This week’s guest on CMO Insights is David Green, Director of Marketing at LeadCrunch.
In this video, David talks about:
- Using big data and AI to better understand the customer journey
- The importance of building a good company culture
- Account Based Marketing and other major changes in the marketing world in recent years
Learn more about David from his LinkedIn profile and follow LeadCrunch on Twitter.
For more great CMO interviews like this one, please check out our other CMO Insights or the podcast.
Full Transcript
Jeff Pedowitz:
Hi, welcome to Revenue Marketing Television, and the CMO Insights Series. I’m your host, Jeff Pedowitz, President and CEO of The Pedowitz Group. Today as our guest, we have David Green, who is Director of Marketing for LeadCrunch. Dave, welcome to the show.
David Green:
Oh, thank you so much, Jeff.
Jeff Pedowitz:
Great, great, great Avenue. So you know, for starters, I mean it might be obvious to a lot of people, but just tell us a little bit about LeadCrunch. What does it do?
David Green:
LeadCrunch is a company that uses artificial intelligence and outreach to help marketers drive demand based upon their ideal customer. So we deep, deeply profile those customers and then get their content and engage their buyer personas and campaigns on a cost per lead basis,
Jeff Pedowitz:
You know I’m sure you’re well aware. The AI is a big bias, right. And I think more executives are trying to understand, so exactly how does it work and, and, and now not literally speaking, I don’t think that went on how to program and or anything, but elaborate a little bit more. I mean, what’s your, what’s your engine built on? How’s it work? You know, how’s it actually finding the data and how, how would the marketing team use it?
David Green:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So our head of data scientist, a guy named Steve [inaudible] had been in the credit card detection industry and he and a small team had built the algorithms to detect to protect from credit card fraud, about 3 billion credit cards. And he learned from that something you hear all the time from data scientist, which the predictions, aren’t a big deal. It’s really the data. And we have patents on a number of on data. And I think the thing that, and I worked for denim Bradstreet’s database marketing group early in my career, I’ve written a book where I collaborated with someone who at the time I thought was probably the premier B2B database marketing guru in the U S so this is a topic that I’m not unfamiliar with, but he has some insights that I had not considered before.
And I think the really big one is the movement of data. So in other words, if you’re trying to see, like, what is this company gonna buy? It depends on what they’ve been doing, right. Not just exactly where they are right now, but what’s the sequence of things. Did they get a new executive? Are they starting to staff up in a particular area from a skill standpoint in terms of their team? There’s a lot of dynamics. Are they opening up a new market? There’s a lot of dynamics there. And I think the thing that Steve did, and we did some pro bono work for the university of a couple of professors at the university of San Diego and, and Stanford trying to map the ecosystem in San Diego at a very deep level going back, I think we had 10 years of data and we learned a lot from that that we’ve been able to apply to what we do.
And I think the bottom line is I think we started fixing the data. That’s the big thing that we do. And I think the other thing that I have found true, and I, you know, I know, you know, we’re all familiar with serious decisions in demand, waterfall and the benchmarks. You know, in spite of all of the enhancements that we’ve had and in my career conversion rates from inquiry to lead are not very high. And you know, and if you go upstream from that to the conversion of somebody seeing your display ad it gets microscopically low. And I think a lot of that has to do from the fact that we’re not very good at targeting right up front in spite of a few new innovations, a lot of people still use firmographic data. And the test that we’ve done, it’s bad. I mean, half the time it’s wrong, people can flight.
What who, who accompany sells to with their industry, which is different. It could be a software company selling to healthcare, and yet it’s classified as a healthcare industry company. And I think you have to get a whole level of new dimensions and much more granularity and the data in order to target. And I think it’s going to have a dramatic impact on demand generation marketers.
Jeff Pedowitz:
Yeah. A lot of times they give us a very simple example of, so let’s say you and I do the grocery shopping for our families, right? We’re the same age. We have a SIM somewhere job. We’re both directors of marketing. We both make whatever, you know, a hundred, a hundred grand a year. But the main difference, and then we, we want nutrition, we want choice. We want convenience. We want nice stores, but maybe I work five minutes from the house and then you work in the city, so you’re an hour away. So while we both want all those things, because you’re an hour away, you’re spending a lot more time in traffic, you might value convenience. So your shopping patterns of behavior patterns are going to be different, right? You’re not going to really be as, as interested in browsing because you’re spending more time in the car.
