Interviewer: Now we have to accept. Cool, so Magda, quick-fire question. Just read out the sentence, and then you read it out and then just quickly reply in your own words.

Magdalena: Of course.

Interviewer: If you are ready, I am ready as you are.

Magdalena: I am also ready. I will start with the first question right away which would be why did you choose to work in marketing. Actually, I didn’t choose to work in marketing. Marketing chose me somehow. I ended up here after starting out in the sales team as a working student. We had a lack of lead management and lead generation, and somehow, I went into going or focusing more on lead generation, demand generation in general, and we didn’t have a CRM manager, so I had to look at our CRM a lot, so yeah, now I’m in growth marketing.

Interviewer: That’s fantastic. I think it’s quite a pickle, and I love that you have the background from sales as well, right? There’s just this classic clash between marketing and sales all the time, short- and long-term, but you are a marketer that, yeah, has seen both sides, and I’m pretty sure that your team appreciates that a lot.

Magdalena: Yeah, I hope so. Also, it helps me every day. Every day with everything I do it helps me out, yeah.

Interviewer: How does it help you?

Magdalena: It definitely helps me with knowing the processes first of all and also knowing the goals or targets and then making sure that my colleagues in the marketing team also know about these targets and processes. Yeah, you can just basically see the overall lead generation funnel, which is important because we have all one goal, and it really makes it more transparent to see it.

Interviewer: Yeah, lovely. Okay, let’s fire to the next.

Magdalena: Okay. What’s the best piece of advice about marketing you’ve ever received? I think the best piece of advice about marketing I’ve ever received is to be human and also listen to the customer. Be human in a way that, of course, I’m selling a B2B product, but in the end, there’s still a customer buying the product, so I have to target towards them, trigger them, make sure that they feel like I am a human or we are a human selling something valuable for them.

Interviewer: I love this answer. Some say it should called – it should be called H2H, so human to human, still, but just a quick follow-up question. How do you make sure that you are being human in your messaging? I think that’s – everybody speaks about it, but it’s hard to explain how to be human. What’s your take on that?

Magdalena: Yeah, it’s definitely hard. I think I always try to step back a little bit and look at it – look at the messaging again another day or something. Also really try to, yeah, have in mind what I’m targeting or who I’m targeting and what he could be interested in, and then also, of course, making sure that standard steps that I don’t include a lot of industry language, a lot of tool language that doesn’t make sense to anyone not using the tool, and trying to have an emotional – also, of course, emotional connection with them by knowing that they – I don’t know – love memes, for example. The community loves memes and, of course, doing a lot of research about them on a personal level.

Interviewer: Fantastic. I love the meme one. How do you stay up to – how do you stay up to date to the mere verse because we have the same thing right now where we have this one meme, and it worked quite a lot, but now it’s outdated. How do you come up with new memes?

Magdalena: Actually, we do a lot of brainstorming about that or whenever somebody on a different marketing team they have an idea, they come to us, and we try to implement it. Actually, one of our technical SEOs is also a really, really good meme maker, and she helps us out a lot, and it’s really funny. Recently we published a meme that our working student put into our idea pod. Yeah, all in all, it worked quite well.

Interviewer: Lovely, lovely. It’s so effective, right? If you find the right – if you’re typing to someone who has the same humor, it’s like okay, instant connection.

Magdalena: Absolutely.

Interviewer: If you [04:46], you can do whatever. That’s magic.

Magdalena: Absolutely.

Interviewer: Cool. Let’s jump to the next one.

Magdalena: Okay. What’s the craftiest way you’ve been prospected? I think the craftiest way was actually a really, really personalized LinkedIn message, and surprise, surprise, Jan, that was the one you sent me, the first touchpoint you ever did when approaching us, which is still one of my main sources of inspiration because it’s really – it was a really short message. It was three parts. You triggered me personally because you did a lot of research about me. Then you added something about my hobby, which, of course, gets me in the heart. Then you said something about our website traffic, which was not true, but it really made me think about it because of course, I wanted to see how you can see that and why I don’t know about the number, so this definitely triggered my interest, and then you were just straight up and asked me if I want to learn more about it, which I am – the CTA was strong.

