Scaling Strategies for Success: Maximize Impact with Limited Resources

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr, and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Holly Chen. Holly is the managing partner of Exponential X, a marketing and growth advisory collective for high growth SaaS startups advising companies like Miro, Loom, ServiceNow, Appsflier in their growth journeys. Previously, Holly was the global head of digital marketing at Slack, helping it grow from 100 million to 700 million ARR and going public. Holly lives in San Francisco and speaks Italian and Chinese fluently. Holly, welcome to Revenue rehab. Your session begins now.

Holly Chen [00:01:24]:
So excited to join you, Brandy. This is fun.

Brandi Starr [00:01:28]:
I am excited to have you. I always love when guest bios throw in a little personal aspect in there. So very curious. How did you learn to speak Italian? Did you live in Italy previously?

Holly Chen [00:01:42]:
I did study in Italy. That was my undergrad major. I actually studied Italian in Beijing, so there were 24 of us every year. It's basically almost like a prep school for the Ministry of Foreign affairs. So, yeah, so, like, pretty much like, it's a really small circle. Everyone who study Italian know each other.

Brandi Starr [00:02:04]:
Ah, very, very cool. I loved it. I always loved to learn a little bit about my guests. And so before we jump into our actual topic, I like to break the ice with a little woosa moment that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what industry buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Holly Chen [00:02:27]:
That's such a great question, and I love the controversial beginning of it. I think growth hacking is something that unfortunately has lost its sort of original meaning. I think originally it had a lot of spirit on trying things out. Fail fast and don't be afraid of failures. I think right now a lot of people think about hacking as a random act of just throw things on the wall and don't really take a systematic approach into growth marketing and growth strategies. And some people even look for a silver bullet and says, oh, just give me some growth hacks and then I'm going to grow my product or company. So I think, you know, yes, growth hacking as a term has gotten misinterpreted a little bit. And I think I would encourage people to take a more systematic approach to plan out on your growth and be open to changes.

Brandi Starr [00:03:45]:
Yeah, I am with you there. I think growth hacking has been banished a number of times here on the is one of those words. It is people looking for that, you know, magic bullet that's just gonna, you know, it's like that easy button that staples used to have in their commercials. Like, there is, there's not any one thing that we just slap that button and magically here is growth. So I can promise, at least for our discussion, we will put growth hacking in the box and throw it away. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab today?

Holly Chen [00:04:29]:
Yeah, great. I just finished a six month interim CMO role at a SaaS company, and they were primarily self funded, actually. Like, they raised some funding, but not necessarily a huge amount. They have been growing very consciously and sustainably. So we had to use a lot of tactics to use limited resources, planning for marketing strategies and channels and approaches. So I can, you know, share some of the thoughts on how to drive more impact with limited resources and probably also, you know, like, how to make the best use of your interim executives and what to look for. What are some of the pitfalls?

Brandi Starr [00:05:18]:
Awesome. I love it. This is such a great topic because despite how many resources you have, I do think we all are limited in some capacity. And I feel like, you know, budget and headcount seems to be getting smaller. And so before we dive to our topic, I believe in setting intentions. It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. And so what's your best hope for our talks? What would you like people to take away from the conversation?

Holly Chen [00:05:56]:
Yeah. So marketing is changing so fast, and there are many new tools out there, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed around all the different companies getting funding or different tools out there and don't know what to use. So if I were to give one takeaway, it would be get hands on in trying out the AI tools, regardless whether they are perfect or not. Just try it out. You know, take a course on prompt engineering on, like, how to, how to use some of these tools and actually, like, use it in the, you know, in the actual, you know, like, outbounding for your, for your, for your marketing services or writing your personal blog or, like, so. I would, I would say, like, so. So often we stay on the strategy level and, and don't really get our hands dirty anymore for senior executives. So we encourage senior marketers, also get hands on and get a first feel on all the tools out there.

Brandi Starr [00:07:09]:
Yeah, and I agree completely. Like it is really important to, especially when things are changing so fast and the technology is evolving. I do think it is important that you get your hands dirty, figure it out, because the technology impacts the strategy. It's like what you have at your fingertips allows you to determine what ways you can deploy it. And if you don't really understand how it works, what it can do, then you're limited in your thinking there. So I agree with you completely. We got an action item right out of the gate, which is lovely. And so my first question really is a broad one.

Brandi Starr [00:07:53]:
So I know you just wrapped up this interim role, and in your role at exponential x, I know you see what's happening at a lot of different companies. So tell me, what are you seeing that's working? Like, what are some of the channels and tactics that in our current market are really effective?

