The Growth Marketing Episode

We as humans and our buyers, even in B2B tech, are human beings. We research, we talk, we learn, we go to events, we talk to our colleagues consistently. Not when a budget is hired or lowered, right, or when, you know, you all of a sudden get some extra money and you put some extra dollars to this display ad. This is Revenue Makers, a podcast by Six Cents investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. Sima, so question for you. Who is the greatest growth marketer you’ve ever met? The greatest growth marketer I’ve ever met. Is this question. I know. Very loaded question. There’s this guy, Adam Kaiser. I don’t know if you know. Alright. I wasn’t. Thank you. That’s not what I was going for. But, anyway, we I wanna ask you that because we have never really had a true sort sort of, like let’s talk about that as a discipline of marketing. Yeah. But we have a great guest today, Alana Haas from FireMon, who take heads up their integrated campaigns in growth marketing. And we that’s what we did. We had a, like, a throw down discussion about growth marketing that was really great. Talking about everything from brand demand, the definition, ton of good stuff. And then, of course, we talked about data and measurement, which happy place for you. There you go. And Alana is fantastic because she’s just played so many roles over the years, and she is opinionated. And I love a great sort of, you know, a passionate discussion about what has worked in in the real world and how we need to pivot. And so I think even in just the first ten minutes, folks will take away specific examples and ideas of of how to leverage some of this in their own growth marketing strategies. Really, really great Well, I loved it. Let’s get to it. Let’s do it. So, Alana, you’re here. We’ve met in person. Actually, this is the twice in person, more so than virtual. So that’s like a new thing. Thanks for joining. We got a great conversation. I know we’re gonna have a great conversation. We have a great background, a lot ton of experience. Why don’t you do the the little intro, let people know where it’s all been from? Thank you. Yeah. It’s been so fun running into you and chatting, and thank you for having me here. Overall, about twenty years in b two b tech. Started in sales, which love that. Gives so much insights when you actually sit with customers and do a lot of forecasting and presenting. Switched a bit and got an MBA in marketing and marketing strategy and how that affects business models and have been doing different elements of brand, demand, growth, life cycle marketing. What is the hottest jargon topic name you wanna throw out there? Omnichannel. I’ve had all those in my different titles, revenue marketing. All those in the last about fifteen years. And, thrilled to be talking to you. Really excited about everything. We’re gonna discuss. And, just a little tidbit. All these thoughts and opinions are my own, not affiliated with any past or present employer. I love the disclaimer, but it’s also where where are some of our experiences. Right? And and just the fact that you’ve been through sales and you’ve played so many different roles in marketing, you’ve seen a thing or two, I would imagine. Right? And so if we just jump right into it, talk to me about budgeting and marketing and and how much of a role that should play in what you know needs to happen or where you need to go. Yeah. That’s really interesting. And one thing I kinda didn’t mention the intro that I think plays a part too in the experience, and I’ll answer that question, is I’ve also been at some very, very, very big brands Mhmm. And some smaller series c, kinda scrappy, not official startups, but, like, scale ups, I think, is the official term. So So I’ve seen different budgets. Mhmm. I’ve seen very many different line items. And what I think is, the best practice, if I should say, is that budget should never be marketing dollars or, really not an on off. You don’t just start something and you’re like, okay. We’re gonna throw out a campaign, and then we’re gonna just turn it off. Or brand, sure. We’re gonna do an event and then turn it right off. That’s really not gonna build consistency. You’re not gonna get that recall. And At the end of the day you’re not gonna get to trust and to authenticity and to the you know, all those elements that buying behavior, like, basic human psychology is based off of. I was thinking about it. We as humans and our buyers, even in B2B tech, are human beings. We research. We talk. We learn. We go to events. We talk to our colleagues consistently, not when a budget is hired or lowered, right, or when, you know, you all of a sudden get some extra money and you put some extra dollars to this display ad. We’re constantly doing that. And so I think it budget needs to be thoughtfully planned out and allocated. And not drastically cut. How do you do that? Because I agree with you. Everything you said, how do you do that in a world where it’s all about hitting the number? It’s all about we’re lagging. We need to pivot. We need to quickly do something. How do you deal with the panic moments that maybe senior executives are feeling or seeing based on trajectory? I’ve spoken to different executives. There’s definitely an element of change management that has to happen at times. There’s an element of proof points that has to happen, convincing, discussions. And, of course, by nature, some businesses and some executives may get it better than others. I do think