I didn’t agree to it for the first time or for the first couple of messages because I wanted to see more cool messages, but actually, when you sent me this message, we were starting up with our social selling stuff, reaching out to people via emailing because before that we only did calling, and I ran through the office showing my manager your LinkedIn message, and he was like if we achieve this that somebody runs through the office to his manager with a LinkedIn message because it’s so good, then we’ve reached our goal. I haven’t heard of anybody running through the office with our messages, but we’re working on that.

Interviewer: That’s so nice. It’s so fun because I thought I totally messed it up because it was way off. It was wrong, and I thought I was – I thought you ghosted me totally because you were like – you weren’t answering and so forth, but I agree. If you have a good message, then you sometimes just want to see the next one, right? So fun, yeah. Thanks for that. Lovely.

Magdalena: Thank you.

Interviewer: Yeah, cool. Let’s go on to the next.

Magdalena: Mm-hm. Gated content or not, and why? I’m all for non-gated content. I think we can go back to the be human part here because somehow you have to tease something to them, of course, and I don’t know if that’s a thing where you are, but here, If you go buy an ice cream, you usually get a small spoon of a different ice cream you want to try, so I really see it like that. Give them something. Give them a small piece to try, and they will come back because you added value to them. You showed them something interesting, so I’m all for non-gated content.

Interviewer: Yah, I love that a lot like the ice cream one. It’s so true, right? You taste a flavor, and then you taste another one, and then it’s like okay, of course, I’m going to take two bowls, even though I wanted only one from the beginning.

Magdalena: Absolutely.

Interviewer: It’s a really nice analogy. More people are actually speaking about that right now. It’s hard because right gated is always like okay, if I fill this in, then something will happen. I will get that white paper, but I will also get message from Jason, Chris, Peter, and Evgenia if I want to buy an additional tool. If you can try the ice cream by yourself at first and actually see it tastes nice, you will maybe come back, or you already know them when they reach you and ask you to buy more ice cream. Makes sense.

Magdalena: Yeah, 100%. We are talking about it quite a lot because also there is a huge part that is gated, and that makes total sense right now, for example, but eventually, I think non-gated is the way to go to what you just said. Give them a taste, and then they will come back because you added value.

Interviewer: Nice. Just another point because I spoke to another really cool marketer. He said you can also split the gated content into different stages of the funnel. What’s your take on that?

Magdalena: I actually agree. Totally makes sense to, of course – If you look at more product awareness, they most likely already are really – already very ready to buy, so you might – ideally, you have their information already, so you don’t need to gate your content anymore. You can give it to them. On the other hand, of course, a general lead generation funnel or lead funnel makes sense. You need to have the subscribers there. You need their contact information because you will not find it out by yourself. It’s probably a part of both, and then for some specific really high-value content, I think it makes sense to put it out non-gated because that gets the funnel going.

Interviewer: Yeah, lovely. Great answer. Cool. Let’s go to the next. You already started with it a bit here.

Magdalena: Absolutely. What are three tips you would give other marketers to try and break down silos between sales and marketing? Of course, the most obvious one I think people should be focusing on is measuring marketing and sales with the same KPIs. Ultimately, you have to make sure that both teams want to achieve the same goals, and in a simple put way, that’s qualified leads that’s closed quickly, but you make everyone aware of that, that’s quite a tricky question or task to do, so I think making sure that they are measured with the same KPIs totally makes sense. Then the next point I have concerning that question is that – it really ties into the first one, actually, that you want to make sure that your marketing and sales team understand processes and challenges and vice versa. I would love to have everyone in a marketing team do a couple of sales calls and everyone in a sales team do a couple of marketing days building a landing page or creating some content, pulling a [11:13] together, stuff like that, just so they can see okay, what’s the challenge here, and make them aware of what the challenges are so they can better understand. and also get behind the process, of course. I know that’s also nothing new, but I think it really adds value.

Then I really like the idea – at the beginning of the year, we had some market squads workshops, and one task was that we all had to write down a target account that we want to be approaching this year. There were people from marketing, sales, pre-sales, customer success, customer support, so our whole lead funnel was there, or people from the whole lead funnel. Everybody was supposed to write down one target account, which I really liked because it really showed - is everybody aware of what we’re going towards? Does everybody know their goal? Is everybody aware of what our value is and stuff like that? You could definitely dive into this deeper and see why they chose this or why they want to be approaching the certain target account.

