Cutting Through the Noise with Andrew Morton

Overview:

Kerry Guard sits down with Andrew Morton to explore the role of clarity and consistency in go-to-market strategy. From aligning sales and marketing to eliminating jargon, Andrew breaks down how to create messaging that truly connects. With experience across high-growth SaaS companies, he offers tactical advice for early-stage founders, marketers, and GTM teams looking to gain traction and stand out in a crowded space.

Transcript:

Kerry Guard 0:01

Hello. I'm Kerry Guard. Welcome Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. We are finally, finally, finally making this happen. Andrew and I have come through hell in high water to do this, where Andrew is sick once again, but he's going to power through for us. And I am at the airport, because, you know, when life happens, you just got to keep on, keeping on. And I am here for it. And I was not pushing this episode again. I was not doing it. And I'm grateful that Andrew is hunkering down with me to do the same, because I have been so excited for this conversation on the edge of my seat, folks, it is a long time coming, and we are going to have all of we're going to hash it all out around the customer journey and where it is and where it's going before I get there, before I do my instruction. If you are here with us, please say hello. Please let us know where you're calling in from. And we cannot wait to hear all of your question which, unfortunately, I can guarantee we will not get to all of them, but we will circle back. We will circle back in the comments. I will send Andrew back in there, and we will make sure that we have an asynchronous conversation, because we are here for it. So Andrew Morton, little bit about Andrew. He is I did as a dynamic leader with extensive GTM experience and a proven track record of driving revenue growth. He thrives at the intersection of product innovation and market strategy. His journey has been marked by transformative roles, where he's spearheaded strategic initiatives, built high performing teams and consistently exceeded growth targets. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Morton 1:30

Thanks for having me. I likewise. I'm glad that you are powering through this with me, and because I've been so excited to sit down and have this conversation. And as I said to you before, like when I got sick, I was like, There's no way I'm missing out on this conversation again. So anyways, but real life podcasts are the best. Anyways, right?

Kerry Guard 1:52

The best, the best,yeah, there's a little girl over there, and she's looking at me, like, are you holding a microphone here for it? Like, I love it. I'm here for it. Um, Andrew, that little blurb that I gave, and I know that you did this for us before, so I'm so sorry to have you do it again, but I missed it because I was putting my kids to bed. So I'm here for it this time, but I'm not getting up. I'm not walking away, and I would love to hear one more time your story. What do you do now? How did you get there?

Andrew Morton 2:21

I don't know. That's pretty good. You made me sound like really impressive by reading that, and I feel so inadequate. And now I'm thinking about reading that in front of my kids, and they're like, What does that even mean? So and no, I appreciate it. So I'm currently the Chief Revenue Officer at a company called User Voice. We help product teams build incredible, robust, meaningful feedback programs that help activate their end users and elevate voice of customer, and all of those good things that it takes to build an amazing product. It was interesting. I was thinking about this question. I've been thinking about it a lot. Actually, I feel like I have found my calling as a chief revenue officer. And that sounds very cliche, and people are like, probably, you know, puking into a bucket somewhere on the side because, but it's I've been doing it for four years at user voice now, and I really kind of get to work on all of the different aspects of go to market that I love. So I really enjoy building strategy and kind of being a guide and being a coach to the team, which obviously I get to do in that role. But I came up in marketing. I started my career in hospitality, and I really grew through sales. So having the opportunity to pull all of those different pieces and pull on all those different levers and work with teams that are really good at those things has been really fulfilling for me, and I get to do all the things every day that I'm really passionate about. So I've loved it. I've had a really wild ride in terms of getting here. I've worked in operations. I've worked in, as I mentioned, in hospitality and hotels. At one point, I was running a transportation company in Las Vegas that was doing $100 million a year in revenue, and I was working for the former CEO of MGM International. I was like, how did this happen? So we can unpack any of that, but I've just had a very interesting career, and I've gotten to do a lot of cool things, and I feel very lucky that I've ended up in a role that really I think fits my style and who I am and what I love to do.

Kerry Guard 4:25

It's this wonderful intersectionality, right? Of like having all these sort of different careers, and I feel like as marketers, it definitely helps us from a Swiss army knife to be able to understand not just the marketing side of it, but the business and the operational side of it too. I mean, to have that vocabulary is so huge, especially as you're building bridges between the different teams, as you're trying to go beg for more money from the CFO, like, right? You can sort of use their language, of like, here's all the numbers here, here's why this is important to you, and here's how we're going to get this done with it's. Much more budget he,lp us out. I think that's I think that's so amazing and a gift that we don't all get to have. So congratulations on a wonderful career, and for where you are now in terms of go to market, I feel like this is a new return. Sure, there's CRO there's GTM, and then there's, like the marketing functions around demand generation, brand marketing ops, and all that fun jazz. So, how is this different or similar to sort of those functions? Is it totally different, or is it just a different way of looking at the same thing?

Andrew Morton 5:46

it's a really interesting question. And I was talking about this the other day. I forget who I think it was, at a conference, but anyways, we were talking about sort of the proliferation of a Chief Revenue Officer role. And I think historically, you would have seen that sort of manifest as, like a Chief Sales Officer role, and it was really focused on driving sales, and we had a hierarchy of, like multiple VPS. But I think what actually happened is teams and companies were really struggling to make all of those components that go into a flywheel of revenue generation and retention teams are really fairly ineffective at actually making all those pieces work together, right? And they often operated in silos. So if I'm doing growth and I'm feeding a lead funnel for the sales team like that's good, but it's also that's a very linear process. And when something doesn't work as ineffective. It's not generally just one component of the go-to-market process. So it's not like, oh, growth is executing something wrong. Just picking on growth as an example, right? It's like, well, what is the brand implication on growth, or growth implication on brand? What is the sales executions responsibility in that process? And kind of obviously to the to the point of today's conversation, the customer journey has gotten so it's really diverse. There's so many different buyers in the process. We need to be more intentional than we ever have about how all of those different pieces work together to bring customers through that journey. And so I think again, the role that I'm in today is manifested to do that right? It's to help all of those different pieces work together and to make sure that they're operating succinctly, and that we're serving our customers and those people that we want to serve, and we're doing it well.

