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Hubspot CMO Kipp Bodnar: Why the Best Marketers Think Like VCs | 20VC w/ Harry Stebbings #930

Kipp Bodnar is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot, where he sets HubSpot’s global inbound marketing strategy. Prior to his role as CMO, Kipp served as VP of Marketing at HubSpot, overseeing all demand generation activity worldwide and building out the EMEA and APAC marketing teams. Kipp serves as a marketing advisor for SimplyMeasured, InsightSquared and Guidebook. Kipp is the co-author of “The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More.” ----------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Kipp’s Background 2:14 When did everyone realize that HubSpot right? 3:13 How to select a marketing channel? 5:45 How do you know when to give up on a new marketing channel? 7:20 Advice for Founders on Building Brand 9:40 Channel Diversification 15:46 The State of Product Marketing Today 20:48 Brand Marketing 30:30 Marketing Attribution 33:00 The Rise of Product-led Growth 35:22 Kipp’s Biggest Mistakes 36:40 Signals an employee is in over their head 41:56 How to know when to fire someone 42:48 Is the role of CMO lonely? 44:25 How to create great cross-functional relationships? 45:40 Advice for Aspiring CMOs 48:46 One skill that will 10x your career 52:44 Which marketing tactics haven’t changed in the past 5 years? 53:40 Which marketing tactics have died in the past 5 years? 54:17 Why inbound marketing has been so successful 54:55 Where Kipp needs to improve most as a CMO 55:27 Does Kipp want to be a CEO some day? 55:45 What company has the most impressive marketing strategy? ----------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Kipp Bodnar We Discuss: 1.) The Journey to CMO @ Hubspot: How Kipp made his way into the world of marketing and came to be CMO @ Hubspot? What does Kipp know now that he wishes all CMOs knew when they started? 2.) Choosing The Channel: How does Kipp advise founders on which channel they should focus on? What is the framework which will tell them which channel is right for them? How many different channels should they try? How focussed should they be? Should they have independent teams for each channel? How do the best founders allocate resources to new channels? How do you know when one is not working and you need to stop? When do you just need to keep going and persisting? What have been some of Kipp’s biggest mistakes when entering new channels? 3.) Product Marketing, Brand Marketing and Founders Marketing: How does Kipp advise founders who say that, “social and personal brand is just not for them”? In what two ways does Kipp believe that all businesses are constrained? Does Kipp agree that the state of product marketing has never been worse? What is truly great product marketing to Kipp? How does Kipp distinguish between good and great brand marketing? How has what it takes to be great at brand marketing changed over time? 4.) The Best Marketing People: What are signs of clear 10x performers in marketing? What advice would Kipp give to someone aspiring to be a CMO? What mistakes do 95% make that they should change? How do the best CMOs manage up and manage their team? Why does Kipp compare the role of the CMO to the general manager in NFL teams? Why does Kipp believe the role of the CMO is a lonely one? What are the hardest elements? What framework for learning does Kipp use to learn all new topics? What works? What does not? ----------------------------------- Subscribe to the Podcast: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/kipp-bodnar Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Guest on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kippbodnar ----------------------------------- #KippBodnar #HubSpot #HarryStebbings #venturecapital #productmanagement #productmarketing #marketing #chiefmarketingofficer #inboundmarketing #inbound2022

Harry StebbingshostKipp Bodnarguest
Sep 28, 202256mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:14

    Kipp’s Background

    1. HS

      (beeping) Three, two, one, zero. You have now arrived at your destination. Kipp, this is such a joy for me to do. I've heard so many good things from Danny at Sequoia, obviously from Kieran on your team, so, so huge thanks for joining me today.

    2. KB

      Thanks for having me, Harry. I'm plump- pumped to be here, man.

    3. HS

      It is gonna be a great show. But I wanna start with a little bit on you. I love a bit of context-setting. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of startups? And then how did you come to really lead one of the most powerful marketing and growth orgs in HubSpot today?

    4. KB

      Look, um, I wish I had some master plan. I didn't. Uh, I was... I'm somebody who's just a really, really curious and obsessive person. I love to learn. And in the early 2000s, I saw the internet happening, and I was doing marketing at a bunch of different marketing agencies, and I was like, "Wow, this internet is going to change how people do marketing." And I didn't know what I was doing, but I realized one really important thing, that when something's new, everybody has the same baseline of knowledge, right? It's not like somebody's been doing it for 30 years and has some advantage. I was like, "Great. So all I have to do is learn faster than everybody else, and I can, I can be successful." And so it's all I did, is I read, I networked, I went to events. I did a blog. I, I had a blog called, uh, Social Media B2B, which was all about just, like, how social and the web were gonna impact B2B boring kind of traditional companies. Nobody was talking about that then, right? Because they were all talking about the consumer stuff. And all of that work, you know, I'd kind of wake up at 5:00 AM and grind out some blog posts and then go to work and then kind of do that every day, led me to meet Bryan and Dharmesh at HubSpot, which was amazing, kind of, a- and they were like, "Hey, well, why don't you come help us?" And, and I met them, and I was like, "Oh, they believe the same thing I believe in the world." Man, that's... For people listening, that's a very rare moment when you meet people who believe the very same thing you believe and the most, the majority of humanity does not yet believe that thing. You gotta remember, this is, like, late 2000s when online marketing was still really early. You know, we're talk- you're talking, like, 13 years ago. And a lot of people were still very into print and, and out-of-home and all of those o- old school things. And so I met Bryan and Dharmesh, and then the rest is kind of history from there.

  2. 2:14 – 3:13

    When did everyone realize that HubSpot right?

    1. HS

      Can I ask, when do you think the tide turned and the realization for everyone else became very apparent that what you were doing was right?

    2. KB

      I'd say about 2014-ish, 2013 to 2014. You know, basically what happened, Harry, is that Facebook ads especially got real in that world.

    3. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    4. KB

      And basically G- Google, Facebook, all of the ad, those ad products got way mature, and then we got good enough at s- like organic search, for example, that, like, oh, you could build a real business. And like, Kieran and I were doing it at HubSpot, right? And people were looking up and being like, "Wow, how do these guys have millions of people interested in this boring b- boring, quote-unquote, B2B software company?" And I think between that, the Inbound Marketing book, everything of that movement, it took, it took a while. But then that's when it really started, I think, happening for real.

    5. HS

      Do you know what I love about this show, is that I just completely fucking freewheel, Kipp. I have this schedule, and then I just ignore it. (laughs)

    6. KB

      I, I, I love it. You, you know me.

    7. HS

      The biggest thing-

    8. KB

      I, I don't need a schedule, dude.

  3. 3:13 – 5:45

    How to select a marketing channel?

