Join Brian Strauss, co-founder of Demand Collective and a leader in demand generation marketing, as he delves into actionable strategies and real-world insights that make demand gen more approachable.
In this episode, we’ll explore:
Tune in for an insightful discussion packed with takeaways that reflect the ever-evolving demand gen marketing landscape!
Summary:
In this episode, Brian Strauss, co-founder of Demand Collective and former Senior Director of DemandGen at UpFlex, shares his insights into demand generation marketing and the importance of fostering a community for marketers. With over seven years of experience, Brian dives deep into creating a space for demand gen marketers to connect, learn, and share best practices across industries such as property, technology, childcare, and entertainment.
[Read the full transcript]
pharosIQ: Welcome to this week's episode of pharosIQ’s podcast. Again, I'm saying this week's because I've gotten to the point where I forgot how many we've done, which is a good thing in podcast land, because it means I've done more than a few to remember. This week, really, really excited to have Brian Strauss in, former senior director of DemandGen over at UpFlex and co founder of DemandGen.
of the Demand Collective. Demand Collective is a community built for demand generation marketers to connect and share their knowledge with each other. Brian's been in marketing for seven plus years and has helped plan and execute tons of campaigns across verticals like property, technology, child care, and media and entertainment.
He resides in a much warmer place than me in San Diego. Um, I'm currently sitting in chilly, chilly Philadelphia. So, um, welcome. Welcome Brian. How are you?
Brian: I'm good, pharosIQ. Super glad to be here.
pharosIQ: I was going to say, I did say warm San Diego, but you are rocking this fall festive cardigan. I didn't know they did fall in San Diego.
I figured it was just a surf, surf shorts and shoes all year.
Brian: Yeah, I know. We, uh, despite popular conception, we don't all surf to work. Uh, and you know, the second it gets to 65 degrees, we're all in sweaters. So I
pharosIQ: used to work with a guy who, who lived in a van and just spent most of his career. Yeah, I mean he had a home, but he spent most of his time in this outfitted sprinter van working, surfing, and skiing.
That reminds
Brian: me of, uh, you ever see that pharosIQ Farley skit where he goes, You'll be living in a van down by the river.
pharosIQ: One of the greatest of all time.
Brian: Oh yeah.
pharosIQ: They don't make them like that anymore. They don't make them like old, old school Farley. So the demand collective, I want to start here cause it's new and exciting.
Um, and, and something that I've recently bumped into myself and I've really gotten a ton of value of, so tell us what it is. Um, you know, we'll start there and we can, we can branch out from there.
Brian: Yeah. So demand collective was really, you know, me and my co founder, Eric Linson, we looked at the landscape, right.
Of marketing communities out there. And there's really. Yeah. You have the really large free Slack communities that sort of let anyone who has an interest in the topic come in and you have the really high executive level sort of pavilions, right? And we found there was a need for something in between, right?
Sorry, my cat is making an appearance. Um, we found there needed to be something a little more niche, something that was a little more centered on driving one to one meaningful communications and relationships. Right. Um, And so we saw this opportunity where me and Eric for months. Talked to countless demand marketers.
And the biggest thing they saw was they needed something that went beyond the sort of common denominator of LinkedIn posts, right? They needed to have nuanced discussions around what strategies are working for them, what it's like to take on a leadership role, what it's like. To manage up to an exec team.
And so we were, after all of that, that sort of customer research, we came up with the idea of demand collective and it became sort of this outlet for us to host these workshops, these masterminds to facilitate these relationships. So it's been really exciting.
pharosIQ: Awesome. Yeah. And I, I, I love it because it's a, I don't want to say a safe, a safe place.
Right. But as you mentioned, right, like managing up topics of that nature, get you getting your budget to prove that's not something most mid somewhat senior level marketers are going to want to just go posting on LinkedIn. Like, Hey, can somebody help me manage up to my boss? Knowing that I'm. Connected to my boss on LinkedIn, right?
