On this Episode of Markigy, I’m joined by Andrew Harder, Senior Paid Media Manager at Webex Events, whose experience has spanned agency and corporate roles leading to some phenomenal results. Andrew will share with us how those experiences help shape his strategies today, how he captures and creates demand via paid media, AND how he uses direct customer outreach to inform his strategies. Let’s dive in!
The problem with optimizing your ads for the lowest cost per click is figuring out what happens with those clicks. Are they converting into sales? Just because you're optimizing your spend and the clicks are cheaper, doesn’t mean you’re getting the most bang for your buck.
So, how do you know your paid media marketing is actually working? Speak to the people who you’re marketing to, your ideal customers.
A critical part of customer-centric marketing is communicating with your customers and receiving quality feedback. Just as we’re able to learn a lot from loyal customers, we can also learn a lot from leads that didn’t become customers.
It’s important for any marketing team, even PPC teams, to understand the power of direct customer outreach and how it can make or break your marketing strategy.
In this episode of Markigy Podcast, your host Leanne Dow-Weimer welcomes Andrew Harder, Senior Paid Media Manager at Webex Events, to talk about creating and capturing demand through direct customer outreach.
In this episode, we discuss:
Meet the Host:
Leanne Dow-Weimer, Founder & Host of Markigy Podcast https://www.linkedin.com/in/leannedow
Meet the Guest:
Andrew Harder, Senior Paid Media Manager at Webex Events
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-harder-3b48134a
Links to content here:
Webex Events: https://www.webex.com/events.html
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This episode was produced and brought to you by Reignite Media.
[00:00:40] Leanne Dow-Weimer: On this episode of Markigy, I'm joined by Andrew Harder, Senior Paid Media Manager at Webex Events, whose experience has spanned agency and corporate roles leading to some phenomenal results. Andrew will share with us how those experiences help shape his strategies today, how he captures and creates demand via [00:01:00] paid media, and how he uses direct customer outreach to inform his strategies.
[00:01:06] Let's dive in!
[00:01:07] Good morning. I am joined here by Andrew Harder, the senior paid media manager at Webex Event who creates and captures demand. Andrew, tell us more about yourself.
[00:01:20] Andrew Harder: Hi Leanne. Thanks for having me. Yes, I work at WebEx events part of Cisco, so a large company. . Um, just to give you quick [00:01:30] background, like most people did not go to college for B2B marketing cuz that doesn't really exist.
[00:01:36] um, had a few kind of random jobs before. My first kind of SAS company that I was a part of. It was a really small company here in Bloomington and I , I did sales, marketing, recruiting. It was like an exposure to all facets. Really small team. So once I was there for a while, I realized I [00:02:00] needed some hard skills cuz I was kind of spread across these departments.
[00:02:05] I didn't like sales, so I thought okay, marketing, I guess. Um, but I, there was a, a local PPC agency that I joined and really learned a ton about paid search. So that, that's kind of my, um, my main area of expertise over the last five years. But over the course of my tenure there, , um, a lot more experience and paid social.
[00:02:28] Abm. My [00:02:30] largest client kind of at the end was an ed tech company and so really enjoyed working in the SAS space and that's how I came to socio. So, and then we were required, so I know , I know we'll get into that, but that's kind of a quick background and excited to talk more about it. .
[00:02:46] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Great. Yeah, that definitely sounds like you've had a wide experience.
[00:02:50] And I always love it when people chose marketing, um, or marketing chose them however you wanna slice it. But, you know, and, and having that sales [00:03:00] experience really helps us to better understand the entire customer experience. Um, one thing you mentioned about, you know, working at the agency, what kind of stood out to you?
[00:03:15] seems to be very agency life verse in-house life. So if we just take a, that, that chunk of what it's like to work at an agency, especially a paid per click one. Mm-hmm. , what's, what's that like [00:03:30] as far as strategies and things that you did?
[00:03:32] Andrew Harder: Yeah, I mean, so I mean, it's obviously very performance driven. I mean, that's how you retain your clients.
