With the rapid digitalization of business over the last few years, B2B marketers are being pushed to pivot, adapt, and innovate their marketing tools and strategies. So, are you keeping up?
In this episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers podcast, Steve Goldhaber is joined by Manny Rivera, VP at Salesforce, to share real stories and insights on marketing technology, customer acquisition, and the future of B2B marketing.
Tune in to hear Manny also shed light on how he first got started in B2B marketing and what he enjoys most after 30+ years of marketing. Then, he shares his expert advice for new, aspiring B2B marketers in 2022 and beyond.
Plus… Manny shares his current favorite martech tools, his biggest marketing pet peeve, and his candid thoughts on potential changes in B2B marketing in the next 5 years.
What You’ll Learn In This Episode:
With 25+ years of marketing experience, Steve Goldhaber is a former head of global digital marketing for two Fortune 500 companies and the current CEO of 26 Characters, a content marketing agency in Chicago.
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
Steve Goldhaber: All right, welcome to the podcast today. I've got Manny Rivera joining me. How're you doing, Manny?
Manny Rivera: Hello, everyone. I'm doing fine.
Steve Goldhaber: All right, great to have Manny on the show. Manny and I used to work together in a former life. So we had many funny, and sometimes tragic stories too. There's always a plethora of experiences that we can connect with other people.
Manny Rivera: I think we tend to call them experiences.
Steve Goldhaber: It's the lawyers. The lawyers have kept us all very clear. I just call them experiences. And it doesn't kind of take good or bad. All right, so Manny, I don't want to steal your thunder on your background. So give us a quick minute or two on your background?
Manny Rivera: Sure. Well, hello everyone, Manny Rivera as introduced. I am a, I would say, a marketer by trade for the last over 30 years, I stopped counting. But I started my career in traditional CPG marketing. And I've ended my marketing career in, well, I wouldn't say ended but transitioned into a former Head of Marketing for Financial Services. And I crossed multiple industries from pharmaceuticals, to automotive, as I mentioned, CPG, as well as financial services. And I've done that successfully in the marketing discipline. And I've been in the trenches of B2B to B2C type marketing. I've managed large organizations as well as multi-division operations. So that's the fun part where you start transitioning into marketing operations. And I've also founded a couple of companies and they've done well. So that's good on that respect. But I'm also now focused in really working in the MarTech space. And I have been for the last three years after being a practitioner for 15 years and transitioning traditional to digital.
Steve Goldhaber: Alright, awesome, good background, and you're currently a VP over at Salesforce. So you bring a good plethora of the of the industry kind of cutting edge SaaS worlds that many of us are living and breathing every day?
Manny Rivera: Correct.
Steve Goldhaber: All right. So now we're gonna jump right into the storytelling part of the podcast. And just to level set on how this works, we're not going to go over any specific brands, you're not going to be able to associate stories with the actual companies that Manny said work for, we keep it anonymous. So let's go ahead and jump in to the first story, we're going to focus on marketing technology, given that that's what you're thinking about a lot these days. So Manny, take it away on Story number one.
