372: How To Orchestrate Engagement Along The Customer Journey- with Martin Schneider

Social Capital

Meet Martin

Martin has had a unique career that has spanned both analyst and marketing practitioner roles focused on high technology and related industries. The unifying factor has always been a keen analysis of go-to-market trends while also having achieved success as a marketing leader. Schneider started his career as a journalist covering b2b technologies and quickly transitioned into leading analysts covering application software for the 451 group in New York City, where he specialized in CRM, marketing, automation, and business intelligence analytics technologies. After analyzing the go-to-market strategies of dozens of technology vendors, Schneider made the move to the vendor side, where he led successful go-to-market teams for several startups and established tech providers including Sugar CRM, Basho, technologies, Caspio, and support logic. Schneider brings a wealth of marketing and sales alignment content strategy and other go-to-market expertise to his role at Annuity this research is excited to be merging his two passions in producing research and analysis around modern go-to-market and growth marketing strategies for a broad set of b2b professionals.

So what's driving this interesting evolution and how growth leaders that you're talking about are looking at approaching go-to-market right now?

Look, I think I think we've kind of hinted at it, right? I mean, it's the idea that looks, we we've changed the models of like delivery, and like payments, and like we've done all the infrastructure things, billing, you know, all these things that needed to be done in this new recurring model of everything. Subscription economy, whatever buzzword you want to use, right? Yep. But we have like, we never thought about the go-to-market and engagement strategies for the second half of that, right? We've never extended that part down the line. So that's really what's needed. Because what are we being forced with? We keep, you know, what did we hear a week or so ago in Chicago, right? Do more with less, you know, leverage data in ways that you never have. But well, what's the data need to be about? It's got to be about well, what's the customer experience that's driving new opportunities for growth? Right? It's about how we find lift, not just revenue. And how do we focus on the metrics and the KPIs that matter? Not the ones that are like what I would call kind of short-sighted, you know, how many times does a CMO pat the team on the back and said, Look, we did 115% of our lead handoffs, the sales for sales accepted leads were awesome. But the company misses its number. So then fingers get pointed, and people start, you know, and there's distrust and factions, and all those types of things that start to dysfunction, right? But because there wasn't a shared growth plan, there wasn't an understanding of like, well, well, what is a good lead? What are you know? And where did the post-sale? the idea that like, how do we not market these people effectively to get lifting growth inside our accounts, rather than just focusing on that new and blah, blah, blah, right? So I mean, that's really what's happening, right? Like, if everyone's using this term growth, and you see these things like growth hacking, and you use a term like hacking, and I'm like, that sounds a lot like just random, haphazard acts of marketing that are not strategic. They're not aligned to the entire journey. And that's really what's driving this, right, we need to have a full journey, an orchestrated approach that understands, you know, who are the personas for presale? Who are the personas for post-sale? What is that conversation track? What kind of content? What kind of channels? When do we provide that? What are the indicators that say this is upselling versus this is the reinforcement of just baseline stuff, of making sure they're actually using our product effectively, that kind of thing? And, and really building these models' full journey. That's really what's driving it lead for that because that's what drives perpetual, which is super important when you think of perpetual versus haphazard, random acts of like a campaign versus an ad total engagement model. Right. And that's the difference. People need that because that's what builds sustainable growth, not, not these random acts that people still kind of talk about, you know, it was interesting, even at the event seeing people talk about this was a great campaign. And so yeah, well, how does that tie into your overall conversation track? And your full journey? engagement model? No, one is kidding.

I'm curious, if you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regard to your professional career?

I'm definitely networking more. I was one of those people that when I was younger, I thought I was like, Really, like smart. And I thought the books and all that kind of stuff. We're gonna give me what I need. thought if I had the chops, everything was gonna work out. But there's a lot of who you know, right? Yeah, in terms of opportunities, but also just learning opportunities, right, like, network and be open that like, other people have good ideas, even if they're not your idea, right? That kind of idea. And just learning reading, like, I should have read more industry books early. I kind of got into that late, you know, and, you know, especially at my 20 year-olds, because I was still like an academic for academic sake. Not like I thought business was, you know, I had a kind of opposite, right? I thought academics were smarter and business people were like, they just couldn't hack it from it's like, kind of the opposite, right? Like academics can't do so they teach right. So, so yeah, I mean, I would definitely network more and take all those opportunities to network, take opportunities to learn, you know, I liked school, but again, like much more like practical things, even if it doesn't come out with a certificate or certification that you can put on your resume. take those opportunities to learn, you know, if you can, right sometimes, you know, time and the economics make that hard but take whatever chance you can learn from people who were doing it. Right. The academic approach is always kind of limited and dated, I'm talking about people who are getting MBAs right now, and learning from people who are really doing it now. And getting that mentorships and things like that, you know, I thought I was way smarter than I was right. And that approach of saying, like, be open, and learn from others. And network and network and network is really important, especially when you're young like you want to, you kind of want to have like, your social life, and you want to kind of keep these things compartmentalized. But the more you kind of merge it the kind of better, like having good friends in the industry, that are really friends is really important. And I didn't learn that until way late, right?

Connect with Martin!

Connect on LinkedIn