Peter Caputa's survey-driven thought leadership content (DataBox, HubSpot)

One way to impress people and capture their attention is to take data and then package it up into bite-sized, actionable information that you can share with anybody.

And it's exactly what Peter Caputa and his Databox team did with the 2023 State of Business Reporting.

It's based on a survey that's responded to by over 314 global companies.

You write a post on why you should share your company's performance data with everybody in your company.

But if I have data that says more successful companies share their performance data with everybody in their company, that's way more compelling.

It doesn't come off as salesy, right?

It's just like it comes off as like, okay, yeah, of course.

That's good advice.

In this Marketing Powerups episode, you’ll learn, first, how a survey-driven content can fuel your marketing strategy.

Second, how surveys can be used to create content that impacts every stage of the customer journey from activation to retention.

Third, how Peter and the Databox team created the 2023 state of business reporting.

And fourth, how dedicating time to learn things outside of your function can help accelerate your career.

Now, before we start, I've created a free powerups cheatsheet that you can download, fill in, and create a survey-driven, thought leadership content right now.

You can go to marketingpowerups.com to download it, or you can find the link in the description and show notes.

Are you ready? Let's go.

Announcer: Marketing Powerups. Ready? Go! Here's your host, Ramli John.

Ramli John: Let’s talk about marketing powerups.

One of the best ways to have your content stand out, really, is to create propriety data through surveys.

A perfect example of this is something that Databox has just put out, the 2023 State of the Business Reporting.

And it's really based on 314 companies globally your team has surveyed.

And I'm guessing it took a ton of effort and time and resources to really gather, compile, and synthesize this data.

Why was it so important for your team for you to really have and create this 2023 State of Business Reporting?

Peter Caputa: Yeah.

Peter Caputa: So Databox, we provide a set of tools that help companies monitor, analyze, report, and benchmark their performance.

So we're all about how companies should be doing their internal reporting in order to make sure that they're on track to goals and optimizing for efficiency and hitting the growth targets, all that stuff.

So for us, it was like, it's what we do.

And we wanted to understand how companies are doing it with or without us so that we could share best practices with everyone, really, prospects, customers, partners of ours.

Peter Caputa: So now we can definitively say, this is how companies do the reporting.

Peter Caputa: We were also able to take a portion of the respondents and identify them as higher performing companies.

Peter Caputa: And so we are also able to identify the habits of the higher performing companies.

Peter Caputa: So now we can go to our customers and say, hey, you're doing this, this, and this with our product, you should probably do these things.

Peter Caputa: This is what higher performing companies do and that allows us to compel them to use our product better so that their business perform better.

Peter Caputa: It sounds a little no, it's in their best interest.

Ramli John: I feel like that's legally tapped into most humans natural inclination to compare themselves, to compare their business.

Ramli John: It's like, oh, we should be doing this.

Ramli John: And the end goal for databox is to increase product usage.

Ramli John: You're like getting them to use other types of things that they might not be doing is exactly what I'm hearing.

Ramli John: Is that right?

Peter Caputa: Yeah, we're a very product led growth, which I know you're a huge advocate and expert at.

Peter Caputa: We're very into product like growth.

Peter Caputa: And for us, we want our customers to connect more of their data.

Peter Caputa: So more of the tools that they use google analytics, search console, ad platforms, email tools, marketing automation, CRMs finance tools, et cetera.

Peter Caputa: So the more tools they connect, the better of an overall view of their performance they have and the more likely to continue to use our product.

Peter Caputa: Also, we want them to add more users.

Peter Caputa: So the more people inside of a company that are monitoring the performance of that said company, the more likely that company is going to do well.

Peter Caputa: And also of course, stick with us.

Peter Caputa: And then we have features like goals.

Peter Caputa: Lots of companies aren't very good at setting goals and if they do, it's like on a piece of paper or something.

Peter Caputa: And so we have a goals feature in the app which we want our users to use.

Peter Caputa: There's a reporting tool that allows them to semi automate a report but still prompts them to interpret the data a bit and recommend next steps.

Peter Caputa: And so we want them to use that.

Peter Caputa: It's an active usage of our product which lends itself well to retention.

Peter Caputa: Through this survey that we did, we were able to identify that companies, for example, that companies that are transparent about their performance internally and they share their results internally are higher performing.

Peter Caputa: And so one of the things that means is that everyone should at your company should have a log in the data box, right, so they can monitor and see how the company is performing.

Peter Caputa: Because a more informed employee is going to make smarter decisions, going to feel more invested in their own work, in helping other people in their company execute their work, et cetera.

Peter Caputa: And they're just going to understand the interplay between everybody's work and the final result to achieve.

Peter Caputa: So all those things that we're able to validate through the survey, we can use our whole journey, whole customer journey.

Peter Caputa: That makes sense.

Peter Caputa: Exactly.

Ramli John: What I was just going to say is it can really touch upon the whole journey.

