How To Think Bigger Than A 'Dollar In, Dollar Out' Marketing Mentality

Erica Seidel: 00:00:02

Hi, you're listening to The Get, the podcast about

Erica Seidel: 00:00:05

finding -- and keeping -- great marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:09

I'm Erica Seidel, your host.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:12

A lot of CEOs and boards, especially in private-equity-backed businesses,

Erica Seidel: 00:00:16

expect marketing to be a sort of dollar-in/dollar-out proposition.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:21

How reasonable is that when you need to build a brand for the long term?

Erica Seidel: 00:00:25

Today, you'll hear from a marketing leader with a lot of advice on

Erica Seidel: 00:00:27

how to articulate the value of a brand investment to CEOs and CFOs.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:32

Khalid El Khatib is the Head of Marketing and Communications for Stack Overflow.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:37

You may think - that's a developer website, not a SaaS company.

Erica Seidel: 00:00:41

Actually, Stack Overflow has enterprise SaaS products for

Erica Seidel: 00:00:44

collaboration and knowledge sharing that are growing like hotcakes.

Khalid makes a good point: 00:00:48

"If you don't make a brand investment, you can wonder

Khalid makes a good point: 00:00:52

why competitors are beating you and why demand generation isn't working...

Khalid makes a good point: 00:00:56

A rising tide lifts, all boats and an investment in brand

Khalid makes a good point: 00:00:58

awareness is that rising tide."

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:01

You'll also hear about how to respond when CEOs say they need a CMO, but you suspect

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:05

they really need a demand gen director.

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:08

And you'll hear about how to look around the corners when hiring and

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:11

staff up ahead of a growth curve.

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:13

Let's go.

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:18

Khalid, welcome to the show.

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:19

I'm really happy to have you here today.

Khalid makes a good point: 00:01:21

Thanks for joining.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:22

Thank you for having me.

Erica Seidel: 00:01:24

So my first question to you is you're pretty young, right?

Erica Seidel: 00:01:27

You're, like, fifteen years into your career or so, and you are now

Erica Seidel: 00:01:31

running marketing for one of the fifty most popular websites in the world.

Erica Seidel: 00:01:36

And so I'm curious, as a career-oriented person, what is it about you that

Erica Seidel: 00:01:41

made you advance as fast as you have?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:43

Sure.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:43

Yeah.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:43

Well, I appreciate you calling that out.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:46

I think, you know, I think there are a few things, the first of which is right place,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:49

right time, which is true of most folks' careers, people who tend to do well.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:53

And that's been true throughout mine.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:55

So, I started my career working in comms at Teach for America at a time when Teach

Khalid el Khatib: 00:01:59

for America was very much a media darling.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:01

So I was quite young, helping write op-eds for Wall Street Journal, and doing

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:05

60 Minutes, The Today Show, et cetera.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:07

And then from there went to an ad agency that was acquired shortly after I

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:10

started and went from about twenty-five people cut 250 by the time that I left.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:15

And so I had the extraordinary opportunity to learn sort of on the job.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:20

And I think in every job that I had, the two or three or four years that I

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:24

stayed felt like ten in terms of the fire hose that I was drinking from.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:28

I think the other thing is I've had the good fortune of having really excellent

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:32

managers, people who cared about me, who invested in my professional development,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:36

and gave me really, really candid feedback throughout the course of my career.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:40

Something that I've tried to do for others.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:42

And then thirdly, I think one of the things that sort of made me

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:45

well-positioned to succeed is that I like to think that I have some

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:50

self-awareness around what I'm good at and where I could use a lot of help

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:54

and where I need to hire to help me.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:56

And I think the one thing that I'm good at that's really helped me as

Khalid el Khatib: 00:02:59

a marketing leader is being a strong writer and a strong communicator.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:03

I think that we take for granted how important and how powerful it is to

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:07

be a good writer, especially in 2021, when a marketing leader's mandate is

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:12

not just positioning and messaging, but also internal communications to

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:17

employees who are going through a highly dynamic, very challenging time.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:21

CEO communications, when they're communicating to everyone from employees

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:25

to investors, to customers, and then communicating to your own team.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:28

So I think that that's something that's really helped me.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:31

I studied creative writing in college.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:33

I've freelanced for a number of publications over the course of the years.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:36

And so I really credit being a strong writer to being a strong marketer.

