Building With Buyers

Kyle Lacy, CMO (and Chief Mario Officer!) at Lessonly, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Kyle has been recognized as one of Indiana’s Forty-under-40, is the author of 3 books, built the content marketing team from scratch at ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce for $2.6B), led marketing at OpenView Venture Partners, and advises a couple of tech startups besides his full-time role. Lessonly was founded in 2012, has 200+ people, and is based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. They've raised Series C ($30.2M total). Lessonly is the powerfully simple way for teams to learn, practice, and Do Better Work. Enabling busy teams (like Sales, like Customer Service) to get on the same page, stay ahead of change, and deliver amazing experiences to customers and prospects. This is NOT your ordinary training software. Here's what we hit on: You updated your title on LinkedIn to Chief Mario Officer - why? What was that for?; Irrational ideas can sometimes work; How we tie marketing to revenue and why that's important; About Lessonly in your own words; What's unique about your marketing team; You've been at Lessonly for 4 years. What did you do in those early days that was critical for success? Kyle introduced an agile marketing framework with 2-week sprints - we dive into why and how this is done; Lessonly moved their outbound sales development (SDR & BDR teams) under marketing - why and how this makes you more successful; Marketing: what’s working well for you right now, what channels (HINT: direct mail is part of it); Marketing: what are the challenges, what are you trying to figure out (HINT: hiring while remote is part of it, how to keep the culture); We talk about Ali Llama - who is this llama? Who came up with this? What's the story?; How do you differentiate from other (online training) players in the space; B2C can help inform B2B marketing; Write how you talk when creating content; Having the space to be creative vs. proving ROI on each creative campaign; How to lose money responsibly in order to differentiate; Favorite failures. You can find Kyle on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kylelacy Find out more about Lessonly: www.lessonly.com Here's the e-commerce site to get your llama gear: https://olliellama.co/  Do Better Work was mentioned in the episode: dobetterwork.com For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov on Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCYgrBn-Y6P9o_OJ2lxHkWyg or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Alvaro De La Rocha, CMO at Bespoke Post, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast.  Another Kellogg connection on the show! Plus the co-founders are also from Kellogg. What a team!  Alvaro has held previous roles at Ogilvy and Microsoft, on both the product and marketing side.  Bespoke Post was founded in 2011, has 73 people, and is based out of NYC. They've raised $8.9M in funding.  Bespoke Post is goods and guidance, delivered monthly. Themed boxes full of enviable gear – shaving sets, shoe shine kits, home bar essentials. They partner with under-the-radar brands so you can discover the coolest selection of goods and gear. And to help out during the Covid-19 crisis, they've purchased over $38,412,000 of products just from small businesses.  Esquire magazine says "You can't put a price on the fun you'll have opening the boxes."  Here's what we hit on:  What does that mean, goods AND guidance;  Quick pitch about your company, who you’re for, what problem you solve (if there’s anything I missed);  Who's on the (marketing) team? Anything unique in the way that you’re structured;  You've been at Bespoke Post for 8+ years, started as the Director of Marketing. What were you doing in those early days to stand out? (HINT: getting featured on podcasts back in 2012?!);  Promoted to VP of Marketing, then to CMO. What did you have to take on for each role? What do you need to do to be successful? (HINT: good hiring + knowledge sharing to speed up your learning curve);  Marketing: what’s working well for you right now? what channels? (HINT: FB/Insta, podcasting, and TikTok);  How are you making FB/Insta/TikTok work for you, specifically? (HINT: more creators for social ads + less control);  What’s the brand personality;  How are you specifically leveraging podcasts? (HINT: more testing and not so worried about CAC);  How do you differentiate from other players, other subscription boxes;  Top items purchased from Bespoke Post in the past year;  What are the last 2-3 really good (marketing) ideas you've come up with;  What’s your “favorite failure”?  You can find Alvaro on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alvaro-de-la-rocha-2549b3/  Find out more about Bespoke Post: www.bespokepost.com  For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen).  You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov on Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCYgrBn-Y6P9o_OJ2lxHkWyg or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

