Cold Open And Crowd Etiquette

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hey everyone, welcome back to Marching Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin. And I'm Chris Newton. Chris, this is long overdue. We're back in the studio, if you will. Zoom virtual studio. Uh we have so much to talk about, so little free Zoom time in which to do it. I guess to dive right into something that you and I were talking about uh pre-hopping on this line. Uh when is the last time that you farted in a gym or a crowded area?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Uh gym, it's it's been a while because I usually work out at home. If you're talking about my basement where I work out, um, probably about three hours. Um if you're talking about a crowded area, probably about one and a half. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah. Why is that why is that classic? It's so funny. Uh just a quick aside, a quick plug for a uh another podcast. Um, Stuff You Should Know has long been one of like my wife and I's favorite. If you guys are not onto it, you totally shouldn't be. It's an iHeartRadio production. These two guys have been doing it since like podcasts became a thing. I was listening to one topic earlier about like crowds and like the stuff behind crowds and how people end up like moving together or not, how you stay in like a small circular orbit kind of stuff. Um, it's interesting to just like get a sense of like how it is. Usually there is like a there is like a critical mass of like congestion of people, then things start to get dangerous. But ordinarily, like there's something inherent to human nature about how you can like navigate a crowd safely and uh and just like come out of it alive, which is I I think fascinating. So I was listening to an episode on that earlier today.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Um speaking of pretty uh before we go on, it's uh it is kind of interesting because you know you always get those like awkward people in the crowd who don't know how to kind of move through the crowd and like you're trying to get by somebody and they're completely oblivious to what you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

You sound like my most recent Trader Joe's experience. I had in this show. Good people, dude. Oh my god. Like the fact that there has to be an employee with that stupid sign's like two lines over here, like you're starting. I don't know. It should be easier to form a queue. But yeah, what do I know?

SPEAKER_02 2:37

I mean, that's what they have those bells for, right? It's like one ding if uh if they need help at the register, two dings if you have a bunch of fucking idiots that aren't moving out of the way. Like, you know, nothing pisses me off more than like Trader Joe's when you have like, you know, they're pretty tight aisle aisles, like they're not made, they're not they're not massive stores, and then you have people like with a shopping cart that take up the entire like little tiny aisle that you're trying to navigate down.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yep. And invariably they'll leave that right in the center of the aisle while they go on like their side excursion to the frozen food section

Trader Joe’s Aisle Meltdown

SPEAKER_01 3:10

and grab 25 of the beef with broccoli case. This is overly specific now to my example.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

I was gonna say it sounds like you're talking from experience.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Uh fucking Linden, man, if she would just get out of the way. Uh okay. Speaking of problems that we have, there's uh there's some things we want to talk about to today, and this is I'm I'm excited for this, right? So ideally, in the time we have on this Zoom, we're gonna do uh throwback to like earlier marketing qualified recording, three takes and a flake or a fake, or whatever the fuck we want to call it. Chris has a little game lined up. Uh another thing we're gonna do is benchmark or bullshit. This I'm particularly excited about because who doesn't love a good made-up stat and trying to sniff that out? Uh, there was some big industry news recently, um, and we'll get into it when we get to the segment, but like how would we like to light 84 billion with a B billion dollars on fire?

Games And Agenda For Today

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Uh, talk about ways that we would go about doing that, and then simple question: who who hurt you? We'll take a look at something that Chris found and just try to break down the uh from our arm terror solist perspective, what the hell is going on with someone, maybe end with some validation that uh we found on LinkedIn of all places. So that is our that is our loose trajectory. Uh we have Christopher, I believe you have some takes.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

I do. I've I've got many takes, but uh, I'm just gonna limit it to three and a flake uh today. So um the way this is gonna work is I'm gonna read out three uh of my marketing takes,