Holly Chen [00:08:12]:
Yeah, that's a great question. So I think a lot of the traditional channels are transforming by itself and they shouldn't be seen as their old role anymore. So for example, for SEO, it's a foundational channel that every company should do. But AI is really changing how SEOs are done. For example, the new trend in video in SEO. So instead of just using AI to write a generic article, or instead of just writing text based articles, I've seen people more and more use video as a multimedia, multi model format to optimize for their SEO. So on your page, you would have multiple formats, including your text, including images, infographics, including videos, and actually using the transcript and summarize the transcript as part of the takeaway and of course adding your original thoughts in the article so that the SEO article is now being optimized with multiple sources. So even old trick like SEO is changing so fast.

Holly Chen [00:09:46]:
And Google is testing, for example, indexing transcripts within TikTok videos, and they're testing in some countries in Europe, and I'm not going to be, I'm not surprised if they're going to launch it globally pretty soon. So even old taxes like that is changing fast. And so marketers needs to stay really on top of it. And some of the new ones not new anymore because everyone is now doing it. Founders, LinkedIn, founders X and Prada Hunt, and even working with influencers. And all of those are not necessarily new, but they are taking on new formats and there are always new tactics you can use. So for example, LinkedIn, they sometimes even hide your comment with the link. Nowadays, you know, every few months you get new ways that you can make the channel work, and it is always changing.

Holly Chen [00:10:57]:
So I would say, as marketers, instead of say, well, this channel doesn't work, or LinkedIn is so expensive, or influencers, I don't have resources to do it, I would encourage marketers to actually think through how can we use the current resources and even though it's limited, what kind of impacts that we can make with these limited resources.

Brandi Starr [00:11:24]:
Yeah. And I think you hit on a really great point in that currently it's less about what new channels exist or what new things we can do and more. So how do we do better and different with the channels that already exist? Like everything is, you know, all the current channels still play a role. They're just evolving and I what's effective and how we're using them.

Holly Chen [00:11:48]:
Yeah, yeah. It's so easy to want to find the next shiny object, the next new channel that no one hear about. Yeah, there are some of them, but I think really, the success or the failure of the tactic really depends on how you make it work, instead of, you know, always trying to find a new channel.

Brandi Starr [00:12:17]:
And are there any channels or tactics that you're seeing that you're like, eh, that just, those really don't work anymore at all?

Holly Chen [00:12:32]:
I have tested content syndication at various occasions. They always had a mixed result. Sometimes people don't even remember that they've downloaded a white paper from us when our salespeople reach out to them. Other times they just bluntly said, oh, like, I didn't do it. Why are you calling me so? I don't know, the content citation on the, on the cio.com or cfo.com of the world, I always wondered how that's working for other marketers. I'm curious, actually, have you tested those?

Brandi Starr [00:13:17]:
Yeah, I would say that content syndication is less effective than it used to be. However, now I think it really has a lot to do with the vendors. At one point, there were fewer syndication vendors and the lists and the way that they were targeting and pushing things to people, what they were collecting as an actual response, I think was a little more structured and strategic. And now there are so many mass vendors that it is like, you know, it is, they are pushing tons and tons of content. You know, what they're counting as engagement and passing over to you is a bit more passive than active. And so I would agree that it is less effective. I have seen, you know, we have a client in manufacturing that still leans heavy on content syndication, and it's been effective for them. Like they're, some of the vendors they work with the contacts that, you know, now they don't come in ready to talk to sales.

Brandi Starr [00:14:30]:
And I think that's the big nuance. You know, those that are engaging with content syndication generally, it's an indicator of an interest in a particular topic. And so there's still more conversation to be had before you have someone just reach out to call them.

Holly Chen [00:14:49]:
Yeah, that's a really good point. I think the setting expectation that this is not a channel that's going to convert right away, but it's more about nurturing them, building trust vis the content and actually hit people up. There's multiple pieces of content and maybe lead them down a journey of nurture before just throwing them to the sales team is probably the way to make it even more effective.

Brandi Starr [00:15:21]:
Yeah. Because I very much see it as a part of a contact acquisition strategy. Like this is a way that you are building your audience and you're doing so in a targeted way by tapping into the audience of the syndication vendor. And so, yeah, so anytime I'm leveraging content syndication, even though they call it cost per lead, like, I really wish they'd change that l and just say cost per contact because you're not actually getting leads, like you are essentially leveraging syndication to build your audience. And then you've got to, you know, create that awareness of why they should care about what, you know, the problem you solve, etc. Etc. Before you, you know, it's not like a webinar, whereas someone attends to, you know, a webinar, they give you 30 minutes to an hour of their time. Like, yeah, they might be ready to have a more in depth conversation.

