Hey, Amanda, thank you for being here and welcome to the next CMO podcast. I’m really excited about the discussion. And maybe we can start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about that. Great. Well, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. So I’m Amanda Ryerson.I’ve been doing marketing. Gosh, I’d say over 20 years in the LA area and really taken my tour through some big brands. So direct TV Yahoo sorta did my stint in tech for a while. Farmers insurance, and most recently at Thumbtack, which is super exciting because this is an earlier stage company and a brand that the world doesn’t necessarily know about yet.Although millions of people are using it so here to help lead marketing and really excited about the. Yeah. And we were talking earlier and I’m really excited to learn more about them. Tack end. I didn’t know about it, which is as we discussed before, why you’re here so that more people will know about Thumbtack, but [00:01:00] tell us a little bit for a, for the audience.What, what is Thumbtack all about and why should we use. So Thumbtack think of it as the modern way to manage your home. And you know, there’s a lot of other categories out there where you know, shopping has completely been disrupted, right? If you think about shopping online, it’s two clicks away or not worth doing.Homeownership is complicated and can be frankly, kind of a drag, you know, everything from have to fix that pipe to want to do a kitchen remodel and Thumbtack really has it all and is looking to bring sort of that ease into home ownership that doesn’t exist today. Right. Like you, you want to hire a plumber and you’re texting 10 people, hoping you get a hit somebody that someone’s used locally and had a good experience with.So this, this product really solves that, and it’s an exciting mission and great people that just want to build and succeed. So that’s, that’s sort of what we’re about and excited to, to make it a household name. That’s great. And tell [00:02:00] me, if you look at the balance between, I can imagine a number of benefits to have.
A marketplace model for all the services you might need. For managing your home. There are a bunch of different things that are useful about that, but two that came to mind right away. And I’d love your perspective on sort of what is more important if it is such a thing. One is convenience. Cause you talked about sort of the common e-commerce visitation.
If I can make up a word that I can’t even say of these kinds of services, but then the second thing is true. Is I’m inviting someone into my home in, is it someone that I actually can, can trust that it’s okay to have someone come into my home. So compare and contrast those, those two benefits. And are they the important ones?
Are there other ones that people should think about? No, I, I think you’re right. It’s funny. You can build the best technology in the world, but if you don’t have a brand. That people trust [00:03:00] short of bed in the water. So I think that’s, that’s really the secret of what we will be working on in marketing is, is building that trust building, like, what is Thumbtack really about?
How do we want people to feel. After using the product. And at the end of the day, we’re in the people business because we are sending pros out to people’s houses, as you said, and those, those experiences need to go well too. And we guarantee them but we need to make sure that customers do trust us and really get over the hump to do that first job.
And once that goes, well, the flywheel of sort of builds out. But that’s, that’s the thing. Yeah. I’d imagine if you have a good experience, the, the idea of thinking about the equation of customer acquisition versus lifetime value is an important one in, in thinking about what other services I can upsell to my customers obviously is, is interesting.
Now you may not know all the answers to a lot of these things, because as, [00:04:00] as we’re speaking, I think you’re in week seven. Was that right? Excellent. Excellent memory slightly longer than a goldfish. I think it was five minutes ago that we had their conversation. Yes. But week seven in, in this was a pretty significant transition for you.
So so obviously th Thumbtack is not a tiny company. It’s been around for a while and it’s big scale and millions of consumers on the platform, et cetera. But you came from farmers insurance where you. Chief growth officer that has to feel like a pretty significant change. So tell, tell me in that transition, what was the most shocking thing that happened going from farmers to.
Yeah, so certainly big company, big brands also in the people business too, as you think about local insurance agents and building up their personas digitally to help them grow, which is a lot of what we’re doing at Thumbtack. So a lot of parallels [00:05:00] there, you know, I’d say probably the biggest sort of shock to the system.
Honestly onboarding remotely which we’re all in this, this world now where you know, it’s, it’s the new norm, but a lot of people haven’t started a new job in this new world, but I’d say. It’s it’s, it’s gone really well. And I’ve just been impressed over the last couple years. I dunno how you feel too.
