Honest Marketing

Deanna Shimota: Boosting Sales and Marketing with Demand Generation

• Honest Podcasts • Episode 39

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The world of marketing has changed big time in recent years. It's not just about ads anymore; it's about building strong, long-lasting relationships with customers.

A key player in this change is demand generation. It's more than just getting leads; it's about sparking genuine interest in what you offer to boost sales.

If you want to learn how to use this strategy for your own business, you're in for a treat with this episode. I'm joined by Deanna Shimota, the CEO of GrowthMode Marketing, and we're going to dive deep into how B2B professionals are changing the way they do things.

Deanna highlights the difference between getting leads and creating real demand, emphasizing the need for trust and value in marketing. We also discuss the importance of knowing your customer and choosing the right ways to connect with them.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain a competitive edge in today's marketing landscape. Tune in now and equip yourself with the insights to stay ahead of the curve.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • The difference between lead generation and demand generation
  • Building brand trust and awareness
  • The importance of understanding your ideal customer profile

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And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com. 

Deanna Shimota  [00:00:00]:

I think the key to understanding demand gen is to kind of talk about lead generation versus demand generation because I think there's a lot of people and marketers out there that think that those terms are interchangeable and that they all mean like, we're just going to bring leads in the door. 

Travis Albritton [00:00:21]:

Welcome back to the Honest Marketing Podcast, where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Albritton, and today we're talking about all about demand generation. What is demand gen? How is that different than lead gen? How is that different than prospecting and pipelines and sales? We're going to get into all of that. And to do that, my guest is an expert in specifically how do you generate demand for your business through content and marketing channels. Deanna Shimota, the CEO of Growth Mode Marketing, comes on to talk about all those kind of things. And for me, I think, especially if you're in the B to B space. This podcast is going to be really helpful for you, thinking about your philosophy of sales and marketing and specific strategies and tactics that you can use to get more leverage from the things that you're already doing, whether it's newsletters or webinars or podcasts or case studies, any of those strategies or avenues that you're pursuing. I think this podcast is going to help you see the opportunities to leverage those pieces of content even more. Definitely make sure to check out the end of the episode where I give you my number one takeaway from my conversation with Deanna, but let's go ahead and dive in. Well, Deanna, welcome to honest marketing. Happy to have you here and really pick your brain on demand generation and content marketing.

Deanna Shimota  [00:01:18]:

Thank you. It's so good to be here, Travis.

Travis Albritton [00:01:20]:

So just before we kind of dig into the meat of the episode, I would love for you to just introduce yourself, your background, and what you currently do with Growth Mode Marketing just so that people have some context around you.

Deanna Shimota  [00:01:32]:

Yeah. So I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of Growth Mode Marketing, which is a demand generation agency that helps B two B technology companies break through the clutter of a crowded market so they can crush their revenue targets.

Travis Albritton [00:01:45]:

All good things. Everyone wants to crush revenue targets. That's great. So talking about demand gen or demand generation, that's not a term that is normally thrown around in the kind of zeitgeist of B two B marketing. It's much more about getting leads or prospects or filling pipelines. So what is demand gen and how do you help businesses figure out ways to generate more demand for their products and services?

Deanna Shimota  [00:02:11]:

I think the key to understanding demand gen is to kind of talk about lead generation versus demand generation because I think there's a lot of people and marketers out there that think that those terms are interchangeable and that they all mean like, we're just going to bring leads in the door. There are some similarities, but they're actually very different strategies. And I'll start with Lead Generation. So Lead Generation is about marketing programs that are focused on the 5% of companies that are currently in market. You're doing tactics to uncover those companies that are in market you're asking prospects for a meeting and you're trying to pull them into your sales process. A prime example or an easy to understand example would be, let's say you have a research report created that has really robust content. You run digital ads, you put a form in front of it, someone comes, they fill out the form in order to download that report, and then you take that contact information, you hand it to an SDR, they start trying to book an appointment with that individual because they downloaded that content. There is a challenge in doing it that way because B to B prospects just don't buy like they used to. They're much more reluctant to engage with a sales rep. In fact, there's data that's come out of both Forest Chart and Gartner that indicates that up to 80% of that purchase decision process is made before they're willing to engage with a sales rep. And 72% of B, two B prospects would prefer to have zero interaction with a sales rep at all during the sales process. So you can imagine how hard it is to be an SDR these days and to do lead gen programs where you're cold calling. Because the reality is, if you're doing lead generation, many of the activities that are collecting the names do not actually indicate any type of buying intent. And if you're selling something like a software to enterprise level organizations, it's very expensive. You're not likely to convince someone who's not in market to buy right now to buy right now. So on the flip side, demand generation is about focusing on driving value, not just with the 5% of companies that are currently in market, but also with the 95% that are not looking to buy right now. And so your marketing programs are really focused on building brand awareness, credibility and trust to create demand and ultimately capture it in the market. So on the flip side, you've got prospects asking you for a meeting on their timeline and they're inviting you into their buying process when they're actually in market. But you're running marketing programs like, let's take that example of the research report again. Instead of gating that content and capturing those names, you're freely putting that content out there because you want people to consume it, the right people, of course, and continue to engage with your content and follow along and consume it to build that brand awareness and that credibility and trust. So that when they are in market, knowing that they're making up to 80% of that purchase decision before they'll engage with a sales rep, they're actually considering your products and services and you make the short list.

Travis Albritton [00:05:34]:

Yeah, it's just a different way. If I can just kind of repackage my take on all that you just said, it's identifying that b to b people, whether it's business owners, people in marketing making those purchasing decisions, the things they care about and the things they're interested in have shifted, and they're wise to all of our sales tactics and glorious strategies that worked ten years ago. And they're kind of tired of I don't really want to talk to a sales rep because they're not actually going to answer my questions. They're just going to go through all these objections that their sales script says to go through to then magically turn my money into their money. And that's not really serving me and my needs, that's just serving them and their business goals, which is to grow and get more revenue. And so what you're talking about is really shifting that to more of a service first approach. Like we're just going to freely give with no expectation of return or cashing the check right now of oh yeah, we have this really great report, but give us your email first. We're going to hold it hostage and then now you've given us permission to follow up and set up meetings and it's like, okay, we've all been there, we know how these automations work and so really just saying, hey, regardless of whether you're ready to buy right now or not, here's something useful for you. And then not even with the expectation that it turns into something, but just creating that heightened sense of awareness of this is the kind of company that is helping me. So later on the road when I'm ready to make a purchase with the kind of software or service that you offer, your company is the first one that comes to mind because you've been the one that's been there the whole time, serving without any kind of expectation, getting something in return. Is that close to what you're talking about?

Deanna Shimota  [00:07:18]:

Yeah, that is absolutely what it is. It's creating more of a buyer centric approach to your marketing versus a sales centric approach. And it is a shift because if you think of years ago in the software space anyway, salesforce came up with the whole model of how to grow rapidly and everybody took that playbook in the software space and they're like, oh, we need to hire an army of SDRs. We need to put this marketing content out there, that's gated. We're going to find these contacts, we're going to go through Bant, we're going to vet them, we're going to get them to say yes to an appointment, and then we're going to pass them to a sales rep. Well, that's pretty tricky when they're not willing as prospects to respond to things and when they hit ignore on every cold call and they hit delete on the emails and they go to landing pages that still have forms, because there's a surprising amount of marketers that still rely heavily on forms for their content. And if you look at the bounce rates it's kind of shocking to see. I've talked to prospects where they're like, I've had 1500 people come to my landing page and not one filled out the form. So what you're telling me is you had 1500 people who were interested in consuming your content, the very content that you believe will create a positive brand impression and convince them to buy from you. And you put an obstacle in front of it. So not one of them read it. When you stop and you think about it, it's like, okay, it's working against itself because it's just back in the day, yes, we all filled out the forms. It was the price we paid. And now we realize we don't have to because there's plenty of vendors that are giving it away for free. And the type of information that they give away is for whatever stage in the purchase process you are, whether you're at the awareness stage or you're ready to make a decision. So you go to company websites and those that are doing it really well, you can go deep. You can see video product demos, you can see pricing. You can get all that information that you want before you talk to the sales rep versus the old school model, which is, let's have an SDR vet them. Then they finally meet with a sales rep who doesn't show them the demo because now they're doing an intake call to get all the information to customize the demo for them. Next step, they show them a presentation with like, screenshots. They still haven't seen the demo. Third call in, they finally get to see the demo and they're like, okay, tell me about pricing. And they're like, oh, we got to prepare a proposal. Let's schedule another call so I can review pricing with you. So it takes four or five calls just to get the basic information that a buyer wants. So it's no wonder that they're running for the hills and saying, I don't want to fill out your form. I don't want to engage with a sales rep. Because as businesses, we've made the sales process much more complicated than buyers want it to be.

