Go-To-Market Strategy: The voice of your customers should lead your marketing strategy (episode #118)

We’ve all seen it in the movies. A character has an invisibility cloak, or drinks a potion, or perhaps turns into a ghost. And then, oooh how tantalizing, they can see what goes on when they’re not around.

Well as our latest guest explains it, we shouldn’t just think of that kind of moment as some sort of sci-fi fantasy. We should work as if we’re trying to optimize that conversation.

As she puts it – “It's about what people say when you are not in the room.”

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Allyson Havener, Chief Marketing Officer, TrustRadius [https://www.trustradius.com/].

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

• Creating a category is one of the most difficult GTM strategies, but if you have enough conviction, time, and money to pull it off, it's worth it
• Done is better than perfect
• It's about what people say when you are not in the room
• Align marketing initiatives to revenue
• Lead marketing strategy with the voice of your customers
• Partner to understand the investment needed for growth while also achieving profitability

Discussed in this episode

Get Productive With AI – Join us on November 20th at Noon EST. There is no cost. See the 7 principles you can learn in this session and register to join us at MeclabsAI.com/GetProductive (from MarketingSherpa’s parent company, MeclabsAI).

B2B Digital Marketing & Demand Generation: My boss has asked me to produce $1 billion in revenue. Now what? (podcast episode #109) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/B2B-digital]

Female Entrepreneurship and Marketing: Having built a big community doesn't mean you will be able to monetize it (podcast episode #71) [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/entrepreneurship]

Brand Voice: 3 quick marketing case studies from Pedigree, a freelance marketplace, and a marketing agency [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/brand-voice-case-studies]

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Transcript

Allyson Havener: We're in the trenches with sales, kind of getting feedback from sales. Now they weren't telling us, hey, we need a webinar. Like, no, this isn't a restaurant, you know, disorder webinar. I like that, but but it's like, hey, what do you what is actually the problem in getting done? Hey, we're getting beat up by, you know, x, y and Z objections.

Okay, great. How do we help you from like an objection handling standpoint? What's the messaging that we do. What do we need to do with our top the funnel marketing to combat those objections. So when you have those conversations you don't even come up. Right. Like how do we get proactive about it? And sure, maybe there's a webinar in there.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: Audience. We've all seen it in the movies. A character has an invisibility cloak or drinks a potion, or perhaps turns into a ghost and then, ooh, how tantalizing they can see what goes on when they're not around. Well, as our next guest explains it, we shouldn't just think of that kind of moment as some sort of sci fi fantasy.

We should work as if we're trying to optimize that conversation, as she puts it. It's about what people say when you are not in the room. Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories. Is Alison Hamner, chief marketing officer of trust Radius. Thank you for joining me, Alison.

Allyson Havener: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Daniel Burstein: So Alison has been the director of brand integrated and content marketing at Live Ramp. And for the past three years, she's been at Trust Radius. And you might be listening and say, hey, normally when you have a guest on, they have a lot more roles in their in their LinkedIn. But she told me she's been in the tech industry for 15 years.

I just want to give a big shout out here to Alison for having some staying power. That's pretty darn impressive. Trust Radius has raised $25 million in funding, and Alison manages a team of 15 responsible for vendor and technology buyer marketing. So, Alison, give us a sense. What is your day like as CMO?

Allyson Havener: Well, it starts really early because, I'm actually based in San Francisco and most of just radius is based in Austin. So a lot of 7 a.m. calls even though I do try to block off my calendar and make a rule because you don't really want to see me at 7 a.m., but, and it really starts with we actually have a very structured like meeting culture.

So my day starts with some kind of kickoff meeting for the day, with my team, cross-functional teams. Like what, what needs to be tackled this quarter or this month, this week, etc.. And then the rest of the day is really interesting. It's like, filled with a lot, I would say cross collaboration. I think my whole job at this point is making sure I'm connecting the dots for people who they need to be talking to and when, you know, all kind of some sort of like the first morning meeting and then there's some sprinkled customer calls in there.

I love talking to our customer. So at any point I get a chance to join the customer calls. I'm there for. It's my team. Our team. Me a lot of those. And then, you know, the fun executive meetings that pop up a lot, kind of across the board, especially when we're getting ready for, you know, end of the year planning, which I'm sure a lot of CMO and executive teams are now.

Daniel Burstein: Okay, let me ask you, how do you do cross collaboration if you work remotely and have no notifications turned on? Because I told Alison before this, I was like, hey, I'm turning off slack. Like, you know, turn off your notifications stuff. She's like, I never have my man. That's how I roll. I'm like, how do you do that?

You're my hero. Teach us.

Allyson Havener: A lot of self discipline. I, you know, I think as, as anyone in the workforce, but especially a marketer, it's really easy to get distracted and have, like, a lot of whiplash going on, and people are, you know, asking for this, and can we do this? And, it's really distracting. And I think, focus is a lot what I push with my team.

