Humans of Martech

Hey folks, today we’re joined by Ramli John, one of my favorite marketers and someone I’ve admired and followed on Twitter for many years.Ramli got his start in marketing at PepsiCo as a Marketing Systems Analyst where he stayed for 4 years. After a co-founding stint Ramli moved to Toronto where started his freelancing career as a SaaS growth consultant. Along the way he also worked at a few different companies including SkyVerge which exited to GoDaddy.He also spent a few years teaching as a Marketing Instructor at big name spots like RED Academy, Centennial College and CXL Institute.He started what’s widely known as one of the top marketing podcasts on the planet, Growth Marketing Today and he’s one of the inspirations of our podcast here.He went on to join Product-Led - The leading community for PLG Pros founded by Wes Bush the famous author of Product-Led Growth. During his time there Ramli wrote his own book with Wes. It hit shelves last year: Product-Led Onboarding. I’ve read it twice and it’s been a huge career growth lever for me.Now he’s landed in what seems to be the perfect role, Director of Content at one of the top no-code onboarding tools in Appcues.Damn what a resume, what a journey, Ramli it’s an honor to have you.Questions and topicsRamli there’s a bunch of jumping off points here, I want to get into the podcast, the book and also the new gig but I’d love to start with an early career question.Early career at Pepsi and startupYou did a 180 when you went from a massive 100k + enterprise at Pepsi to then co-founding a startup. How wild was the transition and what advice would you have for listeners in big companies thinking of starting something one day?Podcast growthYou did Growth Marketing today for 4 years, I remember you posting once about how long it took you before you finally started to gain big traction. What advice do you have for people creating content with a small audience, sometimes feeling like they are speaking into the void.Teacher questionRamli, you spent a few years teaching, first at RED academy, a tech and design school, then at CXL Institute in their Demand Gen mini degree and also at Centennial College teaching a 14-week course on web analytics. What gave you the itch to spend 3 years teaching and maybe talk about the process of designing a course from scratch and all the work involved there.On writing your first bookTalk to us about writing your first book and the difference between the process of writing a course vs a book. Obviously Wes was probably a big inspiration but was this something you’ve always wanted to do and will there be more books in the future?PQL vs. PAIListeners have probably heard of PQLs by now, Product Qualified Leads or criterias that tell you someone has experienced your product or gotten some mileage in it. In your book, Product-Led Onboarding, you talk a lot about PAI, Product Adoption Indicators. Can you unpack the difference between both of those for listeners? Key onboarding milestonesMany people will dumb down onboarding to just getting users to the ‘aha moment’ like it’s something that magically unlocks onboarding challenges. You actually break down the nuance here and coin 3 different moments of value: Perception, Experience and Adoption. Can you walk us through a practical example of this?Conversational bumpersIn your book, one of my favorite analogies is your bowling analogy and how you compare onboarding emails and SMS messages as conversational bumpers to help users get their first strike. Unpack this for our listeners.Appcues, 6 months inYou’re about half a year into Appcues leading the content team, teaching SaaS teams about onboarding and product adoption. When I saw you announce that I was like damn, that’s the ultimate fit, Ramli gets to go back to SaaS and he gets to keep pumping out content about onboarding. I’d love to hear how the journey has been so far but maybe start by telling us how this opportunity came about.Happiness questionRamli, you’ve got a ton of stuff going on, you’re a podcaster, an author, a frequent speaker, a soon to be dad and you’re leading a content team at one of the coolest SaaS in the world. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy? ---Ramli’s linksTwitter: https://twitter.com/ramlijohn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramlijohn/LinkedIn posts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramlijohn/recent-activity/shares/ Product-Led Onboarding book: https://productled.com/book/onboarding/ Appcues: https://www.appcues.com/ Growth Marketing Today: https://growthtoday.fm/ ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone, today we’re diving into a fascinating conversation with Nick deWilde who’s leading an exciting web3 project.Nick’s an MBA graduate of Stanford University and a self described generalist who’s spent the majority of his career working with early stage startups He was the Managing Partner at Tradecraft, an education program that helped trained people for roles at fast growing startupsThis led him to lead product marketing at Guild, a company helping frontline workers earn debt-free degrees and credentialsShortly after having a baby, Nick then made the wild decision to leave his full time job and strap on a jetpack (fueled by early crypto investments) and go independent He worked part time at a venture firm incubating early business ideas alongside consulting