There is no point in filling your funnel if it leaks like a sieve. Just like your cybersecurity, your marketing needs to be free from any holes. Clark Barron is a 3x Cybersecurity Marketing Leader, focusing on Demand Gen, where he often unconventionally tests marketing strategies and tactics to find these holes and fill them. He joins the show to share the insights marketers can glean from cybersecurity to craft an impenetrable marketing strategy that achieves results. He points to the many many gaps present in most B2B marketing and presents the best ways to close them.
There is no point in filling your funnel if it leaks like a sieve. Just like your cybersecurity, your marketing needs to be free from any holes.
Clark Barron is a 3x Cybersecurity Marketing Leader, focusing on Demand Gen, where he often unconventionally tests marketing strategies and tactics to find these holes and fill them.
He joins the show to share the insights marketers can glean from cybersecurity to craft an impenetrable marketing strategy that achieves results. He points to the many many gaps present in most B2B marketing and presents the best ways to close them.
In this episode of Markigy, Clark and Leanne discuss:
The actionable takeaways mentioned in this episode are:
To learn more subscribe to Markigy: The Science of Marketing Strategy with Leanne Dow-Weimer.
This episode was produced and brought to you by Reignite Media.
[00:00:00] Leanne: Welcome to Markigy the Science of Marketing Strategy, a bi weekly podcast where all the cool marketers discuss their favorite marketing strategies, study by study. On this show, we feature marketing risk takers who believe long term wins for the customer equal long term wins for the business too. How?
Human led marketing. The combination of where science, creativity and strategy meet. Or, as we also like to call it, Markigy. Let's break down the marketing trends, myths, and methodologies together. I'm your host, Leanne Dow-Weimer. Let's go! Hi, this is Leanne Dow-Weimer with Markigy, and I'm joined this morning by Clark Barron.
He is a cybersecurity demand generator. Clark, tell us about yourself. How'd you end up
[00:00:52] Clark: here? So, I came into cybersecurity as an outsider. It was pretty serendipitous, actually. I had always romanticized cybersecurity. Penetration testing, getting paid to hack into things, and make your way into buildings, and red team stuff.
Like, that's just the coolest... on the planet to me. And I had been in the marketing agency world for years. And after leaving that world quite disillusioned, I was like, you know what? There are actually a lot of similarities in what we do as marketers, as far as like the soft skills goes. And. People that persuade other people to let them into their server room, you know, it's it's those kind of similarities And so I ended up applying to be a penetration tester on a red team with zero technical experience whatsoever Understandably, I was ghosted no hard feelings I totally get it, but I'd written this long email to the CEO of this company Explaining some of these similarities, you know, and huge letter, put a lot of time into it, ghosted.
So two years later, I get a random phone call from that CEO. He had started his own, uh, founded his own cybersecurity awareness training startup. And he said, I've been thinking about that email for two years. I want you to come run my marketing department. And so I knew I was going to get in. Any way I could into cybersecurity and that just happened to be it.
And here we are.
[00:02:30] Leanne: That's such a cool story. So, I mean, I think we all want to feel like someone reads our emails and remembers it for two years. That's so, it doesn't, it didn't feel good to be ghosted, but what a great outcome.
[00:02:42] Clark: It was wild. Yeah.
[00:02:46] Leanne: So when you went from like a marketing agency, which I don't want to call all agencies the same cause they're not, but there's the very typical marketing funnel and things that, that happen.
How did that fit in when you moved over to cybersecurity? Did you like, how did that, that match?
[00:03:07] Clark: Not at all. Okay. Yeah, it didn't match at all being on the agency side, you know It's just a matter of being at a different kind of agency This is more of a creative marketing agency. And so I was working with everyone from Exxon to Jimmy Buffett to Everything in between you could think of like global brands or the mom and pop barbecue Stand in Birmingham, Alabama, you know Who knows?
But yeah, it was, it was really different, you know, coming from agency into basically anything else, because agencies are a beast of their own, but the funnel itself is one of those things that I have a really strong love hate relationship with. Yeah,
[00:03:50] Leanne: I think, I think we all feel that way at some point.
We're like, well, you know, there's the whole, is it a funnel? Is it a flywheel? Like, what is it? You know, it's... It could be a dinosaur. We don't know.
[00:04:02] Clark: Yeah, well, funny you should say that, you know. A dinosaur, I think we might be able to track where it's heading that way, you know. Buyers don't want their hands held, you know.
