Humans of Martech

What’s up everyone, today we’re taking a dive into the world of dashboard building.Startups may not always have the luxury of having a dedicated data analyst on staff, which means marketers may need to get more hands-on with data. Yeah I haven’t had the data analyst luxury in my career very often! In episode 38, we discussed marketing reporting and how you can use key reports to help highlight impact and find new opportunities. But we’re not talking about reports here right?That’s right, dashboards aren’t reports. They are living breathing snapshots of key areas you want to keep an eye on in your business.Yeah I think a lot of people don’t make that distinction and just assume reports = dashboards = chart. Where should marketers be starting? With charts?Scatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, maps, funnels, box plots… There’s a bunch of different chart types and visualizations at your disposal when you're designing your dashboard, but this isn’t where you should start.Here’s today’s main takeaway: When designing a dashboard, it's important to focus on the decisions you want to make, rather than just the metrics you want to track. Before building your dashboard, consider your audience and bring together the right people to answer key questions. This will help you create a prototype of your first version.Dashboard projects are close to both of our hearts. Both having worked for Klipfolio (a dashboard SaaS for startups and SMBs), we’ve spent a fair amount of time researching and writing about the internal dashboard building process.There’s obviously a critical collaboration piece to this that would be an initial starting point for anyone taking on a dashboard project. Yeah one thing we always said about building good dashboards is that it takes a village.So Phil, you’ve actually led the charge in this area at a few startups. What are some of the questions you should be asking as a marketer to get started?Questions before buildingThe first questions to tackle as a team are: What metrics would you look at on a regular basis to measure performance and determine areas for growth? What metrics do you care about the most?So ultimately, this depends entirely on your team goals and the top priority metrics we’ve selected as a group. These goals further inform how to prioritize views and metrics in our dashboard. What does this group of stakeholders look like when you’re starting to build things?Stakeholder groups:Main viewers: Who will be digesting or regularly looking at the dashboardMarketing Ops/Data Ops: What resources to you have to help you build the dashboardDesigner and point person: Who’s scoping out the dashboard and driving project management as well as designing the end dashboardAdmittedly, in startup land, you’ll likely be wearing all three hats. I know I have. But in bigger teams, you’re working with a lot more moving pieces. Yeah I’ve gotten a taste of both of these. Small teams and bigger teams. There’s advantages to both. But I think regardless, it’s important to get a lay of the land first.Yeah it might be helpful to walk through an example. You’ve been pretty deep in lifecycle marketing in your career. Maybe give us a real life example wearing a lifecycle hat. So Phil, you’re Director of lifecycle and you’re tasked with building out a lifecycle dashboard.Here’s a list of example questions to ask yourself and stakeholders Yeah I like the lifecycle example actually. It’s broad enough to touch most parts of marketing so I can  use it as goal posts as we unpack some of this stuff.Your goal with these questions is to figure out what metrics we care about the most, getting a benchmark and establishing a goal for each of these metrics and how they have been trending over time.Current segment/vertical data we get on signups, are there specific segments we know we want to grow?Current lead scoring on signup events, are we scoring leads based on email and domain and any other data we might be collecting?What’s the current activation rates of signups after the first email, what’s our deliverability rate on the first email to signups?Are there specific lifecycle status labels that we are currently using, ie Content lead/subscriber > Signup > Active/published site > Upgraded. Do we currently have micro stages/do we care about this detail, ie in between signup and active we might have, installed theme, created a page and created a menu.Do we currently have the ability to attribute multi touch events for email engagements? Meaning, if a signup opens a pricing email on day 4 and they click the plans link and they buy 2 hours later, is that email getting $%?With all of this information on hand, or at least identifying areas of focus and priority metrics, you can then start scoping out the first prototype of the dashboard, intentionally with too much information, with the hopes of cutting things out in following iterations. Exactly. Next we can talk about metrics that flow in from those questions. What metrics you should consider for the first prototypeThe critical piece of this phase is to spend time understanding the most important things to monitor and give ourselves time to explore different ideas before rolling out a finished dashboard.Here are the core areas of a lifecycle dashboard, with a focus on conversion rates, starting at signups (explicitly did not scope content lead > signup):Signups, signups by segment, signups by lead scoreConfirmations, signups > confirmation %, deliverabilityActive (published a site)Behaviors (installed a theme, >2 pages, menu)Email metrics, engagement score, top emails, ab testsConversions to plans, signups > conversions %, % in first 30 days, % after 30 daysUpgrades, plan breakdownRevenue impactYeah that’s a lot obviously, depends how long you want your dashboard to be but we’re still in the prototype phase here so more is better and you can always remove stuff later or create a second dashboard.The main takeaway of this episode though as we said is that When designing a dashboard, it's important to focus on the decisions you want to make, rather than just the metrics you want to track.So how do we do that?Focus on the decisions you want to makeSomething we want to keep in mind as we narrow the list of important metrics are the decisions we want to be able to make. The goal of our example dashboard is to monitor the lifecycle marketing performance and identify growth opportunities. That means answering questions like:Are we improving sign up engagement and conversions over time? Are specific segments or campaigns driving better conversion rates than others?Should we double down or kill this experiment/emailSo ultimately, the focus of the dashboard should be on Signups > activated(published site) rates and Signups > upgrade conversion rates in the first x days and the viewers should be able to see the impact across the funnel over time. So now that you have a better idea of all the metrics you want to start with, one of the next steps you can start thinking about is chart types, how you’d like to ideally display your data.Choosing chart typesScatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, maps, funnels, box plots… There’s a bunch of different chart types and visualization...