So you’re going to want to get in and out of the store. Sorry. So, so knowing that, so to your point, right, you have the firmographic data, I know who you are, what your salary is, what kind of cars you drive, all that stuff. But it still doesn’t tell me some of the most important things, which is what are you going to do when you’re in the store. Right. And then, and then what are you buying? What’s your pattern? And then how do I maximize that experience for you? And so that simple example could be applied, I think, to any, any situation.
David Green:
Yeah, that’s true. And you know, what, what have I bought in the past? You know, what, what kind of people are inside of my organization and what direction is it going? Is it growing? Is it declining? How are things changing for my company? I think those are very predictive factors about folks. And so over time, we’re going to really provide a lot more rich data and more accurate data about the the accounts about the people and about content. I think the other part where I think AI can have a big, make, a big difference is seeing what ideas are spreading. Who’s spreading them. What kind of content do different people want to consume? I think there’s a lot of missing pieces. And then the other that I think is true is everything changes, right? We, we bring out new products, we go after new market segments and the market itself is very dynamic, always changing. And so I think you need something that’s always on and always learning to help you bring the insights to be able to scale what you’re doing.
Jeff Pedowitz:
You know, so I was talking to some of my colleagues that are futurists, and one of them came up with the interesting hypothesis that a few years out AI will market to AI and marketing’s role. Like people will actually be reduced because machines are going to just process all the data to determine what kind of campaigns they’ll figure out, how to write the copy, present the campaigns, and then they’ll send them out. And then on the receiving end that for the buyer, they have, AI is just receiving us information, determining whether or not it meets the criteria. What, how would you respond to that? What do you think
David Green:
It can, I don’t see it going quite that far that fast. It seems to me that what you want to do with AI is look at the parts that are tedious have massive amounts of data that could be potentially analyzed. I think there’s always going to be a role, at least, at least as far as I can see for human empathy. For example, I don’t know that artificial intelligence was that by the way, I think, I think empathy from a content marketing standpoint is a huge critical success factor. And how do you get to empathy? Well, you got to go talk to people, you got to look them in the eye, you got to do interviews. You know, you have to understand the job they’re trying to do for a particular task and then develop content that helps with that job. I, I just don’t know that artificial intelligence can do all of that. I think they can help and provide some guidance and maybe narrow down some of the choices, but you’re still gonna have to go out and and, and talk to people in your market and really understand them and develop empathy for them.
Jeff Pedowitz:
So you don’t think AI can mimic empathy or machines can mimic empathy.
David Green:
It’d be great if they could, maybe they will. I, you know, I hate to doubt technology, but I think sometimes the hype gets a little bit ahead of the the execution. Oh I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna ease off the gas on it. I think it’s going to have profound impact. That’s why I’m working here, but I don’t think it’s going to be necessary to lay off marketing people anytime soon. I think there’s going to be plenty of work.
Jeff Pedowitz:
I’m sure that’s going to make your team feel really good about that. So speaking of your team, you know how big are they and what’s your approach to building out a modern marketing organization in 2018?
David Green:
Sure. Well, you know, we’re, we’re a startup, we’ve got a series, a we’re on the hunt for a series B. And so I think anybody in my role, it’s a hair on fire scenario where there’s obviously 4 million things like to do but only like a hundred that you can anytime soon. And so you have to prioritize. And my bias on building a team is to try to get a players who could be leaders as you scale things up as the initial wave. So I have one person in digital marketing, and then I have one person who’s kind of a generalist. And, and I think the challenge when you’re a small organization like ours, is the depth of knowledge that you need to really execute has gotten so deep, right in SEO and content marketing in the funnel and email marketing.
I mean, you have people in large organizations that that’s all they do. They, all they do is social. And so trying to find somebody who’s who’s a deep enough generalist across all the digital channels is, is a challenge and it costs more. And so that’s the bias that I have before you start to bring in too many too many generalists. I think you need to find some pretty experienced people who are who can be generalist, but really know have a depth of knowledge. And then I think you get out of their way. You know, I, I don’t think management’s role in marketing or any other role is to tell people how to do unless they, they ask you. I think there’s a little bit of what, and a lot of why, and then I think you get out of their way and let them do what they know how to do. I think that’s my approach.
