Speaker 1: 0:24

by marketingopscom, powered by all the mob pros out there. I'm your host, michael hartman, flying solo once again. I know mike is knee deep in prep for mops blues at 2025, uh, so I know that recently we just had the the uh session speakers announced. So if you're not sure if you're going to go waiting to see what's out there, you you should be able to start seeing the speakers now. But joining me today is my guest, pratipa Jain, a seasoned B2B marketing leader who's been driving demand and growth for nearly two decades across industries like cloud computing, dev tools, enterprise planning, software and HR tech. She has led teams across demand gen, growth, marketing, marketing ops and more, and brings a unique perspective on what really matters when it comes to measuring marketing's impact. From ABM to events, paid media to pipeline metrics, pratibha has done it all, and today she's here to share the lessons from her journey, walk us through real world examples and talk about how she's partnered with RevOps and marketing ops to drive results that truly move the needle. So, pratibha, thank you for joining.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Thanks for having me, Michael.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Yeah, all right, I know, I asked you how to pronounce your name. Did I get it? Was I close? Please say yes.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:39

I know it's not an easy name to say Well, you know, all of us, all of us lazy Americans, you know, but I try, I try Anyway. Well, let's get started with your like. Let's just maybe start with your background right, as I mentioned in kind of the intro for you, you've managed and led demand gen growth in marketing ops and even, like BDR, mdr teams. Maybe walk us through a little bit of like a brief history of your career and how that unfolded and you know how that has impacted the way you approach marketing.

Speaker 2: 2:21

Absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 2:23

I'd say that I started my career in a little bit more of a traditional marketing role but quickly gravitated towards demand gen and, more recently, growth marketing because I really liked seeing the impact of the programs I was driving and how it was connected to revenue right Pipeline and revenue generation.

Speaker 2: 2:42

And, as you said in the intro, I've led all of the inbound and outbound marketing channels and content marketing and marketing ops and the VDR, mdr function and all. I think having oversight of all of these functions really shaped how I thought about marketing or how I think about marketing right. These are not independent, isolated channels, but really an integrated story that we build around the customer journey but really an integrated story that we build around the customer journey. And that perspective led me to ask, like, how can we bring that integrated story across all of these touch points? Our customers and prospects don't frankly care who owns one channel versus another internally at the company. What they're seeing really is a sum total of everything we're doing and saying right via email, on our website, at events and so forth. So I think that's what really motivates me and that's kind of where I am today.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Okay, I don't know why this popped in my head, so this is totally unplanned, so I'm going to throw a curveball at you already. So there was a point in my career where I had more of a marketing and a technical side of marketing background. But there was an opportunity that was like a customer support team and they were thinking about. What was interesting is, they were thinking about customer support as a marketing channel too. Like, how do you? Top of mind for me is how little I see of marketing teams that are focusing on customer marketing and retention. Do you think of that as a potential channel for marketing or at least affecting loyalty, or something like that?

Speaker 2: 4:25

Oh, absolutely so. Customer marketing has been part of the dimension teams that have been on as well in prior roles, and I think about not just how do we acquire net new customers, but I've also been gold on customer retention and customer expansion and, as we well know, right, it's much easier for us to keep our current customers than to acquire a new one. It's easier, less expensive all of that. So I think customer marketing probably doesn't get as much visibility as it should, but it's certainly a very important piece of the marketing group.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Okay, yeah, that just popped into my head. So one of the other things that you and I, when we talked before, is that you said, I think, you described as your passion about data, so which I like to hear. So, from your perspective, maybe with the demand gen lens in particular, right, how have you thought about what metrics and what data is really important, and maybe a nuance like for what purposes? So what would you use to, say, take to the executive team of the board versus what would you use within your marketing team for just within that domain, as opposed to sharing it broadly with others?

Speaker 2: 5:53

Yeah, definitely so. For me, it comes down to decision making, right? So the question I'd like to ask is what decisions are we trying to make and what data will help us or inform us to make those decisions? Otherwise, you're really drowning in data. There are so many data points, reports, dashboards and all, and they look really impressive, but they don't help move the business forward, right? So for my purposes, I look at the top of the funnel data. So I care about efficiency metrics at the very top, right. What's the cost per qualified lead coming in? How many people are hand raisers? Right? Those form completes like demo requests and contact us on our website.

Speaker 2: 6:37

Mid funnel, I'm looking at conversion rates at velocity and I'm slicing and dicing that by persona, by segment, by geos, so I can identify either the friction points and help remove those or figure out where to double down and down the funnel. I'm focused on influence pipeline, on wind rates by region, on deal acceleration and so forth. So there's a lot of data and while I look at everything, what I bubble up to the business or outside of just the marketing team are really how is marketing helping drive pipeline and revenue Right? So, the top, the final metrics. They're interesting, but I think they're more interesting to marketing. I'm really interested in sharing, like what is the conversion rate? What velocity and how are we making an impact in those target accounts that we really want to go after and how?

