The Modern Marketing Playbook: Advice for Early-Stage Tech Start-ups

[0:05] Intro:   

Welcome to Revenue Rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita, Brandi Starr.

[0:34] Brandi Starr:   

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 Joe Reynoso. Joe is a sustainable growth advisor with 12 years of integrated experience designing, activating, measuring and optimizing go-to market strategies for early and mid-stage tech companies. He is the founder and CEO of Tierra Nueva Interactive, a b2b demand generation strategy firm focused on helping SaaS founders and their teams to reduce waste, increase pipe and accelerate sales velocity in a more customer centric way. Joe, welcome to Revenue Rehab, your session begins now.

[01:26] Joe Reynoso:

Thank you, Brandy. That was an awesome introduction. It's so nice to be here with you.

01:32] Brandi Starr:

I am excited to have you and yes, I know every time I read my guests' intros I'm like always so impressed with the people that I get a chance to talk to. And we're going to jump into and talk to a lot about what you do with companies at Tierra Nueva. But before we do that, I like to break the ice with a little woosah moment that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me Joe, what buzzword would you like to banish forever? 

[02:05] Joe Reynoso:

You know Brandy, there's about 15 years behind the scenes of hearing so many buzzwords over the years. But I think as a, as a marketer, that's been doing this at a high level for quite a while, I would say, the buzzword that I would like to banish today is platform.

[2:27] Brandi Starr:  

Interesting. That is not one that I hear often. So tell me, why would you like to banish platform? 

[02:37] Joe Reynoso:

So as a full stack marketer, I partnered with many organizations that have grown organically, also spend a quite a bit of money on technology in order to accelerate that growth. And everyone's looking for the technology that's going to best enable their go-to market strategy. And oftentimes, during the execution of that go to market strategy, we find when we go into these companies that a lot of their tech is underutilized. Organizations are looking for platforms in order to accelerate growth, but they utilize them like point solutions, where maybe just a few of those important features are being utilized. And we essentially go in and help them rethink how that technology is best suited to enable their strategy. And maybe if there's something that can help accelerate that growth, that's less costly, we kind of guide them in that direction as well. So platforms, let's banish platforms. 

[03:50] Brandi Starr:  

I'm with you there. Now that you've given me the explanation, it sounds like what we do is somewhat similar and I see the same thing where is wanting to get these platform solutions is kind of the in thing. And then they get them and it's like, do this one thing, or there's like other technologies that do the same thing as what's a part of the platform technology, and it's like, what's the point of a platform if you buy all these other things also.

And then the platforms tend to market themselves as a one size fits all, do everything in here and it's they usually do one thing really well and everything else kind of mediocre. So I'm with you. We can take platform, put it in the box, put it on the shelf, toss it out. We will not use the term platform, at least for this discussion. So now that we've gotten that off our chest tell me what brings you to Revenue Rehab today.

[4:56] Joe Reynoso:   

Sure. Thank you. So I acquainted with a member of your organization at Tegrita, Rolly; he is an awesome leader. I introduced myself to him through the pavilion network. And just organically, this introduction was made. So I'm here to help other early stage founders just avoid some of the common mistakes that are so often made when they're trying to accelerate growth. So I'm hoping maybe we could chat about that today. 

[05:34] Brandi Starr:

Awesome. And I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most importantly, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should take away from our discussion today. So what is your best intention for our discussion.

[5:51] Joe Reynoso:   

Always listen to your customer. They're generally right all the time.

[05:56] Brandi Starr:

I love that. And it's a great -- voice of customer journey, the customer experience, whatever we put the customer at the center of things, that's when we tend to get it right. So I love that to always listen to your customer. So generally our audiences going to be heads of marketing at varying sized businesses. So if you're listening today, and you are the head of marketing for an early stage SaaS tech companies startup, this discussion is particularly for you. And so Joe, I want to start by asking, what do you see as the biggest challenge right now with those that are trying to lead marketing to drive a growth strategy in these early stage startups? 

