#306: What’s Working Right Now in B2B Marketing - Live from Drive 2025 with Sylvia LePoidevin, Trinity Nguyen, and Natalie Taylor

#306 Executive Insights | This episode was recorded live at our annual event, Drive 2025. I hosted Sylvia LePoidevin (CMO, Kandji),  Trinity Nguyen (CMO, UserGems), and  Natalie Taylor (Head of Marketing, Capsule) for a leadership panel breaking down what’s working in B2B marketing. They get into events that reliably create pipeline, outbound that still converts, media plays LLMs keep citing, and the tactics they’ve stopped running (like generic webinars that no one shows up for).

Want to come to Drive next year? Head over to exitfive.com/drive to join the waitlist for Drive 2026 and be the first to know when tickets go on sale.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro + Drive 2025 context
  
• (03:46) - – Meet the speakers: Sylvia, Trinity, Natalie
  
• (05:38) - – The one thing each leader refuses to give up
  
• (05:49) - – How Capsule turns events into their #1 pipeline channel
  
• (09:52) - – Why outbound still works (and how UserGems does it)
  
• (14:45) - – How Kandji built a media property that LLMs actually cite
  
• (19:11) - – Plays they stopped doing (blogs, generic content, virtual thought leadership)
  
• (27:29) - – Playing offense: Shark Tank Day and GTM alignment
  
• (32:53) - – Team wide alignment strategies that drive revenue

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Dave [0:00:00]: You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.

Dave [0:00:17]: Hey, it's Dave Quick note before we get into this episode, this is a recording from Drive twenty twenty five, our annual event.

Dave [0:00:24]: Here at Exit Five.

Dave [0:00:25]: This was recorded live in Burlington Vermont at Hula as part of our event.

Dave [0:00:29]: And we'd love to have you at next year's event.

Dave [0:00:31]: We're bringing it back to Vermont Stove vermont.

Dave [0:00:34]: You can go to Exit Five dot com slash drive to get more information, put your name on the waitlist list and maybe make it to next year's event.

Dave [0:00:41]: But we're bringing the audio recordings from these sessions to you live, well, recorded on the podcast because we thought it'd be a fun way to show you the stuff we talk about a drive and give you a sense of what it was like, if you didn't get to be there.

Dave [0:00:54]: And if you were there, then you get to now re listen and maybe take notes again.

Dave [0:00:58]: So this is one of the sessions from Drive.

Dave [0:00:59]: Go and check it out, Get tickets, put your name in the waitlist list for next year, Exit Five dot com slash drive.

Dave [0:01:07]: We're gonna end this with a little panel.

Dave [0:01:08]: I have three awesome marketing leaders that are gonna come up here in a second.

Dave [0:01:12]: And I wanted to do a panel talking about...

Dave [0:01:15]: We get lost in strategy, a little bit.

Dave [0:01:17]: Strategy important as Sang said, but we get lost in it.

Dave [0:01:19]: I wanna talk to three marketing leaders and we love hearing about.

Dave [0:01:22]: What are you doing right now?

Dave [0:01:24]: I don't wanna hear about Fluff.

Dave [0:01:25]: I wanna talk about whatever quarter this is We don't operate corey.

Dave [0:01:28]: Was this q three for all you.

Dave [0:01:29]: What are you doing right now and what's working, and I wanna talk to that.

Dave [0:01:33]: And, also, we will take all your questions.

Dave [0:01:35]: We'll talk through all the all your marketing stuff, talk about what's happening in your org right now.

Dave [0:01:39]: And so we have Trinity Natalie.

Dave [0:01:42]: And Sylvia, what does your company do?

Dave [0:01:44]: What industry you're in roughly what stage you're are you at and the rough makeup of your marketing team and we'll we'll jump off from there.

Dave [0:01:50]: Sylvia you go first.

Sylvia [0:01:52]: Amazing.

Sylvia [0:01:52]: So I'm Sylvia, CMO of Kandji.

Sylvia [0:01:54]: So we manage Apple devices.

Sylvia [0:01:56]: Any companies that have Apple devices for any corporate reason.

Sylvia [0:01:59]: So it's part cybersecurity part It.

Sylvia [0:02:02]: So we sell the It security.

Sylvia [0:02:03]: Our marketing teams about thirteen people total at the moment.

Sylvia [0:02:06]: There's some different groups included with that.

Sylvia [0:02:09]: But core core marketing team is just five at the moment.

Sylvia [0:02:12]: And me.

Sylvia [0:02:12]: So we're super lean.

Sylvia [0:02:14]: We're almost three hundred people total as a company and definitely growth mode and lots of stories to

Dave [0:02:20]: Hey good.

Dave [0:02:21]: Trinity.

Dave [0:02:21]: Good to see you.

Trinity [0:02:22]: I am Trinity Nguyen in Cmo at UserGems.

Trinity [0:02:24]: We're an Ai solution for sales and marketing, basically using Ai agents to help you capture buying signals, prioritize account people and then help your team writing messaging and converting them into pipeline.

Trinity [0:02:35]: Our team is about three marketers.

Trinity [0:02:38]: Right now, hiring one.

Trinity [0:02:40]: I'm fighting for one more.

Trinity [0:02:41]: Strong bench of professional and consultants wouldn't be able to do what we do without them for the last six years.

Trinity [0:02:47]: And then also an Sdr team.

Trinity [0:02:49]: So we call Ad account development reps within marketing as well.

Natalie [0:02:52]: Alright.

Natalie [0:02:52]: I'm Natalie.

Natalie [0:02:53]: Hello.

Natalie [0:02:53]: Happy to be here.

Natalie [0:02:54]: Ai.

Natalie [0:02:55]: Thank you.

Natalie [0:02:56]: I believe

Dave [0:02:57]: I one you.

Natalie [0:03:00]: Super fan.

Natalie [0:03:00]: I leave marketing in a company called Capsule.

Natalie [0:03:03]: It's a series a software company.

Natalie [0:03:06]: We create video editing software for enterprise brands.

Natalie [0:03:10]: Currently, the team is me and we just raised a series a a few months ago.

Natalie [0:03:16]: So hired one person.

Natalie [0:03:17]: So far who leads all of our events.

Natalie [0:03:19]: I was just talking to Devin reed that it's not a common first hire is an events person, but that was our...

Natalie [0:03:25]: We'll talk about that later.

Natalie [0:03:27]: But That's the current makeup and continuing to grow the team.

Dave [0:03:31]: Okay.

Dave [0:03:31]: Let's go back down this way, And what's the one thing that's happening inside of marketing at your company that I would...

Dave [0:03:36]: I would not be able to pry out of your c dead hands?

Dave [0:03:39]: Like, do you have to pick one thing?

Dave [0:03:41]: What is it?

Natalie [0:03:42]: Like, one thing that you can't take away from my marketing team.

Dave [0:03:45]: Be a person could be a tool could yeah.

Dave [0:03:46]: Like, it's the key to me.

Dave [0:03:48]: Right?

Dave [0:03:48]: Like, it...

Dave [0:03:49]: It's the key to making things go right now in the company.

Natalie [0:03:51]: Yeah.

Natalie [0:03:51]: It's my first marketing hire us marketing best hire I've ever made, and she is running the function that has been our runaway successful channel.

Natalie [0:04:00]: And our pipeline would just plummet our opportunities would just plummet if we weren't running that events machine.

Dave [0:04:08]: This is your events person.

Dave [0:04:09]: Talk a little bit about why What did you do?

Dave [0:04:11]: A events are obviously hot right now.

Dave [0:04:13]: We're talking about them and we're doing it, and we said we're doubling down?

Dave [0:04:15]: They've worked for you early on what is an event for capital?

Dave [0:04:19]: Why does it work?

Dave [0:04:20]: How have you done it and then talk about hiring this person and what their goal

Natalie [0:04:23]: Yeah.

Natalie [0:04:23]: We talked a lot about this on podcast.

Natalie [0:04:25]: So I won't rehash everything there, but they've been so successful because we have a very focused Ic.

Natalie [0:04:32]: We're very thoughtful about how we get people there what the topic is around how we structure the event itself, and it's really centered on getting their peers to network with each other.

Natalie [0:04:44]: That is such a valuable hook.

Natalie [0:04:45]: And then of course, it's, like, at a really cool restaurant and around a really interesting topic.

Natalie [0:04:49]: And then we have a very an even tighter sales plan.

Natalie [0:04:54]: It's a full go to market effort these events.

Natalie [0:04:56]: It's figuring out what customers to invite it's figuring out what prospects to invite target accounts, and then the whole follow up plan, which A is gonna be there and how to convert that into a an opportunity.

Dave [0:05:06]: What goes into that follow, man?

