Building a Marketing Machine from Scratch (with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Social Distribution and PG Palooza Employee Amplification
Erin details LinkedIn strategy, founder-led posts, employee contests with cash incentives, and sales follow-up process.
#337 | Dave sits down with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews, who joined as the company's first marketer with a two-page website and zero recurring revenue and helped grow it to $20M+ ARR over eight years. Erin breaks down how she picked one niche audience and went all in, why she led with ungated content, and how she built a quarterly operating rhythm around "Bangers," tentpole marketing moments that get the entire company involved. They also get into podcasting ROI, what she'd do differently with AI-driven search today, and why she thinks the brand vs. demand debate is just noise.
Timestamps
- (00:00) - Intro: 8 years, one niche, a two-page website, and $20M ARR
- (05:16) - How Erin identified the right audience to go all in on
- (07:18) - Building the UX Research Field Guide and the early SEO strategy
- (09:47) - Why she went ungated and still captured 13% email conversion
- (13:28) - What she'd do differently with content strategy today
- (16:04) - Stacking channels one at a time instead of doing everything at once
- (18:43) - How to plan for the next phase of growth before you need it
- (21:14) - Introducing Bangers: the quarterly marketing OS
- (23:42) - Top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel Bangers
- (30:25) - How LinkedIn and employee advocacy fit into the Banger playbook
- (34:44) - Why Erin started a podcast seven years ago when no one else was
- (38:07) - How to think about podcast ROI when attribution is fuzzy
- (40:59) - AI expectations for her marketing team
- (45:27) - Why the brand vs. demand debate is stupid
- (48:39) - The real secret: making your customer the hero
Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/
***
Brought to you by:
AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.
Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.
Convertr - The enterprise lead data management platform that sits between your lead sources and your CRM, automatically validating, enriching, and standardizing every lead before it touches your systems. Check them out at convertr.io/exitfive.
Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand generation agency that helps high-growth cybersecurity, DevOps, and enterprise software companies drive more pipeline through AI SEO, paid media, and go-to-market engineering. Visit compoundgrowthmarketing.com and tell them Dave sent you.
***
Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.
- They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
- Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
- Visit hatch.fm to learn more
The AI-powered Podcast Player