[06:54] Joe Reynoso:

Certainly Brandy. I think if I had to summarize it, one challenge that I see repeat itself over and over again, in my career, has been what I like to call the slow effect of moving too fast. And so you have multiple functions within the go-to market strategy, hopefully all working in unison to enable the education, the awareness, the consideration that's required to help your buyers buy what you're selling. And so when you go into these organizations, as a unbiased, third party, sort of consultant role and you mesh and integrate into these teams, you start to see that there are lots of activities that are going on. And all these activities are intended to be measured, and they're intended to be tracked, and they might be focusing on maybe last touch attribution, or maybe there's a multi touch element there to their measurement. And it's all focused on building out what we call opportunity management process, which is essentially how your buyers go through the various stages of your sales process. And so, in doing that, organizations will implement so many different tactics, in order to enable that strategy. You might have lead gen, you might have a very real and tangible brand play, that is causing your audience to become aware of your solution, to develop more of an affinity for your product or services. You might also be funneling those prospects, once they convert on your forms into maybe an outreach sequence, where there's the intention there to book a meeting. And then you've got your SDR, your AE teams doing that outreach in order to enable that initial discovery conversation. And so, through that process, there's quite a bit of friction that is generated on the buy side. Buyers want to consume information in the feed in areas where they're likely to learn more about what they're potentially looking to acquire. And then the conversation that happens in the feed, generally in social networks, where I play quite a bit, it shouldn't be a transactional conversation. When you're building brand, when you're trying to generate demand for your products or services, it's definitely more about what is it that I want to learn? And then if there's something that I want to learn more about, I'm going to engage with that. And I think most buyers, most customers believe that to be true. It's not a transactional channel. So social, some of these buzz terms like dark funnel or dark social.

[10:38] Brandi Starr:   

I'm pretty sure that was banished before. 

[10:40] Joe Reynoso:   

I'm pretty sure sure that one has been banished. 

[10:42] Brandi Starr:

I think that one may have gotten banished twice.

[10:45] Joe Reynoso:   

There's a modicum of truth there. There are areas in within the social networks where engagement is happening, conversations are free flowing, recommendations are being made. And those engagements are really hard to track. So there's some truth in calling it dark social or referring to something as a dark funnel. But what is true, in my experience is that buyers don't want a transactional experience there. They don't want to buy, while they're trying to have a friendly conversation to learn more. If they want to buy, they will then take that information that you've shared with them, and go visit your website and convert on your Contact Us form. They'll go check out your pricing page, they'll do their due diligence in private communities, ask a network of their peers, learn more about a first person account from a first person, someone that they trust, whether that was a product or solution that served them well. And then at that point, they'll come to you with 95% of the information necessary to make an informed educated decision. And then the sales team's job at that point, is just to help them buy what it is that they are looking to buy. So when I say the slow effects of moving fast as being a challenge, I mean that if we focus on the customer, and we use that technology and the strategy that we intend to employ to reach them in a more conversational way, in a more just genuine way, instead of trying to focus on the conversion, then the results generally come.

[12:43] Brandi Starr:

Okay. And so I think within that you hit on a couple things that I want to dig further into. So you talked about activity. And there's a lot of activity that happens on the marketing and the sales side. And if we think about it, at least early in my career, so 20-ish years ago, activity was everything that was what we could measure was, how much were we doing. And so there's the activity piece. And then there is the friction that you talked about, on the buy side, where you do have organizations that are treating some of these sales as transactional, which again, I think is a very old school mindset. And one of the things that I know that you feel passionately about is what the modern marketing playbook looks like. So not doing things the way that we used to do it way back when, and I think most of our listeners are going to not be living in the dark ages, and still measuring on activity. But one thing that I do see, especially in early stage tech startups, is a lot of times we have a lot of first time leaders. So really strong marketers who have been more of an independent contributor in other organizations and are able to cut their teeth as the head of marketing in an early stage tech startup. And so in some cases like that, leading and being able to drive for their teams, and in some cases, they are a team of one. What that modern marketing playbook really should look like? And how they do what you said, which is put the customer first and make sure that we're removing that friction and leading them to the sale so that they are raising their hand essentially, what does that look like? If I'm a first time head of marketing, at an early stage startup, what is the modern marketing playbook look like for me?

