Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the stacking growth podcast today. We've got Sam Keanley and I'm joined by. Sydney Waterfall, everyone. Yeah, and we've got a fun one today.
So we got a listener, sent us over a question that we thought was really fascinating. So we'll go through that, what they had to share with us, and then we're going to chat about it a little bit. So Sydney, here's what was written into us. I was listening to an episode of State of Demand on my drive, plus one for that.
And one thing that is missing for me is the factor of time and the importance of content, whether it's customer acquisition costs, heroes, advice about creating demand, and where to start. I'm not seeing how time is factored in. How do you all think about that when consulting or doing calculations? Furthermore, we live in a world where everyone wants it now, which is ironic because every successful unicorn talks about how it was never an overnight success.
It takes time to understand your target. You need to factor in time into your calculations for the sales cycle, how long it's going to test to see if something's working, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I also see that you all, you can do everything that Refine Labs is saying. You can calculate and measure the right metrics.
You can do the tactical self-reported attribution. But if you don't really start with the why or understand the value behind it, and your content just sucks, pure plain and simple, it's going to cause you not to get the results that you were expecting. So how do you and the Refine Labs team express in that with clients? So a good question here.
Really getting into the time, the content, which I do think are incredibly incredibly important. And he does have a good point that I think we take it for granted a little bit because we do it and talk about it so much. But for those that are going through it or don't see this across multiple customers, how long is a big question? Or what kind of content should we be creating?
So when we say it takes time to see results, what do you usually see with that? Yes, I agree. I don't think we normally talk in depth about this publicly because it's just kind of second nature to everybody internally here. So I think this is a good prompt.
So when we think about time, especially when you're shifting your strategy or you're kind of, you know, maybe let's just talk about like paid ads or even like organic kind of strategy that's more around creating demand, educating the feed and getting your, honestly, your strategic narrative out and distributed to your target market. That does take time because it's not a conversion based action and you're educating. So typically, like what we tell our clients, especially when we kick off and we launch with them is like once we get ads in market, it's really going to probably take about three months before we start seeing like, you know, measurable. You know, measurable impact on pipe qualified meetings and hero pipeline.
And then that's kind of our general timeline, obviously, depending on the clients we audit our client, we look at sales cycle links, we look at what their buying process like this and we can kind of give them a more personalized recommendation. But if you're shifting something and you're trying something new, you cannot expect it to deliver or even show like incremental value in any quality pipeline metric right away. So then it goes to like, what do you look at them for what we kind of call positive signals, right? So really in the first month, we're looking for validating our audiences and our targeting and validating that the content is first of all reaching them and second of all, is it engaging and you can do the same thing on organic to, you know, you can't really like target right who's following you, but you can see like, what am I doing right now and is it getting more engagement than what I was previously doing, right?
Content and engagement is kind of what we optimize first before we actually start looking at the pipeline metrics. So that's, that's like the out of the box, like internal like first answers, like how we think about that. And then obviously if we're doing it well and the company does have already kind of thought out, I would say narrative that's different and differentiated and something that actually resonates with their customers like back in accelerate even more. But of course we're looking for things time on page or, you know, if we see stuff coming through self report and attribution, you know, even if it's one signal and one or a couple signals in that first month, that's like, all right, we're on the right track and now let's fuel this up.
Yeah, that's interesting. And so to go back to stuff and thinking about the psychology of the prospects that they're trying to get in front of. So a lot of execs or its leadership think of what this type of marketing is the light switch as soon as you turn it on as soon as you add the spend, you should get this influx of people that want to get a demo talk to your sales team, start your product, whatever it is. But they don't think about the psychology of those buyers or things are going on in their world that would prevent them from doing it on day one once those ads go live.
And so when we talk about looking at things like time on page, you know, we're trying to understand are the right people coming to the website. But when you think about where they're at in their journey, they could be having this awareness generated for them. They can be building trust with you, but they also might be dealing with their own thing. So and that's your truly category creator, you know, they haven't been doing anything before.
Most organizations need to be companies are in some type of contract with another company, whether it's a six month, a 36 month contract. So you might have a better product, but they're locked into something. So they're not just going to switch or pay for both or if they do, you know, they're burning cash, good for them. I wish I had some of that on my pocket as well.
They might not have budget yet. Fiscal years June or start July January, they might have to wait for one of those times of year to have new budget clear up so they can afford something like this. Another one I like to say, especially when you're dealing with say you're in the CMS space, new websites, I've yet to meet someone who really genuinely wants to build a website switch that is a bear to do it's a lot of work. So you also have to overcome this like how big of a pain is it and just do people want to do that and that often requires a lot of internal buy in.
