Revenue Attribution with Laura Erdem from Dreamdata.io
In this week's episode, Host, Lee Murray, has the privilege of speaking with Laura Erdem, Senior Account Executive of Dreamdata.io.
Dreamdata is a company in Copenhagen that specializes in revenue attribution, mapping out all of a company's go-to-market data to understand the impact of marketing on sales. The company helps teams understand what drives revenue so they can scale their company.
Join Lee and Laura as they cover a wide range of topics—including revenue attribution, the best practices for a CMO at a mid-sized B2B company, and the importance of having a sales and marketing overlap, specifically on LinkedIn.
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 with Laura - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lerdem
00:00:00:02 - 00:00:20:09
Lee Murray
Welcome back to Exploring Growth Podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today I speak with Laura Erdem, senior account executive from Dream Data IO and we talk about revenue attribution and what it might look like to be a CMO for 100 days. All right, thanks, Laura, for being on Exploring Growth podcast.
00:00:21:08 - 00:00:25:13
Laura erdem
Lee It's fantastic to be a part of your broadcast. Thank you for the invitation.
00:00:26:00 - 00:00:54:10
Lee Murray
Of course. Yeah. I'm so excited to get together with you and chat about some of the things that you have going on. I, I ran into you on LinkedIn and you are doing a bunch of LinkedIn lives. I found a lot of value from them, sort of sorry listening in and, and I actually, I think one of the first points of engagement with you and your company was an article that you guys put out about sales and marketing alignment.
00:00:54:10 - 00:01:21:20
Lee Murray
And I don't know if you remember that that was probably like a year and a half ago or something, and it was right before I started my podcast, actually. Now I'm thinking about it and I mention it on the podcast and and because I was talking with Dr. Riggs, who's a professor of actually I'm a sales program. And so we were talking about this kind of juxtaposition and what's happening with marketing and sales, you know, and how is it growing and changing.
00:01:22:04 - 00:01:45:12
Lee Murray
And it was such a great article to use as a reference point in our conversation. So that's really kind of like my entry into dream data. Now obviously the company you're working with and and then I was, you know, see all your great content on, on LinkedIn. It's, it's very, you know, kind of like non-biased. I like that you're kind of guiding people through how to think about revenue attribution for B2B.
00:01:46:09 - 00:01:50:06
Lee Murray
So it's been great and I'm glad to finally have you have you here.
00:01:51:01 - 00:02:20:06
Laura erdem
Thank you so much. This is a huge compliment for our concentrator because, well, he's writing the articles that we think are either possible buyers or influence orders for our buyers might be interested in. We talk a little bit about ourselves. How are we running revenue? How are we running our teams? And since we are a B2B SAS company ourselves, a lot of companies might be either doing the same or trying to pivot or pivot towards that.
00:02:20:13 - 00:02:26:22
Laura erdem
So this is a huge complement. The two finds its relevance. We can definitely talk about the sales and marketing alignment to bring data.
00:02:27:10 - 00:02:32:09
Lee Murray
Yeah, that's awesome. You want to just say a word about dream data and what what you guys are about?
00:02:32:18 - 00:03:03:02
Laura erdem
Yeah. Thank you. So dream data is a scale up in Copenhagen, and we work with revenue attribution, so it's more or less mapping out all of your go to market data. That means all of your online touches, your traffic to your CRM. So you can understand that what marketing is doing is it actually converting into sales? All of those fantastic campaigns, are they driving revenue or are sales not able to close all those deals that you're bringing in?
00:03:03:12 - 00:03:09:10
Laura erdem
So we're helping teams to understand what drives revenue so they can scale those pieces of their company.
00:03:09:21 - 00:03:40:19
Lee Murray
Very important. Very important stuff. So let's let's talk about revenue and revenue. Attribution is one of the major topics that you guys are about. That's what you're talking about a lot on LinkedIn. And so I have this question for you that I thought would be kind of fun to kind of kick off our conversation. And, you know, a lot of my audience is obviously B2B, but there are mid-market somewhere around the 10 million mark and they're there, you know, plus or minus and they're building they probably have a little bit of a pretty good sales team.
00:03:40:19 - 00:04:04:16
Lee Murray
And now they're trying to build a brand. And, you know, they're thinking about all of these different things. And they go out there like all of us do, and they find information on Google and LinkedIn and various places, YouTube, about how to build a team. You know, they're hiring. They're hoping to hire a player marketing directors, VP marketing to lead this effort of building the marketing part out.
00:04:05:21 - 00:04:33:07
Lee Murray
So, you know, that's my audience, right? Those are the people who are tuning in. If if you were a CMO or VP marketing, whatever the title may be for 100 days at one of these companies, these mid-sized B2B companies, what would you do to install best practices for revenue attribution? That's that's really, I think would be really interesting because it gives us a lot of, you know, room to room to to run.
