How to Conduct Customer Interviews in 2023 with Ryan Paul Gibson

[00:00:00] Jess Bahr: You're not going to get themes and patterns that are going to help you in marketing because you might just get biased by one side and then you start spending money on all sorts of marketing activities that make no sense for closing deals.
[00:00:17] Ryan Paul Gibson: Welcome to marketers.
[00:00:19] Ryan Paul Gibson: Talking marketing.
[00:00:20] Ryan Paul Gibson: Today we're joined by Ryan Gibson.
[00:00:22] Ryan Paul Gibson: Can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
[00:00:25] Jess Bahr: Yeah, thanks for having me first.
[00:00:27] Jess Bahr: I should say that thank you would be nice.
[00:00:29] Ryan Paul Gibson: Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:30] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:00:30] Jess Bahr: Manners.
[00:00:31] Jess Bahr: My background.
[00:00:32] Jess Bahr: So I'm a B.
[00:00:33] Jess Bahr: Two B.
[00:00:33] Jess Bahr: Marketer.
[00:00:34] Jess Bahr: I've been in B two B 20 years.
[00:00:36] Jess Bahr: I started off actually sort of in sales operations and business development, and I did that for a good six, seven years.
[00:00:44] Jess Bahr: I took a bit of a hiatus, went back to school, took broadcasting, became a reporter for three years.
[00:00:52] Jess Bahr: TV and radio.
[00:00:54] Jess Bahr: Yeah, which has sort of really helped solidify the work that I do now, which I'm sure we're going to talk about.
[00:01:00] Jess Bahr: And after that three years, it was a super fun job, but it was like not my calling.
[00:01:06] Ryan Paul Gibson: It was like 05:00 a.m.
[00:01:08] Ryan Paul Gibson: Like 02:00 a.m calls to be on.
[00:01:10] Ryan Paul Gibson: No, thank you.
[00:01:11] Jess Bahr: I was a morning reporter, so I was up at 04:30 A.m.
[00:01:15] Jess Bahr: Scouring the streets for a story.
[00:01:18] Jess Bahr: And it was great and it gave me a lot of amazing skills.
[00:01:22] Jess Bahr: But I went back to the business world, ran marketing for a few places, and then about four years ago broke it on my own.
[00:01:31] Jess Bahr: And now in the last two years, I've really focused in on, through my company called Content Lift.
[00:01:37] Jess Bahr: We do customer research, interviews for B, two B marketing and sales teams.
[00:01:42] Jess Bahr: Because for me, it's like just the foundation of how you make everything starts with that.
[00:01:47] Jess Bahr: And if you don't have really good market or customer or buyer intelligence, it's all going to fall apart down the line.
[00:01:54] Jess Bahr: I don't care how good you think you are.
[00:01:56] Jess Bahr: So that's sort of why I do it.
[00:01:58] Jess Bahr: It's always been my favorite part of marketing.
[00:02:00] Jess Bahr: That's sort of the skinny on me.
[00:02:02] Ryan Paul Gibson: I'm sure myself included, and listeners are having flashbacks to when product or engineering comes and says, hey, we got this really great product we built.
[00:02:11] Ryan Paul Gibson: Go sell it.
[00:02:12] Ryan Paul Gibson: It's like, well, hold on, how are you building for it?
[00:02:15] Ryan Paul Gibson: Because Product Market Fit is the thing we all strive for, and it's really hard to find Product Market Fit when you don't build a product for anyone specifically or build a sales motion for anyone specifically.
[00:02:29] Ryan Paul Gibson: So it definitely feels like it should be the foundation to a good marketing program.
[00:02:33] Ryan Paul Gibson: But I know for a lot of people, they skip past it and think, hey, I know my customer, I know what they want.
[00:02:37] Ryan Paul Gibson: I am my customer, so let me go build for myself, and others will follow.
[00:02:42] Jess Bahr: Yeah, and that works in the beginning.
[00:02:46] Jess Bahr: That's how most businesses get found, is someone with subject matter expertise or they have domain discipline.
[00:02:54] Jess Bahr: So let's say SaaS.
[00:02:56] Jess Bahr: Most software companies are technically founded like they're funded by a technical discipline and they see a thing and an opportunity and like, oh, I can make this better, maybe I can spin it out and make money.