Manny Rivera: I think this is a great topic. And it's something that I focus on a daily basis. And you'd be surprised and how many large organizations and I would say, in the Fortune 100, that are struggling in this space around marketing and technology. I think a lot of us folks who've been in marketing, for many years have learned the discipline of from a traditional sense of marketing. And now we're up against this, these platforms, these tools, that are now actually driving the execution that we usually used to do manually. And now that we have to transition those skill sets into these digital tools we are, I would say most marketers are being challenged, if you didn't grow up with the technology, you're being challenged to transition quickly. And I see that on my daily basis. And the folks I work with, what we did is, we do is try to strive to help them understand how to you operationalize your marketing, and that part is different. And I think one of the things I come across around marketing technology is like there's multiple marketing structures, and I’d say there's like four or five different types of categories of CMOs, that are running their marketing departments, and they vary on technology and how they're going to be using technology moving forward. And it's not one shoe fits everybody. So the nice thing about it is that the platforms today allow a marketer to have a set of tools that typically have been fragmented tools, but in order to drive those platforms one requires to have their operation feed into the platform. The challenge is that running the platform is a completely different skill set than a traditional marketer is used to running. So that requires either you learn how to run those things or you need to bring in people who are more technology forward but may not be marketers. So the hybrid approach in the mix is probably in the over the next 10 years is going to be the challenge for most CMOs and most folks in marketing is to embrace it and to learn how to live on both sides of traditional and digital, but to ignore, it would probably not be the safest thing to do in a marketing career.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it's interesting, I want to touch on one thing here, because the thing that I always look back on last 10, 20 years in marketing, I feel like 10 years ago, we were still in that stage where we were hoping that the technology was there. And for the most part, it is here today. And I say that because I feel like the resistance that's still happening to adopting this is really a cultural, or a change management thing. And you kind of alluded to that with the, if you grew up in traditional or digital, tell me about that. That culture change as you help people kind of implement these things. What do you see culturally, where if there's not adoption, why is that not happening or, what's the catalyst to speed those up?
Manny Rivera: Well, I would say from my experience, and working in this space, for the last several years, is that I do see is your traditionals. And I'm just gonna call it a CMO or head of marketing, we're just gonna just interchange those words. But that head of marketing, by the time they become that department head, or that division, head or company head, they've grown up in a traditional sense, and they know their stuff. Well, they know how to do the roles and functions that they oversee or manage within marketing. But it's a big but here is the utilization of digital technologies is not what they grew up with, and how they use it. So the organizational changes, how do you structure and how do you operationalize your existing labor force your marketers? And how do you have them be part of this evolution, because these platforms do improve performance, these platforms do improve your go to market strategies, your take rates, your conversion rates, it does it because it's more real time where normally it takes a traditional marketing approach weeks, possibly months to gather the insights to make the change, the system is doing it on the fly in real time, you shave off a lot of time in that respect. But the challenge is that that's not how one thinks in a marketing operation if you grew up in a different environment. So now the thing is that you have to pivot and by pivoting is the skill set changes significantly, but you still need that traditional mindset of how to go to market and how to do the marketing. But how do you execute is the part that is the change management aspect. And you get folks that don't see that, but they know it's here, but they don't know how and I mean, they don't see it, they don't know how to transition their traditional approach into a digital operation. Doesn't mean that you change market research, doesn't mean you change email deployment, and doesn't mean that you change creative and targeting. It's like how do those skill sets feed into a platform that actually is augmenting all those facets of insights in real time, but at the same time, who's running the platform? It's a difference. That is the struggle that where you get changed management. So your KPIs don't change your goals. What you set out to do from a sales or conversion standpoint doesn't change is like, but how do you manage it now?
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, for the people who you think of have crossed over, and they bridge that gap, and they are more what we call modern marketers, what is it that they have that enabled them to just kind of go all right, this was hard for me to think about, but I'm there now, and I can't look back. I totally, I wished I had done this sooner?
Manny Rivera: I heavy I tend to see those who've had some exposure and experience any type of e-commerce in the last 10 years tend to understand digital marketing or digital transition. Because that's obviously enhance, it's all digital, your e-commerce business. But those who don't have an e-commerce businesses like doesn't mean that you just haven't been exposed to the tricks of the trade, or the new tricks of the trade of the tool sets that are used doesn't mean that you can't do it just means what I find is most folks don't know where to start.
Steve Goldhaber: One thing I've always kind of I created this thing up whenever I felt like I was up against change management, I called it the rule of thirds. This is not the photography rule of thirds, very, very different. But to me, the rule of thirds was a third of the people embrace it, they want it, they're actually the ones knocking on the door saying please let me buy this, I need it. Then you've got another third who are the middle, I call them fence sitters. And they're open to it, but you can sway them either way. And then the last third are the people that are just gonna dig in, they just can't embrace it. So whatever you do, you cannot convert them over. And my goal is always been saying I want to get to two thirds. So you start with the top third, they're going to influence the middle third, and that gets you two thirds and hopefully over time, the bottom third will eventually catch up but so I share that with the question to you is it that simple when you see these things being rolled out, do you think is it a third on top, that are really eager and asking for it? What are your thoughts on that? How it breaks?
