Peter Caputa

Databox

At Databox, I am currently 100% focused on helping marketing agencies automate their reporting. But, thousands of companies have figured out how to use our software on their own. They use it to set numeric marketing and sales goals, auto-track progress by pulling performance data from 100s of other software systems and visualizing it on any device.  The mobile app is slick and we even have a free version that allows you to track performance from up to 3 different apps. www.databox.com

Stay tuned...

Collaborative Growth Network

Helping various SaaS and marketplace software startups with strategic direction. Focused around sales, marketing and channel strategy. Mostly martech and salestech. Special focus on helping companies build channel strategies where marketing agencies are the channel.

Advisor to Startups (Drift, Insycle, Pandadoc, Pantheon, PartnerStack)

I run a mastermind group of marketing agency owners who meet weekly to share and learn from each other and select guests. 

If you're interested in joining us, contact me. We add one or two members per quarter.

Founder

HubSpot

Manage 130 person sales team. Mid-Market, SMB. Direct sales, Channel (sales to and through agencies), Verticals (NP/EDU, Ecomm, Media). Inside sales, both quota carrying/closing roles as well as appointment setting team. Work closely with marketing and services to achieve new and net revenue targets.

VP Sales

Built channel sales from 6 to 24 salespeople, while consistently exceeding monthly customer acquisition and retention goals. Direct a team of cross functional managers including sales, services and marketing. Team signed up 1,000+ marketing agencies as partners and helped them sign up 1,000s of clients on retainer.

Director, Channel Sales & Marketing

Built and run the reseller sales channel at HubSpot, a 3 year old direct sales driven organization. Manage and do all marketing and sales activities involved with creating a value added reseller sales channel for selling SaaS marketing software through marketing agencies. Responsibilities include marketing through content/webinars, reseller account management, reseller training and communications, assisting resellers in their sales processes, managing a full time marketing person and projects, reporting quarterly results and plan to senior management, building processes for administering program with finance and operations. Built team from me and one marketing person to a team of 6 salespeople. 

Demonstrated how channel can acquire customers at a higher rate with lower cost of customer acquisition and higher customer retention.

HubSpot Partner Program, Sales & Marketing Manager

Consistently exceeded monthly targets for acquisition of new customers via direct sales and referrals. Achieved highest customer retention rate among 40 salesperson team. Became an expert practitioner of inbound marketing, advising prospects and customers of best practices.

Inbound Marketing Software, Sales

WhizSpark Corporation

President of WhizSpark. Offering event planning software and access to an event promotional network.

Owner

Root Markets

Blogger

Saint-Gobain Abrasives

Product Sales Engineer

I help companies grow by implementing sales and marketing excellence. Worked with 100s of businesses directly as well as helped 100s of agencies and media companies grow by helping their clients achieve predictable, measurable and improvable ROI from the marketing and advertising services they provide.

Specialties: Online/web development, online marketing, inbound marketing, lead generation, marketing automation, content marketing, seo, channel sales, sales management, consultative sales, agency new business, marketing services, coaching marketing agencies, selling marketing services.

VP Marketing job opportunity: Profitable, $8M SaaS software company looking to accelerate with first ever VP Marketing hire.

It's time. Time for Databox to step on the growth gas pedal. 

When I joined Databox in 2017, we had $1.9M in the bank. We haven't taken a dime more in venture capital since then, choosing to burn very little. We've been obsessively focused on building an easy-to-setup, but powerful analytics product and a great customer support experience, while remaining cash-flow breakeven.

An incredibly challenging product to build and support, this has clearly taken us time to get right. 

(Still work to do, of course. But, it's time to walk (ie continue to innovate) and chew gum (market more aggressively) at the same time.) 

Knowing this would take time, we deployed our lean marketing budget towards long-term investments: organic search, content co-marketing, organic social, product marketing, product-led growth and our partner program. This has allowed us to have a ridiculously low CAC and payback period.

Frankly, too low for our ambitions.

So, why are we investing now? Simply put: our current unit economics (and actual economics) allow it now. We've been able to steadily increase our average revenue per customer (ARPC) and lifetime value (LTV) this past year (and have leading indicators showing it'll continue to increase) after launching software capabilities that bring the power of high-end business intelligence tools to the masses.

So that's what we need help doing -- taking Databox to the masses. 