[00:03:07] Jess Bahr: And that's how most businesses typically start.
[00:03:10] Jess Bahr: The challenge is then when you start to grow beyond those initial early customers you get, or those few beta testers, there's just more intricacies in a market and how buyers evaluate solutions and how you can build a go to market and sales strategy around that.
[00:03:27] Jess Bahr: So it starts to sort of get away from you after the founder sort of lets go of the reins.
[00:03:34] Ryan Paul Gibson: I can 100% see that.
[00:03:35] Discussing Customer Research with Jess Bahr

[00:03:35] Ryan Paul Gibson: So where do you typically come in to work with clients?
[00:03:38] Ryan Paul Gibson: Is it after they have their product and they're trying to get a better fit for it?
[00:03:41] Ryan Paul Gibson: Is it earlier stage?
[00:03:43] Jess Bahr: Yeah, around there.
[00:03:45] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:03:46] Jess Bahr: Just for people who might not be familiar with the research side, there's tons of different types of research you can do.
[00:03:52] Jess Bahr: There's Uxuy, there is Win loss analysis, there's Churn analysis, whatever.
[00:04:01] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:04:02] Jess Bahr: I do what's called buyer research predominantly, so I focus more on the acquisition side of things from when people first identify a problem in a business to sales gets check or credit card gets put into whatever you're using.
[00:04:18] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:04:18] Jess Bahr: And you get locked in.
[00:04:20] Jess Bahr: So I sort of play in that space there.
[00:04:23] Jess Bahr: But for me, yeah, specifically I will work with companies that have some they're making some money, they have some customers, right.
[00:04:34] Jess Bahr: And now they just sort of need to build it out.
[00:04:37] Jess Bahr: Or they've built something, they have a bit of customers, but it's not working right.
[00:04:40] Jess Bahr: Maybe they think they have something wrong about how it's positioned, who they're supposed to go after, because that happens too.
[00:04:46] Jess Bahr: I've run projects like that where they've actually had a hypothesis around the ideal customer, but they've been wrong.
[00:04:55] Jess Bahr: That's typically the space where I work.
[00:04:57] Ryan Paul Gibson: So if a marketer is listening to this and they're saying, oh, man, maybe I need to validate my assumptions on my ICP or go beyond our founder and our engineering team as who our main audience is and really explore that and do a little more research, where do they start?
[00:05:14] Ryan Paul Gibson: Are there any easy spots or tools to begin with?
[00:05:17] Jess Bahr: Yeah, this is how I would do it.
[00:05:19] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:05:20] Jess Bahr: Because that's actually one of the questions I get the most, because one of the reasons marketers don't often do this type of work, and there's a number of reasons for that.
[00:05:29] Jess Bahr: But when they do get access to customers or buyers, there's three things that I always try to tell them to keep in mind.
[00:05:39] Jess Bahr: So one, what is it you want to know?
[00:05:41] Jess Bahr: What is the objective of the conversation?
[00:05:43] Jess Bahr: What is it that the information or intelligence that you need to be successful, that you do not have or you think you need?
[00:05:53] Jess Bahr: Who is the type of person that you're going to talk to and what type of business?
[00:05:58] Jess Bahr: Because that's really where marketing starts to shine.
[00:06:02] Jess Bahr: Because it's all about marketing is long form for market, right?
[00:06:06] Jess Bahr: What's the market?
[00:06:07] Jess Bahr: So we're trying to find a sample size of identical buyers with similar fermographics and psychographics that share commonalities and pains so we can market to them en masse.
[00:06:19] Jess Bahr: So if I speak to, let's just say a software developer or a CTO in a SaaS company and they have a development team of like 100 people, but then they speak to a CTO at a hospital and they have like maybe five devs, those worlds can be dramatically different.
[00:06:45] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:06:45] Jess Bahr: Now, they might share some pains and maybe the solution can help.
[00:06:48] Jess Bahr: But from a research perspective, you're not going to get themes and patterns that are going to help you in marketing, because you might just get biased by one side.
[00:06:59] Jess Bahr: And then you start spending money on all sorts of marketing activities that make no sense for closing deals.