Dave [0:05:08]: Because I feel like you can't just invite twenty people to dinner and then magically, you know, pipeline grows.

Dave [0:05:13]: There has to be some like, we got everybody to hear.

Dave [0:05:16]: We had an awesome time, but then what?

Natalie [0:05:18]: Yeah.

Natalie [0:05:18]: I mean, it's how you frame the whole event.

Natalie [0:05:20]: So you're getting there...

Natalie [0:05:21]: You're getting people there under the premise.

Natalie [0:05:23]: Like, we're gonna talk about video and Ai.

Natalie [0:05:25]: It's broad enough that it's interesting enough to our Ic, but we've structured the conversation so that we're based having some initial discovery conversations at the dinner that gives us enough information to follow up during the dinner and then also after the dinner, like, hey.

Natalie [0:05:42]: And, usually, by the end of the dinner, at least half of the people there are, like, yeah, Let's talk more.

Natalie [0:05:47]: Let's have a demo.

Natalie [0:05:48]: Like, they know that they wanna keep talking to us.

Natalie [0:05:50]: So it's all on the T.

Natalie [0:05:51]: It's all in how you get people there and how you're you're framing it.

Dave [0:05:55]: Trinity?

Dave [0:05:55]: What's your thing?

Trinity [0:05:57]: What's at the name of your employee let me the moments when she said that I'm, like, every manager lauren

Trinity [0:06:03]: life whitney fine last time.

Dave [0:06:07]: That's...

Dave [0:06:07]: Wait But...

Dave [0:06:07]: No.

Dave [0:06:08]: We were talking about this last night at dinner, and it is worth saying, I feel like in my experience, which is not everything every hiring mistake I've made in the marketing when I was in a marketing leadership role was because I didn't really...

Dave [0:06:18]: I hadn't done the job or we didn't we didn't do the thing internally, and you were saying last night, it's like, the perfect example of, like, you hire an events person because, like, Natalie was the first events person.

Dave [0:06:29]: You did all the things.

Dave [0:06:30]: You you knew what could looks like?

Dave [0:06:32]: You know how to do it, and now you have a better sense of hiring, like, I've, you know, made a mistake in hiring an Seo person because just was, like, I think we need an Seo guy, and let's go hire or someone Right?

Dave [0:06:41]: And then, like, of course, that flops.

Dave [0:06:43]: But you know all the things now And I think that's an important part of that lesson.

Natalie [0:06:47]: One other thing I'll add on to that to close out the events piece is the full perspective I had was hopeful in knowing exactly what I wanted because when I found Whitney, I was like, I could never even imagine this type of experience would be perfect for this role.

Natalie [0:07:00]: She led private events at eleven madison in Park, one of the best restaurants in the world.

Natalie [0:07:04]: And then she pivoted into tech customer success and was, like, the top Cs for up call.

Natalie [0:07:11]: And so I knew that I needed someone who had incredible hospitality experience and got vibe restaurant, all of that kind of stuff.

Natalie [0:07:19]: But also understood how this fit into the broader sales picture, and the importance of this to our pipeline, and Yeah.

Natalie [0:07:25]: Sales.

Dave [0:07:26]: Did she come inbound?

Dave [0:07:27]: Or did you find her?

Natalie [0:07:28]: She came inbound from Linkedin.

Natalie [0:07:29]: She saw the linkedin post.

Dave [0:07:31]: People get caught up in the ego of posting on Linkedin a lot, and I see people all the time.

Dave [0:07:35]: And I'm like, I think you're miss...

Dave [0:07:36]: Especially as a leader in your company.

Dave [0:07:37]: I think you misunderstand the value of you posting there as, from an employment brand perspective.

Dave [0:07:43]: Okay, Training.

Dave [0:07:44]: What's your one thing?

Trinity [0:07:45]: So I'll skip the people side.

Trinity [0:07:46]: Everyone does amazing.

Trinity [0:07:48]: Amazing and kind of a similar background to what Natalie said as well in terms of...

Trinity [0:07:52]: It's kind of a unique background in general list, but also special.

Trinity [0:07:55]: So like kind of if the tea marketer, but to pride up my cold dead hand.

Dave [0:08:00]: Hopefully you're not dead.

Dave [0:08:00]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:08:01]: And I'm not talking my book.

Trinity [0:08:03]: It's literally the product that we're selling because I've been there a first business hire, our entire go to market team.

Trinity [0:08:09]: Our entire Crm is powered by this one brought us.

Trinity [0:08:12]: So, like, how we...

Trinity [0:08:14]: Saw team's lien everyone seems to sleep to the the revenue target we have.

Trinity [0:08:18]: Right?

Trinity [0:08:18]: But how do we keep increasing the capacity?

Trinity [0:08:20]: Whatever we doing, how do we get more precise and like knowing which accounts to go after?

Trinity [0:08:24]: All of that is just data.

Trinity [0:08:26]: So then we run a lot of Ab, then we target six hundred accounts every single month, one zero one, our Ad r's and our Ae prospect a lot.

Trinity [0:08:34]: So, like, how do you prioritize your effort?

Trinity [0:08:37]: So That entire Crm is powered by usage gems, and then now it's picking up the messaging, it tells us it's like right now, who to talk in September.

Trinity [0:08:44]: October.

Trinity [0:08:45]: So if you talk to anyone at UserGems, they will tell you this is, like, that's how of entire Crm empowered.

Trinity [0:08:50]: If I have that, I would...

Dave [0:08:52]: Do you you have these six hundred accounts.

Dave [0:08:54]: Right?

Dave [0:08:54]: I think a lot of people will understand that.

Dave [0:08:56]: But I think where people will have questions is probably what is the Outreach saying?

Dave [0:09:00]: What are you saying this came up in a session we had yesterday everybody's was like, yeah.

Dave [0:09:03]: Everything's harder than ever.

Dave [0:09:04]: Email is harder than ever outbound harder than ever?

Dave [0:09:06]: Like, we can send it, but we don't know it's gonna be open.

Dave [0:09:08]: And so, like, what's the message roughly Is there a framework that is working.

Dave [0:09:12]: Right?

Trinity [0:09:13]: Essentially.

Trinity [0:09:13]: People online say, like, Outbound is dead, access dead.

Trinity [0:09:16]: Everything's dead.

Trinity [0:09:17]: Right?

Trinity [0:09:17]: And then you would...

Trinity [0:09:19]: And then you would say something on Linkedin and that's saying, like, this is an amazing reply rate one percent.

Trinity [0:09:24]: I wouldn't use my job tomorrow.

Trinity [0:09:26]: If that's a good reply rate.

Trinity [0:09:27]: So it works.

Trinity [0:09:29]: Even if people saying that email doesn't doesn't work, I have numbers to show you it works.

Trinity [0:09:33]: When people say cold calling, no one picks up the phone, I have numbers to show you that as well.

Trinity [0:09:37]: It's just outside of a Linkedin bubble, These things actually work if you kind figure out optimizing for it and make sure they all go out at the same time in a very orchestrated way.

Trinity [0:09:47]: So for us, so we have a time of, like, say twelve thousand accounts.

Trinity [0:09:50]: We can't go after all them at any point in time.

Trinity [0:09:53]: So we use signals to prioritize, why do we wanna target these accounts.

Trinity [0:09:57]: If these six hundred accounts, they rent, like, hundred points to above?

Trinity [0:10:01]: Because they have all of these signals at the company level, and then we find people inside those companies And these are the reason why we should reach out to them as a signal was like, do the users in the past and new hires, they know someone that is a customer of blah blah blah.

Trinity [0:10:15]: Then the messaging that works is when you combine all of that into an email.

Trinity [0:10:19]: When you say, like, hey, John, congrats on whatever, Like new job etcetera, hope we can work again, Ps.

Trinity [0:10:25]: So and so in your marketing team talked to us last year about pipeline generation issue.

Trinity [0:10:31]: Timing wasn't right, budget was straight.

Trinity [0:10:33]: Maybe you wanna sing with John about what he So when to combine all of this into an Ai messaging, it works.

Trinity [0:10:39]: And then when it say the cold calling doesn't work, it doesn't work because reps a hate being yelled at at get rejected and hung up on.

Trinity [0:10:48]: But if you give them a reason why they calling.

Trinity [0:10:51]: So if someone picks up their phone and right in front of them is like, this is the reason why I'm calling you because your company has these signals, and I'm calling you specifically because you know us.

Trinity [0:11:01]: Or you know John who knows

Dave [0:11:02]: us talked about Yesterday say.

Dave [0:11:03]: It's like, the...

Dave [0:11:03]: Outreach and I respond to, like, the whole universe has my cell phone number.

Dave [0:11:07]: But the...

Dave [0:11:08]: And I totally, I really wanna change my number She's, like, we've been together for thirteen years, and I just learned your phone number.