A/B Tests And Fake Confidence

SPEAKER_02 4:40

like things that I believe. We can kind of chat through each one and and see if you also agree, um, disagree, if you want to fight me, um, so on and so forth. And then one flake, which is one thing that I used to believe very heavily, but now I don't believe anymore, so I'm kind of flaking on, and uh um yeah, we'll kind of uh you know show everyone that I am capable of changing my mind, uh despite what my wife might say. Um here's the first one. Um I'm not gonna like say I'll I'll tell you which ones are the takes and which ones are the flake. Like you don't have to guess which one the flake is. Yeah. But so here's the first take. Uh most A-B tests run by marketing teams are too small to be statistically sick meaningful, and everyone just picks the winner they wanted anyway. That's uh me talking both from personal experience, because I tend to pick the winner that I wanted anyway, but also just in teams you know, with A-B tests that I've run, you know, it I'd say 90% of the time it works out that way. The other 10% of the time we just say there wasn't enough data, so we're just gonna pick the winner or uh or just you know go with whichever direction that we want to go anyways. Uh agree, disagree, want to fight?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

I yeah, I definitely don't I definitely don't want to fight. I think that in my experience as well, it has been about that 90-10% split. So that makes me think, are we just like really good marketers? They come up with ironclad hypotheses of our our variation with your like in the instance where it isn't uh what is the word, like a statistically statistically significant, easier for me to say, insufficient data set to draw a conclusion on the A B test, and you end up picking the one that you wanted anyhow. Like I don't know, do you have any experience in that working out kind of nicely in terms of the key KPI you were looking at? Like what's your experience there been?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Um, I mean, a lot of times when I do A B tests, I I mean, I think a lot of it depends on the organization, like how comfortable you are with like your boss and like the the marketing team and the higher-ups and everything, because like if you don't have a c a lot of companies will say that they're data driven and like they are comfortable with like you know, running a failing test, but I've also worked at places where it's like you kind of don't want to run a failing test because that's a bad reflection on you. So you want to make sure that anything that you do is going to succeed, even though it's an A-B test, which the whole point is to see what works and what doesn't. So that's kind of my take. Like, I not every place I've I've done these has has been like that, but if you work in a place that doesn't embrace failure and like is okay with like just letting the data back things up, you're either not going to take like really big swings where you know it might not be moving the the needle one way or another, anyways, like oh, let's change this the CTA color from a dark blue to a light blue. It's like who go who gives a fuck? Like, you know? Um but I mean if if you do like a more major change, I mean just making sure that you have like your goal in mind. Like I've seen instances too where like something might be significant, like the click-through rate on a CTA might be significantly higher, but then the end goal that we're going for, like the sign-up or the demo request or the conversion or whatever, we're end up, you know, whatever cur conversion we're trying to optimize for doesn't increase one way or another, then you know, which which one's gonna be better, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Right. It's funny you mentioned that. That actually that was one of the more um I don't basically I ran an experiment with um Gotta help me was do like a LinkedIn in mail campaign, right, for folks, and like was A B testing a subject line. Um that was one variation, another one was like uh the CTA, like the text-based CTA therein, right? And there's one variation of that that did get more click-throughs, got more sessions to the landing page they were directing folks to, but exactly as you described, the desired thing they were supposed to do when they landed there wasn't happening, right? And I guess my question to you is in that instance, what is your what is your next move? Do you start to tweak the landing page? Do you try like another iteration of the A B test in like the ad to make it more aligned with what's on the landing page? What do you what is your what is your move?

