In this episode of Interesting B2B Marketers, host Steve is joined by Amanda Elam, CMO of Bloomreach. Amanda, a dedicated B2B SaaS marketer, brings a wealth of knowledge and passion for technology, data, and creativity to the conversation. She divulges her insights into a successful rebranding campaign she spearheaded for a tech company transitioning from on-premise to cloud offerings, and discusses the challenges of building a community during a pandemic. The interplay between technology and human elements in decision-making and problem-solving also forms a significant part of their dialogue.
Key takeaways from the episode include:
Connect with Amanda and Steve on LinkedIn.
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.
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Steve: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Studio 26 and interesting B2B marketers. Today I am joined by Amanda. Amanda. Great to have you on the. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. All right, cool. So everyone knows we jump into case studies, but we always do the 60 second intro. Tell everyone about your background.
Amanda: Sure. I'm a B2B SaaS marketer, mom of three boys. I love tech, love data, love being creative, and hopefully growing businesses for a very, very long time.
Steve: Nice. All right. You, you set the record for most succinct. That was like 20 some seconds, but I appreciate that. That should be the new challenge. Everyone does it in 20 seconds.
Amanda: It's always the least interesting part, I think. Yeah.
Steve: Or you could, you could have done the generic, just go to my LinkedIn profile. We don't have, you don't have time for this banter, right? Yeah. All right, so number one case study we're gonna talk about rebranding. I, first of all, I love that your background is so heavy in tech. I learned the most from tech marketers purely because I feel like the stacks that they work in are just so much more interesting and innovative. But that being said, the first one is about a rebrand of a tech company and how they were migrating into a cloud offering. So I'm excited to hear about this one. Take it on.
Amanda: So cloud obviously is not new, but several years ago it was a little bit newer. And so there are a lot of companies that are making a transition from what is called on-premise, meaning you install server side to a cloud environment where you actually have a login and you interface through a browser of some type. And so particularly in the financial services space, those types of platforms were more prevalent for security reasons. And cloud software had not really been in a place where it was secure enough to use in financial institutions. And so this organization had waffled a bit on making an investment in cloud. Ultimately, as the rest of the world had moved to cloud, they realized they also needed to begin that journey. But repositioning themselves as a new player into a fairly established space where disruptors always come in and take advantage of an opportunity there. So there were a lot of cloud disruptors already in the space, gaining brand awareness and visibility and taking a lot of customers. This organization needed to completely reposition themselves as an innovator in this space without losing a significant portion of their existing revenue, which was all on-prem. So we had the enviable task of repositioning the company as safe, secure, stable, being around for a long time, but also new and innovative. And so it was about a two and a half year effort, but, the Rebranding campaign helped them grow north of 30% year over year, where their previous track record had been between seven and 10%. And it helped us gain some ground in the North American market in particular, it was a global company, and that campaign lasted about four and a half years before they transitioned off onto another branding campaign. So all in all, I'd say it was moderately successful. But I'm proud of the transition that we went through as a marketing organization to implement that.
Steve: All right, so I'm gonna dive into how you went about this, because repositioning, no two companies will do it the same. You have some that are all about, like, they're gonna embrace market research, focus groups. They're gonna live there for months. Other people are like, we know best. We don't even need to do that. Other times it's the salespeople who have a huge seat at the table and. Most companies are some combination of those things. So what did you go through? What was your process for?
Amanda: There, there definitely was a lot of market research. I love research and testing. I think we have to do that all the time every day. And if we aren't doing that, then we're gonna definitely miss something. So there was quite a bit of research, but it wasn't in the sense that it needs to be perfect. And one of the quotes that I love is, perfection is the enemy of good. And that was certainly what we were. Took to heart. So we would do, we would run campaigns, test campaigns, we'd get market feedback, but that didn't stop us from actually trying to create demand and figure out what worked and what messages resonated. Being that it was in the financial services space, that is a much safer audience. They move a lot slower, our opportunities to get feedback. We did. We definitely had more. We learn a lot from our competitors as well, where they're, where they're positioning and how they're winning and what we can differentiate against what's working for them instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. I definitely steal a lot. They've clearly done some kind of work that I can learn from, so it was, it was definitely a mix. We listened, we jumped on prospect calls and interviewed customers directly. So probably nothing. Super different, but I'd say we moved really fast.