So you're going through and trying to get those stakeholders. So you're meeting the market where they have to do a lot of legwork to get the people to understand the value behind it. And then the final final thought that was brought up in the question is it's also going to require shifting your content strategy. So if you were doing, you know, a lot of lead gen, it's just driving to a demo page, but now you want to educate and build trust.
That's a completely different set of content that has to be built knowledge that has to be masked and gained and then you have to put out a bunch of new mediums and that's going to take time as well. So that's what I say, you know, you can, unless you have all that ready to go, you know, you might have a couple people sneak in, you just have to meet them with the right budget at the right time and they'll come in. But there's a lot of other factors that come into play with why your market might not be coming in and droves that you would expect right in the beginning. So say that you now have people who are wanting to switch to demand, you know, you work with customers or someone else.
Why do you see that it might often break down? So this switch is philosophical mindset that comes with it. So you have a VP of marketing who wants to try it out, but when it doesn't get fully adopted by the team, what are a couple of key reasons that you see that that usually gets held up? Strategy alignment and that could be strategy alignment within the marketing teams.
Maybe the marketing leaders on board and CSO vision and they're like, this is it, right? Like this is what we need to be doing, but maybe under everyone underneath them nods their head and says, sure, sure, sure, but actually when it comes to execution and the day to day, they actually don't really understand it or even sometimes they don't agree with it. Like that can cause a lot of friction. And that's within the marketing team, but even with outside the marketing team, you have a lot of other pressures, right?
You're going to have pressures from your CRO, VP of sales. And if they are not aligned with the vision at like the revenue leadership level, it's going to fail because, you know, it's a long term approach. So it's not, hey, we're going to do this this quarter and it's going to skyrocket pipeline this quarter. Like, no, no, no, no, no, you need to say, hey, we're going to start shifting our approach and, you know, again, shifting our approach.
It's not necessarily turn everything off in a hundred percent pivot unless the way you're doing is just so not good. That would make sense to do that. But usually it's not like a hundred percent pivot. And so it's over time.
Like, how do we shift a little here shift more shift more shift more to build that momentum? And I think that also helps set expectations. Like, we're going to make this shift over the next three to six months and then in by in two quarters from now, like we think that now this will be driving all of our pipeline and we won't have to do these other activities. And then that gives everybody in the organization time to actually shift shift what you might need to be your infrastructure shift your content strategy, make sure you actually have the right people getting customer insights or even getting customer insights to drive the content strategy.
So those are a couple of things. And then above that, you also have your CFO, your CEO and your board. At the end of the day, if your CEO and board are not understanding of the shift and why, like, it's going to go back to Lee Jen. We've literally seen this happen to companies.
They do it for six months and then their board comes in and says, no, I don't care. Give me MQLs. And you're kind of handcuffed. So I would say those are the main reasons alignment.
I'm not really understanding, like, the core differences in buyer behavior, which leads to that lead obsessed MQL obsessed volume mindset. So they don't really at the core understand it. They might shake their head and like while you're presenting or while you're convincing them, but they don't actually truly understand it. And then, you know, obviously I mentioned infrastructure that's reporting an attribution.
So if you're not aligned with the problem and why you're shifting your strategy, like you'll have your own reporting and attribution to that across the business, not just in the marketing team. Yeah, that's so true. I'm just thinking about some of the things that you said there, having the right people getting the content and the insights that takes time. That's weak.
So listening to calls, trying to get a meeting schedule to CEO CFO. That's going to be three to four weeks out. And that's your BFS with them. Good luck making changes and operations and sales force again.
You've got to work with your IT team or others. And again, that's all going to take time. So I do want to want to talk a little bit more about you mentioned setting expectations. And so what I think will be interesting here is how we've gone about it historically.
And then I know that we're making a big change to how we approach this this revenue R&D. So let's talk a little bit about how we've done this for the past couple of years. And then I'll touch on some of those items and then I'll pass it over to you because I really want to hear what the future of this looks like in a truly scalable way. So, okay.
So in the setting expectations phase, we like to hit on this hard early on we talked to leadership in one meeting. We talked to the full team in our meeting and we're we're hitting on this especially hard in the first couple quarters that we're working together because like we said, you're not going to see the revenue on day one. It just doesn't work with how the buying works. So we like to break it out into a couple of phases.
The first one is we like to call just the foundational phase. So you talked about it earlier, but it's usually about three to six weeks where you're going to be auditing your accounts. You're going to be looking at historical performance. So I think like slip funnel exercise, you're going to be getting reports built that are going to help build out the data that you're using moving forward.