So having that, that, that safe kind of community space to jump into total value there. And I, I wi I wish, I wish they had one for, for sellers back when I, when I was selling, you know, just a place where you can go to kind of have that safe space. That isn't like, you know, constantly being viewed where you don't have to have a brand now question for you.
I recently jumped in and I noticed that it's, uh, I've seen communities that a couple different ways I've seen. You can join as your own name. And I've seen communities where you can join is kind of like an avatar, right? I've known I've noticed in the community, you can join, you join as your own name, right?
This is who I am. This is whatnot. Was there a discussion about that? Should it be, should it be blind? Should it be anonymous or should you be who you are inside the community?
Brian: We have always sort of, uh, subscribed to the idea that. You know, it's about building relationships and everything we do for the community is we ask ourselves, cause me and Eric come up with tons of ideas about what we can do, and we always have to ask ourselves, does this serve what we believe to be our greatest value prop, which is those relationships.
And so. You know, we, we try to cultivate a, an environment of trust and empathy. And so we want people to be themselves. We want them to share the work they're doing. And, you know, we have these, these mastermind groups, right. Where every time someone comes, they're on the hot seat, right. And they run us through the programs they're doing, the challenges they're facing, and it is, you know, for lack of a better phrase, that safe space where like, No, whatever, whatever gets said, you know, in the group stays in the group.
And that's that, that trust is essential to building these relationships.
pharosIQ: I think I'd tell him, tell me more about, about these groups, that this mastermind group sounds like a unique concept.
Brian: Yeah. So it's really exciting because. For many demand marketers, they are sort of working on an island, right? A lot of, there's a lot of teams, you know, ranging in company sizes from, uh, you know, there, I think I was 38 at childcare CRM up to, you know, at, uh, when my time at paylease, I was, uh, the only demand slash marketing operations member of the team.
And that was a 350 person company. So there's so many demand marketers who are working on an island and this becomes an opportunity for you to develop a brain trust, right? To have people who are intimately knowledgeable and understand your situation, right? Instead of just getting generalized advice on LinkedIn, you have people who know the nitty gritty, who have done the work at the same seniority level as you, who are giving you informed advice.
And so that's, that becomes such a thing, uh, a thing that demand marketers can lean on, you know,
pharosIQ: Almost like a, like a mini board of just your peers, you know, kind of, you know, they don't have a vested interest in what you do. They don't have a personal say in it, but they still have the experience to weigh in on positives, negatives, et cetera.
I like the concept. Yeah, they do. So what trends are you seeing in the community right now? What's being talked about the most?
Brian: So there's a couple of key things, right? Right now, there's a lot of talk about the evolution of the role. And I wouldn't say that topic comes up explicitly that often, but what I see are topics adjacent to that sort of like that big question of who is demand gen?
What is demand gen? Where does it go from here? And how is it being perceived and sort of tucked into the organization, right? Cause there's, there's overlap in demand gen. You have. To work closely with your content teams, with your product marketer, if you have the luxury of having one, um, a lot of the times you're working with leadership who don't understand how demand gen works and the value it brings to a company, right?
A lot of the time it basically gets, you know, there's reductive discussions around. Demand gen is basically performance marketing, right? And that's obviously not the case.
pharosIQ: It's, and I've talked about this a few times, uh, on, you know, on this show, demand creation versus demand generation. Right. And, and most, most executives, I can tell you, look at demand generation only from the eyes of demand capture, right?
Like how many people are Googling. You know, SEO software and how many of them can we get to our site to become a lead? So sales can sells them. Right. But whereas I found demand generation and it's heart is, it's very much the long play, right? It's a combination of tactics and skills across, you know, a little bit of brand, right.
With some of the performance element, and then you have social thrown in and that, you know, and email there's, it's, it's almost like the. The centerpiece of the marketing organization because you have so many different masters. And of course the biggest master being sales, which throws everything for a loop.
Do you think, do you think the, the recent surge in tech and over the past couple of years before the recent drought has made sellers lazy, right? And you think that you hear, I mean, this whole concept of the B2B buying journey has changed a side note of 17 years. I've been doing this at the. The buying journey has changed every year, depending on what narrative someone wants to tell you.
