The World of B2B Marketing in 2023 with Tara Robertson

[00:00:00] Jess Bahr: It's a wild west.
[00:00:00] Jess Bahr: I think we could say.
[00:00:02] Jess Bahr: But it's so inexpensive, and people are still on Twitter.
[00:00:05] Jess Bahr: People are like, begrudgingly still on Twitter, because that's where they're consuming their content.
[00:00:14] Jess Bahr: Welcome to another exciting episode of Marketers Talking Marketing.
[00:00:18] Jess Bahr: Today we are joined by Tara.
[00:00:20] Jess Bahr: Can you tell the audience a little bit about what you do and who you are?
[00:00:25] Tara Robertson: Sure.
[00:00:25] Tara Robertson: Who am I?
[00:00:26] Tara Robertson: So I work at a company called Chili Piper.
[00:00:29] Tara Robertson: I run our demand gen programs, and I've been in B, two B, or I guess more generally, SaaS marketing for about ten years now.
[00:00:37] Jess Bahr: Can I just have a vulnerable moment here?
[00:00:39] Jess Bahr: I didn't realize until, like, six months ago that it wasn't Chili Pepper.
[00:00:43] Jess Bahr: I've been calling it chili pepper.
[00:00:45] Jess Bahr: I've been at two organizations that have used Chili Piper, and I've called it Chili Pepper on marketing and sales, all hand meetings, and no one ever corrected me, ever.
[00:00:56] Jess Bahr: And then I was on LinkedIn one day, and I feel like I remember at a conference getting hot sauce, and I just always called it Chili Pepper.
[00:01:05] Jess Bahr: And then I was on LinkedIn one day, and I saw and I'm like, oh, it's Piper.
[00:01:09] Jess Bahr: And I was so confused.
[00:01:11] Jess Bahr: And I'm sure I'm not the only one that's happened to, but you're not.
[00:01:17] Jess Bahr: Pivotal moment in my life, realizing that I was messing it up.
[00:01:20] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I run our AdWords, so I see the search terms.
[00:01:24] Jess Bahr: Oh, my God.
[00:01:25] Tara Robertson: The amount of chili pepper login or how do I do this with chili pepper?
[00:01:30] Tara Robertson: It's kind of interesting.
[00:01:32] Jess Bahr: That makes me feel so much better.
[00:01:35] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we need to have fun with it.
[00:01:37] Jess Bahr: I needed that.
[00:01:38] Jess Bahr: You guys should do some chili Pepper branding.
[00:01:41] Jess Bahr: Just put it out there.
[00:01:44] Jess Bahr: Someone will think it's a hot sauce.
[00:01:45] Jess Bahr: They'll get confused.
[00:01:47] Tara Robertson: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that, because we've actually gotten the feedback in the last probably quarter or so that a lot of people know who we are.
[00:01:54] Tara Robertson: They're like, oh, yeah, the hot sauce people.
[00:01:55] Tara Robertson: But they don't know what we do as a company.
[00:01:58] Tara Robertson: So they're familiar with seeing us at events, with our organic social, especially on LinkedIn, is doing really well for us.
[00:02:04] Tara Robertson: But we get feedback a lot that people don't actually know what the tech does.
[00:02:08] Tara Robertson: So obviously, as a demand gen marketer, I'm trying to fix that this quarter.
[00:02:12] Jess Bahr: I'm just imagining someone getting on, like, a sales demo and be like, yeah, so I have an event coming up.
[00:02:17] Jess Bahr: I need, like, 1200 bottles.
[00:02:19] Tara Robertson: As far as I know, that hasn't happened.
[00:02:21] Jess Bahr: But I used to work at a DNS platform, and every once in, there would be a just preposterous demo that would come in.
[00:02:29] Jess Bahr: Someone would have the actual demo meeting, and then the PDR, the rep would ping and be like, hey, they don't know what we do.
[00:02:35] Jess Bahr: They thought the marketing website explained it as something totally different.
[00:02:39] Jess Bahr: So they get on this call, and then they get halfway through and like, oh yeah, no, this is not a fit on that end.
[00:02:44] Tara Robertson: But how did you fix that?
[00:02:45] Tara Robertson: Was that part of your job to handle?
[00:02:48] Jess Bahr: Listen, that was so far above my pay grade.
[00:02:51] Jess Bahr: I feel like website copy is always the hardest thing to get alignment on internally because there's always, like, everyone has so many opinions of it, and especially when you sell into engineers and really technical audiences.
[00:03:05] Jess Bahr: The biggest thing that I would hear repeatedly was marketing's watering it down, marketing's making it sound stupid, marketing's making it too fluffy.
[00:03:12] Jess Bahr: It's like, Listen, Joe, your CTO is signing off on this.
[00:03:16] Jess Bahr: He doesn't care about all these intricate details that you think he cares about.
[00:03:21] Jess Bahr: We're writing our marketing website for executives, for procurement, for people who are coming to figure out what we do and make a quick decision.
[00:03:28] Jess Bahr: Talk to us or not.
[00:03:29] Jess Bahr: They don't need to know every little technical detail on the home page.
[00:03:33] Jess Bahr: The home page is self selecting to other parts of the website, but people get so married to it.
[00:03:39] Jess Bahr: And ultimately, how much of your website traffic goes to your home page?
[00:03:42] Jess Bahr: A lot of it ends up going to product pages and specific pages that are optimized.
[00:03:46] Jess Bahr: So it was always a nightmare.
[00:03:49] Jess Bahr: It will never be in my pay grade to try to get that solved.
[00:03:55] Jess Bahr: So we eventually did a few updates, but it continued happening.