We need someone to help us fulfill our mission: making it easier for millions of companies to improve performance through better use of data.

We need a senior hire with been-there-done-that SaaS marketing leadership experience of going from $10M to $50M -- or someone who at least has seen the movie close-up once or twice and is ready to fill some bigger shoes.

This person will report directly to me and join our senior management team. They'll inherit a team of 8 people and will work with their team and the management team to determine how to steadily scale results through incremental investments.

I expect I'll be swamped and overwhelmed by interest, so I do ask that you apply here if you are interested: 

https://lnkd.in/edZEBrtR <--- More details about the role, of course. 

Of course, introductions by way of direct message or by tagging people in the comments (preferred so that they don't get lost in my mess of an inbox) are VERY appreciated.

Most companies are still doing content marketing like it's 2010:

- Keyword research
- Read competitor's articles
- Write better version
- Promote via email
- Post to social

The main goal of this process is usually to get search traffic. (Email & social are usually check-the-box activities.)And if you have a high domain authority (or unique product for a niche market), this process may still consistently work for you.  Otherwise, you're going to struggle to achieve & maintain rankings. 

This Google SEO gravy train game is over. This 2010 process is no longer effective for most companies, especially new ones. 

To compete for attention today, you have to publish where the people are. 

You need a podcast, a Youtube channel, to publish on Linkedin, etc.

The problem is that expanding to all of these channels is expensive (& time consuming) unless...

... YOU CHANGE YOUR RESEARCH PROCESS.

The first step that enables effective content for all of these platforms is original research; reaching out to actual people (not Google or ChatGPT) to gather new insights & data on a topic.

Original research makes it 10x easier to produce content for each channel. 

The key is building a new process that starts with original research.

Here's an example campaign from my team at Databox: 

1.  Picked a market: B2B Linkedin Advertisers

2. Picked a relevant topic: Linkedin Impression-based ads.

3. Identified Linkedin Ads benchmark data: https://lnkd.in/exun-2Dv (This site gives benchmark data from 70+ data sources with a free account.)

4. Wrote a social post asking a question: https://lnkd.in/eVkYfP4n (Notice the 92 comments.)

5. Ran a survey on the topic: https://lnkd.in/e33MRwPh (To incent respondents, we make aggregate survey data  immediately available after survey completion.)

6. Recorded a podcast with an expert on the topic, JD Garcia: https://lnkd.in/eJ_8EVya

7. Wrote a comprehensive article on the topic that embeds the podcast, includes the benchmark & survey data, as well as quotes from the survey & our social media post comments: https://lnkd.in/eDPbdgr9

8. Highlighted the survey & benchmark data, article & podcast in our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ekibJjA3

Now, this probably looks daunting to you. But, you don't have to do all of this. We expanded this process over time. 

You can start with steps 1 through 4 before you write your next article. (That's not that big of a deviation from your 2010 process.)

Then, add number 5, 6, 7, 8 when you're ready. We still haven't added Youtube yet. But, it's next.

Oh, & btw, Google ranks original content higher. They rarely give guidance, but the 1st point in their checklist for evaluating content says, "Content [that] provides original information, reporting, research, or analysis."  Source: https://lnkd.in/eqYM4crR


Ever wonder what the benefits are hiring a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) or have questions how that works in the long-term?

Databox covers this in great detail in their recent article interviewing quite a few sought-after agencies, buyers, and fCMOs - 271 in all. 

It is great to be featured in this, given my work over the past decade+ with later-stage startup and middle market companies. 

This data also confirms multiple other research studies and the one thing that most HR and recruiters miss. Industry experience is NOT correlated to success in a Chief Marketing Officer or fractional CMO (the same holds for COOs and CPOs). If the person ONLY has experience from the company's industry, there is actually a greater correlation with slower growth and losing market share to competitors.

In my experience, and in my quote, the leaderships experience with fractional executives (as opposed to consultants) greatly impacts the success as well. Although, I will also add that I am seeing an incredible humbleness from some CEOs that do not have this experience, see the value, and are open to coaching on how to make the relationship work the best...these are also just great #servantleaders more often than not.

My quote:
“Understanding of the Fractional CMO model varies widely, influenced heavily by the leadership’s experience and the company’s growth stage. First-time CEOs or those at the helm of eight-figure companies for the first time often believe that only a full-time CMO can drive growth, overlooking the strategic value a Fractional CMO can bring.