Kerry Guard 7:34

Okay, so what I heard you say, which I think is an interesting distinction, is that a CRO is more focused on the revenue side and driving revenue. And not to say that we we're not all knowing. We all know that ultimately we need to contribute to revenue. Like that needs to be ultimate goal across the board. And a story. What's interesting about GTM, and what you said, and what I love is that it's your job to serve the customer. And so I do think the customer journey has changed drastically. It is not linear, and it has made our jobs significantly harder. So let's talk about, where do you think trying to think about the board of operations, of how I want to ask these questions. Let's talk first about what the customer journey is now in relation to what it was, and then I want to unpack how we got here. So first, what is it? And then we'll get into the how.

Andrew Morton 8:32

So the way that I think about the customer journey now is really trying to I think one, we have to boil it down to individual experiences. Because in the buying process, just as an example, whether it's pre or post net new sale, you have so many different people coming to the table, so many different users with so many different desires, goals, and metrics. So we have to, we have to think about on an individual level. But I think about it more of like, what is their relationship to my brand and product, and what is their current experience related to my brand and my product? And that's a much bigger picture, and we need to think about that much more dynamically. So one of the things that I think is really important, and I'll kind of double down a minute, just a second ago, is like part of this bigger picture. But what that means is that we now need to think about different users relating to our product, with different levels of experience, right? So some are coming in and they they know tons about our product, and they already have familiarity with what we do, but they've got a whole buying team that some people have some familiarity, some people don't think that this is actually even a problem, whatever it is that we're trying to address. And so we need to think about, how do we activate all those different stakeholders, but then how do we continue to keep those users activated and engaged and serve them throughout that their ex. Experience as a customer. So we think about them in our process, from moving them from a, probably a more traditional top of funnel, of like, what's my awareness relative to the product? What's my sort of awareness of even the problem in the business, or taking a step back and non brand relation, but like, how do, how does this problem surface within the business, starting from there, what is the root cause of that? Where does that trigger? What are the things that people experience that are volatile, that would get them to look for a solution, and then creating that buy in, and then maintaining that throughout their interaction with my process, and trying to drive them or move them forward, not just to be users of my product or adopters, but really advocates. How do I get somebody all the way from that stage to I need you to I want you to go promote my product, and I can ask you for referrals, and g2 reviews and all these things that will kind of create a flywheel of user acquisition In the long term. I think that what's happened is, I think there are two things that have actually kind of disrupted the cycle. So one, we're not considering all of the different stakeholders that have influence in the buying process, and we're not considering how they're coming to us in terms of their awareness, their familiarity, and their perspective on our product and our brand, we're not breaking that down dynamically enough. And then the second piece is, I think that we've gone to channel-specific and we're not thinking holistically about how different pieces fit together. So how does brand seek work to serve my growth loop? And how does do those two things leverage product marketing to build this holistic picture and this holistic picture and this holistic experience, and to then actually upstream and serve those customers, to get them to those different levels of activation. So it's much more complex process break down the different pieces, pieces of it. But I think in ultimatum, or in summary, a lot of companies still think about a very linear journey, and like, I'm just going to get this buyer and then I'm going to move them through and to move them through and they're going to buy and activate. And it's like, well, no, we have all these different perspectives showing up in the process now, and we need to be considerate of those, and we need to think about how we bring in that engagement with me.

Kerry Guard 12:19

You're good. There we go. I love this. Let's talk that. There's so many things that would impact first, I want to start with the ABM piece, because we're talking about, when we're talking about the complexity, one of the big pieces of that has come down to the fact that there's more than one buyer, and they're buying by committee, like you mentioned. So you're mentioning, you're basically calling out ABM as part of a go to I mean, do you believe in ABM as part of a GTM motion, is it? Do you do? Do you do it differently? Like, I feel like ABM, as wonderful as it is, it takes a huge feat, yeah, a lot of energy and mega dollars. In most regards, there are some people out there doing it in a really intentional way, like Mason Cosby, but that guy's a dime a dozen. So talk to me about how you approach ABM.

Andrew Morton 13:14

I don't know if I think about it, I guess, I guess I would say you are correct. I'm kind of articulating ABM, and that's sort of in a lot of ways, like how we think about a process. I think that's product-specific for us, because there has to be for our product. There has to be a cultural appetite to buy our product, and that it's reflected in leadership and what their priorities are. But I think, actually, excuse me, you hear the sickness coming through. I think User Gems is a product that we use, and they've articulated this really well, but I think about it more as multi-threading, right? That's maybe not the best way to put it, and I know that's often affiliated to a communication style, but I like to think about basically, who constitutes the buying committee, right? And how do I activate those individuals specifically and bring them forward? So well, let's just take net new as an example. So if we get engaged with the stakeholder, and we have a prospect that we're working right, we have spent the time and done the work to analyze our historic deals and all these other pieces of our business, to say, like, we know that these other stakeholders at some point have to participate in this process. Like, generally, we can't move a deal forward if it doesn't happen, and we can't engage this person if it doesn't happen, and we need to, we need to bring them forward and get engagement. So I'm less focused. Maybe I know that there's a nuance difference, but I'm less focused on, like the organizational level, but I do have a clear understanding of who the people within the buying committee are and what their different ROI metrics are, and also how they're showing up to the process. So I've got a champion that's super engaged and is a former user of my product, and another company cool. They're going to come in and they're going to have high velocity, high familiarity. I don't have to spend a lot of time. Um. Nurturing them or working with them, but what I need to be doing in parallel is, like, I've got a CPO that's existing out here that is never used our product doesn't really believe in feedback, you know, as a part of a product management process. And so there's a long tail of nurture that has to happen here that I have to use to activate this particular user. So, so, yes, I guess that is kind of reflective of like, okay, is the bot is an organization demonstrating signal for buying and, you know, can I speak to the different users in this organization? But I think it helps to be very specific about who the influencers are in the buying committee, and then really spending the time to map where they are when you activate them, right? Like and again. Do I need to be spent? Do I need to do more education? Am I going to have to send more product marketing updates and emails? Do I need to subscribe this person in my newsletter versus somebody I can push through the funnel? Because what I've seen happen is like, you know, people look for intent signal at an organization, right? And they say, Cool, I don't know company, a I won't call anybody out, is all over my website. Great pro, you know, great. ICP, fit, etc, and they go and find a champion, and they're this person's like, yeah, I love the product. It's I'm desperately researching it. This is what I need. And then the deal slows down, and it's four times your normal deal cycles. You're trying to move it through that, that your customer journey, or whatever it is, and and it's because there are five people in the background that you didn't engage with that this champion is trying to advocate for you, but is not really influencing them, and it's not moving them along. And so I think it's got to go a level deeper. You have to have a really good understanding of the buyer committee. And again, like I said, you need to understand where they are when they come into the conversation.