[00:04:00] Jess Bahr: I think that's, like one of the larger B two B challenges is a lot of brands have names that don't always indicate what they do or it'll sound like they do other things.
[00:04:10] Jess Bahr: And so you do have to rely more on your website, your copy, your messaging, and your advertising to really hone in on what do you do, what's the problem you solve?
[00:04:20] Jess Bahr: Who do you want to talk to, and then hope that it gets the right way.
[00:04:24] Jess Bahr: There's this whole growing number of companies with freaking domains that you can't find.
[00:04:31] Tara Robertson: Yeah, all the iOS AI.
[00:04:33] Tara Robertson: I feel for them because you have to mention it every time you say your company name.
[00:04:37] Jess Bahr: You have to say IO and then whatever the root name is.
[00:04:41] Jess Bahr: I'm thinking of Primer.
[00:04:42] Jess Bahr: Specifically.
[00:04:44] Jess Bahr: Primer.
[00:04:45] Jess Bahr: I can never find their website, and it's say Primer.com, and I'll go to use Primer Get.
[00:04:50] Jess Bahr: Primer get because you can't buy Primer.com.
[00:04:54] Jess Bahr: It's probably a priming paint company that owns that.
[00:04:57] Jess Bahr: But there's so many back in the day, you go to buy a website, you could get your website and like 20 other TLDs for $10.
[00:05:05] Jess Bahr: And now everyone owns many of these domains, and you have companies with similar names, so you end up with these blah, blah, blah.
[00:05:13] Jess Bahr: I think Motion app is like trymotionapp.com.
[00:05:17] Jess Bahr: And then there's also Motion app, something different.
[00:05:22] The Evolution of B2B Marketing in Current Economic Situation

[00:05:22] Jess Bahr: So we were rolling into our topic, we were chatting earlier about how B two B has evolved and some of the challenges that B two B marketers are facing with our current economic situation, the growing number of layoffs, budgets getting cut, all that stuff.
[00:05:39] Jess Bahr: What are your very broad question here?
[00:05:42] Jess Bahr: What's your thoughts on the world of B two B marketing today?
[00:05:45] Tara Robertson: Yeah, that's a broad question.
[00:05:46] Tara Robertson: I think it's a tricky time.
[00:05:48] Tara Robertson: I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
[00:05:50] Tara Robertson: I think people are anxious about, like we were saying earlier, their team is smaller than it was last year, most likely.
[00:05:57] Tara Robertson: They probably have less budget to work with.
[00:05:59] Tara Robertson: So my I guess worry for B, two B marketers is that we're going to go back to old school, lead gen, gating, everything, just to kind of prove like, hey, we should be here.
[00:06:09] Tara Robertson: We're really important too, to sales.
[00:06:11] Tara Robertson: But what I see, at least in my experience, is that people are even less likely to buy right now than they were last year.
[00:06:20] Tara Robertson: So the last thing you want to do is scare people away with old school, like skating everything, chasing down leads.
[00:06:25] Tara Robertson: With nurture programs.
[00:06:27] Tara Robertson: I think, if anything, we have to remove the friction for people that are ready to buy and let everyone else just know who we are, what we do, how we can help, but not be too pushy about it.
[00:06:38] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I think nurturing is more important now than ever with it because the sales cycles are also longer and people are doing more research.
[00:06:45] Consolidation of tech tools in the advertising industry

[00:06:45] Jess Bahr: And consolidation of tech is a huge topic for a lot of companies where you may not five years ago, five months ago, whatever pre all this, you may have been able to get six cents and metadata for your advertising because metadata has better capabilities for display advertising than $0.06 does.
[00:07:07] Jess Bahr: I'll die on that hill.
[00:07:08] Jess Bahr: We'll die on that hill of saying it, but now they're saying, hey, $0.06 can do display advertising.
[00:07:13] Jess Bahr: And so is it good enough?
[00:07:15] Jess Bahr: Do you really need this separate budget?
[00:07:17] Jess Bahr: Do you really need this separate technology for it?
[00:07:20] Jess Bahr: Can you use one tool that can do everything half decent instead of getting specialized tools for different things?
[00:07:26] Jess Bahr: But that's not always like, the answer to it, because then you're again going to go back to those older school methods where you can't nurture someone because you don't have the tools to understand where they're at in the buyer journey.
[00:07:36] Jess Bahr: And so you have to just hit them with top of funnel or bottom of funnel content on that side.
[00:07:42] Tara Robertson: Yeah, exactly.
[00:07:42] Consolidating Marketing Tech Stacks: A Trend Amid Budget Cuts

[00:07:42] Tara Robertson: And I think on the consolidation piece, we're seeing that obviously my own team is being questioned on what our tech stack looks like and what it should be.
[00:07:51] Tara Robertson: We used to have intercom and HubSpot, both as email tools, and one was for customers, one was for prospects.
[00:07:57] Tara Robertson: We were moving everything over to one.
[00:07:59] Tara Robertson: And it's just the consolidation is can.
[00:08:03] Jess Bahr: I ask which way you're moving it?
[00:08:04] Tara Robertson: Sure, yeah.
[00:08:05] Tara Robertson: So we actually brought on a tool called Chameleon to do inapp, basically pop ups and different communications with our customers so that kind of took away part of the intercom use case.
[00:08:14] Tara Robertson: So then we realized we're basically overpaying for a tool just for email.
[00:08:18] Tara Robertson: So it seemed like an obvious answer that we should move everything to HubSpot.
[00:08:22] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I feel like intercom HubSpot is a pretty common stack for anyone who has product based messaging too.
[00:08:28] Tara Robertson: Yeah, one big change too is we had a totally separate team running customer communications in the past.
