Bitly's Tara Robertson on setting up a team of highly skilled marketers

00;00;02;05 - 00;00;28;09

Ben Hillman

Water is going to fill the path that gravity takes it. It's how we get rivers that flow downstream into oceans. It's how we get ocean waves on our shores. And once that water evaporates, gravity takes over again. One of the few things that is constant about water is that it is always changing. Marketing is like water. Every SaaS, B2B operator needs it.

00;00;28;17 - 00;00;52;13

Ben Hillman

But often times, the best strategies and tactics can be fleeting. They're always changing when someone discovers a new place for marketing to flow. The floodgates are open. It's in this way that marketing can be frustrating if you don't stay on top of it. Numbers won't be met and eventually opportunity. Those can dry up. We've chatted with a lot of marketing professionals on Protect the Hustle.

00;00;52;18 - 00;01;15;15

Ben Hillman

But today we bring you a special case. Tara Roberts was nice enough to sit down with us, not even a week into her role as CMO of Bentley. Tara is not new to the marketing world, with stops at Hotjar, Sprout, social and teamwork. She is a seasoned pro who is great to learn from. Listen on as we open the floodgates on what it takes to start a brand new marketing team.

00;01;16;08 - 00;01;37;12

Ben Hillman

From Paddle, it's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of media business growth to make you an outstanding operator. On today's episode, Paddle CISO, Patrick Campbell interviews Tara Roberts about running a high functioning marketing team. We talk about connecting emotion and value to drive results. What to look for when building a marketing team.

00;01;37;20 - 00;02;02;25

Ben Hillman

Prioritizing Effort. Some areas of biggest influence. Setting up a team of highly skilled marketers. And which partnerships are essential within your organization? Timestamps for each section are listed in the show notes. And after you finish the episode, check out the in the field guide that will help you accomplish your marketing goals.

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Patrick Campbell

Who are you? What do you do?

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Tara Robertson

Tara Robertson. I'm the CMO at Bentley.

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Patrick Campbell

I'm glad you say your name because we've known each other for like what, six years now? And I still am so like Tara. Tara, Tara. Tara. Every single time, which is always really exciting. But yeah, bitterly. Like technically you're only day six and.

00;02;21;12 - 00;02;21;27

Tara Robertson

Day six.

00;02;21;27 - 00;02;28;17

Patrick Campbell

Start guarding of this. So maybe you're like, isn't really ready, but I know you've like interviewed and stuff like that, obviously for a little while since, but like, what do you do?

00;02;28;18 - 00;02;49;25

Tara Robertson

I will do my best. Most people know Bentley as link management or link sharpeners. What they don't know is that this past year Billy acquired QR Code Generator and we're actually in a process right now of being a catalyst for connections. And so we do QR codes, link management and Lincoln bio and really the mission of the company is to connect people with each other between the digital ecosystem.

00;02;49;25 - 00;03;05;15

Patrick Campbell

I didn't know you guys went to Lincoln Bio That's so smart, right? And that's what, what I loved about you and I were catching on before of like Billy has been around for a long time. Like shortening that was kind of the thing. And then how it's evolved into really kind of going to this expansive mission, which is really, really cool.

00;03;05;21 - 00;03;13;13

Patrick Campbell

That's awesome. And for the folks who don't know, like what's a little bit of like your background all in marketing, but you've been through you've been through some really cool things.

00;03;13;13 - 00;03;27;08

Tara Robertson

I would I have so, so lucky to work with some amazing brands. So I spent the last two years at Team Work, which is project management software, and before that I was a Sprout social LED up marketing strategy and customer marketing was lucky to be there during when we went public and going through the whole.

00;03;27;16 - 00;03;29;02

Patrick Campbell

We were together the day when we.

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Tara Robertson

Were. I remember when I went, oh, I remember we were.

00;03;31;03 - 00;03;41;20

Patrick Campbell

At an event and you were and you were like, I really want to go to the next thing, but I have to sit here on my computer and ring the bell. Yeah, yeah. Which is so cool. That's a great way I interrupted you so much.

00;03;41;20 - 00;03;45;23

Tara Robertson

And then before that, I was at Hotjar. So I've worked on some pretty amazing, remarkable brands.

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Patrick Campbell

That's really cool. Yeah, that's where I think we actually met was in Malta. You were just like there and I was hanging out.

00;03;50;00 - 00;03;51;14

Tara Robertson

David There's an American on this.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, there's another.

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Tara Robertson

Guy we should say.

00;03;53;19 - 00;04;11;05

Patrick Campbell

Hi. Yeah, Malta is just a fascinating place as well. But I think that what I've always loved about your career and just like, you know, being friends of yours, is that what I've always really admired is like you have the ability to go broad but also deep. And I don't think you choose to go like deep everywhere, but like you kind of have that balance.

00;04;11;16 - 00;04;22;12

Patrick Campbell

Like, is that something that you've developed because it's just really important to be a marketing leader or is it something that like you're just naturally built for and you kind of go from there? So tell me about your childhood. What a good.

00;04;22;12 - 00;04;47;19

Tara Robertson

Question. Oh, my gosh. 1,000% learns absolutely not who I was when I first started my career. I would say the last decade or so I have been so honed in on trying to learn everything you possibly can about focus, reading all the books, listening to the podcast, trying to dig in, to thinking about how do you find the way to create ruthless prioritization when it comes to where are you going to put all your effort and what's going to drive the most impact?

00;04;47;19 - 00;05;00;28

Tara Robertson

And sometimes you're right and sometimes you're wrong. It depends on when you take the risks. But I would say early in my career, you know, we all go through those stages when you think I can do it all and you don't know what you don't know, but you don't know yet, that you don't know what you don't know.

00;05;01;15 - 00;05;13;13

Tara Robertson

And so I think I learned by falling down and doing too much and burning myself out that you actually have to be really prioritized and you have to be focused. And that's been a really big thing that I focused on in my career.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, And I think it's also really important to realize that I think startups or like tech, you know, I think you could speak more broadly about it's like the best self-help program ever because it's if you're trying to strive, which, you know, it's okay, like some people in their careers sometimes aren't trying to strive, but if you're trying to strive, you're getting punched in the face all the time because it's such a fast moving like environment, no matter the actual product or vertical.

00;05;35;07 - 00;05;49;23

Patrick Campbell

And I think like for me, what I'm always curious about, I don't think we've ever had this conversation like, why marketing? Like, why, why was it this over being a firefighter, over being like something else, but also like as you got an attack in business, like why, why this area of the business?

00;05;49;26 - 00;06;04;26

Tara Robertson

I have so many answers to that. So I'm going to try to hone in on it. I remember I actually remember the moment when I was in college. I initially went to college, had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. You know, some people go to school and they think this is exactly what I want to do and these are the classes I'm going to take.

00;06;05;03 - 00;06;27;07

Tara Robertson

I started out as a theater major, which is crazy, but then moved into communications. And I remember sitting in my first marketing class and I was suddenly seeing this connection between creativity and art and then science and data and people and connecting it together and spoke to me. I just kind of saw all of these different components and things that I got really excited and interested in.

00;06;27;07 - 00;06;59;26

Tara Robertson

So chose then to go on to get my Masters and integrated marketing and went to a small school in Boston, which was such a great experience. And you know, in general it's just part of who I am and a passion. And I think when I connect to that with tech, part of what I loved about moving into the technology space and this is this is depending on where you work and who you work with, but I've been lucky to work with some brands that care not just about creating a great product, but also creating a great people experience and opportunities for communities, especially underrepresented communities, to get opportunities in the world.

00;06;59;26 - 00;07;19;14

Tara Robertson

And so while I don't work for a nonprofit, so I won't go and say, you know, I'm waving the flag of doing all the good in the world. I do love that I can work for companies that can do good while also taking in that really exciting piece of learning how to connect the human brain with emotion and value and driving results and.

00;07;23;18 - 00;07;40;02

Patrick Campbell

You're a great speaker, like at conferences just to give you a plug there. And I've seen you speak a number of times. So like I feel like I have enough of a sample size, like, say that connecting like, oh, like you've done theater like now I like get it like when you do your, your attention getter and stuff like that at the beginning of talks I was like, Oh, I see.

00;07;40;02 - 00;07;55;25

Patrick Campbell

This is like a theater exercise or something like that. It's really interesting the connections there. And I do feel as if marketing is that space marketing in product where that like there's an art here, there's also a science that needs to be studied and you can kind of lean a little hard into one of those are the other, depending on like your style.

00;07;55;25 - 00;08;19;06

Patrick Campbell

But I think that's really, really smart. What I'm kind of curious about and love to go deep on is you're six days in, you've built or been a part of building great marketing teams. I'm just kind of curious like, how do you think about what good looks like with a marketing team first hires all these types of things, Like if I was listening to this and thinking I got to build a marketing team or I failed at marketing many times, like how do I get it right?

00;08;19;06 - 00;08;24;14

Patrick Campbell

Like, I'd love to go deep on that. So I guess where do we start, like defining it or where's the starting point?

00;08;24;17 - 00;08;49;25

Tara Robertson

I can tell you what I'm doing right now on day six. So I think really, depending on what you're working on, where you're going. Dave Every company is different and it's really important that when you start any new job, regardless of if you're startup, if you're growth stage, if you're enterprise, you have to listen. And so step one, my first 30 days, a lot of people had these expectations of me coming in the door and think, Oh, Tara's here, She's going to start doing all these things.

00;08;50;03 - 00;09;09;02

Tara Robertson

And my number one priority right now is just listening, setting up time with everybody and marketing everybody in partnership orgs that I work with, the entire executive team asking them all the same questions the same way we do with customer research and really starting to understand where the opportunities are, where the gaps are and what the makeup of the machine should look like.

00;09;09;10 - 00;09;26;29

Tara Robertson

Balancing that also with understanding what our priorities are. So you have to know your metrics and you have to know your goals as a business. And again, every business is different. I've worked in organizations where marketing was very demand generation, heavy working organizations, where it's much more focused on product marketing and positioning and really driving a stronger brand.

00;09;26;29 - 00;09;46;24

Tara Robertson

And so I think by getting in and really understanding your goals as well as understanding the people and what the people need, you can start to then map out your organizational design. Now I say that with also saying there are some roles that I think are critical to any marketing organization as as a marketer myself, but also as the CMO can't do it.

00;09;46;24 - 00;10;09;22

Tara Robertson

All right. And I think the other thing we were talking about this right before we started, one of the things I've learned in my career is you don't know what you don't know, and I definitely can't do all of it. And I'm a big believer of hiring people smarter than you. And so I look for the gaps that I have also and figure out what are those partners that I'm going to need in order to make sure that we can build out a proper marketing organization that's going to drive the right impact.

00;10;10;10 - 00;10;16;17

Tara Robertson

And so it's first getting to know your team, mapping out the organizational design and then starting to kind of bring people along for the ride.

00;10;16;20 - 00;10;35;03

Patrick Campbell

So I think you said something like you glossed over it because I think it's very obvious to you, but I think it's really important to point out, similar to how we do customer research doing that internally, right? Because I think that there are founders out there. I used to be one of them where it was like, Wait a minute, like you're just going to go like learn for nine, nine months or three months or whatever it is, right?

00;10;35;19 - 00;10;54;22

Patrick Campbell

And then there's also, you know, people out there who when they go and say, yeah, I'm going to have to go like learn for 30 days, they're just kind of like having a couple of conversations now. But I presume and correct me if I'm wrong based on that verbiage, this is a structured learning process, like I am seeking X, I'm seeking Y, Looks like we say this.

00;10;54;22 - 00;11;05;21

Patrick Campbell

We don't actually do this with the data, that type of thing. Is that how intense it is? Like at least on your end? And maybe the person you're interviewing is not, you know, feeling that, but that is, that is at the level. And if so, could you give me a little bit depth there?

00;11;05;22 - 00;11;24;15

Tara Robertson

Yeah. So some of the questions that I'll ask when I first start and you're absolutely right, it's very, very systematic with the way that I approach all of the interviews and depending on the group of interviews, you know, if it's a marketing team member, I might ask one question. If it's a leadership team member, I might ask another one question I ask everyone is, what are you hoping all accomplish?

00;11;24;15 - 00;11;55;12

Tara Robertson

You know, what are your hopes and dreams of me walking in the door that your expectations were you're going to do X? And then usually what I'll do is take all of the answers to the questions that I asked. And I start to pull that feedback and put it into a spreadsheet and then really analyze what are the things that are coming to the top and then put together essentially a plan that says based on everything I've seen, you know, I'll get as deep as saying 72% of the people that I spoke with all mentioned we need process or all mentioned that we need to build a better system for how prioritization come on.

00;11;55;18 - 00;12;14;23

Tara Robertson

Or 40% of the people mentioned that we need this specific role, which is the most sought after position within the department. And then I use that to then balance that against what the goals are for the department, then figure out how we then will prioritize the roadmap, how we prioritize our hiring. And it doesn't mean I'll go out and immediately start hiring for those positions.

00;12;14;23 - 00;12;34;12

Tara Robertson

It's really about putting together a plan and then walking people through it, getting their feedback again. And so it's it's really systematic in the way that I think about interviewing, then parsing and then actually presenting a lot of that feedback. And I think the really important part that a lot of people don't think about is the importance of a roadshow.

00;12;34;18 - 00;13;02;13

Tara Robertson

Once you get all of that feedback and you understand this is where I'm going to focus, which includes building your org structure, starting to figure out the hiring, going around each department, going around to each team and presenting it back to them, giving them transparency into this is what we're thinking, this is what marketing will look like. And that becomes so important because then what you're doing is creating collaboration, but you're also getting buy in for a lot of what you're planning to do, and that's often putting together a 12 month, 24 month plan.

00;13;02;13 - 00;13;03;01

Tara Robertson

Interesting.

00;13;03;14 - 00;13;24;27

Patrick Campbell

There's a lot of probably like function leaders or people on the front lines, for lack of a better phrase, or that's just a rich amount of information to learn about, like customer by proxy, like these types of things. But then not saying it badly, but like in other organizations and maybe a little bit a bit like there's a lot of people who think they know what marketing is or how to do marketing, right?

00;13;24;27 - 00;13;29;17

Patrick Campbell

It's like, Oh, she's ads, right? Like that's, you know, ten years ago said, I told you, isn't it just ads like.

00;13;29;17 - 00;13;30;28

Tara Robertson

Everyone thinks they know marketing.

00;13;30;28 - 00;13;49;11

Patrick Campbell

Right? And so so my question is, is like you're doing this interview and you're synthesizing and obviously you have like you're a marketing leaders, you know how to, like, pick a direction. Let's say you're like, here's how we're going to win or whatever that doc ends up looking like. And that road you you're going on. But Joe, the CEO said, you know, we need to do content.

00;13;49;11 - 00;14;05;15

Patrick Campbell

I saw this article that I read about how important content is and then Sally in Customer Success is like, Oh, I talked to so-and-so and they said the best marketing ever did was case studies. We need a bunch of case studies, right? And some of it's like, This is the direction you should take. And some of it's this is a tactical thing that we need.

00;14;05;15 - 00;14;27;09

Patrick Campbell

How do you kind of like handle that situation? Because I think marketing, especially CMO role is the worst exact role because it could be so broad, but also it kind of gets blamed for everything because obviously some products fault. Obviously it's not sales fault, right. So, so how do you kind of handle that, that opinion? And also you might be choosing directions that intuitively they don't understand or don't agree with.

00;14;27;13 - 00;14;58;08

Tara Robertson

Absolutely. So so many thoughts. One, you're right, you've got to have thick skin. A lot of people will have opinions about what marketing should or shouldn't do. And so lead with the data, with everything that you work on and your priorities. I think a lot of it truly comes down to process. And so when you build a well-oiled marketing machine, some of my favorite hires honestly, is in marketing, revenue ops, program management and operations role, where we can actually get structure around how we're prioritizing the work we're doing within marketing.

00;14;58;14 - 00;15;13;02

Tara Robertson

And so when I work with the leadership team and we do our roadmap planning for here's our strategic objectives and this is what we're going to do for the year, we break that down into, okay, well, how are we going to do that? We think these are the top five things we need to be doing. We cool, we cool, everybody's cool.

00;15;13;08 - 00;15;32;21

Tara Robertson

Then like you said, a week later, someone comes rolling in and says, I need to sell. She or I need this case study or we need to build this community. And they're never necessarily bad ideas. I try to always go into those with curiosity and not judgment because one, I'm also new. I don't know as much as the people that work at the business do.

00;15;32;21 - 00;15;51;15

Tara Robertson

But two, we've all agreed, we've committed and we've got our roadmap. And so the conversation becomes less of, No, we're not going to do that or you're wrong in either direction and more of, Well, okay, let's talk about that. You think this case study is super important? I'm going to pull up the marketing roadmap right now and let's look at our priorities if we want to fit that in.

00;15;51;23 - 00;16;20;02

Tara Robertson

The priority that needs to move out and really help create that alignment on what is the most important thing we're doing. And then you've got an interesting conversation of, well, I absolutely don't think that a case study is more important than driving up acquisition, and it becomes a lot easier to have those conversations. So I think you have to own the narrative and you have to own your roadmap, but you also have to be collaborative and make sure that you're listening with intent, that you're curious, you ask the why, and then you pull it up and you look at it together and say like, I don't think that's the right thing to do.

00;16;20;03 - 00;16;32;18

Tara Robertson

This is why I don't think it is. But if you really truly do, especially with your CEO relationship, then these are the things that would have to move.

00;16;32;18 - 00;16;48;29

Patrick Campbell

My favorite question with that type of stuff is also like, what would you move off this list right? Because you're not telling them. Then you're like, You think through this and it can backfire because they can be like, I didn't never like number three or whatever like that. And I guess like beyond this as well, because there's an interesting question.

00;16;48;29 - 00;17;13;19

Patrick Campbell

But to get there, a different question is like there's the idea of the T-shaped marketing strategy, right. Which I don't know if you've heard, but it's marketing. Okay. Yeah. So basically there's all these different areas of marketing, SEO, paid content, all while there's all these different areas and then presumably this shape. And I think there's a lot of people use a different ways as, okay, but we as a strategy, we're going to go deep on these two things or one thing or three things, not really a scientific thing.

00;17;14;01 - 00;17;33;01

Patrick Campbell

Is that how you kind of think about the strategy? So like I believe it's a little early in terms of data, but do you envision the thing that you're going to go road show or the thing you're going to go is like, we're going to do these two things, these two channels, this you, whatever, we're going to go deep and we're going to like run this flywheel and then all the other areas are going to support that.

00;17;33;04 - 00;17;35;15

Patrick Campbell

Is that what you're getting towards? Is that basically what it is?

00;17;35;15 - 00;17;57;10

Tara Robertson

Okay. Yeah. And I would say already a bit early, that's what we're going to be working on. That's part of what I hope to bring to any org that I work with is ruthless. Prioritization is critical and the way that we think about the work that we do every quarter with every team I've worked on will do is start, stop, continue to understand of the recurring work that we're doing, what are the things that are actually moving the needle in the way that we want them to?

00;17;57;17 - 00;18;18;14

Tara Robertson

And is there anything that we can take out that isn't necessarily a good use of our time or isn't the right thing we should be doing based on that will prioritize the marketing department on what's is the recurring stuff that we got to make sure we're doing. And then the marketing leadership team, which includes usually your senior leaders or people managers, we'll do a brainstorming and getting into our quarterly planning on what's the big thing.

00;18;18;14 - 00;18;34;22

Tara Robertson

And I would usually go off of the rule of 1 to 3, no more than three big things. We're really no more than one big thing. And you do that thing brilliantly, and once you do that thing, you start to execute on it and you start to drive the results. That's when you can start to think about the next big thing, really.

00;18;34;22 - 00;18;54;02

Tara Robertson

And that's the same for a really large marketing organization. That's how we ran it at Sprout to a much smaller organization in a startup, because once you have a million different things that you're trying to do, I think the phrase is it's like two rabbits running in an opposite direction, right? You'll never catch one of them. And so it's really about figuring out what is the thing that we all lean into.

00;18;54;04 - 00;19;19;16

Tara Robertson

And then I think the important part there that that's maybe worth going into is how that impacts other departments. Because usually our one big thing needs sales, needs success, needs the product. Org And so I'll work with the go to market quadrant or the go to market team on really thinking about how do we make sure that this campaign that we're running drives revenue, how do we make sure that we're getting customer happiness or customer engagement on this or advocacy?

00;19;20;01 - 00;19;24;11

Tara Robertson

Because that's where your partnership becomes so much stronger and your marketing efforts then will compound.

00;19;24;14 - 00;19;42;19

Patrick Campbell

Before we get there, actually. So just to clarify or make sure I'm getting this right, So well, those big things, one, two, three, and then the medium things, do they all revolve around one of those. TS Right. So like just to set this up, right, let's say given our market, our customer, whoever it is, we're going to go deep on content.

00;19;42;23 - 00;20;06;13

Patrick Campbell

And then that means like media, let's say, and then that means we're also going to go deep on SEO because it's a very complementary thing and it's going to be like that playbook that support sales. That means those big things under this arrangement that I'm clarifying mostly always are in those two parts of the T and yeah, we'll have initiatives that are paid ads or we'll have initiatives that are DBM or we'll have initiatives that are those things.

00;20;06;22 - 00;20;10;22

Patrick Campbell

Those are never going to go super deep, at least in our current structure. Is that is that right?

00;20;10;22 - 00;20;26;21

Tara Robertson

Sometimes I think it really depends on the thing, right? So sometimes if, if we're talking about a one thing that we're working on like right now that we're working on a big brand campaign and that big brand campaign is very focused on your T right, You've got your brand in PR, we've got an out of home that we're working on.

00;20;26;21 - 00;20;49;00

Tara Robertson

The really cool stuff, very exciting Day six. But sometimes there's also campaigns that I've done in previous roles like a T mark. We did a huge digital event and that actually required all the tiers because we might have one department that's really driving that initiative, but then we're going to need help and support from social media. We're going to need help and support from lifecycle marketing and other parts of the division.

00;20;49;00 - 00;21;11;01

Tara Robertson

And so usually the way we would work on that is, you know, your T is the driver, right? That's the person that's driving that initiative home. And then we bring in all the collaborators, whether you use I don't know if you're familiar with DC or RACI, your you know, driver is accountable contributors responsible, right? So whatever the days of your racing looks like, that's when we'll bring in the other team members to execute their part of the plan that helps that.

00;21;11;01 - 00;21;33;23

Patrick Campbell

So I guess ask this a little bit differently. You're not like if that event goes well, we're going to like double down on it, but we're not going to move our entire marketing strategy to be like event based. It's going to be more we're doing a bunch of other stuff. That stuff depends on the needles that we're seeing move More of the stuff that moves the needle is less of the stuff that doesn't, and it's more like function based in some some respects as well.

00;21;33;24 - 00;21;35;02

Patrick Campbell

That kind of a good summary.

00;21;35;02 - 00;21;36;27

Tara Robertson

Yeah, definitely. And kind of squad based.

00;21;42;07 - 00;21;59;18

Patrick Campbell

Because sometimes it's like it's not necessarily that they just copy and paste the thing that they did successfully before, but sometimes it's like, no, I'm a CMO who is fantastic at paid and fantastic at this and yeah, I can do SEO and I can do it. So but like I'm not going to be great a company that requires that.

00;21;59;28 - 00;22;16;16

Patrick Campbell

So I guess what I'm trying to say is like, do you want a CMO who I think kind of appears with you, who's like, I would argue almost my growth based on anything because you're kind of following where the my team. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Versus like the person who is really good at like some of those like channels.

00;22;16;16 - 00;22;20;10

Patrick Campbell

Like how do you think about that? Like if I was trying to hire someone like you kind of thing.

00;22;20;15 - 00;22;42;17

Tara Robertson

So I'll, I'll give you probably not the best answer in the sense that it depends. Right. And what I mean by it depends is it depends on what the business needs and what the organization needs. If you're smaller, for example, often a CMO that's really good at acquisition really understands demand gen performance marketing and paid strategy and you're well-funded and you just got to get those results, then that's a critical part.

00;22;42;17 - 00;23;01;28

Tara Robertson

If you need somebody that's going to build a bigger team potentially, then from that perspective, I really think depending on the CMO, but you know, probably biased here because I'm a KMO, but I think if you're a strong CMO, you're kind of a generalist, even if you do have a T-shaped area. But for me it's less about what is my area of discipline at this stage.

00;23;01;28 - 00;23;18;24

Tara Robertson

Yes, I get excited about that and yes, I want to do it. Like I have moments where I'm like, Oh, if I could only just write some conversion copy today. But my job is a lot more getting out of the way and actually helping serve and empower and enable the team that I'm growing and scaling in order to go and execute their areas of focus.

00;23;19;02 - 00;23;36;17

Tara Robertson

And so depending on the organization, if you're smaller, you might want somebody much more specialized in what you need as a business. As you get a little bit bigger. It's really about people that are really good at building teams, really good at recruiting and making sure that they can think about the organizational design for what that department needs.

00;23;36;26 - 00;23;49;28

Tara Robertson

And I'll kind of go back to something I mentioned a little bit ago. I also look for hiring people that are stronger than me in multitudes of different areas, which are lots of different areas. And I think that's important too, is that you're building a world class team.

00;23;50;03 - 00;24;10;18

Patrick Campbell

Yeah. Again, another thing I think is really important to point out is that it's probably worth like in those conversations, like asking that marketing candidate, especially if everything they're talking about is this channel, this channel like, okay, great, let's say those channels don't exist. How would you build out the PR and events world right here? Because I think that is probably going to show a lot.

00;24;11;02 - 00;24;28;09

Patrick Campbell

Are they the true, like powerful generalist CMO, or are they someone who, like one, rode the coattails of like a company that did really well, right. Like or and there's someone I'm thinking about in that particular case and I'm not going to tell me No, it's are you at all? You've done so well, so many different places, like I can't be it can't be that right.

00;24;28;18 - 00;24;41;22

Patrick Campbell

But I think that the other thing is like making sure that they're not just a copy paste marketer or I think they called it ABC Marketer or whatever back in the day where it's like, Oh, I saw that. I'm just going to go do it, or like, Oh, this is what I did last time and obviously should work like that type of thing.

00;24;41;22 - 00;24;42;11

Patrick Campbell

That's really cool.

00;24;42;12 - 00;24;58;20

Tara Robertson

I think you also have to be really thoughtful about what you need from your CMO. If you are a sales led organization, for example, your CMO has to have worked with the sales team before and have a really good example. There's a little bit of that, right, wherein if you're product led, you probably want to have had product led experience.

00;24;59;08 - 00;25;18;06

Tara Robertson

So I think there are components of what you're looking for. And one thing that you mentioned that I do think is really important is if you are in the earlier stage, an acquisition is number one. You got to be careful you're not hiring somebody That's too much of a brand marketer because I would say, you know, different marketers think different ways and it really depends on what you're looking for.

00;25;18;06 - 00;25;29;22

Tara Robertson

And so I would I would probably urge the founders of the CEOs or whomever the executive team is, is to really think about what they need in the organization. And then that becomes a part of the hiring process and to really vet that through.

00;25;30;05 - 00;25;45;23

Patrick Campbell

So, okay, that's really helpful. So it's kind of like you are looking for someone who can play that generalist role, but there's probably things that kind of trend towards and you want to make sure you align towards those trends probably in the early stage. Like, yeah, I like what you said, but okay, we've done our research.

00;25;46;00 - 00;25;46;09

Tara Robertson

Done our.

00;25;46;09 - 00;26;05;13

Patrick Campbell

Research, we've kind of come up with the framework of how we're going to win at X Company. We've evangelize that a little bit. We've probably had some conversations with people who don't quite get it, but like it's not because they're not smart, it's just because they don't. They're a marketer, right? And so you've had this conversations. You mentioned hiring people who are better than you at certain things.

00;26;05;24 - 00;26;23;01

Patrick Campbell

How do you set up that team? Like almost like functionally, like I know you already have an existing team building and obviously you're going to expand and hire some other people, but like maybe starting from zero, like how do we how do we hire out that team? Because I could see well, I don't know if I'm going to go deep in advance.

00;26;23;01 - 00;26;30;22

Patrick Campbell

I don't know if I need an event marketer yet. There's also the world of like, I'm going for broke. I mean, I know I'm going to need these different marketers. Like, how do you think about that team?

00;26;31;00 - 00;26;46;02

Tara Robertson

Yeah, I think it starts with the goals again, if we're starting from scratch, right, not based off of you've got a team that you've already absorbed because if you've absorbed a team, you've got to talk to them first. Again and figure out kind of where they want to grow and what their skills are and what their history is.

00;26;46;02 - 00;27;04;08

Tara Robertson

But if you're starting from scratch, I think you start with understanding what your goals are and then what are your gaps. And depending on your stage, then that's what you start to hire for. I think a lot of people will sometimes look at lookalikes, and that's probably a big mistake depending on what you need, because you need people that you can partner with.

00;27;04;08 - 00;27;24;11

Tara Robertson

And so when I say hiring for where I'm not strong, I love data, hate spreadsheets. I do not love living and breathing and going through and trying to crunch all the numbers. And I'm not very good at it. And so one of my first hires is always going to be somebody in rev ops or analytics because that way those people are great partners.

00;27;24;11 - 00;27;43;15

Tara Robertson

To me, I'm also very much on if you ever do any of the disc profiling or personality tests. I'm strong on the extroverted, you know, get everybody aligned, talk about value, get people in the room. Not really good about going in and making sure I validate my data and so partnering with somebody that I can go in and say, Hey, I'm thinking this.

00;27;43;27 - 00;28;01;04

Tara Robertson

Can you go in and look at this with me? Are we thinking about this the right way? Is generally my number one partner, and that's sometimes an acquisition that's sometimes in revenue ops and analytics. And so I think you're finding first and foremost, what are the people that you need in order to become successful as a marketer? Generally start with your leadership team.

00;28;01;13 - 00;28;26;11

Tara Robertson

I would say a lot of people will start in and think, Oh, if I just bring in somebody that doesn't have a lot of experience but is hungry and ready to grow and learn, you actually spend more time coaching than you spend doing. And I'm a strong advocate if the budget is there and honestly, even if it's not, you're better off hiring one really strong VP here than you are five practitioners, but a VP that's willing to roll up their sleeves, right?

00;28;26;11 - 00;28;29;09

Tara Robertson

Copy. Do emails like get in and do the work.

00;28;29;15 - 00;28;41;02

Patrick Campbell

So we have a rib ops person or marketing ops depending on their work. We're hiring a VP. Like is IVP have like a function area? Are they a generalist as well? Like how do you, how do you think about that.

00;28;41;04 - 00;28;59;19

Tara Robertson

Depends on the size of your marketing org I would say, and it depends on what you're planning on scaling. And so usually part of my process will be work closely, one with SEO, I reporting to the President, but also your CFO, to really understand what your marketing budget is and where your priorities are. And then what's your operating plan for what you need to achieve.

00;28;59;28 - 00;29;19;08

Tara Robertson

And then based off of that, I'll start to map out on org structure. And so I would say being inside for over a decade, generally the types of work structures that you're looking at is you might want the revenue ops role. I like that role to be by itself, not actually under an acquisition team. A lot of people will put them under.

00;29;19;08 - 00;29;20;08

Patrick Campbell

That doesn't make sense.

00;29;20;11 - 00;29;26;02

Tara Robertson

Does it make sense because you want them to be non-biased? Do you want them to go in and look at the data and challenge that and be a partner to Mark when.

00;29;26;02 - 00;29;30;15

Patrick Campbell

They're if they're chair of ops, they're looking at data and sitting across many different orgs outside of.

00;29;30;15 - 00;29;50;02

Tara Robertson

Marketing. Exactly. Yeah. And they're working. I've had them in marketing. I've had them working in a full rev ops division, but they're working cross-functionally, right, with everybody that's reporting on data. So you're looking at the same numbers. Acquisition is a no brainer. Sometimes that will come in the shape of a plane, VP of Marketing or a VP of acquisition or growth or demand generation, or.

00;29;50;08 - 00;30;00;17

Patrick Campbell

What is that person doing? Just because I think acquisitions are loose term and I think in the marketing world it's being used, but it's catching up in the non marketing world. What that actually means. Like what do you mean that specifically? Like what does that person When.

00;30;00;17 - 00;30;20;24

Tara Robertson

I think about that function, I'm thinking about the way I would explain it when we were at team work was the acquisition team, Was everybody that was focused ruthlessly on driving growth. And so everything that they worked on was revenue, revenue, driving growth and revenue. So everything that they were working on, at least on the acquisition side, had a metric or a target behind it.

00;30;20;24 - 00;30;45;18

Tara Robertson

They're very aligned to wanting to live in the data. They might be doing website optimization, performance marketing like search engine marketing or paid social, a lot of SEO and organic. I would say they're they're the ones that are responsible for driving organic paid direct to all of your different channels to drive your outcomes, whether that's if you're product led trials and sign ups, if you're sales led demos or quotes.

00;30;45;26 - 00;31;01;14

Tara Robertson

Right? But their goal is to truly be the ones that are focused on bringing the funnel and starting to move that funnel. And then lifecycle marketing will often sit under the acquisition team as well for conversion and emails. You know, the new fancy way of calling them email marketing. And so that tends to be a first hire.

00;31;01;14 - 00;31;08;18

Patrick Campbell

I like how we reinvent all these terms all the time because we're like, we don't have many channels that open up every quarter anymore. We need to like, you know, reinvent. It's got.

00;31;08;18 - 00;31;10;01

Tara Robertson

To be fancy called lifecycle.

00;31;10;01 - 00;31;14;18

Patrick Campbell

Now. So we have a rev up with VP is probably focus on acquisition well.

00;31;14;20 - 00;31;18;04

Tara Robertson

Branded communications for sure comes next and I think that.

00;31;18;05 - 00;31;20;23

Patrick Campbell

BP like a budget but for sure.

00;31;20;29 - 00;31;45;29

Tara Robertson

Hands on budget but I think VP is critical and I think branding communications this role can have some roles in it. And I'd say there are some interchangeable which we'll get to. But for a VP of branding Communications, they're working on PR, their core KPIs are awareness and impressions and everything out of the site. So they're trying to drive more people to your website, to your product, to learn about you, to know about you, to love you and to connect with you.

00;31;46;03 - 00;32;08;22

Tara Robertson

Social media assets under branded communications, usually in my orgs as well, because they're really about engaging and interacting and driving more of those awareness and impressions. And then sometimes and brand. I'm excited that this will be a part of the Billy Brands team. You've got employer brand, which is really focused on working with your people division and driving a lot more of your internal communications and your branding efforts for your people.

00;32;08;24 - 00;32;14;17

Patrick Campbell

So we have comms and brand are all one, so you have to be PS right now DVDs. Okay, any more of a piece.

00;32;14;17 - 00;32;46;18

Tara Robertson

Got another one so I technically one and a half so product marketing for sure critical role within SaaS and I think product marketing is often one of the most confusing roles. Sometimes within marketing it can mean a million things to a million different people. And so what I'm looking for in product marketer is again, very metrics focused. Even though I don't like spreadsheets, really focus on people that are really critically deep diving into your customer research or competitive in market analysis.

00;32;46;26 - 00;33;06;17

Tara Robertson

But also they care about product adoption, they care about launches. But it's not just let's get this out there. It's really understanding who's using what parts of the product. Based off of that, what are things that we can learn that product marketing can bring back to the rest of the marketing department and say, Hey, you know, a Billy, we're finding this percent of growth with our QR codes.

00;33;06;22 - 00;33;23;10

Tara Robertson

When they're leveraging QR codes with link management, let's run a campaign on that. And then that becomes part of how we come up with our next one big thing, right? And so I think product marketing truly says that the epicenter of your full marketing department as a partner to marketing and a partner to product and the rest of the business.

00;33;23;10 - 00;33;24;26

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, yeah. Who is the half?

00;33;25;02 - 00;33;44;05

Tara Robertson

The half is content. And the reason I say the half this content is content can set in a bunch of places, right? Like I've seen content set in, brand set in acquisition, and in some places it sits on its own. So I do think that content is something really dependent on the company that you're at and where the right place for content to sit is.

00;33;44;22 - 00;34;02;20

Tara Robertson

In my previous role, what we did is we actually created the content squad because we found content focused on the different pillars within each division. Was the best way for us to achieve the goals. In other organizations that I've worked at, content is its own total umbrella, and they own organic as a metric or they own community. Sometimes.

00;34;02;20 - 00;34;11;02

Tara Robertson

So I think content can be something that you've got to understand what content is for you or are you building a media hub or are you focused on driving more organic trials to the blog?

00;34;11;02 - 00;34;33;00

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, so we have these like three and a half EP's. Obviously these VP is like if you just hired the VP is even if they're willing to roll up their sleeves, like can't last that long, I'm sure. Like, so do you at least need a couple of directors or like underneath them, like how deep do you go on these teams?

00;34;33;00 - 00;34;34;01

Patrick Campbell

Like at the outset?

00;34;34;06 - 00;35;02;15

Tara Robertson

So I would say building from scratch. I'm a huge believer in working with your team to figure that out. And so usually if you're hiring the right VP is they're going to come in with their own perspective. And my expectations are, you know, I've got these people, they're all rock stars, put them in place, then I'm going to want to see them going on their own road show and understanding what their metrics are, working with them closely and saying, All right, VP brand, I want you to deliver this many impressions and this much awareness.

00;35;02;22 - 00;35;18;23

Tara Robertson

What do you need? What are the things that you have? What are the things you want to outsource? Here's your budget. How are you going to work with that budget to then figure it out? And like you mentioned, there are some roles like Brand will generally have social media, they'll generally have events, will generally have PR and comms, internal branding.

00;35;18;23 - 00;35;32;20

Tara Robertson

An employer brand can't hire six people out of the guests. So we figure out what are the things you have to hire for right away? And I might have some in my back pocket, right? I might know that we're going to need a social media manager and say like, Hey, I think you really need a social media manager.

00;35;32;28 - 00;35;36;01

Tara Robertson

Can we move quickly on that? But I won't make that decision without the VP.

00;35;36;01 - 00;35;47;26

Patrick Campbell

Is those numbers you're talking about, are you kind of setting those top down or I mean, it's probably a little bit of like if they go no way in hell it's happening. Like you're going to have a conversation, but like, where is that number or that goal being that great question.

00;35;47;26 - 00;36;04;23

Tara Robertson

I think it really depends on how how far along the organization is. And so what I mean by that is say you're building a brand team from the ground up. They might not have any numbers right out of the gate so that they can look at and say, Oh, this is what I can do. And so what you start with is establishing how do you get that benchmark?

00;36;05;02 - 00;36;21;16

Tara Robertson

And so whether that's in social and using a social media management platform to then go in and analyze is over a certain period of time what that should look like. Sometimes you get a start with best in class and then work your way backwards and forwards from that. Sometimes I would say with acquisition, usually a lot more cut and dry.

00;36;21;24 - 00;36;40;15

Tara Robertson

You kind of know what your operating plan is to a certain degree, and I'll often work with your head of a financial planning and analysis or if you have the marketing rev up function that you're working with, they'll probably have some of those metrics maybe your CFO does. And so I'm figuring some of that out from the beginning is what do we have and what do we need?

00;36;40;15 - 00;37;01;21

Tara Robertson

And then working with, you know, the direct leader, VP, maybe director, depending on stage to then say, okay, this is what we have, this is what we don't have, let's Go. And generally most people, if they're senior enough, they're going to have some form of perspective of what their goal should be. And that's usually what I'm hiring for, is I'm going to ask people during hiring process, how do you measure success?

00;37;01;21 - 00;37;12;17

Tara Robertson

What does the successful brand look like to you? How do you report on that? How often do you share that and really understand from them what their thinking is so that when they come in the door, that's the first thing we're working on.

00;37;12;23 - 00;37;37;15

Patrick Campbell

That's cool. You hinted that previously and then you just kind of hinted at it like this cross company collaboration, like a lot of pitfalls there, I presume, because again, I said before, marketing is like an easy place to blame, not because I think it's just it's not fair. Sometimes it's probably fair, but like, it's just like it's just one of those things where because it's amorphous and because people just kind of look at probably the end of pipeline, they don't really look at like all the stuff.

00;37;37;16 - 00;37;56;20

Patrick Campbell

It's a funnel, right? Like, it's like, well, sales is like, well, we didn't get enough pipeline. The pipeline numbers are wrong. Like, a lot of these numbers end up being very amorphous, unfortunately. One, how do you handle that? Because that's a very high level. And then like, who are your advocates and who do you need? Like to make sure you buy in across the board, Like sales is obvious, but who else?

00;37;56;20 - 00;37;57;01

Patrick Campbell

Yeah.

00;37;57;06 - 00;38;24;13

Tara Robertson

So I'll start by saying you can't be a KMO if you don't want or like to collaborate. Like you have to collaborate and build partnerships and create open communication with your entire executive team that you're working alongside with. That's probably step one, I would say in the beginning, in the next 30 days. You know, part of my goal is getting to know everyone, understanding their hopes and dreams of marketing, but also starting to build those relationships.

00;38;24;21 - 00;38;42;22

Tara Robertson

Because I would say every single executive that worked with that is one of my core partners, and I will answer that. We have our conversations every day, and I think those conversations come down to I don't have enough pipeline or well, who should own this part of email? Is it here in the customer journey or this product hasn't launched yet?

00;38;42;23 - 00;39;07;00

Tara Robertson

What's happening here? These people aren't getting along. I would say there's cons in friction that's happening within marketing within all organizations, and marketing does get blamed a lot. But I think the more that you can start to build those relationships and create that collaboration these year, it is to just face those things head on. I would say my core partners and again, it depends on what your goals are, but it's really everybody in leadership.

00;39;07;00 - 00;39;24;10

Tara Robertson

You know, your CFO holds your budget. You definitely have to understand what are the things keeping them up at night, what are the things that they want to see marketing deliver on, and then be ahead of that and make sure you can show them. Here's the results for working on. Here's what I'm looking for. Here's the data to really understand when you're asking for something that you can give the why.

00;39;24;16 - 00;39;45;21

Tara Robertson

I think a CFO relationship is really, really important, same as your people relationship, because there's a lot of collaboration there, both for the internal comms, but they're going to need a lot for marketing too, especially when they're thinking about things they want to do for their people. You're obvious ones I mentioned before, kind of a go to market team is generally your sales and success team.

