Episode Description
Whitney Goldstein, Director of Marketing at Revver, joins the discussion. With a decade of experience in B2B marketing, Whitney delves into the nuances of marketing strategies in today's dynamic business environment, sharing valuable insights from their role at Revver, a leader in the enterprise SaaS document management sector.
Key Highlights:
- Persistence in Job Hunting: Whitney emphasizes the significance of resilience and persistence in navigating career opportunities.
- Revver's Marketing Challenges: Insight into marketing strategies during Revver's rebranding phase, including wide and narrow go-to-market approaches.
- Direct Mail Effectiveness: Discussion on the power of direct mail in reaching C-level executives, focusing on personalization and its impact.
- Strategic Execution: The importance of executing marketing strategies methodically, backed by data, and the ability to adapt to market trends.
- Innovative B2B Campaigns: Insights from Whitney's experience with Cisco's annual security makeover campaign, highlighting the role of creativity in demand generation.
- Market Dynamics and Future Trends: Analysis of the evolving market dynamics over the past four years and predictions for the future of B2B marketing.
Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities in B2B marketing directly from an industry expert.
Whitney Goldstein on LinkedIn
Summary:
Whitney Goldstein, Director of Marketing at Revver, shares insights from her decade-long experience in B2B marketing. She discusses her approach to understanding the current state of marketing within an organization, emphasizing the importance of collaboration across departments and the need for curiosity in learning. Whitney highlights the shift towards a targeted go-to-market strategy while balancing broad outreach with focused engagement. She also advocates for the effectiveness of direct mail in cutting through the noise of digital marketing and creating demand. Whitney concludes with advice for marketers to remain curious and adaptable in a changing landscape.
[Read the full transcript]
pharosIQ: Welcome everyone to this week's edition of pharosIQ’s podcast, the podcast That is anything but be to boring. This week we have Whitney Goldstein joining us. Whitney, welcome.
Whitney Goldstein: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
pharosIQ: Really exciting. We've been trying to get Whitney on for a while, tough to catch. She's working crazy hours these days, approaching, new gig, holidays, all of that.
pharosIQ: So Whitney's got 10 years of experience in B2B marketing, managing strategic direction, everything encompassing mission, vision, strategy, and also execution. Whitney's expertise includes a ton of achievements across a ton of B2B SaaS and technology companies. She's currently the director of marketing for an enterprise SaaS solution called Revver, which is in the document management space, I believe.
pharosIQ: Correct?
Whitney Goldstein: Correct. Yes.
pharosIQ: Tell me a little bit about Revver before we jump in.
Whitney Goldstein: Sure. So we've been in the DMS space, a document management system or solution for 20 years. And we mainly were a B2B SMB kind of focus, and we sold direct to consumer that way. And in the last year we did rebrand and are going more up market to serve more of those mid market and enterprise companies.
Whitney Goldstein: So we have a lot of experience. We are definitely experts in document management and all workflows, automation, security, collaboration, governance. We have a lot of exciting things coming this year, 24.
pharosIQ: So speaking of that as we dive in you recently took a new role you're what 60 90 days in somewhere around there tell us about some of you know The first 90 and some best practices for folks who might be in the job market right now or actually starting a new role soon
Whitney Goldstein: Yeah I will say that i'm going through the job market recently I have a lot of compassion for anyone who is looking and I will say that Be persistent and resilient with looking for jobs.
Whitney Goldstein: I think it's I can only speak from my experience of being a director right now and hiring. It is There's so many things that we're working on that it's just taking longer and longer. And I really do think that if you're looking for something in specific, it's out there. So just my two cents on hiring, I have the same approach here that I do at every company that I joined in the first 90.
Whitney Goldstein: And my first couple of weeks are really focused on getting what I call like a state of the base of where is. Marketing today, where do we want to go? And also understanding kind of the nuances between cross functional departments and some of the things that the team was working on and initiatives that are really important.
Whitney Goldstein: But I try to get a variety of sources and that's all the way from CS to sales, to rev ops, to the CEO, to product, to get an understanding of how other people view marketing and where need marketing needs to go. In addition to doing my own analysis and comparing those two. And so I think that gives me a holistic view of the organization and like my favorite thing to do is go and clean up the marketing department.