They want to do what they want to do. And it's perfectly understandable because, you know, everybody knows the majority of, basically all of my experience is in B2B. And so, We too often get caught up in the, the personas of it all right? They're still human beings at the end of the day. They still wanna lay on the couch and watch Bob's burgers and thumb through TikTok.
Like that's, you know, that's a thing. You know, it's, there're, there're so many marketers out there that have their personas, have their ICPs and you're like, who fits into this box? You know, and so the entire structure of their funnel is predicated on that and then going after them wherever they are perceived to be.
Well, a few of them might, sure. Do you know how many C level executives are not on LinkedIn? A lot.
[00:05:06] Leanne: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's one of the things in our first conversation where we... We're the most alive. We're like, Oh my God, I think that way too, is that the people are people and if you have a group of 10 people, you know, how's a business buying committee really that different than the purchase decisions for like a new car, right?
You think that, you know, after a certain age or a certain stage of life. You know, there's, there's usually more than one person involved in the decision making process. So, you know, I, I think that, you know, is it ten people that chooses whether someone gets an SUV or a sedan or blah? Nah, maybe not that many people.
But I don't really think that all ten people in a buying committee are getting ten opinions that are equally weighted. That are, you know, equally, there's always somebody of the pack that is like leading the cause, that is leading the decision making, that is saying like, hey, you know, like there's a mediator, the translator, they're managing it all.
[00:06:13] Clark: We also have to consider that... You know, we, we talk about people as in, in this context, like your average consumer and those buying habits versus a B2B buyer. Well, you also have to consider that if you're just a regular consumer, you know, IRL in real life, then You want the thing, you actively think about it, often, whatever, if it is that SUV or whatever, you know, how many people within your ICP, your buyer community, whatever, how many of those people just turn the lights off and go home, right?
They flip the switch, their brains off, they're not going to think about it again. They're going to go back to being the person watching Bob's Burgers on the couch, you know, it's one of the, they go back to being a human, not a persona. And so... You know, when, when we think about demand gen as a whole, and, you know, so many eggs are put into the, the LinkedIn basket, or if you're trying to do the demand capture and, you know, whatever, you're not only competing with your competitors, you're competing with TikTok, crazy cat videos.
You know the hot Wings eating show on YouTube like you are creating for a 10, or you're competing for attention. And what a lot of B two B marketers don't understand is that attention is earned and you have to have some sort of value that keeps you top of mind with that audience because there's an excellent chance.
That at the end of the day, they don't think about you at all while you're up until midnight worrying about what those people are doing, whether they're seeing your ads, what can you do in your messaging? Could you change this color, this word, the position of this button on this landing page? They don't think about you ever.
[00:08:06] Leanne: Nope. If you miss a day posting on LinkedIn, do they wonder where you are? No,
[00:08:12] Clark: they don't. Right, and so tying back, tying this all back to the funnel, you know, in, in my world, we, we think the end all be all is the CISO, the Chief Information Security Officer. Well, that's one person. And there might be a buying committee, but what usually ends up happening is, for example, the, the practitioners that would be using your cybersecurity tool, they're not marketed to.
Why? Well, a lot of people think that they don't have to because those practitioners don't write a check, right? They're not gonna add qualified pipeline those specific individuals, you know If we're running a hardcore ABM play then we might throw lump them in together Sure, but you know if you're putting all your eggs in one basket and neglecting, you know, who?
The group of people that could actually be using something, then you've got one single funnel that you're trying to drag a person through that does not have time, doesn't really want to talk to you, is very, very, very once in a blue moon, in market for what you do, if ever. And so it's kind of like the old, hey, you should diversify your portfolio.
It's the same way, like we can cast a wide net without casting too wide of a net, right? Yeah,
[00:09:34] Leanne: I mean, we talked about kind of like inverting the funnel, like as far as what the net that we're casting. One thing that came to mind as you were speaking was like the whole, is this a vitamin or a painkiller, you know, kind of cliche question.
And is it really the CSO that feels the headache of using it every single day, or is it the person that reports to the CSO? Right? Like, who's the person whose pain you're actually killing? Who's the person who's gonna actually have that emotional connection, or need, or, you know, what we're trying to...
Inspired her marketing. Is it, is it really the person in the C suite or is it the person who has to make a report every month and list all the, you know, for example, all the security breaches or attacks or this or that? Who is the person in compliance, perhaps, that has to make sure that PII wasn't leaked?