So hand raisers meeting, the book like you meant heroes, all of those. And then when you're thinking about what's going to be happening in these three to six weeks, you aren't changing anything yet. You're just building that foundation. So you should be seeing the same type of results as before.
So you want to set that expectation on early. Once we get into the execution phase, this is where it's usually going to take one to two quarters. And what we're doing here is we're launching and validating a lot of the strategy. So you've updated your search accounts.
You've got your new social campaigns live. You've got your organic work started in enhance. You've got the content machine going. So what are we looking at to understand?
Are these things working? If you're saying we're not going to get revenue on day one, well, how do we know for on the right path? So in the first few months, what we're going to be looking at is some of those behaviors like you spoke about earlier since people aren't ready to buy just quite yet. There's other things going on, but we're going to look at new users to the website.
Are we seeing an increase there? The number of visits specifically to high intent pages from organic and direct sessions. So that means that people know your brand. They are choosing come to the page.
We purposely do not count paid campaigns that drive directly to these pages because that would over inflate the number. I mean, you can drive anyone to any page with a paid campaign. You want to look at your increased ICP engagement on social. You should start to see that as you have better targeting, tighter messaging.
And then what you can do is you can combine things like your click the rate or view through rate depending on the medium that's being used and then go to Google Analytics and look at the data. Time on page bounce rates scroll depth pages viewed. Are they engaged? Are they leaving quickly because that's a sign that there's mismatch between who you're going after and what you want to be accomplishing?
And then my favorite just because I'm a huge data nerd, but you should often be seeing much more efficient search campaign structure. So you should have been weeding out from the audit of inefficient keywords. So these are keywords that you're spending on that just flat out didn't convert or keywords that converted, but they never turned into any pipeline. So you honestly, you should usually see 30 to 60% of your money back there.
So that's what we often look at early on. And then once you start to get near the 90 day mark, that's when you should see an increase in the number of the pipe qualified meetings booked. You should start to increase in the hand raiser to meetings book conversion rate. Things starting to signal people are engaged and they want to begin that sales journey.
None from there just depends on your category complexity, your sales cycle. So it could be a quarter could be three quarters, just depending on the length. But that's when you'll really start to see the meaningful movement. So increase on your pipeline.
And then from there, you can get into things like your sales cycle to understand like one is that downfall and pack when to be a three month sales cycle. You start an opportunity on June 1st. Okay, it's probably going to close towards the end of September. So you also have to be realistic and understanding how that all plays together.
So that was a lot for me on what we've done. But what's more exciting is where we're going. So I want to pass it over to you to give some of this visionary outlook. Yeah, so you kind of just gave a masterclass in like how we currently like set our expectations of like this is when you work with us, what you can expect to see what we look at during different phases, just to educate people.
And, you know, when we, you know, check in on campaigns, it's like, why are we not checking in on this metric right now? Because we're in this time period and we set this expectation and kind of through us kind of running this at a bunch of different companies. It's very easy to kind of just throw a bunch of things at the wall. A lot of marketing teams do this and they don't actually understand like what is working and what is not, especially with attribution challenges.
So what we've done is kind of how can we put in a framework so that we can actually understand what programs are delivering at an executive level like an executive. What programs are where and where are we and when should we expect programs to deliver and we've generated what's called the revenue R&D pipeline and it's a framework. If you want more detailed information on it, we just dropped a podcast on on state of demand gen and we just updated our website. But essentially, it's a, it's a process of advancing revenue generating programs from concept to fully integrated.
So I think this is when we break it into phases and each phase has its own metrics and exit criteria that we're optimizing for and trying to get it to hit that exit criteria before we move it to the next phase. It naturally aligns. All right, this is here. And in order to get it here, this is what we're going to need to do.
And here's the timeline that we think this is going to, we're going to achieve that. It doesn't what it kind of pushes back on is, okay, we're going to launch Facebook ads and next month where's my Facebook pipeline. It kind of gives you the permission to say, no, we're going to do this. And then over time, once it gets all the way to phase four or five, that's when we start expecting it to deliver.
So we've obviously seen a need for this because we get asked all the time. When is it going to deliver? When can I see the pipeline? When am I going to see the revenue?
R O I R O I. And the reality is, it takes a lot of work to get some of these programs to be consistently generating pipeline month over month quarter over quarter for you. And normally that work, depending on your program, your running or initiative, can take anywhere from like two to eight months, depending on how complex your category, your market, your sales cycle is. So it kind of allows you to say, we've got these three things.