[00:03:38] That's how. Grow budgets with your clients, which then grows your revenue. So obviously very focused on that. And I think, you know, I think a lot's changed since I've gone in-house and that was kind of the reason why I went in-house. Cause I knew I wanted to go deeper into marketing as a whole, just like as a function, but also like understanding.
[00:03:58] on the B2B side, [00:04:00] especially like revenue, like with B2C and e-commerce, it's a lot more straightforward. If you're working at a PPC agency, you can really understand what's working, what's not. But with B2B it's a lot more complex. So, um, to answer your question more directly, it's when I, when you have clients like, you know, you, you do try to understand their business, of course you get to know like how they operate, um, their audiences and all of that.
[00:04:23] But at the end of the day, you're really just optimizing in the platforms and. , you, you miss out on a lot of, um, [00:04:30] again, speaking like B2B specifically, you miss out on a lot of like what's working down funnel, the feedback loop with sales, like customer team, like all those like really es essential inputs you don't have.
[00:04:42] Um, so, um, yeah, I would say though it's great. Um, for anyone listening, is that an agency right now? Like you do get to, you learn a lot more, a lot faster I think in terms of. How to work in platforms, how to optimize, um, especially if you're able to work across different [00:05:00] verticals and, and just getting kind of a grasp on those things.
[00:05:02] So that was very beneficial. But you're gonna hit like a ceiling at some point and like how, how deep you can go. .
[00:05:09] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Yeah, definitely. What I felt like was when I was in a similar role was I felt kind of siloed where like I was operating in a vacuum and, uh, I, I always wanted to be more connected to the entire funnel, like you, you mentioned.
[00:05:26] Mm-hmm. , um, . And then another part is, is, is the [00:05:30] getting to know the audience part. And that's really what on, on this podcast, we love talking about how we're, we're human-centered and customer-centric. Mm-hmm. . So, um, now that you've kind of transitioned into your new role, like how, how has that changed to enable you to do the things that you were hoping to?
[00:05:52] Andrew Harder: Yeah, so I, when I joined, so um, a little over a year and a half ago, it was still, it was like [00:06:00] series A. So it was, it wasn't like a startup though. I mean it was at that point it, it survived the, the pandemic, which was huge being an event platform company cuz it was just in person and they did an amazing job, uh, evolving to virtual and that's when virtual was huge.
[00:06:14] And, and it's funny, like just a year and a half later, Virtuals died down a ton in persons really back. But, um, that's a different topic, I guess, , but, um, it's, it's allowed me to like really go [00:06:30] deeper, like I said, like cuz it was a small marketing team, like I was the fourth marketer. There was a content person that was hired at the same time as, as I was as well.
[00:06:38] Um, so even though like I was hired really to run like the paid program that was responsible for majority of like inbound. MQs and revenue. Um, I was able to do a few other things, like, especially like the, the big kind of learning curve for me was understanding like HubSpot, like that's the CRM and marketing automation that we use.
[00:06:59] And [00:07:00] so it took me probably a month or two to really get my mind around that and instead of just looking in Google to see like what's converting, like actually looking in HubSpot and seeing what's converting down funnel. , uh, I mean that's, that's just a very specific example, but I'm able to look at like, the full funnel of things and like what job titles are converting, like what accounts, um, we're really capturing and like the buyer committees, like how many people, like what levels, like all those things.
[00:07:27] Um, you, you can't see [00:07:30] unless you're in the crm. And I think, you know, for any marketer, like no matter like what department you're in, like being able to. , if you're hands on that data and understanding that is, is essential for then like putting together a strategy and executing it.
[00:07:44] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Absolutely, because one of the biggest drawbacks in my mind, um, to optimizing for lowest cost per click is what happens with those clicks?
[00:07:56] What, who are those people? Just because they're cheaper [00:08:00] and you're optimizing your spend doesn't mean that that's necessarily the best. Maybe there's more competition for your ideal person and maybe you should be spending, you know, their. , you know, kind of level of cost per click is a little bit higher, but you don't know that unless you have the access to the whole funnel like you do now.