Travis Albritton [00:10:34]:

And just a few points of clarification. When you say SDR, what does that acronym stand for?

Deanna Shimota  [00:10:39]:

Sales development rep. They're also known as BDRs at times business, development rep. They're basically in a technology organization. They're going to be like an appointment setter that will follow up on those leads that come in the door to try to qualify them and convert them into an appointment to pass to sales.

Travis Albritton [00:10:58]:

Got you. So they are the very first kind of like sacrificial lamb of go out there, scrape the Internet, find these people, try and get them set up with the Closer, and then they can put them through this four or five step rigmarole before they get the clarity they need to make a decision about buying something. I've definitely been a part of those. It is a hard job. There's always a tendency to villainize practices or strategies and to think, oh well, that's so like ten years ago or why would anybody do that? But if you have a company that provides a really great product or service, it's your obligation to try and find the clients that you can serve at a high level and show them how you can do that. And so I think that's absolutely still necessary. But we're just talking about changing your approach to how you entered into that conversation and how the buyer feels throughout that process.

Deanna Shimota  [00:11:54]:

Sales reps are absolutely a critical part of the process. And I will tell our clients, like, you want to build your digital footprint out from a marketing standpoint to become your best sales rep. And I've actually had pushback from a sales leader that's like, whoa. So you're telling me your marketing can do a better job than my enterprise level salesperson, and it's replacing them, and it's like, no, that is absolutely not what I'm saying. It's how do you make your marketing programs into what prospects are looking for from that information and researching and being able to go as deep as they want to go before they're ready to engage with a sales rep. So it's helping get them to that what is now up to 80% of that purchase decision, which is pretty critical, so that the salesperson can step in and do their job when that person is finally willing to talk to the sales rep.

Travis Albritton [00:12:55]:

So when we talk about content, we're talking about information that's packaged in a way that serves your ideal clients before they become a client and then sometimes afterwards. Within that, you talked about the strategy of putting things behind a form because email marketing is still very powerful, it's still very effective if you have a direct connection with someone and can initiate communication with them, that's really valuable. So how do you think about content that should be freely available outside of any kind of restrictions or forms or intakes? And when does it make sense to use content as a lead magnet, as a hook in order to engage in a more long term conversation? How do you think about those two different kinds of content?

Deanna Shimota  [00:13:37]:

So I kind of look at content as share everything and I didn't used to think that way. I used to be like, of course we're going to put a form on it, because if they want this content, they must be someone we want to talk to. Right? And the reality is, nine out of ten times, unless it's something that really demonstrates buying intent, they're not someone that's ready to have a conversation from a sales perspective. And you may call them and they may have a conversation and then they disappear. Right. Because the reality was they weren't chomping at the bit to make that purchase. Right now, I think when you're thinking about forms and where to use them, I just recommend use them sparingly. And if you're thinking, well, this is a really rich, good piece of content, ask yourself? Are you willing to have most people bounce from it, or is there more value in putting it out there freely? And at the end of the day, from my perspective, forms, what you use them for is to sign up for something like a newsletter, a webinar, and to contact me. Like if I fill out the form, I'm serious, I want you to contact me. Or it's some kind of event or subscription model where it makes sense for the person to give their email to you and their contact information. But if it's not a contact form, if it is, I'm subscribing to your newsletter, I'm attending your webinar. Just be mindful of how you use that information moving forward. It's absolutely okay to put them in email campaigns, but don't stick sales on them right away or your SDR team because all you're going to do is kind of create that bad impression in their mind because they don't think it's a fair trade, right? They're like, Wait a minute, I signed up for your newsletter. I didn't say I was interested in talking to sales. So you need to back off.

