It’s Time To Ditch That Old Marketing Funnel with Georgiana Laudi - Episode #169

Speaker A: The funnel is a problematic model for many reasons. It is particularly problematic for any business that relies on recurring revenue. When we're referring to recurring revenue businesses. Bottom of funnel. When somebody becomes a customer is the start of, uh, the story. It's the start of your relationship with your customer, not the end. So to think about your relationship, especially as a marketer, to think about your relationship with your customer as any ending at when somebody becomes a customer. If you work at a recurring revenue business, that is a highly flawed model because recurring revenue, continued value being delivered, even expansion opportunities, those, none of those have a place in the funnel.

Speaker B: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the People of Digital Marketing podcast. For those who are both new and returning, this is what I hope to become. The number one resource for anyone who wants to, one, impress their boss and two, eventually become their boss, ideally the cmo, co founder or founder of a company, et cetera. And we are all on a mission whenever we listen to these episodes to become better marketers. And today's guest is going to help us do just that. Her name is Georgiana Laudi. Hi, Georgiana. How's it going?

Speaker A: Good. Nice to be with you, Kenny.

Speaker B: Nice. All right, so I start every single one of these interviews the same, um, because I hate personally to assume context, and it helps to provide context to both myself and the listeners just to know your story as professional and where you started in your career. So could you start this conversation off by just letting us know, how did you get into marketing in the first place?

Speaker A: Oh, boy. Uh, we're doing it for a long time. I'm not sure where I should start the story, but I guess when I moved into marketing, marketing, I. So I was in. I was working for my father's business back in, like, 2000. Uh, I also studied communications, uh, in university. So I got very much into sort of like digital comms, obviously, um, because of that, uh, like early days, ebay, like that type that, like that time. And so when I actually started working and had, like, got my, you know, started working for, with an actual job and started working for my father's business, actually, um, that's really when I sort of transitioned in. So I was sort of managing a retail store, but it's a retail florist. And at the time, flowers were. I don't know what the stats are now, but flowers were the fourth most purchased thing on the Internet. This is back in the very, very early 2000s, and that's behind, like, books and porn and I don't know what else I Don't know what was number three. Uh, but then it was flowers. It was a very, very competitive online to um, compete with the sort of big behemoths in for local businesses to compete with the big behemoths like the FTDS and the 1800 flowers. And so I really became hell bent on helping my father's business, our business sort of rank locally. And so I got really into sort of SEO and digital marketing, um, the very, very early days of social media marketing. Um, and so I was, that was sort of my entry point in it was really to have that, create that web presence for the business. Um, eventually, uh, like an industry mag, you know, sort of took notice and I started writing a column uh, for other local businesses and other local markets. Uh, and then eventually I moved in. I went agency side and I hated that. And then I went sort of consulting. I did my own thing for a little while and then eventually I went in house and I was uh, in House as VP of marketing for about five years at a B2B, uh, SaaS company. And then when I had my second kid I was like, you know what, I want to go back to doing my own thing. I always knew I was going to. So I went back to doing my own thing. Uh, how old is my youngest? 8. So since then I've been back sort of um, on the, I don't want to say agency side. We're more consultancy. Ah, we don't do sort of ongoing retainers with companies. We're really very project based and focused. But I launched uh, Forget the Funnel with my uh, business partner Claire sullentrop back in 2016, early 2017. And that's what we've been doing since. And our focus is really working with B2B SaaS companies, helping them sort of stop guessing as to what is going to work, uh, to help them grow from a marketing perspective, from a product marketing perspective, um, and sort of product growth perspective by getting more intimately familiar with your ideal customers so you can create a better, more resident, higher converting experience for those customers. So we work predominantly with um, product teams, uh, marketing teams and really like the leadership teams on how to sort of orient the business around ideal customers to create better experiences and ultimately you know, grow revenue.

Speaker B: I love that positioning. And before we get into Forget the Funnel because I'm definitely interested in knowing how that got started and how you came up with the name, et cetera. I love finding these little tangents to dive into because I find that it helps the listener figure out if a certain career path is right for them or not. You mentioned when you were explaining your narrative, if you will, your career narrative that you hate, hate working in an agency setting. Can you like double click, so to speak on that? Like, what was it about working in an agency that you just didn't enjoy?