Erica Seidel: 00:03:39

Do you find yourself using your writing skills to prepare

Erica Seidel: 00:03:42

for those sensitive conversations that you're going to have?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:45

Absolutely.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:46

You know, I think, and this will probably be a theme throughout the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:48

conversation that we have today, but agility is super important when you're

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:53

a marketing leader, especially in 2021.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:03:55

And being a professional writer or really investing in professional writing

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:00

skills means that you're open to edits, constantly writing and rewriting.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:05

You're not so married to a script that you're sort of one and done.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:09

And I think that, you know, being a compelling and a strong writer

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:12

or communicator doesn't just mean being able to write something

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:16

good and then read it quite well.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:17

But also going back to the drawing board, understanding different and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:04:21

disparate voices and communicating to different audiences and things like that.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:26

That's interesting.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:27

Yeah, this framework for career success that, you know, this is

Erica Seidel: 00:04:31

like me, like twenty-plus years into my career, and I believe that

Erica Seidel: 00:04:34

career success is three things.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:36

It's good decisions, hard work, and good luck.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:39

And so I'm glad to hear you talk about some of those aspects here.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:43

But I want to get into some of the decision-making.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:45

Your business has doubled this year, Stack Overflow, and you anticipate a

Erica Seidel: 00:04:51

further doubling next year, as I recall.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:53

And we talked about hiring ahead of the scale.

Erica Seidel: 00:04:57

I would love to hear you talk about how you can look around corners for

Erica Seidel: 00:05:00

hiring and what that looks like.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:02

Cause that is actually, not everybody can do that.

Erica Seidel: 00:05:04

Sometimes, you know, marketers are a little hampered and

Erica Seidel: 00:05:07

they're like the last ones to get budget, even during a scale-up.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:10

Sure, happy to.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:11

I think just to level set, just so folks understand, or maybe those

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:15

who are not familiar will still know what Stack Overflow does.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:18

StackOverflow.com is one of the most popular websites in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:22

the world, like you shared.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:23

More traffic than the New York Times, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:25

And it's a website where developers and technologists go to troubleshoot

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:29

their code or learn to code or solve their technical challenges.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:33

And so our public platform reaches about a hundred million people

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:36

all over the world every month.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:38

And it's a two-sided marketplace.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:39

So we have the public platform and then we have two paid products.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:42

We have Stack Overflow for Teams, which is a collaboration and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:45

knowledge management platform.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:47

And then we have what we call Reach and Relevance, which is an advertising

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:50

product, whether advertising software or tooling to developers

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:54

and technologists, or employer branding, advertising your company as

Khalid el Khatib: 00:05:57

a great place to work for developers.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:00

And so the paid product side of the company is what's growing so quickly.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:04

We've had a great year and we anticipate further growth next year,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:07

like you said, and we're fortunate to be able to be hiring ahead.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:10

And so as a marketing leader, what I try to do is I try to say, which

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:15

resources do we need in-house and where can we bring on board a bench

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:20

of freelancers or permalancers to experiment before we scale?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:25

And so to me, what that looks like is a really solid investment in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:28

product marketing, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:30

I believe it's very difficult, though not impossible, to outsource your product

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:33

marketing efforts because not only do they need to know the product inside and out,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:37

but that team has to both build really strong relationships with the product

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:41

and the sales team, and they effectively have to be the connective tissue that

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:45

holds the marketing team together.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:47

And so that's one area where we try to invest ahead of growth.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:51

On the other side of the coin, there's brand and content, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:54

So one thing that we haven't done historically, because we

Khalid el Khatib: 00:06:57

largely market to developers, is make a big investment in video.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:00

Developers notoriously have an aversion to video.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:04

They're much more likely to read a long piece of technical content, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:08

But it's something that we want to do more around, you know, whether it's

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:11

TikTok on one end of the spectrum, or a coding tutorial video on the other.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:16

That said, before bringing on board two or three videographers or an

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:20

editor, we want to see if it works.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:22

And so that's an area in which we can bring on a small, scrappy agency or

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:26

a permalancer to help us get where we need to go, and where I can free

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:30

up an FTE for product marketing.

Erica Seidel: 00:07:34

Right, right.

Erica Seidel: 00:07:34

My feeling is that product marketing is the hardest role to hire for right now.

