I'm sure we'll have some people trickle in, but I want to get going because there's a lot to cover here today. Again, yeah, thanks for everybody for joining. This is going to be our fourth iteration of our B2B marketing round table with our fine labs, just a way to kind of bring the community together, conversations that we're having internally as an organization, but also conversations we're seeing across LinkedIn and the sales world. So just really, how do we feel these to be more of a dynamic conversation with other folks?
You know, Command & Live was a fantastic forum for us to come together and we're just kind of taking learning from that, but also building on kind of the modern marketing strategies we're focused on. So with that this week or this month, we're kind of diving into, you know, a common theme that we see is like things that need to take place before you start activating your paid media strategy. So we're calling it three milestones to achieve before you invest in paid media, Ciara and Megan are here to chat through it. Ciara threw in a fourth one at the last minute, which I'm excited about what I've been to, but really kind of setting the stage for why this is such an important topic for us.
You know, people are often thinking and translating demand generation as paid advertising. And really when we think about it fundamentally, like demand generation is about an ecosystem with an organization that's coming together and able to actually work along paid, along ops, along revenue, excuse me, revenue function, along the marketing function leadership. It's not just about paid, but oftentimes you translate it that. And so people will hire a demand general to bring somebody on and they're like, all right, it's time to rock and roll.
You know, we're going to invest in paid. This is what's going to drive our pipeline. This is what going to drive growth, but there's such a fundamental missing component there. It's the foundational piece.
And that's what we kind of want to get into today is like, what are some of those key indicators that really you should have accomplished prior to investing in paid media before you really think this is kind of the lever you want to pull. I don't know, Megan, if there's anything you want to add to color on that as well. Yeah, just to build on that, I think, you know, after doing this for five years, we're about to hit 300 companies that we've worked with. And when we go back and we reflect on companies where we weren't able to see the typical performance lift in terms of, you know, higher web conversions, more opportunities, more revenue from our programs, this has really been the common trends and themes that have emerged.
And so what we thought was really beneficial, you know, people will invest a ton of money in paid, not just the advertising budget, but hiring an agency, investing in the creative. It can be one of the biggest investments that a marketing team makes. And there are some very clear milestones that if nailed and executed correctly, really ensure that the investment that you're going to make is going to give you the return that you're looking for. And you know, I like to make sure that I'm constantly dispelling the myth, like, you know, paid advertising is not a, it's not like a coin operated machine.
Like I put money in and then I get customers out. Like that's not how it works. And Evan, you kind of alluded to this, it's a broader strategy where there needs to be core foundational pillars in place for it to work. And so this is intended to be a discussion and a conversation to really outline what we've seen in our work and what can really make or break the success of a paid program.
Even when I'm talking to, you know, new potential customers, these are things that I'm speaking with them before we even decide if we're the right fit. Cause I want to make sure that if we're going to work with a company, that they have these foundational elements in place. So I'm excited to get into it. I think we'll kind of tackle each one.
Ciara was like, no, there's a fourth one. There's more milestones we need to add. So she's a great, a great addition to our original list that we'll cover as well. Yeah.
And without, that's just kind of like, go to the fourth thing that we'll cover and then let's just kind of get into each one of them. So, you know, the first one that we're going to talk about is really defining your ICP. Sure. Everybody says that.
What does that mean? So hopefully we can kind of spell that a little bit and get into the details there about the importance of having a true target market to go after kind of jumping into topic two is going to be developing your strategic narrative. We've gone through this through with refine labs recently, just kind of repositioning ourselves on how we want to think about 2025 in the future of refine labs. So definitely some learning's there, but also curious kind of what the you guys have all been working through.
From a third topic, we want to dive into like the conversion aspect of your website. So understanding the core function of your website is to convert customer, educate and convert customers. So the importance of that and kind of that pre paid media strategy and then Ciara added, which I think is fantastic. Marketing, ops and sales ops.
So we want to be sure to dig in there. Just to kind of set the stage with topic one, and I think that from all of our point of view, a clear ICP, it's for done. We understand. Sure.