Dave [0:11:13]: I'm not changing.

Dave [0:11:14]: But the outreach that works for me is, like, it is real.

Dave [0:11:18]: It's, like, hey, we went to the...

Dave [0:11:20]: I'll just use that?

Dave [0:11:20]: I went to the Exit Five website and it takes, like, three and a half seconds to load.

Dave [0:11:23]: Do you know that actually Saying I'm like, shit.

Dave [0:11:26]: Does it take...

Dave [0:11:26]: You know, if it's a real problem that we have, then, like, that's a real exam or or somebody the other day was like, hey, you guys post all these videos on Youtube and, like, the average video has sixty four views.

Dave [0:11:35]: Like, you should be doing this instead, but instead of talking a big game.

Dave [0:11:38]: This person actually made a three and a half minute Loom video and wasn't fluff, and she showed me exactly what we should be doing.

Dave [0:11:45]: Because like.

Dave [0:11:46]: That is what it takes.

Dave [0:11:47]: Also, why I love events like, this is because talk to someone outside earlier they're, like, outbound sucks for us doesn't work, and then five minutes later you talk to someone and you're, like, oh no, it does.

Natalie [0:11:56]: And I offer.

Natalie [0:11:57]: Like, you have to have an off, like, seventy percent of our dinner guests come from outbound emails.

Natalie [0:12:02]: Mh.

Natalie [0:12:02]: And even if they can't come to the event, we're getting so many opportunities they're like, oh, I can't come, but, like, what is capsule and then it starts a conversation they...

Trinity [0:12:10]: Because we're being lazy basically lazy.

Trinity [0:12:11]: Right?

Trinity [0:12:12]: You looking for, like, a quick fixes on a wins but you're gonna say, like, this equals that and buy my product, like, hey Our Ceos get this all time.

Trinity [0:12:20]: Hey, Oktoberfest is up Line because he's German Austria Oktoberfest, and he opens it because he lies Oktoberfest and He's like, hey.

Trinity [0:12:28]: Do you speak...

Trinity [0:12:29]: I noticed that you went to the school and have you been to Oktoberfest first?

Trinity [0:12:32]: By the way, by this, like, Hr software?

Trinity [0:12:33]: He's like, what?

Trinity [0:12:35]: Exactly.

Trinity [0:12:36]: It's just lazy for.

Dave [0:12:38]: Right.

Sylvia [0:12:38]: People also just love saying things are dead.

Sylvia [0:12:40]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:12:41]: But there's usually just, like the old way of doing it was dead, or maybe it was never that great to be in with, and there's a better way to do it.

Dave [0:12:48]: Yeah.

Dave [0:12:48]: What's what's not dead at at your companies.

Sylvia [0:12:51]: Okay.

Sylvia [0:12:51]: So basically, it's our media property.

Sylvia [0:12:52]: We have this media property called the sequence that we launched, which is essentially like, We didn't wanna keep building the company blog because, like nobody wants to read that.

Sylvia [0:13:00]: And so we're, like, can we create something that people will actually follow.

Sylvia [0:13:03]: And we also were investing a lot in social media, lots of other types of content video, etcetera.

Sylvia [0:13:08]: And so we need to place, like, point everyone back to you.

Sylvia [0:13:10]: Can we just, like, have a place house all this stuff.

Sylvia [0:13:12]: And we've put it on its own domain called the sequence dot com.

Sylvia [0:13:17]: And we realized, like, a month after it launched that it's being cited so heavily in all L search.

Sylvia [0:13:25]: And so I wouldn't give that up, and then we actually did...

Sylvia [0:13:28]: We just recently launched, like, a very simple how did you hear about us form on the website.

Sylvia [0:13:32]: And it was about seventeen percent seventeen,

Dave [0:13:37]: said

Sylvia [0:13:37]: they found us through L, specifically a lot of them named L.

Sylvia [0:13:39]: It was just an open text field, which I highly recommend for anyone wants to do this because then you get actual raw information and not just like, I was lazy click the first item in the drop down.

Sylvia [0:13:48]: So seventeen percent coming to us from Ll search, and the sequence is helping to power how we show up there.

Sylvia [0:13:56]: And so it's an interesting answer because I would...

Sylvia [0:13:58]: It's a media property that lives on its own and in its own right is, like, in we've twenty the number of, like, subscribers that we get from the company blog.

Sylvia [0:14:07]: This this is all brand new.

Sylvia [0:14:08]: Launched, like, two months ago.

Sylvia [0:14:09]: And so I wouldn't give that up because clearly, people are searching this way We have that data, and the fact I think that it's on its own domain.

Sylvia [0:14:16]: Yeah For some reason, became this sort of pack where the L m's are, like, this is an external source And so we wanna cite internal and external sources when we're talking about you?

Sylvia [0:14:26]: And so it's for some reason, like, helping us there.

Sylvia [0:14:29]: But it's not like a hack thing.

Sylvia [0:14:30]: It's not like, we're, like, let's just automate fifty articles and, like, throw them on some other domain.

Sylvia [0:14:34]: Could generally started as, like, can we make really good content?

Dave [0:14:37]: Look who's creating that content?

Dave [0:14:39]: Who owns creating that content?

Dave [0:14:40]: How does it get on the site?

Dave [0:14:41]: What do you decide to write about there?

Sylvia [0:14:43]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:14:43]: So it's actually multiple different people the team.

Sylvia [0:14:45]: One of them is we have a content person.

Sylvia [0:14:48]: She will see writes the newsletter and then the, like, editorial articles.

Sylvia [0:14:51]: But we treat it as sort of, like, there's different content streams.

Sylvia [0:14:54]: Almost like, when you go on netflix and there's different shows.

Sylvia [0:14:56]: So we have like, our editorial stream, but then we also have...

Sylvia [0:14:59]: We do these, like, short form videos.

Sylvia [0:15:00]: We'll post those there.

Sylvia [0:15:02]: We do longer form demo days, which those have been insanely success full.

Sylvia [0:15:06]: We literally...

Sylvia [0:15:06]: It's just a webinar, then we do a demo.

Speaker_5 [0:15:09]: People love it.

Speaker_5 [0:15:09]: I don't know what.

Sylvia [0:15:10]: It's, like, people are tired of all bullshit and they're like, can we just see a demo.

Sylvia [0:15:13]: And we have, like, really knowledgeable people run them and stuff of chorus.

Dave [0:15:17]: Don't you sales.

Dave [0:15:17]: We'll get mad if you give them a demo without the salespeople being on the demo?

Sylvia [0:15:21]: No.

Sylvia [0:15:21]: I think they're just pumped at, like, they can see what questions people ask.

Sylvia [0:15:25]: There's people ask me about competitors.

Sylvia [0:15:26]: We have, like, four or five hundred people showing up, and we'll get, like, two, three hundred questions.

Trinity [0:15:31]: Wow.

Sylvia [0:15:31]: And it's

Sylvia [0:15:31]: a demo up.

Sylvia [0:15:31]: And we've done Virtual ones before.

Sylvia [0:15:34]: They have not been successful.

Sylvia [0:15:35]: And this format for some reason really works So anyway, the this sequence is kind of a catch off for, like, many different content streams.

Sylvia [0:15:41]: So it's our content person, and then we have someone that runs virtual events.

Sylvia [0:15:45]: So she does the demo days, and then we have someone who runs social, so she does this short from video.

Sylvia [0:15:49]: So long answer, but there's multiple people.

Dave [0:15:52]: I love the demo day concept that goes into, like, the trend of, like, you know, interactive product demo showing the product?

Dave [0:15:57]: It's like, can somebody just show me how the hell this thing works?

Dave [0:16:00]: The east and I.

Dave [0:16:01]: And then, like, what a sneaky little marketing playbook there is, like, you get...

Dave [0:16:05]: I think a lot of the time with content, the Roi is the feedback, the questions, the objection handling, Like, oh, this always comes up on our on our webinar deck for the demo, Let's handle these objections in each week, we can iterate on the stack and and make this better.

Dave [0:16:20]: One of my early early marketing place when I was at drift was I hosted a weekly webinar.

Dave [0:16:24]: Mh.

Dave [0:16:25]: Every single Wednesday from two to three o'clock.

Dave [0:16:28]: And I literally...

Dave [0:16:29]: That's all I did for, like, a year was I worked on this deck.

Dave [0:16:31]: And every week, I would come up with new objections and try to handle them and it would influence the product map, and I think stuff like that in the world where we wanna automate everything is super important.

Trinity [0:16:41]: I think I attended one of those sessions with

Dave [0:16:42]: did do.

Dave [0:16:42]: Yeah.

Dave [0:16:43]: Yeah.

Dave [0:16:43]: We charge, like, twenty dollars for the product at that time.

