Welcome to Stack and Growth, called to action, a show for the Trailblazers, change makers, and paradigm shifters. Each week, a different marketing hero who is called to make a change in their field will walk us through each step of their journey. They'll cover the highs, the lows, and what's coming next. Together, we'll help you find the changes needed for your own business to win.
I'm Steph Kreniola here with Evan Hughes, and today we're so excited to welcome Refine Labs VP of Demand Creation, Sierra Hopkins. Sierra is bringing us her expertise on Refine Labs' commitment to fixing funnel disparity by focusing on accurate reporting and data integrity. Not all leads are created equal, and Sierra is here to help us understand why and how to address it. Sierra, thanks so much for being here today.
Yeah, thanks, thanks to be here. I'm so excited to learn from you, but before we get into the nitty-gritty details, can you tell us a little bit about your path into marketing? Maybe some history with leaning on the traditional marketing funnel structure. Yeah, totally.
So my career actually started in sales, and I was in SDR way back in the day. It was right out of college, and I was cold calling people that had filled out a guide, and then I also was calling people that had filled out a demo for the company that I was working for. And it was just like a really, I just remember I was 22 right out of college, and I was like, I would hate when I got the content leads, because I'd be like, oh, these are the worst. I literally would call them, and these people would be like, sorry, what did I fill out?
Why are you calling me? And it was back in the day when we had to call and email, but the first thing we did was call. And so I was like, oh, I was like a twin-year-old. I'm like, I don't know.
I'm like, I must call me to call you. I'm being tracked on activities and activities, you know, like a caller email. So I'm like, I just got to get my activity going for the day. And so I just remember thinking it was really weird that I would call someone, because they felt like a guide five minutes ago.
Some people would be like, I literally just filled this thing out. Like, why are you calling me? And I'd be like, yes, it was a great question. So anyway, I moved, I didn't think about that.
I was just a young child outside of college. And then I moved into marketing. And so I was like on the other side of the house, and I was running marketing campaigns that were generating content downloads, and I was trying to figure out types of content to get, how to promote them. And then I kind of moved my way through demand generation.
I started a little bit in the customer marketing room, moved into like demand generation, lead generation, actually at the time we called it lead generation. And I worked my way through a few companies where we were doing the same thing. Like we were trying to get folks that fell out demos, but we also were just trying to figure out content that we could gate and put on our website and just get people's names. Because I just wanted a list of people that I could get to sales, and then they could do their job, and try to convert these people.
And then I came to refine labs, and all of the things started kind of clicking around the things that I'd been thinking about for almost a decade of my career of why am I trying to get these people's names and contact information by filling out a content download form. And so I moved my way through. If I'm on labs, I've been here for almost three years now. It's been an exciting journey.
I started as our director of demand generation working with clients, and now I'm leading a team of demand managers that are also working with clients. So really trying to bring a lot of the learnings that I've kind of started my career with into life in this current role. So excited to be here. That's a journey that I wish most marketers would experience, right?
I went in the cold calling and just calling numbers and getting screamed at, hung up on why the hell are you calling me? I feel like that that's something that a lot of us can empathize with when we're trying to understand our early points and career, especially as marketers, like what do I need to be doing? Why am I doing this? So I think that background's going to resonate with a ton of people, especially myself.
I was never in that SDR role. So I like to assume I know what it's like, but I have no idea. So to kind of come into that, I think it shows just evolution of your journey is so much more evident in why you make that shift, because it's like, I'm doing this because it's a job at a college and they tell me to do it. I'm starting to think a little bit more critically about this, and it's not necessarily meeting the goals that I need to hit.
Why am I doing this? I don't want to be doing this any longer. So it makes total sense and I appreciate sharing that. Yeah.
There's the, I feel like that's kind of the inflection point you talked about as you step through like each step of your career, but I'd love for you to kind of talk us through, one of these moments where you knew you needed to make that change. So you kind of jumped to different parts of your job stages, but when were you like, all right, this is time to where I need to start cleaning up data. I need to start having data integrity, making sure that what I'm doing is adding value for the business. Yeah.
So, okay. So I was a sales rep for a little bit, and then I moved into marketing, and I kind of just forgot about like all the things I thought about in sales. And then I moved into another role that was a little more demand generation focus at another company. And we were like, so I would say like we were pre-marketing.
Like they hired me to do demand generation, but we had nothing set up. And so I was like, okay, I put my sales hat back on. Where are the MQLs? Where are the opportunities?