Whitney Goldstein: So I'm asking questions of what are we doing? What is working? What's not, what have we tried that? I don't need to repeat because maybe the results were the same and I would have executed it very similarly. Or we want to redo some things that were maybe tested and do it in a different way. I try to match the strategy that I'm building to the situation.
Whitney Goldstein: And I think that's an important aspect that I have learned over the years is that You have to meet the company where it's at. We often come in with some grandiose ideas. We're marketers. We want to be like the visionary. And before you can get in and do a lot of cool things, you need to address where you're at.
Whitney Goldstein: And so that's very much where we're at and what I've been doing at Revver and also what I've seen success at other companies I've done.
pharosIQ: Yeah. And it's really interesting. You mentioned multi, silos and different product owners and product units, especially at companies that are still growing and emerging.
pharosIQ: It seems everyone thinks they're a marketer. I just always. I see that you're seeing that the meme that has like the website that has like a, the pizza that has like 70, 000 ingredients. And it says like the website, when everybody helps marketing,
Whitney Goldstein: it's
pharosIQ: gotta be challenging on that side of the fence.
pharosIQ: What, with a recent rebrand, I'm assuming a lot of things are still relatively new and you're still collecting data just because the company is almost changed. So that's within relatively recent to what you're joining. So it seems like everybody's learning together.
Whitney Goldstein: Absolutely. I think cross functionally, we're stronger than ever because we all have one goal to move up market. And we're all marching in the same direction. It's the way that I see a really big ship trying to turn is everyone has to be on board for that turn or else it's not really going to work.
Whitney Goldstein: So yes, I think we are definitely in the learning and testing phase and speaking to other marketers that are in this spot, you think that your situation is unique and that the challenges that you're facing are unique. When in reality, if you were to go to another company, they're usually Challenging or, having the same issues.
Whitney Goldstein: And so knowing that like this cycle does repeat itself. And that even if I wasn't brand new, and even if we didn't have the challenges we have, you would probably be facing the same similar situation or going down the same direction if you were at another more established or bigger company. So yes, definitely a lot of challenges, but it's also really exciting to have such an impact.
Whitney Goldstein: On the product, on the systems, on the way that we go to market and being the leader of that, of course has its pressures, but it's also, I think, challenging and fun in its own way.
pharosIQ: You mentioned go to market. It's all the rage, right? It's this year's ABM,
pharosIQ: What motion? Is currently in place for Revver and is there chatter about adding motions, pivoting motions, all of that, or is that you haven't got there yet?
Whitney Goldstein: Yeah I think one of the things that we're realizing and that I think a lot of companies go through is Do we focus wide and less narrow or do we focus in very narrow? And I think where we're moving is somewhere in the middle where externally we will be very broad and wide But directly to who we're targeting in the verticals and the personas that we're trying to go after We're going to be very direct and streamlined and focused So like a one to one approach without actually doing a true abm motion
pharosIQ: It's a large TAM, so you want to, I'm sure your inbound motion is that wide net, but your outbound motion is more of that finite, etc.
pharosIQ: So it's a, that's where we're seeing a lot of, a lot going on right now. It's just too expensive in this particular market to have a wide net outbound motion, right? So it's complementing that with a very specific ABM or a very one to one type approach is really exciting. And
Whitney Goldstein: that's the funny thing too, is I think.
Whitney Goldstein: Everywhere I've gone and when I look at the marketing channels or the demand gen engine, and I look at the kind of breakout and diversification of programs, I often see a lot of these inbound type programs, a PPL program, or, organic search, paid search and display advertising that is supposed to be casting a wide net and attracting and creating interest.
Whitney Goldstein: But yet we don't have a lot of control. Over who's actually coming in on those channels. And so that's one of the biggest things that I see is that the breakout of these channels is heavily skewed towards things that you can't really control and manipulate, which is why I'm a proponent of more of a paid lead gen or direct mail, because I do have the ability to tweak and adjust who I actually want to come in and then do the same tactics and nurturing that I would do from a broad scale to those prospects.
pharosIQ: And I feel like Google hates us all right now, too on the paid side of the, I don't know if it's just me or my team, or I've had enough conversations where it's man, why is this so hard right now?
Whitney Goldstein: Yeah. I
pharosIQ: don't, it's and I know it's byproduct of just less people in market, right?
pharosIQ: Money isn't free, there's less investment, there's less people in market, so it feels like it's significant, but it also feels like Google is just messing with people, right?
