Marketing as a Growth Engine

Speaker 2: 00:08 
Hello everybody. Welcome to a new episode of our podcast series that we're talking about is revenue driven marketing and how to approach that as marketers. Specifically, today we're going to be talking about marketing as a business growth engine. So how do we build and justify our marketing budget as a team? So to start this off, I, I want to go into a question specifically, how does a business growth goals affect its marketing efforts? Like how do those, what's the relationship between our goals and growth and, and, and how we address that in our marketing teams?

Speaker 3: 00:46 
So the way I've always seen marketing is it's an objective that's based on the business goals. So having those targets, KPIs that lead to completing an objective for that business's growth. I think that as a cmo, I've noticed a transition to almost being adding in basically a CRO CGO role because marketing is now so intertwined just because it's become so much more omnichannel, there's so much more data, there's so much more automation, there's so many more avenues to pull in the awareness, the leads, etc to match business goals. So I view marketing honestly as more of an objective. They'll say, oh, I have marketing goals, but to me those are objectives to achieve the business goals. So growth to me is, you know, you have growth, we have revenue, we have marketing. I think they're very intertwined and I think that's how it really affects the overall marketing effort is you have to think of it again, kind of breaking that down into those objectives, those hows and then setting the targets so that we can achieve the goal and what that will look like in the future.

Speaker 2: 02:03 
Yeah, yeah. And a big part of it is like what do you have the time to go slow and steady or do you need to make moves fast and make an impact quickly or right. What's your budget? How does your budget play into this? And there are a lot of things your, your business grows goals might be impacted by the size of the business, the business that you're in, different things that are changing that'll affect. Yeah. The strategy you take specifically, you might need to be really aggressive and try to pinch a penny and Right. Maybe hit paid advertising and, and try to get people in with high intent. Or are you able to play the long game and play SEO content a little bit more and try to rank for certain things. And we're talking about in the last episode is these long sales cycles that we can have. So. Right. Knowing all of that can certainly impact how you approach this to begin with. Seth, any other, any other thoughts here?

Speaker 1: 03:01 
Yeah, I would, I would just say, you know, in a more abstract sense that sometimes the business's growth goals can be unrealistic and put a lot of pressure on the marketing team and lead to haphazard strategy and panicking and subpar results. So just something to keep in mind.

Speaker 3: 03:21 
Yeah, it becomes very reactive, not as proactive. And I think, you know, we've all been in those situations where you know, I want to increase my, you know, leads by this and they're just like, you know, good luck. There's no structure to it. So yeah, I mean I've definitely experienced that before where if the goals aren't really set properly then the marketing is not going to do well.

Speaker 4: 03:48 
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Speaker 2: 04:25 
Yeah, and you don't know what a success looks like if you don't have those goals. And then it's harder to prove your case for sure. So when we're looking at this, what are the specific metrics, are there financial metrics that we can track to justify you know, as, as marketers, as CMOs, what metrics should we be tracking to justify our spend?

Speaker 3: 04:45 
So I think from a financial metric standpoint, anything that happens more in the sales portion. So the customer acquisition cost, the return on investment, you know, how expensive was it to get that customer throughout the entire attract phase? And then if they are a, you know, say a subscription or they're going to come back and be upsell, you know, there's going to be an upsell involved then it's more of like a, you know, a CLV customer lifetime value. You know, basically taking services, they get the overall lifespan and then obviously from there it's the amount of effort that is being put into getting this lead. So I think there, there's almost like two portions of it where you have the marketing cost, you have the, you know, the sales cost, SDR etc so that should all be put in there. I think what a lot of people do is like for instance like Google Ads they'll take the ROI from that and things like that's the cost. But there had to be someone answering those calls or someone doing, you know, the fill in. Like there's so much more to it. So it's truly like a full circle. When I think customer lifetime value, very full circle. And then obviously, you know, pipeline contribution, like if you have salespeople sitting there just waiting for something to show up that's not efficient. Right. There's definitely a cost to that. There's a billable hour that's set for that. And then, you know, if they are a product, you also would have to add in, you know, how many returns are they getting. Right. How many people are, you know, canceling, how many people are asking for a refund. So it's very end to end. And this is again why I think cmos should start thinking more like a CRO when it comes to this stuff. Because it's very, very full circle.

Speaker 2: 06:42 
Yeah. And it's, I mean customer lifetime value is something a lot of companies don't even have. That, that information you got to be around for a while to know to even. You got to be around for years to be able to collect that data, to figure out averages and a lot of these numbers change a little bit and it's, it's pretty nebulous. So yeah, that's, it's, it's definitely tricky, but totally agree. Right. It's, it's, you should be judging your pipeline and your, and your, that funnel. Right. Are we moving people down and can we use that to start to predict in the future? So this is all again based on data and the information that we can pull in, but can you use that data to predict into the future and say, all right, we know we have on average a 12 month sales cycle, so can we project where the next 12 to 24 months are going to look like on our sales based on what we've been doing for the last six months? In marketing, you gotta take a really long term view sometimes. It's not, not easy. And not everybody has that information all the time, so it's tricky.

Speaker 1: 07:45 
I would say those pipeline contribution metrics prevent the over reliance on vanity metrics that we talked about last episode.

Speaker 3: 07:55 
Right.

Speaker 1: 07:55 
Like, you know, that's, that's critical.

Speaker 2: 07:58 
Yeah, yeah. Great. So when we're doing this and we're talking about revenue, you know, our marketing efforts and, and revenue generating efforts, how do you balance building your brand versus specifically revenue generating campaigns and what's even the difference?

Speaker 3: 08:18 
So I would say they should Be very tied in. I think if you're just doing revenue generating, so you're sending someone to a landing page, you know, to me you need to tie that in with brand building. So let's say they go to your landing page and they do not come through. You need to then retarget them with more information. But there's that informational and transactional campaigns and they have to be integrated. I think if you're just starting out, you should not just be doing revenue generating. I think if you're have been existing for a while, you should not be doing just brand building. I think they should be interconnected, just kind of going down that funnel and then what a lot of people I think mess up on is they don't do retargeting outside of hey, you stopped on our landing page or hey, you didn't finish your checkout. We want to put them into some type of also brand building. So we need to build trust. That's probably the reason why they didn't just immediately work with you. So that is like how you kind of like intertwine those. And for me, any part of the marketing funnel, it has to have those, those two components of informational, transactional building trust. I think I've seen too many of these operations focus on just one without having like a plan to kind of build them into each other.

Speaker 2: 09:46 
Yeah, love that, Zach. Or sorry, Seth, any, any thoughts there?

Speaker 1: 09:52 
I, I think part of it is, you know, just, just having a mindset that balances these two. Right. You need to do both. I feel like some companies or marketers are just so brand focused, right? And brand is great, but you, you need to generate revenue and vice versa, right? Like let's, let's get leads. Come on everybody. But how's your brand? Right? So, um, I think a little bit of education at the company level about why both are important is good as well as, you know, making sure that your marketing team has either someone who can balance between both perspectives or two different roles that can complement each other and make sure that both are covered well.

Speaker 2: 10:37 
Yeah, it's similar to what we were talking about before. It's like brand building is long term, revenue generating is more immediate, but there is a relationship between the two. You need to be thinking, you need to have an eyeball on both, right? You need to have an eye on what you're doing today and you have, have to have an eye on, on what you're doing in the future. And I think brand building is, is, is setting yourself up to be consistent to Build that trust to build that relationship with the, with the consumers. But then, right, you have to also be getting those people in the door and bail it. There needs to be a balance there, I think for sure.

Speaker 3: 11:12 
Yeah. I think the best companies out there started with these two and they're on like different ends of the spectrum. And over time through testing and by really sinking them, they've kind of become congruent. So they've kind of like met to be revenue generating and brand building. They're not as separate. And the only way to do that is through trial and error. And slowly, when people know you provide a good service, they are able to match your brand with your product and how you actually, you know, generate that revenue. That connection point is, I mean that that's the reason why we see businesses that are, you know, trillions and trillions of dollars and you go on and you have an app, you talk about them. I'm going to go Google this. I'm going to go on Amazon. There's that centralized point of connection that will allow you to really balance both of those.

Speaker 2: 12:04 
Yeah, great. Oh yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 12:08 
No, just a little bit of. Sorry, let's. Let me start over. So just one more thing if I can. Just talking about brand building versus revenue generation. You know, in our perspective as an agency, we get clients that are like just, you know, go ahead and generate revenue. I feel like there's often a lack of understanding about why brand is important or, or folks, you know, where, where the messaging is broken. The there's no solid go to market strategy. Right. Like just go generate revenue. I feel like there's a common lack of understanding about why both are important and how they're intertwined. So just maybe more for getting that off my chest, but also just something for folks to be aware of if.

Speaker 2: 12:56 
Yeah, for sure. Love that. All right, so as we move forward, how do people in marketing, how do marketing directors and CMOs and, and people in our position, how do we make smarter budget allocation decisions? How do we approach that? Right. Where do we spend our money?

Speaker 3: 13:15 
So I've always been under the guidance of the goals and within, you know, that first testing period, you're going to know based on your market, based on the types of campaigns you're running, which ones are working and which ones are not. And you've got to have that pivot. So I think budget allocation to me should be continuous, but it should be very fluid throughout the different parts of the funnel and the different types of campaigns you are running. So to me it's Very open to debate and I think it should be debated often based on where you are in your current sales cycle and your current marketing cycles. I think everything should be kind of very. Things should be allocated very fluidly.

Speaker 2: 14:12 
Yeah yeah. You got to be looking at like where's the impact coming from? Right? Or where. Where are your biggest issues? Where are the, where are the quick. Can you identify quick wins again? When you're looking at your, when you take a big step back and, and look at your Funnel From a 30, 000 foot view, you can start to identify where is our biggest pain point, where's our biggest issue? Where's the bottleneck that's, that's stopping people from, from, you know, being nurtured to the next stage of our, our funnel. If you can identify any big problems there, that's where you'd want to focus your budget. If you're not getting enough people into your, into your marketing funnel, you start at the top. You started awareness. What can we do to get people in front of it? If you're not converting people, you get all the way right. Or maybe you're not even talking to the right people. Maybe you need to find and do a little research on, on your audience and find out what matters to them. I think it's. Yeah, you're. There's not like one thing to say like, well, this is the best way to spend your marketing budget. It's on a business by business, a case by case. You know, that, that, that changes that. So identifying those weak points, identifying the quick wins, identifying those big bottlenecks in your funnel will tell you where you should be spending some of your budget and focus on to get that right. Make sure we do have a healthy pipeline. We are generating sales qualified leads for a sales team to talk to and, and things like that. Or maybe once you get them in, you're losing. Right. You can go into retention and advocacy and just taking a big wide view of all of that and saying okay, where are the big red flags and how can we address those? I think is big there. Great. And then lastly, how can we shift the marketing perception for the businesses that we work with from marketing as being a cost center to a revenue generator? How can we shift that, that thinking from right, we're just a money pit to something that no, we generate revenue for people.

Speaker 3: 16:15 
I think just again, when businesses have those goals, making sure that the marketing will not only achieve them, but it's a very clear goal. So it can't just be, hey, I need you guys to, you know, double our revenue in, you know, X months. Right. Has to be attainable, it has to be tangible, has to have objectives to it. So I think before you just jump into, you know, throwing marketing budget at something, you need to make sure that there's going to be an outcome and be able to, I wouldn't say like, fully predict it, but at least put benchmarks in place. You know, I've talked a few times about having that like CRO cap on just making sure that your focus for your marketing is on revenue generation. But it has to be done within a respectable timeline. It can't just be like an overnight success. You know, I see these ads all the time that are like, hey, you know, we'll get you x leads in 90 days. And if we don't, then, you know, they basically go straight to the cost. Right. They don't go into the entire revenue generation and how long it actually takes and how. Honestly, some things aren't really generating new revenue. It's actually, you know, in, you know, brand building. Right. It's doing something to possibly get people in the future to do that. But you need to make sure that your marketing's spread out in a way where, you know, it's not just heading to a, you know, quote unquote, cost center. It's going to generate revenue and this is the steps that it will take to get to that point and then just being able to back that up with data.

Speaker 2: 17:54 
Yeah. Yeah. Seth, any other closing thoughts here?

Speaker 1: 17:59 
Just thinking about that question about how CMOs can make smarter budget allocation decisions. You know, it's like today's CMO is supposed to know about marketing and digital marketing technology, sales, growth, revenue.

Speaker 3: 18:15 
Right.

Speaker 1: 18:15 
It's so much that they're expected to know. So, you know, not to be too promotional, but, you know, that's kind of why the fractional model that, that we have works, right? You know, pairing with an agency like OH8 to bring in that extra expertise, you know, to partner with you to make these kind of budget allocation decisions can be, can be really helpful. Right, because there's just so much to know and multiple perspectives can be great.

Speaker 2: 18:47 
Yeah, Love that. Well, thank you everybody for following along. We're going to continue on our, our series here of revenue driven marketing next week. But thank you again for, for viewing, for listening and we'll, we'll see you soon.