    1. HS

      So the biggest problem that I have often, and I advise founders with this today, is actually that, one, you don't need to be on every channel. When people are on every channel-

    2. KB

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      ... they do it poorly. But if you do, channels are so individual and specialist. To win on YouTube is very different to winning on LinkedIn or Twitter.

    4. KB

      Yes.

    5. HS

      You need teams per channel.

    6. KB

      Yup.

    7. HS

      Do you agree with me? And how do you think about channel selection, prioritization, resource allocation? Love to hear how you think about that.

    8. KB

      Oh, yeah. You're, you're, you're speaking my language. It's a hard problem, right? 'Cause founders wanna do everything, and they also wanna track everything. And so first challenge here is tracking is getting harder every day. Data privacy is making track, tracking attribution ROI much h- harder every day. And I think if you're a founder out there, you're gonna do some type of advertising that works well for you. Might be Google, might be Facebook, might be YouTube. You're gonna have, but you're gonna have some primary advertising channel, and you're gonna need one to two primary organic channels. And I think it's, it depend, dependence on your scale and your competition. Like, if I was doing a two-by-two to answer your question, I would say, you know, "Do I need a few people every month, or do I need hundreds of thousands of people every month? And do I have no competition, or do I have a lot of competition?" Right? And so depending on which quadrant you fall in, I think depends what ch- what channel you would actually pick. So if, if you were going, "I have a lot of competition, and I need a lot of people," then you're probably doing YouTube.

    9. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. KB

      Right? Because classic Google search is the first place everybody goes.

    11. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    12. KB

      And so if you have less competition, then go to Google Search. Text is easier, right? And, and the conversion rates are a little higher. If you have, if you're just entering a very entrenched space where there's people who've been doing really good content inbound marketing for a while, then you need to be different, and you gotta go, maybe go someplace like YouTube, for example, to get real scale. And if you don't need that many people, that's where you go into different types of influence campaigns, LinkedIn, different things, if you're kind of in a niche B2B business. But if you're talking about real scale, which I imagine a lot of folks listening are, it's, it's about which Google property you're gonna start with, y- y- you know, I think, for me.

    13. HS

      I think the hard thing also... So, so I'm totally with you there, and I agree. The hard thing is, though, with content, I think everyone fails because for me it's a game of who can survive the longest. I've been doing this for, you know-

    14. KB

      (laughs)

    15. HS

      ... seven, eight years. Yes, we have hundreds of thousands of listeners, but it's seven, eight years every weekend.

    16. KB

      It's a grind.

    17. HS

      But sometimes it still doesn't work. And so my question-

    18. KB

      Yeah.

    19. HS

      ... to you is like, how do

  4. 5:45 – 7:20

    How do you know when to give up on a new marketing channel?

    1. HS

      you know when to give up on a new channel versus when to just keep persisting and the tide will turn?

    2. KB

      Ah, that's... yo- you know, that's a great question. And so when I think about enduring on a new channel, I think about, like...... my, my moral imperatives? Like, do I have another choice? Sometimes you don't have another choice. Sometimes you're like, "Cool, if I can't make Google Search work, then this business is just not gonna work. I am not going to be able to acquire customers at a low enough cost to make this business work," for example. And so if that's the case, then you gotta, then you gotta grind it out. If that's not the case, I look at it as, like, are you able to make real predictable growth progress? You know, are you able to increase your subscribers and your distribution on that channel? Even if it's small, but are the growth rates meaningful? Can you grow that thing, you know, 4, 5, 6%, 7, 8, 9, 10% month over month? Even if the numbers are small, well, it's like, "Oh, I'm figuring this out." And can you point to clear things that you have learned that are going to, that are driving that growth? If you have, then grind it out. If you don't know what the hell you're doing and you're f- you're flat performance, and you're just kinda like throwing stuff at the wall, then it doesn't matter what you're doing, you're not going to be successful. What you have to understand is you have to think like a creator, you have to have a creator, either be one yourself or have one on your team, who understands that it's a mix of, like, the best ideas and the best content, but packaged perfectly for that platform.

    3. HS

      I'm so glad you said about think like a creator

  5. 7:20 – 9:40

    Advice for Founders on Building Brand

    1. HS

      there, 'cause the thing that bluntly irritates me the most... I'm really having to... sounding off today, um-

    2. KB

      (laughs)

    3. HS

      ... irritates me the most is founders when they say, "Hey, you've got an incredible opportunity Kipp to build a brand in this space, in this geo, in this specific-"

    4. KB

      Yeah.

    5. HS

      ... and they go, "Oh, no, no, I, I'm, content's not my thing. I'm not into personal brand." And I'm like, "Fuck, no one goes to the gym and is like, 'Aha, I feel at home. This is so me.'"

    6. KB

      (laughs)

    7. HS

      No, it, it takes time. Like, it's a muscle, you keep working it. Do you agree? And how do you advise founders today on that, building that personal brand?

    8. KB

      Here's what you have to know. Uh, I'm, I'm a first principles driven person. I am, I'm just logical to a fault, for, for better or for worse. And so every company in the world is either distribution constrained or product constrained. Right? They don't have a product that's good enough to sell to their customers for the price that they wanna sell it for, or they, they do and they can't get that product out in front of customers for a low enough cost. Right? And normally what happens when you're early on in a business, there's, th- those two things are kinda like S-curves, and the product S-curve is always the first, right? You're trying to find product market fit. You kinda get middle of the way up that curve and you kinda found it, and that's awesome. And then, then you start that second S-curve, which is the distribution one. And most companies fail not because of the product curve, but because of the distribution curve.

    9. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. KB

      And so th- you can, you can not want, not wanna do content, what have you, you have to solve distribution. So, what I would say to them is, "Cool, you don't wanna be a creator, you don't care about personal brand, great. How are we gonna get scalable distribution at a low cost?" The content's one way, but if you tell me you have a awesome viral loop, cool, then I don't give a shit if you care about content. You can make it work. If you have some prepea- uh, repeatable template growth strategy that allows you to grow through, like, basically search template product action, great. Then you don't have to go and have this personal brand. But if you don't have an answer to that distribution strategy, then you have to care about content and personal brand, because that by default is your distribution strategy. And you are going to be distribution constrained more than you are gonna be product con- constrained, unless you are just completely inept at building the thing you're building.

    11. HS

      Mm-hmm. A- a- listen, I, I totally agree with you there in terms of what's the distribution plan. If you don't have one, then you have to care. I think

  6. 9:40 – 15:46

    Channel Diversification

    1. HS

      one thing I also find interesting is founders who try and get too cute on channels, you mentioned kind of the mix between organic and paid.

    2. KB

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      And I find too many too early are like, "No, I need diversification of channel," and I'm like, "No, you don't. It's working on Facebook. It's working on paid. Just keep going. It's rare to have it working." How do you think about the diversification of channel? And then also, how to transition between channel when you maybe see a denigration of effectiveness?