Here's when we expect them to deliver and if they don't deliver and they are stuck in this phase, maybe we should stop doing them. So it sets up a better, I think, honestly, just like back and forth and not even with clients, but like if you were to use this like with your own internal stakeholders. It's very clear around where your programs are, what you're expecting out of them. And it's very clear what you're not expecting out of them.
So I'm super excited. Some of our clients have just started using it. And I'm sure we'll try a lot more as we learn. But that's kind of where we're at and why we developed it.
Yeah, that's exciting. I'm really, really glad that we're rolling this out because it does. It makes it just so much easier to have that conversation around timelines and also just setting expectations. You know, we know these three programs will generate extra months.
We can count on them and then how do we stack this growth on top of it? We want to experiment with these types of things. We have hypotheses that test it out and then we can start to layer them on and that's where we really get that growth curve. It's not one channel that drives the amazing results.
It's a sum of it all. And so that's where we really start to get that exponential effect. So I can't wait for us to have more clients on this. I do think it's really going to change things up for us.
So, yeah, this is all exciting stuff. So as we think about the timing aspect of it, I know we've worked with clients that are, you know, early stage startup, mid stage startup, late stage startup. So I can share an example of, you know, an earlier stage startup, what was the timing of it all look like and then what were the factors that led into it working well. And then I'll let you talk a little bit more about a later stage startup and the timing and everything there.
So from the earlier stage startup, I want to talk about one of the groundwork. So it took a couple months to accomplish this before they even started the strategy. They were getting buy in internally from their CEO, their head of sales. They were bringing on a new VP of marketing.
So they were doing the internal marketing to get the knowledge set up where they said we want to shift to the strategy. Here's what it's going to do. Here's what our numbers are going to look like. And then they brought us on once that knowledge was already in place.
So they spent a couple months there again. Two months from that point, they were ready for us to come in really shift the paid strategy. So we started executing the playbook that we all run. They really created more content that was focused on the market, not on their product.
So again, like what's the benefit to the prospects content that genuinely helps them a lot of video so they can understand what it's like to be the end users and solving problems that they're currently facing. And then they also executed a full organic strategy alongside this because separate conversation paid is not your only lever if you're playing only on that. Good luck. So they had a podcast going there.
Their CEO posting on LinkedIn and so many of these other items. They did all this. So from getting CEO buy-in to when they saw results, it was about nine months. They stayed with it.
They were months when I remember we had very, very tough calls. But after that, we saw this consistent take off and then they were just producing a remarkable level. And a lot of that was the nine month mark. There was a combination of things, but really was a lot of their market head and learned about them by them and they've gone through those things.
So the budgets had played around. They were wrapping up contracts with existing vendors. So all of this came together to lead to a lot of those results. So we saw early indicators in the beginning that showed us like, are we on the right track?
Yes, no, that's makes a minor changes. But the real thing is they stuck with it. They knew they were on the right track by monitoring things and then it took off from there. So that's a smaller company.
I know it's a bit different. Okay. You only have to get one CEO, one head of sales on. What was it like for you when you were dealing with a large organization?
Yeah. So I sometimes the larger organizations, there's more people. There's more red tape. There's more approvals or there's sometimes just like more opinions and things that you have to like work through.
So it can take a little bit longer depending on your org. What's interesting about this company is we, you know, they were very heavily in like paid, but probably running a not what we would recommend type of paid strategy. So there was some easy ones that we could do quickly while we went through. Okay.
What's the create demand strategy? What's what else are you guys going to do? So it's very similar. They stood up while we kind of took over some of the pain.
They also stood up like an event strategy and event flywheel, right? And that's something that their subject matter experts could do. Their team was owning and we were definitely helping advising on and helping of like, how do we then use this content that you guys are doing and then distribute it to the market. So again, it was kind of a two prong approach.
Not just ads, like you mentioned, but I mean, we typically saw it was about six months. So by the second quarter, we saw, you know, pretty good results. Obviously, they didn't have a little bit lower cell cycle. It was like 65 days.
So, you know, that plays into the timing that you're going to see results. But what's interesting with them is we will see, we've seen results, right? And they don't always go up into the right every quarter. And that's natural.
I don't know any company that's always up into the right. So we saw kind of a big bump and we were able to maintain, maintain that pipeline creation and revenue at that level for two quarters. And then it kind of starts to plateau, right? So you're like, okay, now how do we get this to bump up again?
