FIR Podcast Network

Product-led growth has gained a ton of traction among marketers everywhere, but it looks very different in the SaaS industry.

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Jason McClelland, CMO at Domino Data Lab. They talk about the importance of product-led growth in the SaaS industry and how to execute it successfully.

* Product-led growth is a huge trend in marketing these days, but traditionally it works best for products that are fairly straightforward, like Netflix and Spotify.

* Leveraging product-led growth for a highly technical audience can be tricky, but it can pay off immensely. Jason says it helps him generate interest amongst developers and data scientists, who typically don’t care about flashy marketing initiatives — they just want to try the product out.

* Once a user has opted into a free trial or freemium product, you have to nurture them through the process. It’s like a Ferrari, Jason explains. You can’t just throw someone into the driver’s seat and say, “Go.” 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/ampupyourdigitalmarketing/gaggleamp-ep148_jason_mcclelland_mixdown.mp3

Product-led growth is a hot topic in the marketing industry these days.

It’s a marketing strategy that relies on the product to do the heavy-lifting through free trials and freemium models. Marketing veteran Jason McClelland is calling product-led growth “a huge movement and is the next frontier – the newest frontier.”

Sure, it’s not like this approach just landed on the scene yesterday, but it’s picked up a ton of traction in the last several years. Just take a look around and see how many free trials you’ve been offered today.

But what does product-led growth look like when you work with a highly technical product in the SaaS industry? It’s not always as straightforward as handing out a seven-day free trial.

Jason understands this firsthand. Before joining Domino Data Lab, he spent years working at Adobe and Heroku, which was acquired by Salesforce.

“Our biggest barrier-to-entry was people would come in, they’d sign up for a trial, they’d look at a blank white page and go, ‘OK, now what?’ It’s like somebody’s giving you a Ferrari, but you don’t know how to drive a stick shift,” he explains, referencing Photoshop’s free trials.

Jason joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to explain what product-led growth is, what it looks like in a more technical field, and shares tips on how to turn these initiatives into long-term successes.

What’s Product-Led Growth, Anyway?

Product-led growth (PLG) can be a smart way to draw people into your product — or get them hooked, so to speak. You’re letting the product speak for itself by letting interested users sign up for a free trial or freemium service.

Source: ProductLed Institute

“The product-led growth way of doing things is to try to catch people super early,” Jason said. “This is through freemium models, free trials, and content marketing… It’s really trying to help shape the conversation when people are very early in their journey.”

At Domino Data Lab, Jason markets to developers and data scientists. The only issue? “They abhor sales and marketing,” he said. “They will do anything they can to not get on the phone, not to send an email, and not to get on a webinar.”

At the end of the day, they just want to try the service out, and a free trial or freemium product allows them to do just that.

The movie The Social Dilemma is now streaming on Netflix. It’s been widely reviewed, and most of the reviews are positive.  (You can read David’s review for his Avast blog here.) It combines documentary-style interviews with leading minds formerly at Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Instagram and so on, along with star turns from Shoshana Zuboff, Jaron Lanier and Renee Diresta. The thesis is that the social giants have sold us and our data down the river, and we now are stuck with the results.

Paul and David discuss the wider implications about the movie for B2B marketers, particularly for the tech world that we both know so well. While neither of us learned anything new, the movie does portray a dark and dangerous situation situation developing. We feel that the time has come for advertisers to band together to acknowledge that this is a problem, to fight platforms’ tacit support for conspiracies and hate speech and to educate the public about how to be careful in their own consumption of social media posts and misinformation. There are several privacy suggestions in both the ending credits of the movie and on David’s post that could be starting places for a discussion.

Earlier this summer a group of advertisers banded together to boycott Facebook. The NY Times wrote about the results here. Basically, while many advertisers went dark, most of them came back in August. The revenue impact on Facebook wasn’t significant and many smaller businesses really have no choice but to use the platform.

We’d love to hear from you with other suggestions on how we can work together to improve the social media landscape. Post a comment or email Paul or Dave.

The September 2020 episode of The Hobson and Holtz Report features Neville and Shel discussing…

* The new crisis PR: What companies should do when they’re “cancelled”

* Twitter’s plans to motivate users to “read before you retweet”

* How COVID-19 has changed the way we write content (and engage with video and social media)

* The arrival of the NHS contact-tracing app gives a big boost to QR codes

* Your company’s history could pose a risk for your reputation

* LinkedIn is making changes

* Dan York reports on Amazon podcasts, LinkedIn Stories, WordPress news, and TikTok at home and in China

We are hosting an FIR Communicators Coffee Break on Zoom each Thursday during the stay-at-home period at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to [email protected]. Spread the word to your communications community.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

Links from This Month’s Episode

* The new crisis PR: what should brands do when they’re ‘canceled’?

* Cancel Culture Is Real — Here’s What Brands Need to Know About It

* Twitter plans to bring prompts to ‘read before you retweet’ to all users

* Twitter tweets about its retweet prompt

* How COVID-19 changed the way we write content

* Engagement with Video and Social Content Soars During Pandemic

* Arrival of NHS contact-tracing app heralds return of QR codes

* UK government site for creating a coronavirus QR code poster

* UK government contact tracing app FAQ

* Your Company’s History Can Make It More Valuable—Or More Vulnerable

* Major Changes To LinkedIn You Need To Know About

* LinkedIn Launches Updated Look, Makes LinkedIn Stories Available to All

* LinkedIn Introduces Stories and a Redesign to Create a Friendlier Platform

Links from Dan York’s Report

* Amazon Podcasts

* All you need to know: podcasts in Amazon Music

*

We’re going to spend a little time today talking about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. While not directly related to communications, there are some things we can learn from her, as professionals and as human beings.

Guys, this may not directly correlate to you, so if you want to skip this week’s listen, it won’t hurt my feelings. But if you are a feminist and are concerned about how women’s rights continue to change, particularly right now during a global pandemic, this is for you.

As we think about how hard Justice Ginsburg fought for equal rights, regardless of gender, the time we’re in right now feels eerily like a step back 50 years.

I don’t know what the right answer is, but I do know we have one job to do: we have to continue to fight for equality for all humans, women included. It’s exceptionally challenging right now to care for children while they’re doing distance learning and we’re working full-time. I’m right there in the middle of it with some of you and it sucks.

There are definitely days that I think, “OK, maybe I take a sabbatical for a year until there is a vaccine.” And then there are days, like on Friday when Justice Ginsburg died, that I think, “A dumb pandemic is not going to do me in. I am woman. Hear me roar!”

Resources Mentioned In Episode

* Coronavirus Has Hit Women Harder than Men

* The Spin Sucks Podcast

* The PESO Model

* Spin Sucks Community

In his book, “The Great Game of Business,” Jack Stack introduced the business world to open-book management. The Great Game of Business website points out, “Open-book management at its most effective far outperforms a definition as simple as “sharing financial information with employees”. Open-book isn’t just about opening your financials to your company, it’s about responsibility, ownership, results, and growth, all of these things can come together to drive the needle forward in your organization. With proper training and knowledge, all levels of your business start to act and engage just like the owner, or leadership.”

Clearly, communication is a vital dimension of open-book management. Episode 61 of “Circle of Fellows” featured four IABC Fellows looking at the communicator’s role, including introducing the concept to leadership. Panelists included moderator/Fellow Brad Whitworth and IABC Fellows Jim Shaffer, Tosh Hattori, and Amanda Hamilton-Attwell. Of special note, Jim has worked closely with Jack Stack, founder of open-book management and CEO of SRC Holdings. He escorts clients to SRC Holdings so they can see first-hand how to implement open-book management.

About the panel

Todd Hattori — After 20+ years of leading in-house communication functions within a variety of organizations and industries, Todd “Tosh” Hattori, ABC, IABC Fellow was drawn to the consulting world by PeopleFirm’s core business philosophy: your people = your success. He leads PeopleFirm’s organization design community of practice, engaging and collaborating with cross-functional teams to address business challenges by designing solutions with their people in mind. Outside of his client work, he serves on the volunteer board of directors for the Technology Access Foundation, a national model / leader in providing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education to students of color; and improving teacher diversity and retention of teachers of color in Washington. He currently serves as the IABC Ethics Committee vice chair.

Dr. Amanda Hamilton-Attwell, accredited by both IABC and PRSA. She is Managing Director of Business DNA, based in South Africa, which provides strategic research and consulting, including communication audits, customer service, and women’s leadership topics. She is licensed in Adobe Connect and WebEx, using these to conduct virtual professional learning and education sessions. and other focused research and training in communication skills. Her career has also included a 15-year stint as a research manager for the National Productivity Institute.

Jim Shaffer is a business adviser, leadership coach, author, and speaker. As leader of the Jim Shaffer Group, he helps organizations accelerate results through superior strategy execution. The Jim Shaffer Group creates hard business results by translating the business strategy to the people who need to implement it, aligning systems, processes, and culture to make the gains sustainable. The firm has improved quality, service, sales, safety, turnover, productivity, speed and costs with some returns exceeding more than 1,600 percent. He designed and produced the IABC Academy courses, “Managing Communication to Drive Results and Value” and “How to Add Value as a Strategic Adviser”. Some of his clients have included: Hallmark, ConAgra Foods, FedEx, IBM, Marriott, Mayo Clinic, Verizon, Owens Corning, Pfizer, and Toyota.

Brad Whitworth is a veteran communicator and communication coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Brad was most recently a communication manager at Hitachi Vantara. Before that, he was an executive communication manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and senior communication manager at Cisco Systems. Before Cisco, Brad led communication programs at HP, PeopleSoft, and AAA. He earned undergraduate degrees in both journalism and speech at the University of Missouri and an MBA at Santa Clara University.

We love talking to Steve Crescenzo because where else can you gain practical, actionable comms advice through a conversation that includes a pet rabbit on the loose, (not) tolerating our spouses under COVID-19 quarantine, and leadership communications hostage videos? Steve and his wife and partner Cindy have had front row seats to the comms-coronavirus crisis response through their business, Crescenzo Communications. Steve joined the EE Voice podcast to talk about all they’ve learned – from the two things you must do to step up your internal comms leadership to the office culture shifts we’re witnessing that he predicts are irreversible.

Links referenced in the podcast:

* Whitepaper: 7 steps to futureproof your internal communications strategy

* Gallup study on the need for internal communications during the pandemic

* Crescenzo Communications upcoming webinars (happy hour included!):

* Employee Communication Master Class

* Writing Master Class

Because of all of the crisis work I’ve been doing this year, I’m quite obsessed with what can happen to a brand, through no fault of their own. From Trump tweeting to boycott your product or service to getting in the crosshairs of QAnon, it’s a crazy time to be a communicator!

Though I love social media and the world it has opened up to me personally and professionally, I often long for the days when the crises were few and far between and they rarely happened to one organization more than once. Now it’s not “if”, but “when” when it comes to every, single one of us facing perhaps even one (or more) crises a year. 

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Not necessarily how to handle a crisis—there is plenty of that information, including on Spin Sucks. But how to detect if something is brewing before it ever hits the keyboards of the warriors.

Resources from the Episode

* Crisis comms resources on Spin Sucks

* Wayfair Is In the Crosshairs of QAnon

* Trump Boycott of Goodyear Tires

* Early-warning risk intelligence

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Kayt Leonard, the public relations manager at PSI CRO. They talk about what executing marketing campaigns looks like when working in a highly regulated, highly targeted, and highly misunderstood industry.

* Clinical trials are an integral part of health care, but they’re often misunderstood. (Thanks, Hollywood.)

* At any given time, there are hundreds of thousands of clinical trials registered across the world. Each one needs a specific number of participants who meet a specific set of criteria. As the PR manager of PSI CRO, it’s Kayt Leonard’s job to find these participants.

* “There’s no template we have,” Kayt says. “There’s no ability to look through previous campaigns and see, ‘All right, this patient population worked; these advertisements and keywords worked.’ We really build out every single campaign and every single persona as if it’s the first time we’ve ever done it.”

PR managers don’t have the breeziest of jobs. But when you’re the PR manager of a highly regulated, highly targeted, and highly misunderstood industry? That requires some trapeze work.

You could say Kayt Leonard has mastered the balancing act. As the PR Manager of PSI CRO, a global clinical research organization, she builds marketing campaigns for open clinical trials.

These campaigns are under strict regulations — a “minefield,” she describes — and they often require a large amount of targeting. To add to the difficulty, clinical trials don’t exactly have the best reputation, thanks to Hollywood horror films.

Kayt joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to explain exactly how she and her team at PSI CRO navigate these obstacles to create successful marketing campaigns.

Back Up: What’s a Clinical Trial?

Before diving into the whole marketing aspect of clinical trials, it’s helpful to understand what clinical trials look like.

Clinical trials are medical research studies consisting of human volunteers. These are an essential part of health care and the development of new medical treatments and cures.

But not everyone understands this.

“They’re an incredibly important aspect of healthcare that have a pretty negative connotation globally,” Kayt says. “People think of clinical trials, and they think, ‘I’m going to lose an eye, or I’m going to have bruises or scars, or something weird is going to happen just because of Hollywood.”

That’s just not the case, though.

When a drug hits the clinical trial phase, it’s been thoroughly tested and has passed through a number of regulatory hurdles.

At any given time, there are hundreds of thousands of clinical trials registered across the world. Each of these trials is made up of a specific number of volunteers who meet specific demographic and medical criteria.

Now you can probably see why Kayt’s marketing efforts require so many layers of regulations and targeting.

Marketing Clinical Trials: Overcoming Major Obstacles

If you manage PR or marketing in an industry laced with regulations and/or targeting requirements, you know how difficult it can be to create a successful marketing campaign.

Kayt reveals some of her strategies for navigating the complicated world of clinical trials, which you can apply to your own industry.

1. Leverage the Team’s Collective Expertise

To overcome a “minefield” of regulations, as Kayt describes, she taps into her team’s collective expertise.

“In coming up with that message,

Last fall, I smelled a rat. For those of you following along with my Facebook isolation diary, it’s not that kind of rat (though I’m up to 18 or 19 of them being rested at my feet now, like some proud trophy—ick!).

Rather, something seemed amiss in the business world.

Having taken my business through the Great Recession, it felt eerily similar.

Retainers were drying up. Prospects were opting for project work. And the sales cycle took twice as long as normal.

Of course, I could not have predicted what was actually coming. That shocked pretty much everyone except maybe Bill Gates.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we all have a way to control our own destinies through what I like to call additional revenue streams—or income diversification.

A friend of mine was telling me that his dad, before he retired, was in the National Guard, was a high school teacher, AND he bought and sold apartment buildings. That’s some serious income diversification. 

You can certainly go a similar route, or you can use your intellectual property—the skills in your brain—to protect yourself, your business, or the company for which you work.

For today’s purpose, diversified means that the money you earn in your life or business doesn’t all come from the same place, and you have different streams of income from different kinds of products or services that make up your total income.

Got it?

Good!

Enjoy!

Resources Included

* My Facebook isolation diary

* The Modern Blogging Masterclass

* PESO Model Certification

* Agency Jumpstart

* Close More Clients

30-Day Communications Challenge  

The Communicator’s Playbook

* Graphic for invoices

Customer experience is incredibly important for your brand. In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Rhoan Morgan, co-founder and CEO of DemandLab. They sit down to discuss the importance of turning customer experience into a company-wide effort.

* Traditionally, the B2B customer experience has been a siloed practice, an effort focused on by one or two teams. But Rhoan Morgan, co-founder and CEO of DemandLab, is encouraging businesses to start using the marketing-led customer experience approach.

* “What you’re doing is you’re using technology, data, and content to really engage with a company’s audience — but in a way that matters to the customer,” Rhoan says.

* Embracing the marketing-led customer experience approach requires cross-team collaboration and setting specific customer experience goals using relevant data.

Remember when you started hearing the “customer experience” buzzword thrown around? As a marketer, you were probably wondering what the big deal was — you’ve been focused on the customer experience for years.

That’s exactly what Rhoan Morgan was thinking. She’s worked in marketing for more than 25 years, and she’s seen firsthand the deep imprint technology has made on the industry. That’s why, more than a decade ago, she co-founded DemandLab, a consultancy that helps businesses leverage technology and data to meet customer success goals.

But to successfully cater to your customers, Rhoan urges B2B companies to look beyond the simple idea of customer experience and instead focus on a newer concept: the marketing-led customer experience.

Rhoan joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to explain exactly what the marketing-led customer experience looks like, why data and teamwork are critical to the process, and how you can begin implementing this into your larger strategy.

What is the Marketing-led Customer Experience?

The marketing-led customer experience is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a customer experience approach that turns marketers into customer champions, journey creators, and experience innovators, Rhoan describes.

“What you’re doing is you’re using technology, data, and content to really engage with a company’s audience — but in a way that matters to the customer,” she says.

Traditionally, several teams within an organization own the customer experience. Oftentimes, these teams operate in a vacuum. The marketing-led approach aims to make customer experience a more fluid “ecosystem.”

“When marketing-led customer experience is really well implemented in an organization, we’re seeing it’s optimizing every customer interaction, and it’s really pulling together what used to be a rather siloed process,” Rhoan says.

The reality is, B2C companies have been doing this for years (think: Amazon, Zappos, Nordstrom). Now, B2B companies are rising to meet these higher customer expectations.

The Key to Turning Loyal Customers Into Champions: Teamwork

It’s no secret customer loyalty is huge in the B2B world. And if you can turn a loyal customer into your champion? Even better. Those champions will give you repeat sales, and they’ll hand-deliver new leads. They’re invaluable.

But Rhoan says companies often don’t give loyalty initiatives enough attention (or budget). Usually, they’re missing one critical component: Teamwork.

That’s where this idea of the marketing-led customer experience comes into play.

“We might say it’s a marketing-led customer experience, but it absolutely is a full company-wide initiative,