[00:08:21] Um, yeah, and I mean, HubSpot's, you know, one of the bigger players, but it didn't used to be. And they got bigger cuz. Mm-hmm. , they give you [00:08:30] the information you want. Um, so now, . Now, you mentioned being on a team of like four people. Has that kind of been consistent or has that changed as socio was acquired shortly after you joined?
[00:08:46] What's that been like?
[00:08:47] Andrew Harder: Yeah, so that, I mean, it's changed a lot. . Um, four months after I joined, we were acquired and at that point we had hired a few more marketers. So I think we were around like seven [00:09:00] ish, seven or eight. But then a year, a year after I joined, we were at 20. So we saw, you know, tremend, obviously when you're acquired by a Fortune 100 company, you're, you have more budget, you're able to grow the team.
[00:09:12] Um, there's a ton of investment, you know, , obviously WebEx, uh, is part of Cisco. Cisco is primarily hardware. They've invested a lot in software companies, so they're really pouring a lot of resources into those teams and that's why we're still like standalone. Um, we did rebrand from socio [00:09:30] to WebEx events to be a part of like the larger WebEx portfolio, but we do have a dedicated team of like 20 marketers just to WebEx events.
[00:09:37] We do support. Kind of like the larger ecosystem and like enterprise deals, which is um, some, like another topic. But, um, it's changed a lot cuz we do have. A, a fully built out content team. Um, like writers video, uh, just a content leader, email marketing, social, like organic [00:10:00] social, like, so very built out content team, which is critical obviously to Yeah, a marketing team.
[00:10:05] Um, and then it was funny too, when I joined, we're an event software company. We didn't have any event marketer on our team . Um, so we hire. someone I think probably three, four months later. And then that person's been able to, hi, like hire out. And so there's three people on that team. And so, you know, there, there's other departments too, like partner customer, um, but it's changed a lot.
[00:10:26] Um, I think a lot of marketing companies [00:10:30] can experience, um, the si like you can even get siloed within your own team. Even though we collaborate a ton like it, it has changed a. In the sense of how we work together. And even though like, and we hired someone else to work with me on the paid team, cuz our, our budget grew, grew a lot.
[00:10:46] We expanded into a lot of different channels. Um, and even though like, Crystal is the person that works with me on the team. We, we work on paid, we have so much need to collaborate with content, but also like we're kind of on the front [00:11:00] lines and seeing like what's converting, like, what demand is there. So like I said earlier, in person's really back, whereas a year ago it was like all virtual.
[00:11:08] So. We're, we're trying to provide those inputs to the content team. Um, but ultimately, like we all are on the same mission in trying to just grow our revenue. Um, and that's, it's, there's definitely been lots of challenges with just the changes in the landscape and our competitors have definitely seen some difficulties, so.
[00:11:28] Yeah. A lot of, a lot of changes. We'll just [00:11:30] put it
[00:11:31] Leanne Dow-Weimer: bluntly. Yeah. I mean, that's five times the amount of people and so that makes it infinitely more complicated when you're communicating mm-hmm. . Um, but it's also, you know, every marketer's dream is to have more resources, right. Whether that's content or that's any part of it.
[00:11:47] Uh, because it really does interact and play well together. It's one thing that I saw happening was. That these smaller businesses would [00:12:00] hire an agency, like a pay per click agency, but they wouldn't have their organic channels support the way that they needed to. So now you have the, not the luxury, but the, you know, appropriate level of content support so that when you send, you know, like an ad, they go somewhere and it matches and it provides more value.
[00:12:22] Mm-hmm. and they're able to keep that branding across. Channels. Sorry if I'm like, you know, spoiling what you might have said.
[00:12:29] Andrew Harder: No, no, no, [00:12:30] it's good. No, it's good because, I mean, and to take that even further, like really we're building out like a full like ABM. , um, strategy right now. And the alignment with sales is like so critical to like, so your pointing about like paid and organic being the same, like you need sales to be speaking the same language and a lot of times, like they know better like the language to use cuz they're speaking to prospects like daily.