that showcasing, and I think we’re gonna get there in this conversation at some point, showcasing how, especially brand and some of that top of funnel because your point. Right? Numbers, numbers, numbers, showing how that trust that is required to get to the number. Right? Everybody wants pipeline and opportunities and growth. And I am a firm believer you cannot have that without the trust and the consistent messaging in market. And so in order to kinda get one, you have to do the other and showcasing some of that, being able to actually tie a brand and brand elements and that trust factor to pipeline with the attribution models of multitouch attribution models that I know we’ll chat about too and just be able to showcase some of that, do some really interesting retargeting. I’ve done a really cool case study in my past where we actually focused on two hundred accounts in pipeline, ran a brand just like a trust, what are we doing for you commercial, CTV commercial, we got so much more increased engagement for those two hundred accounts. I mean, it was something like forty three percent coming back to our digital property that had it in the prior thirty days or so. And so showcasing those numbers to help then the budget discussions is really what I’ve seen with success. And, again, it definitely is not easy because you’re right. Growth marketing. Right? It’s in your title. It’s in my title. I don’t know what it means. No. I do know what it means. But I love to ask this question. You and I talked about this a little bit. I’m going to that too. Like, to your point where you’re talking about your intro, all the different titles and the clever names and the trendy names, how would you define growth marketing as it is right now for you? This is, again, you know, my definition, not necessarily a you know, don’t look it up in Webster’s, but my favorite class in my MBA program was monetizing business models. And it was actually within the marketing strategy concentration. Favorite professor, We actually my thesis ended up being partly based off that. And when I think of growth marketing, I almost think of monetizing business models because growth is about monetization and how do we get there. But it doesn’t only come from marketing, and it can’t be. It has to be a collaborative, cross functional, go to market strategy that even involves HR because how you treat your employees, how you care about the environment, a lot of the different elements of HR policies and procedures, Financing legal. Are you a company that’s easy to do business with? Do you approach your customers fairly with your pricing and discounting? All those elements have to do again with kind of how you as a firm, as a company appear in the market, and then how marketing can portray you in the market to help you grow as a business. There’s layers underneath, and then growth marketing is how that’s brought together and sort of, portrayed in the market. Those are the elements of the brand, and that’s how that helps and interplays with growth marketing. Well, it’s a great kind of transition to talking about brand as well. What do you think? What do you have what have you seen? The most generic definition I’ve ever seen of it is that it like, if you think about demand gen mostly as top of funnel, that growth is just takes it all the way through post post sale life cycle. That’s another, you know, word, right, that’s out there. And, like, you’re sort of it’s a much more holistic, which actually really does kinda tie back to your point of, like, you know, monetizing business models. Because, right, because your business model is not just acquiring customers. It’s servicing customers and growing customers and all those different things. So I think that aligns really, really well. And then you’ve got people saying, like, growth is another name for demand gen, which I disagree with in terms of just like again, like, you could argue semantics of titles all day long. It doesn’t really matter. Right? Well, I happen to agree with you. To me, demand gen is an element. Sure. Especially for sort of the lower funnel. Right? Once we’ve gotten some of the intense signals in and we’ve looked at the data and we’ve understood what customers are actually right there. Again, we’re gonna add in some more jargon here, but demand creation, demand capture, and demand conversion. So if we think about that, demand gen definitely in demand capture, demand conversion, but it’s not in demand creation. And, and I think that’s why I would not say that it’s the same thing. Growth and demand gen just aren’t the same exact thing. I love the conversation around brand to demand and kind of all, like, that’s become yeah. That’s the new one. That’s a new sort of catchy phrase. But given all that’s changed in the world, both from an acquisition standpoint around, like, search and the seven thousand things you’re reading every day about kind of AI changing search. The inability for privacy and tracking and and all these different things that have led to the point of we’re coming back to we were in this world of b two b where it’s like performance, performance, performance, measuring everything. Every dollar has to get in and, like, of course, you have to be generating and and and showing that value. But the pendulum is starting to I wanna say starting, has swung and continues to swing back to brand in the sense that there are now things that you have to do. If you think about all of the things we’re talking about around, like, LLM search