Marketing That Clicks-Aligning with Today’s Fast-Paced Buyers

Overview:

In this episode, Kerry Guard sits down with Thereasa Roy to discuss the shifting landscape of product marketing. They explore how buyers are making decisions faster than ever, why traditional marketing funnels are evolving, and the growing importance of clear, feature-focused messaging. From the challenges of data cleanliness to the role of AI in product discovery, Thereasa shares actionable insights on how marketers can stay ahead by getting straight to the point.

Transcript:

Thereasa Roy 0:00

You're like, I don't want to add more tools to my tool set. Even you said it. I did. Everybody feels this way.

Kerry Guard 0:06

Yeah, it's true.

Hello. I'm Kerry Guard and welcome back to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. I'm so sorry, folks. Welcome the time zone change for where it has happened for you all in the United States, which I will then experience in three weeks, which means that instead of having a five-hour time difference from the East Coast, it's only a four-hour time difference, which means any meeting that I have scheduled has not moved. So if you were to have a meeting with me at normally 11, it is now at 12. Hence where we are today. So psych opportunity where we could just not do we don't the 1800s that need the farmers to wake up. It for true. Oh. Girl, can dream. I am giving everybody a minute to hopefully hop on with us, on the new link, over on LinkedIn. If you are missing this and you are not here with us and you're watching it asynchronously have no fear. Comment away, and we will be sure to absolutely follow up with you also. The amazing Elijah Drown will be producing this and we will be sharing it across all of the platforms so that you cannot miss this episode. Because you shouldn't miss this episode. It's, we are doing a 180 folks, and it's going to be a glorious time in terms of, you know, cutting to the chase. So before we get there, a little bit about our guest, Thereasa Roy. Thereasa and I met. It feels like ages ago now.

Thereasa Roy 1:48

I know that's what time is right now: speeding, speeding,

Kerry Guard 1:52

We met at the cyber marketing con in December in Philly, go birds. And it was awesome. I went and saw her talk about Blockbuster, which we will circle back on. And then we met in the lobby at the Lowe's and hung out in the evening. And it was just, I mean, that's what these events are all about. And I was like, Hey, Thereasa, want to come on a podcast? And she was like, Sure, let's do it. So here we are today, a little bit about Thereasa, in case you don't know her and weren't there at cyber marketing con Thereasa. Thereasa is a seasoned product marketing leader with over 15 years of marketing experience, 10 of those in Product Marketing; she has successfully launched numerous software products that have driven significant revenue growth for many companies with a deep understanding of customer needs and marketing trends, she has developed and executed Go to market strategies that have maximized product adoption and customer satisfaction. Thereasa, welcome to the show.

Thereasa Roy 2:46

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I should also mention that my 12 year old daughter has commandeered the sweatshirt that you gave me, and she wears it all the time, so the middle school in Bend, Oregon knows about your brand,brand awareness.

Kerry Guard 3:00

I am here for it, and that just means I got to get you a new one. So let's make that happen. She loves like.

Thereasa Roy 3:08

Mom, this is so cozy. I was like, I know they are.

Kerry Guard 3:11

They are pretty, pretty great, honey, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Thank you to your daughter. I appreciate her, and I'll be getting you I'll get it back one day. I've heard it's been so loved. Oh, I'm joining that day. My daughter is almost 10, and she's she can just about fit my clothes. I'm like, Oh, they wear my shoes, my clothes. Yeah, your shoes, 100%

Thereasa Roy 3:39

Yeah. It's going.

Kerry Guard 3:43

Well, I'll come to you for tips and tricks on where to hide all of the things.

Thereasa Roy 3:48

Yeah, I don't know they find all the things. It's not good.

Kerry Guard 3:53

No comment. Girls. Girls, so good. Well, Thereasa, I'm so excited for us to get into the heart of our conversation, but before we do whether marketing found you or you found marketing is always a lovely journey. So why don't you share with us where you are today and how you got there?