[00:07:05] Jess Bahr: So I feel like the person in the business.
[00:07:07] Jess Bahr: So that's sort of like how you get started.
[00:07:09] Jess Bahr: Right to your question, let me know if I didn't answer it right.
[00:07:12] Jess Bahr: But that's how get people going is you got to figure out what do you want to talk about, who you want to talk about it with.
[00:07:20] Jess Bahr talks with Ryan Paul Gibson about importance of Customer Research for Marketing

[00:07:20] Ryan Paul Gibson: And getting access to customers seems to be a challenge for a lot of people to where maybe sales is really precious with a relationship.
[00:07:27] Jess Bahr: They sure are.
[00:07:28] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Ryan Paul Gibson: So I don't know if there's a way through that.
[00:07:31] Ryan Paul Gibson: Bribe your sales reps, give them cookies and try.
[00:07:35] Jess Bahr: Yeah, that's part of it.
[00:07:37] Jess Bahr: I can speak to that.
[00:07:39] Jess Bahr: That's been my lived experience.
[00:07:40] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:07:41] Jess Bahr: And still is.
[00:07:42] Jess Bahr: There's a lot of reasons marketers don't get to talk to customers.
[00:07:45] Jess Bahr: That's one of them.
[00:07:46] Jess Bahr: So sales acts as sort of like a gatekeeper to that.
[00:07:51] Jess Bahr: How I often get around that or I phrase it, or I help people phrase it, is they're just always worried about their accounts and the status of deals because that's how they make money.
[00:08:03] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:08:04] Jess Bahr: Pay their bills.
[00:08:05] Jess Bahr: So I understand I have empathy for that anxiety because it's really anxiety that's driving that apprehension.
[00:08:12] Jess Bahr: So I will say phrase it as such.
[00:08:16] Jess Bahr: Let's pick five of your best accounts.
[00:08:20] Jess Bahr: Would you want 20 more of them?
[00:08:23] Jess Bahr: Most often it's yes.
[00:08:24] Jess Bahr: Well, if I can't figure out what's happening in their business model before they get to you and you're closing that deal, then I won't be able to bring these 20 people to you.
[00:08:36] Jess Bahr: Or the chances of me doing that are dramatically low.
[00:08:40] Jess Bahr: So I need to sort of understand how they're thinking so then we can get in front of them and influence their decision process to gravitate towards you, to get into a demo or a sales conversation.
[00:08:52] Jess Bahr: That tends to sort of perk people's ears up a little.
[00:08:55] Jess Bahr: Bit, and then you throw them cookies, like you said, on top of that.
[00:08:58] Jess Bahr: So there's that.
[00:09:00] Jess Bahr: And then for executives, which are often the other one, since I've sat on leadership teams, I sort of understand how budgeting works, how we divvy up capital among different parts of the organization.
[00:09:12] Jess Bahr: So I always say to executives, how do you know you're not wasting money on your marketing?
[00:09:18] Jess Bahr: That's the key one.
[00:09:19] Jess Bahr: And you just say that they're like, we don't know.
[00:09:22] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah, that's like the golden question for so many companies.
[00:09:26] Jess Bahr: Yeah, and that's what executives care about, capital efficiency.
[00:09:31] Jess Bahr: Because I think what oftentimes as marketers, we forget that the money you get for your budgets comes from a pot that other teams are trying to vie for.
[00:09:42] Jess Bahr: Everyone else wants more money.
[00:09:44] Jess Bahr: So why do you get the money you get out of the only pot, the one pot of money that exists for the entire organization.
[00:09:52] Jess Bahr: So you have to be able to make that business case so that you either deserve what you're getting or you should get more.
[00:10:00] Jess Bahr: So research helps build that business case, and that's executives who really tune into that's.
[00:10:08] Jess Bahr: Those are some of the reasons people don't get it.
[00:10:10] Jess Bahr: I sort of haven't answered your question though, Jess, which is like, how do you get them?
[00:10:14] Jess Bahr: So working with your sales counterparts, for sure, you can go into your CRM yourself.
[00:10:19] Jess Bahr: I tell marketers that do that, especially if you are like a product led company.
[00:10:24] Jess Bahr: I might have thousands and thousands of customers and they might never even talk to someone in your organization.