Steve: Okay. So, and I would imagine something like this where we're talking about physical storage on-prem to the cloud, the elephant in the room becomes the psychology of this is a scary thing, right? As much as it's great because there's like CDNs and there are redundancies in the cloud. It's the big fear thing. So how did you come to, how'd you get over the fear of just the old school IT person who was like, loves to see the actual you know, hardware in their office?
Amanda: Yeah, I think a lot of it was about security and reassuring them that we were partners, that we had more certifications than they could possibly attempt to get in, in their own businesses that we offered. Cheaper, more scalable solutions because it wasn't something they had to maintain that we had the upgrade path for them. So that a lot of those are traditional cloud benefits, but I think really doubling down on security safety. We're here to partner with you and it's not gonna cost you more to do it. Where some of the key tenets of that brand reposition and then. There was another element and this is a trend that I would say is even more prevalent now, but there's this leaning towards being more sustainable and making decisions that are good for the environment and for the world. And they're related to clouds in particular. There is a benefit to carbon footprint and those things. And so we started some of that initial messaging with just overall ecological benefits. And I would say now, if I were to do it again, In, in this year. I'd lean into that way more heavily as that's a big, big trend we're seeing.
Steve: Yep. That would make sense. I have a random personal story now for, for my own experience. I won't name the company obviously, but I will say it's a, it's one of the two Fortune 500 companies I worked for, so no one will know which one I literally walked into, like the IT closet. One of the guys in it was showing me some things. And a server was just sitting on top of a table and there were papers all around it and there was like a coffee cup next to it. And I go, I point down to the server, I go, what is that? It had a big, big Google sticker on it. And I was like, this is interesting. Like, what is that? And they go, oh, that's the server for our.com. And I literally was like, no, like. That's a joke. What do you mean? And he's like, yeah, it's not in the cloud yet. So the server's right here. And I'm like, there's a cup of coffee two feet away from it. And literally he looked at me like, okay, we should, we should probably move that. And it's just, it blew me away of the, of the that, I mean, that's the biggest challenge of an on-prem solution is. If it goes out, it's out. Yeah, so anyway, coffee can bring random server side down. Yeah. I literally, and then once that happened, that became my I think that was my, my lesson I would share with new people on the team about, like, sometimes it's just make you, like, have good judgment. If you see the server in an open space, you should probably say that. That's not so good. Agreed. All right. Anyway, anyway, I digress. All right, let's jump into case study number two. So, About a situation where you just took a new role, you're really excited to help the company grow. And then this little tiny thing that we may have heard of called Covid 19 started and that forced you to pivot how you kind of went about your role. So, tell us more about this one.
Amanda: Yeah, so my entire career has been about growth. My, if you were to see my resume or profile, it's all about I will help you identify markets and grow, grow, grow. I love pipelines and so I was hired by this company to come in and help them establish a presence in North America and grow fast. And I went in, I put my entire plan together on the budget that we would need, what it would deliver, when we could expect to see revenue come. They were ready to fund the programs. I landed on March 13th in the US and got a call from the CEO who was based in Europe, and he said, Yeah, we're shutting everything. We're shutting everything down. There's no money. We cannot invest in marketing. We don't know what's gonna happen with Covid. Most of our customers or retailers or fashion companies, and they're all there, they're all very much in the midst of, what are we gonna do? And so I think the rest of the experience we all had, where we're locked in our homes and we're, we're trying to understand what the real impact of this is gonna be on the world. And as a marketer, your job is, you have, you have an option. You can leverage the fear and try to use it to drive business for your organization. Or you can say, how do we protect our customers? How do we do something good? How do we message and provide? Community for people to come and feel like they can exchange and hear ideas. And thankfully our leadership team was totally on board with providing value, but that's not an area that I'm comfortable with. I don't have a resume as a community builder. I have a resume of driving demand. So I went through some very personal transformation as well. How do we create content? Purely for the purpose of value. How do we bring people together and provide a forum for retailers to get on the phone and say, what are you doing in your business with 40% of your team on furlough? How are you managing all these kids at home and, and trying to accomplish and get work done? And just creating forums for people that we had some level of influence with to connect with each other. How do you measure that? How do you know that you're doing anything that's even remotely helpful? And at the time I would say we had no idea. We just said what we felt. Human, what feels like the right thing to do. And when I look back on that, we did end up publishing a program called The New Normal Benchmark, which essentially said, what, what does it look like for you to be entirely digital as an organization and how far do you have to go to get there? We gave the product away for free. We delayed invoices for customers. Like we genuinely as a business said, how can we be human? And we still have customers that talk. What that was like to be part of our community during that time, as compared to other vendors. And I'm proud of that, just as we didn't, we didn't dramatically grow the business, but I'm proud of what I can say after the fact that I feel like we did a good thing.