But do you think sellers have gotten lazier throughout your career and more of the hook has been put on marketing?
Brian: I don't think that's fair to sellers. Um, I'm a huge, huge proponent of, you know, like you hear a lot about marketing sales alignment, right? And it's usually really vague. Um, But it's one of my favorite components of the job, right?
And when working in a sales led organization is demand gen has that opportunity to go across the aisle and to get into, get into the mud with sellers, right? And they, I don't think sellers are late getting lazier and vice versa. I don't think marketers are getting lazier. I think technology has inundated us with information.
We don't know what to do with. Right. And a lot of the time that information isn't contextualized and there's not a narrative connecting the dots. And so what happens is I think sellers are put under immense pressure with goals that are very often not aligned with what leadership has decided marketing goals are, and so you have behaviors that aren't healthy, that are incentivized, not because of sellers or because of marketers, but because of a lack of coordination from leadership.
Right. And, you know, when you have these, these incentives that, that, that don't align with the broader business impact, then it creates hostility and it creates misalignment and it creates a culture of finger pointing, you
pharosIQ: know, nail on the head sales too often. We, you know, it's been the same narrative, you know, sales and marketing alignment, communication, breaking down barriers.
I think 90 percent of sales and marketing alignment fails at the leadership level because marketing. Teams and sellers are given goals that are completely different. They have completely different objectives. Marketing's goals are generally, let's call them leading metrics, right? MQLs, SQLs, and sales goals are following metrics, revenue, and et cetera.
And there's no connective tissue between the two of them, right? You know, so if I'm a marketer, you told me what my job is. Um, my job is to keep my job, get a promotion, get paid, get a bonus, all of those wonderful things that we all want to do, I'm going to execute the hell out of it. Sales has been given a job.
They're going to hit their goals. They're going to hit their bonus. They're going to do all the same and they're going to execute. So like the silos are created by leaders, not connecting the dots between the two tissues that are sales and marketing. Right. And one of those key, like I've always said, why is, why are those people following up with leads driven by marketing, right?
Why are we, why are we targeting them based on meetings generated in pipeline and not lead conversion rates? Right. You know, again, if you, if you gave a seller a target right on, on the conversion of leads There would be a lot more honest conversations happening about the quality, right. And then that conversation would be connective.
Brian: Yeah. And I mean, going back to that, that idea of making sure goals are aligned is a lot of the time what will happen is you have sales goals, you know, are X marketing goals are Y, but if sales and marketing has to, you know, generate Y amount of leads, but if that doesn't roll up into the amount of revenue that sales is expected to generate, Then they're set up for failure, right?
Especially if the expectation for pipeline contribution isn't aligned on top of that. And actually, you know, that's why you see stats about what something like only 50 or 60 percent of sellers are expected to meet quota this quarter or this year. So I don't quote me on that stuff, but I know it's, it's not high right now.
And that's,
pharosIQ: that's probably generous.
Brian: Yeah. And I don't think that's entirely on sellers. I think it's, it's, it's unfair and a bit, um, It's disingenuous to put that all on sellers.
pharosIQ: But we could put a lot of it on,
Brian: right? We can put some. We can put some on it. You know, there's a level of accountability for sure for everyone, but You know, and that's, that goes to, depending on your record as a marketer or a seller, if you've got back to back sort of failures, then maybe that's more indicative, but I
pharosIQ: mean, but this is a, I mean, Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross, right?
Like the leads are weak and an entire movie created about lead quality. 20, 25, 27 years ago now. Right. And we're still, and we're still having the same, the same conversations and that's, that's bad. Right. So
Brian: things never change,
pharosIQ: which leads me to ABM, right. Is, is ABM, is ABM changing? You mentioned the change in the demand generation role, right?
ABM has been around for probably, I'd say it's had some serious legs for five or six years now. Are we, are we reaching like a renaissance with ABM to where it's changing?
Brian: I think it's, it's certainly, uh, hitting a sort of, uh, uh, a fork in the road, right? Uh, a convergence, a convergence of different ideas, different channels, different tactics, all sort of fighting to define what ABM is, right?