[00:10:31] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:10:31] Jess Bahr: So them getting a message from you might be of interest to them, like, yeah, I'd love to talk about this product, because how you frame it is we're doing research, we're trying to make it better for you, we're trying to understand it for you.
[00:10:44] Jess Bahr: Product people do this sort of thing all the time, and often people want to give their opinions on the product they're using that is being very impactful in their work environment.
[00:10:54] Jess Bahr: And then if you're struggling there, there's lots of third party tools.
[00:10:59] Jess Bahr: I use a few of them, one's called User Interviews, and they create the aggregate populations of people in different disciplines, skill sets, companies, problems, whatever.
[00:11:12] Jess Bahr: And you can go and type your parameters into the machine.
[00:11:15] Jess Bahr: It spits back a list of people you can talk to, and you just to pay anywhere from seventy five dollars to two hundred dollars an interview to talk to these people for an hour.
[00:11:24] Jess Bahr: And they're in market, they buy in your category, they know about solutions like yours.
[00:11:30] Jess Bahr: And it's actually a really fascinating way to see how far you are from other solutions in the market and how people look at them.
[00:11:38] Jess Bahr: Those are some of the ways you can find people.
[00:11:40] Ryan Paul Gibson: I feel like that would be interesting too, because you're not using a tool like user interviews.
[00:11:45] Ryan Paul Gibson: You're not just getting your customer base with people who you'd want to be selling into that may not give you the same level of data if they were in a buying cycle.
[00:11:57] Jess Bahr: It's very different too, because when we're inside a company, we think everything we do is awesome because our customers tell us we're awesome.
[00:12:07] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah, they love us.
[00:12:08] Jess Bahr: Yeah, and that's great.
[00:12:10] Jess Bahr: But what if there's things you're missing as a product within a category that you should be doing but you don't have any line of sight into it?
[00:12:23] Jess Bahr: Buyers in market can tell you those things, right?
[00:12:25] Jess Bahr: You can glean how off you are by going to reviews, going to the communities, seeing what tools people are talking about, what they're using and why.
[00:12:34] Jess Bahr: But if you actually speak to these people one on one at length about your type of tool and why they may or may not buy something like that, it is very eye opening.
[00:12:47] Ryan Paul Gibson: As a marketer, one of my favorite ways to try and get anything with buy in internally is to tie it back to customer stories too of customers tell us they care about being able to X, Y and Z or customers care about this.
[00:13:01] Ryan Paul Gibson: The industry tells us they care about this.
[00:13:03] Ryan Paul Gibson: We hear from prospects in cycle that they love our webinars, so we need more webinars.
[00:13:09] Ryan Paul Gibson: Said no marketer ever.
[00:13:10] Ryan Paul Gibson: Probably.
[00:13:11] Ryan Paul Gibson: I think that's usually product marketing.
[00:13:14] Ryan Paul Gibson: They love our product demos, more product demos than everything.
[00:13:18] Ryan Paul Gibson: But it's always good intel to bring in to help build your program and really build how you present it internally too.
[00:13:24] Jess Bahr: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:13:26] Harnessing the power of User Research in Marketing

[00:13:26] Ryan Paul Gibson: You made a comment earlier, pre show when we were doing a little chatting about every marketer should know how to do their own research.
[00:13:34] Jess Bahr: I think.
[00:13:36] Ryan Paul Gibson: Like, we have a lot of newer marketers, newer into their career, marketers listening.
[00:13:40] Ryan Paul Gibson: So we talked a little bit how you can get started.
[00:13:43] Ryan Paul Gibson: Are there additional tools like user research that can help someone who maybe doesn't have a big client base yet, doesn't have access to a lot of clients yet, and try to just get the ball rolling on some data for themselves?
[00:13:55] Jess Bahr: I got this question the other day, you sort of asked it earlier.
[00:14:00] Jess Bahr: How do you just get started?
[00:14:01] Jess Bahr: Really basic, I think.
[00:14:04] Jess Bahr: This is just my career.
[00:14:05] Jess Bahr: I know what your experience has been, but it's always been very natural for me to work across an organization and talk to all the stakeholders.
[00:14:14] Ryan Paul Gibson: Same.