We need to have that. But it's really about you not wanting to waste resources on these lower fit customers. And again, when we think about investing in paid media and you don't have an ICP in place, you're actually burning money on customers that aren't tangible for you to target, activate, move along the funnel. There's also this notion that the target market isn't static.
So it evolves a little bit. So having fluidity in your ICP, understanding that it is a constant exercise for you to reengage and kind of challenge who that target market is based on your product development, your team development, your learnings. So those are kind of just like my point of view going into it, but I love CR and making two as you think about like the importance of ICP, the target market and some of the challenges you run into. Yeah, I love this one.
And so it seems obvious, but it's actually way harder in practice to get this right and to nail it. And so I want to touch on a few points here. So the first is a common thing that I see is that a company will have a perspective of who they want their customer to be. But that might be disconnected from who their actual customer actually is.
And so a common, you know, a common pattern you see is, oh, we want to go up market. We've been serving, you know, small and medium sized businesses up until this point, but we can sell into the enterprise now. And many companies can make that transition. And that's just one example, but it's intended to sort of illustrate this who's actually buying and using your product today versus who is your ideal target that you might want to go after later.
So I always think it's really important for people to analyze their current customer list, analyze their closed one and closed lost opportunities, actually get really clear on who your current users are. It's absolutely okay to have a goal that your ICP is going to evolve. But in terms of deciding who you're going to target, you know, today and tomorrow with paid advertising dollars, you want to focus on replicating the success that you already have and building into a different ICP over time if that is the ultimate goal. And so I think number one is just like objectively embracing reality.
Who are your actual customers? Your CRM will have a lot of really great signals on your actual customer list, you know, your closed one and closed lost opportunities. So that's a really great place to start in terms of clarifying who your customer is today. You know, and that can often signal things like company, firmographic criteria.
The other piece of it is who at the company is the person that's going to either be making the buying decision that influences the buying decision. That's also another piece of this. So within an organization, what are the right titles or combination of titles that we want to be going after? Another thing that will come up a lot is, well, you know, everybody can use our product.
Sometimes the definitions of an ICP is just way too broad. And that also isn't helpful. If everybody can use your thing, then that can also mean that none of them can use your thing. And so I think it is really important to have a more clear perspective and narrow in the focus.
Even if it's true that theoretically everybody can use your thing, you probably want to direct investment to the segment within everyone that's going to be most likely to use your thing or benefit from your thing. And so those are a couple of things, top of mind, that I consistently see and hey, you know, they're easy traps to fall into. I've been there as well. But again, if you're going to make that investment, there has to be some rigor around defining this and sort of having this be clear, specific, focused, and sort of data-backed based on who your current customers are.
But I'd love to open this up. Ciara, I would love to hear more about what you think and Evan as well. Yeah, I'll totally piggyback, Megan. I think that I think you're right in the sense you start with your customer base and then I would take it one step further.
And I would say there are certain people that use your products and there are certain people that are all stars of your product. So they use a bunch of different pieces of your product. They're using the wide breadth of it. They have a lot of experience.
They're in it every day. And those are the target people that you want to analyze and evaluate. Why are they using this much of your product all the time? Which pieces are they finding the most relevant and interesting for their business?
And look at that group of people and all stars and those are the people that we want to target and paint media strategy. And then I also think that we have, we work for businesses that have really complex products. So it's not always like one size fits all. There are different pieces of your product or maybe you sell different products in your solution.
And certain users will be better for certain products. So it's really important to know which users are going to be best for which pieces of your product or which products in your organization. And mapping that entire journey out. Why do they use this piece of your product?
Get all that really clear. So you can use that to figure out who you want to target and which channel you want to target them on. Another thing too is sometimes we have longer sales cycles. Sometimes we have shorter sales cycles.
Do the same people stay in a sales cycle the whole time? Or are you maybe bringing in a decision maker at the beginning and then an end user towards the end to validate the product. All of those things you need to identify. Who are the end users for the decision makers?
Who are the influencers? And if that is relevant for your product and your sales cycle, those are things that you need to make sure that you are also bringing into your ICP and your paid media targeting strategy. You said something that was so important which is you need to clearly define your audience and then select your channels. A lot of people will say, oh, I want to advertise on Google or LinkedIn and meta.