Kerry Guard 16:47

You mentioned the sport a couple of times, and so I really want to double down on it, because I don't think that we always think about it this way. Is the champion? So, how do you define a champion? You mentioned one way where it's about somebody who's already used your product and now they've moved company, and now they're a company, and now they're like a huge, you know, user, previous user, and they want to use it. Is that the only way?

Andrew Morton 17:11

I think it's a good way, you know, for for us specifically, we've really been able to leverage job changes, and I think we have a product that has familiarity and people, we've seen people carry it with us, but that was really, I mean, I think that the interesting thing was, like that sort of happened on its own. So for us, it was more of like a that's a signal that we're going to lean into, rather than we are trying to perpetuate this, right? But I think a champion can manifest itself in a lot of different ways, like we often think about, often think about champion as, like on the front end, as net new somebody who's going in and advocating for us and really believes in the product. And there's buy in and from an ICP fit, they make, you know, they fit the bill really well. But I think that there's a deeper level to that on the net new side, which is, do their individual goals, and if they're serving or leading on a team, do their team goals align with the outcomes that I can deliver from a product and a service perspective, right? So how closely mapped are those two things? Because if you're 90% mapped, you're going to have somebody who's going to activate as an advocate of your product, right? And so it's important to understand those often people are like, they look sort of at the profile the user coming in, and they're like, Yeah, this person changed jobs. They used our product in the past. Awesome. Clearly, that person is going to be a champion. But if I'm a product leader, and I'm like, I believe in just using our product as an example. I really, truly believe in customer engagement, and I want to create a voice of customer loop within my product, and I don't have that today, and you can deliver against those outcomes, you're going to really excite and entice a user and activate them in a way that's going to turn them into a champion. The other way that we kind of look at champions is, you know, I can't, I can upsell to a current customer who's a huge advocate of user place, but like, I've got customers in an enterprise plan that I can't really do anything with in terms of upsell, but they're huge advocates of the product, right? And we think about moving them as part of our customer journey, from sort of an adoption to a regular user, to these types of advocates who are really champions of our product. And those are the people that are going to give you testimonials and do case studies with and write G2 reviews. And so I think from a champion perspective, like, what is it in service to? Is it I'm trying to create velocity and momentum in a deal, or am I trying to perpetuate a pipeline, or am I trying to create a sort of a pillar customer within a community? And so I think it's often looking at the right side of the funnel and saying, Okay, where did those people exist? And you can see that through things like CSAT and NPS, and that's how we found and identified a lot of those users, and continue to do so. And then it's just simply making the task for whatever it is, like we've set up some pretty powerful referral programs in the past based on. Uh, users that have activated and again, quote, unquote, champions of our product. So I think broadening the definition of what a champion is and looking for them throughout your buying process or throughout your customer journey is really critical, and you can use it in some ways that are not necessarily traditional, outside of, like, I just have to create momentum and drive a deal forward.

Kerry Guard 20:21

I love this so much, and what I love about it is how you figure out to take one champion to make more champions. I think that's really the power of it. And referral programs are generally pretty tricky, but if you can do it in a way that's like super easy, then maybe it's reviews as a great example. I think we tend to like as marketers get to a buyer and they go, okay, cool, thanks. Bye. Like, okay, they're off to sales. They're by now we get to just go focus on more net new. But I think that is a way to create net new in a way of looking at champions. The only way that I'm trying to figure out champions right now, as we think about our own marketing as mkg, is, who do we work with? Primarily? Like, it's kind of how, you know, when I work with companies that are going after developers or IT professionals, right? They tend to go to the CISO level or the VP level, and it's like, well, is that really? Who's going to be using your product on a day to day basis? So for us, it's like, well, we could go after VPs and CMOS all day long, but it's really the marketing managers that are like, yeah, people, we we need to make the hero on a regular basis. Like, how are we? How are we bringing information to them in a way that they can take it internally and say something really thoughtful and smart, because they don't have the same expertise we do, because they can't, because they're trying to, you know, be a broad marketer versus the specific marketer that we are. And so I think there's power in ABM, but I am also skeptical in the sense of, like, we can't do it at the risk of losing sight of who our true customer, our true user, is at the end of the day, and how do we empower them? And I love what you were saying about either helping your champion, yeah, like, you know, focusing on that champion and then figuring out how to make their job easier, whether it's selling this thing in or giving them important information, whatever the case may be. But yeah, I think going back to our end user, it's not, it's not the executive, like, they're counting on their team to make here's your budget team. You tell me?

