Nick Bennett's people-first GTM model

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Ramli John: Marketers are often too focused on acquisition and not enough on retention, renewal and advocacy.
[00:00:05] Ramli John: It's fair, acquiring new customers is exciting, but if you struggle to make them stick around to become advocates of your product, you'll struggle to build a sustainable business.
[00:00:14] Ramli John: Today, Nick Bennett, cofounder of Tax shares his people first go to market strategy.
[00:00:18] Ramli John: In episode 63 of the marketing Pop show, you learn first of all the importance of increasing renewals and advocates.
[00:00:23] Ramli John: Second, how to create campaign his focus on increasing renewals.
[00:00:26] Ramli John: Third, how Nick generated over 81 g two reviews in 48 hours and number four, a power up that has accelerated Nick's career.
[00:00:34] Ramli John: Before we get started, I've created a free power up cheat sheet that you can download and apply Nick's people first go to market strategy.
[00:00:40] Ramli John: Get it now marketingparups.com or find that link in the show notes and description.

[00:00:44] Developing a Go-to-Market Model for Airmeet with Nick Bennett

[00:00:44] Ramli John: Are you ready?
[00:00:45] Ramli John: Let's go.
[00:00:46] Nick Bennett: Marketing power ups.
[00:00:49] Nick Bennett: Ready, go.
[00:00:53] Nick Bennett: Here's your host, Rambly John.
[00:00:58] Ramli John: I'm super excited to be talking about first go to market model that you've been working with Mark.
[00:01:05] Ramli John: Maybe.
[00:01:06] Ramli John: Let's jump in.
[00:01:07] Ramli John: How did it come about?
[00:01:08] Ramli John: Like, you and Mark were chatting, you were both working at the same company, and then I guess through conversation they're like, this is what we need to focus on.
[00:01:17] Ramli John: And did it just come like, did it come naturally or did you workshop it through over time?
[00:01:24] Ramli John: I'm curious how this model that you and him have been working on came about.
[00:01:29] Nick Bennett: Yeah, so he was actually the CMO of Airmeat, and I was on his team.
[00:01:35] Nick Bennett: And funny enough, I worked for Alice before that.
[00:01:38] Nick Bennett: And Mark and I went to dinner.
[00:01:40] Nick Bennett: It was like October of 2022.
[00:01:42] Nick Bennett: And we were talking about like, hey, future, what's next?
[00:01:47] Nick Bennett: He's like, hey, why don't you come build out this creator thing at Airmeat?
[00:01:52] Nick Bennett: And for anyone that's listening, Airmeat is a virtual event platform.
[00:01:57] Nick Bennett: And so I was like, all right, cool.
[00:01:59] Nick Bennett: I was exploring what's next.
[00:02:01] Nick Bennett: And so I went and I had a team of about five or six people, but I led this creator piece.
[00:02:08] Nick Bennett: I led events, field, marketing, community, social media.
[00:02:13] Nick Bennett: So I had a lot of different pieces that reported to me.
[00:02:16] Nick Bennett: And June of this year, he was like, hey, I'm going to have to lay you off.
[00:02:22] Nick Bennett: And I was like, yeah.
[00:02:24] Nick Bennett: And I was like, oh, I've gone through this before.
[00:02:26] Nick Bennett: And I was like, you know what?
[00:02:27] Nick Bennett: No big deal.
[00:02:28] Nick Bennett: I get it.
[00:02:30] Nick Bennett: Tech is a bloodbath right now anyway.
[00:02:33] Ramli John: Yeah, it is.
[00:02:34] Nick Bennett: So I was like, all right.
[00:02:35] Nick Bennett: And then he was like, I'm going to be leaving as well.
[00:02:38] Ramli John: Okay.