Also, I not only have three things but four things. There’s one thing that we are doing right now or want to be implementing right now which is called learning lunches, which is basically a lunch date for the teams. For now, it’s going to be the marketing team orders pizza for the sales team during lunch break, and we just share some sides of our email performances, for example. Just getting the communication going. I don’t know. Hardship makes friendship, as they say, just to be able to have a similar – yeah, similar approach to everything and also communicate about stuff really is important to have everyone in the same direction, and with the different teams, that’s a challenge I face every day.

Interviewer: Yeah, I can only imagine what a marketer’s going through. It’s nice. I really like the tips because the first ones have the same goal and measure them on the same goal as well, which is tough because we book meetings and you go okay, but what’s my share of the piece, and in the end, it’s revenue that counts or the amount of deals closed, so that’s really cool, and then nice incentive with some pizza. I think you should go vice versa. The sales team also has to invite you sometimes, otherwise –

Magdalena: I hope they do. I hope they do.

Interviewer: You take the first step. Then they go back. Fantastic. Cool. Let’s take the last one.

Magdalena: Okay. What tools help you the most in your day to day? I wrote down three tools, which are actually only two because I wrote down Salesforce twice, so my first go-to tool is Salesforce and also the second go-to tool is Salesforce just because I get all of my data in there not only for prospecting, targeting, performance overview, everything, and I really, yeah, could not be doing my job without Salesforce. Then, of course, also SalesLoft, which is our sales engagement platform, which we only introduced a couple of months ago, which is turning out to also, of course, be a big important part of my day-to-day business. I’m making [14:43] steps visible, making everything else, like for the – doing part a little bit more easy to access than in Salesforce.

Interviewer: Yeah, I love that. It was like when we got – we have Outreach right now, but it felt like suddenly you could keep the football with some air in. Before it was really hard. We used manual sequencing in the HubSpot, which also works fine, but suddenly we’re like okay, now we’re talking. Now we are –

Magdalena: Yeah, love the reference. That’s exactly how I felt before using a sales [15:19] controller.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s the first thing I said to my men. It was like I can finally kick the football. It’s like okay, it makes sense, and Salesforce twice, yeah. Salesforce can be heaven, but it can also be horrible, especially for us reps, Salesforce hygiene, but it’s so important that you do it every day, so I love that people get reminded of themselves.

Magdalena: Yeah, that’s just how it works.

Interviewer: Yeah, exactly. Now five more minutes. Should we just pick two questions and go with it?

Magdalena: Yes, let’s do that.

Interviewer: This conversation’s is going really well. Which one would you like to start with? Do you have one that you’re really hot on? The pitfalls?

Magdalena: Yeah, I would say the challenges and pitfalls. We should start with that.

Interviewer: Okay, so you’ve been going through a lot of challenges like everybody else. It’s not a problem but a challenge as you would say. What are your top three marketing challenges and pitfalls going on right now, Magda?

Magdalena: My biggest challenge probably right now is feeding three different markets, core markets, with different channels, so inbound and outbound. Of course, the markets react differently to the same content, so that’s something we always have to consider. There’s different readiness on the market, so I think this is one of my biggest challenges, and I’m directly tying into that that I take care a lot about – of inbound and outbound marketing or outbound sales and inbound marketing more. Here the biggest challenge is, of course, for me internally to switch from one to the other just like that and then also making sure that we are aligned on the goals, so like outbound sales has a different goal than inbound marketing. Eventually the same goal, [17:26] is always the goal for us, but the way to get there is different, and to combine those with so many different stakeholders all in one, it’s quite a challenge at the moment, yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah, I can imagine. You spoke about readiness, and I really like that because we always speak about the curve of innovation and then separate the market on how innovative the market is. Some are [17:49], some are innovators, some are early adopters, some are late majority, and so forth. How do you do that? How do you measure the readiness of the market of your target accounts?