[00:14:14] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I don't think every marketer thinks that way probably for a lot of reasons.
[00:14:20] Jess Bahr: Yeah, and that's okay.
[00:14:21] Jess Bahr: I understand.
[00:14:22] Jess Bahr: There's probably a lot of reasons why they think that way.
[00:14:26] Ryan Paul Gibson: It's just always been orgs that I think create like big t trauma in people earlier in their career too.
[00:14:32] Ryan Paul Gibson: If you're in one where, yeah, there's a lot of orgs where sales and marketing aren't friendly and a lot of people come up in those worlds where if you don't spend out your budget completely, another department is taking it, and you're never going to get it back.
[00:14:46] Ryan Paul Gibson: And you go into every meeting.
[00:14:47] Ryan Paul Gibson: And so there's definitely a lot of marketers, I think, who it's not second nature to have allies across the organization, be able to work efficiently across the organization with that.
[00:14:59] Jess Bahr: So this is how I would tackle it, because this is how I've always done it.
[00:15:02] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:15:02] Jess Bahr: If I'm new into a company, first thing I want to do is just really speak to the different parts of the organization about first.
[00:15:12] Jess Bahr: I understand why we exist in the first place.
[00:15:14] Jess Bahr: Why is this business even here?
[00:15:17] Jess Bahr: Which sounds like such a silly question, but it's a vital one.
[00:15:22] Jess Bahr: Like what do we do and why?
[00:15:24] Jess Bahr: And then as a marketer, my first step has always been sales.
[00:15:30] Jess Bahr: When I've run marketing teams, every day, I'd be speaking to the director of sales or my sales counterpart every day.
[00:15:38] Jess Bahr: How's it going?
[00:15:39] Jess Bahr: How is the pipeline?
[00:15:40] Jess Bahr: What are you hearing?
[00:15:42] Jess Bahr: What's going on?
[00:15:43] Jess Bahr: And when I'd started an organization, I'd have them say, walk me through an average deal.
[00:15:48] Jess Bahr: How does it work?
[00:15:49] Jess Bahr: How do they come in?
[00:15:51] Jess Bahr: What are they talking about?
[00:15:53] Jess Bahr: What are the objections?
[00:15:55] Jess Bahr: Like, that sort of thing.
[00:15:55] Jess Bahr: That's the beginning of research of that buying journey.
[00:15:59] Jess Bahr: It's still limited view because sales only sees the tip of the iceberg of why someone buys.
[00:16:06] Jess Bahr: But it's a start, right?
[00:16:07] Jess Bahr: And that's to your question, that's the easiest access you have in that immediate time frame is talking to salespeople.
[00:16:14] Jess Bahr: I used to go into the sales floor and just throw ideas at the sales team, hey, I'm thinking of this.
[00:16:21] Jess Bahr: What do you think?
[00:16:21] Jess Bahr: And they'd be like, oh, that's interesting.
[00:16:24] Jess Bahr: This is why I think it's interesting, because I heard this last week.
[00:16:26] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah.
[00:16:27] Jess Bahr: So that's a very easy place to start customer success, right?
[00:16:32] Jess Bahr: Because they will tell you about what it's like after the fact.
[00:16:35] Jess Bahr: What is the impact we're having on customers, what is the end result, how do we help them move the needle?
[00:16:42] Jess Bahr: Right?
[00:16:43] Jess Bahr: Those are the two really quick ways.
[00:16:45] Jess Bahr: And then for qualitative research outside of the company, my favorite place to go is Reddit.
[00:16:54] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:16:55] Jess Bahr: I always say go to G two for the reviews, but go to Reddit for the real reviews.
[00:16:59] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah.
[00:17:01] Jess Bahr: In communities, because that's where people are honest, very earnest and honest about what they're talking about.
[00:17:07] Jess Bahr: So I'm a marketer.
[00:17:09] Jess Bahr: I'm in a few slack groups for marketers.
[00:17:12] Jess Bahr: People talk about tools all the time or solutions or problems they're having.
[00:17:17] Jess Bahr: You can go in there and just see how they're talking about stuff, because that is the moment where you're going to be able to start influencing how they think about solutions to solve the problems that they're encountering.