00:04:33:17 - 00:05:00:17
Laura erdem
Yeah. And it's a very exciting question for a salesperson because I run sales during data. And what if I was a CMO, how would I do the work? So okay, somebody hired me a salesperson as a CMO at a company that is sales driven, huh? And they're trying to kick off their marketing and so on. So the first and the far most important thing is to set the CMO free for a long time.
00:05:01:01 - 00:05:24:23
Laura erdem
Yeah. So if sales are steering marketing's work, it's very likely not going to performance. You expected to do because it's such a different discipline. Sales might be thinking what's helping their clients to buy, but they know their clients already there when they're in the consideration phase or when they're getting them on the cold calls, they're still not aware and so on.
00:05:25:09 - 00:05:49:20
Laura erdem
And education of your clients is a whole different realm than what sales know about at all. So if I was a CMO, first of all, before I'm hired, I would have a serious talk with the CEO of Where am I going to have my mark? What do you expect from me? Who am I going to collaborate with and how much freedom do I have?
00:05:50:11 - 00:06:22:18
Laura erdem
And that might be a lot of nice words because everybody would say, Oh, you're yeah, you're free to go and so on. Yeah, but what are you going to measure me upon? Right. And when? Because marketing takes time. B2B marketing. So we, we've run some overviews of our clients. So an average B2B SAS customer journey takes 192 days, 192 days to close a business from awareness, first touch and the customer journey until the business is closed.
00:06:23:11 - 00:06:48:07
Laura erdem
So if you have that time and you would say to a CMO, Oh yeah, you kick off your things and so on, and then we will measure you in a month or two. Well, that's not going to work. And then as soon as you know your customer, the length of the customer journey, the CMO also has to be chosen in the right direction because the CEO has to ask the CMO what will be the first things that you're going to do?
00:06:48:14 - 00:07:10:01
Laura erdem
Because if the CMO starts talking about, Oh, we're going to be building the brand and redoing the website and all that kind of beautiful things, the things that are seen on the mark of the CEO would see the actual website. Oh yes, he or she did the work. They changed the website, but it didn't bring any revenue and then the CMO could start like lowballing it.
00:07:10:02 - 00:07:37:07
Laura erdem
Yeah, but it takes time and so on. So there has to be a balance of the expectations and the deliveries dream data. When we started our marketing and did not have that much of demand to start with what our CMO started to do is creating articles and information to our prospect buyers about everything that sales have been asked on the calls.
00:07:37:07 - 00:08:02:16
Laura erdem
Whenever we had a question on the sales call, we could not answer or needed a longer explanation. That means that there are more people on the web looking for those answers than we would create a blog or a document about it, and we just continue doing that. If you have zero content or very high level content gets very basic into what questions your buyers are looking to get answered.
00:08:03:01 - 00:08:33:10
Laura erdem
As soon as you've got that go higher up level and start educating your market and then you can talk about sales and marketing alignment, whatever it is that you're selling like higher level information so that when they come to you to learn that stuff, they will also learn about the questions that our bias usually are asking. And then they're closer into the sales conversation because a lot of questions would be answered by your articles before they actually meet sales, and that will save sales time as well.
00:08:34:03 - 00:08:59:19
Lee Murray
For sure. I would just say that like that underscores a lot of the things I've been saying for years. And to simplify it, I would say sales is not marketing and marketing is not sales. And a lot of times I have to install a new mindset for the manager or, and or executives that are bringing me in because they're there very a lot of times short term thinking.
00:08:59:19 - 00:09:31:11
Lee Murray
They're very results tomorrow driven because they've been doing sales for a number of years. And so now they want marketing to do what sales was doing and that doesn't work. So I love that you start off with number one, what are we measured by? Because what that's going to do, I think just because I'm thinking about conversations that I've had with actual CEOs, and I think what that's going to to result in is them asking you, well, I don't know how to measure you.
00:09:31:22 - 00:10:06:00
Lee Murray
Right? So then you have to give them kind of goes back to my point of they're looking for a player CMO's, right? Because they need someone to come in and show them the way. Now that's kind of a tricky thing because they want to hold them accountable to what sales was doing, but they don't know how. So I love that that is that is where you started, because that's such an important conversation to set the mindset correctly and establish a basis for what how they're being measured.
00:10:06:09 - 00:10:19:18
Lee Murray
And then as they're moving along, everyone having their own territories. And of course, as you said later on, then that can be come in alignment. But so I love that that's a that's a great start. So you're hired you're hired.