Manny Rivera: So it's interesting because I do understand your analogy and the strategy of approaching the target group. Who you're trying to communicate to and market to? I think nowadays, what happens is that everybody has choices. And there are more choices. And those choices are actually I'm not going to the choice, the choice is coming to me. And so the dynamics change, your end user, your consumer, your buyer, your whoever it is, is really in charge it before it wasn't. About 20 years ago, you had a couple of choices, if you found it, those were your choice sets. And that's what you decided on and you can communicate to that person. Now. It's like, I can sit here today. And I can get bombarded with the right messaging at the right time, because someone was tracking what I just bought, and they'll be able to match an offer to me that's relevant. So that one third that's eager to buy that one third is probably easier to persuade into whatever the ask is, and then you got your other, the next third, that's being influenced, but the next third has been influenced on how you nurture them into your ask.. And so the art of marketing has changed with a lot of science, a lot of insights, a lot of research to go in making, what is the right ask. And now with today's platforms, it will tell me that you and I are probably looking to same, acting the same, living the same, but we buy differently before we wouldn't know that. Now we do.
Steve Goldhaber: I do, sometimes I get caught up in a world where I do think platform first. And you have to remind yourself that you're actually to your point of there's an art and a science to this. So to me, like the science is inherent in a lot of these platforms. But you can get carried away with that. And you need to really level set and get back to the art of it. You have all this powerful technology. But if you don't know how to use it, if you don't know how to get someone to go with an insight or creative message, it's not going to do anything.
Manny Rivera: Yeah, look at the way, I look at the tool sets nowadays is, it is an execution platform that aggregates multiple departments insights in one place before he used to be all over the place, or someone will send you an email with the insights or our PowerPoint presentation, whatever. And you had to aggregate that just organically and naturally through your own experiences. Now the system will feed it up and saying, “Oh, by the way, Steve just bought this, or Steve just opened up three emails on this particular topic”. Your research will say, “Oh, this person would be prime”. Well, I can do that instantly and saying, “Well, hold off 60 minutes, and then send Steve, this next offer which is relevant to what Steve is interested in”. Now, the nice thing about is like, you still have to think and conceive of what is that? What I call a purpose driven experience. There is a purpose for why we communicate and purpose and why we market by what type of channel. And if that still has to be manually done, you still have to think it through, there's still some creative aspects to the art aspect of marketing. And then there's insights as to “Do I send Steve to a text?” because he doesn't respond to texts, or he only responds to text or I send Steve's grandmother who's 90 years old attacks, will she does she communicate in tax? Would that be the right appropriate thing but that might be a different medium. And so the platform and insights will actually do that automatically. And it will learn as it goes. And so that you can increase your go to market performance. But here's the thing, none of it can be conceived of in the computer can't do it on its own unless you manually think through your strategy.
Steve Goldhaber: Cool, all right. Anything else on Story number one, that we were gonna round out? Where do you think this stuff is going like 10 years? I mean, we've been talking about air for way too long is it going to continue where that's part of the engine? Or, is something going to replace that?
Manny Rivera: Well, now, I think AI is going to be good. But I think you got to understand what AI does, you need to inform, you need to point AI in the direction to aggregate the insights and then spit out an answer. AI is just, some people I come across and they just say oh, we'll just have deploy AI has to do while. You need to focus your AI because AI the way it works in general and depending on the kind of AI you have, it's ‘A’ or ‘B’. You're looking for enhancers like okay, I'm looking for ‘A’ go out there and see if ‘A’ is a common thing. And if it's not, then you gotta go for ‘B’ but you need to direct it. So it's not this vacuum that you just it reads all your data and it comes back with the aha moment.
