“Marketers like to differentiate, people like to compare”

While Cassidy is away, Carl takes the wheel, joined by Kaylee Edmondson - VP of Revenue R&D at Refine Labs! They go head to head about paid versus organic media - they cover myths, uncover truths, and dig into the ways to leverage each strategy to build the best brand presence. Then they switch gears to customer research, providing 6 insightful questions to ask customers while interviewing.

“Showing someone that you’re better does not mean that you win.”

Cassidy and Carl were joined by Jen Allen-Knuth, Community Growth @ Lavender, to chat about the need to shift mindset as a creator and community leader. She dives into the way Lavender uses LinkedIn as an informal listening mechanism to get into the heads of buyers on a larger scale and steps that revenue professionals can take to start evolving beyond their “why us” messaging to  “why change”. 

Then, she covers the way she works to shift perception about cold emails. She focuses on the larger story around earning customer attention, and encouraging people to embrace the emotional response to what they don’t enjoy. This shift allows for honest and productive conversation as a baseline to find the beliefs and assumptions behind the emotions.

Stay tuned through the end for a challenge and a promise from Carl.

In our premiere video episode, Courtney Vermette, Associate Creative Director at Refine Labs, walks Cassidy and Carl through a teardown of toast’s website, email, and paid social strategies. 

On the website, Courtney assesses the use of video, copy (including the effectiveness, necessity, and consistency of puns), and calls to action across several different pages. Then, she moves to email in order to point out some similar strengths and weaknesses in line with and contrast to the website. Finally, she pulled up three of toast’s paid social ads and the team chatted through different ways to use design elements that could boost engagement and conversion rates.

This walkthrough is an incredible opportunity to ask yourself the same questions and analyze your own materials for the same qualities.

In this episode of Stacking Growth, Carl and Cassidy reflect on how business has been changing, and how to stay on top of the rapidly shifting landscape. 

They talk about the shift in buyer behavior that has brought about the need to shift marketing from “why us” to “why change?”, and how to align your team to be focused on the same (and most effective) strategies. They look at the differences between sales teams and marketing teams, their strengths and weaknesses in response to change, and how executive teams can make the difference in pushing everyone forward.

Cassidy puts Carl on the spot in asking him about business acumen and the ways people can accelerate the improvement of their own, and Carl returns the favor by committing them both to delivering a ‘why change’ narrative framework.

In this episode of Stacking Growth, Carl spills his hot takes to Cassidy on Product-Led Growth and Account Based Marketing.

They expand on the idea that PLG, often billed as the future of enterprise software, is typically just a repackaged version of old school lead generation, diving into some common misconceptions surrounding Go-To-Market strategies of unicorn products that can make these arguments irrelevant. 

Then, they dig into the confusion around ABM and how in most instances it’s just another way for marketing to execute lead gen. They also cover the idea that, instead of ABM being viewed as just good marketing fundamentals, it’s been separated from General Marketing strategies, the foundational confusion in treating it as a separate concept, and how the impact of technology has started to lead strategy instead of strategy leading technology.

Today Cassidy and Carl are joined by Devin Reed, Head of Content at Clari to chat about transformational leadership in Content Strategy and beyond. Devin spills his secrets on how to make a splash in a new role at a successful organization by leveraging strategic priorities.

He also digs into getting buy-in on an employee LinkedIn posting strategy and how to affect change internally. He walks Cassidy and Carl through the personal monetization, consulting, and gated content strategies he has adopted through his career.

Today’s episode was recorded live, featuring Dan Case, Creative Director at Refine Labs. Dan leads Cassidy and Carl through a Creative Teardown of Dashlane, looking at their design choices across branding, website, and paid social. 

He assesses their prioritization of programs and the differentiation between them that can cause confusion and conflict in message. With questions from Carl, Cassidy, and the audience, Dan explores reasons behind this rift between programs and how companies can achieve clarity.

They also discuss in depth the idea of rebranding: how and why might a company come to the conclusion of needing a rebrand, and how do you go about doing it in the most effective way. 

This walk through is an incredible opportunity to ask yourself the same questions and analyze your own materials for the same qualities. 

Today Cassidy and Carl are joined by Dan Sanchez, Director of Inbound Marketing at Element451 to chat about audience growth, among other podcast and personal brand insight and advice!

He starts by tracing his journey through shifting industry, why he moved into Higher Education, and how to align experience with passion when making a move. He then dives into the importance of vertical systems in SaaS, the impact of vocabulary change from “Marketing” to “Audience Growth”, the biggest problem companies face when trying to grow their reach, and more!

This week’s episode features a keynote speech by Sidney Waterfall, Senior Vice President of Growth at Refine Labs. She presented at the Full Funnel Summit on How to Measure Demand for the Entire Funnel. 

She explains why it’s time for measurement to change, gives an overview of key terms including Dark Social, Pipe Framework, and Hybrid Attribution before presenting actionable steps for setting up your own Framework. Sidney approaches the topic from a philosophical and data-backed perspective, digging into the root cause of measurement issues and how to improve results in a practical and meaningful way.

Cassidy and Carl sat down with Kate Hammitt, CMO of Splash, to chat all things Event Marketing. She covers how the field has grown and evolved over the past couple of years, tracing the history of expectations from in-person trade shows and flagship events into virtual and hybrid events, and the impact they have on marketing strategy. She also discusses how companies like Splash are streamlining the process for companies, what the focus of goals and data should realistically be, and more!