Ramli John: Like you mentioned, from activation to retention, I'm guessing their retention piece and getting them to use other features can increase their revenue, their revenue expansion potential as well, where they're using other yeah, exactly.

Ramli John: With you.

Peter Caputa: Where they are using other types of product pricing tiers.

Peter Caputa: And we have a value based pricing.

Peter Caputa: And then we launched our second product.

Peter Caputa: We'll launch a third product this year, so any additional usage and value they're getting will lead to more usage and more upgrades for us.

Ramli John: That totally makes sense.

Ramli John: It's such a great piece of content, and it's something that actually we've been thinking a lot about at that piece as well.

Ramli John: It's like how you can use proprietary data through survey to create almost like a content that's hard to copy.

Ramli John: With AI out there, it's easy to create like a listicle.

Peter Caputa: Right?

Peter Caputa: But this kind of data accurate.

Peter Caputa: You could create one.

Peter Caputa: It might not be accurate exactly, but.

Ramli John: For it to spit out original thought leadership research like, this is so important.

Ramli John: I love to just hear your thoughts on this.

Ramli John: Why is it so important when we are preparing for a chat?

Ramli John: You mentioned that every marketer should be thinking about creating content like this.

Ramli John: Why is that important?

Peter Caputa: It is really hard.

Peter Caputa: We can walk through what we've done to pull it off.

Peter Caputa: That's the second report we published.

Peter Caputa: We're about to publish third.

Peter Caputa: And we're getting to the point where we can pop these things out so I can talk about the process.

Peter Caputa: But yeah, I think it's so important, again, because it impacts every stage of the customer journey.

Peter Caputa: So, for example, I wrote five LinkedIn posts which just riff on one of the data points from the survey.

Peter Caputa: And the survey had 30 to 40 questions.

Peter Caputa: And so I could literally go and write ten more.

Peter Caputa: I still have way more than I could do.

Peter Caputa: Each one of those creates creates a conversation.

Peter Caputa: I think one of them had like 80 comments on LinkedIn, and that's just like impression, like crazy impressions and influence both both people who don't use us as well as customers, as well as partners.

Peter Caputa: And so it just enables us to really get our message out there in a way that doesn't feel like selling.

Peter Caputa: Right.

Peter Caputa: I could, of course, go and say, like, I could write a post on why you should share your company's performance data with everybody in your company.

Peter Caputa: But if I have data that says more successful companies share their performance data with everybody in their company, that's way more compelling.

Peter Caputa: It doesn't come off less salesy.

Peter Caputa: Right.

Peter Caputa: It's just like it comes off as like, okay, yeah, of course.

Peter Caputa: That's good advice.

Peter Caputa: I think it's just so much objective, right?

Peter Caputa: You could take your value props, your positioning, how you want people to think, and you can make it a very objective fact by having survey data that backs up that perspective.

Ramli John: I really love that.

Crowdsourcing Research to Create Hard-to-Copy Content: A Strategy for Growth

Ramli John: And what I'm hearing is that you're able to create other types of content.

Ramli John: You mentioned the five LinkedIn posts, which I'll link in the show notes in description as well.

Ramli John: But from this content, you're able to create, like I heard you were on the Metrics and Chill podcast.

Ramli John: You could talk about it on a podcast now, like what you're doing here.

Ramli John: You can create those LinkedIn posts, you can create YouTube videos, you can create all these other types of content based on this research.

Ramli John: That's super hard to copy.

Ramli John: Like your competitors are.

Ramli John: Amount of effort that your team has put into this is not as easily copyable.

Ramli John: That's even a word.

Ramli John: Rather than other things.

Ramli John: Essentially.

Peter Caputa: Yeah, because it relies on them going out and getting 300 people to answer 30 questions, which is not easy to duplicate.

Peter Caputa: Right.

Peter Caputa: And chances are they wouldn't want to just rip off our questions either.

Peter Caputa: I would hope that our competitors would have some different positioning in the market, and we'll want to vary that as well.

Peter Caputa: But yeah, this helps us get our message out.

Peter Caputa: The other beautiful thing about surveys is they're highly citable.

Peter Caputa: C-I-T-E-A-B-L-A.

Peter Caputa: Citable.

Peter Caputa: Right.

Peter Caputa: In terms of when you have a stat out there that companies are more successful if they share their performance data with all their employees, that's something that someone else is going to want to reference.

Peter Caputa: That's not maybe not even a competitor of ours, maybe a partner of ours, or maybe just somebody that wants that same positioning out in the market.

Peter Caputa: I think that though they tend to be link magnets, these reports, right.

Peter Caputa: Where people are constantly linking to that report because they just want to grab one or two stats that they use, say, in the introduction of their article or introduction of their social post or whatever.

Peter Caputa: So we did the state of Facebook advertising performance about a year ago, and that one, if you just Google Facebook Ads performance, we ranked number one for that report.