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yeah, I mean in in that case, like if the goal wasn't there there might be too many like little micro goals like in between. Like if the goal is to increase more signups, then I would consider if if it didn't move one way or another, I would consider the A-B test a failure and I wouldn't do anything. Like if leave it as is. Yeah. Um I mean, I guess it could be argued that if more people are clicking through to the site, they could be you know getting more exposed to your content and you know potentially becoming more familiar with your brand. And like obviously it takes multiple touches to to get somebody to convert. So that would be beneficial, but I think it would make sense to like kind of go back to the the drawing board and be like, what's the actual goal of this? Is it to get people to actually open it and click? Like if you're gonna do an A-B test on an email, for example, I don't have experience doing this with like LinkedIn or or in mail or anything, but in an email, like if you're A-B testing the subject line, you don't also want to be testing the click-through rate because it's completely different. Like the goal of the subject line is to get people to open the goal of the the click-through rate, you know, the the body of the email and the CTA or whatever you have in the email is to get them to click through to the website. So I think that like having yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

I was just gonna say, I feel like that's a really important point to make and like how um I guess like I've communicated that to other like members of Go to Market in the past actually tends to be a little bit difficult, right? Especially when you get into like different ad groups and like tests therein. Like to your point, you want to control and have a single variable that's out there so you can like test the efficacy of that. And I feel like oftentimes folks are like, let's try all this shit at once. Yeah. And that totally muddies the waters, right, in terms of what's actually what's actually working or not working. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Try uh explaining to one of my previous managers uh who wanted to do a whole like site-wide A-B test and then also test every single landing page on the site at the same time. Ooh, fun. With conflicting variables and like navigation menu like changes and like just like a header design change and like you know, something that would be on every single page, but then also test these other things that are like individual. And I was basically like, you know, if we're testing the entire site, we can't be doing running any other A B test simultaneously. If we want to test A B like the landing pages that don't kind of like link to each other and talk to each other, then that's completely fine. But if you're doing something site-wide, you can really only have one test running at at a time. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But uh yeah, it sounds like we're we're mostly in alignment with that. I mean, maybe I just haven't worked like I I would love to like get my hands on like working on like an Amazon or like a Google, like with that level of traffic where you can see statistical significance in like probably five fucking minutes if you make a change, versus like, you know, it takes weeks for for some of the companies I've worked at with less traffic.

Influencer Fraud And Bot Followers

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Um but, anyways, let's go on to the the next take. So um influencer marketing has a higher fraud rate than display advertising, but nobody wants to say it out loud. I just said it out loud.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

You totally said it out loud. Yeah, he went there, everybody. He fucking went there. That's Chris New in at marketing quality. Let him know your thoughts. Okay, so there I'm drawing a blank. Oh my god, this might be like a political example, actually, but I know for a fact that there was recently uncovered uh like a scheme, a fraud, a plot, whatever, that like a bunch of influencers were compensated to speak ill illy, speak unfavorably about like some other thing, right? And it's the most recent of I feel like a couple of different examples I've heard about this. Um, and for that reason, I think that's probably true, right? Display, I heard a really good quote recently, and it was like uh oftentimes, especially this, I think this was applicable to like Washington, DC, is the context I heard about it about, but like um oftentimes when we suspect something nefarious, it's really more ineptitude from from someone. And I feel like that's the case with like Google display ads, right? Like obviously there's gonna be some shit that happens on there.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Well, let's take a step back. So you mentioned what Washington, DC. I mean, what what could possibly be inept about DC?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I just I I wonder that where to it's a flawless, it's a big, beautiful, it's a perfect place. Yeah, because I don't have the impression down topic.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