and what Google is now doing, A lot of it is traffic is no longer the goal because you’re not getting it. So creating brand awareness in other channels, you’re getting more PR mentions and showing up there. That can influence how it comes up in a in an AI search. So we’ve started to swing back. How do you view brand just overall as a growth lever? You talked about that CTV example, which was great. Like, other sort of, like, things that you’ve pulled that have been directly brand related that have helped you kind of hit against those growth goals. I agree with a lot of what you said and see the trends and hear you. I’ll give a couple examples, and then I’ll also give some, like, opinions on some of that. Because, again, I have been at a couple of really big brands in my career where they have such established brand identity and trust, they are thought of as thought leaders. They are truly seen as like, when you’re doing some research, I should ask that brand. They don’t think of I should ask this guy or I should go and ask Reddit or, you know, some user group or something. They actually and this is I’ve done research. You know, you can test me on some of this. They will go to specific elements of those brands, even certain events of those brands, and those brands have communities such that they’re almost tattooing their logos, right, on their bodies. That’s a famous, you know, NBA school case study of Harley Davidson. Kind of work. They are. But, when a brand becomes that much, a thought leader, a helper, seen as really they truly understand the space they’re in. Now that’s obviously, you know, something you might be saying. You guys might say like, oh, but that’s a big brand. They have the budgets. They have the money. You know, we talk about Fortune top ten to fifty brands here. Yeah. But I’ve also seen a much smaller series c company doing it really, really well too where their execs just really understand the mission, the purpose of their product, their brand, how it truly helps, and how to enable for the future state for their customers. And they really have a POV, so that brand has a standing. And then the whole org lines up because you can see how and why they say what they say and the brand truly works aligned to that mission. You see it in the proof points, in the customer case studies. To your question earlier a little bit, how else can you use the brand? It can be done very strong and the brand is thought of as that thought leader that like, I don’t have to go to chat g p t and ask the question of how do I get this done or what’s my I can go directly to their blog with their case studies, their event, and I know I’m gonna get help. And I think a little bit of what you were saying earlier, right, in this day and age, what are some of the trends, I really think people sometimes just need some help. It’s pretty easy. Right? We can all do our jobs, and we want some help. And if a brand defines and explains how it is that brand helps to achieve for the customer x y z and truly can showcase that in a case study, in customer proof points. Do some videos. Sure. Like, put out a commercial. Be interviewed about it. Talk loud and proud and stand on it, and you have to back it up. And, again, we can go back to what we just said in terms of monetizing business models. You need your whole org behind you. A CEO can’t just say it or a couple of folks, your, you know, CRO or your sales team. You gotta truly embody it. But then if you’re a helper, you’re going to be seen as that trusted brand to help get into the demand and to help align and all that. So, hopefully, that answered your question, and that actually helps to showcase how some of that interrelates with each other. It made me think back when HubSpot first got started. And I got a call one day from an AE, and they’re like, oh, our platform. I was like, you have a platform? Like, I think they were early, but they had provided so much. I was like, yeah. Of course. I didn’t even know. Like, it was again, it was so educate there was so much there that was helpful. And, like, they were still, like, in the process of coining inbound marketing as a thing. But they established themselves so early. I mean, this from a content perspective alone was like even now, I mean, you go look on their their blog. It’s not a blog. It’s like a encyclopedia at this point. Absolutely. And I’m sure in many different spaces, we could all name a couple of brands that you can turn to and truly again, trust them, believe them, and, honestly, they’re probably always on. Right? The budget, to your earlier point in question, isn’t turned on and off when deals need to be accelerated specifically or somebody’s like, I need I need demand right now. You can recall them. You can think about it. You can be like, oh, you know what? That’s the expert in that space. I mean, I’m not gonna call out some of the different brands, but you just said so I’ll play. Cisco is fantastic at that. They have a massive DevNet community, for example. There are blogs. There’s another company I’m thinking of specifically, blogs. I worked at a company where when I send out an email for a webinar, I would get three thousand people to register, and that’s not a made up number, pretty much with one email sent. And I was floored, flabbergasted, like, what is going on? And I would ask a bunch of people, ask the executives that were there for a while, and it’s because and and, again, I’ve done enough research on the brand now, but people cared to hear from this