And it's cool. Those might be great channels for you. But actually, step one is who is our audience? Who do we want to reach?
And channel selection should come once that ICP is clear and the audience is clear. Because you want to go where your audience spends their time. You don't want to just pick channels because they're popular or they're conventionally used or everybody is advertising on those channels. So you hit on that point, which I think is so, so important because a lot of people will jump to channel selection, not making the connection between the importance of defining your audience and having that inform where you should be allocating your dollars.
Sorry, Evan, back to you. You know me. I can't help myself. No, no, no, it's good.
And I think, Jerry, you bring up a point that a lot of us, personally me, tends to not think about in the moment because it's like the worst advice that people give on LinkedIn across B2B is just talk to your customers. Like, what does that mean? What questions am I asking? How am I utilizing that information?
And I think it's more like going in depth to your point, like the power users. Who's what are the accounts that are activating but not using the product, right? So there's a lot of functionality and infrastructure that's needed in order to capture that. But that's where you should be putting pressure on the product team.
It's like, what signals can I actually look at that then decipher like a tier one, tier two, tier three, because then you have kind of like the best customers based on our business outcome, who are the customers that are turning quickly or draining a ton of our resources? They might fit the ICP because you talk to the customer in their in need of this product, but are they truly like a functioning group or cohort of individuals that you want to talk to. So I've been on the head of like understanding the usage of your product and those power users. What are some common traits and commonalities there?
Sure. Sir broad, like when when Los analysis by our committee job titles, right? I mean, I have a personal POV on job titles. I think it's a lot of BS because it's objective in the B2B world, but I digress you have to get started at somewhere.
So to your point on that is like, understanding what that customer looks like after usage is key and that is. Wait, Evan, you know, you have to say more about job titles. Like forget them. Just don't even like ignore them.
Tell me more. I think they're, I think they're important, but it's LinkedIn is a first self reported website where you can input what job you are in. So I've seen people where their titles will change almost monthly and they're in the same role or function. So I'm just saying like, as we think about, okay, I want the VP of marketing and that's who I'm going to target.
What does that VP marketing look like in a series A or seed versus a VP of marketing at an mid-market or enterprise? So as you start to segment, you need to understand like that job and responsibility could have drastic volatility and what it actually means. And so job titles are the first layer, but then you need to quantify that based on the segment of industry, function, company size, revenue, bands, all of that because most of the large enterprise companies we work with, right? Senior directors and above are kind of like that sweet spot of that individual they're focused on.
So you have to be cautious with that approach and understand that it's segmenting further is important. Tyler, do you want to come on a second? What if you rarely use job title targeting? What are some of the things that you do?
I'm really curious. This is a great thread. Typically, if we're not doing some type of ABM approach where we upload a company list, it is job function and seniority for the most part. And then we try to exclude from there just because like everyone was saying, I've seen people changing jobs constantly, but it's still the same type of function or role and you end up missing out on those people from a targeting perspective and ads if you don't open it up a little bit more wide using the function and seniority piece.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And it just continues to underscore the point that this process, you know, at face value might seem really simple. Let me just define my ICP. Let me write a few sentences down, but it's nuanced and it's complex and you have to be thinking about all of these things.
Once you define it, then you also have to be really smart about how you leverage those core definitions in terms of targeting depending on the channel that you have as well because it'll vary channel to channel. So I think, yeah, like what I love about the conversation today is people will look at it and say like, well, yeah, all that stuff is obvious, but oftentimes people can't, people are not doing the obvious things well or correctly. And that is what's actually getting in the way of their success. And I think reminding people of the importance of this and how to think about it as we get into the weeds is important.
So great. Thank you so much, Tyler, for sharing your experience. I appreciate that. Also, I have a hard time believing Tyler's calendars, right?
Because it feels like it's January like 50 seconds of me. It's in the longest break in my life, but I digress. So we kind of, you know, anything else, let's just be our Megan on the ICP front. I mean, we could probably go all day on that alone, but I think that was good.
I think we could put a pin in that and hit the next one and we can come back if we have some more questions at the end, see our head a great comment in the chat, which is a good ad. Awesome. The next one that we kind of brought up is really thinking about your strategic narrative. And my point of view here is like your product isn't your story, right?