Right? So you're going to see that you're going to get lift. And then if you can maintain that and deliver on that every quarter, but then it is going to get stagnant or flat if you don't continually experiment and try to layer net new things on. So that's kind of our, that's kind of what happened here.
So they were doing a lot of the bent stuff. We broke out and we started testing other page channels. Basically, we said we're, we've proven we can educate our market and we get our market to come to us using these programs. But we need to figure out what's next, right?
How do we use what they're already doing? You know, they were investing in organic and SEO. They're building out their web pages. So we have more educational content, investing in templates, like a lot of their content strategy was going to play into then how we could get them to the next level.
But it took them, again, another six months to develop a lot of that content strategy for us to then plateau to the next growth level, growth level of their pipeline. So it's almost like an ongoing cycle. Like you will get growth. You'll see that growth plateau and you better always be building because you're going to need, you're going to need that to then get to your next kind of milestone of growth.
Yeah, I love that. And I think that's so important that they recognize that, you know, we're growing into plateau. It's not just, okay, that's three more money on the fire and see what it does. But they recognize we need more content.
If we want to support this, we, if we want to expand on different markets, whatever that is, I mean, you spoke about the events. I can only imagine how much money was spent at those events and also all the production that went into that. So, I mean, you can't solve things with just during when you have to be mindful of it because at those events, I'm sure they were talking to customers, prospects, people who were on the ground level, who truly felt it and they wanted to get a pulse on like, what are you struggling with? What can we help you with?
What are you experiencing? And then building content that spoke to that and spoke to their pains, not come look at us, come look at how great our product is and look at this shiny, great feature. But it was focused on the value that they were going to get out of it and being able to shift that strategy. I think that's where a lot of organizations struggle as well is they're just like, let's put money into this ebook or let's drive more people to this webinar and the webinar is just a one way communication.
It's not a dialogue. I think that's part of what has made some of the more recent podcast, why people enjoy them because it's a discussion. It's not one company conducting all of its thoughts and everything you need to do at you and you just have to absorb it, but they're getting push back. They're getting questions back and it forces them to really think about, okay, like, what should we be creating?
And this is valuable feedback. Should we be building it into our product roadmap or using this to tailor our sales pitches? So, yeah, I think that those who have adopted this mindset of really letting their customers and prospects leverage a good bit of their content strategy, what's being produced. They're the ones that are continuing to grow up through tough times.
Yeah, you can't without a content strategy that's driven by customer insights, like you're not going to win. You can put paid behind crappy stuff and it's not going to be successful. So, and that's where we really partner with our clients that we work with. Like, we are not experts on their persona and their brand, but we are experts on how to create demand and what strategies they should be deploying or maybe what makes sense to explore.
So, it's more than just running paid or, you know, let's let's stand up a LinkedIn employee advocacy campaign or something. It's what should you guys be doing that? You guys are the experts at that's going to drive that content strategy and honestly growth strategy. And then how are we going to use that across all of these different programs channels, you know, whether they're paid organic or just like grassroots.
Yeah, that's such a good point. So, I guess as we kind of wrap it up and really think about, you know, there's no overnight success with it. It's going to take you a couple quarters just to see the initial insight of, is it, are we on the right track? You know, you have to be willing to stick with it.
Again, I hate using this analogy, but it's so spot on going to the gym, the exercising. You go for one run. You do one bicep curl. You do one pushup.
You're not going to see results. It's doing it consistently over and over over time. And that's what you really start to see it and grow on top of it. So, the question earlier on, it's going to take you out to give yourself at least two quarters to see the initial results.
It's probably going to take you three to four to really validate though, if you're if you're doing the right thing. But again, the investment's worth it. If, like you said, you know, you're doing everything that we tell you and you're measuring the right things, you've got the self-port attribution and you understand the why and the value of it. And then along the way, have fun.
And I said, if your content sucks, have some fun with it. I mean, people have personalities. They want to see brands that aren't just, you know, blue background, some boring copy about ROI. But, you know, have some fun.
If you know your market and the pains that they go through, you know, go a little over the top with some of those pains. So just be like, we get it, you know, we've been on your spot. So, create great content. Give yourself time.
I know it's much easier said than done, but anything else you'd add to that? No, I think I think you wrapped it up pretty well. And also just make sure you set expectations when with whoever's approving this or you're working with them when you're going to see results. I think that's the biggest one.
What are we going to do today versus I'm doing this today for next quarter? Exactly. I love it. Well, great conversation as always.
Hopefully this is helpful to anyone who's stuck in month three and wondering, you know, when all are going to start seeing results, hopefully this gives you a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. So, until next week, talk to you later, Sydney.