[00:17:29] Jess Bahr: So those are, like, the three easiest, low hanging fruit stuff.
[00:17:32] Jess Bahr: Because what I do, which is qualitative research, and even if you do quantitative research, like surveying and all that stuff, to do a survey, well, takes a lot of time and thought and effort.
[00:17:45] Jess Bahr: And what I do can take sometimes two or three months, which not everyone has time to do.
[00:17:50] Jess Bahr: That if you need insights and intelligence now, those three things sales, customer success and then online communities are like your easiest way to get stuff quickly.
[00:18:00] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah, I cannot imagine the marketing world without the I know there's a lot of slack communities but there's some really great ones.
[00:18:09] Jess Bahr: Absolutely.
[00:18:10] Ryan Paul Gibson: And prior know as a marketer I was going to in person networking events and there'd be one like a month that you go to maybe or two.
[00:18:19] Ryan Paul Gibson: But online communities have transformed the ability to talk about some of these tools in what feels like a private environment.
[00:18:27] Ryan Paul Gibson: But it's actually pretty public because you can I used to work for vendors and I would be in these slack groups as myself, as a representative from the vendor, seeing all these conversations about it where it used to be really hard to get into that.
[00:18:40] Ryan Paul Gibson: I love slack groups.
[00:18:42] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it changed everything.
[00:18:45] Jess Bahr: To your point, the amount of knowledge you have at your fingertips has dramatically increased because when I started in b two b, none of that stuff existed.
[00:18:54] Jess Bahr: When I started in B two b, we had two email addresses for a company of 25 people.
[00:19:00] Ryan Paul Gibson: It's like a sales and marketing pretty much, yeah, right.
[00:19:05] Jess Bahr: We still had fax machines.
[00:19:09] Jess Bahr: Back then, salespeople controlled the flow of information and the amount of information you had access to is very limited.
[00:19:20] Jess Bahr: Everything's flipped.
[00:19:21] Jess Bahr: Customers have more access to information than ever before and they control the flow of it based on these things.
[00:19:28] Jess Bahr: Like we just talked about reddit or online communities, social media, what have you, right?
[00:19:34] Jess Bahr: So marketers have to understand how all that stuff exists because that's where you start to influence how people build affinity towards what you do.
[00:19:44] The Importance of Product Marketing in Business Development

[00:19:44] Ryan Paul Gibson: Do you have favorite slack communities that you're in?
[00:19:48] Ryan Paul Gibson: Do you have ones you recommend people join?
[00:19:50] Ryan Paul Gibson: Marketers join?
[00:19:51] Jess Bahr: I just joined the product marketing always say is alliance or association.
[00:19:56] Ryan Paul Gibson: I think product marketing alliance.
[00:19:58] Jess Bahr: That one's awesome.
[00:20:00] Jess Bahr: I have no affiliation to them, but I just joined it and there's a lot of people in it.
[00:20:07] Jess Bahr: But for marketers that really want to move the needle in their career and just how they approach product marketing is really, I think, the place to be.
[00:20:21] Jess Bahr: And it's funny, like if I may, I sort of dated myself a few minutes ago.
[00:20:26] Jess Bahr: So when I started in B two b, I started in B two b, but it was B two b for consumer goods.
[00:20:33] Jess Bahr: And in the B to C world, research has always been a pillar of that.
[00:20:41] Jess Bahr: It's a massive thing and that hasn't been the case in B two b.
[00:20:49] Jess Bahr: But when I was in that earlier role, everything I would have done would be considered what product marketing does now, which is like how do you position the thing, what's the price?
[00:20:59] Jess Bahr: How do you go to market, how do we wedge in?
[00:21:02] Jess Bahr: Who's the competition?
[00:21:04] Jess Bahr: How do we position against them, how do we launch?
[00:21:07] Jess Bahr: Like all that stuff.
[00:21:09] Jess Bahr: So when I came back to B, two B after being a reporter and no one in SaaS and other stuff were talking that way, they just talked about what is our web page going to look like?
[00:21:17] Jess Bahr: I'm like, okay, that's part of it, but how are we positioning the company?
[00:21:21] Jess Bahr: And they're like, no, we don't do that.
[00:21:23] Jess Bahr: And I was like, what am I, the crazy one?