It's about like how the customers are transforming using your product or how are they enabling themselves and growing. But too often we define our strategic narrative around our product. I think that's one area that I see a lot of misses on kind of that component, but I will continue to ramble as well, pass that over to you. I think this is a really important one.
And I would say the high level strategic narrative, I think there's some accountability that needs to be given to CEO or the core leader of the organization to really set the high level company story and strategy. And then it's up to the marketing leaders to really build that out and then bring that to life in terms of program execution. What's really important and the reason why I like referencing the strategic narrative, credit goes to Andy Raskin for his strategic narrative framework he's put together, it's probably in my view, one of the best positioning frameworks out there that is accessible and usable by any company. It has sort of those five clear components.
And what's really interesting is three out of the five components actually have nothing to do with your company or your product. It's about describing what's happening in the world and this is a key piece that companies just skip over because they're just overly eager to talk about all of their cool features and what their product can do and the value and the benefits that it can provide and all of their case studies. And of course that's important and that needs to be part of the strategy in the content we're going to create and the messages that we want to distribute. But the first three components of the strategic narrative are critical for you to build credibility and trust and get your target customer to even want to listen to you about everything else.
This is how you set the right context and demonstrate to your customer that you understand the challenges that they're dealing with and you have a solution that they should consider. And so the first component of it is really the big undeniable shift. And this is intended to just talk about what's happening. Classic Refined Labs strategic narrative has been BB buying and selling has changed dramatically from 2010 to 2015 to 2020.
What's really interesting is that's still true today but now it's going to be changing for a different reason with the advent of the AI era and how that's going to dramatically shift how buying and selling happens. But that becomes like an example of the undeniable change or the undeniable shift depending on your company and the space you play in that's going to be different. But being able to describe that and describe it in a way that resonates with your customer is so important. The next piece is talking about winners and losers.
So this big change is happening in the world. There are going to be people that successfully navigate the change and there's going to be people that do not. And so you want to position what that looks like. Winners are going to do X, Y, and Z.
And then the winners will sort of suffer all of these bad things, painting the picture that we want to be the winner. And the intent there is to start to set the stage and the foundation for these are the changes you need to make, these are the actions you need to take, these are the things you need to focus on. The third component of the strategic narrative is about describing the promised land. So this is like future utopia, ideal and state.
And so when we think about that, how are we describing basically what happens when they make the choice to make a change and become a winner during the changes that are happening and what are the benefits that they are going to be enjoying because they have done the work and made that change. Those three sort of initial components of the strategic narrative, again, have nothing to do with your product or your service, but getting really clear on what those are in terms of what your company offers in the market that it serves is critical. And then the fourth and fifth is intended to now connect how your product can deliver on the promised land, can make them a winner, can help them navigate the undeniable change and then have evidence to back that up. And so that's like a very quick rundown of the And You're Ask Institute narrative framework.
But most companies I've seen will have a basic positioning or messaging document that intends to sort of jump straight into describing, you know, product features. And it's just not enough. When you want to think about how you want to define your messaging strategy, you need to have a clear and differentiated position and you need to have clarity on the key messages that you're communicating. And typically that kind of basic positioning and messaging document is not enough to fuel the content strategy for a paid program.
So that's why we're a big believer in this. We'll go through this. I go through the strategic narrative exercise with most of our clients, actually, if we find that it's an area of opportunity for them to really elevate their overall messaging. And it just makes your paid programs that more effective because you're now communicating a real message to the right person in a way that's going to have them actually take action and build an affinity towards your brand.
So I'll pause there for now. It's a lot of talking. So good, Megan. Megan is the queen of the strategic narrative.
It's pretty fun to watch her with our clients. It's awesome. I really never even thought about like before working with Megan and I ever thought about looking outside into like what's happening in the world to develop our strategic narrative. And that's something that I think is imperative now seeing it.
I would say my, just like the thing that I anchor myself on the most when I think about what we're going to talk about to these people that we just decided on this group of target market that we decided on, I think mostly about, we do a lot of companies are a really good job of talking about their product. I was saying, we can do this and we can do that. And look, I'm making this is, but the thing that's going to get people to look at what you're selling is what problem you're solving for them. And that's kind of like just the basic core of how I like to make sure that we're messaging strategically what problems are you solving?
