Unleashing the Power of Partnership Marketing -- Renee Bigelow, Consultant and Fractional CMO

Disclaimer: The following post was created using AI which used an interview transcript as a source.

In today's fast-paced and competitive business environment, companies are always looking for innovative ways to expand their reach and generate more leads. One such method gaining momentum is partnership marketing. To better understand this powerful tool, we recently had an insightful conversation with Renee Bigelow, a seasoned marketing expert and fractional CMO, who shared her knowledge and experience on the subject.

Renee shared several key benefits of partnership marketing, including:

1. Cost-effectiveness: By working together, companies can share marketing expenses, making it a more affordable option for reaching a larger audience.
2. Increased reach: Partnering with other businesses allows companies to tap into each other's customer base, thereby increasing their reach and potential leads.
3. Improved brand reputation: Association with reputable partners can enhance a company's image and credibility in the market.
4. Shared expertise: Companies can learn from each other, share best practices, and improve their marketing strategies.

Creating a Successful Partnership Marketing Strategy

Renee emphasized the importance of understanding each partner's objectives and building a plan that aligns with both companies' goals. She recommended the following steps:

1. Identify potential partners: Look for companies that have complementary products or services and share the same target audience.
2. Establish clear goals: Define the objectives and desired outcomes for the partnership to ensure both parties are on the same page.
3. Develop a joint plan: Collaborate on a marketing plan that includes content, campaigns, events, and other initiatives that will benefit both companies.
4. Measure success: Track the performance of the partnership and adjust the strategy as needed to optimize results.

Going Beyond Traditional Tactics

Renee encouraged companies to think beyond traditional partnership marketing tactics, such as co-marketing webinars or joint content downloads, which can become tired and expected. Instead, she suggested integrating partnership marketing into the natural onboarding or prospecting flow of each company. By identifying key leverage points in the customer journey, businesses can create more meaningful and impactful experiences for their customers.

Leveraging Customer Advocacy

Renee also discussed the importance of leveraging existing customers as brand advocates. By identifying satisfied customers, businesses can engage them in testimonials, case studies, and other marketing initiatives. This can be achieved by talking to various departments within the company, such as sales, customer success, and product teams, to identify happy customers and gather feedback.

Conclusion

Partnership marketing presents a wealth of opportunities for businesses to grow and thrive. By collaborating with like-minded companies and leveraging the power of customer advocacy, organizations can significantly improve their marketing efforts and reach new heights. As Renee Bigelow highlighted, the key to success lies in understanding each partner's objectives, developing a joint plan, and constantly evolving the strategy to ensure optimal results.

If you'd like to connect with Renee and learn more about her expertise in partnership marketing, you can find her on LinkedIn. Don't miss out on her upcoming project to publish mental models and concepts that have proven successful in her work with clients. Stay

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Transcript

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Right, today I am sitting down with Renee. Renee is a fractional CMO who works with a lot of B2B SaaS companies, as well as other companies.

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And before her current position, she actually served as the vice president of marketing at Align.

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During her tenure there, she implemented a single checkbox that generated over 15,000 leads.

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And during her work with SaaS companies, she implemented some content marketing campaigns

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and nurturing sequences. And the first time she did that, she actually exceeded a SaaS company's,

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aggressive goal by 5X in the first quarter. So Renee, you're super accomplished. I'm super

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excited to chat with you. Hi, and so it's so nice to meet you. I'm excited about the conversation

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today as well. Absolutely. So would you like to tell or share a little bit about like your

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background and kind of why you got into doing what you're doing now? Sure. So before I worked in.

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SAS or in tech, right, I actually worked in media and I'm going to date myself a little bit here,

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but if those of you who've been around for more than about 15 years, if you think back to the

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the beginnings pre-Facebook, pre-Fang, well, not pre-Fang, but pre-dominance of the Fang,

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then you remember that media companies actually had the biggest websites around.

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That was my jumping point into tech is going from a media company where we had some of

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the largest audiences really having big audience and tech to play with, where there was a lot

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of tech but not these massive audiences.

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A marketing side, having these big audiences and understanding how you can use the different

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levers to create a good experience, to interact with content.

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Again, content marketing became a natural evolution for somebody who worked in media

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because we used content all day long. So.

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That was my evolution into tech and applying a lot of those things.