Thereasa Roy 4:07

Yeah, so I love to say I started my career in sales. I grew up in demand gen, and I fell in love with product marketing, if you were to equate it to your love life, this is kind of what happened to me. I started in sales, selfishly because I just needed to make money out of college. Had to pay some bills, because that's what we do in America. And so I took a job out of college and did a bunch of cold calling, and had some decent success with it. And I realized that after three years doing that, that I was probably going to get better leads and have better conversations if I actually affected the marketing programs that were feeding my lead funnel and my, you know, my inbound, my inbound queue, and so I continued in sales while going back to school to get an MBA, because that's kind of what you did back in the early 2000s Yes, I am that old, even though I don't log it. And, and then I went and actually took a huge pay cut and took a marketing job, and then I did that for 10 ish years. And after that, I realized the same kind of thing that, like my marketing programs were good, but if I didn't really understand the audience, and I didn't really understand the market, that I wasn't actually developing the right kind of programs. I either wasn't in the right channels or the message wasn't landing, and so my lead quality was going down, etc. So I kind of can, I like to say this is very much a marketing funnel, right? Like, I started the bottom of the funnel in sales, I moved up to the middle and demand gen, and then I kind of really fell in love with product marketing, which the way I describe product marketing is, it's like three it's a Venn diagram. One is the market. So like, what's happening in the market, what's happening for your with your competitors, etc, micro, micro, macro, economic stuff. I also have a minor in in economics, so I'll flex their SEC every now and then, and then. And then it's kind of, your product. What does your product have? And what is, what exactly does it do? And then it's really, kind of about your customers. And Kerry, this is, you know, where I super geek out, and I did the whole presentation about your customer research and all that kind of stuff. And I'm sorry. I need to mute my I need to mute my slack. Um, so, so then you kind of have this perfect Venn. You have this perfect Venn diagram of all the things your customers are kind of at the bottom. What are they are experiencing? What are their specific pains, all that kind of stuff. And through that, you have this triangle, and this triangle is really your unique value prop, right? You have covered the market, what's happening. You've covered your product, what it does, you've covered your customers, your personas, all that kind of stuff, and you find this unique value prop that then should be able to feed all of the other work that you do. Right? It should affect the challenge. The channels that you use should affect the messages that you do. Ideally, you're driving more higher quality leads because you've really dialed in on this triangle in the middle of your Venn diagram. And so that's kind of how I came to marketing. I My father was a salesperson, my mother was a nurse, and it's interesting, because both of them, in the end, ended up being people that listened a lot. My dad talked a lot more, because that's the patriarchy. But my mother was a listener, and as a nurse, that's often what you have to do. You just have to listen to people's problems. I mean, she was bedside with a lot of folks. She specialized in cancer treatment, so it was people that were experiencing a lot, and she taught me how to listen and how to kind of evoke that information from people just by asking questions, which is also, I think, what's fed so well to my my desire for kind of customer research, and how passionate I am about making sure I listen to my customers. That's why that bottom circle and customer voice is so important to me, because I really feel like a great product marketer can't come up with good words or, you know, know their channels, or know their themes, or know their audiences really well, unless you're actually talking to the people, like, yes, you can use GPT to try to, like, suss that out. I mean, I do, actually, I'm using it much more. But when I started doing customer research, you know, five years ago, on the very regular there wasn't GPT, and so we did actually have to talk to people. And luckily that, in that insight, has fed what GPT now tells me, so I'm able to use that, those AI tools now to be able to do it faster if I need something in a pinch and I can't get a hold of somebody. But there's nothing better than actually talking to people, which is why we're here right now. Right? It is,

Kerry Guard 8:37

It is,and I love your journey of how it all connects too, because I find as marketers, when we start in marketing and we do nothing else, we don't have direct access to the customer, and so we fit, we feel like there's a barrier to entry there, where you have that sales foundation that you already know how to sort of talk to customers, even if it's not it, there's sort of This hurdle that we have to get over as marketers to go and talk to our customers, whether it's selling or not, just like it's just a hurdle. So it's what advice do you have for us as marketers who haven't come up in the sales process, to be able to get over that? How should we go about and then I promise I'll get on topic, folks. But I just think this is so critical of like, we do need to talk to our customers, and so what's, what's the easiest way to do that, the lowest barrier to entry for us to just hear what our customers are saying.

Thereasa Roy 9:34

Find a sales best friend. Find one like and just be like, Hey, can I hop on your call? We are lucky enough that we record all of our calls and Gong so I can at least go listen to them, which isn't exactly the same as having, uh, you know, a one-on-one interview, but if you can just ask a rep like to be like, Hey, can I just sit on some of your call? First, you've got to make friends with them, so show up, provide them all the tools that they're used to getting for. Marketing, you know, as in any relationship, right? Show up with value, and then they will show up with like, okay, then the Ask isn't totally out of left field, but show up with the value. Then come back with the ask to be like, Hey, how can I just want to ask a couple more questions. Do you have any recent new customers that you think would be a good fit for me? And then when you do get to talk to the customers, one, don't promise anything. Like, don't be like, Oh yeah, I could totally affect the roadmap. Instead, just be curious about them people. I mean literally, Kerry, you asked me on this podcast, because I love to talk about myself. That's why my mother always told me she was like people love to talk about themselves, as she was running bedside for them, right? Like people do love to talk about themselves, so why not ask them about themselves? It's such an easy, quiet intro. And have you know, give your give yourself the opportunity to, like, send them a Starbucks card and say, Hey, thank you so much. Or send them swag afterward, people are going to love that they can get a get hold and just talk to somebody about their day-to-day challenges. You know, you're not going to find 100% of your response rate is going to be like, Oh my gosh, yes. I still want to talk to you, because some people are just really busy. But if you ask, you're going to get at least a 20% you know, people are like, oh, yeah, sure, I'll talk to you 30 minutes, 30 bucks, like, whatever it is. So anyway,

Kerry Guard 11:25

yeah, I mean, that's why I started the podcast, because I need to hear directly from my customers, potential customers, all you know, people in the market doing the work, what's happening out there, right? And so, but then I felt really mean keeping it all to myself, so I turned it into a podcast. Love it, where we all can learn. I mean, this has literally been like the best university course ever, hosting a podcast for five years. It's been brilliant. So I can't tell you how powerful it is to really hear from boots on the ground.