Erica Seidel: 00:07:38

Are you finding the same or do you have this kind of one role that's

Erica Seidel: 00:07:41

like the bane of your existence?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:43

I find that to be absolutely true.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:44

I think, well, I read your email, your newsletter, and I think I

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:49

forwarded it to my product marketing team, which they both appreciated

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:52

and sort of probably groaned to see.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:54

So I think that's absolutely true across a couple of dimensions.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:07:58

One, product marketers are really expensive and the market is highly

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:02

competitive right now, as you know.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:04

And then two, in a period when there are so many applications that we're seeing,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:09

such a high volume of applications, the product marketing title can be

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:13

something of a misnomer because, as I'm sure you know, so many companies hire

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:18

what they call product marketers to effectively only do sales enablement.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:22

Or a product marketer within a smaller SaaS company, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:27

It might be something of a generalist and they might do a lot of field marketing.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:30

So I think a true product marketer, someone who really understands

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:34

messaging and positioning and can do a pricing and packaging strategy,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:38

is like finding a needle in a haystack, especially in this market.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:42

Yeah, yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:08:42

It's almost like all this stuff that a CEO would do or like McKinsey Consultant

Erica Seidel: 00:08:47

would do, and then we're expecting people with very different backgrounds to kind

Erica Seidel: 00:08:51

of coalesce it all, to do all these like super strategic and important things.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:55

Yeah, and I think that it's also, exactly like you said,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:08:58

a unique combination of having some quants and qualitative skills, too.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:09:02

So the expectation that they really understand the mechanics

Khalid el Khatib: 00:09:05

of the business and a lot of metrics and KPIs, but can write the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:09:09

messaging for the product as well.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:11

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:11

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:12

So your business is, it's so interesting because you have a piece

Erica Seidel: 00:09:16

that's the software as a service, and, obviously, a piece that's not.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:20

And your background, again, you started your career at Teach for America.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:25

Totally like the opposite of a SaaS kind of business.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:28

What's your take on bringing people into SaaS that don't have SaaS backgrounds?

Erica Seidel: 00:09:32

Because, as a recruiter, I often go and start a search and people

Erica Seidel: 00:09:36

are like, well, we absolutely need somebody who's a strong SaaS marketer.

Erica Seidel: 00:09:40

And sometimes I challenge people and say, do we really?

Erica Seidel: 00:09:42

I mean, it's kind of an obvious thing to say you need, but I'm curious to

Erica Seidel: 00:09:47

hear you talk about, do you think that we will see more non-SaaS marketers,

Erica Seidel: 00:09:52

whether B2B or B2C, pivoting into B2B SaaS, and how do you think through

Erica Seidel: 00:09:56

that when you do your own hiring?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:09:58

That's a great question.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:09:59

I think the thing that's benefited me throughout my career is I have a lot of

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:02

experience around two-sided marketplaces.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:04

So Teach for America certainly was not SaaS.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:06

And then while I was at WPP, I worked a lot with TED, both the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:10

conference and video talk platform.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:12

And then, most recently before Stack, I was at GLG, insight and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:16

knowledge platform, which has a robust bench of experts and end clients.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:21

And so I think what I've learned through working with two-sided marketplaces

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:23

is how to prioritize and how to market to two disparate groups while

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:27

finding the connectivity between them, and then some efficiency in that.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:32

But to answer your question, a little more on the nose, I think

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:35

it largely depends on the role.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:37

And so I think there are some roles if you're a SaaS company looking to

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:41

build out your marketing team where you can bring someone in and it's fine,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:44

like an events person, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:46

I think events folks, as long as they're data-driven and super agile,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:51

can come from B2C or any sort of field or sector and do well in SaaS.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:56

I don't know that that's necessarily true among a lot of demand

Khalid el Khatib: 00:10:59

generation roles, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:01

So the ABM, the account-based marketing motion for SaaS, is quite

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:05

different than it would be for, you know, a non-technical B2B business.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:10

And so I think that's one area where you really benefit

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:12

from having a SaaS background.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:14

When it comes to a brand role, again, it depends on the role, but I do think that

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:18

there's some benefit in hiring a designer who knows the B2C space really well and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:22

can bring some elements of it into SaaS.

Erica Seidel: 00:11:25

Is there an aspect of the SaaS business model that has

Erica Seidel: 00:11:28

been hard for people to grok that are new to SaaS, like on your teams?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:33

That's a great question.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:34

I think, sure, there's not one that jumps out to me.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:37

The one thing that I will say about SaaS is because it's incredibly buzzy

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:41

and because it's seen such tremendous growth over the past few years in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:45

particular, there are no shortage of resources that exist in the world

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:49

to help people get up to speed.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:51

And so an example of that is some folks in our product marketing team and our

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:55

product marketing leader, who's excellent, didn't have a ton of analyst relations

Khalid el Khatib: 00:11:59

experience working in the SaaS space.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:02

And that was a core focus for us this year.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:04

And so what we did is we brought on a firm called The Skills Connection who

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:08

is comprised primarily of former Gartner analysts to help us put together our

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:13

pitch, to help us decide which analysts we should engage with and what our strategy

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:17

should be for Gartner, Forrester, and IDC.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:20

And so that's an example of where we made a relatively small investment, monetary

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:24

investment, a big investment in time, and said, okay, here's what we don't know,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:28

how can you help us get up to speed?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:30

And we did really, really quickly.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:32

And we didn't necessarily need to hire a bunch of folks to do it.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:36

That's great.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:37

So you do a ton of hiring.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:39

You have a big team.