Speaker 1: 7:28

are we making an impact in those target accounts that we really want to go after? Yeah, so a conversation I've had multiple times recently is as much as I like or at least I did like really thought like things like attribution reporting were going to be valuable for marketers. I think it's pulled people away from what I would call controllable things, right, which which I think it's. In general, these get called vanity metrics. Now, right, um, and my take on it is like it's not that those were bad per se, but they were either used with the wrong audience for the wrong kind of thing, right, which then that gives them the vanity metrics, but don't tie them to the business, but then they've been shunned because of that.

Speaker 1: 8:15

And I think there's this huge opportunity for marketers if they really went back to like what do they have control over? So, how well did our content perform? Like, did our email get open? Right? So we need to think about the subject line, like all that kind of stuff. If you truly believe, right, that all has a full impact across the buyer's journey, then you should be trying to optimize all those little things along the way, but it feels like a lot of people stepped away from that I mean, are you seeing the same kind of thing? And it sounds, because it sounds like you actually haven't gone full circle, like you're still looking at some of those kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 8:51

So I'd say overall, for the business right, I'm looking at everything from leads coming in to MQLs, sqls, and obviously those stages might be named differently at different companies, sure, but I'm looking at everything you know through the funnel opportunities created and closed, won or lost. But then within each of those channels, as you mentioned, right, it is important to see, like, how is that channel performing? If it's a webinar program that I'm running, not just the registrations but like how many actually attended the webinar, whether it's online or demand on demand, right? So with any channel, I'm also looking at the metrics. And attribution is definitely a very sticky topic not sticky but I guess a controversial topic, right.

Speaker 2: 9:35

How do we measure the impact? Is it first touch, last touch, multi-touch, the whole bit? But I think it's important to see again, what is that digital footprint, from a lead coming in to becoming an opportunity, to becoming closed one? So I can figure out does it take seven steps to get them from lead to opportunity? Does it take 12? And what are the most common interactions that we're having? So what's working? Well? So I do look at it from a channel perspective and then overall from the full funnel right Marketing and sales funnel point of view.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Just one last question on this. So when you're presenting to senior leadership or the board or whatever, what like? What are I think about, like what I would do, I would probably have only a handful of things I talk about. Right, probably wouldn't be just one thing, but there might be four or five things. What have you found that works well when you're talking to that kind of audience in terms of metrics that talk about marketing's effectiveness or impact on the business?

Speaker 2: 10:45

Yeah, I think in that case, less is more, right, less is better. So, again, what are those key metrics that actually show that we're going to contribute to pipeline and revenue? So, if you like, all because we probably didn't have the right quality of leads then or something else was missing, right, our message didn't resonate with them, and so on. So what I present to in my quarterly business reviews or to the board are really those bottom key metrics, right, which is what's the opportunity creation, how are we moving that through pipeline and through closed one deals? And then, what is the velocity and what are the conversion rates that we expect and are we meeting those, are we exceeding those, et cetera. So those are the key metrics that I would present to them, but I'll keep in my back pocket, right, the full funnel metrics if there are questions more geared towards, like top of the funnel or middle of the funnel.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about it a little bit here in the moment and I think that sounds like a good way of focusing on the things that that audience cares about. And then those more top of funnel, upstream ones actually could be part of like, if there is something that is happening in those metrics you're talking about good or bad, right, the, you have the supporting data. That's probably part of the diagnosis about what you like, what's causing that, you know, change, right, and probably more most likely when it's something like oh, we're not meeting our number for pipeline or something you know. You know, oh well, if we think about, like, what we have to do upstream, um, we had a dip in the quality of our leads three months ago, so now we're, like, we're seeing the results of that. Is that kind of the way you think about it?

Speaker 2: 12:42

you nailed it, michael.

Speaker 1: 12:43

Yes, okay, okay good, good, all right. Well, I'm learning here as I go, you know, um. So. So another thing, you think again, going back to your career path, you, um, you've had, for sure, you've had relationships with marketing ops or rev ops teams, but it sounds like you've also had teams that reported into you. What, like, if you could pick a handful of things and say this is these are the scenarios when those teams have performed well or where we've worked well together. What were those kinds of things?

Speaker 2: 14:14

Yeah, I think I'll start with trust and and shared ownership, right? So, as you said, I've led marketing operations directly. I've also worked very closely with marketing ops, leaders in the company and leaders too. But I think when marketing sales, rev ops, marketing ops, like all of them are co-owners of the pipeline and I don't mean just working in parallel, but I mean working together to solve the problems right, aligning on the goals and the end goal, of course, is pipeline and revenue, but going at a much deeper level and trying to make understand and make sure we are all on the same page as to what our goals are. Are we trying to increase velocity? Are our conversion rates not what we expect them to be? And therefore you want to work on those. Are we trying to expand in a specific segment? Right? So, getting clear on what the business objectives are up front, so that everybody is going in the same direction, so to say.