    4. KB

      If you are good at what you do in distributing things on the internet, every channel of any scale that I know of, you have years and years of runway.

    5. HS

      Huh.

    6. KB

      Y- l- you know? I, I'll t- I'll tell you this what, this Harry, uh, uh, I, my first job at HubSpot is I wrote the HubSpot blog. I wrote, uh, I think we did, like, three posts a day for, you know, a year, or whatever. And we did that to get organic search traffic. We're still doing that. We are f- 14 years, 15 years into that blog grind, and it's still working. We're still growing that traffic. Yeah, we've expanded topics. Yes, we have, we're optimizing the old stuff, all of that. But, think about that. Like, I've made that work for over a decade and a half. If you're thinking you're gonna run out of runway in 12 months, then you're just kind of an idiot.

    7. HS

      (laughs)

    8. KB

      Like, you're just, you're not thinking about the real potential of what you have. Humanity's natural proclivity is to go do a new thing, you know, 'cause they're bored of the old thing. The most successful people say, "Wait, wait, wait, I have this thing that's working really well. How do I make it better and better every day, and how do I be a top 1% person in the world at this thing?" Like if you look, y- you're a really smart, savvy investor, right? You've seen all kinds of companies at all kinds of stages.

    9. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. KB

      I think you're gonna agree that the following's true. A startup that gets traction and really kicks off, they've got one predictable growth channel. It's often ads. Right?

    11. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    12. KB

      A startup that really scales and gets c- and, and like flirts with that $50, $100 million run rate, they have two predictable growth channels. Normally it's ads plus one other thing, whether it be YouTube, whether it be Google Search, whether it be some type of free product, virality, whatever.... the, the pro, the, the, the company that scales, goes public, really kind of has a future to be a big scale company, really only has three scale distribution channels. They don't have 10, they got three. And so if you're a founder and you're in that first bucket, your job is just to get to one and have that one keep working for you. And then as you scale, know you're gonna need to add one more. Not five more, one more. People think that they need to do way more than they actually need to.

    13. HS

      Okay, so my question... I totally agree with you and I love that breakdown. My question to you (laughs) ... Gosh, I wish we were having a martini and, um-

    14. KB

      I would love that. I'm-

    15. HS

      Yeah. So-

    16. KB

      You're, you're in London, which is my favorite city, not just in the world but my favorite city to have a martini, so please.

    17. HS

      You, you should come. We could do a much more, uh, atmospheric conversation. Um, but I, I-

    18. KB

      Yeah.

    19. HS

      ... wanna ask you, you mentioned the kind of the expansion from one to two, two to three. In terms of testing that next kind of jump and transition to the second-

    20. KB

      Yeah.

    21. HS

      ... do you, in terms of resource allocation, do you recommend kind of splitting across five different potential channels?

    22. KB

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    23. HS

      Or really going in hard to test one? Do you dedicate budget to YouTube to really give it a go, or sprinkle across five and see what hits?

    24. KB

      I'm a, I'm a fan, Harry, of a more focused approach. You know, I, look, I think of marketing as a venture capitalist. Whether you're a big established venture capitalist like Sequoia, an angel investor, or anywhere in between, your job is to make really smart decisions and win on a bunch of asymmetric returns. And so it's actually like, how many channels do I think I actually have the chance for an asymmetric return on?

    25. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    26. KB

      There's actually not that many.

    27. HS

      Yeah.

    28. KB

      And most of the time when people spread themselves thin across five, six different things, it's because they don't realize that. Once you, once you're very clear on the asym- asymmetry of the return, you can say, "Ah, there's actually only, like, two things that are gonna give me the return I want, and I should just go as aggressive as possible of those two things, and I have to make one of them work. If I make both of them work, then I'm le- then I'm a legend. And then, like, we have scaled this thing beyond what anybody thought is possible. If I make one of them work, we're gonna survive, we're gonna be great, we're gonna be successful."

    29. HS

      Can I, can I ask, can you take me to a time when you thought one was working, doubled down on it, and it didn't work?

    30. KB

      So in the early days of HubSpot, we had a t- free tool called Website Grader. You put your, you put your website in and it returned a report. Awesome. Like, people were sharing it on social, like, really grew. Big part of how we kind of generated leads, emails for automation, all of that kinda stuff. Still, still do, but man, it had a peak and then really troughed down. And I think we actually made a bigger mistake than the one you're asking, which was we spent a bunch of time trying to redo it, do the product, re- redo Website Grader to re-accelerate that growth. And we didn't realize that actually it had a point in time, and then it has a new steady state after that initial, like, point in time where websites really got mitigated through the divers- diversification of the web, the import- rise of different social channels, people consuming across different media types. Websites are still important, but they weren't, like, the thing like they were in the late 2000s, early 2000 teens, you know? And so I think the mistake that we made there is thinking, "Oh, you can salvage that and get back to that peak." You know? And we spent a while, like, couple of years trying to do that, and I think we would've been much, much better off, for example, if I had a time machine, I would've said, "No, no, no. Our job is to, like, get the best steady run rate, and we should go and conquer a new channel with that same time, energy, and capital."

  7. 15:46 – 20:48

    The State of Product Marketing Today

    1. HS

      This should be called what pisses Harry off.

    2. KB

      Please, I love this. Let's go.

    3. HS

      Um, product marketing. I really find that you-

    4. KB

      I, I hate product marketing in, in so many ways. I lo- I have a love-hate relationship with product marketing.

    5. HS

      I, I don't think people can tell stories. And I always say to founders when I meet them, I'm an investor, I meet, I don't know, 25 founders a week. I say-

    6. KB

      Yeah.

    7. HS

      ... "If you had a billboard on Times Square, what would you put on it, put on it in 10 words or less?" The amount of founders that can coherently say an answer, I'd say 10%, if that. 5% that are actually good.

    8. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. HS

      I find that appalling. I, I'm intrigued, how do you... Do you agree with me on the state of product marketing today? And how do you think about the most effective product marketing?