I think we're in such a period where there has been so much rapid change across technology, across methodologies and philosophies around sales and marketing, where they're all fighting to be sort of the predominant. Ideology behind these tactics and strategies. And ABM started off as it started off much more, more simply like, Hey, you know, we've decided we want to go after, you know, Salesforce, we're going to send their, you know, marketing team, all a personalized video, right?
Then you had the explosion of all of these ABM specific tools that also sort of had overlap with marketing automation platforms and then vice versa. They tried to like things like Marketo tried to. Re, uh, uh, backwards engineer to include a BM. Right? Now you have the conversation around A BX, right? Or, uh, qualify replacing m QLS with, uh, what a QLS account.
Qualified leads or qualified account. I forget the acronym. There's too many acronyms these days, but you, so it, it becomes. You know, then it becomes a, a, a, who is a target account? And at what point does it become an ABM campaign? And I don't think a lot of people have a clear idea what that is, um, because they're using generalized pipeline metrics for a program that doesn't operate.
Like inbound marketing, you know what I'm saying?
pharosIQ: It's crazy and it's what usually happens, right? You start with ABM and like you said, they're like, okay, who are, who's our 25 money accounts, right? Let's creatively sit down as a group and figure out how to attack them. And then what happens? It works, right?
So you penetrate the, and then somebody goes, Oh, well, you're like the old, what the old Google narrative, like, how can we 10 X this, right? How can we have some, some genius comes in the room and says, how can we 10 X this? And then now we're trying to do ABM at scale. And those two things are opposite. Yeah.
So like we, I see it all the time. I've, I've, I've, I've companies send, you know, send us in like, Oh, we're looking to work. Our, we'd like to work our target account list. Here's a list of 27, 000 accounts. Like, okay. That that's, that's one hell of a target account list, you know, so target account market, you know?
So, and then, you know, you had vendors in this space. Trying to define what ABM was as a piece of software or as a solution or as a platform, when reality, it's just a strategy, pick accounts that you think are the most valuable for you and work together to close them down. Right. And I think, I think what's happening now, unfortunately, is with the down economy, CFOs are coming in and saying, do we really need that?
Right. And a lot of the tools that are getting pushed out from the, do we really need that? Or some of these ABM, ABX, AB, whatever platforms that, you know, have a lot of bells and whistles that are really, really fancy, but, you know, you know, showcasing that actual return on investment is becoming more difficult.
So,
Brian: yeah. Yeah. So there with, with, you know, I had a background in marketing operations originally, and there is. Definitely, people underestimate just how central the onboarding of these tools can be to their strategy, right? The tool shouldn't be the strategy. But if you take the time to onboard and train people to really understand, How does this impact our metrics and our ability to execute on these campaigns?
Then they can be extremely helpful in a way that we've never had access to and, you know, in marketing and sales. But when they aren't, then you have these muddled spaghetti ball tech stacks that are eating into your budget. You end up cutting people who run them. And next thing you know, they sit 50, 000 a year towards what you could have essentially had another member of the team.
pharosIQ: Cause you got the discount for signing the three year you
Brian: got the discount
pharosIQ: for the like all the three year agreement. Oh the sass world and what kind of leaves me, you know, I mean you've been in sass for a while seven years You see and I think we're finally reaching a spot where the subscription is it?
People like not only buyers, but I think also investors and executives are realizing that it's not the subscription that creates the stickiness. It's the value, right? Does this, does this solution provide, no matter how much, like, I mean, again, most, most companies aren't signing up for AWS and a subscription it's month to month usage base.
But it's so sticky because it's valuable because your tech team needs it to run forward. Right. And I think that's finally, you know, we're, we're, we have a sharp left turn, right? A down economy can create a lot of Let's let's rethink this, right. And I think one of the great things to come out of this little downspout of the economy is the, this force feeding, uh, customers, platforms and, you know, platforms and, and subscriptions, uh, in, in a segment to where they may or may not need them.