Magdalena: I really like the curve of innovation. I heard it before. I have not written it down strictly towards our target markets, but yeah, It’s just so obvious what we are doing on the different markets that I really – I should be measuring it definitely, but I just listen to the sales feedback. I talk to sales managers. I talk to their feedback there, and definitely now, okay, for example, for the Spanish market, they have a different awareness of SEO because I’m selling an SEO tool – than, for example, the DACH market. One big part is that our – One of our founders is really famous, a really famous SEO in the DACH market. When we enter this conversation there, we’re usually two steps further, which doesn’t make it easier at all because we have to convince them more, but for example, for a different readiness stage, we have to educate them more, so it’s more about educating them about SEO in general. Then for a DACH market for example, it’s more about really going deep into technical stuff.

Interviewer: Yeah, it’s specific – the German wants the specifics and how does it work, how do you know that and so forth. That’s [19:15] question.

Magdalena: Yeah, absolutely.

Interviewer: Yeah, cool. That’s probably why the pizza is well spent so you can really touch on the readiness of the market. It’s a challenge, right? How do you measure something that’s intangible? How can we report this to the board, to the CEOs? Okay, you have [19:39] readiness, yeah, but how can we actually quantify that? Cool.

Magdalena: Yeah, absolutely.

Interviewer: Yeah, which one do we take next? Because you have to run soon. I think you have to run very soon, actually.

Magdalena: No worries. We can take a little bit longer. What do you prefer, Jan?

Interviewer: I am really interested in – because you spoke a bit about the return on the campaigns, about the KPI goals. You said [20:04] is really important, like this is what you strive to do, but I think the last one considering that most marketing projects take time to get results – not all of them, but most. It’s a longer time span than say it is like now I need some meetings, How do you convince your stakeholders to buy in what you want to build?

Magdalena: Yeah, actually, I think I’m in a really, really lucky place where I work at because our target audience is marketing people, so everybody has an awareness of how important it is to invest in marketing and how to make sure that marketing is set up really. Internally, I think I really am at a better place than other people in marketing, and besides that, I make sure that I put KPIs in my project plans. I make sure that I show numbers and that I show potential things that can happen or will happen when this campaign is launched or something really long-term happens. Once again, a good place and also a position I am at with my managers., for example, also they support me on that, of course.

They know okay, it’s going to take some time, and they trust me, which, of course, always helps in executing those projects, and then I still try to show the marketing influence on the revenue that we generated when the sale happened or the deal closed. Of course, I go into and check where it came from, so I can say okay, this campaign actually worked, or this project we wanted to do accelerated our growth by this amount, and then for the next project I want to be doing I can tell them it worked last time. It’s something different now, but I think it’s going to be working again.

Interviewer: Yeah, I get it, but all the question is always like how do you get the trust, and I think for you it’s really like including a lot of KPIs as early as possible to make sure that you – that they give you the trust, right, because otherwise, you – like other marketers said marketing is about spending a lot of money and getting even more money out of it, which is fun, but sometimes it’s hard, right, to make that count. Last question then you have to run.

Magdalena: Yes, we can do two more, actually.

Interviewer: Okay, two more. Great. You buy or you’re involved in buying software a lot, so I would just like ask you what would you improve when you buy software and how and what would you change in that case?

Magdalena: Of course, it’s always the case. I would love for me to be able to show the value right when I try the tool because that’s, of course, the biggest part, so somehow make sure that you put an outcome in your trial. I know that’s not the easiest. I’ve been dealing a lot with it here, and we are still working on it and improving it, but this will be one major thing I will be changing when purchasing software. Then also, I think it’s always a case of flexible pricing because we’re a startup company, and price is, of course, always an issue. A budget is a part of the purchasing process always. I really, really would be appreciating if there’s flexible pricing, for example, not yearly contracts but half yearly. I totally get it. People tell me the same thing when purchasing our tool, so we’re all in the same boat here, but that’s something I would be highly appreciating if that would be changing more.

Interviewer: Yeah, makes sense, right? If you get the value, if you come back to the ice cream, you will eat more, but if you – maybe you don’t want to buy the whole cup in general even though the ice cream maker needs to sell the whole cup, but it’s better to come back for more rather than eating all of it and then you’re fed up if we speak in that story. Cool.

Magdalena: Definitely. Also overwhelmed by a tool. It’s really overwhelming to be introducing a new tool, and then if you in the purchasing process tell them that you’re not ready for the full version yet but you have to purchase it, it gets quite overwhelming because you wanted to start with just a small feature, stuff like that, so I think there’s a lot of potential in there.