Thereasa Roy 11:56

I mean, yeah, when I came out in 2001 from college, and it was like you were sitting in classrooms. That was the only way to get your information. I mean, I'm so grateful. And even as I kind of grew up, I would say to people that were new, I'm like, Hey, go teach yourself some tools, because there is so much value in understanding, like the basic tools and how to use things. But also, yeah, talk to other people as much as you can. But I mean, back then, it was like happy hours, and, you know, it wasn't even something that we could really do all that easily, virtually. So I mean, so grateful. I mean, and you know, my our daughters are going to experience a totally different way of growing up and learning and stuff like that. But I mean, we're training the AIS now as we talk.

Kerry Guard 12:38

So hey, girl, how's it going? My husband and I had to actually come up with, like, a code because of how much my voice. So he was like, We need you all over the internet. We probably should have to sort of code.

Thereasa Roy 12:55

Is it really you?

Kerry Guard 12:57

Is this really your voice saying that I should you answer all this money to your bank? Yes, exactly.

Thereasa Roy 13:03

I'm with a Siberian prince. What?

Kerry Guard 13:08

No wonder before we transition into this 180, we're going to tell everybody to do it's going to be great. We're going to tell you to shift all your messaging. You're going to love us at the end. I promise. I promise. Before we get through, though, Thereasa, what's a challenge you're currently facing? What's feeling really hard for you right now in the product marketing space, with the current world order of things,

Thereasa Roy 13:34

Two things, data, cleanliness, just finding people that you know, that I can continue to talk to, but making sure that they are the right people that I haven't you know walked into a landmine of a really unhappy customer. I'm actively feeling the lack of data cleanliness right now for me to be able to reach out to people, and I don't, you know, I don't know way to kind of automate that, because a lot of that stuff happens because of conversations, right there is, you know, it's and it's coming in from a bunch of different areas. So we, I just, I don't know how to automate the cleanliness. I'm sure I will get a pitch after this is over from some tool that will tell me how to do it better, but I think that's probably one of the hardest things. The second thing is the pace at which things are changing, and this kind of gets into what we were talking about. But, you know, with, I mean, I've already talked about it once, but like, you know, with GPT, like, we are actively trying to figure out what it looks like for us to make sure that we're showing up on those results and then the research that's being done there that we don't even have any insight to I mean, I you know, we all know it was hard enough to figure out how people were finding us when Google kind of did their lockdown on keywords and things like that. But I. But now we have no insight into how people are finding us. We're all we see is the referral source of GPT, and we don't really know how people are searching. So it's, it's a fun, fun world, but it's the pace at which people are able to get information, make quick decisions without you even knowing it. And this is not new, Kerry. I mean, we've all been talking about how, you know, I mean, God, it was like early to early 2010s when serious decisions was like, you know, 70% of the buyer's journey happens. Sorry, this is my serious decisions voice, 70% of the buyer's journey before they even hit your website. And I think that that's, you know, more and more true. I don't have any data to back it up, like the serious decisions folks, but I imagine that even more is happening. So it's just the pace and trying to keep up with it and somehow come up with a So the third thing is probably a unique kind of coming up with something that's unique. You know that the bots can't, can't. Can't, can't multiply for me, because we need to be unique in order to sell to other humans. So three things, yeah, yeah,

Kerry Guard 16:13

Those are three very real things. I feel the data, the disappearance of it, the cleanliness of it, the what's one? This idea of one source of truth, in terms of how fast things are moving, and AI and ChatGPT, there are tools that are already starting to come out of the woodwork around being able to actually see what people what keywords they're using. Oh, and yeah, it's it. I It's very new. There's a few I've seen, two tools now, okay, that are coming out of the woodwork to actually measure how people are searching for you in these GPTs it's whether it's called, whether it's chat, whatever case, maybe that's coming. Okay, I can't believe how fast that is already happening.

Thereasa Roy 17:09

That is wild, yeah, and exciting, because we do get the insights that we wanted, like that, it's almost like we get the Google back that we missed. You know, remember those unknown Sol you're like,

Kerry Guard 17:19

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening right now. So that's about to all be uncovered, which is going to be glorious, although that's just me. We had to add another tool to our text, I know, just so great.

Thereasa Roy 17:34

Hopefully some rush gets on this, on this gravy train, and we can just put it in there, right? I'll pay an upgrade, sure.