How are you messaging that in an easy way? And you know, are people able to understand and are people actually resonating with that problem? And are they problems that you're not identifying yourself as a marketer? Are they problems that you're identifying from your customer base?
People are using your products and they aren't the answers are in the building, right? The answers are outside the world with your customers, what problems are you solving? And even just like looking at your competitors too. Are you solving the same problems as your competitors?
If so, how are you solving them better? Are you solving different problems in your competitors? If so, make sure you highlight those as well. So.
No, I mean. I like to always add a little bit, but I don't know if anybody here too has any sort of point of views or like any learning that Tyler you said you had worked with, the Andy's kind of workshop and improving the sales deck. Are you finding that those are shrinking as you evolve them? Like you're taking out a lot of the noise and kind of tightening the messaging or, yeah.
Yeah, we're on the same wavelength with you, Tyler. You're you're thinking about all these same things. That's another really great point. I think when you go through the strategic narrative exercise, ultimately you should be looking to effectively develop like an artifact, like a documented narrative of what you're trying to communicate.
And it's not just the input for messaging for your paid programs. You should then take that artifact and look at your website and you should audit and adjust your website so that it's reflecting the same message and narrative that you're trying to communicate your sales pitch deck, another asset. It should be shared with the sales team and we should be making sure when sales people are actually having sales conversations that they're weaving that messaging into it. Any other enablement materials or materials that will be sent to prospect or customer should be reinforcing this message as well.
So this exercise is not is not meant to be done only for the paid program. It's meant to represent like a key positioning exercise that everyone should really be undertaking that informs pretty much every facet of your go-to-market strategy. And so yeah, I mean, there's lots of different frameworks out there and folks that have different ways to think about positioning and messaging. But I think this is really a proven framework and formula that can be applied to any company.
And what's really interesting is when I go through this with our clients, a lot of them will have like a pretty good starting point. But every time I do this exercise, it creates an opportunity to create more clear and differentiated positioning and elevate the overall messaging. And so it's great to think about. I think the other thing is this should evolve and shift over time.
Go to market over the next five years, probably next one or two years, is that we have to go through some massive changes again because of the emergence of AI. So as the market continues to change and shift, it is a signal that companies should be going back and revisiting their strategic narrative and evolving it as well as the market continues to change. So it's not a one-in-done exercise. And again, just something every company should do.
Yeah, and I think it's hard to get so wrapped up in blinders essentially created internally because you anticipate what you need to build, what other people are going to say, because sometimes that external opinion is valuable and kind of that unlocks. So it's just been helpful for some of the smaller clients that I work with is grab a couple of people in the industry or a tangential that are like, can read over it, get some of the learnings and like question you. Be challenged on it. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed to your strategic narrative isn't perfect because that shows that it's constantly in a ball and be documented.
But I've run up a lot of handful of folks that are just like, almost feel as if it's an attack when you question some of the strategic narrative when really you're trying to clarify some of the key points. So it's a great stuff there. So we have the ICP, great. We know we're going to eventually start targeting.
But I think it's also important to think about our website, right? So the strategic narrative feeds into the website, hopefully, a lot of times it doesn't. And then like the core messaging when you define your ICP about who you're trying to target and what you're trying to target should also feed into your website. And I think this is why this is such a key milestone that you should invest the time and effort in building and strengthening to know once you turn on that paid advertising motion, that there's the opportunity to actually capture and convert more clearly.
But this is something that we run up against a lot, right? Individuals are ready to pour on the, pour gasoline on the fire and you look at their website and I'm asking what the hell do you actually do? Yeah. And it's so important that actually when we onboard a new client, we go through what we call our inbound buying analysis where when you think about it, if I'm going to deploy digital programs, the most likely action that people will take is visit your website.
That is the most likely action that will happen as a result of all of your money. So it's like, okay, we're going to put all of this money into these programs. The most likely action that people will take is going to the website and then the website becomes an afterthought for most people. And so we like to view the website through the lens of the buyer and through the lens of, okay, if I'm visiting this site, what is it that I want to know and learn and how do you architect the information on your website to make it really easy for the buyer to get the information that they're looking for?