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A lot of people are surprised when they hear that I came from a media background that one

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of the last things I'll recommend to my clients though is advertising because there's a lot

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that you need to put into place before you go out and put ads, put ads out unless you're

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testing using ads to help you test or validate.

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Because otherwise, if you put ads out too early and you haven't done the work that you

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need to do. This is what I found in working in media that lots of people were driving

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tons of money into ads and getting a lot of results from the ads, but not a lot of revenue

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because what they were doing is driving people into a bad experience.

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And so that's the dots that I jumped over into tech to help fix that I really wanted

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to drive and connect those dots was to not take out ad money until you have a great experience

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to drive people into. Otherwise, it's like a double compound negative, right? Wasting

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money, but you're, you're burning leads because you're driving them into a bad experience

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and they're going to go out and talk about it. Right. So it's, it's the double negative

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in that way. So come in and build a great experience, make sure that you're serving

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the needs and then drive people in.

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Okay. That makes so much sense. And it's good that you're thinking about this problem like

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holistically because sometimes people will have a very narrow focus. They'll just say,

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okay, well, we need to get started with getting some customers in. So over the next couple of

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months, let's pour tens of thousands of dollars into ads and then we'll worry about like all this

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other marketing stuff and like these longer term things later. Yeah, it's really typical. And then

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and then that's actually when CEOs tend to come to me. They're very frustrated because it didn't

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work. They're like, I tried this and I did it. I just spent all this money on this. I did this.

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I did all the things that people said to do and it didn't work. Like, well, you were spending money

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to drive people into a bad experience. Like if you just say it like that, they're like, light bulb.

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Okay, so what do I need to do to have a better experience? And then we can spend money, right?

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So some of that money that was going into ads need to be spent on resources that need to fix

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the experience. Then you can go back, you know, by that point, you should have grown enough and be

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be able to accept more budget to be able to then add budget for ads.

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Yeah, that makes so much sense. So yeah, so what would you say is like the main insight you'd like

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to share? Like how would you summarize it? So I think, you know, you've kind of hit it,

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you really touched on it when you said everybody's like, oh, the first thing we got to do that, you

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just, when you're building out an early stage companies, like it's very easy to get myopic

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and like what we need to do next. And what do we need to, you know, get very tactically driven,

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because you have to do the tactics, and you have to do those building blocks, and you have to build

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out some sort of operational organization for marketing to work. And it's really easy to get

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lost in that and not keep it broad. And the thing that I've really kind of figured out that.

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That helps, it's something I've always felt, but I didn't articulate it well, and I didn't understand

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that other people didn't see it. So the thing that I think helps a lot now is I really evangelize that

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you need to think of marketing as a flywheel and not a funnel. Funnels leak things out, like everything

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that goes in comes out. It just comes out in a different way, right? And there's constant leaking

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of energy. When you think of a flywheel, it's constantly like the beauty of a flywheel is that

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it holds momentum is better than most anything, right? Like it keeps momentum. If you reduce

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friction, then it will keep momentum for a very, very long time and allows you to speed up and that

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speed allows you to grow by having that momentum. So when you think of the flywheel, and then you

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think once I get momentum, then I can just get bigger and bigger and bigger and build a bigger

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flywheel, then you start thinking about how marketing is bigger than just getting people

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to the door. And I think that's one of the big...

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One of the big misnumbers is that people really think marketing is about lead gen,

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or demand gen. It's about getting people to the door. Then there's supposedly this handoff

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to sales and then this handoff to customer success. Well, really, marketing is through all of that

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because people are interacting with your brand. If you aren't thinking of it as a flywheel,

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you aren't activating the people who are really happy inside of it.

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You're growing a community and when you activate the people inside of that community,

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it makes demand and lead to much easier. The other piece that comes out of is not thinking.

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About getting people to the door, but you get people to understand that everybody has a role

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to play in marketing. Everybody touches marketing, product team, customer success team, HR, sales.

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Everybody touches marketing. When they understand how it works, then you get, and this is super

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important in a startup, right? You need more people contributing in from all those points of view

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because you can't do it alone. If the CEO comes in and says, oh, I'm hiring you for marketing so

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they can be like at arm's length away, then that's kind of a red flag that you got some work to do,

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that you've got to get them to understand how everybody participates. Does that make sense?