Speaker 2: 15:15

One thing that is one of my pet peeves is marketing having their own dashboards and reports and sales having their own dashboards and reports. Right, I think that is a really bad signal. I think having a single source of truth across the entire go-to-market organization. So no matter whether somebody is in product marketing or the CRO or the SDR right. Whoever is looking for that information right, they're looking at the same data and we're measuring success the same way.

Speaker 2: 15:47

The last thing I'll say about this is really really important to actually get the marketing ops and RevOps teams involved early, and what I mean by that is, you know when we're setting up the lead scoring program or the lead routing, or thinking about attribution, the funnel stages, and what are the entry and exit criteria for each stage of the funnel right. So all of these things, as we're really starting to think and plan those really important to actually work with marketing ops and RevOps. Bring them into the fold early. Align on the big questions. Make sure we all know, you know, what good looks like and know what, actually, what levers we can actually pull, so that you know when we are looking at the data we're, you know, coming in with the same point of view, we can troubleshoot things easily, right? Do all of that. So I think that you know relationships when they're open, when they are, um, you know, aligned against the same goals. I think those ones I found to be most effective it's, it's so for audience who's just listening in.

Speaker 1: 16:52

Right, I had this big smile on my face when she was talking about the different reports because like it feels like a real you know sign that there's going to be a challenge with alignment is when you've got different reporting right and that, um, it's already a signal that like there's going to be a battle when it comes to like, whether it's like a who gets credit or who are we going to believe, who's right, who's wrong? And um, like like to me, I think that like lesson here is like, if I start seeing that kind of stuff in these organizations, it's a, it's a time to go like, oh, we need to. I mean, it's kind of this overused. Like you get aligned um, which sounds simple but it's not. But if you can at least agree on which metrics you're going to use consistently, that might by itself just sort of help solve some of that alignment problem right.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, have you gone through that example of like where you have you had to solve that like bridge that gap, where you were doing different reporting on what on the surface looked like the same metrics with senior executives and then you had to like work through how to how to make them more consistent?

Speaker 2: 18:17

Yeah, I've actually experienced that more than once, unfortunately, where I've come into the organization and you know, marketing has their own dashboard, Sales is running their own reports and dashboards. I'm like, why don't we have one funnel view of this right? There's one goal, one revenue number to achieve and there's no reason to be looking at different metrics Because, as you said, what happens is if the numbers you know, if you don't meet our numbers, for example, there's a lot of finger pointing, because I'm looking at this data.

Speaker 2: 18:51

You're looking at that data. It doesn't align and you know, I'd rather not have that hard burn and just start again from what are our goals and let's build one view and let's all use the same data and the same cadence right reporting cadence and make sure that we're all aligned.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Yeah, I'm sure that that resonates with everybody, like a lot of people listening, that there's like it had this like visceral reaction to that idea, because I've experienced it myself too. So, kind of going back to this, so what are the characteristics of the marketing ops or RevOps teams that you've worked with that made them where you felt like they were great partners with what you were doing?

Speaker 2: 19:37

Yeah, I think a lot of it is actually, I would say, almost cultural, and what I mean by that is it's how frequently they're actually willing to meet. How transparent are they right about working together. How quickly can we troubleshoot metrics when they do go south every now and then? Right, how we're willing to pivot and also clearly define roles and responsibilities. What would the marketing ops leader do? What's expected of the demand gen leader? Right? Where does RevOps, you know, come in, et cetera. Having those clear definitions of roles and responsibilities and being able to come together to work through any challenges that come up, I think those kinds of things right is what you know, what I look at when I work with marketing ops and DevOps teams.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Got it. So we talked a little bit about alignment. In a general sense, it sounds like you've done a lot of ABM kinds of go-to-market strategies too, and like one of the things I've found when I'm in a marketing ops leadership role is having people come to me and saying we need, we need to do ABM, and what they really mean is go buy some technology, and I've always not always, but pretty consistently gone, turn around and said great, can we? My approach has always been like I don't mind getting more technology, but like, can we get aligned on what we mean by abm? Right, do we have a list of target accounts? Um, and that to me has been more of a struggle like, are there any particular nuances of alignment when it comes to abm that you think are unique? And then, kind of going back again for our core audience, right, how could people in our audience, in marketing ops roles, for example, be a facilitator, a catalyst, right, an enabler of that alignment and execution? Then for ABM, yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:43

So I know ABM is a very easy and catchy acronym to use, but I would like to frame it a little bit differently. I would say account-based strategy or account-based planning, because that is truly not just an ABM, like a marketing effort. Right, we need to bring product marketing, sdr leaders, rep ops, marketing ops, sales leaders, right, All of them to work together to actually have account-based play. So a couple of things I'll say. I actually, again, will start off with who is our target audience, right, do we have those target account lists? Are we focused on one-to-one you know, account-based strategy? Are we doing one-to-few, account-based you know outreach? In my view, one-to-many is basically just targeted dimension, right, it's not really an account-based strategy, really.

