Welcome back to Stacking Growth Snacks. I'm Steph Crenola and I'm here with Ashley Lewin, Senior Director of Demand Generation for Refine Labs. Today, we are wrapping up our conversation on Demand Generation Dashboards and KPIs. Okay, Ashley, this is I think the number one question I hear when I've been in these conversations, how do you get leadership to buy into these changes?
What is the process for moving into this type of reporting? Stephanie, this is a great question and a tricky one. I think the biggest issue is there's so many marketers who know this is the right thing, but they're handcuffed and they can't think that buy-in is really hard. So I think a lot of marketers give yourself grace if you feel the struggle.
I think we've all been there as well. So this is a very tough one. And so it takes a lot of time and effort. So I just want to forefront that statement before we get into it.
My biggest thing is when you are looking for buy-in is that it should not be the first time the stakeholders hearing about it. I had a really great mentor who taught me this theory of constantly just drop little tidbits of information or insights into conversations with these stakeholders. It doesn't need to be formal. It could be if you're in office, it could be while you're walking through the coffee maker, things like that, but you just are slowly interjecting it.
And so that when you do come with the proposal, they're like, yeah, actually, you've been talking about this forever. Let's do it. So that's just one little piece I want to call out that I have also found really impactful. Let's go through the tactical pieces if you're looking for some help on this transition.
So I would say step one is a research phase. And this is key to knowing where to shift your strategy and get overall buy-in from internal stakeholders. It's really to arm yourself with data. You need the data to support this theory that you want to make the switch.
And it will also help you make an adequate business case as well. So during the phase, you should run a pipeline source analysis as well, the final analysis and if you need analysis, all three of these are what we call revenue performance assessments or marketing performance assessments while it can pull multiple different things. But essentially, you're going to want to know what is the state of your marketing performance in terms of business outcomes. So the end deliverables of this should be things like saved reports of where you saved your data.
The key to this is to be able to show that data so you can combat and distrust in data. This is another huge thing when you are presenting data. There's typically an automatic distrust in data. So show your work, save these reports in Salesforce, talk about whatever you're using and show the filters and that someone can just ease look into them.
So here you can have like a sample marketing plan. So you know what, what does it look like if when you're showing the problem with all the data, how do you solve for it? So you have a rough outline of the solutions that you would propose for it. So it could be things like we are going to switch our goals and we're going to be scorecarded against different metrics.
This is how we'll achieve those. We're going to switch our paid media. We're going to phase that over time. We're going to look into a list purchasing software tool so we can move away from data content because they're essentially the same thing.
Things like that again, it's just really providing a solution to that. Then moving in, this is still before doing like a giant pitch per se. I like to call it like an MVP launch. So try executing various tactics and almost like an MVP style in that rough marking outline you had.
Again, this can be a small budget. It doesn't mean you need to shut off all of your gated content and then move into all ungated. This is going to be a slow transition. So I would say try and launch something just so that you can show initial traction, especially when you go to do that pitch.
You can say, here was the problem. Here's a solution. We tested it out in an MVP format. This is what product teams do all the time so that you can show some initial insights and then it just helps kind of get that momentum going as well.
So execute a small scale experiment, compile data from your experiment and so on. And then here comes the big phase, which is the pitch. So this is when you are transitioning from that lead gen to demand gen. This is like quote unquote what everyone is kind of fixating on, which is the pitch.
So you'll be pitching to stakeholders and leaders about the previous spaces and why it's such an important quote. I can't highlight this enough business decision to shift. So ensure you're speaking the same language as the room that you're in and try to show that business impact as much as possible. This is somewhere I feel like we can continue to challenge the marketing profession is to really remove marketing speak from the conversation and put it into a business lens.
Pretend you're the CEO is one thing I really like to think of. So what is the CEO and the CFO and the CFO? What do they care about? Make sure you're speaking their language, etc.
Have a deck representing a decision for how you're going to be forward. I would say this is also going to be something you want to spend a lot of time on, like make one hell of a presentation deck for this because it is going to be core. It should look very professional. There should be no typos, etc.
So this is going to be that big phase. But it doesn't stop there. So let's say you get buy in or it's kind of on the waters, things like that. I would say you get that buy in.
I would say transitioning isn't like a light switch, which you can turn off right away in an ideal world. Of course it could be. But if we're thinking about companies today, I get to see this or you can just okay, we're shutting everything off. We're going to go into this new approach, etc.
So it takes a little bit of a pullback and pull forward approach. You're going to do like what I call like a phase five of scaling back. So let's say you do get that buy in. So instead of ripping that band aid, let's say you start scaling back your gated content spend, you start ramping up additional demand creation spend activities, etc.
So this will be a little bit of a slow drawn out process, but it really helps, you know, get the team okay with it, etc. And then the final stage on this or one of the final stages is a goal change. So we talked about this in previous episodes as well that if you are switching from a lead jump to a demand gen, it really first and foremost comes to goals changing because if you keep the same goals that the marketing team holds from a lead jump perspective, you're going to be feeling and it's going to be horrible and then you won't be able to continue. So you really need to be able to change the goals and the KPIs that the team has held against.
You also need to get the sign off from those leadership and stakeholders that you pitched to, you need to roll these goals out to the teams, you need to set an equal setting framework and KPIs, etc. So this is really key. And then that final stage is the turn off. So you know, you're starting to scale back in other areas, you switch your goals and then it comes to a point where you need to shut it off and you need to just continue with the full buy-in of demand creation, demand generation, etc.
So that was a very long wented answer for this transition. No, I think that's great. And I love the idea that you're planting these little seeds, you're leaving your bread crumbs so that it's not coming out of nowhere. Because I think that the step, all the steps that you go through are really clear and not easy, but they seem logic, they seem like a logical progression.
But if you're coming, if you're blindsiding your leadership with this, you're never going to even get the chance to start. Ashley, thank you so much for this. Where can people find, follow and connect with you? If you are on LinkedIn, I'm a little bit overly active over there.
Shoot me at the end if you're running into a recording question, I would love again to chat about it. This is my favorite topic. And then of course, follow over time lapse on LinkedIn, our podcasting so I'm a retail host. Thank you so much, Ashley.
And we'll see y'all next month.