for a few startupsHe writes an awesome career strategy newsletter called Junglegym and launched a talent collectiveHe also co-founded Invisible College, a school owned by the students that helps people learn, build and invest in web3.Nick, thanks so much for your time, really pumped to chat.Questions and topicsThere’s so many things I’d love to unpack today. I've become a huge fan of your newsletter and your work around career strategies, but I had to prioritize some of the topics today given the time we have together. I want to get into some web3 stuff as well but maybe we can start off by taking us back to 2021 when you were on paternity leave. Paternity leave makes you do wild thingsNick you wrote about stepping off a rocketship and strapping on a jetpack into web3. You did this 3 months after having a baby. Talk to us about this decision and what impact having your first child had on making a big career change.Nick’s Notes:Having a baby does funny things to your head. It limits the number of hours you can focus on work and reminds you that your time on earth is finite.The net result was both a decrease and increase in my career ambition. I no longer wanted to do things to impress a boss to move up at a company, but at the same time, I wanted to take a swing at something exciting. That led me to independence and stating Invisible CollegeZone of geniusOne of your guiding principles when you took the leap and went independent was to work in your zone of genius. For you that meant, creative ideation, crafting + executing a strategy and collaborating with people you admire.Walk us through this concept and how others might determine what their zone of genius might be?Nick’s Notes:Zone of Genius is a concept I got from a book called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership.Living in your zone of genius means that instead of choosing to spend your time living in your zone of incompetence, or compentence or even excellence, you are spending your hours working on things that you are truly great at and love doing.To find your zone of genius think about where you feel flow state, think about the skills you get compliments on, think about the hours of the day where you create the most value for others. When it’s time to leave your jobIn episode 48 last season we talked about when to quit your job. Being successful and happy in martech requires having a true north for your career. Sometimes, that means recognizing that your current workplace isn’t helping you advance your career.You built a chart that can tell someone when it’s time to leave their job. I’d love it if you could break that down for our listeners.Nick’s Notes:So imagine plotting all your skills on a 2x2 chart. On the top are all the things you like doing, on the bottom are all the things you don’t like doing. On the right is all the stuff you’re bad at. On the left is all the stuff you’re good at.Basically you want most of your work activities to be in the top left box – stuff you’re good at and like doing. These are things that are valuable for you and your employer. This should be at least 60% of your job. In the bottom right box is all the things you’re bad at and don’t like. This should be 0% of your job because neither you or your employer are benefitting. You’ll probably have some things that you’re good at but don’t like – these are skills you’re no longer enjoying learning. It’s basically taking one for the team.To make up for that, you should also get the opportunity to try out stuff that you aren’t good at but like doing.I think a good rule of thumb is 60% stuff you’re good at and like, 20% stuff you’re bad at and like and 20% stuff you’re good at and don’t like.If that gets drastically out of ballance you’re very likely to want to leave your job.The Great Online Game“We now live in a world in which, by typing things on your keyboard, or saying things into a microphone, you can marshall resources, support, and opportunities.” You reference this article written by Packy McCormick (the author of Not boring newsletter) many times in your work. Many of the folks I follow in web3 reference it as well. Talk to us about how this article lit a fire in you.Nick’s Notes:The Great Online Game, as Packy describes it, offers something of an alternative to traditional employment. Rather than relying on a single employer for money, relationships, and professional development opportunities, ambitious knowledge workers can get their needs filled by working for the internet. Unlike most jobs where your trajectory is constrained by the operating system of a single employer, working for the internet offers the promise of uncapped upside. By publishing this newsletter I had started been playing the online game. This newsletter has served as a magnet for new friends, speaking gigs, and even investment opportunities. For the next phase of my career, I decided that I wanted to get serious about playing.Every marketer should get the opp to launch a web3 projectLast year you tweeted that your hope was for every web2 marketer to get the opportunity to launch a web3 project. Talk a bit more about that, why is launching a web3 project vs web2 such a rush?https://twitter.com/nick_dewilde/status/1473064169557553152?s=20 For marketers who might not have the current bandwidth to launch something of their own right now, what’s a smaller commitment – first step that they could take?

Today on the show we have a veteran of the SaaS marketing industry, we’re joined by Kamil Rextin. After moving from Islamabad, he worked in Karachi for 2 years at P&G and completed an MBA at Waterloo University. He got his start wearing many different hats like Growth, Demand Gen and Ops at early/mid stage SaaS companies in Montreal and Toronto including Breather, Pressly, Uberflip and CrowdRiff.In 2018, he took the entrepreneurial plunge and went out on his own and started an agency called 42Agency. 4 years later, Kamil’s agency counts more than 5+ full time team members providing demand gen, marketing ops and ABM services. He’s worked with top brands like ProfitWell, Hubdoc, Sproutsocial, Knak and many more scaling B2B saaS companies.Kamil’s a father, a founder, a podcaster, a community moderator, the author of the 42/ newsletter, a neurodivergent advocate… but most of his time is shamelessly spent on memes and hot takes on Twitter. Kamil – we’re pumped to chat with you today, thanks for taking the time.Questions and topicsKamil, I’ve dived into your twitter feed over the past year and there’s a ton of hot takes that we can dive into that I’d love longer than 280 character take on. Recently you did an AMA on the B2B marketing community on Twitter, I pegged you with a bunch of questions and wanted to let you expand on some of those – maybe we can start there.Running an agency vs in-houseFor guests that have gone the in-house and agency route, I love asking the pros and cons of both of them. You’re even more fascinating because not only did you do agency… you founded an agency from scratch and have been running it for more than 4 years now. What’s the biggest upside/downside of running an agency vs being an in-house marketer? What are some of your early learnings from starting your own agency?Future-proofed marketing skillsWhether they end up in-house or at an agency, if you were mentoring a fresh marketing grad, you said that you would recommend them to specialize in the technical side of marketing. Why do you think the quantitative side of marketing is where a lot of opportunity is?Technical marketingLet’s dive into that a bit more, I think people generously add technical marketing to their skillsets. What does it mean to you? Is it anything that has to do with reporting and integrations or using martech or is it more technical than that? Like how to manipulate data and build basic models or building a Data Warehouse?Analytics and Tracking in 2022From a quantitative marketing standpoint, the tracking analytics world is weird in 2022. The industry is moving away from session based tracking and with Apple and others making a big business out of privacy and with click based tracking only getting harder with cross browser tracking, what should marketers be relying on in 2022 and beyond? Is it incremental testing? Is it statistical models or ML?Martech buyer’s guide – Wirecutter for SaaSI actually discovered you 4 years ago when I stumbled upon some of your early martech buyer’s guide work. You were building the wirecutter for SaaS, I think the first one you did was on CMS, can’t remember how favoroubly you talked about WP (lol) but what happened to this project, are you going to pick it back up one day?https://twitter.com/kamilrextin/status/1338536972608999425 Dark socialSome influencers have denigrated tracking and attribution to the point where many recommend just ignoring it and trusting your gut. One of the main culprits of this is the rise of dark social. WTF is dark social, is it just a buzzword for offline referrals like in group chats or in Slack threads and forums, and do you buy into all of this hype? How much do you hate this term?SaaS companies should be a media company narrativeSticking to some of your hot twitter takes here, there’s a few more I’m excited to dive in with you. One of them is this idea that many influencers proliferate that SaaS companies should be a media company narrative. Why do you think this is bullshit?https://twitter.com/kamilrextin/status/1362544724813430786 Personal brandsAnother of my favorite twitter takes is your disdain for personal branding. A quick look at LinkedIn and Twitter reveals that building a personal brand has been dry humped to death. Every influencer is only an expert at self promotion. There’s a total lack of receipts and actual experience. It’s all about 24/7 self aggrandizement. Twitter screenshots on LinkedIn and nothing but dolphin claps and clicks. How do you really feel about building a personal brand?--Twitter

Our guest today is Emma Paajanen (Payanen). She’s currently based in Boston but was born and raised in a small town in Finland. She got her start in marketing at a Helsinki-based agency as a Comms specialist before moving to big tech at a cyber security company called F-Secure and also spending a year in internal comms at Nokia. Emma also had a freelancing stint while she was on parental leave from F-Secure where she later went on to lead Marketing Operations. Today she’s inventing new and powerful ways to engage with customers as VP of Marketing at Aiven, an open source data startup turned Unicorn, headquartered in Helsinki with hubs all over the world like Berlin, Boston, Paris, Toronto, some employees even work in a mountainside van. Emma thanks for your time, we’re excited to chat with you today!Topics and questionsBoomerang-ingYou worked at Ellun Kanat in 2010 then went to F-Secure for 2.5 years but you decided to go back to Ellun Kanat in 2014. After a tour of duty at Nokia, you also decided to go back to F-Secure in 2016.You and Jon have this in common – Talk to us about your experience being a boomerang, working at a company, leaving and gaining experience elsewhere, and going back to that company. You did that twice.Your time at F-Secure CorpYou spent over 3 years at F-Secure, working in 4 different roles, from Senior Marketing Manager of cyber security consulting to B2B Digital and content to then becoming Marketing Director and finally Marketing Operations Director.Looking back, what were some of the things you think that helped you move up from manager to Director? Walk us through your role as Director of MOPs at an almost 2k employee software company?Marketing exec roleSo now you’re VP of marketing at Aiven. You’re on the exec team. For the listeners who think they want to be an exec one day, talk to us about the difference of the day to day at Aiven vs earlier roles at F-Secure?Growing from series BYou joined Aiven in April 2020, a few months after their series B round. How big was the marketing team when you joined and how big is the team today?Startup turned $2 billion companyWith their latest round of funding, Aiven is valued at 2+ billion. What do you think makes up the DNA of a great marketing leader at a Billion dollar company vs an up-and-coming startup.Marketing a technical product to a technical audienceAiven offers technologies as managed services, that offering includes services and sometimes technical support is an add-on. Talk to us about marketing a technical product and service to a technical audience. Open sourceAs I understand it, Aiven helps companies leverage open source data technologies on a public cloud platform. Being at WP, Open-source is close to my heart. Talk to us about the transformative period that the open-source community is currently experiencing. (Many IT vendors that originated as open-source developers are starting to place restrictions on their own software licenses—decisions that might be shortsighted and driven by profits.) Content marketing is simply marketingA few years ago, you said that in 10 yrs, #contentmarketing will just be #marketing. Walk us through what you mean by that and do you think that content marketing is at the core of a marketing strategy?Going beyond the brandEmma, you’ve said that you’re passionate about going beyond the brand. What is brand marketing to you and what does it mean to go beyond branding? The importance of marketing experience and values over just the brand name. Happiness questionYou’re a working mom, you’re an executive at a Billon+ valued company leading a big team with big goals. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--Emma Paajanen, VP of Marketing at Aiven LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmapaajanen/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmapaaj ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone – today on the show we’re joined by exceptional martech mastermind: Dave Rigotti. He’s the co-founder & CEO of Inflection.io, a marketing technology startup focused on helping companies with product-led growth.Before building his own company, Dave has had a fascinating career in marketing. He got his start at Microsoft working on the Bing marketing team just as the search engine was launched. He quickly discovered his love for growth and B2B marketing.Hen then spent half a decade at Bizible, a marketing attribution platform where he worked his way up to VP of Marketing – and was part of the successful exit to MarketoHe spent a year at Marketo running ABM and demand gen before they were famously acquired by AdobeAt Adobe, Dave was Director of Account Based Marketing focused on Marketo and Magento productsLast year, while working on Inflection, he also launched the ProductLed.Marketing community which has more than 700 members and is continuing to grow.Dave, we’re excited to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time. Questions we asked Dave:What is Product-Led Marketing or Product-Led Growth?What’s the substance of PLG? What’s the difference between PLG and customer led growth?How is PLG different from all the buzzwords that hit marketing over the years?People in tech love to find new ways of avoiding calling marketing marketing. Growth hacking, conversational marketing, community led growth and now product led growth… What do you say to all the folks who claim this is just another buzzword that will fade?How is PLG different from freemium and why does this instigate such brutal Twitter wars?Traditional: generate leads and serve sales.PLG: using your product as part of your GTM. More customer centric.Jon isn’t active on social but I’ve witnessed my fair share of PLG debates on twitter.What do you say to folks who claim PLG has been around for decades (appcues, mailchimp) and that it’s simply a repackaging of freemium and free trial models… that its the old marketing playbook for the SMB segment?  Where does a PLG model make sense? Can this be done with enterprise software that requires integration and onboarding support?How do you shift to a PLG strategy when you’re selling a B2B to enterprise and you require 1-2 weeks of integration and setup before end users can get a glimpse of the product in action.Do you think some B2B buyers prefer the sales led model? Sometimes I don’t always have 14-30 days to pork around in a product and figure out on my own if this will meet my company needs… sometimes I need someone to show me around and tell me how itll solve my problemsWe can skip the MQL vs PQL debate, but how do you define a PQL when your product is constantly changing?Product usage data is the holy grail of data for PLG marketers. How do you see teams forming their marketing strategy around product usage, activation, and engagement?How is PLG a whole new game?You wrote an awesome piece for OpenView Partners that PLG is a whole new game for marketers. Can you walk us through what this new game looks like? What do you say when you hear the phrase PLG is just a product that sells itself? What are marketers in PLG companies doing differently to accelerate growth and revenue? How will PLG influence marketing technology over the next 10 years? What are your big predictions? Shifting gears, Dave, you've worked at some of the most recognizable marketing technology companies on the planet. Not only have you held senior roles in those companies, but you’ve been on the inside of two major acquisitions. Give us a sense of your career story and how you ended up as a co-founder and CEO in this space?What differences do you see working at enterprises versus running a startup? What lessons do you apply to your own startup, and what things do you try to do differently?Dave, you’re a super busy guy. You’re a dad, a husband, a startup founder, and community leader – one question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--Dave RigottiTwitter - LinkedInProduct-led marketing communityInflection.io✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up folks, today on the show we are joined by Adriana Gil Miner.Born and raised in Venezuela, she’s a 20+ year marketing exec who got her start as a data analyst and went on to work at American Express. She then worked with some of the top brands in the world after moving into PR and digital strategy at Weber Shandwick, an A-list agency according to Ad-ageAdriana then ended up going through a wild growth ride leading Brand marketing at Tableau– a well known analytics platform. Today, she’s CMO at Iterable, one of the top customer-led marketing automation platforms on the planet.Adriana, it’s a pleasure to be chatting today, thanks so much for your time.In-house marketing vs agencyYou’ve had a fascinating career bouncing from agency to in-house roles. Agency for 2 yearsIn-house for 5 years at AmexFreelance for 2 yearsBack to agency for 5 years at two different firmsBut along the way you got the in-house itch again and joined Tableau where you ran Brand marketing for 6.5 years. And you’ve been in-house ever since, getting the CMO gig at Qumulo and now Iterable. Talk to us about what you loved and hated most about in-house vs agency and why you ultimately settled on in-house.Follow-up: At what point in your journey did you decide you wanted to be a CMO? Was there ever a point where you considered staying IC and focusing on data vs leadership and people management?How ‘hands-on’ do marketing leaders need to be in the product they sell?Jon and I are no strangers to the world of BI having both spent parts of our career at an SMB focused dashboard tool in Klipfolio. As the SVP of Brand Marketing at Tableau, how close were you to the product and how skilled would you say you had to be in data analysis? CMO of 2030 -- what should they be working on today? Storytelling, data and technologyYou’ve said in several places that you love bringing together the art of storytelling, technology, and marketing. Talk about some of your most memorable breakthrough campaigns that exemplify this idea bridging story, tech and marketing. The power of storytellingLet’s dive a bit deeper into that. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways for humans to learn. The best content and brand marketers know this and use it to persuade the rational and the emotional brain. How can marketers get better at storytelling? How can we make stories more relatable – practically, how can stories be more real, vulnerable when you’re selling a B2B tech product?Spotting up and coming marketing superstarsYou’ve written about having a lot of pride in discovering and nurturing up-and-coming marketer rockstars. Walk us through your approach for discovering some of these future rockstars and what are some of the early signs and qualities you look for.Customer advocacy and community marketingSomething that was a big part of your time at Tableau was prioritizing community marketing. Walk us through some of the benefits that this can have on brand growth and customer advocacy opportunities. The relationship between how we use marketing technology and community? Why is community such an integral part of successful B2B products? Branding gets a bad rep“I don’t believe in brand marketing. If you build a good product and people love it, they will share it.” I’ve heard too many technical CEOs say this. What do you say to a business leader that doesn’t believe in brand marketing and how would you respond to that if – as CMO – your CEO walked in a room and told you that? Follow-up do you think there’s anything marketers can do to change a founders mind if they don’t believe in branding? Do you think founders and CEOs need to create the brand so that marketers can drive the brand?Branding vs positioning vs GMT vs demand genMarketers get a bad rep for all the buzzwords we throw around but don’t all agree on what we mean when we say them:BrandingPositioningGo to marketDemand generationFor professionals who are supposed to be good at communication, we don’t do a good job at making ourselves understood. Walk us through your definitions and how we might better align with how we use them?Future of marketingThere was a viral tweet on the future of marketing last week that I thought was interesting and would love your take on. This is from George Mack, “Don't try to create great content. Instead, try to create Red Pills (dramatically transformed perspectives) that groups are thinking about but nobody is talking about.” How can marketers create more Red Pills? Being in the marketing automation space for a bit now, what do you think are some of these perspectives that need to be transformed?LatinX women in techYou’ve written bravely and powerfully about your experience as a Latina immigrant and shared your thoughts on the Caucasian male narrative that dominates much of the world. Talk about your change in mindset when it comes to the importance and power of checking that box despite not always feeling like you fit the stereotype people often have.Time management /staying happyOne question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy? --Adriana's Twitter: https://twitter.com/agilminer Adriana’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilminer/ ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone, on the show today we have one of the planet’s leading search engine marketers. We’re joined by Mike King. He’s the founder and CEO of iPullRank, an awarding-winning SEO agency. In 2020 he was named Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land, and has been a Global Associate for Moz for more than 10 years. He’s been on the cutting edge of technical SEO his entire career, and he’s currently working on an upcoming book, the science of SEO: Decoding Search Engine Algorithms.He’s a confident introvert and proud Philly native, but these days he pulls rank in a cabana in South Beach, wearing Nike Air Max 1s, and listening to Snoh Aalegra. Mike’s also a Dad, a freestyle rapper, and a highly-engaging keynote speaker. Mike, it’s great to have you on the show – thanks so much for your time.Career path to starting your own agencyYou got your start as a webmaster working for Microsoft in 1996. Since then, you have worked in-house in numerous different SEO roles. Eventually, however, you founded iPullRank, an award winning agency. What prompted you to start your own agency? You started iPullRank 8 years ago, today your team is 15+ full time people. You’ve said that you love your team, but not in the “we’re a family” kind of way but rather in the "I respect these people and I want us all to win together" way. Talk to us about the kind of agency you built and what sets you apart?The art of an SEO auditI remember a few years ago when we worked with you and you and your team presented us with what I can only call an epic SEO audit. One thing that impressed me the most was that everything you outlined was practical and had clear implementation.Audits get a bit of a bad wrap. I’ve seen a few reports passed off as SEO audits which are effectively S.E.M.Rush or Ahrefs audits with a logo replacement.What should all SEOs be thinking about when they start a client audit? What’s the secret sauce of a great SEO audit.SEO is the testing we did along the wayA theme in your approach to SEO is testing rather than relying on the data provided by Google or other tools. Everyone is familiar with A/B testing things like landing pages and subject lines.What does testing in the SEO context look like? Can you give our listeners a primer?To code or not to code?I’ve been learning to code for a few years now. While I haven’t found too many practical applications to coding in my day job, I’ve personally found it fun to learn and gratifying to speak more at eye-level with devsYou have a strong background in coding. Do you think it’s an important or even an essential skill for modern marketers? What advice do you have for folks thinking about learning to code? The end of Universal AnalyticsThe one constant in SEO land is change. Though the end of Universal Analytics seems to be hitting everyone a bit different. What’s your take on this shift to Google Analytics 4? How are people preparing? Are people prepared?Future-proofing for SEOAlgorithm changes and updates are effectively part of the SEOs daily regimen. The only constant is change. How do you future-proof your website/brand against future updates? Is there a technology solution such as adopting modern frameworks like React and Gatsby with a headless CMS or is it by acquiring a certain set of skills as a contributor to be proactive (when possible) and reactive (when needed)? Top SEOs of 2032 In 2020 you were named Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land. First, congrats on the accomplishment! Second, I’d like to get your perspective on the future of SEO and what it’ll take to be named Search Marketer of the Year in 2030?What skills will the top SEOs have in 10 years? If you were starting today, where would you invest in yourself?Technical SEO & Modern Digital MarketingIn 2016 you wrote a piece for the Moz blog on the technical SEO renaissance. You cover a lot of ground in that piece, but reading it now, it holds up incredibly well. Some of what you wrote verges on the prophetic, particularly when you think about Core Web Vitals and the importance of page speed and user experience.Modern SEO feels remarkably similar to developing a SaaS application – web teams need to focus on UX, performance, utility and, of course, content. If you were to write that piece today, what would your call to action be? Science of SEO BookYou’ve got a book coming out next year titled the “The Science of SEO: Decoding Search Engine Algorithms”What inspired you to write this book? What do you hope SEOs will get out of this book?Happiness, balance, successThe first line in your Twitter bio is dedicated to your daughters and you’re a firm believer in family over everything. You run a multi million dollar digital marketing agency, work with some of the top brands on the planet, regularly speak at conferences, you’re writing a book, and rapping on the side…How do you find balance in your life? What does happiness and success look like to Mike King? ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

What’s up folks, today on the show we are joined by India WatersBased in Atlanta Georgia, she’s a community management expert with a deep appreciation for startups. She got her start running community at Memoir, a NY-based startup that built a photo sharing app. The startup eventually pivoted to focus on photo sharing for the wedding industry and was later acquired by The Knot – one of the biggest wedding brands. India currently leads growth and technology partnerships at MessageGears, a customer marketing platform for enterprise customers. India thanks for taking some time to chat with us today!Early startup daysWalk us through some of the early days at Memoir, I read that you got 2 rounds of funding which included prominent investors. You spent 4.5 years there and I’m sure things changed quickly and often.The importance of trying new thingsBefore landing at Memoir – You graduated from UGA in the middle of a recession with not very many jobs available. Walk us through some of the earliest jobs you did and what advice you’d have for folks in similar positions today.Constantly changing strategies in startupsSo that eventually brought to startup land – Phil and I are no strangers to working for startups and needing to consider pivots and changing strategies. What lessons do you have when it comes to adapting to frequent strategy changes?Target customersYou first started working at Memoir which was an app for consumers and was probably hard to segment as it could be used by anyone. Then the company (Veri) refocused to pivot the app for the wedding industry which led to the acquisition. Now you’re at a tech company selling marketing software to marketers. Talk about how different it is to sell a product with product market fit or a more focused target customer?Community-led growthSome of your earliest focus areas were community growth. What did community-led growth look like 10 years ago vs today?Working up to different roles at a bigger companyYou’ve been at MessageGears now for a little over 4 years and you’ve held 4 different roles there. Starting with Market research analyst and biz dev to Growth manager, to senior growth manager and now Associate Director of Tech partnerships. Oftentimes folks will leave a company to get a promotion but your the perfect example of working up at the same company. Talk us through some of the ways you were able to get promoted and yeah walk us through that journey a bit.MessageGears – on premise vs SaaSLet’s talk about the product for a bit. You’re one of the 300+ names that show up on G2’s grid of marketing automation software but you describe yourselves differently. ‘the first and only customer marketing platform that connects directly to our customer’s enterprise data warehouse.’ Talk us through that, the first and only platform that connects directly to your DW On premise software vs SaaS and cloud based tools Connecting and using DW data vs (API) operating on a copy of your dataMessageGears vs Pardot and MarketoI noticed in one of your job openings that MessageGears actually uses Pardot to send marketing campaign emails?Work with Demand Generation team to execute lead generation, nurture and conversion programs in Pardot.What’s the difference between Mg and Pardot and why doesn’t MG use MG?Baby podcastYou started a new podcast with a colleague from MessageGears, tell us more about that!Time management /staying happyOne question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?--India’s twitter: https://twitter.com/indialandwaters India’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/india-waters/  ✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created by SLB

The great resignation phenomena has taken over mainstream media, but what does it really mean? Is it simply a buzzword for saying, more people than ever are sticking to remote work and not going back to the office? Or does it actually mean that more people are taking the leap and leaving bad workplaces, and toxic jobs? Let’s call it the great realization or the great awakening. COVID and the pandemic didn’t just open up the eyes of CEOs and managers to remote work, more importantly, it awakened a class of workers who’ve been sucking it up in a bad job thinking  it was normal and that things aren’t better anywhere else. But these people are awake now. And better jobs and companies do exist. Here’s todays main takeaway: Hustle culture is dying. You deserve better pay, more flexible hours, less meetings, better benefits and better leadership.Last season in episode 048, we told you when to quit your job. In today’s episode, we’ll walk you through a simple playbook for finding a good job, with a company you love.JT are you ready?—The importance of networking in finding a job and how this doesn’t mean what it used to.Most leaders are looking for known quantities, and want a reference from within their circleDo good work at your current company, be someone others want to work with, complete your tasks on time – people will recommend youNetworking isn’t becoming an influencer; it’s getting to know the communityProvide value, and you will get value in return—I’m part of several marketing communities, one I’ve heard great things about and just recently joined is ALL IN, a free Slack community for in-house marketers created by Brendan Hufford, the guy behind SEO for the rest of us.One of the coolest channels is the #career channel where you can post questions about specific challenges. Recently a fellow member posted about having a hard time finding a new role. He mentioned applying to a bunch of places but not hearing back from any of them.I helped some of my former students in this exact situation and I’ve boiled it down to a simple blueprint for this episode. —LOL - I'm incredibly anti-social. I'm not part of any community -- I stay in touch with past colleagues;I will reach out to folks in community to do mind-shares -- that has resulted in most of my consulting opportunities.—Alright I’ll share the blueprint in it’s simple form and then I’ll go in depth on each step… you’ll see it’s pretty simple but it’s been super powerful for me in my career.Keep a nice list of companies you'd love to work forFind the hiring managers on LinkedIn and follow them (not the same as req connection)Add links to each HM’s activity feed in your list and check it out twice a week or more oftenLike their posts, reply to them when you think you can add valueKeep an eye on job postings they shareBefore you apply, reach out to the hiring manager and ask if they can answer questions asyncSend them thoughtful questions about how to stand out and what makes a great candidateCrush the application process—I like the advice on having a companies you’d love to work for. I imagine this requires a bit of soul searching on what you want out of your own career. How did you figure that out? And what does that list of companies look like for you? –Yeah I’m not super active on social in terms of spitting stuff out, but I’m what you could call a doom scroller… I read too much. So I’m fairly in tune with new companies or companies that are standing out. When I discover one of these companies, I add them to my list.Before getting a gig at WordPress, some of the companies I was actively keeping an eye on we’reZapierNotionBufferAhrefsAppcuesConvertkitCustomerioIterable1passwordVidyardBrazeGrammerly… —How do you come up with the list?—It’s a mix between the folks they attract, their products, their size and also that they’re fully remote. Everyone’s list should be a bit different whether you prefer big companies or small or fintech vs martech. –Alright, so you gotta list of dream companies, whats next?–Step 2 is finding their linkedin pages and figuring out who are the hiring managers on that team. So if you’re a marketer, look for the VPs and the director of marketing or growth or whatever you’re into.The key thing here is don’t just flat out cold ask for a connection request. Some of these folks are super friendly and they'll accept. But you don’t have a relationship yet so you’re better offer clicking on the “follow button”.Once you’re on their profile, scroll down to the activities section and click on See all activity, then hit Posts. That’s a direct feed to everything they post on LinkedIn. Grab that URL and add it to your spreadsheet next to the company name and the hiring manager’s name.As an extra step, you can search twitter to see if they are active on there too.–Up to you how often you want to do this but you can skip this stpe if you’re on LinkedIn everyday, chances are you’ll catch their posts anyway but in the spirit of digital minimalism, carve out 10 or 20 minutes in your day, once or twice a week and check out their posts.They key thing here is engaging with their posts, start with a few likes and eventually if you have value to add, add some comments to their posts.In time, the hiring managers will get familiar with your name, they might even check you out.–What you want to look for here is job postings obviously. All linkedIn hiring managers will share their jobs on LI… it’s the most common type of post. Many of them even bump their friends’ hiring posts as well. When you see something you want to apply to, reach out to the hiring manager before you do. Don’t ask them for a coffee or a quick intro, be direct and offer to let them answer async. Have some thoughtful clarification questions about the role and show your passion for their work/company.You want to standout ahead of applying here with some thoughtful questions and feel free to even ask for tips on the hiring process.And then let the magic happen, crush those interviews.—If you keep doing this even after you have a job you love, you’re essentially building relationships with your peers. You can offer to chat with them and ask for advice on a problem you’re dealing with.Eventually you won’t need to apply to jobs anymore and all these connections you’ve made will naturally evolve into new opportunities.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with love in Canva

What’s up everyone! Today on the show we’ve got one of my favorite email marketers and arguably the funniest marketing twitter account to follow, we’re joined by Samar Owais. She’s a top Email pro and female entrepreneur based in Karachi, Pakistan. She designs email strategies and writes email copy for SaaS & eCommerce clients with a simple goal: increase conversions and reduce churn.She isn’t your average consultant though. Samar is a model of courage and heart, known for being fiercely independent, doing excellent work, caring about results and always telling the truth. She’s worked with big brands like Drip, Pinterest and Hubspot, as well as solopreneurs like Paul Jarvis, Fix my churn, Copyhackers and a growing list of smaller Ecomm businesses. She runs an awesome email newsletter where she picks email fights and questions the status quo of how things are typically done in the email world. She also runs an ecomm bootcamp to help folks become email pros.Samar, we’re grateful to have you on the show.Pivot from content marketing to emailI have a lot of friends who started in email and ended up moving into content, sounds like you did the opposite. Give us the long story :)Discounts and emailsSomething I’ve learned from you is how to think about discounts in email. Discounts get a bad rep because they eat away at your profits, bargain brand perception, attract shoppers that are deal-focused and avoids addressing actual issues. Do you ever make exceptions to your no discount rules like bundled discounts in dtc or shipping delays… How to email marketing - without using discounts, especially when your sales team is requesting them or you’re starting a role where it’s just business as usual?Email approachAside from no (or as little as possible discounts) you’ve shared your simple strategy for email marketing also consists of extra focus on CX and open to experimentation. I’d love for you to expand on that a bit:https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1486534280725602305 Email should be owned by everyone at the companyYou’ve said this before on a few podcasts, how do you operationalize that in bigger teams with growing opinions?Growing traffic that’ll convert into email subsOne of my favorite tweets of yours is when you claim too many folks obsess about growing an email list vs growing traffic that will convert into email subs. What’s the difference and what advice do you have for early marketers responsible for email and lead gen.https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1487200305515274245?s=20&t=nZYTI902PZupV-xvupvH7g Ecomm email bootcampI love your ecomm email bootcamp landing page. “This is not a get rich quick scheme” and “I don’t teach anything inside this course that you can’t eventually learn and figure out on your own.” This is a very humble way of saying, “yo I’ve been doing this for 10+ years and I’ve crammed hundreds if not thousands of hours of experience and research into a digestible course so I can save you a shit ton of time.”Talk to us about your process for building an email course from scratch, how do you decide what’s important enough given the limited amount of content you can cover?follow-up:You tweeted about some of the email challenges as part of your bootcamp/workshop. One thing you said was being so proud seeing some of your students emerge as email strategist. What are early signs that tell you someone has “it”https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1489243917476192266 Saas bootcamp course one day?I loved your tweet about maybe creating a similar email bootcamp for Saas but it would be a deep dive into pouring over customer research until you find the real problem and then figuring out how to fix it with email.In all seriousness, many SaaS are completely blind to this and we don’t have to talk about the importance of understanding your customers but ‘how do you fix things’ with email, can you give us some practical examples?https://twitter.com/samarowais/status/1483513135499780097 Email newsletter platformsYour email teardown newsletter is powered by Converkit, but I know you’ve been in a bunch of other platforms. Talk to us about your favorites and what makes a great email automation tool.Who you don’t work with.I love that on your site you have a section about who you don’t work with. “I’m not the email strategist and copywriter for you if you’re a tobacco, gambling, alcohol, or an arms and ammunition company.” What advice do you have for early freelancers that don’t want to work with specific companies but are afraid of being that bold this early?Girl educ...