Universal Analytics is sunsetting in July 2023, and its replacement, Google Analytics 4, isn’t exactly getting a warm reception. For digital marketers, SEOs, analysts, and basically anyone else who got used to GA3 over the past decade, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.Ok, I’ll confess: I’ve been a bit further behind on Google Analytics 4 than I wanted. Like many marketers, I struggle to balance martech innovation against the reality of my day-to-day life. I admit I had been procrastinating on learning GA4, but no more.I’ve spent the last few months going as deep as I can on GA4 and, by extension Google Tag Manager. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that GA4 is Google’s gift to digital marketing – I think it’s still an immature platform.I am going to tell you GA4 is getting a much worse rap that it deserves precisely because so many marketers have been deep in GA3/UA for so long. Changing habits is tough, and GA4 makes it more challenging because of a new interface, not too mention a completely different approach to web analytics. No big deal - you can learn all this in a Sunday afternoon, right?Yeah, that’s going to be tough.Today I’m going to give a procrastinator’s guide to GA4. If you’re expecting me to complain about GA3, this episode isn’t for you. We’ll mourn the loss of GA3, briefly, but then move on to making the most of this situation. I don’t think GA4 is all bad – actually, GA4 is pretty slick and I think if it weren’t for the contrast to its predecessor, many folks would be pretty happy with GA4. – – – Alright JT, it’s great to be back behind the mic. We’re starting off with a fun one here. I’ll admit I’ve been out of touch with top of funnel reporting and analytics for the last couple years so I’m excited to learn about GA4. There’s rightfully been a lot of noise since its release in October 2020… maybe we can start there actually, the Google decision. Google has basically said that they are making the switch from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in order to provide users with “more advanced tracking for digital marketers” But aside from new features like automated events, cross-device reporting and BQ support, there’s a lot more behind the decision to make the switch.Why is Google making the switch from UA to GA4?Needs attribution: Lawsuits in EU where UA used as evidencePrivacy regulationsEnd of 3rd party cookies, rise of first party cookiesSingle-page applicationsEvent-based measurementSo October 14, 2020: This was the date when Google officially announced GA4 and began rolling it out to users. What dates should marketers be aware about when it comes to the “forced switch from UA?”What are the important dates and why are they importantJuly 1, 2023, data collection stops. 6 months later, you won’t be able to access your dataYou’ve got 6 months to move to GA4 or another web analytics solution or you’ll be flying blind… You need a solution for your historic data (excel, bigquery, or API)Sounds like it’s time to put down that Netflix remote, grab a cup of coffee, and dive into the exciting world of GA4!It seems like such a big hurdle… JT, how can marketers start to learn GA4?How do I learn GA4There’s going to be a few layers to learning GA4. Let’s break it out into 2 roles:Web Developer, implementationDigital marketer or web analystFor web developers or implementers, GA4 can be installed directly on your website by inserting the code directly onto each page. This isn’t new. I think what is new is that GA4 is much more closely tied with Google Tag Manager. It is absolutely the recommended way to install and configure GA4. There’s a whole episode or series about Google Tag Manager we could do, but the short of it is that GTM gives you a huge toolset to do tons of cool stuff: event tracking, sending additional data through dataLayer, and modifying your implementation without having to directly modify your website.If you’re not already using GTM, GA4 should push you to start using it.For digital marketers and analysts, the task is about getting used to the new interface, migrating configuration settings from GA3, and making a habit of pulling reports from GA4. The big hurdle here is matching up the data from both tools – because I’ve never actually seen both tools give the same number.I think this is what people are most unprepared for: the new reporting paradigm and definitions. Things like users have modified definitions, in no small part because GA4 is better at tracking individual users and corrects known errors in GA3. However, whenever a disparity in the numbers arise, much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth ensues…So getting it installed and playing around with new features is one of the first things folks should be doing. Data history and collection is important.These new features are more powerful and are said to help you better understand and optimize your digital marketing efforts… JT, what are some of the new features that excite you the most compared to UA vs GA4?What is different between GA3 & GA4Bounce rate, conversion tracking, user definitions;Event-based approach, more akin to product analytics tools, and, frankly, this is better for modern web (problem: vast majority of sites aren’t on modern tech)User InterfaceData collection and real-time dataData retentionSo gone are the days of needing to manually set up event tracking codes for specific things like we had to do in GTM? No, still more than enough in GTM. Enhanced Measurement gives us some events out of the box that seem to mostly work for some websites. Events are much better in GA4 – can send custom parametersOne thing a lot of folks mention is improved cross-device reporting, have you dived into this? How is Google associating traffic from multiple devices to unique users?I’m more of a Redshift guy than Big Query these days but I do feel like the switch to GA4 is also pushing many users to adopting Big Query right? GA4 includes native support for BigQuery integration, which allows you to connect your GA4 data with other data sources in Google BigQuery.JT what do you like the most about GA4 so far? Is it the Conversion Probability report or the Customer Lifetime Value report? Or just the new UI and design? What does Jon like about GA4?It might seem like putting lipstick on a pig, but I kind of like GA4. Maybe I’m just coping a bit or being obstinately positive, but change is the name of martech. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to switch tools against my will, and it won’t be the last.Everything is a tool, and GA4 is no different. Events are customizable and don’t have to send same parameters/fields as UA. You can send anything which is powerful when looking at custom data.Conversion events are much more accurate (citation)Reports are much more customizable and better lookingMachine learning to surface insightsSome of the coolest ML insights come in the form of predicting the likelihood that a user will convert on your website or app. This is based on their behavior and other factors. So theoretically, your business can better identify high-potential users and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.Do you know what this looks like practically? Can you push segments of these users to BQ then Hubspot and send custom emails or better yet, to your product and surface different offerings?So like we said, there are many wa...

