This episode features an interview with Suresh Sathyamurthy, CMO of SingleStore. SingleStore helps businesses adapt more quickly, embrace diverse data and accelerate digital innovation by operationalizing all data through one platform. Prior to SingleStore Suresh held various product and marketing leadership roles with industry leaders like Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Dell EMC helping build and grow emerging businesses in areas of Security, Data Platforms, and Cloud Services. On this episode Suresh shares his insights into building high-impact partner ecosystems, ways to demonstrate value to your customers, and secrets to non-intrusive marketing.
This episode features an interview with Suresh Sathyamurthy, CMO of SingleStore. SingleStore helps businesses adapt more quickly, embrace diverse data and accelerate digital innovation by operationalizing all data through one platform. Prior to SingleStore Suresh held various product and marketing leadership roles with industry leaders like Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Dell EMC helping build and grow emerging businesses in areas of Security, Data Platforms, and Cloud Services.
On this episode Suresh shares his insights into building high-impact partner ecosystems, ways to demonstrate value to your customers, and secrets to non-intrusive marketing.
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“You have to focus on fewer, bigger partners at scale, so you can dedicate the time and energy with them. And then over time you’re creating proof points and value that other partners are going to look at and say, I want to be a part of that story. Create the energy and evidence that you need for partners to want to be a part of your ecosystem.” - Suresh Sathyamurthy, CMO, SingleStore
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:18) - Suresh’s role at SingleStore
*(02:49) - Segment: Trust Tree
*(08:05) - Targeting developers to try your product
*(12:05) - Segment: The Playbook
*(14:04) - Providing value to users of your product
*(20:22) - The value of non-intrusive marketing
*(17:35) - Building high impact partner ecosyetems
*(37:32) - Segment: Quick Hits
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Sponsor:
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Links
[00:01:33] Ian: Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios, and today we are joined by a special guest, Suresh how are you?
[00:01:41] Suresh: I'm doing very well and thanks for having me.
[00:01:43] Ian: Yeah, thanks so much for joining. Excited to chat about SingleStore and all the cool stuff that you have going on there, and obviously, get into your background. How did you get started in Demand Gen in the first place?
[00:01:53] Suresh: I started my career right after my MBA.
[00:01:55] Suresh: I got an internship at Microsoft and product management and marketing, and that's what got me started in marketing and Demand Gen to begin with, and I grew through the ranks in Microsoft. I worked in other companies, big companies, and small and have. Been a fan of marketing and its impact on the business, and that's what got me here.
[00:02:14] Ian: And so flash forward to today. Tell us a little bit about your role at SingleStore.
[00:02:18] Suresh: I'm responsible for all marketing activities at SingleStore as the Chief marketing officer. In addition, the CMO responsibilities, I'm also responsible for developer relations. We are an application platform product. We target developers.
[00:02:32] Suresh: A developer relations is an important component of marketing, and I also work with our product teams on what we call plg, product led growth on how do we use the product as an offer to drive an experience to acquire new customers.
[00:02:44] Ian: I love it. We're gonna, we're gonna dive into all that stuff.
[00:02:48] Ian: Let's go to our first segment, The Trust Tree.
[00:03:01] Ian: This is where we can go and feel honest and trusted, and you can share those deepest, darkest marketing secrets.
[00:03:06] Ian: So what does SingleStore do?
[00:03:08] Suresh: SingleStore is a database for modern real time applications. So these days when you build applications, You need information real time. Think about Uber, for example. When you ask for a. You can't keep the app spinning. You need the car to arrive as soon as possible, at least give you the information in real time.
[00:03:27] Suresh: So Uber, for example, runs on SingleStore and anything that you do on share trading or stocks, where happens real time, that runs on SingleStore. And most of the audience in this call is probably marketing executives and marketing leadership. Many of the MarTech dashboards and applications that they use, like HEAP Outreach, integrate.
[00:03:48] Suresh: Factors, ai, phantom analytics, all of them run on SingleStore. So we are a database for applications like those, or what we call real time applications.
[00:03:57] Ian: And who all do you sell to? What's your
[00:03:59] Suresh: customer? So we have two. We have the users and the decision makers. The users are those who build applications or want data quickly that they can use to make decisions on.
[00:04:11] Suresh: So these are usually developers, data a. Data engineers, the decision makers are the chief information officers, and these days there is a new title. The chief data and analytics officers, or chief data officers, they are an integral part of the decision process on the platform that you build for real time analytics and use cases such as those, Yeah.
[00:04:32] Ian: What does that buying committee look like? Are they actually involved in the decision making process?
[00:04:37] Suresh: The journey starts with the person who is building the application. In the process of building an application, they decide what data stack they have to choose and they start exploring those data stacks.
[00:04:50] Suresh: And that's why we do have a product led growth motion. We want to give the customers an experience to try the product to see if it fits their use cases and needs. So that's where the journey starts. , but as soon as the developer and the development team make this decision on the data stack to go for, then it goes to the decision makers about them, the CIOs and CDAs, the chief data and analytics officers, and that is the tribe that gets together to make a decision on what platform to choose for their application and watch data stack to choose for their applic.
[00:05:22] Ian: And how is your marketing and sales org structured to go acquire those
[00:05:25] Suresh: accounts? So the way I've structured my organization is, I call it the engine and gas model. With the evolution of electric cars, we probably need to find an analogy for it, but the engine and gas model is actually very simple. The gas.
[00:05:39] Suresh: Is the set of information workers and people who build content messaging and value proposition that we want to take to market and we want to take to this audience, right? So we have them structured by audience profiles and they, these are the content marketers. These are the product marketers. These are those who build technical value like tme, technical marketing engineers.
[00:06:02] Suresh: The second piece is the engines, which is essentially the teams that take that message. To market. These could be campaigns, programs, webinars, events and trade shows, social media, marketing, all of the engines that take the message to market. So the way I've structured my team is really four buckets, right in the, in the gas side.
[00:06:23] Suresh: It is the product marketing and content marketing organizations in the engine sides is everything that we need to do to Dimension, right, Which is campaigns, programs, social media awareness, et cetera. I do have a marketing ops function as the third leg of the tool, which is going to help with data and analytics to inform those decisions of internet, gas.
[00:06:43] Suresh: And of course I have also have a communications organization on reaching media as well as our influencers in the field, like analysts and. .
[00:06:51] Ian: And then you said that your developer relations team, does that live sort of like outside of marketing, tangential to marketing? How
[00:06:59] Suresh: does that work? The way I've structured it now is I see developer relations and the advocates in our developer relation team as those who build content that adds value to developers.
[00:07:08] Suresh: That helps them through this decision process to try the product so they sit within that gas, um, of the team. The product marketing, content marketing and developer relations are a part of that organization. I do believe that they could be a standalone organization as well, but as it stands today, based on the competencies that I have in the team, they fit very well.
[00:07:27] Suresh: With where they are.
[00:07:28] Ian: Yeah, that makes sense. That's what we see a lot of times, like if we're making a podcast and someone has that sort of either developer relations or a similar type of expertise field, a lot of times they'll sit close to content or community or or whatever that piece is. And then, you know, you mentioned how demand sort of fits in there.
[00:07:45] Ian: What's your demand
[00:07:46] Suresh: strategy? So there are a couple of strategies for demand. The first, of course, I told you where we have to start, right? Which is during the buying cycle. The developer has to evaluate the product to decide what stack to choose on. So that's where the journey starts. So the first part of our dimension is getting people to trial.
[00:08:05] Suresh: The discovery and consideration of the product is targeting developers and getting them to trial. So we have free offers. To get them to try the product. And we have a team, and these are not sales people. They don't carry a quota. A team that is dedicated to making sure that the developer is successful in the project that they're trying to do.
[00:08:25] Suresh: And by getting them to adopt and use the product, we generate what we call pql or product qualified leads just like MQs, but by getting people through the experience of trying the product, right? That is where the journey starts. Now, of course, there are other. Decision makers and influencers in that tribe that has to choose the product beyond just the developer.
[00:08:46] Suresh: So we provide them with information of value that can help them make the right decision and choose the right product for the data stack. And these are more content that are more thought leadership that gets them to explore. New ways of thinking about modern applications and data stacks, as well as to give them enough information for them to consider a newer emerging technology like SingleStore instead of a traditional legacy database product as well.
[00:09:14] Suresh: And we believe that the combination of P QLS and MQL P qls, product qualified leads driving the user adoption and MQs that provide enough value. To the rest of the decision tribe is the right approach to drive demand. As you're
[00:09:29] Ian: driving those P qls, how much outbound stuff are you doing to drive those type of things versus using that energy to drive those
[00:09:38] Suresh: M qls?
[00:09:38] Suresh: I would say it's a combination of both. So developers don't like to get marketed to, and what I mean by that, Is they want to find information in the places in the watering holes that they go to for information. So part of the way we achieve that is with our developer relations team. We want to make sure our developer relations team is building content of value.
[00:10:03] Suresh: To these developers and making them available in the watering holes that the developers go for information in. And once they get that information, they become an inboard lead. They come to the website to explore the product, to try the trial or read more or learn more about the product, and that becomes more of an inboard lead.
[00:10:19] Suresh: But in addition to that, we also want. To have more of this paid media and outreach to acquire These developers who are users of other products today are users of competitive products, users of substitutes, to achieve the same goal and inform them about the value that we bring to the table, and that we take more of a paid approach.
[00:10:42] Suresh: So it's a combination of paid and organic, inbound and outbound that helps us get the right source of leads from PQL perspective.
[00:10:50] Ian: Anything else there on strategy or even some broader thoughts on marketing strategy?
[00:10:54] Suresh: There are a couple of things that I would add in addition to those. The first. There is also an ecosystem that is involved in the decision process.
[00:11:04] Suresh: Data stack decision is not made in vacuum. It is what other technologies do they work with? For example, in the case of ingesting data that is streaming or real time, how the product works with Apache Spark, which is an open source tool for. That becomes an important factor as well. So we, we also focus on what ecosystem of partners that we have to partner with to provide a more holistic value to the customer beyond just the value that the product delivers.
[00:11:33] Suresh: So we do have an, what we call an innovation lab based in Rally North Carolina, where we work closely with ancillary partners and other technologies, and essentially our intent. CU developers and customers will come to us if we provide them with enough differentiated value. And by partnering with these, with these other technology providers, we are able to give a more comprehensive value to the developers building applications.
[00:11:58] Suresh: So that is a strategy that we have invested in as well to add value and to acquire new customers.
[00:12:04] Ian: I love it. All right, let's go to the playbook.
[00:12:15] Ian: This is where we open up the playbook and talk about the tactics that help you win.
[00:12:20] Ian: What three channels or tactics are your uncut budget items?
[00:12:23] Suresh: So my uncut budget items is all focused around discovery. Being a startup, we are relatively less known brand, and our competitors are big ones like Oracle and Amazon and Google. They have a lot of brandness already behind them. So what we have to do is we have to make sure that we.
[00:12:43] Suresh: In the right place and in the right time to be discoverable. So one of the activities that I would never cut out of my budget is Spade Media, specifically targeting competitive keywords, spade search, specifically targeting competitive keywords because that is the journey that is where. Our developers and users start their journey.
[00:13:00] Suresh: They start looking for solutions that is out there and explore solutions that is out there. The second approach we take, the tactic of course, is still paid media and search, but the approach that we take is we also buy keywords for common problems that must have with databases that SingleStore can help address.
[00:13:19] Suresh: So, Going after those problems, we find that developers usually go search for solutions to those problems and use those keywords. By using those keywords and having the right content to help address those problems. We get customers to come to our website, explore our product, and treat it as a potential solution that could potentially be a lead.
[00:13:39] Suresh: For us as well. That is then part of our un unacceptable budget, paid search and paid media. The second part that is, that I believe is unable is the developer relations aspect of it. Databases themselves are application platforms, so it's critical that the user is involved in the decision process of a database, and developers are the primary.
[00:13:59] Suresh: Users of the, the users and decision makers here. So by giving them value, the developer relations team's primary mandate is to provide value to the developers, the users of the product. I think that is uncut. I do think that marketing's role is to help. Add value to the customers and by adding value to the customers, they come to us for solutions for it.
[00:14:22] Suresh: And this approach that I saw Embrace is just giving customers value that they find with the brand. So they come to the brand to address solutions for them. It helps us build our brand with the developers as well.
[00:14:33] Ian: Yeah. I'm curious, you know, you mentioned that developers don't like to be marketed to, It seems like they, they do click on Google ads and stuff like that, so when they're in that moment looking for different things, then that stuff, is there developer relations, kind of acting like a brand play almost to make sure that they know who you are and that you exist and that you're there to help?
[00:14:53] Ian: Is this something that like as a smaller organization or smaller company, Than your competitors relatively. There's some like hidden value there that you could be more personalized or you could invest in that. Whereas, you know, you can't necessarily invest in like huge brand campaigns, for example, but you could invest more in building those relationships one to one almost.
[00:15:14] Suresh: Yeah. There are actually two things that more agile, fast growing, smaller companies can. That I've found that these large companies struggle with, and it is also the advantage of these fast growing scale-ups and startups have over the big more established players. The first thing that we can do, and I'll give you an example on how we are doing this as well.
[00:15:38] Suresh: I talked to you about developers searching for. Problems that they run into when they're building their application. So most of the developers who are choosing a database start with an open source database like mys, and as their application grows, they run into errors and there are usually one to three common errors, like too many connections, the memories full, et cetera.
[00:16:01] Suresh: What we did is we targeted those specific errors and we had our developer relations team build content to help address those. To tell them how SingleStore can be a solution to that problem. And we provided a rich set of information to those developers and we asked them for nothing in. It was helping them solve the problem.
[00:16:24] Suresh: And of course, as a function of going and learning about how to solve the problem, they discovered that SingleStore is a potential solution to the problem. They give it a try. Now, we didn't market all of the capabilities that SingleStore could do. We only marketed. That problem that SingleStore could solve for them.
[00:16:42] Suresh: And once they use us, they learned that it could solve many more problems that they had, and they start using the product and they start displacing the competition. Now, this is something that you will find big companies don't do. They are more often than not focused on talking about. All of the capabilities and functionalities that their product can deliver.
[00:17:00] Suresh: They are not focused on solving a specific problem for a small customer. The second thing which I think small agile companies like ours can do is we can lean into more aggressive marketing. We can get more attention by cutting through the noise, whereas in larger companies, there's a lot of red tape and bureaucracy behind what should be the brand associated with because they just don't have one product.
[00:17:25] Suresh: They have a portfolio of different products, and they have a brand that has its own value in the balance sheet that they're supposed to protect. This gives us a lot more attention and ability. To cut through the noise and SingleStore has done that with its billboards that you see in 1 0 1 here in Silicon Valley.
[00:17:40] Suresh: We take more of an aggressive marketing approach to get attention that people take photos and tweet and talk about as well, which many companies don't do. They are, ads are very planned.
[00:17:51] Ian: Yeah, and it, it seems like that those sort of things like. Understanding what the inside jokes are. Obviously you can do research and data and all that stuff, but it seems like the only way to really do that is to have people that are living it every day.
[00:18:03] Ian: You can't just throw a hat on a marketer and say like, learn everything about developers and hope that they are gonna understand all that stuff. It seems like you have to pull a lot of that out of the communities.
[00:18:14] Suresh: That is true as well. And one of the biggest benefits of having your developer relations team aligned to your marketing organization is they tell you, What the developers value.
[00:18:26] Suresh: They tell you what they like and don't like about your messaging or content, and they give you input that makes your product marketing and other functions in your marketing organization better as well. And you are aligning and all the ships are sailing in the same direction towards adding value to the developer, which is exactly what we want to do.
[00:18:44] Suresh: We believe that if we add value to the developers, they will come to us for solutions and they will give. A try. And we know based on our data, that when customers come and try our product, we more often than not win our focus is to add value to their process of building an application or helping them make the right decision for their data stack.
[00:19:04] Suresh: Which also means there may be use cases or workloads where SingleStore is not the right fit for, and we should be able to tell them. And tell them why they're better off with a better solution. And that honesty and transparency on where we work, what works best for them also builds trust on your brand.
[00:19:22] Suresh: So the next time they have a realtime app need they come to you as a solution.
[00:19:27] Ian: Yeah, it's interesting. We always talk about sort of like the product past the fit, the marketing, like the culture of the company and all that stuff. Because if it's disjointed, the person kind of knows it seems like. Because of the way that you have this PLG motion that you can have these people out there.
[00:19:46] Ian: The develop relations folks and just say like out there helping people and they're like, Hey, by the way, you know, like, we do this. You can try it, it's free. Like go check it out. You know? If you like it, then that's great, and if not, no worries, no harm done sort of a thing. It seems like those two things go together, that you get a little bit more.
[00:20:02] Ian: Just honesty and transparency there. Yeah. Whereas if you were like, Hey, yeah, we're just here to help, and then you have a bunch of gated stuff and everything is behind big paywalls and it's super complex purchase and all that stuff, well, that's not really something that I can just kind of sink my teeth into and see if I like it.
[00:20:19] Ian: Exactly,
[00:20:20] Suresh: Exactly. We think about it as a non-intrusive marketing or value edition. We don't want to be intrusive. We want the customers to evaluate their product in their own terms. I'll give you some examples of how we have achieved this. Yeah, you could go to our website today. There'll be a button on the top right that says Try me.
[00:20:37] Suresh: You click on it. We are not going to ask you to fill a form. We are not going to ask you to give your full name, your phone number, your address, and your official email, et. You go, you use your single sign on whatever you're used to using. Your email is all we need to get you started. That is one way of making sure that we are focused on the experience for the customer.
[00:20:58] Suresh: Now, if they do need help from you, we have and chat where there are engineers, not salespeople, engineers waiting to help the developer build their application. So their chat facility is again, not focused on selling. but help you be more successful in your project. And we are also, are engineering and product teams are working closely with marketing to also improve the experience of using the product in the customer's own terms.
[00:21:24] Suresh: So it makes it easy for them to try it, decide if it's the right choice for them, and then buy it and buying the product. Again, in your own terms, you want to use your credit card and buy directly from the website. You want to talk to a person that is available to you. Philosophy, our, our. The customer should not feel like we are intruding and they only do it in their own terms, and I do believe that adds tremendous value.
[00:21:48] Suresh: The experience itself creates a perception of the brand and it also helps the customer make faster decisions.
[00:21:57] Ian: That is really cool. I didn't know that you all did that before the episode. I went through and did the try free and all that sort of stuff just to check out your stuff, but I didn't realize that you could chat with engineers.
[00:22:08] Ian: Obviously we talk about chat a bunch on this because our amazing sponsor qualified is the number one place for pipeline development and conversational marketing, so we think about that a lot. But I hadn't heard that use case of saying like, Hey, actually you can just chat with someone who's gonna help you solve your problems.
[00:22:24] Ian: Right. That's really cool.
[00:22:27] Suresh: Yeah, and we believe it's a fundamental tenant of our brand as well. We are here to add value, not to market to you. Marketing is a term that we just use internally, but we believe if we add value to our users, the customers will come to you. Okay. What's your third
[00:22:41] Ian: UN cuttable?
[00:22:42] Suresh: The third one that I've seen of that has added tremendous value to us is a focus on our strategic partners and ecosystem.
[00:22:49] Suresh: So if you look at our last quarters announcements, if you look at our press releases, we announced a partnership with SaaS, which is the. Largest data and analytics provider I in the world. They are the Gartner Magic Quadrant leader for data and analytics. In the last eight years, we have a very close partnership with ibm and with these, what we are working towards is making sure that SingleStore is providing value to both the partners and our joined customers through tight integration with data stacks products, and the ecosystems that cater to our customer's needs.
[00:23:24] Suresh: And from a marketing perspective, the co-market. The experiential marketing of engaging with the CXOs is a critical aspect of how we go to market as well. So you will see us in many of the CXO marketing and sponsorship activities like we do golf sponsorships. We are a part of large events and trade shows where these customers and partners have a presence, and I do believe.
[00:23:50] Suresh: The co-marketing with these strategic partners. This includes Amazon Web Services, This includes ibm. This includes Dell, hp, as well as SaaS is a critical component of our go to market, and marketing is very closely involved in co-marketing with these partners as well. Any
[00:24:06] Ian: pieces of advice on co-marketing?
[00:24:08] Ian: We do it a bunch because we have a bunch of podcasts that we do where you'll have a primary sponsor and they'll bring in partners. You know, it's such a tricky thing to like get right and when it is right, it feels so awesome. But sometimes it relies obviously heavily on having a good partner marketing org and those can be obvious just like everything hit or miss.
[00:24:26] Ian: So, yeah. Curious, any piece of advice on how to partner, market and evaluate? So
[00:24:31] Suresh: I do believe that before we talk about marketing, the most important thing is just like how I talked about a marketing approach that adds value. The best way to think about marketing with partners is to think about how you are adding value to the partners and the joint customers.
[00:24:50] Suresh: That will prompt the right behavior in terms of working with the right engineering folks, the partner teams, to build a solution that solves for gaps in the partners products and adds value to the end user and customer. That actually makes it easier for the marketing organization to then work with the marketing organization of these partners as well because it is solving a problem that.
[00:25:13] Suresh: Been coming in the way of their sales motion and sales cycle, and I do think that is the first bridge to cross. But once you do that, then making sure that you have a close alignment with the partner marketing organization of the partner team becomes a critical component of how we go to market.
[00:25:29] Ian: I'm always surprised that more folks don't do this.
[00:25:32] Ian: In my opinion, one of the big, where the rubber meets the road is just like having both partner marketing orgs. Being able to blind on that stuff, but to me it just ends up being like, Okay, we're gonna check X amount of dollars of partner marketing. Spin up a smaller team now are not gonna be quite as resourced, We're not gonna expect as much, and we don't really know how it's gonna drive roi, but hopefully it does.
[00:25:54] Ian: Maybe it'll just be more a brand place. And it seems like it's kind of a silly thing to do, but I don't know if there's a better sort of way to do it other than that, because it seems like just manag. All of those partners is such a massive job from all the partner marketing folks that I've worked with.
[00:26:10] Ian: Managing the massive ecosystem of partners is really more like a people management job. Yeah. Than it is a pure marketing kind of play.
[00:26:18] Suresh: There are two approaches. The first, choose fewer strategic partners. If you are working with more than 10 partners, you have too many partners in your hands. And when I say strategic, your product should truly add value to the joint end customer and fill a gap in the partner's needs.
[00:26:37] Suresh: Choose the few that you can dedicate your time. Co-invest with and have the vision aligned. For example, some of our most successful partners are aligned on the vision that the world is going real time and real time analytics is what most of the future apps would be because if they're aligned on it, they are not just betting on you for current revenue.
[00:26:59] Suresh: They are betting on you for growing their business in the. And you want to find the kit of partners who believe in your vision, who see where the puck is going and want to partner with you today so they can grow with you. And you can't have hundreds of partners in this cycle. You have to focus on fewer, bigger partners at scale so you can dedicate the time and energy with them.
[00:27:20] Suresh: And then over time, you're creating proof points and value that other partners are going to look at and say, I want to be a part of That story. Seems like that is going very well and is helping. Pipeline. So create the energy and evidence that you need for partners to want to be a part of your ecosystem.
[00:27:38] Suresh: If you're not
[00:27:39] Ian: an integration partner, if you were a SingleStore in Caspian, were like, Hey, let's create a partnership for a joint billboard campaign. I don't know why we would do that, but in this case, we're both trying to reach developers and so we're gonna create a billboard campaign together that's like life is better with SingleStore and Caspian, and we're not monetarily integrated.
[00:27:57] Ian: We're like the money actually is. If someone buys Caspian, then it helps out SingleStore and vice versa. If you're running more separate in that way, is that something that people should be doing and investing in? That's a broad question, but how do you think about those? Those
[00:28:13] Suresh: type of relationships. So the, the way I think about it is what value is the partner bringing to the table and what value you're bringing to the partner.
[00:28:23] Suresh: Be clear about those two aspects of things. in the case of reseller and distributor partners, more often than not, the value that bring to the table is because they have sold other products to customers over a period of time and have the relationships, accounts, and connections, and they know as a function of the footprint that they have within those accounts, what their needs are and who the people are.
[00:28:46] Suresh: For you. The value that you're bringing to a partner is a piece of technology or innovation that is going to help their customers be more successful. And that en lies a partnership opportunity. The ability for the partner to add more value to their end customer and for you, the ability. To take your product and allow it to reach a larger audience that you wouldn't have been able to do yourself, or it would've cost you much more to do yourself simply because you have to generate the pipeline and contacts and ads to reach those customers.
[00:29:19] Suresh: And now you have someone who has those contacts, has the footprint and can allow you to reach. So I do think that is, Best approach to even choose a partner by deciding what is the value that each of you bring to the table and how that one plus one is going to be equal to more than two.
[00:29:34] Ian: So it's more in depth than simply like co-marketing and doing something together like that.
[00:29:39] Suresh: Exactly, and the co-marketing becomes a lot easier when you are aligned on that value edition as well. Then you know what you want from each other, and you can decide how to best go to market with that
[00:29:49] Ian: value. What is something that you're not maybe investing in, in the near term future or something that might be faded away a little bit?
[00:29:55] Suresh: So one of the things that I've seen as, uh, the, I, I don't know yet if that is adding value, is sponsorships in third party events and trade shows, big conferences. I think the pandemic has changed who and how attend these conferences and how we derive value out of it. There is anness aspect of ads and sponsorships of these big events, but generally speaking, I struggle with seeing value from sponsorships of events and trade shows with some exceptions because we go after a developer audience.
[00:30:31] Suresh: We do see a lot of value in big events like AWS reinvent, but we are increasingly seeing. That we don't get as much traction from big data events as we used to. Big data used to be big back in 20 12, 20 14 timeframe. I think those are all fading. So picking and choosing which events and trade shows to be a part of is an important thing as well.
[00:30:53] Suresh: I wouldn't do a blanket sponsorship of a set of events and trade shows that goes after our audience anymore. I'd be very picky and choose carefully about where to put my money.
[00:31:02] Ian: Yeah, we've heard a similar thing from folks where they're like, Hey, I'm gonna go really big on obviously their own customer conference or whatever, and then kind of, Hey, we're not gonna do arrest these.
[00:31:13] Ian: I'm curious though, because you have a strong developed relations team, is that something where you send those folks on the road to those type of events so that at least someone is there even if you don't have a sponsored presence? Or is it just that it's too expensive for the
[00:31:26] Suresh: ROI piece? So if you were to ask me this question a year, , I would say I'm not sending anyone and I wouldn't be paying a single penny for these events in ratio.
[00:31:36] Suresh: That's because we are just coming out of the pandemic. It was all these events were either getting canceled or not getting enough attention and not a, and wasn't getting the foot traffic that Booth used to get. It's changing a little bit this year. I think there is no more willingness to people to attend conferences and events, and there is more traffic that we see in those, but I completely agree.
[00:31:57] Suresh: It's focusing on your own events. We recently did our own event, Revolutions 2022 supercharging Real Time, and we sponsor a few handful of big events, either those that matter to our strategic partners like IBM and sa or those that matter to our developers like aws re, Invent, and that is all we focus on.
[00:32:19] Suresh: The day and age where we used to have 20, 30 even sponsor. I don't think it's coming back anytime soon. I think the approach going forward is going to be the one that you mentioned, your own user conferences combined with a few large conferences where you want to get a higher sponsorship level and get a lot of attention on.
[00:32:41] Ian: That's interesting though. One of the things you didn't say there, which is something that you already discussed earlier, is you have a developer relations team that is in those online communities like all day every. But they're just not at events. And I think that that to me is the thing that is the most important.
[00:32:59] Ian: If you can create original things yourselves and then be in the community, I don't wanna say 24 7 cause that's not realistic, but be present in the community year round that it's like, Dropping in at a few of the things. The utility there is that you get to actually meet these people in person in an event setting that's fun and educational and you can party and do whatever it is that you want to do at an event.
[00:33:24] Ian: Whereas like you can be in these watering holes for basically free or with investments in your own content and all that sort of stuff where. Sort of thing, compounds. That's to me where it, I think we get so obsessed with like, quote unquote events, um, because of the sales thing is like chuck sales people at it.
[00:33:43] Ian: They get to have a bunch of conversations, they get a bunch of leads, everybody feels good. But now it's so much easier to be digitally aware all the time.
[00:33:53] Suresh: You stole the words from my mouth, . That is exactly what our double team focuses on today. More digital outreach than anything else. And we do have an SLA in our community, the forums, which you can also access from our website, where we try to respond to any questions within a day, within 24 hours.
[00:34:11] Suresh: But our average has been three hours or less. In some cases. The dev upgrades are so passionate about their work that they are actually, there are 24 by seven, whether we asked them to be there or not. . So, but that is, that is exactly how it works. How do you view your. There are a couple of the approaches that I take to my website.
[00:34:29] Suresh: The first thing is it has to help with the customer journey, which is essentially, is it if an audience is coming into our website, do we offer them the right learning materials? Once they discover, come to our website, do we offer them the right learning materials to help them make a decision? Do we give them.
[00:34:46] Suresh: Path that they could choose to go with. Do they want to download a ebook? Do they want to go to trial? Do they want to watch a webinar? Do they want to download a white paper? The reason we offer those is because different people consume information differently. There is no one website that would work for every piece of audience we have to offer.
[00:35:05] Suresh: The different consumption choices, and I personally learned this myself. Me and my brother are completely different people. My brother is a voracious reader. While I consume information more through visual media, more through podcasts, more through webinars, and I don't spend as much time. Reading a lot of content, but I consume a lot of information, maybe even more than he does, but he approaches it very differently.
[00:35:27] Suresh: And that is exactly what each of us are. We are, we all consume information differently, and the way I'm designing the website is to offer the different consumption choices that you prefer in your own terms as you go through the. So once you discover, then you learn and then trial. You've seen the trial experience right on top of our page, giving them the opportunity to try the product themselves and the ability to buy the product.
[00:35:55] Suresh: What we also do is the last phase of the journey, which is. We want them to use the product and if they're happy with it, become advocates of our product as well. And so we help. We do have forums in the website and communities in the website, not just by asking questions, but the community helps each other as well.
[00:36:11] Suresh: That is how we've designed the website for the entire customer journey from. Discover, learn, try by and advocate. And the second aspect of this is designing it for the visual look and feel. Just the pleasantness of experience of it. We have an in-house design team. We want to make sure that the page doesn't have so much content, that it crowds the mind and we track where the users click and how to make the design experience so convenient for the user that they have a pleasant experience visiting the website as well.
[00:36:40] Suresh: Now, if you don't see a lot of content in certain pages, it is by design. and we also do constant testing to keep improving it, and this is one of those things that requires ongoing experience improvements. It never comes to an end. We test our website and webpage. all the time to see which creator works, which message works, where are they clicking, where should the button be?
[00:37:02] Suresh: The digital experience of it also matters in the website. So it's both the content and the experience.
[00:37:07] Ian: Love it. Great. Great. I couldn't agree more, and I think that so much of the future is gonna be geared towards having. Content that is tailored to the way that people consume rather than just what it is.
[00:37:19] Ian: Because I think that you're exactly right. We all consume things slightly differently, and having more options there allows you to target non-consumers of the stuff that you've been creating. Yep. Okay. Final segment here. Let's get to our quick hits, Kids. These are quick questions and quick answers. Just like how quickly qualified helps companies generate pipeline faster.
[00:37:42] Ian: Tap into your greatest asset, your website to identify your most valuable visitors, and instantly start sales conversation. It's quick and easy. Just like these questions. Go to qualified.com to learn more. Suresh quick hits. Are you ready? I'm ready. Do you have a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume,
[00:37:58] Suresh: Tennis
[00:37:59] Suresh: I do play tennis. It's not on my resume.
[00:38:01] Ian: Do you have a favorite book, podcast or TV show that you've been checking out recently?
[00:38:05] Suresh: My favorite book, which I also gifted my team recently, is a book called Influence by Robert Aldi, and I think it's important, favorite marketer to read it too.
[00:38:16] Ian: Do you have a favorite non-marketing hobby that may be sort of indirectly makes you a better marketer?
[00:38:20] Suresh: Yes. I've just taken to learning golf and I do think the networking aspect of it combined with the learning from other people is helping me be a better marketer.
[00:38:30] Ian: I love it. You're in the Bay Area. We'll go golfing together sometime.
[00:38:35] Suresh: I'm pretty bad, so that would totally work for me. I've been good company then.
[00:38:39] Ian: Perfect. If you weren't in marketing or business at all, what do you think you'd be doing?
[00:38:42] Suresh: I think I'd be a product manager. That's where I started my career in and I gravitated towards marketing.
[00:38:48] Ian: what is your best piece of advice for a first time CMO? You've been doing this a couple times, whole CMO thing, so what's your best advice for a first timer?
[00:38:57] Suresh: Hire the best marketing operations person that you can find because you need a way for data to show value of the marketing activities that you're doing, and it's important that you be data driven in your approach to marketing.
[00:39:14] Ian: Suresh. This has been awesome. Thank you. You made me think that's awesome.
[00:39:18] Ian: I'd love to hear that. For listeners, go check out SingleStore.com, go through their stuff, some really cool information, content, especially their developer stuff, of course is great. SingleStore.com. Any final thoughts? Anything to : plug?
[00:39:29] Suresh Yeah. One of the things that I want to plug in most of the listeners of the sport cards are either marketing leaders or those interested in dimension and marketing.
[00:39:38] Suresh: Be aware that most of the MarTech stack that you're using have realtime needs, and they are built on SingleStore. So make sure when you buy new MarTech stack. Ask for whether the product was built on SingleStore because in that case, you can make sure that you're getting your data real time and not a day late.
[00:39:56] Ian: I love it. SingleStore inside . Make sure, make sure that it's on the box, the proverbial box. Thanks again. We really appreciate it. And we'll talk soon.
[00:40:05] Suresh: Talk soon. Thank you.