brand. They wanted to know what were some of the new insights, what were some of the features, What are the top new trends? This brand has people in the White House. I mean, granted again, big brand, but it’s when you develop that authenticity, you’re gonna get that to your point again, demand waterfall. And that brand is seen as a huge helper. Yeah. And a huge multiplier. A huge multiplying force. So much of it, though, even in your explanation, Alana, was intangible, a feeling, a association. Right? And I’m always gonna bring it back to measurement, and those things are very difficult to measure. And so I know you have very strong POV around multi touch attribution and being able to tell that story of all the touch points because it is rare that a brand component manifests itself as a lead source at the end of the day. Right? So so talk to us about why multi touch attribution is just smarter marketing. Absolutely. And I’m gonna nitpick on one word right there, sourced versus influenced. Mhmm. And we can talk about that too because that is a nice and hot juicy topic as well. But I really feel, again, if we need as a as a marketing team, as an org, as a go to market function, if we wanna explain the story, we all, at this point, I think, have been drilled down by from everyone from SiriusDecisions, from Gartner, and everybody else that the buying journey is complex. It’s long. It is so, to your point, multifaceted, multi touch. There are definitely intangible things that you definitely cannot measure, like conversations at a bar golf course between a couple of execs. Right? Can’t measure that. But in order to tell some most of the story, you need to show the multi touch attribution. If you just show last touch, that does not cover the twelve to ninety eight touch points that have happened. If you show first touch, that doesn’t cover everything that’s happened afterwards. And so to be able to explain how an ad or a commercial, right, CTV, you can show commercials now in so many places, a podcast, which you can do some really interesting targeting with podcasts, like, really cool stuff, How that, PR, AR, how all these elements, third party articles. There’s just so many things on top of events and discussions, and we know events are big. User groups. How all that plays a part in, at the end of the day, the opportunity, the pipeline. And that’s one factor. But for someone like myself or even Adam or yourself in marketing, to then be able to say with multi touch attribution models that are sophisticated enough, which touch point converts at what rate. Because then, to your very first question about budget, we can at least be able to do smarter budgeting. Right? If I know that events are really great, sure. I’ll put more money. But if I have data that can tell me, not just with my last touch, right, but by actual the journey, that these commercials really influenced them coming back to our website. And then once they come back after that recall, they’re actually closing that pipeline deal faster. Then as marketers or as folks in my you know, I’ll be able to ask for more money. We can budget accordingly. And it just gives you that better picture of understanding your customer intent, their 6AI, so much more of a full picture. And we all do that in our personal lives. Right? We’re doing lots of research on buying a mattress or the new protein drink you wanna drink. They’re not just kinda like get demo now, and that’s it. There’s a lot more that happens behind that to be able to look at it. You’re relatively new to Firemont. Right? I think it’s been just a couple months. Right? In terms of I am. Yes. Yeah. So when you come into a role, let’s say you come just in Firemont now. In your first x number of days, let’s say your first ninety days. Right? It’s always kind of the magic time of, like, what you need to do. Thirty, sixty, ninety. Does attribution sit in that at least in terms of discovery of how it’s being measured now? I wouldn’t say, in thirty, sixty, ninety type of time frame is my, first role of business to propose changes because that looks bullish and crazy, which maybe I am, but I’m not gonna, you know, do that right away. But I am absolutely looking at dashboards, absolutely looking at how that data is showcased and collected, what is behind it. Right? And literally did that about a week ago. So I think I’m around day sixty or so and absolutely looking at it, figuring out, okay. I have our basis. Now having discussions on how do we get to where we wanna be. But before even that, let’s define where we wanna be. What is the business objective? What does the business need? Not how can the tech stack then get there, or how do we implement the next BI tool, and where do we go with the tooling, and how do we get everything to sync together? That’s, like, five months later or something. You know? But you have to define what are the business requirements. What do we want to be looking at? Kinda like why. So, yes, absolutely with the very early stages of understanding what is in place today, how is the attribution track today, and starting to have early conversations with leadership around what do we need to be looking at. Do you do that? I mean, are you guys also looking at attribution models and digging in? No. Simon, what she does every quarter is they and she gets it from our CFO. It’s a big bag of cash. Drop it on your desk, and they’re like, you know what? Just go. Have fun. We’ll see you at the end of the no. Absolutely. I’m joining your team. I’m