Interview Summary
Jolie discusses how B2B marketing connects with mental health in professional environments, along with the changing role of social media across generations. She shares her career experiences, and innovative marketing strategies, and highlights the power of curiosity for growth in both personal and professional settings.
Key Points:
- Jolie's Career Journey: From growth director at Caspian Studios to founding Mental, a community focused on mental health support.
- Caspian Studios' Expertise: Offering full-service podcast production for B2B brands.
- Super Bowl Ads and Social Media: Sharing thoughts on memorable commercials and social media’s evolving impact.
- Intent Data in Marketing: Using predictive analytics in marketing strategies while addressing privacy concerns.
- Community-Driven Insights: How B2B marketing is shifting towards peer research and collective content creation.
- Data-Driven Marketing Proposals: Securing buy-in and budgets using compelling data.
- Generational Engagement: Exploring how different generations interact with marketing and social media.
- Curiosity as a Growth Driver: How curiosity fuels success in marketing and beyond.
Join Jolie Shapiro from Caspian Studios as she dives into the value of mental health support in professional settings. She shares about the Slack community she created, which includes a "mental health chat" where professionals can ask questions and a "tips" section with advice from various sources. Jolie also explores her views on the effectiveness of intent data and its impact on marketing strategies, discussing both first-party and third-party intent data.
Read the full interview:
pharosIQ: Welcome, welcome, welcome to this week's episode of pharosIQ’s podcast, the podcast for B2B marketing professionals that is anything but boring. Each week we dive in, jump, and talk to a B2B marketing leader or professional, um, or expert about a campaign or an idea or a program that they've run that is anything but boring.
The goal here is to inspire each and all of you for new ideas, new creative ways to approach demand gen and B2B marketing in general. Welcome, This week we have Jolie Shapiro. Jolie is the director of growth at Caspian Studios. She's got 10 plus years of experience leading demand gen and growth teams across B2B SaaS.
She's also the founder of Mental, a community focused around mental health for professionals. Um, welcome Jolie. Good to have you.
Jolie: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here.
pharosIQ: So before we dive in, tell me two things. First, tell me about Caspian Studios. What do you guys do there?
Jolie: Sure. So Caspian Studios is a B2B podcast as a service agency.
They tend to work with B2B enterprise brands like Snowflake and Dell and IBM and a few others. They are a full service production agency from soup to nuts. So there's about 35 producers and I'm on a lean mean fighting machine marketing team and revenue. Is
pharosIQ: this the part of the call where you, you, you say we gasp and see those needs to take over this podcast.
Is that I just walk right into that one.
Jolie: No, no, I'm not. I'm not gonna, no, I'm not gonna do a hard sell, but we can do a soft sell after.
pharosIQ: Awesome. I'll come after. Fantastic. Awesome. So also tell me. Tell me a little bit about mental. I saw, I'm just seeing your LinkedIn post recently about launching and relaunching that seems like a really, uh, interesting initiative that you've got a lot of passion behind.
Jolie: Yeah. So I have a lot of personal, just experiences, mental health, and I wanted to create a community for people that need support that are professionals. Cause it's, it's still taboo, the topic. Um, and it's, it's definitely. Becoming a bit more de stigmatized, but wanted to create a group on Slack. So gear to a professional set really just need support.
And we have a couple of different channels we have. Let me take a look. We have announcements, intros, job board. So any jobs that people are interested in, we have mental health chat general, where people ask questions. We have tips where I provide tips from articles and different sorts of things. And then random where I post mental health means.
pharosIQ: Oh, awesome. It's, it's, it's such a great idea and such a great community and something that's very much needed. Um, it's coming, you know, every day, I think, um, In, in the, in the business, uh, we'll call it the business stratosphere, it's becoming more and more commonplace to talk about, um, which is, I think a really, really good thing.
And I think a lot of business, they're doing a lot of great stuff. Um, so where can folks find mental, um, just to kind of, if they're interested in joining or any of that.
Jolie: Yeah, sure. So we have a Facebook page with the link to, excuse me, not Facebook, um, LinkedIn page for people to sign up the, let's see, sorry, I'm gonna, there's a link, please edit this out.