Steve Goldhaber: I had one of my clients come to me and super excited. I need AI got to infuse more AI into what we do. I said, “Alright, I hear that.” What problem are you trying to solve using AI? And they couldn't answer the problem. And I said, you don't need AI, you have to ground it into a problem that you're trying to solve or a goal that you want somebody to complete, or, “Hey, this is broken, can AI fix this?” I still think we're into year 10, of getting excited about.
Manny Rivera: And that's the same thing with any MarTech stack that anybody wants to conceive of is like, why do you want to integrate all this into one platform? Because right now, everybody's, a lot of most people are using standalone things. So why integrated all at all? Insight, well, if you're trying to get to the next level, and speed, then it's obvious that you need to integrate into one singular platform that can actually aggregate the information. But if that's not your goal, and if that's not what you're trying to improve, then you're going to be left behind, because that's where everybody is at right now is moving that direction.
Steve Goldhaber: All right, we're closing. Here's my book, I'm closing the book on the first story, we're going to open up.
Manny Rivera: That's your editing.
Steve Goldhaber: That's my editing right there. It's the book closing. All right, so Story number two, a topic near and dear to every B2B marketers heart is customer acquisition certainly parallels both on the B2C side, but tell us about your stories as it relates to customer acquisition?
Manny Rivera: Well, customer acquisition is probably the holy grail of marketing, you got to fill that top of that funnel in order to see if any of them actually transact into what you're trying to ask them. And there's a lot more tools, and there's a lot more insight that can help in acquisition targeting. But then again, it's becoming more and more complex, because of the channels of communications, that clouds that before, 20 years ago, we had just a few channels of communication, and you just picked and you win, and whatever perform, perform. But now you have to do what? Well, you have to mix it up, you have to pulse it, and you got to mix it. And that is becoming more of a science, and it's going to vary by your personas, it’s going to vary by the type of product you're trying to or services you're trying to communicate. And so it becomes more complicated with the new channels, for instance with digital channels, obviously there's and with social channels, it complicates things. And then when you're out there on your digital channels, and when you do an interrupt, when you do a retargeting, when you do just without being so creepy it, because there's a there's a point in time where people start saying is like I'm starting to, I'm sure this has happened to folks is like, hey, wait a minute, I look for Nike sneakers and all of a sudden I get Nike ads, or I get shoe ads everywhere I browse on the internet. Well, you get to the point, it's like you have to make be careful with that, because that's the creepiness of acquisition when you don't have a very focused target.
Steve Goldhaber: I think to at acquisition level, what's always interesting to me is like the marketers can initiate something. There's always the classic disconnect between marketing and sales, some companies are great at it. Others are literally like marketing is on the 42nd floor, I'm on the 30th floor like we don't interact. And even though there's an elevator that goes up and down, we choose not to use it. Tell me about your experiences in the when it's married up well together? Where we're culturally, marketers and salespeople are working together? A marketer can have a sales idea and vice versa. Where have you seen that best happen when culturally it's just more seamless?
Manny Rivera: So here's the interesting part is in, from my experience, I've been in organizations where marketing has led the business performance, and they oversaw head P&L, and the salespeople reported into marketing. And I've also been in organizations that marketing was a sales support function, where sales lead the organization and marketing was just supporting the, ask of sales. The ones that I find that tend to have the ease of impact on the business is when marketing owns the P&L and marketing is leading the business performance and setting the strategy setting its targets, making sure that elements are there and the salespeople are very, very focused on what needs to be delivered based on the marketing plan, which is basically a very strategic plan around P&L acquisition and sales. So like I stated before at the beginning is, like I've been in various categories. And the category that I find that actually has the best blend between sales and in marketing has been in the consumer packaged goods industry where they die on the store of sales and marketing, on low margins, high volume, a lot mass marketing and that tends to bring the team together, when every little bit adds to the overall large performance of the business.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it's amazing. I do think structure drives so much that, when I was leading marketing teams and companies, the same that I always used to have was, as a marketer, do you want to write the prescription? Or, do you want to fulfill the subscription? So it was a medical analogy between, are you the doctor? Are you the pharmacy? And in a lot of marketing organizations, they are the pharmacists. They are supporting, okay, we had a head of sales, have a meeting, this is what the head of sales wants, “Great, let's fulfill that”. And it's not to say that that's bad. But to me, it's always been more enjoyable as a marketer to do the diagnostic part of the job. And you can surface some things that someone in sales maybe didn't pick up on. It's always interesting culturally, how that happens. And we all know marketers who are great at just heads down execution, like, hey, just tell me what the strategy is, and I'll execute and then others, they'll drown in that environment. They'll kind of be as a marketer, they'll be like, you can't just tell me what to do. I need to deconstruct your business goals, the marketplace and then come up with something. Have you have you encountered that through your career? Do you is the pharmacy versus Doctor Analogy? Does that hold true for you?