00:10:20:18 - 00:10:21:05
Laura erdem
For 100.
00:10:21:05 - 00:10:41:18
Lee Murray
Days. For 100 days. And actually, you know, it's kind of funny that we're talking like this because it's just a, you know, a riff. But that's kind of how a lot of people think. They, you know, they may not say you're hired for 100 days, but if you don't work out 100 days, like if you don't produce new revenue in 100 days, now they're going to start questioning you.
00:10:41:18 - 00:11:11:07
Lee Murray
So again, that's that's very much a sales mentality. And you said it's 192 days until someone buys. So, you know, that's 90 days outside of the 100 days that you've been given to perform. So actually, that's a very interesting position that you've created here because after 100 days, I think I think paying someone what they're paying, you know, a high level executive marketer to come in and run a team and do all this, there's a lot of cost involved.
00:11:11:13 - 00:11:34:02
Lee Murray
They haven't really done this to a large extent before unless they've been part of another company previously and seen it work. Caveat. So here we are at the end of 100 days and you're going to start to kind of get a little itchy. Those board meetings are going to start to start to rumble. Right. And a marketer, even if they are a player, they're the star.
00:11:34:02 - 00:11:50:03
Lee Murray
You know, Laura has decided to leave her sales career behind and start, you know, become a professional CMO, you know, that. Or you don't know, you still have another 90 days to go. 92 days. So that's like another hundred days.
00:11:50:11 - 00:11:50:18
Laura erdem
Yeah.
00:11:51:03 - 00:12:10:14
Lee Murray
So in 100 days, you're worthless, right? I mean, it could it could become like that. That could be the mindset if it's set wrong that, hey, in hundred days, whatever you really done, you know, that, that to me, I feel that so much out there talking to CEOs. So.
00:12:10:21 - 00:12:38:08
Laura erdem
Yeah, there are two things about this. So I before I joined Dream did I used to work for Gartner and selling to the CTOs and CIOs. And one of the biggest reports that Gartner is usually sold for the C C-level suite is first hundred days. So one of the things for the salespeople, as soon as there is a new C-level in the company you're selling to go out and talk to them about the first hundred days.
00:12:38:17 - 00:13:04:06
Laura erdem
What do you need to do in the first hundred days? And for the CMOs, I mean, it has to be the right things that you're measured upon. What is it that you can have an impact on? Can you at all drive any revenue? What will you be measured upon on the way? So those 192 days, well, that's how long it takes for a client to find you and to buy the solution.
00:13:04:13 - 00:13:24:20
Laura erdem
But if you were to measure a CMO one day, 192 days, well, those prospects first needs to come in and be aware of you. So that's where it starts, even the 492 days. So it's even longer. I, I sense that is the reason why the CMO careers are so short.
00:13:25:13 - 00:13:32:11
Lee Murray
Yes. It's like for 100 days, all they're doing is updating their LinkedIn bio, I think.
00:13:33:10 - 00:13:34:12
Laura erdem
Because at the end of the day.
00:13:35:07 - 00:13:35:21
Lee Murray
They're done.
00:13:37:03 - 00:13:55:21
Laura erdem
Exactly next. Next the exact right. Yeah. So I hope the mindset will be changing a little bit, especially for B2B SAS. I mean, if you are a B2C CMO, I think the impact is much faster because your buyers are buying so much faster. But for B2B, it's it's a different.
00:13:56:08 - 00:14:17:00
Lee Murray
The mentality has already been established there with B2C because sales is sort of marketing, you know, sales is wrapped in with digital marketing. So you're already you're already accustomed to spending money on ads. And so when you come in to from a sales purely just cold calling, cold emailing, you know, events, feel, marketing, whatever you're doing to to generate leads.
00:14:17:03 - 00:14:45:22
Lee Murray
And now you're doing real marketing and doing things that are higher are harder to, to attribute. And you may not even have a high qualified CMO that's done this before. I mean, you're saying 192 days then tack on maybe 90 days prior to prep for the 192. So we're getting, you know, we're getting close to a year here of of really not a lot of traction.
00:14:45:22 - 00:15:05:05
Lee Murray
So that's interesting because it really it really set you up to to have a powerful story from dream data to to explain like, okay, you're going to support the CMO in in communicating to the C-suite how progress is being made, I assume.
00:15:06:07 - 00:15:07:12
Laura erdem
Yeah. So if in one.
00:15:07:12 - 00:15:14:21
Lee Murray
Hundred and 92 days this, you know, you haven't attributed any sales, well, you should be able to look at some data and say it's coming.