And so what you put on your homepage really matters. Every website will have some key product or solutions pages that further explain what they do. What you put on those pages really matter. Social proof and customer testimonials really matter.
They need a presence on your homepage and throughout your website. Your primary conversion form really matters how it's architected, everything from what's on the page, what you're communicating, what the form experience is like. Also what happens after the form is submitted. Sometimes we like to do some secret shopping and only to discover that no one is following up on an investment.
It's like we did all this work. And so really auditing that experience is so important. And in fact, almost every time we're able to present a scorecard back to our client with where they're doing great, where we see opportunities for improvement and ultimately inform a priority checklist of changes that we would recommend if we want to convert the traffic that's coming to the website. And so at a high level, that's why this is so important.
Maybe I'll kick it over to you, Ciara, maybe you can get into some of the specifics of some of the things we recommend and look for. Yeah, I was actually doing an incoming analysis this morning. Lucky. I know.
And I was doing some secret shopping. So every time I feel out of form, I'm like, sorry, sales, like this isn't real. But no, I think you're right. Everything you said, Megan is totally correct.
And I think another thing that maybe is potentially overlooked but really important is not just the content on your website. That's obviously, that's right in front of your face. That's very important. But it's the layout and the journey of your website.
So if you look at your nav bar, do you have like a thousand things you can click on? Or is it really simple? And there's only like a few tabs with a few dropdowns? Or is there like, you know, a bunch of tabs with a bunch of dropdowns, like make your nav bar simple.
You don't want customers to have to click all over the site to get to what they're looking for. It should be very easy to learn. And if it is complicated, figure out how to make that like like uncomplicated. Like there's something that's not landing, if it's too complicated and figure out how to simplify.
Like it's not your product. That's too complicated. It's the way that you're talking about it. So figure out how to simplify the message.
And then that will kind of land within the structure of your website. And I think too that we really look at is, is it easy for someone that's ready to buy? So if I'm a buyer, I go on your site, like can I fill out a demo or contact us for? Or is it easy to get in touch with a form within one or two clicks?
I like, I like one click. Like I'm on your homepage. Can I click on get a demo? Can I get right to the form and fill it out?
If not, if it's hard, make that easier. You shouldn't have to click all over just to get in touch with sales if you're ready. Because that will frustrate the buyer and it will lead to drop off in, you know, the process of filling out a form. So that is like ease of entry is huge for your website.
And then of course, just keeping things like the message very clear. Like if I look on your homepage on your hero page, can I understand what you do in a sentence? Like can you tell me what you do in one sentence? Or is it confusing what you do?
I look at clients websites all the time and sometimes it's confusing. And like I don't understand what you do and who would be the right person to use your product. And so making sure you're very clear and as little words as possible is going to be like the most beneficial for you and allow folks to learn in a productive way and make it to your site. Yeah, Brian, you drop the comment in the chat that is so spot on.
I don't know if you want to come on and elaborate on that a little bit more, but it's huge. And I think so helpful when you're also doing sales conversations or customer conversations and testing out new messaging or narratives and kind of hearing the response and how people are coming back to you and being able to integrate that is really key. Thanks for giving up. It's a pleasure.
So while I was trying to figure out my microphone, I'm not sure if I heard your question. I was more so just asking if you had some specific examples to just build on the point that you're making. I think the point that you're making is so spot on, but so many people don't do it. So I don't know if there are just rhythms or ways that you guys have been able, in your experience you've been able to do it.
That might be a really helpful takeaway for people that are listening. Yeah, so my experience background on sales, revenue generating frontline guy evolved into strategic marketing. I'm a big fan of revenue generation. I'm not siloed, and so how do you bring marketing into sales, sales into marketing?
I hate that dysfunctionality that exists. So as a marketer, being in the field with the reps, capturing voice customer, bringing that back to my marketing team makes me a more effective marketer. I heard this in the field. I heard the customers say this.
And then I can create more content that my sales guys find value in. Like, oh, he gets us. We're bringing out content. We're at the front edge of them, enabling them to what I call, I bring it into three silos.