Dave [0:16:45]: I a real good history of charging very low in the beginning.

Dave [0:16:48]: We'll we'll pay for it later.

Dave [0:16:51]: Okay.

Dave [0:16:52]: I wanna maybe ask the flip side of that question.

Dave [0:16:54]: So you all have a bunch of experience in marketing even beyond your companies now.

Dave [0:16:58]: Or it could be relevant to your company today.

Dave [0:17:00]: What's something that you've done in the past that you're not currently doing.

Dave [0:17:04]: And examples of this could be like, you know, we killed our company blog or we don't care about Seo or we stopped doing events.

Dave [0:17:10]: And what's the opposite of that question?

Sylvia [0:17:13]: I think for me definitely the company blog.

Sylvia [0:17:14]: The other thing that comes to mind is...

Sylvia [0:17:16]: We don't do, like, thought leadership virtual events anymore because the demo days have been so successful.

Sylvia [0:17:21]: Like if we've tried thought leadership events, you get some leads, you get some sign ups, we just always struggle to really nurture those, probably in us problem.

Sylvia [0:17:28]: But I found that for virtual events, people just want something super super practical.

Sylvia [0:17:32]: And for our audience for some reason, the demo format works.

Sylvia [0:17:35]: And so we do plenty of thought leadership in other formats.

Sylvia [0:17:38]: But I would say, yeah, no longer do we do really like thought leadership virtual events.

Sylvia [0:17:44]: And the other thing we're not doing is content that's just, like kind of generic like from the team.

Sylvia [0:17:49]: So, like, all of our content becomes so much more human recently.

Sylvia [0:17:53]: And if there's something we're writing or if there's a video, there's a human that that's from.

Sylvia [0:17:57]: Even if it's an editorial article.

Sylvia [0:17:59]: It's from a person, and it's written from their perspective.

Sylvia [0:18:01]: And sometimes just goes written by someone on our team.

Sylvia [0:18:04]: But I think we've just done away with, like, generic content.

Sylvia [0:18:07]: And it's probably just a ripple effect of, like, Ai can write generic content, nobody fucking wants then anymore.

Sylvia [0:18:13]: They want something within an opinion, and they want it to come from a person.

Sylvia [0:18:16]: That's, like, here's an experience I had, and it's more auto than it is just, like, generic.

Dave [0:18:23]: Bruce Eddie, Eddie Eddie a great...

Dave [0:18:24]: Eddie a great copywriter, and he has a newsletter tell me about earlier, and he Sorry if I talked for you, but he writes a newsletter?

Dave [0:18:30]: And he shares a copy lesson, but tells a story about his kids or his family, and that is what gets people in.

Dave [0:18:37]: Right?

Dave [0:18:37]: How how would you explore it?

Dave [0:18:38]: Can you explain it better than I do Can you say what your process is there?

Dave [0:18:40]: Yeah.

Dave [0:18:41]: So I mean, you

Dave [0:18:42]: know, think I I one of those breakfast three orange instead.

Dave [0:18:46]: It's like

Dave [0:18:47]: a the anecdote sorry.

Dave [0:18:49]: There

Dave [0:18:50]: is pleasant takeaway.

Dave [0:18:51]: And that

Dave [0:18:55]: there's a work workout.

Dave [0:18:55]: Sometimes Still go or or tactical to complain, I'll

Dave [0:18:59]: be like, three convenience

Dave [0:19:00]: number.

Dave [0:19:00]: Two fifteen four.

Dave [0:19:04]: And I'll try to those that story and that that's bless together

Dave [0:19:09]: How important do you think the story is to the fact that people read your thing.

Dave [0:19:14]: The story

Dave [0:19:15]: And then you deliver the...

Dave [0:19:16]: It's, like, what you said to me about, like, the Exit Five stuff.

Dave [0:19:18]: It's like, you come for the marketing and you stay for that connection.

Dave [0:19:21]: It's like, you know, what the hook is the story?

Trinity [0:19:23]: Yes.

Trinity [0:19:23]: Stay for the interaction?

Sylvia [0:19:25]: And it's funny because I love cooking.

Sylvia [0:19:26]: And you know when you, like, browsing recipes and they tell like, a a two hundred page story.

Dave [0:19:30]: I know zero.

Dave [0:19:31]: Like get they a big cookie recipes.

Dave [0:19:34]: I always used a jam.

Dave [0:19:35]: I'm like, let's stick out damn.

Dave [0:19:36]: I'm and temperature for samples.

Dave [0:19:37]: I need to know.

Dave [0:19:39]: I was like, So I know my Chat been crazy lately.

Dave [0:19:43]: It's like, problem statement.

Dave [0:19:45]: You want to know what?

Dave [0:19:46]: Keep richard, I'm like, no.

Dave [0:19:47]: No.

Dave [0:19:47]: Don't you do this now.

Natalie [0:19:51]: So, yeah.

Natalie [0:19:51]: I think there's a balance

Trinity [0:19:52]: to it.

Sylvia [0:19:53]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:19:53]: But at the same time, it's probably more valuable now than more than ever.

Sylvia [0:19:57]: If that makes sense.

Dave [0:19:58]: What about you, miss UserGems.

Dave [0:19:59]: Some you flipped your opinion on or have or have killed, you know?

Dave [0:20:02]: I...

Dave [0:20:02]: What I want one of you to say, like, we stop doing branded search or something like that.

Dave [0:20:06]: You know?

Dave [0:20:06]: Like...

Trinity [0:20:06]: So the thing is like, whenever I say something that we stop doing.

Trinity [0:20:09]: I'm gonna regret it because somehow in a year, it works again because everybody stays dead.

Trinity [0:20:13]: So...

Dave [0:20:15]: Yeah.

Dave [0:20:15]: I got people from thirteen years ago when.

Dave [0:20:16]: What's up now?

Dave [0:20:17]: Mister no forms, like, alright dude.

Dave [0:20:20]: Thanks How your chatbot box now?

Dave [0:20:24]: I'm like, dude.

Dave [0:20:25]: I worked at the company.

Dave [0:20:26]: Like, what did...

Dave [0:20:27]: Yeah.

Dave [0:20:28]: I hear you.

Dave [0:20:28]: We won't hold it against you.

Trinity [0:20:30]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:20:30]: I'm just thinking like, what...

Trinity [0:20:31]: So we stopped.

Trinity [0:20:33]: So a year ago.

Trinity [0:20:34]: I think it was some on some podcast podcasts.

Trinity [0:20:35]: I said that, conversational ads on Linkedin worked because this is probably two years ago, made a data builds, like, you a, quarter seven million dollar pipeline, which is conversational because it wasn't new.

Trinity [0:20:46]: No one absolutely believe their name was to be cheap.

Trinity [0:20:48]: And then we got into that bandwagon and then we saw, like, the in the insane amount of pipeline.

Trinity [0:20:53]: But we're not doing it anymore because the moment when we add publicly.

Trinity [0:20:56]: The channel stop program stopped working.

Trinity [0:20:58]: So we're not doing that.

Dave [0:20:59]: That's super real, though you share something and then it gets super crowded.

Trinity [0:21:03]: That's why market as those openly...

Trinity [0:21:04]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:21:05]: Unlike sellers, like sellers you can share because it's, like, one to one versus marketing, the whole thing gets saturated.

Trinity [0:21:10]: I think, like, one one thing we also stopped doing is, like massive boost, like, booths like massive conferences.

Trinity [0:21:16]: Not like this.

Trinity [0:21:17]: Like, this is great.

Dave [0:21:18]: About boosts that smaller conferences.

Trinity [0:21:20]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:21:20]: We're like booths it's small complexes.

Trinity [0:21:21]: Are the antsy conference.

Dave [0:21:23]: But even even there, I feel like the what matters is the offer.

Dave [0:21:25]: Right?

Dave [0:21:25]: If you're like there's a hundred booths and you're all just, know, handing out for frisbee bees and scanning.

Trinity [0:21:29]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:21:29]: How you execute it.

Trinity [0:21:30]: I think it it's just like, the capacity that we have internally out strategy, how we approach things, combine, like, the the venn diagram.

Trinity [0:21:36]: I think booth at large conference in Vegas is, like, underground no sunlight.

Trinity [0:21:40]: Does work for how Ic?

Trinity [0:21:42]: Mh.

Trinity [0:21:42]: So we stopped I'm gonna do a lot of regional dinner similar to kinda like what you're doing.

Trinity [0:21:46]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:21:46]: Yeah.

Dave [0:21:47]: Yeah.

Dave [0:21:47]: Was.

Dave [0:21:48]: Like, capsules or earlier, but maybe things you did in past roles that your...

Dave [0:21:52]: You didn't bring to caps or not, you know.