Speaker A: So I, I will say I did enjoy my colleagues a lot and I, that was a really great environment to learn from other subject matter experts that were like slightly adjacent to my subject matter expertise. I loved that experience working with like designers and you know, technical marketers and strategists and campaign strategists. I loved that experience. What I did not enjoy was the sort of, um, cutthroat, for lack of a better expression, nature of the work and feel, feeling like every moment of my life was billable. Uh, like I would experience, this is a ridiculous example, but I would experience guilt when I wasn't being 100% per person productive because every single minute of my time was like, had a dollar amount associated with it. Like the time sheet was my nemesis. Um, and that's what I really did not enjoy about working sort of agency side was feeling like I was, you know, shortchanging our clients in any way, shape or form. I just, I really, really did not enjoy that experience at all. I didn't last very long. Um, I really did prefer working sort of directly with companies and knowing that I was making, you know, sound decisions. I mean I'm a default strategic person. Um, so I think higher level by like, I can't help it. And so I want to be able to make and help teams make the best decisions possible regardless of whether or not it is billable by the hour or not. Does that make sense? So that was what I really didn't enjoy. And when I went consulting and solo, I loved that. Um, I had a great time working with the individual teams, um, and uh, really helping them make progress. Where I started to burn out a little bit. There was just that I was sort of spreading myself too thin. I would have too much client work at any given time. I wasn't giving my uh, myself enough space. And so going in house was a nice, it sounds funny to say like a breather, because it wasn't a breather at all Working in a tech startup. There's something breather about working in a tech startup. But what was nice was sort of sinking my, my teeth into one brand and one set of customers and one team versus being sort of, um, you know, on the consultant side where I was spread a little thin across all of my I'm, I'm doing it much better my second time around and for the last eight years, uh, than I did the first time around. I'm not spreading myself quite as thin as I used to, so I've learned that lesson. But that was, it was like, you know, a ton of focus on a bunch of companies and then sinking into one. And now I'm sort of back to really making sure that I'm having as much of an impact for as many companies as possible. But we limit the amount of companies that we work with so that they're getting maximum sort of value out of that. I don't know if that 100% answered your question or I went.

Speaker B: It does around in a couple years. It helps paint a picture because sometimes I've, I've gotten into this scenario where I'll talk shop with some of the people who are in my level, junior level marketers. And some people swear by the agency model because they say they get bored easily and they prefer to have multiple clients and multiple brands they're working with rather than having. Working internally on one, like, problem. But that's where I shine and what I love. I love working in that internal team rather than an agency because I feel like I get to this more. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, and you actually get to do all the things. You actually see the projects through to completion and you see the end result and you get to sort of, um, bask in the outcomes that come from your work, which is definitely. Yeah, it doesn't, you know, they're harder to come by.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but, uh, that's actually exactly why we do the work that we do. And we're not an agency. Um, somebody once framed it for us as like, oh, you're a liberating force, not an occupying force. And that is very much how we see ourselves is as, um, I don't want to say teachers, but, uh, to a certain extent we are sort of teachers with the companies that we work with because we're really helping teams get closer to their customers and then operationalize that customer experience so the team can then make better decisions about what to do. And the team gets to know the sort of the framework and the approach. They know they have a resource to sort of run with and continue to build on over time. So we are. Not only are we helping teams sort of expedite the process of learning more about customers and, and operationalizing their experience for better outcomes, but they're also along for the journey with us. So they see, they see what good looks like. They see how to continue building on it and take advantage of it in further years. And we do a, we do like a Sprint format where it's a project with a beginning and an end. And at the end of that project we can stay on a little bit to help out but our MO is definitely not to get, you know, our clients on a long term retainer. We way prefer the teams run with it. Um, they're the ones that, they're the important ones at the end of the day. It's how they internalize the insights, how they internalize the resources and tools. That's what matters to us. So I say all that to say that like the, I feel like the model that we use is superior to the agency model because we are really enabling teams to do better work. And we do see the sort of beginning in the end we get to go the full sort of um, scope from like we don't know enough or we're not sure we don't know or this you know, particular part of our marketing or product marketing or product experience is you know, not performing strongly enough. And so we'll actually laser target our work on that part of the project and that part of the sort of challenge or opportunity that the teams have and then they can kind continue to build on it afterwards. But if there is a direct outcome, um, and so that's wildly gratifying, you know, for us that we get to see that whole thing through versus an agency model of like you know, you know, paid, paid campaigns for example where it's this ongoing thing. So yeah, I, I like, I obviously have a bias towards the way that we work with companies because I love seeing these projects through. But I, there's also nothing I love more than talking to a team a couple months later, even a year later where they've continued to build on it and they are doing better work because of it. That is like there's, that is Chef's kiss. My ideal scenario always.