Peter Caputa: So not a great stock.

Peter Caputa: Tens of thousands of sessions, but pretty good chart.

Peter Caputa: Especially given that we're in the business of helping people track their Facebook Ads products.

Peter Caputa: I think these kind of reports are very link worthy.

Peter Caputa: They attract links, basically, and you have to go out and get them.

Ramli John: I wanted to what you mentioned there another advantage of this is Google trust it since it's more trustworthy, Google sees it as more likely to be rank higher, essentially.

Ramli John: So there's a little bit of an SEO play there as well, with the backlinks and the Citable, like you mentioned.

Ramli John: So that's super interesting.

Ramli John: That calling that out.

Peter Caputa: Yeah.

Peter Caputa: In general, we get more than a quarter, almost 300,000 sessions a month on our website.

Peter Caputa: Wow.

Ramli John: Last month.

Peter Caputa: December?

Peter Caputa: No, January.

Peter Caputa: We got 6400 sign ups for our free product, all from organic, as measured by Google Analytics.

Peter Caputa: That's word of mouth and all this other stuff.

Peter Caputa: But it's all organic.

Peter Caputa: And we've crowdsourced 1000 articles, more than 1000 articles in the last six years, long form articles.

Peter Caputa: And so while we've done these longer form surveys, like the state of business reporting, state of Facebook ads, performance, et cetera.

Peter Caputa: We also do shorter ones where we'll ask like two open ended questions and maybe three to five closed ended questions and then we'll create an article on that.

Peter Caputa: It's usually a few thousand words, so it's not short, but it's nowhere near the length of our 30 40 question surveys.

Peter Caputa: And that's allowed us to produce a lot of content, which allows us to get a lot of traffic and a.

Ramli John: Lot of for people who are interested in doing something like this for their own company, you've already done two, you're going to do three now with your team.

Peter Caputa: How Agencies Can Benefit from Surveys and Collaborating with Partners

Ramli John: Any piece of advice you'd like to give them that would be helpful.

Ramli John: As to, for people who might not.

Peter Caputa: Have done this before, the best thing you could do is partner with somebody that has a complementary reach.

Peter Caputa: So for example, the survey we're running right now is State of Agency client Collaboration for marketing agencies and their clients.

Peter Caputa: And we teamed up with a consulting firm called Zenpilot who helps agencies implement click up and teamwork as their project management solution.

Peter Caputa: And so they designed half the questions and we designed half the questions.

Peter Caputa: Their questions are obviously around project management.

Peter Caputa: Ours are around reporting results to clients.

Peter Caputa: And together, that's like the two most important functions that an agency is going to have in order to secure the client relationship, right?

Peter Caputa: They got to scope projects and execute them and they got to report results.

Peter Caputa: And so we built that survey together and then we promoted it together and so they got respondents.

Peter Caputa: So we got respondents.

Peter Caputa: And that really helps because it's hard to get like 300 people to fill out a longer survey.

Peter Caputa: Now, like I said before, we've been doing shorter ones for a long time.

Peter Caputa: So we've built up a list of marketers especially who are willing to take surveys because for two reasons.

Peter Caputa: One, we often will quote them in the articles or the reports that we write.

Peter Caputa: And then two, we give them access to the raw survey result so they can see how their performance and see the things they're doing versus what other respondents are doing.

Peter Caputa: So that's kind of an incentive.

Peter Caputa: So we're actually in the process of partnering with a bunch of different companies to do more of these going forward.

Peter Caputa: It makes it a lot easier, right?

Peter Caputa: We got maybe 50 or so people to respond from that partnership with Zen Pilot.

Peter Caputa: That's 50 people we wouldn't have reached that are now on our list that we can use for the next survey.

Peter Caputa: And it just makes it easier the more you do it, but it really comes down to repetition.

Peter Caputa: I don't recommend starting maybe with the long form survey.

Peter Caputa: If you're a new company or you don't have a lot of other marketing channels yet developed, right?

Peter Caputa: I would recommend starting with a short one where it's more almost like a poll with an open ended question and just write a report based on you ask them an open ended question like, how did you improve X performance in this area?

Peter Caputa: Right?

Peter Caputa: And they give you a free form thing and then they answer a few questions and then you just do a quick article on that.

Peter Caputa: And that's the way you get 30 to 50 people to respond and that's enough, right?

Peter Caputa: So that's how I recommend starting.

Peter Caputa: I wouldn't recommend starting with getting 300 respondents unless you already very successful company, have a big audience.

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The Process of Creating Databox's Comprehensive Reports

Ramli John: Now, you can find that link in the description below.

Ramli John: Let's jump back in.

Ramli John: I'm curious how you pulled off the interesting insights.

Ramli John: I feel like that's not something that somebody who is not familiar with the space might be able to pull off.

Ramli John: Like, I'm going to bring up interesting insight in a bit, but do you go through that or John, the head of marketing at Databox, or anybody else that I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Ramli John: Marketing is the most monitored, reported that somebody who must be familiar with the space has gone through the data.