Manny Rivera: No, that does, that's the same thing when you get marketing lead would be the doctor aspect where or be on sales lead is from a marketing standpoint, then your sales lead operation would be your pharmacist and it translates well. What I find is that, our sales folks are really good at identifying opportunities and going one on one. So and that's what they're really skilled with, they can manage a P&L, a marketer can manage a P&L, but a marketer tends to have more of a skill set around communicating to the masses. So if you have a, if your mark, go to market strategy requires going to the masses in order to accumulate, like I said, high volume, low margin type business, then a marketing lead structure tends to be the better approach versus a sales lead. But if your view have the one off, not say one offs, but if you have, your one sale order coming in, and they're big orders and big hits, big wins, and it's a one on one sale, then obviously a sales lead culture is a better structure to be in.
Steve Goldhaber: All right, cool. Anything else on customer acquisition before we jump into meet the marketer? And by the way, you're a special guest here because we can meet “Manny, The Marketer”. I mean, it's three times in a row, the alliteration is fantastic.
Manny Rivera: No, I mean, the acquisition I think is with today's technology, and the insights that are available to us, I think acquisition strategies, not talking about the execution of the strategy, identifying people in the right people said is right now is a good time to be in that space. You just have to know how to use all the right insights and the right tools to get you to that right target group, or that right target person. But I remember when I started it was, you throw it on the wall and see if it sticks. And you got lucky sometimes and sometimes it didn't work out. Nowadays you can be very, very focused.
Steve Goldhaber: All right, awesome. So let's jump into meet “Manny, The Marketer” now, tell us how you first got started in B2B. What was your first entrance?
Manny Rivera: It's interesting. Here's the interesting about B2B, B2C. I have always been in B2B. And the reason I say that, but the companies I have been part of everyone assumes they're B2C. It's you got to I look at this as like, you gotta look at the distribution channel. So when I was an automotive, okay, there's the big three American automotive companies. And out of that they don't sell directly to consumer, people think it's like a B2C brand. The B2C brand branding is one thing, but they sell through a franchise organization. And so that is really B2B. If they're selling their manufactured products to another business, which then retails that product to you and I. So it's interesting. It's like that this definition between B2B and B2C, the marketing skill set and the marketing approach, and the marketing discipline are identical. You just change out who your target is, you change out the size of your target, you change out who they might be and what location they might be, but that's still the same skill set that you would look for if you're hunting and directly selling to an end consumer directly. So I mean, I'll give you another one. I was also in. I worked in the beverage industry, and I worked for the two largest beverage manufacturers in the world and with that being the case, but they didn't sell to you and I. They sold directly through what they call a bottling system, and they would sell their syrup, they would sell their labels, they'll sell their packaging through a bottler, which would assemble it in their manufacturing facility and then resell it to a retailer, which then would resell it to the consumer. That's a B2B operation. But it's the illusion of B2C. So this thing about drawing that line going back again in that line is, it one likes to hide behind saying, “Well, I'm a beauty marker on the B2C is like, I couldn't tell the difference, because the skill sets that are needed in marketer are the same.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. It's amazing how, like, as a consumer, it all seems so simple. There it's Coke, I see it, I buy Coke. But as a marketer, it's way more complex. And the distribution systems are more complex as you describe. And it's always, that's sometimes also where you think you've got a great idea, you just can't sell it to the consumer, you've got to bounce it off all the people who've got a vested stake in it, and that's sometimes the hard part.