Speaker 2: 22:35

So let's start with the ICP what are the pinpoints, the challenges, how do we solve for them? Do we have a champion within those customers, especially those one-on-one accounts, and really make sure that we are aligned at the executive level, right, as far as our target companies and our you know, our own executive team, so that we fully understand, right, what is the pain point they're trying to solve for and how can we help them with that. It's also again starting or looking at at, like, our shared goals, shared systems right, you mentioned account-based platforms, which, of course, are important to get the intent data and to do a lot of the paid campaigns and other outreach and all that, but I think that's just one piece of it. I think it's making sure that we actually are focused again on the same metrics and we are defining everything right from the definitions to the handoffs, to the reporting, like everybody is working towards the same outcomes. So those are the kinds of things that I, you know, generally look at, but specifically for. Is there any part of the question, michael?

Speaker 1: 23:47

I apologize if I no, no, so the last part I asked sorry, I asked a long winded multi-step question, so don't worry about it. So the other part was like how, how, how can then ops folks be kind of and contribute to not only the execution, because I think that's fairly obvious, but also, with the alignment right, Helping to facilitate?

Speaker 2: 24:25

that alignment and then turn that into an actionable plan, whether it's using new technology or existing technology. Yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 24:34

I think marketing ops and rev ops both actually have a huge role to play here I did mention, like the shared definitions, right, like what counts as a major count, right? What are those qualified buying signals that we should look out for? Marketing ops and DevOps can also set up the right alerts and the routing logic so the sales knows who to follow up with, when to follow up, and so on, and have a reporting cadence that is consistent across, again, marketing sales, right, all of the different go-to-market functions. So everybody is, you know, speaking the same language and measuring the impact in a similar way. One other thing, actually, I'll add to this, to your earlier part of the question, which is, oftentimes I've seen that there is a lack of visibility of what's happening on either side, and by either side I mean sales or marketing. Sales may not know what campaigns you know marketing is running and marketing may not have feedback from the sales team to really know, like, what's resonating or not, right?

Speaker 1: 25:33

So quite often I've seen that that is a problem that makes it very difficult for us to A plan those programs and to see the impact you know in a meaningful way I mean, I like I know I can probably think of many scenarios in my role and marketing apps leader where all of a sudden we'll get this is not even with abm per se, like, but just in general, like, hey, why didn't my customer get that newsletter that promote, you know, the invite to this webinar or whatever, or the flip right, why did my customer get this stuff? Right? They're not supposed to be getting stuff and I think getting alignment on that, and what are the signals? Because my approach is like, hey, I want to know that, but I think a lot of organizations don't really get down to that level of detail. How are we going to know in at least a semi-automated way? The best example I have is if I'm a salesperson and I'm actively working on a potential opportunity, opportunity um, and I really want to kind of um curate the messaging that's going to them because I'm really like I don't want something to interrupt.

Speaker 1: 26:51

And then, you know, because they're in our database and marketing sending out something that's maybe promotional um could cause a problem.

Speaker 1: 27:00

I can really see that happening.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Like, how can we provide a way for them to like flag those accounts as ones not to communicate with with general stuff Right, and it's me like it sounds like a pretty easy thing to do, right, you can come up with a pretty solid rule that probably works most of the time Right, but it's going to require it does require some discipline and consistency from the sales team.

Speaker 1: 28:31

So they like small example, right, and to me this is a way of like getting buy-in from sales teams on doing things that I think a lot of marketers wonder like scratch their head like why won't sales update their opportunity status? Why won't they add contacts to opportunities? Right, and it's because, like, they're not getting paid for it, there's no incentive for it. But if what they want to do is say, hey, I really want to make sure that if I've got key stakeholders from an account where I'm working on an active opportunity and I don't want marketing in general to communicate to those, well, the easy way to do that is add them as contacts to that opportunity and then marketing could assuming there's a sync between that and their marketing platform, they just say we're going to have a standard exclusion on certain kinds of emails, that if there's people who are in an active opportunity, then we don't send them. It's not that hard, but it does require someone else to take action.