Natalie [0:21:54]: I think it's more...

Natalie [0:21:55]: I mean, I've mostly worked at startups ups.

Natalie [0:21:57]: So, like, I haven't had a big enough team ever to be, like, oh, we're gonna stop doing this?

Natalie [0:22:02]: It's like, okay.

Natalie [0:22:03]: Where do we go next and what do we experiment with?

Natalie [0:22:05]: So it's less like stopping doing things and more just running tests, but it's probably just more a reflection of how I've grown as a marketer and just matured as a person is just less about kind of doing things to do them because you feel like you have to do them.

Natalie [0:22:23]: I think that's...

Natalie [0:22:23]: We all experienced that through our our careers is, like, figuring out what is really working and prioritizing that versus, like...

Natalie [0:22:31]: Well, everyone's doing stuff with Ai.

Natalie [0:22:33]: Everyone's doing stuff with whatever.

Natalie [0:22:35]: So I I have to do that or my Ceo saying, like, why aren't we doing this and I'm looking at brandon check marketing.

Natalie [0:22:42]: Yeah.

Natalie [0:22:43]: Yeah.

Dave [0:22:43]: I never...

Dave [0:22:43]: It's

Dave [0:22:44]: hard because you hear something you hear something that's working, and you wanna go do it, and, like, you don't have the context maybe.

Dave [0:22:48]: I think the context matters so much.

Dave [0:22:50]: I used to try to chase this a little bit, which is, like, well, maybe that company raised a hundred million dollars of Vc money and so they can run a different play.

Dave [0:22:57]: Your bootstrap.

Dave [0:22:58]: You can't hire the same person.

Dave [0:22:59]: Maybe you don't have the Sylvia has built a nice little, like, employment brand where people wanna go work with you because of what you're writing on Linkedin and stuff.

Dave [0:23:06]: Maybe not everybody has it.

Dave [0:23:07]: So And and one I think it's fun about the job is we all have different ingredients to, like, try to make a recipe and that is...

Dave [0:23:13]: That becomes a fun beast.

Dave [0:23:14]: I wanted to ask you if anybody has a strong way to handle this.

Dave [0:23:18]: How do you play offense with marketing as opposed to just reaction I think it's something that we always...

Dave [0:23:23]: We all deal with here is like, hey.

Dave [0:23:25]: We need this landing page.

Dave [0:23:26]: We need this deck.

Dave [0:23:26]: We need this thing done.

Dave [0:23:27]: We need this.

Dave [0:23:28]: Just just...

Dave [0:23:28]: You can spend all your time just caught up and playing defense and reacting to all the things across the company when, like, the best marketing teams are able to say like, no.

Dave [0:23:36]: These are the things we're doing.

Dave [0:23:37]: Any of you work through that or how do you do it at your company?

Dave [0:23:40]: How do you manage up and work with the Ceo?

Dave [0:23:42]: Any insight onto that is super relevant for this?

Trinity [0:23:45]: Have a

Sylvia [0:23:45]: really fun example from recently.

Dave [0:23:48]: We don't want that.

Sylvia [0:23:50]: We did a shark take day, and it was the best thing ever.

Sylvia [0:23:53]: So we basically, I wanted to get all the best ideas the top of

Sylvia [0:23:58]: the pile.

Sylvia [0:23:59]: And I wanted to, like, accelerate Ai.

Sylvia [0:24:00]: And I felt like I had all these people in nineteen team had all these brilliant ideas And there was like space for them to bring something that big to the table, Like, something that would require, like, some big change cross functional involvement or something like that.

Sylvia [0:24:12]: And so I think this was a way of being proactive is that Like, I created the shark tank day, basically marketing shark cake.

Sylvia [0:24:20]: We had sixteen ideas we pitched some insane ideas, Like just really cool stuff.

Sylvia [0:24:24]: And we pitched to this panel of sharks.

Sylvia [0:24:26]: They were all representative of our buyer Personas, so there were people internally, but there were people that had, like, been our buyer persona done that job been in those shoes.

Sylvia [0:24:34]: And so I told them, like, you are in character today of that persona, but then we also had people from leadership that was that were there.

Sylvia [0:24:40]: I gave them money sharp labels.

Sylvia [0:24:42]: So they were money sharks.

Sylvia [0:24:43]: Gonna to give a name, but they were there for just, like, buy in and hearing the ideas.

Sylvia [0:24:47]: And, obviously, at some point, we're gonna have to allocate budget to stuff.

Sylvia [0:24:50]: And so I needed people to be in the room that would be supporting that as well.

Sylvia [0:24:53]: And so that was a cool way to just bring all the fresh ideas to the table, do it in a way where each person could pitch something they were passionate about or some idea that they had, and we had, like, music and people won cash prizes, and it was also just really fun.

Sylvia [0:25:09]: And I think especially in, like, age of Ai right now, there's so much fear.

Sylvia [0:25:12]: Like, if I could wave a magic wand and do one thing, it would be just remove all the fear around it because I think there is such, like, this mindset of limitless possibilities.

Sylvia [0:25:22]: And I feel like this make it into a game just allowed us to step into that energy a little bit?

Dave [0:25:28]: What's the best idea that came out of that?

Sylvia [0:25:30]: There so many different carriers.

Sylvia [0:25:31]: One it comes to mind is.

Dave [0:25:32]: What's the one that you're most likely to actually put in play as opposed to be?

Dave [0:25:35]: That was a fun team bonding exercise?

Sylvia [0:25:37]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:25:37]: How to see a bunch of that.

Sylvia [0:25:38]: I think there's six or seven that we are generally gonna do.

Sylvia [0:25:40]: But one that comes to mind is interactive experiences on the website.

Sylvia [0:25:44]: I think this is the most Ai specific too as well.

Sylvia [0:25:46]: But there were others that were not.

Sylvia [0:25:47]: And so it's...

Sylvia [0:25:49]: The idea that we could create a digital twin of our solutions engineering team.

Sylvia [0:25:53]: Which are super knowledgeable.

Sylvia [0:25:54]: They're are the people that are running those demo days.

Sylvia [0:25:56]: Right?

Sylvia [0:25:56]: We sell the It.

Sylvia [0:25:57]: They they don't wanna talk to sales.

Sylvia [0:25:58]: They don't wanna talk to me.

Sylvia [0:25:59]: They wanna talk to that person.

Sylvia [0:26:01]: And so can we create a digital twitter of them that they can then chat with?

Sylvia [0:26:04]: You create a digital twitter yourself.

Sylvia [0:26:05]: Didn't you?

Dave [0:26:06]: I did.

Dave [0:26:06]: Yeah.

Dave [0:26:06]: Yeah.

Speaker_5 [0:26:07]: How's it going?

Dave [0:26:08]: Equally as annoying.

Sylvia [0:26:10]: So...

Sylvia [0:26:10]: And there was many other interactive ideas too.

Sylvia [0:26:12]: One of them was just, like, just like, fun interactive things like, you could put in your current tech stack and we'll have a bot that will roast your tech, but then also tell you why we do a better job at all those.

Sylvia [0:26:21]: Right??

Sylvia [0:26:22]: So like, there's something that are just, like, fun here.

Sylvia [0:26:24]: That could be a little bit, like, viral and shareable.

Sylvia [0:26:25]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:26:26]: There's probably five or six of those, but they're all this category of just these, like, interactive experiences and we created, like, lovable prototypes, so we were just, like, demoing them at the shark thing thing, and it was really cool.

Sylvia [0:26:36]: So that's definitely one that comes to mind that feels doable and something that incorporates Ai, so we can get more around as well.

Sylvia [0:26:44]: But is also super valuable.

Sylvia [0:26:45]: Like, our Ic loves to chat.

Sylvia [0:26:47]: They don't life like to fill out forms or talk to sales.

Sylvia [0:26:50]: They like to chat.

Sylvia [0:26:50]: And so I think that would work really well for that person.

Trinity [0:26:53]: I like that roast thing.

Trinity [0:26:54]: Yeah.

Speaker_5 [0:26:55]: I really wanna do their own.

Trinity [0:26:56]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:26:56]: It's.

Trinity [0:26:57]: Yeah.

Trinity [0:26:58]: It's time to stick.

Trinity [0:26:59]: Is I'd.

Dave [0:27:01]: That somebody already posted about it.

Dave [0:27:02]: Guess what's dead.

Dave [0:27:03]: It was like, shark tank days or dead.

Speaker_5 [0:27:06]: Hey know.

Dave [0:27:07]: No, but I I do think it's important.

Dave [0:27:08]: It's, like, why?

Dave [0:27:09]: I...

Dave [0:27:09]: Events like this, You learn a bunch of days It's like, you can give your team or even just yourself space and not get caught so much in, like, the rigor of the day to day Yeah.