So I just check off my notifications and, I will check my email when I, you know, when I have time to do that, I will answer slack. When I have time to do that, I will answer text when I have time. So I really try to compartmentalize. And again, keep that focus, which I think is really hard across the board for people to do these days.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. You know, we talk about marketing, budgets, databases, all these assets we have. But my gosh, and the attention economy focus is so valuable. And I like that term whiplash too. We got to avoid that. All right. Let's take a look at some lessons from your career. As I said before, I really like that about being a marketer.

We get to make things right. I've never been anything else. Like a, podiatrist or an actuary or anything, but I don't think most people get to make things in their profession. So let's look at some lessons from some of the things you made. Your first lesson creating a category is one of the most difficult GTM strategies, but if you have enough conviction, time, and money to pull it off, it's worth it.

So how did you learn this lesson?

Allyson Havener: So I thoroughly deserve librium. We had, kind of emerging technology, you know, back in the it was like 2013 or something around those times, data onboarding or essentially CRM we targeted for digital advertising was a thing. AD tech was kind of an emerging industry. But we knew that we had a really amazing product market that, and there was a lot of demand, and we knew we had an opportunity to kind of create this category and be the leader in it.

Now, that is probably, like I said, the most difficult go to market, strategies, because creating a category, that is ubiquitous and with your target audience, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. And like I said, a lot of conviction across your executive team, the entire company, as a whole. And it took us years to do that.

But Lyra was the leader in data onboarding and expanded into other areas of, digital advertising. And that's still, you know, the market leader and is ubiquitous. And, and I think that because we had that conviction, I think budget, we spent a lot of money on doing it. Is is super important. And then obviously at the time, like if you're, if you're weighing the pros and cons of long term versus short term, this is not a short term strategy.

This is not something that's going to, help you hit your targets. That quarter. This is something that is going to help you go from a $10 million company to a $500 million company.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So you mentioned product market fit. When you're creating a category, what did you do to make sure that it was a man for this new category, something that would actually serve customers. They would want it. Like for example, when I interviewed Matthew Bowman, the VP of strategy, GTM and growth marketing for Act, one of his lessons was interview your customers, and he told the story of how he found all these wonderful testimonials had been uncovered because he interviewed the customers, he talked to them.

So for you, Alison. Right. Okay. We're talking about big investments in terms of money and time. How did you make sure that before you launch this category that there was product market fit? How did you know?

Allyson Havener: So our first use case was really around third party data providers that needed to they have all this data, but then how do they actually activate it and sell it to a brand? So, you know, for instance, if I'm a Samsung and I want to buy a certain segment or know more about my customers, I need to buy some third party data that I can augment my data with and then obviously advertise to them.

And so we worked with a lot of third party data providers to essentially take their data and make it actionable for a big brand. And we started to make those connections, and then we were like, oh, well, we can do this like Samsung, we can do this with your data as well. We can take those, all those records that you have, we can help you advertise more effectively.

And so it was like the Samsung's, the retailers of the world that actually were our first kind of use case where we knew we could go brand direct. And to your point, earlier on listening to the customer, we knew that digital advertising who who like when you're building your ICP, your ideal customer profile, who does a ton of digital advertising retailers, right.

What's in a really competitive market? Retailers. And who's always trying to push the envelope? Digital advertisers at retailers because it's so commoditized, it's so competitive. So we we knew we had something there. So we started with kind of the third party data providers. We saw this connection with, a lot of their customers or retailers. And so we started to listen to those use cases, and we connected the dots and were like, great, let's go.

Let's go. After some of the most innovative brands that are out there that are really pushing the envelope. So some of our first customers are like gap, Sephora, Nordstrom and then what we did, we're like, great, now how do we get the next set of, you know, customers? Well customer Voice was a huge piece of that. And we're like, okay, here's what these really innovated innovative brands are doing.

And they're really pushing the envelope when it comes to advertising and efficiency and effectiveness. You hear from them. And that helped us with our brand or credibility and that, you know, compounded over time, and really expanded the business. But it really started with kind of to your point about listening to your customers and connecting the dots, really doing that kind of ICP work to know, okay, who who within the industry is actually like this will actually drive value for them and drive value for them really quickly.

Daniel Burstein: So it sounds like you started with some pilot accounts, but I mean, did you have like customer counsels? Did you go to any of the customers? I mean, how exactly did you get the knowledge from those customers? Because I remember I went to this event once and I was sitting next to someone. They talked about how I had no competition and I was like, oh my gosh, that's to me.

That's, you know, we hate our competition. Like to have no competition. It's like, no, it's horrible. And he's like, because there's there's no bake off, there's no RFP, there's no place in the budget for, you know, we got to create to begin with. So like it makes sense. I could I can hear in your voice okay. There's this value proposition we figured out.

But how did you go from. Okay, we have a few pilot accounts, but my gosh, like you said, we're going to make this big investment and actually do this. Do you have customer councils? I mean, what did you do with those first few customers to make sure that this was scalable?

