#212: Marketing Leadership | Lessons for First-Time Marketing Leaders with Michael Cole, SVP of Everflow
Jan 21, 2025
auto_awesome
Michael Cole, SVP of Marketing at Everflow, shares his inspiring journey of building Everflow's marketing function from the ground up. He reveals effective strategies for transforming satisfied customers into referral partners and discusses the delicate balance between organic growth and paid advertising. Michael emphasizes the importance of flexibility in team structures and collaboration with complementary businesses. His insights on delegation and accountability shed light on leading a thriving marketing team, making it a must-listen for aspiring marketing leaders.
Michael Cole emphasizes the importance of understanding company growth and addressing immediate needs when building a marketing function from scratch.
Everflow successfully leverages referrals by turning satisfied customers into advocates through a structured referral program, enhancing organic lead generation.
Event marketing plays a crucial role for Everflow, as hosting industry gatherings fosters community engagement and significantly increases brand recognition.
Deep dives
The Challenge of Marketing Attribution
Marketing attribution poses a significant challenge for B2B companies, as it becomes increasingly complex to measure marketing effectiveness. Paramark offers a solution that addresses this issue by utilizing a marketing attribution platform designed to evaluate what strategies work and which do not. Their approach eschews traditional click attribution methods and instead employs marketing mix modeling and incrementality testing, making it easier for businesses to decide where to allocate their marketing budgets. This innovative method allows marketers to gain deeper insights at various levels, including channels, campaigns, and geographical locations.
Building Marketing Teams from Scratch
The experience of developing Everflow's marketing team reveals the intricacies of starting from the ground up. When Michael Cole joined as the first full-time marketing hire, the company had a minimal structure and was generating only 1.5 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). He focused on identifying immediate needs, such as enhancing the website and improving customer support, while establishing a sense of direction. This foundational stage demonstrated the importance of addressing urgent issues and creating a cohesive strategy to align marketing efforts with overall business growth.
Leveraging Referral Programs for Growth
Referrals emerged as a key growth strategy for Everflow, proving to be one of the most impactful channels in their marketing efforts. The company capitalized on its satisfied customers by implementing a formal referral program, wherein happy customers were incentivized to recommend Everflow to others in their industry. This approach highlighted the power of customer success in establishing trusting relationships that encourage referrals. By ensuring that customer success teams were actively engaged, the company was able to harness the enthusiasm of its clients and generate leads more organically through word-of-mouth recommendations.
Maximizing Event Marketing
Event marketing served as a vital strategy for Everflow, with the team recognizing the importance of attending and hosting events in their industry. By organizing happy hours and parties at major affiliate marketing conferences, they were able to foster a sense of community and engagement among their customers. These gatherings not only created positive experiences but also significantly enhanced brand recognition, leading to increased word-of-mouth advertising. As a result, Everflow became synonymous with social events in the affiliate marketing ecosystem, thereby strengthening their position in the market.
Adapting Marketing Teams for Scale
As the company grew, so did the need for a well-structured marketing team capable of managing various channels and tactics effectively. Michael adopted a strategic approach by continually evaluating the team's composition to ensure it aligned with company goals, focusing on performance and results-driven initiatives. He emphasized the importance of scaling marketing efforts and experimenting with new channels, such as Google ads, to supplement organic growth. By maintaining a close relationship with his team and encouraging collaboration, he felt confident in their ability to adapt and innovate as the company navigated its competitive landscape.
In this episode, Dave sits down with Michael Cole, SVP of Marketing at Everflow, a partner marketing platform that helps companies manage referral and affiliate programs. Michael discusses his journey from being Everflow’s first marketing hire to leading a marketing team of 16, and shares strategies for building a marketing function from the ground up.
Dave and Michael cover:
How Everflow turns happy customers into referral partners
What it’s like to be a first-time marketing leader
Building a marketing function from scratch
Timestamps
(00:00) - - Introduction to Michael
(06:10) - - Michael’s journey to marketing leadership
(10:57) - - Understanding company growth before developing your strategy
(14:01) - - Turning happy customers into referrals
(18:06) - - Scaling a successful team
(24:30) - - Referrals vs. paid ads
(28:47) - - Organic vs. paid strategies
(31:14) - - Growing organically and spreading through word-of-mouth
(33:00) - - Finding complementary business partnerships
(39:13) - - Enhancing content creation
(42:13) - - Delegation and accountability in a strong team