Dave [0:27:17]: And be, like, what if we just had two days to just imagine the things that we should be doing?

Dave [0:27:21]: You right we do get a lot of...

Sylvia [0:27:22]: And it was different from planning.

Sylvia [0:27:23]: Like, it felt totally different than planning, but it was a kind of planning, but it wasn't.

Sylvia [0:27:26]: And it was different because it was almost like we were in this alternate universe where we could create anything.

Dave [0:27:31]: Yeah.

Dave [0:27:31]: One of the first jobs I had.

Dave [0:27:32]: I worked at this email marketing company called Constant contact back in the day.

Dave [0:27:36]: They did this amazing thing that was like this, but it was across the whole company.

Dave [0:27:41]: And anyone could participate as if wanted to.

Dave [0:27:44]: And they...

Dave [0:27:45]: What they did is they basically...

Dave [0:27:46]: They got, like, the top two or three business problems right now.

Dave [0:27:50]: Like, a conversion is down, or we need to increase adoption of x.

Dave [0:27:55]: Right?

Dave [0:27:55]: And then they would randomly pair you with teams of, like, six to people.

Dave [0:28:00]: They would have breakfast and lunch and you'd all go literally across the office and spend the whole day with your team.

Dave [0:28:06]: Your team would have a name.

Dave [0:28:07]: And you'd be, like, someone in customer success.

Dave [0:28:10]: A salesperson two engineers, and your job was to spend two days and, like, fully hack on this, and that was such an amazing thing because it got every role in the company, working on the growth challenges of the company.

Dave [0:28:22]: And I think, you know, Sang ingram kinda alluded to some of this stuff this morning.

Dave [0:28:26]: Sometimes we it is too solid.

Dave [0:28:27]: It's like, yeah, the company growth is a company effort.

Dave [0:28:30]: And man, if we got all these smart ass engineers in here, like, don't we wanna help them, like, work on growth and the salespeople people are really smart and Cs and that was an amazing thing.

Dave [0:28:39]: So I I like that inside of marketing.

Dave [0:28:41]: That's cool.

Dave [0:28:41]: But I wanna do a q and A with with this crew, But, it was there anything anyone...

Dave [0:28:46]: Is there a question I should've have asked you.

Dave [0:28:47]: That's worth saying in front of this forum about something that's interesting you're doing at work, and then I can own it past the micro.

Natalie [0:28:53]: I would maybe just say one thing that's been that I've learned in the past year is the importance of aligning across the whole go to market team.

Natalie [0:29:00]: I've worked before in places where departments are very siloed and marketing doing marketing and sales is doing sales and sales will ask marketing first stuff.

Natalie [0:29:08]: But from the beginning, the head of sales, and I joined at the same time, and we have worked very closely together throughout the growth of the company.

Natalie [0:29:16]: And the events, for example, we're a full go to market team effort of...

Natalie [0:29:21]: I've mentioned that before, like, Cs is advising on what customers to come.

Natalie [0:29:26]: Sales is we built, like a seating arrangement for the dinner and talk about the game plan for every single person and the follow plan for every single person, and that alignment has been crucial for our success as as a company.

Natalie [0:29:39]: And some of the things we do to maintain that are every week, we have a full company weekly wins where everyone shares a win and gives a shout out.

Natalie [0:29:48]: So it just gives visibility on what's going on.

Natalie [0:29:51]: And then at the top of the week, we do, like, a full team sprint meeting.

Natalie [0:29:55]: So we're all aligned and we all know, like, what everyone is working on and it...

Natalie [0:29:59]: It's kind of an open forum of, oh, well, I know what's going on that person, that deal.

Natalie [0:30:04]: How can I help?

Natalie [0:30:05]: Oh, we're hosting an event there next month.

Natalie [0:30:07]: Let's make sure that that person is there, and it's a full team effort so that everyone's work...

Natalie [0:30:12]: Like, we all know that we all working towards revenue.

Natalie [0:30:14]: That's our north start.

Natalie [0:30:15]: And I think that's super important to remember in any team.

Trinity [0:30:20]: I'll, add to that one a little bit too since we had a marketing conference.

Trinity [0:30:23]: One thing that's been noticing because we talked to, like, sales leaders and the marketing leaders rev offs as well.

Trinity [0:30:28]: One thing I've noticed with a lot of, like, marketing leaders is just, like, depending on how our companies structure teams.

Trinity [0:30:34]: I noticed that a lot of markers actually don't know how sales operates operate.

Trinity [0:30:38]: Like we align on top like, Ic goals and all incentives.

Dave [0:30:42]: They don't know the club plan.

Natalie [0:30:43]: Right?

Natalie [0:30:43]: Don't let know how sales reps.

Trinity [0:30:45]: I totally believe that in...

Trinity [0:30:46]: Like, you show me incentives, I would tell you the the behavior through and do.

Trinity [0:30:49]: And when we talk about alignment, like, marketing and we always talk about alignment revenue alignment has been around forever, we talk about it.

Trinity [0:30:55]: But whenever I talk to marketers, Would say bought like, eighty percent of people in the room don't really know how reps actually get the deal done because marketers we operate as accounts.

Trinity [0:31:04]: We programmatic dramatically, we have the tools to kinda glass and target, do a lot of fun stuff.

Trinity [0:31:09]: But for sales is one to one.

Trinity [0:31:11]: So until you can kind of like, internalize how they would work in account like if you were them it's really hard to get them to believe anything you say.

Trinity [0:31:20]: Because everything you say it's gonna be fluffy and sales can tell when you're just like make up because kind of like their job.

Trinity [0:31:26]: So I wouldn't encourage his mother.

Trinity [0:31:28]: I mean, margaret to your questions.

Dave [0:31:31]: Wanna do questions?

Dave [0:31:31]: Yeah.

Dave [0:31:31]: Yeah.

Dave [0:31:32]: Or, you wanna shout it out?

Dave [0:31:33]: So

Sylvia [0:31:36]: questions sylvia So you thanks

Trinity [0:31:52]: Yes.

Sylvia [0:32:10]: Just

Speaker_5 [0:32:12]: I know I've ruined it already.

Speaker_5 [0:32:14]: Done.

Sylvia [0:32:16]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:32:16]: So the question she asked was essentially, why is it the fact that it's on some domain.

Sylvia [0:32:20]: Why does that make a difference?

Sylvia [0:32:21]: Towards how the L treated.

Sylvia [0:32:23]: My hypothesis in the research that I've seen is that there's L m's like to cite multiple sources when they're giving an answer to something, and they don't wanna cite just the company's own stuff.

Sylvia [0:32:34]: Because that's something they wrote about themselves.

Sylvia [0:32:37]: They could claim anything.

Sylvia [0:32:38]: And so I think it's that they like to check it against an external source.

Sylvia [0:32:44]: And I've seen like, I know if you've seen, like, the charts on Linkedin about, like, where L get their data, and there's, like, internal external breakdown.

Sylvia [0:32:50]: And so I think it was just, like, if someone asks it a question that it can only get the answer on our website, then it's gonna go look for other places to, like, validate that answer.

Sylvia [0:32:59]: And if there's an external source that has some good information on it, then they will use that.

Sylvia [0:33:04]: And so, like, when I go into Chat And and, you know, search things about Kandji, I'll see the sequence referenced in those little links on the right all the time.

Sylvia [0:33:12]: And so...

Sylvia [0:33:13]: And I think that's because it's looking for an external source.

Sylvia [0:33:15]: And the fact that it's on its own domain, d dash sequence dot com, then it's being treated as extra.

Sylvia [0:33:20]: Absolutely not.

Sylvia [0:33:29]: I have no idea.

Trinity [0:33:32]: And you just thought two months ago.

Sylvia [0:33:34]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:33:34]: This super new.

Sylvia [0:33:34]: So we've just a week ago launched that, like, how did you hear about a field, which is how we got that number seventeen percent referenced.

Sylvia [0:33:41]: But this is a week of data.

Sylvia [0:33:43]: Yeah also, like, this my totally

Dave [0:33:45]: Think, like, one one thing that's kind of, like a, like, a mine trip is, like, is that is that traffic that would come from Google and now we're just getting it from a different source.

Dave [0:33:53]: Like, you know, it might it might not always be net net new?

Speaker_5 [0:33:57]: Yeah.

Speaker_5 [0:33:57]: True.

Speaker_5 [0:33:57]: Sorry.

Speaker_5 [0:33:58]: Just a quick follow on that group.

Speaker_5 [0:33:59]: Please know that this external tight is what's influencing that.

Speaker_5 [0:34:03]: We can get the traffic is coming from perpetual feedback.

Speaker_5 [0:34:07]: Right.

Sylvia [0:34:09]: It's because it's it's very hack.