And like nothing, I'm not even kidding you. Nothing was set up in our CRM. And so my jobs shifted from less about like demand generation strategy and more to like, how do we foundationally set up a reporting structure so we can use actionable insights to create a strategy for demand generation? Demand gen, because that's what I call it now, but it was literally jumped back into it.
And so at that company, I was really focused on marketing ops, and that's when I got pretty excited about marketing operations. And I was like, okay, there's things that I can do here to start to track where the leads are coming from, how they're getting in the funnel, how we identify them. And then I moved to another company where the sales, the CRM was set up perfectly. And I had to do like a few different things.
And so then I'm trying to like finally starting to use my you know, demand generation hat. And I remember this point where I was setting up like UTM values for our leads. And this company, we didn't think about things in like high intent and low intent. We just thought about like the funnel, the lead funnel.
And so, and that was how I knew it. At that point in my career, and I was like, yeah, it's a lead funnel. We just have things that come in from LinkedIn lead generation, or we have things that come in from Google search or direct and organic. And I remember trying to just like get these content leads that we were spending money on to get through the funnel.
And I was like, oh my gosh, like something, just something is wrong here. Because I couldn't, I couldn't try to prove out the value of these leads, because I knew exactly what it was like as a sales rep to be like, yeah, you guys need to work these content leads, but they didn't want to work the content leads because they weren't converting and not helping them either quota. But I was spending money on them because I was spending money on, you know, Facebook and LinkedIn and paid in Google search. We were driving content leads and not demos.
And so I just remember this moment of like, oh my gosh, like, I have to look at this differently. I have to, and this was also kind of the time when I started to, you know, follow Chris Walker and find loud and start thinking about like the refinance podcast. And I was like, I have to think about this differently. So that was definitely like a big inflection point in my career.
I guess career, but also just like my knowledge of lead generation versus an generation. And it was like a really, I just distinctly remember the day that I was like, this is working. And it's kind of cool that I'm talking about everything as a. So that click that alhamomat.
I mean, it's almost for me, it was almost embarrassing at that moment because I was like, wait, what have I been doing this whole time? But in the best way, right? I was holding myself accountable to new goals and new ways to thinking about things and challenging myself. And I think like you described it so relevant to most of us is operating in silos, right?
So you were the marketing function in the ops and you were starting to build out like the infrastructure needed to succeed, but wasn't necessarily in like conversations with sales, understanding how they're utilizing them, understanding quality index of measures. And I think there's the intent piece is the biggest piece here that I hear you saying is the most valuable to understand. Yeah, I think that's third two things that I really learned. I feel like in that kind of period of discovery and exploration.
And the first thing was, well, the first thing was intent, right? And so I like really, it's like, and I think about intent as categorizing offers on your site or even just how you're bringing folks, folks as information into your funnel. And so an offer, I would say like a demo request is an offer, a content download that's on a gated, you know, piece of content that is an offer, a webinar form that's an offer. So I think about offers as categorizing in the high intent or low intent.
And what we were doing, this company I was working at is we just said like all the leads are coming in and then we were just sending all of them to sales in the way that they came in. And of course, you're gonna get so many more of those content downloads, whether it's just an easier lower barrier to entry for someone to fill that out versus the demo requests. So there's that there's the intent. And the second piece was this like notion and importance of UTM tracking.
And a lot of people are like, okay, well, UTM tracking is going to tell you what channel things are coming from. And that's true. But we have to think about organic and direct as a channel as well. And something I think that's crucially important that I wasn't doing in my career at this time was I was just measuring like, okay, LinkedIn's bringing in this, Google searches bringing in this.
Here's how much money I'm spending on LinkedIn. Here's how much money I'm spending on Google search. And here's what I'm getting out of it, very linear, which that makes sense, right? But when you start to implement UTM tracking on your leads, then you see how many leads are coming in that don't have UTM values, or that have UTM values that are organic from Google or organic from Microsoft or whatever you want to say.
And that is where I think is the like, where it's really important because you're spending marketing dollars and you're not and you're generating organic and direct interest. And so I was really trying to reframe like how I'm thinking about that, and how I'm going to talk to my, you know, my executive and senior leadership about how I can showcase the value of organic and direct traffic and leads that are coming to the door. So two things, UTM tracking and intent. Yeah, UTM tracking one is like a whole deep dive to that I want to have one of these conversations around in a future because it's just like the implementation.