Allyson Havener: Well, I mean, it honestly was the results that we were driving. I think with digital advertising, it's really easy to measure in a sense. And I guess I shouldn't say that it's a lot of marketers that would disagree with me on that one. But, but I think what we've found is like, okay, with these customers kind of to your point, where there is a lot of focus on them and making them successful, getting those results back in those, kind of testimonials of how it was working and you also have to think, at that time, digital marketing was so inefficient because people were just like across banner ads across the internet, and programmatic

was a disaster. And so any way that you could find these, these efficiencies was like millions and millions of dollars in advertising. You know, you're talking to some of the biggest advertisers in the world. And so when you have these efficiency gains of, like, you know, anywhere from 5 to 10%, it's a lot of dollars to be, that they can repurpose, use more on advertising, have more effectiveness with it.

So, with these few customers, we were really focused on one, outlining the use cases, that again, that they were like, hey, like, this is great. This is we want to roll this across like our product lines. We want to roll this across the entire business. We built those testimonials to like, land and expand within those accounts.

And then we use that essentially those customer stories to go get the next line of customers. And we really focus on the industry as well. Like I mentioned, retail is really important. And that's where we started. It was like, let's not try to boil the ocean. And I think a lot of companies, I talk to a lot of my friends around this word, like, when do you vertically or you try to boil the ocean too quick?

It's like, just be successful in one vertical or, you know, this is that where you have product market fit, where you like your bread and butter, and grow from there. And I think that was kind of the light bulb moment where it was like, okay, if we just like, really kill it in, in retail, we can expand from there.

But let's get like the use cases down. Let's get the messaging down. Let's get the go to market motion down. And so I think that again, going back to like that focus, it was really, really important for us, to be able to then expand to other verticals.

Daniel Burstein: You know, as I was having that conversation with an entrepreneur the other day who had a platform that could do many things of like starting there, that because I was mentioning Amazon, like, okay, Jeff Bezos goes to the moon now, whatever he does, you forget he just started selling books. And that's all he started with. Right? And that's how we got to where we are today.

But so it also brings up okay, when you're launching that category you're doing lot. You know, there's a lot you're probably trying to do very quickly and trying to figure out we're trying to go public with you said one of your lessons is done is better than perfect. So tell us how you learned this lesson.

Allyson Havener: I think with marketers and really anything like the analysis paralysis is real. We had again, if you think about it, could have been really simple for us to just like go after whatever accounts were knocking at our door or anybody that answered our, our call. But it took a lot of discipline to be focused. But then it also took a lot of discipline to just get things done and out the door.

When you're also dealing with an emerging technology, you know, the messaging around it, the way you price, like pricing and packaging was, like very difficult. But we had this notion around, hey, like, let's get it done, let's make a decision, let's move forward. And then let's make sure that we're iterating quickly on that. And so pricing and packaging is a really good example.

And I think everybody that's listening to this is that have been part of pricing and packaging calls it like a nightmare. But you have to get something out there and you have it. So it's like, it's not it's never nothing is ever perfect. So get it out there, get in front of your customers, get the feedback, iterate on that.

And and it's something that's an I always tell my, team. I'm like, it's just an evolution. And I think when you get this mentality, it also helps your team really challenge the status quo. It's like, fail fast, learn, let's move on. And we do that a lot. A current team just adds I am constantly pushing them.

I'm like, you guys get it out the door. Like our motto is like, get shit done, get it out the door. Let's learn from it. And it really creates this kind of psychological safety. And I, in some of the most creative people on my team, you just watch them, like, light up. And then when something's working and really going down, like, let's double down on it, let's go.

You know? And so I think that is this notion of done is better than perfect. It's kind of like a duh. But it's really hard to do.

Daniel Burstein: Well, it's on. It's done. Let me tell you why. And I got a question for you here. In all seriousness, it's like, so a lot of times, you know, I've heard that the minimum viable product. Right. We talk about that the term I like better is minimum awesome product. And we've done some research. We found that is what you really need with customers because sometimes you get one chance with them.

Right. Like they'll see okay brand X trust raise whatever it is and like okay they'll try it out. And then later when it's approved, they're like, you know I try to I'm not messing with that again. So here I have a question for you. It is an impossible to answer question, but I will ask it anyway. And let's say we have to say, how do you determine when something is good enough to launch, even if it's not flawless to for example, I when I interviewed Cordelia for the marketing director of TMW on how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was also done is not perfect, and she told the story of when helping

to launch the future Females Business School product in six emerging markets, how they would launch it, things would go wrong and stuff, but they would learn so much from their customers. And I think one of the reasons was from what she was saying, she built a community first, and we have our own AI guild. We've been moving very quickly.

We've been messing a lot of stuff up, and we did. But I think the one thing that that we've done right is we have built trust with the members of this guild over many years with Mac Labs and marketing Sherpa, so that when something comes out and this is research we've done into customer first marketing has told us this as well.

Like they they feel like, okay, this this company is actually trying to work in our best interests. It's not working well because they're trying to work in our best interest and move quickly versus what sometimes customers do think is it's not working well because this customer, this company is stupid and dumb. It doesn't care whatever it is. Right.

So let me get back to my original question, which again, in fairness to you, is there is no answer to. But I just wonder what your thoughts are. How do you determine when something is good enough to launch, even when it's not flawless?

