. So I want to, I want to end this episode talking about the beginning. We're going go all the way back. Tell me about the first job you had that is not on your resume. Like these jobs are never on your resume. Tell me about that first. Like, I don't know if you were, you were manning the shake machine at McDonald's or you worked at the food court in the mall or you. Delivering newspapers. I don't know whatever it is. Tell me about that first job in high school. I never worked retail or in restaurant, but I worked at a greenhouse. And it was, I was not at a desk when I was interacting with people. I was with like plants and I actually loved it. was really, I was hardworking. It was really fun to see like, you you plant something that actually grows. I really enjoyed that. did that for a summer and then the next summer I went back and I was ready for the next step because it was a greenhouse that sold wholesale flowers to florists. I actually got to help put together the bouquets to take to the four shops. So that was really, really fun. But yeah, that was my first job. And then I realized I wanted to be a marketer. So I don't know how I went from that to going into marketing, but it was a very kind of sweet. Like for, it's just a hard job, you know, like you work really, really hard and tired at the end of the day, but it was really, really rewarding. And I wasn't with people or customers at all. Maybe that's what I missed was being with people and customers, but. So I have to ask because no interview is ever going to ask you this question. But this is the only one that's ever going to ask you the question. Tell me what you learned at that job. What was your takeaway? I think I realized maybe something that I was passionate about personally that I didn't want. I learned that you can enjoy something and be passionate about it, but it doesn't have to be your job and how you make a living. So now today as an adult, I love plants and growing plants. And I think that that is a personal hobby of mine. And that came from that first job, but it doesn't have to be you know, what you do as a professional career. And that was the big learning for me. that it's like an early look at like work -life balance and separating a personal life and you have to be all in on something that you don't enjoy or you enjoy at a different time. yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that's another takeaway is who knows and maybe later in life I'll want to go into that professionally. And that's another thing is we're not one thing for the rest of our career in life. We can have different stages, and I think that's another learning as well. for those who can't see your video, that's a shame because you only have one thing in your background. So it is not a plan. my background, so I don't have my diploma. don't have a picture on the wall yet. they're on either side of me. Where's that homage going on? there you go. right there. I should have them closer right behind me. Yeah. You should you should have you should have like little ones on on a shelf behind you Like to the right of the architecture plans, have little six -inch shelves and have the... Or do a hidden shelf with the plant. Yeah. floating? Is it levitating? Like, how did you do it, Andrea? No, it's a good. with a book with the book around it and then the plant is on the book. my gosh, that'd be very cool. And it's a talking point, like why the plans, Andrea? Well, let me tell you about what I learned at my first job in high school. And it could be it could be an instant pun because you could put it on top of something like thinking grow rich Think aga It could. So it has to be thought exactly, the placement, the book, what's around it has to be a story, theme. Every everything in it. Actually that was advice that I was given really Early on like before everybody started the transition to remote work I was given the advice that you know, you're losing so much of that person personal connection when you're remote that you almost have to put your personality behind you and So putting things into your background that tell a story about who you are that somebody might be able to connect to. Maybe it's a picture of a place you vacation. Maybe it's art that you enjoy. In my case, there's a lot of like board games and vintage audio there. like things, things that people can connect with. It definitely helps. And for all those sellers out there listening to this, that is like table stakes. If you got, if you got a white background behind you, that is nope. Not today. more than this plan that's not even centered behind me. I have more than this. I have more than the plan. swear I have an interesting person, I swear. I feel like that's literally every every marketer after their pitch for the next year's budget plan is I'm more than the plan. I'm a person. I'm fine. Yup. That's why everybody come time for December and January is like really ready for the holiday season because they've been doing forecasting. or board meeting prep or budget season. Yeah, they're really, really ready. They're really ready. I've worked at a couple of companies where the quarters end, ended in January instead of end of December. That's always appreciated. yeah. Well, well, the cool thing is then you have a really I mean, a really lit Valentine's Day. That's true, you're ready. You're ready. You're ready for the Super Bowl. You're ready for... Yeah, yeah. But no, yeah, that's... What's behind is that that's a great channel to show off your personality. I feel like it's replaced what was on our desk in the office. That's what it's replaced. Yeah. even even like body language and things, you know, you're not getting a lot of it when you're shown from like chest up on a, on a zoom, you know, you're missing a good portion of it. So having things behind you definitely hacks that a little bit. and I, I do think anytime I see a company with like the, the, the logo backdrop thing, I, Always tell them you got to take that off like it be Yeah, the zoom virtual background and it's like, you know company logo and stuff and it's like I get it You want to highlight the brand but they know who they're on the phone with What they don't know is your brand ambassador the person who is the brand to them? And that's the relationship that I want to over index on I don't need the logo in the background for an hour Mm -mm. That's really smart. That is really, really smart. Yeah. Yeah. Unless what's behind you isn't going to help. Like I have some colleagues who work in their garage. Maybe that's a talking point. I don't know. Yeah. I had I had somebody we were on a call and they had they had a classic car that they were working on behind them. So like like the the the hood was up and everything. And I mean, it was sick. I'm not a car guy. And it's crazy because I live in Detroit. So like, obviously, I should be one. I'm just not. But it was still really cool. Like. And it was unintentional to, you know, he joined the meeting because he was working on his car and he's like, I'm late. Let me join. And he just joins with it behind him. And it was so cool. It's like, no, that's where you need to build your desk. Like that. That's, where your desk needs to be. I'm sorry, but like, if you're going to do a webinar, you're there like that. Yeah. Hood up. Yep. the arms. I want to see dirty towels like on the floor next to it. Like I need the whole experience. So. thing. The whole thing. I love that. But yeah, that is there's a lesson I think, yeah, and personal brand virtually. think, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so I would ask you to think back to the Andrea that was like, I am done with this manual labor and I'm going to get into marketing. What advice would you give to her? wow. I think the marketing that I was doing a long time ago when I first started my career is different than it is now. And we didn't have social media at the time. We didn't have influencer marketing and things like that. It's just very different now than it was. And I think it's having that Having that discipline of being open to and staying on top of how the industry changes. I think, gosh, I took marketing classes in college and they're highly irrelevant to how marketing is done now. So I think it's having that, being that open -minded and knowing that you're going to learn more about marketing, doing it than you will in a classroom. So get out there and get as much experience as you can. I don't care if you're doing marketing for the school paper or... a mom and pop like own business, like just get as much experience as you can. Never say, don't say no to anything, but get out there and get the experience and don't just read about it and take a class about it. So that's what I would tell the Andrea of then.