Season 1 featured our first 50 episodes, 20 of which were guest episodes. In today’s episode we’re going to recap our key takeaways from each guest episode in season 1.Our first guest episode featured Lauren Sanborn, Director of RevOps at CallRail. She recently moved over to DataRobot, an AI cloud platform for Data Scientists.  Aside from leaving us with several marketing and sales alignment tips, my favorite takeaway from Lauren was to not be so hard on yourself if you don’t know what you don’t want to do (for work). Her advice was to get out there and try different things so you can start to mark off what you don’t like. Eventually you’ll find something that you love.”Our next guest in episode 07 featured one of our most senior and perhaps most accomplished guest, Brian Leonard, former co-founder of TaskRabbit and now CEO of Grouparoo (recently acquired by Airbyte).Brian went pretty deep on the relationship with marketing and engineering and my favorite takeaway was that marketers and engineers shouldn’t think of themselves as doing completely different things inside a company. At the end of the day, both groups are there to move the needle on the business. So the best way to think of it is to come together to power the right stack.Instead of pitching to product, marketing needs this, pitch it as, the company needs this and this is how it will benefit everyone. For example, marketing attribution isn’t a marketing or a marketing ops thing. It’s a company thing.Next up was our boy Nick Donaldson in episode 10, fresh off a new consulting gig at Perkuto. Another marketer who’s moved on to another company, he’s now running Marketing Operations at Knak. Nick is wise beyond his years and my favorite takeaway from our chat with him was that the number 1 skill to succeed in marketing ops is curiosity. Early in your career Google and twitter are your best friends. There’s so many smart people that have been in your shoes and are nice enough to share those insights. Find them. Read them. Learn from them.So 10 episodes in and we already had a RevOps Director, a CEO and founder and a consultant. We also had a Professor. In episode 11 we were joined by friend of the show Jonathan Simon.This might have been controversial amongst his peers at the University but we’re happy to report he’s still in his current gig (lol). My favorite takeaway from our chat with Jonathan is that you don’t need a degree to have a successful and happy career in marketing anymore. More than anything, marketers need to be adaptable to changing tech and strive to be lifelong learners. He talked a lot about side hustles and starting something, in his course he actually gets all his students to start a blog and build something during their time there.Episode 17 featured Ottawa native Julie Beynon who leads analytics at Clearbit. Things got technical pretty fast but I think Julie did an awesome job introducing data warehousing and making it seem a lot less intimidating.My favorite takeaway was when she explained that a DWH doesn’t have row limits and isn’t limited by your laptop’s CPU. She loves a Google sheet as much as any data driven marketer, but at some point, startups need to upgrade from that clunkiness to a data warehouse solution.It’s been fun seeing the martech landscape shift from; APIs for everything and we integrate with all your tools to – we build on top of your data warehouse or we connect natively to Big Query.Keeping to the data theme, we had Steffen Heddebrandt in episode 19. Still almost a year later he’s trashing Google Analytics on LinkedIn (lol). He’s the co-founder of Dreamdata, an attribution solution for B2B startups and SMBs.Attribution still gets a bad rep, we heard Corey trash it in season 2, but Steffen has solved big pieces of this puzzle at his startup. My favorite takeaway from our convo was when he declared that when it comes to revenue attribution, GA is basically close to useless for B2B companies. Multi touch attribution software does sound like magic when you’ve tried to orchestrate it yourself, but give Dreamdata a spin if you’re still skeptical about it.Episode 25 featured Naomi Liu, Director of Global Marketing Ops at EFI. Naomi spends some of her time mentoring future marketing ops leaders and was hiring for an entry level marketer on her team at the time so we centered our conversation around how to ace your first marketing job.My favorite takeaway was when Naomi said that new marketers should be asking lots of questions. Be that annoying kid in the back seat asking all of the questions.Episode 27 featured friend of the show and local Ottawa social media maven Erin Blaskie. She recently made the switch from leading marketing at Fellow to go back to freelancing as a fractional CMO.My favorite takeaway was when we asked her how marketers should choose between the freelance route and working in house. She thinks everyone should try both. Throw out everyone else’s definition of success and make your own by trying different things. Big company, startup, agency, freelance, give them all a shot.In episode 37, we had another manager who was hiring on her team. Shannon McCluskey leads marketing ops at Clio and my favorite takeaway was when she described the role of marketing ops.We are not order takers, we’re active consultants designing our own destiny. Sometimes we need to evaluate solutions our partners haven’t thought of. We don’t always say yes to every request we’re given.Episode 39 featured co founder and CEO of Kank Peirce Ujainwalla. A well known face in the martech scene, we asked him to weigh in on the html vs text debate for emails.He said it’s important to do a mix of both. Text emails have that personal feel, but HTML is still super important for all your visual users and telling your brand story.Episode 41 featured another local Ottawa and social media expert and now head of marketing at Fellow – Manuela Barcenas. She’s also a productivity nut and my favorite takeaway was when she said that her biggest productivity superpower is knowing what to work on when you open your laptop in the morning. Time blocking and planning your week ahead of time by scheduling tasks and deep focus blocks.In episode 44, friend of the show Roxanne Pepin from Rewi...