Sylvia [0:34:11]: We haven't measured this yet because we just discovered, like, a week...

Sylvia [0:34:14]: A couple weeks ago.

Sylvia [0:34:15]: It's literally just from, like, when you go in there or I go in there and search, and you see, like, the links on the right where it's, like, giving us reference sources, then you'll see the sequence all over there.

Sylvia [0:34:27]: And so that's the only thing.

Sylvia [0:34:28]: So we haven't put a We actually did just buy air opt which is supposed to help with some of the measurement.

Sylvia [0:34:32]: But I don't think Air opt ops yeah it's, like, L optimization measurement, but we haven't...

Sylvia [0:34:38]: I believe implemented it yet or have the data from it.

Sylvia [0:34:40]: So once we have that, maybe we'll get some more information.

Sylvia [0:34:43]: But it was definitely something that just stood out to me that especially since the sequence is, like, two months old.

Sylvia [0:34:48]: Like, it makes no sense.

Sylvia [0:34:50]: And so the fact that I think a

Trinity [0:34:52]: lot of people said the same thing.

Trinity [0:34:53]: Like, everything she said in terms of, like, the hypothesis how Ai crawls multiple sources.

Trinity [0:34:58]: So press releases actually is now odds, not that.

Dave [0:35:02]: We saying is a P is back.

Speaker_5 [0:35:03]: Man yeah.

Trinity [0:35:04]: I know.

Trinity [0:35:04]: I can't believe it.

Trinity [0:35:05]: But because they're looking for third party sources.

Trinity [0:35:07]: So now a lot of companies rev P team.

Dave [0:35:11]: Yahoo Finance like those like...

Trinity [0:35:14]: Because you want a third party pace to list your stuff.

Dave [0:35:17]: You got you next year.

Dave [0:35:19]: One more.

Speaker_6 [0:35:19]: Follow on.

Speaker_6 [0:35:20]: On that.

Speaker_6 [0:35:20]: Like, how much are you...

Speaker_6 [0:35:21]: Or how are you factoring in like, the content you're creating there?

Speaker_6 [0:35:25]: And how much is this kind focus first it's, like category

Sylvia [0:35:29]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:35:29]: It's a good question.

Sylvia [0:35:30]: So we actually...

Sylvia [0:35:30]: We...

Sylvia [0:35:31]: We...

Sylvia [0:35:31]: When we do these demo days, we write up recap.

Sylvia [0:35:34]: And that's the most product specific content we have on the sequence.

Sylvia [0:35:37]: Because the sequence is supposed to be an editorial site.

Sylvia [0:35:40]: Right?

Sylvia [0:35:40]: It's not supposed to be this, like, dump of product information.

Sylvia [0:35:43]: But I think because we put the demo day recap on there.

Sylvia [0:35:46]: I think that's where it's getting some, like, the product specific info.

Sylvia [0:35:49]: And so I would say the vast majority of what's on the sequence is is more thought leadership.

Sylvia [0:35:54]: It's from a human perspective.

Sylvia [0:35:56]: They're almost, like op, type pieces or their videos with descriptions things like that.

Sylvia [0:36:00]: But the, I would say maybe I don't know a fifth of it or a sixth of it will be these, like, demo day recap, and we'll obviously tell a story around it.

Sylvia [0:36:08]: It's not just, like one two, three, four, five product features, but it is pretty product very straightforward.

Sylvia [0:36:13]: And so that's probably the the sort of segment or stream of content that's the most product specific.

Dave [0:36:20]: Don't you all feel like there's a lot of conflicting information out there about Ai and Seo and nobody really knows.

Sylvia [0:36:26]: Even knows what the acronym it is.

Sylvia [0:36:27]: Yeah So...

Dave [0:36:28]: No but But but that's the thing about, like, the posts and stuff you see on Linkedin, like, isn't the best thing to do, Like, I think it's easy to sit wherever and be like, well, she doesn't know all.

Dave [0:36:36]: You gotta do stuff...

Dave [0:36:37]: Like, try something.

Dave [0:36:38]: Learn for yourself.

Dave [0:36:39]: Be like, okay.

Dave [0:36:39]: There might be something here.

Dave [0:36:40]: What type of experiment can I run?

Dave [0:36:42]: To do this.

Dave [0:36:43]: Right?

Dave [0:36:44]: I think you can argue all day in the linkedin comments with people about how to measure Ai for.

Dave [0:36:47]: Like, let's all just do it for our own business and Yeah.

Dave [0:36:49]: Figure out where we can learn.

Dave [0:36:50]: There was a question right there.

Dave [0:36:51]: You, my friend.

Dave [0:36:52]: Yeah.

Speaker_5 [0:36:53]: Sports here.

Speaker_5 [0:36:54]: So it wants idea of digital with shit's engineer, but How do you record competitor You think that we're bad.

Speaker_5 [0:37:05]: I don't hope if that

Sylvia [0:37:06]: is a good question.

Sylvia [0:37:06]: We have not gotten that far yet

Speaker_5 [0:37:08]: honestly this day?

Speaker_5 [0:37:09]: So.

Speaker_5 [0:37:09]: I'm gonna note that down.

Sylvia [0:37:12]: I mean, I thought on it was...

Sylvia [0:37:13]: I think there are certain Ai platforms you can purchase I can give some level of governance against any sort of, like, a misuse of a bot and things like that.

Sylvia [0:37:20]: So we're in the process of just, like, researching how to actually make this happen.

Sylvia [0:37:24]: And so I'm sure we'll learn a lot more through that.

Sylvia [0:37:27]: In terms of the competitive side, my personal, like, philosophy on that is like Who cares.

Sylvia [0:37:32]: They're gonna find that shit out anyway.

Sylvia [0:37:33]: Maybe everybody's

Dave [0:37:35]: I like the Zoom info pricing docs somewhere or whatever.

Dave [0:37:37]: Yeah.

Dave [0:37:38]: Know.

Dave [0:37:38]: I've been at every company and, like, You get it someone forwards you a message from one of your competitors.

Dave [0:37:43]: It was, like, I was at drift and Intercom had our whole freaking sales deck, and it's like...

Sylvia [0:37:47]: Exactly.

Dave [0:37:48]: Get that.

Sylvia [0:37:48]: But fine We

Dave [0:37:49]: are in a new age though, we're, like, there is a lot of, you know, what what level of information would you would you want to give as is is definitely a very real concern and question.

Sylvia [0:37:57]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:37:57]: We could potentially have two versions, maybe there's one that's more just for open deals.

Sylvia [0:38:01]: That's a resource for them that's embedded in the product, and maybe there's one that's external or something like that.

Dave [0:38:06]: Imagine if you knew was a competitor, you control like, like, you just flip into, like, control mode or something like that?

Dave [0:38:11]: That'd be so good.

Dave [0:38:12]: Any...

Dave [0:38:12]: Yeah.

Speaker_6 [0:38:14]: If someone has a or that yet?

Speaker_6 [0:38:15]: The outreach.

Speaker_6 [0:38:16]: Where do they start to bring out how does orange signal else to look for?

Speaker_6 [0:38:21]: They're evening stride.

Dave [0:38:24]: Very good question.

Trinity [0:38:25]: So I would say...

Trinity [0:38:25]: So it depends on the business, I guess, in your case, It has how old is the business.

Trinity [0:38:30]: Do you have, like, crm data, historical data, things like that?

Speaker_6 [0:38:34]: Handful.

Speaker_6 [0:38:34]: What?

Speaker_6 [0:38:35]: How into ways like what world?

Trinity [0:38:38]: Right.

Speaker_6 [0:38:38]: Up.

Speaker_6 [0:38:38]: And so they always have different ideas about say.

Speaker_6 [0:38:42]: Well lot these guys are reaching it through play gonna start to build it out.

Speaker_6 [0:38:46]: And so I'm not trying guy too much.

Speaker_6 [0:38:50]: And see where they're gone.

Speaker_6 [0:38:51]: So really tough.

Speaker_6 [0:38:53]: I'm asking miguel so historical data to see what the clients who they are.

Speaker_6 [0:38:58]: When did they find tell go.

Speaker_6 [0:38:59]: Not sound white?

Speaker_6 [0:39:00]: Yeah.

Speaker_6 [0:39:01]: I didn't know.

Speaker_6 [0:39:01]: There's a better Rose brand.

Speaker_6 [0:39:02]: Sales, Ceo, Thoughtful.

Speaker_6 [0:39:05]: Think dan.

Trinity [0:39:06]: So I think it's good to have, like, good the feedback from, especially the sales team Tv and the Ceo depending on how they involved in deals.

Trinity [0:39:13]: But I think the number one start out with quantitative first, so, like, look back into your historical, but how much data you have.