Brian: Yeah, I think, honestly, I think the predictable revenue model and evaluations and board metrics that come with that, I think have done so much damage to how we. Market into how we reach the customers because it's not customer centric. And I think most. Not most, but like a lot of B2B businesses are not customer centric.
Instead. It's more geared towards, we want to make the sale in two years. I get that, right? You got to appease the board. You want to make the sale, but the best way to generate value is going to be to be Maniacal about your customer centricity and adhering to the subscription model at all costs, it's right for some people for sure.
Don't get me wrong, but at all costs, because you get a higher valuation out of that to me is just nuts. Like it's not, it's not customer centric at all. And then that's really challenging when you go to an organization and they want to rebuild everything to be centered on that. And they start to see huge swaths of churn because the business model has now been fundamentally changed and it no longer serves them the way it did.
Going back to what you said about value, they no longer get the same value.
pharosIQ: I mean, sometimes part of the value is not having to make the commitment and having to show up and perform consistently, especially in performance based, like performance based. Tech and media, right? You know, things like zoom info at 6 cents, like there, this isn't an HR platform, right.
That you need to stuff like, like at its run that. That service has to perform. It has to provide value to a marketing and selling organization. And the focus on the subscription is not, it basically takes the vendor off the hook from providing value for whatever the term of that subscription is. So if I'm, if I'm buyer X, and I'm like, and someone's pushing me into a three year subscription of X marketing stack platform, what I'm hearing is, Oh, you're not confident that I'll get enough return on it in a year that you're going to want to hook me up for three.
Right. Um, and I think that's the, That's the key difference in Mar in MarTech and sales tech is that it always aligns to a return because there's so much cost associated with marketing and sales, whereas other types of subscription based solutions are, are more logistically oriented from a, you know, the ROI comes from time saved in reporting and things of that nature.
Yeah. So we've been, we've been jumping, jumping around a lot just because, you know, you talked to so many demand marketers in the community and you've been doing this a ton. So let's jump, jump into the nitty gritty. Everyone's favorite part of the pod. Why we all come, you know, you've been, you've been doing the demand for years now, right?
Let's hear your most unbeatable boring campaign, you know, tell us about it. Did it work? Did it not work, you know, what, you know, what, what would you like to share with the, with the group?
Brian: Yeah. So when I came into childcare CRM as a demand and specialist at the time, they were running this yearly benchmark report.
Right. And they were, they gathered a bunch, you know, you have, they were probably the most preeminent, uh, childcare specific software in the industry at the time. Right. They were a, a, um, in an industry where most of the users don't know what a CRM is. Very tech apprehensive. These are people who are specialized in childcare, not in technology.
And so we came in and they did this, this yearly benchmark report. They would spend months putting it together and they put it out. Not really much promo. And it would sit in a drawer until the next year when they started the process again. Right. So I came in and I took this approach. I had gone through previously, like a, an acquisition at pay lease from Vista equity partners.
And back then, you know, we worked with some of their consultants where they sort of taught us before it became really mainstream on LinkedIn about content repurposing. And so I'm a big fan of. Talk to your customers the way they talk to each other. Right? And so that has meant like when I worked in media and entertainment, speaking the language of media, people speaking the language of higher education, and in this case, speaking the language of people who are tech apprehensive in the childcare industry.
And so what we did was we rebranded the whole company at the time, right? I worked with the CEO, with our head of marketing at the time, and then. We rebranded that report to be the building blocks of success, right? And so tying in with the theme of childcare and we redid everything so that it all aligned with, you know, like before it was, it was really tech heavy, really tech, tech oriented.
And we focused more on how does this impact your day to day? And we took that and we started hosting basically webinars that were sort of, um, they were framed in the way you would think of like a lecture or a class. And they were meant to teach the teachers, you know, cause they don't know, like on top of not knowing the platform, they don't know how to market the childcare centers.
And this is at a time where it peaked COVID in an industry that was. heavily hit. And so it really, you know, going back to the idea of value, we had an opportunity not just to provide value, but teach a man to fish, you know, um, and to me that was super exciting because you could see on these webinars, you'd be taught walking them through Hey, here's how you set up an automated response to, uh, prospects or people who inquire about your services.