Kerry Guard 17:40

Yeah, anything not to add to my tech stack that'd be great. So yeah. So I definitely am feeling, feeling those things too. You are not alone on the struggle bus of those challenges in terms of how the buyer has shifted. We talk a lot about, I feel like I've been talking about the buyer shift for years and how, and we just mentioned it, and that has that that hasn't really changed. The buyer is in the driver's seat. They want to feel like they are have full control over the decision they are making, and they are not being influenced by anybody in sales or marketing of the company. And that is completely unbiased in terms of the call that they are ultimately making, however, the way they want to be communicated to feels like we're on the brink of of that shift where we were told so long ago that people don't want to hear about your product, they don't want to Hear about your features. They want to understand the pain points you're going to solve, but they get it now. Totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about this. How are you seeing this shift in the universe in terms of, you know, how we used to talk to buyers versus how we need to talk to them? I think that

Thereasa Roy 18:59

this probably happened for me. About three years ago, I started working for a tech startup, and they were super fast at developing features and the product and stuff, and so we would just bang stuff out the door. And I was, as a marketer, always kind of caught on my heels that like, oh my gosh, we're ready to go with, like, a whole new feature. It's gonna be huge, blah, blah. And so I'd have to be like, Okay, I have to do all the very basics, which is, like a demo video, and hey, tell everybody about it, put a social all that stuff. And I think what I and what, I guess, what, what I learned, is that people ate that up because they had, like, I often think about kind of the thought leadership and the top of the funnel, middle of funnel kind of stuff is, at this point we're beating a dead horse, right? Like there are some amazing brand awareness campaigns out there. And, you know, there's some super bowl this is very US-centric, but there's, you know, billboards on 101, and there's the Super Bowl commercials and people. Are like, Oh yeah, they totally see my pain. And then, of course, you do kind of put, you know, the time x watch in the back of your mind when you're looking at purchasing an Apple watch because they said to you, like, just look at the time. Don't look at all your notifications. And for some people, that is really valuable and impactful, and maybe it will trigger somebody to go, decide to like, oh, great, I'm just going to go make this purchase. But if you're in a kind of software business like I've always been in, you're trying to solve a problem. You either know you have the problem already, because you literally are just like me, and we just talked about the problems that I'm facing, so I'm thinking about those problems every day. I don't need to be beat over the head with the fact that that problem is causing me issues. I don't need to know exactly how much cost it's causing me. I can literally feel the cost of it every single day. And so instead, I know that I need a solution on it like people are moving so much quicker away. They're moving from this kind of, like, tell me how my problems are actually affecting me, to like, I know it, I just need to decide what my solution is as quickly as possible. And again, because we have these tools now, it's so easy for me to get to solution and to get to a real good list of solutions pretty quickly, you know. And at the same time as I'm saying this, I'm sitting here, and we were talking about the fact that, like, I can't solve I couldn't think of how to solve this problem of how are people searching for me and stuff like that. I hadn't yet brought that to GPT to ask it like, Hey, I've got this problem. I want to solve it. So there is something in between, kind of like the you have a problem and you need to solve it there that I think we can still hit, but we definitely have to be attracting the people that are have already decided they know they need a solution for it, and we have to give them all the the quick like, yep, we can solve it. Here's the five things that we do really well, check, check, check, show people how easy it is, and then get them to just, you know, get the get the pricing, purchase the thing, do the thing. So

Kerry Guard 22:06

I just saw somebody post on LinkedIn, and I so am angry at LinkedIn because I could never find the posts that of the thing that I saw. And then I want to see it again.

Thereasa Roy 22:15

I know even saving stuff is hard on LinkedIn.

Kerry Guard 22:17

It's so frustrating. Anyway, I could talk about, I could go on a rant about LinkedIn all day anyway, somebody had said, and I'm so sorry to the person I can't give credit to because I can't find it again that. And I lost my thought because I was so angry at LinkedIn. So I'll come back to No, no, it's okay, it's but it, it is this notion of,

Thereasa Roy 22:48

jog my memory Thereasa, we were talking about how people like I so I had this problem. I know I need a solution for it. I haven't done I haven't done the like, Hey. I need to find a solution, but I do want to make sure that we're attacking it. I shouldn't say attacking, but reaching those people that are actively like, I know that there's a solution out there. Tell me what it is, go ahead, versus Yes,