I just think it's more like uh, you know, everything they do is strategically planned. I just think it's str uh strategic incompetence or planned incompetence.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yes, yes. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie uh Horrible Bosses 2, but there's a great line in there where uh for a lot of talk about him, but like Kevin Spacey's character is looking at the three main characters, and he's like, I feel like I'm looking out, it's not much more, it's like I'm looking out at the great wall of ineptitude when he talks about the people. I just really like that. Anyway, back to the actual fucking thing here. Dude, I I do actually like agree with that because it's just happening more often, right? Influencer marketing do actually like subscribe to it. I do think it has its place. It has been around in some capacity for forever, just like in the days pre-social media, it was a little bit less like obvious and frankly a little bit less like cringe worthy than it than its current state. Um, I've personally had a little bit of like success, like launching small campaigns, even in like the B2B space, like using influence and what have you. But where I think it becomes like fraudulent or like spammy, or I forget the exact word that you use is when like people aren't paid to like give like honest reviews about stuff, but it's like they're compensated to disparage a competitor in like a non-case study way, like, oh, we switched over from A and now with company B and we got Z. No, I went Z instead of C. We should unpack that. But anyway, do you know what you know what I'm trying to say here?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah, yeah. I and the the way I think about it in terms of like just the overall fraud is like I mean, it's kind of like filled with like I haven't done a f a ton of influencer campaigns, and like if we have any influencers listening, um probably not, because it's just uh you know, like our wives at this point that are probably listening, probably not even my wife anymore. Like she hears me bitch enough about this stuff at home. Um but it's more just like it's very vanity metric driven. Like, let me know if you agree with that statement. But like, oh, if you're gonna choose an influencer, you would theoretically want to choose the one with more followers and you know, like that kind of stuff. But like, what about like the millions of bots that they have following them and like these bot farms, and like that's kind of where my mind is at with like a lot of the stuff of you know, if you talk to an influencer and like they can't tell you how much was actually driven, it's all just like oh you'll get this many views and everything. It's like, is it from your bot farm? And like, you know, you have like five million followers, but you get like an average of like 10 comments on every single one of your posts, kind of thing. So it's like you know, that's kind of that's kind of where my mind is like there's a lot of that kind of stuff going on, and also too, like we um it's not even just like just on social, like everyone thinks like oh TikTok and Instagram, like that kind of influencer stuff, but there's also like like your B2B like influencers on LinkedIn, and like they have like people that have websites and blogs, and you know, oh well we'll put you in a newsletter and you pay to get placed in a newsletter, and like, oh, we'll drive this many clicks. Like this actually happened at a a company I worked at where an influencer promised us like X many clicks and we'd like to we did the math and they're like, oh, if they really deliver as much traffic as their reporting that they did, you know, based on our standard conversion rate, even if it's less, we'd get like you know, 20, 30, 40 demo requests. And even just like like I asked them to put in the email like a UTM link because that's the only way you can track anything from an email. So I I put the UTM link in the email. They were reporting that it got like three, four thousand clicks, and then I'm looking in like HubSpot at the tracking, and we got maybe like 50 or 60, and like most of the traffic bounced right away. So like that was a great use of money. It wasn't my decision to launch it at all. Like, I actually would have pushed back against it, but you know, yeah, when it's coming down from the top, you can you can't you can't you can't push back against it, you can try to set as clear of expectations as possible, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Which is a whole other like art and science. I just want to acknowledge, like, you made a really good point about like the bots followers and like the bot formula. Honestly, not something I had considered before when it because to your point, like you do want to look about like optimizing for reach that an influencer has, but if a lot of those are like AI bots, which are increasingly prevalent, especially um, you know, Instagram, whatever the case is like didn't fucking Zuckerberg say that like that was a big focus for Instagram this year was getting out like more AI kind of like folks that you can interact with and like whatever. Fuck that guy. Anyway, the point is like, yeah, you make a good point. Um, it's kind of like a calculated risk gonna get some shit display on influencer. I guess if you're looking for actual advice in this segment, it's whatever makes the most sense for your company um and your ICP, but definitely be sure to set appropriate expectations with respect to like traction you're gonna get and what you're solving for for these engagements.

Dashboards That Drive No Action

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Couldn't have said it better myself. Um all right, so next take. Um most marketing dashboards exist to make marketers feel busy, not to make better decisions.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

I'd need more context here. Are you saying to make them feel busy because they're spending so much time creating them? Or something else?