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I'll pause for a second and make sure. Yeah, I think it does. I want to hear like the practical

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side of this. So like step by step, let's say I was, I wanted to turn the marketing in my SaaS

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company into a flywheel. What would you have me do? Well, I mean, like, first of all, some of this

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is culturally, it's just different in different companies, right? One of the nice things that I.

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I get to experience most of the fractional CMOs, I get to see what's working in multiple places

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and put those in place immediately if I see something working.

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Like carry one thing over from another place with when in a regular position, right?

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More full-time position, you're generally like having to go external to find that

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or waiting until the next job to use those learnings from the previous job, right?

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So one of the things I kind of go in and diagnose quickly is like, what is it inside the culture? How do people feel about marketing?

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So if you have a culture where people are very at arm's length about marketing.

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One of the turning points for me where I realized this is when we knew we had a problem with

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positioning. People didn't quite understand what we were, the positioning and messaging.

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And literally see everybody in the executive team looked at me and said.

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Okay, you're marketing, go do that. I mean, I'm supposed to determine the positioning for every like, well, what about the product

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roadmap? Does that mean I get to choose the product roadmap?

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What about our sales process? Do I get to figure that out too?

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Because whether or not somebody goes to demo or we have self-serve, right?

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Like those are two totally different things that are going to make a difference in positioning

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and messaging, right?

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So there's a lot of that where people are just like, well, you're marketing.

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I don't do that's your job, right?

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You have to figure out culturally, if that's the case, how to get people to understand they

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have to participate in the conversation because there are pieces of the pie that they own,

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that influence what that positioning is going to be, what that messaging is going to be,

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what all the things that you've got to figure out are going to be. A lot of places.

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Product owns the website, meaning the dev team controls the website. If you can't get changes

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to that, you're stuck. There are times where you have to point out that changes to a website,

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because the devs control the website and they work for the product team, or the tech team,

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however they label themselves inside of a company, if they don't understand that we won't get more

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revenue if we don't do the website before we launch a new product, that we could launch a new

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version but nobody's going to know anything about it if we haven't changed the website.

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That if they don't understand those pieces, right, then it doesn't work.

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And that's sort of that flywheel concept of everybody understanding how to contribute

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and get that energy back in. So first starting with that culturally

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getting everybody to understand and then.

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You got to take a look at the experience from someone first hearing of your company

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through a very happy customer that's been with you for a couple of years.

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What is their experience? And then when you look at their experience, what are the levers that you

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can press along the way that will A, activate people who are happy internally, that can be,

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customers, people in your community, partners, employees, all those people that are in your

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universe, right? So that you can have a little bit more of a community driven brand, because that

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community is going to be the Calvary that your marketing department needs, right? They're going

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to help create that demand because they're very happy. So you have to figure out how you can.

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Identify the levers that are inside that you can activate and then how you can activate the people

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and find the people that are really happy too. So it might be like MPS scores. I love having a feed

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of MPS scores in the Slack channel, right? A Slack channel dedicated to the feed of MPS results.

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Then you see who's happy. Once you know who's happy and who can't live without your product.

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If you have one open forum field where they can just put anything, that's gold.

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You start looking inside of that gold and you start getting content ideas. You start understanding

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who's willing to leave reviews, who's willing to do case studies, who's willing to give success,

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stories, who's willing to maybe get on the phone with somebody who's a prospect and say,

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yeah, yeah, this is totally something you should do. This is where I was. This is the problem I had.

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This is what it solved." You will get customers who will volunteer. I have been in places where

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literally we had a customer volunteer, a CEO say, I will talk to anybody who wants to know about

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your product. If you have a high value target and they aren't sure about it, you can have them call

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Nobody did anything with it.

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We had a CEO willing to say, I will talk to anybody and do the sale for you. And nobody did

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anything with it. We had to build that in. So that's one of those levers and then identifying

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how to activate it. Does that make sense? Right. Okay. So you're looking for opportunities,

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within your existing customer base or even within partners, anybody in your community.

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I like to use the example everybody loves to put out. People get a little confused about brand

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because everybody sets out like Nike and Apple. Let's be honest, that's not the experience of a

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startup SaaS, B2B startup SaaS companies, marketing and brand. It's just something totally

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different. So when you start thinking about the full experience that people are having.

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As they interact with your company, anyone that interacts is a part of that. They can be part of

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your community. They don't have to be a customer. You could go to a trade show and the person who

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who puts on the trade show just really loves your product.

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That person has a lot of influence that you could activate, right?