[00:08:34] Tara Robertson: But obviously with the focus on renewals and churn and making sure that we're making the most out of the funnel right now marketing is taking on a bigger piece of that.
[00:08:43] Tara Robertson: So it just makes sense for everything to be coming out of one tool.
[00:08:46] Jess Bahr: Yeah, no, totally get that 100%.
[00:08:50] Jess Bahr: And I think that's part of the impact that the restructurings can have because if you are taking communication from different functions and rolling into one, you don't need the tools.
[00:09:00] Jess Bahr: But when it's separate it does make it a lot easier for a team to own that tool.
[00:09:06] Jess Bahr: But the trade off is perhaps you have these specialists who really understand upsell who have a tool specifically designed for engaging customers and customer communication and now you're going to kind of a general one and does that have the same impact and experience and that's that trade off?
[00:09:23] Jess Bahr: There's a CFO somewhere who's like there's so many CFOs who just want to measure the impact of marketing but don't believe the impact.
[00:09:32] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I think that's definitely it feels like more of an uphill battle now than it used to be.
[00:09:37] Tara Robertson: I think marketers were always trying to fight for a seat at the exec table and at those conversations and now it's very much I don't know, I feel like we're being grilled in a different way that we're not used to.
[00:09:49] Tara Robertson: So that's a lot of marketers I talk to now are all of a sudden we're supposed to be reporting on things like churn that we in the past did not.
[00:09:56] Exploring Unique Marketing Metrics

[00:09:56] Jess Bahr: What's your favorite metric to report on?
[00:09:59] Tara Robertson: Favorite?
[00:10:00] Tara Robertson: We have a kind of a unique one here actually that I hadn't used before.
[00:10:04] Tara Robertson: We call it QHM, so it's qualified held meetings.
[00:10:07] Tara Robertson: So as a marketing team, that's kind of the North Star metric that we look at week over week.
[00:10:12] Tara Robertson: So instead of lead form fills or MQLs, we look at how many people that were either they were qualified and they showed up to meet with our sales team.
[00:10:21] Tara Robertson: It's a little further down funnel than a lot of marketing teams.
[00:10:24] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I like that though.
[00:10:26] Jess Bahr: Is that something then you're manually tracking?
[00:10:28] Jess Bahr: I assume it's like an updated field in salesforce if they completed and were qualified.
[00:10:33] Jess Bahr: Like a stage.
[00:10:34] Tara Robertson: Yep, we track it as a stage.
[00:10:36] Tara Robertson: Obviously we use our own tool for the meeting booking process.
[00:10:39] Tara Robertson: We're able to see who showed up who.
[00:10:42] Jess Bahr: Yeah, as I said, salesforce too.
[00:10:44] Jess Bahr: I was like in my head I was like, oh, they probably have something tied into.
[00:10:49] Tara Robertson: Yeah.
[00:10:49] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we're in salesforce, but we also do a lot of our reporting through.
[00:10:53] Tara Robertson: We have a whole new data team that has been just really changing our reporting and giving us much more granularity.
[00:10:59] Tara Robertson: So we use a tool called Sigma to do a lot of the reporting, but salesforce is where the fields get updated.
[00:11:04] Jess Bahr: Yeah, cool.
[00:11:05] Jess Bahr: I might steal that, honestly.
[00:11:07] Jess Bahr: I have a client that operates similarly but doesn't have a formal mechanism for it.
[00:11:12] Jess Bahr: And so it's just a number on a spreadsheet.
[00:11:15] Jess Bahr: Kind of kept track between a couple of different reps.
[00:11:18] Jess Bahr: So I might get inspired and borrow that.
[00:11:22] Tara Robertson: Cool.
[00:11:22] Tara Robertson: Yeah, it's QHM if you want to.
[00:11:25] Tara Robertson: Yes.
[00:11:26] Jess Bahr: This interview, this conversation is 100% worth it now.
[00:11:31] Tara Robertson: No pressure.
[00:11:32] Tara Robertson: No.
[00:11:32] Adapting Marketing Focus in Pandemic Times

[00:11:32] Jess Bahr: So when it comes to we talked about consolidating tech a little bit, budgets being shifted.
[00:11:38] Jess Bahr: How are you responding?
[00:11:39] Jess Bahr: What's your focus?
[00:11:40] Jess Bahr: Is it shifted since all this has started?
[00:11:42] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that's changed in the last quarter or so is we had a lot of ambitious plans to test brand new channels, and I was excited about those plans, but we've kind of shelved those for now.
[00:11:53] Tara Robertson: So one, I know you were talking last time about Twitter a little bit.
[00:11:57] Tara Robertson: We were excited to play around with Twitter ads especially.
[00:11:59] Tara Robertson: A lot of big advertisers have pulled out for various reasons.
[00:12:03] Tara Robertson: So I've been hearing that the CPCs and CPMs there are just dramatically down, but it's just not the right time for us to be trying something brand new.
[00:12:12] Jess Bahr: Gotcha Twitter.
[00:12:14] Jess Bahr: Listen, it's a wild west.
[00:12:15] Jess Bahr: I think we could yeah, but it's so inexpensive and people are still on know people are begrudgingly still on Twitter because that's where they're consuming their content.
[00:12:25] Jess Bahr: They can't leave until the content creators all leave.
[00:12:28] Jess Bahr: And the content creators aren't leaving because audience is still there.
[00:12:31] Tara Robertson: I feel like I'm on it more than ever just because every day is such a new I don't even know dumpster fire if that's the right word.
[00:12:38] Tara Robertson: But there's so much drama every day.
[00:12:41] Tara Robertson: I'm like, I need to go check out what's happening.