Peter Caputa: There's a lot of survey design is a skill, I guess is the right maybe the right it's like a discipline.

Peter Caputa: There isn't a course, I think that you go for in college necessarily for survey design, although some colleges have them.

Peter Caputa: But it's kind of like you should take a course on survey design, in other words, or read a book on it.

Peter Caputa: There's a lot of tried and true principles.

Peter Caputa: I did a survey in college for a project.

Peter Caputa: It was like a year long project where we actually back then had to phone people out.

Peter Caputa: In S One, we called these manufacturing companies, and I'm not going to get into the topic, but we literally called like 500 of them back then.

Peter Caputa: This is the late ninety s people used to pick up the phone so they would answer and we'd tell them we were at school and people would feel like, oh, that's really cool that you're doing this in school.

Peter Caputa: And they'd answer our questions.

Peter Caputa: But I learned a lot, both for the professor and a book that I read on survey design around how to write your questions in a way that they're not leading people how to maybe have sometimes have multiple questions.

Peter Caputa: They ask similar things so that you can check to see whether people are being honest, how to structure, use different types of survey questions, whether it's multiple choice, select all that apply, select one right rank things like there's different things that you can do in order to design an effective survey.

Peter Caputa: So I'd recommend pick up a book on it if you're going to do it, but to answer how we do it.

Peter Caputa: In the beginning it was me designing the surveys.

Peter Caputa: That was a long time ago.

Peter Caputa: Along the way we hired a person just to do survey design.

Peter Caputa: Like I said, we do these shorter surveys multiple times per week and so that's her job is to identify topics and come up with survey design around them.

Peter Caputa: We also have multiple people internally who will come up with topics because they have various experience, either working with customers or just experience in certain marketing tactics or sales processes, et cetera.

Peter Caputa: And so they'll be able to come up with creative ideas.

Peter Caputa: And our first step is to write a research brief.

Peter Caputa: Most content marketers write a content brief.

Peter Caputa: We write a research brief.

Peter Caputa: So it's like here's the hypothesis that we have, here's the angle, we think that's interesting, here are the questions we would ask, here's some data we already have because we're often using performance benchmark data, these reports now as well.

Peter Caputa: And so we'll write that and then it'll be a next step.

Peter Caputa: We'll go to the survey design person and she'll fine tune the survey questions.

Peter Caputa: She'll do some of her own research on the topic and fine tune it and then it goes into production where we recruit respondents.

Peter Caputa: And so then we have a variety of tactics and techniques and channels for recruiting respondents that we use.

Peter Caputa: And then once we get enough that's when we analyze the same person who designed the survey.

Peter Caputa: Analyzes interesting, makes sense, analyzes it oftentimes we'll review that for the longer form surveys.

Peter Caputa: I'm still involved in reviewing that to kind of make sure the things we're saying make sense.

Peter Caputa: There's statistical relevance to stuff we're slicing or segmenting the respondent pool differently in order to compare and contrast things.

Peter Caputa: So there's a bunch of different steps.

Peter Caputa: Now I'm more of a rubber stamp kind of person at this point.

Peter Caputa: The team is really good at this, but I do stay involved in some of that stuff because I'm passionate about survey design and have been for a while.

Peter Caputa: And then once we're done the analysis, we actually have a team of freelance writers and we provide direction and then we write the content brief and hand that off to the writer to weave it all together, including the people involved in recruiting respondents, even though there's like ten of them.

Peter Caputa: But if I just include them as one person.

Peter Caputa: There's like six different people that touch it.

Ramli John: Wow, that is impressive.

Ramli John: In this six months, I believe, like, I read somewhere that Jeremiah, I think in the podcast metrics that Chill mentioned, that it took up most of 2022 building this state of business reporting.

Peter Caputa: Yeah, we're getting faster at it every time.

Peter Caputa: So the Facebook ads one probably took us like six to nine months, which is too long.

Peter Caputa: Things change in six to nine months.

Peter Caputa: But it was still a good report.

Peter Caputa: It was statistically relevant.

Peter Caputa: And then the state of business reporting is about six months.

Peter Caputa: I think this one we're doing now, we're going on like four months and we're close.

Peter Caputa: We seem to be able to get to like 250 respondents, and that last 50 is really hard to get.

Peter Caputa: But I anticipate because we basically build a product that does this.

Peter Caputa: We haven't rolled this feature out yet, but as we partner with other companies to do this, my expectation is it'll get a lot easier for us to do it because we have multiple partners.

Is the increased monitoring and reporting of marketing activities a double-edged sword?

Peter Caputa: For one research report I want to.

Ramli John: Jump into, one of the interesting takeaways from the report is around how marketing actually beat out sales in finance as one of the most monitored and reported on function.

Ramli John: And yeah, in your LinkedIn post you said this may be a good thing because now marketing finally has a seat at the table.

