Matt Fleming is director of marketing at Ovation.io, a scientific data company providing a cloud-based LIMS for molecular diagnostic laboratories.
Before joining Ovation.io, Matt headed the marketing initiatives at Loadsmart & Apptopia. He was also the founder of Segment Ai, a SaaS-based app that uses data science to help marketers bridge the gap between the personas that live in slide decks and the segments that exist in their CRM data.
Matt specializes in early/growth stage tech startups and is passionate about the convergence of data, machine learning, and marketing.
In episode 11 of the MOV Podcast, Pranav Chimulkar ( Cofounder at guch.me & Host at the MOV Podcast) and Matt discussed the key benefits of using video for talent acquisition and corporate branding.
Matt spoke about the key difference between lead generation and demand generation.
Matt truly believes “Prospect makes up their mind well before filling out the sign-up form” and we went deep in our conversation to understand the true sense of this statement.
We also discussed how brands allocate their budgets for performance marketing versus Brand marketing.
So without further ado, tune in to learn more such interesting marketing insights only on the Mad Over Videos Podcast by guch featuring Matt Fleming.
Pranav Chimulkar: Hey guys, welcome to the MOV podcast by guch. This is episode eleven and we’ve brought in someone who is an expert at demand Gen, we’ve not touched upon this topic in our previous podcast. So we wanted to really get into, like how videos can help demand generation and who’s like somebody who’s actually good at this, who’s been doing this throughout their career. So without much ado, I think I’ll add the guest to the podcast, and please welcome Matt Fleming from Loadsmart. That is mad for you guys. How are you, Matt?
Matt Fleming: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. How about you?
Pranav Chimulkar: I’m doing really well. So it is 11:30 pm in India.
Matt Fleming: Hustle man, you’re hustling.
Pranav Chimulkar: So you might see a little bit of the distinct tiredness on my face. But then you know that I’m really excited. I’ve been behind you to come on the podcast for a while now.
Matt Fleming: I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me. And also this topic is gonna be fun to talk about. So I’m looking forward to it.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, absolutely. So, briefly, I think if you could introduce yourself, and just tell me a little bit about your role as the Director of Marketing at Loadsmart.
Matt Fleming: Sure. Yeah, my name is Matt Fleming, pretty much spent my entire career in early to growth-stage tech startups. And at load smart, I lead marketing, at loadsmart. So I lead a small team, that’s really looking at all the ways that we can kind of drive growth at the company. In a nutshell, that’s essentially what I do.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right. And that said, like, I happen to skim through your LinkedIn, I was trying to find out the topics that you generally talk about the topics, that you are very passionate about what you’ve been practicing throughout the career and, I’ve seen that one area of expertise that has come out from all the rules that you’ve served in your career is demand generation. And I really want to talk about demand generation. But before that, I just want you to touch upon what is demand generation? What is the main difference between lead generation and demand generation?
Matt Fleming: Whoo, that’s good. So I think demand generation comes one step before lead generation, right? Like I think, people think, hey, we’ll just throw up some paid ads, right? Throw up some ads on Google Display on search, social, all that stuff, right. And that is capturing demand that’s already out there. Right? Like, it’s not manufacturing demand, it’s not building demand. It’s capturing demand. So when you start talking about demand generation, it’s actually honestly one step, even before someone fills out a lead, at least in my head, it’s, how do you kind of build awareness and activate and educate the market so that they there is a demand for what you’re, you know, whether that’s, you know, a Lead offer or whatever it might be, right. But I see them as kind of different steps. Right.
Pranav Chimulkar: So it’s about creating a market, it’s about creating awareness for people who don’t know that they need such a solution. They have certain problems. So it’s also explaining or creating awareness around, like problem statements, which are not so evident.
