What’s up everyone today we’re talking about marketing roadmaps. Rodmaps are usually more common with tech product teams and they are also very common in the project management world. It’s about giving your team the big picture and helping everyone align on project goals. Anyone who’s been in marketing knows that this is something super useful that can be applied to this practice as well.

Key takeaway: While it doesn’t always have to be set in stone, a roadmap helps your team stay accountable to certain tasks and deliverables but it’s also a focus weapon that arms you with the ability to say no to new requests. You work on priorities and capacity, you share it with other departments for feedback and it becomes marching orders.

Definition

Okay so how would you define a roadmap?

Definition: A team roadmap is a visual overview showing what projects and tasks will be worked on and when.

It usually includes objectives, milestones/tasks, deliverables, resources, and a timeline.

A roadmap can serve as a reliable reference guide to help keep the team on track and share with other stakeholders your key projects and objectives.

So how do you bring this to life?

So I like to do this quarterly. Usually I have a backlog list of projects. This is made up of ideas and things that have popped up over time that we want to get to eventually. From the backlog, you want to try and assign a priority. This exercise can be wildly complex but it can be a simple ICE exercise (Impact, confidence, effort).

One keep component as you score projects is company goals and OKRs. Defining the business goals and objectives that the marketing team will work to support. This is usually trickled down in some capacity from management. It might include goals related to increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or improving customer satisfaction.

Then you look at capacity, how many hours of work does your team have this quarter, subtract meeting time and PTO. One thing I like to do here is keep a buffer of 15% time for unexpected urgent tasks that pop up.

Then you can decide what stays in the backlog and what gets prioritized for the upcoming quarter.

There’s a bunch of different tools you can use for roadmapping, whether it’s Jira, Asana, Trello, Notion or others, they all boil down to very similar functions.

1. Start with a list of core projects
2. Break up the projects into sub tasks and milestones
3. Assign task owners and deadlines
4. Describe each task and highlight dependencies

Tools

What are the best tools to developing a timeline for the initiatives and activities, including key milestones and deliverables.

There are many different tools that organizations can use to develop a timeline for their marketing initiatives and activities, including key milestones and deliverables. Some common examples include:

Project management software, such as Notion, Asana, Trello, or Microsoft Project, which can be used to create a visual representation of the timeline, track progress, and manage resources.

Collaboration tools, such as Slack, Google Hangouts, or Microsoft Teams, which can be used to communicate with team members, share information, and collaborate on tasks.

Gantt charts, which are graphical representations of the tasks and dependencies within a project. Gantt charts can be used to visualize the timeline, identify potential conflicts or bottlenecks, and adjust the schedule as needed.

Spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, which can be used to create a tabular representation of the timeline, track progress, and perform calculations.

Overall, the best tools for developing a timeline will depend on the specific needs and preferences of the organization. By using a combination of different tools, organizations can create a comprehensive and effective timeline that helps them plan and execute their marketing initiatives and activities.

What’s your fav tool?

Trello never fails. But I’ve become a big fan of Notion.

Yes, Notion can be used for project management and roadmaps. 

It’s usually thought of as a company wiki or a place to write memos, but it’s so much more… and if it can also help you manage your projects… imagine combining all of that in one place.

Many teams have

• A company docs or wiki like Confluence
• They have a project management tool like Asana or Jira
• And then they have a bunch of scattered docs in the form of google sheets, google docs, folders
• That usually includes a bunch of emails also

But imagine if you could have just 1 tool to rule all of these. At my startup we use Notion pretty heavily. Not every does this to a T, we do have some stragglers, but imagine a world where

• Company docs and memos are no longer emails or a various panoply of google docs
• Projects are managed in one spot and reference things in the same tool, no need for separate logins or extra credentials
• All in Notion.

Notion is a versatile and customizable productivity tool.

I use it personally but also at work, like I mentioned.

But because of its versatility, Notion sometimes gets a bad rep when it comes to project management or roadmapping… I’m here to tell you it can all work in there.

Notion has a database that enables you to have a variation of views on projects and items, it has templates, it has comments and tracking changes features, it can do anything Trello or Asana can and more.

Identifying stakeholders

It’s easy to assume you chatted with important folks before diving into projects but speaking from experience, forgetting a key stakeholder and realizing it too late can create major chaos.

What's the best path to identify dependencies and stakeholders?

Conducting a stakeholder analysis, which involves identifying and prioritizing the stakeholders who are relevant to the project or initiative, and assessing their interests, needs, and potential impact. This can help organizations understand who the key stakeholders are and what their priorities and expectations are, and can inform the development of the project or initiative.

Creating a stakeholder map, which is a visual representation of the relationships between the stakeholders and the project or initiative. This can help organizations understand how the stakeholders are connected, and can identify potential areas of conflict, collaboration, or influence.

Developing a stakeholder engagement plan, which outlines the strategies and tactics that will be used to engage and communicate with the stakeholders throughout the project or initiative. This can help organizations ensure that the stakeholders are involved and informed, and can provide feedback and support as needed.

Overall, identifying dependencies and stakeholders is an important step in the project or initiative planning process, and can help organizations understand the potential impacts and risks, and develop strategies to manage them effectively. By using a structured and systematic approach, organizations can improve their chances of success and achieve their goals and objectives.

Sharing your roadmap

Finally, how do you share this roadmap?

Some possible approaches include:

Creating a visual representation of the roadmap, such as a timeline, mind map, or infographic, which can be used to illustrate the key initiatives, activities, and milestones in an engaging and easy-to-understand format.

Using storytelling techniques to communicate the roadmap, such as narrating a journey or...

What’s up everyone? Today is a bit of a follow-up on the previous episode about building dashboards, check that one out first if you haven’t already.

Today we’re taking this a step further and talking about data models and the limits of building dashboards.

Here’s a typical stance on dashboard design:

It is best to focus on the ideal scenario, and worry about the practicalities of implementation later,

Or “let the ops team worry about that” as they call it.

Haha yeah… This approach may seem appealing at first, as it allows designers to imagine and create without constraints. However, as a marketing operations person, I’m not a fan of this.

Here’s today’s main takeaway: I believe that understanding how a dashboard is powered, and having a sense of what is possible and what is not, is a crucial differentiator.

Too often, I have seen dashboard projects built in a vacuum, disconnected from the reality of the data and the systems that support them. In these cases, valuable time and resources are wasted building an idealistic dashboard that cannot be implemented or used effectively.

Today we’re going to be breaking down how you can level up your knowledge about data models or the capabilities and limitations of the data and the systems that support the dashboard, and designing solutions that are feasible and effective.

By understanding these constraints, designers and marketers can create dashboards that are not only beautiful and engaging, but also practical and useful.

I feel like this topic could get hairy pretty fast, so let's break down some definitions for the listeners. Da hell is a data model, let’s start there.

What’s a data model?

Data modeling is a way to organize and structure data from different sources in a consistent and useful way. It helps to make data more accessible and organized, so it can be easily analyzed and interpreted.

Gimme a non marketing example, how would you explain this to your mom?

Example: A simple example of a data model is a phone directory. The data model for a phone directory would include information such as the names and contact information of individuals, as well as the relationships between them (e.g. family members, colleagues, friends). By organizing this information in a consistent and structured way, the phone directory can be used to easily look up and contact individuals. This data model helps to make the information more accessible and useful.

Okay what about a marketing example, that was too simple.

I’ll go with my bread and butter, Email marketing example: One example of a data model for email marketing might include information about the email campaigns that have been sent to different segments of your audience. 

This data model might include details such as 

• the subject lines, 
• Type of content, 
• Subject line keywords
• Main call-to-action 

You would also have the results of the campaigns

• open rates, 
• click-through rates, 
• conversion rates

By organizing and structuring this information in a consistent and meaningful way, the data model can help the email marketing team track the performance of their campaigns and to identify areas for improvement.

For example, the data model might show that certain subject lines or content types don’t generate as many opens as some emails but they perform better at driving clicks and conversions, and the email marketing team can use this information to optimize their future campaigns.

So why should marketers care about this? It’s to prevent shiny object syndrome and understanding where the numbers are coming from but also give you the ability to customize your dashboard.

Exactly. A data model is the first step in allowing you to have a dynamic/interactive dashboard.

Describe an interactive dashboard in simple terms

Describe an interactive dashboard in simple terms for the listeners.

It’s being able to interact with the charts and elements to analyze different parts of your dashboard, for example; filtering certain elements and changing date ranges.

This is what sets them apart from reports. For me, I see it as a personal assistant of sorts. An interactive dashboard allows you to easily filter, slice, and drill down into the data, revealing insights and patterns that might otherwise be hidden. Unlike a static dashboard or report, which shows the same view for everyone, an interactive dashboard lets different users explore the data in their own unique ways.

What’s a simple example that most folks would understand?

Imagine a sales manager who needs to understand the performance of her team across different regions and product lines. With a static dashboard or report, she would see the same view for everyone, with no ability to filter or drill down into the data. 

But with an interactive dashboard, she can easily select the regions, the individual reps and product lines that she is interested in, and see the data that is most relevant to her. She can even save her custom views, and share them with her team, so they can all see the data in the way that is most useful to them.

Basically, a dynamic dashboard allows you to go from metric reporting to data exploration and analysis. 

In episode 64 we talked about GA4 so I have a GA example here.

Example:
Consider the following scenario: your marketing team has built a Google Analytics (GA) dashboard that shows monthly traffic data. The dashboard is static, which means that it updates every month, but it does not allow you to filter or drill down into the data. When you log in to the dashboard, you see the same view as everyone else, with no ability to customize or explore the data in your own way.

Now imagine that, instead of a static GA dashboard, your marketing team has built a dynamic lifecycle dashboard that is powered by a data model. This dashboard allows you to filter the metrics by user attributes or campaign events, so you can see the data that is most relevant to you. 

For example, if you want to see how your email campaigns are performing, you can easily filter the metrics by channel. Or, if you want to see the impact of in-app messages, you can filter the metrics by that attribute. And, because the dashboard is dynamic and interactive, you can explore and analyze the data in your own way, without being limited by the pre-defined views of a static dashboard.

Yeah. So where does the data model fits into this? Well the data model is what allows you to have a dynamic dashboard, especially when it comes to combining data from different sources. 

So data source > data model > dashboard? Is that the hierarchy? 

Yeah I think that’s fair.

Understanding your data model

So here’s a practical example:

Let’s say we have two main data sources:

• New signup events from you...

What’s up everyone, today we’re taking a dive into the world of dashboard building.

Startups may not always have the luxury of having a dedicated data analyst on staff, which means marketers may need to get more hands-on with data.

Yeah I haven’t had the data analyst luxury in my career very often! In episode 38, we discussed marketing reporting and how you can use key reports to help highlight impact and find new opportunities. But we’re not talking about reports here right?

That’s right, dashboards aren’t reports. They are living breathing snapshots of key areas you want to keep an eye on in your business.

Yeah I think a lot of people don’t make that distinction and just assume reports = dashboards = chart. Where should marketers be starting? With charts?

Scatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, maps, funnels, box plots… There’s a bunch of different chart types and visualizations at your disposal when you're designing your dashboard, but this isn’t where you should start.

Here’s today’s main takeaway: When designing a dashboard, it's important to focus on the decisions you want to make, rather than just the metrics you want to track. Before building your dashboard, consider your audience and bring together the right people to answer key questions. This will help you create a prototype of your first version.

Dashboard projects are close to both of our hearts. Both having worked for Klipfolio (a dashboard SaaS for startups and SMBs), we’ve spent a fair amount of time researching and writing about the internal dashboard building process.

There’s obviously a critical collaboration piece to this that would be an initial starting point for anyone taking on a dashboard project.

Yeah one thing we always said about building good dashboards is that it takes a village.

So Phil, you’ve actually led the charge in this area at a few startups. What are some of the questions you should be asking as a marketer to get started?

Questions before building

The first questions to tackle as a team are: What metrics would you look at on a regular basis to measure performance and determine areas for growth? What metrics do you care about the most?

So ultimately, this depends entirely on your team goals and the top priority metrics we’ve selected as a group. These goals further inform how to prioritize views and metrics in our dashboard. What does this group of stakeholders look like when you’re starting to build things?

Stakeholder groups:

• Main viewers: Who will be digesting or regularly looking at the dashboard
• Marketing Ops/Data Ops: What resources to you have to help you build the dashboard
• Designer and point person: Who’s scoping out the dashboard and driving project management as well as designing the end dashboard

Admittedly, in startup land, you’ll likely be wearing all three hats. I know I have. But in bigger teams, you’re working with a lot more moving pieces. 

Yeah I’ve gotten a taste of both of these. Small teams and bigger teams. There’s advantages to both. But I think regardless, it’s important to get a lay of the land first.

Yeah it might be helpful to walk through an example. You’ve been pretty deep in lifecycle marketing in your career. Maybe give us a real life example wearing a lifecycle hat. So Phil, you’re Director of lifecycle and you’re tasked with building out a lifecycle dashboard.

Here’s a list of example questions to ask yourself and stakeholders 

Yeah I like the lifecycle example actually. It’s broad enough to touch most parts of marketing so I can  use it as goal posts as we unpack some of this stuff.

Your goal with these questions is to figure out what metrics we care about the most, getting a benchmark and establishing a goal for each of these metrics and how they have been trending over time.

• Current segment/vertical data we get on signups, are there specific segments we know we want to grow?
• Current lead scoring on signup events, are we scoring leads based on email and domain and any other data we might be collecting?
• What’s the current activation rates of signups after the first email, what’s our deliverability rate on the first email to signups?
• Are there specific lifecycle status labels that we are currently using, ie Content lead/subscriber > Signup > Active/published site > Upgraded. Do we currently have micro stages/do we care about this detail, ie in between signup and active we might have, installed theme, created a page and created a menu.
• Do we currently have the ability to attribute multi touch events for email engagements? Meaning, if a signup opens a pricing email on day 4 and they click the plans link and they buy 2 hours later, is that email getting $%?

With all of this information on hand, or at least identifying areas of focus and priority metrics, you can then start scoping out the first prototype of the dashboard, intentionally with too much information, with the hopes of cutting things out in following iterations.

Exactly. Next we can talk about metrics that flow in from those questions.

What metrics you should consider for the first prototype

The critical piece of this phase is to spend time understanding the most important things to monitor and give ourselves time to explore different ideas before rolling out a finished dashboard.

Here are the core areas of a lifecycle dashboard, with a focus on conversion rates, starting at signups (explicitly did not scope content lead > signup):

• Signups, signups by segment, signups by lead score
• Confirmations, signups > confirmation %, deliverability
• Active (published a site)
• Behaviors (installed a theme, >2 pages, menu)
• Email metrics, engagement score, top emails, ab tests
• Conversions to plans, signups > conversions %, % in first 30 days, % after 30 days
• Upgrades, plan breakdown
• Revenue impact

Yeah that’s a lot obviously, depends how long you want your dashboard to be but we’re still in the prototype phase here so more is better and you can always remove stuff later or create a second dashboard.

The main takeaway of this episode though as we said is that When designing a dashboard, it's important to focus on the decisions you want to make, rather than just the metrics you want to track.

So how do we do that?

Focus on the decisions you want to make

Something we want to keep in mind as we narrow the list of important metrics are the decisions we want to be able to make. The goal of our example dashboard is to monitor the lifecycle marketing performance and identify growth opportunities. That means answering questions like:

• Are we improving sign up engagement and conversions over time? 
• Are specific segments or campaigns driving better conversion rates than others?
• Should we double down or kill this experiment/email

So ultimately, the focus of the dashboard should be on Signups > activated(published site) rates and Signups > upgrade conversion rates in the first x days and the viewers should be able to see the impact across the funnel over time.

So now that you have a better idea of all the metrics you want to start with, one of the next steps you can start thinking about is chart types, how you’d like to ideally display your data.

Choosing chart types

Scatter plots, bar charts, pie charts, maps, funnels, box plots… There’s a bunch of different chart types and visualization...

Universal Analytics is sunsetting in July 2023, and its replacement, Google Analytics 4, isn’t exactly getting a warm reception. For digital marketers, SEOs, analysts, and basically anyone else who got used to GA3 over the past decade, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Ok, I’ll confess: I’ve been a bit further behind on Google Analytics 4 than I wanted. Like many marketers, I struggle to balance martech innovation against the reality of my day-to-day life. I admit I had been procrastinating on learning GA4, but no more.

I’ve spent the last few months going as deep as I can on GA4 and, by extension Google Tag Manager. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that GA4 is Google’s gift to digital marketing – I think it’s still an immature platform.

I am going to tell you GA4 is getting a much worse rap that it deserves precisely because so many marketers have been deep in GA3/UA for so long. Changing habits is tough, and GA4 makes it more challenging because of a new interface, not too mention a completely different approach to web analytics. No big deal - you can learn all this in a Sunday afternoon, right?

Yeah, that’s going to be tough.

Today I’m going to give a procrastinator’s guide to GA4. If you’re expecting me to complain about GA3, this episode isn’t for you. We’ll mourn the loss of GA3, briefly, but then move on to making the most of this situation. I don’t think GA4 is all bad – actually, GA4 is pretty slick and I think if it weren’t for the contrast to its predecessor, many folks would be pretty happy with GA4.

– – –

Alright JT, it’s great to be back behind the mic. We’re starting off with a fun one here. I’ll admit I’ve been out of touch with top of funnel reporting and analytics for the last couple years so I’m excited to learn about GA4. There’s rightfully been a lot of noise since its release in October 2020… maybe we can start there actually, the Google decision.

Google has basically said that they are making the switch from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in order to provide users with “more advanced tracking for digital marketers” But aside from new features like automated events, cross-device reporting and BQ support, there’s a lot more behind the decision to make the switch.

Why is Google making the switch from UA to GA4?

Needs attribution: 

• Lawsuits in EU where UA used as evidence
• Privacy regulations
• End of 3rd party cookies, rise of first party cookies
• Single-page applications
• Event-based measurement

So October 14, 2020: This was the date when Google officially announced GA4 and began rolling it out to users. What dates should marketers be aware about when it comes to the “forced switch from UA?”

What are the important dates and why are they important

July 1, 2023, data collection stops. 6 months later, you won’t be able to access your data

You’ve got 6 months to move to GA4 or another web analytics solution or you’ll be flying blind… 

You need a solution for your historic data (excel, bigquery, or API)

Sounds like it’s time to put down that Netflix remote, grab a cup of coffee, and dive into the exciting world of GA4!

It seems like such a big hurdle… JT, how can marketers start to learn GA4?

How do I learn GA4

There’s going to be a few layers to learning GA4. Let’s break it out into 2 roles:

• Web Developer, implementation
• Digital marketer or web analyst

For web developers or implementers, GA4 can be installed directly on your website by inserting the code directly onto each page. This isn’t new. I think what is new is that GA4 is much more closely tied with Google Tag Manager. It is absolutely the recommended way to install and configure GA4.

There’s a whole episode or series about Google Tag Manager we could do, but the short of it is that GTM gives you a huge toolset to do tons of cool stuff: event tracking, sending additional data through dataLayer, and modifying your implementation without having to directly modify your website.

If you’re not already using GTM, GA4 should push you to start using it.

For digital marketers and analysts, the task is about getting used to the new interface, migrating configuration settings from GA3, and making a habit of pulling reports from GA4. The big hurdle here is matching up the data from both tools – because I’ve never actually seen both tools give the same number.

I think this is what people are most unprepared for: the new reporting paradigm and definitions. Things like users have modified definitions, in no small part because GA4 is better at tracking individual users and corrects known errors in GA3. However, whenever a disparity in the numbers arise, much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth ensues…

So getting it installed and playing around with new features is one of the first things folks should be doing. Data history and collection is important.

These new features are more powerful and are said to help you better understand and optimize your digital marketing efforts… JT, what are some of the new features that excite you the most compared to UA vs GA4?

What is different between GA3 & GA4

Bounce rate, conversion tracking, user definitions;

Event-based approach, more akin to product analytics tools, and, frankly, this is better for modern web (problem: vast majority of sites aren’t on modern tech)

• User Interface
• Data collection and real-time data
• Data retention

So gone are the days of needing to manually set up event tracking codes for specific things like we had to do in GTM?

No, still more than enough in GTM. Enhanced Measurement gives us some events out of the box that seem to mostly work for some websites. Events are much better in GA4 – can send custom parameters

One thing a lot of folks mention is improved cross-device reporting, have you dived into this? How is Google associating traffic from multiple devices to unique users?

I’m more of a Redshift guy than Big Query these days but I do feel like the switch to GA4 is also pushing many users to adopting Big Query right? GA4 includes native support for BigQuery integration, which allows you to connect your GA4 data with other data sources in Google BigQuery.

JT what do you like the most about GA4 so far? Is it the Conversion Probability report or the Customer Lifetime Value report? Or just the new UI and design?

What does Jon like about GA4?

It might seem like putting lipstick on a pig, but I kind of like GA4. Maybe I’m just coping a bit or being obstinately positive, but change is the name of martech. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to switch tools against my will, and it won’t be the last.

Everything is a tool, and GA4 is no different. 

Events are customizable and don’t have to send same parameters/fields as UA. You can send anything which is powerful when looking at custom data.

• Conversion events are much more accurate (citation)
• Reports are much more customizable and better looking
• Machine learning to surface insights

Some of the coolest ML insights come in the form of predicting the likelihood that a user will convert on your website or app. This is based on their behavior and other factors. So theoretically, your business can better identify high-potential users and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

Do you know what this looks like practically? Can you push segments of these users to BQ then Hubspot and send custom emails or better yet, to your product and surface different offerings?

So like we said, there are many wa...

Season 1 featured our first 50 episodes, 20 of which were guest episodes. In today’s episode we’re going to recap our key takeaways from each guest episode in season 1.

Our first guest episode featured Lauren Sanborn, Director of RevOps at CallRail. She recently moved over to DataRobot, an AI cloud platform for Data Scientists. 

Aside from leaving us with several marketing and sales alignment tips, my favorite takeaway from Lauren was to not be so hard on yourself if you don’t know what you don’t want to do (for work). Her advice was to get out there and try different things so you can start to mark off what you don’t like. Eventually you’ll find something that you love.”

Our next guest in episode 07 featured one of our most senior and perhaps most accomplished guest, Brian Leonard, former co-founder of TaskRabbit and now CEO of Grouparoo (recently acquired by Airbyte).

Brian went pretty deep on the relationship with marketing and engineering and my favorite takeaway was that marketers and engineers shouldn’t think of themselves as doing completely different things inside a company. At the end of the day, both groups are there to move the needle on the business. So the best way to think of it is to come together to power the right stack.

Instead of pitching to product, marketing needs this, pitch it as, the company needs this and this is how it will benefit everyone. For example, marketing attribution isn’t a marketing or a marketing ops thing. It’s a company thing.

Next up was our boy Nick Donaldson in episode 10, fresh off a new consulting gig at Perkuto. Another marketer who’s moved on to another company, he’s now running Marketing Operations at Knak.

Nick is wise beyond his years and my favorite takeaway from our chat with him was that the number 1 skill to succeed in marketing ops is curiosity. Early in your career Google and twitter are your best friends. There’s so many smart people that have been in your shoes and are nice enough to share those insights. Find them. Read them. Learn from them.

So 10 episodes in and we already had a RevOps Director, a CEO and founder and a consultant. We also had a Professor. In episode 11 we were joined by friend of the show Jonathan Simon.

This might have been controversial amongst his peers at the University but we’re happy to report he’s still in his current gig (lol). My favorite takeaway from our chat with Jonathan is that you don’t need a degree to have a successful and happy career in marketing anymore. More than anything, marketers need to be adaptable to changing tech and strive to be lifelong learners. He talked a lot about side hustles and starting something, in his course he actually gets all his students to start a blog and build something during their time there.

Episode 17 featured Ottawa native Julie Beynon who leads analytics at Clearbit. Things got technical pretty fast but I think Julie did an awesome job introducing data warehousing and making it seem a lot less intimidating.

My favorite takeaway was when she explained that a DWH doesn’t have row limits and isn’t limited by your laptop’s CPU. She loves a Google sheet as much as any data driven marketer, but at some point, startups need to upgrade from that clunkiness to a data warehouse solution.

It’s been fun seeing the martech landscape shift from; APIs for everything and we integrate with all your tools to – we build on top of your data warehouse or we connect natively to Big Query.

Keeping to the data theme, we had Steffen Heddebrandt in episode 19. Still almost a year later he’s trashing Google Analytics on LinkedIn (lol). He’s the co-founder of Dreamdata, an attribution solution for B2B startups and SMBs.

Attribution still gets a bad rep, we heard Corey trash it in season 2, but Steffen has solved big pieces of this puzzle at his startup. My favorite takeaway from our convo was when he declared that when it comes to revenue attribution, GA is basically close to useless for B2B companies. Multi touch attribution software does sound like magic when you’ve tried to orchestrate it yourself, but give Dreamdata a spin if you’re still skeptical about it.

Episode 25 featured Naomi Liu, Director of Global Marketing Ops at EFI. Naomi spends some of her time mentoring future marketing ops leaders and was hiring for an entry level marketer on her team at the time so we centered our conversation around how to ace your first marketing job.

My favorite takeaway was when Naomi said that new marketers should be asking lots of questions. Be that annoying kid in the back seat asking all of the questions.

Episode 27 featured friend of the show and local Ottawa social media maven Erin Blaskie. She recently made the switch from leading marketing at Fellow to go back to freelancing as a fractional CMO.

My favorite takeaway was when we asked her how marketers should choose between the freelance route and working in house. She thinks everyone should try both. Throw out everyone else’s definition of success and make your own by trying different things. Big company, startup, agency, freelance, give them all a shot.

In episode 37, we had another manager who was hiring on her team. Shannon McCluskey leads marketing ops at Clio and my favorite takeaway was when she described the role of marketing ops.

We are not order takers, we’re active consultants designing our own destiny. Sometimes we need to evaluate solutions our partners haven’t thought of. We don’t always say yes to every request we’re given.

Episode 39 featured co founder and CEO of Kank Peirce Ujainwalla. A well known face in the martech scene, we asked him to weigh in on the html vs text debate for emails.

He said it’s important to do a mix of both. Text emails have that personal feel, but HTML is still super important for all your visual users and telling your brand story.

Episode 41 featured another local Ottawa and social media expert and now head of marketing at Fellow – Manuela Barcenas.

She’s also a productivity nut and my favorite takeaway was when she said that her biggest productivity superpower is knowing what to work on when you open your laptop in the morning. Time blocking and planning your week ahead of time by scheduling tasks and deep focus blocks.

In episode 44, friend of the show Roxanne Pepin from Rewi...

Hey folks, today we’re joined by Ramli John, one of my favorite marketers and someone I’ve admired and followed on Twitter for many years.

Ramli got his start in marketing at PepsiCo as a Marketing Systems Analyst where he stayed for 4 years. After a co-founding stint Ramli moved to Toronto where started his freelancing career as a SaaS growth consultant. Along the way he also worked at a few different companies including SkyVerge which exited to GoDaddy.

He also spent a few years teaching as a Marketing Instructor at big name spots like RED Academy, Centennial College and CXL Institute.

He started what’s widely known as one of the top marketing podcasts on the planet, Growth Marketing Today and he’s one of the inspirations of our podcast here.

He went on to join Product-Led - The leading community for PLG Pros founded by Wes Bush the famous author of Product-Led Growth. During his time there Ramli wrote his own book with Wes. It hit shelves last year: Product-Led Onboarding. I’ve read it twice and it’s been a huge career growth lever for me.

Now he’s landed in what seems to be the perfect role, Director of Content at one of the top no-code onboarding tools in Appcues.

Damn what a resume, what a journey, Ramli it’s an honor to have you.

Questions and topics

Ramli there’s a bunch of jumping off points here, I want to get into the podcast, the book and also the new gig but I’d love to start with an early career question.

Early career at Pepsi and startup
You did a 180 when you went from a massive 100k + enterprise at Pepsi to then co-founding a startup. How wild was the transition and what advice would you have for listeners in big companies thinking of starting something one day?

Podcast growth
You did Growth Marketing today for 4 years, I remember you posting once about how long it took you before you finally started to gain big traction. What advice do you have for people creating content with a small audience, sometimes feeling like they are speaking into the void.

Teacher question
Ramli, you spent a few years teaching, first at RED academy, a tech and design school, then at CXL Institute in their Demand Gen mini degree and also at Centennial College teaching a 14-week course on web analytics. What gave you the itch to spend 3 years teaching and maybe talk about the process of designing a course from scratch and all the work involved there.

On writing your first book
Talk to us about writing your first book and the difference between the process of writing a course vs a book. Obviously Wes was probably a big inspiration but was this something you’ve always wanted to do and will there be more books in the future?

PQL vs. PAI
Listeners have probably heard of PQLs by now, Product Qualified Leads or criterias that tell you someone has experienced your product or gotten some mileage in it. In your book, Product-Led Onboarding, you talk a lot about PAI, Product Adoption Indicators. Can you unpack the difference between both of those for listeners?

Key onboarding milestones
Many people will dumb down onboarding to just getting users to the ‘aha moment’ like it’s something that magically unlocks onboarding challenges. You actually break down the nuance here and coin 3 different moments of value: Perception, Experience and Adoption. Can you walk us through a practical example of this?

Conversational bumpers
In your book, one of my favorite analogies is your bowling analogy and how you compare onboarding emails and SMS messages as conversational bumpers to help users get their first strike. Unpack this for our listeners.

Appcues, 6 months in
You’re about half a year into Appcues leading the content team, teaching SaaS teams about onboarding and product adoption. When I saw you announce that I was like damn, that’s the ultimate fit, Ramli gets to go back to SaaS and he gets to keep pumping out content about onboarding. I’d love to hear how the journey has been so far but maybe start by telling us how this opportunity came about.

Happiness question
Ramli, you’ve got a ton of stuff going on, you’re a podcaster, an author, a frequent speaker, a soon to be dad and you’re leading a content team at one of the coolest SaaS in the world. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?

---

Ramli’s links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ramlijohn 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramlijohn/

LinkedIn posts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramlijohn/recent-activity/shares/ 

Product-Led Onboarding book: https://productled.com/book/onboarding/ 

Appcues: https://www.appcues.com/ 

Growth Marketing Today: https://growthtoday.fm/ 

✌️

--
Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone, today we’re diving into a fascinating conversation with Nick deWilde who’s leading an exciting web3 project.

• Nick’s an MBA graduate of Stanford University and a self described generalist who’s spent the majority of his career working with early stage startups 
• He was the Managing Partner at Tradecraft, an education program that helped trained people for roles at fast growing startups
• This led him to lead product marketing at Guild, a company helping frontline workers earn debt-free degrees and credentials
• Shortly after having a baby, Nick then made the wild decision to leave his full time job and strap on a jetpack (fueled by early crypto investments) and go independent 
• He worked part time at a venture firm incubating early business ideas alongside consulting for a few startups
• He writes an awesome career strategy newsletter called Junglegym and launched a talent collective
• He also co-founded Invisible College, a school owned by the students that helps people learn, build and invest in web3.

Nick, thanks so much for your time, really pumped to chat.

Questions and topics

There’s so many things I’d love to unpack today. I've become a huge fan of your newsletter and your work around career strategies, but I had to prioritize some of the topics today given the time we have together. I want to get into some web3 stuff as well but maybe we can start off by taking us back to 2021 when you were on paternity leave.

Paternity leave makes you do wild things

Nick you wrote about stepping off a rocketship and strapping on a jetpack into web3. You did this 3 months after having a baby. Talk to us about this decision and what impact having your first child had on making a big career change.

Nick’s Notes:

• Having a baby does funny things to your head. It limits the number of hours you can focus on work and reminds you that your time on earth is finite.
• The net result was both a decrease and increase in my career ambition. I no longer wanted to do things to impress a boss to move up at a company, but at the same time, I wanted to take a swing at something exciting. That led me to independence and stating Invisible College

Zone of genius

One of your guiding principles when you took the leap and went independent was to work in your zone of genius. For you that meant, creative ideation, crafting + executing a strategy and collaborating with people you admire.

Walk us through this concept and how others might determine what their zone of genius might be?

Nick’s Notes:

• Zone of Genius is a concept I got from a book called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership.
• Living in your zone of genius means that instead of choosing to spend your time living in your zone of incompetence, or compentence or even excellence, you are spending your hours working on things that you are truly great at and love doing.
• To find your zone of genius think about where you feel flow state, think about the skills you get compliments on, think about the hours of the day where you create the most value for others. 

When it’s time to leave your job

In episode 48 last season we talked about when to quit your job. Being successful and happy in martech requires having a true north for your career. Sometimes, that means recognizing that your current workplace isn’t helping you advance your career.

You built a chart that can tell someone when it’s time to leave their job. I’d love it if you could break that down for our listeners.

Nick’s Notes:

• So imagine plotting all your skills on a 2x2 chart. On the top are all the things you like doing, on the bottom are all the things you don’t like doing. On the right is all the stuff you’re bad at. On the left is all the stuff you’re good at.
• Basically you want most of your work activities to be in the top left box – stuff you’re good at and like doing. These are things that are valuable for you and your employer. This should be at least 60% of your job. 
• In the bottom right box is all the things you’re bad at and don’t like. This should be 0% of your job because neither you or your employer are benefitting. 
• You’ll probably have some things that you’re good at but don’t like – these are skills you’re no longer enjoying learning. It’s basically taking one for the team.
• To make up for that, you should also get the opportunity to try out stuff that you aren’t good at but like doing.
• I think a good rule of thumb is 60% stuff you’re good at and like, 20% stuff you’re bad at and like and 20% stuff you’re good at and don’t like.
• If that gets drastically out of ballance you’re very likely to want to leave your job.

The Great Online Game

“We now live in a world in which, by typing things on your keyboard, or saying things into a microphone, you can marshall resources, support, and opportunities.” You reference this article written by Packy McCormick (the author of Not boring newsletter) many times in your work. Many of the folks I follow in web3 reference it as well. Talk to us about how this article lit a fire in you.

Nick’s Notes:

• The Great Online Game, as Packy describes it, offers something of an alternative to traditional employment. Rather than relying on a single employer for money, relationships, and professional development opportunities, ambitious knowledge workers can get their needs filled by working for the internet. Unlike most jobs where your trajectory is constrained by the operating system of a single employer, working for the internet offers the promise of uncapped upside. 
• By publishing this newsletter I had started been playing the online game. This newsletter has served as a magnet for new friends, speaking gigs, and even investment opportunities. For the next phase of my career, I decided that I wanted to get serious about playing.

Every marketer should get the opp to launch a web3 project

Last year you tweeted that your hope was for every web2 marketer to get the opportunity to launch a web3 project. Talk a bit more about that, why is launching a web3 project vs web2 such a rush?

https://twitter.com/nick_dewilde/status/1473064169557553152?s=20 

For marketers who might not have the current bandwidth to launch something of their own right now, what’s a smaller commitment – first step that they could take?

Today on the show we have a veteran of the SaaS marketing industry, we’re joined by Kamil Rextin.

After moving from Islamabad, he worked in Karachi for 2 years at P&G and completed an MBA at Waterloo University. He got his start wearing many different hats like Growth, Demand Gen and Ops at early/mid stage SaaS companies in Montreal and Toronto including Breather, Pressly, Uberflip and CrowdRiff.

In 2018, he took the entrepreneurial plunge and went out on his own and started an agency called 42Agency. 4 years later, Kamil’s agency counts more than 5+ full time team members providing demand gen, marketing ops and ABM services. He’s worked with top brands like ProfitWell, Hubdoc, Sproutsocial, Knak and many more scaling B2B saaS companies.

Kamil’s a father, a founder, a podcaster, a community moderator, the author of the 42/ newsletter, a neurodivergent advocate… but most of his time is shamelessly spent on memes and hot takes on Twitter. 

Kamil – we’re pumped to chat with you today, thanks for taking the time.

Questions and topics

Kamil, I’ve dived into your twitter feed over the past year and there’s a ton of hot takes that we can dive into that I’d love longer than 280 character take on. Recently you did an AMA on the B2B marketing community on Twitter, I pegged you with a bunch of questions and wanted to let you expand on some of those – maybe we can start there.

Running an agency vs in-house

For guests that have gone the in-house and agency route, I love asking the pros and cons of both of them. You’re even more fascinating because not only did you do agency… you founded an agency from scratch and have been running it for more than 4 years now. What’s the biggest upside/downside of running an agency vs being an in-house marketer?

 What are some of your early learnings from starting your own agency?

Future-proofed marketing skills

Whether they end up in-house or at an agency, if you were mentoring a fresh marketing grad, you said that you would recommend them to specialize in the technical side of marketing. Why do you think the quantitative side of marketing is where a lot of opportunity is?

Technical marketing

Let’s dive into that a bit more, I think people generously add technical marketing to their skillsets. What does it mean to you? Is it anything that has to do with reporting and integrations or using martech or is it more technical than that? Like how to manipulate data and build basic models or building a Data Warehouse?

Analytics and Tracking in 2022

From a quantitative marketing standpoint, the tracking analytics world is weird in 2022. The industry is moving away from session based tracking and with Apple and others making a big business out of privacy and with click based tracking only getting harder with cross browser tracking, what should marketers be relying on in 2022 and beyond? Is it incremental testing? Is it statistical models or ML?

Martech buyer’s guide – Wirecutter for SaaS

I actually discovered you 4 years ago when I stumbled upon some of your early martech buyer’s guide work. You were building the wirecutter for SaaS, I think the first one you did was on CMS, can’t remember how favoroubly you talked about WP (lol) but what happened to this project, are you going to pick it back up one day?

https://twitter.com/kamilrextin/status/1338536972608999425 

Dark social

Some influencers have denigrated tracking and attribution to the point where many recommend just ignoring it and trusting your gut. One of the main culprits of this is the rise of dark social. WTF is dark social, is it just a buzzword for offline referrals like in group chats or in Slack threads and forums, and do you buy into all of this hype? How much do you hate this term?

SaaS companies should be a media company narrative

Sticking to some of your hot twitter takes here, there’s a few more I’m excited to dive in with you. One of them is this idea that many influencers proliferate that SaaS companies should be a media company narrative. Why do you think this is bullshit?

https://twitter.com/kamilrextin/status/1362544724813430786 

Personal brands

Another of my favorite twitter takes is your disdain for personal branding. A quick look at LinkedIn and Twitter reveals that building a personal brand has been dry humped to death. Every influencer is only an expert at self promotion. There’s a total lack of receipts and actual experience. It’s all about 24/7 self aggrandizement. Twitter screenshots on LinkedIn and nothing but dolphin claps and clicks. How do you really feel about building a personal brand?

--

• Twitter

Our guest today is Emma Paajanen (Payanen). She’s currently based in Boston but was born and raised in a small town in Finland.

She got her start in marketing at a Helsinki-based agency as a Comms specialist before moving to big tech at a cyber security company called F-Secure and also spending a year in internal comms at Nokia. Emma also had a freelancing stint while she was on parental leave from F-Secure where she later went on to lead Marketing Operations. Today she’s inventing new and powerful ways to engage with customers as VP of Marketing at Aiven, an open source data startup turned Unicorn, headquartered in Helsinki with hubs all over the world like Berlin, Boston, Paris, Toronto, some employees even work in a mountainside van.

Emma thanks for your time, we’re excited to chat with you today!

Topics and questions

Boomerang-ing

You worked at Ellun Kanat in 2010 then went to F-Secure for 2.5 years but you decided to go back to Ellun Kanat in 2014. After a tour of duty at Nokia, you also decided to go back to F-Secure in 2016.

You and Jon have this in common – Talk to us about your experience being a boomerang, working at a company, leaving and gaining experience elsewhere, and going back to that company. You did that twice.

Your time at F-Secure Corp

You spent over 3 years at F-Secure, working in 4 different roles, from Senior Marketing Manager of cyber security consulting to B2B Digital and content to then becoming Marketing Director and finally Marketing Operations Director.

Looking back, what were some of the things you think that helped you move up from manager to Director? Walk us through your role as Director of MOPs at an almost 2k employee software company?

Marketing exec role

So now you’re VP of marketing at Aiven. You’re on the exec team. For the listeners who think they want to be an exec one day, talk to us about the difference of the day to day at Aiven vs earlier roles at F-Secure?

Growing from series B

You joined Aiven in April 2020, a few months after their series B round. How big was the marketing team when you joined and how big is the team today?

Startup turned $2 billion company

With their latest round of funding, Aiven is valued at 2+ billion. What do you think makes up the DNA of a great marketing leader at a Billion dollar company vs an up-and-coming startup.

Marketing a technical product to a technical audience

Aiven offers technologies as managed services, that offering includes services and sometimes technical support is an add-on. Talk to us about marketing a technical product and service to a technical audience. 

Open source

As I understand it, Aiven helps companies leverage open source data technologies on a public cloud platform. Being at WP, Open-source is close to my heart. Talk to us about the transformative period that the open-source community is currently experiencing. (Many IT vendors that originated as open-source developers are starting to place restrictions on their own software licenses—decisions that might be shortsighted and driven by profits.)

Content marketing is simply marketing
A few years ago, you said that in 10 yrs, #contentmarketing will just be #marketing. Walk us through what you mean by that and do you think that content marketing is at the core of a marketing strategy?

Going beyond the brand
Emma, you’ve said that you’re passionate about going beyond the brand. What is brand marketing to you and what does it mean to go beyond branding? The importance of marketing experience and values over just the brand name.

Happiness question
You’re a working mom, you’re an executive at a Billon+ valued company leading a big team with big goals. One question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?
--

Emma Paajanen, VP of Marketing at Aiven

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmapaajanen/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmapaaj 

✌️

--
Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created by SLB

What’s up everyone – today on the show we’re joined by exceptional martech mastermind: Dave Rigotti. 

He’s the co-founder & CEO of Inflection.io, a marketing technology startup focused on helping companies with product-led growth.

Before building his own company, Dave has had a fascinating career in marketing. 

• He got his start at Microsoft working on the Bing marketing team just as the search engine was launched. 
• He quickly discovered his love for growth and B2B marketing.
• Hen then spent half a decade at Bizible, a marketing attribution platform where he worked his way up to VP of Marketing – and was part of the successful exit to Marketo
• He spent a year at Marketo running ABM and demand gen before they were famously acquired by Adobe
• At Adobe, Dave was Director of Account Based Marketing focused on Marketo and Magento products
• Last year, while working on Inflection, he also launched the ProductLed.Marketing community which has more than 700 members and is continuing to grow.

Dave, we’re excited to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time. 

Questions we asked Dave:

What is Product-Led Marketing or Product-Led Growth?

• What’s the substance of PLG? 
• What’s the difference between PLG and customer led growth?

How is PLG different from all the buzzwords that hit marketing over the years?

• People in tech love to find new ways of avoiding calling marketing marketing. Growth hacking, conversational marketing, community led growth and now product led growth… What do you say to all the folks who claim this is just another buzzword that will fade?

How is PLG different from freemium and why does this instigate such brutal Twitter wars?

• Traditional: generate leads and serve sales.
• PLG: using your product as part of your GTM. More customer centric.
• Jon isn’t active on social but I’ve witnessed my fair share of PLG debates on twitter.
  • What do you say to folks who claim PLG has been around for decades (appcues, mailchimp) and that it’s simply a repackaging of freemium and free trial models… that its the old marketing playbook for the SMB segment?  

Where does a PLG model make sense? Can this be done with enterprise software that requires integration and onboarding support?

• How do you shift to a PLG strategy when you’re selling a B2B to enterprise and you require 1-2 weeks of integration and setup before end users can get a glimpse of the product in action.
• Do you think some B2B buyers prefer the sales led model? Sometimes I don’t always have 14-30 days to pork around in a product and figure out on my own if this will meet my company needs… sometimes I need someone to show me around and tell me how itll solve my problems

We can skip the MQL vs PQL debate, but how do you define a PQL when your product is constantly changing?

Product usage data is the holy grail of data for PLG marketers. 

• How do you see teams forming their marketing strategy around product usage, activation, and engagement?

How is PLG a whole new game?
You wrote an awesome piece for OpenView Partners that PLG is a whole new game for marketers. Can you walk us through what this new game looks like? 

What do you say when you hear the phrase PLG is just a product that sells itself? 

• What are marketers in PLG companies doing differently to accelerate growth and revenue? 

How will PLG influence marketing technology over the next 10 years? What are your big predictions?

Shifting gears, Dave, you've worked at some of the most recognizable marketing technology companies on the planet. Not only have you held senior roles in those companies, but you’ve been on the inside of two major acquisitions. Give us a sense of your career story and how you ended up as a co-founder and CEO in this space?

What differences do you see working at enterprises versus running a startup? What lessons do you apply to your own startup, and what things do you try to do differently?

Dave, you’re a super busy guy. You’re a dad, a husband, a startup founder, and community leader – one question we ask all our guests is how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you’re working on while staying happy?

--

Dave Rigotti

Twitter - LinkedIn

Product-led marketing community

Inflection.io

✌️

--
Intro music by Wowa via Unminus
Cover art created by SLB