Building a Marketing Machine from Scratch (with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Knowing When to Quit and Try Again
Erin shares experiments that failed initially, like referrals and influencers, and lessons on timing and persistence.
#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
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