But even just thinking about that, trackability. So the UTM early on, right, that just like direct response was the marketing objective drive leads, whatever channel report out in silos of cost per lead for LinkedIn, cost per lead for Google, all of it was like, basically building out slides is what I envision and most of us have done where it's just like a slide on Google, here's the performance results and everything here's LinkedIn. And we kind of omitted this whole concept of brand organic and bound because that kind of operated as like the SEO or the brand team and it you don't realize or for me it was like that moment of, holy shit, this money is going into these channels. And myself just like in, if I was to purchase like clothing offline, like I see it and then I randomly go directly to the store to purchase the item.
I'm not necessarily clicking through the ad when I'm like being a bum scrolling on social media on the couch, right? It's like when there's intent there or the intentions right, then I'll do it. And like, how did you find that leadership responded to that initially? Like when you try to introduce that because I think that's the hardest part, right?
How do you sell that idea that like, well, it's not going to be quantifiable. There's no really like our lie on this that I can say, but we're making assumptions. I think that's unlocked for a lot of people. Yeah, so honestly, it's taken a few years to kind of figure out how to tell that story to leadership to get a set, because what's like, what's my goal?
My goal is to drive my as a marketer. My goal is to drive as many high intent form submissions as possible that generate pipeline and revenue down the funnel at the highest, easiest level. And so I remember when I was in this kind of like, ah-ha moment phase, I didn't, I didn't know. And I kept trying to be like, okay, well, if I can get enough money on Google's search, then then I can get money to like use for LinkedIn.
And so I was really trying to like, use Google's search as this because it's, I mean, we still kind of do this today is like, Google search is generating direct leads way more than LinkedIn is generating direct leads. And so I was trying to like kind of like specialize my Google search strategy, but I'm still missing out on like the rest of like, you know, we talk about create demand. So I was really trying, I didn't like categorize as create and capture at that time, but I was trying to be like, okay, I can spend more money on Google search. And if I can get more money out of Google search, like from a pipeline revenue perspective, then maybe I can use some of that money.
And I'm asking for from leadership to put it into like a brand awareness of LinkedIn. And so it was a little bit, I don't know if that's a bit in switch, you guys tell me like, maybe I was like, we've all done it. Right. And so, but like, and so that was like how I could try to finagle it at that time in my career.
But now I think, you know, the main thing first is to really get your reporting set up. And like, you have to have UTM value tracking through the pipeline, you have to have the high intent low intent, however you want to categorize it, some people say hand raise or non-hand raise or some people say NQL or just elite. And so however you want to categorize that you have to have that set up. And then I think the conversation with leadership is more around what is marketing doing like, we're all of the dollars that we're spending driving, all of them, not just the dollars on LinkedIn, not just the dollars on Google search.
And you do kind of like this blended analysis of marketing is spending this much money all up. And we are getting this much money in return and pipeline. And I'll pause there because I know there's a lot of nuance to that that we can talk about. But from a high level, that's kind of how I would start with leadership is the total amount of money you're spending on your paid media and the total amount of money that's coming into the pipeline from those high-intense sources, you can also do content or low-intense sources as well.
And I focus really primarily on those high-intense sources. Yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice. It's kind of the initial step is bare minimum, right? Just like identify high and low for your organization, whatever that means.
However, you're capturing the data currently. If you could take 15 different lead sources or inbound or contacts, however you're acquiring them, just break it out. Understand what that is. So what percentage of our traffic currently is high-intense versus low-intense?
That's an initial conversation you can set the stage. And then if you can start putting the dollars behind it, so marketing spent $50,000, 50% of that went to low-intense, 50% of that went to high-intense. Obviously, it's not going to be that's usually going to be 90-10. And then that's another point of the conversation.
So you stair-step each way. It's like, okay, here's the foundation of what I see. Here's what the infrastructure we currently have in place. And then that also opens the door to your point of we need to improve our data integrity so we can have more sophisticated conversations around it.
We need to implement UTM tracking beyond just absorbing it to the contact. But I think what you said is such the light bulb is like map that all the way through to the opportunity object. If you're using Salesforce or just make sure that you can identify that lead source and how they turn through the funnel. So when you do have those small wins, that's the odd moment.
Okay, we did invest in this and we are seeing an ROI on this channel. I'll be over still seeing growth in others. So I think there's it's very simple sounding, but I think that's how you have to approach it to your point. That's all you have.
That's all you work with. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, just to follow up really quick, I also think that it's like we're all marketers here.