Speaker 2: 29:37

You're exactly right and it happens more often than you would think. Right. But, as you said, sales just wants to work on the active opportunities when things go south. Right, why did my customer get this email or why didn't they get included on that email? That's when the surfaces, but it requires a lot of diligence right Throughout the process A for them to actually for us to come up with those rules of engagement and then B for them to update right the information in their opportunities so that they you know, some of their contacts don't get included or do get included, as the case might be. Yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:18

Well, I mean, I've seen, I've seen the over I'll call it an overreaction but salespeople who, because they don't want their customers to be contacted, they mark all their contacts as unsubscribed. Right, and I'm like don't unsubscribe them because once that happens, we can't resubscribe them without them giving us explicit way of doing it. And it's like if, if what you want to do is say, like I want to limit again, like we can come up with another way of saying don't send them these people, that doesn't go to the level of unsubscribing, but because they don't communicate, that's what happens.

Speaker 2: 30:57

Yeah, and I think about marketing provides a lot of air cover campaigns and if they were just unsubscribed, I think these accounts and the contacts associated with them would miss out on those learning, educational, nurturing opportunities, right. So it's really important. It's easy to do let's just unsubscribe them. But, actually, then we miss out on a lot of marketing goodness.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Yeah, I mean there's like all kinds of unintended consequences that come with that, right, and that's I mean mean I know from my perspective, because I've I've had to deal with those sort of, um, sometimes right, high emotion kinds of responses to things like that, and in the moment it's, it's it's like it's hard not to take it personally, um, but that's like, that's the like my mental state is, like I try to to go okay, this is not a personal thing, they're actually trying to help the business in their own way.

Speaker 1: 31:57

Yeah, so I try to give them a benefit of the doubt. What I try to do is take it as an opportunity to teach, right, and this sounds so trite, but, like I mean, the more I've had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with salespeople about what they do and when, like why things are the way they are. Like, in a situation like that, I find that they actually get it Right and they're more than willing to try to help solve the problem on a bigger scale. But if we just simply say, well, oh, you screwed up, you unsubscribed those people, you shouldn't have done that, sorry, right, then that doesn't help anyway. Like, so it just feeds into this lack, comes out as a lack of alignment, but, like it's just, there's no communication that's effective at that point, so there's no way to get alignment because, like it's just like we're talking past each other.

Speaker 2: 32:51

Yeah, that's true. I've also found that the easier we can make it for the salespeople to do what we're asking them to do, the greater the chances that they'll actually do it. So make it super simple make the logic the rules.

Speaker 1: 33:09

Or, even better, just make something that you want done automatic, based on something that they're required to do to get paid.

Speaker 2: 33:18

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 33:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm very passionate about this particular topic because I think a lot of people in our community in this space get frustrated with sales and sales ops and I think a part of it is just not understanding what drives their behavior based on the incentives that are there for them. Right, and so if you recognize that they're they're not incented to add contacts to opportunities, to update their opportunity status until they're being asked about their pipeline status, right, it's like if you recognize that it makes it easier to go, like how can I make it easier for them while also moving towards the benefit that I think the organization will see by having that in a consistent way, which is a lot different than going. They're stupid. They don't understand why we're doing this. Throw my hands up.

Speaker 2: 34:26

Right, right. That's not to move anyone forward.

Speaker 1: 34:29

No, okay, sorry, I need to get off that soapbox or I will just continue down that and no one needs to hear that rant. Um, okay, so one more, one more alignment kind of question. So, and you hinted at this already that, um, sometimes marketing ops and I'll call I'll keep it at sales ops, whether it's called rev ops or not, but like the ones that are, as opposed to rev ops, that is sort of across the go-to-market functions. But yeah, a lot of times there is also friction, uh, or lack of alignment or lack of communication between those teams, not just at the all marketing or all sales level. So do you have any thoughts, suggestions for how the ops teams can start to do a better job of aligning as well?

Speaker 2: 35:30

Right, and I think some organizations actually have marketing ops rolled into the RevOps function. Some have them reporting separately, right, so some of that may also like have an impact on how those teams are run. But again, I would go back to you know, something I said previously, which is start with shared goals. Right, if marketing ops is trying to optimize towards maybe the top of the funnel metrics like MQLs and SQLs, and sales ops is thinking more about pipe creation, revenue and so on, right, there is going to be friction.

Speaker 2: 36:05

So, really aligning on the goals, building the funnel together, defining the stages of the funnel very precisely so there's no guesswork there and making sure we have those right reporting dashboards, frameworks that were built together, co-created, not just built in silos Using the same reporting dataset. The reporting cadence is the same right, marketing option we're reporting on a weekly if RevOps is doing on a monthly or whatever. Right, let's align that because we're reporting out on the whole business, not just marketing or sales. Obviously, and those are the things that I have found that keeps everyone really focused and honest and really thinking about how are we reaching the goal, the goal. And the other part, again, is just making sure that it's clear who's making decisions right when something isn't working? Who owns what right? What is marketing ops zone? What is sales ops or rev ops zone? I think having clarity can prevent a lot of back and forth and a lot of again finger pointing or back blood between those teams.