Travis Albritton [00:15:41]:

So we talked about demand gen. How that's different than lead gen? We've talked about content. I want to focus right now on the 80%. You've talked a couple of times, like when a buyer comes in, they're 80% of the way towards a buying decision. And I imagine content plays a big role in that. But also it's key common questions that any prospect has of your business that ideally should be very easy to find the answers to. So what are the core questions that specifically B to B buyers are asking themselves, thinking about looking for answers to before they engage with a sales rep or whoever on your team is doing the selling. So that way anyone listening to this can go and quickly do an audit of their content and their website and make sure, oh, we have all these things in place so people can actually learn these things. So for me personally, it's like I recognize a lot of enterprise level softwares and solutions. Pricing varies. What's the range? Do you have options? Is it like tiered into different groupings? Just give me an idea. I know you can't tell me the exact number, but if I have to sign up for a sales call to get in the ballpark of a proposal, then for me that's a turn off. For me, it's like you have base pricing. Just let me know what it is so I can know what I'm getting into. So one, I'm curious if that's a common thing that people are looking for or if that's just me in my own head. And then what are the other common questions that we should be addressing with our content and with our websites?

Deanna Shimota  [00:17:10]:

The pricing. Absolutely. And I have worked at enterprise level software organizations. I know how complex the pricing can be. And I know that it seems really impossible to put any pricing out there because you're like, well, there's so many factors and there's this add on and this thing. I think there's ways to build out some basic, though, like starting at or if you're a company with this many employees. For example, if you're selling HR technology, the price range is typically between A to D, right? What you should put on your website really depends on what your buyers are looking for. And I always say you should be defining your ideal customer profile. And as you're doing that, you should be going and talking to individuals that fit within a company. That would be your ideal customer profile. And for those who don't know what an ideal customer profile is, it's really identifying and defining the key characteristics of the best fit type of companies for your solution. So it's narrowing it down to say, okay, we could conceivably sell to everybody in our total addressable market, but this, if they have these characteristics, we're more likely to sell to them. They're more likely to be satisfied, they're more likely to be profitable. We want to attract more of this type of company. And so if you go and you have conversations with the key decision makers and influencers within those type of organizations, you should be asking them, what are the types of information that you need before you're ready to engage with a sales rep for this type of solution? And they'll give you the answers and then you can map it out. But typically what I would say is people are very interested in understanding all about your product and how it solves the pain points for them. They're not necessarily as interested in the features and functionality at a really deep level. Some people are because not everybody consumes information the same way, and some people are super analytical. But you need to think about the content that you put on your site as what questions are we getting asked in the sales process and how do we put as much information to answer all of those questions we commonly hear in there. So absolutely they want to see if it's a technology demos. They don't want to wait and go through the sales process to be able to see it. They want to see that demo before they decide to talk to your sales rep. So you really need to think about how do we create even if it's mini demos in a video series on our website, they really want to know pricing. They really want to know if they are the right fit for your product. So it's okay to have an ideal customer profile page that says we're a good fit for you if XYZ, we're not a good fit for you if it's ABC, because it saves some of the sales challenges of spending a lot of time talking to people that are not qualified if they can self disqualify, right? So it's not a bad thing to have that specific information on there. It actually helps you attract more of the right fit clients and I think just overall making it easy for them to understand your solutions and what pain points it solves for them and what they can expect. The end result of working with you.

Travis Albritton [00:20:55]:

Is and I imagine that it's easy to super overthink some of this stuff, like a product demo could just be you recording a loom video walking through a dashboard. It could be when you're setting up this kind of campaign, this is how you would do it with our internal example company or website. Right? I love the point that you brought up about when you're talking about your ideal customer profile and kind of who you target. Also listing who you're not a good fit for, which can seem like, why would we ever want to turn anyone away that's even thinking about our software? But what I've noticed and the companies that do that is it actually creates a stronger magnetic pull for your ideal clients because they recognize you don't just work with anyone that walks and breathes and chews gum and that they can clearly identify. Like, okay, I'm not that profile. So not only do I feel like I could be a good fit, but I'm also definitely not a good fit. So it's like extra ammunition for them to feel confident. This is the company that's going to work well with us and our needs.