Give me a sec.
Here we go. US number. So there, there's a link, there is a, there's a community page on LinkedIn. And if you go to mental dash linkedin. com slash company slash mental dash community, you'll find that and it will be a sign up button.
pharosIQ: Awesome. There's a link around your LinkedIn profile as well, too, correct?
Jolie: Yep. Yeah, it should be in my profile. Yeah. I actually need to add that. That's a good point. Thank you for the marketing advice.
pharosIQ: We're help. We are here to help. It is very much my goal to bring value to AB to B marketing life each and every day. So Awesome. So we're a few days past the Super Bowl, that's when we're recording this.
It might go out a little bit later, but just for reference, we're recording it a few days post Super Bowl. My favorite conversation to talk B2B marketing with, tell me about the commercials. What commercial did you, did you love and why?
Jolie: So I found most of them to be. a little myth. They, they weren't that great.
But the one that, the one that I loved was the Uber eats one. I mean, it, it did, it did help that there were a lot of celebrities in it, a lot of really recognized faces, but I just, I love the, how they did a humorous approach. Um, they did a very funny kind of spin on like, uh, like, uh, Rachel and Ross, like how she hadn't seen him and how they worked together for 10 years on friends.
But, but she didn't recognize him. Everyone forgot everything. It was just really, I loved it. I thought it was so clever.
pharosIQ: Mine was the, I, I love the Duncan one that, you know, with Ben Affleck and Tom Brady.
Jolie: I
pharosIQ: love Duncan in general, but something about like that Boston vibe, you know, like when they go to the old school Boston vibe, it's just somewhat endearing.
And also like, The social media follow up after it too. I don't know if you're on tic tac, tic tac or Instagram or saw any of it, but the, the follow up quote unquote, like sub little mini ads on social were just hilarious, like just even better than the actual spot that was on, on the TV.
Jolie: Oh, really? Yeah. I actually deleted Facebook and Facebook and Instagram.
I still have LinkedIn and that's kind of like my, I'm already addicted to LinkedIn. I'm like, I can't do Facebook and Instagram too, because I'm just going to never do anything. I'm just going to be constantly doing scrolling.
pharosIQ: I did. I, I TikTok gets me, that's my, like my one vice, you know, like, you know, I, I, I just enjoy it.
It's like the 20 minutes of the evening where I just turned my brain off and just kind of like. Through and kind of do that. That's where I've seen most of it. So awesome. I've seen a few posts, um, on your, on your socials on LinkedIn about intent data. Um, over the company over the past months, years and how to best leverage it with success.
Um, lots of different opinions and thoughts on intent data in the space, what it is, how it is we can, we can chat on that, but for your, your perspective, what have you seen work?
Jolie: Yeah. So I listened to this podcast, Scrappy APM. I believe his name is Mason Crosby and I love his opinion on, so there's two sides of the coin, there's the opinion that you don't need the big tech and you don't need to spend 200, 000 on ABM platforms.
But what I actually just did a, a call with an analyst about it, six cents a demand base. And I think once you're ready to scale, I think ABX platforms are really good and they're not just for account based advertising. I think where they really bring value is the predictive analytics. And the PR and knowing who's in market to buy.
Now, there are a lot of free tools coming out like propensity and other and other tools that I think are going to change the game with at least with SMBs. But there's also, you know, the snowflakes and the six senses of the world that operate as a one go to market team. And I think that they. They definitely have something right because sales and marketing have been bashing heads for years or butting heads is probably a better word but they've been butting heads for years and I think that abm has become not just a or abm and intent has not just become a Uh, like, uh, and what a strategy has become like part of the go to market motion.
pharosIQ: Yeah. And I agree. I think that the, and, and where I I'm, I'm, I'm a bull sides, right. That I think where, where I think most of the big quote unquote platforms struggle from an intent perspective is most of the intent they're giving you is just your website traffic.
Jolie: Yeah, like the first party intent data. I
pharosIQ: think they're bringing a ton of value outside of taking your individual website or CRM traffic and putting it in a nice prettier picture and allowing you to execute on it.