Speaker 1: 37:16

Yeah, there's also sort of what I think would be a relatively simple thing that I see not happen in many places, both where I've been and I hear about, is like sales ops makes a change in Salesforce, it breaks an integration to the marketing platform or vice versa. Right, and if there simply was a conversation that happened like, hey, we are planning this change, here's what's going to happen, it could prevent a lot of pain, right and finger pointing and I think just that kind of stuff, even like that one even doesn't even necessarily require aligned goals and you know projects and things like that. It's just a matter of like recognizing that there's this interdependency and going like, oh, I need to make sure that if we make a change, like is this going to affect what's happening in the marketing team or vice versa, and it just doesn't happen enough for my experience I completely agree and you know something what'd said before is like having regular meetings between marketing ops and rep ops to share those kinds of things, right, what's coming down the pike?

Speaker 2: 38:23

looking at the metrics together and seeing like, what's trending well, but again, what's not trending as well as we expected it to. The other thing I'll add is, you know, marketing ops and DevOps, as I said, should be involved, you know, very early on in the process. They should be communicating regularly right between those two teams, but also doing like a retrospective and taking those learnings and feeding them back into, like you know, planning future programs or other changes or updates or whatever might be coming down the pike. So those things are actually very effective. So we don't make the same mistakes over and over.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Yeah, agreed. So I want to go back to kind of you touched on something I want to go back to a little bit, which is, like Bing being data, really care about data and using it to evaluate what's been effective. How do you think about optimizing your, I think, in particular, outbound investments, investments when you're like, do you do testing? Do you? Yeah, like, how frequently are you looking at results and adjusting? What's your approach to that?

Speaker 2: 39:47

Yeah, so I actually look at data every day, you know, looking at the programs, looking at, obviously, the dashboards and the top level metrics and everything. Generally. There are weekly goals that you know we have in marketing. So what we do is we look at the revenue number, we walk backwards from that and say, okay, based on our conversion rates, based on, you know, time between different stages of the funnel, right, this is how many leads I need to create now for it to have an impact. A quarter down, a month down, and so on and so forth, right? So I look at the data every day.

Speaker 2: 40:25

On a weekly basis, there is a cross-functional team meeting that I typically run, which is between the SDR leaders, the sales leaders and all of the marketing functions that either bring in leads like you know the events, you know leaders, the paid media leaders and so on or even lifecycle marketing. They don't bring in leads, but they do help nurture them and move them through the funnel. So anyone who has, either directly or indirectly, any touch points which almost everybody in marketing does right will be part of those meetings. And ahead of those meetings, I look at our weekly metrics. We have a goal to reach every week, based on, obviously, what our monthly, quarterly and annual goals are to see, like, how are we doing for that given week and ahead of that I will actually sync up.

Speaker 2: 41:17

So let's say, our webinar numbers were down this week. Why were they down? So I would, either I own that program myself and I would know because we did fewer webinars this month, right, sure. Or um, we didn't have like a paid media cost really went up. Maybe that's because of competitor activity and so on and so forth, right. Or we paused, spent for and devoted that to an event or to an account-based strategy or some of the program. So, bringing those insights into those cross-functional meetings and really talking about what's happening what are the trends? Are we meeting our numbers? Which channels aren't performing as well and the reasons why? Having that cross-functional conversation and deeper dive into the data is how I look at it and not just wait for end of month when I have to actually report out to the business what those metrics are.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Yeah, that's impressive. So when you've hired marketers across those different categories, do you expect them to be doing that as well at their level, and how does that affect your hiring practices? Do you have to teach people? Do you expect them to come in with it? I'm just curious about what that has been an impact on how you build teams.

Speaker 2: 42:37

Yeah, great question. So I'll say it depends Not the best answer, but it depends because some folks may be very early in their journey, right in their career journey. I've hired folks who were like their first full-time job to folks who've been like directors of growth and dimension on my team and obviously the latter right.

Speaker 2: 42:58

They know they've done this before. They know exactly the importance of metrics. They know what to look for and troubleshoot. You know things and all that. But folks are very early career. They don't necessarily know that. They don't know what you know. Signals you look for, what leading and lagging indicators you know would tell them, like how the channel is performing and all that. So there's a lot of coaching and educating and helping them understand that we're not just chasing vanity metrics but these metrics are important because this is how it contributes to our weekly goal, which contributes to our overall revenue goal and so forth. So I don't necessarily assume that everybody will have that knowledge and that experience when they come in um, but it is based on tenure as you get to more seasoned professionals.