I spoke with Lesley Crews from Sweet Fish Media on the B2B Growth podcast.  They've been going deep into the world of demand generation for the month of April - sweet! In this episode we discuss modern demand gen for startups and the playbook I wrote up that outlines key themes in more detail, including: The difference between lead gen and demand gen; Old vs. new demand gen and the key differences that will get you results; Your demand gen strategy should focus on the buyer, not you; How to be revenue-oriented...not leads focused; Sales & marketing collaboration. Here's the demand gen playbook covered in the episode: www.linkedin.com/pulse/modern-demand-gen-startups-anna-furmanov For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov  on Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCYgrBn-Y6P9o_OJ2lxHkWyg or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Jeroen Corthout, co-founder at Salesflare, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Salesflare was founded in 2014, has 8 people, and is based out of Belgium. They've raised Seed funding ($406K). Salesflare is the perfect CRM for any startup or small B2B business that wants to make more sales with less work. No more manual data entry. The CRM fills itself out by synchronizing with your email, calendar, phone, social media, and organizes all this data for you. There’s a free trial (no CC required) for those interested in test driving. Here's what we hit on: Why Jeroen decided to get on 100+ podcasts and the impact he's looking for from this effort; Who's on the team and what they're focused on; What marketing channels are working really well for them; Deeper dive into SEO and how they're making it work with a lean team; Marketing challenges they're trying to figure out; How they differentiate from other sales tech/CRM players out there (HINT: WOM, customer support, and relationships); How they’re automating social media distribution across 3 channels; How Jeroen keeps his marketing fresh and stays creative; What are some bad recommendations Jeroen has heard in the startup/marketing/sales space; We talk about Doctura, the other company that Jeroen founded, and the learnings he got to help build Salesflare. You can find Jeroen on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout Find out more about Salesflare: www.salesflare.com Link to StoryChief mentioned in the episode: https://storychief.io  For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Tera Hudson, Senior Marketing Manager of Demand Gen at The Mom Project, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to The Mom Project, Tera was at InStride (reinventing the education of today’s workforce in partnership with leading global universities) and TeleSign (communications platform as a service or CPaaS, a Series B tech startup). The Mom Project was founded in 2015, has ~270 people, and is based out of my personal favorite, the hard-working Chicago, IL. They've raised Series B ($35.6M total). The Mom Project is a digital talent marketplace and community that connects professionally accomplished women with world-class companies - companies like Accenture, DropBox, Pinterest, Etsy, Facebook. They're changing the way women work and redefining career structures by providing women with opportunities that are in balance with their personal goals. This is HUGE and especially during COVID times. That respect that’s so desperately needed for work + life integration. I'm a big fan of the mission of The Mom Project. Here's what we hit on: Tera's fascinating story of landing at The Mom Project; Those first days and weeks at TMP - what did Tera focus on; How the marketing team is structured; What's working well with their marketing efforts and how they're making it work (HINT: paid and organic social); The challenges of marketing for a 2-sided marketplace (companies vs. talent); Why they decided to pause with Facebook and go big with LinkedIn; How they're using proprietary research and leading insights to generate demand; Is there a clear buyer journey at TMP, or not; Bad recommendations related to attribution; Tera's personal story of sacrificing her well-being to get the job done, and what she decided to do instead; Tera's obsession with crime stories. You can find Tera on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/terahudson Find out more about The Mom Project: www.themomproject.com Link to the Werklabs research: https://work.themomproject.com/resources/tag/werklabs For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Peep Laja, founder of 3 companies (Wynter, CXL and Speero) joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Peep has been building companies for years. He founded a SaaS startup back in 2009 for building and selling online courses (it didn’t work out) and now running these companies. Peep has really grown his audience on LinkedIn and Twitter. 