Allyson Havener: I think it goes back to your is it going to achieve the goal? And we're, you know, marketers, you have to be very, very results driven. And I think when you look at it, is this going to achieve our goal? So the good example is we know that like our target audience are B2B marketers and go to market teams.

They live and breathe on social media, like our constantly on LinkedIn. And we knew that we wanted to create like we were going to double down on social. We're going to double down on creating really interesting content. And thought leadership or strategy was about leadership. That's educational. We have millions of buyers that come to trust radius. We're constantly making, content about the buyer's journey, the buyer's mindset, to help go to market teams meet the expectations of those buyers.

And so we started a whole series, and we did LinkedIn lives. And this the interesting piece about this is most people are like, we need a webinar. We need to generate leads. We need, we need the how are those leads performing, you know, etc.. And there's like this very like webinar centric mindset. And we're like, you know what?

We're going to go with LinkedIn lives. We don't track any of the people that come. All we want is content consumption, because we have some really big competitors in the space that have bigger brands than we do, that have a lot more funding than we do, and they've really defined our industry. And so we have to challenge that.

And we have to change an entire way of thinking, and we have to gain mindshare. We have to build trust. We have to do all these things. How do you do that? Content consumption. We need to build content that shows our POV in the market, and we need people to actually consume it. Like, I think that a lot of marketers don't have a content problem.

They have a consumption problem because we're so focused on lead generation and pipeline and revenue. Fine. That's all really, really important things. But you can't forget that at the end of the day, it's mindshare. Like, are you top of mind? Are you when that person is actually in market, when your sales team reach out, are you do you have mindshare that they actually answer that email or answer that call?

And so what these LinkedIn live is, it was like all we want is people to to see the content and again change. Try it, try to change this mindset that our competitors have. But in the market, because we approach our business very, very differently. And it worked. And and it's also funny because you know, people are like, oh, like this content consumption, like how are you measuring it?

And I think there's so like the normal funnel metrics that you look at. But at the end of the day when people what I look at is how many more qualified people are coming and knocking on our door, how many? I get what our, outbound ding. How is that looking? That is super healthy. Also, the meetings that we're having or how qualified are they?

Are we priming people really well on this kind of like mindset change and trust really is value prop. So when they go and talk to our sales team that we're having more qualified meetings and that those deals are accelerating faster, and when you look at like when we started doing this and it's been over the last two years, that we really changed our strategy around just pure content consumption and not caring about these, like, you know, very, bottom of the funnel metrics as much.

It's really changed kind of the game when it comes to our outbound being in the conversations that we're having in our in our deal acceleration.

Daniel Burstein: Right. That's big. But I got a really specific question. I want to know how you first launched that with sales like and how or internally with your organization, because we've got a webinar coming up on November 20th right now. And every day everyone's looking at those reg numbers. And I like what like you're saying such good things because you're a challenger brand.

So we got to disrupt I love that. But I also just think very practically, if I was in your shoes, I wouldn't know if anyone's going to show up to that LinkedIn live that first one or the second one, and sales are still going to be saying, hey, where are the leads for how did you really get that ball rolling?

I mean, one thing that's a great thing is once something's working, it's got, you know, it's own inertia. And you could say like, okay, look, we've got all these kind of downstream metrics, but how do you get it rolling at first?

Allyson Havener: Okay. It's a philosophical, alignment. But to be honest, like, I think that you have to convince you have again, going back to this conviction in your strategy and in setting expectations, hey, this isn't going to be the gold rush I see at the beginning of the day. Like it's just not. And and I think what, what marketers get really distracted by it is like where buy leads where like where are like where are meetings and, you know, etc. and it's like we have to think about our brand.

And again, like, I what one thing that we did actually, that's really tactical is close loss analysis. There's nothing better than close loss analysis in my opinion. As a marketer, that was like the first thing I did. You kind of trust your ideas. I was like, great, tell me all the deals that we lost and all the customer churn, and then obviously all the ones that we've won and why.

But like I was very interested in the close loss was lost. Nobody knew who we were. We did not have enough, executive mindshare. We have big competitors in this space and that's to their boss now. Okay, so if that's the problem, then how are we going to fix it? We have that's a brand problem. And so we need to invest in that.

And this is part of that strategy. So what I did is I connected it to the business problems that I found in. There were win loss analysis. And then I connected it to our strategy of how we were going to solve for that. And I set the expectation of like, this is this is the long game. This is this is not going to help us.

And right now in Q two or whatever it was, but I was like, this is a long game. This is for tomorrow's revenue number.

Daniel Burstein: You know, what I really like about what you're saying is sometimes you talk to marketers and you see throughout their career, like when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so they've got the tactics are good at and they just bring them to the next company. And so for you, you could have just brought category creation, right.

You could have said, okay, we've got these bigger company companies that we're competing with. Hey, let's just create a new category. So we're not competing with them anymore. But I like, like you've done a really good job of breaking down, hey, here's the challenge and the opportunity. And so let's serve it with the right tactics. I also like when you talk about close loss analysis, because it brings up that lesson I mentioned at the open, which I thought was so great.