    10. KB

      Yeah, I'll give you, I'll give you my, my rant on product marketing (laughs) . Harry just gave us his rant, I'm gonna give you mine. Um, well, most founders are inherently logical humans, and they're often very product-driven humans, right? So you know what they do? They go hire product marketing as one of the first functions they, they wanna hire. And you're like, "Oh, this sounds great. You're gonna help me tell a story around the product." That's never what happens. What happens is those people become operators and, like, basically story, like, like project story pushers around. You know, it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna run for, to this product leader, to this business leader," and it becomes basically internal gymnastics versus external storytelling. And they pull these product marketers so close to them that their product marketers are too close to the founder and not close enough to the customer. And when the product marketers do get closer to the customer, the companies often don't make the hard choice of saying, "This is what my customer wants, but it's not what we're gonna give them because they need something they do not yet know that they want. And they, I need to package a different story for them." I think the best companies that have the best story don't start with product marketing. They start with the problem that their customer has. So if we take the HubSpot story, for example, we didn't start with, "Hey, you need software to do better marketing," or anything like that. We said, "Hey, technology has changed the way people shop and buy. And because people sh- and, and because technology has come along..." They're, like... You look, they're fast forwarding through your commercials. They're throwing out the Yellow Pages 'cause they got Google. They don't need your direct mail. They got ads on the internet. All of these things, like..."What are you doing? Don't you need to- to do marketing in a fundamentally better way?" "Yeah. Well, yeah, actually I do. What do I do?" "Oh, it's called inbound marketing. It's amazing. You're gonna create content. You're gonna deliver that content through free organic channels. You're gonna grow over time. You're gonna own those assets versus renting them from somebody else. It's gonna be amazing." And then by that time people are like, "Oh, well, cool. How do, how do I do that?" Like, "Oh, well, we have some software for you. It's called HubSpot. You should check it out. We can help you do all those things way better, provide amazing automation for you." But that product story is that part of the act. You know, if people are coming for- coming to you and saying like, "Oh, I need this particular product. I need this category," then- then you're in a market share game with all of your competitors. If you are defining that category and finding- and defining the human changes within that category, then you're growing that category and you're n- then not against your competitors, you are against your ability to grow that category and drive awareness for it.

    11. HS

      So, I mean, I have a couple of things I have to unpack there. Totally agree with you on defining the category. Does that not also make it almost harder? Because you are then entering a customer education process, educating more.

    12. KB

      Yeah, oh, for sure.

    13. HS

      And that's more expensive, no?

    14. KB

      Uh, it's not nece- it's not necessarily more expensive, but it takes longer.

    15. HS

      Hmm.

    16. KB

      You know, when you are- when y- when you are in the category creation mode... You know, there's two types of business. There's, you're creating categories, you're a transformative business or you're a better mousetrap business.

    17. HS

      Hmm.

    18. KB

      Right? And most better mousetrap businesses are 10X better, 10X cheaper, 10X faster, whatever. And transformation is like, we're gonna ask you to do something completely new, right? We're gonna ask you to leave the old way of thinking behind and think this new way. And it takes longer 'cause you start earlier on that adoption bell curve. You start with those early adopters and then go up. When you're a better mousetrap, you start in the middle of the bell curve. You're like, "Oh, I know about this category. It's awesome. Let me tell you how my thing is better." The problem is when you start at the beginning of the bell curve, you can be really different. When you start in the middle, you're kinda just like everybody else. And so you have t- if you're running a better mousetrap business, you have to be obsessed with differentiation and emotion. I think that's where brand marketing is way more important than product marketing. Yes, you can describe the value proposition of your product, but what is the reason that somebody should believe in your brand, have emotion about this thing that they already know, that there's already a bunch of good things out in the world to do and solve? Like, why should they- why should they take the time to switch or consider your new thing?

  8. 20:48 – 30:30

    Brand Marketing

    1. KB

    2. HS

      Can I ask, brand marketing-wise-

    3. KB

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      ... to be very clear, how do you define brand marketing, one? And then, what do you think you've done so well that means thousands of people wanna come to your conferences? People don't wanna fucking go to (laughs) conferences. Thousands wanna go to yours. What have you done well, brand marketing-wise, to inspire that feeling within customers?

    5. KB

      So, wh- when I think about brand, Harry, I think it is the emotional benefit of not just your product, your service, but your company. Like, why do you exist in the world? And what do- what do you make people feel? You know, and from the very beginning at HubSpot, our- our goal was we want people to feel like we are there to help them, teach them, like, guide them through this transformation. And so that just became the principle. And so in the early days, you know, e- I talk to startups all the time and they're like, "Look, I don't have a bunch of money for this expensive brand marketing." I'm like, "Cool, yeah. No, we didn't either." Tell you what we did. We had a good story that resonated with people. We wrote a book, we spoke at conferences, we wrote a blog. All that stuff was actually pretty cheap. The hard part, the expensive part, was getting the story and agreeing that that story was the right story to tell and having it really tight and everything. And so that- that whole message just kind of cascaded through, and that becomes a movement, that becomes an emotion. And so people wanna come to our event not bec- eh, people, most conferences are marketed as like, "Oh, it's gonna be great networking. You're gonna get to learn from your peers," right? And I think that's, like, if you think about b- most big conferences, like, that's what it is. People come to our event, like we're having our event INBOUND in September this year, and we'll have I don't even know how many peop- thousands of people there, because they know that they're, we are, all we want is to help and educate them. That's it. Like, that they know that if they sit down in a room, that they are going to get a completely valuable and different perspective on whatever topic they're sitting down in. And I've read all the NPS reports, Harry. I have read all the- the surveys. The top-rated thing, the top reason people come is the quality of- of content, the quality of education. Same reason people listen to your show all the time, because that's what they want, because that is the scarce thing in this world today. Everybody's trying to just cold sell and cold email people to all hell. It's very rare to get that value today.

    6. HS

      What do you think is the biggest mistake that founders and startups you see make when it comes to brand marketing?

    7. KB

      Not giving a shit about it.

    8. HS

      (laughs)

    9. KB

      Right?

    10. HS

      And you thi- and you think that's just 'cause it's not inherent within founders or it's not taught? Like, to be, I- I almost sympathize with them. It's like, product marketing-

    11. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. HS

      ... brand marketing, for a technical founder who then also doesn't know sales-

    13. KB

      Yeah.

    14. HS

      ... as well, it's- it's fucking hard.

    15. KB

      It's super hard, right? This is, what you are getting at is why all, like- like the majority of startups fail, right? Because all of these things are very different disciplines, and it is a rare human being who can figure out how to prioritize and get them all right. You know?

    16. HS

      Does your brand mark- does your brand marketing change significantly over time? And do you worry about inconsistencies at all? Like when you think about, you know, HubSpot's evolving product layering on CRMs, et cetera.

    17. KB

      Yeah.

    18. HS

      Does the brand marketing change over time? And how do you think about not losing your core when expanding the brand marketing to additional?

    19. KB

      Yeah, let me, let me give- give the founders out there listening, I- I think, a framework that will help them kind of codify this a little bit.You wanna think about your marketing story as in a timeline. Right? And so, the brand marketing work that you do is the longest part of your timeline. That's gonna be 12 to 18 months ahead of the reality of your business and your product. It's the emotional benefit, it's pointing everybody to where you're going. Okay? Then the product marketing that you're doing, that's going to be basically, that's kinda like 90 days, four months ahead of where you are right now. You're, you're previewing, you're giving some roadmap, but like it's largely in the here and now. Your demand generation is exactly in the here and now. It is what is happening right now, it's what you have to offer people, and it's what customers want in the market today. And like, if you think about stacking those three things along that timeline, it gets a lot clearer. 'Cause you, you, you basically start at the demand generation stuff and say, "Oh, what's my story here today? Am I, do I got it working, and is it, are people buying it? Great." You st- extend a little bit to product marketing, then you say, "Great. Now I can accelerate that demand generation, that product marketing, if I tell a remarkable brand story that shows people that I am, my company and this business is going in a real long-term direction that is better and different than the other alternatives in this market."