Interviewer: Yeah, how do you deal with that because I just know from sales that we don’t want another tool. It’s like give me the information. Another tool that I have to learn – it took us – Outreach took us a month of headache before we figured it out. Then it worked. Same when we switched from HubSpot to Salesforce, so different. How do you make – When you bring in new tools, or new [25:01], what’s important for you then because you want the team, of course, to work with it as soon as possible? How do you make sure that it’s not – as little headache as possible so to say?

Magdalena: Of course, I think the biggest part of that is a project plan, implementation plan so making sure that everyone is involved in the right place, making sure what challenges might be coming and take time, and then, also, I think it’s really important to get all the stakeholders excited from the start. I really try – if I introduce a new tool or want to buy a new tool, I really try to get everyone involved, get everyone up to date and maybe even give them a trial already, which really helps in making them already aware of everything. and then, also, I think it’s really important to – If you have a project plan and you will figure out that you need another week for the tool or for the – for example, SDRs to adapt to the tool before you can switch to the next feature or something, give it the time – give it time, and then it will be turning out fine, so not be shy to step away from the project plan just from a timely manner Of course, stick to your project plan, but not – yeah, but make sure that you are also flexible when dealing with that.

Interviewer: Nice. Yeah, it’s always customer first. Let them do their own pace, but sometimes there’s problems in the implementation. Okay, you just have used it and then you’re also in this dilemma. Yeah, I get it. It makes total sense. Alright, last question, you pick.

Magdalena: I’ll pick the last question, which I should say is the how are you making sure to get return on your marketing campaigns to align with your KPI goals.

Interviewer: Nice.

Magdalena: Yeah, I think actually there are two important parts to that. First of all, monitor your goals regularly, and then also not be shy to take actions but also at the same time make sure that you don’t change everything up too soon. Make sure okay, that you always are aligned on the goals also with the different stakeholders and don’t get sidetracked. because, Of course, there is time where you need to take actions, but of course, there’s also times where you need to give it more time. I just recently had this case when introducing a campaign, we did two different cadences, and the one was not performing like we wanted it to, so we came together I came together with the SDR team, and we made a decision to cut off the cadence for now.

Keep the prospects that are in there in there, but then not put any new ones in there, and now eventually – of course, the cadence kept going. We can see some traction there, and I’m really glad that we didn’t just break it off. We didn’t remove any prospects, and they’re sill in there, so I think that’s quite a valuable. and, of course, also along with your goals. Then also, a second KPI, I would also be focusing on – especially if you’re just implementing new things… which us both are doing a lot, we Try to put in many AB testing – yeah, AB testing things, and then after that – and that’s something we really need to work on to be coming back to the table after something has ended or just on the regular to really say okay, this is the winner of our AB test, and this is something and we really need to be upscaling the whole team, letting them know okay, this is the winner because we can prove it with data and then using the winner from now on.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s so relevant, like having these – we as reps we also get attached. Okay, that’s my idea. Maybe I don’t want to share it with everyone even though you are a team player, but it’s like you get attached to the things you build or the things you use, and then it’s hard for the reps or in general to change. Oh, no, new template. Why should I do that? Having the opportunity to AB test and split test, and then the data – in the end, it’s how you can get the data from it that’s a gamechanger. Alright, Magdalena. This was fantastic. Thank you so much for the conversation. Last words to you.

Magdalena: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation. Also enjoy everything that we are doing together as a network and really appreciate your time.

Interviewer: Is there somebody else you think I should interview?

Magdalena: I think you should interview Becca.

Interviewer: Yeah, I know.

Magdalena: I would be interested in her answering those questions, and then maybe I will think of one or two you could also be interviewing.

Interviewer: Yeah, please do so. I’m especially interested in more women because it’s always – it seems a bit easier to get a hold of all the marketing guys, so if you have female power, I would love to add that.

Magdalena: I will have to think about it and let you know.

Interviewer: Great. [Speaking German], Magdalena. [Speaking German].

Magdalena: Thank you, Jan. [Speaking German].

Interviewer: [Speaking German].

Magdalena: Alles gut. [Speaking German].

Interviewer: [Speaking German].

Magdalena: Ciao.