This episode features an interview with Kevin Tate, Chief Marketing Officer at Clearbit, a marketing data engine for customer interactions that helps businesses grow. Kevin has more than 24 years of sales and marketing experience as a 2-time CRO and 3-time CMO, and has held many other senior leadership roles throughout his career. On this episode, Kevin discusses the importance of speed when it comes to capturing customer intent, marketing’s role in creating a compelling promise for a company’s product, and why websites need to look to mobile-first experiences as inspiration sooner rather than later.
This episode features an interview with Kevin Tate, Chief Marketing Officer at Clearbit, a marketing data engine for customer interactions that helps businesses grow. Kevin has more than 24 years of sales and marketing experience as a 2-time CRO and 3-time CMO, and has held many other senior leadership roles throughout his career.
On this episode, Kevin discusses the importance of speed when it comes to capturing customer intent, marketing’s role in creating a compelling promise for a company’s product, and why websites need to look to mobile-first experiences as inspiration sooner rather than later.
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"...the idea of the ideal customer profile is maybe a sort of 101-level content, right? It is really foundational to how companies think about, understand, and act on their ideal customers. But, as we look at sort of the 201 and 301 levels, it's about how to actually focus my funnel on my ICP and then, how do I do it in a way that's consistent through acquisition, conversion, and operations so that I can actually measure and optimize? ... So, again, thinking about how [the ICP] goes from foundational to the edge of where people are pushing the boundaries is what keeps it fun." - Kevin Tate
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Episode Timestamps:
*(2:00) - Kevin’s role at Clearbit
*(3:12) - Kevin’s first job in demand gen
*(5:00) - Segment: Trust Tree
*(9:18) - Clearbit’s buying committee and personas
*(15:46) - Segment: The Playbook
*(25:10) - Clearbit’s event strategy
*(26:49) - How Kevin views Clearbit’s website
*(33:04) - Kevin’s favorite campaign
*(34:43) - Kevin’s most cuttable budget items
*(36:30) - Segment: The Dust-Up
*(38:10) - Segment: Quick Hits
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Sponsor
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Links
Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn
[00:00:00] Ian: Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries. I’m Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. And today I am joined by a special guest. Kevin, how are you?
[00:00:06] Kevin Tate: I'm great. Thank you for having me, Ian. It's great to be here. Yeah.
[00:00:10] Ian: Excited to have you on the show for multiple reasons. But one among them is that we are a customer of Clearbit and we love Clearbit and we use it for, for our podcast.
[00:00:19] So excited to chat about. All things Clearbit and your background. So let's get into it. Tell us a little bit about your role at Clearbit.
[00:00:28] Kevin Tate:. Absolutely. So I got to Clearbit in May. So it's been what? Seven, seven months? Yeah, about seven months now. And boy, what an exciting time to join. A fast-growing company in a really, really fast-moving industry.
[00:00:45] So Clearbit participates in the MarTech space and especially the sort of evolving role of data in that space. And one of the things that I've come to really appreciate is it Clearbit has, we've got, we've got. A great reputation and awareness among sort of the growth practitioners, right? So the people that the data-driven marketers and the companies are using that, but part of my role is, is to take some of what we're learning and, and experiencing and finding with those customers.
[00:01:16] And how do we bring that to a broader audience? Right? And so, as, as CMO there, how do I take the growth engineering from our customers and from our product team and from our own team, and then bring that to the data-driven team. Across industries. So that's what I've been up to
[00:01:32] Ian: and taking a step back, what was your first job in demand gen?
[00:01:35] Kevin Tate: Oh, and has a good question. So in 1996, uh, I worked for a company called, IPC which stood for internet profiles corporation. This is my first web job, and this is going to sound silly now, but the idea which was very novel in 96 was if we can. Collected information about people's demographics and psychographics and in the form of an internet profile, then, then that could be shared with advertisers to websites to help them get advertising because they could understand their audience and say, Hey, look, these are the types of people visiting my site.
[00:02:13] And so you should give me ad dollars and this is 96. So getting ad dollars to work on websites was a novel and unproven concept. So anyways, it's kind of weird cause I, I, until you asked me that question, that's actually. Kind of what Clearbit is still doing today, right. Helping people understand who their customers are so they can run their business better.
[00:02:33] So, wow. I'm having kind of like a full-circle moment here. Um,
[00:02:39] Ian: it's a tale as old as time that we want to know more information about our prospects and customers, right. It kind of speaks to the longevity of, of a solution like Clearbit. And we'll get into that here in a second, that it's like, the work is never finished, right.
[00:02:52] Or something like this, because we want to know more and more and more and more. And that's the job of, of every sales rep is to figure that stuff out. And it's the job of marketing to get our brand message out into the market so that it reaches those people and we can serve.
[00:03:07] Kevin Tate: Yes, our work is never done.
[00:03:10] Ian: Alright, let's get to our first segment, the trust tree. This is where you can go and feel honest and trusted and share those deepest, darkest demand gen secrets. What does Clearbit do and who are your customers?
[00:03:23] Kevin Tate: So Clearbit bits, secret power. The center of what we do is that we can tell. A team or a system, everything about a company, how many people work there, what industry they're in what technologies they use, all the geo and Thermo and demographic information.
[00:03:40] We can tell them all of that based on just one data point. Right? So just knowing a domain or just knowing an email address or, or just having them visit your website. So that's at the seed of what Clearbit does and. What we've created is a platform that lets companies put that context, that full picture to work across all the different sort of systems and teams that need it.
[00:04:06] So a big part of what customers do with Clearbit is taking that full picture and making it available to their CRM and marketing automation systems and making sure that they know everything they can about their current customers and leads, but then there's this other. Which is a little higher in the funnel, which is how do I take that full picture and use it to better understand and convert the people who are showing intent on my website?
[00:04:33] How do I treat them in a way that's going to be more relevant show the big companies, the big logos and the smaller companies, the smaller logos, that kind of thing. And so we talk about that as, how do you activate this real-time intelligence across your stack? To drive real meaningful outcomes and how you acquire and convert and conduct your revenue operations.
[00:04:55] Ian: And so talk to me about the types of companies that buy Clearbit.
[00:04:59] Kevin Tate: That is a really good question. It's one that I've been spending some time looking into since, since I got here. So we're very fortunate to have. A lot of customers, a thousand plus customers across all kinds of industries. I think broadly they break into a few buckets.
[00:05:14] We have a lot of companies focused on a PLG, our product led growth motion. And for companies who have a lot of customers in the say the free trial stage or, and they've got tens of thousands or even millions of companies that are in the early stage of discovering the product, having that full picture and being able to understand.
[00:05:35] And everything about a company helps those PLG teams know where to prioritize their time or understand signals that suggest that someone is about to go from sort of trial to buy and create expected value around those types of customers. So, So those types of companies, our product-led growth internet companies that are trying to be as smart as they can about how they prioritize pipeline.
[00:06:00] Then there's a whole other set that are really these days focus more around an ABM motion. So account-based marketing. And I listened to recently to the episode of the John Miller, which was great. Right. And, and I, I, everything John said, I agree with, I think ABM has so reshaped how companies. Look at and prioritize their go-to-market efforts.
[00:06:21] But in that context, companies use Clearbit as this, this data foundation for all the different systems and processes that they need to be smart. And so this idea of sort of a smart stack that you're organizing around something like an ABM motion, uh, Clearbit plays this foundational role, and those companies tend to.
[00:06:42] And all over the map there, basically anybody who needs to understand and prioritize their funnel to increase conversion. So it's, it's really interesting to see, and it really crosses a lot of industry.
[00:06:54] Ian: And even little companies like Caspian studios, trying to figure out who's listening to our podcasts.
[00:07:00] We use, we use Clearbit. I got to say, it's just a slick product. And it is in our stack and has been for a number of years. And again, it's just, it's, it's great for us to try to figure out that stuff. And with our customers, you know, it's really hard to figure out with anyone it's really hard to figure out who's listening to podcasts and, and.
[00:07:16] And Clearbit is one of the things that we use. So even little companies like the studios.
[00:07:21] Kevin Tate: Well, thank you very much.
[00:07:22] Ian: So what is the buying committee look like?
[00:07:27] Kevin Tate: Hmm, that's a good question. We actually just did, some recent work around our personas. So I'll talk to you a little bit about what we sort of figured out from looking at customers.
[00:07:37] We have one set of buyers that are really focused on how that, that context, that data can inform. Operations. And so they tend to come from rev ops or sales ops, maybe marketing ops. And they're looking at things like, boy, I wish all my systems knew everything about my customers. And I wish that the types of segments or audiences that my marketing automation or my CRM or my, even my website chat platform.
[00:08:04] I wish they could all talk about the same types of segments and audiences. And so they look at us for things like that and lead, scoring, and prioritization from an operations perspective. So we've learned to understand what kind of data and how do we make that useful for them. There's another group that is the performance.
[00:08:22] And so how do I increase my ability to precisely target ads? A lot of, a lot of B2B spending is now going toward more social platforms, especially over the last 18 months and the type of targeting and the type of tuning to optimize the performance of the system. It does a whole lot better if you've got this kind of data.
[00:08:42] So performance marketers, look at that. And they also look a lot at the conversion opportunities on the website. How do I make the form shorter? How do I make the content more relevant? How do I get obstacles out of the way of this B2B buyer? So the performance marketer has become a really important buyer for us.
[00:08:59] And the third one I get excited about this one is really the sort of the smart stack visionary, right? Someone who's saying, I want to create a MarTech stack. That really serves our business and it's gotta be, it's gotta have the right kinds of tools. It's got the right tons of processes. It's gotta be flexible, but not too complicated.
[00:09:19] And they, they come to Clearbit as the sort of foundation of that stack and they, they really value our integration with those other systems and ability to power these interactions. So some version of those three people is who makes up the committee. And sometimes it's just one, but it's kind of fun when they're all three of them.
[00:09:38] Ian: Yeah, for sure. I'd like that idea, the smart stack that for us Clearbit, obviously a part of that obviously qualified our amazing sponsors part of that. Yeah. As a big fan big fan. But yeah, I mean, I think that this is kind of like the new age, right? It's like, we just, we just have to know as much as we can about the people that we're selling to both from talking to customers, doing all that sort of stuff, getting information that way, leveraging sales conversations, leveraging conversations in real-time and, and leveraging data.
[00:10:05] And there's just so much stuff. That we need to have that foundational data element that it's just more important than ever. And like the data-driven marketer. I don't know how you, you can't beat one at this point. Yeah.
[00:10:17] Kevin Tate: And it's, it's interesting to your point, understanding and knowing who that customer is, or what's useful to know about them is, is a big part of it.
[00:10:25] I'm also. Continually shocked at how much the speed with which you can act on that information ends up mattering when we do customer interviews and hear like, okay, well tell me how you're using Clearbit. What really stands out is the number of times that something around being able to capture a customer's intent or engage a customer faster comes up.
[00:10:49] So that they'll say yeah. When the customer starts filling out a form, say to show that they're interested in. I not only want to make that form shorter, but I want to send an instant note to the salesperson for that account and see if I can engage them on chat before they finish filling out the form.
[00:11:07] Because as soon as they're done, they're going to go to some competitor's site and play the same game. Like it's not even, it's not even minutes it's seconds in terms of the speed with which they can engage a customer if they have that ability to act on the right information, which is fun.
[00:11:21] Ian: Yeah. I mean, we've cited that stat in the past, and I forget the exact number, but it's like, essentially your, your odds of closing a customer is dramatically lower. If you respond in more than five minutes, right. It's like you have five minutes to respond to a lead
[00:11:34] Kevin Tate: right. Five minutes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's amazing.
[00:11:38] Ian: And it makes sense.
[00:11:39] It's so true, right? By the time you figure in that five minutes, how many other companies did they get? Did they go hit, fill out that same lead for. And go do that, but you're exactly right. We want to know exactly who that person is as soon as they walk in the door. And then the other thing is we want to reduce friction.
[00:11:55] Like I know in our podcasts. I want someone to sign up, to engage with one of our podcasts. If, if, if we're going to do an email newsletter for one of our shows, I want them to do that with the absolute least friction humanly possible. Right? Like give me an email address. I don't care about your name. I don't care about that.
[00:12:10] I don't care about any other stuff. I just want to, when there's a new episode, I want to send it to you. But you know, people are going to use their Yahoo email address or they're going to use all sorts of different stuff. And at the end of the day, we would love to know those demographics. And like as a marketing team, this idea of this huge form fit.
[00:12:27] To get all of this person's information. It's like, we know who we're selling to. We don't need all that stuff. You absolutely don't need it anymore.
[00:12:34] Kevin Tate: Yeah. Yeah. It's a really interesting point. And we call this part of our, of our platform reveal. And part of what reveal does is be able to. Understand who a business buyer is, perhaps even if they're using that Gmail address, right?
[00:12:49] Because we can see what IP address they're coming from. We can look across systems and see what connections might be through LinkedIn and other things that get us back to a business context. And we want to do that in a way that is respectful of privacy and six to sort of business card level data. But there are things that create more visibility into customers, even at an earlier stage.
[00:13:10] And a big part of this is just knowing who they are. When they hit the website. So even even the idea of having a focus on the two or even 1% that might fill out a form, what about the 98% who didn't fill out a form, but they came in and they looked at some great content and they showed some real interesting signals around the pricing page or the solutions, detail page odds are.
[00:13:33] We can tell you what company that was too. And we can look at things like hair, several people from that company coming and spending interesting time on really valuable pages. This one. Uh, what could we do with that information to help meet that intent? Right. And focus on that company with our outreach efforts.
[00:13:51] So that's a big, a big part of that too.
[00:13:53] Ian: Okay. Let's to the playbook. This is where you open up the playbook and talk about the tactics that help you. What are three channels or tactics that are your uncredible budget items,
[00:14:04] Kevin Tate: uncharitable. So at Clearbit content plays a big role. Content plays a big role and the forum for us, eBooks and prescriptive content and blogs and customer.
[00:14:17] What we call recipes around. Use data to achieve these things. And so that is a huge, huge engine for Clearbit. And I think helps us create what we call marketing engaged leads or males. Uh, how do we get people interested in the topics? So that's one the second, and I'm a little surprised to be seeing this at this point in our remote world, but webinars, webinars, and events continue to be.
[00:14:44] Great ways for us to sort of meet new people and bring people into the Clearbit funnel. It's funny. One hypothesis I have, I don't know if that's right or not, but as an industry participant, I used to be a part of, you know, going to a show and just sort of being there and feeling connected and sort of that sense of collectivity.
[00:15:04] And now I think to an extent webinars and virtual events serve some of that role. And so they've been really effective for us. And I know from. The last one I would highlight is what we call growth engineering, our free tools. And for us, this is effectively a PLG light motion, but we're able to take what Clearbit can offer and put it into some sort of bite-size previews that have real value and it can help people explore the potential of.
[00:15:32] Our most recent one's called the weekly visitor report. And so you put a little tag on your website and we can show you, Hey, here's the top 20 companies and here's what they, who came to your site. And here's what they looked at. And here's a couple of interesting bits about that. Um, it's not the full product, but it's a free.
[00:15:50] Way to start to see what that value is and think about whether or not that could be useful for you. So the weekly visitor report has been a really popular edition this year and that's, that's another big one for us. I
[00:16:03] Ian: love it. Yeah. How do you think about creating content? You mentioned content is so important.
[00:16:07] What's your content strategy?
[00:16:09] Kevin Tate: I think about it from two angles. One is to the extent that the role of marketing is to create a compelling promise that that then the product can keep, I don't know if I came up with that or stole that from somewhere anymore, but that's kind of how I think about what marketing's do it.
[00:16:27] How do I, how do I make a compelling promise to them? The product can keep then the content is, is about sort of making that promise, right? Say, Hey, look, this is, this is the opportunity. And here's how we think about it. And, and letting people explore different parts of, of how that might fit into their business.
[00:16:44] And so that suggests a lot of prescriptive content and leading people through a path of education and, and value assessment. Then at the opposite end of this Bactrim, I remember it. And this was, this was back when I was working in the internet of things. I was talking to a company who have been very, very effective at building pipeline.
[00:17:01] And they said, they said, I'll share our secret with you. So we think about when people are trying to achieve the, solve the problem or achieve that. That were involved in, where are they going to get stuck? In this case, it was around configuring devices to work together in the internet of things. I said, we know where they're going to get stuck.
[00:17:23] And so what are they going to search for when they're stuck? And I want to be. The piece of content that shows up and gets them unstuck. And then I can start to create that relationship. I thought that was a really interesting way of looking at it. I'm a big fan of the sort of jobs to be done view of how we all operate.
[00:17:43] And so I think it's interesting to apply that to content and say what jobs to be done. Can we anticipate people are going to get stuck on and how can our content.
[00:17:55] Ian: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I love the Clayton Christiansen jobs to be done framework his work there, I think is a fascinating thing for marketers in the same sort of way.
[00:18:04] Right. And we think about this when we're creating podcasts or video series or anything, it's like, what is, what is the burning need that, that somebody has for a particular. Niche, whether that's an industry or a persona or whatever it is, what is the thing that you're trying to create, that they can get through this piece of content that they couldn't get somewhere else or that this distills it in a more Clearbit way or that it adds more structure to that, or that it allows it to have even a more long form version of this rather than something short form.
[00:18:35] And I think that so often, like you said, it's. For an individual piece of content or part of a series. We talk about the promise that you make to the, to the listener, to the reader that you're going to deliver every time. It's like, I promise that you're going to learn about X, Y, Z. In this episode or this piece of content, and we're going to deliver on that promise no matter what, and it's going to be high quality and it's going to be, it's not just going to be something that we're doing just to do it.
[00:19:00] Yeah.
[00:19:00] Kevin Tate: I think that's a really important mindset. It would, it makes me think of is I'm also a fan of the sort of StoryBrand way of looking at the relationship and in. Sort of, uh, we're not Luke Skywalker, we're we're Yoda, right? Um, the role of content is, is enabling, right? It's not a like, look how awesome I am.
[00:19:21] I here's a piece of content that shows yet again how awesome I am. It's like, Hey, I get your problem. And I've been fortunate to solve it for others. So if this is useful for me, that's a much more natural position for the content to take. Yeah. I would say we're over. No. Oh, that's good. Well, yeah, he's taller too.
[00:19:37] So it's good. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:39] Ian: Yeah. It's funny. I mean, I think that that's exactly right. To extend the analogy. Cause we, we use that a lot too, that I think so often you're making pieces of content for all of the different steps along the journey, right? Not just, obviously we need to, we need to have content for whatever trials and tribulations Luke is going through.
[00:19:58] About to fall into the Sarlacc pit, you know, like how do I, how do I get out of the Starlight pit? Just read up on that before I go to,
[00:20:06] Kevin Tate: I really want to see where this goes. Let's just keep the, uh, totally. We actually had a planning session around content just this morning and we're looking at next year.
[00:20:14] And, and one of the things I was suggesting to the team is that in terms of data-driven marketing and this creation of smart stacks to power, these types of interactions, Next year, it's going to be kind of a Kazimi year. And I realized that it's just like bringing in book after book here, but I am a fan of crossing the chasm.
[00:20:30] And I think as we, as we think about the role of content for the classic sort of innovators and early adopters, the role of content is probably a little different. For that early majority. Right. Totally. And so how do we think about that in a continuum and not something that's a huge shift. And so, anyway, it's just interesting to think about, right.
[00:20:51] And what's the role of content? How does it fit into the go-to-market motion?
[00:20:54] Ian: And so, yeah, you know, we were actually thinking about that recently, we working with a customer. The idea of, is this series going to be one-on-one? Is it going to be 2 0 1? Is it going to be 4 0 1 level content? Like what type?
[00:21:06] Where is the gap needed for your group? Right. And like this particular group, they had tons of one-on-one stuff, but they're like, you know, where there's a gap in the market is really, really detailed 4 0 1 level content for people. Our like true experts. So there's not really anything. There's not books written on this stuff.
[00:21:26] This is like, we kind of want to blaze our own path on this level of content is like, let's kind of explore some ideas and see what. We can create in this. And I think that that's an interesting framing of how you were looking at it as the early adopters, the type of content that they need, versus someone who's a much, much later type company, an older legacy company or something like that.
[00:21:46] Or maybe not as innovative, your right is totally different. And that the resources that they would need, even from a sales enablement standpoint, they're going to need a case study. That is exactly like their company. Right, right, right. Same size, same industry, same Democrat. Every single thing has to be the same cause they're going to their boss and going our competitor X uses this and we need to be using it too.
[00:22:09] Whereas like an early adopter is like, they're almost exact opposite. They're like, I don't care if you have a case study that looks like us, we're unique, we're pushing innovation.
[00:22:18] Kevin Tate: It's a great point. And it's interesting. So to bring that to Clearbit bits piece, we, you know, ICP, the idea of the ideal customer profile is to your point, maybe a sort of one-on-one level content, right?
[00:22:29] That is really. Foundational to how companies think about understanding and acting on their ideal customers. But as we look at sort of the 2 0 1 and 3 0 1 level of that, it tends to be how to actually focus my funnel on my ICP. And then how do I do it? That in a way that's consistent through acquisition, conversion, and operations so that I can actually measure and optimize and that.
[00:22:53] Different level of, and of course requires much more actionable data around taking that ICP idea and then applying it and optimizing for it at all these different points in the funnel. So I think thinking about how something like that goes from foundational to sort of the edge of where people are pushing the boundaries is, is again is where the fun is.
[00:23:15] Ian: So, with all of the rigor and data and stuff that we put into content creation, I want to kind of juxtapose that a little bit with, I'm curious how you think about these webinars and virtual events because I think that at times they can feel perhaps over-engineered, whereas a lot of the times it's kind of like you put people in a room, you get the heck out of the way.
[00:23:34] So, and not that either is wrong or right. Like a very curated event is wonderful to behold, but also an uncurated event is also really nice. How do you think about your events, digital events, virtual events, that sort of strategy? Yeah.
[00:23:48] Kevin Tate: That's a great question. And one that has moved a lot over the last year.
[00:23:51] I think I'm a big fan of dialogue. I think part of this remote work world we've been in is there's a little less dialogue and exchange of ideas and that sort of personal connection around the professional topic. And I think. Some of the ones that I've been a part of that we've put together, did one, not too long ago, I Ianed a piece around how ABM and PLG motions are starting to co-exist.
[00:24:15] And what does that mean for, for how revenue operations is starting to instrument for those, and basically step back and four or five people from different gyms and how they're doing, how they're thinking about it and what they're learning and what's not working. And I think that's great. And so. We actually at Clearbit, we are Ianing a series of sort of fireside chat sessions this fall called the slay, your pipeline series.
[00:24:38] But yeah, it's just that, like, let's sit down with three people from different companies and talk about how do you do lead scoring and what works and what doesn't work. And what's the right level of complexity. And just really talk about the problem we're trying to solve.
[00:24:54] Ian: How do you view your website?
[00:24:57] Kevin Tate: So I think of the website, or I think that the job of the website to start and support a conversation with the market.
[00:25:05] And so to me, that helps, think about what conversation is that, is it trying to start it with, how does a conversation tend to start versus how does it get supported over time? And also. Introduce a certain dynamic aspect to it. Yeah. It's the same conversation with the market over the year, but the focus of that conversation can change.
[00:25:27] Right. And so how do we let the website reflect the way we want to start or participate or lead a certain set of conversations in the market over the course of the year and kind of tie that back to the content calendar and the demand gen sources. So I think the role of the website for us, and I think for a lot of countries.
[00:25:45] It's really gone up. Any part of this whole digitalization or the acceleration of the digitalization of B2B buying is the website is where a lot of it happens. And now, as we've had things like chat into websites to really bring a, uh, interactivity in a conversational element to it, I think a lot more attention to the website is what we're going to see in the next couple of years.
[00:26:09] Ian: Yeah. It's so funny. I mean, obviously we, we think about this holiday. Uh, qualified, but it's funny because it's so obvious in retrospect. If you were to just go back four years and it's like, man, our websites were like pretty bad, pretty dumb, pretty bad. We're just hanging stuff. Wherever we were hanging it.
[00:26:27] Some people had really good ones, but you know, by and large, I mean, especially if you look at the fortune 500 type, very large enterprise companies where it's like. Super clunky stuff, everywhere. Personalization wasn't even like a thought. That's like what? You can personalize a website for like different people to be there.
[00:26:46] So it's just so much of. Uh, website is, is fundamentally changing seemingly by the month. And we've all known that it's like digital storefront, but it's just kind of funny waking up a few years later and thinking like, Hmm, probably should have been focusing a little bit more of our effort on shifting.
[00:27:02] Kevin Tate: It was shifting. I think more than we realized part of my hypothesis for that. Now, if this is right or not, As consumers, like as individuals, so much of our interactions have now been mobile and app based and have become that way right over the last five, 10 years. And that's a pretty high bar, right? When I'm interacting with an app on my phone, it knows who I am, where I.
[00:27:27] Probably what I did the last time I was there. It might even be able to figure out what I'm trying to accomplish. Like it's really smart and it treats me that way and you go to a website and it's like, Hey there, you know, it's just, and so how do we start to make websites feel and act more like the type of applications we've come to expect in other spheres?
[00:27:47] And that's pretty high bar.
[00:27:49] Ian: Yeah, you're totally right. I mean, it's just the beat. Websites and specifically apps, like you said, are just, it's such a contained environment. And those, those marketers were just so sharp that bringing that stuff over to B2B, I think people were collectively like, how do we do this?
[00:28:03] It's like, yeah, but it's like a multi-million dollar deal in a two year sales cycle and all that stuff. So. They're going to get there eventually. And then you see the stats and you're like, if they hit a lead form and nobody talks to them and it actually like I'm going to lose the deal more often than not like, wait, shoot.
[00:28:17] Really does it a really say that? I think there's kind of that collective like, oh, we should probably be thinking about this, but what's so funny is we spent so much time thinking about SEO and getting people to this. Right. Doing green button versus red button. What are people clicking on? I think that that sort of stuff, we probably got a little lost.
[00:28:35] Yeah. Maybe shiny object syndrome or something. Yeah.
[00:28:38] Kevin Tate: Well, it's interesting because you bring up things like the five minute followup, but there's this aggregate data. That shows us the trends of how people are behaving and maybe even how people in our, you know, that we're engaged with as a brand are behaving.
[00:28:51] And then you get these really individual stats to your point. It's like, no, but really this is a $5 million enterprise deal. And these people, how do you tie those together? Right? How do you, how do you make sense of what's going on for the portfolio aggregate level and then the. Account by account and deal by deal.
[00:29:05] And part of what we're seeing companies do again, is use that idea of the ideal customer profile to sort of cut through those and say, how can I understand what I, what I believe to be my ideal customers? How are they behaving here, here and here? And, and what patterns can I start to see? And some things I can't affect, but somebody can, right.
[00:29:25] How do I make it more likely that I'm going to capture a convert intent that the corollary to that, and this is something really interested to explore more at Clearbit is we have this interesting ability to, to not just tell companies everything about a given company and its its profile. Right. But also.
[00:29:44] Their whole target market. Right? So if you be telling me what you're interested in is now I tell Clearbit what you're interested in. This companies, financial services companies, more than 5,000 employees in the us in north America. We got them all and we know a whole bunch about all of them. And so how can we help you?
[00:30:00] Not just understand your ICP in what they're doing today, but how can we help you discuss. Your ICP, discover your ideal customer prospects, perhaps from this, from the whole market, right? And from your whole Tam, and start to think about how you bring those people in and get them into the yellow brick road.
[00:30:20] So it's just really intense. I think about, I'm trying to think about how do we learn the opportunity to discover your ICP and bring that to customers. Cause it's, uh, it's something pretty cool that we can do.
[00:30:31] Ian: That's where you look at AI and this idea of this predictive analysis and saying like, you think that your ideal customer profile is X, Y, Z.
[00:30:41] The data shows is actually kind of more like this. That's the sort of stuff that you could imagine. The conversation between the CMO and the CRO sitting there. And the VP of sales is sitting there. Like this is what I'm hearing day in and day out from our teams on the calls and saying like, I hear what you're saying, but this is what the data shows that stuff is already happening.
[00:31:03] And. Yeah, totally. Do you have a favorite campaign that you've either run at Clearbit over the past six plus months or in one of the previous times that you were a CML
[00:31:13] Kevin Tate: gosh, a favorite campaign? So here's a campaign that comes to mind. This is going way back. This was early days of e-commerce. I was a company called Fort point partners and our head of marketing at the time created a campaign.
[00:31:28] Around building at that point, e-commerce was very new. And what we were doing was helping companies create their very first e-commerce websites. We were reaching out to those, you know, more early adopter side. And the, what I loved about it was that the imagery we were in San Francisco Fort points at the base of the golden gate bridge and all the imagery was like from the, uh, late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds and sort of, you know, black and white pictures of the construction workers with their lunchboxes.
[00:31:56] Steel beams of the half-constructed bridge. And, and it just to me like both as an employee and as a, and as a perspective customer and their mindset, like that's what it is like we're building, like we're building the future and we're, and we're, we're part in this, this tangible. And so anyway, I think back to that one, as the tapping in to.
[00:32:20] A real sense of sort of adventure and discovery and, and tradecraft around these elements. That, to me, that's kind of what lights me up. And so I, I like, uh, I thinking about how can we take some of the opportunities we have at Clearbit to get people excited about building? What is effectively the, the future of the smart stack.
[00:32:41] Ian: We talked about a bunch of uncredible budget items. What about your most. What is the thing that you're like, you know, this is something we've been trying, it's not really working or maybe something that you're just you're giving up on. Or maybe you're, you're a little out for 20, 22.
[00:32:55] Kevin Tate: I am going to answer this honestly, which is I really don't like spending money and what I call the brand defense fund.
[00:33:04] And that is trying to keep. People from buying the Clearbit bit keyword so that they fill up all the first search results. And it's amazing. I, on one hand, and if any of you are listening, we certainly appreciate the compliment. And as my team tells me to have companies literally buying the Clearbit keyword and spending.
[00:33:25] Substantial money to be at the top of that, it'd be ahead of us, um, is, is a real compliment. So I take the compliment, but when I look at the money that we have to spend, just to show up in our own search results, it's a little bit of a head-scratcher for me. I'm not totally sure why, but why that should be such a great point.
[00:33:43] Ian: I love that you brought up. Maybe we need to check in with you next year and figure out how it went. Because I think about this constantly. It's one of the things I know that there's really savvy marketers that I've talked to that have shown without a doubt that adding paid to organic, just in SEO in general, obviously it boosts results and stuff like that.
[00:34:06] I have no data. I, if anyone knows, feel free to hit me up in a Caspian studios.com. And if you have some data that shows that like, Hey, you should be buying the name of your company. I would love that we should do a deep dive on that. Cause that would be, that would be fun.
[00:34:18] Kevin Tate: Yeah. I'm glad to hear that. Not the only one.
[00:34:23] Ian: Think about a concept. I see it all the time. You know, you Google people's companies all the time. Some people don't, some people do. That's a fun one. All right. Let's get to our next segment. The desktop is where we talk about health. That's with your board, your competitors, your sales team, or anyone else have you had a memorable dust-up in your career?
[00:34:40] Kevin Tate: I think this will be a dust up. This comes to mind. I have, I've worked in a lot of emerging industries, right? So I talked a little bit about early days of e-commerce spent a lot of time in the early social and mobile days, trying to figure out the relationship between social networks and advertising and different forms of that, and then talked about the internet of things.
[00:35:00] And so, anyway, back during the social and mobile times, I just recently joined. A company that was doing so social commerce enablement. And I think it was probably three weeks in. And one of the leading analysts who had a lot of respect for came out and said, yeah, that's, that's dead. That's not a thing.
[00:35:20] And. They weren't wrong, but to have an analyst publicly declare your company or your, your sort of segment DOA on like week three, it, if I'm. Yeah. And so, you know, so begins the campaign of sort of, oh, well, yeah. You know, we actually met this or you're on the band. But it was a very valuable lesson in that I, as a marketer, you develop a certain antenna, a certain feel for when, when there's market poll and when you're sort of trying to push, pushing a rope into a market.
[00:35:57] And that in particular was a, a good lesson and what it felt like. Push a rope after a, after a segment was just not, let's
[00:36:05] Ian: get to our final segment, quick hits. These are quick questions and quick answers, just like conversational marketing with qualified qualified prospects are on the website right now.
[00:36:15] And you can talk to them quickly with qualified, go to qualified.com to learn more quick and easy. Just like these questions. Go to qualified.com. We love them. They're the best. And they've been with us since day one of TGV crickets. Kevin, are you ready?
[00:36:31] Kevin Tate: I think so. I don't know what to expect.
[00:36:32] Ian: What's one hidden talent or skill.
[00:36:37] Kevin Tate: I really enjoy explaining board games. I realized that's really specific, but I, I liked board games, but I've come to realize that what I enjoy is the act of like learning them and then, and then explaining them in a way that other people. Like light up and get it and enjoy it more.
[00:36:55] Ian: You are invited to every holiday party until eternity. Cause I love board games, but I'm horrible at explaining.
[00:37:02] Kevin Tate: it's really hard. And so I say that with humility because it's taken a long time, but I've really over years, tried to get better at explaining it and try different approaches.
[00:37:16] Ian: Uh, that might be the best answer we've ever got. I love it. That is a true, hidden talent. That is so good. Do you have a favorite book or podcast or TV show or something that you've been checking out?
[00:37:27] Kevin Tate: Yes. I think a lot of reading during the last long-form reading and I read a book recently called major labels. I really, I really enjoy music and the music industry and in particular, I really enjoy sort of Janus the way Sean was work and move and change.
[00:37:44] And so this book, major labels is looks back at, I think the seven. Main genres of rock in, in American history and talks about how they came to be and how they evolve and sort of where the boundaries formed it fascinating. And the author just does such a great job sort of celebrating, but also commenting on the music and how it fits with what society at that time and highly recommended major labels.
[00:38:09] Ian: What did you do your favorite non-marketing hobby that sorta, maybe kind of. Indirectly makes you a better marketer?
[00:38:17] Kevin Tate: I enjoy futsing around with technology. If I can, if I can use that verb, I've always been a tinkerer. And so case in point, everything we have here is, is Mac and it's all Mac, but I just went through about six weeks of Chrome.
[00:38:32] I was like, I'm going to switch to Chromebooks for six weeks. Just see what it feels like. And actually went through three different ones. And just, just to. What's it like to try to translate that work and the data and things into that environment and then move it back out. And I don't know why I do it because I get, I ended up getting super frustrated with it, you know, like I can't the notes don't transfer.
[00:38:53] Um, but there's something about that that I'm drawn to. And that I think, I think also makes me a better marketer in that I'm sort of constantly turning. Think about different sort of systems and systems design and systems thinking. And this, what if we just put this thing together a whole different way?
[00:39:10] Does it unlock some new way of looking at something? So I guess that's how I rationalize my obsessive need to break my technology all the time.
[00:39:20] Ian: That's hilarious. So I, I have two Chromebooks that I use and I get made fun of all the time by cause that almost everybody on my team has a Mac. Yeah. But the tabs never crash.
[00:39:32] Everything that I do is, is browser base. I mean, that's not true, not every single thing, but most everything I do, we're also like G suite everything. So like we're like Google Asana, slack for our stuff. So we're just so
[00:39:44] Kevin Tate: fast. Uh, same boat. If apple messages should somehow show up on the Chromebook. It'd be, we'd be good.
[00:39:50] Right. But, but it doesn't, and that's a wall I run into every time, so, yeah. Anyway.
[00:39:57] Ian: Last question for you get out of here. What piece of advice would you give to a first-time CMO trying to figure out their demand strategy? I
[00:40:04] Kevin Tate: think it would be trying to really listen for and understand that that sort of push versus pull that I talked about earlier.
[00:40:14] So if you think about the role of conversations in the market, there's there's ones as you can go. All right. And then there's ones that you can join and, and they kind of needs to be a balance and not coming in with a prescribed playbook or not going too far in either direction until you've really tried to understand where the push and pull are, I guess, were the pull in the market is, and where there might be some, some push or some proactive opportunities.
[00:40:43] I think that's a really tricky balance and it sounds very high level, but in the reality. That balance, I think ends up mattering a lot in terms of how effective your ad spend is and how effective your pipeline creation is and what life is like for the rest of your go-to-market team.
[00:41:00] Ian: Kevin been great having you.
[00:41:01] Thanks so much. Any final thoughts, anything to plug? I know you all have some really fun stuff coming in 2022, in terms of, in terms of new product. I don't know if you can give us a teaser here or if we just have to wait.
[00:41:13] Kevin Tate: Yeah, we, we, we will. I think probably shortly after this airs, we're going to be launching some new capabilities around, around really activated.
[00:41:22] That data. So based on what we've learned from, from customers, and thank you for being a Clearbit bit customer, trying to take those recipes, those ways of applying data to different parts of the customer, touch points and funnel and make it even easier to put that data to work and across the funnel. So very excited to launch some of those things in early next.
[00:41:44] Ian: Well, we are excited for it. Huge fans of Clearbit for our listeners. You can go to Clearbit.com and check it out, Kevin. Thanks again.
[00:41:50] Kevin Tate: Thank you so much.