Speaker B: Hey there. If you're enjoying this episode and uh, you're a first time listener, why not hit the follow button? My goal with each of these episodes is to introduce a new marketing concept or dive deeper into, into one so that you can become a better digital marketer. Hopefully through these episodes. You join me on this journey, the path to cmo. So I'd love it if you subscribed. Thanks for listening so far. That that's like the manifestation of the service you're providing is not necessarily coming in and finding ways which is the uh, misaligned incentives. If you Will from an agency model where it's like, how can we bill for something that is predictable and repetitive? But more so, you come in here saying, hey, there's this channel or opportunity the client has identified or has hired you to help identify, further refine. Maybe they have a hunch. Um, and then you come in and you find a way to enable them to seize the opportunity and potentially, from what I'm hearing right now, identify future opportunities because you've helped them. Like, definitely skill as opposed to providing a repetitive service.

Speaker A: That's exactly right. Yeah.

Speaker B: Cool. I'm glad I'm. I'm, uh, tuned in to the mission. And one thing that interests me about the name specifically, forget the funnel. Back in 2015, when I started marketing, uh, credit to my mentor, I didn't know anything, and he was trying to help me, like, conceptualize what marketing is. And usually when you're new to marketing, what someone would do if they're teaching you is, hey, here's a diagram of, uh, unaware, aware, uh, they're considering. Then there's a conversion. And maybe they even consider, like, what happens post acquisition. Doesn't happen all the time. But there's a funnel kind of, like, framework. Um, I've also seen a flywheel kind of framework, which is somewhat different because it kind of makes it look like there's a circular fashion and when it comes to the marketing initiatives. But when it comes to the funnel specifically, why do you name the business? Forget the funnel.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so the funnel is a problematic model for many reasons. It is particularly problematic for any business that relies on recurring revenue. Um, and that might sound obvious, right? So a funnel is, you know, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, slightly different than levels of awareness like you were describing. Levels of awareness still definitely has its place. But when we think in terms of, like this model of top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, when we're referring to recurring revenue businesses, bottom of funnel, when somebody becomes a customer is the start of the story. It's the start of your relationship with your customer, not the end. So to think about your relationship, especially as a marketer, to think about your relationship with your customer as ending at, uh, when somebody becomes a customer. If you work at a recurring revenue business, that is a highly flawed model because recurring revenue, continued value being delivered, even expansion opportunities, those. None of those have a place in the funnel. And I've seen the inverted funnels and all of these things. But the other problem with the funnel is that it is a sort of flattened view of our Customer. Our customers are much more complex than that. Your customers are not like your competitors, customers, um, or your, you know, other, other companies who may have a similar model to you or that serve a different market or that have a different product offering. Your customers, you know, seek out a solution even potentially as a. I uh, mentioned direct competitors. Your direct competitors might not be your direct competitors, you might think they are, but your customers might actually choose you for slightly different reasons. They may have a slightly different buying cycle. And so if we're relying on a model like Funnel or a, you know, MQLs and SQLs or these like flywheels, those make the assumption that all of our customers for every product across the entire market have exactly the same experience. And they don't. Our customers are unique. Our product experience is unique. And so it is way smarter to build a customer experience that is appropriate, appropriate for our ideal customers and for our, our ideal uh, product experience. And so funnels are very generic. They flatten our view, but like I said, life cycles, like you know, life cycle stages, um, uh, also flatten our view. Pirate metrics. I love pirate metrics. Pirate metrics was why I got into SaaS to begin with because I was like, finally, there's a role for marketing post acquisition. Everybody understands it now. That was in 2012 or 2010 I think that pirate metrics came about. I remember I was at an event where Dave McClure introduced parametrics for the first time and I was like, yes, SaaS, that is going to be my space. Still, still there are, there is still a bit of a, of a discrepancy in like marketing's role post acquisition so so many years later. But even pirate metrics, even though, yes there is that emphasis on post acquisition marketing, it still flattens our view and it still still assumes that all of our customers are the same across, you know, any market, any industry. And our, our customer experience, particularly if you're in a product LED environment or it's uh, not even only true for product led, but particularly for product led for trying to build scalable experiences for our customers. They need to hit, they need to be a resonant, you know, and be highly effective and high convert as high converting as possible. Especially if we're relying on programmatic messaging to convert them. And so like a salesperson can do a ton in a one on one, right? We can iterate on the fly when we're one on one. Your programmatic marketing cannot. So you need to be deeply uh, you know, in tune with what your Customers want and their milestones for success in order to have the highest conversions possible. So that's the other reason why these generic sort of models are highly problematic. Because you're not getting close enough to what, you know, a customer experience, you know, should be or could be, uh, for your customer to, in order to maximize conversions. So generic models, lazy, problematic, shortchange your customer, shortchange your team in terms of, you know, how strategic they can be. Um, and a bunch of like, in depth intel about your customers is also left out of the equation when you use those generic models.