Brandi Starr [00:16:17]:
Like they're just, they're not on the same playing field. Yep.

Holly Chen [00:16:20]:
Yep, that's a really good one.

Brandi Starr [00:16:24]:
And so thinking about, you know, I think where in having some conversations with other cmos and marketing leaders, sometimes what I find is the struggle when resources get limited is figuring out, you know, we know we would like to do all of the buckets, but we don't have enough resource to do all of the things. So it's like really prioritizing and being able to identify what's going to be the most effective. And I know there's no like universal formula of, you know, these tactics work. It's going to be business by business. But I, as you're working with companies and having to, you know, go through that prioritization exercise, I'd love to just hear some of your thoughts around what are you thinking about when you're trying to figure out where to deploy, whether it's your budget, your team, etcetera, when things are limited?

Holly Chen [00:17:22]:
Yeah, that's such a great question. It's on top of every cmos mine because like this year or even last year, it's all about doing more was less. So I hear this so often from every company I work with. I think what's really important is to be clear on what stage you're at, actually what, you know, what revenue stage dictates a lot on what kind of channels that you want to focus on. For example, if you are less than 1 million our company, versus a one to 5 million versus five to 20 million versus 20 million plus ARR, the type of channel I would recommend is actually quite different for, you know, less than 1 million ARR. I would really recommend companies to focus on organic channels. So you know, like we just talked about, you know, founders, LinkedIn thought leadership and videos and partner webinars, SEO content, working those micro influencers where you don't spend a huge amount of money but you know, the micro ones that still have a lot of impact, leveraging your existing network of media relations and launch press and founder led sales and those under 1 million ar, you don't have a lot of resources from both people and money perspective. So these organic channels would actually create a lot of impact.

Holly Chen [00:18:56]:
Then for one to 5 million ARR, I would say this is when you started to see some traction from pmfs. Then you can start with some of the more like paid performance in a smaller scale. So let's say for Google search ads maybe you can do up to $5,000 a month to try out various different campaigns. Now if you have even more budget or raised like a significant round, you can say okay, maybe YouTube ads is something that we want to test out to generate some demand to increase our brand awareness. I think YouTube is really underrated oftentimes because people don't click on YouTube ads. But in various incrementality studies and Brent Lyft studies I've seen and YouTube has been very effective in driving both awareness and remarketing. But I think oftentimes people don't spend enough budget to actually observe an impact on some of these channels. For YouTube I would recommend, let's say thirty k per month to see a observable impact versus I've seen people just say oh, like 5000 a month on YouTube, you're not going to see really a big change.

Holly Chen [00:20:28]:
And plus making sure you're tracking your organic search lift, your brand search lift and organic search ads and brand search volume to really holistically evaluate the impact of YouTube. I talked about SEM, I talk about YouTube ads, but also for one to 5 million ARR, you can start to do more scaled LinkedIn. You can ask your team to cross post on LinkedIn, you can use email to reach out to folks. You can even host online events now to get more of your prospects into learning more about you for SEO, even though for less than 1 million ARR you want to do more of the one article per week type of SEO content and now at one plus million, and you can do more scaled SEO, you can spend on backlink building, you can scale your content into maybe two times a week or maybe building some of the free tools page. So like a lot of the tactics you can build on top of each other to now, like create more impact now at this stage, I would also say referrals has proven to be really, really effective. And there's a lot of my clients. So referrals not only the traditional sort of affiliate networks, but also look into some of the partner networks I know, like Crossband and reveal just merged. So they have been very effective in driving referral relationships for some of my customers.

Holly Chen [00:22:14]:
And then once you hit 5 million and 20 million, this is when, especially for PLG companies, you can start to do product led sales. For some of the sales led companies, you can start to invest more in LinkedIn ads, in creating podcasts, like creating thought leadership and podcast, and maybe trying content dedication now and do some of the role specific channels where you can have target campaigns to particular Personas. So in summary, I would think, you know, less than 1 million ARR, focus on organic one to 5 million ARR, start testing some of the performance marketing and then above 5 million ARR and up to 20 million IRR. And then you can start to use some of the more like sales driven and scalable, scalable channels, offline channels.