[00:10:28] Clark: Right. So it's a really weird situation because If you separate those two groups, like for example, a DevSecOps team, trying to go on a wild goose chase, chasing down vulnerabilities that aren't even exploitable, for example, do you know how much time is wasted? Just like, well, we'll, we'll start patching stuff, you know, that's a completely different pain point within that entire account than what it would be with a CISO, for example, if there's a hundred million dollar breach, right?
Right.
[00:11:03] Leanne: Define that kind of attack. Define the acronym you just said. CISO, was it? What kind of attack?
[00:11:09] Clark: Oh, no, I was referring to
[00:11:11] Leanne: the C suite. The C suite, okay, okay, sorry. I was like,
[00:11:13] Clark: I haven't heard this! Right, the CISO, yeah.
[00:11:17] Leanne: I'm like, I know what a DDOS attack is, but I don't know.
[00:11:22] Clark: Yeah, there's the CISO attack, and that's what we as marketers do.
Yeah, just trying to get people to click on something, right? You know, between pool, between marketing and cybersecurity, can we please get some more acronyms? I know
[00:11:38] Leanne: what
[00:11:40] Clark: they are. Right, but the problems that are going to attract a CISO to a tool, what's going to put him in market, or her in market, is going to be completely different than what an entire team would be paying attention to.
It's different pain points. And when you do things like neglect an entire team of practitioners, You miss all those pain points. You're missing opportunities left and right because one, they don't know you exist. They don't know that you could actually provide a substantial lift. And it's just like I mentioned, it's an entire funnel that, you know, should exist, but it doesn't too often.
And so it's, you know, it's one of those things where we don't really know what to do with the funnel as a whole. Should we get rid of it? Should we just start? Focusing on messaging for individual groups of people like we did should we make another funnel? You know, it's a it's a tricky tricky place to be in right now, but it's really fun.
It's really fun to navigate You
[00:12:38] Leanne: know, it can be really fun or it can be a lot of busy work so when we talk about kind of like flipping the funnel or you know, Taking a wider net and, and looking at how the typical funnels fail, uh, to create demand in this sense, what are some, some risks of the way that you approach it?
Like what would be something where you're like, Oh man, this was something I was worried about might happen. And thankfully I did this so that it wouldn't. Kind of thing.
[00:13:11] Clark: So the one thing that I would actually be worried about the most that might fly under the radar are the internal issues that would arise.
That comes from the KPIs being different for those two different motions, right? Those two different audiences. There is a customer journey that you. At the end of the day, we would like certain individuals to go down, certain groups of people to go down, but we can't force them down it. And so we have to measure them differently.
And we have to take things into consideration like, yeah, Asiso does actually hold the coin purse, right? Uh, it has different pain points, etc. So, it's an entirely different campaign. It's basically its own motion.
[00:13:54] Leanne: Ryan? Yeah, and I would assume, but you know, we want to question all assumptions, that the type of moves that you would make to be inclusive of the lower level, you know, ICs, Individual Contributors, would not alienate or somehow detract from, or worse, cannibalize the motions to attract the C suite.
[00:14:18] Clark: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you kind of have to do one with the other. I mean, the overarching goal of making these kind of plays is Basically the same concept as, let's say I make toys. What am I going to do if I want to sell my toy? Am I going to immediately ask the parents for money? No, I'm going to put the toy in the kids hands and watch what happens.
I want to create those internal evangelists that will do my job for me. They'll do the sales for me. You know, that's what we want and attacking it from that angle. It's really awesome to see. And going back to some of the risky things is if you're making those kind of plays, have a very clear discussion upfront that we're gonna be measuring this this way, we're gonna be measuring this this way.
They're going to look very different. One's gonna be based off of engagement. You know, we, we might have, for the practitioner's motion, we might have an interactive demo on, on a landing page just for them, just so they can go use it. Because we know that if we try to put a bunch of gates in front of it, if we try to ask for a bunch of information, one, practitioners, they're going to put whatever they can in that box to just break that gate.
If not, just break the gate, because they're world class experts at doing exactly that, you know. But yeah, we're going to just provide as much value. We're going to be proud of our product. We're going to get it in their hands and watch the magic happen. Whereas, let's test a different experience for the C suite where we can compromise.
We can keep a customer journey. That goes through a CTA that's book a demo or contact sales. Let's just see what happens. And obviously with one, you're going to be measuring more bottom, you know, traditional bottom of funnel stuff. And then the other one's going to be more top and mid funnel. You know, there are tools right now where...