Jeff Pedowitz:
Great advice. So what comes first? The plan or the people,
David Green:
Oh, everything is culture. You know, if you don’t have the people and the culture if you don’t have alignment across departments, I think it breaks down pretty fast. And I think it was Mike Tyson that once said that a plan’s really great until you get hit in the mouth and, you know, when you’re going to market, you’re always getting hit in the mouth. There’s always stuff that you’re learning. If you get outside of your intuition and, and test, or, or engage with the market that surprises you. And I think you have to be nimble enough to, to adjust to that.
Jeff Pedowitz:
So in addition to the obvious, you know, AI, and in your, in your opinion as a senior marketer, what do you think have been some of the other biggest changes that have impacted marketing over the last five to 10 years?
David Green:
Well you know, I think obviously ABM I actually did my first ABM campaign about 20 plus years ago. I was working for an agency and we did one ad to Proctor and gamble and, and got eight leads. The ad cost us like 40 grand to put up full page, page, newspaper ad out. But it resulted in an $8 million deal. And, you know, if you get into this game very long, I think you realize that not all leads have equal value. And so I think if you’re immature at this, we’re at the top of the foot, the cost of lead, and you try to get to a low cost lead and you end up getting into a little bit of a with sales, because those don’t often convert into opportunities for them, which is what they care about.
So I think ABM is going to become a bigger and bigger force. I think things like artificial intelligence will really made to help with that by helping people really figure out where is the big pockets of money and to be able to take it down a notch besides just the, you know, the fortune 500 where, where else can I go and how can I apply more stratified resources after these higher, higher value opportunities? The other thing that I haven’t really seen happening yet, but I have a hypothesis that it could is around.
It was originally started with Marketo and those guys around the individual contact and individual buyer personas. And you had a, a path for everybody. I, I, I think that the folks that wrote the challenger customer had a really interesting point of view, which is the real job we have isn’t to help individuals with different departmental level requirements, see how you can help that department as much as it’s to help build a consensus. And I wonder if that’s going to have a very profound impact as we start looking at lead nurturing as a sort of a buying committee approach, and, and how do we get everybody on the same page and how do we help build consensus with that buying committee, I think that could really have a big impact moving forward.
Jeff Pedowitz:
Great. so I was starting to think, as you were describing, I was changed us. What about you, as, so, as, as the market’s changed, how have you changed? You know, if you, if you were to look back at a younger version of you just starting out in your career, how do you think you’ve changed over the years?
David Green:
I would say I’ve gotten a lot less sophomoric. You know, I think when I started out, everybody was an idiot and I couldn’t believe how stupid everything was. And, and now I see why it’s so stupid, cause it’s hard. And it’s hard to get a lot of people moving in the right direction. And and, and marketing B2B in particular is extremely complex. And so you just have to allow for that and realize the limitations of what you can get done in that context. That’s probably how I’ve changed. I’ve certainly seen a lot. And unfortunately you learn the most from a failure. In my opinion, I don’t think you learn as much from your successes as you do from your, from your types and you stubbed your toe. So
Jeff Pedowitz:
I know, but I think that that’s been one of the things that we’ve been trying to instill the most in our younger employees, that it is okay to fail. It’s okay to make mistakes that you have to learn from it. I think that this society over the last 15 or 20 years has created an environment where everybody wins and, and, you know, everyone, everyone’s a winner and, and competition is not a, not a good thing, but that’s not, that’s not really how the world works. Right. So I think we have to tell them that, Hey, and that was all part of your growth it’s okay. You know, and then you just keep get you keep moving forward, right?
David Green:
Yeah, I think I think failure is a big opportunity to learn. And I think if you’re going to be in marketing today in B2B or B to C, really I think you better be dedicated to learning because however it’s working today, it’s going to be different three years from now. I mean, if you just look back in, in, in our space right over the last five years or seven years you know, ABM really wasn’t a big deal. Whether people did it, no one was calling it that it wasn’t nearly the movement that it was you know, the whole evolution of marketing operations and some of the larger organizations, that’s a relatively new thing.
And you could go right on down the line with retargeting and programmatic advertising and, and, and, and there’s just a lot of stuff that’s coming out. That’s new, that changes how you might do things. And I think you’re going to have to be prepared to capitalize on those and evaluate them and figure out which ones will work for you.
Jeff Pedowitz:
Great advice, David Green. Thank you so much for being on the program.
David Green:
Jeff, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Jeff Pedowitz:
You bet. Best of luck to you.
David Green:
Alright.