Hey folks, today we’re joined by Ramli John, one of my favorite marketers and someone I’ve admired and followed on Twitter for many years.Ramli got his start in marketing at PepsiCo as a Marketing Systems Analyst where he stayed for 4 years. After a co-founding stint Ramli moved to Toronto where started his freelancing career as a SaaS growth consultant. Along the way he also worked at a few different companies including SkyVerge which exited to GoDaddy.He also spent a few years teaching as a Marketing Instructor at big name spots like RED Academy, Centennial College and CXL Institute.He started what’s widely known as one of the top marketing podcasts on the planet, Growth Marketing Today and he’s one of the inspirations of our podcast here.He went on to join Product-Led - The leading community for PLG Pros founded by Wes Bush the famous author of Product-Led Growth. During his time there Ramli wrote his own book with Wes. It hit shelves last year: Product-Led Onboarding. I’ve read it twice and it’s been a huge career growth lever for me.Now he’s landed in what seems to be the perfect role, Director of Content at one of the top no-code onboarding tools in Appcues.Damn what a resume, what a journey, Ramli it’s an honor to have you.Questions and topicsRamli there’s a bunch of jumping off points here, I want to get into the podcast, the book and also the new gig but I’d love to start with an early career question.Early career at Pepsi and startupYou did a 180 when you went from a massive 100k + enterprise at Pepsi to then co-founding a startup. How wild was the transition and what advice would you have for listeners in big companies thinking of starting something one day?Podcast growthYou did Growth Marketing today for 4 years, I remember you posting once about how long it took you before you finally started to gain big traction. What advice do you have for people creating content with a small audience, sometimes feeling like they are speaking into the void.Teacher questionRamli, you spent a few years teaching, first at RED academy, a tech and design school, then at CXL Institute in their Demand Gen mini degree and also at Centennial College teaching a 14-week course on web analytics. What gave you the itch to spend 3 years teaching and maybe talk about the process of designing a course from scratch and all the work involved there.On writing your first bookTalk to us about writing your first book and the difference between the process of writing a course vs a book. Obviously Wes was probably a big inspiration but was this something you’ve always wanted to do and will there be more books in the future?PQL vs. PAIListeners have probably heard of PQLs by now, Product Qualified Leads or criterias that tell you someone has experienced your product or gotten some mileage in it. In your book, Product-Led Onboarding, you talk a lot about PAI, Product Adoption Indicators. Can you unpack the difference between both of those for listeners? Key onboarding milestonesMany people will dumb down onboarding to just getting users to the ‘aha moment’ like it’s something that magically unlocks onboarding challenges. You actually break down the nuance here and coin 3 different moments of value: Perception, Experience and Adoption. Can you walk us through a practical example of this?Conversational bumpersIn your book, one of my favorite analogies is your bowling analogy and how you compare onboarding emails and SMS messages as conversational bumpers to help users get their first strike. Unpack this for our listeners.Appcues, 6 months inYou’re about half a year into Appcues leading the content team, teaching SaaS teams about onboarding and product adoption. When I saw you announce that I was like damn, that’s the ultimate fit, Ramli gets to go back to SaaS and he gets to keep pumping out content about onboarding. I’d love to hear how the journey has been so far but maybe start by telling us how this opportunity came about.Happiness questionRamli, you’ve got a ton of stuff going on, you’re a podcaster, an author, a frequent speaker, a soon to be dad and you’re leading a content team at one of the coolest SaaS in the world. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy? ---Ramli’s linksTwitter: https://twitter.com/ramlijohn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramlijohn/LinkedIn posts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramlijohn/recent-activity/shares/ Product-Led Onboarding book: https://productled.com/book/onboarding/ Appcues: https://www.appcues.com/ Growth Marketing Today: https://growthtoday.fm/ ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone, today we’re diving into a fascinating conversation with Nick deWilde who’s leading an exciting web3 project.Nick’s an MBA graduate of Stanford University and a self described generalist who’s spent the majority of his career working with early stage startups He was the Managing Partner at Tradecraft, an education program that helped trained people for roles at fast growing startupsThis led him to lead product marketing at Guild, a company helping frontline workers earn debt-free degrees and credentialsShortly after having a baby, Nick then made the wild decision to leave his full time job and strap on a jetpack (fueled by early crypto investments) and go independent He worked part time at a venture firm incubating early business ideas alongside consulting for a few startupsHe writes an awesome career strategy newsletter called Junglegym and launched a talent collectiveHe also co-founded Invisible College, a school owned by the students that helps people learn, build and invest in web3.Nick, thanks so much for your time, really pumped to chat.Questions and topicsThere’s so many things I’d love to unpack today. I've become a huge fan of your newsletter and your work around career strategies, but I had to prioritize some of the topics today given the time we have together. I want to get into some web3 stuff as well but maybe we can start off by taking us back to 2021 when you were on paternity leave. Paternity leave makes you do wild thingsNick you wrote about stepping off a rocketship and strapping on a jetpack into web3. You did this 3 months after having a baby. Talk to us about this decision and what impact having your first child had on making a big career change.Nick’s Notes:Having a baby does funny things to your head. It limits the number of hours you can focus on work and reminds you that your time on earth is finite.The net result was both a decrease and increase in my career ambition. I no longer wanted to do things to impress a boss to move up at a company, but at the same time, I wanted to take a swing at something exciting. That led me to