Brandi Starr [00:23:13]:
I like leveraging that or leaning into the revenue levels as a way of identifying those priorities because I know, especially when talking to smaller companies, especially if the leader, you know, has historically worked in larger companies, sometimes it's really easy to think about the big things that, you know, that work that you totally don't have the resources for. So really aligning. And I think what that also does is a lot of that organic stuff lays the foundation for some of those bigger things. And so it becomes almost like layers that you're going through of, you know, we're gonna keep putting these things on top of, on top of other things.

Holly Chen [00:23:57]:
Yep.

Brandi Starr [00:23:58]:
In, in your last answer, you hit a little bit on something else that has been a hot topic recently, which is the whole debate of brand versus demand. And there's, you know, most marketing leaders really get the importance of investing in brand and that it really is a long term play and it is, you know, needed in order to support everything. But there is also a balance of, you know, when the numbers aren't doing what we want them to do, there is a little bit of that panic and a push to focus on more short term things that can impact the current quarter or next quarter. And so just love to hear some of your thoughts in how you're advising people to, one, where that split becomes, and two, how you're communicating upward, or to the board, to the CEO, etcetera, who if they don't believe in that, you know, the need to consistently invest in brand.

Holly Chen [00:25:12]:
Yeah, I can give you an example of how, as a gross marker, at heart I'm now the biggest proponent of brand marketing. So one of my clients is AI tool space, very competitive. It's very hard to stand out. And then they realized how important it is to actually using brand to differentiate themselves. So very early on we actually worked as a really amazing brand agency to create the look and feel and the brand language from the visual photography style, funds the color scheme all the way to, you know, how do we want to talk about ourselves, how do we want to storytell, how do we want to communicate the value prop for the product? So was that work? It wasn't like a huge effort as I think traditionally companies do rebrands for like an entire year. But you know, for smaller companies, we were able to do it really scrappily with some great partners in like months and a half, was able to redo the website and redo a lot of the messaging. So when we looked into the performance charts, basically the visit to sign up rate had a 25% change pretty immediately after the time we launched, launched the new website. And also the traffic itself have grown really like ten X and 20 x since that point because more word of mouse coming in.

Holly Chen [00:27:09]:
And actually even for the influencer strategy that we implemented, more influencers started to respond to us because now they see this very nice and professional brand and they thought we were actually a lot bigger company than we actually are. And more people responded to us and that's like a really, really nice flywheel that we created and then we look more professional, more people want to work with us, and then they create more influencer videos and a word of mouse and start to spin. So that's like a very concrete example of just doing the exercise of creating a brand language has visually impacted bottom line and demand. And the second thing I want to say is this conversation of brand, we can't measure brand. I think it's only half true. There are ways that you can measure brand impact. So from the more traditional survey all the way to how do we set up geo control holdouts to understand brand campaign impact, how do we actually use some of the more geofencing or tactics or time stamp differences as you air something, let's say, on tv and then the five minutes afterwards, and what's the impact of it? Especially with a lot of the connected tv and digital channels, even out of home now has a lot of digital out of home now. So the way you can measure brand is a lot more available than, you know, 510 years ago.

Holly Chen [00:29:16]:
So I would actually encourage, like, do not, do not give up on brand measurement just yet. And, you know, there's so many ways that you can do brand measurement from survey, from holdout analysis, incrementality analysis, all the way to like, observing your brand search volumes and tie that back to your baseline.

Brandi Starr [00:29:45]:
Yeah, and I think that's a great point. Like the way that technology has been implemented in the different tactics that we are using, it is a lot easier to measure. And I don't know that we'll ever 100% get there, but I do feel like, you know, we're headed in the right direction to the point that you can prove value even with just the data that is currently available.

Holly Chen [00:30:12]:
Yeah, yeah. I would even say, like for, for different stages, a company brand plays a different role as well. You know, when you look at some of the more mature companies, they've. They've used all the demand tactics. Like a very obvious example is like Airbnb, right? Like they always do. Brand, they now actually switched a lot of their budget from performance marketing to brand because they know well, by now a lot of, like most people have heard of Airbnb, but in order for these people to come back to purchase repeatedly, brand plays a bigger role than performance marketing.

Brandi Starr [00:30:56]:
Yeah. And I think that's a great point. And so I want to shift gears. My last question, you know, one of the reasons that I started revenue rehab is to have conversations like this, because marketing, you know, leading marketing is a tough gig and there's so many things that are changing and evolving. And I know a lot of times the marketing leaders can almost feel a bit alone in what they are struggling with. And just as someone who, you know, I know that you're advising lots of different companies. I would just love to hear your advice. For any of the marketing leaders out there that feel like they're struggling to really hit the mark and hit their goals, what are your thoughts and advice you'd give to them?