00:15:15:06 - 00:15:34:07
Laura erdem
Now. Exactly. To start looking at the early pipeline, the early views into what is being brought in, are those converting further into the pipeline? What is sales starting to do on that? What's working? Where are we dropping them off? That's where attribution comes in. So you can understand the full customer journey for sure.
00:15:35:01 - 00:15:47:20
Lee Murray
So I mean, what are some of the things that or maybe just one thing that they should be thinking about prior to the 100 days? So if they were looking to hire someone, what are the prep? What's the prep work look like?
00:15:48:12 - 00:16:15:22
Laura erdem
Yeah. So really important to start tracking on the website. Proper tracking. Usually it comes from either your web development team or even from the product team. If you are a B2B SaaS company, very likely your product team is already tracking what's happening in the product. Do exactly the same on your website. And if you understand where your traffic is coming from when the new CMO is joining, that will be so much easier to grasp and figure out.
00:16:15:22 - 00:16:34:18
Laura erdem
Okay, most of the traffic is coming from here. Let's figure out how we can close this or we have no traffic from here. Let's see if we need the presence in here and the testing will be much, much faster. Instead of that, you have to start collecting your traffic and understanding the historical, and then it will take much longer than 200 days for it, for sure.
00:16:35:05 - 00:17:13:07
Lee Murray
Yeah. So it gives them some kind of general benchmark to, to run with. And so kind of go back to the content part of it. And I know prior to the call you were saying like a lot of the your LinkedIn lives and things that you're doing are still kind of experimental. And I like that because I love experiments because that's how we, we test and grow were where you think where your team when they're thinking about creating content were they thinking about it primarily from an SEO standpoint or were they did they have sort of a duality of mind from a sales support standpoint?
00:17:13:19 - 00:17:42:07
Laura erdem
To start with, it was purely sales support. Okay. I mean, we are aware of SEO, but the first thing is we need to help the troops upfront, talking with our prospects to close those deals. That's right. And if we're able to have that in writing, it will be easier to have that explained on the calls first priority. Then as soon as we had that part, then we started to see what type of content is starting to bring in our clients.
00:17:42:10 - 00:18:05:16
Laura erdem
Is that what we're doing on LinkedIn? Is that what's going on on the website? Where are our prospects? Where do they come from? Where do we have to be with the high level content and with the specific content, it really depends on where on the education journey our clients are, our prospects and the clients are. And then the SEO kicked in to yeah.
00:18:05:16 - 00:18:20:09
Lee Murray
So a lot of that started on, on your website I assume, you know, content articles and those, those type of pieces of content. And then it probably moved off to include also places like LinkedIn, is that correct?
00:18:20:19 - 00:18:50:13
Laura erdem
Yeah. So the mastermind of it all is our CMO. He's fantastic. And he is the one making sure that we have the content that our prospects might be willing to read. And if the content that we wrote is not performing, we figuring out what to write more off and less off. What is it that at all not helping our clients to convert into any types of further pipelines and the content on LinkedIn comes after that.
00:18:50:23 - 00:19:13:04
Laura erdem
This is something that is enabling our team to be proactive on LinkedIn and talk about the things that are relevant for our prospects. And we see that from either sales conversations because we record them, we talk about them on Slack and so on. Plus we see the insights and dream data, what type of content is helping our prospects to move forward further in the pipeline?
00:19:13:04 - 00:19:43:11
Laura erdem
And the people who are on LinkedIn, they very likely only want to read the high level content. Sometimes we mix in the more technical attribution content and so on, and that's what is actually helping out the prospects that are already in the pipeline or really considering the solution. To read more and understand. Okay, so this is how I can also use an attribution platform kind of education one to many instead of I had to send videos to each and every prospect.
00:19:43:11 - 00:20:20:14
Lee Murray
Sure, I love that. That's great. And so since we're kind of talking about content, talk a little about a little bit about your LinkedIn. I think it's interesting, you know, to get your perspective since you live in this marketing world as a salesperson, right. There's there's so much there's so much I don't know what's the right word to use, but like empowerment, I guess, as a growth professional to have a sales mind, but also in a marketing world, because that's where I feel like B2B is.
00:20:20:14 - 00:20:40:13
Lee Murray
You have to really understand sales to understand marketing and vice versa like that. You really have to have an overlap. You can't just be, you know, siloed. So I'm curious, you know, how it plays out for you, how it's playing out for you on LinkedIn specifically, you know, tell me about what you're doing and and what's working.
00:20:40:19 - 00:21:10:12
Laura erdem
Definitely. You alluded a little bit to that before, like where is the market moving tributes of IS especially for how sales and marketing are collaborating because before in time it was so purely siloed. When I used to work at Red Hat for what is it now six or seven years ago, marketing is a part of the company that is making sure that events are well executed and they're just asking us for a list of leads that we got at the events.