Trinity [0:39:20]: And then theoretically, the solution, you have to be able to tell you the Ic criteria, the fit that's pretty standard.

Trinity [0:39:26]: And then typically, what kind of signals those companies typically had for around the time that they talk to you, same thing with the buyers.

Trinity [0:39:34]: So this is the hardest part it sounds simple, but basically, almost like a product marketer Ai that kind of a look back and analyze and then tell you typically, these are the indicators of companies that like to bind you.

Trinity [0:39:47]: Not saying in market because as assume a lot.

Trinity [0:39:49]: Right?

Trinity [0:39:50]: And that becomes your stack rang up.

Trinity [0:39:52]: These are the signals and we should care about, and then assign weight to those, then now what is your target account list if you have them or let's go find accounts and match these And then these new accounts find all the signals that's happening right now there and then start bringing them based on the first sheet of paper.

Trinity [0:40:09]: So in the between, before you start applying it to your target accounts, this is when I would bring in the sales leaders and then maybe a Ceo Like, does it look right.

Trinity [0:40:16]: The data face that.

Trinity [0:40:17]: But maybe something's changed because data could also, like, things could change.

Trinity [0:40:21]: Like, we monitor a mix of Ic persona in the last six years and things do change.

Trinity [0:40:26]: So maybe they have some newer information.

Trinity [0:40:29]: In the last three months that could shift the way.

Trinity [0:40:32]: So this is where human in the loop comes in, and then you get that set of, like, weighted signals, important scoring, apply that account scoring and contact scoring to your next.

Trinity [0:40:41]: Yes.

Dave [0:40:42]: We'll do one more and then these three were in Vermont.

Dave [0:40:45]: They got nowhere to go, so I would go find them and find them after.

Dave [0:40:48]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:40:48]: Can't audi.

Sylvia [0:40:49]: So

Speaker_5 [0:40:50]: I I didn't even my New.

Speaker_5 [0:40:51]: I I did meet with that, but I both I actually needed that client survey and just to figure out, like, how our buyers our clients are getting their information and still traditional media.

Speaker_5 [0:41:04]: It's the largest one for us.

Speaker_5 [0:41:06]: We go work with manufacturing, health care and all that.

Speaker_5 [0:41:09]: Just wondering, like, how ar bringing Mean we are to leverage Lauren rosa warm law.

Speaker_5 [0:41:16]: I guess, modern marketing strategies.

Speaker_5 [0:41:19]: It's just, you know, we're trying to use it for bought leadership warrant and all that, but I just...

Speaker_5 [0:41:23]: I'm curious to see that.

Speaker_5 [0:41:24]: Ideas right.

Sylvia [0:41:27]: Yeah.

Sylvia [0:41:27]: Have some thoughts on this for P r, our thought is basically, like, p is only as good as it spokes people.

Sylvia [0:41:33]: And so what we're working on is really more building sort of influencers internally.

Sylvia [0:41:38]: So we have people who are building up their Linkedin accounts, for example, getting them hosting, doing video with them, and then also having those as spokes for P.

Sylvia [0:41:47]: The best way to do P has something really interesting to say or have someone really interesting to talk to.

Sylvia [0:41:52]: And so if you can build up this bench spokes people that's out there saying really interesting things.

Sylvia [0:41:56]: It's just gonna naturally extend to that, like, journalist conversation as well.

Sylvia [0:42:01]: So I think yes, if you're trying to do P for an Ll optimization hack, and you're just gonna, out a bunch your press releases.

Sylvia [0:42:08]: I don't know.

Sylvia [0:42:09]: Maybe that's a strategy.

Sylvia [0:42:09]: We're not doing that.

Sylvia [0:42:10]: For us, it's more just like, yeah.

Sylvia [0:42:12]: Who are the people?

Sylvia [0:42:13]: Like, that's where it really starts with, like, are the people that have something interesting to say.

Sylvia [0:42:16]: Then we set up a sourcing call with them?

Sylvia [0:42:18]: We figure out, like, what do they wanna talk about.

Sylvia [0:42:20]: What's interesting to them?

Sylvia [0:42:21]: We kind of match that up with our storytelling.

Sylvia [0:42:22]: And then that's what we pitch out to the journalists.

Sylvia [0:42:25]: And so I think yeah, he's has to start with, like, the people internally at the company.

Natalie [0:42:30]: So I hear you said, Like, have something...

Natalie [0:42:31]: I have someone to

Dave [0:42:32]: say.

Dave [0:42:32]: Right?

Dave [0:42:33]: The p thing I've seen work over the last couple of years with Cmos and others is the myth is to think that you're gonna just, like, pitched in New york times on the fact that you raised a hundred million dollars and, you know, the Ceo thinks that's gonna happen, but it's not.

Dave [0:42:44]: The play that I've seen work really well is if the company has truly interesting and original data, and you're often...

Dave [0:42:52]: And, like, that's gotta become part of the product.

Dave [0:42:53]: And let's say, you know, this happens a lot in, like, cybersecurity.

Dave [0:42:58]: Right?

Dave [0:42:58]: If you have a lot of data on interesting hacks and leaks and things that happen and you start by becoming a source for reporters.

Dave [0:43:04]: It's not, hey, talk to our spokesperson, but it's like, hey, This thing happened.

Dave [0:43:07]: We have some data.

Dave [0:43:08]: This is interesting.

Dave [0:43:09]: That's is gonna help your article, and then it becomes this bridge to actually build a real relationship.

Dave [0:43:14]: I think that the the value in having, like, a P r firm on retainer right now is probably gonna be, like, relationships two journalists in particular industries, but the marketing play that I would wanna run is, like, what interesting data and not not the bullshit company data.

Dave [0:43:27]: Like, we know we analyzed two hundred...

Dave [0:43:29]: You know, I loved our, like, salary report we did with Exit Five, but, like, we're not gonna pitch that to the New York times.

Dave [0:43:34]: Right??

Dave [0:43:35]: So can you create original data and be a source, and you happen...

Dave [0:43:39]: It happens to be created by the company that makes this product, and that gives you more something visual, but is...

Dave [0:43:44]: That is exactly the example of, like, having something to say.

Sylvia [0:43:47]: There's two ways to do the research part so you can pay an agency to do the research, which is generally best because then they put their, like, little stamp of approval on it, and they're a research agency and journalists loves stats.

Sylvia [0:43:57]: Like, we...

Sylvia [0:43:58]: When we do a...

Sylvia [0:43:58]: We used to do this annual report, we would get coverage for it the entire year.

Sylvia [0:44:02]: Like, it just They love stats.

Sylvia [0:44:04]: And so research is definitely great.

Sylvia [0:44:06]: Works for me.

Dave [0:44:07]: Perfect example.

Dave [0:44:07]: It's like, Apple device from what, you know, apple device management.

Dave [0:44:10]: Right?

Dave [0:44:11]: So something happens with Apple.

Dave [0:44:12]: You have some stat about how many people take their Apple devices is home now because we're all working from home.

Dave [0:44:17]: Like, those are relevant to, like, Yeah.

Dave [0:44:19]: Orders on the tech b.

Dave [0:44:20]: Right?

Sylvia [0:44:21]: Exactly.

Sylvia [0:44:21]: And then we've been experimenting with by doing our own research and seeing if they'll pick that up.

Sylvia [0:44:25]: And we do this really simple.

Sylvia [0:44:27]: We used type form.

Sylvia [0:44:28]: We send out surveys to our sequence readers leadership, and our latest survey got a thousand responses.

Sylvia [0:44:33]: We offer some swag incentives.

Sylvia [0:44:35]: And so we don't know if journalists, they're gonna be like, well, did this research yourselves.

Sylvia [0:44:39]: We don't know if they're gonna, like, honor that or not, but because there's so many responses we think they might.

Sylvia [0:44:43]: But, yeah.

Sylvia [0:44:44]: And you could always try that, like, simple type forbes survey, it's just amazing for just connecting with the customer too?

Sylvia [0:44:49]: Like, I loved what Saying was saying about Nr and bring coming back to that.

Sylvia [0:44:53]: Like, I think in all this Ai hype, the biggest thing people are missing or just like, what are we doing for the customer.

Sylvia [0:44:58]: Like, we're all here looking at ourselves and looking at our teams looking at our processes, and this just, like Is any of this helping though?

Sylvia [0:45:04]: Is any of this impacting them?

Sylvia [0:45:06]: And so, like, the ability to, like, come back to the customer even if it's like a simple survey or just sitting on a sales call?

Sylvia [0:45:12]: Like, I think we're really missing that right now.

Dave [0:45:15]: Cool.

Dave [0:45:15]: Okay.

Dave [0:45:16]: We're gonna wrap shout out to this panel, please.

Dave [0:45:17]: Thank you.

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