Welcome back to another episode of Second Growth. I'm your host, Judy Sheriff. I'm a general manager here at Refine Labs. I'm super excited for today's conversation.
I have with me two of my colleagues here at Refine Labs, bringing together someone from our demand team, as well as our creative team for a really fun chat on the fact that creative professionals are not sidekicks and the importance of sharing data and insights and feedback with your creative team. So I'm going to pass it over here to Miles Madden first. He's a performance marketing manager here at Refine Labs. Still quick intro.
Yeah, Miles Madden, performance marketing manager, like you said, been with Refine for about six months, but Lex and I actually go back quite a few years now as we've been answering on this topic. So I have a lot of stuff for you guys that's been accumulating over the years. So Lex, go ahead. Old friends are really excited to hear what you guys have to say.
Yeah, I finally have a platform to share all of our hot takes. Like Miles said, I am Lex Wenship. I am a senior copywriter here at Refine Labs and super excited to have this conversation. I'm definitely very fired up about it.
So happy to be here. Yeah, so let's dive right into it. So like I said, we have Miles representing our demand team and we have Lex representing our creative forces. But really both sides of the coin here.
We have content and creative creation and then we have content and creative distribution. So let's talk a little bit about how distribution and creation play together. Miles, I know you have some strong opinions here. Yeah, it's interesting.
Of course, we invest so much time and energy around, obviously, the high level go to market. We want to sell to product market fit, language market fit, all these different customer research and market research tactics, which is all good. Right. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that.
That's obviously the foundation of marketing. And then it goes to the next layer. Now we know who we want to sell to and what we want to say to them. It goes to the paid media layer.
And so now we have paid media managers, whether they're LinkedIn ads or Facebook ads, professionals, or a combination of both. They get an nitty gritty figure out exactly how to target these people, where to find them, right, all the tactics of these platforms. And then it gets to the actual marketing aspect, which is the only part that the customer sees, which is a different talking paid media that advertisement. And there's this heavy, heavy investment in the distribution and ideation and planning.
And then we get through the actual creation aspect, what the customer sees and they see this very dismal ad that's lacking any sort of creative. And this is very common and be to be with that over investment in the distribution and planning and the severe under investment and creative, which is funny because we're also investing 80 to $100,000 salaries in creative people and professionals, but we're not using them like we should or investing the time into them as we should. So that's my first quam with the in equal investment there. I don't know if you have any opinions on that as well.
Yeah, I just think it's like a funny dichotomy because it's like, like you said, we have these professionals in house now, we're not living in the time of marketing managers being one, jack of all trades doing every single thing. We're bringing the right people in house, but we're still not really sure how to utilize them properly. And I think that that's a very different problem than when we've seen previously, like on marketing teams, I think. So it's kind of a fun, unique challenge, I think.
Yeah, I know, like here at Refine Labs, we really consider creative our secret weapon. You know, I think it's way, it's the way that a B2B company can stand out in a sea of what is traditionally pretty boring, pretty unimaginative creative. We really flip that on our head here, we're thinking it's the main takeaway. How do we leave that impression in feed with our creative?
I think we see, you know, we work with a variety of different clients and companies that have a lot of similar challenges trying to get creative to work for them. So let's talk a little bit about creative handcuffs and what you guys have seen typically these companies running into that's causing some of these challenges. Yeah, that's a really great topic. I do think it obviously there's this risk of it, right?
So B2B is professional, B2C is very much more loose. We're talking to mothers and our duty or recent mother and so there's that emotional aspect of it. And so selling you a stroller, for example, we can leverage these other emotions and things like that will resonate to you as a human. When we shift to B2B, there's this weird transition that happens where we think we're talking to all people in certain ties that are all the same and not different and they're only professional focused and have no life.
And so there's this inherent risk that then comes with that. Now we have this conception that we're targeting professional people that don't have lives, which sounds silly as I say it, but it's the reality. And so we're risk-adversed to doing anything creative because we don't want to look bad in front of the professionals who are brand and essentially hurt the opportunity of scale and revenue for our company. And so it happens is there's this committee of people that don't want to be creative, they want to be more conservative and don't take that jump.
And then the second issue is there's this design by committee. And what I've seen historically is that we have groups of people trying to agree on a certain design or a certain way of messaging. And when we take so many opinions, we have to make compromises. And when we make several compromises, we naturally lead to this very conservative design, which at the end of the day, we're trying to capture attention of humans, of people.