00:21:10:22 - 00:21:32:20
Laura erdem
This is the silo. That's where we shook our hands. That's it? Mm hmm. But where I see it moving right now is exactly what you're talking about. Sales has to do a little bit of marketing because your prospecting will be just as good as you're able to grasp your audience, especially if you're selling to sales or marketing professionals.
00:21:33:02 - 00:21:58:13
Laura erdem
They're bombard it with messaging, with information all over the place, and for it to stand out in a way that people remember what you talk about, not even knowing that you're actually selling to them, but educating them, then it will be much easier for them to come over to you and at the end of the day be sold too, because nobody wants to be sold to marketing, sales, very marketing and all.
00:21:58:13 - 00:22:26:20
Laura erdem
We have companies do this and that. This is boring for a salesperson and nobody will buy on that messaging. But if you're able to join the two and start talking about the problems in the market, the buyers will be attracted by that because it will be a voice that okay, so if she's able to explain the solutions in those types of words, maybe if I'm in the sales conversation with this person, that might not be a waste of time.
00:22:26:20 - 00:22:38:01
Laura erdem
I might even learn something. Maybe not by to start with. That will be my job to convert to devices, but. But you will be much more eager to engage in a conversation.
00:22:38:11 - 00:23:04:04
Lee Murray
Yeah, I agree 100% and I feel like education is that kind of critical piece where it's not that you're necessarily teaching people, but you're relating information. You're you're relaying and relating information to them in the context that makes sense to them. So I really feel like LinkedIn Live is, is really the center of the universe for the most part.
00:23:04:04 - 00:23:49:19
Lee Murray
I mean, I don't want to make it too extreme, but I feel like LinkedIn lives are highly underrated, highly undervalued because it allows you to do what we're doing here in a with a feedback loop involved, you know, and, and I think that it's invaluable to get that feedback. I think there's a balance between, you know, uptake, the feedback that you're getting about need and problems and and giving that information, relating that information back to them and balancing it with helping your audience to understand what they actually need, you know, because they may not know they're in the process of figuring out what solve their problem or what their problem even is.
00:23:50:20 - 00:24:18:00
Lee Murray
But I think in those conversation and those live conversations, it gives you the it's an even better mechanism than what we have here on the podcast, because here it's they're listening now and they may, you know, make a comment or something retro. But I really love that for that reason. And I, I've been a part of couple of yours and I like how they've been run just, you know, they feel like boxes were relatable, right?
00:24:18:04 - 00:24:52:19
Lee Murray
I feel like you're doing a good job of getting not only yourself, but you're you're getting your guest to take the knowledge that they have about the market, whatever's happening in their their domain and relating it to the buyer so that it might hit on a nerve, that might be a problem somewhere. It's not necessarily it has nothing to do really with sales as much as it does as much as about bringing together all the pieces of the puzzle for that user to kind of make up their mind about where we're at, where they're headed.
00:24:53:12 - 00:24:56:00
Lee Murray
Of course, it's all about timing for for the user.
00:24:56:05 - 00:25:28:16
Laura erdem
Yeah, it is. And thank you very much for the compliment. It's it is still an experiment. That's what I'm saying. And that's why it's so nice to hear the feedback like this means that we are on the right path. And so the way I dreamed it, we started to run. Lengthened Lives was very experimental. One of the times we were sitting in our sales pipeline review and talking with the CMO, say, Why don't we do our dream theater demos live like people?
00:25:28:16 - 00:25:54:16
Laura erdem
Whoever wants to drop in, they just drop in and do that. And what's the best lesson? Well, we're ready on LinkedIn. Let's try to do a LinkedIn live. And so fine. It was my idea as Let's do it and I'll do it. I'll run like every second week I can run something like this. Yeah. And the first time it was almost a complete flop because I had to figure out how streaming works and so on.
00:25:54:16 - 00:26:18:22
Laura erdem
I was talking 15 minutes with myself and and it was like that. Then our CTO comes in. A lot of you know that nobody can hear you. We don't see anything. I'm halfway through so and then I figured out that that you cannot do demos on LinkedIn live because the screen is very small. The people who are listening, they cannot see what you're showing.
00:26:18:22 - 00:26:39:12
Laura erdem
And I think we had like ten people joining. So that that mistake is fine and it's the best way to test this out. Sure, that one didn't work. Then we took the next one and the next one, and then instead of me presenting something, I started to invite people to it and people to start with. It was on site.
00:26:39:12 - 00:27:07:00
Laura erdem
So I said, Who do I know of marketers who would be good to be guests on our LinkedIn live? Who could share something relevant for my audience on LinkedIn for Dream Data's audience on LinkedIn? So we spoke like what is it? What should how do you prepare for your first CMO role? Or how do you do demand generation like really general topics more?