    20. HS

      Mm-hmm. I totally get you there. It, it all, to me, comes back to like resonance, and resonance with your customer.

    21. KB

      Yes.

    22. HS

      The challenge and the question I have for you is, HubSpot is bought by a huge variety of customers-

    23. KB

      Of course.

    24. HS

      ... incredibly horizontal product. How do you think about resonance when it's anyone from a gardening company, to a dentist, to a mom and pop cookie store? When it's such a horizontal product, how do you think about that brand marketing story resonating across the hor- like horizontal customer base?

    25. KB

      All those people have the same problems. All of those people have the same, same problems. You have to find a uni- ... The best, best stories are when you can find the universal truths across your customer base, that people are afraid to say out loud but they believe, and tell them to them. Right? Like that's what we did with Inbound Marketing. It's like, people knew that they were sending out 10,000 direct mail, uh, you know, cards at work and then going home and throwing everything in their mailbox away. They knew that. But they didn't wanna admit that to themselves, right? They needed somebody to tell them. And not just tell them in a shameful way, but tell them in a, "Hey, it's okay. There's a better way." You know, and that is the universal truth here, that I think every business has to get to, is, you know, we have this big, diverse group of customers. Yeah, we do. But, they're all trying to grow, they're all trying to feel, feel, to solve a crisis of dix- disconnection with their own customers, right? They're, they feel like they're a mile away from their own customers, whether that be attracting them in, keeping and retaining them. And so, we can ... I don't care if you're an architect, a manufacturing company, or software company. If I can talk to you in that way, and give you real, practical, um, ways to do that, on top of that emotional benefit of doing that, then th- then that doesn't matter. You can have a big, clear horizontal business with that.

    26. HS

      Can I ask, when you look at the things that we've mentioned, brand marketing-

    27. KB

      Yeah.

    28. HS

      ... product marketing, taking unconventional bets on new channels, one thing that strikes me is actually the challenge for, say a CMO, in communicating why we need that budget to the board, to the CEO.

    29. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    30. HS

      How do you advise CMOs on managing up in order to get that upward, um, hierarchy, to see what they see and what they need?

  9. 30:30 – 33:00

    Marketing Attribution

    1. HS

      The, the element that's interesting and slightly nuanced though-

    2. KB

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      ... is the element of accountability and attribution. And it's-

    4. KB

      Of course, of course.

    5. HS

      ... should marketing be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? Leads alone ain't worth much, actually, if they don't convert. Um-

    6. KB

      Of course.

    7. HS

      So how do you think about creating frameworks of accountability and attribution around the initiatives that marketing does to prove the effectiveness?

    8. KB

      Yeah. So, so look, you're talking about a problem of attribution, which is, has always been a problem as long as marketing exists, will always be a problem as long as marketing exists. And it kinda ebbs and flows. And like honestly, it's gonna get kinda worse in the short term, because data from Google and Facebook and other channels is getting worse, not better. For example, email data getting worse, not better. And so, what you have to do is measuring something as more of an internal alignment exercise than it is an analytic exercise. You have to understand on the puts and takes of between marketing sales, CFO, CEO, what do we agree on? So for example, Harry, there's overlap across marketing and sales and across marketing channels. So how are you gonna account for overlap, like in your attribution, is like a big thing that you have to figure out. And there's endless ways that you could rationalize to do it right. So it matters less what you decide, and matters more that the business agrees that, "Oh, this way we're doing it is good and fair to everyone, and is an accurate representation of what we think is going to grow and scale this company." You know? And so when, when I think about it, I think every marketer in the future should have, should be directly accountable to revenue, both inbound and outbound, whatever that may be for your business, you know? And in, in SaaS especially, right, like it's pretty, it's pretty straightfoward. There's, you have, you have a close rate, you have an average sale price of the product you sell. So y- you know, if you sell $100 product and you have a 10% close rate on a qualified, we'll call it a qualified lead, then great. Every qualified lead's worth $10 'cause you need 10 of them to get to the $100. And yes, it's an oversimplification of, of the example, but you can get to what is a simple enough example that can show contribution in a way that's not perfect, but it's gonna really work and drive alignment and growth for the business. 'Cause that's ultimately what matters. Not marketing getting credit, but it's like are we doing these activities and are we getting the growth that we want on the other side?

  10. 33:00 – 35:22

    The Rise of Product-led Growth

    1. KB

    2. HS

      With the rise of product like Growth and the increasing-

    3. KB

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      ... importance of content marketing and consumers' appetite to engage with content marketing as a way to e- be educated on a product, to me, we're gonna see like the complete delineation between sales and marketing, where there's not really a blurring actually. I mean, there's not, there's not really like a line between the two. How do you think about that, given now consumers being so far along the sales funnel before they touch often a sales rep?

    5. KB

      You, you, uh, I wanna make sure I understand what you're saying. You're saying sales and marketing are going to become more different than they are similar, and that consumers are going to notice the starkness of that handoff more?

    6. HS

      In the way that actually marketing is eating up so much more of the sales funnel with its education of customers where traditionally sales reps would have done. And actually, the blurred lines are moving completely away, and marketing is just kind of eating sales.

    7. KB

      Well look, marketing is eating sales, but I would actually say that like stories, differentiation, personalization are eating like go-to markets, right? So it's like if you're, if you're a great marketer, right, and you've got content that resonates and, and you're using that to pull people in, drive automation, like really help them understand what you're all about, for example, well don't you think a sales rep's gonna send a personalized e- video in their email about that same thing? It becomes, like the best companies are gonna figure out how to just have that content experience transition really seamlessly from one-to-many to one-to-one. That's all we're talking about. All we're talking about is one-to-many to one-to-one. That to me is the difference between marketing and sales, is when you do something one-to-many, it's marketing. When you do something one-to-one, it's sales. And I fundamentally believe that's what's gonna happen, is the best teams are going to be aligned on that story and that customer journey, from that like very high level brand awareness or first s- first search result to the deck that a sales rep showed, the demo the sales rep showed. And I want that line to be blurrier. The more stark the contrast is between marketing and sales, the less effective it's going to be in the future, because the customer's gonna be like, "Oh wait, I was sold on this thing, on this, with all this, this marketing messages, but now I'm getting this very different vibe and experience and message over here. Is this really what I thought I was getting?"

  11. 35:22 – 36:40

    Kipp’s Biggest Mistakes

    1. KB

    2. HS

      I, I, I totally get you, and I love that differentiation between one-to-one and one-to-many. I always think that actually lessons are learnt in the mistakes that we make.

