Making decisions solely based on numbers can be very misleading, especially in marketing. Therefore, performance marketers need to be brought into conversations that discuss customer insights.
Coupling this qualitative feedback with the quantitative data will allow performance marketers to make better judgments on the campaigns they manage.
If you want to grow your business, then you cannot wait for someone to search for your solution. You have to be in the places where people are talking and claim your stake there.
1. What’s one thing about Performance Marketing that most people don’t get?
This is one of my favorite questions! Most performance marketers are very analytical and numbers oriented. This is a valuable skill, but I have seen it be a detriment to many performance marketers.
Making decisions solely based on numbers can be very misleading, especially in marketing. Therefore, performance marketers need to be brought into conversations that discuss customer insights.
Coupling this qualitative feedback with the quantitative data will allow performance marketers to make better judgements on the campaigns they manage. One last point, and this is directed towards the performance marketing managers out there. Performance marketers are known for having very little business acumen and seen as the “Facebook Ads person” or “Google Ads person”.
I push performance marketers to educate themselves on business principles so they can join larger conversations and make educated decisions focused on customers and the business. I’ve noticed many performance marketers make decisions with a sole focus on the platform, rather than understanding how it could affect the customer and business.
2. Which customer engagement platforms do you think every marketer needs?
Many companies and individuals, including myself, consider their CRM as their customer engagement platform. In this case, my two favorite customer engagement platforms are Salesforce and HubSpot.
I love HubSpot for its simplicity and ease-of-use, but it lacks some advanced functionality. I love Salesforce for it’s advanced functionality and the incredible dashboards I am able to generate, but it lacks the ease-of-use. Both are great solutions, can’t really go wrong with either of these!
3. What are some marketing analytics tips and tools that you swear by?
My biggest marketing analytics tip is to take a step back every once in a while. It’s so easy to get hyper-focused on a spreadsheet or a screen for a few hours and lose yourself. Take a step back, go outside, get some fresh air, and then build a story using the data. Data is useless without a story; people need to know what the numbers mean and why they are there. When you focus on telling a story, you’ll find that there is a lot of data that is irrelevant and the decisions you make will be much more impactful. As far as tools I swear by, I’ve enjoyed using funnel.io. Other than that, I’m not a major tool fanatic.
4. Why can’t marketers ignore dark social anymore?
It’s plain and simple. The world has changed. Buyers have changed. In the physical world, it would be naive to think that people don’t “talk behind closed doors”. It would then also be naive to think that people don’t “talk behind login screens”. Buyers’ options for product discovery were very limited 5 years ago. With the craze of social media and the boom of online communities, peers are doing their product discovery with one another rather than solely turning to Google Search.
If you want to grow your business, then you cannot wait for someone to search for your solution. You have to be in the places where people are talking and claim your stake there.
5. What’s the major difference between growth marketing and performance marketing?
This is a great question and it is not asked enough. Performance marketing is the responsibility of analyzing how each ad dollar is used to ensure it is working to its fullest potential. That typically means more efficient campaigns, online audience research, and new channel testing, with less money wasted. Performance marketing is mainly focused on acquisition of new customers. Growth marketing is focused on customer relationship building and fostering loyalty, usually using a variety of channels while performance marketing mainly leverages paid media. Growth marketing is mainly focused on customer retention of existing customers.
6. How should brands go about executing their ABM strategy?
Execution of an AB strategy begins with a solid GTM strategy that is agreed upon by both the marketing and sales teams. The marketing playbook we follow at Refine Labs is to educate and entertain your entire total addressable market (TAM), composed of both the decision makers AND influencers in the buying committee. We work with the sales team in outlining target accounts to ensure that they are being targeted (typically ABM accounts exist in the TAM already), but we do not specifically target a message to a particular account.
The result.
Your outbound sales team has a much easier and successful effort with target accounts. Your TAM and target accounts understand how your solution can make their life easier. They know everything about your product and you provide value consistently through content that actually helps them. That is how companies need to execute their ABM strategy.
7. What are some of the most crucial email marketing KPls? How should the marketing department track those?
In full transparency, I haven’t had much success with email marketing. Email can definitely work, it just is not my strong suit and I haven’t prioritized it enough within any GTM strategies. I will advise that you should not be using open rate as an email marketing KPI. I open every email. My email open rate is 100%. Yet I read maybe 5% of the marketing emails I receive. Secondly, I don’t think click-through rate (CTR) is a great email marketing KPI. You should focus on delivering value in the email rather than driving somebody to your website for a vanity metric. There will be emails where you will want to drive people to a landing page, and in these instances you can track success using CTR. The email marketing KPI I would use is subscriber growth. You want to be building a community that receives value from your emails and evangelizes to their cohorts. Tracking this should be relatively easy inside the email marketing platform you are using.
8. Chris Walker is one of the most influential marketing leaders. Can youshare his vision as the CEO of Refine Labs?
Chris is one of the greatest leaders I have ever experienced. He is extremely passionate and truly cares about every employee, community member, follower, etc. Very rare to find. As far as the vision, he has crafted and communicated an amazing future for the world of B2B marketing. The vision is to change the way B2B companies do marketing to unlock ultimate growth, while creating a company culture and working environment that attracts, retains, and develops top talent.
9. What’s one tip you’ll give to demand generation leaders across the world?
To break out of the box that is traditional B2B marketing. There are plenty of legacy “best practices” and “principles” that are outdated and don’t work. Think critically about what you adopt and challenge the status quo. I’m not saying to be a contrarian necessarily, but success doesn’t come with comfort
10. What’s your favorite part about working at Refine Labs?
Refine Labs is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’d love to say flashy things like innovation, but it truly is the people. Everyone is amazing. I literally get to work and hang out with friends while also having the added benefit of the incredible talent they offer. It starts top-down. Leadership is some of the most enjoyable people I’ve interacted with and they make the experience working at Refine Labs world-class.
I can’t praise Refine Labs enough!
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With 4 years in B2B SaaS marketing for high-growth companies and directorial and managerial positions in demand generation, Myles has had much experience in effectively strategizing and executing successful go-to-market strategies. He prides himself in bringing a fun environment to the workplace and is incredibly passionate about business and marketing!
Refine labs help B2B SaaS companies dominate categories and unlock major growth opportunities through a never before seen combination of marketing strategy, research, and specialized execution.