Steve: Yeah. That's so interesting. I really like the part where you just talked about like, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know how to help. And I think just having that transparency and just with your customers and just say, We, we just want to hear from you. How are you doing? And especially during that time I remember like social media just kind of had a good role again. Like everyone had been fed up with it. And then it was like, oh wait, we can use this again. We can all share what we're going through. So I, I, I think that's a good marketing lesson. Sometimes it's just saying, we don't know. We don't have an answer. Maybe here's a theory, but like, what's on your minds?
And I think just that ability to gather like-minded people goes a long way.
Amanda: Yeah, it made, it definitely made a difference that we provided a forum for people who were going through similar experiences, similar job transitions, and that was another thing, like people losing their jobs, still making a place where they could connect with brands who might be looking for people, contract help, resources so that ultimately, At the end of the day, the job doesn't really matter. The company doesn't really matter. I probably shouldn't say that on a podcast, but I'm not gonna be at the company I'm at forever. I want people to have a good impression of me as a human being. And so how can we infuse that into the decisions that we make as a business?
Steve: All right, so you're, you've, you've told us that you were a hardcore demand and growth person, but then you pivoted the community. So the question now becomes, is your demand. More human. Have you changed it or was it I just pivoted back into a demand mindset cuz I know what works.
Amanda: I definitely see the benefit of the connectedness behind the human element and then also the technology element. How does technology help us solve a problem? But we're not, we don't. The vendors I think vendors, particularly marketers in tech, have done themselves a disservice by making claims that aren't because they sound good and it's not necessarily possible in the technology itself to that, that can deliver it. So people have moved more and more to really needing that validation from human beings in their network. I would say even more than what we've seen in the past, where any claim that you make, It's just not believable because we've just lied too many times.
Steve: I feel like a billion dollar idea can be born out of that insight, which is essentially is you could be a, a third party neutral you know, like a neutral third party and just say, we're a certification company and if you as a company have a claim, we will validate it and if our stamp of approval is, is in there. Then your salespeople can leave with that. And that would be, that would be very interesting. It's kinda like, let's start the cons, let the consumer reports version of, of bad vendors saying things that aren't true.
Amanda: Yeah, it is. It is. There are a lot of them. And as tech marketers, we experience it all the time.
Steve: Yeah. Yep. All right. That always happens though. Unfortunately, that's why anytime you go buy a new car, you're just kind of like, I don't want to talk to anyone. I just want access to the information. Okay. We're gonna jump into case data number three. And this is all about you know, you've got a lot of tech experience, so there's acquisitions popping up left and right. So this case study focuses on things like post-acquisition. How do you do like a rejuggle of different offerings and how do you, how do you figure. How to take things that may not make sense and try to funnel them into a yes these ladder up into one vision.