Whitney Goldstein: Yes, absolutely. And yes, I've made a joke the other day about, end of year budgets were in Q4, we're trying to do an end of year push.
Whitney Goldstein: And I was joking with my CFO saying, if I had extra budget right now, you wouldn't just tell me to go spend it. Everyone is taking back any extra budget that they have. So it's definitely a harder quarter. And with a down economy, we always have to get a little bit more creative and a little bit more streamlined on what's actually working.
pharosIQ: So you had a couple of speaking engagements in 2023 up at a couple of conferences events, right? You have anything on the agenda for 2024 yet?
Whitney Goldstein: I don't, but I am definitely interested in looking. I love speaking and I love spreading my viewpoint of marketing and B2B marketing and strategies. So definitely open, but nothing yet.
pharosIQ: Awesome. Any event, speaking of events, as we roll in there, what is, it's very polarizing when I talk to B2B marketers, what is your take on events? Are you big, are you a big event proponent, their necessary evil or somewhere in the middle?
Whitney Goldstein: I do think. I think they're a necessary evil. I think there was such a shift after we came out of COVID and people were craving that in person interaction.
Whitney Goldstein: So even the conferences that I went to felt like they had like energy and buzz in the room. And I think that is still very strong and very true today. I think we see a lot of people. Being more specific on where they're going to be attending. And I think marketers are the same where they're cherry picking the top events that they want to go to and less of a kind of spray and pray.
Whitney Goldstein: And yes, I'm definitely a proponent of events, but I think for us, we haven't done as many in person events and trade shows, and so it is going to be a very interesting test going into. Understanding what are the events that we are going to go to, because we don't have historical data to help drive us and guide us.
pharosIQ: It's so hard to get return. They just cost so much, even a average booth at an average event. By the time you roll in, getting your team there, all the creatives, any sort of swag, some sort of sub sponsorship, right? Cause obviously The days of people walking through the expo and stopping at the booth just to say I are long gone, right?
pharosIQ: So I found that I love them, right? And and everybody always says the same cliche thing. If I have two good conversations, it pays for itself, right? But is that really the metric we want to be? Then that doesn't even account for all the hard cost of the hours that you spend with your team talking through logistics and planning and how are we going to do this and how are we going to route the lead?
pharosIQ: So I've been. Really struggling with it up and down. We've done a couple of events historically here and I've done them in the past and there's a couple of nice ones, but it's Hey, if I took that aggregated hundred grand, not to mention the 70 man hours we spent crunching through this event, could I possibly make more ROI?
pharosIQ: So it's a lot of the questions that that I've been asking myself on that side, and I was just curious to get your take just because I think we're, I think we're getting, we're coming to that reverse renaissance again, right? COVID killed events, everybody, events came back and everybody's did you have my house?
pharosIQ: And now with the CFO crunch coming down, right? Everybody's do I really need to go to that event? So I think we're going to focus on it. And I'm curious if you're in the same boat too, is yeah. Some more targeted like micro events, if you will, roundtables, those types of speakeasies, things of that nature to try to get a very small group of people in and collaborating.
Whitney Goldstein: Yeah. Executive dinners and such. Yes, absolutely. And I think To your point too I thought about this recently, the last event that we went to, I'm not only spending time setting up for the event, I'm not only spending money at the event, but there's so many people that we might be missing that are not there.
Whitney Goldstein: And also we're taking time away from our AEs, which my viewpoint of the marketing landscape and what my role is everything to do with sales. And I think that's what makes a really good B2B marketer or demand gen expert is. How are you supporting sales? And I have to think about it from their perspective.
Whitney Goldstein: Is it the best use of time for them to go talk to new prospects at an event that may or may not be interested or may not be the right fit? Or do I keep them working the deals and the prospects that they already have, that we've already sourced, that we have a lot of data for? So it is definitely an interesting conversation.
Whitney Goldstein: I think we will still Do them, but we'll do them on smaller scale and we'll be very specific about where we go.
pharosIQ: Now, you mentioned something earlier that I'm going to come back to, which is interesting. You mentioned direct mail, which, isn't, it's, it isn't exactly, I don't want to say popular, not the latest rage.
pharosIQ: And I've, we've got a ton of customers who have success with it. And I've been speaking to it quite a bit on social. So tell me. Your experiences with it. Cause I promised I did not bribe you to say direct mail.