You can have these interactive demos on your page. I'm a huge fan of Nevadic. You can track all sorts of analytics through how far down the demo someone gets. You know, you can get really good insight without requiring people to identify. You know, there's still a lot of stuff to report on. And I think if you approach it from that angle, you're going to mitigate a lot of risk up front.
Because I don't think that just putting two separate motions into action is Is really any different than just having a couple of different campaigns running, you know, we know how to report on those things, but if you're comparing it to something very, very differently, that's all working together, then you got to have that conversation up front because misalignment internally with motions this large, that, that'll cause some problems.
[00:17:15] Leanne: Yeah, and I love that you mentioned, because I'm looking at my notes from our original conversation, I love that you mentioned the demo thing because that was something I really wanted to hear you talk about was from the summary of it was that on the page was that instead of gating the demo because you were you the way that you explained it to me was that they You wanted to approach the relationship in a more authentic way, and you knew that their, their bullshit meter was like super duper high, and you mentioned that, and I'll let you talk on this, but how were you protective of the products?
Because what, there was like one flaw that might come up with doing like evergreen or, you know, the demo the way that you were talking
[00:17:57] Clark: about. Yeah, this is one of those. Ways of old, particularly in SaaS, in cybersecurity, you know, everybody's really protective. of their product and the way I approach that conversation is imagine walking into any store or Starbucks or McDonald's or whatever, and you having to give your personal contact information or better yet, your work email, not a, I'm going to require a work email before you're allowed to see or get.
Why are we doing that? How much sense does that make? How much confidence do we have in our product? Are we that afraid? Are we that afraid that our brand isn't good enough? That our product isn't good enough? That we need to sit someone on a call and hold their hand the entire time? Because everyone out there has data suggesting that buyers hate that.
Absolutely abhor it. I
[00:19:02] Leanne: mean, I, I don't know about what the data is, but I know I for sure gets, I just don't know because it's, it's just classical pedagogy. It's, it's how you teach people. People don't learn very well by just watching someone else click around on a screen. They need to have the experiential learning of multiple ways of, of interacting with a thing that they're, a skill that they're trying to gain.
So they need to hear it said, which is great for the demo, but they also need to be able to, like, have that kinesthetic, I moved this and I did this and I clicked here, and they need to, their brain needs to create the neural pathways for themselves.
[00:19:42] Clark: 100% correct. Now think about a cybersecurity audience, practitioners.
They will know more about your product just by clicking around in about 7 seconds than a lot of your sales folks. Like, they know what they're doing. Just have, have faith. If you have a good product, build a good brand.
[00:20:03] Leanne: I almost, it brings to mind, like, a picture of, this is probably the second time I've referenced the Matrix today, but like, when, like, he can all of a sudden see the code behind people, and it's like, that's almost kind of like, you know, in a delayed impact of, of how probably the practitioners, the cybersecurity practitioners are like, look, I know that this says this.
I just need to see if you added this line so that it's actually secure. Or I need to see if you have it set up like this to meet my needs. They have very specific needs.
[00:20:32] Clark: You're exactly correct. And that that's actually where a lot of deals Go south, to be honest with you. I've seen it happen before where you've got to check that box, close, lost because you get in a in one of those demos through one of the more traditional bottom of funnel motions and someone starts with the really really hard hitting questions, and if the person that's giving that demo Is it batting a thousand and just a plussing the entire thing that hurts your brand?
It doesn't just lose you the deal It hurts your brand because that's a very tight knit group that basically everybody knows everybody kind of small town and Once you're burned you're burned like to the point where you're you know, you might have hit your marketing goals But how much of your TAM did you actually burn on the way there?
Yeah.
[00:21:25] Leanne: I mean, and that, that comes back to, you know, some like myths and mistakes. I feel like we just uncovered a lot of them and, you know, like thinking about long term instead of short term is, is there, there's that delicate balance between meeting the short term needs and the long term value. And, and so.
I know we don't want to say that they're ICPs, but it feels like you, you just have to know your ICPs. You got to know your people and, and what it is they actually value instead of saying, oh, this is Tech Tom and Tech Tom likes webinars. Well, no, Tech Tom actually doesn't like webinars.
[00:22:05] Clark: And I have seen spreadsheets that have exactly that kind of language on it.
And I mean, everybody has when you do your, you know, here's your Maverick. Here's your, you know, those types of deals. You know, you give them names and you're going, I thought they were just people. Like, you know, we have to. Rely on our marketers to build a brand that can make them aware and then trust that we can get them to engage with us.