Ramli John: But you also mentioned in that LinkedIn post, which once again I'll link in the description, this might not be as good thing as people may think.

Ramli John: Why is that?

Ramli John: Why are you sure that this may be a good thing, this insight, this takeaway.

Peter Caputa: I don't want the bad thing to overshadow the good thing.

Peter Caputa: And the actual data shows that marketing, sales and finance are like neck and neck within percentage point in terms of whether they're monitored and or reported.

Peter Caputa: So basically the short version of that is that marketing, sales and finance are both monitored and reported, like, almost by all the respondents in the pool.

Peter Caputa: So it's like 90 some percent.

Peter Caputa: But I think one of the and so that's a good thing.

Peter Caputa: Let's enjoy that for a moment.

Peter Caputa: When I started my career, career, as we were talking about like a quarter century ago, marketing was still just producing brochures for the sales team to drop off at the client.

Peter Caputa: Right.

Peter Caputa: Or marketing was making sure that the booth had an effective giveaway.

Peter Caputa: I think we should enjoy the fact that marketing has arrived.

Peter Caputa: And of course, it wouldn't have happened without the Internet and digital marketing making things way more measurable.

Peter Caputa: And therefore, because it's measurable, you should report on it.

Peter Caputa: Absolutely.

Peter Caputa: Databox's business is really built around marketing reporting.

Peter Caputa: We also do sales and finance reporting and other types of functions inside organizations.

Peter Caputa: But marketing is still our bread butter.

Peter Caputa: In fact, 40% of our customers are marketing agencies doing the reporting out of us celebrating that.

Peter Caputa: We'll put the celebration aside for a second.

Peter Caputa: Why I think this is a little bit concerning is that I fear that companies aren't thinking about their marketing strategically enough, right?

Peter Caputa: They get caught up in what is measurable and they do the things that are measurable and they make it marketing's responsibility to grow the company.

Peter Caputa: And I think this is especially true of product like growth.

Peter Caputa: It's like we built a great product.

Peter Caputa: Marketing should be doing more.

Peter Caputa: We should have more of the market, right?

Peter Caputa: It's marketing's fault.

Peter Caputa: It's easy to say that.

Peter Caputa: But in reality, the way that you grow your business, PLG or any business, is that you pick a really big market.

Peter Caputa: You differentiate yourself in that market through your product and services.

Peter Caputa: You take a stand on things, right?

Peter Caputa: You provide really good service, a really good selling process.

Peter Caputa: In PLG, especially the right free product, the right pricing and packaging around that, the right trial experience, like the right onboarding stuff, that all that stuff.

Peter Caputa: If that's not right, marketing can't fix that alone.

Peter Caputa: At least.

Peter Caputa: I think it's easy for companies to say, marketing is really measurable.

Peter Caputa: How come we can't just do more of it?

Peter Caputa: Because in sales, if you want to grow sales, you add headcount, right?

Peter Caputa: In marketing, it's not that simple.

Peter Caputa: So first of all, you have to have that strategy, right?

Peter Caputa: And then you got to pick your channels and your tactics and all that, and then your angles.

Peter Caputa: And you got to be creative.

Peter Caputa: You got to balance creativity with productivity.

Peter Caputa: So I think marketing isn't as coin operated as other functions.

Peter Caputa: Coin operated, meaning like, you can't put a coin in and just make it work anyways.

Peter Caputa: That's why I think it's a little concerning that companies are monitoring their marketing so closely for that result, when in reality, it's the bigger, longer term decisions that determine the success of the marketing.

Ramli John: I love that coin operated concept.

Ramli John: I think on the other end, the results is hard.

Ramli John: Sales is easy to hopefully sales is easy to track the results.

Ramli John: Where are you bringing in sales?

Ramli John: And finance is like, are we releasing our resources correctly?

Ramli John: Marketing might not be as directly like one for one output where you put in, for example, investing in brand or investing in something might take a while for it to see the results.

Ramli John: Versus sales, you put in that one headcount of salesperson, hopefully within that quarter, you can see the results of that person right away.

Peter Caputa: Versus marketing.

Peter Caputa: I think most companies, it's going to take six to twelve months before a salesperson is covering their expenses.

Peter Caputa: But yes, you should have an early sign that they're capable of connecting with a prospect, willing to dial prospect every day, capable of having a qualification call.

Peter Caputa: Like you'll see all that stuff and there's this very step wise process of making sure that that is a good hire.

Peter Caputa: In marketing, it's more of like, okay, we hired this person, and these are their skills.

Peter Caputa: What should we have them do?

Peter Caputa: Right?

Peter Caputa: What do they want to do?

Peter Caputa: What do we think they should do?

Peter Caputa: What will have the biggest impact?

Peter Caputa: And finding the intersection of that, I think is harder.

Peter Caputa: And the other thing is salespeople.