Matt Fleming: Yeah, I think so. Yes. I think the other thing that kind of comes into it’s even beyond because I think a lot of people start thinking demand, right? And they immediately start thinking, Oh, well, it’s like, product-centric videos, or stuff like that all stuff. That’s all about me, me, me. Right. And I think that’s one of the mistakes a lot of companies kind of make is it’s so inwardly focused, that it’s like, it’s not great content, you’re not building awareness. No, you’re not building demand. So I think, when I think about kind of demand generation, it is not just about kind of providing great content, right, and maybe content that helps build awareness for kind of the category or the problem that you guys solve. But I think as much as it’s doing that, it’s also building a connection with those people. And it’s funny like people don’t buy from companies they buy from people, right. And that’s one of the reasons that we can get into this right that I love video, because like it is the best, most cost-efficient way to try and build a Connect, not just awareness, but a connection with the people that you actually want to sell to.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, True. True. Because if you brought out the topic, let’s dive in straight. So I want to know how loadsmart uses videos for their business for different purposes. I have a few videos that we can talk through as well, that we can play and you can maybe tell me or we can go into the depths of why you create each type of Video rights, and the first one I like to play is from your weekly recap show hosted by one of your colleagues.
Matt Fleming: I’m scared! Which one is it?
Pranav Chimulkar: So yeah, this looks like I mean, this is a piece that I have not seen very often companies putting out. This looks like a news item. That is like CNBC, CNN.
Matt Fleming: That’s awesome. Our content guy Aaron, who’s coming up with it. You’d love that compliment. Yeah, you want me just to kind of talk about it a little?
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, please tell me why do you do this particular piece of content? And this is something that we all do every week. So I want to know, why so much attention is put? And before that, I think just to set the context for the viewers, because if you can tell a little bit about LoadSmart, because then it’ll make more sense about things that affect your business.
Matt Fleming: Yeah, absolutely. So LoadSmart is a technology company that helps shippers large and small, move their freight across the country more efficiently. And really, the way we do that is by using technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, to essentially automate tasks that would be a better fit for a computer, basically a human than a human right. So we generate lots of data, right, and our customers on both sides, both the shippers we get freight from and the carriers who were hoping to get to move that freight. Understanding what’s happening in the market is crucial. Now, if you’re a larger shipper, right, you probably have different data sources that you’re already getting this information from. But the other thing is, on the smaller side, number one, like they don’t have access to those tools, right, a lot of them don’t. But two, it’s also putting context around it, right. So like our operations team, which Jordan, who you just met, represents, they literally have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the market. So who better to provide context around the data that maybe some of these guys have access to? Then, our own operations team. And then the other point I was going to make there is, we’re a super small team, we are three people, right, including me, plus a couple of contractors. So what that means is that when we think about video, and we think about content, we need to think about ways to do it as low effort as humanly possible, right? Like, it needs to be repeatable, it needs to be scalable, it needs to be easy. So one of the things we realized was, man, our operations team is essential, not in a video format, right? But there, they’re giving these data points in this context to the entire company on a weekly basis already. And oh, this content is also probably pretty valuable to external audiences, how can we kind of package that up in a way that allows us to kind of ship weekly so that was how we kind of made it repeatable, right? So yeah, at first you look at it, right. It’s like, oh, man, that looks like so much investment. But the reality is, it’s actually not, the initial investment is kind of figuring out the call it the script, right, just in terms of like the talking points, and then the template for the video. But then the rest is just kind of, you know, rinse and repeat. Yeah, that kind of help.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it’s like you said, You got your own Cody to post so that you didn’t have to, get a paid spokesperson. So that is something that you save upon? Yeah, there’s one.
Matt Fleming: Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Pranav Chimulkar: So he’s also a subject matter expert. So I mean, you don’t have to like really spend in training that particular spokesperson, and things like this, it really helps.