Speaker B: And I think partly, and um, you can correct me here if I'm wrong, but I think these generic models continue to persist because marketing, like almost any other function in business, needs to have definitions in order for you to know what to do on a daily basis, not just like a quarterly and annual basis, but you need to know, like, what does the work look like? And jargon, generic models, playbooks, paradigms of thought, whatever you want to call them just help you figure out, like how do we operationalize a campaign? For example, we add in another layer of complexity when it comes to growth models too. So we've talked about them in the past with other guests on this podcast, but they were discussed individually. And I like, you're a great person to ask how to compare and contrast all of them. So just to give the listener a primer, we have sales led, marketing led, product led, community led, and you also are a proponent of customer led. Before even talking about customer led, could we just compare and contrast for a moment? Product sales, marketing, community led, and how all those are different?

Speaker A: Yeah, there's also engineering led, there's that too a, uh, way. I, there's uh, also product led sales, which is slightly different. Um, so a way that I like to think about it or a way that might be helpful for listeners to think about it is where does the majority of growth come from? Like new growth come from? So if you're thinking about a marketing led, um, you know, situation, that might be the early days of HubSpot. So when I was in house as a VP of marketing, I was working for a marketing led, uh, organization where the majority of growth was coming from building awareness and sort of thought leadership and mind share out in the market to attract somebody to our front door. And so that is how, what I would think of as like a marketing led approach. And HubSpot was very much, um, in that camp in the early days when they were touting the value of like inbound marketing. They had to Do a lot of education in the market on the value of inbound marketing. So they were very marketing led early days, as were we. It was a maybe around that time. Um, so that's a marketing led situation. If you're in a. I hope nobody is working for a company that is in the category creation space unless it is a very big company. But if you're at a small company in the category creation space, you are in the marketing business because if you are creating a category, you a hundred percent of your budget goes into marketing because you need to sell the problem that your category, your product solves. So that's a marketing led scenario. A product led scenario is a little bit different where it's the product that is looked to for the majority of growth. So think of scenarios where, you know, freemium or a trial, whether time based or otherwise, is leveraged in order to help people sort of kick the tires, try the tool for themselves and see whether or not it's going to solve a problem for them. That's what you would be considered a product led scenario. There are. Product led is a massive topic. I could talk about that one at nauseum because I'm very pro product led. When there's an opportunity to be product led and then sales led, I think probably goes without saying. People can pretty well understand it might be. It might rely on inside sales, it might rely on outbound, but there is a one to one high touch sort of situation that is needed in order to help customers convert from being a lead into a full customer. Because there's that like assist that's needed. And then product led sales is kind of a combination of both product led and sales led. One follows the other. There's a lot to talk about there. Um, engineering led is a little bit different where you would be at the scenario where kind of you're, you know, at the scale of maybe like a Facebook where you're, you're testing things like button color or micro copy where that can actually have a big impact on growth overall. But you're in a very different stage as you can imagine. So again, this sort of X LED motion I think of in terms of like where does growth come from? Community led I've seen conflated inside of others. Um, I'm not sure if I've been yet to see anybody talk about community led growth quite in the way that I'm describing the. But in my opinion you should. But community led is kind of like marketing led where you're sort of mobilizing, um, a sort of movement. And ah, you know, there's a, there's a lot there. I think community led is super, super cool. Um, what was the other one? I guess that was, that's about it. I mean, there's probably some other stragglers. So how customer led compares to all of that is the customer, uh, LED should be thought about as the sort of foundational layer beneath all of those models. Customer led growth is the framework that helps you figure out what growth model should I be leveraging and when and what is the most appropriate growth model for my customer and my product and the direction that I want to take my business. So some founders may have a sales LED sort of motion, but they want to move into a more product led motion, um, or the other way around. And customer led growth is a great, great tool for figuring out how to, you know, not pivot, but, you know, transition from one to the other. It's a great model for figuring out how to leverage product LED sales. It's a great model for figuring out how to leverage all of the other growth models. If that makes sense.

Speaker B: That makes total sense. And before I ask my next question, I just want to get an example, if one comes to mind, of community led growth. Is there a B2B SaaS company that's doing that correctly?

Speaker A: Great question. I wish I knew the answer to that. Um, I, I know that Wistia, uh, back in the day actually had a pretty active community. I know that, um, HubSpot does a lot of community. Uh, I don't know that I would refer to it as M. HubSpot, I don't think can be considered community led growth. Like they leverage many models at this point. They have a sales motion, they've got a community motion, they've got a marketing motion. So I don't know that I could say that there's a True community led B2B SaaS company that I am familiar enough with to actually say, oh, yes, they're community led.