And so we tell stories like that's our job. We tell the story to a customer and they either agree with that story, resonate with that story or don't resonate with that story. And so it's all about having the access to the data and being able to tell the appropriate story to the appropriate audience and what CMOs and VPs and executive level leadership what they care about is is my money that I'm spending getting something in return. And so at the very baseline, we have to figure out how to tell that story.
And you're not going to tell that story if you're just looking at spend your spending on LinkedIn or if you're just looking at spending on Google Search. So you really have to think a little bit bigger and like also take a step back and look at it from like a bird's idea. Go away. Yeah.
That's so what element, right? Like, why do I care about this and why do I want to spend 30 minutes listening to you? I think that that's important to go with that mindset depending on your audience always. Yeah.
You know, kind of thinking about like your journey, understanding that you wanted to make this switch, you wanted to transition a little bit into like more of a demand generation holistic marketer, you've had the foundation of sales, you have the foundation of so now you're kind of really on the front lines leading teams. Were there any sort of tools or like sort of mentors along the way that you think would be helpful for others that are listening to maybe think about adopting or trying to absorb? Yeah. So I would say I think one of my biggest like pieces of advice and things that I stumbled through in my career thus far is it's especially as a marketer, it's really easy for you to get super siloed into one thing, whether it's like a LinkedIn strategy or Google search.
I mean, Google search is freaking intense. Like there's so much stuff on Google search and Google ads that like you could optimize and do it's like a literal job. LinkedIn paid like paid socials a literal job. And so there's so much with digital marketing and paid media that you can really like silo yourself into.
And my biggest piece of advice is to step back and see the funnel and look at the customer journey as a whole. And that starts with someone, you know, it actually starts wherever you feel like it starts in many different places. But I think it's really important to know exactly where your ads are going, who's potentially seeing those ads? And then what happens when they see those ads, say they come to your website and then they fill out a form and then what happens?
I think a lot of times marketers, they stop at that. They say like, oh, we just got a form full of great like you as a marketer, you need to know the sales cycle, like you need to know what sales is doing and if they get those leads and then what happens? How do they become an opportunity? What is the process and can you recite it to yourself or to me or whoever, you know, like you have to know those things.
And I I've just been fortunate to kind of, you know, work in different pieces of that from like a marketing mouse perspective as sales, or not sales, but like sales, SDR perspective and in demand gen. And I think even if you don't work in there, you still can ask questions, you still can connect with the folks that aren't on your media team to really understand what their job is, what is marketing offs job, and it just helps you paint a much better picture of what is happening in the customer journey. And then it makes you a stronger marketer because then you can identify gaps and identify the problems that you need to solve to make your money that you're spending become more valuable. Do you have any tools that you've used to make this information digestible, either to leadership or to other marketers to take all everything that you just said, put it all together in a way that tells that story in a more like snapshot focused way?
Do you use it all that like grunt spreadsheet work? I don't have like a one tool to rule it all. I use a combination of like the marketing automation platform, like whatever your map is in the near CRM. And I don't know if this is answering your question, but I would say like in my experience, the most successful that I've been is when I felt I've had cohesion in like in my mind between what I know is happening in marketing off, I'm working on a mission platform, and what I know is happening in Salesforce or your CRM Hubs, whatever it is.
And so what I mean by that is like a lot of times marketers will just spend time in HubSpot or their Marketo or their Pardot, and they won't spend time in their Salesforce. I think it's highly important to spend time in both spots or like the sales people only spend time in Salesforce. That's fine. But you I think as a marketer, you have to spend time in both your marketing automation platform and your CRM.
So I'm not sure if that answers your question step, but I think that's probably my biggest recommendation of tools and how to like really apply yourself is to be very immersed in both of those systems as a marketer. Yeah, I want to just jump in there real quick. It's true. Everybody operates uniquely in terms of how they absorb information.
One of the easiest things that I've always recommended to my team when they get started is like the rule of 10. So 10 questions that you have, write them down and find the answers. And that could be like on the upside how leads flow through, what how are these leads getting to like the form? What is the form that coming through?
What happens after the form? What are the workflows? Write those down and make yourself answer those questions because those lead to 10 more questions. So it's like in any scenario, just start simple, like just your framework should just be what don't I know that I'm going to challenge myself to answer in the next 15 to 30 days.
And then when I don't know that you identify stakeholders to your point who you can kind of build conversations with, you can build the infrastructure around data integrity. So it could be the simplest tool in terms of just holding yourself accountable. And I think that that's worked a lot for me and hopefully that resonates for a few folks. Yes, I love that.