[00:12:43] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I just want to see what do they call it like when you watch something just because it's bad, which.
[00:12:51] Tara Robertson: Would be guilty pleasure.
[00:12:52] Jess Bahr: All the reality TV shows I watch.
[00:12:55] Tara Robertson: Yeah, same.
[00:12:55] Tara Robertson: Maybe that's why I'm so drawn to Twitter, because I'm a big drama.
[00:12:59] Jess Bahr: Listen, I feel like when you have little drama consumption points in life, it lets you live a drama free life.
[00:13:07] Jess Bahr: I don't need to start shit because I'm going to go watch that and then I'm going to be like, yeah, I'm going to be really calm in my communications and collaborative because I don't want to start shit because I'm already got my drama quota filled from watching 90 Day Fiance.
[00:13:25] Jess Bahr: I love that they're responding to every pressing query with a poop emoji.
[00:13:31] Tara Robertson: I can't believe that's real, but apparently it is.
[00:13:34] Jess Bahr: It's interesting because I think there's a way of doing things and there's like the traditional B to B way of doing things, even where oftentimes, until recently, brands didn't have personalities, they were very formal in their communication.
[00:13:48] Jess Bahr: And now we're seeing on the B, two B side brands are opening up.
[00:13:51] Jess Bahr: They're being nice and friendly and sharing memes.
[00:13:54] Jess Bahr: When I first started seeing memes get shared on social, it's like, man, I want to do that.
[00:13:58] Jess Bahr: And I could never get Legal to approve that.
[00:14:01] Jess Bahr: I could never get that done.
[00:14:02] Jess Bahr: And I think when we look at Twitter, Elon is doing all this stuff.
[00:14:06] Jess Bahr: Twitter now is doing all this stuff.
[00:14:08] Jess Bahr: That's not how business operates, but nothing's really there's not like a consequence of breaking the business norms.
[00:14:15] Jess Bahr: They're sending Poop emojis in their press inquiry responses and everyone's talking about, but like, it's not slowing their press that they're getting.
[00:14:25] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't take business advice from Elon necessarily, but to your point, it's getting them, like and on the meme mean, I think that's why I'm so drawn to startups.
[00:14:37] Tara Robertson: I've never worked at a company big enough for Legal to say, you can't post that.
[00:14:41] Tara Robertson: I think if I did, I would leave.
[00:14:42] Tara Robertson: I don't think I can handle that.
[00:14:44] Tara Robertson: But our best performing LinkedIn ad right now is a meme, which is a little bit like when I think about what I was posting two years ago, it's so different.
[00:14:52] Jess Bahr: It's just what meme is.
[00:14:54] Jess Bahr: It.
[00:14:57] Tara Robertson: I feel like it's not going to sound as funny to describe it, but it's a frying pan with a bunch of spinach.
[00:15:01] Tara Robertson: You know how spinach?
[00:15:03] Jess Bahr: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:03] Tara Robertson: Cook it down a lot and it cooks down to nothing.
[00:15:06] Tara Robertson: So it's an over filled pan with the spinach, and then underneath that it says MQLs.
[00:15:11] Tara Robertson: And then the next picture is the spinach all cooked down.
[00:15:14] Tara Robertson: So it's like three leaves and it says qualified pipeline underneath.
[00:15:18] Tara Robertson: And the caption is basically like, your sales team doesn't want MQLs, they want meetings and qualified pipeline.
[00:15:25] Tara Robertson: So it ties right back to what we do.
[00:15:27] Tara Robertson: It's not a meme that's just like, look at this for market, it has to be relevant.
[00:15:31] Tara Robertson: I think that's a mistake that we made probably last year, we went really hard on, especially LinkedIn, a lot of content around recruiting, around remote work, because we've been huge remote work advocates since before the pandemic.
[00:15:44] Tara Robertson: And people love that kind of content of seeing where people work from around the world.
[00:15:49] Tara Robertson: And we have a lot of people that live in really cool places, like in Brazil and Portugal, and people love to see that, but it has nothing to do with what we do.
[00:15:57] Tara Robertson: So if that's all you post, I think that's where we got into a place where people were like, oh, it looks like a cool place to work, but no idea what you guys like.
[00:16:05] Jess Bahr: Do you do staffing?
[00:16:08] Jess Bahr: How do I work from brazil.
[00:16:09] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we get a lot of questions of how do I work there, but not necessarily.
[00:16:13] Tara Robertson: I would love to check out your software.
[00:16:15] Tara Robertson: So we're trying to flip that a little bit.
[00:16:17] Discussion about effective use of memes in marketing strategies

[00:16:17] Jess Bahr: So can I ask, when it comes to memes in general?
[00:16:21] Jess Bahr: Right.
[00:16:21] Jess Bahr: So memes are such a huge world of memes that can be chosen from.
[00:16:28] Jess Bahr: How do you decide on which memes to use?
[00:16:31] Jess Bahr: Like, are you guys making your own memes?
[00:16:32] Jess Bahr: Are you repurposing memes?
[00:16:34] Jess Bahr: What's your what's a great meme strategy look like?
[00:16:37] Tara Robertson: I can't believe I'm even having this conversation.
[00:16:39] Tara Robertson: It's just, again, when I think of the really dry ads I was posting two years ago at a different job, it's night and day.
[00:16:46] Jess Bahr: I also bet you, though, someone is listening and they're going to take notes and they're going to build a meme strategy off whatever you say.
[00:16:53] Tara Robertson: Well, I want to see it.
[00:16:54] Jess Bahr: If they do, you're a meme fluencer.
[00:16:57] Tara Robertson: So really it started on the organic side.
[00:17:00] Tara Robertson: So we had someone running our social last year, Marioli.