Amanda: Yeah, so this, this example is definitely more, more recent. So if you have looked at my LinkedIn for a full bio, you probably know more. But two very, very different companies are coming together. Totally different personas, different technology categories, different buying profiles, different market segments. So on paper it probably is. Like a bad idea or looked like a bad idea, but the CEO who led the acquisition had this big vision for what it would, what these two disparate technology companies would look like coming together and, hi. His vision was all about how the digital ecosystem has completely changed and we have expectations. Primarily based on our experience on Netflix where it's fantastic content recommendations or Amazon, where it remembers the products that you purchased and helps your member when to repurchase. And those experiences don't filter out to the rest of your digital experiences a lot. And a lot of us wanna support smaller, up and coming brands, but they don't have great experiences because they don't have the digital teams that Netflix and, and Amazon have. So how can we take it? Consumer expectation of what a digital experience looks like and actually deliver that across marketing channels, your website, all of those things. And it's today, most e-commerce marketers or e-commerce professionals cobble that together with a custom tech stack. They buy 20ish tools. They try to tie 'em together. They try to connect all the data. And make that happen. And that, that is where our problem came from, is that we're not competing with an established technology category. We're actually competing with 20 point solution technology categories and different buying personas depending on which one you're going with. And the reality is it's hard. This has been very, very hard because we're we. Trying to create a new category. We're trying to solve an existing problem. One that, funnily enough, when we do our market surveys is, is a top problem for brands. They're saying we wanna deliver better personalization, but. Because most marketers and most e-commerce professionals are very data driven. They believe they've identified the technology solution, and as I mentioned earlier, they're tired of being lied to by other technology companies and don't believe it's something that can be solved by, by a singular entity. So our marketing organization has just been working overtime trying. Create content that's relevant to multiple personas in multiple categories across multiple competitors. And we've, we've really started, I'd say, in the last six months, identifying what that red thread is. I let the, the famous or infamous, depending on how you feel about it, red thread that connects what is important to the ethos of this company and our customers. This is gonna sound super simple, but it really, really, really is about that end consumer building great relationships with people. And so I think that is where my experience of community and being human in digital experiences is, is coming to, to fruition in this latest challenge.
Steve: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I live content all the time, so I love it. I love that we're talking here about using content as a means to build trust. Mm-hmm. What do, when you look at the different types of content that you thought you needed to have this, like tell us like a little bit of like the, whether it's the short versus long, or is the content coming from the brand, or is it from an individual at the brand? Does that help drive more trust? Tell us about,
Amanda: It absolutely is not dependent on length, but absolutely dependent on quality and what we see, whether it's short or long, if it's super impactful. So we, if we're telling a specific use case, we owe a customer who is a furniture store. They have this super unique use case about how they drive in-store traffic. It is very detailed. Overview of how they use technology in order to do that. And it gets quite a bit of interest and people stay on the page and they wanna learn more versus, Hey, we connect online and offline channels for you to learn how, and that, that there's just zero impact in that. So it's about the depth of the differentiators and the education and really helping somebody become better at their job.
Steve: Yeah. Are you big into the verticalization of the content meeting? Like, Hey, if, if here are the 10 different verticals that by most of our offerings, let's slice that content up and, and tweak it, or is it more of a no, we try to go big with different types of content.
Amanda: We try to tackle both. So we have our big brand campaigns, which are much, much broader. And then we have very specific in, internally our term is hill campaigns, but really they're verticalized versions of the campaign. So be it fashion or beauty or travel. But it is a smaller version of the campaign.
Steve: Yep. Okay. That makes sense. Anything else in this third case study that you wanted to. You're still in the middle of it. Right? So you, there's not an end to it yet.
Amanda: Unfortunately, there's not an end to it. It's continually evolving. But I think yeah, we are doubling down on pro again, providing help and value and helping people become better marketers, e-commerce professionals as a result of working with us.
Steve: Okay. Awesome. All right, we're gonna get into the end of the q and a now. We always start with this question: tell us about your first B2B marketing gig. What was it?
Amanda: My first B2B marketing job was for a nonprofit direct mail solicitation company, and my very interesting role was to do the control test for the direct mail responses with donations and try to figure out the percent of our tests against control. It was all entered very manually into a super ugly CRM system that was not on the cloud. And quite clunky, but I learned a lot about testing.
Steve: You know, we have a lot in common that way. I started out doing a lot of direct response marketing, and I actually, I really loved it because I viewed it as a big game. I mean, it was kind of like mm-hmm. You have, you could play with like, The outside envelope message is the inside messaging, the time of day that you would like to send something. I, it just was fascinating to look at all these different variables. And then also on the back end of the direct responses, the whole responder analysis to say, well, let's learn about what happened from who responded, knowing that we can then apply that to the future prospecting list. I felt like I was grateful to kind of stumble in on that world because it really forced you to be so data driven. And this is, this was before data was a thing. I mean, right. I started doing these jobs probably in like 97, 98. I'm glad I started my career that way cuz I've always been wired as a marketer that way is to think, test and control and, and do the analytics on the back.