[00:12:54] Yeah. Whereas, you know, we're in our own little back corner sometimes just looking at the data that we have, but we're not having [00:13:00] those conversations. So I think it's super important. And then, and to your point too, When you're at an agency, like you're not, you're not seeing those things. Like, and I kind of talked about that earlier, but it's so critical to have that collaboration.
[00:13:14] Um, and it's a challenge because things are always changing and, and different teams are seeing, um, different numbers. They're focused on different outputs, but ultimately like being on the same page and having the same messaging, like goes a long way. And I think some. The SaaS companies that are doing well right now and [00:13:30] that I really like from like a, just a branding standpoint.
[00:13:32] Like they do what you're describing, like organic paid events, like everything is together and unified. Yeah.
[00:13:39] Leanne Dow-Weimer: The alignment really stops us from, you know, creating that kind of Frankenstein marketing right. Where one thing doesn't, and it's all just kind of happenstance, like stitch together. Um, one of the things you mentioned was, Direct, you mentioned it offline, but direct customer outreach.
[00:13:58] So [00:14:00] how, what does that look like in your setting and how do you use that?
[00:14:06] Andrew Harder: Yeah, so this is something, um, and maybe we'll get into this more after speaking about the customer kind of feedback loop, but. for, for paid social and kind of for, I always split it between like demand capture and demand create, which is kind of why I have that , my LinkedIn like name or my title or whatever.
[00:14:27] Um, you know, demand [00:14:30] capture being paid, search reviews, set like Capterra um, creating demand being like those, channels. And this is, it's not strictly to pay, like it goes across organic events, you know, community, all of that. The demand, demand capture is very straightforward. You look at numbers, you look at revenue, you look at that, it's very simple. The demand create, you need other signals and you need other like inputs. So, um, over this past year, like my paid, so, and kind of the agency background is still very [00:15:00] like, direct response kind of lead capture, even on paid social.
[00:15:03] And that just doesn't, you know, it can work in, some settings, but majority of the time, especially b2b, there's a million touchpoints. You're not going to see ROI from those types of activities and campaigns. So, um, the reason for doing customer research, and I know it was funny. When I went to our, customer team and I was like, Hey, we want to like talk to some customers.
[00:15:28] We're not trying to get case studies. You [00:15:30] know, like when marketing goes to customer team, that's normally, Hey, we need some case studies. We need some like marketing materials. I had to frame it up as, hey, we want to like improve what we're putting out on like paid social specifically. Um, we want to move from that traditional kind of lead gen to actually like speaking to pain points and just building credibility there by actually like giving our target audience. So for us that's, you know, event marketers, field marketers, um, we have a lot of like nonprofits in higher ed, [00:16:00] so the titles are different, but people that are doing events, we wanna speak to their pain points.
[00:16:04] So like, how do you solve, like, solve virtual fatigue? How do you improve, like your post-event, like follow up process, like how do you make in-person events? , like a lot's changed with the pandemic and everything, so like what's different and how do you improve your, like all those like specific things like we just want to distribute that like in feed on the channels that our customers are, are actively in.
[00:16:27] And so we had like a set of questions, [00:16:30] there's experts on LinkedIn that are much better than I am and I gathered some of my questions from them. it, it was, it kind of got at like the, the buyer journey. So, you know, for paid. But again, this can apply to anyone on a marketing team, like understanding where your target audience is hanging out and that changes.
[00:16:48] Uh, it's crazy how much, um, it changes with, you know, like TikTok has, you know, been huge for a while, but for b2b there's still a lot of like, um, Will they, won't they? [00:17:00] Yeah. Like, yeah, like, is that effective? But like there's so, there's so many different channels, and so for us, like we just ask like basic, like what channels do you get your information from?
[00:17:11] And it can be a, it's not just social. Like there's also like kind of like third party sites. , um, in, in different communities, and it was almost every single person said like Facebook groups or LinkedIn groups. I was actually surprised how many Facebook groups are still like, active. But, um, and like for me as a market, I'm a part of a few different [00:17:30] Slack groups, so I know like how much is, you know, kind of like that dark social, like you can't track that stuff, but there's so much going on behind the scenes.