People have just risen to it and been able to work, you know, we’ve we didn’t miss a beat. We all went home. We thought we were going home for two weeks. Here we are, right. 20 months later. And you can do everything. You can work, you can start a new job. And one thing about Thumbtack, actually, that was really surprising and encouraging.
They are so sort of dead set on future of work. And how do we really think about hiring diversity of talent and people all around the country? As well as we have offices in Toronto and the Philippines, and it’s just, it’s a whole new way of just thinking about I can recruit talent from anywhere I can recruit diversity [00:06:00] from anywhere it’s like it opens, it changes the game.
Absolutely. And I’ve I remember having a conversation. About two years ago, it was literally probably six months or so before the beginning of the pandemic. And I was talking to a friend of mine, Brian Kardon hi, Brian, if you’re listening today, Brian is the COO of a company called envision. And they do a online interactive design platform, which is very cool, but InVision was a company that was 800 employees and they never had enough.
Th they were always a remote company. And I remember him back then talking about the fact that he was just a Gog about the idea that he could recruit people from anywhere in the planet. And he could literally find the best talent anywhere. And I think that. That’s true. It’s creating some really interesting competition going on right now.
In fact, it’s, it’s a really frothy job market. As, as you [00:07:00] probably know, you were just part of it. You just frost, I guess, is probably the word. And, and now when you you’re coming on board and you’re, you’re a couple of months in. How, how do you think about recruiting in this world and how do you, how do you even do it?
Because I assume you probably have some growing to do in your new team. Yeah. And we’ve actually already made a key hire. She’s on day three and she, she’s actually a senior director of, of media and performance marketing. And man is that skillset frothy, you know, you think about performance marketing, you think about analytics, digital analytics.
You know that talent is maybe you’re listening now, but you know, it already, you’re, you’re, you’re hard to find. And once you have those employees, So the fortress around him because that’s, you know, where everything is going, right. It’s all about digital marketing is all about accountability. So we’ve already been successful in recruiting and you know, like, like you were saying, Peter, it’s sort of, it, [00:08:00] it blows the doors off of like where you can go recruit now.
So it’s all about finding the person you want and location. It can be completely location agnostic. In fact, At Thumbtack, it’s almost encouraged to bring in people in different areas because we do want to sort of build employee bases in different city, so different cities. So people have that sense of community.
But again, sort of diversity of background thoughts companies, right? Cause if you’re, you’re sort of consolidated to a certain Metro area, a lot of the people who’ve worked for the same places or sort of run in the same circles. And now we get to completely rethink that. It’s interesting that you, you talked about sort of that.
Location diversity is, is really fascinating because our networks of course tend to be based on the people that we live near and, and work with, et cetera. And I know in fact, I was just on a call with with a prospective customer for my company a couple hours ago. And we were talking about. All of the shared contacts we had.
Cause they were also a Boston based [00:09:00] company and we have all this history of people we worked with that we all knew each other and things like that. And that’s probably going to change a little bit because you tend to have you tend to have it, especially in sort of major, major metros, like LA, where you are in Boston, where I am, where you tend to have sort of this.
Especially in high growth companies, kind of this pollination effect that happens where companies get incubated, they start the grow really fast. And then sometimes they poof, they explode in the, in they either they get acquired or they go away. And when they do that, they pollinate all these employees all over the place.
So it creates really interesting network effects. And I suspect X’s going to change a little bit over the time and maybe that’s good. And it probably is, but it might, it might be bad too. I didn’t know. You know, to me to have a larger network of talented, smart, driven people. There’s no downside. So I will still continue to cultivate [00:10:00] my California ties and I worked for Yahoo and I’ll tell you a CIO who’s are everywhere.
So that will never go away from me. But I only, I, I look at it as being able to grow my network. In different ways that I’ve never been able to. So if anything, it just builds upon what we’ve done in the past. And it’s a whole new way of thinking, networking, hiring, and looking for new. Absolutely. So, so tell me, Yahoo.