[00:02:38] Starting a Company and Launching with Hype

[00:02:38] Nick Bennett: Have you ever thought, would you ever be open to starting a company together?
[00:02:42] Ramli John: Oh, what?
[00:02:42] Nick Bennett: And at the time, I was like, well, I just had twins.
[00:02:46] Nick Bennett: And I was like, at the time, they were probably, like, two or three months old.
[00:02:50] Nick Bennett: And I was like, I don't know, is this a good time?
[00:02:53] Nick Bennett: But I was like, you know what?
[00:02:54] Nick Bennett: Screw it.
[00:02:55] Nick Bennett: Who cares?
[00:02:56] Nick Bennett: Let's try it.
[00:02:58] Nick Bennett: The fortunate thing of building your brand online is if something doesn't succeed, you can go back and ask people for a job.
[00:03:05] Nick Bennett: You can reach out to your connection.
[00:03:07] Nick Bennett: Someone's going to help you find something.
[00:03:08] Nick Bennett: So I was like, listen, I'll give it a few quarters.
[00:03:11] Nick Bennett: If it doesn't work, I'll go find a w two job, and I'll just kind of, like, start over.
[00:03:17] Nick Bennett: And we did it.
[00:03:18] Nick Bennett: We soft launched it in June.
[00:03:21] Ramli John: That was cool, right?
[00:03:23] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:03:24] Nick Bennett: And then we hard launched it August 1.
[00:03:27] Nick Bennett: So he finished up his time at airmeat through the end of July, and then come August 1, we were like, all right, we're going all in on this.
[00:03:35] Nick Bennett: And so we actually rented or we chartered a photo.
[00:03:40] Nick Bennett: Yeah, we hired a video crew and kind of, we went out and shot all this content of what Tac is, what people first is all that stuff, because we wanted to kind of like everyone.
[00:03:53] Nick Bennett: I mean, if you think about people first, you've probably been doing it a majority of your life, but people just don't connect the dots.
[00:04:00] Nick Bennett: And so if you think about a people first go to market, it's a pretty simple sentence.
[00:04:05] Nick Bennett: It's like a business strategy that uses relationships and partnerships to create, capture, and convert demand into revenue.
[00:04:12] Nick Bennett: But it's designed to put people at the center of every interaction and experience.
[00:04:19] Nick Bennett: You don't have to be a b two b company to do this.
[00:04:21] Nick Bennett: There's lots of, like, I mean, your butcher shop, your fish mongler, all these different shops that might be in your town or city or whatever, they're probably people first to a certain degree as well.
[00:04:32] Nick Bennett: If they're putting people at the center of everything and just kind of like, not relying on that company first mindset, it does a lot.
[00:04:40] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:04:42] Ramli John: First of all, I like how you and Mark launched it.
[00:04:46] Ramli John: There's this concept.
[00:04:48] Ramli John: I call it hype, people who can hype up something.
[00:04:51] Ramli John: And then I remember, just like, first of all, you started with a teaser.
[00:04:55] Ramli John: We're launching something.
[00:04:56] Ramli John: And then there was like a picture of a sailboat or something.
[00:04:58] Ramli John: I can't remember.
[00:05:02] Ramli John: Out comes this video, and it looked like a rapper music video.
[00:05:07] Ramli John: You're both on a big boat, and then you're just talking about it.
[00:05:12] Ramli John: How did that concept come about?
[00:05:13] Ramli John: I mean, maybe it's a play on the word with the word.
[00:05:17] Nick Bennett: So it a.
[00:05:19] Nick Bennett: I'm not a sailor.
[00:05:20] Nick Bennett: I didn't actually know what the name meant.
[00:05:24] Nick Bennett: Mark grew up sailing.
[00:05:25] Nick Bennett: He's from port, mass.
[00:05:27] Nick Bennett: So, like, on the water.
[00:05:29] Nick Bennett: And so attack is actually how you change direction on a sailboat.
[00:05:36] Nick Bennett: So when you put up the sails, you tack, and that's how you turn.
[00:05:42] Nick Bennett: And so it's like, all right, cool.
[00:05:44] Nick Bennett: The pressure on any business today is immense.
[00:05:47] Nick Bennett: And so you need to be able to tack in different directions.
[00:05:52] Nick Bennett: And so it's basically shifting like a tide shift kind of is a model that's, again, very much focused on partnering with software to partnering with people to grow, and so that's how you move.
[00:06:09] Nick Bennett: I've learned a ton about sailing, which is crazy.
[00:06:12] Ramli John: So good.
[00:06:13] Ramli John: And then the video around sailboat, I'm guessing Mark was the one, let's go get on a boat.
[00:06:18] Ramli John: Let's do this video.
[00:06:21] Nick Bennett: It was his idea.
[00:06:22] Nick Bennett: And I was like, oh, yeah.
[00:06:24] Nick Bennett: It was literally a beautiful day to be out on the water, too.
[00:06:27] Nick Bennett: And we were out there for, like, 3 hours.
[00:06:29] Nick Bennett: And it was just, like, so much fun to be able to just kind of, one, learn how to basically drive a sailboat, but two, understand what this all means and how it plays into the larger story.
[00:06:43] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:06:45] Nick Bennett: I like that.
[00:06:47] Ramli John: I think we're seeing that more and more where people are thinking about doing creative ways to launch us.
[00:06:53] Ramli John: I'm seeing mutiny do this where last Christmas they hired a rapper to sing like a song.
[00:07:02] Ramli John: I think that's part of this model here.
[00:07:06] Ramli John: Visually, I'm going to show it on the screen.
[00:07:08] Ramli John: For people who are watching this YouTube, it's like this circle, this loop with community led growth, member led growth, and customer led growth.