Whitney Goldstein: No, and I actually have two right here that I've done at a variety of companies. I'm a huge proponent of direct mail.
Whitney Goldstein: And I, I saw this, I think it was while we were still in COVID is there was such, there's so much noise right now for marketers and advertising, getting buyers attention we know is harder than ever, and they are doing the research online and we know what they're looking at. We know where they are in the cycle, but we can't bring them in there.
Whitney Goldstein: I think they're spending like, I think the content marketing report or demand gen report said that buyers spend about 60 percent of the time outside, or they're getting about 60 percent through the sales cycle before they get into our actual CRM and sales cycle. And so I saw this. Shift, I think right as we were leaving COVID or coming out of it is that there's so much noise.
Whitney Goldstein: So how do you break through it? How do I be the ad or how do I be the company that actually makes it to someone's desk? And so that's why I did turn to direct mail. And I think it is a really good medium. It's another reminder. It's another way to engage with them in a physical way that could sit on their desk and be a reminder every day that they're looking or interested in your product.
Whitney Goldstein: And I think that's also why we've seen the shift towards Podcast advertising, which is essentially old school radio, advertising, TV, advertising, CTV, advertising billboards are coming back, whether they're digital or actual print. So I think we're definitely seeing a evolution and kind of going back and we're elevating those traditional channels, but they are still very much the same mediums that we use before.
pharosIQ: Somebody posted on LinkedIn, and I'm stealing it because I steal things sometimes, they said, the desktop is crowded, the mailbox isn't, right? And it just makes so much sense, right? I think I get 150 plus prospecting messages into my work email box daily, and I can, again, I can spot a sequence 72 miles away, right?
pharosIQ: You can spot that on. And again, most good buyers now are sniffing out automation, right? And frankly, it just becomes annoying. So a lot of what you're focusing on is the personalization, but still, even if you are personalizing, you still, there's just so much, so I've loved the direct mail play recently, just because, again, it's.
pharosIQ: And it depends on the, I also think it depends a bit on the persona, right? If you're targeting, I've always, if you're targeting IT finance, legal, right? Those are probably the three core personas that engage with mail the most.
Whitney Goldstein: Yes.
pharosIQ: Obviously, I. T. People, they're always getting something shipped to them, right?
pharosIQ: Finance people they, the bills, and then, obviously, lawyers have the paperwork that gets forward to them as well. But what I found interesting, I don't know if you've seen this as well as that targeting C level executives or very high level executives with direct mail is works really well because they're not the person who gets the mail.
Whitney Goldstein: But
pharosIQ: If the person who does like the a, accounts receivable person goes to get the mail and there's a postage address to the CFO, they usually get that handed to them by hand. So it's almost like a hand delivered package that they have to open up and engage with. So we did. A recent campaign for a customer who was targeting CFOs and they were baffled by how many people are, how many CFOs are responding to a direct mail.
pharosIQ: I'm like, that's because people hand it to them.
Whitney Goldstein: Then it's a different way of engaging. And I think just having something physical. Versus an email to start that communication does a lot for that relationship and doesn't a lot to engage that kind of person. And I thought the same thing. I was very surprised.
Whitney Goldstein: I actually see the most responses from direct mail from a C level. And I also think it's really funny when it's an incentive. I've campaigned for a CFO or CTO and I'm like, you guys are hunting down a 50 gift card, it works. So it definitely works.
pharosIQ: And I've found the incentivization side of it is really the, it's just the accelerant like that person likely has the need.
pharosIQ: It's on there. It's on their to do list. I need this. We need to solve for that. I'm going to take a demo eventually, but oh, okay. I'll take some free coffee. You got me. I might as well did, or something interesting. Yeah.
Whitney Goldstein: I did that actually. So when I first started running direct mail and it was an incentivized campaign, the feedback from my sales team, as we were piloting was these people are just interested in the incentivization portion of it, right?
Whitney Goldstein: They're not actually interested in the product. And so I did a mini pilot of myself and I obviously get a lot of inquiries on LinkedIn or email. And I specifically looked for the ones that were trying to get me to book a demo within some type of incentivization. And. So I did go through that route, a couple of products.
Whitney Goldstein: And my whole point was to see what happens after this? And what is my perspective after I take these demos? So I did a handful of them and I got my gift cards or whatever kind of gift it was. And I think I bought at least one of the products and then one of them was slated for later in the year.