And then that's where the relationship actually begins. Because if you think you know your audience, You know, your actual buyers that can write you a check based on just something you made up. I got news for you. You're, you're gonna have a bad day.
[00:22:56] Leanne: Yeah. This is a little bit like off track from our prompts, but you told me a story about how you blended in with a group of your.
your potential customers. And that was one way that you participated in the same types of forums that they participate in. And that's one way that you were able to gather like that frontline, you know, I don't know what to call it. But the the team talk, you know, the behind the scenes, I would say inside.
Sure. Yeah, inside information. And I thought that that was really a great way to get to know them instead of just making assumptions.
[00:23:31] Clark: Thanks. Yeah, I, whoo, yeah, here we go.
[00:23:36] Leanne: We're working on phrasing, though. We're phrasing this as participating.
[00:23:39] Clark: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's one of those things that is scratched a part of my brain that I just can't let go.
And that is... The darkest of funnels, just finding out where everyone hangs out and just seeing if you can blend in, seeing how long you can last, you know, it's as a marketer. That's what I live for. That's the holy grail, right? Is just hearing it. Straight out of their mouths, like candidly, no one's around there, you know, amongst peers, friends that they've been in touch with for decades.
What are they saying about your product behind your back? What do they really think? You might have some. You know, hear about some bad reviews or whatever, but all that's front facing, you know. So yeah, I did manage to get into a closed group, a professional network. And, you know, tactics to get in, probably won't dive into that.
[00:24:46] Leanne: We're just gonna, we're gonna pretend that they were on the up and up and that you were invited.
[00:24:52] Clark: Yeah, for sure. But the takeaway here is put forth any emotion that you can afford to make that happen. Because when you're relying on things like your, your paid search attribution and everyone thinks that like, Oh, let's throw more money at Google ads.
Like, There is a seedy underbelly of the, you know, where everybody hangs out around the water cooler. That's where they found out about you initially, you know, and if you can do anything you can to get there, the gates just open there. There are your. actual pain points. There are your real insights into not only the perception of your product, technically speaking, but the perception of your brand and all of your competitors.
And I've seen some pretty brutal things in those communities. You know, nothing crazy like one might assume, but the way that brands and certain products were just being absolutely ripped To shreds just, and for every one sentence that I saw that was talking badly about someone's product, there were 19 million that were talking about the way they marketed that product.
It was all about the marketing. It was all about the over promising and under delivering. It was just straight up lying. In sales calls about what their product does and they knew for a fact going in, it didn't, they just wanted to find out if you'll sit here and say that to my face because I know it doesn't do what, what you think it does.
And it, it was eyeopening. It was absolutely eyeopening. And if you've got a marketer on your team that is, Just completely unhinged and crazy enough to to try to get those kind of insides do it because it's insanely difficult and might be one of the Most valuable pieces of research you can ever do because I guarantee you You will never find that kind of stuff off any intent data ever off of zoom info off of someone's LinkedIn post It's never ever gonna find it
[00:27:14] Leanne: Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I remember when I was doing social media for one organization and I set up, you know, this is kind of the, the entry level way of doing what you're saying. And I set up like alerts through Talkwalker, free alerts. And I would see things that were posted all across the internet about that brand. And I would see, you know, if you really want to know what people think about you.
your product, what the keyword warriors are gonna say mean things about you. Go to Reddit. Go to Reddit. Go see what people who are anonymous, who are there to dogpile on each other's comments. Go there if you really want to see what you need to fix. And take it seriously. And, you know, it's funny because, you know, I, I know that there's so many sales methodology.
Oh yeah, you should Sandler, you should Bant, you should MedPick, you should this. I don't know what half of these things mean. Like on like, uh, I couldn't like write out the framework, but I can tell you that if you execute any one of those things in a way that makes me feel sold to, or tips off my bullshit radar, or is anything but authentic, I'm not an idiot, and I don't like being patronized or condescended to.
And I'll tell everybody about it.
[00:28:42] Clark: And I should say that, well, yeah, like, I should say that, like, the group that I was in, like, I kind of got invited, but, like, a lot of folks didn't know, like, it was more to get in there and just... Look and just observe, you know, it's definitely not one of those like infiltrate and influence, right?
Like, I mean, what sounds like pretty cool operation, but like it, you know, I, it wasn't, it wasn't the, the first time that had happened where one of my friends on the other side of the fence was like, hey, you got to see this. You know, it's, it's wild, and Reddit is absolutely another one of those things, and anybody can go there and just...