[00:07:18] A conversation about the people-first go-to-market strategy

[00:07:18] Ramli John: Can you talk a little bit about how.
[00:07:20] Ramli John: I mean, you don't have to go through every single one, but why this particular shape with this circle and how to essentially describe it?
[00:07:32] Nick Bennett: Yeah, so there's really, like seven go to market pieces that fall into this whole people first thing.
[00:07:39] Nick Bennett: And so you have channels, you have offers, and they all kind of play a different way.
[00:07:45] Nick Bennett: So ultimately what you want to do is using the three different types of channels, the three different types of offers in an overall partnership strategy that kind of encompasses the entire thing.
[00:07:57] Nick Bennett: And so each channel is designed to create, capture, and convert demand at different stages of the customer journey.
[00:08:04] Nick Bennett: And the offer gives your business an infinite ways to create value and build trust with your buyers and customers.
[00:08:12] Nick Bennett: Now, each channel becomes more efficient when you partner with others.
[00:08:15] Nick Bennett: No one should go to market alone.
[00:08:19] Nick Bennett: Just think about that.
[00:08:20] Nick Bennett: It's kind of like a loaner.
[00:08:23] Nick Bennett: It's like, why not go to market with others?
[00:08:25] Nick Bennett: And so each channel should ideally be crafted through a partnership with either other people or businesses.
[00:08:32] Nick Bennett: And so partnering with people is like the heart of the model, which kind of wraps around the entire thing.
[00:08:38] Ramli John: That makes a ton of sense.

[00:08:40] Customer Led Growth: Building Strong Relationships with Customers

[00:08:40] Ramli John: I know particularly you wanted to chat around this customer led growth concept.
[00:08:46] Ramli John: Let's dig into that and double tap into that.
[00:08:49] Ramli John: I feel like most marketing teams often focus on.
[00:08:53] Ramli John: This is something I think I saw on LinkedIn, how you mentioned that most teams, marketing teams focus on acquisition and not enough on building those customer relationships and those renewals and advocacy.
[00:09:06] Ramli John: Is that what that piece means, or.
[00:09:09] Ramli John: I'm curious how you would define customer led growth.
[00:09:13] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:09:14] Nick Bennett: So we've actually put together kind of like a maturity model to a certain degree of how we view customer led growth.
[00:09:22] Nick Bennett: So when you think about stage one, the outcome that you're really trying to achieve through stage one is customers and adoption.
[00:09:29] Nick Bennett: You need customers and adoption before you get into all that other stuff.
[00:09:33] Nick Bennett: And so how can you identify the most engaged customers?
[00:09:36] Nick Bennett: How can you partner with them to share their stories, their examples, their successes, creating content together, education that ultimately is going to help other customers use more of the product.
[00:09:47] Nick Bennett: That's stage one.
[00:09:48] Nick Bennett: When I think about it now, stage two takes it to, all right, cool, you have the customers, you have the adoption.
[00:09:54] Nick Bennett: Now, how can I focus on retention and advocates?
[00:09:57] Nick Bennett: So this is where like a customer advisory board might come into play or like a voice of customer program, and you're going to partner with customers to really drive product innovation that's going to activate other audiences.
[00:10:10] Nick Bennett: So it's like you're designing all of these marketing campaigns and these offers that feature your customers.
[00:10:19] Nick Bennett: It plays into that whole net revenue retention number, all those things.
[00:10:23] Nick Bennett: The third piece, now that you have retention, you have advocates, you have customers, you have adoption, is how do you take your advocates one step further?
[00:10:31] Nick Bennett: So it's like the outcome is advocates in referrals because the referrals is going to fuel the net revenue growth there.
[00:10:38] Nick Bennett: And so it's like, how can you build tiered customer programs?
[00:10:42] Nick Bennett: How can you build different experiences for different segments of customers across your go to market team?
[00:10:48] Ramli John: I don't know.
[00:10:48] Nick Bennett: Maybe it's enterprise, maybe it's commercial, whatever it is.
[00:10:52] Nick Bennett: Maybe you're hosting a flagship summit event for your customers.
[00:10:56] Nick Bennett: Maybe you're building a model that's going to predict renewal and referrals.
[00:11:01] Nick Bennett: You can do a lot when it comes to customer led growth.
[00:11:06] Nick Bennett: The important thing is when you think of the tenants that make up customer led growth, there's really four that come to mind to me.
[00:11:14] Nick Bennett: Value first reciprocity, voice of customer and deeper education.
[00:11:21] Nick Bennett: So those are the things that make up customer led growth.
[00:11:24] Nick Bennett: Now, what are the components that drive those tenants?