Manny Rivera: You do. And what you're trying to do is, if you if you see the commercials, or you see the end ads and things like that, what you're trying to do is what we call push pull, balancing, you're trying to pull it for your customer off the retailer, so that they see that your product is adding value to their distribution channel, being that your product is being sold and turning on shelves very quickly. That's why you do the branding and advertising to give that allure of this is the best, this is the option to choose when you're selecting in that category. But the end of the day, that's the value add you bring to your customer to balance that out. But you stop, you've already sold your product to the manufacturer, who made and who assembled it. And then you're done. So that's the thing about people don't realize it. And you mentioned a big brand. And so out of that is like people tend to forget, it is a consumer perceived brand, but it does not sell to the consumers, you never have.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. What do as a marketer, I'm curious to know, what gets you really excited, like, if you have a full week to do whatever you want as a marketer? What would you sign up for? What just gets you going to say, I don't care if I'm working 60, 70 hours this week, because I'm doing this?
Manny Rivera: Yeah, what I enjoy right now is, after 30 years of doing marketing, I really enjoy focusing on helping those CMOs just navigate and transition into digital marketing, how did they're going to survive the next 10 years? Because those directors are already growing up with digital marketing experience and understanding, and then the end of the day is like, in 10, 15 years, there's not going to be this transition phase. They've already grown up with it. I see you, I'll give you an analogy of look at our kids today. I didn't have cell phones until I was, I handed my third job, but now they don't know how to live without it. So they're already in the ecosystem of that type of communication and that was devices. So the same thing with marketers, those directors today are going to be by the time their CMOs in 10 years are going to be transitioned already into it. So it's this crossover effect that I'm really excited to work on. And that's what I really focus my time and energy on. So I would do this all day long working with CMOs and helping them transition and helping them. So like, how do you do this? Where do you start?
Steve Goldhaber: It's funny, you talked about the, , not having a cell phone until a couple jobs in, I remember, I got a promotion to Vice President at a job. And part of that was the reward of here's your Blackberry, congratulations, you've now attained a level where we will buy this for you. And then you quickly realize after like 10 minutes, you're like, “Oh, now I'm just attached to the organization that was like a very big distinction is as a VP, you are connected 24/7”. And at that point, they didn't expect everyone else to kind of be online, like we all are today. So that was a thing.
Manny Rivera: Well, absolutely. And I would say there's a positive to it, and there's also a negative to it.
Steve Goldhaber: Exactly.
Manny Rivera: You're constantly on and you can't turn off but you have access to the information you need instantly.
Steve Goldhaber: Alright, so now here's my next question. We're going to jump in a time machine and you get to meet “Manny, The Marketer” from 20 years ago, and you get to sit down and take them out to lunch. What are you going to tell him? Meaning, what have you learned? What are some convictions that you may be really felt strongly when you got started in marketing, and then you kind of look back today and said, “Oh, maybe it wasn't on the spot as much as I thought it was”?
Manny Rivera: Yeah, I would go back in time and I would definitely say that [voice break 00:29:39 – 00:30:34] get to understand how a CFO thinks, how your CLO operates and learn to speak their language, learn to understand how to read their objectives, so that you can get your ideas into market easier.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, I can relate to that. I think that I'm guilty of that, as a marketer, looking back on my career, as I was foolish enough to think that like, as long as it's a great idea, it will just happen, people will get excited, and maybe other marketers get excited. But to your point, the rest of the organization that needs to adopt it and rally around it, you got to sell it to them. I mean, that's something as marketers that we kind of forget is you got to put your sales hat on to make sure that people get the marketing. And that means, starting with the problem, and your marketing program has to solve it. That's what I would do jumping in my time machine, I would go back and teach myself that diplomacy is not just for politicians, but for everyday marketers.