independence and stating Invisible CollegeZone of geniusOne of your guiding principles when you took the leap and went independent was to work in your zone of genius. For you that meant, creative ideation, crafting + executing a strategy and collaborating with people you admire.Walk us through this concept and how others might determine what their zone of genius might be?Nick’s Notes:Zone of Genius is a concept I got from a book called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership.Living in your zone of genius means that instead of choosing to spend your time living in your zone of incompetence, or compentence or even excellence, you are spending your hours working on things that you are truly great at and love doing.To find your zone of genius think about where you feel flow state, think about the skills you get compliments on, think about the hours of the day where you create the most value for others. When it’s time to leave your jobIn episode 48 last season we talked about when to quit your job. Being successful and happy in martech requires having a true north for your career. Sometimes, that means recognizing that your current workplace isn’t helping you advance your career.You built a chart that can tell someone when it’s time to leave their job. I’d love it if you could break that down for our listeners.Nick’s Notes:So imagine plotting all your skills on a 2x2 chart. On the top are all the things you like doing, on the bottom are all the things you don’t like doing. On the right is all the stuff you’re bad at. On the left is all the stuff you’re good at.Basically you want most of your work activities to be in the top left box – stuff you’re good at and like doing. These are things that are valuable for you and your employer. This should be at least 60% of your job. In the bottom right box is all the things you’re bad at and don’t like. This should be 0% of your job because neither you or your employer are benefitting. You’ll probably have some things that you’re good at but don’t like – these are skills you’re no longer enjoying learning. It’s basically taking one for the team.To make up for that, you should also get the opportunity to try out stuff that you aren’t good at but like doing.I think a good rule of thumb is 60% stuff you’re good at and like, 20% stuff you’re bad at and like and 20% stuff you’re good at and don’t like.If that gets drastically out of ballance you’re very likely to want to leave your job.The Great Online Game“We now live in a world in which, by typing things on your keyboard, or saying things into a microphone, you can marshall resources, support, and opportunities.” You reference this article written by Packy McCormick (the author of Not boring newsletter) many times in your work. Many of the folks I follow in web3 reference it as well. Talk to us about how this article lit a fire in you.Nick’s Notes:The Great Online Game, as Packy describes it, offers something of an alternative to traditional employment. Rather than relying on a single employer for money, relationships, and professional development opportunities, ambitious knowledge workers can get their needs filled by working for the internet. Unlike most jobs where your trajectory is constrained by the operating system of a single employer, working for the internet offers the promise of uncapped upside. By publishing this newsletter I had started been playing the online game. This newsletter has served as a magnet for new friends, speaking gigs, and even investment opportunities. For the next phase of my career, I decided that I wanted to get serious about playing.Every marketer should get the opp to launch a web3 projectLast year you tweeted that your hope was for every web2 marketer to get the opportunity to launch a web3 project. Talk a bit more about that, why is launching a web3 project vs web2 such a rush?https://twitter.com/nick_dewilde/status/1473064169557553152?s=20 For marketers who might not have the current bandwidth to launch something of their own right now, what’s a smaller commitment – first step that they could take?

Today on the show we have a veteran of the SaaS marketing industry, we’re joined by Kamil Rextin. After moving from Islamabad, he worked in Karachi for 2 years at P&G and completed an MBA at Waterloo University. He got his start wearing many different hats like Growth, Demand Gen and Ops at early/mid stage SaaS companies in Montreal and Toronto including Breather, Pressly, Uberflip and CrowdRiff.In 2018, he took the entrepreneurial plunge and went out on his own and started an agency called 42Agency. 4 years later, Kamil’s agency counts more than 5+ full time team members providing demand gen, marketing ops and ABM services. He’s worked with top brands like ProfitWell, Hubdoc, Sproutsocial, Knak and many more scaling B2B saaS companies.Kamil’s a father, a founder, a podcaster, a community moderator, the author of the 42/ newsletter, a neurodivergent advocate… but most of his time is shamelessly spent on memes and hot takes on Twitter. Kamil – we’re pumped to chat with you today, thanks for taking the time.Questions and topicsKamil, I’ve dived into your twitter feed over the past year and there’s a ton of hot takes that we can dive into that I’d love longer than 280 character take on. Recently you did an AMA on the B2B marketing community on Twitter, I pegged you with a bunch of questions and wanted to let you expand on some of those – maybe we can start there.Running an agency vs in-houseFor guests that have gone the in-house and agency route, I love asking the pros and cons of both of them. You’re even more fascinating because not only did you do agency… you founded an agency from scratch and have been running it for more than 4 years now. What’s the biggest upside/downside of running an agency vs being an in-house marketer? What are some of your early learnings from starting your own agency?Future-proofed marketing skillsWhether they end up in-house or at an agency, if you were mentoring a fresh marketing grad, you said that you would recommend them to specialize in the technical side of marketing. Why do you think the quantitative side of marketing is where a lot of opportunity is?Technical marketingLet’s dive into that a bit more, I think people generously add technical marketing to their skillsets. What does it mean to you? Is it anything that has to do with reporting and integrations or using martech or is it more technical than that? Like how to manipulate data and build basic models or building a Data Warehouse?Analytics and Tracking in 2022From a quantitative marketing standpoint, the tracking analytics world is weird in 2022. The industry is moving away from session based tracking