[00:11:27] Nick Bennett: Ultimately?
[00:11:28] Nick Bennett: Customer stories, references, reviews.
[00:11:31] Nick Bennett: I know we talked about like g two reviews.
[00:11:32] Nick Bennett: I've done this before, advisory board, product training, customer examples.
[00:11:38] Nick Bennett: So all those things, the components plus the tenets, make up what customer led growth is.
[00:11:45] Ramli John: I love how you describe the stages.
[00:11:47] Ramli John: That's how you naturally would build a deeper relationship with a friend.
[00:11:52] Ramli John: First you would like, hey, let's hang out.
[00:11:54] Ramli John: The next thing you know, let's go on a trip.
[00:11:56] Ramli John: And then next thing you know, it's like, hey, bring your other friends so that they can, I guess, have a bigger group of friends.
[00:12:02] Ramli John: I'm not sure.
[00:12:03] Ramli John: I think that's kind of the maturity, it's almost like a friendship maturity model.
[00:12:08] Ramli John: How do you get deeper relationship with your customers?
[00:12:11] Nick Bennett: Exactly.
[00:12:12] Nick Bennett: And that's the thing.
[00:12:13] Nick Bennett: Relationships are at the center of everything.
[00:12:15] Nick Bennett: I mean, you know, people buy from people.
[00:12:18] Nick Bennett: This is the way forward.
[00:12:22] Ramli John: That makes a ton of sense.
[00:12:23] Ramli John: And you're talking about the different pieces here.
[00:12:26] Ramli John: If you were to advise a company who is just starting with customer led growth, I guess the first step is like, hey, let's focus on adoption.
[00:12:35] Ramli John: What kind of stuff would you advise them around customer education, to educate them around the product, or I'm curious what your approach is for a company who's never done any kind of customer related marketing.
[00:12:48] Nick Bennett: So I did this at alice actually.
[00:12:49] Nick Bennett: So I took over customer marketing there for a short period of time.
[00:12:53] Nick Bennett: And so what I realized was we had a really strong relationship with our admins that again, they knew all the features, they were talking to cs.
[00:13:03] Nick Bennett: But the thing is, just because they're the admin of the account, what about all the users within the actual account itself?
[00:13:10] Nick Bennett: We literally weren't sending them emails.
[00:13:12] Nick Bennett: They didn't know anything unless the admin told them specific stuff.
[00:13:16] Nick Bennett: So what I would recommend is whether it's a weekly, whether it's a bi weekly, I think it has to be one of those two things.
[00:13:23] Nick Bennett: There has to be some type of product education that comes out to all users.
[00:13:29] Nick Bennett: And maybe there's two different paths.
[00:13:30] Nick Bennett: Maybe there's an admin path because the way they're going to use the product is going to be different and then there's kind of like a user path, because what they're going to care about is going to be different.
[00:13:39] Nick Bennett: And there could even be third or fourth path depending on maybe it's like a CMO or VP of marketing.
[00:13:44] Nick Bennett: They may use the product or care about it in a different way as well.
[00:13:48] Nick Bennett: But it's a great way in an easy way with really no cost to drive adoption of new features, new integrations, new releases that you have coming out, and a great way to amplify.
[00:14:01] Nick Bennett: Kind of ask that.
[00:14:02] Nick Bennett: You may need to ask for them for referrals or other things.
[00:14:07] Nick Bennett: It's very low lift, but high reward.
[00:14:10] Nick Bennett: And if your goal is to decrease the time of value that someone sees of your product, because let's be honest, most SaaS products, you sign a one year contract.
[00:14:20] Nick Bennett: So if it takes you three months to see value for that product, you really only have nine months left before your contract is up.
[00:14:27] Nick Bennett: And most likely that renewal conversation is going to happen seven months into the contract.
[00:14:33] Nick Bennett: So you're saying you really have like three or four months outside of the ramp time to be like, all right, is this worth 5100 thousand dollars a year?
[00:14:43] Nick Bennett: It's not good.
[00:14:44] Nick Bennett: And so my whole thing was, how can I decrease time to value to sub 30 days?
[00:14:50] Nick Bennett: Because if you can get time to value achieved in that 30 day window, they have eleven months of using that product.
[00:14:57] Nick Bennett: And obviously a little bit before the renewal conversation, but it changes even like 30 days to 90 days.
[00:15:04] Nick Bennett: That's a huge window in where someone may be able to see additional value or adoption or additional users coming into the product.
[00:15:14] Ramli John: That makes a ton of sense.
[00:15:15] Ramli John: I'm a big fan of really setting up people for success and making sure that they know further, more advanced use cases or adopt the product even deeper.
[00:15:31] Ramli John: I guess if I was to take a step back, it makes sense to start this from the beginning because I've had this.