I actually have never heard of that, Evan, but I love that. I think that the biggest thing that you can do is like ask questions, be curious about something. And that's I feel like I remember that in Flexion Point in my career. I was looking at like Google ads and I was like, how do I make sure there's ROI from Google ads?
And then I was like, directly, I was like, how do I make sure there's ROI from LinkedIn? And so asking those questions leads you to data that will either answer your question or like you said, Evan, like how do you ask more questions that will lead you to other types of answers? So I love that. That's really smart.
Yeah, that's great. And it's a great relatively easy entry point as well. Even like you were saying, when you were making those sales calls, having those questions asked to you, just writing that down, you didn't have an answer. And so like going out to find the answers will help you become a massive change maker in the industry.
Like that's such a cool story to see is like the fact that you knew that something was off and you pushed forward to figure out why. That's why we're here today talking to you. But it's not all positive good growth. Would you talk us through any moments in this journey that felt maybe insurmountable or any missteps that you've encountered that you're willing to talk about?
Yeah. So I think this is recent and it doesn't I mean, it still feels like this has been a problem for a while. But here's what I am, here's what I am, have been struggling with. And I think a lot of the market is struggling with it.
When you shift your perspective to this, like create capture demand strategy, high intent, low intent, funnel reporting strategy, there is still this question mark from leadership. Okay, I get it. I get it, Sierra. I know that like my high intent spend is generating pipeline on a positive level.
Thank you. But I'm giving you 50 grand a month for LinkedIn. And I need you to tell me what that money is going towards. And so, you know, as just like a data analyst or someone that is trying to like directly give them an answer, you want to be like, okay, well, I'm not driving leads from LinkedIn.
So how do I tell that story? And I've run into this a few times recently, and I mean, I've run into this for a lot of my career, and I think a lot of us are running into this. And I think the solution is a lot of times now what we're doing is it's less about the pipeline you're driving from these channels like LinkedIn, and meta X, whatever it is. But it's more about, are you meeting these people on, like, are you meeting your target market on these platforms?
And that is the question you have to ask. And that's the question and answer you need to give to your senior leadership. And then you quantify, yeah, you quantify it. And so you essentially say, all right, I'll LinkedIn, 50% of the MQLs that came in in December have had impressions or clicks on LinkedIn.
Therefore, the money has gone like what we're saying is we're spending, you know, expert account, that's how to click. And so that's what you want to start to reframe the conversation around. And it's less about with these paid social and paid search channels, less about the pipeline you're driving directly from that, and more about the people that you're reaching, and then put a dollar amount behind that, like a cost efficiency metric, cost per account reached, cost per account engaged, things like that. And so that is what I would say has been a hiccup in my, honestly, the last couple of years, because I've definitely been stumped in calls or folks that are like, yeah, I get it, but I need to spend, I need you to tell me why I'm spending 50k.
And so it's really about choosing a different metric and reframing a different story and moving away from direct pipeline attribution. Yeah, you think about the data integrity. Also, sometimes it's just with the data that we have in the CRM, it's not feasible for us to paint that story when we are operating on a demand creation brand awareness play, where we're looking at audience saturation and messaging penetration to that audience. So definitely it's another point of like, identifying what data gaps you have and what data can inform different discussions or lead to different paths.
So I love that. And I think just being vulnerable about mistakes, we all feel like we all have been to that situation where we just like can't answer the question in a moment. And that's tough. Yeah, I think we all have this spend conditioned and it makes sense.
Like the thing that makes the most sense in our head is are we driving conversions or leads from these channels and are they generating money for us. And that's what makes sense. But marketing doesn't work like that. We know that by the buying just process doesn't work like that.
And so to figure out how to like attach different data points and KPIs to the buying process is where you're really going to win and the ones that you have to re-educate, you know, your VP, re-educate your CMO to think about the value of money in a different way than just pipeline. And this doesn't mean it's going. No. Because we think about, you know, your journey as well and kind of the ups and downs.
What we just say like throughout this journey of your career marketing and what is one thing that it's taught you about yourself? What do you appreciate it most about your skills and passions because of the journey? Yeah. Oh my gosh.
I think like when you have a question in your head and you're like something feels off, like listen to that instinct and that like gut feeling in your body. And so I didn't really do that for like 10 years. And I, you know, and like I think a lot of us didn't really do that. I actually will just speak for myself.