Obviously you spend a lot of time in like really deep, crazy digital and, and and then farmer’s insurance, which is obviously, I mean, of course digital, well, I mean, it’s just, it’s gotta be different, right? I mean, it’s, it’s a different environment, a different. And you’ve, you’ve really done some interesting, interesting, diverse things in your career.
How did that happen? Sort of by design. I I’d say when I start a new chapter, I don’t go halfway. I sort of go all in. So you know, Yahoo was a great experience [00:11:00] and that I, I almost think of it like Yahoo university. It was deep, crazy digital, different products working with engineering, it data really sort of getting to accountable, digital marketing as it was like becoming a major thing.
I absolutely loved it there. I still bleed purple. But I took the farmer’s role because it’s such a great brand and building more digital capabilities there really helps the company grow because people are searching for insurance online. That’s it that’s the reality. And they still don’t get me wrong.
Insurance is still a very people-based business in that, you know, with the insurance agent, like homeownership can be. Homeowner insurance can be complex and sometimes you want a person to walk you through it. And that’s sort of where sort of, they’re still that people-based consultant, but we needed to augment it with digital in order for those agents in the company to really be successful.
And we set up a direct to consumer channel as well. So I joined farmers [00:12:00] just because of the opportunity of the foundation of such an amazing brand. That needed to build these capabilities in order to sort of keep the growth trajectory. So that’s, that’s why I chose it. And I’d say one of the reasons I, I have chosen these jobs too, is it’s just so important to me to have an impact.
Like if I can’t see my, my fingerprints on the company, you know, it’s a little harder of a sell for me and at farmers, I had to learn the culture. I had to learn how to get things done, how to play the long game. But it was an amazing experience and it’s amazing company too, that takes care of its employees.
And then, you know, moving on to Thumbtack again, it’s sort of that impact of, you know, there’s a lot that translates from farmers. Again, is, is it relates to sort of local services and growing digitally. But there’s a big opportunity to have an impact building on such an amazing foundation and customer experience that some textbooks.
Yeah, that’s great. And one of the things let’s, let’s talk about some of the marketing [00:13:00] challenges at Thumbtack a bit, because I find marketplace models really fascinating because you have to market. You’ve got to get buyers and sellers and, and make a market. And obviously as an established company, you’ve, you’ve got a market, a marketplace in place, but what, what are the considerations that you think about when you try to split your efforts?
So how much time do you spend building service providers versus building consumers? Is it both equal? Does it change over time? How, how do you think about keeping that. Yeah, that’s a great question. I wish I had that algorithm for you maybe on week 17. I’ll have it instead of week seven, but listen, I think you’ve, you’ve got to go where sort of the gaps are, right.
So we flex when we’ve got to build demand. We are flexible. We need to build supply and grow our, our pro base and retain our probate. [00:14:00] So you know, really both of them can’t exist without the other. I’d love to say it’s 50 50, and we have that all figured out, but really it’s a matter of sort of flexing on what the need is.
And it’s not as simple as that is that because really we have to go down to the market like. And determine what’s the right demand. We want to drive on that market level as well as like, what does that pro supply look like on the market level? So we could have a lot of house cleaners in LA, you know, and none in Nashville.
So you’ve got to make sure that you’re, you’re pushing hard there. So that’s kind of, what’s so exciting about it is it is a true marketplace model and the data sort of drags you as to, okay. What are those pockets of opportunity and how do we prioritize based on. Based on business implant impact. But the great thing is in slim pack is built on data and sort of built on their technology.
And we sort of have the signals in order to point us in those directions. But I’d say it’s, it’s constantly sort of ebbing and flowing on both sides of the equation. [00:15:00] And if you think about the, the base of service providers out there are, are these. Small to medium businesses. Is it individuals, is it side hustles?
Is it a mix? What are the, what are those people are, it’s a total mix. So everything from side hustle to sort of that individual business owner to a little bit larger companies on a local scale. So yeah, Thumbtack can really be a home for all of them. But I think you’re getting at too is it’s not a one size fits all from a marketing standpoint either.