    3. KB

      Of course.

    4. HS

      You know when, when we listen to you, it, it kind of sounds like you haven't made any, Kipp-

    5. KB

      No, I've made a shit ton.

    6. HS

      And I'm sure, I'm sure (laughs) respectfully. Um, and so like when you review the mistakes you've made as a CMO with HubSpot-

    7. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. HS

      ... what was the most significant to you, and what would you say was the big lesson that you took away from it?

    9. KB

      I will tell you what the most significant is, is one of the things I talk with founders or companies I invest in constantly, and it's, the mistake's always people related. People are much harder than strategy, turns out. Strategy's often much clearer. The people side of it, do you have the right people with the right skills for the right stage of your company, is actually the hard thing. The biggest mistakes I have made is not hiring the right person, or not knowing that I needed a person with a new level of skillset at that stage and scale of the company, or-... holding on to somebody who was really good for that last stage of growth, but isn't good for this next stage of growth too long.

    10. HS

      Okay, so-

    11. KB

      Right? And being, being too close to that.

    12. HS

      ... I heard that was a weakness of yours, uh,

    13. KB

      Totally.

    14. HS

      ... br- ... Okay. But it's hard.

  12. 36:40 – 41:56

    Signals an employee is in over their head

    1. HS

      What are the signals that someone is now in a stage where they are no longer comfortable or meant to be?

    2. KB

      Well, so, so let me, let me tell you why I think that's hard. Uh, are you a sports fan, Harry? I think you are-

    3. HS

      Yep.

    4. KB

      ... right?

    5. HS

      Yep.

    6. KB

      Yeah.

    7. HS

      Pel- Peloton all the way, like- (laughs)

    8. KB

      Yeah. You know, yeah, I, I love Peloton. But, you know, whether it be basketball, football, like ... So for example, in, in the NFL and the NBA in, in the US, there are some teams that have s- uh, have a person who is both the coach and the general manager, and there are some teams that have a person whose job is to be general manager, the person, uh, another person's job it is to be the coach. It's very hard to be both, right? And that's what you're asking a CMO to do, to be the coach and the general manager. And when you're the coach, you're so close to the people and you're in the trenches with the people, that you have trust, you have loyalty, you have all those things. When you're a general manager, you're saying, "Uh, I'm trying to win. Do I have what I need to win?" Right? And that is a very, very hard thing. That's a very hard thing for a CMO, it's a very hard thing for a founder. And so I have found that there are times where you have to purposely put on the general manager, you know, fictitious hat. You know, you gotta, you gotta say, "Okay, I have to take this week and think about it like I am just a general manager, change my schedule and s- and just be very, very objective." And you really have to put in processes in place where you're like, "Okay, I'm taking back and I'm taking a different look and evaluation at this team to make sure I have what is necessary to win."

    9. HS

      I totally agree with you, but it's hard to do. How- how-

    10. KB

      It's freaking so hard and it takes-

    11. HS

      ... yeah, how-

    12. KB

      It's one of the things that, uh, Harry, takes practice and repetition. You just can't, like, hear me or you or anybody else in this world talk about it and be like, "Oh, cool, I got it. I'll, I'll just go and do it now."

    13. HS

      And so how, how do you actually do it? How do you form that detachment where you switch hats, put on the GM hat, and take o- bluntly remove a bit of the humanity and go, "This is not what we need"?

    14. KB

      You have to be v- you have to look at everything from, like, the principle and problem layer. Right? You actually have to take the people in totality out and you have to say, "Okay, I am trying to grow. What are my constraints for growth? Based on those constraints for growth, what is it that I need to do and what is the success in doing those things look like?" And you literally write it out, like, "This is what I need to do. This is the type of skills and activities that will happen to be successful." Once you have all that finished, then you can go and, like, overlay it on top of the people and be like, "Oh, great. Well, what we need to do, so actually this person has the skills to do what we need to do, so that's fantastic, and we can go and march on to do it." Or, "Actually this person doesn't, but I think I could coach them 'cause they, it's just a small gap." Or, "Oh, actually, there's a big gap and what I need to do is bring in somebody with a different set of skills to help us get to that next stage of the problem."

    15. HS

      I'm sure, I'm, I use the show also as an advice. It's, it's cheaper than a therapist or a mentor.

    16. KB

      Of course, way, way cheaper.

    17. HS

      Um, tell me, stretch candidates. Like, I am looking now ... My media business has grown far faster than I thought-

    18. KB

      Yeah, yeah.

    19. HS

      ... which is great-

    20. KB

      Of course, congrats.

    21. HS

      ... but I need a c- but I need a CEO to really run the day-to-day processes. I have the feeling that I want someone young, hungry, who's not done it before, but is a-

    22. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. HS

      ... complete fucking hustler. But then I'm also worried that actually I need a seasoned CEO who's run big media companies before. How do you think about the stretch VP versus the seasoned exec from a big firm?

    24. KB

      Yeah. And I, I'll, I'll broaden this up b- to just founders overall, right? And if you're, if you're founder, I get this question all the time, "Do I ... Am I good with, like, a junior director of marketing for a while? Do I need a VP? Like, what, what, do I need a CMO? What, what, what is it, what is it that I need?" Right?

    25. HS

      Yeah.

    26. KB

      And what you have to say is, "Balanced teams win. Teams with a balance of perspective and skills win at the end of the day." And so if you're a CE- CEO, for example, on, on the startup side, who's passionate about marketing, been doing a lot of the company's marketing in the early days, well then you can pro- y- y- you know what's up. You can probably get by with a stretch candidate, right? Because you know a lot of it. If you are a super product-driven CEO and you are crushing on the product but you don't know shit about marketing, then stretching is not gonna be a good thing. So just on the media company side, Harry, if you are awesome at operations and you are process-driven, you know how to scale stuff, then you can go and stretch somebody. If you are not those things and you wanna bring in somebody to be those things, then you need to have somebody with those skills more established.

    27. HS

      Well, I, well, I, I, I didn't mean it dickishly. I am awesome at them, but I also have about-

    28. KB

      I, I assume, but, you know, I'm doing it hypothetically.

    29. HS

      ... 20 o- But I have 20 other things that I need to go do and I can't be in them at all anymore. So it doesn't matter-

    30. KB

      Yes, it does.

  13. 41:56 – 42:48

    How to know when to fire someone

    1. HS

      how do you know when to let someone go? I'm shit at letting someone go.

    2. KB

      You know when to let someone go when it is clear that you, you're clear on what you're trying to achieve, you have told them what you are trying to achieve, set expectations with them about what it takes to get there, and they have not been able to do it for a period of time that you guys agree on. Normally, normally you would say, you know, you could normally see progress pretty quick in a month or two, and, like, you can say, "Oh-... this, this person's on the progress- progressive path. They're gonna get there. Or you can say, "This person is actually just not. This is actually just a fundamentally wrong job for them. They actually care about this other thing that I don't need right now, and they should go to another organization and go do that and be great at it."

    3. HS

      We spoke about the changing hats there and the challenge in moving to GM. I totally get you. And I spoke to Kieran-

    4. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. HS

      ... on your

  14. 42:48 – 44:25

    Is the role of CMO lonely?

    1. HS

      team before this. And he said-

    2. KB

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      ... "I always wonder, is the role of CMO lonely?" Um, and I thought the same when he said it. Do you find the role of CMO lonely? And what's the most challenging aspect for you?

    4. KB

      It's super lonely. Right?

    5. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. KB

      Like, think about it. You have a pretty broad sense, and go, w- we get to the second part of your question, right, which is the challenging part. I don't know that there's another business discipline that requires as much context switching and broad knowledge than marketing. So for example, what I mean by that is, like, you need to understand, like, the depths of, like, distribution on Google and, uh, Facebook. You gotta understand email score deliverability and GDPR and data privacy regulations. But you n- need to understand what great design looks like and what a perfect event experience looks like. And, oh, oh, by the way, how to model and attribute all of that so that you can do what you need to do for your sales team. Oh, and also, and then what's the story we're gonna package for product, for the product team, and how are we gonna take that product to market? Once you start stacking all of the very different things that are actually fundamentally very different skills, it's a very broad job. And that's what makes it lonely. Because at any month, you're doing a, you're kind of focused on one part of it. And every, and so the vast majority of your team is, like, off doing other things that you're not thinking about and doing, because you're trying to fix the one of those many parts that is broken in that moment.

    7. HS

      How

  15. 44:25 – 45:40

    How to create great cross-functional relationships?

    1. HS

      do c- y- how do you... I totally agree. How do you think about creating such great cross-functional relationships with sales, with product, with engineering, to really allow yourself to be kind of plastic across the different functional areas?

    2. KB

      Look, the, the thing everybody listens to th- to this show needs to understand is that humans are incentive-based creatures, right? Incentives and alignment around goals and incentives fix everything. If you have a problem collaborating, it is because you have competing goals or you have competing z- incentives against those goals. And so job one is to be, uh, very clear on those goals and make sure the goals are, are aligned between whether it be marketing and product, marketing and sales. We talked about attribution. Once you have your SLA, your attribution, all of that set up, it's actually very clear. The incentives are aligned, and then you just come up with a check-in and, and, like, communication process around that. Most people fail because they don't set that foundation. And instead, they just go and kinda do a bunch of, bunch of stuff and kind of overindex on the relationship building side, which is really important. But the relationship part can be secondary if you've got the right foundation and infrastructure, uh, around goals and accountability.

    3. HS

      I, I, I totally agree with you there. Uh, uh, it was funny. When

  16. 45:40 – 48:46

    Advice for Aspiring CMOs

    1. HS

      we tweeted last night about you coming on the show, I got-

    2. KB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. HS

      ... a load of DMs from aspiring marketers who want to be CMOs. And there was about ten of them who said, "Hey, can you ask the question of what would you advise aspiring marketers who want to become CMOs in order to get that promotion and get that step up into the role of CMO?"

    4. KB

      Yeah, so if you're... Uh, uh, this works for CMO, but I think it works broader than CMO, right? You have to make some... If, if you want to be great at something, whether you wanna be a CMO, whether you wanna be CEO, found a successful company, you have to make a series of counterintuitive trade-offs that you wouldn't think you'd otherwise make. Most people that I know who, who wanna be a CMO but don't get there don't make trade-offs. And what I mean by that is like, "Cool. You know what, Kipp, I really wanna be a CMO." "Great. Well, well, wha- what's the next job you're gonna take?" "Well, you know, I've been doing, you know, marketing automation. It's going really well for me, so I'm gonna go take a director of marketing automation. They're gonna pay me 20% more. It's gonna be awesome." I'm like, "Great, but what if you just go learn a completely different part of marketing and you go make 20% less in the short term, but wow, you bre- you, you get a real breadth of experience, and now you're actually ready to be a CMO?" And most people don't make those changes. You, i- i- if you wanna be a CMO, you have to figure out how to get a breadth knowledge, and you have to figure out how to scale your leadership and get things done through others. Most really talented marketers are amazing individual contributors. They have a hard time delegating and scaling through others. And the magic of being a, a marketing leader is figuring out how to scale through other people.

    5. HS

      Is that not hard to get that promotion to CMO, though, if you move between different roles constantly kind of flat-lined? Do you not need to show a spike of excellence? And you won't show the spike of excellence unless you concentrate in some way?

    6. KB

      Uh, uh, so the question I think we're asking is, "Oh, cool, if I have one spike of excellence, is that enough to get me to be a CMO?" In, in, in an average organization, maybe. What I'm advocating for is multiple spikes of excellence, which is like, "Hey, I, I've got a spike of excellence in marketing automation, and then I went and did 18 months in product marketing and killed it. This is the progress and success we had. And then I did 18 months in acquisition demand generation marketing. We grew demand 100% year over year. Now, let me talk to you about how I also built the teams that I made to accomplish those things and how I think about hiring people." And then you're, then you're off. That's the ideal candidate. It's a hard thing to do in practice. But that is the person that a founder really wants.

    7. HS

      Kip, I could talk to you all day, which is, uh, rather a challenge given the 20-minute, uh, guidance that I did set on the show many years ago.

    8. KB

      Of course.

    9. HS

      Terrible. Uh, product marketing. Uh, I lied. (laughs)

    10. KB

      (laughs)

    11. HS

      Uh, (laughs) very simple. Uh, but I do wanna dive into a quick fire round. So-

    12. KB

      Please.

    13. HS

      ... I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. And I'm gonna start with one from

  17. 48:46 – 52:44

    One skill that will 10x your career

    1. HS

      Kip. Kip said specifically, and I wanna make sure I get this right, "If you were to keep..." T- Sorry, not Kip. Sorry. Kieran said, "If you were to teach Kieran one skill that would 10X his career, what would it be?"

    2. KB

      The emotional side of marketing, brand building. Kieran is a logical person, right? If you are listening to this, what you wanna say is, "What are the things that I am best at in the world? And how can I get good at the opposite side?" Because that's how you get 10X. If you're like, "Oh, I..." Kieran is methodical, he is logical, he is analytical. If you can combine that with really emotional skills, then you're, then you are like a diamond in the world. There are very few people who can combine those things together.

    3. HS

      No! That's terrible advice. (laughs) You know, you wanna be so good at the one thing. It's like, I'm a emotion-driven investor, so the only thing that matters to me is human psychology, understanding incentive structures, frameworks, human ambition.