Whitney Goldstein: And it was something I had never heard of. I wasn't really interested in, and I wasn't necessarily looking for it. And so I went back to my sales team, really excited to give them This perspective of mine of that. I think it does break through and cut through the noise, because like you said, I'm going to take the demo anyway, I might take this demo anyway.
Whitney Goldstein: So why not get a gift card for it or some type of incentive? Or it's just, I think it's a really powerful medium. So
pharosIQ: you just have to find the fine line between incentive and bribery.
Whitney Goldstein: Exactly. Exactly.
pharosIQ: You're too heavy on the incentive that it's like, Oh, I'm just taking a free hunt. For me, my line is a hundred bucks, right?
pharosIQ: Again, we're all not wealthy people, right? A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. If somebody throws me a demo for a hundred, I'll probably take it because that's like a solid Lego for me, right? That's a decently sized Lego for my collection, right? But 50 is something I have to be interested in.
pharosIQ: And then I'll take the demo. And like 25 is okay, there's always that fine line between incentive and bribery.
Whitney Goldstein: Yes. Yeah. Yes, definitely. And I'm also, I also respect the fact that sometimes I'm just genuinely not interested and I don't take it. And I imagine that our prospects are also doing the same.
pharosIQ: So I think to that point, I think you mentioned the down economy earlier. And I think my take is B2B marketing is on this Virgin Renaissance, right? Where Lord. Amazingly, the past four or five years was just fantastic to do anything. It was great to be a marketer. It was great to be a seller.
pharosIQ: It was great to be everyone, right? Everybody's buying everything. Interest rates are zero. There's 200 unicorns a day, right? Everybody's got a billion dollar valuation, but I think that's. I think that's we've hit the end of that road. So do you think are the real marketers starting to emerge now?
pharosIQ: Are we getting back to that zone and how?
Whitney Goldstein: Yes, definitely. I think from my perspective, companies across the board are. Constraining or getting tighter, getting leaner, learning to do more with a lot less across the board, not just marketing, but sales products, CS, so on and so forth. So yes, I think not only are marketers going to have to really learn how to work smarter and do a lot more with less.
Whitney Goldstein: I'm trying to figure out that formula as we go. And I also think that they're going to have to rely on a lot of the new tools and technologies and emerging things that are coming out in the market. So AI being a huge one of it and learning how to integrate those into your systems to do some of the things that we don't have to manually do.
Whitney Goldstein: And less of that strategic arm and more of that executionary arm. And I think. Digging into data and making sure that your data is very clean and accurate and reliable is going to be the utmost important. And so obviously we've already been on this trend of marketers have so much data to go through, but making sure that you're looking at relevant signals and really cleaning that data up so that you don't have to spend a lot of time or money going in a direction that you know, it's not going to work.
pharosIQ: And I think the key keyword that I love that you use there was execution. Everybody wants to be a strategist.
Whitney Goldstein: Yes,
pharosIQ: everybody just wants to just talk in rooms and that, but I've always I've had a lot of go to market conversations with a lot of people. And I think what's happening now, which is unfortunate, is that companies are pivoting their go to market strategies to completely new strategy.
pharosIQ: Oh, we've tried inbound. We need to go outbound. We need to be this. And what they're missing is that yeah. They just haven't, they're just not executing on the current go to market to where we're executing well on it, it would work. So instead of trying to fix the execution, everybody's just pivoting again.
pharosIQ: And so and then your employees are like what do we even do any right. And I was talking about this on a recent podcast. Each go to market and requires a very different skill set. And there's very few marketers and revenue leaders who could do everything right. Like a product led motion is a very different animal from an inbound motion.
pharosIQ: That's from an outbound, like it's so different. And when you try to pivot these motions versus focusing on execution, you just put people in a bad position. Like again, You've never done product led growth and your company says we're going to pivot to product led growth. You're ice skating uphill because it's a completely nasty little animal.
pharosIQ: So that's the, I think that's the renaissance, right? You have to be a strategist and someone who can execute. If you're a, if you're a CRO, you have to be able to build the long term plan and jump on a sales call. That and I think that's which is exciting because again, there's just a ton more people who are more connected to the product to the customer, to the employees.
pharosIQ: And I think that's a really great pivot point to go forward. And I think the employees that you find right now. We'll be the ones that you build your businesses and your teams on for the next 10 years coming through.
