B2B Growth Mindset for Marketing Leaders with Mike Grinberg

Welcome back to another episode of Exploring Growth! This week's guest is agency owner, Mike Grinberg. Join us as we discuss effective B2B growth strategies tailored for mid-market companies.

We also shed light on overcoming growth plateaus and the importance of profitability. Together we explore the power of relationships, referrals, and unique customer experiences in driving long-term revenue and success. If you're eager to grow and scale your business, this episode is a must-listen for you!

Thank you for watching. If you are enjoying what you hear, please consider sharing it with a colleague or a friend.

Have a guest recommendation, question, or just want to connect? Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast

Connect on LinkedIn:

Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray

Mike - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegrinberg

#ExploringGrowth #BusinessGrowth #GrowthStrategy #BusinessAdvice #BusinessRelationships #B2BGrowth #Profitability #Networking #MarketingStrategy #BusinessStrategy #B2BCompany

Lee Murray (00:00:00) - All right. Welcome back to Exploring Growth, uh, today. I'm Mike Grinberg, and we, are we just having a little discussion right before we jumped on here? And we're two agency owners, right? So this, I think this is gonna be a really inter interesting episode for marketing leaders, VPs, directors of, uh, smaller, you know, it's a mid-size, uh, B2B companies because we, we both think the same way when it comes to, um, B2B growth. And, uh, I had, um, Aaron Weeks, which also works the Proofpoint on a couple episodes ago, and we talked about scaling relationships. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to that. It's very good. It's kind of a primer to some future conversations we're gonna have about that. But kind of like laying the foundation is this idea of, um, you know, if you're, if you're a small company and you start, you know, mom and pop, but also you were, let's say you've even bought it, right?

Lee Murray (00:00:51) - You're small, bought a small company, a lot of the way you grow is through, um, network, word of mouth, uh, relationships. And as you hit a certain sort of, um, I don't know, pivotal, pivotal point, you realize that that's not scalable to the point of a hundred million, 200 million, whatever. Um, and a lot of companies, usually when they hit the mid-market tier, they're looking for a buyer to be acquired or something. It's a natural next step. But a lot, and those are a lot of companies I work with are these small marketing teams. They're trying to form who they are as a team, you know, who's in the right seat, what skillsets are needed, uh, what tools they should use or stack all of that. Um, but, um, but, you know, strategy kind of gets put on the back burner until they realize all these tactical things that we're doing are not working. Um, but yeah. So I, I thought, you know, this is a great, um, kind of time point in time to sit and talk with two agency owners about maybe some of the, the trials and the successes we've had with our clients about B2B marketing. And so hopefully that sets you up, uh, you know, pretty good. Uh, Mike, thanks, thanks again for coming on.

Mike Grinberg (00:01:56) - Yeah, happy to. It's an, it's an awesome, uh, lead in here and yeah, I totally agree, man, that the, the number of times I have virtually the same conversation with somebody coming to us mm-hmm. , you know, and again, it's usually kind of that, it's like 25 to 50 million mm-hmm. technical service based business, that's usually who we focus on. Um, and they've, they've grown the company, you know, from what I call what I'll call brute force networking, relationship building, right. One-on-one, you know, they'll go to conferences that they, speaking engagements, they'll leverage their network, they'll ask for intros, all this kind of stuff. Maybe they'll get some, uh, referrals from clients. Sometimes they've done better at activating that specific part of the referral. Mm-hmm. , um, channel. Mm-hmm. , like being able to better ask for referrals and creating a pipeline there. But usually they've stalled mm-hmm. , right? Because that kind of brute force method, no, only now is only giving them just enough to take care of attrition insurer. Yeah. So, and they often want to go to some something very, very different, which is, again, if we wanna label it kinda more traditional lead gen stuff Yep. And it just doesn't fit with what they're doing. Right. Because they've traditionally built it through relationships, through deep conversation, all this kind of stuff. And now they wanna churn out eBooks, do paid search, and mm-hmm. do some seo, and, which

Lee Murray (00:03:21) - Is very different.

Mike Grinberg (00:03:23) - It's a, it's a very different mentality. It doesn't mean those channels can't work.

Lee Murray (00:03:26) - Right.

Mike Grinberg (00:03:27) - But they just, they're, they're like, oh, we just need, all of a sudden they're like, oh, we need scale. And they think scale means shotgun approach. Yes. When in reality it shouldn't,

Lee Murray (00:03:36) - Right? Yeah. And I think the, the paid ad side of it, it does work. And, um, you can make a, you know, make up a lot of ground quickly if you are skilled in that way, but it really should be supporting the other things that you're doing. Right? Yes. It shouldn't be. I mean, and then as you grow in your skillset or your team's skillset, you can obviously peel it off and have it do, it's have its own kind of roi, I guess. Um, but I, I think for, for marketing leaders that are listening to this, this is, you know, and I would love for feedback too, like on LinkedIn or, um, by email or whatever, like, pick our brains on, on what's going on. I was talking with a marketing director the other day, and, uh, he is been given, you know, a pretty good runway of time to like sit and the, the prior person who enrolled it and didn't build the team really well, and it's kind of old school mindset.

Lee Murray (00:04:24) - So they're, they're refreshing everything. So he is been given some time to like, think about the tools they're using, think about the people who need to be in the right seats for what they're doing and, and spend some time on strategy, which is great. I mean, I don't hear that a lot. Um, and so, you know, it, it kind of jogged this, this, as we started talking it, it made sense. Like I think marketing leaders that are in those positions where they're being tasked with, maybe they're hired in and the, and the, the companies like, Hey, we need a fresh perspective. We need like, um, you know, we need, we need growth, but we need it to be in continuity with what we've done in the past. Um, you know, maybe that's that person that's listening right now, they're in that seat where they're trying to make these decisions.

Lee Murray (00:05:01) - Well, yeah. All of those things, all the above are the things that I'm working on, and it's kind of overwhelming. Mm-hmm. , where would, where would someone like that start? Okay. Like, they've been doing a lot, like they come into the company, or they've been there for a little while, now they're tasked with, we've been doing a lot of relationship stuff. Maybe they're doing conferences, um, you know, maybe, uh, net, some just old school networking. They've got email newsletters running, you know, stuff like that. Um, where, where would you direct them from that point forward?

Mike Grinberg (00:05:31) - So there's, um, one important thing I think to highlight as a baseline here is most of these companies are private. They generally don't have investment. Some of them do get, you know, private equity kind of thing mm-hmm. , but that's what generally causes neath the scale faster mm-hmm. than they have historically. And the goal of, if it's private equity, the goal is profit, it's not just growth.

Lee Murray (00:05:54) - That's right.

Mike Grinberg (00:05:55) - And if you're just private in general mm-hmm. , the goal is definitely profit. Yeah. So this is the big difference between these types of companies and a VC back software company, for example. Yeah. Right. Where profit doesn't come into the equation until much, much, much later. Mm-hmm. , it's all about go, go, go, go grow. Even though now they're saying, okay, yes, we need to be more conservative, but even then, if you've got a $10 million investment or a $50 million investment in your series B or C, like, that's a very different ballgame to be bootstrapped family owned, potentially. Yes. Or likely private business. So those

Lee Murray (00:06:30) - DC companies is where you end up with the head sandwich maker are titles. Like you have, you know, 15 different marketing product led growth marketers that are Yep. Sub stacked. That's not reality, I don't think. I think the majority of companies, as we were talking before, don't, aren't like that.

Mike Grinberg (00:06:46) - Yeah. So why do I bring that up? And why is it important? It's because if your focus is actually profitability rather than revenue mm-hmm. profitability more than anything, is an outcome of great relationships. Revenue is an outcome of great relationships too. Mm-hmm. long-term revenue. But if you wanna have profitable clients, especially in the service business, you need to, these clients need to be more educated when they come inbound. Mm-hmm. , they need to be, you need to be having more conversations with them to be able to educate, to be able to build those relationships. Mm-hmm. , you need to be able to, again, get them more on your side so that once you, excuse me, get into the quote unquote negotiation phase of a contract mm-hmm. , they're more committed to Yes. A, uh, uh, a compromise of some sort.

Lee Murray (00:07:38) - Yeah. You know, I, the way I would say it is, you need to spend more time with them virtually mm-hmm. , like maybe the owners and initial leaders spent physically in some, virtually, I think spending a lot of time on platforms like LinkedIn, or it could be, it could be Instagram or Twitter or other platforms, but being social, being physically, you know, in, in front of them, um, but building those relationships and educating them is very key. Yeah. I think that that's very important.

Mike Grinberg (00:08:08) - So, you know, going back to your original question, what should they focus on? What should they do? Mm-hmm. , it's a, to me, it's a mindset shift. Mm-hmm. , it's a mindset shift to relationships and conversations and looking at referrals as your core channel. Mm-hmm. . Now, this is where I think a definition's important, which is generally you say, when you say the word referral, what does that mean to most people? They'll say, oh, it's, you know, referrals from customers, or, oh, it's a f formal partnership or referral program. Mm-hmm. , yes. And yes, that's part of it. But actually if you think about it, that's a small part of it. Yes. So, wh what I think of referrals and what I'd urge people to think about is there are various levels of referrals, and there's a, if you look at kind of a, a, a, you know, X access, Y access along the X axis is you have relationship type or relationship strength, meaning stranger, acquaintance, client, friend. And on the vertical axis you have, um, relation, uh, uh, uh, referral difficulty or social capital required. Mm-hmm. , you'll have something that looks like almost like a standard distribution curve, except it never goes out completely down. Mm-hmm. , you know, kind of flatten out maybe toward the middle, because in the very beginning, and actually let me go the other way, at the very end, that's where most people will focus. They'll focus on Yep. Friends and family and things like that. Sort of the bottom

Lee Murray (00:09:44) - Of the funnel where they know you trust you. Exactly.

Mike Grinberg (00:09:46) - Yeah. But those are few and far between your network and like Sure. Some people have bigger networks than others, but in general, yeah. Those strong relationships call

Lee Murray (00:09:53) - It a hundred people,

Mike Grinberg (00:09:55) - They only go so far. Yeah. And if you wanna scale that business to a hundred million, good luck. That's not gonna get you there. Not gonna happen with a hundred people. Even, even if you're selling half a million, $2 million projects, at some point those projects run out, so there's mm-hmm. , natural churn, you know, all that kinda stuff. Okay. Then they'll go to the next thing, which is clients. Now the problem that they forget is with clients, that's the highest amount of social capital. So it's gonna take you a long time and a lot of effort mm-hmm. to get consistent and enough volume out of that. Number one, how many clients do you have?

Lee Murray (00:10:24) - Yeah. B B is generally not a high volume,

Mike Grinberg (00:10:26) - Especially in service businesses. Right, right. Uh, like high ticket line mm-hmm. , high ticket service businesses. Um, and even if you do have more clients, it's a lot of effort, meaning mm-hmm. number one, you back end

Lee Murray (00:10:42) - On the back end. It's a lot of effort.

Mike Grinberg (00:10:44) - Yeah. For, well, for both. Right. So it's a lot of effort for you to build up the relationship, do the great work, create a maybe more formal ask. Sure. Create a system where not just the c e O can make the ask, but mm-hmm. the sales people or the account managers, right. Or the directors, managing directors, whoever, right? Mm-hmm. , um, build those relationships, but then also for the clients, number one, it's an ask, which means, well, they don't owe you anything, let's be honest. Mm-hmm. you like, you've done the work for them, they paid you for the work. That's it. That's the exchange. Yeah. Right. So there has to be, you have to have built that relationship. So there's the time aspect mm-hmm. , and there's the social capital and clout aspect, meaning, okay. Mm-hmm. , I know you, but I don't know you, meaning we're not best friends Yeah. And we're clients. Okay. Yeah. So for me to go out proactively and say, Hey, Joe, or hey Kate, or whatever mm-hmm. , you should talk to Lee at such and such company, or Mike at Proofpoint or whatever mm-hmm. doesn't matter. Yeah. Um, that's a lot of social cloud I need to really trust mm-hmm. that you're gonna deliver, because otherwise I look like an a-hole.

Lee Murray (00:11:56) - Yeah. So it's gonna take a long period period of time for you to build that, which is gonna be at least months. Mm-hmm. .

Mike Grinberg (00:12:03) - Yep. So that's where most people focus. Mm-hmm. , what they won't focus on is where most of the scale is actually on that front end of that spectrum. Mm-hmm. , if I like. It's that person who has never worked with you, probably never even talked to you, but has seen your contact on LinkedIn, seen you speak at a conference, attended your, uh, event mm-hmm. , um, listened to your podcast, uh, bought your book, whatever your special sauce of demand gen is. Mm-hmm. , and I even hate to use the words demand gen, cuz that means a lot of different, these different people. But with your special sauce of relationship building the end of that mm-hmm. , first thing that gets people excited, there's zero social capital required pretty much. Right. Yeah. Because I'm talking whatever me and you are talking, it's good. And you happen to be maybe talking about, uh, look, I, I'll throw this out there totally randomly because it's a, it'll be a real thing. Um, you say, Hey Mike, you know, we're looking at building out a, a more robust rapport program. You know, we're looking at a platform not really sure how to activate our team. Mm-hmm. , I'll go, Hey, you know what, you should look in this platform called small world ai. Mm-hmm. , we just had, uh, you know, David Rush, David free advertisement for you. He didn't pay me for this. Yeah. Like, uh, you should, you should talk to him about their platform, because that's literally what they do. Yeah.

Mike Grinberg (00:13:25) - Zero. I don't care. Like, you don't like David, you don't like their platform. I don't care. I lost zero. Nothing for it because I never worked with them. I'm openly telling you that. Mm-hmm. , it took me all two seconds, whatever. Mm-hmm. , that's where the biggest opportunity for scale is and what people miss is there is a way to operationalize that. Mm-hmm. . Um, also, you know, um, well, I'll, I'll stop there cuz Well, yeah.

Lee Murray (00:13:52) - So I would say, I would say this, um, if we, if we zoom out just a, a one click and look at the macro picture, one thing I always share with my clients on the very, very front end of talking about any type of marketing strategy is to just give them a clear, um, simple, almost like limited picture of what your ecosystem system looks like, right? So you have, you, you the brand and you have the buyer, and then you have stakeholders and influencers around the buyer that are mostly internal depending on your sale. And then you have your clients, like you talked about, who can refer you, and then you have your partners or allies mm-hmm. . And the more complicated your product or service and how the buyer buys it can change some of those nuance nuances, but majority of 'em are all the same.

Lee Murray (00:14:39) - So then it's about influencing the conversations between all of those, right? So it's the conversation that you're having between the brand and the buyer that's building a brand directly. You know, it's running ads directly. It's sending emails directly. Um, and I think that's all, most marketers think about it. It's, we want to go, you know, and add in the paper, or we wanna like shake someone's hand, but there's no in between mm-hmm. . Um, but there are these two other, two other parties, major parties, which are your current clients that can, you know, definitely should go after even though it mm-hmm. , you, you need to, you need to operationalize it. So there's a sustainability feature there on, on, on time, you know, for ongoing. And then from the partner side, that's really where I think to your point, when you're creating content that is shareable, your partners are having all these conversations with your buyers, they're building trust back on their back.

Lee Murray (00:15:35) - So the social mm-hmm. proof that takes you so long to build with the customer, they've already got built with lots of their customers. So if you have, let's say you have 50 customers, each one of them have 50 customers. So you know, the shareability of that, of that relationship and the trust is scalable. And then of course, remember that all of all of these people, if you are, you know, in a, I don't wanna say necessarily has to be in a niche, but typically if you're in a targeted industry or area that you're serving, those people who are your partners are going to serve, you know, in very complimentary ways. And your clients are gonna be very similar to the ones you wanna, you know, this goes back to your business model and again, some strategy, but just having that simple framework helps, I think, helps marketers to, to say, like, to take everything you're saying and put it into practice where they say, okay, we could just literally look at these four parties and say, which one do we wanna focus on?

Lee Murray (00:16:35) - And then what are our, what's our path to reaching these people? Mm-hmm. . Um, but I think the bigger conversation here as we get in get deeper into it, is this idea of, um, creating content essentially, um, that is scalable amongst all those parties. And you brought up demand Gen, um, which I think is, again, I I always say this, I I feel like I've said this on every podcast episode, but all the marketers like to do is make up new acronyms and new, new, you know, words to play around with. And I think a lot of it comes outta the VC back tech stuff. Um, you know, us, us like small time marketers over here, we're actually talking to real customers are, um, you know, we don't, we don't make up acronyms every day. We just kind of say, yeah, well that work, let's do it again.

Lee Murray (00:17:18) - Um, but I, but I think, I think the quote unquote, demand gen is a good if, you know, I think also a lot of marketers listen to this may have been the first time they've heard this, uh, they may be interested in learning more about it because it's so different than lead gen or running ads specifically and having workflows and sequences. Um, when you go and look into that, it's, it's about educating your, your client through the journey, right? Through, through the awareness and engagement, nurture, uh, conversion. And, um, but if you apply it in a way that, in the framework that I'm, I'm saying too a macro framework of, okay, how do we do this in a way that serves our partner, our allies, that then pass along the word and how we do this in a way that serves our buyer and our clients. I, I think that, that, that's really the thinking back to mindset. That's really the thinking that these marketing directors should be, should be trying to turn their brain from, we need to run ads. Yes, you probably do have to run ads at some point, but let's pull it back and say, how do we get here relationships, how do we scale relationships? Well, it's gonna be content and it's gonna be now thinking about those people you're creating content for. Yep.

Mike Grinberg (00:18:35) - Yeah. We, we, so I, number one, I love that you mentioned the ecosystem, uh, cause we do something very similar mm-hmm. . And the one thing I'll say is I think one of the big misses that people make is they don't think enough about the external influencers mm-hmm. , because again, the word influencer is kind of murky. What does that mean? Mm-hmm. , and, you know, you, you know, you mentioned like buyer buying influencer. Well, do they directly influence the buying cycle? Sometimes it might be a consultant. Sure. Yeah. But sometimes it's just they influence whether you come into the buying cycle at all or not. So, I mean, I'll give you a couple examples. We, uh, were working with a, this is actually a software company, an act tech firm. And they found that one of their, like they found this anomaly where they were getting a, a number of referrals from CPAs that were specifically working with family farms.

Mike Grinberg (00:19:32) - Mm-hmm. . Okay. Well, you can either A, not do much with that and just say, okay, cool, we can expect X number, or you can really double down and it say, all right, what percentage of these do we close? Are the bigger deals or the smaller deals, if it's worthwhile, awesome. How do we find more of these people? How do we build stronger partnerships? Can we start a, a podcast with them? So the, so the more of these people that listen to them already come into our orbit, right. Make it easier for them to like all these things. Like as long as you, and there's a prerequisite here along all this stuff, whether it's a partner, uh, influencer, internal, external, I can mention a couple other interesting examples maybe. But anyway, you slice it, you have to have this core brand infrastructure in place. Mm-hmm. , you have to have your category, for lack of a better word, a PO A P O V on the market. Like, especially if you're a service-based business, like

Lee Murray (00:20:27) - You gotta be clear about what it is you do for whom.

Mike Grinberg (00:20:30) - Yep. And why? And like how is it different? Right? It's what is, I mean, look, marketing agencies are a dime, does it? Mm-hmm. , right? Um, uh, biotech for consulting groups or a dime a dozen mm-hmm. maybe not as much as marketing agencies, but still

Lee Murray (00:20:45) - Yeah. Probably

Mike Grinberg (00:20:46) - Not. It firms, cybersecurity firms, all this stuff, right? Yeah. At the end of the day, you can make the argument, well, that's all commodity. Like everybody does the same thing. Yeah. But do that mm-hmm. like, do you have, everybody's got some sort of special sauce mm-hmm. , everybody's got a slightly different view on the market. How do you make that come to life? That's, that's part that's a big part of your brand. There's a culture component, meaning does your team and I just, I just talked to a C M O really interesting conversation, uh, yesterday about it. Um, or sorry, I guess Yeah. Yesterday. Um, like do they get it? Do they, can they repeat it? Mm-hmm. , both of those things are important. They actually have to understand it Yeah. And be able to evangelize it. So like, all those branding components are core before you can do all these tactics.

Lee Murray (00:21:33) - That's right. Because

Mike Grinberg (00:21:34) - People always wanna jump to tactics. It's like, oh, cool. Well, you know, like I, I told this story on our show the other day. I'm like, oh, well, you know, your, your, um, uh, employee candidate pipeline can be a revenue generator. Mm-hmm. can be a relationship generator for you. Mm-hmm. , and I specifically preface it, li don't just go try to copy this because if you don't have your brand architecture in place, it won't work. Mm-hmm. , you'll just probably make it worse. Yes, that's right. But if you do, that can be a way that you drive a decent amount of business. Yeah. Long term.

Lee Murray (00:22:09) - Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when you said secret sauce, it made me think about McDonald's secret sauce on their Big Mac and made me hungry. Um, I'm not gonna lie, but it actually gave me this, this funny picture of, uh, of an analogy or, um, illustration of, or a restaurant, right? Um, and funny enough, um, we're talking B2B here, but I think a lot of B2C people who get it right, especially small, um, they stand out and, and so the, lemme just say the point so I don't forget it. But the point is, what we have to do with our content is we have to demonstrate our uniqueness. We have to demonstrate that through the content so that it is, and make it shareable, make it these things that, you know, grab attention are engaging, but we have to demonstrate our expertise. We have to demonstrate our product.

Lee Murray (00:23:01) - We have demonstrate our service. We have to demonstrate our culture. We have to demonstrate all these things through, through content so that they can float around in that ecosystem. Um, you wanna be a little bit more dialed in than just letting it float around, but eventually it's gonna float around. It's gonna get shared around. And if it hits any of those parties, is it gonna have value? But the thought that comes to mind with the secret sauce is restaurants. You go there because you really enjoy the taste of a certain dish and you enjoy the experience of, of, you know, these, the really nice restaurants that you, that you want to go back to. Um, and not necessarily five star restaurants, but you know, yet had a good experience. That's a big deal. The food was really good and the service was good. I think that plays for most businesses too.

Lee Murray (00:23:42) - Um, I follow a bakery in Lakeland on Instagram, and it followed them from like, probably, probably seven years, eight years. It's, it's a weird thing cuz I don't follow any local restaurants like that, but I followed them because of their story. They started out the farmer's market and they had their stuff together. The branding was in place. They really had a good storyline, um, to what they were doing. Their food was amazing. And it stood out because there's not any other bakeries like them around. There's not anywhere near that I can find. So we would drive to Lakeland when we were down there. This is like an hour and a half, two hour drive just to go to the bakery. And I would follow 'em on Instagram and enjoy feeling like I was part of the success because I'm there liking their post and commenting and being a part of that.

Lee Murray (00:24:31) - But what they were doing is demonstrating, um, what it looks like for a company to be passionate about something. Uh, and they're, they're building a community around what they're doing, which is all relationships. Um, and that was scaled massively so much that I think it attracted a bunch of investors. Um, so to that whole point, I think demonstrating what you do well, how you're unique is clearly saying what is that you do for whom in a way that adds value to each of those parties. People are gonna start to follow that. And when they start to follow that they're in lies of scale scalability.

Mike Grinberg (00:25:08) - Yeah. I mean, I I couldn't agree with all that. More like the, the example that really comes to mind and the, the word I think that I pulled out of what you just said is the word experience. Mm-hmm. . So I like to talk to our clients and just think about more, it's not about, it's not content, it's content-based experiences.

Lee Murray (00:25:23) - Correct. Yeah.

Mike Grinberg (00:25:24) - So that makes it broader. Mm-hmm. . Right. And because what is content most, again, I think I had a mentor of mine that said, you know, words are, words are important, use them wisely. And that Yes. Like the further along I get in my career, the more I realize like, yes, definitions are so, so important. Yeah. Not just because it makes you sound smarter, but because it's so easy to go content that's just blogs. Yeah. Or it's, you know, whatever. Yeah. But the example I want throughout there is this content-based experience. So we were driving, we're, we're in Arizona, we were driving through, um, Prescott, and all of a sudden we see this like crazy building where that looks like a fantasy castle with slides and mm-hmm. all sorts of stuff. We're like, is that a playhouse? Is it a play? Like, what is that? Mm-hmm. , you guess what it is?

Lee Murray (00:26:17) - Hotel,

Mike Grinberg (00:26:17) - Dentist office.

Lee Murray (00:26:19) - Oh my gosh. Of all things.

Mike Grinberg (00:26:21) - Yeah. Giant.

Lee Murray (00:26:22) - They went for it.

Mike Grinberg (00:26:23) - They went, but they, I mean I, I don't know them like, but I did find like an article and things like that. Cause I went like, what the hell is this? And I cannot imagine they're not making it kill it. Yeah. Because I know rather than going, oh, we can just, yeah, we can create some uh, uh, you know, user stories. Right. Which I'm sure they did. I didn't do enough research, to be honest. I'm sure they have some and just, you know, running paid ads or running a newspaper thing, but they created this experience, which then they can then repurpose, right? Yes. Now they can run ads and be like, hey, like they can throw an event and the event mm-hmm. rather than doing it on a parking lot. Mm-hmm. , it's in their freaking playground of a building. Yep. Right? Yeah.

Lee Murray (00:27:05) - No, and which

Mike Grinberg (00:27:06) - Kid is not gonna wanna go to that dentist office?

Lee Murray (00:27:07) - They've taken the mystique out of, or the anxiety out of going to the dentist for these bad things and said almost like, Hey, you could come to the, our dentist office whenever you want to have fun and go to the playground. And then by the way, you could also get your teeth clean while you're

Mike Grinberg (00:27:21) - Here. Yeah. So like, that's the example I think of, and again, going back to your thing of, there's a lot of examples of b2c. I think what B2C does amazingly well in general compared to B2B for the most part, is these experiences. Mm-hmm. , experiential marketing, whatever you wanna call it. But it's doesn't have to be events and doesn't have to be this, does everybody have to go build a playground? No. Mm-hmm. . Right. Does everybody have to have a podcast? No. Does everybody have to run events? No. No. But you do need to create something that gets out, like you said, these unique pain points and problems mm-hmm. That people have and provide value to them in a way. It's not a, it's not just about like, here's a, here's an ebook. Now I also don't wanna bash e-books either. Yeah. I think there are guides and we've done, we've done this for clients. Like

Lee Murray (00:28:06) - Yeah, look,

Mike Grinberg (00:28:08) - You know, I'm sure

Lee Murray (00:28:09) - I don't, I don't bash bus ads or direct mail or any of that because all of it is a vehicle to demonstrating your expertise or your uniqueness if your market is there and willing to, I mean, I've done work with, uh, government agencies where we're putting together bus ads that, you know, cuz that's where the people are and we'll see, you know, um, yep. So you gotta go where the people are. Yeah. And you gotta speak their language

Mike Grinberg (00:28:37) - As long as it's all in the name of building that relationship. Mm-hmm. , the channel is agnostic of that in theory. Yeah. I think that, yeah. So again, go, go back to full circle, right? It's how do you build relationships with the right people as quickly as possible?

Lee Murray (00:28:51) - Yes.

Mike Grinberg (00:28:51) - Solve that problem. Yes. How do you, and then really the next level of that is how do you have the most quality conversations with your entire ecosystem?

Lee Murray (00:29:03) - Yes. Yes. Yes. That's, uh, that's it. I, I think that's the question that I think these marketing leaders should take to their strategy and planning sessions when they're talking with their team and their execs about how did we get here? Where are those people? How are we unique and how do we want to take that uniqueness to them in a skilled way? And, you know, you mentioned this about the dentist office. What comes to mind for me is pub subs for Publix. Um, we're in Florida, so mm-hmm. , you know, we have a lot of Publix down here. Yep. Um, but you know, they, they killed it with the pub sub. It's a whole kind of colloquialism, almost like, you know, going to get my pub sub right. And what's so cool about that is, um, it's almost a brand outside of Publix's brand. And so to that point, I think like, ha, starting, starting a service or having something that compliments something else, you do can be your uniqueness. It can be the driver. It doesn't necessarily have to be the uniqueness within your se current service. It just depends. Like grocery stores or grocery stores or grocery store. Well, we need something a little different. Um, maybe your service is just like every other service. So what are you gonna do that's unique? You know, or what, how, what about what you do is unique? That's probably a good place to start. Because if you can't say what that is, then you have a problem.

Mike Grinberg (00:30:25) - Yeah. I mean, I do think you have to connect it to, it's gotta be relevant to what you do and the pain points that you solve, right? Mm-hmm. . So again, I I, we have some relatives in South Florida's been to plenty of Publix. I haven't heard of the pub sub, but Yeah. Pretty straightforward. I think again, it comes down to, hey, people are coming in anyway. Yeah. How do we make the experience better? Because that's what people want. Mm-hmm. . And the reality is grocery, grocery grocery shop is a pain in the ass.

Lee Murray (00:30:55) - Yeah. It's, well, it's so

Mike Grinberg (00:30:56) - There's so people both that enjoy it. But if you think like Costco, it's the dollar, you know, dollar the dollar 50 hotdogs or whatever. I, I never buy them, but I know people do like the soda and whatever. Yeah. You know, the $2 pizza slice, like that's an experience. Yeah. Like people just go there Ikea, the, the, the meatballs or whatever, like Yeah. It's how do you make the shopping experience? Well,

Lee Murray (00:31:17) - So funny. It's funny you hit on that because Publix, up until like, just a few months ago, their, their tagline was where shopping is a pleasure. Mm-hmm. and shopping for sure is a pleasure when you go to Publix versus in pretty much any other grocery store you can go to, like it's head and shoulders. Yep. Um, but so what they did was they turned in, you know, turned the pubs up and they have other things too like that. Um, but I thought it's, I thought it's brilliant. Like, you have an affordable, fast, good, easy sub combo. You can come on your lunch break, get it, and you're probably gonna pick up a couple things that you need for the house at the same time. I mean, every time I go to appointment, even

Mike Grinberg (00:31:52) - If it's a loss leader, who cares?

Lee Murray (00:31:54) - I can go in there for 10 minutes and it's always 30 bucks, 30 bucks, 30 bucks. I mean, I'm buying a pack of gum. It's 30 bucks . So like they've got me, you know?

Mike Grinberg (00:32:03) - Yep. . Exactly. Um,

Lee Murray (00:32:07) - This is good though. This is, this is a good, a good, uh, I think this is a really good sort of primer for, uh, this conversation for marketing leaders. And, um, you know, what would be interesting, I think we'll just put this out there kind of public would be, would be cool to have myself and you, uh, and maybe one other, um, uh, market marketing agency leader and, um, bring this topic back up and have a panel and maybe bring on a one or two marketing leaders that are actually in the seat and, and have a, I've got a

Mike Grinberg (00:32:39) - For you that I just spoke with, I think she'd be great.

Lee Murray (00:32:42) - Yeah. I think that would be good to do a, to do a little panel like that. I think, you know, I got a lot of, a lot of, um, benefit from going to panels, listening to, you know, back in the day, uh, listen to CMOs of local, um, companies, talk to agencies and tell 'em what they, you know, how they're thinking. You know, if, if you're Yep. If you're self-aware at all and you wanna sit there and actually listen to what they're really saying behind what they're saying, you can really, you know, serve them well. So I think that similarly would be a benefit to marketing leaders here.

Mike Grinberg (00:33:14) - Yep. Definitely. Cool. Okay.

Lee Murray (00:33:16) - All right. Well, if you, if if you're a marketing leader listen to this and you wanna hear that, let us know and, um, we'll put it together. Uh, sounds like a good, good, uh, project. Anyway, so I'll probably get started working on that . Um, but hey, Mike, it's been, it is been great as I knew it would. Um, and so thanks for your time. If people want to reach out and find you, where's where sh where should I send them?

Mike Grinberg (00:33:38) - LinkedIn's the best. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. That's kind of my primary channel. I dabble pretty much everywhere else, but that's the, yeah, that's the primary. So, um, we got a, we have a podcast master marketer show. We've got a live, uh, a relationship like Growth Live that we do every Thursday. Um, and then if anybody wants to hear me rant on marketing adjacent things, me and a friend of mine just started a, a podcast called Marketing Adjacent.

Lee Murray (00:34:06) - Nice.

Mike Grinberg (00:34:07) - So thanks. It was that.

Lee Murray (00:34:09) - Okay. Um, well, yeah, we'll link all that. What was the first podcast you mentioned? Uh, the

Mike Grinberg (00:34:13) - Master marketer Show.

Lee Murray (00:34:14) - Master Marketer. Okay. Make sure we

Mike Grinberg (00:34:16) - Get, I'll send you all the,

Lee Murray (00:34:17) - All that, all the stuff Yeah. Documented, right. Feel free to link

Mike Grinberg (00:34:19) - Whatever you want.

Lee Murray (00:34:20) - Yeah. Cool. All right. Yeah. Hit mic up on LinkedIn.

Mike Grinberg (00:34:23) - Awesome. Thanks. Thanks again. This has been fun. I found we could talk for hours on this, so.

Lee Murray (00:34:27) - Oh yeah. There's so much more. That's so much more here. . All right. Thanks a lot.