Right. We’ve got B2B and B2C motions. You’ve got it’s, it’s very different audiences. So it’s, I’m sure it’s fascinating is one way to think about it. It is. And let’s be honest. These local business owners don’t have a ton of time. To manage digital leads and marketing. So that’s where we really try and be a true partner to them too, to make it easy, as easy as possible to get [00:16:00] jobs and get leads.
Because they’ve got, they’ve got their day jobs. And this is the model for, for them literally like a commerce transaction or is it like a lead like, oh, I want to talk to someone about this or is it, I want to buy a thing? Is it a packaged service where you literally, I say click, put it in the cart and, and I need someone to wash my windows.
Yeah. I’d say it’s largely based on leads and lead management. So think of it as, as. Really the true marketing lead gen pipeline for these pros and the model is sort of set up that way. Yeah. So you’re, we’re constantly evolving to cause there’s a lot of different ways we can go about it. And again, it’s sort of managing to those local professionals and profitable jobs that’s money in their pocket.
So, you know, we’re constantly evolving the model as well. Got it. So you’re you are the Kayak model versus the American airlines model. That’s one way to think about it. Right? So, and that’s top of mind, [00:17:00] because literally I was listening to a podcast last night how I built this out. And if you ever listened to it, it’s this NPR podcast.
And and one of my my fellow high school class graduates was the founder of kayak and they did a great story on him, which is. Oh, that’s great. Yeah, but it’s, it’s a similar model. It’s a great, great story. Really fascinating. But but really interesting similar model because they’re actually in the lead business kayak, they actually don’t sell flights.
They sell, they sell leads and which, which is a different thing. So that I imagine is, so your, your currency is is, is business opportunity that you’re sending to the service providers and it’s up to them. And so so do you transact on your platform? So there are some transactions you can do.
And again, we’re sort of evolving the product based on sort of needs of customers need the pros to make it as much of a one-stop shop as we can. Got it. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Now has, has the changing work environment [00:18:00] changed the pattern of, of use of your platform? Look, I’ll say the last year.
So I’ll talk about the demand side and the supply side on the demand side, you know, last year was a great year for us because all of us are sitting around on zoom, staring at our baseboards and thinking about all the work we need to do to our house. So if anything, I’d say home ownership has taken on a whole new meaning, right?
We’ve all bonded with our homes in ways we never thought. So that actually was. Was fantastic for the business, but look, I mean, people having local professionals in the home there obviously were limitations to that with COVID too. So you know, and we were obviously didn’t We weren’t immune from that.
So there are certainly ups and downs. You know, what I’d say is what we’ve learned from sort of the pros too, is we do a small business friendliness survey, and we’ve seen that people are seeing higher growth now than they had in 2019 pre pandemic. So the run on home [00:19:00] services you know, it is, it is severe and it’s competitive out there.
And so, so these, these local pros are seeing a lot of business now, which is great. But again, it’s. It’s been a, I wouldn’t say 2020 has given any of us a solid or in 2021, a solid baseline to work off of as we go into our 20, 22 plans. So we’re doing the best we can. And hopefully, hopefully we’re, we’re turning to some sort of normalcy, but look, I’m knocking on wood, as I say that and hope everyone’s staying healthy and that’s, that’s what’s most important.
Yeah. I I’d imagine that, that there might be. Factor, that’s driving your, your demand on the consumer side too. And that housing values have gone up so much and his housing values go up. I suspect people say, holy cow, I better take care of this. Because it’s now worth sort of this outsized amount, or maybe I’m going to spruce it up so I can flip it and try and take some of the value here before you realize what it costs to get into your new house.
But do you see that as a factor at [00:20:00] all? Yeah, I think that’s a factor as well as look, I mean, people are moving in buying houses at bigger rates than we’ve seen in a long time. And you move to a new city. You don’t know a plumber, you don’t have that network of 10 people to text. Right? So if anything, I think some tech can thrive there too.
If people that are sort of find themselves in new communities and need to be matched up with, with local service professionals. So that as well as yes, making sure that our homes are in as good, a shape as possible to retain the value because yeah, the, the market is, is certainly off the. So Amanda, one of the things I wanted to get into with you a little bit is the fact that your seven weeks as we discussed into a new CMO role, and there’s a lot of churn, obviously in the COC.