Matt Fleming: Yeah. And the other thing we started to do again, right? It’s like, how can you do all this stuff in like, as scrappy of a way as possible, right? It’s a startup small team. So one of the things we also start looking at because we do a weekly version, and then we do a monthly version, which is hosted by our VP of operations. So Jordan’s boss, essentially, who’s like been in the industry forever, like super, super knowledgeable. But what we realized is like- man, like we should be leveraging our network of friendlies. Right? So we have friends at very senior companies or friends at very companies whose brands are much more recognizable than ours, at least for now. You know, we’re working on it. But basically pulling in those relationships on a monthly, we get these senior executives at very recognizable brands in our industry to join us. And it’s a win for them because they get to kind of build their own personal brand and expose our audience to their company a little bit more, right, maybe with a little bit more nuance. But it’s also a win for us because we’re able to essentially associate our brand alongside some of these really major influential brands in our industry. So that’s kind of another, twist to it that we do on the monthly version.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. I think I think we can quickly move on to the next series. You recently launched this series for, I think what was called the National truck driver Appreciation Week and did a bunch of them, I think, representatives of a bunch of your partners, then then you also put that together into a nice, crisp video, and I think I’m going to be playing that video before we start talking about it.
Matt Fleming: I love that video.
Pranav Chimulkar: It’s such a warm message for partners who actually drive your business. Yeah.
Matt Fleming: Yeah. So I can give you kind of the backstory. So there’s another version, which was or not another version, but another one, which was like Driver Appreciation Week, which I think is the next one we’re going to show. But um, so this one was, right is COVID was basically impacting the US, like really starting to fly across the US and everything was starting to shut down. And everything was shutting down except truck drivers. And I think it was kind of this interesting thing where drivers honestly aren’t often recognized or appreciated at all. It’s very true within our industry, I think they’re kind of underappreciated. And I think, they’re not even thought of as essential at times, right. But here in this moment, as the country literally, we’re trying to get, as crazy as it sounds, toilet paper on shelves, stores, keeping pharmacies stocked. These guys are essential workers, and they’re putting themselves in crazy situations as we taught, so we do an interview series as well called, On the road. And we interviewed a carrier and one of his employees decided instead of going home to his family, right, and potentially exposing them to COVID, that he was going to just sleep in his truck for four months. Right? So these guys are sacrificing yet they feel underappreciated. And I think, you know, one of the things that we talked about, so this was a special moment, right to say something, and I think, and honestly to say, like we see what you’re doing, we appreciate what you’re doing. And I think, you know, there’s no better way to do that than by showing the faces and the people who are actually they work with day to day and loadsmart. And so part of it was, you know, like a really human authentic, genuine way, like that is exactly how we felt. And being able to kind of communicate that appreciation to the drivers who helped support us and our customers. So that’s kind of how that video came about. Definitely more brand, right? But it’s one of those moments where it’s like, it’s an opportunity for a brand to feel authentic and human relative to one of their customers. And that’s really what we were trying to go for.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely, I think this pandemic has forced a lot of us to change our communication, a lot of brands have been, like moving away from their traditional communication strategies and then trying to change the message that they are projecting outwards. And this is a clear example of how loadsmart has adapted to the situation. And try to like put out a very genuine, warm message to the people who actually matter. Right? That sound like you said, I’m just quickly going to show a few more seconds of it.
Yeah, so Matt, I think this is a beautiful video, again, talks about the people behind the business who actually on the ground doing the work. While most of us, I have the luxury to sit at home, and and and still continue to, these guys are putting their lives at risk. And it’s genuinely appreciated when the brand which employs them actually cares about them. So I think kudos to you guys, for putting out something like that.
Matt Fleming: Thank you, appreciate it.
Pranav Chimulkar: Quickly want to jump on to also the other aspect of using videos for two other purposes. One is talent acquisition, like employer branding. And the second is you’ve been doing a lot of customer stories, showing real case studies of how you and your partner’s, collaborate and create an impact on a larger level. So genuinely, I want to know, how the company actually feels like investing in videos to do these things.