Speaker 1: 43:41

Obviously that's part of any marketer's role, um, and yeah, so you like, essentially, you set a cultural norm like even if you don't have that skill, your the expectation is that you're going to continue to grow in that skill, if you don't already have. It right To be able to understand what metrics matter, and yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 44:04

I have to say I think that's highly unusual, sad as it is to say, but I don't think it's as common as I've seen, like I've I've seen many teams where even seasoned people, um, I would say have a hard time, like they're not very data literate, I think is the way I would put it.

Speaker 2: 44:24

So um, I'm sure I'm sure you're you're right when you say that, but I feel like if marketing isn't looking at the data and looking at it consistently, if you take our eye off the ball right, we're going to miss that, whatever that period is the week, the month, whatever, and it's really really hard to play catch up after.

Speaker 1: 44:44

Yeah, I mean, I know examples where there's also an important thing about clarity about who's responsible for the outcome of a program. For example and I know of at least one example that really sticks in my mind where it was a webinar my team helped facilitate getting it set up, turns out, actually there was a piece that hadn't been tested well enough, which was the connection from the registration form to the webinar platform. And we're a week. We've been promoting it for a month and a week out. Finally, the person who was like kind of facilitating the speakers and all that was like, hey, what's our registration numbers? Well, guess what you go to? In this case it was on 24, but go to the webinar platform. We're like zero. We're like what? Oh, my goodness, yeah, well, by we're now like a week out. Well, the number wasn't really zero because it's just the registrations happened in the marketing platform. The integration wasn't set up correctly, which it's like.

Speaker 1: 45:46

I was like why weren't they asking like the day? Because, like to me, the day or two after you do your initial promotions, you're like I'd be on it like a hawk, like I, when we publish these podcast episodes, I watch the numbers immediately, right, like I like, and I'd say like, how, how, like, how would you not do that if you were responsible for it? And go like, cause I want to know early signals, like if our promotions off and it's not generating the expected kind of outcomes and what we expect for registrations, like I want to course correct quickly um, and like this is an example. What I mean, like there's I don't why I don't think um, what? Like I've seen plenty of scenarios where, like, those people are like even not, that's not even being data literate, that's just not having a focus on those metrics again, because like, oh, they're vanity metrics, but like knowing that people are actually registering, that's not a vanity metric, that's like fundamental to whether or not this is going to be successful.

Speaker 2: 46:54

Exactly, and those are the kind of surprises you want to avoid, right, Like a week out and you don't know what the registration numbers look like. So that's why I think having an eye on the metrics on a very consistent and I mean daily basis, super, super relevant. Same thing running events right when you are, if it's your own hosted event, whether it's a small dinner event or a user conference right, Making sure we're looking at those registration numbers really really closely and knowing where they're coming from. Right, what's the mix between customers and prospects, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, I can talk about data all day long.

Speaker 1: 47:28

Yeah Well, so you brought up events. I'm curious because it feels like events uh making a bit of a comeback coming out of covid. I think there was a lot of craving for that like pent-up demand. So mopsa blue is a great example. But how, um, how have you thought about the importance of like? How do you think about that as the mix of part of your go-to-market strategy? From a budget standpoint, is it like? Do you, are you intentional about being clear about what the goal of a particular event is? Because, like, I think a lot of companies are not like hey, we are going to be at the, we're gonna exhibit it at this conference, because it's a signal to the industry that we are still viable, but we don't really expect it to generate leads. Right, it's more of a for like, a better like, it's a brand thing, right, versus something where we go like absolutely we're expecting to get meetings out of this.

Speaker 2: 48:23

Yeah, events has actually been a big part of my remit and I've run events everything from like running the company's user conference, sponsored events right, which are industry events, to small closing events, to online events, right, which are industry events, to small closing events, to online events, right the whole gamut. It's really important and a big part of my budget usually, and events have been one of the biggest opportunity sources opportunity obviously, then converting into revenue. For most of these, I would say last few companies where I've been, for most of these, I would say last few companies where I've been. I think it also takes a lot to plan an event well, and I like to say that running an event is a team sport, right. It's just not the demand gen and growth marketing team, but it's product marketing, it's our SDR team, it's a sales team, it's marketing ops, rep ops. Everybody needs to work together to really make it successful.

Speaker 2: 49:20

One of the biggest pitfalls that I've seen is companies will spend a fair bit of time really thinking about it pre-event. What I mean is securing a great booth, making sure we think about the swag, the collateral, even the demos and all of that, and do outreach and the day of execution. Yes, they're focused to make sure that all of these places line up, but I think a lot of the events where they start to fall apart is really post-event. There's no coordinated follow-up strategy, there's no nurtured plan. We scan people at our booth. We had some great conversations and sales will, of course, pick up on those really deep conversations that they have, but there's no outreach to those potentially hundreds of people we scan at our booth that are in our ICP.