and with Apple and others making a big business out of privacy and with click based tracking only getting harder with cross browser tracking, what should marketers be relying on in 2022 and beyond? Is it incremental testing? Is it statistical models or ML?Martech buyer’s guide – Wirecutter for SaaSI actually discovered you 4 years ago when I stumbled upon some of your early martech buyer’s guide work. You were building the wirecutter for SaaS, I think the first one you did was on CMS, can’t remember how favoroubly you talked about WP (lol) but what happened to this project, are you going to pick it back up one day?https://twitter.com/kamilrextin/status/1338536972608999425 Dark socialSome influencers have denigrated tracking and attribution to the point where many recommend just ignoring it and trusting your gut. One of the main culprits of this is the rise of dark social. WTF is dark social, is it just a buzzword for offline referrals like in group chats or in Slack threads and forums, and do you buy into all of this hype? How much do you hate this term?SaaS companies should be a media company narrativeSticking to some of your hot twitter takes here, there’s a few more I’m excited to dive in with you. One of them is this idea that many influencers proliferate that SaaS companies should be a media company narrative. Why do you think this is bullshit?https://twitter.com/kamilrextin/status/1362544724813430786 Personal brandsAnother of my favorite twitter takes is your disdain for personal branding. A quick look at LinkedIn and Twitter reveals that building a personal brand has been dry humped to death. Every influencer is only an expert at self promotion. There’s a total lack of receipts and actual experience. It’s all about 24/7 self aggrandizement. Twitter screenshots on LinkedIn and nothing but dolphin claps and clicks. How do you really feel about building a personal brand?--Twitter

Our guest today is Emma Paajanen (Payanen). She’s currently based in Boston but was born and raised in a small town in Finland. She got her start in marketing at a Helsinki-based agency as a Comms specialist before moving to big tech at a cyber security company called F-Secure and also spending a year in internal comms at Nokia. Emma also had a freelancing stint while she was on parental leave from F-Secure where she later went on to lead Marketing Operations. Today she’s inventing new and powerful ways to engage with customers as VP of Marketing at Aiven, an open source data startup turned Unicorn, headquartered in Helsinki with hubs all over the world like Berlin, Boston, Paris, Toronto, some employees even work in a mountainside van. Emma thanks for your time, we’re excited to chat with you today!Topics and questionsBoomerang-ingYou worked at Ellun Kanat in 2010 then went to F-Secure for 2.5 years but you decided to go back to Ellun Kanat in 2014. After a tour of duty at Nokia, you also decided to go back to F-Secure in 2016.You and Jon have this in common – Talk to us about your experience being a boomerang, working at a company, leaving and gaining experience elsewhere, and going back to that company. You did that twice.Your time at F-Secure CorpYou spent over 3 years at F-Secure, working in 4 different roles, from Senior Marketing Manager of cyber security consulting to B2B Digital and content to then becoming Marketing Director and finally Marketing Operations Director.Looking back, what were some of the things you think that helped you move up from manager to Director? Walk us through your role as Director of MOPs at an almost 2k employee software company?Marketing exec roleSo now you’re VP of marketing at Aiven. You’re on the exec team. For the listeners who think they want to be an exec one day, talk to us about the difference of the day to day at Aiven vs earlier roles at F-Secure?Growing from series BYou joined Aiven in April 2020, a few months after their series B round. How big was the marketing team when you joined and how big is the team today?Startup turned $2 billion companyWith their latest round of funding, Aiven is valued at 2+ billion. What do you think makes up the DNA of a great marketing leader at a Billion dollar company vs an up-and-coming startup.Marketing a technical product to a technical audienceAiven offers technologies as managed services, that offering includes services and sometimes technical support is an add-on. Talk to us about marketing a technical product and service to a technical audience. Open sourceAs I understand it, Aiven helps companies leverage open source data technologies on a public cloud platform. Being at WP, Open-source is close to my heart. Talk to us about the transformative period that the open-source community is currently experiencing. (Many IT vendors that originated as open-source developers are starting to place restrictions on their own software licenses—decisions that might be shortsighted and driven by profits.) Content marketing is simply marketingA few years ago, you said that in 10 yrs, #contentmarketing will just be #marketing. Walk us through what you mean by that and do you think that content marketing is at the core of a marketing strategy?Going beyond the brandEmma, you’ve said that you’re passionate about going beyond the brand. What is brand marketing to you and what does it mean to go beyond branding? The importance of marketing experience and values over just the brand name. Happiness questionYou’re a working mom, you’re an executive at a Billon+ valued company leading a big team with big goals. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--Emma Paajanen, VP of Marketing at Aiven LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmapaajanen/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmapaaj ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone – today on the show we’re joined by exceptional martech mastermind: Dave Rigotti. He’s the co-founder & CEO of Inflection.io, a marketing technology startup focused on helping companies with product-led growth.Before building his own company, Dave has had a fascinating career in marketing. He got his start at Microsoft working on the Bing marketing team just as the search engine was launched. He quickly discovered his love for growth and B2B marketing.Hen then spent half a decade at Bizible, a marketing attribution platform where he worked his way up to VP of Marketing – and was part of the successful exit to MarketoHe spent a year at Marketo running ABM and demand gen before they were famously acquired by AdobeAt Adobe, Dave was Director of Account Based Marketing focused on Marketo and Magento productsLast year, while working on Inflection, he also launched the ProductLed.Marketing community which has