Matt Fleming: Yeah, totally. Um, so I think when it comes to the, you know, talent acquisition, right, or kind of corporate branding and stuff like that is honestly, like, it’s almost like low hanging fruit a little bit. And it’s not a huge lift. For us. It’s really just telling the stories of why our employees love working at loadsmart and why they came here and then using that, you know, a lot of across all of our videos, right? Especially the carrier stuff, it’s a lot about validation, right? Like it’s almost like whether you’re saying to a carrier, hey, we know we see you, or you’re trying to tell, have one employee tell a prospect employee, Hey, I actually really like it here, right? It’s all about, I think, being human being authentic, being vulnerable, and trying to have a connection. And the video is such an awesome mechanism for that. So in terms of like investment, and stuff like that, we just handle a lot of the talent acquisition stuff, or the corporate branding stuff a little bit more ad hoc, as needed. As opposed to really thinking through specific campaigns, it’s just kind of as it pops up. Here, there are a couple of yearly milestones that we think about, like a hackathon that’s more corporate branding, that will really kind of play it out. But a lot, a lot of the rest is ad hoc. And then you brought up the other thing, right, which is partner marketing, right, and partner marketing kind of with video. So, really, this is kind of like a, its partner marketing and webinar playbook, essentially, right. So essentially, what we’re trying to do is, part of our value is that we’re integrated with all of these different transportation management systems, right. So you don’t need to come to load smart.com, you can literally just keep using the systems you use every day. And obviously, there are benefits for us too. We can see more freight, we can provide more quotes and all that good stuff. But there’s a huge part of one, building awareness, building education, and then also validation, the same thing. There’s a big difference between load smart making announcement that we’ve integrated with x platform, and you know, when there’s a press release, and there’s the email to our base, but that platforms never really part of the conversation, right? Like, that’s not if you’re a prospect and hey, you’re telling me you have like X, Y, and Z integration. But I haven’t heard a peep from that other company, and I can’t even see you got, you’ve never been next to them in an email or in a blog post or in a video or a webinar, like, play. There’s kind of a question of trust, right? So what we do is we use webinars as kind of a way to build awareness education, it’s almost like the top of funnel to even add through acquisition, almost right, because what we do is our playbook is essential, we use paid social ads to target our target accounts and the right kind of personas within those target accounts, drive them to that webinar, and then we use that webinar and re recycle it like a ton. So what we do is we’ll put it on LinkedIn live, that’s kind of table stakes, right? But then we’ll chop it up into different quote cards. Right? So what are those meaningful quotes that a partner might have given us? This really just happened with the last webinar we ran with Oracle. So we’ll chop it up into little bite-sized quotes, their little mini-movies, but are absorbable in the same way, but we still try and do the human aspect, right? We put faces in there like we’re trying to show that like, yes, this is a real human his name is, you know, Chris, or Lauren. Right? Like we’re trying to make it human.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, yeah. So I think I just mentioned that most of the time, the problem to solve is about validation and social proof problems, this lack of trust today in society. I personally believe that trust is today, one of the most powerful currencies that one can have, in today’s world, I think there’s so much mistrust across the board, especially because we can’t see each other we can’t, we can’t shake hands, we, I mean, that is going to be an even bigger problem to solve in the new normal. So I think videos can actually because you putting a face there putting a real person in front. And as you said, you also happen to ride on larger partner audiences, like the likes of Oracle, and you also work with Home Depot? Again, big brands that you can actually ride on as well.
Matt Fleming: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of interesting. So yeah, there’s definitely a rising tide aspect of it, right, where it’s like, if we’re able, one, it provides value to like, the brand that we’re working with, or the partner that we’re working with because we’re doing some pretty genuinely cool stuff that provides value to their customers. So it makes sense from that. But we also get kind of the rising tide effect, where we’re able to kind of position ourselves alongside a major brand, right. And you mentioned, kind of the Home Depot thing really getting like validated like public, validation, right, or as an endorsement from a major, major company, like, that’s very hard to do these guys. They don’t give that out easily, right? Like it’s, and they also don’t want to show favoritism. And I totally understand that. But again, like the same thing, the way we were able to crack that a little bit was to say, Okay, well, we’re finding carriers to move your freight. Right, and this is driver Appreciation Week. So what better way to show that you guys see those carriers, then to record a quick video just saying thanks. And we’ll do all the production, we’ll hand we’ll do all the heavy lifting, we just need you to kind of say what you want to say. And that is actually how we were able to pull that off. So like we knew the likelihood of us like getting like some formal, like an endorsement or something like that probably isn’t like super high from a major, major brand like that. They just don’t operate that way. But we thought like, the best way to do that, or at least show some tie there was by giving them an opportunity to thank the carriers who are moving their freight. And, you know, kudos to them, because they were kind enough to take the time out of their day to go record that message. And they’re infinitely busy, especially at end of the quarter. Yeah, so a big shout out to them, too, for helping us with that.