Erica Seidel: 00:12:40

What's your favorite interview question that you ask that

Erica Seidel: 00:12:43

is surprisingly revealing?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:45

That's a great question.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:46

I manage five sort of functional teams - brand, content, communications, product

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:50

marketing, and demand generation.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:52

And the questions differ for each role.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:12:55

I think one that's particularly telling for most of them, you know, demand

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:00

generation, content, comms, and brands, in particular, is what is a favorite

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:04

campaign that you've seen of late?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:06

And it sounds pretty simple and straightforward, but it can be

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:10

relatively telling because I love when I get a really creative answer.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:14

An advertisement, whether it's on TV or that they saw on Instagram recently,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:18

that has nothing to do with the field in which we're interviewing them for, but

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:21

sort of gives me a sense of what their interests are, two, what they find to

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:25

be powerful, and then three, how often they consume content and the news.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:30

And something that I really look for in a lot of the critical hires on our

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:34

team is someone who has their finger on the pulse of what's happening, not

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:37

only in our space, but in the world.

Erica Seidel: 00:13:41

Why is that so important?

Erica Seidel: 00:13:43

I mean, it sounds obvious, but...

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:44

One, at the highest level, intellectual curiosity, I think,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:48

makes someone much more successful in a job than someone who is looking to check

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:52

a bunch of boxes on a job description or follow their OKRs for the quarter.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:13:58

So I think that that's really important.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:00

And then the other is that I think external perspective and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:04

outside expertise is so powerful.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:06

And maybe that's my bias from both TED and from GLG where the business

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:10

model is essentially focused on bringing in outside thought.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:14

But one thing that we try to do at Stack, and on the marketing team in particular,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:19

is have speakers come and talk to us, employ consultants wherever it makes sense

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:23

to do so, or advisors, so that weren't looking beyond what we're doing in the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:14:28

day to day to make ourselves better.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:30

Right, right.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:31

That's great.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:32

I talked to somebody else for this podcast whose favorite interview question was,

Erica Seidel: 00:14:35

I'll just share it because you might find this interesting, it was tell me about

Erica Seidel: 00:14:38

a product that is well-marketed and why.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:41

And the guy's really listening to the why and does somebody have a

Erica Seidel: 00:14:44

structure for what good marketing is?

Erica Seidel: 00:14:47

And I think yours is suggestive of that as well.

Erica Seidel: 00:14:50

It's like, okay, does somebody actually know what a good campaign is?

Erica Seidel: 00:14:53

And what are the aspects that they think are really important in a campaign?

Erica Seidel: 00:14:56

Is it just, you know, oh, that it's pretty colors or whatever, or is it

Erica Seidel: 00:14:59

like, oh, they've thought through their audience, they've thought through how

Erica Seidel: 00:15:02

they're going to measure, et cetera.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:03

Right.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:04

Yeah, exactly.

Erica Seidel: 00:15:05

So, can you talk a little bit more about how you

Erica Seidel: 00:15:07

organize your marketing team to support the two different products?

Erica Seidel: 00:15:11

So you have the public platform versus the P SaaS aspects?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:15

One, it's so important to be highly cross-functional in your

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:18

approach to everything that you do.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:20

And so I work super closely with our CPO, our chief product officer, and our

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:24

chief revenue officer on everything.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:26

We even have a weekly check-in that we do for thirty minutes every week, just

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:31

to see what's going on and try to see around corners to the best of our ability.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:35

And so the benefit in doing that, and in addition to that check-in our teams do

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:40

monthly business reviews around the public platform and around each of our products.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:45

So the point of doing that, and what that sort of unlocks, is our ability

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:49

to find synergies wherever they exist.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:51

So if the public platform team is working on something that we can

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:54

help or augment in some way, we can deputize a small amount of product

Khalid el Khatib: 00:15:59

marketing resources or demand generation resources to promote it and vice versa.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:04

So I think that's one piece that's really important.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:06

The second, which is related, is uncovering synergies wherever they exist.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:11

And so our Stack Overflow for Teams product is effectively a private

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:15

version of the public platform.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:16

There are, of course, several differences to the approach, but sometimes when

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:21

something really resonates with the public platform or the paid product, we can make

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:25

them interchangeable or we can build a roadmap that works in the other direction.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:29

And so I think it's all about finding those efficiencies and those synergies

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:33

and empowering everyone on your team to think about it in that way as well.