Watch the world burn when it comes to sure, cyber security folks, but also all different industries just complaining about the way that marketing is done. And it's, that's what irks me is because we don't take feedback. Like that to heart and further we don't consider that Someone may have had that opinion of what we were doing before we even started to do it You know, I I think that you have to be very very thorough in Evaluating You, like your personal or your team's personal level of self awareness.
And what would I do if I saw this? You know, and put yourself outside, you know, marketers are the easiest people to market to on the planet. Because we will click on absolutely everything. We will light up the switchboard and like Christmas morning, don't know if that signals intent, who knows, but you know, everybody's going to participate with everybody's everything.
Not everybody's like that. Not everybody's like you, you know, like you, you, you, or you all of us as marketers, you know, and if you can put yourself in anyone else's shoes outside of the, the LinkedIn marketing echo chamber, just run down that path as fast as you can, because that's where your audience actually is.
Yeah,
[00:30:54] Leanne: absolutely. And I think that, you know, you should take things with a grain of salt and there's always outliers or anomalies. But at the end of the day, if you, if you take a systems approach to fix those things and you say, you know what, if we have this thing that we've seen up here, here and here, and, or this one person has this experience, it can be repeated.
You know, first you see if it's a repeatable. mistake. And then you got to look at the system that enabled it to happen. Is the premise flawed? And if you don't fix the foundation, you're not, you're, you're, you're just a fist pushing a boulder up the hill. Like you gotta, you gotta fix the foundational things in order for things to work.
And, and sometimes there's, there's hard parts and there's, there's uncomfortable truths, or there's just pushback and you're just It is what it is. But the more that you can, I firmly believe, the more that you can be transparent and you say what you are and what your flaws are, people are willing to deal with a lot.
And it's not... It's not an automatic no, and if you want to hear more about this, I'm going to pitch somebody else's book. But this is a really good book to talk about, like, that says, Yeah, well, look at the flaws that this company has, and people pay premium stuff for it. So before we go too far down that tangent, so as far as You know, expanding the funnel and kind of like flipping it and things like that.
Is there a person or time when, when what you're kind of saying to do is the, the wrong fit? You know, is this something that people outside of cybersecurity should be doing? Is this, you know, what are, who, who is this good for and who is it not good
[00:32:42] Clark: for? What everyone should be doing is... It's doing absolutely anything it takes to figure out how your audience thinks, not only what they think about, not what they think about you, where they're at.
And the only way you're going to do that is to talk to them. You know, I've seen a lot of situations where marketers like don't have access to your own customers. It's wild to me. How are we going to learn? How are we going to iterate and adapt? You know, I FailFast, you know, whatever you want to call it. I think that that's expense number zero on my list of things to do is put forth a program to where all marketers on your team have full access to all the customer data.
They're, you know, a way to incentivize customers. To give us feedback, you know, whether it be a coffee hour or lunch and learns or whatever, or just, you know, same type of like referral thing, just give them value, give them, you already have their account, you already have their contract, like give them what they, whatever you can.
To just get them to give you insights and just ask them questions like why did you buy our thing? And I don't mean why did your company buy our thing? Why did you buy our thing? What was it? And just listen, you know, a lot of marketers don't realize that if you just talk to your customers They will tell you Exactly how to do your job and be really Really good at it.
You've just got to shut up and listen. That's the
[00:34:32] Leanne: hardest part, shutting up. You just, they absolutely want to tell you. They're waiting for somebody to ask. They've got opinions. And it's great when you are able to, and there's plenty of free, cheap, easy ways to have conversations.
[00:34:46] Clark: You know, if you, on the back side of that, you can also apply that to closed lost, right?
Absolutely.
[00:34:53] Leanne: 1000%.
[00:34:54] Clark: You know, I, I think that, I think that we do that a lot more often, like we, you know, especially folks in sales, like, why did I lose that? Like, you know, I, I, I've seen AEs and reps just Obsess over it, and I get it, like, it's directly tied to their income, like, I mean, I'm measured on qualified pipeline and velocity, like, mine kind of is too, sometimes, so I get it, but create an environment where you're not sending emails, tracking down, and you're, you're still continuing to operate As a marketer or as a salesperson chasing someone down the road that's running away from you as fast as possible.
Approach that conversation like a human being because you're a human being wanting to talk to another human being. You're not a salesperson chasing a persona down the road, right?
[00:35:46] Leanne: I can tell you like that I feel like when I was working for myself and I would be the salesperson, I'd be like pitching this or Or even, I'm so ashamed, I did this to somebody that I wanted to have on my podcast.