37k followers on Twitter and almost 26k followers on LinkedIn. Wow. People (including me) are following Peep's thought leadership on building companies, experimentation, storytelling and content marketing. Wynter is a messaging optimization platform for B2B companies. What messaging hits home? What falls flat? Customers include Drift, Unilever and GoToMeeting. CXL is a skill-building platform for marketers that uses the world’s top 1% practitioners as instructors. Customers include Google, Cisco, and Hilton. Speero is a customer experience optimization agency. They do CX research and experimentation to measure and improve your customer experience. The short story here is Peep sent out a Tweet: “A podcast booking company is pitching me, saying they can get me on 2 shows/week and nobody else can match their success rate. Let's see about that.” Clearly Peep is an experimenter. And then someone emailed me about it and so here we are :) Here's what we hit on: How many podcast shows have you booked so far? What's your goal with being on so many podcasts; What did you learn from your 2 years building the SaaS startup (that failed) that has helped you succeed with Wynter and CXL and Speero; What are your thoughts on content marketing and how it has changed over the years? What exactly has changed since 2010? What do marketers need to stop / start doing; Who's doing innovative things with their content (HINT: Harry Dry and also Growth.Design with their comic book style case studies growth.design/case-studies); Recommendations for startups on how to differentiate when sameness is the default...what’s the strategy (HINT: innovation, brand and strategic narrative); How Peep stays creative; Some bad recommendations that Peep has heard and wants to set the record straight; Do user research but BE CAREFUL; Top tips for posting content and building an audience on LinkedIn and Twitter. You can find Peep on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peeplaja On Twitter: @peeplaja Find out more about Wynter: wynter.com Find out more about CXL: cxl.com Found out more about Speero: speero.com  For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Grace Woods, VP Global Head of Marketing at Patreon, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to Patreon, Grace held executive roles at Flexport, Kloudless (Series A startup), and Salesforce (for 5 years). Patreon was founded in 2013, has over 200 people, and is based out of San Francisco, CA. They've raised Series E ($258.3M total). Patreon is a creator-founded membership platform that helps creators change the way their art is valued through a direct relationship with their fans. Thousands of video makers, podcasters, musicians, writers, game developers, and other creators are making a salary on Patreon. Creators offer their fans a monthly membership. So I’ve been part of DGMG’s Patreon ($10/mo.) for months. $10 seems like nothing, but when you have thousands of fans, that’s amazing recurring revenue. Here's what we hit on: How Grace made her way over to Patreon and the personal significance of working there; First days and weeks at Patreon, what she focused on and then COVID hit and brought various challenges; Marketing is 40 people across Creative, Brand, Demand Gen, Product Marketing, Web Engineering, Marketing Operations, Customer Marketing and Events. How Grace gets the pulse on everything; What it means to set the bar on content (when your customers are content creators themselves); Patreon's very successful creator ambassador program that fuels their content engine; Frequent content is not as important as authentic, valuable content; Grace offers up tips on how to approach virtual events; Top Patreon creators (including While She Sleeps with a link to their PR video); Some super creative marketing ideas from Grace's creative and social team (including visually celebrating creativity plus spreading the word about what we offer); How Grace continues to stay creative; The idea of having a "village of advisors" to help solve different problems; New ideas have to run through the customer obsession litmus test; Grace's story on failures and learnings going forward (HINT: listen to your customer vs. push your own message); How to approach website redesign in a balanced way; How to balance both brand + demand to drive growth; Grace's marketing pet peeve; Grace's mantra to "do what you suck at" and how that relates to marketing. You can find Grace on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gracewoods Find out more about Patreon: www.patreon.com Link to While She Sleeps creative PR video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5mKa0r8Fjk For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Jared Jost, VP of Marketing at PatientPop, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to PatientPop, Jared was at Twistlock (cybersecurity startup that got acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and Smarsh (SaaS). PatientPop was founded in 2014, has ~450 people and is based out of Santa Monica, CA. They've raised Series C ($125M total). PatientPop makes it easy for healthcare providers to attract more patients, manage their online reputation, modernize the patient experience, and automate the front office. From searching for a provider online, to checking their