I lead marketing strategy at Sprout Social. We are a social media management platform,
so we help support growing different businesses within their social ecosystem, aggregate all
those social systems into one safe place. But we also work with businesses of all size,
anywhere from SMB to agency to corporate to enterprise.
So my role at Sprout is really to help support making sure we have a defined strategy.
So the way that we work with all of our individual segments that come in,
we work on helping them individually grow and scale their social business.
So the talk is how to 10x your customer marketing through retention optimization.
So I'm a strong believer in just data in general as a marketer,
and a lot of the times when people think about growth or they think about conversion rate optimization,
they tend to think on the top of the funnel and all the things that you need to do to get people to your website.
And so what we want to do, if you're a very customer centric organization,
is focus rather on just trying to bring in more people,
make sure that the experience that they're having as they come in
is going to be something that they'll continue to want to stay, grow and flourish utilizing our software.
So a few years back we had a challenge specifically with our agency segment
in where they were churning, meaning they were leaving our product a little bit faster.
And we really wanted to spend some time understanding them
so that we can better understand how to retain those customers.
So I'm going to talk a lot about the journey that we went through as we started off
and how we dug into understanding our agency segments specifically,
but then also how to grow that segment and how to build a software solution for them
that really spoke to their needs.
And then how to retain, grow, optimize and put kind of that growth data-driven methodology for marketing
into the funnel on the other side of the spectrum.
I think a lot of it for us came down to feeling like we really intrinsically knew our customers.
So before we even created any content, before we even went to market with ways that we can help grow
or support them or flourish or retain them, we really wanted to make sure we understood them.
So we did a deep dive analysis on the qualitative and the quantitative side.
So spent a lot of time surveying, spending a lot of time interviewing
and really understanding what their biggest pain points were
and to understand what were the things that kept them up at night.
And not necessarily things that kept them up at night from our product,
but what were things for them that was really challenging the way that they go to business,
the way that they work and the way that they specifically grow.
And then utilizing that data and matching it up really with the quantitative stuff too,
of how are they using the software, how many times are they logging in,
what was the optimal number of people that we can be working with at an agency.
And then taking all those data points and connecting what they were doing with the why
that they needed to do that.
And so all of that data together helped us create a better value proposition,
a better messaging strategy, and a better way for us to really talk and communicate to them
so that as we did create content, such as onboarding videos or webinars, guides, anything,
we really did it in a way that it spoke their language and helped solve for their pains.
So rather than just saying, hey, we're social media management for agencies,
we can say, hey, we can help you grow your business and support you by this social media 101 guide
for growing your client base, which are things that they would come back to us
and say that they needed.
So really trying to solve for the voice of the customer is a huge part of how we've changed
and diversified our model.
I think a lot of it really just comes down to the way that we talk and the way that we communicate.
All too often, I think marketers tend to err on the side of trying to push a product,
and we've heard a lot at Inbound this week already, the idea of pushing an idea and to tell a story.
And so we use more of a storytelling approach where we try to connect with our audiences on that human level.
And so anything that we do automate, we try to do it based on data or based on insight that we have
into the customer.
So we're not just sending them something.
If we have a new product launch, it's less about throwing that launch to them and saying, hey,
buy our product and more about helping them become better at what they do,
helping make their life easier and helping them kind of see the value in working together.
And so a lot of how we'll communicate to them, even if it is through automation,
is to make sure that we're taking a step back and saying, well, how have we asked?
And so spend a lot of time asking them questions.
We spend a lot of time really just connecting.
We try everybody on our team to be on the phone with customers at least an hour a week just so that we do have
that human connection to them as well and drive that into everything that we do.
And I think it really depends on who the customer is.
And that's part of the biggest challenge when you work for a business that oversees literally every kind of customer.
We want to make sure that we have a team really dedicated on knowing what their pain points are.
And so a lot of what we'll do early on is set up flows for segmentation so people can go in and self segment themselves.
And that way we can help make sure that we give them the right content at the right time.
So say an agency, for example, were to come to us with the pain of growing their agency.
What we would do is want to set them up with the right content of maybe connecting them with our agency partner program
where they can then work with somebody to help set up a growth path.
We can give them KPI tracks or content that they can use to sell the ROI of social to their clients and to their customer base.
And then we can also kind of hold their hand and walk them down the journey to help them understand if you're trying to or if you're challenged with selling ROI,
this part of our tool analytics is really where you need to spend your time.
So using kind of what their big driver is, why they came to us in the first place, and then feeding them the part of the product
and then also the content they can use and trying to make their life easier as much as possible.
So we tailor a lot of our onboarding and we tailor a lot of our one-to-one connections based off of how people segment themselves early on.
So as soon as a customer comes to us and say, this is the pain thing that's keeping me up,
we'll try to then solve for that across a various level of different kinds of journeys.
And there's never really a one-size-fits-all, and I think that's the part that can be really, really challenging.
When you think about customer marketing, when you think about retention, it all has to start with value
and making sure that that person on the other end does feel like a human. They do feel like they're getting that value.