Erica Seidel: 00:16:38

And so you have these monthly business reviews, so you're

Erica Seidel: 00:16:41

saying you have product and marketing and sales altogether at those

Erica Seidel: 00:16:46

monthly kind of NBR, so to speak?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:48

That's right, and we also have the full

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:50

leadership team there as well.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:51

So there's representation from the legal team, from the finance team, and the CEO,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:55

so that cross-functionally, everyone knows what's happened and what's happening,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:16:59

and they have the opportunity to ask questions about all of those things.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:03

Right, right.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:04

That's cool.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:04

And it gets your marketing team to kind of have that what I

Erica Seidel: 00:17:07

call business first, marketing second kind of view of the world.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:10

100%.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:11

I mean, I think that the great thing about Stack Overflow, and you can call

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:14

it transparency or what have you, but there are I don't think any surprises.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:19

We tend to be pretty good about cascading information to the company

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:23

and to the team around performance.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:25

We share quarterly financials data and then do AMAs every single month around it.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:31

And the marketing team, as well, has a pretty good view into who we're

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:34

hiring for one or two quarters ahead and what our priorities are as well.

Erica Seidel: 00:17:40

So, can you share an organizational choice that you've

Erica Seidel: 00:17:43

made that you think might be a little bit unique, that some other marketing

Erica Seidel: 00:17:47

leaders haven't done or wouldn't do?

Erica Seidel: 00:17:49

And that organization choice could have worked well or poorly.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:53

One thing, and, you know, this is cheating, but one thing

Khalid el Khatib: 00:17:57

that I did do, so I'd been at Stack for three and a half years, and three years

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:02

ago or so the company itself, Stack Overflow, was 40% remote at the time.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:06

And our technical teams were much more remote than that, about 80%.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:10

But I elected, because there were so many challenges around hiring great

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:14

marketing talent in New York, where we're based in London, where we have

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:17

another office, around product marketing in particular, to hire a much more

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:22

remote-first, remote-focused team.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:25

And so the marketing team is highly distributed, even before the pandemic.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:29

Now, obviously things are quite different.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:31

But I'm really, really glad that I took that approach because I've found some

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:35

really excellent talent by doing it.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:37

And the team has sort of a remote-first DNA and muscle

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:41

memory around how to interact on a remote-first basis from day one.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:45

So I think that sometimes marketing leaders are inclined to say, okay,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:50

you know, sales teams, I think more than anyone else, and especially

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:53

BDRs and SDRs tend to be in person or gravitate towards office work.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:18:58

And sometimes a marketing leader will say, because it's so important to

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:01

build relationships with sales teams, the marketing team should be in person

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:05

too, but I think that's a mistake because I think it's really possible

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:08

to build relationships remotely.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:10

And two, I think, especially with regard to strong demand generation teams

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:14

and product marketing teams, we're no longer going to be able to find the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:18

folks that we need just looking at New York or Chicago or San Francisco.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:23

Right.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:24

Right.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:24

I've been thinking that this kind of remote hiring, obviously a lot of people

Erica Seidel: 00:19:27

are doing remote hiring now, you had some expertise with it ahead of COVID.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:33

Do you think it makes you have more of like an optimizing mindset versus

Erica Seidel: 00:19:37

a satisficing mindset with hiring?

Erica Seidel: 00:19:39

Because there's a difference between, oh, we want to hire the best person in

Erica Seidel: 00:19:44

New York, versus, oh, we can look far and wide across, not just the U.S., but

Erica Seidel: 00:19:49

maybe also, across Europe, we're going to find the absolute, very best person.

Erica Seidel: 00:19:53

And do you ever see that it makes it like you're trying to have the absolute

Erica Seidel: 00:19:57

perfect hire and so it can take longer?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:19:59

That's a good question.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:00

And that's certainly a risk, one that I haven't spent too much thinking about.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:04

I mean, I try to take the approach, maybe less with hiring than

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:07

everything else, but " don't let perfect get in the way of very good."

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:11

And I think that's true of hiring and I think every position is different.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:14

And so, you know, one question you have to ask yourself when you bring someone

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:18

on board is do you want someone who can do the job at a hundred percent

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:21

or 110% on day one, or do you want someone who will do it at 90%, invest

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:26

in their professional development, and hopefully will stay two or three years?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:30

And so I think that that's one key consideration, maybe one that we've

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:33

lost in a market that's this crazy.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:35

But sometimes, you know, you want someone who can grow into the role to some extent.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:40

Or, and I think this is a specialty to run marketing teams, you bring someone in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:43

at the manager or the director level, and you don't have any anticipated VP recs for

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:48

two or three years and where do they go?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:20:50

They're likely to leave.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:51

Right.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:51

So we've talked about hiring an organization.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:53

Let's take a broader lens.