Andrew Morton 22:29

Yeah, the funny thing, so two things on that, 100% right? Like, and I, and I've seen it on the flip side, where we have a chief product officer who's like, okay, we're implementing User Voice tomorrow. And all of the the sort of the mid level product managers that use the products are like, Yeah, this isn't a priority for us. We're not doing it right. Because, in the same way that you can't, it's hard to build that bottom up trend like advocacy. You also can't do it. I mean, in certain cases, yes, I've seen, you know, there's some weight with an executive team, but ultimately, even if you get that and you're like, Yeah, let's use in your case, like VP of marketing comes in is like, I've got my brand and my growth people, and he's like, we're using the smart tech technology. You're going to implement it, whatever it's for. Like, your adoption is going to be terrible. Your churn risk is going to go way up. So if I'm thinking about preserving that customer and really creating a great experience like that's going to inhibit me down the road, I'm going to have such a hard time implementing it successfully. And so in the weird thing is, so oftentimes we do spend a lot of time on the front end trying to build advocacy with these different roles, right? Like, who are the different users? I clearly need an exec sponsor, but I also need users that are going to be in the product day to day to advocate for me, because they have to have a good experience with this. And then we move to an implementation, and it's like, it gets passed off to, hey, I'm the project manager for this, and you don't interact with these people. We don't take the time to engage these other users. And even beyond implementation, going through the customer journey, you're like, like, if you're single point of contact within a customer, unless your product is, I can't think. I honestly, I can't think of a product where it's like, yeah, having one user and having a relationship with a single user trying to build customer advocates and through that customer journey is not a risk for your retention, right? So, like, we focus so much on bringing in all these people and all these different users of that buying committee, but then we don't preserve them and engage them throughout the rest of the process. We're like, cool, we transacted. Okay. PM, go implement this to your point. Hey, product champion like this is on your hands now there's one of you, especially with the volatility of the job market, and you know that that person is there's a high likelihood that that person will leave in the next 10 to 12 months, like you have to build relationships with those stakeholders outside of that if you have any hope of product preservation within that organization. And I just see it all the time where it's like, cool, we just dump it off, and then it just completely falls off a cliff, and it's. Yes, and I think that's a you see that manifesting in high churn rates right now?

Kerry Guard 25:04

Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point of there are so many times where, you know, we build relationships with the VPs, and then they leave and they go to their next company and they say, this is our this is the agency I want to use. But if we don't take the time to meet with the stakeholders that we're going to be meeting with on a day to day basis, and get their trust and buy in, then it's just going to be the VP can preach all they want about working with us, but that doesn't mean it's going to be an easy, great relationship, and there's been times where it's certainly not been so I think that's so again, coming back to that champion and making sure that we're all keeping our eyes on the ball of like, who that person truly is, from a from a end user standpoint, I think it's just critical. Something else that you mentioned up front about There you are. Trevor, hello. Something else that you mentioned early on in our conversation about the buyer support journey and how it's changed is how many it's no longer linear. Of you see an ad, you click on it and you buy it like that. Might work for e-commerce to an extent, but for the rest of us over here in B to B land, that's the case. So talk to me about what those what channels are you seeing in regards to quote, unquote working? And I want to use working loosely, because we all define working as different, and we're going to get into that. But for you from your GTM motion, being at this company for four years and thinking about this complex user experience of not, you know, from multiple, you know, committee buyers to your champion to now, we have to have so many touch points across so many channels, yeah, what does that look like for you?

Andrew Morton 26:55

Okay, so I'll say a couple of things in preface to this. It's really difficult out there for for lead acquisition and building funnel and pipeline and again, specifically, because there's so interesting i It makes me think of maybe three years ago, we ran a we did a bunch of pricing work and research and rebuilt our pricing and packaging, and We wanted to kind of understand, should we go product LED? Should we continue to go sales LED? Like, what needs to happen here? And we surveyed. I don't remember what the specific question was, that we were actually asking people, but it was like, basically, our end customers said we don't want to talk to a salesperson in the process, but we also don't want to self-activate in the product. And so I'm like, what do you, you know? Like, what? So I, you know, I mean, there's, you could, you can jump over that million different ways. But so I think that there is, there's definitely an independence. And I think the big challenge is most people don't like being sold to, and they don't like being marketed to in the sense of, like, Don't feed me non relevant shit all the time, right? Like, I need the information when I need it, and I want it when it's available and when I'm looking for it, and that's hard thing to match, right? So by any means, that match. But I think we just said cool. Blast people with everything, and it's a volume game, and that's really hurting go-to-market in general. So when we think about channels, the first thing I think about, and I think people need to think about, is, what is the time to value with your product or service? If I am a customer or potential customer, can I see that value really quickly and get in that sort of value loop of like, cool, I get in, use it, activate? I'm hitting value within 24 hours. Is it a longer tail? Do you need three weeks? Is it, you know, I need multiple stakeholders, and do I need to get my data in all those different pieces? Because that for us, and I think for a lot of teams, should drive the channels through which you engage and acquire your customers. For us because of our price point, because of the customer group that we serve. And kind of goes back to your point, Kerry, like I should really understand who my ICP is and who I'm selling to, and who's going to be involved in the buying committee, because I need to know where they are. I need to know their different value propositions, and so I can speak to them directly, but for us based on our price point and our customer group. Content production has been a really good piece of us, but we think about it. We're thinking about it in two parts, right? So we're thinking about channels related to brand awareness and recognition, and then we're thinking about channels related to to acquisition once we've actually got some buy in and we've got, you know, think about somebody going from, like, a total relevant market to a total relevant buying market. I'm butchering sangrams stuff from terminus, but like, they're moved down the funnel. They've got the awareness. They know who we are. We got familiar we're going here. So. From a brand awareness perspective, we're heavily invested in content, a lot of written content, trying to do thought leadership, more video content, social activation, and really focused on, I think too many people have gotten away was comes to brand getting away from impressions and engagement in social authority, because it is important, like, you can't just activate somebody with a Google ad that has no idea what your product is, especially if the time to value is long. So lots of again, lots of content, lots of LinkedIn social content. We're trying to do more of it. We haven't done enough of it. I will remind everybody that that's a long tail. So if you are looking to activate current users, you're not going to start writing content, and the next week, you drive your pipeline through the roof. But what you will see over time is like my site traffic go up, does my brand awareness rating go up? Does my there's components of NPS that will improve based on that. So specifically content for brand awareness and brand and non brand related search, which I think we should talk about in a minute, because that's a you've got a you've got a funny story, and I have a funny story there as well, but we need to like you will be surprised who's bidding against you on your keywords. And so I think that that's a worthwhile place to invest time, even if you are capturing traffic that you may or may not have gotten previously, you know that you're activating, activating that traffic. So that's really where we're heavy from an awareness perspective, from a conversion perspective. So later stage in the journey, and we want to actually start to activate those users, I'll take a step back. So content distribution has been through blog, social media, and then doing our newsletter. I think that that's under utilized in a lot of different teams. Your content needs to be really good, but you need to be writing constantly, because that will give you perspective, and it'll give you brand authenticity and authority, and help you build that pathway to activation. We go to activation. We're testing a couple of different things. I think that's where I mean, again, to be as real as possible. We've really struggled there. We've seen some success in leveraging LinkedIn ads, because we have the tale of content that's been supporting it, and so now it's like, cool. We're serving some of these people who are pushing and then doing some retargeting off of our website. So really understanding who's coming in, how are they been digesting our traffic, and then trying to reactivate and re-engage those particular users. We will do some outbound but it's generally signal driven, so we're using things like user gems to say, cool again. Champions, as we talked about, with a job change earlier, I want to go target that organization because I know that there's a high likelihood that they're going to buy I've got a former user that left and went to this new company. We can activate that. We also look for new hires onto the product team as a way to activate outbound. So we're doing that outbound, but very specific to a signal. And those have been pretty effective ways for us to start to capture some of that traffic. And it's again been a challenge because most people, there's a stat out there that's like, 96% of buyers are or buyers are through 96% of their buying process before they come to you. So I think what I would submit that all and say is, like, I think brand right now, to be honest, is more important than it has ever been. To be quite honest, like, you have to be paying attention to that. You have to be building notoriety online. You have to be doing that and then activating your champions, is the last piece of it. We've done a lot of referral work, which has been really helpful. There's probably nothing more powerful than a current customer going out and being like, Hey, I know this person. You should absolutely lose use XYZ products, because it's been incredible, even if that's a promoted post, even if it's paid post going back to g2 that peer activation is so important to the process like I it's it's invaluable for us.