Kerry Guard 23:09

yes. And so we're sort of in that I'm going to come back to the other person, because I've lost their quote. But the there is that like that empty space, but it seems like that empty space is less is less often, right? When people, people are getting to those they're they're realizing they have problems faster, and they're getting to their solutions, yes, faster by themselves within hours. Yeah, it's not an apple anymore. Where, you know, Steve Jobs got to stand up on stage and say, you know, 1000 songs in your pocket. You didn't even know you could have that, but you can't, right? Like, yeah, so I do. It's very unusual now to find companies who are solving a problem that people don't even know that they have. I'm running into that less in terms of the customers we're working with, so in terms of how we need to market that if people are I mean, I think this is a bigger question, and is sort of dancing around a little bit of of the heart that we'll get to in a second. But I do think this is a problem we're all sort of facing right now on on the struggle bus with, in terms of, then, how on earth do we even market to these people? Like, if they're already out there doing their research, like it feels like it, it feels like we have to be everywhere, nowhere at the same time, yeah,

Thereasa Roy 24:28

yeah. I was on a, I was on a product marketing huddle with folks from the cyber security marketing society yesterday, and somebody was kind of new into a product marketing role, and they were like, you know, sales is asking for kind of a bunch of different assets, and I am looking at a spreadsheet with, like, no assets. So like, where do I start? And my thing is, start with the thing that's going to get you revenue fastest. Because everybody who doesn't love revenue, right? So I think a lot about the things that people are going to need at the bottom. And I know this is old. School term. But like, kind of bottom of the funnel, right? Like, do you have the basic demo videos of all the cool features? Do you do you have a way for people to quickly sign up and see the product and see how it solves their problems? Do you have a, you know, a checklist of things that people need to consider if they're looking at a solution like this, so, basic things that you really need to just start with at the bottom of the funnel, I think are where you're gonna get the biggest bang for your buck. Now, everybody's like, but that's too much, too soon, and I don't want to show you know you don't want to open the coat, as they say, unnecessarily, but I do think that there's ways for you to kind of do teaser content, right? Like nobody is going to sit for an hour long demo anyway, because they won't even sit for two second Tiktok video. So give them a little bit, and give it to them in tiny snippets, and be like, pick the one tiny problem that they solve. Show them how you do it, right? So let's go back to my use case right now. Like I need a tool that can show me exactly how people are searching AI in order to find our solution, okay, show me exactly how people are actively doing that, like how they're searching for my brand, the things that are showing up, how you can put that into a dashboard, and how you can deliver that to me to make it as easy as possible for me to action on. And I think that if we can find a way to really just pick a one tiny problem that you're going to solve, and you'll catch all. I mean, you won't catch all, but you'll catch a lot of people that are actively like, this is the problem I need to solve it. And then you can be like, see, this is how we solve it. And then they're going to be like, great. Okay, now let's have a conversation about all my other problems, then you are almost working your way back up the funnel. So start with the bottom. Solve one tiny problem. I mean, not even tiny, but solve the one problem really well, and then talk to the others. I remember

Kerry Guard 26:53

now what I was going to say. So there was a post not too long ago. I'm sorry for the solo, whose name I cannot remember, who posted it, but they were talking about what we're talking specifically about cyber because that's, that's where we primarily work these days. And one of the pain points that the practitioner or CISO had mentioned is like they have the pain that that has to be part of the solution is that you got to get into the tech stack, and so if you don't fit with my existing tech stack, I'm not even gonna look at you. Yeah, right. So I just thought that was such an like to everything you're saying. It was just like this aha moment of even if you could touch on that right, of like, Here are the tools we work with. Here's why it's easy. Because what needs to happen is, if you have to displace an existing tool, or you have to be added into a tool stack, the CFO has to go re forecast. I just learned this in this post. It's glorious. The CFO has to go reforecast years, years to fit your tool into their tech stack because of depreciation, like this is the mountain these practitioners and CISOs have to climb to get your tool into their right. So talking about that one thing of how you're going to fit in so easily and solve that like that messaging has got to be spot on, right. So you

Thereasa Roy 28:17

said the beginning, you're like, I don't want to add more tools to my tool set. Even you said it, I did. Everybody feels this way.

Kerry Guard 28:25

Yeah, it's true. It's true. So I think what's interesting, you know, I do think that there is space. I had a wonderful conversation with Sarah Heartland a few weeks ago where we were talking about content and thought leadership, and it's needing to be authentic and new, which is something else we mentioned, and I still think that's that's the case, and it has to happen. But to your point, and we have to, like, we can't forget about the bottom of the funnel, and where people are actually raising their hand and saying, Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to solve this problem and show me how you do it. Yeah. I I think is getting back to, I feel like we're sort of all on this, on this ride, back to basics in terms of marketing, yeah. And what

Thereasa Roy 29:13

Sarah was saying is, is, is also true. I mean, it's this and this and this and I mean, isn't the world working that way these days, but in the end, the reason that people purchase is one, you're solving the problem quickly, but also they trust and or they they value the relationship they're going to build with you. No CISO is going to go back and fight for adding you to the tech stack if their brand also didn't make you feel like you really understood who they were. So yes, there are some technical things that we need to start checking off. Like, again, we're going through a checklist. But then there is a broader like, do I trust this company? Do I think it will be around in five years when the you know, the when the finance you know. Of drawdown has happened. So I do, I mean, there's, I think there is space and room for both. And I kind of, I mean, I'm not, I'm just saying this out loud. Now I kind of wonder what this means for, like, middle of funnel stuff. Like, maybe middle of funnel is either going to be top of funnel, just building your brand, just talking about who you are, just talking to, like, the thing that sets you apart, and then there's just going to be this, like, feature function, check box thing.