Erica Seidel: 00:20:55

Can you share some mistakes for a SaaS marketing leader to avoid when scaling up?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:01

This one is an easy one to articulate.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:04

It's a difficult one to fix.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:06

And I think that that's not enough SaaS marketing leaders

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:09

invest in brand marketing.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:11

And that's especially true, as I'm sure you've seen, in private-equity-backed

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:15

companies where it's sort of this dollar-in/dollar-out mentality because

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:19

as every marketing leader knows, it's really difficult to prove ROI

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:23

for dollars that are spent on brand.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:25

And so I think that we were fortunate to have this support of our CEO and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:31

our CFO over time to make an investment in brand awareness, and we've also run

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:36

longitudinal studies twice a year, brand tracking surveys, which have proven

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:40

out the value of investing in that.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:42

We've seen awareness of Stack Overflow for Teams and evangelism for

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:46

it go up double digit percentages.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:48

And so I think, you know, a couple of mistakes that are made is one,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:52

not making any investment at all, and then figuring out why competitors are

Khalid el Khatib: 00:21:56

beating them and why your demand gen teams aren't working because a rising

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:00

tide lifts all boats and investment in brand awareness is that rising tide.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:05

And then the other is making an investment and talking to partners and peers

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:10

about how you can articulate the value of an investment in brand awareness.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:14

Every CEO and every CFO is different, as we all know.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:17

A brand tracking survey once or twice a year doesn't always work.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:21

And so there are lots of other tricks and things that you can do.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:24

Not necessarily tricks, but social listening, for example, qualitative

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:28

feedback at conferences and events, anecdotal feedback from employees in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:32

terms of the campaigns that their friends and family are seeing, and that all

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:36

sort of coalesces, in my opinion, to be a very, very powerful tool and brand

Khalid el Khatib: 00:22:41

awareness and investment in brand is not something that should ever be neglected.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:46

It's so true and it is a hard conversation to have.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:48

I like your point about the dollar-in/dollar-out expectation.

Erica Seidel: 00:22:52

And I think the best marketers are the ones that can go into a meeting

Erica Seidel: 00:22:55

where somebody has that viewpoint and pivot that viewpoint and have

Erica Seidel: 00:23:00

them realize that - you know, like a former boss of mine says, I love this,

Erica Seidel: 00:23:04

"Today's brand is tomorrow's demand."

Erica Seidel: 00:23:05

it's just a great way to put it.

Erica Seidel: 00:23:07

Any other thoughts on key mistakes to avoid when scaling up?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:12

I think a related point is, you know, an investment in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:15

brand doesn't mean that you need to take out an ad in the Superbowl or a

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:18

billboard in Times Square, which is sometimes the misconception that a

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:22

board or a CFO or a CRO or a CEO will have when people ask for brand dollars.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:27

Especially in B2B SaaS, when I as for brand dollars, I'm not saying that we

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:30

need to do a takeover of the subway system in New York City because I know

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:33

that it's not going to lead anywhere.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:35

And so a related point is always start small, scale and iterate from there.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:40

So, I think, one approach that we try to take when it comes to developer

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:43

awareness is looking at our key 1000 accounts, where are they headquartered?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:49

You know, increasingly a lot of them are headquartered in Austin, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:52

A lot of developer-oriented companies have moved to Texas

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:55

over the past couple of years.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:23:56

And so, if we're going to do something out of home or some big display,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:00

why don't we start it in Austin?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:02

Why don't we take over their public transportation?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:04

Or billboards in their downtown area where they're much more likely to be

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:07

working from the office than in New York, for example, or San Francisco?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:11

So starting in a hyper-local market and scaling if it makes sense to do so, is

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:16

how I would approach brand awareness, as opposed to some people who get a capital

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:20

injection and then right away will take out these massive, massive buys.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:25

Exactly.