But I didn't really do that for 10 years. And I knew something felt weird when I was a 22 year old calling this person that just felt like a guy that they haven't read yet. And I was like trying to figure out how to talk to them about this guide. Like quite frankly, I didn't even read.
I was just like, do you want to have a meeting with my AE? And they're like, why would I do that? And so I just something fell off in that moment. And it fell off like that as I moved through my marketing career.
And something I feel like I've learned in those years of just exploration is when something feels off, you know, ask your ask the questions either to yourself to start writing down yourself, see if you can figure out answers and then start to talk to other people about it, have dialogues, have brainstorms, ask other people those questions, see if anyone else is feeling the same like, often is that you are feeling and you'll probably get somewhere that you never really expected to get. And I just remember I was working, you know, before I came to Refine Labs, I had this feeling for a long time. And then I started, you know, listening to Chris on Demand and Live. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, that's what I've been feeling for a decade.
And I was just really grateful to Chris and the Refine Labs community to like actually operationalize it. And so I think we all have this feeling of what feels often what doesn't feel off and to kind of lean into that and surface it and like, bring it out into the world and bring it out into the open is definitely one of the biggest things I've learned about myself and also my piece of advice for anyone going through the same thing. And that's how change happens. Like you have that conversation with someone else and you ask them that question and that question and they don't have an answer.
And then finally, you know, you see someone on LinkedIn who's asking the same questions as you and it builds this thread and now everyone's asking the same question. And now we have something that is a lot easier to take to leadership or to make the change because it's something that is more universal that's happening and building and growing and yeah, not keeping those questions to yourself because it's so easy, especially when you're young and just starting out to say, well, I have these questions, I must be stupid or I must be not paying enough attention or I don't have this in your to ask someone higher up these questions and like, yes, you do. And no, you're not stupid. Like ask the questions and find where the information leads you.
And that's where that's where we get these like revolutionary ideas and growth in the industry. That's really cool. Totally. Yeah.
Well, let's go to one of my favorite questions, but also these favorites, depending on your answer. I'm glad now talking about like, as we think about 2025, yeah, New Year in marketing, just the evolution that you've experienced, what shift do you expect? Or do you anticipate from your perspective? And how do you think people listening or other folks should kind of maybe challenge the way they're thinking about it and prepare?
Yeah, I thought about this a lot in the back of this year. All right, so I still think we have a move on movement. I still think that in the industry, we are trying to attribute value to paid social and search channels. And when I mean value, I mean direct attribution, like we talked about like this entire time, I still think that's happening.
And I think the reason it's happening is because no one else knows what to attribute value to and it's just like this just makes sense and it's easy and it makes sense in my head, right? It's right there in front of me. But what I think is shifting and what I'm starting to see is that people, people, me and companies, businesses in the industry, they're starting to understand the importance of brand awareness. They're starting to understand that we need to run brand awareness ads on our paid social channels and even paid social channels and educate the market about what we do meet their pain points that come known.
And I don't think that's taboo anymore. That was taboo a few years ago. Some people are still kind of like getting on the train, but I think the train is moving. What I think is going to be changing in 2025 is all right, this shift from, okay, I'm on the brand awareness train, I'm on it, I'm bought in.
But someone tell me how I'm supposed to report out on brand awareness. Someone tell me how I'm supposed to attribute value to the money that I'm spending. And I've talked about this a little bit already, so I won't go into super high detail. But I think what 2025 is going to be about is now we're spending money on brand awareness.
Let's figure out the KPIs for our business that we need to implement in our CRM and our reporting and our marketing automation platform that's going to show the value of money for brand awareness. And that LinkedIn is doing some really awesome things we're reporting. I think it's a great channel to do that with. I know hockey stack is like a new kind of up and coming software and tool that more businesses are starting to use.
There are different versions of this metadata kind of does this too. It's really starting to try to figure out influence of these channels and the KPIs. And I think that is what 2025 is going to be about. And the businesses that can lock that are the businesses that are going to spend or unlock that are the businesses that are going to spend the appropriate amount of money on the channels where their target market is at.
Well, that's like almost reframing, you know, the demand create demand capture to it's almost like brand now is create awareness. And we have the middle layer that's demand which is capture. And then it's almost going to be like evolving into like this idea of expanding. So I love that.
It's like challenging how you categorize within your organization and having streamlined definitions is awesome. I really appreciate that perspective. Yeah. Yeah, this has been great.
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