Kerry Guard 30:30

I think the middle is where it's kind of dark right now and freaking us all out, yeah, because we can't, to your point, we can't. And with chat, GPT and all of these other places, and social, dark, social, and all of that, and the networking effect and influencers, it's the messy middle. We don't really know what's happening. All we know is that we need to create the funnel to some in some regard of how we move people through. And you know, hope is not a strategy by any stretch of the imagination, but if we follow best practices from SEO and digital ads perspective, then we know it comes back to touch points, right? So there's anonymous touch points and then not known touch points, right? So they're going to be anonymous and they're going to show up in our databases nobody, but all the touch points will be there, attached to an IEP address until it's not. And so I think moving more into that, you know, it takes 40 plus touch points before they come up with a list of three people, three vendors, yeah, and they know, really, which one they want to go for, but they have to, you know, appease the leadership gods and come to the table with a bunch. And so we have to make sure that we are active in the messy middle as they're making that decision, and look for those touch points, and then look for those trends of how they're making their way through to be make more thoughtful decisions, and where we need to pour more into and it's not to your point with data clarity,

Thereasa Roy 32:06

it's struggle is real, yes, yes, yes, it's real. Yeah, maybe, I mean, maybe that's a good case for us to continue with the middle of funnel content, because we don't have the data cleanliness to be to know exactly where people are in their in their buyer's journey, they can

Kerry Guard 32:26

come in at any point. They could come in at the bottom and see the demo and say, That's cool. And then they need to be nurtured for a whole bunch around brand to build that trust. And then they enter the messy middle of curiosity. And then they come back. They circle back, right? So it really can be, it really can be anything in terms of getting back to basics around the the bottom and who we're clearly talking to, right? When we're talking about practitioners and CISOs, and even outside of of cybersecurity, when you're talking to developers and IT folks similar, right? You got to get to the point. Yeah, to the end, as my husband loves to say,

Thereasa Roy 33:04

who is a developer, not a big narrative. Listener, okay,

Kerry Guard 33:09

right? They want to your point. They only watch two seconds of Tiktok. So how's he doing

Thereasa Roy 33:12

with that 10 year old daughter, with all the stories

Kerry Guard 33:17

I hear that I'm the listener, that dirty, same, same,

Thereasa Roy 33:21

same.

Kerry Guard 33:25

So let's, let's bring it home for folks in regards to how we need you mentioned it. You sort of piece mailed it together for us. But let's just pull the string through. The content has to be what it's got to be. It's got it's got it short,

Thereasa Roy 33:43

solve a problem a specific problem, also be really clear about who the audience is. So like again, get really narrow your ICP has a specific problem. This is how you solve it. And quickly hit those three points. Move on to the next column of could be the same ICP could be a different problem, right? And then how do you solve it? Then you could get to the point where you have a different ICP, same problem as one, but a different ICP, so you're going to talk to them a little bit differently. Hey, I see your problem, or hey, I know who you are. This is how your problem is a little bit more unique than somebody else's. This is how we solve it for you. So again, you're taking this thing that your your thing that your product does, and just parsing it out to your different audiences and or to the different pains that

Kerry Guard 34:32

they breaking it down, yeah, breaking it down in terms of the ICP, in terms of the this is also really muddled in terms of ABM right now I'm finding because the CISOs are saying, Don't go to them, because they're not. Ultimately, the decision maker, the practitioners are, the doers are, and so when you're talking to the ICP, is that who you're catering to is. Is, is that practitioner or are you trying to do multiple that way? Yeah,

Thereasa Roy 35:06

so I will do practitioner stuff to make sure I'm covered there, and then I'm going to move up funnel, up funnel, up title level. From there. We don't really message too much to CISOs. I think it was the IRA talk at cyber marketing. Yeah, I hear you, and we've heard the same thing, like from it just is they are inundated, and they rely just as I do, right? I'm a leader, and if somebody comes to me with a data cleansing tool, I'm gonna marketing ops comes to me with a data cleansing tool, I'm gonna trust that marketing ops has got their stuff sorted and they've done the vetting. I'm not going to get into the weeds about exactly what it does. If you trust that it's going to work. I am hiring people that I trust, and CISOs are doing the same thing. So they're going to trust the people. So we don't bother to message to those folks very often. We might do it on like a C to C level, but that's different. But this is like problem solution for specific ICPs. And we totally start with the people that are on the ground that are going to use it every single day, and then we kind of work our way up from there.