Peter Caputa: I think they're comfortable with looking at a funnel and just saying, yes, my work equals my output.

Peter Caputa: And with marketing, I think marketing brains, including my own, tend to go with, like, what's the creative thing that we could do that would be awesome, right.

Peter Caputa: But in reality, the reason you have people listening to your podcast is because you do it every week, right?

Peter Caputa: And the reality people subscribe to a newsletter is because word of mouth spreads, because you send it out every week and it's good every week, and people get they start to like it, right, and talk about it.

Peter Caputa: So I do think there's an element of repetitiveness that's required in marketing that is very measurable and depends entirely on the effort and the focus of that team.

Peter Caputa: But there's still creativity required within it, right?

Peter Caputa: To write that newsletter, you can't just sit down, write it out.

Peter Caputa: It's not like writing a prospecting.

Peter Caputa: Essence very similar to the last 200 that you sent.

Peter Caputa: It's a really hard balance with marketing to find those repeatable things that produce results and then being creative within it, too, so that people want to talk about it and want to listen to it and read it, et cetera.

The Marketing Pendulum: Finding the Balance Between Creativity and Measurability

Ramli John: You mentioned something in your licked post around a pendulum swinging.

Ramli John: Do you feel like things have gotten so data driven for marketing this past few years and now it's kind of swinging back?

Ramli John: Or what are your thoughts around this pendulum that you were talking about in that LinkedIn post?

Peter Caputa: I don't know where the pendulum is right now, but I do think the pendulum swung too far towards the measurability.

Peter Caputa: And I think people think about, like, why can't we just do more of that?

Peter Caputa: Well, because we'll get it diminishing returns, right?

Peter Caputa: Or we just need one more channel to work.

Peter Caputa: We got SEO working.

Peter Caputa: Why can't we figure out the next channel?

Peter Caputa: Well, because that channel is entirely different, and we don't know how to do that yet.

Peter Caputa: In our context of our business, I think it's gotten too focused on the mechanics of marketing, which is, of course, measurable and not enough focus in on the higher level company strategy and balancing creativity with the consistency.

Peter Caputa on Martech Benchmarking and Career Journey

Ramli John: I love this.

Ramli John: We probably could talk about this for like a half a day or even longer, but I want to move on to talk about your career, actually a career problem.

Ramli John: This helped you.

Ramli John: You've been in Martech, actually for over 25 years.

Ramli John: You mentioned that you were creating websites for your wife, and then you became VP of Sales at HubSpot, and then.

Peter Caputa: Now you're not for my wife, but.

Peter Caputa: I created my first website in late ninety s at my job, I was an engineer.

Peter Caputa: They decided to launch an ecommerce site, and they needed somebody that understood our product that we were manufacturing.

Peter Caputa: And so I got on that team and then I'm like, okay, well, I might as well learn how to code.

Peter Caputa: So I went back to school, learn how to code and help build that site.

Peter Caputa: It didn't work out, but I learned a lot.

Peter Caputa: This was good for me, not for the company.

Peter Caputa: They ended up shutting the business, shutting the ecommerce site down.

Peter Caputa: It didn't make any sense, upon reflection, for that business to do, to sell online, but that's how I learned.

Peter Caputa: And then when I learned that, I then hooked up with some friends and we started building our software ourselves in the early 2000s.

Peter Caputa: Did that nicer weekends for a while, did that full time for a few years.

Peter Caputa: And that's when I ultimately met marco bears, who was running sales at HubSpot, had just joined.

Peter Caputa: In fact, I met him before he even joined, he was just consulting them at the time, and we referred some customers to HubSpot even before I joined.

Peter Caputa: And then my startup wasn't going anywhere.

Peter Caputa: We still had a big ambition, but we weren't getting very far, and that's like a whole other episode.

Peter Caputa: And so I ended up taking a job in sales at HubSpot.

Peter Caputa: Previously I had hired a sales coach and went through like a year long sales training, sales coaching program, and it happened to be Mark's dad, by the way, mark Robert's dad.

Peter Caputa: So anyways, Rick introducing Mark, and mark hired me, and then at hostpa, I was the fourth sales rep, 15th employee.

Peter Caputa: And then I built out the channel there, which is the agency partner program, and built that up to a little over 100 million in annual revenue.

Peter Caputa: And then it wasn't as entrepreneurial anymore at that point, and I was looking to get back in the trenches.

Peter Caputa: I had some ideas around what I wanted to build next, some of it around benchmarks and the survey process.

Peter Caputa: And so I ended up connecting with the founder of databox.

Peter Caputa: They had just pivoted, they had to do, they raised money and kind of blew through some of it, and they had to restart and refocus.

Peter Caputa: And so what they were building and the market they were building for aligned with my understanding and my market knowledge of working with agencies in martech.

Peter Caputa: I ended up joining databox six years ago, and so now we're a bit less, a few, maybe about 100 and 3140 people or so and still growing.