And I think there's a ton of software tech that does that way cheaper. So, you know, my. My, my thing is, I think there has to be a vendor and I'm, you know, obviously MRP plays in the space as well, where really trying to identify buyers who are in market or, or, or in the buying cycle from the many different third party sources around the web, right?
Beyond just your website, because at the end of the day, like. You know, not many, there's not many brands out there that can, that have the, the cash or the means or the expertise to drive a ton of traffic to your site. So if I'm using Sixth Sense and I don't have a ton of website traffic to my site, what value am I truly getting from an intent perspective on that side?
Cause it's so heavily weighted on the traffic that goes and the pickles that they place on your individual websites.
Jolie: Yeah. I think, I think Sixth Sense also has third party data. But like the Bamboras, the six senses to demand basis, it's like, okay, they clicked on a G2 review or they looked at your LinkedIn, but does that really mean they have intent?
And I think the intent gets a little muddled for, for third party. Um, something that actually that Caspian does, they work with casted. So you can, it's first party intent, but you can see what targeted counts are listening to your podcast, which is, which I, which is new. And I find that to be really cool.
Like that's, I mean, that's first party intent, but it's, It's really good data because it's really hard to attribute brand awareness and, and leads and pipeline to podcasts, but it's a way to show account engagement, which I find very interesting.
pharosIQ: Yeah, it's, it's an interesting space. It's continuing to evolve.
You know, there's, I think the next phase is, is hashing out. You know, what data privacy regulations will say about, you know, contact level intent versus account level. It, I've seen a couple of folks pop up saying that they can do contact level intent. I'm, I'm personally not, not a fan, right. Cause I think the contact level stuff will just original will be eventually crushed by PII data and some sort of data.
Lines over time. So,
Jolie: and I think it's a little creepy, to be honest, the contact level data is, is a smidge, the smidge creepy,
pharosIQ: how it's attacked to, you know, like, I don't know if I had that, like, I saw you around my site, like, Whoa, shit, sorry, I got there on accident. Sorry. My apologies. Like
Jolie: I literally clicked by accident on an ad
pharosIQ: or it's, it's really, and that's a really interesting point.
And intent data. So we, in the B2B marketing community, but also sales as well, there's so much talk about tactic, right? Or strategy, should I use intent data? Should I not does intent data work? Does this work? Does this work like when executed? Well, I think anything works. But when executed poorly, I think anything doesn't work right that the best quote unquote intent data ever in the hands of a terrible follow up strategy will be bad.
Jolie: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. I think that there's, there's a lot of best practices and there's a lot of the echo chamber of this is how it's done. But I think a lot of what I've heard. I, the, the way I learned is like podcast reading, just kind of, I'm just a lifelong learner, but it depends, like something that works for one company might not work for another.
And I agree with you. I think the execution is where it's at. If you're saying, Hey, I saw you looked at our website. People are going to get creeped out. They're not going to respond to you. But if you do like a zoom info. Um, contact pool and you reach out to your target accounts that way by and, and use the content driven intent data, like what pages are looking at, like the first party, the anonymization that, that I think makes more sense by using the content that they're interested in versus that one liner that people directly send you to spam.
pharosIQ: It's, and it's, it reminds me of the, remember the beam, like the, You know, the, the creepy girl meme, like with the, the big, that one, I think that's what they called it. Right. We're like the stalker girl meme, which
Jolie: is kind of
pharosIQ: like the immediate follow up to intent data. I saw you on my site. Are you ready to buy now?
It kind of feels like that, you know, so, yeah. Oh, go ahead. Oh,
Jolie: sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no, no. Go ahead. I
pharosIQ: was going to, I was going to transition. So go ahead and finish your thought.
Jolie: Oh no. I was just going to say, so no, it's the same thing with like a webinar, right? Like a webinar or an event or like you scan a badge or whatever.
And they immediately, people are ebook, an ebook download, and you immediately follow up with, Hey, want to book a demo? No, I'm not in that buying stage. I'm not, I literally just read an ebook. I'm not ready to talk to you. I think like, it's just like, for example, at Caspian, we have these lists that are called content generative lists and it's, Just people that we want in our database, but we're not contacting them because they downloaded ebook or sent it for a webinar or they'll, they'll come to us and ready to buy.