Holly Chen [00:31:59]:
I have two thoughts. One thought is be really, really close with your sales leader. I think I learned so much from our sales leader, our CRO, and conversation with them is always so many great insights and great ideas. And for them, they were just sharing, you know, like, their conversations with customers. And for a marketer who's, you know, genuinely, genuinely asked questions with curiosity and, like, brainstorming, I had so many, like, just random creative ideas coming out from, from those conversations. So I would say, like, say really close with the CRO and also just, like, be really frank about expectation setting. I think a lot of times, like, sales and marketing gets into this, oh, you're not generating enough leads, oh, you're not closing the deals. But in reality, it's like, okay, how do we actually make sure the handoff is really tight? How do we make sure, like, what you're hearing from the unqualified people and we can proactively address in marketing, messaging, or what we're hearing from CS team around the product improvements, and how do we actually give that feedback to the product team and then address it in a marketing campaign, too? So I think cross functionally getting that insights.

Holly Chen [00:33:36]:
And two, I would say think about what you want out of this job. I think, like, lots of times we tie our identity into a job very closely, and then when, you know, macroeconomic environment is not working and we think this is our personal failure, I would, like, I always take a, like, what can I learn from the situation? Even if, like, the company is not doing well or, you know, like, your traditional tax is not working, or, like, maybe there's a messy, I don't know, like, sales team. Like, I'm just, you know, but all of those situations are great learning opportunities. It's like, oh, now I know how to create order from chaos. Or, like, now I can learn how to use unconventional marketing channels to reach out to people, and now I can learn how to, you know, influence the boardroom conversation so that the investors are not, you know, like, on top of us. So, like, I think, I think, like, what can I learn? What can I get out of this experience that you never know when, when it's gonna pay out in your next role.

Brandi Starr [00:34:56]:
Yeah. And I think that's a great point as well, because I, you know, if I look at my own career. It's like every role has built on the next, and there's been some skill or some experience or some connection that has happened in that role that it's like, oh, I really needed that to prepare me for, you know, this. And so that is, you know, I. It's funny. And this is why I love asking open ended questions, because I hadn't even thought about it from the perspective of, you know, just the individual. But that is such, such great advice. And so talking about our challenges is just the first step, and nothing changes if nothing changes.

Brandi Starr [00:35:35]:
And so, in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework. But here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So this is where you give us your one thing. For those that are listening, if what you have said has resonated with them, where should they start? What's that first action item?

Holly Chen [00:35:59]:
This may not be new, but like, with all these new AI tools, I really recommend marketers to try them out. So recently I've been trying out those outbound sales AI tools because now running exponential X collective, we've always been inbound, but we're like, oh, maybe we should try out how outbound works. So I'm literally signing up the clay that instantly all the sales, sales, outbounding tools and trying them all out like a pol. You know, I think being hands on, trying out new tools is the best way to learn.

Brandi Starr [00:36:45]:
I love that as an action item, when it comes to new technology, I'm always like a kid in a toy store. Like, I want to try all of the things. So I think that that is a great action item. And so, Holly, I have enjoyed our discussion, but, but that's our time for today. But before we go, tell our audience, how can they connect with you and also give us the shameless plug for exponential X. What do you all do?

Holly Chen [00:37:14]:
Thank you. So Exponential X is a marketing and gross advisor collective. So all of us are previous cmos and vp of marketing at b, two b companies. So we help companies with growth and marketing challenges. There's various different formats. Some of them are more project based, helping you to figure out your product, marketing, messaging. Some of them are more advisory based, where we are your coach along the way and help you to have a second opinion or brainstorm. So great people in the collective from various companies, airtable, Grammarly and loom.

Holly Chen [00:37:56]:
And we're all just love solving problems. So check out espionagelx if we can be helpful. We just launched our YouTube channel. So again, you know, practice what we preach. I strongly believe in video and content, so we just launched, like, X Millennial x collective YouTube channel so you can look for it.

Brandi Starr [00:38:24]:
Awesome. Well, yeah, I will definitely have to check that out. And we will make sure to link to exponential X. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can connect with Holly and continue to learn from the exponential X team. Well, again, Holly, thanks so, so much for joining me.

Holly Chen [00:38:47]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Brandi Starr [00:38:49]:
And thanks for everyone for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my discussion with Holly. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time. Bye bye.