And I could tell you the exact moment where it messed up. Because I could just, I could tell by their demeanor, their face, or, you know, I said the wrong thing and it was too late. And when they feel sold to is almost always going to be that moment where you just see them glaze over. Or you use phrasing that is just unknown to them.
It is just not how they think, speak, whatever. And getting really good at understanding that moment and being able to articulate what it is you did wrong and not do it again. Huge, huge
[00:36:34] Clark: impact. That just reinforces the notion that you have to prioritize your audience. Because just what you mentioned, that particular threshold is going to be different for every single person that your teams come in contact with.
And so you have to dive head first as hard as you can into that wide net again and see how many you can catch because you have to have as many data points as humanly possible. You know, it's, it's a lot to sort through. It's a lot, you know, if, if you're a marketer that has spent a half or a whole day or, you know, four years of your life listening to Gong calls, for example, cool, you know, so glad that got better and, you know, got to the point of those calls, but it's, you know, it's the same type of deal.
You really have to consider the individual. That's what it all comes back to. It comes back to the individual because there are way too many variables there. to just assume that you know anything about them. You're trying to put them into a box, because you're incentivized to. You're incentivized to put everybody in a box, because you want them to be dumped out of that box, down that funnel.
And if you have a bunch of strays running around, How are you going to get them in the funnel?
[00:37:56] Leanne: How are you going to segment them? How are you going to do it? Exactly. Earlier, we, I said something to you and I just want to repeat it like on the podcast. Is that the best skill that you can have is the questions you ask.
And, you know, I think that the questions that we as marketers ask when we have these opportunities changes everything. And I've met some, some amazing people, some people that are just so good at the questions that they asked other people. And if you can make that your superpower, go. Like, that's the direction I would tell somebody to go to.
If I could meet like a, an 18 year old person looking for my advice, I'd be like, get good at asking questions. And one of my questions, such a cheesy segue, what do you think the future of marketing is? Do you think that it's going to enable us to be human centric? You know, do you think that where it's going is where it should be going?
[00:38:54] Clark: Is it going to enable us to be human centric? We're already enabled to be human centric. We just refuse to do it. And that's the problem. The future of marketing is brand, particularly in B2B because B2B buyers. have had about a gut full of our current customer journey and where we want to hold their hand constantly.
At the end of the day, they're still a person and they buy things like a person and we can't interrupt that. We can't tell them where to go or what to do. We can incentivize it. We can suggest it, we can present what we have to say to the world and hope that they do. And that's, you know, that's the name of the game.
And the people that are better at doing that succeed more. But you're never going to have a long term sustainable growth model if you're not paying attention to the individual. Because when you scrape 10, 000 leads off of ZoomInfo, and dump them into the funnel. What do those numbers look like? I don't think anybody's been too happy at what those numbers look like in quite some time.
And then what does that do? That leads to your sales team hating you because they're garbage leads. And it, you know, creates all this internal conflict and everything goes to shit after that. And so, approaching it from a brand perspective. Let your buyer know, whether they realize it or not, that you actually respect them.
You understand how they're choosing or not choosing to engage with the things that they engage with, just like they do as a normal consumer. You know, in cybersecurity, for example, sales cycles are regularly Really, really long. People are very rarely in market. And so, that means that they're not ready, really, to engage with anything.
They might click on a page. Sure, they might give you that email address to get your white paper or whatever. And if they're feeling crazy, they might even interact with some content syndication. You know, who knows? But that's not indicative of intent at all, really. And we're finding that out more and more.
And so I think where not only it's going, but where it absolutely must go on our side, what we absolutely must start doing is loading Top of Funnel content, Top of Funnel value. It's about brand awareness and being top of mind when they're in market. Because a lot of the times you have no clue when that window is going to open and for how long.
And I guarantee you that in, in my industry, for example, if you're not already on their radar, you have lost. When they, when that, when that switch flips. And they are in market. If you're not already in their brain, you're out. You will never be considered in the first place. And so we're all focused on traditional bottom of funnel metrics because they, you know, make us think that something's happening.
You know, they, they, they look good on a presentation deck, right? How many dollars came from that? You know, you know, the sales cycle is being so long. You're, you're actually just guessing at that
[00:42:34] Leanne: point. I mean, I love analytics and, and I, you know, spend a lot of time looking at the data. I feel like so much of it is just an arbitrary guess because we have to have something to guess with.
We feel like we have to call it something so that we can, we can try to.