And we'll just continue nurturing them.
pharosIQ: I think, and it's a really key point that so there's everybody that the buyer's journey, everybody's consistently talking about the buyer journey, the buyer journey. And I think we have to stop thinking about it as the buyer journey and start thinking about it as the buyer's thought journey.
Right. Like there's like the buyers, the buyer journey itself is like, it's like a mishmash, right? I'm ready to buy. I'm not ready to buy. My CFO told me yes. My boss told me no. I have the budget. I don't have the budget. The economy is good. Like, like the buyer itself is just a mess, right? But the thought journey of, um, from I have a problem to can this software solve it?
Yes, it can. I'd like to buy it. Has been the same since really the beginning of time, right? Yeah. And. Whether you're buying, you know, pre industrial, you know, machinery, right. For an assembly line or now AI software, it's like, it's still, I have a problem. You know, the, the flow is generally the same. I have a problem.
Can I afford to solve the problem? Is there something that solves the problem? What do my peers think solves the problem? And then which vendor should I choose? It's all. So if you can. In your, in your B2B marketing flow, attack the thoughts that the buyer is having and stop trying to attack a funnel. I think you'll win from either, you know, all standpoints of whether it's content, whether it's your point, right?
I have a ton of customers who use third party content syndication just to build out a target ICP, you know, data set for email that they can continue to drop knowledge to, and then wait for them to have that thought, you know, Well, you know, if they're thinking, what are my peers doing? Great. I'm going to send them the message of here's what your peers are doing.
Here's what G2 says. Here's what peer review sites say. Here's what case studies we have all, you know, like connecting the content to the thought, I think is the real win versus trying to catch somebody in the quote unquote buying process.
Jolie: I completely agree. And I think people go in and out of the buying, the buying journey, the buying thought journey, as you mentioned, like they can go from consideration, The decision back to awareness, like it's not, it's not linear anymore.
Actually, something that I've done, um, I was thinking about starting my own podcast for mental interviewing, different, different healthcare professionals, different leaders. And I, I went straight to my community, a couple of communities like Pavilion, Forgex, Club PDF, and asked what the best vendors were.
For pop for podcast production. I went, I just went straight to the Slack. I didn't even, I didn't even do any research. And I feel like that's, that's kind of the way things are going now. You just straight up ask your peers. You don't really even, you do some research. You probably check out the site after, but you go to your peers.
pharosIQ: And it's really, and it comes now, the peers is expanding to, right. I think you sites for a wider range of peers, there's immediate peers, there's community groups. There's so many different ways to define peers, but I think it's the, the most common, you know, spot, you know, I think, but I think research now is the first level of, I have this problem.
Can it even be solved? Exactly. That's
Jolie: a,
pharosIQ: that's a Google search, a chat sheet. Search a white paper, read a podcast, listen, I think, but also maybe the most important part of the journey, right? Everybody like, especially in a down economy, everybody's so focused on the bottom of the funnel and the sales ready lead and the driving pipeline.
But B2B marketing is the long game, right? And if you're not the first person in the door, when they asked that question, can I solve this problem? You're always going to be ice skating uphill, trying to be the vendor that gets selected at the end of it.
Jolie: Exactly. And if you don't have the, if you don't, I call it, and many people have said this, but, you know, content led demand gen, like if you don't, if you don't have the content.
That aligns with the problem and you don't, and you don't have the educational phase, like you said, people are, you're going to ice get uphill.
pharosIQ: So speaking of ice skating uphill, right. Getting buy in for marketing campaigns and projects and all that, right. For B2B teams can be tough right now, right?
Budgets are slimmer, resources are down all that. Like what are your go to tactics as a crafty veteran? Um, to get budget or buy in for like a project that you want to attack either at Caspian or things you've used in the past.
Jolie: Yeah. So what I love about Caspian is the CEO just lets me fly. I'm like, Hey, I have this idea.
He's like, go for it. But it's a, it's more of a, that's not always the case. So at Sixth Sense, um, and other companies that are more mature, I usually use data. Like I'd say, Hey, here's the data behind. What we can achieve. Here's an ROI we can achieve. Here's a projected forecasting of what this will bring to the table.