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah, creating them, looking at them, talking about them in meetings, but then like a lot of times like there's no action that's taken from it, like there's no decision from it. It's just like, oh, you're you're asked to pull data, and it's like like I was saying, like a lot of like vanity metrics are just stuff that doesn't necessarily move the needle. But it feels good to like, oh, more data's better and like more more numbers and more metrics and more KPIs, but like at the end of the day, it's like, are you actually even using it to help like take an action?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

I'm going to slightly reframe the question here because I do think while what you said is might be true, I actually think that some marketers are forced, many marketers are forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their time in reports, creating dashboards and what have you, and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, fucking save me all like well, the AI and cloud code or whatever, shut up. The traditional way of doing it is time intensive, and it comes from a place of uh something I was reading actually by a B2B influencer on LinkedIn recently was like you have to defend everything that you do as a marketer in terms of ROI, in terms of pipe influence. It's just not a position that is very easily forgiven in terms of like, okay, money in, we better be able to quantify everything that's being done. Not an unreasonable ask, but you have to like understand that not everything is going to have a direct impact, right? In terms of thinking about like multi-touch attribution, it's gonna take some time for investments uh calorie-wise and like monetarily to actually like make a difference further on. And so I think that partially true, but I think that a lot of folks also are forced to spend more time than they would like to doing this stuff because they have to defend like every single decision that they make um in order to like continue to have a seat at the table and and and have a job, frankly. So yeah, that's my that's my reactor to the take.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah, that that makes sense, that's valid. Um, I think a lot of it too is like you know, depending on on your boss, like you'll never know what question they're gonna ask. So you you gotta kind of over-prepare and like plan for every single possible question that that could come your way, because you don't want to look like you're unprepared. So I think that's the reason that a lot of this happens. And like also, like I've I've built reports and dashboards like for for people like based on requests, like I built for for sales teams and CEOs and like you know, other people, and then you send it to them and then it's crickets, and then you like you you did all this work and you pulled all this data for nothing, and they don't even look at it. So like I'm a little jaded. I'm a little jaded from that side of things where I've built enough dashboards and wasted enough time that uh you know I just I I I I start pushing back more and like asking like what the goal is and like what insights they're trying to gather, and then that lets me kind of build it in a way that I think can get the answers versus oh, can you pull this, this, and this data? It's like, okay, well, why? Yeah, what are we after here? Because I fucking told you to. So you go, okay, yes, sir, sir, yes, sir, thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

What is it? Uh it's Leo's character, right? From the departed. It's like what the fuck are we talking about here? What are you doing? Uh it sounds like these people could use litigal. To help them get some of this information quickly. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah, if if only there was an AI-powered insights platform out there, but uh um they might be one of our sponsors one day. So more to come on that. More to come. Nice, nice, nice. Okay. You ready for the

Freemium Versus Free Trial Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_02 22:15

flake? I'm ready. Flake me. All right. Um so the free tier creates bottom-up adoption. I've also seen it attract users who would never pay under any circumstances. So your your take on like freemium. Um, good, bad, like are you more of like a completely gate sign up and demos only? You know, you have to go through a gatekeeper to sign up. Are you more of like a free trial guy? Are you more like sign up for free and like use the free tier forever and then you know naturally like do an up pre-path, like similar to like what HubSpot and other SaaS companies do? Like, what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

I very much am a fan of the freemium model where you stand it up, um, you get the the try before you buy kind of thing, right? You want to like test drive the car before you actually make the purchase, what have you. That said, I've acutely felt the pain that you're describing where there's a bunch of like people that never have any intention of upgrading. It conflates uh the performance gets all murky as a result of that. And I think we've talked about this in the past, but like another way to like hedge against that is just to give people like different ways that they can get the information they need. Some people may be more uh amenable to a freemium trial with grade out features, right? By the way, the success of that totally depends on good like product growth signals, right? Like how many people are clicking on this grade out thing, and you're like, you gotta be able to track what the fuck is going on inside like the freemium version as well. I've been in places where that's the case, I've been in places where it's not. The ladder is a terrible place to be if you're wondering. Uh but other ways, like give them the the video walkthrough, right? The recorded video. Give the use like a use different like um demo platforms to show the stuff that you want. Use like calculators. I mean, you've met in your in the past, you're a big fan of like those type of like ROI things. So like you may not even see the software, for example, but you're getting a sense of like the return on if you like use this thing appropriately. So I think that it is uh I think it's a fair thing to flag. Again, I felt the pain myself. I think part of the solution to that is to give people like multiple options to get the information that they need. Um that's my what's your reaction to that reaction?