It's about what people say when you are not in the room. So close off analysis. That's what we all want to know, right? What's what's being said when they're deciding? I think you're talking about this in a more personal level. So. So how have you lived this career, this lesson in your career? You personally.

Allyson Havener: Yeah. No, I think that that's a good call out and is if you think about, if you pull from your CRM, Salesforce, whatever, and you look at all the close loss, it's like budget timing. It's like really basic. But when you actually like sit down with the prospect or customer and like that, first of all, they really appreciate it.

Like I would love for someone to call me and be like, hey, why did you pick this? My platform? And I would tell them, and we can have like a conversation and it's really, really productive. And it actually led to opening up more conversations like, wow, no, nobody's ever done this before. I would love to entertain another conversation in the next, you know, next quarter.

So that was really interesting. I think from a personal standpoint, really, really early in my career, when I started out, library of I was very green. It was my first tech job. I had no idea what was going on. Like, I had spent most of it. I was, a ballerina and lived in Dubai two years before that.

And so the whole corporate world I was getting introduced to, and the VP of marketing comes up to me and he says, hey, I and, you know, I just wanted to tell you, like you, you're we we all got together and, you know, you're on our rising star list. And I looked at and I was like, what does that mean?

I think, you know, just walked away. I was like, I don't even know what that means. Now I realize they're doing the nine box exercise, and that was a night corner. And but when I was, you know, in my early my career, I was like, what is going on? And then it like connected the dots. I'm like, oh my gosh, you're just sitting in a room and talking about everybody's performance.

And I was so young and so green. I had no idea because like, you know, being classically trained, like the teacher tells you to your face, like, either you look too great or you're not right. They're giving all the criticism directly to your face. And so this concept of people going into a room and talking about performance and like that doesn't necessarily get shared with you was like this really formed idea.

And then all of a sudden I was like, oh my gosh, people are constantly evaluating me and what I'm doing. And it just completely changed my perspective. And I think, what what really is part of like my values and, and what I bring to the role is that I'm always, I'm always pushing for ownership and accountability. And I think that's really hard to find these days where it's like, if I say, I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it, and if I'm not going to write or if I'm going to miss a deadline or if I'm going to, you know, whatever the situation is, is going to be set the expectations properly

and the follow through, which is so important. And like if at something epically fails, that's on me. Like the buck stops with me. And when I was really young in my career, I think that really helped me get from, you know, from one role to the next in my career and why I stayed there for so long is like the trajectory of the company, which is hyper, hyper growth.

And my career was the exact same. And I think it was because of this accountability and ownership and just and I knew that, hey, when I want people think about me, Allison, she get shit done and you can count on her and she's going to take complete ownership of it. And I made sure that my actions were comp were making sure that that narrative was told when I was not in the room.

Daniel Burstein: I loved that lesson because it was so visceral. Like when you hear that, see those words again? Like, right when I read it in that podcast guest application, I went to daydream and thinking of like, like, what is that conversation like? And picturing the room. And it's like when they do a cutaway in The Simpsons or whatever, but I don't want to overlook something you said and just let it pass by that you were a ballerina in Dubai.

So I wonder, is there anything you learned from being a ballerina or from living in Dubai that has helped in your marketing career? Because I've interviewed all sorts of marketers, and it's funny when you look at some things like way in their background, like being a personal trainer or journalist, all these different things, like we take that with us and we learn lessons that help with our career.

So Ballerina Dubai, anything there that's actually helped you in your career?

Allyson Havener: Oh, absolutely. I mean, living in the Middle East, that is completely foreign to, your culture, your every everything is different. And so I think the adaptability like I, you can put me probably in any situation and I could figure it out and I can adapt and make it work. And, I think that was a big piece of like I had reverse culture shock when I moved back to California because I, I had just acclimated so well, living there and, and I still like a lot of, like, you put me in any kind of Arabic restaurant.

Like, I start ordering and I know exactly like I have, like, I know for you, I do not speak Arabic, but I know a few words to be conversational and you should see way like, they're like, shocked. So I think the adaptability of living abroad and, and being away from all your family and friends and making friends and making a community like that, that's something that you have to take with you.

And, and, in any beyond your job and your own life is, how you adapt and build a community around you, I think, is really important. And then being a ballerina, I mean, gosh, just discipline and hard work. It is. It is insane. The work and the hours, you know, you're dancing 6 to 9 hours a day.

And you're putting a lot of strain on your mental and physical, health. And so you have to have a lot of discipline, and you have to work really, really hard.

Daniel Burstein: Well, in the first half of the episode, we talk about lessons we learn from the things we build, which for most marketers is things like brands and campaigns and for Allison, and also includes ballets. On the second half, we're going to talk about lessons from the people we made them with, because that's what we get to do as marketers.

We make things and we make them with people. But first I should mention that the How I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by Mic Labs. I the parent organization of marketing Sherpa. You can join the CEO of Mic Labs. I flip McLaughlin for an accelerated version of Get Productive with AI on Thursday, November 20th at noon eastern time.