00:27:07:01 - 00:27:32:08
Laura erdem
How do you do proper UTM mapping things that people relate to. But we almost never spoke about dream data. It states who is hosting the the session. All of the people who came in, they came well, they are already our clients, so they felt a little bit of light to mention dream data once in a while that help, but it was not the purpose of it at all.
00:27:32:16 - 00:27:55:03
Laura erdem
And the later we thought, okay, so let's invite somebody else and let's try to do it online. Maybe that will work as well. Just like we too are talking from the different parts of the world. We started to do that and we started to see that it's actually working. People are willing to join. We're having like 100 people attend the like 50 can't come to the to the live show.
00:27:55:03 - 00:28:39:03
Laura erdem
That's amazing. Numbers. And I was doing it every second week than our CMO is coming overseeing louder. Could we do that every week? I said no, no, I'm in sales. So now we stopped. That's where he joined me. So now we do it every week. But he's doing some of the shows, I'm doing some other shows as well, and we just switched the swap and then he invites maybe a little bit higher based CMO's from like, I don't know who was he talking like profit well and bigger companies because he knows the topic and I can take on other guests that I'm just very curious about the topic and that also matches the audience interest
00:28:39:12 - 00:28:41:13
Laura erdem
so we can just have a very good chat about it.
00:28:41:22 - 00:28:44:12
Lee Murray
So what are you finding most of your guest on LinkedIn now?
00:28:44:23 - 00:28:45:09
Laura erdem
Yes.
00:28:45:17 - 00:28:51:15
Lee Murray
And you're reaching out to them or assume probably some of them are reaching out to you. It's sort of like this where we're I mean.
00:28:52:22 - 00:28:58:08
Laura erdem
Most of the people don't reach out to us yet, so we're not that big. It's still an expected.
00:28:58:08 - 00:29:00:15
Lee Murray
So no autograph signings or anything yet?
00:29:01:02 - 00:29:21:22
Laura erdem
No, but I can tell you about the feeling of being known as well a little later that that weird. Yeah, it is but we invite so far but it's also a very good thing because we can choose who we want on the show. So we're inviting and we're inviting them personally. So it's not like a third party, somebody inviting or they have to fill out something.
00:29:22:04 - 00:29:45:18
Laura erdem
We write to the people, we want them the show. We tell them why we want them on the show and what is it that's we're going to talk about? It takes 30 minutes for them. It's good exposure for them. It becomes a podcast later as well. So it's it's very targeted. And if somebody would come over to us and ask if they can be on our live show, we will still need to discuss if it's a good idea because it has to match our audience.
00:29:46:01 - 00:29:50:07
Laura erdem
So the best way to do it is to approach people. You want to be on your show. Really?
00:29:50:22 - 00:30:08:07
Lee Murray
I like that. So what has so far with this experiment? What has it done for dream data? I mean, do you have any because I know you guys are about, you know, attributing success through the pipeline. What can you say about what your time spent on this has done so far?
00:30:08:13 - 00:30:13:00
Laura erdem
So interesting. You asked and now I'm opening the blog that we've released yesterday.
00:30:13:00 - 00:30:13:23
Lee Murray
I thought you would never.
00:30:14:21 - 00:30:23:14
Laura erdem
Know, but we've released a blog about this, and the next length in live will be me and Stephan next week talking about what did we achieve with LinkedIn lives.
00:30:23:21 - 00:30:24:12
Lee Murray
That's awesome.
00:30:25:07 - 00:30:53:18
Laura erdem
A perfect timing. So we ran last year. We ran 32 LinkedIn live sessions. Out of the 32, we had over 18,000 attendees as low as 28 people. We spoke with external from dream data and lifetime minutes. Watched was 616 hours. It's a lot for an experiment. It's crazy.
00:30:54:12 - 00:31:03:12
Lee Murray
That is crazy. So those watch hours from LinkedIn native or is that after LinkedIn because you said you turn into a podcast, right?
00:31:03:21 - 00:31:11:10
Laura erdem
Yeah. That's only native LinkedIn. We did not. Podcast is really like baby step so far, so we don't get a lot from that.
00:31:11:10 - 00:31:24:01
Lee Murray
That's amazing, though. I mean, I can't I would never would have thought that. I mean, I guess consistency of, you know, one hour here, one hour there, it builds, you know, the snowball effect.