00;39;45;21 - 00;40;12;00

Tara Robertson

So customer facing teams that you're working with your product team. Absolutely. You know your chief product officer constantly working with them and understanding what are the things we're working on within the product and what are the things that we're doing. And I think in most product wars I've worked on because I've always been a product led organization, growth tends to be something that lives both in marketing and product, and that becomes a really strong collaboration that you also have to work on with your execution.

00;40;12;09 - 00;40;23;16

Tara Robertson

And then I think obviously your your CMO, your CMO, you know, whatever your org structure is, it just basically listed all of them. So I think they're all really important for different reasons. Yeah, it's.

00;40;23;16 - 00;40;45;18

Patrick Campbell

Interesting. I think the struggle that marketing, like you said, the word collaboration, how much consensus building are you building and how much are you like this is where we're going. I mean, if you have any feedback because that can get really tough because marketing has such a broad like scope, like I feel as if it can get very tough to like toe that line of like democracy versus like, this is where we're going.

00;40;45;18 - 00;40;47;25

Patrick Campbell

Like, you have so much more context than everyone else.

00;40;48;04 - 00;41;10;13

Tara Robertson

Totally. So that all starts with the roadshow. I think that's the important part of your listening roadshow that you go through. So where I mentioned earlier, similar to customer feedback, which we dug into a little bit more, part of it is that when you're listening and hearing everybody, when you come back with here's our priorities, people are often going to see themselves in those priorities and it might be a different version of it.

00;41;10;13 - 00;41;28;14

Tara Robertson

But I will often point back to and I heard this from this person, or this is something else that came up often in the feedback. Here's the things we've prioritized and this is why we prioritize them. So I try to create a form of communication that is very much, you know, the latter, where it's like, Now this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it.

00;41;28;14 - 00;41;50;11

Tara Robertson

Because at that stage I've worked with everyone in marketing, I've worked with everyone in leadership, and I do it enough. That's not a six month process that'll be done. That's being done right now, and I'm only on day six, and that's probably the most important thing that you can actually do, because then when you're driving that vision and you're bringing that product forward, you're bringing your roadmap forward, the rest of the team is looking at and saying, Aha, I got it.

00;41;50;14 - 00;42;09;02

Tara Robertson

You've told me the why. And so I don't do a lot of let's get everyone in the room and ask their opinions because I'm asking their opinions while I'm formulating a lot of that plan. And then the second part of that answer is when there is a lot of people in the room and opinions on do it this way, do it that way, test, you know, you can always test it.

00;42;09;07 - 00;42;13;13

Tara Robertson

I think that's always the thing that I'll come back on is like great feedback. Neither one of us actually though.

00;42;13;14 - 00;42;22;28

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, I've learned many things about you, but something is really interesting that you have like a rare combination of is I think you like the spreadsheets more than like maybe you don't like the work of the spreadsheet, you just.

00;42;22;28 - 00;42;24;28

Tara Robertson

Don't like the formula, you don't like the spreadsheets, you.

00;42;24;28 - 00;42;25;07

Patrick Campbell

Like the.

00;42;25;07 - 00;42;25;21

Tara Robertson

Output.

00;42;25;21 - 00;42;47;23

Patrick Campbell

Sites, like you've combined being data, I would say informed because I think data driven is a little like not the right phrase, but being data informed while also being like a very empathetic, collaborative leader, which it's a pretty rare combination. So at least I haven't seen it as much. Right? There's always levels. All the stuff like people might be listening, and I see that all the time with marketers, but I haven't seen I know a lot of marketers, so that's really cool.

00;42;47;23 - 00;42;51;17

Patrick Campbell

Anything else on, on this like structure org all that kind of fun stuff.

00;42;51;17 - 00;43;11;06

Tara Robertson

Oh, I'm sure there's lots of different things. I think for anyone that's listening, most important thing is you mentioned this earlier, don't walk in as a CMO and think that what you did before is what's going to work this time around. I think that's a really important thing and we all learn that the hard way. Our experience sometimes, whether you're.

00;43;11;06 - 00;43;14;15

Patrick Campbell

The marketer in that situation or the person who hired the marketer.

00;43;14;15 - 00;43;31;21

Tara Robertson

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think making sure that you listen, making sure that you spend time formulating a plan that's specific to the business that you're working in, do it every time that's so important. So that would be the first one. And then the other one, I would say is dependent on how you build your team and the right structure for your team.

00;43;32;00 - 00;44;02;21

Tara Robertson

Make sure your team knows their outcomes and make sure they understand their responsibility, because I can't say how many times I've joined a team or at some stage been a part of a team. People will often feel confused or they often don't have the clarity because they just don't know how they can bring the most value. And so I think the important part of building your org is build a structure right for your business, but then connect your people with knowing how can they crush it, What are the things that they know that they are solely responsible for, that they can control and the things that they fight through and they struggle through to know

00;44;02;21 - 00;44;22;17

Tara Robertson

that part of the job of being an executive or we talked about earlier, it's not necessarily doing the work. It's sometimes helping teach people how to do that, serving them, rolling up your sleeves in a different way, where you become more of a coach and you're helping them learn those hard things together because you'll see your people fall down and it sucks, see your people fall down and but you got to be there to help get up.

00;44;22;21 - 00;44;26;18

Patrick Campbell

That's great. I think that's a perfect way. Then where can people find you? Anything you want to plug?

00;44;26;24 - 00;44;40;07

Tara Robertson

Yeah. I mean, you can find me anywhere on. Social media. It's just at Tara Robertson not to be confused with Tara Robertson, who's my Robertson doppelganger inside. But you can reach me on Twitter, LinkedIn, any of the any of the social sites.

00;44;40;07 - 00;44;41;24

Patrick Campbell

Awesome. This is great. Thank you.

00;44;41;26 - 00;44;46;00

Tara Robertson

Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

00;44;46;00 - 00;45;16;04

Ben Hillman

A huge shoutout to Tara for doing this podcast. Now you have what it takes to market. Well, today we talked about connecting emotion and value to drive results, what to look for when building a marketing team, prioritizing efforts on areas of biggest influence, setting up a team of highly skilled marketers, and which partnerships essential within your organization. If you want to support Padel and the show, we'd really appreciate it if you left a five star review of this podcast or the equivalent rating wherever you listen to watch.

00;45;16;13 - 00;45;24;13

Ben Hillman

Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Paddle.