There is no cost. Learn more and register at Mic labs. I e-commerce get productive. That's NEC labs air.com/get productive. It will not be an exciting snazzy new LinkedIn live, but it will just be a boring zoom meeting. But the zoom meeting itself will be the boring part. It's going to be an awesome, fun thing. We're going to, help you get more productive with AI.

So make sure to join us on November 20th. All right. Let's take a look at some of the lessons. You learn from the people you collaborated with. You mentioned Rebecca Stone, the SVP of revenue marketing at Cisco, and you said you learn to align marketing initiatives to revenue. How did you learn that from Rebecca?

Allyson Havener: Well, first, Rebecca, they taught me how to be a marketer. I had no marketing experience, and she totally took me under her wing. And we're still good friends today, and I'm still constantly learning from her. But I think really she taught me the the importance of you're not marketing for marketing sake, like you're not putting out this like amazing ad creatives and like this email nurture for the email merger.

You're doing it to drive revenue. And I think that you know, it's interesting, when you talk to marketers and you say, well, what your, you know, your bottom line goal is should always be revenue. There's no other goal. It's it's revenue. And yeah, there's a lot of things that ladder into that that a marketer does. But at the end of the day, you need to be driving growth.

And so that was something a lesson I learned from her. And and you have to be aligned with sales. I you know, my my husband's actually a CRO. And so we have a lot of conversations about this, but I firmly, firmly believe that the CMO and CFO need to be philosophically aligned of how they're going to run the go to market team and then and alignment has to be, it has to be a top down, and it has to be the standard of the team.

And that really came from Rebecca. Shoot. We're in the trenches with sales kind of getting feedback from sales. Now. They weren't telling us, hey, we need a webinar like, no, this isn't a restaurant. You know, just order a webinar. I'd like that. But but it's like, hey, what do you what is actually the problem? And getting down, hey, we're getting beat up by, you know, X, Y and Z objections.

Okay, great. How do we help you from like an objections handling standpoint? What's the messaging that we need to do. What do we need to do with our top of funnel marketing to combat those objections. So when you have those conversations, they don't even come up, right? Like how do we get proactive about it? And sure, maybe there's a webinar in there or not, but that's not the point.

The point is, is that we're in this together and we're like, at the end of the day, if the it's sets revenue number, marketing failed. Right. And so that was like a big lesson learned about sales and marketing alignment. And always, always thinking about the bottom line, which is revenue.

Daniel Burstein: All right. So how I made it marketing I like to challenge ideas. We unpack them. Not that I disagree. I mean I'm sure no one listening to be like, no, we shouldn't be aligned to revenue. But let me ask this real challenging question about how you plan and align your budget when revenue can be a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator.

So for example, when you talked about category marketing and building that up, right, revenue, there was a lagging indicator. And even I would think in your current role it would be, you know, when you have a marketplace, it's first building that marketplace and that engagement with your buyer, who your visitors are, your buyers, your users and revenue can be a lagging indicator.

So yes, we want revenue. I don't think anyone disagree would disagree with that. But practically, how do you plan when revenue can be a lagging indicator?

Allyson Havener: I think you still have KPIs across the funnel, across a buyer's journey, so you still need to look at the KPIs in terms of like, okay, like the, you know, the basics of like at the top of the funnel, what your website traffic looks like, what's page conversion, what's time like? All of those KPIs that you look at across the funnel are still really, really important.

And looking at, you know, whatever the cadence is, we look at it quarter over quarter, what's in the red, what's in the green, what do we need to adjust? Where do we need to add more budget. Where do we need to double down. But we but I look at this from like almost like a high level or maybe not a high level point of view, but for instance, I think it's you hear a lot about this, but like, I would never walk into a board meeting and talk about how great all these KPIs were if we weren't hitting our number, because there's no easier way to start in your pointing and create misalignment

with the sales team. If you're going into the board meeting and you're like, look at all these amazing KPIs. We brought in all of these meetings, and then sales is like, we missed our target and our retention numbers. And you're like, like, that's just a huge disconnect. So I think that so yes, I think it's the unified KPIs that you have with your with your sales team.

But it's like a Venn diagram in my mind where it's like, here's all the, you know, the marketing stuff that they care about that are the early indicators of success. Hey, we're seeing like tons of website traffic. We're seeing our conversion rates go up. Wow. We're seeing a ton of inbound. Wow. Our email open rates are seeing the roof.

Our return on it has been so great. Like, whatever it is, you have all of those marketing KPIs that you're making sure that are laddering into revenue. And then sales also has all of their KPIs that are laddering into revenue. But I think that's how I like in my mind, it's like a Venn diagram of like, here's all the marketing stuff, here's all the sales stuff.

And then in the middle is revenue.

Daniel Burstein: Does I don't put words in your mouth. It sounds like when you're talking about revenue, really you're talking about ownership and kind of that, like you said, when people are saying about you, when you're not in the room, not that's really what you're talking about. With revenue.

Allyson Havener: Yes. 100%.

Daniel Burstein: Awesome. You mentioned this briefly earlier about voice of the customer, but let's dive into a little more. You said lead marketing strategy with the voice of your customers, and you learned this from working with Alison Metcalf, the CRO of Cloudinary. How did you learn this from Alison?