[00:17:04] Tara Robertson: She's amazing.
[00:17:05] Tara Robertson: She's moved on to a different role now, but she would try a lot of fun memes on the organic side and we would see just within our marketing team, like, oh, this is really taking off, this is happening.
[00:17:16] Tara Robertson: But one way that we got a bunch of ideas from the team is we have actually just a slack channel called Creative Council, and it's a mix of marketers, some people from the CS and sales side that do their own creative outreach.
[00:17:30] Tara Robertson: So especially our Ae team, they have a ton of fun on LinkedIn with their own memes and their own just creative strategy on Outbound.
[00:17:37] Tara Robertson: And anytime we post something that we think is interesting, we'll just throw it into that channel and someone will just jump on it.
[00:17:43] Tara Robertson: So sometimes we'll say, like, OOH, I don't know, that's a little bit too much, or this doesn't really have anything to do with us.
[00:17:49] Tara Robertson: But other times, like the spinach one, I just threw out the idea and our social media manager just jumped on it and created it herself.
[00:17:56] Jess Bahr: Yeah, that's where in the past where I've run into issue when I've tried and this was like 2018, when I was like, let's use memes.
[00:18:06] Jess Bahr: And they're like, whoa, who owns a copyright?
[00:18:08] Jess Bahr: It's a meme.
[00:18:10] Jess Bahr: I don't know who owns the copyright.
[00:18:12] Jess Bahr: Not DA Vinci, not who made the original that we're making fun.
[00:18:17] Tara Robertson: Mean.
[00:18:18] Tara Robertson: I could see why a bigger company would definitely be concerned about that.
[00:18:21] Tara Robertson: We're lucky that I think we're a little bit under the radar still.
[00:18:24] Tara Robertson: But one cool thing that we're playing around with right now too, is just there's tons of new AI tools on the image space.
[00:18:30] Tara Robertson: So our designers playing around with, what can we do with AI because we want to start to make original memes instead of taking ones other people are doing and adding our own spin to it, which is what we do a lot now.
[00:18:41] Jess Bahr: You could just make art inspired by oh, art inspired by customer testimonials.
[00:18:47] Jess Bahr: You take how customers are describing your platform.
[00:18:50] Jess Bahr: Put that into Dolly, see what it comes back visually.
[00:18:54] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we've done some that are like a chili pepper with a funnel and just seeing what it would turn out, but some of them are horrifying.
[00:19:02] Tara Robertson: Some of them are really scary.
[00:19:06] Jess Bahr: I can imagine that.
[00:19:07] Jess Bahr: I can imagine that.
[00:19:10] Marketing swag and excitement for upcoming events

[00:19:10] Jess Bahr: What else are you excited for in the marketing world coming?
[00:19:13] Tara Robertson: Oh, I haven't been to any events yet this year, but I'm super excited about just events being back.
[00:19:20] Tara Robertson: I think our team was just at Adobe Summit last week.
[00:19:23] Tara Robertson: I didn't end up going, but just the energy at events is so fun, and I feel like I'm just itching for that, especially working remotely and from home.
[00:19:31] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I love it.
[00:19:33] Jess Bahr: I went to a lot of technical events with clients and past employers, and I used to go to, like, two or three conferences a month.
[00:19:39] Jess Bahr: Tell you, my Sock Jordan is a refresh.
[00:19:42] Jess Bahr: Haven't got any new socks in a bit.
[00:19:44] Jess Bahr: I love swag, to be honest.
[00:19:47] Tara Robertson: Are swags your favorite?
[00:19:49] Jess Bahr: No, my favorite swag is unexpected things.
[00:19:52] Jess Bahr: Actually, my favorite swag is on my desk.
[00:19:55] Jess Bahr: It's a candle.
[00:19:59] Jess Bahr: It's a candle from RollWorks.
[00:20:00] Jess Bahr: And it says vendor giveaway.
[00:20:02] Jess Bahr: Obligatory.
[00:20:03] Jess Bahr: Vendor giveaway.
[00:20:04] Jess Bahr: Yeah, and then smells like an SDR email is on the way.
[00:20:09] Jess Bahr: It's actually vanilla scented and it's from Walmart.
[00:20:12] Jess Bahr: But scan a badge.
[00:20:15] Jess Bahr: Give out swag.
[00:20:16] Jess Bahr: SDR email.
[00:20:16] Jess Bahr: Scan, swig, email.
[00:20:18] Jess Bahr: Scan, swag, email.
[00:20:20] Jess Bahr: And I just thought it was hilarious.
[00:20:22] Tara Robertson: That's so funny.
[00:20:24] Tara Robertson: I have to ask.
[00:20:24] Tara Robertson: I know someone at Raw Works.
[00:20:26] Tara Robertson: I want to know if that was her.
[00:20:28] Jess Bahr: I think this was a Jody idea.
[00:20:31] Tara Robertson: This is a Jody idea.
[00:20:32] Tara Robertson: That's really cool.
[00:20:34] Jess Bahr: But it's my favorites.
[00:20:35] Jess Bahr: I don't know.
[00:20:36] Jess Bahr: I like just random shit that makes no sense at all.
[00:20:39] Jess Bahr: And I know that when as a marketer, when you go to ask for budget for things, what's the return?
[00:20:45] Jess Bahr: What's the impact?
[00:20:46] Jess Bahr: And they'll like things like mugs, because then it sits on the desk and you have your Chili Piper mug.
[00:20:51] Jess Bahr: I already saw it.
[00:20:52] Jess Bahr: So you picked it up.
[00:20:53] Jess Bahr: But I like just random, nonsensical things that are talking points.