Kerry Guard 33:51

Trevor is bringing up an interesting point, how to sell leisure studios, is actually my good friend Trevor van Warden, who is on the sales side of of this. And he's asking about Forrester Wave and Gartner Magic Quadrant visuals, and if they're helpful from our standpoint, from our point of view, in that initial content motion.

Andrew Morton 34:19

It's an interesting question. Yeah, that's an interesting question to ask. I mean, I think it's good, but I, what I would say is that and Jeremy can break me in the comments if I'm missing thinking about this. I'm totally cool with that. But like, when we think about, like, I think about the Gardner magic cologne, specifically, I think it's a good assessment of the user profile, but you should think about who the different users are related to it, right? So it's like, that's if I'm remembering correctly, because I could be misreading this completely. But if I'm thinking about your profiling, basically the influence within the organization and kind of the Prophet. Capacity to buy. But the reality is, like you've got multiple buyers in that process that are going to be in different positions of influence and different levels of awareness. So when we measure a user coming in, or we think about shaping our content, we're thinking about relative role, and, again, propensity to to buy or to not buy, and what's their influence in that buying process, but also how educated they are on our products specifically, and so we may shape different content to address different pieces or different pain points. So I think that's sort of in line with the quadrant. Again, it's been a while since I've looked at the Gardner magic. So again, berate me if I'm wrong in the comments. I think it's a good precursor, but you should think about how that applies to all the different users in your buying process, because as we talk, process. Because, as we talked about earlier, I can have exact buy in, but if I don't get the champions bought in and activated, and I'm not speaking to them, it will kill your deals, especially in today's climate, it will absolutely kill your deals.

Kerry Guard 35:57

I think that's really interesting and important, because one of the things that you keep leaning into that I think is similar but different, is the g2 so it sounds like, apart from Gartner and and Forrester for you, it's the g2 reviews and that peer aspect, and then interesting that you're using that from a marketing standpoint. Yeah, I think I struggle specifically with Forrester and wave. Forrester Wave and Gartner is because they're short lived. Like the minute you get a report, you have got to be you have to put all of your marketing efforts behind that and get that initial wave in, and then it dies off really fast. So it's helpful, but it's it's a blip sort of thing, and it's very caught. It's very costly. But I think, oh, read Trevor's comments like you can

Andrew Morton 36:55

Yes, am I right? Distracting Trevor

Kerry Guard 36:59

micro segmentation. Do you want to answer that question? So Trevor is asking three. Tf is micro segmentation? Tell us more. Andrew,

Andrew Morton 37:10

I mean, there's some. There's definitely some legitimacy to that. But I think you've also articulated it kind of there, Trevor, you're like, you definitely need some you, whatever, whatever the social proof is for your for your market segment, I think it can be valid. So in the case that you're saying, like, you've got a CTO with probably an executive buying committee, and it's like, yeah, you the if you're selling to somebody that's a billion dollars and Arr, as an organization, that proof of like, I've got, you know, I'm on a forester wave report is, is going to be meaningful, right? But I'll give you our use case. We sell to product managers. So I might sell to a CPO. I some to, in some cases, sell to a CTO, but then I'm also selling to, like, line-level product managers. So regardless, to your point, there is a buying committee, right? It's not just the CPOs making this decision, or it's just like the product manager is a champion? He's driving this collectively. They're deciding what needs to happen for the organization. And the more that I can engage that group with whatever social proof, the better. But in our case, we tend to get this. Like, I don't mean to criticize marketing, but I'm going to say, like, this is what I talked to product managers are like, I hate marketing. Like, I don't like being marketed to. And it's like, well, that's bullshit, because you all digest Lenny Richard skis podcast, like, it's the gospel so and, you know, like, and it's great, but like, You, you, you, but they want my, my my buyer tends to like peer to peer, sort of validation, right? It needs to come from another PM, who's in the field, who's executing, who's actually built stuff, and I think that that's probably more common. So I'm not saying like that, that that from a validation point doesn't work, but I think one, you need to think about, definitely the industry. But two, is that going to be relevant to all of those? So if I'm looking to force a wave report, and it's like the legitimacy is there for the CTO, what about everybody else that's like, do they feel the same? I don't know. It's an interesting question. I don't disagree with your point. I definitely think that, again, POV on the buying committee is legit, but we need some different levels of validation.

Kerry Guard 39:19

I like what you're saying too, that it really depends on your ICP from a business, like, how big is your company, and where are these people on I feel like a GT, a g2, review going to a manager versus a forest or wave report going to a CPO is definitely like, where that that could come into play. I don't know that a manager is going to care too much about the Forrester Wave report quite like a C suite will. And so I think that's a great distinction on both of your parts. In regards to that, a question that came up through my LinkedIn DMS here is around the content piece you were talking about, Andrew, when you're. Creating when you're creating the content and the awareness and the brand, yeah, how does AI play into the the I don't want to just, I don't say just content, but like, how does it play into the buyer's journey? For you, does it? Are you leaning into AI, or are you steering clear?

Andrew Morton 40:21

There is a killer podcast I will. I'm going to totally blank on the name, but Sam Altman just did it. It's, I think the podcast is how it's called, how I write. And it was really interesting to have him on there and talk about the implications of of open AI, obviously his company, which runs on the implications of that, on writing in general, and how we write content and copy and all these different things. It's hugely important for us. We are absolutely using it. The way that we use it is to try and identify two things. One, can I identify current trends and what my buyers are talking about, right like, and I think it's more effective than just trying to, like, peruse through Twitter or LinkedIn, like, that's not to say that those aren't great resources, but it's like, can I quit get quick snapshots into relevant challenges for my buyers right now so that I can actually write relevant content to them. I mean, your contents got to be great. It's got to be good, and topically, you should be knowledgeable on that stuff. I don't think that. What scares me a little bit is like you see a lot of, like aI generated blog content, and it's crappy writing. And I think that that's watering down the authenticity of blogs and content and thought leadership totally. But I still think well written content stands out and how you should use open AI is to get an indication of, like, where am I getting signal for stuff that I should write about, right? I think the other really interesting piece is, like, where we've we've used this quite a bit, is, how do my buyers talk about this problem specifically. So if we have a concept for a topic for a blog or social media post or whatever, how would they describe this problem? Like, right? How would a product manager talk about this problem to another product manager? And you can kind of tease out, like, okay, thematically. How should this read? You know, what should it sound like? What should the tone be like? And that will help to make sure that you're not talking about a problem too abstractly, and you're talking about it in a way. I think that's relevant and will actually resonate with your end reader. And I think that those are two those are two things in my mind and ways that we've used open AI, but two things that I think that the tool is really, really good at. Because if you think about core concepts, it's pattern recognition, so identifying trends. And then, you know, text analysis on how problem, you know, PMS talk about like, hey, go read this. Go review these Twitter accounts and tell me, like, what are the how are people describing this problem? It's incredibly good at that. And then that allows you, puts you in a possession to do what you do best, which is right, content and solution, those things,

Kerry Guard 43:05

oh, haven't thought of I haven't used it for that yet. I have so many ideas now, from a research standpoint, I really think that's power of AI is from a research standpoint, and it's, yeah, totally useless from a generation standpoint. I use it for solely research, especially for some of my clients, in regards to what's important to their customers. So I love that. Let's talk about brand. We you mentioned it a couple times, especially from an awareness piece, and from my understanding and looking at this new world order that we're sort of heading into of zero click. I feel like we've all, you know in terms of the fire journey. You're going to correct me here, Andrew, you're the expert. My I'm going to talk from a feeling standpoint, and then you're going to give us the facts. I feel like we've sort of abandoned brand for a while, like lead gen was this bright, new shiny thing. I need to see you to drive leads all day long. And then demand gen came in, and we're like, yes, to get leads, we need to build demand. And demands about problem, problem, problem solution, solution, solution, download this thing. Hurry up. Go, go, go. And in the midst of that, we have forgotten about the Evergreen necessity that is our our name recognition.

Andrew Morton 44:25

Yeah,

Kerry Guard 44:26

is that fair?

Andrew Morton 44:28

I think so. And I think it's I definitely agree that we've over indexed on lead acquisition, and I think it's a huge misstep, and one that we have made, that I've made, right? So I am guilty of it as well. But I think the question that reframes this is like, how are how are people going to know you're there to buy your product if they don't know that you exist, right? And so I think about sort of, and again, I'm stealing from Sangram. Just GTM Terminus stuff here. But if I have, like, if I have my total available market, and then I've got my total relevant market, who people could actually acquire the product and would have a good use case and are good fit into my ICP, and then I've got my buying relevant market, whose people are, you know, considering purchasing or have the problem that's I can activate through direct acquisition and direct conversion. I can activate those people that are in this buying market, but what about all these people that are in the total relevant market that are not ready to buy yet, but may at some point buy right? Yeah, your activation could be good, and you could wait for them to convert to that, but then it's just like you're rolling the dice that you may or may not get in front of them at the right time to actually activate them. And I would argue that the less familiarity they they have with who you are, the less likely you are to convert them. Seth Godin talked about this, and this is marketing, and it's one of my favorite all this stuff is amazing, but it's one of my favorite things. It's like, it's it's really important to tell the right story about who you are, because people want to then affiliate with you. Right? We know that people buy on technical output, but they also buy an emotion and how they feel about a team and a product and a brand. And so it's like, if you want to attract people to work with you, whether that's people buying your product or like employees or or partners, people in the market need to have a good understanding of who you are, what you do with the value that you bring to them. What is the story that you seek to tell to those people that you seek to serve? Right? That's it's hugely important. And we've gotten so over indexed on that lead acquisition, as you mentioned, that we've lost sight of that.

Kerry Guard 46:42

Not a crazy person, fantastic. No, no, you killing it. I'm hearing in terms of brand, I'm hearing something similar from a search perspective. I follow Rand Fishkin, who has been very noisy lately. I feel like he sort of disappeared after he sold his company, and now he's coming back out in a very big way. And one of the things that he's doing that's very interesting is, from an SEO perspective, he's putting less into he's still doing it. Keywords are still important, and making sure that your technical SEO, from a keyword standpoint, is there. But what he's really doing, which is fascinating, is from a PR perspective, so and a brand perspective. So he is trying to create a correlation. So instead of competing with companies, media companies, right? So when you're talking about somebody searching for a problem or an idea, you know, the media companies have so much more clout than we ever will, that they're always at the top Even Wikipedia, my gosh. So, so his notion is, well, I'm not going to compete with them anymore, and I'm going to go to them. So with the notion of trying to create correlation between the problem I solve and my brand name. So if people are seeing you know, he used steak knives as an example, right? So if he's helping and probably sell the best steak knives in the whole world, he wants to be out there where brands are talking about cooking in relation to cutting and steak knives. And then when they see steak knives, they see this company's name and this linking back to the website. And so as we talk about brand and search, I that's one way that I'm sort of seeing this sort of evolution come to fruition in terms of how we have to think about building brand and really intentional way outside of the traditional manner of, you know, billboard ads and TV ads and, you know, display when you're thinking about building brand. My question to you is, how do you see that different than demand gen, and how is your company thinking about coming back to brand in an intentional way, in this new world order.

Andrew Morton 49:05

I took a I took a course two years ago through reforge, and which is a huge it's Brian Balfour who grew HubSpot to, I think, 200 million. And he started a product management course, a community, really. And I think his framework for brand was really eye opening, because I remember for a long time hearing like, oh, oppression. Impressions are BS. Like, what do they translate to cool? My ad served 160,000 people, but I got no money out of it, and it's like that's too transactional of a way to view brand and so, but anyways, the whole, the whole piece of it was eye opening, and I think that there's again, we have to remember that it's like we're not looking to activate people out of this, into my buying pool, like buyers will buy when they are ready, right? Like, unless you get into a sales conversation and you can create some urgency and move them forward, which is a whole different conversation. Like, they're not going to turn around and see this ad and be like, cool, I'm now in a buying cycle, right? Like that doesn't that doesn't happen. So we need to think about how we build trust and authenticity with our users. And again, how do we how do we write our message to those that we seek to serve? If I think about who my ICP is and who do I want to attract, then I need to build that affiliation and affinity and that trust with those particular users. So when we think about writing brand, I'm like, Cool, what? What is going to achieve that with my user? How do I tell my story to users in a way that's that doesn't just resonate with them, but it's actually useful to them, right? Can I provide value in doing that? I think that that's often overlooked, and it kind of goes to your point, Kerry, where you're like, we can't just put on a billboard, right? Like, I need to think about, how do I give value through like, if I'm paying attention to you, why am I paying attention to you? What's the purpose of it? I need to be doing stuff that's valuable, not just valuable, not just like, hey, look at me. We're cool, right? You'll get some proclivity to your brand because of, you know, Association of what you do, who you affiliate with, but for the most part, it's like, I need to identify with value. And then what we're looking at is, from a performance perspective, I do look at impressions, but I really also look at like, how does that impression count translate into engagement. So do I get more likes on my posts? Do I get more followers that were within my ICP? Do I get more subscriptions to my newsletter? Am I getting more blog page views? Because ultimately, that's a long tail of people that I can continue to build trust with and then when they are ready, I can activate them through more specific conversion pieces, right? Like, I know what that that pipeline looks like. So as I said before, if I don't have any of that traffic on my page or on my my social media, and then I go out and I'm like, Great, I'm going to run LinkedIn ads, but there's nobody there to hear that message it How am I going to activate those individuals? So I think that the traditional metrics from brand were are not totally amiss. We should think what they're in service to, and I should think about how I'm activating people. But again, I think that that purpose is like, ultimately, that's going to feed into building an audience that's has this awareness for me, and looking at like, Are people participating? Are they sharing? Are they? Are they energized by the stuff that I'm putting out?

Kerry Guard 52:27

I think this is so important. You mentioned impressions a couple of times, and I feel like one of my most favorite metrics in measuring brand impact is actually search volume.

Unknown Speaker 52:41

Yeah,

Kerry Guard 52:43

what's fascinating and why I think my feelings are valid, and that we've sort of given up on brand, and we need to come back to it, is that I pulled about 18 to 20 reports this week looking at just branded search volume year over year for folks and all but two are down, like significantly down. There was one that was flat. Everybody else is down. And I do think that how we measure, how we measure our impact from very top of funnel standpoint to come into play, because when we take our eye off that ball and just say, well, it's not converting, it's not driving leads, it's not driving MQLs, it's not driving SQL, we're all of that's going to drive up because we weren't paying attention To the very first impression of how we were talking to our audience.

Andrew Morton 53:45

I think the thing that really sucks about that is sort of the silent killer and all that is like, you don't stop doing branding, and then it's like, tomorrow, my lead gen falls off like, in the same way that you don't, you don't start writing content around brand tomorrow, and then in two weeks, you have $100 million in pipeline. Both are long tails, and so the activation is always harder to correlate. Which makes sense, which, again, I think, is why you should think intentionally about like, Well, what I want users to do, right? Like, how do i What's the pathway to activation and gaining is like, intermediate. Those are my lead metrics on this, but they shut it off, and then it's like, six months later, your pipeline is in the can because your website visits are down 15,000 unique visitors, and you're like, Well, what happened? Like, why can't we activate anybody? It's like, well, we're not pushing traffic, and people don't see us anymore. It's funny. So we were, we moved into paid search a couple of months ago, testing it as an acquisition strategy, and we thought we were good with brand because we had, like, we write a lot of content, we host our own blog, we have insanely good domain authority, our organic search kills, right? And we like, why would we need to spend on brand? Like, why would we need to invest in. We're gonna be fine. And when we we ran the results and who's bidding against us, we were getting our asses kicked on a like, there were three or four companies I'd never heard of, but are in our space that were, like, stealing brand traffic because we were just sitting over here, like, yeah, the organic stuff is fine. It's whatever. And so it's like, you get this sort of perspective of, like, yeah, my brand's good enough. People know who I am. And then there's people that are out here, like, taking your traffic from you. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, it's bad.

Kerry Guard 55:33

Oh my gosh, I am so vindicated right now.

Andrew Morton 55:36

Yes, I we just rolled into that story. I was like, I have to go, this is so important.

Kerry Guard 55:40

No, I'm so grateful. I am so vindicated. So long story short, folks, but I totally got trolled on LinkedIn. Part of it's my fault because I commented on on somebody's Post who generally gets gets people in all up in their grill. So, you know, you re put yourself, but at the end of the day, he was trying to tell me he's a B to C marketing person. And he was trying to tell me that if your brand affinity is good enough that and you're you solve the product, you solve the problem better than anybody else. You're already in the consideration set. There's no reason to waste your money on bidding on your own branded terms. And I was like, hold up. First of all, sir, you are in B to C. That is a completely different ball game in this regard. And secondly, you have to bid on your own terms, because you have to capture all of that branded work you're doing out in the universe. You gotta capture it. Because if you're not capturing it 100% your competitors are. And you know, we've seen this for our clients, but it's just nice. Sometimes you feel like you get sort of stuck in an echo. Of stuck in an echo chamber, and you start questioning yourself, and imposter syndrome sinks in. You're like, well, maybe, maybe I am wrong, and maybe it is product market fit, and maybe we are the problem. And then, like, so yes, so thank you. You have to bid on your own branded search terms. You have to capture. It is capture, I'll agree to that. It's you're not building demand with your own branded search terms, but you are capturing it from all of that amazing work you did across the board, in that demand outreach, in that brand name, and if people are coming to you for your name specifically, you better be at the top, because that intent is so high. I guarantee we ran a client. I'll tell a quick story. We had a client, 45% of our budget was on their branded search terms. And granted, they're a household name, so of course, our competitors are coming for them. We have we our budget has to be pretty big in the branded search realm, but 75% 75% of their revenue was from their branded search terms. So only 45% of the budget, but 75% in revenue like, holy cow, talk about intent, folks. So appreciate you, Andrew, I am so grateful for this conversation, not just because I a little pat on the back there, you know, right back on LinkedIn.

Andrew Morton 58:01

It's all about vindication. It's all about vindication. Kerry, that's it.

Kerry Guard 58:04

But also because I you know, we've been seeing this with the customer journey for a long time, of it getting more complex, of needing to be everywhere, of it being a buying committee and sort of feeling like we're getting lost in the sauce and having to throw getting up against the wall to see what sticks. And I think what you're coming back to, and it's so nice to just be reminded of how important your champion your customer is at the end of the day, and how you serve them, from your messaging, from how to support them, from a buying committee, and, you know, leveraging them internally, and from the value that you give day in and day out to that customer, and I'm so grateful for the reminder and to finally have had this conversation with you. So thank you so much for buckling down with me. I know your voice is at the tail end. Here. Last question for you two, I got two. One is, where can people find you? They want to learn more about your brand. They want to learn more about how you got to where you are and what you're doing and all these great results.

Andrew Morton 59:02

You're finding two places. So you want to check out what we're doing at UserVoice. You can go to uservoice.com User Voice Inc on Twitter, and just user voice on LinkedIn. And if you want to find me and ask me any questions or grill me on some of this follow-up stuff, or ask me about Gardner quadrant quadrants, find me on LinkedIn. I'm really easy, and, you know my face now, so it should be fine to to track me down. Yeah, that's probably the best place. But I will read a lot of DMS. So again, any follow-up questions, I'm happy to do that there.

Kerry Guard 59:32

I love it. I love it. So that's the power of like, Jenna's community. It really is, and I'm so great to enjoy our connection. Yeah, it should not be for trolling.

Andrew Morton 59:44

It's not Twitter. Calm down.

Kerry Guard 59:47

No, let's, let's all help each other and build each other up here and not get after each other. I'm here for that last question for you, Andrew. It's October 24, 2024, we are rounding. Rounding out 2024 What are you most looking forward to personally in the next few months? Or maybe there's something happening in 2025 that you're like excited for. We got going on.

Andrew Morton 1:00:11

It's an interesting question. We're going to kick off a new product in January. We of course, have to leverage AI because that's cliche, and it's what everybody does. But I think we've built a really, excuse me, solid foundation. And so January, February, we're going to launch some theme detection tracking components within our product, which I think are going to be really powerful and really useful for our customer base. So I'm excited to get that into their hands. I think stuff that I'm paying attention to, I'm paying a lot of attention to writing right now, copy, but writing in general. I love writing, so I'm probably predisposed to do that. But I think there's just a lot of stuff happening with ChatGPT and how it's influencing writing, and how people are kind of pushing back against that. And so I think in the next 12 to 18 months, the landscape of writing in general is going to change, I don't know, for better or for worse, but it's going to change a lot. And so great writing, I think, is going to stand out. And so I'm doubling down on that, and I'm paying attention to a product called reframe that is I'm so stoked about it has nothing to do with me or anything. But like the guy, Jeff Skis, used to work at sub-Chief Operating Officer at Stack Overflow, building a new product called reframe, which is trying to bring the concept of knowledge work into the operating system of the computer. And I'm like, this is the problem of our age, right? So stoked for that. So those are the kind of things that I'm excited about, paying attention to, and watching right now.

Kerry Guard 1:01:50

Ah, I love it. I love it. I'm going to watch with you, and then we're going to, we're going to circle back, and it's going to be great about how your launch went. And you know what's changed in these So, right? That's beauty. That's to be so gotta love data, right? Gotta love data. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I can't even tell you. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you to our listeners. Trevor, I see you. Heidi, thank you for your question. If you have questions after listening to this episode asynchronously, you aren't with us. Live. No big deal. Comment below. We will circle back with you, because there's a lot to unpack here, and I guess, I just guess that means I'm going to have to have you back. Andrew, so yeah.

Andrew Morton 1:02:29

Ready when you are hopefully I'll get sick again, but I appreciate, Yeah, appreciate it.

Kerry Guard 1:02:33

I won't be at an airport. It'll be good, awesome. Thank you all so much. If you'd like this episode, please like, subscribe, and share. This episode was brought to you by MKG Marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps complex brands get found through SEO and digital ads. It's hosted by me, Kerry Guard, and co-founder of MKG Marketing, and production is done by Snappy. And if you'd like to be a guest, DM me. I'd love to have you. Let's hash it out. Let's discuss. Thank you all so much. Have a great day. Bye, y'all, bye.