Allyson Havener: So Alison is just she's just such an impressive, female leader. I was really, really lucky at live. To have a lot of really successful, powerful female leaders to, kind of show me the way. And, Alison was one of them, and she built our entire customer success team from scratch. We didn't have a customer success.

You know, it's kind of like, kind of to our point where we're like, okay, with these, early customers. It was like, all hands on deck, like the whole company was making them successful. We had we didn't really have this whole, like, post-sale, process or team or anything. So Alison was brought in to build the entire customer success, and we really partnered with her because our whole strategy was like, we need her.

Like, again, you're this emerging technology. You don't have a lot of brand trust. You don't have a lot of notoriety. So how are you going to get that? And what's the fastest way to do it? It's have your customers do the talking, because at the end of the day, people want to hear from their peers. They don't want to hear from you.

I want to talk to somebody that's a CMO at a company that's like mine. What are they doing? I don't want to hear from the vendor. And I mean, we so we see that in our research. Trust radius. We're constantly researching the way buyers think and their expectations. And the number one thing that they want is to talk to their peers.

And you see that with a lot of these like, communities and forums that are everywhere. Because again, you can learn so much from your peers. And so our strategy was to get our customers talking to each other, like, again, kind of like a duh situation. But it was it's it's really difficult to do because you have to build it.

First of all, you have to make your customer successful. Then you have to get those stories. You have to get them to be an advocate. And, and we really created a platform for them to highlight them themselves as like an individual. So we had this like, it was like a, an event like roadshow that we did across the country.

We find all these like hotspots of where our prospects were. And, and we'd kind of go to like the sounds odd, but like communities that weren't going to get like a ton of digital marketing conferences, if you will. So we were going to like Columbus, Ohio, and, like Raleigh and but we had a ton of press.

Minneapolis. But we had a ton of customers there, or prospects as well. And we put on these like half day digital marketing conferences. They were free. We put our customers up on stage and they would be talking about, again, they didn't have to talk about Live Ramp. The underpinnings were live ramp, like we powered the use cases and the stories that they were talking about.

We'd get our partners involved and we did that. And that was a huge part of our growth strategy. And our marketing strategy was like, let's create a platform for our customers to do the talking, and then let's go to all of these hot spots around the country of where our customers are. Like at one point, like Bank of America was a huge prospect.

So we did an event in the Ritz-Carlton as attached to their building, which it'd be hard to do that day with everybody being remote. But back then everybody was in an office. So we in the hotel, we had the event that was literally attached to their office building, and then we got us to talk. I don't know how we pulled that off, but I guess we were really finding people like to hang out with us too.

You know, you got to have that element. But then we got 20 people from Bank of America show up to the event. So we were very, very strategic about where we went, how we planned it, who was speaking. And it was huge. And Alison and her team was were like at the crux of it all.

Daniel Burstein: And that's awesome. So your account based marketing can kind of come together with that? Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. So I like this talk about voice of the customer. So customers hearing from each other. But have you ever used that type of research voice over the customer research to determine brand voice? Because the brand still has to have a voice, especially I bring that up now because there's so many emerging channels to where we have to determine our voices.

There's, you know, artificial intelligence, customer facing devices. Or I did a case study with pedigree where the pet food brand used interactive audio advertising technology to reach out to music streaming listeners. Right. There's just so many places we need to have a voice now. So I see you nodding. Have you used voice of the customer to determine it's great connecting the customers with each other, but what the brand voice should actually be and where it should be.

Allyson Havener: And I think, you know, I talk to my, customers about this a lot. Because you have to, like, infuse your brand messaging with the way your customers talk about you. And, and I think there's there's definitely a distinction between the two, but, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, I just want this like customer quote.

And I'm going to throw it on my website and call it a day. And it's like, that's not really using customer voice. But we actually work with like if you think about reviews and your customer reviews, we actually work with a lot of our customers to synthesize that. And like, what are the phrases that they're using? How do they talk to us?

How do they talk about us versus our competitors? What are the keywords that they're using? And then how do we use that in term in terms of building that brand voice in the way that we talk about ourselves and the way that we present our POV? And I think that you you start with the customer voice, and a lot can stem from that.

It's not, you know, just your customers doing the talking. You have to have a point of view. And then how you convey that point of view is really important as well.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. No, as a copywriter, you know, back in the day, just seeing customer reviews or just seeing anything in the actual voice of the customer and seeing the words they use is so powerful. Like, I remember there was one with kidney dialysis, but I think the kidney was called nephrology or something, and the brand was using that. And you saw how people are talking about.

I didn't even know what that was. They were using a different word. And now for me, like, hey, AI is so freakin powerful that you can just take all this lots of information and use AI to really find what those right words are. All right, let's talk about a current lesson. Bill toll, CFO of Trust Radius, who you're currently working with today.

You said you learned from working with Bill partner to understand the investment needed for growth, while also achieving profitability. So how are you learning this lesson right now?

Allyson Havener: Yeah, it's so Bill. You know, it's probably pretty rare in, in businesses today. But like my CFO, I feel like is like my best friend. Which is probably really rare for a CMO to say, but, he's, you know, we've worked together over the last three years and it's been really interesting, like the how the like tactic, how you measure how a tech company is performing has completely changed.