So that's incredibly important to us. So before we try to sell anything more to them or push a growth lever and say,
hey, let's start upgrading or working on this, we want to make sure that they're getting something back.
Really starting with one, understanding why they came to us for the first place,
and then guiding them in the right direction for what kind of content would be helpful for them early on
and not throw everything at them at once.
I mean, I think it's a digital world now, and it's the way that we digest content,
the way that we digest the world is so incredibly different than the way it was five, ten years ago.
And so every single time we have someone come on, especially if it's a smaller business,
you obviously can't have that opportunity to be face to face like you might be able to at an event like this.
And so the point of video is to really bring that human element to the table,
especially when you're working with customers, because we're trying to really get them to trust us.
Really everything comes down to trust. It comes down to value. It comes down to how we're working together.
And I think being able to see somebody is so incredibly important.
I myself work remote and we're not 100% remote office.
So we try to make sure every phone call we have, every conversation is always on video
because there's these nonverbal cues or these ways that we can kind of see people interact
that you might not be able to hear if you just hear it on a phone call or if you're reading a piece of content.
So kind of bringing that emotional space to the table and saying, like, hey, here I am. This is me.
It really helps us see the human on the other end and not be in a B2B or a B2C world,
but just really a human to human world because that's really the evolution of what marketing is,
is that human connection. And video is just such an important catalyst to that.
There's a couple of areas that come to mind right off the bat. One would be onboarding for us just as a SaaS product.
It's so much easier for us to send short onboarding videos with like a, hey, here's where you can go.
This is what you can digest. This is how you get the information to help bring people
and guide them down the right way to digest the right content versus sending a 10 page guide,
like read this and then you can start being successful. So we want to make everything super digestible
and easy for our end users to get. And I'd say that that's probably one of the first things that we'll stop with.
The next one, though, is just the relationship management. We're huge on video for relationship management as a whole.
So our team does practice a lot of video voicemails or an opportunity to send a video welcome or hello,
even if it's not something that they spend a ridiculous amount of time in production.
People kind of think sometimes that in order for me to do video, I need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And that's just not true. So we try to set up a small space that our team can just go take a video wave, say hello,
and then start to create that relationship right out of the gates. And I think once you have that and you see the familiar face
and you start to feel that intrinsic care for the person on the other end, it helps really grow that relationship out of the gate.
I guess the first one would be to just do it. Just try it. It took us a little while also to even push over the edge of saying,
this isn't scary, I promise. It's an easy thing to just go do. It makes a difference. And then start testing.
So as a growth marketer, we test everything. And in every turn, we'll always see our video campaigns, even if they're small, outperform our other ones.
So if you're thinking about it, if people are considering it, I'd say just test it and do it rather than think about it.
Because that's one of the biggest hurdles that we see come up against video in general.
The way that I see just the world evolving right now is that the way we digest, the way we consume,
and the way we curate content is just so exponentially different than even where it was a year ago.
And so regardless of what new fancy platforms, technologies, systems, whatever comes out,
because there will be more exciting things that come out, I think the future is really just around human connection
and making sure that we can find the ways to connect people, connect with people in that digital landscape.
It's just becoming so incredibly busy. I think Scott Brinker talks a lot about this at Inbound,
where you've got all of the different technologies and ways that marketers can consume and make decisions.
And really what's most important is that we just really start to learn who our customers are,
why they're coming to us in the first place, and how we can solve for them in a way that really helps make their life easier.
So that's something that I can't imagine is going any way away. If anything, it's going to become more and more important
because our consumers expect more. They expect to have these experiences on the internet.
They expect to have these experiences in social. It's part of why we exist.
So our job is just really to create those connections and to create those human, human experiences in general.
So if I were to say, in the future, if there's one thing that we're really just going to need to continue to invest in
and to think about, it's how to be human and how to connect with humans in this incredibly crazy digital world
where we can connect with people all over the entire world within seconds.
I think empathy is one of the skill sets that marketers really need to have.
Empathy and humility probably. In the past, marketing was a lot easier to just say,
oh, I'm going to create a piece of content based off of this keyword, based off of this information,
and then it's going to score and Google's going to throw me to the top. And inbound marketing, right?
That was how it first evolved and things were easier then.
And now it's really having to take a step back and to have that empathy and the humility to say, I don't know,
and that I can learn from the people that are coming to me.
And I think there are things that obviously we need to know and we always need to be learning and we always need to be evolving.
But the empathy to know that I need to put myself in the shoes of my customer
and walk along with them to understand what their pains are and the humility to say, I don't know what I don't know.
So what can I learn to continue to help build the right system and the right model?
I think those above anything else are crucial.
And then mix that with data because obviously the more data that we can think about both from the quantitative and qualitative side
and really making data informed decisions.
So it's less about just going out and trying things and throwing them at a wall and seeing what sticks
and more about knowing what our opportunities for growth are, pulling that empathy into the story
and then really starting to build a unique experience that solves in a very unique way.