Peter Caputa: And we've been cash flow break even for several years, and investing in product innovation, investing in our marketing, et cetera.

Peter Caputa: So it's been a fun ride.

Ramli John: I can imagine.

Ramli John: It's been really like roller coaster upwards.

Ramli John: A rocket ship is probably more rocket.

Peter Caputa: Ship than a roke.

Ramli John: Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Caputa: Well, HubSpot was both a roller coaster and a rocket ship.

Peter Caputa: The rocket ship.

Peter Caputa: Externally it looks like everything was executed perfectly, but internally it was like you'd be crying one day and laid it next day.

Peter Caputa: It was a lot of ups and downs.

Peter Caputa: It was very stressful being that part of such a high growth company.

Peter Caputa: There's a lot of stories that don't necessarily get told publicly, but overall, of course, it's a life changing experience for me and all that and then, yeah, databox has been a little more smooth and steady since I joined.

Peter Caputa: We have our ups and downs.

Peter Caputa: We have challenges, of course, but because of the way we invest back in product innovation and really leveraging product and marketing to drive growth NCS, of course, is important, but I think we've really taken heart the PLG Motion and organic content and all that stuff to really drive the growth of the company.

Peter Caputa: So pretty predictable in terms of our numbers each month, each quarter.

Ramli John: That's been a really great career.

Invest in Yourself to Accelerate Your Career Growth

Ramli John: My question is around a career power up or something that's this long, really amazing career that you've had so far and what's going on so far?

Ramli John: Any advice or any power up that's helped you accelerate your journey to the next level?

Peter Caputa: Good question.

Peter Caputa: I could probably riff on this for a while, but the one that's top of mind for me recently is just like dedicating time to learning and doing it in the context that it'll help you in your current role.

Peter Caputa: Ideally, or at least in your current company, but also set you up for future opportunities and make you like the standout option for future opportunities, whether internally or externally.

Peter Caputa: And so I wrote this post the other day of basically saying you should get a job that's 8 hours a day for most people.

Peter Caputa: You shouldn't be committing to a job that requires you to work more than that most of the time, but you shouldn't work 8 hours a day.

Peter Caputa: That should not be your modus operator if you want to accelerate your career, right?

Peter Caputa: Because there's good people that are smarter, that work harder than you and they're going to have opportunities that you don't.

Peter Caputa: So your only course of action is to invest more in yourself.

Peter Caputa: And I think there's ways to do that that align with where your company is going.

Peter Caputa: So one of them is just to go learn a new skill.

Peter Caputa: So for example, the first company, right out of school, I went and lat backed and learned how to write code that enabled me to do that job better and actually contribute more than they thought I would be able to for that job, which saved them from other costs, which was good for that job.

Peter Caputa: But it also allowed me to start a thing on nights and weekends coding up an app, right?

Peter Caputa: Same thing with sales.

Peter Caputa: Like in my first startup, I hired a coach to do sales.

Peter Caputa: At the time it was like a third of my personal income.

Peter Caputa: It was a lot of money to hire that coach.

Peter Caputa: And I made that decision because I knew that I needed to for that business.

Peter Caputa: It would help me, that business.

Peter Caputa: But it also then of course led to me getting a sales job and I was fine.

Peter Caputa: I wouldn't have gotten that job both because I probably wouldn't have ever met Mark because his dad connected us and my sales coach and also because I just didn't have selling skills that I would have needed to get that job.

Peter Caputa: So I think investing in those things along the way is important and sometimes that requires nights and weekends.

Peter Caputa: Like when I learned to code, it was 9 hours a week, nights and weekends.

Peter Caputa: So it was like 12 hours full day on Saturday and then one night a week or might have been two nights a week.

Peter Caputa: So you got to do that kind of stuff to invest your growth.

The Importance of Online Publishing for Personal and Professional Growth

Peter Caputa: Another one that wasn't available in my career earlier on that is available to everyone now is just publishing online.

Peter Caputa: You don't have to be like it doesn't have to be a side hustle.

Peter Caputa: Not saying go get a side hustle, but you can go online and literally in an hour publish something that other people are going to read.

Peter Caputa: Like that did not exist in the world literally before.

Peter Caputa: Let's just say 15 years ago.

Peter Caputa: And 15 years ago it was harder.

Peter Caputa: Now, like with LinkedIn, it's so easy to get people to read what you write or read what you record and publish.

Peter Caputa: And so people that aren't taking advantage of that, honestly, I think they're fools.

Peter Caputa: It's such an easy way to build your career anyways.

Peter Caputa: Then we have a program internally that we're helping our team do that.

Peter Caputa: I even help edit some of the really imposed interesting because I think it's that important.

Peter Caputa: I think it helps them.

Peter Caputa: They have to listen to something, they have to observe something, they have to think about something critically.

Peter Caputa: They have to write something out.

Peter Caputa: Those skills are so transferable in any role.