Deanna Shimota  [00:21:59]:

Right? And quite frankly, if you think about how people purchase, if you go to a website and you're looking at their ideal customer page and you're like, check, in your mind, you've just built up like, wow, I fit all the boxes that they say are ideal. This is probably a solution they should seriously look at because I wasn't sure about this one over here, whether we were too small for this, and this one's telling me we're right in their sweet spot. So they probably cater to the kinds of challenges and needs that I have in my organization.

Travis Albritton [00:22:35]:

Now, going to content, bouncing back to content and talking about we've talked about the importance of making it freely available so people can consume it. Where are the channels that are working right now for B two B marketing specifically? So I'm curious, what mediums platforms and strategies are you seeing that are working well for B two B businesses that have this demand gen mentality?

Deanna Shimota  [00:22:58]:

It depends, right? I'm going to say that for everything. Because at the end of the day, you build out that ideal customer profile and you're having those conversations, and some organizations, depending on what you're selling and who you're selling to, you may look at it and say, you know what? A lot of the people that we sell to are on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is a great channel to build marketing programs around. There's probably other organizations that what they're selling and who they sell to might be to nurses. Well, nurses probably aren't hanging out on LinkedIn, right? So that's not a good channel. But at the end of the day, I think it's important to have an omnichannel approach and to really talk to individuals within that ideal customer profile to understand where are you going to find information, how are you consuming that information, what type of content attracts you? Like asking all of those questions. At the end of the day, I look at the ideal customer profile. If you do it well and you ask the right questions and you talk to the right people as really the foundation that sets the stage to hyper focus everything else you do, from the content creation and the topics to the distribution and the channels that you use. So it's never going to be about one channel because not everybody hangs out in one place. And Gartner Research has said it now takes an average of 66 touches to get someone to write. It's getting ridiculous.

Travis Albritton [00:24:32]:

66.

Deanna Shimota  [00:24:33]:

And it's not, hey, crazy to think about. It's such a random number and such a big number. And it doesn't mean like, great, I'll send them 66 emails in two months and six days, they're going to be ready to buy. It doesn't work that way. They're not going to look at all 66 emails. In reality, it's probably like 300 emails, and maybe they looked at 66 of them. Right. Just understanding, the more places that we can show up where the ideal customer profile is showing up, the better, because if it starts to feel like, man, that company is everywhere. You're not technically everywhere. It's not cost effective to be everywhere, but you're trying to show up everywhere, where they're hanging out, where they're going to consume information. And that's where building out your digital footprint to become your best sales rep comes into play. Because you're really looking at it from the perspective of, oh, they're going to technology review sites. How do we make sure that we're on those sites and that we have people giving positive reviews for us? Oh, they're going to read blogs by industry influencers. How do we get tied into that? So those influencers write about us or feature our products and services, oh, they're on LinkedIn, they're listening to podcasts, they're going to webinars all of those things. How do you build all that out? Because you know that's where they're hanging out and that's where they're likely to see you.

Travis Albritton [00:26:05]:

Yeah, it really is. There is no I wish there was a silver bullet or a magic answer. It was like, just do webinars LinkedIn, that'd be great.

Deanna Shimota  [00:26:13]:

Marketing is not easy.

Travis Albritton [00:26:17]:

Tell that to people that aren't in marketing. They'll say, oh, what are you talking about? All you do is make Instagram posts.

Deanna Shimota  [00:26:24]:

So true.

Travis Albritton [00:26:26]:

So tell me a little bit about this is a two pronged dancer. Tell me a little bit about growth mode and the work that you do with businesses that come on and are looking to get help specifically with the strategies we're talking about. And then I'd also love to hear what kinds of demand gen or content marketing strategies that you are utilizing in order to get the word out about what you do. Because I've often found that with experts and marketers and people that are in the space, sometimes introspectively, you can identify, we lean into this and it's worked really well. So maybe this could be something that others would benefit from too. So I would just love to hear your thoughts on both of those things.

Deanna Shimota  [00:27:07]:

So when we're working with clients who are looking to build out their demand generation engine, there's three pillars that we focus on. The first is strategy, the second is content and the third is distribution. So going to the strategy, it's let's help you identify your ideal customer profile. What are the characteristics of those best fit companies? It's really about narrowing down your audience so that you can gain better traction for higher growth. Because unless you're a behemoth well known in the market, it's hard to break through the clutter. You don't have the budgets that the big companies have, you don't have the brand awareness that already exists for them and prospects are getting marketed to left and right. So it's hard to stand out there. After you create the ideal customer profile, we help them create a unique point of view framework and that's really like your story to challenge thinking in the market. Because what we found, especially working with technology companies is they don't always have true and meaningful product differentiators that matter in the eyes of the buyer. And what happens then is they tend to lean on like our differentiators are our exceptional customer service, our easy onboarding process, our technology integrations, things like that, that quite frankly, it's like those are not differentiators, those are table stakes. If I'm going and I'm buying your technology, I expect you to have good customer service and anybody can say they have it right. So it's not a real differentiator. So the unique point of view is about how do you hyper focus on that ideal customer profile and create a story and talk about the pain points that show to that ideal customer profile. Like we truly understand the challenges you have and here's how we support them. So just getting people to think differently about it and to connect better with your organization than when you're trying to be everything to everyone. And then that third piece of the strategy is content marketing and demand generation plan. So those three things I think a lot of organizations want to skimp over the strategy. They're like, yeah, I just want to get to the actual work. And it's like, well, this is the blueprint that helps you hyper focus, that helps you stand out. That. Sets the stage for how you're going to execute on all of this. It's pretty darn critical.

Travis Albritton [00:29:39]:

Yeah, it's like trying to write marketing copy without knowing who you're writing it for. It's like, oh, well, this is a great headline formula. It's like, for who? If you don't know who you're writing to matter.

Deanna Shimota  [00:29:51]:

Right. And sometimes organizations will be like, well, yes, we have an ideal customer profile. It's like, great, can you show me the document? Well, we don't have that documented. It's like, okay, so you don't actually have an ideal customer profile. You've just kind of had a conversation where you're like, hey, we're going to target manufacturing companies. Could you be any more broad and vague about that? Right? That second pillar is content. So it's really looking at the key topics content for all stages of the funnel, and also the formats of the content. So we're big on looking at Cornerstone Content and Cobblestone content. Cornerstone Content is going to be those big meaty pieces. So for example, let's say you did that research report and it's 25 pages. That's great. A lot of people aren't going to read 25 pages. How do you get that information out for the different ways people like to consume content? So the Cobblestones become how do you slice and dice that? And how do you create bite size formats in different type of formats, whether it's video shorts and social media posts and audiograms and infographics and articles and webinars. And there's so many things you can do with that big meanie research report, right, to expand the content without reinventing the wheel and to make sure that you're getting content consistently in front of people so that hopefully they notice 66 things and eventually pay attention to your company. Right. And then the third pillar of that demand generation engine is the distribution. And that's really okay. We've created all this great content. It's super hyper targeted to our ideal customer profile. It's got our unique point of view woven in over and over and over so that we can have repetition in getting that message out. Now, how do we get it out in front of our ideal customer profile companies so it actually gets consumed and it serves its purpose. And there's three legs to that stool. The first is your website, obviously your digital storefront. Like, how do you build content in there that allows people to go deep, so when they come and they're interested in a topic, they land on your site, they read that there's infinite content loops of you may also like that keeps pulling them in. So instead of reading one thing and jumping off and going back to Google and hopping to the next vendor, they're spending more time on your site. There's what we call managed channels, which are the marketing channels where you can control what you are publishing, when you are publishing and how often you are publishing. And really think of managed channels as how do I build an audience that wants to continually consume our content? So that's things like social media, blogs, podcasts, email campaigns, digital advertising, like all those things that you get to decide what you're putting out when that you want people to continually click on your ads because they're interested in consuming what you have behind it and listen to your podcast because they like what you have to say. The third leg of that distribution stool is third party channels. And that's really about how do you tap into other existing relevant audiences where your ideal customer profile is hanging out. So that's where you're looking at, it may be free, it may be pay to play. It's usually a mix of both. So how do you become a guest on podcast series? How do you get involved with other companies webinars? How do you do comarketing with them to tap into their audience? How do you tap into industry influencers and industry events and review sites and all of those different things? So collectively, you're building this omnichannel approach to getting your content out there to attract your ideal customer profile and to show up where your ideal customer profile is hanging out in regards to growthwood, marketing and what we're doing. Sometimes as a marketing agency, you're the Cobbler's children, you're so focused on doing client work that you don't take the time and investment to do your own marketing work. I'm trying to get better at that. So we've got a couple of podcast series that we've invited or created that we're doing as our cornerstone content pieces and then slicing and dicing that into social posts and video clips and transcripts and articles and all that. Fun stuff to be able to build out our own demand generation engine and get in front of our prospects in the places that they're hanging out.