Here's projected revenue we could probably bring and then go from there. It's all about numbers. It's all, it's the numbers game to be able to prove, to be able to pitch what the campaign can bring.
pharosIQ: Yeah, I feel you on that. And I think for me, and I've always told my teams, like one slide. Why do you want it?
How much, why do you want it? How much is it going to cost? What am I going to get?
Jolie: Yep. Exactly. I, yeah,
pharosIQ: that's any CFO or CEO or any OO is going to, is going to lose you with, right. So like don't bury the lead, hit it hard, right, right out of the gate, what it is, how much is it going to cost and what we're going to get back.
And I think sticking to that form of formulas, you know, can really drive immediate impact when you're trying to get those campaigns because what happens is. I've always seen and I've done before. You're so passionate about a project that you want to cover all of the details of it. The person that you're generally speaking to doesn't either a understand or be really have the time to dive into the details and they just want to know the TLDR.
Right. So the proposal slide should be the TLDR slide, you know, boom, I think I might have a proposal present. Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, I think I might add that to my sales proposal presentations, the LDR slide.
Jolie: Yeah, I think that's really smart. I was just going to say the best advice I got was from my mentor at Ripple Street, which is a B2B, B2C marketing agency, or user generated content agency, and it's where I first really learned about community, but she said, have 20 slides in the appendix, but seven slides And that, that has gotten me so far, just that I remember presenting, um, how spot to align the revenue team for that company.
And I was like this punky little kid, not a little kid, but you know, punky early twenties. And I had seven slides because of her. And the CEO told me good job. And I, I got like a shot of dopamine
pharosIQ: because
Jolie: it works.
pharosIQ: Appendix right there. I'm prepared.
Jolie: Yep. 20. Yeah. Cause I had this, I had what you, you know, what you talked about, you have what they care about.
And I think that's, that's just in general. If you're selling, if you're positioning, if you're, you know, insert. Cliche here to talk about what people care about and keep it short and sweet.
pharosIQ: Well done. We've reached the crux of the podcast, the biggest time, your time to shine the unor moment, right? So tell us about a campaign project.
You know, anything that you've done over your career tenure that you would consider creative or unbe to boring. Um, you know, what did you like about it? Did it work? All of those good questions.
Jolie: Yeah, I love that question. So it's funny. I, uh, I accidentally did a demand generation campaign back in 2017 and I have never looked back.
So this was, I don't want to say before influencer marketing up big, but on the precipice of when it started getting big. So I did a influencer marketing campaign where I. Interviewed about 20 marketing influencers with the question, what makes you successful? What makes you successful? We call it the digital marketing series.
And. These guys have probably, some of them had upwards of 250, 000 followers on Twitter. This is before it became X, but obviously, but, um, but it got about 7 million organic impressions. It had a mini blow up in the marketing community. And it's funny, whenever I interview for positions, I pitch that and I actually had one person interview say, Hey, can I steal that?
pharosIQ: That's really the whole purpose of the podcast is that can I steal it moment like as, as we all as, as B2B marketers, kind of like, Oh, you're constantly struggling to be creative or that, but sometimes just hearing someone else's idea, like gives you that, like, Oh, I don't want to steal it, but I do want to make it better, or I do want
Jolie: to adopt it.
pharosIQ: I think it might not be great for my audience, but what if I did it? I think that's a really cool. And that's also, let's be just, we're all going to keep just calling it Twitter and not X.
Jolie: Yeah. I, I can't get behind X.
pharosIQ: Like an entire generation that will call it Twitter before it. Like, and I think they'll be like, see my daughter, my youngest daughter's eight.
Right. . So she be the first X generation. Where should they start calling versus the little bird? And yeah, they might never, and never. They might go back though. You never know.
Jolie: Is that Gen Alpha? I think that's Gen Alpha, right? Your gen your daughter's generation.
pharosIQ: I am. I'm so out of track. I lose. So I have four.
I have four. My oldest is 21. My youngest is, oh,
Jolie: okay.
pharosIQ: Um, so I have what I believe is a millennial. Um, and then I think. Down through generation Z, maybe, maybe alpha, if you will, like I'm, I'm in the middle and I'm like the middle, like the, the 1981 unwanted child. Right. That's just between gen X and, you know, what are the millennials, you know?