Erica Seidel: 00:24:26

Any other advice that you would give to a CEO who is looking to hire a

Erica Seidel: 00:24:30

marketing leader for a scale journey?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:32

I have two pieces of advice for CEOs and sort of across

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:36

the spectrum, whether they're seed or series A or B or C or a public company.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:41

Think long and hard and consult with your advisors in terms of the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:45

profile of person you're looking for.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:47

And so occasionally, someone will reach out to me and say, whether it's

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:51

a friend or a peer or someone I went to college with, and they'll say we

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:53

really need, you know, I have a series B company, we're doing incredibly,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:24:57

we've had this massive raise, we have a great valuation, and we're close

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:02

to, or we have product market fit.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:04

We're ready for a CMO.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:05

We need a CMO.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:06

And I'll say, okay, what do you want them to do?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:08

And they'll bullet out ten things and I'm like, you need a VP of demand generation.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:13

You need someone who understands marketing automation and can get you off of HubSpot

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:17

and onto a platform like Marquetto.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:19

You need someone who can build out a field practice and ABM practice.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:22

You do not need a CMO.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:24

And so I think, you know, sometimes there's this inclination to hire as

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:28

senior as possible, when in reality, you don't need someone that strategic.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:33

You need someone who can execute and build out a team who is in the weeds.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:36

So there's that piece of it.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:38

The other, which is related, is what type of marketing leader do you need?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:42

Do you need a brand CMO?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:43

Do you need a demand CMO?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:45

Do you need someone with robust product marketing experience, more

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:48

of a communications oriented CMO?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:51

And I think that, you know this quite well, I'm sure, and provide a lot of

Khalid el Khatib: 00:25:54

counsel on this topic, but often times a CEO or, you know, the board will

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:00

have a very, very either nebulous idea of the type of CMO that they want,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:05

or they'll point to a specific person at a specific company, when, as you

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:09

know, CMOs often - you know, one CMO's very, very different from the next.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:13

Yeah, the challenge I see is they want it all, right?

Erica Seidel: 00:26:16

They want the person who can, as I like to say, parachute

Erica Seidel: 00:26:19

between strategy and tactics.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:20

It's like, oh yeah, I want the person who's going to drive leads, but then also

Erica Seidel: 00:26:23

they have to be a great communicator.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:24

They have to be very analytical and they have to be this and that.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:27

I think the challenging thing in recruiting is that focus.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:31

And I think it comes down to saying okay, who do we need

Erica Seidel: 00:26:33

for the next couple of years?

Erica Seidel: 00:26:34

Because in a couple of years, the whole world will be different

Erica Seidel: 00:26:37

and we can hire somebody else or somebody in addition, at that point.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:40

But I don't know.

Erica Seidel: 00:26:41

Do you have any other tips on how to make that conversation more productive

Erica Seidel: 00:26:45

so that you're not just having the CEO say, oh, I want one of everything please?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:50

One, I would just say to push back and say, it's impossible.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:53

Right?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:53

Like I think if you look at the sort of C-suite, the CMO is the least likely

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:57

to stay at a company beyond two years.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:26:58

And I think that's largely because the expectations when they were

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:02

hired are entirely unrealistic.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:04

Point two, and I think something that's sort of makes all of this a little more

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:09

tangible to someone to say, okay, we'll do our best to find you the most strategic

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:13

leader possible who's also comfortable executing, but who is the number one and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:17

most critical hire you see after the CMO?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:19

And that will often be clarifying to someone.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:21

So for example, for me, demand generation has been part of my mandate and several

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:24

roles that I've had, but I do not, you know, I'm under no delusion that I am

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:28

an excellent demand generation leader.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:30

And so, there's a VP of demand generation and it's really his bread and butter.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:35

I defer to him on most things that he does and that he brings on board.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:38

And he's excellent at that.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:40

And I recognize my own limitations in the space.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:42

And so I often think if someone's like, okay, we really need a new

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:46

CMO, you say, okay, but then do you need a great VP of demand?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:50

Do you need a great VP of product marketing?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:52

Do you need a great VP of comms?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:27:54

Who is this person's deputy and right hand?

Erica Seidel: 00:27:56

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:27:56

And then sometimes maybe that deputy that they're envisioning is all

Erica Seidel: 00:28:01

they need, or all they need for the next, you know, year or two.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:04

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:04

That's very helpful.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:05

So personally, thank you.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:06

That'll be helpful to me when I talk to people.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:10

Let's talk about trends.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:11

So 2022 is, you know, next up here.

Erica Seidel: 00:28:15

Any trends that you foresee for B2B SaaS marketers that

Erica Seidel: 00:28:18

are in scale-up mode for 2022?