00:31:24:08 - 00:31:47:21
Laura erdem
It does. And when we look at how long people stay on the LinkedIn live, I mean, when I listen to Arlington live, I sometimes drop off. If I don't know, something happens, whatever, because it's secondary. You're just there and while doing something else, right? Yeah, right. And if you if people don't drop off and even ask questions while having the session, this is so easy to measure if it is bringing value to your audience.
00:31:48:03 - 00:32:02:03
Lee Murray
Yeah. Now what about past the LinkedIn? So of all of those watch hours and viewers, do you have any kind of next ups from those?
00:32:02:23 - 00:32:34:01
Laura erdem
We're starting this, so it's still an untapped market. So we hired three new as the RS into dream data because we have so much demand that we're not able to tap into it by ourselves, only with the same hands. So the idea is to start conversations with all the people who have been on our LinkedIn live, especially when the topic is around marketing measurements and exactly the topics that are like would help people to figure out that they maybe you need an attribution solution.
00:32:34:05 - 00:32:55:12
Laura erdem
So we're tapping more and more into this to move it over to sales, closer to sales, and at the same time we're repurposing some of the LinkedIn live. So they're being pushed into webinars, they're being pushed into YouTube. We do every create them as content. Some of them are becoming articles as well. So that marketing path is also being picked up.
00:32:56:06 - 00:33:23:21
Lee Murray
Yeah, that's great. I love that. So kind of now that we've, we've, we've, we've gone around the world here with, you know, content and attribution. Let's go back, if you don't mind, to the 100 days because now that you've been hired, I want to I want to talk more about like kind of breaking down attribution a little bit for, let's say, the CEO, you know, as a CMO, newly hired, what are you going to measure me by?
00:33:24:02 - 00:33:45:19
Lee Murray
And the CEO says, well, I don't know what some as you buy and what you know they don't say that directly. Of course, because they don't want to look bad. But now you're going to tell them, okay, well, you know, for this to go well and for your ears not be itching in 100 days, here are some of the first things that here's how I would lay the foundation for attribution.
00:33:46:05 - 00:33:55:07
Lee Murray
What how would you lay that out for them? And it can be high level too. Again, remember, this is kind of like, you know, getting things started and getting the bedrock formed. Yeah.
00:33:55:19 - 00:34:39:02
Lee Murray
For sure. And I mean, likely if the company was very sales driven, it would be difficult to run attribution and get a CMO measured according to attribution the first hundred days because the first thing as we spoke about, tracking has to be the has to come in place. So the technology in the background, not even attribution technology tracking, making sure that your UTM mappings are right so you know where your traffic is coming from, starting to do some experimentation on your pay channels, starting to write some of the blocks and see how do they perform purely in traffic to start with and on form submissions for that you don't need attribution.
00:34:39:02 - 00:35:00:21
Laura erdem
Google Analytics is enough. Or if you want an alternative and understand how B2B companies perform on engagement, you can use dream data for free for that. So kind of start with traffic, see where they're coming from, get the foundation done and when you know and see some of the basics for that, you will start to build the data on top of it.
00:35:01:17 - 00:35:24:11
Laura erdem
Your CRM has to work for you to have a proper attribution. CMO even has to know how the pipeline is looking. How are we measuring the salespeople? How are prospects moving throughout the pipeline? Because if you start measuring a CMO according to attribution, four out of no sales qualified leads, well, we need to talk about what is a sales qualified lead.
00:35:24:19 - 00:35:47:10
Laura erdem
When is the time that sales call it a sales qualified lead? When is it that they're dropping off? So those measurements are going to be so different depending on the company's maturity as well. And to begin with, you don't need attribution. You need attribution when you got some basic data in place, there are so many prospects we're talking with.
00:35:47:16 - 00:36:15:23
Laura erdem
We're like, Please go back and do some homework before we engage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then later, then you'll figure out, depending on your market, like paid works really well for a lot of companies. For SAS companies, review sites is something gold. And so our CMO every single quarter is collecting reviews from due to Caps era because we know what works.
00:36:16:04 - 00:36:36:21
Laura erdem
We know that's where our like buying ready prospects are coming through and if we're there, we're easy to find. So then you can break it down to specific points. Are you going to measure me on how paid is performing? Are you going to measure me on how our review sites are performing? Are we getting clients? Are we closing them through that?
00:36:36:21 - 00:36:47:20
Laura erdem
So there are so many moving parts depending on the business, but tracking has to be in place to start with. And then you can put the layers of various channels to test.
00:36:48:16 - 00:37:29:06
Lee Murray
I like that. Okay, that makes a lot of sense and fundamentals is what I'm hearing. And then, you know, it's really like it's like I think sometimes what we will do is will overcomplicate something that is actually very simple, you know, this idea of, you know, to make it more is finding the platforms where users are hanging out socially, but where are they hanging out for the technical part, too, because I know there's a lot of software companies worked with a handful of them, that they have industry specific, you know, watering holes, right, where people are going to look at certain types of software or whatever.