Whitney Goldstein: Yes. And I was just having a conversation with my ops director as well, talking about this, that we want, if we were to hire people, or if we are looking for people, the people we're looking for are people that maybe necessary their resume isn't exactly fit for this.
Whitney Goldstein: But we want someone who is eager, who's willing to get their hands dirty, to learn, to execute and own. A lot of what we need to do. And to your point, I, the way that I implement testing and the way that I move and shift demand gen or the marketing team towards the direction we want to go for go to market strategy is in small increments.
Whitney Goldstein: And my, I'm very methodical and almost a scientist measuring very carefully where we're going and comparing that and then analyzing and sharing and going back and small tweaks and small increment shifts make a huge difference over the long term versus making a ginormous shift in a new go to market strategy.
Whitney Goldstein: And then you can't measure anything because you've changed every single variable that you were using as your baseline. So that's my focus as well as I try not to change everything all at once. And to your point, that builds the go to market strategy in itself is if you are in a direction and you change it.
Whitney Goldstein: Tiny little bit of it. Then we can say, okay, after six months or nine months, or maybe an entire fiscal year, okay, now we really, we've tried everything and I know for sure, because I believe in my data and I know that it's accurate that we should move to an outbound motion or an inbound motion or whatever pivot.
pharosIQ: And that's again, take away for anybody who's listening is that you just said months and year in small changes that's how data should be aggregated and measured. There's so much data in the space right now. Are you going to CRM? Night, Clary and gone at. All these rep.
pharosIQ: Like they the sad thing is those companies think they're doing companies a good thing by putting all this data into the space. But what they're doing is they're putting a whole lot of data in the hands of people who aren't capable of ingesting data, right? You're you're sending close one data conversion rate data and all of that data into a sales managers hand directly that like that person doesn't have the experience and or the statistical analysis ability to be able to look at a trend versus a data point.
pharosIQ: And that's what happened. Your sales manager is like, Oh, now we're doing this. Send more email. No, call more. No, send more, and it's like this constant. So I've been really preaching a lot to my team. It's Hey don't look at data. Look at trends. And a trend doesn't happen unless we're three months in and we see the same thing over and over again.
pharosIQ: We can't be too jumpy.
Whitney Goldstein: Absolutely.
pharosIQ: Really good stuff. Really fantastic stuff. Now, as we close, we're at the most important part of the podcast, which really never is the most important part. We always talk about so many amazing things before we get there, but let's talk campaigns, right? You've been doing this a long time.
pharosIQ: You're obviously creative because you're using direct mail, but not a lot of folks are. So talk to us about that. One or two not beat a boring campaigns that you've put out there over your career. Did they work and, tell us a little bit more detail.
Whitney Goldstein: Yeah, it's very hard because I think a lot of my campaigns are non are not boring.
Whitney Goldstein: I'm actually going to use one example that I think. I think is very interesting from the perspective of all the time. It was actually, I was at a B2B media agency or vendor, and I used to work on a couple of kind of key accounts. And so one of the campaigns that I've worked on that I just thought was so unique.
Whitney Goldstein: And if you haven't heard of it, I encourage you guys to go look at it. I'm totally pointing everyone to Cisco's website. You're welcome, Cisco. But Cisco does an annual security makeover. And it's. Such a unique campaign in their product suite and the way that they go to market, considering they're so distributor and channel focused and in the space that they're working, you wouldn't think that this kind of episode.
Whitney Goldstein: makeover type like reality TV thing would fit, but it is such a big push and initiative. And they've done it annually, I think six or seven times now. And each year they have an episode where they essentially gift a security makeover to XYZ corporation. They've done zoos. They've, I think a media company internationally.
Whitney Goldstein: And it's, Not necessarily selling the direct products, but it's more talking about the vision and the ethos of Cisco. And each episode is just really unique and different, and they try to pick a specific kind of focus area or theme. And I think, three, four years in now you have years of a campaign that has had longevity and had interest.
Whitney Goldstein: It's just a very robust and interesting campaign in a B2B SaaS play that I've never seen anyone else do. Now, of course it's Cisco. So they have they have some money to spend in areas that maybe companies like our size don't, but I do think it was one of the most interesting campaigns.