And when we basically just put up a boring billboard in the digital world, it's not helping us at all. So that's typically why I see why there are these creative hand-tops, but I'd be interested on the creative side-lacks. What are some things you've experienced? Yeah, I think there's this kind of weird tension to when we're thinking through being an agency role versus even being in house or something like that, too.
I think that this is the value that creatives can bring when it comes to actually having calls with clients and talking through these things with them is earning that trust to push back on some of these status quo. Just use the word agile as much as you can. These things that become very cliche within the B2B realm. I think that creatives have an opportunity to push back on those things with the client if they're able to earn the client's trust.
But very few times you see something like that actually happening, where creatives are elevated to the position of being able to or not trust for themselves, not just on behalf of the company, but to be able to push back. So I don't know. I think it's a really funny pushing back against the status quo is always tough, but everyone, I sprolled through LinkedIn and everyone's saying the same buzzword to you is over and over again. Everyone's complaining about the same things, but they still keep happening.
So I think it's like we know that things need to change. We know that B2B marketing is boring. We know that it's dry. We know that no one really likes it, but we still keep doing it.
And I don't really understand why. And I think that more overlap between creative teams and the performance marketing teams as well as the clients themselves would probably allow that shift to happen a little bit more organically, because I think everyone knows it needs to. I think there's this weird miles you're talking about. We're talking to these very like buttoned up people.
I think there's that, but it's weird that I find that in doing so, we almost revert to this very primal way of speaking, which is like go faster, get there, get where you're going. It's all this very stripped down basic, like low hierarchy of needs type conversation. And so it's like, okay, there's this weird imbalance between we're both too stiff and too just basic at the same time. And I think that that gives us two really cool opportunities to play in the zone between those two things and find a new way.
So yeah, I mean, it's a problem. And I think everyone can agree on that, but it's more so just what we do about it, which is where people get hung up, I think. So I think we can all agree that amount of times that we've heard the or seen the marketing message grow revenue. I'm so over that.
Like everyone's promising that we're going to grow revenue, but we can do something different. Obviously the goal is to keep being a business. It's like, hey, keep being a business. It's like, oh, that's a good idea.
I should do that. Yeah, I'll buy that product. I'll buy that service. Okay, yeah, do that.
But let's find another way to tell that story and to draw people in. And yeah, I just, it's so annoying. Yeah. That's the pet pew you mind.
I want to get out there. But as far as the duty to bring up a resolve to some of the issues that I'm seeing on the first, obviously, designed by committee, too many people having their hands in the pot. And I think the solution is, at the beginning, to really decide on who's going to make these decisions. And it's more common at the smaller software company I've been in rooms where VP of finance has an opinion on the design, which is filed right there.
They're there, you know, back to the VPs of finance, you guys, have a creative side as we all do, but not your expertise. And so what I found is to choose the three to four people. And that's important. No, three to four people that are going to make the decisions.
And what I've seen best is your go to market team leaders and the go to market team. Also, you can use the term revenue team as the sales leader, the marketing leader and the customer success leader reason being sales deals with customers marketing. We should be interacting with customers. Then customer success has an idea of what customers are the most successful and how do we what is the reason why they're attracted and staying long with us.
And so obviously those three leaders and then you need your creative leader in there as well, which is kind of going down a rabbit hole for a second again. The creative leader for creative things is usually not at the table, which that's one thing I bring in Lex into every meeting that it makes sense for her to be in us talking about messaging and pain points of customers and feedback around those things, because there's this game of sales customer success and marketing talking about what should be messaged and what should be communicated to the market. And then it's telephone down to the creative team. And it's basically how the conversation goes.
This is what they need to know. And now you guys go be creative, which is like going to an author and saying, hey, we just need a love story. Can you write a book about a love story? Now, like, great.
I can take this in a million different directions. So I'll pause there and see if you guys have anything to add. No, I think that's a really good like a really good thought because I think that so often we find ourselves in this team of telephone that doesn't really end up going anywhere. We get locked in the revision stage because the initial delivery, the initial creative delivery just misses the mark.
And I think from an efficiency standpoint, there's so much room to improve that process. When creative teams aren't working well with performance marketing teams, so many things just look to the cracks. And I think on the other side, it doesn't really send this clean, polished message to the customer, either another one that you're delivering this final result to for there to be a lack of communication and unity between your creative and performance marketing teams. So I think that a very simple solution, yes, is just bringing creative people into the call.
They're the ones who are actually going to be executing on all of these concepts that we're talking through. I think Einstein said, if I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about what the problem actually is and five minutes on the solution. And obviously in that example, this takes very high. But I think in this case, it's like, okay, why would the people who are doing a 55 minute portion not bring in the person who's going to do the five minute portion into that 55 minutes?
If we can find alignment in that time, I'm not going to trust someone enough to hand over the most crucial part of the process to them in the 11th hour. And I think that we should have just this better understanding of both teams should be involved in both pieces. And both pieces are equally important. If the five minutes doesn't happen, the world doesn't get saved.
If the 55 minutes doesn't happen, the world doesn't get saved. And I think that there's kind of this missing idea of what happens in the hand off between minute 55 and minute 56 or, you know, or minute 55. I'm not an African. That's why I'm a creative.
We can tell though that you're a senior copywriter from that amazing analogy and you get bringing in great metaphors to the conversation. You know, I think here at Refine Labs, we're really looking to solve some of these challenges and the way that we work together and the way we go to market for our clients is very much a collaborative effort between demand and creative. So can you just paint a picture for our listeners of how the two of you work together right now? I know you guys are on the same book of business working on the same accounts.
Like just give us a little glimpse into the day in the life of Miles and Lex. We're just sending hot to the second part of the way I want to. That's my little easter. I love this.
So like I said, number one is bringing how you say creatives into the conversation. So including and client meetings, that's step number one, putting a face to the person who's doing all the amazing creative work. Then on the backend, of course, we take our notes and our learnings and we then look at the data. Right?
So we look at if we're talking about paid media and ads, we're looking at a triangulation of a few signals, things like click-through rates or the engagement with the ads, which gives us an idea of how is this resonating with our audience. So is that quantitative feedback? We're also looking at the qualitative side. Right?
So we're looking at down to the comments in the ads. What is our buyer persona actually saying in this ad that they say they love it? Or are they saying, what are these people talking about? And we also get that qualitative feedback.
Obviously from our clients, they're doing the customer research, whether it's marketing or sales. So we're getting constant feedback from them of, hey, the customer said this thing or mentioned this ad. That's really good feedback for us to iterate and learn from that. And so we take that data, we bring it together, we'll look at it individually.
I'll take my insights and findings from the data. Lex will take her insights and findings from the data. And then we collaborate. And depending on the clients, some clients like to be part of that collaboration process.
We trust you guys. We want you guys to take care of that. And so that's very key that we do individually and then together. Because at the end of the day, this is very subjective.
Take ways are something that we're seeing personally from the data and there's no law or rule to it. And so that's why individual and then coming collaboratively is so important. And then from there, we make decisions and then we make a hypothesis. And then the next creative round, we essentially test that hypothesis and then go through the same process and see if our hypothesis was correct or wrong based on the signals and the data we obtain.
So that's what we're doing right now. Lex, did I miss out on anything there? No, I just I feel like one thing that I'd like to add is just I think that so much of why it works between miles and I in a situation like that is because there's so much of an appreciation and a knowledge of what the other person's perspective can bring to solving the problem. And I think that that is something so often I noticed that creative teams and more like analytics marketers often end up having this kind of like resentment toward each other of thinking like, or even be like a superiority complex or maybe just not feeling understood.
But I think that miles is one of the most creative and curious people I've ever met. And I think that he would say the same about me. And so I think that us having that mutual curiosity and that mutual respect helps that a foundation for really creating good work together. So that aside, I think also just recognizing that curiosity is the like uniting factor between creatives and performance marketers.
And there's no such thing as a good marketer who is not creative or who is not curious and who isn't asking questions and wanting to dig into things. And so I think that yeah, like there's that shared foundation. And I love what Miles said about working separately and then bringing findings together because so many times you realize, wait, that's what you took away from that. Interesting.
I saw this and being able to kind of, you know, sift through what both people are seeing and their perspective and take away on the data really does prove that data can be so subjective in a way that most people still don't believe that it is. And so yeah, I just think that an approach like that has to be rooted in respect and it has to be rooted in a true desire to be curious, which I think a lot of marketers would say they want to be but aren't actually backing that up. They're just checking boxes. And I think that that's one thing I love about Refine Labs's whole thing is there is this pushback against the status quo.
And I think that hopefully we'll see more and more of that. And hopefully marketing will continue to get better and better and it will be harder and harder for us to do our jobs, but it will be so fun. I want to just double click in on the quantitative results that you guys are, you mentioned here. And I think when you even brought this up yourself, like I'm not a math brain, I'm a writer, I think there can be this perception that creative professionals don't want to see that data.
They don't know the numbers, they don't understand the numbers. And like, I mean, I'm sure you disagree with that. But like give me just a little bit of your perspective as a creative person on receiving a hard numbers and some of these data points that Miles is sharing back with you and how you're incorporating that into your edits in your next round of revisions. Sure.
I don't like numbers, but I like people and people are often the numbers that we're talking about when we're sifting through this stuff. And so I think for me and Miles knows how to talk to me about these things now, you know, and I come from a more technical marketing perspective. So I kind of know, okay, when we're talking about this, this is what we're really saying. But even in spite of that, I think that getting to the like actual nitty-gritty of what the data is telling us brings you to a very human and basic approach of what's working and what's not.
And it's more so just digging into how do we solve what's not working. But I think for us, I feel like so often there are event times when I've heard these buzzword type things about, oh, click through rates and oh, this and that and the other thing. And for so long, I was like, oh, it doesn't sound good. But what does it really mean?
And having Miles just walk me through, hey, you know, when this is happening, it usually means this. And then me being able to say, oh, could it also mean this? And then him being like, oh, well, it could, that type of conversation. I think a lot of creatives don't want to admit that they don't know all of the jargon.
They don't know all of like the pieces and where they fit together. But most analytical people are willing to explain those things and often end up learning through the process of doing that. And so I think that just more like interdepartment learning and collaboration on that level really helps break down some of the smoke and mirrors stuff when it comes to talking through these things and really gaining a perspective that becomes way more valuable moving forward and informs the way that I write, the way that I brainstorm, the way that I research moving forward. So I think that there is this idea that creatives don't like data.
And I just don't think that that's true. I think that it just needs to be presented to them in maybe a different way, or they just need to be taught how to speak that language. And I think that a lot of times there's just not an investment. It's not being valuable to invest in that process.
And I think that that that sends a message to creatives that your strategy, your insights, your, perspective isn't valuable to us. It's not worth taking the time to explain some of these implications to you because you couldn't add anything to the conversation anyway. And I think that's missing so much. And again, creatives love information.
They love data. They love to be curious. And so giving them the opportunity to do that, I think opens up so many doors. Yeah, I completely agree.
It's a great covering. Miles, you touched on this earlier. You mentioned kind of specifically what you're looking at, but for listeners, could you share maybe your top free metrics or actual data points that you were looking at when you're judging the success of creative and that you're sharing with Lex on a regular basis? Yeah, definitely.
That's a really great question. And one thing that I do want to add or this will set up this conversation and it ties back into exactly what Lex said. This works because number one, it's mutual, but also I am holding up my end and doing a good job at telling the data story. And so like Lex said, numbers are just numbers unless there's a data story.
And this obviously applies to much broader conversation outside of creative and marketing. You have to tell a data story because numbers in a spreadsheet mean nothing unless there's some context or some takeaway from it revolving in the meeting where presentations pulled up. I say, yeah, we generated this much, but these numbers and like, okay, is that good, bad? What happened here?
Why did that happen? And so it's it's really making sure that you are being clear in the definition of metrics that you're talking about, but also kind of giving a story through that data. And that obviously ties in now to your question, Judy, what metrics are we using? Click-through rate in terms of click to landing page.
So what ads are driving someone making someone curious enough to actually click through an ad, go to that landing page and consume something on that landing page. Obviously, our goal is to reach our entire total addressable market and educate them in platform. But if we have an ad that inspires someone so much to click through and go to our website and and consume that content, that's the powerful data point, but then also the engagement rate. And so for talking about LinkedIn specifically, but this also applies for Facebook, are they liking?
Are they commenting? Are they sharing that shows obviously interest in the post? And then the third data point would be the actual qualitative. So looking into those comments and looking documenting with the marketing team or the sales team is providing through customer research, I think between those three metrics, that's those are the powerhouse metrics that will tell a good story and allow you to make good decisions.
Yeah, cool. Thank you. And see all of that in total sense to me and that stuff challenges me to say, okay, how do I write something that's going to make someone comment? That stuff tells me what I need to do in a way that saying, hey, our engagement rate isn't high enough.
Doesn't really send the same message with the same impact. I think that that's something that analytical data type marketers, very less brain people, who are struggling to bring humanity into marketing, being forced to speak in layman's terms about what it is you're trying to accomplish already gets you 50% of the way there. So I just think that's a funny oversimplification of it. Yeah, this is great.
So I think as a final summary, I'd love to get your perspective from each of you on what is the main takeaway that our listeners should actually take from this conversation? If you're in house at a software company and you are looking to up level your relationship with creative and the creative output that you guys are generating, what's the most important thing they should take away from our conversation today? Who wants to go first? I've got two.
I was trying to take between them with their both powerful and I'm not a chair involved. I have two as well. Four as you take away from today's conversation. So obviously we need to be more creative and be to be, we all know that and it starts with that design by committee, which naturally leads to this conservative approach.
And so I first take away is making sure that you know who's going to be making the creative decisions. I offer a suggestion, you go to market team leaders and your creative leader. I stand pretty firm on that suggestion. Also leaving room for experimentation.
I know we have 80, 20 experimentation rule at our fine lives here. If you have a very conservative team, say, Hey, we'll run this conservative approach for 80, 90% ads. Let's test an attitude. That's a little outside of this box we're putting ourselves in.
So let's take away number one takeaway number two, which I talked to it. I'm probably more passionate about. You have to respect your creative people. These are professionals.
These are experts. And there has to be that mutual respect too many times I hear like, Oh, let's quick throw it over to design. Let's quick have them write some headlines. Let's quick have them right up at it.
Or I don't even know how to say this is ironic, but draw up a design. It's just like the person behind the curtain, right? So how is it? Nobody really is respecting enough and they need to be respected more.
So rent over. Let's see what you have. Okay. Well, I mean, my number one is just informed creative is better creative in general.
And I think that from an efficiency standpoint, from a quality of work standpoint, that's just true across the board. And so however, we can solve the problem of creative that is not informed and that does not have context, the better all of our teams will be, I think that internally teams will just communicate better with each other. People's work will feel less overwhelming to them. It just solves so many problems.
But I think the other side of this is I think that this is a hard problem. And acknowledging that I think is important. You know, this is a problem that has plagued marketing teams for ages. We're having this conversation in 2022.
You know, this is not an easy fix type of problem. You know, we've like, especially I have said things that probably oversimplify the solution to this problem. But I think that so much of what we're at now is this over correction from an age of marketing in which it was expected that a marketing specialist would be a graphic designer, a copywriter, an analytics performance marketer that they would be everything. And now we've kind of, I think, too much siloed things out.
But I think we're in a much better position now than we were 10 years ago, because now we have opportunity. We have creative professionals who want more rather than feeling burnt out. We have performance marketers who want more creativity because they want to be better at their jobs. And so I think this is not a great place to be, but it's also still better than where we were.
And I think we're moving in the right direction just by having this conversation. So I am encouraged by just kind of where I see marketing going. I think we're in a very dry and boring place right now, especially in the B2B space. But I think that when I see dry and boring, I see potential.
And I see, I know that, you know, refined labs is moving the needle there. I know that other, you know, companies are really focused on the same thing. And I want, I'm excited for what marketing looks like in the B2B space in five years. I think it's going to be weird and fun in a way that it never has before.
And five years ago, I wouldn't have had that help. So I'm excited. I'm encouraged and I'm grateful to get to be a part of it. I think it's going to be fun.
We just got to earn trust. And it starts like with my last set, you know, it starts with respect across teams rather than competition or, you know, everyone just trying to stroke their own ego. It comes from yeah, respect and curiosity. Yes, that's such a great takeaway.
Can't wait to see what marketing looks like in five years. We'll need to do a recap podcast in five years and see, we'll, my reality also, like, yeah, I'm playing the game still up. What does this company do as it's from like really didn't looking at it. But maybe everything's will be weird and fun and crazy and we'll love it to all the demand and creative listeners out there.
I think in summary, we want to bring the two teams together in a collaborative standpoint, share data with your creative team and remember that your creative professionals are not your sidekicks. You guys are a team working together for the client success. So yeah, thanks so much. This was really fun discussion.
To our audience, we'd love to hear feedback from you. If there's other topics as it relates to creative, we're going to be bringing more creative voices on from a fine lab. So yeah, comment, share. Let us know what you guys think.
Thank you. Thanks guys.