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If they really love your product, they just may not be your target market,

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but they could act, there are ways that they can activate. They may have a lot of access to your target market

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because they host this trade show, right?

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Even though they're not a customer, they still have access to people that they wanna see problems get solved

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and you have a way to help solve those problems. So how do you incorporate that person into your community?

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That's a lever you can be pressing, right?

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And you can be activating them to press the lever. So if you kind of come at it with,

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how do I get more of these people involved in marketing and that flywheel motion and putting more energy back

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into the brand and reducing friction and pressing levers that help it move along, right?

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Does that make sense? Right, yes. So do you have any tips on like...

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What are some common levers, I guess, that you have identified in different...

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I use a lot of engineering lingo.

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Wow. I mean, a lot of SaaS companies have technical founders and it just helps them understand

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it. I'm sorry, finish your question.

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I was just pointing out my lingo.

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Yeah, what are some of the, I guess, like some tips or like some very specific places

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that you've identified are useful for B2B SaaS companies in order to start like building

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the flywheel or taking advantage of, you know, opportunities, customers or partners presenting.

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So the MPS is one of the first ones, right? Like everybody's like doing high fives around the office.

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First of all, a lot of people aren't using NPS and that promoter score.

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If you don't have that, that's the first one.

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Start doing some customer surveys to getting that promoter score and then start identifying

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your trends. Then you're going to figure out what you got to do to improve your experience.

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If you identify that you have a bad one, then you spend all your marketing resources fixing

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before you drive more people into that bad one.

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I've literally had founders approach me and say, we are pausing everything because they

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recognize I just talked to one last week.

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Like, I put everything on pause until we fix this because I can't have, you know, 11,000 member.

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Company come in here and have a bad experience. Like it'll lose everything, right? Like everything

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I've built, I'll lose all credibility. So, MPS helps a lot with that. Really listening to your

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customers and obsessing over the steps and getting your marketing team to really dive into each step

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along the way. Are you doing sales demos? Somebody needs to be listening to a few to understand what

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goes on in those demos. Are you doing onboarding sessions with new customers? You need to listen

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in on those. Are you doing office hours? You need to see what questions are being asked. All of those

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are content that you can be pushing out while you're working on these. So if you have a content

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arm in your marketing department, those are the pieces of content that help develop your content

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strategy around all of those things because that's people you're already talking to that have,

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questions. There are other people out there that have those same questions. So that's a great place

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to start. Then when you implement that MPS, now you've identified the people who are really happy,

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they're telling you what they're really happy about, now you have to figure out how to activate

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them. Can you talk to them about getting some quotes? Can you talk to them about doing a review?

00:17:12.782 --> 00:17:16.521
Can you talk to them about a success story or testimonial, particularly in a startup?

00:17:16.620 --> 00:17:21.902
This is gold. You need to know who's happy, why they're happy, and then activate them to do

00:17:21.902 --> 00:17:26.622
something so that other people know they're happy. Not just high five that your trends are up or your

00:17:26.622 --> 00:17:27.862
your MPS score is great.

00:17:27.862 --> 00:17:31.062
And that's where even the people who do it, that's where a lot of it stops.

00:17:31.062 --> 00:17:36.062
So the next piece I would say is like look in partners.

00:17:37.757 --> 00:17:44.687
There's a lot of lazy marketing when it comes to partners, like a lot.

00:17:44.687 --> 00:17:47.381
Everybody's like, oh, well, I'd like your email list.

00:17:47.447 --> 00:17:51.324
I want to send an email. They're asking for the same things.

00:17:51.447 --> 00:17:58.527
It doesn't feel like it serves a higher purpose. If you really think about those levers and how you're approaching the experience and

00:17:58.527 --> 00:18:04.247
then you mirror that into your partner's brand experience, then you find levers that work

00:18:04.247 --> 00:18:09.207
on both sides so that pressing a lever is supposed to make things easier, right?

00:18:09.207 --> 00:18:13.298
Help solve problems. So you look for a lever that works from both sides.

00:18:13.527 --> 00:18:19.647
And oftentimes, because there's so much lazy marketing out there around partners and partnerships.

00:18:19.933 --> 00:18:23.030
There's something you ask for that no one else is thought to ask for.

00:18:23.267 --> 00:18:28.727
And it's not something they're super protective over, like their email database or something like that, right?