[00:15:37] The Importance of Customer Marketing and When to Start

[00:15:37] Ramli John: I'm curious what your advice is for this question around when is the right time for a company to start thinking about customer marketing.
[00:15:44] Ramli John: Is it when they're a scale up, they're over 150 employees?
[00:15:49] Ramli John: Or is it like they should start thinking about it right from the beginning?
[00:15:53] Ramli John: Because what you're suggesting is that sets them up for deeper relationship.
[00:15:58] Ramli John: I'm curious what your take is on that.
[00:16:00] Nick Bennett: So I would say in today's economy, you should be thinking about it a lot sooner.
[00:16:04] Nick Bennett: If you ask me two years ago I would say maybe a little bit different, but now budgets are being frozen.
[00:16:13] Nick Bennett: So your biggest growth channel for maybe expansion or renewals or money.
[00:16:19] Nick Bennett: Just revenue in general is through your customers.
[00:16:21] Nick Bennett: And if you're not focusing, I've seen a lot of companies not hire a customer marketer per se, but use customer success as kind of like that lever.
[00:16:32] Nick Bennett: And that's fine.
[00:16:33] Nick Bennett: You could definitely do that early on, but you're going to need someone in marketing and maybe they do customer marketing plus something else if it's super early.
[00:16:42] Nick Bennett: But I would say early on in today's economy makes way more sense because if you think about how much it costs to retain a customer versus how much it costs to go out and acquire a new customer, in tech specifically, it's a no brainer to double down on the retention, especially if you're kind of like a land and expand type of product.
[00:17:05] Nick Bennett: You would see so much more success if you can already establish the adoption, the advocates, all of those things.
[00:17:13] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:17:15] Ramli John: And this is based on my experience that if there's not enough budget for a whole customer marketer, it often falls in the content team or maybe in product marketing.
[00:17:27] Ramli John: Is that what you see?
[00:17:28] Ramli John: You see like, oh, it's like, oh, content marketers.
[00:17:31] Ramli John: You talk to customers, create some content around that.
[00:17:33] Ramli John: Or it's product marketing, hey, create some enablement stuff instead of sales.
[00:17:40] Ramli John: Do it for enabling our customers to adopt bigger futures.
[00:17:45] Ramli John: Is that what you're seeing or is it?
[00:17:46] Nick Bennett: Yeah, I've also seen product marketing play a big piece in that too, in some companies.
[00:17:50] Nick Bennett: And again, it depends how the organization is set up because I've worked for some marketing teams where there's like five of us and like airmeat, for example, we had like a 25 person marketing team, so we had very specialized roles.
[00:18:05] Nick Bennett: And again, it depends, are you early stage?
[00:18:08] Nick Bennett: Are you late stage?
[00:18:09] Nick Bennett: Big, small, all those things.
[00:18:11] Nick Bennett: But product marketing, content enablement, seen all those pieces, play a piece into the customer marketing kind of.
[00:18:21] Nick Bennett: If you don't have that role, I.

[00:18:24] Using NPS Surveys to Drive G2 Reviews

[00:18:24] Ramli John: Like that we're talking about adoption, but I want to talk about referrals around g two because you shared something on LinkedIn a while back around how you were able to get quite a few g two reviews in.
[00:18:38] Ramli John: I think the exact number is 72 in two days.
[00:18:41] Ramli John: And you use some kind of like NPS survey.
[00:18:44] Ramli John: How did you do that?
[00:18:45] Ramli John: Because I think a lot of companies, even here at appuse, like, hey, we need more g two reviews, what do we do?
[00:18:50] Ramli John: But you actually did something super cool that I think people should hear and listen about using NPS to get more reviews.
[00:18:57] Nick Bennett: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was super simple.
[00:19:01] Nick Bennett: So going back to the user piece.
[00:19:03] Nick Bennett: So at like, I had to have engineering pull our users because we didn't have access to it in Salesforce.
[00:19:13] Nick Bennett: We only had access to the admins of the account.
[00:19:16] Nick Bennett: So I was like, all right, well, we're not emailing these people right now.
[00:19:20] Nick Bennett: So they haven't heard from us, but they're using the product.
[00:19:24] Nick Bennett: I can see they're leaving mps surveys like it's something that we had in product.
[00:19:29] Nick Bennett: But I couldn't actually pull those results without engineering for some weird reason.
[00:19:33] Nick Bennett: So I pulled it and I was like, all right, great, I'm going to take all these customers who recently rated us on an MPS survey.
[00:19:42] Nick Bennett: I'm going to add them to Marketo.