And, you know, you've heard this so much around the growth at all costs. And now it's like roll for you. You know, the the talk track goes on, but you know it live. And it was it was absolutely like hypergrowth growth at all costs. You know we were growing 3,040% year over year. And then now that's different. We're you're completely operating in a different mode.

And it's really important that you partner with your CFO on this because you need to be kind of to your point where you're asking around investment and how I like, manage like the budget and bill is a big piece of that. And we have a lot of conversation around where do I think? And it's not even in marketing sometimes.

Where do I think that we're going to have the most impact to the business and our bottom line now and in the future, and where do we need to make those investments? And I think you really kind of put your CMO executive hat on and think about the business. And it's like actually, I think we need to be investing more in engineers.

Like, yeah, maybe marketing isn't going to get the, you know, the 10% increase that I wanted and the headcount that I wanted. But I think, like where we're falling short is we need more engineers building things faster. And that's actually going to help us sell. And that's actually going to the time to impact is going to be way shorter than throwing a bunch of money into, like, you know, whatever campaign.

And so Bill has been an amazing partner where you're doing those evaluations and people are coming to the table and talking through investments and then really thinking about the company first and not your department and how you want to grow. It's like, sure, you can give me, you know, a $10 million budget and we'll make things happen.

But at the same time, that $10 million will be spent elsewhere. And the time to impact could be a lot shorter. And so having those conversations and weighing the short term and long term goals, you you know, he's been such a partner and and taught me a lot. I think, you know, when I was at Lybrand, I reported into the CMM, it wasn't really a part a lot of I wasn't a part of those conversations.

Like, I would get my budget, I would get my head count, and then I would, you know, manage that across marketing. It was very insular. And now, as a CMO and, you know, reporting to the CEO and the board, you have to have your company hat on. And Bill has really, really taught me how to do that over the years.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. So I'm a senior marketing leader. Listen to this right now. I'm starting a new job tomorrow. So what advice would you give me to start building that relationship with the CFO? Because we're actually about to, on marketing ship are going to publish. I've never before published data about marketing collaboration with different departments. I think there's seven departments and I spoiler alert, I want you guys to see the data is really not great, especially not great with the finance department, maybe a little better at sales.

So I think, you know, this is a lesson I've definitely heard repeatedly on how I made it. Marketing. Different workers have their tips for how to build that relationship, but it is a vital and important relationship with that CFO. So let's say senior marketing leader starting a new role tomorrow. Match roll into the office or virtual. You know, the hybrid setup, whatever.

What would be a piece of advice would you give to start building that CFO relationship?

Allyson Havener: You better have some business acumen and know your business metrics and be able to talk about it. And you know, the CFO is going to be asking you like you're looking at, okay, what are the business metrics that matter? You better be able to talk to that. And then you also have to be able to ladder everything that you know, your marketing strategy and speak their lingo.

And I think that was really hard for me. And I'm still learning and adapting to that. And but like, okay, we're we're talking to you about our cap, you know, lifetime value to tack and like, you're, you know, you're like, pulling on these, like, acronyms that you're like, okay, what? Isn't that, like, how do I ladder marketing initiatives into this?

Or how do I justify all of these things that we're doing and make it in the terms that he's going to understand? And that is, I think, walking in again, that business acumen in the business metrics and understanding how you're going to connect the dots for your CFO, because that's that's at the end of the day, what they're trying to do, they're like, great, I'm giving you all this budget, you're running all this marketing stuff.

Now, how does that going to support these business metrics that I need to report on to the board and investors, etc.? And I think the more that you connect the dots for them, that builds the trust in the relationship.

Daniel Burstein: Reminds me of that movie. I don't remember a movie. It was when they thought a bit of that was a Japanese word. They kept saying a bit it. I didn't know what they're talking about that don't roll in on day one didn't do that right?

Allyson Havener: Yeah. All right. Away from me. But Brad.

Daniel Burstein: All right. So we talked about so many different lesson, so many different lessons from your career. And we often stories good to break it down Allison. What are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Allyson Havener: We've said it a lot, but I think the conviction and being confident and listening, I think have confidence in yourself of what you're doing, and have confidence in your team. And then the conviction for the follow through. And listen, I think the listening piece is so important that we do and we lose it. You know, listening to your customers, listening to your team, listening to sales, listening to the executive team.

I think that, like those three things, if you can kind of combine them all together. Me be good at any role. Honestly. But I think as a marketer, you're really the glue. And you and you work across the entire company, you are like, you have to work with product. You have to work with sales. You have to work with the CFO.

And so if you can be, you know, that confident, stakeholder in that and listen to them and have that translate into your strategy and how you show up for the company, you're going to be really, really successful.

Daniel Burstein: Well, Allison, it's been a pleasure listening to you. Thank you so much for sharing all your lessons and stories from your career with us.

Allyson Havener: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This is really fun.

Daniel Burstein: And thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing Paycom.

Daniel Burstein: And.