[00:17:37] And so for us, . Getting back to like your question, like we were able to ask them like buyer journey questions to figure out like, are we in the right channels? But also like specifically like what content is helpful for you? Like, what do you like to see, what do you consume? And, and did get into kind of the gated versus ungated conversation.
[00:17:56] Um, another topic, you can probably have a different [00:18:00] podcast, um, but we did ask those questions. You know, it did get into some of the product questions as well for us to figure out how do we differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Um, and I would say like in hindsight, I wish we were, we talked to more customers that weren't, you know, they were kind of like customers that we would have like in a cab, like a customer advisory board, which is great cuz they're very willing to talk to you.
[00:18:23] But I would've loved to talk to some of our customers that maybe you. Didn't love certain things, [00:18:30] just to get more of that feedback, um, to, to understand that. But just, um, well, yeah, it was super insightful. Uh, it did inform a lot of our page social strategy, so we were able to kind of get like a 20%. Test budget to actually take these learnings.
[00:18:47] Um, we had a bunch of like virtual events that our event team did, broke those down into like bite size messages that we could then distribute through primarily LinkedIn. Um, and it's been actually like very successful, um, for us in [00:19:00] just a few months. But, um, yeah. I'll, I'll stop there. And .
[00:19:04] Leanne Dow-Weimer: No, it's so much, there's so much.
[00:19:06] And so one of the things that, you know, obviously. is so huge in, in that customer-centric marketing is the customer in that communication and the, the communication flow and the research. Mm-hmm. . And one of the things that I, I personally want more of is those customers that [00:19:30] didn't become customers.
[00:19:31] Mm-hmm. . I want more of the people that were like, this is not for me. Mm-hmm. , because I wanna know. , why? I wanna know what about it? Was it the time place, investment qualities, offerings? Um, you know, and that's, that's probably my, my product marketing lens, right? Yeah. Because those lost deals will teach you so much.
[00:19:53] Um, and that's, that's what you were almost alluding to was you wanna know the negative feedback. Right. Um, [00:20:00] and so I think it's, it's really important for any team, but it's also. , not typically the the paid team that, that goes after these things. Yeah. And I think that's why it's so cool that you do it because you saw the need and you went after the right way to do the marketing.
[00:20:19] Um, have, how long have you been able to do this outreach and, and do you think that there's been any like measurable improvements that you've seen since doing. .
[00:20:29] Andrew Harder: Yeah, [00:20:30] so we like, we had an initial phase and this, it's funny you asked this cuz this is something our team is trying to, we do have someone that owns, like customer marketing.
[00:20:37] So you know, we do all like trying to get G2 reviews cap and we have that ongoing, but trying to get the actual like, you know, 30, 60 minute interviews that, Crystal and I did trying to get a cadence for that, like built in because we did it. Um, it. We did like close to 10 of these interviews over the span of like a few months.
[00:20:58] Um, which when I [00:21:00] say that, that sounds like a really low number, but honestly, you can get a ton of insights and this is why, you know, I mean this is from hearing other folks talk about this on LinkedIn. Um, it's not about like the quantity, um, cuz you can get those metrics from other things. It's about like that qualitative feedback and actually like speaking to, and for us, we have like four core ICPs so we're able.
[00:21:23] to Speak to each of those ICPs and get specific feedback. And also what we do, this is a kind [00:21:30] of a tax freebie tip for anyone in paid social. Like break out your audiences, buy those segments and serve them like you could serve the, it's better to, you know, tailor the messaging to that icp cuz there are differences.
[00:21:43] But if you can't do. that What we've been doing is like serving them, they're very practical, like kind of event manager tips, but we can see the different engagement rates, we can see the different completion rates for different videos. Um, when we remarket to them with product videos, we can see what ICPs are [00:22:00] engaging with that and there are for sure differences.
[00:22:02] Um, so it, you can get a ton of feedback from that. Um, and so, and to answer your question about like how, like if we've seen success or like how has that impacted, I would say, I can't say X amount of revenue or X amount of like opportunities for the sales team, but the, there's two, we have like a few different products.
[00:22:22] There's two main ones for in-person right now, like mobile app, like mobile event apps, and like on-site products like event [00:22:30] registration and badge printing, like. We've been doubling down on that like crazy And we've seen like through paid search, um, primarily but through organic as well, like an increase in that.
[00:22:40] It could just be the demand in the market. So I'm not trying to say like what we've done on LinkedIn is like fully responsible for that cuz marketing is a mixture of things. But I think it does help you feel more confident just in your strategy too, and understanding. what is like, what your customers are actually like focused on.
[00:22:59] And [00:23:00] then there's a lot more like down funnel stuff that you have to do. And we're, we're kind of working on that cuz there are some gaps that we have as a team. But there are, there are tons of stuff that you can do based on the what, the findings from those conversations.
[00:23:14] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Absolutely. And it would be a bigger red flag if that was an increased demand and you weren't capturing.
[00:23:21] Right. Um, so I, I think it's fair to do our best with measuring cuz there's no such thing as the perfect measure. Right. But it's, you know, if, if [00:23:30] you were doing all these things and you saw, uh, a slump instead of a lips, then that's true. That's pretty telling. True. Um, so another thing that, like we kind of touched.
[00:23:43] Was, um, you know, where, where we think that this, this type of, you know, paid team, uh, doing the phone interviews, is there somebody who this would be a wrong strategy
[00:23:58] Andrew Harder: for? [00:24:00] It's a good question. It's kind of like, Stuper for me, I, I, I don't understand, like, I don't think, I don't think there is for anyone in marketing, like you're always gonna get value from talking to your customers.
[00:24:13] I guess. Like it could be wrong for your like really early stages. You're trying to like fine tune. But I would say like the flip side of that, having conversations into your earlier point about like the close lost, I think is super insightful. So even like you could take this approach to not. [00:24:30] Customers, but, and you would have to incentivize it probably with a gift card.
[00:24:34] And there's companies out there. I've participated in this actually for different MarTech that we've purchased for like closed loss. But like companies do invest in that. And I think like it is really insightful for just forming. It could be like a product market fit. It could be like the language that you're using on your site.
[00:24:51] And like that's the thing too, like. This has been helpful for the whole team. Like cuz we did compile, like what we found, and we're trying to put this like in our site [00:25:00] language. Like there's, so, there's so many different facets of it. Content team. Like, hey, these are the things that we're seeing. This is what our customers are talking about.
[00:25:07] Can we have more content focused on like X, Y, Z? Like, there's just so many different takeaways that you can get from it. So, I don't know, like I'm, I don't know if you, if you think of anyone that wouldn't work for, but I would recommend it to most marketers. .
[00:25:21] Leanne Dow-Weimer: I, I agree. I would recommend it to most marketers.
[00:25:24] The caveat being is that if you have a sample size that is too small and doesn't [00:25:30] represent your I C P, then you can bery very quickly in a very, very weird direction. Yeah. Um, so you have to be really careful about, um, , and I think that this is where sales background helps is, is being able to just kind of meet someone and get that, that feel and understand the subtext and understand who they are as a person.
[00:25:52] Mm-hmm. and be like, yes, this is our people, or, mm, this isn't our people. What they're saying is irrelevant, right? Mm-hmm. , because there's [00:26:00] always gonna be that, like one person that has like very, very specific needs. Mm-hmm. , that's very different than your, your general population of customer. Right, and while the outliers still matters, they're still important.
[00:26:12] I'm not knocking the outliers. Mm-hmm. , you, you have to be careful to recognize them as an outlier. Mm-hmm. .
[00:26:18] Andrew Harder: Yeah. No, that's a great point. I think too, that's why we weren't really trying to focus on like product feedback necessarily. Yeah. Because like you said, there's different needs. Um, and we do have a pretty wide range.
[00:26:28] I mean, we have [00:26:30] Fortune 100 clients and then we have like really small like nonprofits. So like there's such a wide range. Like it wouldn't be that useful to take those points, like back to our like product team or engineering team that just wouldn't fit. But I think the other, I think I forgot to mention this, like we were really trying to identify like any friction in the buying process as well.
[00:26:48] So like there's things, you know, on our site to a degree, but more so like in the sales process. , and this is where like, and I do have like standing conversations with like sales counterparts, [00:27:00] counterparts to talk about these things. But it's very interesting when you ask the customer like, straight up like, Hey, like what was, and it, it's better to do this when someone just purchased yourself.
[00:27:10] Yeah.
[00:27:11] Leanne Dow-Weimer: The the high emotional
[00:27:12] Andrew Harder: connection point. Yeah. So it depends like how long it's been. Sometimes people come into the role, they've already been using the software the company has, so. You can't always get that feedback, but I do think like those types of things are really good to focus on, um, and can be valuable for anyone.
[00:27:27] But yeah, your advice definitely, [00:27:30] if anyone's in that point should take that advice, .
[00:27:32] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Yeah. And, and, and that's more likely to be those like very early stage, like the seed stage or, you know, very, very small marketing teams. Like let's say you have a marketing team of one, right? And you're only really, you're doing everything for everybody and, and you only really have the chance to get to like one customer interview.
[00:27:50] you know, every six months. Mm-hmm. . Um, and so if you're only doing one customer interview every six months, then you gotta be really careful about that sample
[00:27:58] Andrew Harder: size. Right? [00:28:00] Absolutely.
[00:28:01] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Um, let's see. So, so we've talked about a lot about like customer outreach. Now you've mentioned that. , you know, it's kind of shifting right now between the, the live events and the virtual events.
[00:28:16] Where do you see your genre of marketing? Where do you see the future of that and, and conversely, where do you think it should
[00:28:25] Andrew Harder: go? Yeah, so, . Yeah. I guess [00:28:30] speaking to and paid. Paid search. Yeah. Yeah. Paid, yeah. I would say paid. Social. Paid, yeah. And I, it, yeah, it gets, I know there's, you know, one person marketing teams that are doing all these things, but I, I think the biggest shift, um, it, it's more in like that demand creation, like paid social side, um, of things for sure.
[00:28:49] Like. . I mean, it's funny too, like we're recording this when like the quarterly earnings just came out for like Google and like Meta and I don't, I didn't see LinkedIn's, but like they're all going down and that's, you know, that happens [00:29:00] when the economy's going down. There's less advertising. But I do think a lot of companies oversaturate like their demand capture budgets and having spent time in like probably over a hundred like Google accounts at this point.
[00:29:15] every time there's wasted spend, it's just, it's just true. So I don't, I don't think like there's a concern, like if we're going into a period where like, you know, paid budgets are gonna be cut, I think some people might panic and be like, oh no. Like, we're not gonna be able to like [00:29:30] capture all the demand.
[00:29:30] I think maybe that's true, like if your budget's really cut. But I do think, um, to speak to like what I like, what the future kind of should be. A lot more focus on speaking the customer's language and delivering, like taking your content, your event team, whoever, like whoever's creating this content. Like I always, um, frame it up as paid social.
[00:29:54] Like the paid team is supposed to figure out what content is gonna speak to, like [00:30:00] customer pain points. , um, build credibility. Um, it's, it's more than just like thought leadership. Like, I think that can be a little vague sometimes it's like very specific and it has to be, there's lots of different pain points, so you have to figure out like which ones are, you know, most important to speak to and like what content you have.
[00:30:18] But I think, and this is a different skillset, like this is something that I've had to lean into a lot and it does get more into actually doing market. , I would actually say like , um, paid search and stuff is just more like straight up, just like [00:30:30] advertising and like sales essentially. Like you're trying to capture that.
[00:30:33] Um, whereas when you're creating ads for LinkedIn and Facebook, TikTok, um, whatever it is, like you really have to know, um, who you're speaking to and like what's gonna resonate with them. Um, and it definitely gets that measurement too. Like you do have, you can't look at it the same way. You can't. do, and I'm not even talking about first, first, last, first multi-touch attribution.
[00:30:55] Like it's much more than that. It's like holistically, like what are the few things [00:31:00] that you want to do on like the paid side for like creating demand. Cuz there's on, there's finite budget, there's finite resources. And figuring out like, okay, like for us again, like in person is huge right now we're gonna like double down on that.
[00:31:13] We're gonna try to speak to that. We're gonna see what messages are resonating and then it's just a constant feedback. . Um, like for us, like we're constantly asking sales, like, what are your conversations? Like if you have gone, like listening to recordings, like things like that can really feed that. But I think [00:31:30] coming from the agency side, most people just look at those, those numbers they just look at into your.
[00:31:37] Like what you were saying earlier was like, so spot on. Like, who cares about like, CPC or even like cost per conversion, if you're just looking at the original conversion point versus like the full funnel. Um, and that this also to tie it together, like if you're building like credibility and speaking to these things, like it's actually gonna create much [00:32:00] higher conversion rates down the funnel.
[00:32:01] It's gonna shorten your sales cycle. It's gonna, when you look at. pipeline, velocity metrics, all those things should be improving if you're doing this correctly. And like I'm probably oversimplifying it. I know. And it's like really difficult. Like I'm in this role so I understand how difficult it is. But I do think, um, paid marketers who can paid media marketers that can like refine their skills and copywriting, customer research, all those things are gonna be so critical.
[00:32:29] [00:32:30] Um, and I. , like paid search is just always gonna be there. But really getting those skills in, in that. So I hope that made sense. I was like touching on a few different topics, but I feel pretty passionate about like the different approaches between demand capture and demand creation.
[00:32:46] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Yeah, absolutely. I, I would argue that, um, to, you know, to your point that there is not a separation and the, we all need to be great at marketing 1 0 1.
[00:32:58] in order for [00:33:00] any one of our different tax or tactics or strategies. Mm-hmm. , it's just, it's, it's always gonna fall flat if we're not good at the, you know, making that basic marketing shine through mm-hmm. and, and understanding and getting better at like the core capabilities. .
[00:33:18] Andrew Harder: Totally. Yeah. It's hard,
[00:33:20] Leanne Dow-Weimer: but it's impossible because it's always changing.
[00:33:23] But you know, that's, that's the thing is that we need to evolve and change with it, and that's what I think is really cool about marketing. [00:33:30]
[00:33:30] Andrew Harder: Yeah, for sure.
[00:33:32] Leanne Dow-Weimer: Awesome. Well, I appreciate you so much for coming on this and sharing your depth of wisdom. If someone wanted to get ahold of you or have a conversation with you, would you say LinkedIn is the best place to find?
[00:33:46] Andrew Harder: it. It is cause it's like the only social media account that I have. It's funny, like, I mean, I work in. , um, like paid social, but I actually am not a huge like social user. Um, . Okay. I feel
[00:33:58] Leanne Dow-Weimer: like that's pretty
[00:33:59] Andrew Harder: normal. . [00:34:00] Yeah, LinkedIn. I mean, I'm one of those Mar I have a Facebook account cause I needed to access Facebook ads.
[00:34:04] I don't use it. . Yeah, I, I'm, I guess I, I'm a dad and I haven't gotten on TikTok yet, so like I need to um, get on that eventually. But yeah. LinkedIn. Definitely like reach out to me, connect with me, message me. I love having conversations about marketing. Obviously focus on paid, but I love talking about all different, um, aspects of it, so yeah.
[00:34:28] You can reach out to me on
[00:34:29] Leanne Dow-Weimer: LinkedIn. [00:34:30] Great. Thank you so much. Um, and if you're listening to this episode and you wanna get ahold of me, I'm also on LinkedIn. Uh, my name's a little bit harder than Andrew. Harder.
[00:34:42] but, uh, Leanne del Weimer. And then, you know, I've gotta, I've gotta plug it. Please like, subscribe, you know, listen to give feedback for this podcast, markety Strategic marketing. Um, and I'm available. Lean Dow Weimer. So thank you so much for [00:35:00] joining us today.
[00:35:01] Andrew Harder: Thanks Leanne. Thanks for having me. Thanks.
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