Whitney Goldstein: I worked on several seasons with them. And it's just, I think it's a very interesting campaign and I encourage a lot of B2B marketers to go look at it and talk and see the way that they talk about it. That's so different than the way they traditionally market.
pharosIQ: And just checking it out while we're talking, there's seven seasons in, right?
pharosIQ: It's almost like it looks like a Netflix page where you can go back like it. And I can just see, and again, speaking to some of my tech team here, I could probably ask them and I'd be like, have you checked out the security makeover? And then they're probably like, yeah, every year I give it a go.
pharosIQ: And again, it just helps. It just goes to show that your brand demand that whole connection. And no matter how big you are. Brands like Cisco have to, and any brand has to continually be evolving to a changing landscape and a changing market. I've been doing what we do for, oh God, Lord, 17 years.
pharosIQ: And every year there's always somebody who says like the buyer landscape is changing or the buyer. It's, it doesn't change. It just evolves, right? And the biggest change is that marketing right now is responsible for more of the education and that and the seller is responsible for making that buyer feel great about their decision.
pharosIQ: Right? Where before, like the only way you could get information about something was call sales and they would explain it to you in their way. And obviously they would dance it and dress it up as how they do. But now marketing is responsible for just more of that. So giving people creative ways to ingest with that information and connect with your personality of your brand is very key.
pharosIQ: I love it. It's a very cool campaign.
Whitney Goldstein: Yes. And I think one of the things I like about it too, one of the things I tell my team a lot is for some reason in the last two years, probably with the emergence of intent data and all of the cool technology that marketers can use now, we've gone away from like actually creating demand in the way that we traditionally did.
Whitney Goldstein: Where you were. Nurturing and providing awareness and actually creating interest out of nowhere to prospects. Whereas now we're just demand identifiers and we're like these people look like they're interested, so let's go after them instead of going through the actual motion of demand.
Whitney Goldstein: And I think that the make over is a really good reminder for me, at least every year that comes out that no matter how big you are and no matter what space you're in, you still need to create demand and there's a variety of ways that we can do it.
pharosIQ: With so many buyers in market Over the past four years with such a rise in the economy, it just became a capture, right?
pharosIQ: Like it was a demand capture game, right? Like there, everybody has a lobster boat and there's the most lobster to ever exist on the bottom of the ocean. And it really just about Hey, we just need to just put as many nets out as we can, as fast as we can. And just keep going. And now there's this creativity that's Hey, how could we attract the lobsters to us?
pharosIQ: And, before and then get ahead. So it's again, renaissance, right? Like the next Watch the companies that emerge with positive results. Watch the revenue leaders, marketing leaders, executives who emerge over the next two years with positive results. Because those will be the future of the next 10 years of innovation and growth.
pharosIQ: Watch those that don't, right? And those are people who just happen to be in the right place at the right time with the right product in one of the strongest markets of the past 20 years.
Whitney Goldstein: Yes, absolutely.
pharosIQ: It's not a, it's not a, not a popular opinion, but it very much is reality, right?
pharosIQ: That there's a lot of influencers and a lot of, quote, unquote, high performing folks who happened to just be in the right place at the right time. And we'll see that happen now. So with that. Thank you so much for jumping in today. It was really awesome. I really enjoyed it as we can definitely do this again and we'll do it more regularly, hopefully.
pharosIQ: So with that, do you have any closing thoughts for those last two minutes for those B2B marketers out there as we approach the new year, new jobs, new all that stuff?
Whitney Goldstein: Yes, my one piece of advice is be curious. Be curious about everything that you touch, areas that you're not involved in, that you want to be involved in, go a little bit more deep into, cross functional execution and strategy, and I think it will take you very far.
pharosIQ: Thank you again. That's Whitney Goldstein right here with Revver and again, feel free to like us, five star us, share us on Spotify, Apple, wherever it is that you ingest your podcast, you can also check MRP out at www. mrpfd. com. Whitney, where's the best way to reach you and or Revver for those interested there?
Whitney Goldstein: You can check out Rev. We're Rev, R-E-V-V-E-R-D-O-C-S. So rev docs.com and you can check me out on LinkedIn. It's Whitney Goldstein, G-O-L-D-S-T-E-I-N.
pharosIQ: Thank you much. We'll do it again soon, and appreciate you taking the time to jump in.
Whitney Goldstein: Thanks so much. Have a great day.
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