[00:42:52] Clark: That is what I have often referred to as the elephant in the room. The big elephant in the room that no one talks about, especially in these companies with ginormous sales cycles. How could, can you really attribute like this download from like six months ago to that dollar there?
Really? You sure about that? You know, what happened in between that time, like, it's wild, the things we report on. And sure, you know, we have to do it. We understand why we do it. And we are genuinely trying to get the most insight we possibly can out of it. But is it really a one to one as far as our relationship with our audience?
Is it a clear picture of what it actually is, as opposed to what we think it is that just kind of makes us look good? Hmm.
[00:43:45] Leanne: I don't know. Well, I have to say that at least... You know, as far as my guests, we all kind of agree that there is, you know, not to sound like we're drinking the Chris Walker Kool Aid, but like, you know, we, we all agree that there is the darkest of dark funnels.
There is, there is so much that, you know, we'll just never know. And that we're doing our best. So, I, I see that we've gone for quite a while. I wanted to make sure that I ask you this last question. What is a question that someone should ask? You know, there are a list of questions, they come to you, they want your advice.
What is, and they probably have like all these things they ask you, what is something that they should ask you, but they don't, like that they just miss the, the mark when they're coming to you for advice, or that you want them to ask you because then they'll actually... Get to the right thing that
[00:44:33] Clark: they're trying to do.
How do I know if I'm good at this? Yeah. Yeah, Dunning Kruger Yeah, a lot of the time folks get caught up in the echo chamber and The influencers the LinkedIn influencers that you know are promoting the personal brand to sell their guru stuff You know, sure. Okay fair enough viewers listeners. Call me a hypocrite.
I'm on a podcast. I totally get it I totally get it. I have that level of self awareness, but I never want to be in a position where I'm not providing value, right? You know, a lot of marketers take advice and it throws off their perception of their own abilities in this industry. You know, a lot of they, it's the same concept as van life on Instagram, right?
Oh, look, someone's presenting just the perfect life, van, beach, you know, sunset. But then you go to LinkedIn and go, wow, she's crushing it and I'm not, you know, and you have to remember that just because people have a massive following doesn't mean they're good at their job, doesn't mean that you should take their advice.
And so I think if I could come up with one question that I wish or I'm looking for someone to ask me when, when they're asking me like genuinely for, for my advice, my input, mentorship, feedback, whatever, is how do I know? How do I know? Because we're measured as teams a lot. God knows we have OKRs, KPIs, MQLs.
We've got all that garb, but I might not always be with this team. I want to do this for the rest of my life. How do I know that I'm good? That's the question everybody should be seeking the answer to and everybody's gonna be on their their own journey to find it. It's out there.
[00:46:28] Leanne: Yeah, I mean, that's a great self taught question when you're fighting imposter syndrome, right?
Like if you were giving yourself advice, what advice, you know, what would you tell yourself, you know? How do I know if I'm good at it? Well, you can tell yourself if I was good at this then I would be able to do this And then you realize that you're doing that or you know it or at least it helps you paint a goal to work towards So that's that's a pretty clutch question.
I really like
[00:46:55] Clark: that one. You know, we can always Quantify what we do as a team. Well, if you feel your, your mental health kind of going off, off the rails into the land of imposter syndrome or worse, quantify it, you know, do the same, just the same type of mindfulness, just. for yourself and become a little bit more grounded and self aware and there's there's a lot of room for reflection there And I think if that if marketers will do that for themselves, they will be able to do it better for their teams
[00:47:28] Leanne: Yeah, yeah, just don't go too off the rails Don't go to Joshua Tree on this and be like are any of us any good at anything and it's like some of us Hopefully we're working towards it.
Awesome. Awesome. Well I appreciate you and your energy and everything you've shared with us. If someone wants to connect with you, what is the best way for them to do
[00:47:49] Clark: that? I would say LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm on there quite a bit, probably more than I should be, you know, C L A R K B A R R O N. I'm the one with the crazy hair in the orange background.
That's me. Awesome. Feel free to connect, reach out. Cool,
[00:48:05] Leanne: cool. And then you're also speaking at Demand by Metadata on October 25th, so people can catch that session. Not sponsored.
[00:48:14] Clark: Non spawn, but... But, legit. Yeah, really looking forward to that. Demand 2023 from Metadata. I'll be speaking.
[00:48:24] Leanne: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again.
And my name is Leanne with Markigy. You can also find me on LinkedIn, or you can email me at info@markigy.com. Thank you.
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