[14:57] Joe Reynoso:   

Yeah, that's a great question Brandi. So, I think to start, when you think about modern marketing, it's not so much about individual programs that you're looking to execute. It's more about forging relationships at scale. A marketers job is to help their prospective buyer answer the question, why should I? Why should I? Especially if you're operating in a category or a vertical, that is very competitive, very busy, very noisy. If you're a marketer, a marketing leader working in an organization that is part of a category that is very busy. I would say that obviously, your team's job is to help that prospective buyer understand what makes your solution different, what makes your solution aligned with their reality, with their point of view and ultimately, how you can help them solve their pain in a much more elegant and less stressful way. Our job as marketers is to alleviate pain and we do that by giving people what they want. So I would say, the modern marketer is more of a philosopher poet than they are a person that's just activating paid media in order to convert a lead into your pipe. So that's one. And then I would say, the next step is just taking a moment to understand that your job as a marketer is also to generate appeal, generate affinity, do it in a way that the message is delivered with clarity. And if you're doing that successfully, over an extended period of time, you will ultimately generate the awareness, you will generate the the understanding that your customer needs in order to take the next step, make that next micro yes, in order to ultimately have a series of micro yeses that result in the desired outcome, which is a new customer. 

[17:42] Brandi Starr:   

Okay, so, in thinking about relationships at scale, what I'm hearing is your playbook has to be focused on those micro yeses. So whether it's a series of initiatives or multiple programs, one program like it's -- to me, what I'm hearing is, it's almost a bit of a mindset shift in not thinking about the programs that you're running, and thinking more about some people call them moments of truth, you call them micro yeses. There's different buzzwords for those same things. But really just focus on supporting those -- you talked about why should I? How do I answer my problems, like all of those micro yeses? Moving them forward. And so it sounds like the playbook is less about the tactics and more about the mentality. Am I interpreting what you're saying correctly?

[18:48] Joe Reynoso:

Yeah. 100% Brandy that's spot on. And I think ultimately, if you change the mindset, that's the first step, changing the mindset. Then you you're able to take the next step in that evolution of modern marketing, which is changing the measurement. So if you change the mindset, you can then all come to a consensus within that go-to market team of how you're going to measure that go to market strategy. And then once you change the measurement, then you can change the behavior and the types of tactics that you employ generally flow from there. 

[19:28] Brandi Starr:

Okay, I love that we're going to change the mindset, change the measurement, change the behavior. I want to jump back to something that you said earlier because I found it really, really interesting because you said the modern marketer is more of a philosopher, and poet, which is really interesting and very different than what you will hear most people say, because if you think about old school marketing, we were known as the arts and crafts department. It was a lot more about that creativity, the psychology of colors, and all those different things. And a lot of people view, modern marketing as where you are bringing in more of the data and science into marketing because of the technology, which naturally leads to all of the automations, and data analytics and all of these things. So the fact that you feel like modern marketing is more of the philosopher poet, I'd love you to explain more of that perspective, because it is really different than how most people think about marketing and the role right now. 

[20:45] Joe Reynoso:

Sure, absolutely. That's a great consideration. And I'll double click on that, for sure. I like to view modern marketing, as a marriage of heuristic analysis and also influencing consumer outcomes that help the buyer feel as though they came to the decision on their own. And that means being a helpful guide. That means being Virgil, walking Dante through the inferno of challenges that they may be experiencing. That might be being a helpful friend. And oftentimes, I think what's missing in marketing today is a sense of authenticity, a sense of generally looking out for your your customers best interests. And oftentimes, these GTM functions at early stage startups can be over architected. And so we want to reduce the complexity. Tierra Nueva what we focus on is simplifying the go-to market strategy, so that we can generate a more effective lift, but do it in a way that scalable, and in a way that's more authentic for their buyers. So I would say, yes, it is necessary to focus on data and technology and integrating these various pieces of technology together in order to get the measurement right, and also not to sacrifice the data model. Don't sacrifice the data model, because ultimately, you have to report back on what's working and what's not. And we can get into a whole other -- open up a whole can of beans around that topic Brandi. But ultimately, consumer behavior is also qualitative and the leading indicators that you want to evaluate, are not going to pop up on the back end of an analytics dashboard all the time. Sometimes the leading indicators have to do with positive sentiment, they have to do with whether your consumers or your ideal customer is in market at this time. If they're not, how long are they in their current engagement? Why are they in those engagements? What makes them feel more comfortable using this other solution as opposed to yours? Understanding that is really how you develop the message and the positioning in order to better attract them. So a lot of teams need to do their homework. 

[24:07] Brandi Starr:

Okay. And I just was kind of thinking about the concept of a poet and how poetry is put together. You think about there's a cadence and a rhythm of the poem. There is a lot of imagery; in some cases, poetry is not using direct language, it is using more emotional language. I'm definitely not someone who's totally into poetry, but just thinking about what I do know, there are some parallels there to the customer experience and how we really think about that. So you have given me a new way to really think about how we craft these journeys, because as both a strategists and technologists, I do think of it more scientifically, naturally, as opposed to politically. And so that is really interesting.