[00:21:27] Jess Bahr: What's going on?
[00:21:28] Jess Bahr: But then I think that's just because the internet was seen as a channel back in 2010, 2011, now it's the default way of how we do business across our economies.
[00:21:40] Jess Bahr: So it's just that product marketing discipline now is closer to what I used to do 20 years ago, where you're a core driver of the business.
[00:21:51] Jess Bahr: So that's why I like the Product Marketing Alliance Slack Group because I'm just seeing all these really deep, interesting questions about the nature of how you grow a business.
[00:22:00] Ryan Paul Gibson: Product marketing is the I think I have three or four interviews with product marketers so far and I've said it every time with them and one of them was like, that's weird.
[00:22:10] Ryan Paul Gibson: But I think product marketing is like the hottest, fastest growing function in marketing and also somehow the hardest to get into.
[00:22:18] Ryan Paul Gibson: I've never met a product marketing coordinator or like a junior level product marketer.
[00:22:24] Ryan Paul Gibson: So it feels like it's becoming this really specialized function of either very technical people who also get marketing or marketers, who really deeply get user experience and get product.
[00:22:37] Ryan Paul Gibson: But it is the Venn diagram overlap, I think.
[00:22:42] Ryan Paul Gibson: So like all the technical stuff of marketing and it's an exciting spot to be in, I think it's going to keep growing as a more dominant marketing function.
[00:22:50] Ryan Paul Gibson: And eventually we'll have companies where they're not thinking about do I bring in brand or demand gen as that first hire?
[00:22:56] Ryan Paul Gibson: They're thinking, do I bring in product marketing first and then layer on brand and demand gen later?
[00:23:01] Ryan Paul Gibson: Where a long time it's been brand and demand as like the two functions.
[00:23:06] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I agree with that.
[00:23:10] Jess Bahr: I always look at these things as like the responsibilities are sort of agnostic of the person.
[00:23:18] Jess Bahr: Certain things have to get done.
[00:23:19] Jess Bahr: Buy a business and who owns them can be different regardless of what the business looks like.
[00:23:24] Jess Bahr: So in some companies, what a product marketer might own might actually be a product person in another business model.
[00:23:32] Jess Bahr: Right?
[00:23:34] Jess Bahr: But I totally agree with you.
[00:23:35] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:23:37] Jess Bahr: I look at that.
[00:23:38] Jess Bahr: What they care about as the foundations of how a marketing strategy is either successful or not.
[00:23:47] Jess Bahr: And sometimes that works done by a founder in an early stage company.
[00:23:50] Jess Bahr: As a company grows, sometimes it is done by the VP or CMO and then as it grows further.
[00:23:58] Jess Bahr: It splits out and then grows further.
[00:24:00] Jess Bahr: You get product marketers in different verticals product marketers for different products.
[00:24:04] Jess Bahr: Product marketers as a company grows, things just expand and fracture and people own more specific pieces of the pie rather than a generous level.
[00:24:14] Jess Bahr: But I agree with your comment, obviously, which is like, it's such a key part of the process.
[00:24:20] Ryan Paul Gibson: One of the best product marketers I ever worked with changed how I structured and thought about my demand gen programs too.
[00:24:27] Ryan Paul Gibson: And so I think I probably also have just an affinity for product marketing because working with them made me a better demand gen marketer in the function I was in.
[00:24:37] Ryan Paul Gibson: But well, we're getting to time.
[00:24:40] Exploring the Primary Concepts of Tech and Marketing with Jess Bahr

[00:24:40] Ryan Paul Gibson: The big wrap question is do you have a favorite piece of tech?
[00:24:45] Ryan Paul Gibson: What's in your tech stack and what's your favorite part of it?
[00:24:48] Ryan Paul Gibson: Or your least favorite?
[00:24:49] Ryan Paul Gibson: Some people have chosen to completely shit.
[00:24:52] Jess Bahr: On things, but is everyone crap on salesforce?
[00:24:55] Jess Bahr: Is that like one of the common.
[00:24:56] Ryan Paul Gibson: Ones that hasn't come up yet?
[00:24:59] Jess Bahr: I feel like everyone hates salesforce but everyone uses it.