So I lived in a life, my parents kicked me out of the house and told me to play outside and I didn't have a, you know, no internet, no cell phone, no nothing. I've lived that life. And I've also lived a life. You know, of a millennia with cell phones, internet, you know, Oregon trail and, you know, desktop computers.
So it's a really, I'm kind of that weird, interesting hybrid. Whereas, you know, I think, I think, and I also think the generation that you're speaking to is kind of that hybrid as well. Right. That's like, cause cause they're the children of that hybrid generation. So it's like skipping a generation, you know, I think.
Jolie: Yep.
pharosIQ: Now we're just going off into a tangent on generation always, I'm fascinated by the topic because the, like, the generational way, the world is just completely cultivates not only B2B business, but marketing and how we all do our jobs. It's just, and it's become more apparent now than ever.
Jolie: Yeah, definitely, definitely agree.
pharosIQ: Somebody, I don't know if you saw it, but the, there was a young lady who recorded her termination on LinkedIn.
Jolie: Oh, yes, I've heard, I heard about that. I, I didn't see the recording. But I saw the aftermath of it.
pharosIQ: Yeah, so she's, uh, she recorded it and it was just, I mean, if she was at Cloudflare, they have, they have 1500 sales reps, right?
So they, they, they turned through them pretty quickly. They have kind of a process and she recorded it and it was kind of, I don't want to say it was combative, but she didn't like the answer and it became quite viral. And I'm just saying like generationally, I'd never would have a thought to record something like that.
Yeah. Yeah. I think I would, I would have been like crushed, like being, like, I would never have been like, I'm going to record this and be all confident when I'm being terminated. I'd be like, Oh man, what am I going to do? I have to pay my bills. So it's just a weird how like generationally everybody looks at it differently.
Jolie: Yeah, for sure. I was actually at an Ilana Glazer concert or not a concert, excuse me. Um, show. That the woman who wrote Broad City and served in it and this girl was like this hype girl and she was, she was just a random girl in the, in the, in the line because it was around the block and she kept going, Ilana, say Glazer, Ilana, say Glazer to get it on TikTok.
And I'm like, I would never think to do that. I'm just here to enjoy the show.
pharosIQ: I just, I'm like the get off my lawn guy. Sometimes I just feel like an entire generation of humans is missing seeing things through like their own eyes, seeing them through like this. When was the last time you went back and looked at a video.
You know, like, Oh, like I took them. Like, I always give the example, like 4th of July fireworks. When was the last time you went back and checked out those fireworks videos? You know, like, like, okay. They were just fireworks just like they are every year. Right. But well with that, now that we've gone completely on a tangent, which is my favorite podcast and be the boring as well.
Um, thanks so much for joining us. Um, it's really been awesome. Um, you know, what? Uh, crafty veteran marketing advice. Could you leave us with, or our guests with,
Jolie: I think something that I go by personally, professionally is just always be curious. I think the moment you stop learning, you stop growing and just listening to podcasts like yours or just reading and digesting different information.
And then Making your own opinions, I think is what, is what I go by
pharosIQ: ABC, but always we're taking, taking the negative boiler room sales connotations out of it. And ABC is always be curious. I think it works for both sales and marketing and all revenue team. So
Jolie: you
pharosIQ: appreciate that again, you guys can find Jolie Shapiro on LinkedIn.
You can also find the, um, community. Mental on LinkedIn as well. Check that out. You can find Caspian studios on LinkedIn as well, or I'm assuming Caspian studios. com. We are with MRP Uh, like us, follow us, click on all those magical buttons on whatever platform that you listen to podcast on.
Feel free to share with your friends and go from there. If anybody would love to be on the podcast and you're a B2B marketer and have a unique campaign that you run, feel free to hit me up directly on LinkedIn.Thank you everybody for joining this week. Jolie, again, thank you.
It's been a really awesome time chatting and hopefully we can connect again soon. All right.
Jolie: Sounds good. Thanks so much for having me.
Tags:
