Navigating the Future of Inbound Marketing: Insights with Monique Olan

In this episode of ‘The Chat,’ we delve into the revolutionary changes shaping the inbound marketing and sales landscape with Monique Olan, a seasoned B2B growth marketer and fractional CMO.

Monique shares her expertise on brand positioning, revenue operations, and the evolving buyer’s journey. She reflects on her 15+ years in marketing, touching on the transition from traditional to digital practices, the rise and complexities of marketing and revenue operations, and the impact of AI and data privacy on the industry.

Monique also discusses the importance of career specialization versus generalization and offers valuable insights on building personal and professional brands in today’s dynamic market. Tune in to understand how adaptability, creativity, and strategic thinking are key to thriving in the future of inbound marketing.

The Chat – Monique Olan

00:00- Terry:

Welcome to “The Chat”, where we take you behind the inbound scenes of some of the world’s fastest growing companies. For the past nine years at Chatmetrics, we’ve had an exclusive inside view of how these industry leaders are revolutionizing inbound marketing and sales across diverse sectors. Each week we bring you conversations with top minds in marketing and sales, sharing insider secrets and strategies that drive inbound success.

Join us on “The Chat”, your front row seat to the future of inbound.

Today with me is Monique Olan, the B2B growth marketer fractional CMO who specializes in brand positioning, go to market demand generation and revenue operations.

Hi Monique, how are you today?

01:05- Monique:

I am good. How are you?

01:06- Terry:

I’m great. I hope I didn’t leave anything out then in that introduction.

01:09- Monique:

No, I don’t think so. You got a pretty good chunk of it there.

01:11- Terry:

Thanks for joining us today. You recently, one of the things we spoke about earlier recently, you spoke at the Mopsapalooza was really curious to dig down and find out what was the main theme of your talk there?

01:22- Monique:

Yeah. For my part at Mopsapalooza, I was one of the virtual speakers and my focus was on marketing leadership specifically around Mar Ops in the future. So a little bit more around How do you go from where you might be now, whether that is early stages in your career, mid stage, or even if you’re considering shifting around and making that transition into your future self, your future, marketing leader and how do you get

01:47- Terry:

And what were the main aspects you think in terms of that change of career, perhaps of where it might have been three to five years ago to what it looks like in the future.

01:57- Monique:

Yeah. Good question. So Part of my presentation actually opened with a recap of my first 15 years, in marketing. 15 plus, I think it was 17, and the evolution across my marketing journey. When I started marketing ops was not a thing. Revenue ops was not a thing. We were just really getting into digital marketing as a core function.

And we wore all the hats, especially since I started off pretty heavily in agency space. I got to ride that wave of the transition of the buyer journey and to a digital journey where the buyer started to gain more and more ownership of their discovery phases and their self learning and education against brands, and as we saw technology develop, and I talked a lot about the changes we’ve seen in data and insights and how we went from, when we’re in traditional marketing before, especially when it was a little bit more in print out of home, things like that, a lot less ability to track things. We went digital and our. Our tracking mechanisms just went off the roof which seems so phenomenal for marketing, especially as we try to garner a seat at the table when it came to business decisions. But then you also see the wave dropping again, where data privacy laws are being passed in order to protect the individual.

We’re seeing shifts in the way in which channels are being used in order to facilitate that, like a lot more in channel engagement, as opposed to cross linking and going out. And so I’ve been a part of that wave where we’ve seen this high growth in transparency of data to a drop back into this more gray area of data. And so it was a very interesting kind of conversation I saw at Mopsapalooza as well as something that I talked about was Understanding that adaptability in understanding how marketing works in the business space and being adaptable to change.

And I think one thing that I hinted at and talked about is earlier in my career a lot of what I did was driven by the trends in marketing and I could not predict the future, but as I got later in my career, and as many people know, Attested to because I did some interviews with other experts in order to do this talk. They talked about how even though they can’t predict the changes coming, especially as we think about things like AI and the constant evolution of data. While we can’t predict the future clearly, we are a lot more capable of reacting to what’s needed in exchange for what might change. And I talked a little bit about that in the presentation and a couple other points.

04:26- Terry:

interesting. I wonder if the future roles you’re, you came from a background, I noticed with the timing that you were doing things, building websites and flyers and that really at the coalface and seeing the results. I’m wondering that if. The future that I see is a much more specialization and people from an earlier stage in their career moving into much more specialized functions.

I wonder if that will have an impact. Or do you think that will have an impact on the development of the role? at the CMO level moving forward on the basis that not having such a broader experience, the broad experience gives you the ability to join the dots to see the future and to do your role, I think, in a very holistic manner.

And perhaps that’s why you’ve moved to the this move to the type of role of fractional, and you’ve had experience in agency and contracting. That gives you the ability to be able to do that. Perhaps discern what the future might look like, given your experiences. Do you think that’ll change with, more specialization moving forward through people’s careers?

05:29- Monique:

I’m torn on that because the advice I gave in the presentation and that I still give to this point is I think a lot of it depends. And that’s such a marketer’s answer to things is it depends. But it really does. So the three things that I really hinted on people paying attention to as they scope their career.

So first and foremost, I think in the past, we used to lean on companies to help us scope our career path. And in my presentation, my point was you’re scoping it now, right? The longevity of an employee in a company to be there for 20, 30 years is not very standard anymore. It’s still possible. And I know some people who’ve been with companies for 15, 20 years and around the same kind of time that I entered into the workforce. But it’s a lot more common that you’re going to take it in your own hands. And like to advise people to think about a couple things. One is the company type they like to work in. So whether that is, and this is all a matter of experience, right? If you’re going to find yourself being a little bit more involved with big corporations, publicly traded versus are you working a lot in startups? The CMO hat down the road can vary based on those kind of answers that the company, the types of roles that you personally find appealing I’ve talked to some professionals who, and I said, the interviews that I did going into this They emphasize, some of them emphasize specialization, get to know your specialty.

Some mentioned generalizing. And I think it’s very interesting to also see where they’re at. The person who wanted to specialize is working in and hopefully owning in their future, their own agency specialized in that type of marketing operations. The generalized person moved into corporate meaning, and I’m saying generalized in marketing ops right now. But they moved into corporate and they wanted to go from where they have specialty to learning more of the marketing ops within that company so that they could take a leadership role in that company out of their specialized role. I think that there’s routes for that. So you might see leadership within specialization.

You might see a lot more entrepreneurial based kind of, but the gig economy growing in general, a lot more of that. Do think that you’re going to see having a marketing ops or having a kind of some combination of dimension and marketing ops background is going to steer a lot of the future CMOs. But at the same time, I feel insane trying to predict the future. When, if you ask me, like where we’d be right now with things like AI back in January, wouldn’t I have an answer for you that looks remotely close to what we’re doing right now. So hard to predict. I just emphasize that people pay very close attention to the things that you do and don’t enjoy and help shape that to your path forward. I know plenty of people who are like, I’m going to be a marketing leader, but I don’t want to be a CMO. I want to specialize in my space, in my expertise, and these are the types of companies I want to do it with. And they find their path that way. Some people who want to make it to that CMO level. My biggest recommendation is to really cross learn.

So learn outside of your space and your specialty, but also learn outside of your department. My collaborations with sales teams and overall business development teams has made a significant difference in how I service as a fractional.

08:47- Terry: 

It’s interesting you mentioned that, which one of the things that we’ve seen over the last 10 years in our business is that organizations that have a very close relationship between marketing and sales tend to be the most successful ones. They certainly are in the businesses that we’re partnering with that connection, I think.

And that advice to be broad if you want to move into that CMO type role, because you are part of an executive team and you’re part of the decision making process for the entire organization, not specifically for marketing once you’re in an executive level team. So I wonder if I’m not, I wonder, I’m sure that a lot of those decisions.

In terms of specialist versus generalist. Career ambition is one component, but it’s also personality and what your own interests and fascinations are in terms of whether you want to specialize or whether you’ve got that broader I won’t say less curiosity, just as curious in a specialized role. It’s just that you’re learning everything about that role versus curious across a broad range of functions.

Where do you see, RevOps is a relatively new terminology that I’ve heard thrown around, particularly the last couple of years, not so much before then. Where do you see, how do you see that fitting into marketing? Because RevOps is this, in my mind, it’s almost the, a technical role between sales and marketing.\

10:04- Monique: 

Yeah. It’s interesting cause I’ve seen it spawn up as we’ve also seen the shift in marketing as a function. We, back in the day we’re a little bit more of the thank you for creating my pretty brochures and my flyers and my ads to being more of an arm that owns a significant portion of the touch points that customers experience before they come to sales. And I think that’s a good reflection of understanding how we’ve gotten to the place we are with revenue ops and marketing ops, because we did see that shift. To where I think it’s like right now, a six cents report recently said that about 70 percent of the buyer journey is occurring before they even come to sales and majority people when they do come talking to sales are already pre informed to what they want to talk about.

That’s a big deal. So marketing came to fruition with marketing ops, leading a lot of those touch points, leading a lot of that process. And I think just as the blend between marketing and sales started to become a little bit more blurry, as we started to understand that the breaking down of silos are so essential in order to create revenue and smart marketing leaders were. understanding that we’re in shared metrics of revenue. We started to see this growth in revenue operations and it is more dynamic than just what marketing ops is doing. I think when we look at it, depending on the size of the company will determine how you see Rev Ops and mar- ops working together in, in big corporations, it’s a little bit different playing field.

You even have IT teams that are involved in kind of the dynamics of the backend operations Systems. On more of the kind of smaller startup or midsize companies that I tend to work with, there are blended themes. And so you’re seeing where you might have like maybe a marketing campaign manager.

So say they’re in HubSpot or HubSpot and Salesforce, and you might see that like a role stems up and as the company’s getting through high growth. They start to realize we have some gaps, so you’ll have someone servicing like campaign workflows and setups, realizing that there’s some data hygiene considerations and an actual processing of understanding how sales and marketing data flows, and there starts to become this evolution into a rev ops understanding of not just contact management, but also how do we. Replicate our customer journey within our backend operations for the greatest revenue performance, both net new and for customer Retention. too.

12:22- Terry:

exactly. I’ve always found it interesting, back on the connection again between sales and marketing, and I think you’re right. It is. Very different environment today to the one I was used to 15 years ago in back in my career, sales and marketing manager in a large organization.

And yet, even as soon as you get one step down the separation between the sales and marketing. Was so pronounced. Today, though, I think there’s a, there’s just an understanding that if there’s not that level of working together to a much greater extent, then you’re not going to be able to get the success.

I think in terms of maximizing the return on investment for the organization, it’s just a, it’s a critical factor moving forward. I noticed. Monique, early in your career that you had been working with a particular theme of company, the fitness organizations, the personal trainers and you’ve mentioned an interest in CrossFit.

13:27- Monique:

Yeah, that’s actually very interesting that you bring that together. I started a little bit there because I was in my MBA and I started to take on just some like part time work, trying to apply what I was learning into businesses. And I started working with a couple of gyms and personal trainers, like you mentioned, and yes, I do love CrossFit.

I am a part of that community. Bringing together how that and my leadership works together. I don’t know. I know I’ve actually reflected on that, but I think one of the mentalities that happens with, especially with the CrossFit theme, and I think a lot of fitness in general, we have this concept of trying to make sure I say it correctly slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And I actually have talked about that before in regards to how I think about how I actually run teams or how I run programs. It’s the idea that, and I believe it actually stems from military.

It’s a military concept. Don’t quote me on the branch but CrossFit picked it up as a theme. The idea that steadiness and taking particular time, not necessarily going super slow, but taking your time to really understand the situation, and figure out what you’re in will create this smoothness in what you’re doing and being smooth and if you were to relate it to marketing and marketing teams operating efficiently, Being clean and your cross collaborations, things like that will actually make things come to fruition faster.

And so that’s 1 theme that I noticed from specifically the CrossFit community. I also think that it, in general, has this idea around like a. A kind of short term and kind of dedication to the process and now in order to get a long term gain. And so I guess if I was to think about that when I oversee teams and mentorship and development of individuals is a really big thing for me. I really do try to create a structure in a way for someone to get from where there are now to where their future career goals are. So maybe if I was to blend that into a fitness theme it’s just like when you’re taking on a new regimen, you’re not going to see you become the next CrossFit Games athlete or, be ripped and whatever later, and within one week there are multiple attributes.

There’s actually fitness, there’s nutrition, there’s dedication and consistency, and a bunch of things that go into it, but also those who surround you. So I love CrossFit because I like having. people with me and people who share an experience. And I think that’s really important in your work culture too.

So having people who equally are interested in career growth and who are supporting you in it and a genuine connection there is really important. And so that’s something that I do try to foster with those that I’m helping with their career path

I was curious about how your interest in that field impacts your leadership style from a business perspective.

16:09- Terry:

And is that something that you would find that you foster within your team specifically or within those broader that you that you work with? Because we can’t always have everybody in the team that has those same aspirations. I guess there’s that’s where the difference in leadership styles come in.

16:30- Monique: 

Yeah, I think as a leader, you should recognize those differences too, right? I try to work with each person to understand what their big picture goal is, and sometimes the big picture goal is. I would like to just work my hours so that I can have a life outside of work. And then there’s some people I mentor who are like, I want to become the next X leader and I need to develop my career and focus on it heavily to get there. I respect both of those roles because they make up. the strongest teams when you have mixed dynamics, right? It’s okay to not want to be a CMO later. If you really want to own your space and keep owning that, then let me help you figure out how to get there. If you really want to do your best work in the hours you’re here, but you want to leave your work here, I want to help you there too. One other thing that I always bring to my mentoring with People and employees and team members is that I am super well aware that your connection to this company may not go past the next Two to five years.

Um, and it’s not because I anticipate that they’re going to leave, but I just know from my own career experience that A sometimes you outgrow a role and B sometimes it’s actually better for both you and the company for you to take another position and let someone else come in. And so I try to always think about it. In the best interest of both the company I’m serving and to them as an individual, how can I grow them? That services the company with an acknowledgment that they’re also trying to grow as an individual. And I, I don’t know if every company leader is going to do that for you. A lot of times, you’re working for a company, you’re trying to

That company. I just do my best possible to try to make those marry to each other. It does better for the individual. It also turns them into, I think, better leaders later. I’m sure all of us have had ups and downs and experiences with leaders or managers. And I think enough of my downs and a good amount of my ups to have influenced how I like to

others like they’d be pretty lucky to be mentored by you. The experience that you’ve got and your approach to it, I think, would certainly give anybody a step up in an advance in their career or certainly in their knowledge and skill set. Being able to learn from you. So that’s a kudos to you.

18:48- Terry:

Kudos to you. Not everybody has that desire to mentor and help others. So yeah, well done. Well done. I noticed in your LinkedIn that you made a comment there that you’ve got a brain that feeds on analytics, but speaks with an artistic tongue. Now, that’s a pretty unique capability.

Often you’ll see people that just bury in the numbers and there’s others that are so creative that it’s not that they ignore the numbers, they have a difficulty understanding, but putting the two together is I think a pretty unique skill. What, where do you think that mix came from? What, where is it in your background or what is it in your personality?

Where did it come from?

19:27- Monique:

Yeah. It’s interesting. I have been doodling and making art since the moment I could pick up a pencil. And I do believe that’s a huge aspect of my personality. And the way I just found myself into, I didn’t think I was going to be doing marketing when I was in college. Definitely, different career path thoughts that I had.

Um, but that’s always. That’s actually something I talked about in that presentation too. I honestly, if you asked me my first year of college, I thought I was joining the FBI.

19:56- Terry: 

Oh, wow.

19:56- Monique:

I come from a family of people who have served in military or have taken government roles like that. And I thought that was the path I was going in. I think of like halfway through college, I suddenly realized I don’t know what I’m going to do. I took some college courses in sociology and I took a course called the sociology of consumer behavior. And I found that very intriguing to understand the ways in which we choose to buy and what influences us. And then just to shorten the story, the recession occurred while I was in college. And one of the best advice I got from my advisor was If you can stay a student. And so I went straight from undergrad into getting my MBA. I chose a rounded program because I came from sociology and media studies.

So I learned how to code websites back when you were coding them all from scratch. And my way into an MBA program that kind of did a one year deep dive into everything, accounting, finance, ops, management, marketing, and everything. And then the second year was actually all consulting services. So you would take specialized courses and then consult with businesses in that course. And so that’s where my kind of background found me into marketing somehow, but that kind of artsy side of me always stuck around, but I also an undergrad or actually even into high school. I loved math. I loved algebra. I loved calculus. I loved mathematics.

So I think when I was in the agency and we started to see where I was coming in thinking I’m here to do creative ads and copy and design and things like that. This Mar-ops space started to evolve and I was like, wait, I can make these creative things relate to numbers. And so it just, it sparked a lot of joy for me. And I used to always say I have a passion for the process of marketing. And that. I think that is how I ended up where I am. So yes, my dynamic of being someone who loves to create art, but also loving where, what numbers can do and what they can mean has facilitated where I’ve made my

21:56- Terry:

It’s a perfect mix, isn’t it? Because marketing, I think is a real mix of, Two sciences, as I said, it’s it is analytics, it’s numbers, and it’s psychology. And that’s the two science components But you bring to get results in both of those areas and it’s the totally the creative component of marketing.

It’s all about the words. It’s the imagery. It’s the colors and it’s how we’re impacted. So it’s that makes sense when you say it like that. When you see it up front, it doesn’t. It looks rather. How did that happen? What do you think of the you’re in a fractional role? working with multiple clients.

I’ve noticed that probably in the last three and a half to four years, this I’ll call it the hustle environment, the side hustle environment, where people are starting to move away from more fixed careers, more away from contracting or agency work into, the term fractional, now fractional CMOs, CROs, CFOs, we’re hearing, fractional marketing is being used a lot more.

What’s the definition or difference of a fractional CMO to a contract or agency type work.

23:07- Monique:

Yeah. That’s something that I can speak pretty well to because I’ve obviously been on the agency side. I’m now serving as a fractional CMO and I also do provide consulting services. There are a few key differences and I think to your point, there’s kind of two driving factors into why this concept has become more prominent. One is, I think you alluded to it. Yeah. is the idea that there might be a shift in the way in which we perceive work and our life and work. And I do think that might be a stemming component as to why people are considering the shift into, I don’t want to call it the gig economy, but this format of fractional consultative and other styles, as opposed to full in house.

There’s a second side, which is where I see the most value with the businesses I work with considering the stages of businesses I work with. And it’s that. A need for high tier talent with the experience of a full scale CMO who’s been there, done that, is needed, but the company can’t quite have that or afford that in house. But also, do they really need it full time? And so that’s where we’re seeing this dynamic, I think, spawn up more prominently that I see in B2B tech and B2B SaaS. Um, but there’s a pretty big key difference, right?

When you’re an agency, you might be lifting an arm or a branch or area of the business, but you’re not necessarily providing full marketing leadership. There are some agencies that they’re going to try to position as the full arm of marketing and in some business entities that can make sense to just outsource your entire marketing, but especially when you’re in high growth, trying to get to scale up and trying to get into a larger business format and higher revenue, there’s things you’re going to start to bring in house. The great thing about the fractional CMO is that we’re providing that leadership. Full time for you or as full service to you and owning that for you. So as opposed to an agency, that’s going to maybe specialize and run your demand gen and growth initiatives. They’re not going to forecast your 2024 budget planning.

They’re not going to forecast your full 2024. plan for growth strategies. They’re not going to do your hiring and your team scoping and management of your team, your one on ones, their growth plans and mentoring. They’re specialized usually in an area and a category. And like I said, there’s some agencies that are going to position as a, Full functioning marketing team outside.

But for the most part, those that have the greatest like expertise in house at a cost point that you can afford are going to be specialized. So they’re going to be demand gen agencies, paid advertising agencies. And I do work with them with some of my clients. So there’s times when we don’t have a performance. branch to the marketing team in house and it makes more sense to outsource it to an agency. Consultants will typically work even on retainer on particular strategy delivery or direction, or sometimes project development. So this is where you see consultants moving into more of like project space where we develop things personas.

Um,

26:15- Terry: 

frame.

26:17- Monique: 

Yes. Yeah. So even if you pull a consultant in on a retainer basis where they’re coming in every month and maybe working a little bit more as an advisor in a way they’re not full on owning your marketing team. And that’s where the big difference is. So when I work with my clients as a fractional CMO, I am overseeing the marketing team, their regular sprint cycles on how we work against our quarterly plan.

Developing that quarterly plan, hosting the retros, developing the team out all of the hiring process, which I’m going through right now with one client. That’s a key difference, right? You’re, your foot’s more in the door. You’re not just giving some things, throwing it over to them and having them run with it.

You’re actually

26:54- Terry: 

So you’re an embedded part of the leadership team or the C suite as opposed to someone that reports to them. Very good. Very good. Look, I think that one of the biggest benefits from the fractional roles that I’ve seen is that it does allow smaller organizations that simply aren’t ready for full time, don’t need, whether they don’t need or can’t afford, even though they don’t need full time, but need the support to be able to then, for the amount of time that they need to that level of experience and strategy development and just leadership in their business.

I’ve seen it take organizations to a new level. So it’s interesting. I saw a post from Kyle Lacey in LinkedIn this morning, my morning, your evening over there. And it spoke about the almost pressure that seems to be around this gig economy or side hustles. And I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the last couple of months that seem to be feeling a lot of pressure that they should be doing something different.

That they’ve, they’re in a job, they’re happy with their job. They’re working for an organization, but they’re feeling this pressure that there’s something else. So that. that they should be doing. It’s not necessarily FOMO. They’re not fearful of missing out on something. It’s just that they feel almost that, their peers are doing other things they should be as well.

What’s your perspective on that in terms of, the gig economy? What’s your perspective on where it’s going and, from an individual’s perspective, how should they make a decision whether they should be involved in a side hustle or entrepreneurial and doing their own thing as opposed to staying in an organization?

28:38- Monique: 

Yeah, it’s a very deep question. I don’t think you should succumb to pressure to start a side hustle if it is honestly against your interests, where I think a lot of the pressure is coming from right now is that we are in economic instability for roles. We are seeing people left and right who are talented, getting good dropped from companies out of no fault of their own, but because the company had an issue, projected revenue inadequately and had to do layoffs, whatever the situation may be. As a result, this is creating this higher level concern around diversified streams of income. Yes, personally, I am a fan of diversifying that income, creating smart passive income formats, um, and also just being aware of your money flow and how you’re investing because we are living longer. And unless you’re planning to work longer, being aware of Retirement planning earlier than later. I highly

recommend, Now does that mean you start a side business? Does that mean you consider real estate investment? Does that mean you talk with a financial advisor on how you. Take the money that you have saved and make it work for you instead of just sit there. I think that’s up to the individual But I would emphasize that yes you’re possibly at a slightly higher risk in the current economy how we’re seeing these ups and downs in certain roles when you don’t have some other means of income or other means of money to fall into and This can also vary based on your personal situation.

If you have a dual income in a household, it might be different than if you’re a solo income. How you handle this. It’s a hard question for me to just straight up say, right? There’s a right answer to this. There isn’t. I just would emphasize that enough years in my career and at the age I’m at, which is not that old, but old enough to know I wouldn’t neglect your personal life and your family. And don’t sacrifice that because you feel this pressure around you to pursue a gig economy. I think pay attention to your career path. Pay attention to what is it you want to do. But I also just re emphasize, always re evaluate that. Even if you’re in a peaceful time right now, check your path.

Where are you at? Where are you trying to go? If you’re happily where you’re supposed to be, you might be fine, but if there is room for you to somehow consider diversifying your income, finding passive ways of income, look into that. It doesn’t hurt, but I wouldn’t succumb to pressures to join a gig economy because still see there’s value for in house, right?

I’m, I actually work with clients where I may come in fractionally and eventually replace myself with an in house fund. Full time person. So it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I don’t think we’re all going into full on gig economy. I don’t think that’s how businesses are going to operate. There’s still going to be a blend.

There’s just going to be a at certain stages of the business. What is the most appropriate mix to service what they need with the highest ROI? So I think

would leave that. If enough of an answer.

31:46- Terry:

perfect. And I think you’re right. There is no right answer. Kyle finished off his comment with his post with a comment that said, you do you. And I think that’s the big thing is don’t feel the pressure from others. I love your suggestion and advice to be aware of diversification and do stop and check yourself and have a look at where you are currently in your career and what.

The future looks like particularly with a view obviously to retirement. I think that’s that’s great advice. When it comes to personal brand, what advice would you give yourself? 10 years ago. If you were, if you today, if you’re looking back at yourself 10 years ago, from a personal branding perspective, and I ask this question specifically around there’s so much in all of this, side hustle and gig economy.

And it’s get out there and put yourself out in the, to do a podcast or make sure you’re on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever the channel is that you’re going for, but, be known, be seen. I know personally for myself, I’m quite introvert. I wasn’t even involved in LinkedIn or any of the social media channels through virtually the majority of my corporate career at all in any way, shape or form, but still had very successful corporate career until I decided to make a change elsewhere.

What would you, what advice would you give yourself for 10 years ago? Yeah, but

33:10- Monique: 

Gosh, that’s a good one too. Yeah. If I would give myself some advice for 10 years ago, I probably would have said, I saw someone else post about this and probably be like invested in Google and Apple and, but other than

that,

33:21- Terry: 

a personal

33:21- Monique: 

I would.

33:22- Terry: 

in particular, yeah.

33:24- Monique: 

Yeah. Yeah. No, from a personal branding perspective, I would probably just remind myself and I do remind this to people I mentor now.

So I think I probably would have told myself just to, and this is in all respect to the businesses I serve because I’m a business owner too, but just remember you are a component to a business. And you are expendable, right? And I think I would just emphasize to myself and anyone else to keep that in the back of your mind and protect yourself in some ways.

But also I probably would remind myself to double down on some areas that I started to self brand and not let that falter. So I know I went in house a couple of times with some businesses and my efforts to own my brand and who I am when I started to actually have one Would die off for a few months.

And I think that I would be at a different place, even today, if I had maybe held that a little bit stronger through those time periods. And what I’m just, I’m very much a, when I get into a company and what they I very commit. And so I think that would be someplace I would mention, I, I would dwindle off of LinkedIn or something like that. And I think I might’ve been a little bit more ahead maybe in my space if I had kept that a little bit more alive when it was still a little bit new to be a micro influencer and B2B. I think that’s a good point. I will say I, I at least, if I was to give advice to others that I actually did take I owned my brand name.

So MoniqueOlan. com was a domain I owned from the day it was a, I figured out domains were available to do that. I maintained it, even if it changed over the years, and it did, in what it included. I’m very conscious of my brand image as a person. My social channels that I use and how I use them. Their privacy settings and things like that. I think that’s very important to be aware of. Yeah, those would be the points I’d mention is just you as an individual, you are an asset. and you should treat yourself as your own kind of mini businesses. You grow yourself up in your career, even if at the beginning, you’re not much yet you will eventually.

And so how do you position and sell yourself as whether that is as a future business owner, or if that’s you as just an employee within a company that brand equity of your own is something to

try to own early.

35:33- Terry:

I love that. You comment around owning the your unique URL, your domain. Unfortunately, my name is like the other Smith. It’s not available and it hasn’t been for forever, probably. But I think that’s a great idea. What’s your. Thoughts with regards to where you would do that from a platform perspective, and I asked that specifically around.

I see a lot of talk these days, particularly around. If you look at what Elon’s done with Twitter or X as it is now, where he’s taken things in a different direction to where. Everyone else seems to be going with regards to censorship or getting banned off platforms for voicing particular opinions.

How much of that that, airspace do you actually own or have control of on those other platforms versus, where do you build your brand and how do you, how would you do that? What advice would you give someone in terms of what platforms to use and how to do that?

36:29- Monique:

Yeah, that’s a good point. So the thing I actually practice is, own it doesn’t mean you have to use it. I have a Twitter account. I started, I don’t know, 2007. I don’t really use it, but I’m never giving up my name. I have My own Instagram, even my business entity. I predominantly run through myself on LinkedIn for my business, Pivotal Pitch, but I own it across all social channels. I think this comes a little bit more into just future state of channel use too. So one thing. I’m very privy to is as we look at the trends and data privacy, and we look at how people are engaging and finding information and the growth of the community format and the channel owned engagement. I don’t think that’s going anywhere. I see it continuing to scale into the years to come. So it’s important to. Not stretch yourself thin. Own where you think you need to own it. Like I said, owning it doesn’t mean I have to use it. I just believe in owning your brand name. So owning your name, owning your entities in the channels that matter.

And then being privy to the fact that they can have rise and fall. So So to the point on Twitter, as an example, they’ve had a, I think it’s a 15 percent drop in users over the last year since Elon took over with a 18 percent drop. I think in the US alone, I pulled that from a recent article. I don’t remember which one it was.

I think that’s important to notice that channels can have a rise and fall. You are susceptible to the algorithm. You’re susceptible to their choices. And yes, they own the content that’s on there, which is why a lot of people emphasize owning your own website, finding a way to own your own space. Brands working on ways to own their own communities. I actually think this is a positive shift when you go back to the business side of things because it is forcing brands to stop putting out trash content, right? People don’t want to fill out forms for your white paper that adds no value.

People only want to engage to the point of which they can self inform as much as possible or they’re leaning into trusted sources. So they’re going to things like the marketingops. com community to find out. What are you recommending for marketing ops tactics, vendors tools. I’m in multiple CMO or fractional communities.

We do the same thing. So I think what’s important is that’s where the individual becomes very valuable, but also understanding your various channels. I also had another advisor I was talking with not too long ago who brought up the concept, what would your brand do if your website just wasn’t a source anymore? So just thinking about, This kind of comes back to diversifying, but diversifying wisely. You don’t want to stretch thin, especially as an individual, but also as a brand.

Know where your audience is at, know who you’re trying to speak to and be there for that. Knowing how to adapt to change, but also Not just being a trend follower. So good example, as you think about Instagram and threads you don’t see a lot of B2B companies jumping into threads and it’s probably a good thing right now. Now I could be completely wrong. It could totally be the next big thing for B2B. And I do always recommend if a trend works well in B2C, you’re guaranteed within a three year delay period that B2B will probably be there. But it’s. It’s good to take trends with caution, analyze it, and then, and place your bets appropriately.

39:59- Terry: 

interesting. You should bring up that comment about B2B will follow B2C, but it’s the three year lag. We did some research over the last couple of years. We’ve had a look at over 5, 000 websites, 5, 006 to be exact, a mix of B2B and B2C websites to see how they’re engaging with their clients. That’s our business.

So we’ve got an interest in that. and it was very, the very Interesting finding for me or fascination that came out of that was that in terms of engaging with website visitors and potential prospects and existing customers via the website, e commerce are a mile ahead of B2B, miles ahead in both in terms of adoption, the whole user experience component, they’ve just They get it.

I think B2B have tried to get it. They realize it’s important, but in terms of the execution, in most cases, it’s very difficult. I’m not blaming B2B saying that they’re just useless at it from the different organizations and different structures. different resources, different requirements, and certainly different focuses that experience or interaction on a website is difficult to do.

And B2B it does, it seems three to five years behind where we see the e commerce is it’s going at the moment. So very interesting that you’ve mentioned that. Monique, I’ve got a perhaps a closing question here. I’m very interested, we can see that AI is having a big impact Everywhere at the moment, and it certainly is having, from what I can see, a huge impact in marketing as well.

And so I guess it’s easy step to say that, that could potentially be the next revolution. But from the marketer’s perspective, the CMO’s perspective, what do you think is the next big revolution in the industry?

41:52- Monique: 

Oh man. And it’s not AI. I think it’s the, in marketing, I think the next evolution, or actually I guess the next trend I see coming, is that with the growth of AI, with the shift to community based uses, with this higher demand for the Individual to have a creative layer over tech. So this is something I spoke about once in a post and it’s something I talk about pretty regularly is that with technology evolution usually comes a layer of human over it.

And so that doesn’t mean that, someone else and I will, I don’t remember who I quote from. Someone else had mentioned with the calculator, we didn’t suddenly stop caring about math. We were able to do more over top of it now that we had more

Handle it, right? Every time we have evolution in technology and AI is in there too the human element over it matters. I’ll also hark back to something I talked about in my presentation is the skill trends. So The World Forum has a like top 10 skills of every year that they predict for the next five years. And one trend that you’ll see is that every single time in the top 10 is creativity and problem solving or creative thinking. And you’ll see they stay constantly in the top 10. And you’ll notice that in a couple other skills have started to come up, like being able to adaptively learn or things like emotional skill sets. So when I look at What’s happening now. And I look at the trends that are happening in marketing, the big things going forward, I think it’s going to come back to, and I’m excited and also terrified, right?

We’ve gotten to this dark, social, dark buyer journey. Space. It just means that our quality of what we output is gonna have to be so much higher. So to your point about B2C, this comes back to that too, right? Knowing your buyer journey, knowing their experience, knowing what they truly want, and knowing your niches. I say niches if you’re big enough or your niche, if you’re a little bit

In business. knowing that, knowing their path, knowing what they need to know and what value you can serve and getting really good at serving that value. So whether that is in a content format, whether that’s in what you’re doing on your site, there’s no more kind of that B2B BS that we have done in the past of creating this fluff around what we are and forcing them into an online demo. It’s just not going to

work same. People are self educating. They’re educating with others. So the big trend there, I think is going to be investing on high creativity in your team, high ability to leverage tech to get that creativity. And knowing how to really bridge that to buyer expectation and needs.

Um,

44:25- Terry: 

Yeah. Yeah. I, look I, that’s fascinating for me because I think one of the things that you’d look jump to a conclusion about it. That’s going to be easy. You look at chat GPT. I think it’s a personally my experience with GPT is that it’s a great starting point. It can help you come up with a lot of ideas in terms of content.

It can even do first drafts of things. If you are good enough with your prompting. But to get it to the next level, and as you’ve pointed out, to get it to that level of quality and relevance for your specific audience, I think the human overlay across the top of it is the key critical moving forward.

So I’m with you, I think as these tools and technology come out the human overlay over the top and being, for me, I think it’s a case of. Becoming a skilled mechanic and being able to use those tools to their maximum effectiveness to make you maximally effective.

45:27- Monique: 

Yeah, that was actually another thing in the top 10 skills I think predicted in 2020 and in 2023 was inclusion of technology literacy. And so I would definitely re emphasize that. I also think just, I come back to this point of knowing how to adapt to change, knowing how to test and play, but also doing so with caution. I do join the ranks of people in AI who have enough experience working with those businesses in the tech to understand that there is a also looming threat against data when it comes to AI and its exposure on an individual level, on a business level, on a societal level. And so I think intelligent brains. high creativity and thoughtfulness and how you’re using technology are going to be key components of leaders and just influencing people in business or on an individual level when it comes to our future

46:21- Terry:

you mentioned dark social and this whole new, circle of high quality content that’s not really attributable to anywhere. It’s a bit difficult to measure your ROI. Where is it? It’s for, if you’re putting content out into communities potentially paid content How do you. Attribute that to get some type of return on ad spend. What challenges are you seeing in your organizations that you’re working with at the moment from trying to leverage that dark dark social funnels? And are they trying to measure it or accepting that there’s, at the other end, it’s just a part of what they’ve got to do to be successful?

47:02- Monique:

Yeah. That’s going to be dependent on my conversations with those leadership teams and understanding how do we attribute to revenue as a whole and to that from a level of net new versus customer attention. Trying to measure those as core metrics and then how we get there having certain budget allocation.

But here’s where I just reemphasize that in a lot of ways, history repeats itself. So we came from a time of having a budget. I call it dark journey because it’s not just social, but it’s a dark journey. We came from that. We got into hyper insight and then now we’re dropping back into this dark space. And we’ve been there. We can figure out how to manage that, but now we have to manage it from an understanding of we’re no longer just leading this team of developing brochures and creative and pretty stuff and putting a logo together. Marketing and branding is so much more now, and we are revenue focused. And now how do we take this new journey path? and serve it.

And so I come back to again, being very conscious of your buyer journey. And this means you need to do research on understanding how are they discovering what you do, or even just that they have a need for something similar to what you do. How do they go about informing on it and being very privy to that pre touch point with you figuring out how you can influence and mark into that. There is still some level of attribution you could do against assets and tools like that. I also think we as marketers probably shot ourselves in the foot by going heavy handed with attribution at a time when we could track everything.

And now we’re in this backing off a little bit with Oh man, we promised this and now data doesn’t support that or third parties don’t support that. So there’s a little bit of that. I try to get really particular on focusing on core business metrics, setting up metrics against campaigns so we can understand holistic impact. And then there’s metrics that are meant more for like marketers to pay attention to simple things like, okay, I did this kind of testing here. I’ve noticed that this is where we have a drop off so we can adjust in point A, but point B is still performing high based on how much is still making it through.

Like those kind of metrics you can own within marketing. I think orienting heavily against revenue metrics and then businesses understanding that there’s going to be some budget allocation you’re going to need to make into this front end that Is going to be a little bit gray or a little bit harder for you to attribute specifically, getting really clear on understanding what is an ROI that you can assess on marketing as a whole. And not so much as being so granular on particular channels and things like that. It’s

49:35- Terry: 

I think it comes a lot back to community as well. It’s not just from the individual’s perspective, but the organization’s perspective. If you can be involved as an organization in communities where you’re Potential clients are and be delivering value there. You may not be able to specifically attribute, it’s interesting.

You talk about, this, everything old is new. Again, we’re going through this cycle. We’re human beings. My belief is that we’re, our psychology hasn’t changed in the last 10, 000 years. And so as much as technology might change and there’s varying levels of adoption. Versus I’ll wait and see the technology for attribution, I think, has been driven very much by organizations that are going to benefit from selling that measurement tools.

Google, for instance, in terms of we’ve got all these ways to track and measure clicks and so forth, so that you can see in your analytics exactly where everything’s coming from through to organizations that are completely set up so that every step of the funnel is visible. Google. And there was a demand, there was a need there, they’ve solved that need, but I think we are, I’m with you, I think we’re moving on to a stage where getting back to human beings being human beings and actually asking somebody else, hey, what did you do, have you got a solution for this, as opposed to necessarily just believing all of the, the marketing quagmire that’s out there quite frankly, we went through a process ourselves About two years ago, trying to find an effective CRM.

We’re not a huge organization. It wasn’t just a natural leap to one of the big ones for us. And so I broadened our search over about a dozen platforms and it was, became such a challenging comparison because I didn’t want to just naturally step to Salesforce or HubSpot or and comparing it with the smaller platforms and dialing it back into exactly what you need versus what looks nice.

That’s a nice to have, but what we actually need is this. It’s it was one of those things that the more technology gives us alternatives, and It gives us features that we don’t necessarily need, but we would be excited about it would be good if we had that. It’s one of those things I think that confuses, whereas if we start in a community and say, Hey, we’ve got this problem, how do you solve that?

I found it fascinating involved in a couple of communities, myself specifically around the sales development area. And some of it, Information and insight that we’re getting from people, you would consider their SDRs. They’re beginning their sales journey and yet what they’ve got their hands on in terms of technology about automation and prospecting and all of these sort of things.

It’s okay, so I can see his role. It’s a sales role. But they’ve got so much rev ops in terms of the technologies that they’re using, that it’s almost becoming a mini marketing role in themselves in that, it’s a demand generation as opposed to pure cold, outbound sales efforts.

So it’s fascinating for me with the way that technology is going as far as it’s concerned. Dark social is one of the, what did, what was your phrase for that? Not dark social. It was dark journey. So

52:53- Monique: 

Oh, yes. the dark dark buyer journey.

the gray buyer journey the, it’s just so much of it happens ahead. It’s also changed a lot of why if you’re looking at your marketing team and your budget for it, it should be a red flag. If the marketing space doesn’t have enough budget to own 70 percent of your buyer journey, take a moment to think about that as you go into 2024, I understand, you can’t just throw money unknowingly into space, but The emphasis I have there and to your point on that is yes, don’t underestimate Rev Ops, Mar Ops, or just in general technology operations and what it means for your business, especially as you’re thinking about like the AI adoption into your business, the amount of technology available.

Yes, having that kind of facilitated, owned and managed is really important. I just reemphasize with a lot of brands that. Your funnel doesn’t have to look like some standard funnel you saw either, right? It doesn’t even have to look like a funnel. Ideally, it’s a pipeline, right? The amount of people coming in are actually the ones converting to, but I just reemphasize that because I think we went through this stage where. We Expected particular models to be what everyone did. And depending on the size of your company, some of those might make sense. Some of those won’t getting really privy to your buyer journey, your buyer’s needs. And then what is it? It looks like when they engage on you with every client, I do this, like systems map, which marries the customer experience from the first point of kind of known customer experience.

To closed one and even pass that into like ongoing customer relationships, but we map that against the internal technology that’s used and the internal teams and processes and roles and responsibilities, that’s really good for you to make sure you because you at least know and own that spot. You can manage and influence and constantly refine that. If you can scale that up by adding your own level of community aspect that goes back into where I think a lot of people are talking about brands becoming their own media kind of companies in a way. That’s a whole nother thing in the marketing decisions that you make, but you can get that drilled down, understood and more refined, getting the ability to understand you’re going to be different than other businesses is really important.

Knowing how that works with the pre. I’ve decided to give you my email stages of the buyer journey and just know that some funnel that, might’ve been a standard for the last five years or five years ago or 10 years ago. And I’ve done a lot of them. I’ve made some of them. And just knowing that like It can be unique to you.

Do what’s right for the best format of generating revenue for your business, tracking it, and understanding.

55:35- Terry: 

comment about affording or being able to afford to own the 70 percent of the decision making process. I mean my mind explodes when I started to think what does that actually mean or look like. Is it even possible? Do you think that’s possible with, with all the different channels and communities that people will find their research now?

Yeah.

55:57- Monique: 

I think that’s a very individual question that I come back to the, it depends, answer, but there’s a couple things there, right? To your point, We are humans. We trust humans. We trust communities of other humans. That’s a point to play, right? Understand, and I come back to depends on the size of the company.

If you are a smaller, say, I’m going to go into a B2B SaaS startup company, somewhere between 10 to 20 million ARR. And you’re in that high growth kind of early stages. Really think about what are the levers you can pull. Are you serving particular niches? Try not to boil the ocean. The concept we always say I steal this from Pat Flynn.

The riches are in the niches. If you can really understand your niche, it doesn’t mean that you only serve them, right? So you can sell people outside your niche. If they want to close and convert, they do. But if you can really get to know who’s that niche, how can you best add value to them? So you’re not trying to stretch thin against too many different types of target markets. Really get in there. Be that owner of it. I think that’s where you’re going to start to see the ability to own some of that pre journey because you as a brand or you as a CEO who might have to be the face of that brand just depends on what your growth strategy is for the company. And how you leverage your own internal team experts and SMEs. Able to own that for a niche is very powerful, right? I can’t go out there and say I, I am a leading speaker on B2B marketing. There are so many of us out there, but if you drill down into the types of companies I work with, the space that I work with, the stage they’re in, yeah, I speak to them a lot.

And that’s what I try to, to niche and focus in. Same thing for an individual brand, same thing for a business brand. If you can own the space around your niche, that is somewhere where I think you can start to own more of that gray journey beforehand, because you’ll become that trusted source. Whether that is on your own or within communities that service that,

57:51- Terry: 

Yeah. Do you find with the companies that you work with that they’ve got that niche nailed already or is it something that there’s, do you find reluctance in niching down?

58:04- Monique: 

It’s a mix. In some cases, yeah, I’m like, they know their niche. They own it, and they are one of the top go to’s for it, and those have been beautiful to work with, because it really is a nice ownership there, and now we’re just figuring out how to scale that ownership and create more of a space for it.

self owned kind of community so that we can maximize on that for us and the customers we serve. For some, that is something we have to work on together. They are trying to boil the ocean. I am trying to get a CEO to step back and realize, yes, you can serve all those people, but in order for us to get solid traction in a sea of, 50 other competitors doing really similar things, it’d be really great to, to cross that. pollinate some of those niches. And so I actually saw, and I have referenced Pat Flynn again, cause I just saw his newsletter come through to me today. And he mentioned someone else on Reddit just commented this today, that there’s two paths to being successful with your business. One is being in a niche and one is understanding how to intersect niches. And I think that’s where that was an interesting way to think about niching down. And I think that’s a really good point to think

59:09- Terry:

The other point I think that is often lost is that when you do niche down and you’re focused on a very particular component of the market, often the next niche or the segment to the next niche will present itself to you. It will be one that’s not far off or it’s closely aligned to the niche that you’re in or it might be very different but either.

so strongly for what you’re doing, all the messaging and your branding is actually resonating with them. Often the second niche or the next niche or line leashes will present themselves to you.

59:41- Monique: 

Yeah. And that’s where I emphasize, and this is my more ops background coming to play. I really emphasize like mapping your data understanding of people when they become known through to their like customer attention or close loss stages. I do something called like a buyer data matrix where I really get to understand every data point that we would want to care about a person, whether it is self identified or informed by us. getting really clear on those, getting them into a internal pick list, even if it’s not external facing a data point. And having that as something that we maintain across contacts, that way you can start to really understand, okay, I did have this inbound of.

Subscribers into our system, X percent are within this demographic, and they, when they do get down into conversion stages and close, they’re closing at like 80 percent at a high ticket. This might be a niche that we’re not maximizing on. Or, you might think you have a niche, and then realize that You know what? They are closing at a 20 percent down, a down funnel. Is there something we missed here? Are we not servicing their foundational needs? Another thing to track from beginning to end is what are those value points that you’re selling off of, right?

What are the value ads you’re trying to say? What do they close on? So if you’re leaning in on point A is my number one value at B and then C, and then they’re closing with C is the predominant reason why they pick you. And then customer retention is saying it’s C and B. Getting that data recognized, fluid, and constantly maintained can serve your growth in a more kind of perpetual and compounding way. And that’s something that like, independent of what happens in that gray space, owning that area of your data is so important for you to make sure you can scale.

01:01:27- Terry: 

Those value points really cannot be ignored. And undervalued, so to speak. We recently did some outbound work for an organization and we interviewed the C suite, the sales leaders, the customer success team, the support team, the junior sales to understand why it was. What is it that. The customers actually valued in their product, why they were buying their product and we got a similar value proposition from all of them.

Then we went out to 400 of their customers and did some research and actually found that it wasn’t anything to do with, really it wasn’t anything to do with the value proposition that they all thought it was. There was one very specific component and that when we tested outbounding using their value proposition versus what we discovered the conversion rates were night and day.

And it was simply because of actually listening to the voice of the customer and understanding where the value position was, and this entire organization had just missed that point entirely and really hadn’t done, they were very sales led business and hadn’t had anyone from a marketing perspective really digging into their market and understanding their customers and listening to the voice of the customers.

01:02:46- Monique: 

so, Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say that’s so huge. And I would want to reemphasize just what you point out there. Brand champions are big. So understand your customer by doing interviews with those that are closed, want those that are closed lost. If you can understanding their perspective, but also when you do have some that have longevity with you and you can create a brand champion, I’ve named dropped a couple communities I’ve avoided, but I probably have already named dropped some tech that I use, but I am one of those people that when I find something powerful, I find them very valuable to me.

I will, I am a brand champion when I can be, maybe it’s because I’m in marketing, but think about that when you have customers that are power users or. people that really advocate for you or really find you valuable in their business. How can you turn them into a brand champion? How can you invest in getting their feedback? Create like these brand champion groups where their priorities and insights into what your product can do. They get priority onto your roadmap or something like that. Find out ways to learn from them where they learning more about tech like you, because they’re going to give you line of sight to that gray journey before you, or that dark journey before you.

I found that pretty interesting, but it’s very true. With the companies that you’re working with,

01:03:56- Terry:

point, very good point. With the companies that you’re working with at the moment, is there any particular trend that you’re seeing in the challenges that they’re facing? Is there something that’s emerging in the last 12 months or so that’s potentially a new challenge?

01:04:16- Monique: 

Yeah. I guess I would say trying to think through a couple, one thing is that balance of trying to create net new and audience while also trying to constantly serve the current audience with the shifts in how people are using the channels and how people are responding to things like our traditional lead gen areas. There’s still some ownership and mix around things like doing Google ads and search or brand owned ads and retargeting and LinkedIn being a primary channel and B2B. But as we also look at the shift with using things like People who are going to chat GPT to answer their questions instead of Google search.

This is a huge shift in, in the buyer journey, right? So now we’re seeing, even just when you look at website traffic data, you’re seeing these crawls that are happening more often through these third party systems that are crawling to find information and not actually the users you’re trying to target. This could completely shift the way in which we manage our websites the way in which we manage our information but we’re finding that people are going into other channels to source. And so they might be going into AI or they’re going into communities or they’re going through native channels.

So another shift that you might be noticing is the Demographic shift of where do they go to find information and what channels do they use? I still think in B2B, we have some heavy reliance into LinkedIn as a social channel, but I’m very privy to, again, the lag that happens with B2B versus B2C, but also generational difference in B2C. When you look at some of the younger generations, they are using full on TikTok as a primary search engine. It is something to not ignore. Sure. When you’re in a B2B SaaS company, your target buyer is probably not a young person who’s searching right now on Tik TOK, but give it a few years.

And so I think there’s some things around that, that are challenging us a little bit is how do we continue to maintain some of our net new garnering interest and how is that shifting and how are we real allocating budget? So we’re talking right now about 2024 planning and how Previous channels that may have served us really heavy, like three years ago, are not the same ones that are serving us right now in regards to the best ROI. And we’re reallocating our budgets a little bit more into like things like community and partnership work. I think that’s probably something I’m noticing in a

01:06:46- Terry: 

That’s a really interesting insight, particularly I think around for the B2B perspective. B2C I get, TikTok, yep, I just get it. B2B, not yet, but I’m sure it will come, no doubt. GPT, ChatGPT and the other search, BARD and so forth, the other search. The adoption of ChatGPT and how quickly. The user adoption just launched.

I’m wondering if we’re seeing, a trend where the GPTs may in fact start to replace Google itself and they, the new search engine is in fact these AI assistants as opposed to the Google search bar.

01:07:28- Monique:

Yeah that is a solid question and I can’t confirm one way or the other. I think we’re going to see a growth in AI assistance externally, but I also think we’re going to see a growth in system. So we’re seeing even like the tech that you currently use as primary tech, like your CRM rolling out some of that too. And then I think we’re going to start to see, okay, if you are a global brand that is predominantly based off of the Microsoft suite as your compliance and internal systems, does that change where you lean? So if Microsoft’s AI copilot goes, a certain way for how it supports you, does that start to become more prominent?

And I think that’s a solid question. Is that going to be? This is where we come back to where I was talking with the other individual about what if the valve of traffic to your website was shut off? Um, that’s revolving around this, right? If a lot of it’s going to come through another party’s interpretation of yours and other websites information, and then spit back out does that change the way in which we own our spaces? It also makes me wonder the question around gated spaces and private spaces where AI can’t quite venture. Which is something we also see around the community and then Bit brand media based marketing.

01:08:52- Terry: 

What do you think the impact would, that would be in the longer term? The gated spaces versus public.

01:09:01- Monique: 

Yeah. I don’t know. I feel like I come back to history might repeat itself. We might see this wave of going behind closed doors to coming back into the open. So I feel and I have to say this with transparency. One of my clients right now is a media brand, so they own three different brands that serve media.

And so they do have public facing media. They also have a subscriber base. It is free. But it is a format in which you can get more detailed, more in depth, trusted news source. That in general in media sources like that. Where they do have like at least a subscribe in so you can get access to our more detailed insights and content. See brands trying to do that. Big brands can get away with it, like HubSpot for sure. They have a community

01:09:46- Terry: 

And they bought the hustle.

01:09:48- Monique: 

Smaller company. Yeah. Like there’s enough people on their end user base. They even put so much, they just, they’re, they’ve owned inbound marketing for a reason in the past.

They have so much content out there. So specific to different niches. They started out in a niche and then expanded out. They’ve been in the place for a while for younger brands. This is going to become more complicated, right? You can’t suddenly just ask everyone, I’m going to gate all my stuff so that I can own this knowledge.

You don’t have enough clout To do that’s where I think we’re going to start seeing this like heavier growth and things like partner marketing and that the demand gen space and that whole kind of area is going to see this shift of budgets. This is at least where I’m exploring. How do I take what we might have traditionally spent on things like social ads, and how do I reallocate that into more high value channels, such as community partnering and content. Cross content or event and other type of activity that are just super high value and help us cross pollinate Communities.

01:10:49- Terry: 

With regards to return on ad spend, the, what are you seeing as a trend? I see that, or I hear that it’s starting to decline. It’s harder to get the ROI is actually reducing on advertising dollars at the moment.

01:11:03- Monique:

Yeah it’s a mix There’s some places where there’s still some really good high value and it really I reemphasize again, being very conscious of your spend on a campaign and the campaign’s like level and then thinking about your channels within that campaign. And what are you trying to serve? There’s still some really good value in figuring out how do you get in front of people who’ve already come to your site or come to your spaces. Yeah, we are seeing, especially when you think about in B2B, a lot of us use LinkedIn. If you look at your feed and the recent algorithm changes with LinkedIn, do you really notice companies anymore?

Unless you are following them and even for the companies that I follow I have to seek them out. And is why I think a lot of us are also talking about not just communities, but also micro influencers and the evolution of that in, in B2B and having people who I know some people back in like 2017 that had started to really grow their LinkedIn effort around what they do as subject matter expert in the particular tech that, that they do. The brand I was

Sold. And that has served them phenomenally today because they grew real fast as one of the early onsets of subject matter expert, micro influencers. Um, and that’s something to be privy to. If you go to LinkedIn I get a couple ads here and there. I very rarely even notice them if I do see one and I’m even in marketing.

To noticing them. I’ve seen a couple that have done it really well. And it’s because they maximize on the human side of it. They were very privy to targeting me. Gave me something entertaining in the ad that made me wonder what am I about to click on? And then the experience after was actually super spot on. I wasn’t forced into, and I know LinkedIn is going to prioritize their own, in channel conversion place. They didn’t give me anything gated. It was just and it was, the ad compelled me. It was funny. I related to it. It hit a pain point I had. I clicked through the page, hit it even better. And then instead of even trying to force me into any form of get a demo or anything like that, they had a prerecorded Three different versions of demos based on what it was I wanted to look at. So I think there’s still some ways to make it work if you can get really particular in it, but it’s still going to be high cost. LinkedIn has always been such a high cost channel. But to the point of what will happen to things like search advertising, so many people are already aware of where the ads are anyways, but if people are going to go to AI, that’s going to crawl instead of going to Google. Where does that put that dollar

But I do say it’s going to come back to, maybe it depends on the business a little bit, depends on their offering their audience. Really good point is just know where your audience is at. Experiment a little bit with some of those dollars. So I always like to think about, can I create. Reserve funds for spending that’s a little bit

more experimental. And to test new channels, and you’re gonna have to try to pre-plan for that because sometimes that might cost a little bit more. But I just, I had just posted another brand had just done a out of home ad billboard ad in New York. Times and Times Square,

01:14:00- Terry: 

I saw that. Amazing.

01:14:04- Monique: 

Yeah, and it was so low cost and but it wasn’t just that ad that they got return on. It was taking that ad, the viral state of it, and then maximizing that on other channels with a full journey expectation against Once they see this, what do they do?

How do they engage with my brand? And what do I do next? So that’s why I just come back to thinking about multi channel and an integrated format against your campaign goal and what you’re trying to get them to do in that campaign.

01:14:32- Terry: 

Yep. That was that was actually brilliant. It was just brilliant, even from the shock and awe of the CEO’s face when he turned around and saw the ad up there. It was great. Yeah, a great example. Do you have any recommendations for people in the audience that would be looking to find some of these communities and areas, particularly probably around their own business?

their own career and because obviously brands, it depends on the problems that you’re solving and what the product is, but more, more from personal career and branding perspective, any communities that you’d recommend?

01:15:13- Monique: 

Yeah. I do say, again, here I am pointing to LinkedIn, but I do say you can probably go on LinkedIn, find people that you follow and are you find are influential in your space that you want to be more like, and see if they’re in any communities, they’ll usually post about it. I do have a few that I’m a big fan of. A couple on the marketing ops side. So obviously marketing ops. com, the host of Mopsapalooza. They’re a great community, especially for developing more ops and rev ops professionals. The RevOp Co op is a really good one as well in that space. Um, really great kind of cross learning and things like that.

I personally am in some more private communities, so paid for group communities. I’m in CMOX, which is a area where Fractional CMOs can actually come together. We can work together on some client dilemmas or opportunities. It’s a great space for us to give our clients more than one fractional CMO brain on particular

planning and issues.

So, That’s a paid for community. Yeah. I’m also in I think the CMO alliance and a CMO coffee talks, but. Those are more particular niche for CMOs. So I think exit five is one that a lot of people who are in their growing and B2B space interested in becoming a part of. I’m not actually in there.

I have a few others that I have mentored or people who I know who are in there, who definitely vouch for it being a great informative space. I do think that’s a slightly paid for community, but

it’s super low cost.

01:16:40- Terry: 

Exit five. Okay.

01:16:44- Monique:

B2B marketing. I think they even positioned around no one goes to school for B2B marketing. And that’s Dave is the owner of that community. And and yeah, it’s, trust me, I follow him on LinkedIn. I do get their newsletter. I’m just not because I can only stretch myself. So then again, know your channels.

I focus in certain communities. So I try to stay into the ones that I think I can add the most value to, or that I feel like I get the most value out of as well. And Those are the ones I I can highlight for sure. But like I said, find people. And I also think that good people in their space will be open to communicating.

So I emphasize to people, I did it when I did the presentation, I do it on LinkedIn periodically, reach out to me if there’s anything I can help with or give thoughts on. So I say, do the same thing. If there’s someone that you’re like, man, I want to know how they got where they’re at. um, try to DM them and see if they’ll respond.

Good. People are usually pretty open to helping others grow in their career and become the next version of

01:17:42- Terry: 

Great advice and very true. Too often it’s us our own limiting beliefs that stops us from reaching out to somebody. Good people will respond. Yeah.

01:17:51- Monique:

yeah.

01:17:52- Terry: 

I’ll open the floor to you. I’ve obviously pandered you for the last hour and a half now with with questions. Is there anything in particular that you’d like to talk about or share?

01:18:04- Monique:

Gosh. No, I think we covered a lot here. I just, I guess if I was to have a couple key points for those who are in, whether you’re in a team or you’re actually the business owner of a brand that is trying to get through. struggle points against growth, or you’re in a high growth stage, and you’re trying to figure out how to get through that systematically. I guess just some things I’d like to leave with, right? Invest in your people and be honest with your people. And similarly, When you’re in a team, ask that back to, right? I’ve been in situations where I’ve seen that go very positively. I’ve also seen where that hasn’t happened and that’s been to the demise of the brand. Your staff is intelligent and smart. And they are privy to things. They’re also some of the most at the forefront of how trends work and how things are working. So I think In a time when the economy right now is rocky when you have talented team members already on staff, find ways to invest in them, find ways to make them a part of the growth of your business and respect part of that kind of work life balance.

I hate saying the work life balance concept because it feels like it’s now a fake thing, but I do emphasize

01:19:17- Terry:

But it’s different for everybody, right? It’s just different for

01:19:21- Monique: 

it is. It is. And then some brands, it really is. They’re like, you know what? No, we are nine to five and we will not bother you after. Some are like, you know what? You can have flexibility.

If you need to take off three hours during the morning, it just means that I expect some off hours engagement as well. And they have parameters around that. Just figure out what that is. Be really clear about it. I just think that, When we talk about things like the evolution in tech and that creativity level on top. Good talent is going to be really important to invest in. So I think that’s one little point I would just leave. And then also just to the individuals who are in those teams. If you don’t currently have a method or a career path that you are trying to follow. Take a moment, reflect on it, and then figure out if you have a mentor or your boss now, or even a counterpart that can, you can collaborate with to just scope that out and start to plan for yourself there.

01:20:17- Terry: 

Excellent. Very good. Thank you. And thank you for today Monique. I’ve enjoyed the conversation immensely.

01:20:26- Monique: 

Yeah. Same. I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me on.

01:20:29- Terry: 

Bye for now.