Amanda: Yeah, exactly right. This was, this was a 3, 02, 03 for me, and it was very very very much built that muscle of trying to get the entire picture and find those little bits of optimization and then test your assumption and hundreds and hundreds of different opportunities for you to uncover. Yeah, it was a great learning curve.
Steve: In your testing, what were the one or two things that kind of shocked you along the way?
Amanda: I, I initially was shocked at how much data we were able to get on people. I could not believe the amount of information we could buy in order to send these campaigns. And then when I started to learn the difference between stamps and stickers and holiday campaigns versus we put the type of child that you put, the type of child imagery that you put on a cover. The heartstring content, like when you receive it as a consumer, you're, you genuinely are like, oh, that's soap. But when you understand the amount of testing that goes behind selecting that message, it's a little bit frightening.
Steve: Yeah. You know, I, here's my, here's my takeaway from a lot of the testing I've done today and years ago. Pain and pleasure. Right. Those are the two things mm-hmm. That marketers kind of play, play with. I started out being very optimistic and hopeful in saying, oh my messages are gonna be positive. And when, when you tested a positive versus a negative message, negative. Negatives worked better. And that drives me nuts to this day because and it is not to say that like, okay, all of our messaging has to be negative, but at least for things that need immediate action, you know, a response to negative messages just works better, unfortunately. And, and I've always, I'll re I'll revisit that test with work. But that's the one, that's the one thing I've always kind of like humanity. You've let me down. Why are you responding better to the negative stuff?
Amanda: Why is fear still such a motivator?
Steve: Yeah, I don't know. I think it's also. That also reminds me of decision making in general. Like, I mean, ultimately B2B marketers are always trying to sell something. And years ago I was just always naive and thinking, oh, it's about people buying, making a good decision. And I've just learned that so much of the buying process is about risk avoidance. And I need to make a decision. Makes, you know, it insulates my decision making skills so that if something were to go wrong, I have an out as opposed to like, this is the better solution. And I've heard, I've heard this in, in focus groups for a lot of tech companies where customers have just said, you know what? This partner I think is the better platform, but they're newer. I don't trust them as much and I don't want to expose myself. So I'm going with the old stodgy company. Yeah. Because it's a safe decision that's always fascinated me about buying.
Amanda: Yeah. The old nobody will fire me for going with IBM.
Steve: Yep. Ironically, maybe IBM did get fired eventually, but what do you, what do you enjoy most about marketing?
Amanda: I mean, I love all of it. Sometimes I am often told that my identity is too tied into my job, but I just think that their marketing is about problem solving. And so when you think about how I identify the people that have a problem that I'm solving this issue for, and communicate in a way that's compelling and winning and being competitive and unlocking greatness. Not to be true, too dramatic, but that there's just something really, really rewarding about it. But it's also super exhausting. So maybe a little glutton for punishment.
Steve: That makes sense. I wish I had like balloons being released from, from the podcast duty here because you just talked about marketing, marketing and being problem solving and that's the name of the book that I wrote years ago is called What's Your Problem? So you know you get a copy of my book sent to you in the mail? Yes, because I believe in that so much. I used to I used to run digital marketing for some companies and. I was the guy that was like, deploy Steve. He's the digital guy. He can, he can help. And all these people came with these digital requests that were all very much like, I don't know why I'm requesting these things, but I'm told to request them so I have to talk to you. I needed, and I'm, I met a ton of great people doing this, but like, it was also challenging. So my, the question I would always ask them is, what's the business problem you're trying to solve with digital? And they couldn't articulate it and it, it. It helped me manage the work for me and my team because it's such a powerful question is what do you, mm-hmm. What are we trying to solve here? What's your problem? Don't just come here with, I want a shiny app, or I want a cool infographic. See, I'm a huge believer in solving problems. Okay, so we've talked about what you really enjoyed. What's, what's the stuff besides the vendors? Are foolishly lying to everyone. What are some of the things that you're like, ah, we gotta do better? I wish the industry could, could evolve in this way.