And this is a bit of a segment, but it's pipeline development, pipeline mobilization, pipeline velocity. And this is all relative to your ICP, your strategic narrative and creating content to move one from pipeline development, creating awareness and interest into becoming an executive potential sponsor, champion to then procuring and closing. And sales guys are so focused on channel number three, and they're kind of relying on marketing to help them with development. And it's a combined effort between pipeline mobilization, as you all know.
So as marketers, we really need to be at the forefront of all three of those stages. And that's kind of what I was saying here. So the ICP that we were talking about before, and Carrie, excuse me, I think you said it really well, like the buyer versus the user, right, and the executive champion, all different people, especially in a complex sale, right? So the executive buyer says, I want this for my users.
So I'm the hero by acquiring this. So that's a strategic narrative for that person, the procurer, the person buying it. And then the ultimate user, like, so our job's complicated, right? But this is why being in the frontline with the sales guys, understanding what the customers need so that we can adapt and adjust and execute and be cutting edge and relevant at all times.
And that's just where my brain goes. And this is not easy, right? This is hard, but we do. But I think it's the semi-life relationship between sales and marketing is really what allows us to happen.
Yeah, awesome. I love that. Thank you for sharing that example. I love that.
I'm kind of building on, Sierra mentioned, you know, a lot of websites can be confusing or overwhelming to look at navigate. And I think that that's one thing where, you know, branch your point to right. The how are you enabling sales to get more qualified prospects lead, right? If your website has an overwhelming amount of CTA.
So oftentimes you have different CTA's for gated content, talk to sales, contact, you know, depending on enterprise and market segments. There's a lot of deadweight pages I think that websites have, especially as we think about mid market enterprise, these websites have been around for a while that are kind of owned by product or IT. And it was kind of the days where we just keyword stuff website. So we would rank for SEO over and over again.
And a lot of those websites are, I think the opportunity for marketers kind of coming into is, yeah, it could be overwhelming on how to think about streamlining your website. But if you just look at Google Analytics, what are your top five trending traffic pages? Start there and really have an objective lens on like, what are the balance rates? What is the jargon on the page, right?
If you're using like revolutionizing, if you're using like end in seamless, what does that mean? Like ask yourself directly, like, what am I trying to communicate to the market because these are high value pages. If I'm unable to understand that, then they're likely the market will not be able to as well. So I think all of that feedback loop kind of comes across the organization from marketing to sales to the functionality of the website.
It's such an important component. Yeah, absolutely. Man, we're moving right along. I think we have to now give CRs worth milestones in airtime.
Yeah, I feel like Brian also teed this up really nicely. Really this. So we talked about milestones around like setting up our ICP, making sure narrative is correct. Obviously you're touching on the website and making sure all of that is buttoned up.
But another piece of this is just the internal structure, like internal foundation of your marketing and sales. And then also the marketing and sales operations. So it's kind of, I know I remember when I was working in some, you know, in-house a few jobs before and I was like, I'm so excited. I started to start this campaign and then I tested it and I'm like, wait, where are these leads going?
And so that is super important when you are running a campaign that's bringing folks to your website to know where these leads that are coming in from your website are going. The sales know how to action on them. Do they know the difference between a demo and an event lead? Do they know the difference between outbound sales and a demo?
These are things that the sales team needs to know how to action on and it's marketing and marketing's job to make sure that the sales team is educated. And so all of that from just an educational standpoint is incredibly important. And then an operational standpoint is your lead routing set up correctly. Do you have lead routing?
Do you track in UTM's on these leads? Or do they know what sources are you going into your CRM or your marketing automation platform? These like questions seem kind of trivial, but so many times I see marketers just be like, yeah, we're starting this campaign and the leads are just going to go in here and then it's like a black box. But as a marketer, you need to know where the lead is going, when it gets the sales, how long they're taking action on it, and then what happens after that?
And so all of those things need to be iron out, discussed, and very much like planned out before you launch any sort of a paid media campaign. Yeah, and a big like zooming out on this, like the big reason why this matters so much is because every marketer is going to be in a position to defend their programs, right? And to communicate ROI. And so we're not claiming that marketing can be measured perfectly.