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Uh my reaction to that reaction, and then we'll get your reaction to this reaction, is uh I think you you made a good point in terms of like if the product is well suited for it, where you have like a natural upgrade path and you have like you give them enough to get a little taste, but not enough that they can just like run forever with with a low tier. Um I've definitely seen instances of like you know, the free users tend to be needier, they tend to like not be shy about asking for features, but then they expect those features to be built for free and like use them for free. Um tend to have like a disproportionate like support volume. So like um that's why like a lot of places will do like only community only support, like you can't even email support if you're on the free tier, or even like you know, let alone like chat or or call or anything like that. Um yeah, I I I think uh largely depends on the product. I mean, I I used to be very, very pro freemium, but um you know now I'm leaning a little bit more towards free trial just because it creates like a very clear like this is what you you know, you get everything for free. Because like my my concern with freemium, I guess, is like you don't give them enough so that they don't see the value because like you want to gate some features, but with a free trial, you just give them everything up front and say you can use this for 14 days, but then you always run the case of like everyone's busy, they sign up, they forget, and then the trial's done, and like they're you know, reaching out and like asking to extend or whatever. So, like um, I definitely see pluses or minuses of both, but um regardless, like I'm not a fan of like completely gating, like log in or sign up or anything like that. Like, I think that there needs to be a little bit of a self-serve option, but um you know, obviously, like you know, following up and making sure that the onboarding is strong and that people can get the value that you want them to get quickly so that they are more likely to become a customer.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yeah, I've actually had success in the past in rolling out something for like a free trial. It's like just to uh think about it in terms of like a hub workflow, right? It's like free trial begins, then you're sending a series of emails that highlight how to leverage like the most useful features as for like actual user feedback throughout the duration of call it a 14-day free trial, or like maybe you're overlaying testimonials and there's something like that, right? You're encouraging people to like stay involved via that email, right? You may even have like you know, a uh uh like an SDR or something like that out towards the end of that free trial to see like you know how it went, feedback, that kind of thing, right? So there's there's real potential there. Um my other question to you on this is for the free trial, are you asking for all the information that you might need to qualify them before going in in the for like think about it like a traditional like demo request form? Or are you lowering the barrier of entry to the free trial?

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Um I mean, I'm not a huge fan of super long in-depth forms, anyways. Like if somebody gives me a work email, that's enough to really get the majority of the information that I would want. Like I have access to their company, you can look them up in LinkedIn or Apollo or you know, whatever tool you're using. Um I'm not a fan of like asking for work email and then a company name. I think that's fucking stupid, honestly. If you're you're demanding a work email and then they give it to you, and then you also have to ask for their company. It's like, come on, don't don't make them type more than they need to. Everyone hates typing. You know, if if you're like some people I know, like some boomers when they type like with one finger at a time, that company name is gonna take them like a good 30 seconds to type in, you know? Don't make a boomer work. Whatever you do. But yeah, I mean, I I I would just want to make it as easy as possible for them to do whatever action is most important to me. So if the free trial is more important, I would make that as easy as possible. If the demo's more important, then make that as easy as possible. And I mean, if you get a free trial sign-up, there's nothing to say that you can't have your BDR or your you know your sales team reach out to these free trials and like position themselves as the helpful expert to help them get up and sit and running, but then you can also have the call and like kind of qualify them on the call.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Yeah, absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Um there's something I was gonna say. Oh, yeah, we should do like future offs, a future episode. We should just talk about like forms and how exactly like use cases, like you just said, how there's some really stupid shit that still happens when it comes to using Windows. So that is uh that's my that's my CTA for future.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Before we move on, uh, do you know uh what the most popular form on the internet is? Most popular form on the internet? Uh I don't even understand the question.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

It might be a little bit of a trick question, but uh all I can think of is like a generic like subscribe to newsletter form.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Is that no not not like a generic form, like which which company has the most popular form and which form is it?