[00:20:57] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I think the mugs I personally love it just because, obviously, like I said, I work from home.
[00:21:02] Tara Robertson: It's good to have a thermos.
[00:21:03] Tara Robertson: I think they're a bit overdone at events now.
[00:21:06] Tara Robertson: I've heard of people coming back with, like, five different tumblers from I think they're a little overdone, but it's one way to just bring that memory from the event back.
[00:21:16] Tara Robertson: Like that candle on your desk.
[00:21:18] Tara Robertson: You're probably going to keep that for who knows how long, right?
[00:21:20] Jess Bahr: It's from B.
[00:21:20] Jess Bahr: Two B.
[00:21:20] Jess Bahr: Marketing Exchange.
[00:21:23] Jess Bahr: I think it's the 2021.
[00:21:27] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it's moved with me a couple of times.
[00:21:31] Jess Bahr: I have air freshener, too.
[00:21:32] Jess Bahr: Like a little car dangle air freshener.
[00:21:35] Jess Bahr: That's like the same.
[00:21:37] Jess Bahr: Smells like an SDR email coming.
[00:21:39] Jess Bahr: But the worst swag I ever saw was a lightsaber, which sounds really cool.
[00:21:47] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it sounds cool in theory.
[00:21:49] Jess Bahr: And it was one of those where when you throw it out, it elongates, actually.
[00:21:56] Jess Bahr: Sorry, it wasn't one of those.
[00:21:57] Jess Bahr: It was one of those that was solid.
[00:21:59] Jess Bahr: It wasn't the type that elongates.
[00:22:01] Jess Bahr: And so I saw most of them in the trash at the airport when they couldn't get it through security.
[00:22:06] Tara Robertson: Oh, that's such a shame, because it.
[00:22:07] Jess Bahr: Didn'T fit into a suitcase.
[00:22:09] Jess Bahr: And so it was AWS reign event.
[00:22:11] Jess Bahr: And so at the airport, and there's just literally, like, lightsabers everywhere.
[00:22:16] Tara Robertson: That's so sad.
[00:22:17] Tara Robertson: Yeah, that's when I think about if people can take it home.
[00:22:19] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Jess Bahr: If they can travel with it.
[00:22:21] Innovative Swag and Standing Out as a B2B Brand

[00:22:21] Jess Bahr: Do you have so you like mugs?
[00:22:23] Jess Bahr: Do you have a favorite swag you've gotten?
[00:22:26] Tara Robertson: I mean, honestly, when I joined, we got a package with the mug and hot sauce and a couple of other things.
[00:22:30] Tara Robertson: For me, the hot sauce is just one of those things that people think of us because, again, of the brand, maybe they're calling us chili pepper, and that's okay, but I just think that's so memorable.
[00:22:41] Tara Robertson: I haven't received anything, but I've seen some companies doing swag for dogs, which I think is so smart because it's kind of like when you go to an event and you don't really want swag for yourself, you have enough.
[00:22:51] Tara Robertson: But if someone gives me something for my dog, I would definitely be excited about that.
[00:22:55] Jess Bahr: Children's coloring books were a hit for a long time.
[00:22:58] Tara Robertson: I remember that.
[00:22:59] Tara Robertson: Yeah.
[00:22:59] Tara Robertson: I forget what was the company?
[00:23:01] Tara Robertson: Was it lessonly?
[00:23:02] Tara Robertson: I think it was them that started.
[00:23:03] Jess Bahr: They did it, and then yes, and Packet did some for a bit that were all like, infrastructure.
[00:23:11] Jess Bahr: So be like, color in the server room.
[00:23:13] Jess Bahr: It's like, Listen, you have two colors on there because everything's black.
[00:23:18] Jess Bahr: Like, all of your servers are black, and then the floor is white.
[00:23:22] Jess Bahr: But it was all these, like, look where Mommy and Daddy work and office type color and things.
[00:23:29] Jess Bahr: You take it home for your kids, though.
[00:23:30] Jess Bahr: You're like, I don't want swag.
[00:23:31] Jess Bahr: But you're like, oh, my God, my kids will love that.
[00:23:33] Jess Bahr: And then all of a sudden, you have this packet colored in server room on your fridge for, like, a year because your kid did it.
[00:23:43] Jess Bahr: If anyone's listening, send us swag, I think is also the moral of the story.
[00:23:47] Tara Robertson: I also like coloring books.
[00:23:50] Jess Bahr: I think these type of things are how B two B brands kind of stand out and become a little more exciting.
[00:23:58] Jess Bahr: I would often as an early B two B marketer, in the days where memes weren't okay.
[00:24:02] Jess Bahr: I'd look at consumer brands with so much jealousy.
[00:24:05] Jess Bahr: Like, man, you get a mascot, you get to have fun.
[00:24:10] Jess Bahr: But now B two B brands are embracing it.
[00:24:12] Jess Bahr: They're embracing the fun side of business, too.
[00:24:15] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:24:16] Tara Robertson: And I feel like I used to just on the same note of B to C, we used to watch Super Bowl ads, like, the next day as a marketing team, just kind of for inspiration.
[00:24:25] Tara Robertson: I'm not in the US.
[00:24:26] Tara Robertson: I'm in Canada.
[00:24:27] Tara Robertson: So we get like a watered down version of Super Bowl ads.
[00:24:30] Tara Robertson: We get very different ones, but we would go on YouTube and find the US ones.
[00:24:34] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:24:35] Tara Robertson: And now we can just make our own ads, run them and preroll on YouTube.
[00:24:38] Tara Robertson: And there's so much fun stuff we can do.
[00:24:40] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Jess Bahr: You don't need the Super Bowl.
[00:24:42] Jess Bahr: You don't need that.
[00:24:43] Jess Bahr: That's $2 million for 30 seconds.
[00:24:46] Jess Bahr: You don't need that.
[00:24:47] Jess Bahr: That's the hot spot for crypto advertising these days.
[00:24:51] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I don't know if that'll be a thing next year.
[00:24:54] Jess Bahr: Probably not.
[00:24:56] Jess Bahr: There's a bunch of celebrities getting sued for endorsing coins, too.
[00:25:00] Exploring the Potential of YouTube Preroll and LinkedIn in B2B Marketing

[00:25:00] Jess Bahr: Speaking of YouTube, YouTube pre roll is still a hotspot for advertising.
[00:25:05] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we've been experimenting.
[00:25:07] Tara Robertson: I will say my budget for it right now is pretty small, so I haven't gone crazy with it.
[00:25:11] Tara Robertson: But we're experimenting with running retargeting audiences so we know that it's the right people.
[00:25:16] Tara Robertson: That's one thing that b to b marketers have struggled with, at least I know I've struggled with in the past with YouTube, is I spent five grand, but I don't know who watched it.
[00:25:24] Tara Robertson: And that's really tough for me to justify.
[00:25:27] Tara Robertson: So now we're playing around with preroll, and it's just people who've already been to our website, so more than likely they're qualified in our ICP.
[00:25:36] Jess Bahr: I love that.
[00:25:38] Jess Bahr: I think that's the perfect way to do it in that side.
[00:25:40] Jess Bahr: I used to run Google ads targeting just to anyone in our database.
[00:25:45] Jess Bahr: Like, if you're ICP, I don't care.
[00:25:47] Tara Robertson: What you're searching, don't just want to be there.
[00:25:50] Jess Bahr: Find let me let me distract you from that recipe you're looking for and get you looking at our recipes for success with your infrastructure.
[00:26:00] Tara Robertson: I like that.
[00:26:01] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we haven't done a ton of that.
[00:26:03] Tara Robertson: What I've struggled with, and what I know a lot of b, two b marketers struggle with is when we try to segment our retargeting audiences.
[00:26:08] Tara Robertson: They're so tiny.
[00:26:09] Tara Robertson: So I would love to do stuff like, oh, you saw our pricing page.
[00:26:12] Jess Bahr: Oh, you saw this.
[00:26:13] Tara Robertson: But whenever we've experimented with that, the numbers are so small that it's tough to justify.
[00:26:18] Jess Bahr: Spinning up campaigns for retargeting is really the only spot you can do that.
[00:26:24] Jess Bahr: And retargeting in itself is really not quite as impactful for trying to get someone to actually convert on something.
[00:26:32] Tara Robertson: Yeah, one audience, we've had some success with that.
[00:26:34] Tara Robertson: I honestly should have been doing this much longer, but I just started recently, is just targeting our LinkedIn followers.
[00:26:41] Tara Robertson: So, like I said, we spent a ton of time and effort building up our organic following on LinkedIn.
[00:26:46] Tara Robertson: So now I target them, almost treating them.
[00:26:48] Tara Robertson: Like a website retargeting audience.
[00:26:50] Jess Bahr: I like it.
[00:26:50] Tara Robertson: And they seem more primed to convert generally, than our website visitors.
[00:26:55] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I feel like you have a big LinkedIn following.
[00:26:57] Tara Robertson: Yeah, we're almost at 60K, which is super exciting.
[00:27:00] Tara Robertson: I can't wait to cross that milestone.
[00:27:03] Jess Bahr: That is exciting.
[00:27:05] Examining the Efficacy of Carousel Ads in Different Social Media Platforms

[00:27:05] Jess Bahr: Do you guys test out some of the newer LinkedIn features?
[00:27:09] Jess Bahr: Are you running, like, PDF ads?
[00:27:12] Tara Robertson: We don't really create a ton of PDF type content, which is something that we've talked about.
[00:27:18] Tara Robertson: We do a ton of video ads.
[00:27:20] Tara Robertson: We played around with carousel.
[00:27:22] Tara Robertson: Personally, I didn't think we got great results from them.
[00:27:25] Tara Robertson: I struggled with the carousel ads because just personally, I never scroll through them.
[00:27:30] Tara Robertson: So I was kind of finding it hard to justify when I'm essentially our ICP if I don't engage with them.
[00:27:35] Tara Robertson: I had a hard time believing that others do.
[00:27:38] Jess Bahr: What I think is interesting between LinkedIn and Instagram because carousel ads on Instagram will perform really well.
[00:27:44] Jess Bahr: But on Instagram, if you're scrolling your feed and then you refresh and your feed goes back when you see that person's post, it'll show you the second image in the carousel.
[00:27:53] Jess Bahr: So it almost gives you like five posts in one versus LinkedIn where yeah, you have to you see the little sliver of it and you have to be enticed to actually click into it.
[00:28:03] Jess Bahr: I rarely engage with them.
[00:28:05] Jess Bahr: You're not alone.
[00:28:07] Tara Robertson: Okay, that's good to know.
[00:28:08] Tara Robertson: That makes me feel better.
[00:28:09] Tara Robertson: I saw someone post a LinkedIn carousel the other day that was like 65 slides.
[00:28:13] Tara Robertson: And I just what?
[00:28:15] Tara Robertson: I would love to see the stats on that because it probably took them so much time, but I have a hard time.
[00:28:19] Tara Robertson: I feel like they should have just split that into a couple of posts, personally.
[00:28:22] Jess Bahr: See, thinking out loud.
[00:28:23] Jess Bahr: The last Instagram carousel I engaged with was someone who was sharing like, ten stats You Need to Know about.
[00:28:29] Jess Bahr: It was like ten truths of scaling when you're early.
[00:28:32] Jess Bahr: And slide two, I was like, this is stupid, I don't agree with it.
[00:28:37] Jess Bahr: I felt like it was wrong.
[00:28:38] Jess Bahr: And then I looked at slide three and I was like, yeah, this is wrong.
[00:28:41] Jess Bahr: These are very generic things that someone who's been to business school and never worked in business would tell you.
[00:28:47] Jess Bahr: And so I abandoned, but it was long.
[00:28:51] Jess Bahr: I think it was like actually like ten or 15 total slides.
[00:28:55] Tara Robertson: But I would assume that usually it just seems like they're trying to hit a number.
[00:28:59] Tara Robertson: Like, we want to do ten something or eleven something versus like a real.
[00:29:03] Jess Bahr: Interesting I bet you someone is getting measured on engagement.
[00:29:08] Tara Robertson: Probably.
[00:29:09] Tara Robertson: Yeah, because that's probably part of it.
[00:29:11] Jess Bahr: That'S going to drive your engagement rates up.
[00:29:13] Jess Bahr: Oh, yeah.
[00:29:14] Jess Bahr: That's going to drive your engagement rates up sky high.
[00:29:16] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I think also, static content still has a really strong spot in advertising, even though oftentimes the marketing illuminati will want you to lean into carousel ads or gifts instead of images or videos or long form video or actually short form video.
[00:29:38] Jess Bahr: They'll say short form video.
[00:29:39] Jess Bahr: I've ran long form video before.
[00:29:41] Jess Bahr: That's done really well when you give people something that's good and enticing and actually a fair exchange of value for what they're doing.
[00:29:49] Jess Bahr: Yeah, but I think carousels in there.
[00:29:51] Tara Robertson: I hate to say this doesn't work because I don't know your audience, but I just know for me, when we did carousels again, it depends what your goals are.
[00:29:59] Tara Robertson: If all you care about is people engaging in feed, then maybe carousels are fine.
[00:30:02] Tara Robertson: But what we were trying to do is they were kind of more of a bottom of funnel retargeting offer.
[00:30:07] Tara Robertson: So for us, static images are always going to beat a carousel for that when you're trying to get someone back to your site.
[00:30:12] Jess Bahr: 100% agree.
[00:30:13] Jess Bahr: 100% agree.
[00:30:15] Effective Strategies and Favourite Tools for Business Growth

[00:30:15] Jess Bahr: We are at time, though, but I would love to hear we're talking about all these tools.
[00:30:19] Jess Bahr: Do you have a favorite tool in your tech stack?
[00:30:22] Tara Robertson: Yeah, I feel like this is kind of a basic one, but I just love how simple HubSpot is.
[00:30:28] Tara Robertson: I love that anyone on our team can hop in and send an email without I used to be on Marketo at a previous role and we had a specialist who just sent emails, essentially.
[00:30:37] Tara Robertson: And I just love that with HubSpot, anyone can just pop in and do what they need to do.
[00:30:40] Tara Robertson: Reporting is super simple and easy and just yeah, easy.
[00:30:46] Jess Bahr: I love that.
[00:30:47] Jess Bahr: I have tore out Marketo twice for I just I could rant all day about this.
[00:30:56] Jess Bahr: But I do think if you buy a tool, you should have someone who owns the tools.
[00:31:01] Jess Bahr: Don't buy a tool to replace a person, but if you buy a tool and only one person can use it, or only people that have a very specific specialized knowledge base that's also really expensive, if you have to have a ton of those people to run it, you're doing a disservice.
[00:31:18] Jess Bahr: When you can get a tool that's cost comparable or less expensive that your entire team can use, it's a no brainer.
[00:31:26] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Tara Robertson: And it really depends on your team and how big it is.
[00:31:29] Tara Robertson: We're a pretty lean team, so I can't have myself or one person just dedicated to email and nurture and lead scoring.
[00:31:36] Tara Robertson: We kind of have to split those responsibilities.
[00:31:39] Jess Bahr: I love it.
[00:31:40] Jess Bahr: Well, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:31:41] Jess Bahr: If anyone is interested in learning more, we'll have links in the show notes below.
[00:31:45] Jess Bahr: If you're on YouTube, drop in the comments.
[00:31:48] Jess Bahr: If you thought it was chili pepper, make me feel less.
[00:31:51] Tara Robertson: Put an emoji in there.
[00:31:54] Jess Bahr: Drop a chili emoji, not a poop emoji.
[00:31:56] Jess Bahr: We're not twitter over here.
[00:31:59] Tara Robertson: Thanks so much for having me, Jess.
[00:32:01] Jess Bahr: Thank you.
[00:32:02] Jess Bahr: We'll see everyone on the next episode.
[00:32:04] Jess Bahr: And that's a wrap on today's episode of Marketers Talking Marketing.
[00:32:08] Jess Bahr: If you enjoyed our content and want to stay up to date with the latest marketing strategies and insights, subscribe to our YouTube channel below.
[00:32:14] Jess Bahr: Click on the Bell notification so you never miss a single episode.
[00:32:18] Jess Bahr: We encourage you to like and share this video if you found it helpful.
[00:32:21] Jess Bahr: Got a marketing question or topic you'd like us to cover?
[00:32:23] Jess Bahr: Drop it in the comments below.
[00:32:25] Jess Bahr: Especially if you have someone that you'd love to see on the show, please let us know.
[00:32:29] Jess Bahr: And as always, thanks for being a part of our community.
[00:32:32] Jess Bahr: Keep innovating marketing and growing, and we'll see you in the next episode.