Amanda: Yeah, I would really, really wish marketers would challenge themselves outside of marketing. Moreover, I think we get really, really stuck in marketing metrics and marketing acronyms, and we don't think about the impact on the business. We're not elevating ourselves to become. Partners in the business, we're kind of, a lot of people are kind of okay to be relegated to, I'm in marketing. I think we're a little bit lazy as an industry. I think it's easy to, there are just some tried and true tactics that are super easy to execute. And so we're not, we're not out innovating ourselves. There are certainly pockets of companies who are doing a great job, but in general particularly in B2B SaaS tech, were. Out innovating ourselves. And I think that we also are losing sight because it has become so digital, and I don't mean to keep coming back to this, but we are losing sight of the fact that we're interacting with human beings. And so how do we bring joy to their day even through, through digital interactions? Because ultimately, That is a huge part of marketing is building an emotional tie to the brand that you're representing. So those are some things that are frustrating. I also think my parents still don't know what I do, so that's frustrating.
Steve: The parents never know it's so funny. I remember one of my first jobs, I was in college and I was an advertising sales rep, so I went to Purdue. Purdue had a, had like a, a circulate. It was like a 30,000 Circulation in the college newspaper. And I overhear my mom talking to someone one time and she's like, oh, he writes for the paper. And I'm like, I don't write for the paper. I'm the guy selling ads. Like so yeah, parents always crack me up. I wanna get your thoughts on AI. I mean, it's, yeah, been talked about for too long. I've been kind of playing with it for five to six months now. And I like practical applications. What are your perspective from a, you know, marketer? Are you using AI yet? What do you think the applications are for the long term?
Amanda: Yeah. I think it's super freaking cool and I think ai, I think early generations of ai are absolutely what you can't, you should not buy technology today that doesn't have some component of machine learning in it. That's how scale happens. And we as business professionals need to figure out how to operate at scale. One of the areas that's been really, really difficult to operate at scale is content creation. And so, the language models that are coming out, the generative ai are fantastic. They're absolutely gonna help us scale in a major way. They will not replace our unique brand elements. How do we continue to differentiate and show up in a way that's, if anything, it'll make it more important for us to be unique because it'll be so easy to copy. But very much in the same way where we saw the transition to, to c m s where everybody was like, oh my gosh, how are we gonna be able to create great websites when everything's a template? And that exploded an entirely new industry. And then we saw clouds, we talked about that earlier, this transition from what technology. What they thought technology was gonna be to know this entirely new, much easier to access, much more affordable, democratized version of technology that has catapulted us into a much more digital world. Ai, this, this next generation of AI is absolutely the same thing. I think we need to. Not be afraid of it and get very active and involved in learning about it and bringing ideas to our businesses on how we can use it. And I think particularly women and minorities need to get super involved in the production of AI because we do run the risk of ethical issues with how these tools and systems are being built. And if we can from the beginning, ensure that they're built. With the intent of democratizing and fairness and creating an even playing field for everybody, that this is just gonna be a super exciting journey.
Steve: Yep. Interesting. All right, we're gonna have one final question. This is, this will be my Barbara Walters question. I hope, I hope the tears don't come out. So you've been in marketing for a while. You have to now go back in time and talk to yourself in your first year of marketing and you get to tell. Don't worry about this or make sure to do that. What, what have you learned over the years that you would go back and, and tell yourself?
Amanda: Oh, there are so many things. Maybe I will cry. I was an 18 year old mom who did not who did not graduate from college and fell into an opportunity with a really great owner of an agency. Had no idea what marketing was. I didn't, didn't even know I was in marketing for, for quite a while. And I think what I would tell her is, Focus on relationships and skill building and breadth and don't, don't get super worried about your next step and your next jump in the career and where you're going. Like learning and being hungry and going along for the ride and value relationships.
Steve: All right. Good lesson. I like those. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed getting more about your background and your current challenges. So thank you again for being on the show, and thank you all the listeners for tuning in to another episode of interesting B2B marketers. We'll see you next time. Take care. Bye.