website + reviews, to booking an appointment, to getting an alert, then getting an automated survey, and finally leaving a review online. Enhancing every digital touchpoint along the patient journey. Here's what we hit on: Jared was VP of Demand Gen at PatientPop for almost 2 years, then became VP of Marketing - so what does marketing mean to him; What Jared focused on with marketing efforts when he joined PatientPop 3.5 years ago (they were at Series A); How to thread marketing into the sales process to create pipeline, opportunities, and revenue; How the marketing team is structured now; Marketing channels that are working really well (HINT: PPC + organic but there are nuances); During COVID we learned that breaking up the content funnel makes us better marketers; How we used internal data and thought leadership to increase trust and propel the brand; Challenges related to staying relevant and scaling the company; Taking the company from Series B to Series C funding and what that means for marketing; Building a simple tool to use on your website that addresses the buyer's pain point (quickly) and propels growth faster; Some bad marketing recommendations that Jared can't stand (HINT: it's about leads); How Jared defies convention and tries to take a different approach. You can find Jared on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaredjost Find out more about PatientPop: www.patientpop.com For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Are you ready for this? A twist on the typical Anna + guest format! One of my listeners suggested I ask myself the same questions I typically ask my guests...so basically interview myself. If you ever wanted to learn more about me personally, this will help! And as an added bonus, I ask my 7-year-old daughter some of the same questions. The result is sometimes hilarious and always super cute. In this episode I cover: What does marketing mean to me; Quick pitch about my company, who I'm for, what problems I help solve; How did I start this company; Who's on the team; What's working really well from my own marketing and channels perspective; Quick note on lead gen; Challenges I'm trying to figure out; How has COVID affected my marketing strategy; What did I do early stage (given limited resources) to stand out (HINT: focus on your superpowers); The last 2-3 good ideas I've come up with; How I keep my marketing fresh and stay creative; What's my "favorite failure" (HINT: not just one!); What are some bad recommendations in sales/marketing; Sharing something more personal about myself, maybe a little strange. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Aaron Pollack, CMO at Nanit, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to joining Nanit in 2017, Aaron held various marketing roles at global brands such as Canary, BlackBerry, GreatCall and SiriusXM. Nanit was founded in 2016, has ~65 people, and is based out of NYC. They JUST finished raising Series C! ($75M total) Nanit has created an HD baby monitor that lets you track your baby’s sleep, breathing motion, and growth. So you get the sleep analysis, personalized tips, and immediate alerts, and of course the 1080p overhead view of your baby. And there’s even a digital baby album that's tracking milestones that you can share with your family. An entire baby monitoring solution. P.S. Aaron doesn't have any kids, and that may be the secret to being so successful with his marketing and growth efforts - not falling back on assumptions and continuously learning more from Nanit's buyers. Here's what we hit on: Aaron's "lean and mean" marketing team of 7 people and what they're responsible for; Nanit as both a product + SaaS company and how they think about pricing; Using stage + lifestyle as part of their targeting efforts; How they're using Pinterest successfully (vs. just the typical Facebook and Insta); Working with partners like The Bump that have highly targeted marketing capabilities; Using Criteo for retargeting; Some challenges within the category (customer journey is 4-5 months!) which makes marketing/educating difficult; How Nanit's personalized sleep coaching for parents increases WOM; How parents and the category has changed over the last 5 years so that more people want this (pricier) baby monitoring solution; How Aaron helped take the company from Series B to Series C; Some of Aaron's top marketing ideas; Why the pandemic fundamentally changed the type of plan consumers buy (more than 25% of users are not parents!); How Aaron and team keep their marketing fresh (HINT: there's a Super Parents group); People make recommendations based on what works for them - most of the time it doesn't work for Nanit; What's wrong with being obsessed with "going viral" (HINT: going viral should never be the goal but can be a nice result); Aaron's "favorite failure"; Aaron's secret special ingredient for his winning chili recipe. You can find Aaron on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/aaronpollack Find out more about Nanit: www.nanit.com For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!