From Metrics to Meaning-How Arpine Babloyan Builds Revenue-Driven Marketing

Overview:

In this episode of Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders, Kerry sits down with Arpine Babloyan, VP of Global Demand Gen at ThreatConnect. With a background in journalism and a passion for measurable impact, Arpine unpacks how to align sales and marketing through shared goals, break away from “credit culture,” and continuously refine go-to-market strategies using waterfall metrics. From navigating attribution to defining what truly matters in pipeline planning, this episode is packed with clarity and practical wisdom.

Transcript:

Kerry Guard 0:05

Hello, I'm Kerry Guard. And welcome back to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. Sorry, all for taking a mini hiatus. Last week. I had one heck of a chest infection and zero voice. So, huge, huge. Thank you to my podcast sidekick, Elijah Drown, for jumping on in and having a wonderful conversation last week. If you haven't checked it out, be sure to head on over and take a listen. He was a great fill-in this week. I've been on the edge of my seat for this conversation because I met Arpine at Cyber Marketing Con in December, it feels like yesterday, and also like ages ago. And I, um, pulled myself together and approached her and said, Would you pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, please be on my podcast, because this was an amazing conversation, and I want to rehash it. And she was kind enough to say yes, and we are finally here, and I am stoked. Arpine is the VP of global demand gen for Threat Connect at Cyber Marketing Con. Like I said, I had the pleasure of enjoying her talk about waterfall metrics. Ever since that day, I've been obsessed with marketing decisions based on regularly updating data, and it's so addicting when you add tracking KPIs to the mix. Well, I'll be spilling the tea on that later. Don't you worry, conventions can be loud, overstimulating, and full of sensory overload. It's a lot of pressure. Threat Connect sponsored rock and mocktails with sober and cyber at the latest RSA, we are lucky enough to have learned so much from Jen's mission for sober networking in the past episode of tea time. Arpine is a well-rounded marketer for a huge background in journalism. So you know, she will be telling great stories, just like our previous guests, like John and Mark and all of these wonderful, wonderful folks, so, so excited for the show. Thank you for being here, and thank you Arpine for joining me.

Arpine Babloyan 1:59

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

Kerry Guard 2:01

Yes, oh, it's been, we've been, this is overdue. This is over yet.

Arpine Babloyan 2:07

You said it right, December feels like yesterday, and also feels like forever ago. That is like ever.

Kerry Guard 2:14

Forever, and it feels like it's just around the corner again.

Arpine Babloyan 2:17

Yes, I know. I can't believe it. I we need to enjoy summer for a little bit, though, that's true.

Kerry Guard 2:26

You were just at RSA. Yes, yeah. Just how I know that this I'm I'm going on a tangent here, folks, I'll bring us back to center. Don't panic, but I do have to know, because there was so much chatter, it was like very hot chatter, and now it's very quiet again. But are there any immediate takeaways that were like some aha moments for you while you were there, any surprises?

Arpine Babloyan 2:50

Um, I wouldn't say there were any surprises. What I what I think is it gets better and better every year. Um, so and by better, I mean marketers get more sophisticated with the way they present their products and their booths, and the conversations with people get better and better in terms of people who are actually interested to learn about your products and come to the booth to talk about what you have to offer, versus a few years ago, we were definitely experiencing people who were just there for the swag, or, you know, just there to learn. So it definitely feels like buyer intent is serious in cybersecurity and and it's more fun because you have to be more and more creative to stand out. And I did spend the whole time pretty much in the booth. I haven't had a chance to walk around a whole lot because it was so busy, which is a good thing. We go there busy, and that's and that we were.

Kerry Guard 3:51

That's awesome. It sounds like there's a shift a little bit, in the fire universe. Then in terms of, I feel like there's a bit of a drought or a cold spell, depending on which weather you prefer. In regards to buyers not wanting to engage at all, and now it seems like maybe they're popping their heads back in to see what's going on. Have we built trust back with our buyers? It feels like.

Arpine Babloyan 4:20

Yeah, I think it's trust. I think it's also the when you are creative and personable, people want to talk to you. People want to talk to people, not to websites or businesses. And I think many times the booths that you see, or just even the sellers. They're ready to have their pitch. They don't really care about what the person's doing. And now marketers and salespeople, too in the booth, are getting a little bit more approachable in asking, what do they do? What are their pain points, and talking to them about something that can actually help them, rather than. And getting ready to get their message out, and then wait. So I think it's that I think the conversation is just more fun and personable as well.

Kerry Guard 5:10

I do think that's what buyers have been screaming at us for the last few years, of like that human connection and wanting to be seen and heard for what they need, and not just pumped through some sort of sales process like every buddy else. So it sounds like we finally broke through and saying, We hear you, and we're doing the thing, and now they're actually showing up to want to engage, and that's amazing. I think the people element, too, sounds like the sales team. How are you working with the sales team in terms of that? Like, it sounds like you're all working together to move towards that direction holistically, in both you, in terms of you both being in the booth and both of you having that experience with your buyers. Was that a collective effort?

Arpine Babloyan 5:59

Yeah, it is absolutely a team effort. And I would say we're very lucky at Threat Connect, compared to some other companies that I worked at with. We have a great relationship with our sales team. And just like we were just talking about relationship between buyers and marketers and salespeople has to be people first product second, it's same between sales and marketing. Getting to know each other as people, building that personal relationship makes it easier to work together and understand that we're on the same team. We actually have shared goals with the sales team, and that helps bring us closer to and work on the same be on the same page. We don't have, like in some companies, you could see all marketing only is responsible for leads, and then sales is responsible for pipeline. We're actually all responsible for a pipeline equally, and we're measured by pipeline and closed deals. And this is our joint success, which helps bring us as people and as teammates closer together. So yeah, we're absolutely collaborative in all of the go-to-market strategies that we have and metrics as well.

Kerry Guard 7:12

In terms of aligning on metrics. And I feel like a lot of the times the finger-pointing sort of happens between marketing and sales, because it's like, who did what and who owns what. So it's great that you're all like, okay, we're all responsible for revenue. But what does that mean in terms of what marketing contributes and is being held accountable to versus sales? Or is it just at the end of the day? However, the revenue got there. Teamwork makes the dream work. We're all in this together, sort of thing. Is it, is it one or the other? But it's both? How are you sort of taking accountability for as each service line to contribute?

Arpine Babloyan 7:54

Yeah, I think it's, it's more of the latter. We're trying to shy away from what some people would call credit culture. So like, who owns this lead, or who generated this lead? Oh, it's marketing. No, it's sales. In reality, in a complex B-to-B sale, there are multiple touches, and there is no sale that happens without a salesperson's involvement, obviously, at this point anyway, before AI takes over. But right now, and there is also really no sales that happens without marketing involvement. Even if marketing didn't generate the lead, there's still a person that came to the website, or maybe they read some document that the salesperson sent them. So all of those efforts really make a sale happen. And there are always multiple touches, multiple interactions. So we do look at it. We look at what impacted the sale, or the opportunity, what the touches were, if we can track it, what the interactions were, but we don't necessarily say, Oh, this is who gets credit for this deal, and I would say to the previous question you had, that also helps the team work closer, because we all want the deal to happen. We don't care who gets credit for the deal, because, you know, we both benefit from it, and we both suffer if the deal doesn't happen. So on our end, we want to make sure that the opportunities that we generate are good quality, that the conversations we present to the sales team are meaningful, and they also want to make sure that they move them forward and they spend our time most efficiently to qualify them to get additional information and then to work with us to help drive what, what else they might eat, in terms of messaging, in terms of collateral, so, so the deal help, the deal actually closes. But I guess the other thing, the ultimate goal here, is to help the customer's right, to help the buyer. So we want to educate them. We don't want to just sell, um. Um, and there are people for whom, or companies for which, our products aren't a fit for various reasons, right? So we want to make sure we identify those right people, the ICP of people that we are most likely to be able to help, and then provide them enough information to be helpful, so that they ultimately move to purchase. And it's a win-win

Kerry Guard 10:23

When it comes to defining goals as a company, and then having to ladder up to those as marketing and sales. How are you working together? To say this is such a big topic right now, because it feels like a directive comes down from the top of this is our revenue goal, go forth and conquer. And it's like, wait a minute, and it sounds like Threat Connect is just approaching this from such a different avenue that I think we all would love to know in terms of, how are the goals being set? And then how are you coming together as marketing and sales to say we can or cannot meet those and have you, have you run into a place where you were like, " That's not possible. Or are you part of the conversation? How does setting goals at Threat Connect work? And how is marketing and sales a part of that?

Arpine Babloyan 11:19

That is a big question. And so there is a revenue goal, and there are sales quotas, and they are, what they are, what we do to then come off of that is we build this reverse waterfall, what we call it, where we look at our historical conversion rates. And what I mean by that is, we look at when we generate 1000 leads, for example, how many of them then convert into an opportunity, how many of those convert into a deal? And obviously there are stages in between, then, then we take these conversion rates and kind of apply in reverse to that revenue goal, and to say, if we do absolutely exactly what we did last year, where is it gonna land us? Like, where? How many leads do we need to generate with these same conversion rates to get to this revenue goal? And then, is it realistic or not? And sometimes we do find that it's actually not realistic. You look at things like average sale price, is it increasing? Is it decreasing? What are the different factors that might come into making that goal, making those targets a reality? And then we have a joint conversation between the sales and marketing, and honestly, other people involved, finance is very much involved in these discussions as well. So we can determine, do we need to actually adjust our goals, because what we're shooting isn't going to work? Do we need additional budget, because then we need to generate more. We can't do more with the same resources that we have. Do we need to find some tools to help us be more efficient so we could actually do more with less, and usually, honestly, it's all of the above. We do have a little bit of back and forth on goals when we initially are in the process of setting them, just to come to something that we can be confident in saying, okay, it is possible to reach these goals. We want to grow, so it incorporates that growth, and this is what we need to make it happen. And sometimes we also regroup, even in the middle of the year or quarter, to say, hey, we haven't been meeting goals, or we've been consistently exceeding goals. Why? Because I think that it's not just about the numbers, it's the why the numbers are the way we the way they are. Did we do something that was very successful, like we were just talking about RSA. We always have a spike in pipeline creation around these big trade shows. And that's very obvious. We know, okay, we went to RSA. Here it went, well, there is a spike there. But then, when we don't have RSA, how do we get how can we replicate that with other things? There are only so many big trade shows out there, and understanding these contributors to success or not is what helps you also adjust the strategy. You can't just set the goal and go for it the whole year. You have to adapt throughout the year. Things are changing very quickly, and not just with your marketing, with the world, that there are external factors that affect it too. And so you need to understand all of it to adapt. So the goals, I would say, you have to look at them constantly, weekly, daily, very, very frequently.

Kerry Guard 14:42

So if you don't hit your numbers in Q1 does that have to roll into the rest of the year and you have ground to make up? Or do you adjust to say, Okay, we don't think we can hit this, but we think we can still hit this. And you sort of. To negotiate and compromise with whatever factors you were sort of up against in q1 that aren't panning out that you hope to combat a little bit in Q2, but you can't kind of guarantee.

Arpine Babloyan 15:12

We don't adjust them in that way. We actually even out the goals throughout the year, even though we know there is seasonality in place. So we would know sometimes that we wouldn't hit that goal in, let's say, you know, January or December, because there's holidays and all that stuff. Or in the summer in Europe, there is also a lot of downtime and holiday stuff. Sometimes we just know it. And so when we look at the goal line, which could be flat, like every week, it's the same, and we expect for it to fluctuate up and down. But it's honestly just harder to build that into the goals just because of how CRMs work. You can't, it's a lot of kind of downtime to just adjust these lines, when the end result would be the same? So it's a good question. There might be a technology out there being created that allows to do that more easily, but at this point it would just take too much time. So we just consider it, but we don't change it.

Kerry Guard 16:17

So your goals are just the goals, and either you hit them or you miss them, and that just is what it is.

Arpine Babloyan 16:23

Yeah, I mean, again, we did actually adjust the goals. For example, last year we acquired a company, and that is a whole new business, a whole new product line, different way to measure things, different sales cycles that we had to adjust some things, just call for adjusting goals. Usually, it's not common to do that, and usually we still try to hit it, unless there is something crazy that we uncover. And sometimes there are also things like people turn over, like we would know we lost a rep, or somebody was on PTO all week. So, you know, we didn't set enough meetings, things like that. But so we know sometimes why we don't hit it, but we do want to still compensate for it. For the most part.

Kerry Guard 17:14

I love that you sort of look at, okay, what did we do last year? And so in terms of walking into this year with a baseline, I imagine you always want to sort of try and do a little bit better than the year before. Are you looking at those conversion rates to figure out how you can make them better and what? What are you What sort of are some of the levers that you might be pushing and pulling to navigate that?

Arpine Babloyan 17:37

Yeah, we are looking at all of the metrics. So we do want to grow every year, and the adjustment can come from simply just do more and then keep conversion rates the same, and then you'll get a better result. And that might work, but it's not necessarily the most efficient. So we look at, then, where do we need to increase conversion rates? And we look at some benchmarks of our historical data, as well as talking to peers and the cyber marketing society, and just in general, other people in the network, um, best in class, conversion rates. What? What do they look like? What are ours? What are ours like? And where is this? Somewhere in between where we want to be, and then setting conversion rate goals as wel,l where we could improve them. It's interesting because the other kind of exercise that you can do, or other marketers can do, is a very science like process, where you just come up with a bunch of hypotheses, like if you're not meeting a goal, or if you're trying to increase a particular number, like, you know, let's say your conversion rate from opportunity to whatever the next stage is, evaluation is low. Why could that be? And you just literally write down all these possible reasons, like, from the pricing is too high, to people don't like the product, to some external factors happened and people don't buy anymore. Writing it all down actually is a fun exercise on its own, because oftentimes when you don't do that, you just have make one assumption and you just stick to it and or say, well, it's probably because of this thing. So when you write them all down, then you can say, Is this actually true for us? And there might be ways to prove that. You might be able to run some reports to say you know what, it is true, or we've just checked it and it's not and and then you eventually will come to a conclusion, or a couple of reasons that are actually true, and you can work to fix those reasons, rather than doing everything like rather than trying to come up with a solution, trying to diagnose a problem. And then, once you. Do that, it's easier to set the actions, to fix it.

Kerry Guard 20:04

In terms of the conversion rates that you're looking at. Are you and your water following them backwards? Is that? What are the like? Are you looking at it really tight, like, as you know, closed, SQL, MQL, lead? Are you or is it broader? What sort of are those metrics that you're mapping back to? And how far back are you going, all the way back to an impression?

Arpine Babloyan 20:29

We're just starting with a lead, which is essentially a person, and then, and then everything else. We call them more traditional names like Sal, SQL, opportunity, etc, but the definitions are actually a little different, because we are account-based. So our first after the lead, it's a meeting, which we call Sal, but it's actually a scheduled meeting with someone at the company, or it could be multiple people at the company, but it is on the account level, and then that meeting could be great, and then it becomes a sales qualified opportunity, or it could be bad for different reasons. So then after that, we do have some stages, like demo evaluation, POC negotiation, etc, within the opportunity, within the sales stages of the opportunity, it's managed. So we do look at conversion rates from stage to stage. We do have tight definitions of what those stages are. I gotta say, realistically, you always have some gray areas. Sometimes sales rep forgets to update Salesforce, and then all of a sudden, you see, hey, something came from SQL to close in five days. That's record timing, but that's just because they haven't been updating it. Especially with the acquisition, it happened like there were a lot of these old deals that kind of moved over, and it skewed our numbers a little bit, and in this case, you just have to apply filters so that you're not completely looking at Crazy data and using it, yeah.

Kerry Guard 22:12

yeah. In terms of a lead, what does a lead mean? You said it's a person. So it's just somebody that ends up in your in your CRM, and then you figure out where to put them, essentially, is that what your very, my very terrible, loose interpretation is of what you define as a lead?

Arpine Babloyan 22:32

Yeah, we have a few categories of leads, or what we call leads. We're not super focused on leads as a primary KPI who use more like a leading indicator of what we're doing. But there is the first category of leads, which we call them p ones, for lack of a better term. And these are people who are saying, I want to talk to your sales team, or I want a demo of your product. So they're coming to us, and they're actually telling us that this is what they want to see. Usually, there is a ton of stuff that happened before they became such a lead. They've done a bunch of research on their own. They could have joined our events in the past, but those are the best you know, the best leads that we that we have, the second tier are people who are interacting with our stuff, but not necessarily telling us that they want to talk to someone. So there is kind of like this first-party intent. So they might be downloading a piece of content on our website. They might have stopped by our booth at a trade show and talk to us, but again, didn't tell us they want to follow up. And they are usually it's great to have them. They are still getting nurtured. They're still getting touched. And there might be, they might become this top priority lead. When you reach out to them. They say, actually, yes, I do want to talk to a salesperson, but we don't expect that high of a conversion rate from those. And then the last category are just this third party intent. And those are people that we we haven't really interacted with, or we don't know if they've interacted with us or not. For example, we went to an event, and as part of our sponsorship, they provided us with a list. Okay, well, these people on the list could have heard about us, could have stopped by our booth, or maybe they just had nothing to do with us whatsoever. So those we don't really categorize as p1 p2 we just call them p3 again, very, very simple terms, nothing sophisticated there, but those are just lists that we typically don't have any people follow up unless they monitor them and they watch a few spikes, oh, like there's more activity. Maybe I should reach out to them, or maybe I should. Build out that account, and we do some automated follow up emails to those types of people. So we do call them all leads, but they're actually not leads, even in our CRM, but there are just people who did something, and one person could be a lead multiple times if they did something and then, like they went to an event, and then nothing happened after. And then a couple months later, they came in and they said they want a demo. They are again a lead because they did something else.

Kerry Guard 25:29

It sounds like the demo was really that first initial indicator that this is a real potential buyer.

Arpine Babloyan 25:38

Those are the best ones. Yeah, for sure.

Kerry Guard 25:41

Is that, is that sort of your barometer of if things are going well and up? You know, we talked about leading indicators, and let's So let's define some of those first. First of all, there's all types of different ways to talk about data, right? So, yes, little rapid fire here. I'm going to steal out of the Elijah playbook. Let's just, I'm just going to give you some key some words that we all sort of recognize, but I want to know what your very quick definition is, rough top of your head.

Arpine Babloyan 26:16

Oh, no, pressure. No.

Kerry Guard 26:19

We're just going to give people a little bit of a you know, because every all these words mean something a little bit different to everybody. So we just want to get it based on of what they mean to you.

Arpine Babloyan 26:29

Okay, okay,

Kerry Guard 26:31

Goals

Arpine Babloyan 26:34

Targets that you have to reach,

Kerry Guard 26:37

KPIs

Arpine Babloyan 26:41

Numbers you look at to determine if you're successful in whatever it is that you're trying to do,

Kerry Guard 26:47

Leading indicators,

Arpine Babloyan 26:49

uh, also numbers that might suggest that you may or may not be successful. And need to dive deeper to determine what's going on to help reach those goals.

Kerry Guard 27:02

Um, data.

Arpine Babloyan 27:06

Oh, that's a tough one. There's, you can't have a quick, quick answer to that. It's, it's, you got me there. It's, it's really everything. And it could be numbers. It could be data about your prospects and your customers. It could be your activity. It's it's actually everything that you do and use to operate. Really, you can't, you can't do it without data. So it is a hard one to define quickly. I think.

Kerry Guard 27:43

Yeah, no, that's great, because there's also qualitative, which you sort of leaned on, which is what qualitative data is. What's that mean to you?

Arpine Babloyan 27:53

Um, qualitative data, it's good. Good data, the one that you can actually use to make decisions.

Kerry Guard 28:04

Versus quantitative,

Arpine Babloyan 28:06

And that's fewer numbers. So qualitative could be also anecdotal. And that's that's okay. Anecdotal doesn't mean bad.

Kerry Guard 28:19

So in terms of the separating some of these things we've mentioned, a lot of the different types of data that you measure, let's bucket them. So what would you consider a goal in terms of some of the metrics we mentioned? Metrics is probably another good word.

Arpine Babloyan 28:39

Yeah. So for us it is for Threat Connect, specifically, it is a pipeline goal and a revenue goal, and that's the primary goal. And then I guess we do have some secondary goals that are focused on opportunity sales, qualified opportunity meetings and leads.

Kerry Guard 29:00

So and so, those aren't KPIs. Those are actual goals.

Arpine Babloyan 29:03

Those are goals that could be KPIs or leading indicators, but they are where we're trying to be with those numbers.

Kerry Guard 29:12

Okay, so goals are the number and that you have to hit, yes is the thing, and we got to get there. Yeah, exactly. Okay? And then in terms of KPIs, you mentioned some of them in terms of the meeting set and those sort of things. So those are the how. So how's the KPI different than the goal, then? And how you look at how you're performing on a regular basis. How are you using things differently?

Arpine Babloyan 29:38

There are some that we're looking at all the time. I look at them every day. But as a business, as a group of we have a meeting every week, and we look at those KPIs, which is what I mentioned, pipeline SQL, which are actually sales qualified opportunities and revenue, and this is kind of a joint broad meeting, and then the leading indicators that also have goals. If we're not meeting a particular goal on a KPI, then we would dive deeper to try and understand why. And that's where those leading indicators come to play, and some of them we measure very regularly, like leads is a simple one. We measure them. We don't necessarily talk about them every week, but we talk about them when it matters, or when it's important, or when it tells a good story. There are some that we don't measure and look at every week. We only look at it. We have ability to measure it, but only look at it when we need to do an even deeper dive into why something is happening or not happening, and those could be your impressions and clicks and open rates. And you know, we don't necessarily talk about them with broader with CRO and CFO groups, but sometimes it is important, and so we have a way to measure it, and we look at it when it's needed. Now, I'm sure my digital marketing manager looks at clicks and impressions every day as well, because that's her life. I don't necessarily do that, but we have a way to to get it if we need it as an indicator.

Kerry Guard 31:13

Does each part of your team, depending on their role and responsibility, have different KPIs that they're trying to hit, knowing that it's going to ladder up to the broader KPIs and goals. Or is it just everybody's getting after revenue.

Arpine Babloyan 31:31

KPIs are joint, but then each functional leader creates their own objectives that they can directly control, that contribute to those joint KPIs. So for example, if we're talking about digital marketing, it could be something about, specifically, pipeline that's generated from digital marketing efforts. If we're talking about events, it could be pipeline generated from events, but then also the what contributes to that is attendance, registration, rates, things like that. So you do end up taking this joint goal and then trickling down to all of those things that make that goal a reality, that distributes across different functional areas.

Kerry Guard 32:21

Talk about attribution for a second, because that makes that very interesting in terms of, again, not, you know, ownership, right? So if you're saying digital marketing is responsible for, you know, a certain amount of pipeline that they have sort of back into, does it matter that somebody else has attribution play into the multiple touch points and who gets credit for what? So to speak?

Arpine Babloyan 32:47

Yeah, we attribution is tricky, and we do have attribution. We look at it, but we we don't look at just one layer of it, because we have first touch and last touch. And that just helps us. We actually rarely even bring it outside of marketing. It just helps us determine which campaigns help get people into the system or start educating them, versus push them through that line of becoming a pipeline. And honestly, you do see a lot of these demo requests in Last Touch, because that's what it takes for them to become interested. And then as first touch, oftentimes you see things like events or webinars or content downloads, things like that. So you can't only look at last touch or first touch, and say, This is what your primary thing is that takes the credit, because that demo request could have not happened if six months before that, they didn't come to an event and talk to your team at the booth. So we do look at all of these, and then we also look at what happened even after the opportunity was created. So we call it influence. And that is a whole other metric, a whole other attribution metric that, again, shows the effectiveness of your campaigns and efforts, so that you don't, you know, dismiss some of the things that are very important in making the deal close, but doesn't show up necessarily as that last touch. Last touch is very common, but I think it's a mistake to only look at that one thing, because you can cut back, especially if you use that to make decisions, you can cut back on activities that really directly contribute to your opportunity creation. If you're only looking at one layer of it.

Kerry Guard 34:47

It really is because there's to your point earlier about having so many touch points to get somebody even to a lead or to a meeting that it would. Be I think that's why we sort of ended up in this world where we abandoned the brand ship, so to speak, because we were thinking about the bigger picture. And it was became all performance based. And now our pipeline dries up, and we wonder why, and it's because we haven't been doing the top of the funnel stuff and looking at that initial touch point to begin with in terms of brand, and you sort of mentioned this, I can't remember if it was before or after we started going live, but in terms of brand and how you're measuring brand impact, there is a shift happening right now where people are going, Oh, right. We need to be doing brand, and we need to be always on, and we need to have a consistent presence, and we should really get on that. But there's still the question that comes back of, but how do we know it's working? And I and I think people are still really wary to sort of jump on the brand bang bandwagon, suppose, so to speak, because they are afraid to put money behind it, because they still can't quite understand if it is or isn't working. So how are you thinking about Are you are you doing brand and if so, how are you measuring its impact?

Arpine Babloyan 36:10

I think brand and demand gen are inseparable, in a way, and you can make a case to say when you think of demand gen there is demand generation, and then there's demand capture, where you know demand generation is, you're trying to get people to learn about you and come to you. And then demand capture is, you're trying to find people that are looking for something you can offer, and then kind of grab them, capture them and and and send them your way, or your sales team's way so that demand generation component of it is actually brand, is making sure that people know about your company, that they know what you do, that they know how it can potentially help their pain points. There is a lot of research that goes into that piece, whether you call it brand or you call it, you know, demand generation. And there are some differences, obviously, but it is so close tied together, it is hard to measure, to be honest, which is where you take those you come up with goals, and I think that's where actually qualitative and quantitative can play a role separately, because sometimes you do have to get some anecdotal data to rely on. Like, a simple example of that is putting a field on your form that says, How did you hear about us? Very old school, but you hear a lot of marketers are bringing it back, because as much as you're trying to track where they really heard about you and track their cookies and get the UTM set up correctly, there are still people that are browsing privately, especially in cybersecurity. And so you have these demo requests, you actually have no idea where they came from, and then that how did you hear about us? Is where it actually helps. And sometimes people will say it's, you know, heard it from a friend, or did an online search. And that is hard to it is hard to justify, but that's the data you have, and so that's what you have to use. And then another way to measure your brand impact is surveying your database. It's a simple one, and even if you didn't have that data before. Just saying, like we did a survey recently, and as part of it, we just asked, How often do you hear about threat? Connect? Hear it all the time. I almost never hear it. I only hear it when I look for you, or, you know, this is the first time I'm even hearing you. And that is a good indicator of saying like is, are your brand, your awareness efforts, working? Do people actually hear it? Because you can't really measure it. And then the last example I'm going to give is related to Account-Based Marketing and ICP. So you can determine, here's your ICP. And some account-based platforms actually do a good job at measuring where they are in that buying cycle. And they call it, for example, aware, unaware, or, you know, engaged, so like unawares, they don't know about you at all. Aware is they kind of know about you, but they're not actively talking. And then engaged is they're actively talking or browsing or researching? And then you can measure, okay, this is, let's say, your ICPs, 1000 accounts, and of them, 500 people, or 500 companies are unaware, then you try to measure, okay, I want to get that number to 400 I want to make them more aware. So there are ways to set those goals. It is tricky, which is why you have to do it in advance. You have to determine what it is that you want to measure and that you have a way to measure it, rather than. Doing Stuff and then looking back and saying, Wait, did it actually work?

Kerry Guard 40:02

Yes, the lagging indicators, which is one where we didn't get to but that's exactly what you're describing. One of my favorite indicators is a branded search volume, but it is a bit of a lagging indicator, because if you're looking at are more people searching for you, that means that your brand awareness is going up, but it's after the fact, versus understanding what's happening in market now. So that's such a great point, in terms of three great ways to be measuring a brand. And got a was on our on our podcast a few weeks ago, and she mentioned that lovely little form fill, and the importance of having that to see how people found you. Last question, I could go on for days. I could talk to you forever, but I want to be cognizant of your time. So last question is, had, did you have any funny like, did you have any surprise form fills where you were like, you know, that's interesting, or didn't see that coming? Sometimes people write novels in there. Was there any surprises in terms of attribution that you didn't see, sort of coming of how people found you?

Arpine Babloyan 41:07

Not the funny kind. But actually what surprised me is, and when I saw the UTM match, what the people put in there, because I expected a much higher discrepancy, and then I'm like, oh, that UTM says Google, and they said online search that tracks. So that was kind of cool. So that was actually a surprise for me, and we actually have a quite high percentage of those matches on those form fills, but it is also relatively recent for us, so we don't have a ton of data to look at it. But from what I've seen, that was funny enough. That was the surprise.

Kerry Guard 41:44

It's always nice when the technology does what it's supposed to do, exactly the data is only as good as what being tracked and being tracked well.

Arpine Babloyan 41:55

So yes, exactly and branded search is an interesting category of its own. There is a lot of discussions online about, should you do it? Should you just kill your branded Google ads? Because if your SEO is great, people find you anyway. And I don't know there are so many opinions, I just feel like it's, you know, if, if you're doing it and it works for you, killing it, might risk it right? Like, maybe they'll find you, maybe they won't, maybe they will. Maybe you're on the first page, and they will still click on the sponsored ad that your competitors doing bidding on your name. So then, do you hurt yourself or not? So I'm actually not opposed to branded search. I think it is a good indicator, and it's good to it's good to have it.

Kerry Guard 42:43

Yeah, from a paid perspective, I do think, especially in cyber, you do need to bid on your own branded terms. I know it feels very painful because of all that gorgeous SEO work you did to rank for all those branded and non-branded keywords, and then here you are paying for them. It feels so counterintuitive, but with the way that search is moving in relation to AI and llms and how people are getting to your name these days, more competitors are going to start bid, it is literally becoming a strategy that you bid on competitor keywords because Non branded keywords are getting eaten up in the LLM world, and so the only way for paid search to work and to get found is to know which competitors are showing up in llms, and then making sure that you're bidding on their keywords so that you're showing up in relation to them. So it's a really great strategy, but if you're not bidding on your keywords, I guarantee you someone else might be so yes, for sure to that. And then you can also measure in terms of performance, in terms of your if you're getting brand recognition, search volume, impression volume against your brand a keyword, both organically and from a paid perspective, to give that leading indicator of or lagging indicator, rather of are more people in market for you, because you're doing a good job of building brand so slightly, two different conversations, but yes, both of them, I am here for, like I said, our pine I could literally hang out with you. I was so, I was so excited to think I'm gonna ask our prime on my show. This is really but I really would love, because I could just keep asking questions. I don't normally do such rapid fire. It's a little bit more conversational, but I just had a lot of questions. So thank you for bearing with me and answering all of them. If people have more questions like I do and want to learn more about Threat Connect and what you do in relation to data, KPIs and measuring performance. Where can they find you?

Arpine Babloyan 44:42

Well, LinkedIn, I go through phases on LinkedIn, when it's super busy, I post, and then sorry, when it's super busy, I don't post, and honestly don't check messages that well, but most of the time, I am there and I post occasionally, and I do check my. Citizen, that's probably the best way to reach me if you have any questions. And then, yeah, Threat Connect, website, connect.com, we have some great chat options as well as demo requests and ways to contact us. And also, if you are a marketer and you have any thoughts about, like, what we talked about, or any anything you think we could improve on together, definitely reach out. I do want to add one more thing, because you mentioned we had this talk with our CMO Charles at cyber marketing conference last year, we actually have a monthly session within the cybersecurity marketing society where we talk about funnel metrics and all things that might be bothering people or that they just want to vent about in cybersecurity demand gen through cyber security marketing society. So if you are a cybersecurity marketer and want to join those sessions, let me know, because I can definitely get you signed up for that.

Kerry Guard 46:13

Oh, that's so cool. Oh, I have the worst from however, that is amazing. We will drop all the links to all the things. If you are a marketer in cyber and you are not in the cyber marketing society, you should go sign up immediately, and then contact our pine to tell her you want to join this thing and and then tell me you join that thing so I can be a fly on the wall and pick your brain. Last question for you, because you are more than a marketer, and we all need a little joy in our lives right now. Spring is here. Summer is weeks away. What is currently bringing you joy outside of work?

Arpine Babloyan 46:50

So, two things I want to mention. One thing is my dog. I absolutely adore her. She is a cyber dog, because I adopted her after meeting her at RSA two years ago. So there is a fun story there, but I met her there as a puppy, that some booth had puppies in their booth, and I just fell in love, and now she's my dog. So she is awesome. I love playing with her and spending time with her in all kinds of ways. The second thing is board games. You can see some of them behind me, and that is kind of a nerdy thing, but actually a direct parallel to marketing, because just like, you know, we have a goal, we're trying to figure out how to get there. That's kind of the same, and in board games, so it is nice to exercise the brain in the same way, but doing something a little bit more fun.

Kerry Guard 47:44

We love board games, don't we? Elijah, we had a whole conversation last week with our previous guest, Mark, all about board games. Because, yes, they are, they are joy. They're absolute, absolute joy. I think we're gonna have to have like a virtual board game. Pow Wow. Somehow we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. All right, our fine. We're going to invite you to our next board game session. It's going to be brilliant, and I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for joining me. If you liked this episode, please like, subscribe, and share. This episode was brought to you by MKG Marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps complex brands like cybersecurity get found via SEO and digital ads. It's hosted by me, Kerry Guard, CEO, co-founder of MKG Marketing Music Mix, and mastering done by the amazing Elijah Drown, my podcast sidekick, and if you like to be a guest, DM me. I'd love to have you on. Thank you all so much. Have a great day.