Manny Rivera: Lessons learned, those are the things you can kind of look back use and go, “Oh boy, I wish I had learned that skill set better”.
Steve Goldhaber: What's your favorite, we'll talk MarTech stuff right now, what do you find yourself using lately that you're like, I love this little tool, saves me time, or it gives me new insights?
Manny Rivera: Well, I think I've been playing around a lot with AI to see how you want tweaks that in order to generate the insight you're looking for it and I do like it, it is complex dip. A lot of people have done a good job simplifying it. But you do need to know what you're looking for. So you still got to go back to that hypothesis is like, what am I hypothesizing that I need to kind of prove out? And that's interesting, because to me, those tools weren't around when you got together and you brainstorm and people brought in their own perspectives and their own point of view. But now that you have data is like, “Can you prove out a theory? Can you prove out an idea? Can you find a hole that gives you an opportunity?” That's I think the market right now today, and the tools that are available a lot more science is a lot more math is really being infused into our discipline, which I think balances things out nicely. So I would say that, that's an area that's really interesting now.
Steve Goldhaber: Alright, we're gonna do two more questions. The first one is, what's your biggest pet peeve when you see it happen? You're just you cringe, you're like, “Oh my God, don't do that as a marketer, it is not the right thing, you'll get burned”. What do you think?
Manny Rivera: I would say, when people are working towards short sightedness, and I mean by is that they have an economic goal and it needs to be very, very short focused. So they want to turn something around in two months or three months. And it's like, that's very short minded because you make decisions based on that. And then when you reach that goal, or didn't make that goal, what next? So that's why I kind of cringe is like, you're not seeing the big picture here. This may pan out of the year. It's almost like, you're planning your field. And it's not going to grow crops for another year, and you need to give it time. And I think sometimes is when organizations live by 12 months cycle, and they only live an idea and let it live for a while. If it didn't make it in 12 months, then we got to kill it. It's like no, you don't have to kill it. You just have to reassess and figure out why it didn't work. That would be my pet peeve is killing great ideas, great opportunities, great businesses or products before they're timed out.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, like that one. Alright, final question. Let's look into the crystal ball. Five years, what do you think's gonna happen that isn't just a continued evolution of what we're doing today? Is there anything that you see on the horizon that is going to really be a catalyst or have marketers think differently?
Manny Rivera: Yes, I would say in the next five years, you're going to see a change in marketing skills, the new marketers, they're going to come into marketing or transition into digital will need to be very comfortable with technology and not just surfing or emails. It's about how to use these consolidated platforms? Understanding what they are and understanding how they operate will make your life a lot easier. I think if I use an analogy I remember this now I'm dating myself here but when Microsoft Office came out in the full package, everything you know, you have your Access database, em Excel, you have PowerPoint you have were when it was all integrated Now fast forward, we had those as individuals, but now they're integrated and you can move in and out of it either with Google, if you're using the Google platform, hopefully I just use the word Google. But you use the any of these online platforms where you have your sheets, and you have your Word documents, they're all integrated. And the nice thing about it is that we become so used to it and we know how to operate in and out of that job. That is where MarTech stacks where people need to be just as comfortable moving in and out of the platforms, and there's a lot of free tutorials, a lot of free YouTube stuff, a lot of free training, get on board now. Because five years from now, you're going to be left behind and it's going to be less jobs, requiring those traditionalist roles and did not get impacted by digital.
Steve Goldhaber: I like that. I mean, the connectivity between such the early part of the industry was so, we just took it for granted. And the Service Zapier which I've used in the past to connect, it's basically saying, there's a there's a messy thing that doesn't integrate well together. So there's a whole company built on just making that easier and good for them for doing it that they found the need, but you kind of look back at that and say, “Well, I really wish that we didn't have to have a company that fixed all that”. All right, cool. Manny, thanks for joining us today. It's been great talking marketing, and you're welcome to come back on the show anytime.
Manny Rivera: Well, I look forward to and Steve, it's great to see you again.