00:18:28.727 --> 00:18:33.567
Like instead of saying, can I send an email to all your list?

00:18:33.567 --> 00:18:36.527
How about saying, can you put a story in a newsletter?

00:18:36.527 --> 00:18:47.827
Can we look for something else that we can interact in? That one checkbox story came from really looking at a partner's customer journey and their

00:18:47.827 --> 00:18:55.307
brand experience and realizing that it wasn't a sell with kind of partner.

00:18:55.307 --> 00:19:00.767
Once they introduced the partnership opportunity, they didn't continue to sell it.

00:19:00.767 --> 00:19:04.147
They just, they saw their role as just introducing it.

00:19:04.147 --> 00:19:11.127
So asking to put a checkbox so that we can send people into some way where we can nurture them

00:19:11.127 --> 00:19:14.343
because they weren't going to continue. They did their job, they introduced.

00:19:14.727 --> 00:19:20.827
So what we did is provide a way for people to move into a, I'm not ready to buy from you

00:19:20.827 --> 00:19:22.409
because I just heard about you, right?

00:19:22.927 --> 00:19:26.847
And a way to nurture to them. And that's what brought in tons and tons of,

00:19:26.847 --> 00:19:28.967
it was the most effective lead channel we have.

00:19:28.967 --> 00:19:33.467
So in another instance, we were talking with a partner and we're trying to figure out how

00:19:33.467 --> 00:19:38.607
we can mirror and insert ourselves into their customer journey where they're exclusive partner

00:19:38.607 --> 00:19:40.215
for something, right?

00:19:40.507 --> 00:19:48.127
So they have a vested interest in promoting this is kind of under their brand. that spot.

00:19:48.839 --> 00:19:55.049
Is really critical. Well, when I come in, I don't know this partner intimately,

00:19:55.049 --> 00:19:56.249
like maybe the CEO does.

00:19:56.249 --> 00:20:01.729
So I sit down with the CEO, if he or she still don't have the right ideas of what we need to do,

00:20:01.729 --> 00:20:04.609
then we sit down with a partner and sometimes it's as simple as, you know,

00:20:04.609 --> 00:20:08.169
asking for things like, hey, can we put a reminder on an invoice?

00:20:08.169 --> 00:20:14.609
Hey, have you looked at this service, right? You can upgrade your account and add this service

00:20:14.609 --> 00:20:17.489
if you're interested, ask us questions. Well, I said, I asked,

00:20:17.489 --> 00:20:22.130
Is there something that we can do?" They said, oh, you know what we can do and what would be better?

00:20:22.418 --> 00:20:29.009
Let's put it on every sales quote that we're doing. People come to us, we do our sales quote,

00:20:29.009 --> 00:20:36.769
and then we can put a box that says, this is what you asked for. We can add the service. Do you need

00:20:36.769 --> 00:20:43.609
it too? Now we're getting in front of the journey and we're going to every single customer or

00:20:43.809 --> 00:20:45.644
or potential customer they have,

00:20:45.949 --> 00:20:48.002
and we're getting included in the conversation.

00:20:48.309 --> 00:20:52.900
That's more of a sell with partnership where they're gonna do the selling,

00:20:52.989 --> 00:20:59.246
but they weren't taking the onus on introducing it. So we have to work with them to co-market that.

00:20:59.349 --> 00:21:00.911
Does that make sense?

00:21:01.069 --> 00:21:02.667
Wow, this is great.

00:21:03.089 --> 00:21:05.260
Because now you're just kind of thinking. Yeah, so.

00:21:06.214 --> 00:21:08.949
So yeah, I mean, you see how like each of these is like a lever.

00:21:08.949 --> 00:21:15.189
And so when you really think about the whole experience And you think about from start to end and how,

00:21:15.189 --> 00:21:17.389
I mean, we care a lot about retention.

00:21:17.389 --> 00:21:21.644
We care a lot about recurring revenue in a SaaS model.

00:21:21.752 --> 00:21:25.974
So you can't stop with a funnel. You have to figure out how it all feeds back in.

00:21:26.989 --> 00:21:35.509
I love this. Cause I feel like a lot of the partnership marketing I've seen is like from different brands.

00:21:35.509 --> 00:21:39.387
It's more like, well, it's not even that. It's just that it's like.

00:21:40.738 --> 00:21:45.148
When people, the examples I can think of of people doing this successfully is like,

00:21:45.293 --> 00:21:49.708
I don't know, like co-marketing, like doing joint webinars with a partner company or something like

00:21:49.708 --> 00:21:53.868
Yeah. And those are, those are great. Right. But like you said, they're, they're kind of tired.

00:21:54.025 --> 00:21:58.508
They're expected. Like the first conversation you have with a partner, they're like, okay,

00:21:58.508 --> 00:22:03.162
you're going to ask for my email. And if we could do a webinar, maybe a joint content download,

00:22:03.388 --> 00:22:09.468
like, you know, those three are coming. Right. Right. Go deeper, go into the experience and

00:22:09.468 --> 00:22:17.071
and don't think of just this funnel, top of funnel, Legion, like what makes sense where it overlays?

00:22:17.348 --> 00:22:21.988
I love this. OK, this is so great. Because now you're talking about things like check boxes

00:22:21.988 --> 00:22:29.268
and forms and the natural onboarding flow or prospecting flow that each company has

00:22:29.268 --> 00:22:31.508
and how they can integrate those together.

00:22:31.508 --> 00:22:37.908
Yeah, when does it make sense to introduce it? And then who's responsible for taking it to the next step?

00:22:37.908 --> 00:22:43.508
That fall on the partner or does that fall on you? And once you agree on where to introduce it and

00:22:43.508 --> 00:22:48.308
who's responsible for the next step, now it's just finding like the mechanisms, right? Now it's like,

00:22:48.308 --> 00:22:56.868
okay, what tactic do we use for this? Oh, wow. Okay. Are there any tips or tactics or

00:22:56.868 --> 00:23:04.548
leverage points, I guess you can say, for maybe like the customers that you have coming in,

00:23:04.756 --> 00:23:09.668
or the prospective customers you have coming in? How do you get them to want to purchase your

00:23:09.668 --> 00:23:17.268
product? Or how do you leverage your existing customers so that they become brand advocates

00:23:17.268 --> 00:23:22.948
and promoters of your product? Well, it's different culturally with each company,

00:23:22.948 --> 00:23:29.188
how to do that. If you've never done it, there's a little experimentation here.

00:23:29.188 --> 00:23:35.788
I generally start one-to-one. Find the happiest person.

00:23:35.788 --> 00:23:41.408
If you ask the CEO, the CEO almost always knows who the biggest champion is.

00:23:41.408 --> 00:23:44.798
That's the person they've had a conversation with.

00:23:45.188 --> 00:23:52.063
Ask the CEO, who is that person? Ask the product team because the product team has gotten questions or they've sat and done

00:23:52.108 --> 00:23:56.690
an interview with a customer because the customer wants a specific feature. This happens a lot.

00:23:56.908 --> 00:24:00.948
They're requesting a specific feature. So somebody on the product team is going to sit down with them.

00:24:00.948 --> 00:24:06.475
They have a lot of insight in who those people are. Sales or customer success, the same thing.

00:24:06.588 --> 00:24:09.887
So you have to start with those conversations with them.

00:24:10.148 --> 00:24:12.525
You're going to find some low-hanging fruit right there.

00:24:12.828 --> 00:24:17.068
Get your MPS or something similar if you aren't a fan of Net Promoter Store.

00:24:17.068 --> 00:24:21.748
I am, but there are other things that are out there that are similar. Get those in place.

00:24:22.013 --> 00:24:26.908
Find the people who have voluntarily left reviews and so forth for you.

00:24:26.908 --> 00:24:32.988
Do a quick audit. Has anybody left a review on G2 or on Core?

00:24:34.535 --> 00:24:39.745
Captera, right? Or any of those, right? Like anybody who's gone out there and left reviews for you,

00:24:40.486 --> 00:24:44.865
it might even be on Facebook or Google, right? Like make sure you're contacting them. If you

00:24:44.865 --> 00:24:48.507
have an app, it might be on the app store, anywhere that you can identify these people,

00:24:48.625 --> 00:24:53.125
get in touch with them, talk to them, get them in a group talking together, like, you know,

00:24:53.425 --> 00:24:59.535
so they hear what each other is talking about too. Like start those first kernels of a community,

00:24:59.958 --> 00:25:06.945
because that is some of the resource you need at a startup to get your marketing engine going,

00:25:06.945 --> 00:25:11.310
to get that flywheel turning. You need a lot of people helping push on it.

00:25:11.670 --> 00:25:17.425
And that community is going to help a lot. Anybody you interact with, anybody who's got a positive

00:25:17.425 --> 00:25:24.785
impression, then start building up process around it. So if you start with those conversations,

00:25:24.785 --> 00:25:29.345
and you need to talk to the head of customer success and say, every time somebody talks to

00:25:29.345 --> 00:25:34.465
to your team and they talk about how much they love the product, I need a note.

00:25:34.465 --> 00:25:40.985
We need a note in marketing. This person will be good for a testimonial, this is why, this is what they love.

00:25:40.985 --> 00:25:46.245
Just get the information to us and then your process needs to be, okay, what's the decision

00:25:46.245 --> 00:25:47.585
tree of what to do with those?

00:25:47.585 --> 00:25:53.885
What do we do with the next? Again, now you're getting down to mechanisms and tactics, but getting that process in place

00:25:53.885 --> 00:25:56.501
for how that information flows is the first step.

00:25:57.347 --> 00:26:18.673
Hmm. Okay, that makes so much sense. Renee, this was amazing. I got to implement some of these things right away. And as we're wrapping up, I just like to shine a spotlight on you. So is there any project you're working on anything that you'd like people to know? And anywhere you'd like people to get in touch with you?

00:26:19.376 --> 00:26:25.357
So LinkedIn is generally the best place to get in touch with me. I try to be fairly present on

00:26:25.357 --> 00:26:33.357
LinkedIn and responsive. I try to be very responsive on LinkedIn as well. Although,

00:26:33.464 --> 00:26:38.397
I'm probably going to give you a little note if you start that experience off with trying to sell

00:26:38.397 --> 00:26:43.517
to me right away. So heads up on that. Good to talk about maybe why that's not a great experience.

00:26:44.637 --> 00:26:49.277
Yeah, good point. Most people don't respond after that if they're just doing hard sales BDR. But.

00:26:50.397 --> 00:26:55.357
LinkedIn is always a great place. I just find it's the easiest to always find someone.

00:26:55.448 --> 00:27:03.277
And then for what I'm working on, I have found a lot of success in talking about some mental

00:27:03.277 --> 00:27:08.877
models around this and some visuals around these concepts. Over the past couple of years,

00:27:08.877 --> 00:27:13.911
I've kind of refined them. And I think over the next year, what I'm going to do is work on

00:27:14.308 --> 00:27:20.222
publishing that out on a broader basis because it really does, if I'm looking to scale impacts,

00:27:20.397 --> 00:27:24.759
that's part of why doing fractional CMOs, I can help multiple companies where I used to help one.

00:27:25.173 --> 00:27:29.197
If I think what takes that to the next level, getting these ideas out in a broader audience

00:27:29.197 --> 00:27:34.237
so that it helps more marketers so they aren't as frustrated and don't leave marketing because

00:27:34.237 --> 00:27:38.957
that's happening at a rapid pace, helps more CEOs who are super frustrated because they don't

00:27:38.957 --> 00:27:46.157
understand it, helps customers not go into bad experiences. So if I want to scale that impact,

00:27:46.932 --> 00:27:53.677
that's kind of my project in between clients over the next year is looking to publish some

00:27:53.677 --> 00:27:57.037
of the mental models and stuff that I use with my clients more broadly.

00:27:58.653 --> 00:28:03.597
Awesome. But whatever I do, I will make sure it's on LinkedIn because that's the easiest way to say

00:28:03.597 --> 00:28:09.437
That way I don't have to worry about multiple channels and everybody who's in B2B spends some

00:28:09.437 --> 00:28:14.797
time there. So yeah, makes sense. I was going to ask, is there any way to like actually follow

00:28:14.797 --> 00:28:19.277
this whenever you publish it? But perfect. Let's all connect with Renee on LinkedIn.

00:28:19.277 --> 00:28:23.677
Everybody has channel fatigue. So if I just say one, it just makes it easier.

00:28:24.317 --> 00:28:28.477
Yeah, that makes sense to me. All right. Thank you so much, Renee, for sharing.

00:28:28.477 --> 00:28:32.717
It's been great chatting with you. And you got to follow up with me and let me know which

00:28:32.717 --> 00:28:39.197
which thing resonated and did it work. I'm always taking feedback to include in the process.

00:28:39.748 --> 00:28:41.729
All right, we'll be sure to do that.