Kerry Guard 36:17

I think that makes it finally Yes, yeah, the I recover team is very eye opening, yeah, very clear messaging. CISOs, yeah. Um, okay, so in terms of the ICP, you identify your ICP, and then you identify all the different problems that you solve, but you break them down into in into step, different pillars, and then how you solve them from is it features, essentially, so it's like problem and feature problem and feature,

Thereasa Roy 36:45

yeah, it's pretty in the weeds. That's good, though.

Kerry Guard 36:49

I mean, I think that's what they're asking for. And I think in terms of that building of trust, if somebody told me, I'm on my podcast a while ago, that they found in their data, and I don't know if this is still true to this day. I would be curious if anybody else is seeing this. They found in their data that people were signing up for the free trial simply to see that it does actually do the thing, and then they actually go ask for a demo totally so they don't use the trial. They just want to know that they can log into it, log

Thereasa Roy 37:19

in and make sure that works. And that's the thing too about we talked about, like, longevity and brand trust and things like that, when you've got so many new tech right? You just told me about two new tech pieces that I need to dig into for my figuring out what people are searching for, right? But like, they aren't even those. How long has that tool been around? Four months, maybe. But like, how am I going to know that it actually works and does the things that I need it to I'm going to have to go and make sure that it does it. So if somebody can show me that, or somebody can give me access to a free trial so I can go click around myself. Or the other thing I'm doing is I do weekly live demos where I'm just like, hey, this is all the cool new stuff we have, and I just let anybody and everybody show up, and if you have questions, I'll dig into a specific part about it, but I just it's an easy way to, like, let people get the answers that they need. It's also really good again, for customer research, right? If people are like, Hey, does it do this? Hey, can it do this? And I can be like, Oh, that's the fifth time that I've heard that request. Like, that's interesting feedback for the product team. So anyway, I

Kerry Guard 38:23

can go influence the roadmap Exactly. Let's talk about that for a second, because that's sort of a marketing that's like a kind of marketing channel activation right there. That's your demand. Gen at work. I

Thereasa Roy 38:39

love it. Yeah, I know. I can't help myself.

Kerry Guard 38:42

I think this is the beauty of multi dimensional folks who've been in in many seats across from sales all the way through marketing and demand, Gen and product, all of the things, right? This is where the beauty happens in the intersectionality. So you go girl, in terms of, in terms of that, what does that play look like? If you could just help folks sort of paint a picture? Are you creating a live event and then sending out an invite? Are you doing it as a webinar?

Thereasa Roy 39:11

We're doing it as webinars, mostly because we just it's just a little bit easier. I host them at I'm in the Pacific Time Zone, so I host them at 7am Pacific and 7pm Pacific on alternating weeks. So people can come into a page, they can pick if they want to do you know, if it's early morning or if it's late night, that works for them, and it's just happens every single Wednesday and every week we because we are a platform, and we're kind of constantly releasing new stuff every week. The demo does end up being different, but it's generally the same flow. Like, I hit the same kind of like, Hey, if you're this, this is the things that you care about. If you're that, these are other things you care about. Sales reps are using it as kind of like a hey, I've been trying to get a hold of you, if you just want to see how it works. This is where. You can go to see how it works. So they're using it in their kind of outreach. We're using it slightly on our socials. We're just starting to test it on socials because we're worried it's a little too bottom of funnel for what might be top of funnel audiences, but we'll see and then and then, in a lot of our marketing nurtures, we're using it

Kerry Guard 40:20

is this for anybody current, existing and potential customers? Are you trying to keep

Thereasa Roy 40:25

it just it's mostly for prospects? Yeah, yeah, okay, the existing folks get kind of another round of content from us that is very specific to like, this is new. This is new. This is new. And we have those folks segmented into, kind of their roles within on the on the platform, so then we can be a little bit more tailored, which, in general, I feel like you should treat your customers better than you. Never mind. I can't say that

Kerry Guard 40:51

out loud. Somebody has to, in terms. So this is basically a lead gen play, which we which I feel like we are trying to, not trying to the the audience is sort of demanding that we get away from that. So if it's a webinar, I'm assuming they have to sign up for it, yeah, put their information in, yeah, and and turnouts. It's

Thereasa Roy 41:13

people, slow and steady.

Kerry Guard 41:17

That's okay, right, right? I think because if they're the people,

Thereasa Roy 41:19

and this is my thing about, like, even if it's this one person in this one little narrow column and they just came to see this one thing, or if they're, you know, they've, they are in my ICP and they are trying to solve a problem for maybe, maybe they're trying to solve three or four problems, then I can show them all three or four things, how we solve all three or four of those problems. Or if they're managing a team of my ICPs, and they're like, Hey, I just need to figure out, can you guys do the thing? Yeah, we can do the thing. I'll show you how

Kerry Guard 41:46

that's I love it. I think, yeah, I think getting back to quality over quantity, this is the the numbers game. The jig is up. Guys can't just blanket anymore.