more than 700 members and is continuing to grow.Dave, we’re excited to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time. Questions we asked Dave:What is Product-Led Marketing or Product-Led Growth?What’s the substance of PLG? What’s the difference between PLG and customer led growth?How is PLG different from all the buzzwords that hit marketing over the years?People in tech love to find new ways of avoiding calling marketing marketing. Growth hacking, conversational marketing, community led growth and now product led growth… What do you say to all the folks who claim this is just another buzzword that will fade?How is PLG different from freemium and why does this instigate such brutal Twitter wars?Traditional: generate leads and serve sales.PLG: using your product as part of your GTM. More customer centric.Jon isn’t active on social but I’ve witnessed my fair share of PLG debates on twitter.What do you say to folks who claim PLG has been around for decades (appcues, mailchimp) and that it’s simply a repackaging of freemium and free trial models… that its the old marketing playbook for the SMB segment?  Where does a PLG model make sense? Can this be done with enterprise software that requires integration and onboarding support?How do you shift to a PLG strategy when you’re selling a B2B to enterprise and you require 1-2 weeks of integration and setup before end users can get a glimpse of the product in action.Do you think some B2B buyers prefer the sales led model? Sometimes I don’t always have 14-30 days to pork around in a product and figure out on my own if this will meet my company needs… sometimes I need someone to show me around and tell me how itll solve my problemsWe can skip the MQL vs PQL debate, but how do you define a PQL when your product is constantly changing?Product usage data is the holy grail of data for PLG marketers. How do you see teams forming their marketing strategy around product usage, activation, and engagement?How is PLG a whole new game?You wrote an awesome piece for OpenView Partners that PLG is a whole new game for marketers. Can you walk us through what this new game looks like? What do you say when you hear the phrase PLG is just a product that sells itself? What are marketers in PLG companies doing differently to accelerate growth and revenue? How will PLG influence marketing technology over the next 10 years? What are your big predictions? Shifting gears, Dave, you've worked at some of the most recognizable marketing technology companies on the planet. Not only have you held senior roles in those companies, but you’ve been on the inside of two major acquisitions. Give us a sense of your career story and how you ended up as a co-founder and CEO in this space?What differences do you see working at enterprises versus running a startup? What lessons do you apply to your own startup, and what things do you try to do differently?Dave, you’re a super busy guy. You’re a dad, a husband, a startup founder, and community leader – one question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--Dave RigottiTwitter - LinkedInProduct-led marketing communityInflection.io✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up folks, today on the show we are joined by Adriana Gil Miner.Born and raised in Venezuela, she’s a 20+ year marketing exec who got her start as a data analyst and went on to work at American Express. She then worked with some of the top brands in the world after moving into PR and digital strategy at Weber Shandwick, an A-list agency according to Ad-ageAdriana then ended up going through a wild growth ride leading Brand marketing at Tableau– a well known analytics platform. Today, she’s CMO at Iterable, one of the top customer-led marketing automation platforms on the planet.Adriana, it’s a pleasure to be chatting today, thanks so much for your time.In-house marketing vs agencyYou’ve had a fascinating career bouncing from agency to in-house roles. Agency for 2 yearsIn-house for 5 years at AmexFreelance for 2 yearsBack to agency for 5 years at two different firmsBut along the way you got the in-house itch again and joined Tableau where you ran Brand marketing for 6.5 years. And you’ve been in-house ever since, getting the CMO gig at Qumulo and now Iterable. Talk to us about what you loved and hated most about in-house vs agency and why you ultimately settled on in-house.Follow-up: At what point in your journey did you decide you wanted to be a CMO? Was there ever a point where you considered staying IC and focusing on data vs leadership and people management?How ‘hands-on’ do marketing leaders need to be in the product they sell?Jon and I are no strangers to the world of BI having both spent parts of our career at an SMB focused dashboard tool in Klipfolio. As the SVP of Brand Marketing at Tableau, how close were you to the product and how skilled would you say you had to be in data analysis? CMO of 2030 -- what should they be working on today? Storytelling, data and technologyYou’ve said in several places that you love bringing together the art of storytelling, technology, and marketing. Talk about some of your most memorable breakthrough campaigns that exemplify this idea bridging story, tech and marketing. The power of storytellingLet’s dive a bit deeper into that. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways for humans to learn. The best content and brand marketers know this and use it to persuade the rational and the emotional brain. How can marketers get better at storytelling? How can we make stories more relatable – practically, how can stories be more real, vulnerable when you’re selling a B2B tech product?Spotting up and coming marketing superstarsYou’ve written about having a lot of pride in discovering and nurturing up-and-coming marketer rockstars. Walk us through your approach for discovering some of these future rockstars and what are some of the early signs and qualities you look for.Customer advocacy and community marketingSomething that was a big part of your time at Tableau was prioritizing community marketing. Walk us through some of the benefits that this can have on brand growth and customer advocacy opportunities. The relationship between how we use marketing technology and community? Why is community such an integral part of successful B2B products? Branding gets a bad rep“I don’t believe in brand marketing. If you build a good product and people love it, they will share it.” I’ve heard too many technical CEOs say this. What do you say to a business leader that doesn’t believe in brand marketing and how would you respond to that if – as CMO – your CEO walked in a room and told you that? Follow-up do you think there’s anything marketers