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Uh I dude, I'm drawing an absolute blank.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Uh have you ever visited Google.com, sir? I I have. I'm visiting Google. That that little box, the only pretty much the only thing on the page still after you know 25 years or whatever. Uh that's the most popular forum on the internet, in case you were wondering.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Damn, I was wondering. I didn't even think about that as like a forum. Yeah, touche, touche. I like that. I like it a lot. Uh something I don't think I'm gonna like as much is some of this made up bullshit you're about to walk me through, this benchmark

Benchmark Or Bullshit SaaS Metrics

SPEAKER_01 29:40

or bullshit segment. Um this should be good. All right.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Uh we have about 10 minutes left in our free zoom, so I'll try to go through these uh a little bit quickly because I know that everyone's dying to hear how to lay $84 billion on fire just in case you ever have that problem. Um, so I'll I'll read these, you decide which one's uh real or bullshit. Yep. Um and these are uh potentially real or potentially bullshit benchmarks. Okay. All right. Numero uno. Uh free to paid conversion rate for premium SAS averages around two to five percent. I think that's real. That is real, yeah. Yeah.

unknown 30:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Um I I thought that seemed a little high, but um I backed it up with uh real verified data from AI, so we know it must be true. It's gotta be accurate. Um yeah. Uh so Mike's one for one. Um next one. Average SaaS turn rate for SMB is three to seven percent monthly. Not annually, mind you, monthly. I no, I think that's bullshit. Okay. Uh you're wrong on that one. That's actually a true fact. It's the best part. I don't know what they're qualifying. I don't know what they're qualifying as SMB. Like it's if it's like one guy who like just bar barely started his business and like doesn't know what he needs yet or you know what the threshold of SMB is. But um yeah, supposedly that's a a real fact. Oh, in this economy, maybe, yeah, sure. All right. Um batting 50%, still better than the Red Sox this year. Um Companies that send four follow-up emails close 73% more deals than those who send two. I think that's I think that's real. Uh that's bullshit as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

That's bullshit. Really?

unknown 31:27

What?

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Let's see if you can uh get back to even. Top of funnel content takes six to twelve months to rank and convert. Bullshit. Nope, that one's real too.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Oh my god, are you just kidding? I'm thinking with like with AI and it's gonna fucking scrape in the street, but whatever.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Six six to twelve months uh for for SEO rankings and and converting. Alright. Okay. Uh what what are we at now? You're you're one and three? Yeah, one for three. It's not looking good, Mike. We have about seven left here. Um B2B buyers read an average of eleven point four pieces of content before contacting sales.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Yes, true. Bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Are you serious? These are very believable.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Um I'm trying to find you an easier one. Um B2B sales cycles. B2B sales cycles average three to six months for mid-market deals. For mid-market? Because enterprises like 210. Yes, true. True. Yes, yes, you're right. All right. Two for four. Uh five left. Let's see if you can make it back into the into the um into the positives. Um cold email reply rates average one to three percent on a good day. Bullshit. No, that's real.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

I think it's gotta be less than that, but okay, sure. Great. On on a good day. Oh, on a good okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

I mean when I was when I was trying to reason when I was trying cold outreach, it was like, you know, for 600 emails sent, I got one reply, and basically the guy just fucking mogged me. He's like, his reply was why should I take a demo with you? Give me three reasons, and then I did, and then he just never got back to me.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Yeah, too shit.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