I’m wondering how you approach that first 7, 17 77 weeks. How, how do you think about your start and where do you [00:21:00] focus first as a new CMO in, in a new. Yeah, so we, we’ve got a great marketing team great product teams for that matter too. So teams across the company, for me, it’s, it’s really getting in and listening and, and understanding sort of what town exists, what the major initiatives are on the roadmap.
And really sort of piecing those dots together in order to figure out, okay, where are the gaps and where can I help make an impact? We’re building off the foundation that these teams have, have already built. So I’d say that’s largely what I’ve been doing over the last seven weeks. As well as just bringing a fresh perspective, it’s kind of good timing for me because we’re starting to think about next year too.
So how can we think about, Hmm, maybe there’s ways to do things. That we haven’t done in the past and, or, you know, bringing new tactics on you know, whether it be building brand or, you know, sort of filling some gaps that we’ve had by design over time. So, and it really, it’s been [00:22:00] again, sort of getting to know the company and the business model too, and how it works.
So getting those fundamentals, cause I think you need that foundation in order to. Sort of come in and make an impact. So one of the things that I see a lot of people doing when they sit in a new COC for the first time is really assessed the strategy. And it’s one of the things that I think a lot of CMOs struggle with by the way, is.
Is defining what their strategy is. I mean, their marketing strategy, there’s a business strategy obviously. And hopefully the marketing strategy is related to that. Have you seen the need for an adjustment in the overall marketing strategy or even just a codification of something that was already there?
You know, it’s interesting. You mentioned business strategy. I think one of the things we can do, and I’ve seen this in other marketing roles too, is draw a hard line from what is the [00:23:00] marketing strategy and how does that ladder up to the business strategy? I think gone are the days where marketing can kind of sit in a silo and come up with really good creative and get out there marketing now more than ever before.
Has accountability for the P and L and it’s like true revenue impact for the business. So I’d say as I learned the business strategy, we’ll be crafting a marketing strategy. That again, is that making that connection which is exciting. And again, we’ve seen it done in, in past roles. But again, now that marketing is so performance driven in addition to brand.
It’s I’d say it’s, it’s more making sure that we can draw that line is where my head’s at. So you’ve got speaking of digital and performance. You’ve got two headwinds to deal with right now. I’m sure there are more than two, but I’m going to talk about too, when maybe it’ll add some more to it. One of them is obviously the changes in privacy so that it’s harder to do [00:24:00] cookie tracking and it will get harder and harder still and iOS and Chrome changes, et cetera.
So doing sort of that third-party cookie tracking and in performance, attribution and retargeting and things like that is getting harder and harder. The second thing is that. Everybody in the planet in the last 18 or 20 months said, oh, I guess I’m doing digital now because everything that was not digital became a pandemic ISED and you really couldn’t do that anymore.
And that started driving up driving up prices in, in bidding and things like that. How do you think about. Those two challenges. And how do you, how do you manage around them in a business? That probably is very heavily performance, digital focused. Oh, you paint, you paid a grim, grim picture. No, it’s true.
I mean, privacy and everything happening with, with data and certainly the iOS changes, et cetera. Like it’s, we can’t [00:25:00] market the way that we used to write the sort of. Targeting that you used to do through sort of all the digital ad networks. You’ve got to rethink all of that and really focus on like first party data too.
And what you sort of know about your customers and what you can do well as well as their sort of these walled gardens. Right. And how do we sort of all approach them, but have, I’d say like a really on purpose approach with like different publishers and partners to be able to do it well, versus sort of the.
Big mass programmatic world. It almost like contracts back to what it used to be versus sort of what we’ve all come, come to know. And there’s other ways to like, to get at different audiences, right? Like set top box and like there’s different things now, but I imagine the privacy will. Well, as we’ll get to everything.
So really it’s, it’s going back to sort of, what’s tried and true with, with, with first party is sort of how I’m thinking about it. And just knowing that again, sort of these huge programmatic world you’ve got to proceed with with [00:26:00] caution. And yes, I mean, the landscape is competitive and it’s driving costs up.