00:37:29:21 - 00:37:58:18
Lee Murray
And so, you know, to your point about these review sites, if they're going if you know they're going to be there, then that's probably a place you want to be. Now, if you're not in software and you're in, you know, manufacturing or something else, you know, there's like an equivalent of that somewhere. Yeah, I was working with a training company recently and they have an association that has a very that's the watering hole for for everyone that's, you know, looking to continue their series and all that.
00:37:59:01 - 00:38:13:22
Lee Murray
And they have a listserv that whenever anything is posted, they're pretty much everybody sees it. So, you know, they can they can literally have one person, a client, make a, you know, testimonial on the listserv and they'll get new business.
00:38:14:00 - 00:38:14:06
Laura erdem
Yeah.
00:38:14:13 - 00:38:28:06
Lee Murray
So, so it's like, why overcomplicate something that, you know, at the bottom, you know, the fundamental level that can be a initial source of revenue that always works well, almost in perpetuity.
00:38:28:08 - 00:38:58:01
Laura erdem
Exactly. Chris Walker speaks about that a lot. Talk to your clients. I mean, the most important part is to talk to your clients and the prospects. Ask them where have they heard about you from? They'll tell you the one channel they remember or they find you about from. And then when you've got that significant amount of data due attribution on top of it and figure out if that person's telling you they found you on LinkedIn.
00:38:58:07 - 00:39:24:19
Laura erdem
But they had seven touches before, one on Google, one on Reddit, one on Katara. Well, LinkedIn is very important because that's what they remember. But you still have to be on the other ones because attribution tells you that that person actually was there as well. So it's like talk to the people and then for sure have the data in place to be able to figure out how are they actually buying or what is it that they remember for sure.
00:39:25:21 - 00:39:49:22
Lee Murray
So as we wrap this up, what else would you tell a CEO of a of a mid-level company that's growing and they're wanting this to work, but they don't have really the I don't know. They don't have they don't know what they don't know. They need that expert, you know, marketer to come in and tell them what else would you give them?
00:39:49:22 - 00:40:15:05
Laura erdem
I think it's very important that they let the marketer go in a way, because a lot of CEOs in the companies, especially if they're sales led, they understand everything through the sales lens and they will measure the CMO on the same values. They measure the sales. Right. And if they don't have an impact immediately, well, it's a fast fire.
00:40:15:16 - 00:40:35:13
Laura erdem
And so CEOs have to start to understand that it takes time to get marketing. And four in the CMO is joining companies that are sales led well have a very honest conversation and figure out that they actually trust the CEO telling that they will let you go and let you do the stuff. It could be this is what they want to do.
00:40:36:02 - 00:40:50:04
Laura erdem
But when the ship hits the fan and you're not showing your deliverables that you have agreed upon, how are we going to deal with this or am I going to be fired? Or a Can I go ahead and do more experimentation?
00:40:51:02 - 00:40:59:14
Lee Murray
I love it. I love it. And with that, you got the position. You have 100 days and good luck to you.
00:41:00:14 - 00:41:01:10
Laura erdem
Exactly.
00:41:01:10 - 00:41:03:10
Lee Murray
You'll be fired in 90, 95 days.
00:41:04:14 - 00:41:13:14
Laura erdem
And then you can update your LinkedIn once again. I think that's why we're seeing that many fractional CMO's because yeah, it's kind of a safe way to go in and.
00:41:14:08 - 00:41:35:18
Lee Murray
Yeah, yeah. You know that's an interesting take. I like that and I would agree with you on that. I think the whole market has sort of become fractionalized, you know, where you see the fibers and upwork's and freelancers and, you know, kind of working from your van and whichever country, you know. But yeah, that's that's great. I love talking with you.
00:41:35:18 - 00:41:54:18
Lee Murray
This has been a great conversation. And as I knew it would and I'm looking forward to having you back if you'll if you'll come back in the future and we'll keep following you on LinkedIn. I'll put all of your information below website, you know, contact on LinkedIn and everything so people can can find you.
00:41:54:22 - 00:41:59:01
Laura erdem
Thank you. So mostly thank you for the invitation. It was a pleasure to finally meet you.
00:41:59:21 - 00:42:21:15
Lee Murray
Definitely. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Exploring Growth podcast. If you are getting any kind of value out of this, please feel free to share this with a colleague up here a friend, a neighbor, a stranger, anyone. We want to get this out to as many B2B mid-market B2C growth leaders as possible so they can get value as well.
00:42:21:15 - 00:42:29:09
Lee Murray
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