We all know that it cannot. We all know that there are many things that will influence a particular buyer that said, there are ways to measure a lot of things. And we should be leveraging as much measurement as possible without going overboard and ascribing too much importance to measurement where it sort of backfires on us. But that's important.
So again, before you're going to invest a ton in paid, have you invested in the right infrastructure and have you set up the right measurement and have you also taken the time to align with leadership about how you will measure success of that program? And it doesn't have to be perfect and it can vary organization to organization. But I think that's really key. You want to avoid focusing on only in platform metrics to validate the success of a particular campaign and find ways to make the connection from your paid programs to actual business results, people filling out your demo form, opportunities being created, opportunities being won.
And so that's ultimately why and then everything that CRS said on all of the details to look into and what to prioritize. Yeah, great ads, Ciara. We can officially rename this episode to the four milestones. It's so important.
But yeah, I think to kind of sum things up and we can open it up if anyone has any final questions before we wrap up today. But really, out of all of the stuff that you need to think about before you launch a paid program and invest a lot of budget, we really sort of zeroed in on these four milestones as really non-negotiables and crucial. And I think if you're a marketer and you're thinking about investing in paid, going back and validating for yourself and keeping yourself honest, do we have a clear ICP definition? Have we written our strategic narrative?
What is our website? What's the shape of our website? Do we have the right measurement infrastructure in place? These are all really key components that you want to prioritize and have in place so that when you do launch your programs, you have the most likelihood of success in actually achieving the goal that you want.
I know people like to move fast and grow, grow, grow, but there's a reason why these things are important and taking the time to do things the right way is really what we try to advocate for here. And Brett, yeah, you got a good point, right? There's got to be clarity and expectation management across all teams and functions. So as a leader, ensuring that your team understands what their goals and priorities are and how those actually connect to the business and broader business objectives is key.
So if that feedback loop is not consistent, and oftentimes teams can silo themselves into success metrics that may be online to the broader business. So definitely a good call out there and something. I don't know if you want to add any color to that too. You're welcome to come on in.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I've witnessed this across a bunch of different companies, typically between departments that historically conflict, such as sales and engineering, if we're talking about manufacturers and stuff like that, and I'm in a space now that's a vertical SaaS organization where you have a mix of industry folk and a mix of tech folk. And there's a lot of barriers that seem to naturally exist where this gap just kind of keeps widening between departments, depending on how weighted each department is on individuals and their respective backgrounds. So middle management, I think, gets a lot of crap where people are going, hey, what are they supposed to do?
And from what I'm hearing and listening to, a lot of it truly is making sure that the approach is cohesive rather than disjointed, which is one of the things I keep hearing over and over again. So just that just wanted to share that in my observations. Yeah, great observation. I've seen a lot of similar things as well.
Thank you for sharing, Brett. I'm stating obvious. So sorry about that. No, I think it's so interesting.
A lot of people, and I think I said this at the top of the call, like, oh, a lot of these milestones or things that we're talking about might seem obvious. And in many ways, they can be, but the common theme is people are still not doing these things or prioritizing these things or thinking about these things. So even though it's obvious, people are not giving them the attention and the effort that they deserve, and then wondering why their programs aren't successful or aren't driving the results that they want. And so I think it's really interesting how so much of this comes back to core marketing fundamentals and doing a few things really well to drive success of a business.
And so I'm all for reemphasizing the obvious because it feels like a lot of people need to hear it. Me too. Not a message as we get that. Holy crap, I was thinking that same thing.
And I'm just trying to align with people that also have that same challenge, stuff that I get that quite often on through these conversations. So just reinforces the need to stick true to what we're, you know, kind of the value that we want to continue to bring. Awesome. Well, thank you all for joining.
Really appreciate it. We'll be doing, we'll lock in the date and we'll send it out in the follow up after this message for our February and March. Um, be to be roundtables. So definitely excited for those.
Be sure to join. But yeah, any questions to come up, feel free to reach out to any of us on LinkedIn. We're then happy to keep the conversations going. All right.
Good to see you all. Thank you for the participation. Brian and Brett and Tyler, and I hope you guys have a great week. We'll see you next month.
Thanks. All