So our sort of CPAs, you have to rethink all of that, right. I think that the direction is really spending more for the customers that you want. And you mentioned like lifetime value earlier. So this isn’t all about sort of get any lead with a heartbeat. This is about understanding your customer.
Understanding. What’s going to have sort of the longest payback, which really translates to relationship with your company and really a good value exchange. And you go out and you pay for. And, but that’s, that’s hard, that’s hard, that’s larger acquisition costs than we’ve all been sort of used to in the past, but you sort of gate that and then really focus on building loyalty with your current base.
In that sort of offsets, not having to pay that acquisition cost again, like they’re already there. So you’ve got a mind that, and then be willing to pay for the customers that you want. [00:27:00] You do have an amazing asset with a, a large base. Existing consumers that you can work to continue to provide services to.
So that, that is fantastic. In fact, I was just talking to in my customer advisory board yesterday, actually one of, one of my customers was really excited about the fact because we helped them sort out the the measurement that they had for their calculating their business value created by marketing and return on invested.
Was based on transaction value. But we help them look at it at, from the perspective of lifetime value and their eyes just got so wide and they said, oh yeah, we, we know that, but we weren’t thinking about that way. And we weren’t measuring that way. And it really drove a very different set of decisions and a different level of optimization of their plan.
Because as you said, there’s when there’s more. You don’t know which customers, especially, unless you think about it are the ones that are driving that value in that [00:28:00] analytical approach of understanding how not only how to optimize on something that may be a top of the funnel metric or a single transaction metric.
But really, I ideally optimizing your plan based on customer lifetime value. That’s Nirvana, if you can get there. And it sounds like you’re, you’re thinking that way, which is exciting. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you sort of pay more to get more and transactions are a hamster wheel, right.
Whereas if you build sort of that longterm brand partnership and equity with your customers, it’s going to pay out. And in our case professionals too it’s gonna pay off in the longterm, but you do have to play a little bit more of a long game as you’re thinking about the financial. Yeah, it’s interesting.
I keep promoting this other podcast, but I will, in this discussion with about kayak was really fascinating because it’s a, also a marketplace model [00:29:00] obviously for, for travel related stuff. And in the interesting thing they talked about is the fact that their customer acquisition was completely underwater for the.
You know, in quarters, but the, at it over time, of course they started coming back in, then it got wildly profitable and of course they sold for a couple of billion dollars. So that was a good outcome for all of them. And, but the idea was to when you start thinking about lifetime value and start thinking about not only how do I get someone in the door, as you said, and not focusing on the hamster wheel, but making sure that you’re attracting those hamsters to come back again.
Then it can really drive some really incredible value, but of course it takes some sophistication, some, some thoughtfulness to make sure that you’re, you’re, you’re planning that effectively. And so when you, when you came on a board, did you find Did you find you had to change a lot when you got there?
Or I [00:30:00] realized it’s been seven weeks, so and you know, but did you, do you find that, oh wow. All we have to do is like plugging this extra, extra bulb in the whole Christmas tree. Light is going to a string is going to light up or, or is it he came and said, oh, you know, everything’s fine here. I’m just going to go and keep turning the crank may, maybe like three bolts.
No. Look, this is a very performance customer experience, data driven company. It’s a fantastic foundation to walk into. So it’s really learning that, like we said, learning the business strategy, how marketing has plugged into that business strategy in the past, and then how we build on the marketing foundation to further accelerate the business.
So I’m here to help this company grow. It’s just a matter of, I’d say leveraging all the tools that have been in place to make that happen. I must look at it as like, there’s a lot of raw material here. It’s just, okay, how do we connect the [00:31:00] dots? And figure out, like, how do we, how do we prioritize too, of like, what are we going to put in place on top of what’s been built to take things to the next level.
So still in the process of assessing that. It’s one of those things where there’s the opportunity. So rich it’s exciting. It sounds like it it’s. It’s fascinating. So tell me, as you look out into the future, what do you think the most important changes are? Strategic things that are going on in the world of marketing.
Are there other key changes, trends, technologies that you’re either excited about or worried about that we should all as CMOs be, be thinking about these days? Yeah, it’s interesting. I think about like the pendulum of, of a COO and someone once said to me, like you’re either a brand CMO or an ROI CMO and.
I definitely grew up in ROI CMO and surround myself with really good creatives. And I think the pendulum really swung to ROI, [00:32:00] especially like over the last five, 10 years, it’s all about dollar and dollar out. What are we getting? It’s not about just big brand campaigns anymore, but now I think it’s swinging back a little bit to, especially like we talked about with privacy and you can’t run marketing from a special.
Alone. Right. You have to establish that emotional connection in that trust to sort of bring it back to trust too. It’s like, that’s how you get that one job to the next job is establishing. It’s a good customer experience and it’s trust. So I almost feel like it’s, it’s the pendulum swinging a little bit back to brand identity trust.
But you still have sort of the MarTech and all the technology that’s out there. Right. In order to do your job, it’s just, I’d say the challenge there is, it’s almost an all you can eat buffet. Right? You think about all the different, if I think about a marketing stack, right? Like everything from personalization technology and your website to CRM, to ad tech, [00:33:00] like there’s so much to do.
It’s, it’s really easy to get bogged down in that and think about this shiny object long-term roadmap. But really you’ve got to figure out all right. Yes. We want to play that long game, but how do we also use the stack we have and get some points on the board. And I think that sort of balancing that out is sort of been a challenge I’d say in my last couple of jobs and also will be a a challenge here.
But like, we all want to play that long game and have sort of the beautiful stack, but at the end of the day, like we’re in the people business and how do we make sure we’ve got a strong brand. Again, get points on the board. It’s interesting that you, you brought up the, the pendulum between performance or ROI in, in brand.
And I think about it a little bit differently. I think that the, I think because the. A pendulum assume sort of a, a, a, you know, a single line. And there’s a, there’s a binary notion to it, right? You’re on one side or the other. I think the [00:34:00] reality is that there’s a, the most performance marketers actually actually consider all of it.
And, and I know that was embedded within your comments, but I’d like, You know, jump on top of that and highlight that because I think it is really important in what I see a lot, because we, you know, in my job, we see, I see thousands of marketing plans all the time. Right. And I see what people are doing. And and there’s some really well they’re amazing things.
Most of it is. To tell you the truth. In most people, most people really struggle. And in the biggest thing that I see the biggest gap is people are buried in a blizzard of tactics and they do random acts of marketing and it doesn’t add up to anything. And I think the, the biggest opportunity for most marketers I see is adding thematic coherence to their plans, pulling it together, to tell a big story.
And the story is the brand story or whatever it is. It’s a [00:35:00] story. And, but it has to add up to something and, and there’s so many ways you can do different things and so many different things that are being done. People just miss that threaten. And in that is the biggest gap that I see over and over again is that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.
And there’s just a bunch of stuff going on and people are with best intentions are trying to optimize a thing without understanding that the thing is actually part of a much, much broader system. And it’s the system that has to perform. Yeah. That’s that almost goes back to what we were talking about.
Again, with sort of business results, marketing results. If people don’t have a line of sight, Yeah, there are contributions and how it’s sort of adding laddering up to the whole. It’s hard to motivate a team. And I’ve seen that too in marketing, it’s almost like death by a thousand paper cuts. Like there’s so many things going on, but how do you stop and distill and also have the courage to say no, [00:36:00] if the business impact isn’t there and maybe it was there at one time and that’s great, but we all have to evolve and that can be hard.
So it’s. Sort of instilling this no sacred cows mentality too of, Hey, the marketplace is changing. Our business model is changing. We have to change with it. That’s not an indictment on anyone. It’s just the reality. So you know, how do we get there and, and look I’m with you on the pendulum too. It’s the challenge of, I think the today’s CMO is your right brain and your left brain has to be firing together.