can do to change a founders mind if they don’t believe in branding? Do you think founders and CEOs need to create the brand so that marketers can drive the brand?Branding vs positioning vs GMT vs demand genMarketers get a bad rep for all the buzzwords we throw around but don’t all agree on what we mean when we say them:BrandingPositioningGo to marketDemand generationFor professionals who are supposed to be good at communication, we don’t do a good job at making ourselves understood. Walk us through your definitions and how we might better align with how we use them?Future of marketingThere was a viral tweet on the future of marketing last week that I thought was interesting and would love your take on. This is from George Mack, “Don't try to create great content. Instead, try to create Red Pills (dramatically transformed perspectives) that groups are thinking about but nobody is talking about.” How can marketers create more Red Pills? Being in the marketing automation space for a bit now, what do you think are some of these perspectives that need to be transformed?LatinX women in techYou’ve written bravely and powerfully about your experience as a Latina immigrant and shared your thoughts on the Caucasian male narrative that dominates much of the world. Talk about your change in mindset when it comes to the importance and power of checking that box despite not always feeling like you fit the stereotype people often have.Time management /staying happyOne question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy? --Adriana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/agilminer Adriana’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilminer/ ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone, on the show today we have one of the planet’s leading search engine marketers. We’re joined by Mike King. He’s the founder and CEO of iPullRank, an awarding-winning SEO agency. In 2020 he was named Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land, and has been a Global Associate for Moz for more than 10 years. He’s been on the cutting edge of technical SEO his entire career, and he’s currently working on an upcoming book, the science of SEO: Decoding Search Engine Algorithms.He’s a confident introvert and proud Philly native, but these days he pulls rank in a cabana in South Beach, wearing Nike Air Max 1s, and listening to Snoh Aalegra. Mike’s also a Dad, a freestyle rapper, and a highly-engaging keynote speaker. Mike, it’s great to have you on the show – thanks so much for your time.Career path to starting your own agencyYou got your start as a webmaster working for Microsoft in 1996. Since then, you have worked in-house in numerous different SEO roles. Eventually, however, you founded iPullRank, an award winning agency. What prompted you to start your own agency? You started iPullRank 8 years ago, today your team is 15+ full time people. You’ve said that you love your team, but not in the “we’re a family” kind of way but rather in the "I respect these people and I want us all to win together" way. Talk to us about the kind of agency you built and what sets you apart?The art of an SEO auditI remember a few years ago when we worked with you and you and your team presented us with what I can only call an epic SEO audit. One thing that impressed me the most was that everything you outlined was practical and had clear implementation.Audits get a bit of a bad wrap. I’ve seen a few reports passed off as SEO audits which are effectively S.E.M.Rush or Ahrefs audits with a logo replacement.What should all SEOs be thinking about when they start a client audit? What’s the secret sauce of a great SEO audit.SEO is the testing we did along the wayA theme in your approach to SEO is testing rather than relying on the data provided by Google or other tools. Everyone is familiar with A/B testing things like landing pages and subject lines.What does testing in the SEO context look like? Can you give our listeners a primer?To code or not to code?I’ve been learning to code for a few years now. While I haven’t found too many practical applications to coding in my day job, I’ve personally found it fun to learn and gratifying to speak more at eye-level with devsYou have a strong background in coding. Do you think it’s an important or even an essential skill for modern marketers? What advice do you have for folks thinking about learning to code? The end of Universal AnalyticsThe one constant in SEO land is change. Though the end of Universal Analytics seems to be hitting everyone a bit different. What’s your take on this shift to Google Analytics 4? How are people preparing? Are people prepared?Future-proofing for SEOAlgorithm changes and updates are effectively part of the SEOs daily regimen. The only constant is change. How do you future-proof your website/brand against future updates? Is there a technology solution such as adopting modern frameworks like React and Gatsby with a headless CMS or is it by acquiring a certain set of skills as a contributor to be proactive (when possible) and reactive (when needed)? Top SEOs of 2032 In 2020 you were named Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land. First, congrats on the accomplishment! Second, I’d like to get your perspective on the future of SEO and what it’ll take to be named Search Marketer of the Year in 2030?What skills will the top SEOs have in 10 years? If you were starting today, where would you invest in yourself?Technical SEO & Modern Digital MarketingIn 2016 you wrote a piece for the Moz blog on the technical SEO renaissance. You cover a lot of ground in that piece, but reading it now, it holds up incredibly well. Some of what you wrote verges on the prophetic, particularly when you think about Core Web Vitals and the importance of page speed and user experience.Modern SEO feels remarkably similar to developing a SaaS application – web teams need to focus on UX, performance, utility and, of course, content. If you were to write that piece today, what would your call to action be? Science of SEO BookYou’ve got a book coming out next year titled the “The Science of SEO: Decoding Search Engine Algorithms”What inspired you to write this book? What do you hope SEOs will get out of this book?Happiness, balance, successThe first line in your Twitter bio is dedicated to your daughters and you’re a firm believer in family over everything. You run a multi million dollar digital marketing agency, work with some of the top brands on the planet, regularly speak at conferences, you’re writing a book, and rapping on the side…How do you find balance in your life? What does happiness and success look like to Mike King? ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB