The Revenue-Driven CMO

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute Marketing, where we interview the world's top growth marketing leaders and distill their knowledge into three-minute blocks of genius for your listening pleasure.

Today's guest is Eric Carlson, Co-Founder and CEO of SweatPants Agency, a growth marketing firm that does paid media, CRO, email, and copywriting for subscription and e-commerce businesses. Eric is a good friend of mine and an expert marketer.

Whether it's Facebook Ads, TikTok, YouTube, or any other platform, Eric always seems to have the answers. So my question for him is, "What are the 5 traits of a highly skilled and unstoppable marketer?".

Show notes:

1. Think of marketing and sales in terms of conventional and unconventional thinking. Conventional thinking lowers your risk and involves looking at what other players in the industry are doing (how their websites are set up, how their ads look, etc.). Unconventional thinking is what actually gives you an alpha.

2. In marketing, there are a lot of things that are unconventional but actually work, such as adding steps and micro-commitments.

3. There are a lot of people who conventionally think sales is about manipulating people or getting the deal done, but the truth is that it's about finding the right fit and being authentic. If you're authentic in sales, you're going to close more.

4. You have to make a decision regarding conventional or unconventional thinking based on where you are in terms of risk tolerance.

5. Your best sales emails could be the ones that get the highest unsubscribe rate. The 2008 Obama campaign had a goal of a certain unsubscribe rate.

6. The goal of double opt-ins is to increase email engagement and manage your reputation, but there are other ways to increase engagement upfront and get rid of the people who aren't engaging. Double opt-ins could mean throwing away leads because users have to go to their inbox and verify that they want the email.

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute Marketing, where we interview the world's top growth marketing leaders and turn their insights into bite-sized TED Talks for your listening pleasure.

Today's guest is Jeff Biesman, CMO of National Debt Relief. National Debt Relief is the number one provider of debt relief services in the country, as well as the most trusted. Jeff has an interesting background. He started on the brand side of things with stops at Sony, Disney, and Bank of America before transitioning to performance and demand generation roles.

Jeff's unique background in both brand and performance makes him the perfect person to ask, "How do you align your brand and performance marketing teams?".

Show notes:

1. Performance marketing is what keeps the lights on, puts food on the table for everybody, and grows the business.

2. When you're doing a brand strategy, it has to be concrete and connect the shared interests between a customer and your business in a way that filters everything down.

3. When you're filtering things through a good brand strategy, you're clear on how you're going to say things, what you're going to say, and who you're going to say it to.

4. That's what every performance marketer wants to be able to do instead of having conversations about things like whether the tone is too aggressive, or having performance marketing be stripped down and declawed.

5. At National Debt Relief, every conversation is centered around "how can we help each other?" instead of "you can't say that" or "that doesn't feel right". "Feel" is too subjective when you're developing a brand.

6. What are the pillars of your brand that you want to speak about? How can you articulate what your business is about in a way that's easy for consumers to understand? That's what a great brand should do.

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute Marketing, the world's only podcast that interviews today's top growth marketing leaders and distills their insights into three-minute blocks of brilliance for your listening pleasure.

Today's guest is Tom Kuhr, CMO of Greenfly, a digital media monetization platform for sports teams, leagues, and associations. Tom has had a wonderful career helping multiple software brands grow over the years.

Tom is a big proponent of the idea that "the sale never ends", particularly in SaaS marketing. So my question for him was, "As marketers, what can we do to not only retain our current customers but also turn them into advocates for our brand?".

Show notes:

1. The sale never ends at a SaaS company. The initial sale is just the start. It's the introduction to the customer and it gets you into their environment, but you're really there to continue growing.

2. The first sale is always going to be much less than that customer is worth to the company in the end.

3. Create a sales overlay department within your customer success team, with their only job being to create sales plans for customers and arrange meetings to show the customer the value you're providing.

4. You can double or triple your revenue in a year by having a quarterly business review with your customer and showing them how impactful your software is.

5. The more targeted you are to a persona and their immediate buying group, the faster the sale goes. The more you can educate the team of 5-10 people who will make the buying decision, the more valuable the sale ultimately is.

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute Marketing, where we interview the world's top growth marketing leaders and turn their insights into 3-Minute TED Talks for your listening pleasure. Today's guest is David Wachs, CEO and Founder of a unique outfit called Handwrytten, a company that allows users to write and send automated, handwritten notes. David has been running Handwrytten for eight years, but prior to that he was the founder of a text messaging company that sent over one million texts a day for brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Sam's Club, and OfficeMax.

I've wanted to get in the habit of sending handwritten notes for awhile now. So my question for David was, "How can marketers use handwritten notes to drive more revenue?".

Show notes:

1. While building up his text messaging company, David realized he was part of the problem. Everyone started getting thousands of text messages a month. The average person gets 100 emails a day and spends 24% of their time managing their email inbox.

2. Emails and text messages don't stand out. When you receive a handwritten note not only is it opened and read, it's kept and savored.

3. By integrating with HubSpot, Zapier, Salesforce, and more, companies can send out handwritten notes in the same automated fashion they send emails and text messages.

4. Robots write your notes in a Pilot G2 ballpoint pen at scale.

5. If a customer has a bad experience, companies can utilize win-back campaigns to apologize. One company realized this strategy worked so well that they messed up intentionally to be able to follow-up up with an apology letter.

6. Coupons have a 15-18% redemption rate when you mail a handwritten note with them compared to 3-4% otherwise.

7. Automotive dealerships see a 27% increase in customers coming through their doors when they advertise with handwritten notes as opposed to a printed letter.

8. Use discount code PODCAST on Handywrytten.com for $5 in credit, enough to send one handwritten note to someone.

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute Marketing, where we interview some of the world's foremost growth and performance marketing leaders and distill their best knowledge into binge-worthy three-minute blocks of brilliance.

Today's guest is Alex Montas, SVP of Marketing and Growth at Tubebuddy, an emerging tool that helps YouTube creators optimize their channels. Alex is an accomplished marketer with previous stops at companies like Verizon and Bloomberg. Like a lot of our guests, Alex is a marketing unicorn who has an agency of his own called The Remarkable Agency.

Alex has a lot of experience running Facebook Ads. So my question for him was, "How do you combat the decline of Facebook Ads with creative testing?".

Show notes:

1. Targeting high-intent audiences used to be a great way to drive results on Facebook Ads, to the tune of a 50% CPA reduction just by changing the targeting!

2. But iOS 14 changed all that. Due to this update, audience targeting-based tactics failed to perform like before.

3. Accelerating creative testing was essential in combating these changes. Because the creative itself was becoming a full time job, Alex hired a creative agency to help ramp up volume.

4. Next, he grouped audiences together & focused on testing creative themes against this larger audience.

5. The key is to test everything: your creative videos, the messaging/positioning within the same video, and the messaging outside of the ad.

6. Long story short, ramping up creative testing worked. It lead to 3x the amount of conversions that were being generated after the iOS 14 update hit.

7. Facebook is all about creative now. Facebook and Google want you to give them latitude to show your ads whenever they want and they like big audiences.

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute-Marketing, the only marketing podcast that brings you useful, binge-able 3-minute insights from the world's top growth marketing leaders. Today's guest is Dawn Verbrigghe, CEO and Founder of Jottful, a software company that co-builds and manages professional, affordable, hassle-free websites for small and medium-sized businesses. Dawn is a seasoned SaaS marketing leader and entrepreneur who previously worked for SaaS brands such as Nutshell CRM, Keywee, Intent Media, and Merchantry.

Dawn is an expert when it comes to product-market fit. So my question for her is, "How do you know when you have a product-market fit?".

Show notes:

1. Product-market fit is one of the most misunderstood definitions in marketing. You know you have a product-market fit when you survey your customers and 40% of them say they'd be very disappointed if they could no longer use your product.

2. It's the moment between customer validation and customer creation, but neither of those requires distribution.

3. Venture capitalists will assume that you haven't achieved product-market fit unless you have also found a distribution channel and people are banging down your door asking for your product.

4. To find out if you've achieved product-market fit, you can look at quantitative things like your NPS score, whether or not your customers are repurchasing from you, or your retention rate if you have a SaaS product.

5. You can also look at qualitative measures, which are important if you aren't yet in a place where you can get all the quantitative data you need. Are your customers actively telling other people about you? Do they do things like send you gifts and Christmas cards? Do they volunteer to do video testimonials for you? Are they writing five-star reviews on Google?

6. Some people argue that you need the 15% word of mouth growth without spending anything on marketing to have product-market fit, but that works better for network businesses or consumer businesses. B2B businesses need to utilize tools like advertising and content marketing.

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute-Marketing, where we interview the world's top growth-marketing leaders and turn their insights into short, binge-worthy TED talks for your listening pleasure.

Today's guest is Ryan George, CMO at Docupace Technologies, a SaaS catering to wealth management firms. Ryan is a very interesting person who has been in the financial space for a long time, with previous stops at GuideStone Financial, 1st Global, and U.S. Global Investors.

Ryan talks about reporting in a way that executives can really understand and rally behind. So my question for him was, "Why do marketers need to report results in a non-marketing language?".

Show notes:

1. It's important for marketers to understand how other people see their business. Accounts see marketers as a cost expense, so you have to demonstrate your value.

2. Show when a lead comes in and the activity it takes to engage the lead. Show all the work that's being done to queue them up and get them in front of the right kinds of people.

3. A slide with a bunch of marketing data like CPC, keywords, and where traffic is coming from is going to get lost. They want to know what you're doing to push their brand forward and what you're doing to get in front of the right people.

4. Elevate the brand into the conversations that people are naturally going towards. Engage with influencers.

5. How many shots on goal do you have? How many times did you get engagement from somebody that you know can buy?

6. How are you doing month to month? If you're bringing in 25 leads are they the right leads that are going down the funnel?

7. Skip the fancy metrics and report on leads, sales, and pipeline opportunities. Tell people "here's what happened and here's why it matters".

Welcome to another episode of 3-Minute-Marketing, the world's #1 podcast for binge-worthy, easy to digest tips and insights from the world's top growth marketing leaders.

Today's guest is Doug Zarkin, Vice President and CMO at Pearle Vision, a franchise with over 550 locations. Doug has had a really interesting and storied career, including helping to build out Victoria's Secret in the early days of the company before they were a huge juggernaut.

Doug has had a string of victories that weren't just quick pops but sustained growth. So my question for him was, "How do you build a brand in a sustainable and ongoing way?".

Show notes:

1. To be a marketer, you have to have a degree of arrogance. Marketing at its core is about tapping into a consumer, understanding what they want and need, and putting out messaging that motivates them to take the action that you want when you want. It's a bold challenge.

2. The humility comes from recognizing that in order to lead you must first listen, especially in a product or service that you can't relate to.

3. Think human. Marketing is about identifying a target, but that target isn't a bunch of data points. It's about understanding the people behind the target.

4. Be as consistently consistent as possible. It's challenging to radically change the direction of a brand in one or two years, especially in the current marketplace where there are so many choices and options.

5. Best laid plans take time. Identify the musts and the needs, then the coulds and the shoulds, then the wants.

6. Fear of missing out is not a marketing strategy. There are a lot of things you could do and even more things that you want to do, but if you're not doing a fantastic job with the things you must do and need to do in order to move your brand forward, then you're not going to get credit from the consumer.

7. Listen in order to lead, recognize that consumers make emotional decisions before rational choices, and maintain a degree of humanity in everything that you do.