A common misconception prevails in the market, grouping consultants, agencies, and Fractional CMOs together which obscures their distinct roles and contributions. However, in the middle market, particularly within private equity-backed companies, there’s a more nuanced appreciation for the Fractional CMO model. These leaders understand the value in efficiently utilizing resources, especially during critical growth phases or when addressing operational gaps.

They acknowledge the value of a Fractional CMO in offering the essential expertise and direction to drive growth, while pinpointing the critical skill set required for a full-time executive. This perspective is crucial for effectively leveraging the Fractional CMO model, ensuring it is employed in contexts where it can deliver maximum value and facilitate business growth and transition.”

Find a link to the full article in the comments. It's well worth your time to read if you are considering ANY fractional executive for your company or need help scaling through the next phase.

#GrowthMatters #fractionalchiefmarketingofficer #CMO #marketing 

After reviewing 50+ resumes today of applicants to our VP Marketing role opening (https://lnkd.in/eRpEZmWy), here's a few observations:

→ There are a lot of companies that really underinvest in marketing. Lots of people working at 100+ person companies with VP/'Head of' titles but who had very few direct reports. They were largely project managers. 
→ Lots of marketers jump around from industry to industry, business type to business type, market to market, etc. Maybe some people think that's a good thing, but I think that every industry/business type/market has a steep learning curve and expertise in it grows over time: I'm still learning about SaaS and martech every day, 20 years in. 
→ Marketing seems isolated in most companies. Not a lot of resumes talking about how they had joint wins with sales, product, etc. 
→ Most marketers seem to bounce around to different companies every 2-3 years. Some people seem to job hop like they're on a European backpacking trip, staying in place for very little time. 

This isn't a reflection on the people, more about the companies, I guess. But I do get excited when I see a marketing leader who stuck with an industry, stayed at a few companies more than 4 years, built or managed a relatively large team and clearly knows how to work with their peers. 

Back to reviewing resumes...

I don't write content. I share my thoughts, what I'm learning and what I'm doing. It's not content. It's my journey. 

Last week, a handful of people said to me, "I like your content." They were referring to the content I personally post on Linkedin. They meant well and I very  much appreciate the feedback and the compliment. 

But, I don't like calling it content. I think "content" has been co-opted by marketers as something that's selfish. Even when it's educational, it's clearly designed to promote and convert. 

And sure, I am promoting what we do at Databox and I measure the resonance and impact of what I share on our business. But, most of the stuff I'm sharing is just stuff I'm doing, seeing, learning & thinking. 

I even sometimes write things that I know people won't care about. I often write things that I know won't convert. I still publish these things because I want to share, learn from others and get feedback, first and foremost. 

So, it feels cheap & transactional to call it "content".  

It's more personal to me -- it's more like my journal. 

Wanna grow your Linkedin follower account? It took me a year+ to figure this out. Over the last two days, my follower count grew by ~300 people. Here's my hack...

  |
  |
  |
  |
V

Announce that you're hiring a VP Marketing: 
https://lnkd.in/eRpEZmWy

Seriously, though, people: thank you for the overwhelming support. 

I'm currently trying to get through the 120+ applicants in Bamboo (our applicant tracking system) and all of the intros in my Linkedin inbox. 

I'm starting to think I should have reached out to people privately first. But, we will see once I start digging into the resumes. I actually am very pleasantly surprised by many of the introductions I've gotten from people I respect. 

And I will go through every resume. 

PS. Sorry if I teased you and you were looking for an actual, repeatable way to grow your Linkedin following. 


As of today, Databox is officially the only software in the world that allows you to build a custom dashboard (or report) that pre-populates with relevant benchmark data (alongside your performance, ofc).

You can see what we just launched in the image below.

Benchmarks are accessible for free here: benchmarks.databox.com.
You can even get very specific benchmarks simply by anonymously sharing your data with the system.

By making that free, it helps us build the biggest dataset possible, which makes it possible for us to offer relevant and representative benchmarks to all different types and sizes of companies.

Custom dashboards with benchmarks integrated into them (ie what's shown below in the image) is available on our Growth & Premium plans.

By charging for this, we can continue to invest in making our product and benchmark capabilities even more sophisticated.

Thanks to all who have joined us on this quest for making it easier to answer the question, "How does my company's performance compare to others like mine?"

Special thanks to our early benchmark partners that have invested their time by taking our course (https://lnkd.in/eGH_8qpR) and getting certified to read, interpret and explain benchmark data to their clients.

Thanks to all of you, answering the "How does my company's performance compare?" question isn't as hard as it was yesterday.

I said it before and I'll say it again: Linkedin publishing is the best lead nurturing tool ever created. 

I just received this note this morning:

"Looks like you've been posting a lot about benchmarks over the last few months. I work at an SEO agency that uses Data Studio and think we should consider Databox. I think benchmarks would be a great way for us to start using you.  Question: I assume I can create a group where I can include all of our clients  as opposed to joining one of the existing benchmarks groups?"

No one has ever spoken to this person about how agencies (like his) can build their own always-up-to-date benchmark study using benchmark groups (https://lnkd.in/ekji2fSQ). But he's been following along as I write about it. 

Sure, we could have cold pitched him, ran ads that targeted people like him, got him into our email funnel and nurtured him, etc. There's other ways to get a prospect to raise their hand and ask a good question. 

But, I didn't have to do any of that. Here's what I do:

1️⃣ Connect with people who are good fit prospects for us
2️⃣ Regularly write about what we're doing 
3️⃣ Optional: Engage in conversations with them publicly (in comment threads) and privately (in direct messages). 

That's it. 

(Feel free to use it as your Linkedin nurturing cheat sheet. Lol.)

How many opportunities are you missing out on because you're not writing about what you're doing?

If you’re an executive or business owner, don’t do LinkedIn publishing if you’re not in it for the long run and aren't willing to spend time talking to people. It’s not something you try for a month, or evaluate the effectiveness of right away. It's also not enough just to post your thoughts. You must engage. 

But if you’re committed to building a defensible and innovative B2B business, there’s nothing better than direct contact with customers, partners & future customers via Linkedin. 

People follow along, listen and engage. It’s an always-on 24/7 networking event – and not utilizing that as an executive seems crazy to me.

You don't have to be the CEO/founder or have a large network to start. Of course, it helps if you have some level of authority and are connected to people who know, like and trust you. But not necessary and you have to do the same work regardless. 

When I started publishing on Linkedin, I was able to tap into the network I've built up over the years. But, it took some time before large numbers of people started commenting on my posts or connecting with me because of what I was publishing. 

But one thing that I got immediately was feedback from some people– which drove me to continue. After 18 months of consistent publishing, I’m at a point where I can spend 20 minutes writing something and get immediate responses.

The formula is really pretty simple: when you combine posting and interacting with people on LinkedIn, you create a community around you and your product. It gets you feedback and builds awareness for what you’re doing. 

It eventually generates sales for you too. 

Here's 3 stories I shared on a recent podcast (https://lnkd.in/d8YJjiev ) I recorded with Finn Thormeier

1) I recently posted a 5-minute write-up about a new feature our team at Databox is building – and immediately got 30 valuable responses from customers, partners and prospects. Several asked to start a trial of the plan this feature is on. 

2) Someone who’s been following me for years but never engaged sent me a message and said that they finally tried something I’ve been talking about for awhile. They have been working with one of our partners and signed up for our benchmarks course the other day. They were hesitant at first, but are now committed. 

3) A partner followed me on LinkedIn, joined my mastermind group, and after 9(!) months got on board with our partner program. Their partnership with Databox is a key part of their 2024 strategy.

As these stories demonstrate, consistent publishing eventually gets people to act on your suggestions. 
 
PS. If you're a founder or exec and not sure how to get started with publishing on Linkedin, Finn Thormeier, and his company, Project 33, are excellent resources. 

My simple rules as CEO regarding debates and decisions...

1️⃣ I do not mind debating something a few times. I dislike debating it more than that, if there is no new data or insights to consider. 
 
2️⃣ If you are proposing something, bring our historical data. If we don't have data, bring other company's data (aka benchmarks). If you don't have that, go and interview some experts about what you're proposing. Ideally, follow that up with a survey to a larger group to validate your findings. Your opinions and experience aren't enough unless you've done the thing a bunch of times. Also, sometimes historical performance data is flawed (or incomplete) as data does not usually tell us why things do or don't happen. 

3️⃣ I don't mind being proven wrong at all. My ego isn't tied to being right about everything, only the long-term success of the business. 

4️⃣ I'd prefer to let people who report to me make decisions within their scope.  Sometimes, even when I disagree, I let them run with their decision as long as it doesn't negatively impact other things. 

5️⃣ If you are reporting to me and you want this kind of decision making authority, you have to demonstrate to me that you understand the impact of your work on others. In other words, if you hit your goals (or try to hit your goals), by making it harder for others, I'm going to scrutinize your decisions more closely. 

6️⃣ If you want to convince me of something, work with your peers and get on the same page first. If 2, 3 or 4 people on my team are onboard with something, I'm more likely to go with it. I may still question it. But, just to poke holes, understand risks and make sure you all thought through things. 

7️⃣ Occasionally, I'm going to make a decision you don't like or agree with. It's your job to follow my lead in these cases, represent the decision to the rest of the org and do your best to make it successful. You should recognize this as my burden as much as my privilege. I don't like doing this, unless necessary.

8️⃣ I'd rather not be involved in most decisions. I need to know what's going on so that I can be supportive and help with communication. But, the best executives don't need to consult me on everything and can make decisions within the boundaries we set. Processes, systems and policies help us all with delegating decision making authority. Get good at building them. 

I'm not perfect at this. Far from it. But, as I'm interviewing VP marketing candidates, I figured I'd document this. 

Disclaimer: Subject to change. :-)

Consistency and persistence is an underrated marketing tactic. 

Ali Schwanke thinks most companies would have given up on building a Youtube channel based on the results they got from their first 5 months of effort. 

She didn't and she's now grown it to 22k subscribers in ~3.5 years. 

22k Youtube subscribers might not sound like much to you. And it's not in comparison to the likes of Mr Beast or Cocomelon.  But, when you're addressable market is only ~200k companies, heck yeah it is! 

I interviewed Ali Schwanke, founder of Simple Strat and host of the Youtube channel, HubSpot Hacks,  on the latest episode of Databox's Metrics and Chill podcast recently. 

What was her secret for making Youtube work for helping them drive sales? She simply didn't give up too soon. Per Ali, "If we were a traditional company, at the 5th month mark, we probably would have cut the project." 

As I like to say... Consistency and persistence is an under rated marketing tactic. 

Full episode titled, "Using Youtube to Drive Sales" can be found on your favorite podcast player or here: https://lnkd.in/gs6_9_qv

If you don't listen to it, remember that developing marketing channels takes reps to make work. Keep at it. Keep iterating. Learn and get inspiration from others. But, whatever you do, don't give up too soon! 

PS. Big ups to Hatch (https://www.hatch.fm/) who have taken over our podcast production! They do an amazing job of creating clips, producing the episode and making it easy for us to repurpose and promote. Unfortunately, they can't fix my 'made for radio' face....

You can learn a lot of sales & marketing tactics by observing what other people do. But, one area that you should NOT try to learn this way: prospecting. 

Most salespeople don't know how to prospect. So, by copying what you observe, you'll be copying the wrong stuff. What most salespeople do for prospecting is spray & pray to find some prey. They cold pitch right away in order to find the very small percentage of prospects who were pre-inclined to buy. This works for them usually because they work at a big company that has a great reputation, great marketing, the right software & huge brand awareness. Or they do it at such a high volume.

It won't work for you. 

Even if you write the best templates in the world, you won't be able to start conversations with strangers by positioning your value, explaining problems you solve or talking about how awesome you are.

You need to do the opposite. 

The first thing you have to do is work on yourself. 

You need to be someone worth talking to. (Similar to how you shouldn't date people if you don't have your own sh*t together.) 

You do that by committing to learning through primary & secondary research & then publishing what you're learning. 

This makes you worth talking to. 

The second thing is you need to not be a d*ck when you reach out to people by assuming that they have a problem they need you to urgently fix. 

You have to do the opposite: You have to find something they're doing that they might be willing to brag about. 

Then, you gotta take the time to actually learn from them. 

In other words, when starting a conversation, you should start with a compliment. 

Ideally, from there, you ask them a question. That question should be related to a topic that you've chosen to research. Ideally, you ask that question & explain that you're doing research in order to write something & you'd like to interview them & potentially quote them. 

You can also offer to give them access to your anonymized research if they're interested in learning too. 

A few interesting things will happen once you start doing this: 

1️⃣ The prospects who respond will be your best prospects. Why?  They actually will want to improve. Prospects who are doing some things well already will want to know how they can do better -- or learn how they can do other things well too. 

2️⃣ They'll opt in to your sales process. You won't have to position your value in an unsolicited way. If you learn how to have these conversations, they'll actually ask you what you do. Or they'll be natural points in the conversation where you'll be able to say, "Here's what I learned from my research & from helping other people like you..." 

3️⃣ As you start publishing, people will reach out to you and ask you for help and advice. 

4️⃣ Perhaps most importantly, you'll actually learn something and build a new relationship. 

But, first step is learn how to start a conversation with a compliment & a question. And stop sending cold pitches. 

If some of your marketing content doesn't upset your prospects, you're probably doing it wrong.

An agency owner friend of mine said the following about me to another of our mutual old friends the other day, "As you can see, Pete is still his old crotchety self."

He was reacting to me calling out a group of people for not doing something I recommended. 

But, I did it on purpose because I wanted them to feel guilty for not doing it.

Another agency owner friend of mine recently said this about of one of my posts, "You know I love your work but this post is dripping in condescension."

In that post, the condescension was purposeful.

I WANTED the people who were reading it to feel bad about their dated approach to content marketing. Rather, I NEED them to feel bad about it so that they consider the alternative that I'm suggesting (and teaching our partners via our free course: https://lnkd.in/eGH_8qpR).

Most content marketers have leaned way too far into creating "educational" and "entertaining" content.

Everyone is trying to be informative and fun. That's good for when someone is inclined to buy from you or buy a product like yours.

But without content that evokes a negative emotion, you'll never get prospects to challenge their old ways & consider what you are suggesting they do differently.

The greatest entrepreneurs of our time pissed more people off than they attracted (at least initially) by challenging the status quo. They provoked controversy in order to get people talking about them, so that the people who agreed with them would be more likely to hear about them.

Marc Benioff famously declared the end of on-premise software when he launched the first ever cloud CRM at Salesforce. Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah at HubSpot pissed off a lot of traditional marketers by pointing out that technology changed buying processes, which made inbound marketing a more effective and more righteous way to market and sell. Just a few years back, David Cancel and Dave Gerhardt at Drift, a Salesloft company picked a fight with B2B marketers who built their careers and their funnels with landing pages by suggesting that they should just let website visitors directly start chats and book time with their sales team.

If your value props, messaging and content is vanilla-bland, doing-and-saying the same thing as your competitors, you're going to be ignored.

If you take a stand on something, you'll get people to reconsider what they're doing now and consider you.

To do that, you have to be willing to provoke uncomfortable feelings.

Whether it's anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy or guilt, you have to be willing to make at least some of your prospective buyers feel these feelings.

It's probably not advice you expected to hear today. But if you want to be relevant tomorrow, you might want to consider it.

How does this post make you feel? I hope you feel a bit like a wuss for writing such copacetic content. 

Yesterday, we hit 200 registrants for our free 'Benchmarks' course. But, more importantly, our first partner, Growth, got certified & closed their second deal because of it!

Benchmarks allow our partners to answer a question their prospects & clients often ask: How does our company's performance & business practices compare to similar companies?

The course teaches our partners how to create the benchmarks that answer these questions given their unique services offerings & market focus.  

But, it's not just theory.

It's a proven process. One that we've used to grow our own business & one that we've taught 1:1 to 60+ partners (before launching the course.)

In order to get certified, Growth had to get 3 things live: 

1️⃣ Their benchmark group 
https://bit.ly/3vBMlYL

2️⃣ A landing page on their site that offers a free benchmark consultation 
https://bit.ly/3VDvNKF

3️⃣ A blog post that shares some of their benchmark data 
https://bit.ly/3PMfIOU

(We link to 2 & 3 prominently from their group, as shown in the screen grab below.) 

Once completed, we can be confident a partner knows how to read & explain the benchmarks to others. 

Once live, we can start generating leads together. 

The course (https://lnkd.in/eGH_8qpR) covers so much more than that, though.

It teaches every marketing, sales & client management process we developed over the last 18 months.

Even though we worked 1:1 with our initial partners, even our most successful partners (like Growth) have learned a few things. 

I asked Richard Barcellos, Growth's Brand & Community Manager, what they'll do differently now that they've completed the course.

He explained how they'll be leveraging it more in marketing, "Performance benchmark data helps us create rich content. We can go into our group and clearly see the differences between the top, medium & bottom performers. We'll write about how we've seen companies become top performers."

They are also doubling down on using business process data (collected via surveys) to market their expertise. "Our Linkedin content calendar includes way more posts with benchmark survey data."

On the sales side, Barcellos explained how benchmarks let them deliver more value to their prospective clients. "We live in a world where 'providing value' in the sales process has become a buzzword. Most companies like ours are focused on showing off their capabilities during their sales process. With benchmarks, we have the ability to help someone instantly see how their performance compares and discuss how they can do better. This leads to better sales conversations!"

The proof is in the pudding, though. Per Growth founder, Christopher Nault, "When we had our 1st CLOSED WON deal with the benchmark data being a part of the sales process, they told us they chose us over the other firm because we took the time to review the data. We just closed our 2nd deal this way too. It’s now a permanent part of our process."


Oy vey! It seems like lots of marketers are still just treating social media as a distribution channel for their SEO content.

In a survey we're running on 'content marketing and SEO' with several of our benchmarking research partners (Pneuma Media, Flying Cat , Secret Sushi, Inc. and Knowmad Digital Marketing), we asked respondents, "How do you incorporate social media into your content marketing strategy?"

(So far, we have 88 respondents. So, not yet enough data to make definitive conclusions. But, we certainly see some trends...)

I'm not sure what makes me sadder.

The fact that the largest percent of respondents treat social as the last step in their content creation process (ie 38% said that they create long-form content for SEO and then reformat and repurpose parts of it for social media sites), or that the second most popular response was that they keep their SEO and social strategy separate (an additional 27% said that "our social media strategy is completely separate from our content marketing strategy".)

So, it seems that lots of marketers are spending a lot of time creating something without any real clue about whether it's going to interest people. 

In my experience, the beauty of social media these days is the instant feedback it gives you.

As marketers, we used to get that with blogging when people subscribed by email and RSS. But, those days are long gone and social is where you can more easily (and instantly) determine what people want to read/watch/hear. 

So the fact that only 10% said they, "post short-form content on social media to validate topics and angles before creating long form content" really makes me think that most marketers are missing the mark.

Personally, I think from an editorial planning perspective, almost everything should start with publishing on social media.

23% did select the option that they, "publish both short form content on social and long-form content on their website and then repurpose the higher performing content on different channels". So, that's pretty good. Those marketers are hedging their bets. 

But, even if you add these respondents to the people (like me and Databox) who post to social first to validate, we're talking about just 1/3rd of marketers validating before creating long-form content.  

Anyone else thinking about this critically? Agree/disagree?

The biggest miss marketing agencies have around data: using it just to report the results of their work.

The biggest opportunity? Using data to guide their client's strategy.

We asked 200+ marketing agencies, "How well do you think your reporting process helps you accomplish each of the following?"

➡️ Demonstrate the value of your services
➡️  Retain and renew clients
➡️ Upsell clients on more of the same services we provide
➡️ Cross-sell new services
➡️ Resell or recommend other tools or service providers that complement what we're already offering.

As you can see in the chart, most agencies feel that their reporting process helps demonstrate their value and retains clients.

But, when it comes to upselling, cross-selling and reselling, more agencies think their reporting process does an "ok" or poor job.

My personal observation is that agencies who do all of these things well have a different kind of approach to reporting. 

They get much more strategic by leveraging their reporting process to do the following things too:

1️⃣ They help their clients measure more than just their agency's work. For example, they're helping clients set sales targets and track sales attainment.
2️⃣ They are helping with financial planning as it relates to sales & marketing.  They're having strategic conversations with their client's senior leaders about what growth is possible and what investments it will require. 
4️⃣ They're monitoring the efficiency of their client's business. For example, they are identifying ways to improve the yield on their ad budget, maximize sales close rate, etc.
5️⃣ They help clients devise company strategy, beyond marketing tactics. For example, they're using data from sales calls and customer calls to identify who their clients should be marketing and selling to more, what can compel those prospects to buy at higher prices or more easily.

In order to get this strategic, these partners are helping with what I call "performance management". Instead of showing up once a month to showcase the results they're producing from their marketing services, they have a process that involves annual planning, quarterly business reviews, twice-monthly (or weekly) planning calls to ensure work gets done and that goals are on track, real-time monitoring for underperformance & the impact of work as it gets done.

The more advanced agencies are using benchmark studies and semi-automated forecasts to make some of these things even easier. 

As this technology gets even more sophisticated, there seems to be a big opportunity for agencies to use data to increase retention, upsells, cross-sells & reselling. 

But, more importantly, the opportunity is to really be a strategic partner for clients, maximizing client's financial performance through better management of all of their go-to-market functions. 

Source of data: https://lnkd.in/e4URPf2T


Most software products do one of two things: automate an existing process or introduce a transformative change to their customers. The best ones do both.

The case for building software that automates an existing process is that there is built-in demand for it. For example, there is lots of demand for products like Databox that pull in data from the multitude of tools a company uses and then lets them build custom dashboards, reports, set goals, etc. By being a relatively early entrant into this market, we've been able to build our business using search engine optimization as our primary marketing investment (to date) because companies are "looking for it."

The case against it is that it gets competitive. For example, there are lots of companies that compete with us for mindshare. The trick in a competitive market is to carve out a unique spot in the market and then try to expand from there. We've done that largely by focusing on SMBs and agencies by making our product easy to setup and use, building/managing robust integrations with popular tools and enabling beautiful visualizations.

But, dammit, I'm sick of hearing about a new "competitor" every week.

On the flip side, not much demand exists in the beginning for software companies that introduce transformative change to their customers. I made this mistake (among many) in my first startup: we had built an online promotional network for public event organizers. They weren't ready for it. We didn't have the resources to build a huge promotional network & sell/service the event organizers. I scoffed at one of the investors in Eventbrite when they suggested I study what they were doing, which at the time was just to sell tickets on top of paypal. Eventbrite obviously did better than my startup.

But, the beauty of selling transformational change facilitated by software is that people will value it a lot more. If you pull it off, you'll attract customers and partners who get excited about the potential exponential upside of change and jump on board with your movement. You also won't face a whole lot of competition.

At HubSpot, we no doubt did this with Inbound Marketing. Currently, HubSpot is doing it again with their positioning around 'the connected customer' -- helping sales, marketing & services teams better serve clients by using one product. 

At Databox, our transformational play has been helping companies better use data in their performance management & planning processes. We launched a course on this years ago and we have/are building more into our software to enable better planning and management. We have partners jumping on board to help us figure this out & take our transformational ideas out to their clients & prospects.

It isn't easy for a software company to do both of these things. When getting started, I'd probably go with automating something first. But, I think to be an enduring software company, you gotta do both. 

"That was a big problem for us that you solved," said a Databox reseller about our new ability to update an account template across multiple clients in one click. 

For a year+, this Databox partner has used our Account Templates feature to roll out dashboards for their new gym clients (ie health clubs, fitness centers) in minutes. They provide services to 100s of gyms. So, over their time of using Databox, they had built up their expertise to help gyms track and improve their sales and marketing performance using data from a variety of tools. They've even built custom integrations with tools commonly used by gyms, so they can track lots of different data points and have lots of templates ready to go for each new client. 

The new feature (he was very excited to thank us for) was the ability to update templates that have already been deployed. 

The capability is shown in the video below, put together by Monise Milanese Branca, from our product marketing team. (Skip to minute 4 if you are impatient.) 

The short of it is that IF one of our partners makes a change to a dashboard template that's already being used by a bunch of their clients, they can then update all of those already-in-use dashboards in one click. 

This way, whenever one of our partners realizes they should be:

-- tracking a new metric, 
-- reporting new data from another integration or
-- simply visualizing data in a different way...

...they can quickly deploy that change to all (or a selection of) clients. 

A big reason marketing agencies (and other professional services firms) use Databox is because we help them reduce the amount of time it takes to monitor performance and report results to clients through standardization (or at least re-use) of reports they've built. 

This new capability helps them continuously improve their reporting process across all of their clients much more efficiently too. 


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