And you'd see that light bulb go on the eyes of why, and then they go, wow, this, this is going to be, this is to me, one of the most tangible, uh, examples of value that I've seen in customers that I've worked with, because, You're not just affecting their bottom line. You're affecting their lives. And so they now have more time to dedicate towards the children they serve and teach and educate and take care of.
And at the same time, you're helping small businesses keep afloat. Um, and so we basically, we repurposed all of these things across social media, across our resource center that we developed across providing templates and the frameworks that these losers and these childcare providers could use to keep their businesses up.
And so that, that to me was just superbly exciting.
pharosIQ: Killer cam. It's a killer campaign. And it leads to like one of the, the old tried and true, you know, you didn't always have to pivot. You know, like I think one of the most common mistakes and you mentioned data earlier, right? There are so much data available now that, that I think to be candid, there's a lot of, there's so much data and there's not enough practitioners.
Who are versed enough to use that data correctly, both on the sales and marketing side. So we jump, you know, this feels like it's constant pivoting. Oh, we're our retention rates are down. We have to do this. Our, our, you know, our, our customer acquisition costs are up again. We have to change this, like the, the constant flows of data.
And what happens is no one gives that data time to kind of settle. So you're constantly. So, and again, back to the point where what you did is instead of pivoting. Like, okay, let's stop this report and let's do like, you save the same things. You just change the language to which it's set. And I think that's where a lot of teams missing the simplicity of it, that you, you don't have to rebuild a platform.
We don't have to adopt a tech. You don't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on X, Y, and Z. Sometimes you just have to look at the language to which you're speaking and ask the question, is it the right language or that, you know, like people are hearing the words, but the words aren't.
Connecting and especially in those very niche spaces as well. So really awesome. Brian, I think, yeah, I mean, I think we've, we've come to time, you know, we've been talking a lot of, of really hard hitting, you know, hard hitting segments, you know, I'd love to, I'm going to be talking about the, the renaissance of ABM for many, many episodes to come, I think.
So I appreciate you getting me. We jumped off on that, but, um, so where can we find the demand collective? If I'm a demand gen marketer listening to this and I'm interested in joining the community, where can I find it?
Brian: So demand collective. io, uh, we accept all demand, not all, but we accept demand gen marketers with at least two years of experience, uh, primarily in the B2B and SAS space, um, it's a, an application process.
We carefully vet our members to ensure that all of, uh, everyone in the Is, uh, at the same level, right? We want to make sure you're all getting value out of the community.
pharosIQ: When we
Brian: keep
pharosIQ: vendors and sellers out of there, like no
Brian: spam, no pitches, all community, no pitch, no pitches.
pharosIQ: I'm in there, but I, but I'm like a hybrid.
Brian: I'm like, you're, you're an active member. We appreciate you being in there. I
pharosIQ: know there's no pitching a lot. It really is. And I really, I really enjoyed being part of the community again. I've been working with B2B demand gen marketers for 17 years. So I've never. Done. I've never done the job, but I've, I've worked enough campaigns and I've worked with enough folks to be able to, I think, be a little bit dangerous on recommendations, kind of what's happening at the space as well.
But you did mention earlier, a lot of B2B tech and SAS in there as well, too. Are you seeing an emergence of folks popping in with demand gen titles outside of B2B tech and SAS before I let you go? Cause I'm seeing a little bit of this myself.
Brian: I've seen a little bit of it. I don't know enough for me to say that it's a big trend just yet.
But it might be a rare instance where B2B influences D2C. So thanks. We'll see. Awesome.
pharosIQ: Brian, thanks again for joining demand collective. io. You can reach, um, or you can reach them, him and his founder there. You can also reach, uh, Brian on LinkedIn as well. Join the community. Um, you know, it's, it's a, it's a really, really solid spot to be.
Um, and, uh, thanks again.
Brian: Thanks so much for having me, pharosIQ.
pharosIQ: Awesome. Cool.
Brian: I'm going to take off the recording.