Speaker 2: 50:15

There's no clear ownership of what is marketing going to move forward with and what are, except sending, obviously, that one post follow-up email saying thank you for coming to the booth. But then what is our plan after that and what is sales going to pick up on? Right? So there's a ton that goes into really making sure that everybody is on the same page. We understand our strategy, uh, etc. And I want to come back to something you said about. You know, is this a brand? Are we going to the event just because you know we'd be missed if you're not there, or we're going there from a brand perspective or a region perspective.

Speaker 2: 50:46

I think that is one of the fundamental things that we really must talk about internally right before we even decide to sponsor the event, to say what is our goal? You know, to go to this event. If you don't understand that well, you'll probably do a little bit of everything as we go to the event but not any of it particularly well, which is kind of a waste of, you know, time and resources.

Speaker 1: 51:09

Well, or again it feeds into the misalignment right when you have. This is a brand awareness kind of event, whereas your CEO thinks it's a lead gen thing, right? So if you're not explicit, about what? You believe the purpose is, that leads to, you know, a misunderstanding and frustration. Right, right.

Speaker 2: 51:40

And it's perfectly fine if it is a brand event or if it is a closing event and it's really like a small, you know event where we're going to. We won't get a ton of leads.

Speaker 1: 51:44

Perfectly fine as long as we know what those are and we communicate that right through the organization yeah, I always think of it like I have no problem doing that, as long as we all are saying, like, we all understand, like the purpose of this is not to generate leads are going to close in the next six months. It's to build a longer term view of the company and we we all even though we might not be able to point to all the connection points we all believe that this is going to have a downstream impact on what we care about, which is revenue. Right, but if that's, I think going in eyes wide open and agreeing on what the purpose is is often missed.

Speaker 2: 52:26

That's true and I think something you said it really resonates with me, which is a lot of teams actually think about the impact and measuring the impact right after the event, but then they forget that you know connections we made at the event. They may not mature until and may not be ready to talk to us right until a month later, three months later, whatever. So we need to measure the impact of the events not just right after the event, but on a monthly basis and a quarterly basis, going forward for a really long time.

Speaker 1: 52:55

For years I've seen.

Speaker 2: 52:57

Exactly, I was going to say one of the companies where I was. One of the biggest deals we closed happened actually two and a half years after we got to that event, right, but I've seen the same thing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 53:10

Yeah, so, but like that's, like, that's the. I think the point right Is like it's not like that's what we believe is potential, but like if the expectation is that's going to happen in the short time period. I mean a lot of things it can right. A lot of things have to be sort of serendipitously occurring, right. You get somebody who happens to come by, who happens to be in the moment where they're looking to buy in the territory, to come by, who happens to be in the moment where they're looking to buy in the chair and be like all those things are like the likelihood is pretty low, um, unless you are doing one that is specifically targeting people at a stage where you believe they're already there, right, and that's a different kind of event.

Speaker 1: 53:50

So, um, I have one last thought, and I think we're going to have to wrap it up, but like your point about like, putting an event on, like, I have a soft spot for all those event marketing teams because I think they don't get a lot of credit and it's probably. I still believe that ops maybe is the most complicated and difficult role within a marketing organization, but events is pretty close to. Second, I think people are not familiar with all the little things that have to go right and all the things that go wrong, with every event that nobody knows about because somebody cleans it up, is incredible. So I have a ton of respect for people out there in the event marketing space.

Speaker 2: 54:33

I couldn't agree more, Michael.

Speaker 1: 54:35

Yeah, and yeah it's, it's anyway. Well, hey, proud about it. This has been a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. I'm sure we could have gone on for quite a bit longer, so anyway. So, thank you. If folks want to connect with you or learn more about what you're doing, or, uh, what's the best place for them to do that?

Speaker 2: 55:01

um, they can reach out to me via linkedin, that's probably the easiest way for them to get in touch with me. But thank you so much, michael. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I'll be touching a lot of great points and a lot of things that are actually very near and dear to my heart.

Speaker 1: 55:15

Yeah Well, I think this one is going to be one that will be beneficial for all of our audience. I know I'm walking away with a couple of new ideas and thoughts myself, so I'd like to say that happens regularly. I am fortunate to get a lot of that through these, but it doesn't always happen, so I appreciate it. As always, thank you to our long time and new listeners and supporters. We really appreciate you continuing to support us. We're always looking for new ideas for topics and guests, so if you have one of those or want to be a guest, you can always reach out to Naomi, mike or me, and we would be happy to get the ball rolling on that Until next time. Bye, everybody.

Speaker 2: 55:57

Thanks again.