Travis Albritton [00:34:41]:

Absolutely. Yeah. It is totally true that it's like, well, our team has limited resources. Rather than writing a blog for us, we should probably write a blog for the client that's paying us money. So let's do that. Right? I totally get it.

Deanna Shimota  [00:34:53]:

Yeah, it's embarrassing sometimes where they're like, oh, so you've got it all figured out. I'm like for you. Yes, I know what we need to do for ourselves, but we're not prioritizing ourselves, which I think every organization does that right. Like, if you sell an HR technology, sometimes you go in and that organization doesn't even use their own HR technology. Not because they don't believe in it, but because they're so hyper focused on what do we do for our clients that they don't always do right by themselves.

Travis Albritton [00:35:27]:

Yeah, every B, two B person listening is like, yeah, that's me. I do that. I know what I should be doing and I don't have the bandwidth, I don't have the time. The people got to focus on the client work. Totally get it. Well, where should somebody go if they're interested in learning more about how to integrate those three big buckets into their own Demand Gen. If they want to connect with you at Growth Mode, if they want to listen to your podcast, where are the best places for people to go and connect with what you're doing?

Deanna Shimota  [00:35:53]:

I would say if you're interested in learning more about how to create a catalyst for growth through Demand Generation, to definitely check out Growth Mode Marketing's Podcast. It's called the Demand Gen fix It's on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, basically, wherever you would get your podcasts, we're there. You can also follow me, Deanna Shimota, on LinkedIn, where I regularly post insights and best practices on Demand Generation. And of course, if you really want to dig in and have a conversation around Demand Generation, I encourage you to go to our website, which is Growthmodemarketing.com, and fill out that contact form and I will be happy to answer your questions and have a conversation when you're ready.

Travis Albritton [00:36:36]:

When you're course, of course. Well, Deanna, for coming on and sharing your expertise. I know I definitely learned a lot and yeah, thank you for your time.

Deanna Shimota  [00:36:45]:

Thank you. It was great to be a part of your show.

Travis Albritton [00:36:48]:

So I would say that my number one takeaway from my conversation with Deanna is definitely to shift the perspective of your marketing and your sales away from how do we funnel our prospects through this process to spit them? Out at the end where they become clients to more of a service oriented approach where you're asking yourself, are the marketing things that we're doing, the content we're creating, the initiatives that we have, the ads we're running, are they serving our buyers on their time, or is it more on our time? It's a very subtle shift. But I think if you make that shift and if we collectively decide we're going to sell on their time and we're going to provide resources for them when it's good for them and not necessarily for us, then that will create that reciprocity. That will create those longer sales cycles with higher LTVs that we're all looking for. Not necessarily the longer sales cycle, but the higher LTV. And our clients are going to come in and be so grateful for how we've positioned ourselves and how we've served them to that point that it's going to end up paying dividends for years to come. So I know for me, I'm going to be going back and looking at all of my marketing initiatives, making sure that they're positioned to serve my prospects on their time and not on mine, and also making sure that I'm not putting the wrong content behind forms and opt ins. Because I want people to be able to consume it, to be able to learn and educate themselves and answer the questions that they need answered before they hop on a call with me or anyone one on my team. So definitely make sure that you go and check out Deanna's podcast, The Demand Gen Fix. I'll link that in the show notes below and definitely connect with her on LinkedIn as well with all the content that she's got going on over there. Well, I hope you enjoyed another interview here on the Honest Marketing Podcast. Have a great rest of your week and as always, be honest.