[25:08] Joe Reynoso:   

And I think on that train of thought as well, like, that was put so beautifully. Exactly. It's function and form. So if you're comprising a sonnet, you have five feet, two meters within each feet. You're ending that sonnet with a rhyming couplet. It's memorable. It's the form and the structure of that piece that catches the imagination, that helps someone develop an affinity for whatever message you're conveying. And then long after they've consumed that message, are they going to recall it, when they arrive at a moment of need? And so there, there's lots of poetry. And establishing whether you've developed product market fit, whether you are developing the right ad variations to generate awareness in these social platforms, whether you're controlling the geography of the pitch in order to guide the geology of the mind. There's so much art in that science as well, and there's beauty in it as well. 

[26:43] Brandi Starr:

Yeah, I'm totally sitting here wishing I had paid more attention in English Lit when we covered poetry. Because when I was in college that was not my jam, and it was one of those just enough attention to pass, but it was kind of like, blah, blah, blah, let's move on. So now I'm like, hmm, there really was something to that. But yeah, I think I learn just as much from my guests as my audience does. And this really is a different way to frame the thinking around how we approach driving that customer experience in general. And talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes, if nothing changes. 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. And so I am one that i love -- a lot of times you listen to podcasts, or you attend events, and you get all jazzed about what you need to do, but then you don't quite know how to actually apply it. And so I like to give our listeners one thing. So some action item that they can do relatively immediately, especially if they're an early stage tech startup, in moving in the right direction to really having a modern marketing playbook that will help them to accelerate their GTM strategy. So Joe, I'd like to ask, what is your one thing for us today? 

[28:23] Joe Reynoso:

That's great brandy, I would say, opportunities are greater than MQLs. Get the data model right; make sure that your lead and contact statuses are synced with your lifecycle stages. And make sure that your sales and marketing team are developing feedback loops that inform one another on what the customer wants and what the customer is telling them. It's so important. It's so important. You can go fast and you can implement your paid social strategy, you can implement your paid search strategy, you can do some retargeting on ad roll, you can build out your nurture sequences, you can do all of these wonderful tactics. But if your data model isn't right, you're going to be spinning yourself in circles. So I would encourage all early stage founders to make sure that you place your marketing automation platform at the center of your go-to market strategy, and ensure that your customer journey is aligned with the data capture that you have in place in your CRM and your marketing automation platform. Get that sync behavior working correctly, and if you're looking for help, our team at Tierra Nueva Interactive would be happy to sit down, just audit guide you and share with you what's working well for our customers.

[30:03] Brandi Starr:

Awesome! I definitely can give an amen to putting the marketing automation at the center of things. That is definitely one of my strong beliefs. And for everyone listening, Joe has given us a hard one thing in getting and taking the time to really get that data model right, and making sure that there's a good feedback loop between sales and marketing. Well Joe, I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go, how can our audience connect with you?

[30:37] Joe Reynoso:

Absolutely Brandi, and I really enjoyed the conversation with you as well. Really great to be here. Anyone listening, all of your viewers can find me on LinkedIn. So Joe Reynoso on LinkedIn, you can also visit us at www.tierranuevainteractive.com. And then, in the near future, you should probably be seeing some content being retargeted to you, whenever you visit YouTube. Just a shameless plug there. If you visit my website, plan to be retargeted

[31:18] Brandi Starr:

Awesome. It's funny, as a marketer, you would think that I was like immune to all the marketing that happened. But I just like every other customer are like, oh yeah, I did go to that. Let me go back. So it does work. Thank you so much, we will make sure to link to Joe in the show notes. And for anyone who is listening after you finish this episode, I encourage you to check out episode 26 where I talk to Duane Dufault, and we also talked about growth and how you can continue to accelerate growth. So it's a great next step if you haven't already listened to Episode 26, jump back to that one. Thank you Joe, so much for joining me today, and thanks, everyone for joining us. I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation with Joe. I can't believe we're already at the end. See you next time. 

[32:14] Joe Reynoso:

Take care. 

[32:16] Outro: 

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning has just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenuerehab.live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at Revenue Rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.