Speaker B: I see.

Speaker A: Yeah, there are teams that leverage it like there's.

Speaker B: Because what comes to mind. What comes to mind. But they're not B2B. This is definitely a consumer product. When I think of community led, I think of Call of Duty, which is a video game which does not exist without your, like the demand for the game does not exist without you knowing that your friends are going to play. Totally that.

Speaker A: Think of other examples.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a community that you will be engaging with. It's the core function.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Uh, I didn't want to say A social network because I feel like too easy or it might be somewhat inaccurate. But I think when it comes to like the growth of a product that requires a community as the foundation for the growth, all duty as a video game or uh, maybe other online video games, player versus everyone or player versus player come to mind as like a good example.

Speaker A: Totally. Um, yeah, I, I think there are some decent examples out in like the B2C space but B2B SaaS, I don't actually I should probably get the answer to that question because I have pretty well examples for um, the other growth models. But community led, like purely community led, B2B SaaS, I'm not sure. Um, maybe like GitHub or some like developer tools that have a open source developer tool that then but even that one, it might be community led but the actual core product that you pay for is often either product led or sales led. So I don't know. But that's probably a decent example. Our developer tools like open source developer tools.

Speaker B: Okay, that helps. Now when it comes to leveraging your customers work growth, um, like what's the best way to even begin learning from our customers?

Speaker A: So um, we are big proponents of the jobs to be done approach. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that approach but it a uh, lot of product teams will leverage jobs to be done for thinking about um, the little jobs so to speak inside of our, our product. So what our, what our customers are hiring our product to do for them. We really like to leverage jobs to be done for the, the larger job to be done that our customers are hiring our solution to solve for them. So they're out in the world struggling with the old way. Maybe it's an alternative solution, maybe it's a competitor. Whatever it is, they're struggling with the old way. And there's a day that they decide this has to change and they basically turn, they, they move into sort of solution seeking mode. And that is often where like B2B SaaS marketing would sort of pick up. Right. Like we want to be in the spaces where they are learning about making decisions about discovering possible solutions to this problem. And so if we can get sort of intimacy and understanding of that context that they're in when they first experience the need for a solution like ours, that decision making process where they discover us, how they make a decision to try our product, why they should decide to choose us over all of the other options available to them, what those moments of value are that they experience inside of our solution, how they evolve and grow and expand as customers of our product. All of that can be thought of as the like the big job. So the, the job to be done. It's that, it's that uh, what we're seeking out is understanding from our amazing best customers which is really important. Not all customers are created equally, but from those best customers, those customers that we want more of, we can sort of create this documentary like understanding of what was their life like before? What were they struggling, what old way were they struggling with? What were some of those anxieties, motivations, some of their deal breakers all the way through to you know, singing our praises or screaming our names from the mountaintop and referring others to us. We're expanding in their usage of our product. If we can understand that documentary like holistic understanding of their experience with us, then we can operationalize it. So we use jobs to be done to run research with the, you know, for the teams that we work with. We learn, we, we segment out their ideal customers, we run jobs to be done research with them. And we basically do this customer experience mapping, uh, um, exercise where we're identifying the key milestones and in our customers relationship with us so that we can also figure out what's the most appropriate experience to provide them at each of those milestones. But also how do we measure our ability to help customers get from one stage to the next. It is similar to customer journey mapping. I know a lot of people are familiar with customer journey mapping but it is a little bit different in that it is through the lens of the customer and it includes them being out in the world experiencing the problem which most customer journeys don't include. And it also includes the expansion and continued value that is so critical to recurring revenue businesses. So we our, the way that we work with companies is we first identify who are your ideal customers that you want more of. We learn and intimately understand what those ideal customers sort of experienced, why they chose them. We reverse engineer their experience and we do this customer experience mapping, uh, sort of exercise and identify these KPIs and, and then we basically look at what, what's this team doing today, what's the customer experience today versus what would ideal, what would that ideal customer experience look like? And we can identify all the ways that the current customer experience is out of alignment with this ideal customer experience. That's our sort of end to end way that we work with teams. It ends in a half uh day workshop where we go over everything, we discuss everything, the key stakeholders are in the room that's really, really Important. We don't just do it with CMOs or CPOs. Like the CEOs got to be there, head of sales got to be, Everybody's got to be there so that everybody knows, that everybody else knows what the opportunities are. Uh, and it is like a super, super fun, um, you know, workshop to sort of facilitate, let alone be a part of. So it's really, really cool. We love it. It's the process that we talk about in the book. Um, it's the customer led growth, basically like framework, end to end. And that's how we work with, with companies. We always work in exactly the same way, we use the same process, but obviously the output is entirely different and the outcomes for the team is entirely different too. Because it's, it can be very much, it's very tied to, because of that workshop format. We can tie it to the needs of the team specifically and the desires of, you know, the leadership team in the direction of the company. So it's, it's not just about listening to customers. It's also about connecting the goals of the company. The uh, you know, the unique, um, sort of value of the product and the needs of the customer and sort of marrying those things together.

Speaker B: I want to, um, connect what you just said to a separate concept just to know if it's the right apparatus or infrastructure for the second step where you like, begin to learn from those ideal customers. So we've identified the ideal customers, now we want to learn from them. Um, would you say a good method of doing so would be the customer advisory board, or is there something else that you should be implementing outside of that?

Speaker A: Yeah. So customer advisory boards are great, but in my experience they do serve a slightly different purpose.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: So the, the research that I'm referring to, the learning that I'm referring to is really very important that you're learning from customers who made a decision not so long ago that they forget what life was like before. So recency is very important. And oftentimes customer advisory boards have long standing customers and that's not, it's very valuable. But it is different than what we're doing here because it's really important for us that the customers that we're learning from made a purchase decision inside of this economy. Right. They made a decision with this product, this version of your product. Right. Because products evolve over time. Um, and they also made a decision not so long ago that they don't remember what life was like before because we don't want them filling gaps in their memory with what, you know, they think that we want to hear. So it's really, really important that it's, you know, they've been around long enough that they've experienced full value, but not so long that they don't remember what was going on in their world and how much it sucked to have the problem that you have now helped them solve. So we really, we want that sort of beginning of the story as far to continued value as possible. So there's a sweet spot of customers that would qualify for that style of research. Sometimes we're working with teams that are big enough where there's a few thousand and we would run qualitative, uh, surveys in order to qualify for interviews. But in general we always recommend that interviews are running.

Speaker B: I like that, I like that there's a clear distinction. It's basically the, the ideal customer is differentiated. There's probably other factors, but one core factor is the recency of the purchase and continued value.

Speaker A: Like they have to be happy customers. They've got to be the customers that you want more of. We don't want to bring in the problematic folks. Now it's possible that you believe that these customers could be served better, you know, like they could be happier. And that's absolutely, you know, the scenario for some of the teams that we work with. Um, but they should be the group of customers that you're looking to get more of and do a better job of serving, um, either because you want to do a better job of attracting them out in the world or because you know that your product onboarding experience isn't converting enough of them or because you're looking for post acquisition monetization opportunities with them. Um, all three of those scenarios exists. So when we hear from teams, it's generally the founder or the head of products, sometimes it's the CMO who is reaching out basically with either the understanding we don't know enough about our best customers and we're, we're struggling, we can't make, um, I'm not able to, you know, say confidently that the team is making as strategic of decisions as they could be if they had this information. So we know we don't know enough about our best customers. Other teams will come to us and say, well, we just know we're not articulating our value out in the market as well as we could be. And then other teams are, we're dropping the ball with our product onboarding. Or it's a scenario where we see this post acquisition sort of expansion opportunity. We don't know how to tap into that yet. So some teams that are in a product led sales scenario or teams that are looking to do more with the customers that they already have, um, that's basically what we're, those are the different situations where this works really, really well. And we've worked with some teams more than once where they've, their product has evolved and then you know, a year later or six months later, depending on their, you know, product updates, uh, and roadmap, we'll work with them again. Um, but then other teams, they're able to sort of build on what was done initially and they can sort of run it on their own in house because again, it's kind of like this, there's like a skill set there too and a leveling up, um, and tools that we provide that allow the team to sort of run with it on their own as well if there's an appetite to do that.

Speaker B: And you mentioned throughout the entire process of implementation, outcomes can differ. They can be different.

Speaker A: They're totally different.

Speaker B: Yeah, I have to suspect part of it too is how your research and the end of the workshop, like the learnings are implemented. Um, and there's challenges with implementing customer feedback. We don't need to go into like a specific example, but let's just say you have a client and they do everything you need them to do so that your work is at its best possible output. You provide this workshop to the executive team, all the stakeholders are on board and then someone has to implement the feature. How will we get started?

Speaker A: Generally what we're doing is we're identifying the, our first order of business is intimately understanding these ideal customers. So we have a very deep understanding of what these customers need. And then we're doing this sort of heuristic analysis of the current customer experience. And the workshop is where we review all of that and we say across your customer, uh, experience map, we identified these, you know, uh, sometimes there's many basically opportunities to either improve what they're already doing, stop doing something or add something new. And generally by the end of the workshop they are very clear on what those opportunities are and we can tell them with quite a bit of specificity exactly what they should be implementing and how to implement it. Because we've got all these resources, don't forget we've got the customer experience map. We've also got a, uh, voice of customer brief and a messaging guide that we produce as part of our work so that whoever is doing the implementing can run with the specifics of what we identified was the opportunity along with Some of those resources. So if there's somebody in a product marketing role or marketing role or a copywriter or a uh, csm, let's say they will have all of what they need to implement. We also do with, with about, you know, I'll say half or three quarters of the teams that we work with, we often stay on to help them produce some of those mainstay assets. Because sometimes teams are busy or they don't have, you know, who they need on the team. So we do with some teams stay on to help them produce some of those assets. Um, but yeah, so hopefully that, that clarifies like the, the process a little bit more.

Speaker B: Definitely. I have two more questions for you.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: We're shifting into high level career advice now. I've always been fascinated but never got true clarity on how to become an advisor to companies. And I think it on paper just like the word advisor sounds really cool. But I'm assuming there's pros and cons to becoming an advisor and it may not be as clear cut as just saying hey, put you to this company because you know this founder and you previously work with them and maybe you can become an advisor. I don't think it's that straightforward. Even though sometimes it might look like that online. How do you become an advisor to a company and what does that look like?

Speaker A: So yeah, it's, it started as consulting, just straight up consulting. So when I left my in house, this is pre or just before uh, launching, forget the funnel with Claire, I had left my in house role and I basically made a public announcement that I was leaving my in house role and I didn't know what was next yet. And my inbox basically flooded with founders and um, you know, basically like leadership teams and mostly found B2B SaaS founders who were just desperate to have at their disposal somebody who had experienced that sort of level of uh, growth, um, and experienced in scaling up a team, uh, experienced um, you know, quickly scaling up a team, um, going from a million to 17 million in revenue. Like what did that feel like? What was that experience? Like? How do you build a marketing strategy around that? How do you um, you know, structure teams, not only a marketing team but the, the team on the whole. So they were really looking for somebody to um, help guide not only them but also the members of their team and support the members of their team through these like growth phases. And so it wasn't by design, that was not uh, that was not my idea. But basically they were just desperate for somebody to tell them and and support their team through this phase of growth. So it sort of started organically for me, but how I originally tackled it was like, okay, I'll do some consulting for you. So not only will I help you figure out what to do, but also start producing what I can. I'll figure out how to build out your team, whether or not that's in house or um, outsourcing. And so I was helping teams hire and build out their marketing teams and uh, had hire for product marketing, which was very often needed at a lot of these companies. And then what I realized was I am not serving them as well as I could by doing all of this work. And so what we realized was like, actually what's needed is a foundational understanding of what their growth strategy should even be. And so it, we shifted and I started working with Claire and we shifted to this like, let's not met, let's not be in the weeds with them. Let's help this team get out of the weeds. See that 30,000 foot view of who it is they serve, that the unique, you, uh, know, value of their product out in the market, the growth opportunities that exist for them and enable their teams to be more successful. So we sort of, we sort of swapped over. Now I still work with some teams, uh, one on one, um, in a monthly basis or a bi weekly basis. But that is very much on the, on the back burner. But I would say there's a difference between like mentor, coach, advisor, consultant and I think the nuances between those things or, or fractional. That's the other one that's coming out a lot, right? Fractional CMOs or fractional. Fractional anything. Um, and I think there is an important distinction to make across all of those things. The reason that I dubbed myself advisor was because I don't think of myself as a coach at all. I'm not helping people come to their own conclusions. I'm literally in the, in the thick of it with them, helping them make decisions there. They can leverage, you know, my experience and background, they can leverage this way that we work with companies to help make them, you know, help them make better decisions. But I don't, I don't see myself as a coach. Um, I am sometimes in a fractional capacity like I did that last year where I was a fractional, um, VP of Product marketing at Bitly for a little while. And um, that was like a very distinct way of working with the team. I was help managing a team. I was a little bit more involved. So again, all of these, the Whole, there's a lot of things happening in this space right now, particularly because there's a lot of layoffs in tech. There's a lot of folks, like, I'm getting a lot of emails saying, like, hey, I want to know how you, you know, started doing what you do. I want to, I want to go into consulting or advisory or I want to become a fractional, you know, xyz. So there's a lot of folks, um, muddying the waters. And similar to marketing, this is kind of why we can't, why we can't have nice things. Um, is this like the, the jargon that is being sort of attached here is kind of problematic. And I feel a little bit bad for, uh, founders of companies who are trying to wade through and understand the differences between them. And unfortunately, there's a lot of websites of consultants that are a little bit deceiving. And what I found too is that there's a lot of folks dubbing themselves as an advisor, and they've got, they, like, they're not at an appropriate level in their career to dub themselves an advisor. They could very much be fractional. They could very much be, um, you know, in a different capacity or consultant. Um, but I don't know, there's. There's a lot there that's a whole podcast episode on its own, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so too. Especially because I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people that could be using any of those monikers or titles.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: They might even be so junior or mid level that they're technically freelancers, which is a different. Yeah, okay. I'm glad I'm, um, I'm consuming. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, like, I thought of myself as freelance. Before I went in house, I called myself a freelancer.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I was probably more of a consultant, but I didn't, I didn't feel like it was appropriate to, to choose another title. But this is, this is back in the early aughts, so it's a very different world now. There's a lot of these titles. Nobody really knows what any of them mean anymore.

Speaker B: Georgiana, if you can go back in the past, and this is definitely hypothetical because time machines don't exist, but if one did, you can go back about 10 years knowing everything you know right now. How would you specifically accelerate the speed of your career?

Speaker A: I would have spent far less time guessing what to do. Um, and just thinking that I had all the answers. It's really not necessary to have to do that. There's. And there's a Couple ways to, to address um, that or get in front of that. One is I should have, I should have, um. How do I say this? I wasn't afraid of customer research, but I didn't think customer research was for me. And I think that was a big mistake because I could have saved myself a lot of time, a lot of experimentation, a lot of failed experiments. Um, I didn't have to guess and I think I didn't realize that I didn't have to guess. The other thing that I would have done is I would have gotten outside of the building a little bit more and um, network, done a better job of networking with other folks in my same role inside of other companies. Like there's a mindset share there, there's a, there's a group of um, sort of like minded individuals and a community that you can create for yourself that I should have done a better job of um, sooner. I've got it now, but I should have done it a lot uh, sooner. And then I guess the other thing would be, was I probably wouldn't have passed up so many opportunities to um, demonstrate my um, my skills externally. Like I, I didn't have time to do public speaking, I didn't have time to appear on podcasts. I didn't make time for that because all of my attention was spent on the company that I was working for versus, um, you know, uh, I don't want to say personal branding because that feels a little bit ick, but you know what I mean? Like just I knew things, I could have shared things a lot earlier than I did. So those are probably the three things that like, I didn't have to guess quite as much as probably my biggest one. I don't know why I waited so long to learn the value of customer research and bring the customer voice back to my team. They would have benefited, I would have benefited. It would have been a net win across the board. The leadership would have benefited. Um, I don't know why I waited quite so long to do that.

Speaker B: That makes total sense. And personal branding, I'm guilty of using that term a lot. I've since changed. Just saying, putting yourself out there. Yeah, not as icky. If anyone wanted to say hello to you online or just learn more about you, where can they go?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I mean you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, I'm pretty good about checking in there. Uh, my email address is gia and forget the funnel. Feel free to send me an email. Obviously forget the funnel.com and if you're curious about the process itself, the customer led growth process. We, uh, do have a book that we wrote and it's very short and practical and so that's available. It's called Forget the Funnel. It's a on everywhere but also Amazon. Um, so yeah, I would definitely pick up the book if you're interested in the process. And there's a workbook that goes along with it, uh, that is almost as long as the book itself. So there's a ton of resources there.

Speaker B: Well, I definitely appreciate your time being on the podcast today and I appreciate you listener for listening to another episode of the People Digital Marketing Podcast. This is obviously a free podcast. No one charged you to listen to this or to press play or to continue continue watching. But there is a request, or at least three requests, three favors that I ask everyone that's gotten to this point of the show. First things first, if you've gotten to this point, I'm assuming you enjoyed the conversation, so why not hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening to this on, because there's other experts out there that we have on the show that talk about other functions in marketing that can help you discover other career paths or just problems to discover that make yourself more appealing, feasible, more better looking, whatever you want to call it, to your boss. And then you can eventually use those skills to become your boss. Second, please rate this podcast. We take any kind of feedback to heart so that way we can get better. And last but not least, the best way for all of us to learn at Marketers is to learn together. So if you have a co worker who you think can benefit from this conversation or conversations like it, please share this episode with them. And as always, I hope everyone has a great week.

Speaker A: RA.