[00:19:44] Nick Bennett: So again, I took the marketo path because I was like, no one wants Bcc.
[00:19:50] Nick Bennett: Hell, you get all those emails on there, does it look a little less personalized?
[00:20:00] Nick Bennett: I guess maybe because, you know, it's coming from an automation platform.
[00:20:03] Nick Bennett: But I wrote it.
[00:20:04] Nick Bennett: I crafted an email that sounded like me.
[00:20:06] Nick Bennett: I kept it real, kept it simple.
[00:20:09] Nick Bennett: I told them, hey, I noticed your feedback.
[00:20:11] Nick Bennett: I offered them a gift because we were a gifting platform.
[00:20:14] Nick Bennett: It wasn't just a gift card.
[00:20:16] Nick Bennett: I personalized it to this specific thing and I said, listen, I want you to leave us a g two review.
[00:20:23] Nick Bennett: I'm not incentivizing you to give us a positive review.
[00:20:26] Nick Bennett: Honestly, if you have negative stuff, please tell me so I can tell our product team.
[00:20:30] Nick Bennett: So many people think that this is bribery to a certain degree.
[00:20:33] Nick Bennett: I got a lot of hate from people thinking this was bribery.
[00:20:36] Nick Bennett: But you're incentivizing people to give you feedback, good or bad, and that's the way that you need to think about it.
[00:20:45] Nick Bennett: So I shot the email out to about 310 people in Marketo, sat back and I was like, all right, let's see what happens.
[00:20:53] Nick Bennett: And so my inbox quickly filled up with screenshots of, reviewed, some solid feedback, some things that we could do better.
[00:21:00] Nick Bennett: But I said, all right, if you want your gift, you have to send a screenshot of your review, reply to this email and get back to me.
[00:21:07] Nick Bennett: And then I would reply back again just through my regular Gmail and they would be like, oh, wow, you're a real person.
[00:21:16] Nick Bennett: But we had a 24% conversion rate from those 310 people that actually left us a review.
[00:21:23] Nick Bennett: So it was 73 over two days, but it actually, over a week ended up getting to about 85.
[00:21:30] Nick Bennett: Wow.
[00:21:31] Nick Bennett: Which was crazy.
[00:21:33] Nick Bennett: And so I think as marketers we like to overcomplicate things and simple can still drive massive impact.
[00:21:40] Nick Bennett: This isn't, like, earth shattering what I did.
[00:21:42] Nick Bennett: And I know people that are using this as they were like, you've helped me so much.
[00:21:46] Nick Bennett: Figure this out.
[00:21:47] Nick Bennett: I was like, listen, I take no credit for this.
[00:21:49] Nick Bennett: I just was trying to figure out a way to incentivize feedback and get stuff.
[00:21:53] Nick Bennett: And obviously we were a g two customer, so we wanted to move up in all these charts.
[00:21:58] Nick Bennett: The more reviews you get, the better you move up.
[00:22:01] Nick Bennett: But, I mean, it wasn't like, earth shattering, what I did.
[00:22:04] Nick Bennett: It was four simple things, and that was about it.
[00:22:09] Ramli John: What I like, what you said was that you kept that email human.
[00:22:12] Ramli John: It sounded like you.
[00:22:13] Ramli John: I think often it's like, oh, let's find a template online and copy and paste and tweak it to our voice.
[00:22:19] Ramli John: But you're like, how do I make this sound?
[00:22:21] Ramli John: Like I'm asking a person, which goes back to what we've been talking about, know, it's about building a relationship with that.
[00:22:27] Ramli John: And I'm guessing that was not the first time that they've heard from you before, so they know the name Nick, right?
[00:22:32] Ramli John: It wasn't like, who the heck is Nick?
[00:22:34] Ramli John: Who's messaging me?
[00:22:35] Ramli John: Would that be a fair assumption?
[00:22:37] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Nick Bennett: Again, as a user of the product, I was brought on to so many customer calls, so many prospect calls, because I was a field marketer.
[00:22:47] Nick Bennett: So in event marketer, customer market, I knew the pains that these people were trying to solve, because I was trying to solve them for ten or eleven years.
[00:22:55] Nick Bennett: And I was like, listen, no salespeople need to join this call.
[00:22:59] Nick Bennett: Let's just talk marketer, marketer.
[00:23:01] Nick Bennett: And they valued those conversations so much.
[00:23:05] Nick Bennett: And I think more companies should lean into that human element, lean into your subject matter experts.
[00:23:11] Nick Bennett: Why does a salesperson always need to be involved?
[00:23:15] Nick Bennett: I was the salesperson to a certain degree.
[00:23:17] Nick Bennett: I didn't get paid like a salesperson, although I should have because I closed a lot of deals, but I was doing it to drive the mission of the company.
[00:23:27] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:23:28] Ramli John: You're like an evangelist essentially, of that company.