I’m running. No. No. No. Oh, no. We we look at everything in multiple ways. Right? All the different sort of touch points, first touch, last touch, equal touches across the board. And at the end of the day, my POV is there is the numbers the singular way we show pipeline and reporting to the entire org. But then there’s the analytics lens that we apply internally so that, yes, that’s one view and that’s the view we’ve blessed and that’s, you know, the kind of standard across the organization, but we need to know all the nuances of all the touches. And so that’s where the analytics and operations teams take a look at all the touch points, where things are converting, what the winning patterns are at the end of the 6AI, what helps us win, and what isn’t helping us win, and at what point in the journey are those specific touch points hitting down to pieces of content, by the way. Yeah. Pieces of content that are working, working, keywords that our prospects and customers are researching, intent topics that they’re surging on. Are they hitting the community page? It’s like there’s so much nuance that you can get to, and you can go deep, but then being able to just uplevel those winning patterns and share them with the entire organization so that sales has a POV on what it takes for us to win a deal. CS has the same POV. Marketing can really kind of give that perspective of the market. I agree that you can get into somewhat of an analysis paralysis almost and being able to somewhat at some point, but, okay. This is this is what we’re going with, and this is what it looks like. And, but too many organizations aren’t as sophisticated in looking at so many of the touch points. They employ, let’s say, last touch or even first touch. And so but I think looking at that, looking at so much of the data matters. And earlier, we talked about how AI and search is now playing such interesting roles in the marketing journey. Right? Sometimes folks learn so much without ever going on our properties, like our websites, because so much is within search or within AI LLM model. So being able to see how that plays a role, which is really tough, but that’s kind of, I think, some of the evolution we’ll get to. And I think that that helps to paint the full picture. It’s hard to see it otherwise. We could go on all day. It’s a great conversation, but we we have a question that we ask all of our guests. It’s a fun one. It is what is the most ridiculous thing you’ve been asked to do in your career? And we’ll caveat with the point that it can be ridiculous good or ridiculous bad. This is a fun one, and you’re right. I’m gonna come up with the interesting answer. It could be good and bad depending on how you look at it. For anyone that’s kinda been around a little while prior to, I guess, the recession of the housing crisis of two thousand eight, and then COVID definitely played roles in shifting how business gets done. These were a mock. The whole world was nuts and doing things crazy. And so, I was in sales, and it was a little bit of, like, the wild wild west. And there was a very large deal that I was the account executive on. And my team, the business, really wanted it closed before calendar year end, so before December thirty first to bring it into the books. And it was like, look. No holds barred. Go have fun. Go do whatever. Go do whatever the seesaw wants there, but, go make it happen. And I am not getting into what happened. But if you get into, like, what stays in what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and that home mentality, you guys need The Hangover, those movies. And just, you know, picture some of that in New York City, with a, you know, blank Amex card. So I’m gonna let your minds wander a bit with what was done, but it was fun, and it was exciting and quite ridiculous. Did you get the deal? The deal came in. It was over it was over a million and a half to two million dollars, and I got lots of awards and accolades, for it. I won, like, an AE of, you know, the year in my, like, region. All good news. And I I have lots of the fun memories with it, and I’m actually still close to the CISO of that company. He’s moved on, but, good good times. And are you allowed in New York City still? Well, I saw you about a month ago. So Oh, that’s right. That’s right. I that was a dumb question. You were there. Okay. So, well, you were there. We know you were there. Well, whether or not you were there legally is a different question. Although I guess I can I know? Listen. I think the NYPD has a lot more on their plate than than little Alana coming in. But, thankfully, like like I said, the rules are different back then, but I’m still allowed. Yeah. I didn’t we didn’t do anything illegal. We just had lots of fun. Yeah. We did have one person say something about a statute of limitations running out. So I think that’s an interesting question. But Yeah. Anyway, that was a good one. Thank you so much for having me. This was, thrilling, insightful, exciting, and, I love talking about that stuff. I can geek out for hours. So, thanks for having me. Oh, you got it. And it comes across. Your passion is infectious. Thank you so much, Alana. Thank you. You’ve been listening to Revenue Makers. Do you have a revenue project you were asked to execute that had wild success? Share your story with us at six cents dot com slash revenue, and we might just ask you to come on the show. And if you don’t wanna miss the next episode, be sure to follow along on your favorite podcast app.