    4. KB

      Well, I'm gonna disagree with you, Harry.

    5. HS

      Okay.

    6. KB

      Because you gave... Y- y- you... The question was, "10X better." There's no way... It's very hard to get 10X better at the thing you are best at. If you asked me how to make the most money, I would have said exactly what you said.

    7. HS

      Huh.

    8. KB

      But if you asked me how to get 10X better at something, you can't get 10X better at something... You know, Kieran can't get 10X better at something he's been doing for the last 20 years.

    9. HS

      Will you not only just then be mediocre at something that you were shit at?

    10. KB

      No. So, uh, so, we, we have a couple minutes here. I'll tell you, I'll you a little bit about me and my approach to this, Harry. I'm a serial obsessive. I love learning things. I believe that anybody can get to like 80, 90% proficiency in something in three to six months of like learning something. Maybe not necessarily doing something, but learning perspective, applying that knowledge. And I've done it across all kinds of things that you would... You know, whether it be marketing, whether it be personal hobbies, whatever that may be. And th- how you do that is you have to approach learning very differently. Most people go and they buy the most popular books and they follow, listen to the most popular podcasts and all that. And that's a bullshit way to do it.

    11. HS

      (laughs)

    12. KB

      How you actually go and do this is you find who are the people that the majority of, of the world think are smart at this topic? Great. We ha- I, I've got that outlined. Who are the people that those people learn from? And I go straight to them. And there's normally like these background, less popular, less, less personality people that have all the fucking knowledge in the whole world. And you go straight to them and you are unabashed. And you say, "Hey, I will pay you for an hour of your time. I will pay you for a day of your time. I don't care. I am trying to be the best in the world at this thing. Can you help me?" And you flatter them, you pander them, you do whatever it takes. And you go and you learn as much as humanly possible. And you go through this deep immersion process where you get all this information and then you start pattern matching that information against the thing you're trying to learn about. Like, I learned about art the last year. I learned all about contemporary art. I talked to gallerists all over the world. It was amazing. It was incredible. And I probably have looked at, I don't know, 10, 10,000 paintings in the last year, because I wanted to understand the lessons that they taught me and how to apply them. And so now, like, I can tell you, like, all the, all the things you need to know about contemporary art, I can tell you the core artists, but I can tell you why. And the why is what's important. Once you understand the why, then you've actually... You're not just like mediocre, you're actually approaching being one of the better people in the world at it.

    13. HS

      I love that strategy. Or you could host a podcast and interview VCs.

    14. KB

      That is, that's a good-

    15. HS

      Ah, there we go.

    16. KB

      Look, as, as somebody who is the host of the Marketing Against The Grain podcast with Kieran, we do the same thing. A podcast is a great hack to do that.

  18. 52:44 – 53:40

    Which marketing tactics haven’t changed in the past 5 years?

    1. KB

    2. HS

      Phenomenal. Uh, tell me, what marketing tactics have not changed over the last five years?

    3. KB

      Y- you ha- So here, I'm gonna give everybody a cheat sheet. The more open a tactic, meaning less reg- uh, less regulated by one company... So like email hasn't changed a lot, because SMTP is inherently an open protocol. Apple has put some tracking changes in, but like email has evolved, but it's still email. And, and it's not, hasn't actually changed that much. I know some of the email people will disagree, but I'm sorry folks, it hasn't changed that much. Whereas if there's one company, like organic search for example, organic search has changed a ton, because Google has changed the search engine results page a ton, more ads, different types of search results. And that really... Uh, normally when there's one company that has financial incentives to, uh, evolve a platform, that changes a lot. When there- when it's an open protocol, it changes a

  19. 53:40 – 54:17

    Which marketing tactics have died in the past 5 years?

    1. KB

      lot less.

    2. HS

      What tactics have died a death do you think?

    3. KB

      I think in marketing everything is circul- c- circular, you know? Like, I don't think anything dies, I think it goes dormant for a long time and it comes back around. You know? I, I, I think like, look, I think even some traditional, um, advertising channels, like out of home and those things, like I'm, I'm an investor in a company called OneScreen that's creating a, a platform for out of home and attribution for out of home. And like, that's gonna be awesome. And I thought out, out of home had died a, a death a long, long time ago, you know? But so I've learned my lesson that things don't die, they go dormant for a while and then they

  20. 54:17 – 54:55

    Why inbound marketing has been so successful

    1. KB

      come back around.

    2. HS

      If there was one reason inbound has been so successful, what would you place that success to be on?

    3. KB

      A simple, valuable, clear story.

    4. HS

      ... which is educate first.

    5. KB

      The, the, the inbound marketing story was, was 10 very simple slides. The, the way you were doing marketing doesn't work anymore, because technology changed, and because technology changed, people are ignoring you, you need to do something new. That was the story. And we can go ... You could, I could give you the three-hour version, or I can give you the three-minute version of that story, or the three-second version of that story. And that is what makes something powerful and

  21. 54:55 – 55:27

    Where Kipp needs to improve most as a CMO

    1. KB

      successful.

    2. HS

      Where would you say you n- most need to improve as a CMO today, Kipp?

    3. KB

      Oh, gosh, every way. Um, problems of scale, international markets are really hard. Um, leading a large-scale team of people and helping them succeed in a hybrid work environment when nobody knows what the hell's going on. You know? (laughs) Eh, some people wanna be in an office, some people wanna be remote. There's a lot of things to, to get, get better at over the next few years.

  22. 55:27 – 55:45

    Does Kipp want to be a CEO some day?

    1. KB

    2. HS

      This is a grenade.

    3. KB

      Please.

    4. HS

      Do you wanna be a C- do you wanna be a CEO, Kipp?

    5. KB

      Someday, yeah.

    6. HS

      Yeah. I can feel that. You're very, very good. (laughs) I've interviewed many CMOs and you're like way, way up there. Um-

    7. KB

      That's very kind, thank you.

    8. HS

      ... uh, final one.

  23. 55:45 – 56:33

    What company has the most impressive marketing strategy?

    1. KB

      Yeah.

    2. HS

      What one company marketing strategy have you been most impressed by over the last couple of years?

    3. KB

      Cash App.

    4. HS

      Why?

    5. KB

      I love anybody who's great at marketing a commodity, and money is the ultimate commodity. You know? Like, they, they've done such a great job of reaching a younger demographic in a, you know, platform-centric way, whether it be through TikTok, whether it be through, uh, in-person activations. They've, they've taken a product that had no business of being successful, candidly, and making it very successful through remarkable marketing.

    6. HS

      Kipp, this has been such a joy. You can tell that I've, uh, completely freewheeled, but you were fantastic.

    7. KB

      Love it.

    8. HS

      And thank you so much.

    9. KB

      Thanks for having me, Harry. I appreciate it.

Episode duration: 56:34

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