So there were good reasons too. Um, I definitely have to say I have a lot more empathy for for sales and BDRs and stuff after you know working on this startup for the last few months. Yeah. Alright. Uh, next one. SaaS companies that blog three times per week grow four point two times faster than those who don't.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

That does seem real to me.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

No, that's uh also bullshit. Maybe the days of yesteryear was true, but not anymore. Possibly. I guess it I mean it depends largely on the blog. Like touche. Yeah. Touche. Um the optimal cold email subject line is between six and ten words. No. False. It's less than that. You're correct. Nice. Alright. He's three and six with two left. Um landing pages with a video convert eighty-six percent better than those without.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

True. Bullshit. Bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Um CAC payback period benchmark for healthy sass is under 12 months. Bullshit, it's longer than that. For healthy sass? For healthy. Are you sure you want to actually go with that? Trying to throw you a bone here. 100% true. That is 100% true. He's right, folks, that is true. Woo! God, you know what's that game show where it's like no they didn't really take people seriously, and the the the game show host would basically like try to prod them along, and then you just it's not like uh it's not like um Who Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I there I feel like there is one game game show where like the host would just like they would say something and he's like, Are you sure you actually want to say that? And they're actually like, No, uh, I want to say this other thing, and he's like, Really? And they're like, No. This other thing? And he's like, Yes, he got it. I wish I could remember what show it was. Fuck.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

I can't help you. I don't know what it is. I can't help myself. By the way, the reason I said bullshit on that is because it was cac was way fucking longer for one of these companies I used to work at, and so maybe my frame of reference is just like bad. You did say healthy SAS, and that was not a healthy company, so I guess that checks out.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

I was gonna say it sounds like there was a reason that they're probably not uh doing amazing.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Multiple reasons. Um, we have about uh two minutes left. Uh should we s should we table this uh $84 billion dumpster fire for next time?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I think we probably should because there's a lot to say about that. Uh there's a ton to say about that. Speaking of not doing well, we did not do well with our time today. Uh that that's the brand. The brand. Um yeah. Yeah. Do we have time for any of these other things? We might not. We might not.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Eh.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

The LinkedIn

A Blunt Take On Marketing Layoffs

SPEAKER_02 36:25

validation.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Yeah, maybe. We can try to rip through this thing. Basically, the TLDR, all right, I'll give you the quick, the quick and skinny here. Nobody wants to say it out loud, so I will. Marketing is being treated as disposable right now, ROI pressure goes up, marketing headcount goes down. It's becoming a formula. It's not even the layoffs that bother me the most. It's the talent that's quietly exiting the workforce entirely, not jumping to competitors, not freelancing, just done. I looked at 12 roles posted for recently laid-off marketers in the last 24 hours alone. The majority on-site mandates in cities where the cost of living never corrected. You can't uproot a family on a job offer with a 90-day probation period at a Series A startup. The companies that figure this out in the next six months will have an enormous hiring advantage. The ones that don't will be writing LinkedIn posts about talent shortages. That is from Evan Hughes, FEP marketing of Refined Labs. Well fucking said, we appreciate you. Miserable market. Uh, folks can't say that kind of shit. You can't. Thanks for using using your platform. That's what I have to say. Anything you'd like to say uh in the way of validation for the folks before we bid them farewell.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Um, no, I mean, I I agree with everything that he says. I mean, you know, marketing's being treated as disposable. I definitely know some people who are trying to get out of it as well, um, which is a shame because I think that when done well, like marketing can be a really great career. But um until the until next time, I guess, uh the marketing qualified podcast, we might have to rename it to the uh uh whatever we want to do next.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Yeah, no, totally. Marketing's like the Hotel California, man, you can check out if you can never really leave, can you? And with that, we thank you guys so much for coming back. Uh, we'll talk to you again soon. Do well. Thanks all. Bye guys.