Peter Caputa: And if you can do that, that is the core to building your career and you then get to publish it, which makes people respect you, want to follow, you want to listen to what you have to say, right?

Peter Caputa: And you're building your own following, which could lead to a new job, could lead to a side hustle.

Peter Caputa: Again, not recommending it necessarily, or a promotion at your current company.

Peter Caputa: Or a new role in your current company.

Peter Caputa: So yeah, I think if you're not spending your Sunday morning listening to something, reading a book and sharing 200 words on LinkedIn about it, then I don't think you're serious about your career.

Peter Caputa: That's the way I look at it.

Ramli John: I really love that, being publishing more.

Ramli John: And you said you're helping your employees even read through it.

Ramli John: On the other end, the positive for the data box is that people trust people more than they trust company profiles online, and it builds credibility for the company itself.

Ramli John: I think it's like there's multiple positive things that can happen for it, not just for the employee itself, but also for the companies that are helping their employees do it.

Peter Caputa: Absolutely, yeah.

Peter Caputa: So we have a thing.

Peter Caputa: We call it Podcast club.

Peter Caputa: We might change the name, but everybody in the CS team listens to our own podcast every week.

Peter Caputa: Maybe we'll stop this one in the schedule, but everyone listens to our own podcast metrics and shell and and then we meet.

Peter Caputa: Not everybody, but but like, there's usually ten to 15 people that meet, discuss it.

Peter Caputa: Everyone fills out a quick Google form that says, like, what was confusing from the podcast?

Peter Caputa: What was things that you learned that were new and what would you think the main takeaway, and then what might you write about on LinkedIn?

Peter Caputa: And so we use that as the basis for our internal discussion about the podcast.

Peter Caputa: We clarify anything that was confusing.

Peter Caputa: We talk about what people learned and how that relates to maybe to their own job and data box and how we build our own business.

Peter Caputa: And then we talk about the main takeaway.

Peter Caputa: Then afterwards they go and they write a draft and they put that into a Google Doc.

Peter Caputa: We have an Asana project with different stages.

Peter Caputa: There's some other people that kind of review it before I do and give some feedback, and then I do a quick final edit on it and then they publish.

Peter Caputa: So I don't expect to do that myself forever, but I do think it's important investment that I wanted to make in the team.

Peter Caputa: And yes, absolutely.

Peter Caputa: It helps the company, right, in a lot of ways because it's our CS team doing it.

Peter Caputa: They're also connecting with their prospects and customers.

Peter Caputa: So it's another touch point that we can influence them.

Peter Caputa: And then, of course, when we have ten people writing about something that is much more likely to be seen by our collective network than if just one person is writing.

Peter Caputa: And as you said, yes, people tend to follow and trust people little more than they do brand accounts.

Ramli John: That makes sense, right?

Ramli John: Podcast Club.

Ramli John: I love that.

Ramli John: I might do that.

Peter Caputa: The Creator Club because I created.

Ramli John: Wow, that's super cool.

Peter Caputa: I love this.

Ramli John: Thank you for sharing.

Ramli John: I'm going to try to do it myself here now, see if I can get the CSP to do the same thing.

Ramli John: What we're doing here?

Peter Caputa: Well, yeah, I'm the CEO, so I got to decide that we were going to do it.

Peter Caputa: But yes, you might have to get buy in.

Peter Caputa: But I started to get buy into.

Peter Caputa: In fact, I got some push back that I'm like, let's just do it and see what happens.

Peter Caputa: I love it.

Peter Caputa, CEO of Databox, Shares Career Growth and Data Insights

Ramli John: Before we wrap up yours, one other question I want to ask you around a piece of advice.

Ramli John: If you can travel back in time and give the young a younger Peter piece of advice or a couple of piece of advice, what would you give yourself an advice to your younger self?

Peter Caputa: Probably to pick my battles.

Peter Caputa: We're still picking a lot of battles, and I'm probably still not taking the advice that I'd give myself now.

Peter Caputa: But when I look back on my career, I picked fights more than battles, sometimes because of ego as opposed to trying to optimize for truth and justice.

Peter Caputa: I like to debate.

Peter Caputa: I learn that way, and I obsess over things to the point where I convince myself of something, and so then it becomes like, okay, that's the mission.

Peter Caputa: And so I can be a little voracious sometimes that's got me into trouble.

Peter Caputa: I don't know.

Peter Caputa: Although I'm not sure I would change.

Peter Caputa: It worked out fine for me.

Peter Caputa: That's true.

Ramli John: I love it.

Ramli John: No, it's so good.

Ramli John: I love this chat with Peter.

Ramli John: I hope you learned as much as I did.

Ramli John: You can follow Peter on LinkedIn and check out the databox state of reporting on [databox.com](http://databox.com/).

Ramli John: The link to those are in the description and show notes.

Peter Boyd shares insights on SaaS Marketing and Customer Journey

Ramli John: Thanks to Peter for being on the show.

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