[00:23:34] The Rise of B2B Influencer Marketing

[00:23:34] Ramli John: I'm curious what your take is on.
[00:23:35] Ramli John: I'm seeing more and more companies pick an internal employee to be an evangelist.
[00:23:41] Ramli John: We saw this early with Dave Gerhardt with drift and Elena Verna with amplitude and different places.
[00:23:48] Ramli John: Is that something you would encourage to find?
[00:23:51] Ramli John: Like, it could be the founder, it could be somebody who is an expert in that space to be, I guess, not necessarily the face, but an evangelist, evangelist of the product and the company.
[00:24:04] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:24:04] Nick Bennett: So I actually did this at like, that was part of my role, that was part of my role at airmeat as well.
[00:24:09] Nick Bennett: So I was kind of like the face of the brand.
[00:24:11] Nick Bennett: So I would talk to customers, prospects, I would speak at the events.
[00:24:15] Nick Bennett: Again, when you're a user of the product, it makes it a lot easier and you are the ICP.
[00:24:21] Nick Bennett: But I think the next wave that we're going to see is these b, two b companies are going to start to leverage internal creators to drive huge impact in 2024, we have the external creators people and there's obviously a difference between creator and influencer.
[00:24:39] Nick Bennett: But I think there's a lot of creators, content creators that work within these companies that the companies need to figure out how to leverage them.
[00:24:48] Nick Bennett: And I'm not saying that, hey, go pump company content because you shouldn't do that, but go tell your story because you'd be surprised at how much revenue and impact you can drive just by evangelizing the category or what you stand for.
[00:25:05] Nick Bennett: That ultimately is going to drive impact to the business because they're going to see where you work.
[00:25:09] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:25:11] Ramli John: You're writing a book or I think you've written a book around this.
[00:25:14] Ramli John: Am I crazy?
[00:25:15] Nick Bennett: So I'm writing a book.
[00:25:16] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Nick Bennett: It's in the process.
[00:25:17] Nick Bennett: It's coming out summer of 2024 and.
[00:25:21] Ramli John: The title is b two b influencers.
[00:25:23] Nick Bennett: It's basically b two b influencer marketing and how to use it within marketing to drive like maximum leverage.
[00:25:30] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:25:31] Ramli John: That's super cool.
[00:25:31] Ramli John: And it's not just internal influencers there you're talking about.
[00:25:34] Ramli John: You're also talking about tapping into finding people who are influenced in that space.
[00:25:40] Nick Bennett: I'm guessing exactly, because I think whether you call it influencer marketing, creator marketing, whatever, companies are going to start to leverage creators because let's be honest, a lot of these channels are saturated.
[00:25:54] Nick Bennett: You have to turn to additional people that have the trust and authority that you want to tap into.
[00:26:01] Nick Bennett: And so I think we're already seeing early adopters in 2023, in tech specifically.
[00:26:08] Nick Bennett: I think in 2024 we'll see even more.
[00:26:10] Nick Bennett: I think by 2025 we'll see mass adoption in tech within this whole creator.
[00:26:16] Ramli John: Economy, that makes sense.
[00:26:17] Ramli John: It's something that we've started exploring this quarter at Appcus and what the genesis of it was around how organic, our organic has taken a hit, especially with AI and search.
[00:26:28] Ramli John: We need to find a new channel.
[00:26:30] Ramli John: And it was like, okay, who is like the voice?
[00:26:33] Ramli John: So we sponsor, like Andrew Kaplan, who's like a voice around user onboarding and other folks with that.
[00:26:40] Ramli John: So I think you're totally correct with that.
[00:26:44] Ramli John: When things are changing so much in search and things are saturated with ads, it's getting more expensive.
[00:26:52] Ramli John: You go to people who own their audience and people who have a list, people who trust their voice for that specific thing.
[00:26:59] Ramli John: And I'm seeing a trend more also with those influencers like Kevin Indigor.
[00:27:07] Ramli John: They're posting up about the product right in LinkedIn.
[00:27:10] Ramli John: I've only seen that the last six or so months.
[00:27:14] Ramli John: Is that something that you're going to see more and more going forward or is that.
[00:27:22] Nick Bennett: I'm betting my entire career that this is path forward.
[00:27:26] Nick Bennett: I'm literally all in.
[00:27:29] Nick Bennett: We built our own faTac, we built our own media network.
[00:27:33] Nick Bennett: So we have a media network that runs on audience plus right now.
[00:27:38] Nick Bennett: And so we have five shows that are currently on it.
[00:27:42] Nick Bennett: We're bringing on 20 shows in Q one.
[00:27:45] Ramli John: Wow.
[00:27:46] Nick Bennett: That are going to power.
[00:27:47] Nick Bennett: Yeah.
[00:27:47] Nick Bennett: So we're making it a place where creators come and not only creators come, but then brands are going to want to come and partner with these creators.
[00:27:57] Nick Bennett: So it drives a whole monetization model around creator brand on an owned media network.
[00:28:06] Ramli John: That's super cool, man.
[00:28:07] Ramli John: I'm super excited for that feature.
[00:28:09] Ramli John: And when did you say the bookcase coming out?
[00:28:11] Ramli John: Where can people sign up for it?
[00:28:13] Nick Bennett: Yeah, so if you go to tacnetwork.com, it's actually live now.
[00:28:16] Nick Bennett: So I have a show on there called creators going to create.
[00:28:19] Nick Bennett: There's a couple of other shows on there, but we're going to be bringing on a lot of shows that already exist, plus other shows that we're building out under this umbrella for the shows that already exist.
[00:28:32] Nick Bennett: We're doing it because it's an additional channel for distribution for them and for us.
[00:28:38] Nick Bennett: We leverage SEO to drive growth of the network overall.
[00:28:42] Ramli John: That's super cool.
[00:28:42] Ramli John: And then your book is on this website as well.
[00:28:45] Ramli John: Or is it like.
[00:28:48] Nick Bennett: I don't really have that anywhere right now.
[00:28:49] Nick Bennett: It'll be summer of 2024, but I have a few Creator 101 guides coming out.
[00:28:55] Nick Bennett: I have this twelve chapter ebook that's like, hey, if you're a creator, if you want to figure out the very start, it's very tactical.
[00:29:04] Nick Bennett: There's resources in every chapter that's coming out, like the second week of January, I'm going to probably give it away for free.
[00:29:10] Nick Bennett: And then I have a 201 and a 301 as you kind of progress as a creator coming out in February and March leading up to the book.
[00:29:19] Ramli John: That will be on your website.
[00:29:21] Nick Bennett: Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:22] Nick Bennett: It'll be on the website and then it will be on my LinkedIn as well.
[00:29:25] Ramli John: Nice.
[00:29:26] Ramli John: Awesome.
[00:29:26] Ramli John: Well, thank you for that.
[00:29:28] Ramli John: Let's shift gears.
[00:29:29] Ramli John: That's been fun.

[00:29:30] Building Relationships for Career Success

[00:29:30] Ramli John: Talking about people.
[00:29:31] Ramli John: First, go to market, model and customer led growth.
[00:29:35] Ramli John: I want to talk about career power ups for you.
[00:29:38] Ramli John: You've been in marketing.
[00:29:39] Ramli John: You said you've been marketing many years.
[00:29:42] Ramli John: Alice Airmeat.
[00:29:43] Ramli John: Now you're attacked.
[00:29:45] Ramli John: What's helped you in your career accelerated.
[00:29:48] Ramli John: It could be community, it could be people.
[00:29:50] Ramli John: It could be a tactic.
[00:29:51] Ramli John: I'm really curious as to what's powered up your marketing career so far.
[00:29:57] Nick Bennett: I would say building relationship horizontally and vertically within an organization.
[00:30:05] Nick Bennett: As a marketer, for example, you're not only building your relationships with your marketing peers, but you're also building it with executives within other departments, like marketing.
[00:30:19] Nick Bennett: A lot of times wants to stay siloed to what they do, but the only way you can truly grow is like having relationships with sales, Cs, product, engineering, finance.
[00:30:29] Nick Bennett: You've got to be able to be okay with building relationships outside of that, because one, you'll never know, hey, these people might help you.
[00:30:38] Nick Bennett: Say you get laid off.
[00:30:40] Nick Bennett: They might be able to help you.
[00:30:41] Nick Bennett: And that relationship that you build might go a long way.
[00:30:44] Nick Bennett: Or if you need something as a marketer, I've had this before where it's like I needed a little bit extra budget approved, and finance loved me and was able to help me out.
[00:30:55] Nick Bennett: And again, it's the whole people first mindset.
[00:30:58] Nick Bennett: Like, relationships are everything.
[00:31:01] Nick Bennett: And so in your organization, you've got to be able to build it both vertically and horizontally.
[00:31:08] Ramli John: Horizontally is across the function.
[00:31:11] Ramli John: Vertically is like finding somebody and just building a deeper relationship with them.
[00:31:17] Nick Bennett: Exactly.
[00:31:18] Nick Bennett: Outside of other departments, further up the chain.
[00:31:20] Nick Bennett: I mean, especially if you're up the chain.
[00:31:22] Nick Bennett: Yeah, especially if you're a marketer that wants to, I don't know, maybe be a CMO one day or maybe be a CEO one day.
[00:31:29] Nick Bennett: Don't limit yourself to just marketing.
[00:31:32] Ramli John: Right?
[00:31:32] Ramli John: Is that what you want?
[00:31:33] Ramli John: You want to be a CMO one day?
[00:31:34] Ramli John: I'm curious.
[00:31:35] Nick Bennett: What?
[00:31:36] Nick Bennett: No, honestly, now that I own my own business, I wish I did this a lot soon, right?
[00:31:43] Nick Bennett: To be honest with you, every day you don't report to anyone, do what you want, you take on the work that you want to do.
[00:31:52] Nick Bennett: And it's like if you don't like how someone's acting, you tell them to go off, kick rocks and head out because I don't need your money.
[00:32:05] Ramli John: That's so good.
[00:32:06] Ramli John: I like that.
[00:32:07] Ramli John: Yeah, I think that's something that people, marketers need to explore more, because there's this path like, oh, how do you progress your marketing career?
[00:32:17] Ramli John: It's like, oh, you become a director, become a vp, then CMO.
[00:32:20] Ramli John: And I look at some cmos in their schedule.
[00:32:23] Ramli John: Even my boss, Eric, VP marketing, he's stuck in a lot of meetings, right?
[00:32:28] Ramli John: And is that what people like?
[00:32:30] Ramli John: Is that what I want?
[00:32:31] Ramli John: Is that what you want?
[00:32:32] Nick Bennett: Yeah, it's not what I mean.
[00:32:36] Nick Bennett: I was a senior director at Airmeat, and the amount of meetings that I sat in, at some point you don't even become like you're doing marketing anymore.
[00:32:45] Nick Bennett: You're a meeting shepherd.
[00:32:46] Nick Bennett: You sit in meetings all day, you talk about all of the things you're going to do for the next meeting.
[00:32:52] Nick Bennett: And lots of times you sit in these meetings and it's basically just one big circle where there's no outcome that actually comes of the meeting.
[00:32:59] Nick Bennett: If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love.
[00:33:01] Ramli John: The marketing Powerups newsletter.
[00:33:03] Ramli John: I share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world class marketers.
[00:33:07] Ramli John: You can go to marketingpowerups.com, subscribe and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use, hit their KPIs consistently, and wow their colleagues.
[00:33:18] Ramli John: I want to say thank you to you for listening.
[00:33:20] Ramli John: And please like and follow marketing powerups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
[00:33:25] Ramli John: If you feel extra generous, kindly leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
[00:33:30] Ramli John: And leave a comment on YouTube goes a long way in others finding out about marketing powers.
[00:33:35] Ramli John: Thanks to Mary Sullivan for creating the artwork and design.
[00:33:37] Ramli John: And thank you to Faisal Kaigo for.
[00:33:39] Nick Bennett: Editing the intro video.
[00:33:40] Ramli John: And of course, thank you for listening.
[00:33:43] Nick Bennett: That's all for now.
[00:33:44] Nick Bennett: Have powered update marketing power ups until the next episode.