[00:25:02] Jess Bahr: I always funny, I look at salesforce, there's this old really old school saying in B, two B.
[00:25:09] Jess Bahr: Like, no one gets fired for hiring IBM.
[00:25:12] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I don't know if you're familiar with that.
[00:25:14] Jess Bahr: Oh, yeah, old one.
[00:25:15] Jess Bahr: I sort of say now everyone gets fired for hiring salesforce.
[00:25:19] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it's funny, I'm like the worst person asked that question because I'm so like anti tech stack.
[00:25:24] Jess Bahr: I'm very much like start with pen and paper and spreadsheets and then build from there.
[00:25:30] Jess Bahr: That said, my favorite tech I'm trying to think like what I'm in I'm in Notion now.
[00:25:38] Jess Bahr: I love notion.
[00:25:39] Ryan Paul Gibson: Oh yeah?
[00:25:40] Ryan Paul Gibson: Have you been trying notion, AI.
[00:25:42] Jess Bahr: I haven't, no, I know it exists.
[00:25:45] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah.
[00:25:46] Jess Bahr: I do use Chat GPT actually in some of what I do.
[00:25:53] Jess Bahr: I'm not a naysayer, but I also don't think it's like a panacea.
[00:25:57] Jess Bahr: I think I'm one of those people, like, it's a good tool to help progression.
[00:26:00] Jess Bahr: So, like for a marketer, say I want to push out one piece of content and redistribute it five different ways, but I want it to be different.
[00:26:09] Jess Bahr: Well, I can use Chat GBT to do that.
[00:26:11] Jess Bahr: Right?
[00:26:12] Jess Bahr: But no, I haven't used notion.
[00:26:13] Jess Bahr: AI.
[00:26:13] Jess Bahr: I just like Notion because I actually only started using that Wiki style of software.
[00:26:22] Jess Bahr: Like, I was using Confluence with a client that I work with about two years ago, and I had never used Confluence.
[00:26:28] Jess Bahr: And I was like, this is good because people might maybe people can appreciate this.
[00:26:35] Jess Bahr: But I've always struggled with Google Drive, which is now almost like a default for businesses because there's just documents everywhere and it's hard to find stuff.
[00:26:45] Jess Bahr: It's not well organized.
[00:26:47] Jess Bahr: So when I used Confluence, which is usually used in software development space because Atlassian owns them, it's all organized like a Wikipedia page.
[00:26:56] Jess Bahr: I was like, this is great.
[00:26:58] Jess Bahr: So I was like, how do I use this for my business?
[00:27:00] Jess Bahr: And then as I saw Notion more and more, here's a really good example of a buying journey, right?
[00:27:05] Jess Bahr: So I'd see Notion come up more and more in the solopreneur community, other freelancers talking about them, how people are using them, people building templates for them.
[00:27:15] Jess Bahr: I got in once, I was like, this is okay.
[00:27:17] Jess Bahr: I'm not there yet.
[00:27:19] Jess Bahr: And then finally, as I was doing more and more research projects with clients, we were struggling to jump around Google Drive with all the various stuff I had in there.
[00:27:29] Jess Bahr: And I'm like, I'm done.
[00:27:29] Jess Bahr: I need something to centralize all the information that I can share with a client instantly.
[00:27:35] Jess Bahr: And I was like, Notion, there you go.
[00:27:40] Jess Bahr: So there you go.
[00:27:41] Jess Bahr: There's a real life example of how research helps you in a buying journey.
[00:27:45] Jess Bahr: Notion, if you're listening to this, you can come DM me and I'll yeah.
[00:27:50] Ryan Paul Gibson: Get some free notions.
[00:27:53] Jess Bahr: Anyway.
[00:27:53] Jess Bahr: Yeah, so that's like, my favorite piece of tech, I would say, because I use it to run everything in my business now.
[00:27:58] Ryan Paul Gibson: Yeah, I love it.
[00:28:00] Ryan Paul Gibson: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:28:02] Ryan Paul Gibson: We'll drop links to everything mentioned in the show notes below, and we'll see everyone on the next episode.
[00:28:07] Jess Bahr: Yeah, thanks for having me, Jess.
[00:28:08] Jess Bahr: It was great to be here.