And you also have to be able to hire people. And hire a leadership team that are there too, and that’s an extremely hard skillset to hire for. But it’s the reality of marketing. It is, and you need obviously a diversity of backgrounds and skills and approaches and things like that. But that idea of the left brain, right brain, I think is important, which you can’t do is, is, have, have neither or so either [00:37:00] you need to have some kind of augmented intelligence, like you’ve packed your team with people who are going to help you or.
Which you can’t do a shut down in area. In fact, one of the things that, one of the things that I see you, you mentioned the whole sacred cow thing. One of the big challenges that I also see is that people don’t like to admit when something didn’t work. And, and I think that marketers need to behave much more.
Scientists, they need to apply scientific method. They need to have a thesis. They need to design experiments. They need to run experiments. They need to report on data and they need to say what the data says, not what they wanted it to say. And in the end, I think that’s where a lot of CMOs really fail because in trying to sort of bend their results to say that I did a good job, they trend more and more toward a mediocre or bad.
And, and I think that as senior executives, we need to give marketers permission to say that something didn’t work in, in not berate [00:38:00] them for, for not delivering performance, but thank them for trying something creative and in doing their best to get that out of the performance, but then actually doing the optimization, including when optimization says.
Yeah. So failure is an option.
That’s what, that’s the quotable from this podcast. Failure’s an option. I like it, but you better get it back up with trends and Leo. No, I think that’s right. Like, it’s funny. One of the things I’ve said a lot is like, it’s, this is just, this is on a Mo this is on unemotional. Like this is a math equation.
We tried, it may work, you know, creative or not creative, whatever it is, we’re trying. You know, it’s a set up your learning agenda. And like, if, if we fail, okay, failure is an option. But then what do we learn? And then how do we make it better next time? But yes, getting out of, sort of that culture of fear, which is hard when we all want to grow, right.
And like money doesn’t grow on trees and all that. But if you don’t try new things and sort of create that environment where people can be [00:39:00] honest about it you know, that’s, that’s tough stuff. And I’d say one of the things about some text values, which is really cool is. There’s sort of this accountability, like own it, say what you mean.
Like we don’t have time to sort of BS around. So I do, like, I think the environment that senior leadership set up is is helpful there, but you’re right. If people are trying to protect bad results, you won’t take the right learning and you’re not gonna see. Well, that’s great. Well, I’m, I’m looking at the clock and I can’t believe how fast this time has gone.
And I think we’ve spent it in then a little bit. So so I really appreciate your time. I, I definitely want to recommend that everyone check out Thumbtack because obviously we’re all. In a position where we probably have too little time to do too many things, especially around managing all of those things in your household.
And it sounds like Thumbtack is an awesome place to go scratch that itch and scratch some things off your list, which is pretty exciting. So [00:40:00] thank you for alerting me to this exciting service. I’ll be checking it out in a few, our current customer go back, right? Because we talked about the lifetime value of you.
Current customers. Excellent. So last quick, quick question. Before we wrap today, Amanda is what advice would you give to a current or aspiring CMOs? Ooh. Make sure your left brain and your right brain are firing, I guess. No I’d say sort of be, be curious and be, be empowered to look at things different.
And bring those ideas to the table. Cause a lot of times I think we talked about sacred cows. You know, it can, it can be a hard thing to bring new ideas to the table or suggested different paths. And I think we’re in a market right now. It’s a competitive market across industries and we need new, fresh ideas and.
You know, bring your, bring your ideas, bring your business case. And I think leaders are looking for [00:41:00] that and want to see that, that fresh perspective. So I’d say be empowered to be. Well, excellent. Well, I’m looking forward to see, seeing what happens when you bring all these great business cases to Thumbtack, and we see it continue to grow and thrive.
And I wanted to thank you, Amanda, for a fascinating conversation. And one of the thank you for being on the next CMO podcast and invite all of our listeners. If you have ideas for topics. To let us know at the next cmo.com and don’t forget to follow us on all those things like Twitter and LinkedIn, and please subscribe to our podcast and give us a fantastic rating or don’t give us a rating at all if it’s not fantastic and really appreciate it, Amanda.
And I hope you have a great day. Thanks. Thanks Peter.
nextcmo
23 Nov 2021