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:20

I think one is embrace agility.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:23

You know, I've been saying this for twenty months now, but it used to be

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:26

that you would set a marketing budget at the beginning of the year, you

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:29

would maybe check in on budget versus actuals on a monthly or quarterly

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:33

basis, but you wouldn't really reforecast for at least six months,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:37

most likely until the end of the year.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:39

And that can no longer be true.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:41

I think we're still figuring out what our cadence looks like, but the leadership

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:44

team needs to at least talk quarterly about whether or not the budget as

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:49

it currently stands makes sense, the headcount and org chart that you've put

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:54

together at the beginning of the year still makes sense relative to the needs.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:28:57

And so the very tangible example of that is our events budget for 2022.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:03

Our events budget for 2022 looks very different today than it did ten days

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:07

ago, just because of everything that's happening in the news right now.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:10

And, you know, we're no longer bullish on the fact that we'll be

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:13

at events in February or March.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:16

So I think that's one thing that people really need to focus on, the other, and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:20

I think a trend that's going to not go away for a while is, we spend a lot of

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:25

time talking about how SaaS marketing meters need to better partner with sales

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:30

and product organizations, and I think that they've been laser-focused on that

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:35

alignment for the past couple of years.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:37

Where the B2C space has been focused for quite some time is the synergies

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:42

that exist between the people or human resources team and marketing.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:45

And there's been a lot of focus on employer branding.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:47

So like the Facebooks of the world, the Instagrams, the Twitters, and

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:51

then all sorts of consumer brands have really made an investment in

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:55

recruiting and employer branding.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:57

And I think that marketing leaders and people team leaders

Khalid el Khatib: 00:29:59

have worked lockstep together.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:01

I think that's one area where the SaaS space has really fallen behind.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:05

And so I think a big focus in 2022 and beyond is going to be okay, how

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:11

can marketing teams, whether it's the brand team or the content team or the

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:15

comms team, partner with people teams to help win in this hyper-competitive

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:19

environment today and tomorrow?

Erica Seidel: 00:30:23

Totally agree with you on that one.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:24

I'll be excited to see that kind of greater synergy.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:27

I mean, you think about HR, like everything that happened in

Erica Seidel: 00:30:30

marketing, I dunno, five or ten years ago, and it's still happening

Erica Seidel: 00:30:34

is now starting to happen in HR.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:35

Like greater reliance on technology, greater reliance on data.

Erica Seidel: 00:30:40

The years, like this year, last year, you know, it was like the years for HR

Erica Seidel: 00:30:44

folks to kind of come into their own.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:46

I think that's absolutely true.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:47

And I think that's true from a resourcing perspective as well.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:51

So if you think about like development resources, for example,

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:53

or engineering resources, they were always deputized to revenue.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:30:57

And this is not, I'm not speaking to Stack Overflow, I'm speaking very generally.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:00

But those development resources tend to be allocated towards revenue

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:04

focused initiatives or product.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:06

And then, to your point, at this sort of bottom of the pile is people

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:11

initiatives or the HR system API.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:13

And it's sort of people get to it when they get around to it.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:16

And so job descriptions are hard coded, it's glitchy, it doesn't

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:21

sync with LinkedIn, for example.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:23

And now it's an imperative for the business to be able to

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:26

hire, to be able to compete.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:28

And I think that companies have to start resourcing HR teams differently

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:32

from a technical perspective and from a marketing perspective.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:35

Yeah.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:36

So those are great trends.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:37

Thank you so much for being on the show, Khalid.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:39

This was great to hear all of your perspectives.

Khalid el Khatib: 00:31:42

Thank you for having me again.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:46

That was Khalid El Khatib, who runs marketing and

Erica Seidel: 00:31:48

communications for Stack Overflow.

Erica Seidel: 00:31:51

Now that you've listened, ask yourself: how can you have a

Erica Seidel: 00:31:53

more productive conversation with your CEO and CFO and Board about

Erica Seidel: 00:31:58

the balance of brand and demand?

Erica Seidel: 00:32:01

Next time on The Get, you'll hear from Sydney Sloan, telling us about

Erica Seidel: 00:32:05

her CMO scale journey for Salesloft.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:07

You'll learn about how to think about your market and your marketing, the

Erica Seidel: 00:32:11

bets you're making on each, and the team structure and goal setting as you scale.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:15

Don't miss it.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:17

Thanks for listening to The Get.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:19

I'm your host, Erica Seidel.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:21

Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:23

The Get is designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and

Erica Seidel: 00:32:28

leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:30

We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top

Erica Seidel: 00:32:34

marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:36

This season's theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:39

If you liked this episode, please share it.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:41

For other insights on recruiting great marketing leaders - what I

Erica Seidel: 00:32:44

call the 'make money' marketing leaders rather than the 'make it

Erica Seidel: 00:32:47

pretty' ones - follow me on LinkedIn.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:50

You can also sign up for my newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.

Erica Seidel: 00:32:54

The Get is produced by Evo Terra and Simpler Media Productions.