Thereasa Roy 41:59

Doesn't work. Yeah, yeah. Hope is not a straight you've said it No, spray and pray. Hope is not a strategy, yeah, all

Kerry Guard 42:07

the things, all the cliches, all the cliches, in terms of, I love that, I think we have clear marching orders here. Thereasa, identify your ICP, yeah, a clear problem that a feature solves, and break your content down into chunks in terms of the demos and and webinars. Would you recommend? Or have you tried anything in regards to, you know, videos and, oh yeah, YouTube or Tiktok?

Thereasa Roy 42:35

I don't do Tiktok yet because I'm kind of old, and maybe my social media manager will take that on for me, but,

but yes, we have. So I guess I should have said that, like, I'm doing these weekly demos that are kind of, I think covering this, this broader, like, hey, here are all the problems, and here are all the ways that we solve it. But we do have very individual feature videos that are super short, like no more than 90 seconds, that earlier, like, hey, and we just talk very specifically about what it is, and we put those into, like, blog posts and social posts and emails when we need to do when we're doing a new release or something, right? That's true. That's true. Yeah. So it's a great, it's a great piece to be able to feed all those, those other places. And again, we're just hitting a very niche audience with a very specific problem, showing them exactly how we fix it. So

Kerry Guard 43:28

back to basics. Yeah, talk about it's time to talk about the product. Y'all. I know we were telling you forever, if you've been listening to the show since 2019 we've been telling you forever to stop talking about your product. Stop talking about your features. Talk about the pain points and the problems and the world you're going to create for these folks, and they are over it, and so ICP problem feature,

Thereasa Roy 43:50

yeah, yeah. I'm not saying that's not all you do. I'm just saying that, no, no, but real quick, it's a real quick win. I think it is.

Kerry Guard 43:57

And the audience is, I think it fits this audience. They are. They're technical people. They

Thereasa Roy 44:03

know what their problem is. I mean, this is for cyber security folks. I mean, yeah, but it's true of anybody, right? It's true of me, right? I just told you what my problem was. I know exactly what I need to do to fix it. You have to have the energy to go look for something,

Kerry Guard 44:21

feel that, oh, I need more time. How's it? March? Already halfway through March. What just happened? Q bot is almost over. Folks, what? Anyway, I know, I know Thereasa. I'm so grateful for this conversation. Where can people find you?

Thereasa Roy 44:39

I am mostly on LinkedIn. I so you can find me. My name is spelled funny, but it's slash in slash, Thereasa Roy , T, H, E, R, E, A, S, A, R, o, y, and I am, I think, the only Thereasa Roy in the world. So, yay for identity protection. For me.

Kerry Guard 45:00

Hi, good luck. It's actually why I took my husband's last name because there's only one. Yep, good job. Yeah, good call. I love that. So yes, go connect with Thereasa if you'd like to learn more about product marketing and how to connect with your audience in a really just straightforward, intentional way. I think that's where the audience that's what the audience is asking for, and that's how we need to meet them. At the end of the funnel, the bottom closes the deal. Be clear. Clear is kind. Clear is kind, Thereasa. Before we go, you're more than a marketer. You've been on this wonderful journey of from sales demand to product, but beyond that, outside of work, what is currently bringing you joy?

Thereasa Roy 45:44

So I broke my ankle on New Year's Eve, and I am a skier, so it has been a bit of a rough road this ski season. But what is bringing me joy is the fact that I will be able to go skiing this weekend. So yay, full recovery. Thank you to my physical therapist and my daughter, my husband for all their support, just my immediate speech. No also, Kerry, you doing this podcast slash live is bringing me a lot of joy. I really appreciate that you are taking people that are, you know, feet to the street, doing the work and communicating it out, it helps me feel a lot less alone. And as many of us still work from home, you can feel pretty alone. So thank you. Thank you for doing this.

Kerry Guard 46:30

Oh, thank you. I'm so grateful that you joined us and that we made that we made this happen. If you've missed this episode because of the lovely time zone change, that is not bringing me joy.

Thereasa Roy 46:39

Daylight Saving Time is not bringing me joy.

Kerry Guard 46:42

No, no, definitely, definitely caused quite the hiccup today I'm not bringing me joy either. Have no fear. Please comment, and we will come back to you with all of your questions as we continue to talk about how this ICP is different and changes, and how we can continue to meet them. So grateful for asynchronous communication. Yes, yes, yes. The world if you world apart, look at us. Go. Look at us. Go it. Thank you all to our listeners who are here with us today. I appreciate you. Please Like Subscribe, and we'll see you next week, this episode is 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, and co-founder of MKG Marketing, Music Mix, and mastering done by the amazing site podcast sidekick Elijah Drown. And if you'd like to be a guest, I would love to have you be on me. Let's hang out. Thank you all so much. Bye.