Pranav Chimulkar: I think we’ve spoken a lot about your current role. I also want to go back to like the early part of your career. And during this time, what, what makes Matt the guy he is today? So you’ve also been like at a similar role with the likes of app topia and drift. How do you think your journey has shaped up to the current role that you’re playing at LoadSmart.
Matt Fleming: Constantly learning, honestly, constantly learning like even at what we’re talking about now, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know the power of brand until I spent a short stint at drift. Honestly, it was learning from people like they’re not even learning like ask it like watching and understanding what they emphasized. Right. Like David canceled, like I remember, you know, Grant, it’s not like I had a huge scented drip, right. So like, I’m not trying to play it up. But I remember some of the thing like it was always about faces, right? Whenever we were putting out any type of collateral, it was just about showing human faces in that collateral. And that’s when I started kind of seeing like, Oh, it’s about kind of building connection, right? It’s about building trust. You know, being aware of the company is not enough, they have to have some type of, you know, emotional type connection to it. And how can you do that unless you show the people we’re here? So yeah, and same thing. The folks there, they basically kind of like changed the game a bit when it comes to b2b marketing, right? Like b2b marketing used to be extremely stale. And then kind of they brought the power of brand to it. And speaking in a way that or writing in a way that was genuine and authentic and human. You know, and that’s, that’s Digi. Yeah, so yeah, for me, it’s like, one seeing the things that I’m not doing and then be like, oh, dang, like, that makes a lot of sense. I wish I knew that earlier. Right. So it’s kind of another way you learn is by making mistakes and doing things the wrong way. And then you kind of realize painfully, like, Oh, I’m not gonna do that again.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right. And I think it is also, all these experiences have led have shaped up the way you think. And I like the way you think I think you’ve made some smart comments in the past, and I was just going through a few of them. And I want to bring them up and try and take them a little bit further. In a podcast, that you participated earlier in, you mentioned that all marketing cannot be measured. I think this is something that a lot of thought leaders in the same space, preach, whether it is Chris Walker, from refined labs, they are very vocal about the part that not all marketing can be measured. And I think you also are a strong believer of the same. I want to ask you a question that how do you split your budget when it comes to marketing? That can be measured? And that cannot be? Because that’s a question that must be like, I mean, a lot of people are hearing that marketing, all marketing should not be measured, but then how do I split my budgets? Like what should I spend on brand? What should I spend on performance?
Matt Fleming: You know, that’s a really difficult question to answer. Right. And there’s probably a bunch of different methodologies. And I think part of it also depends on the people you work with, right? It’s a team, it’s not like I make the decision about budgets on my own, at the end of the day, it’s a compromise. And I think so my hunch is that the willingness of, a team to, you know, set aside a budget for the things that are squishy, in terms of attribution, is really based on their kind of experiences, right? And, you know, how experience has they been working with marketers being in marketing, stuff like that. So I guess what I’m trying to say is the degree to which you can kind of push budget to some of the stuff that squishy is really dependent on the kind of, I think, the team and the culture where you’re working, right. And I’m fortunate to have worked with people who, get it. So I think outside of that, though, I can kind of give, you know, some advice, I think the reality is, right, is yes, it’s your decision, if you’re leading marketing, right, like, at the end of the day, like what, you know, what dollars, go into what buckets, but you’d be an idiot, if you didn’t figure out how to, like, get alignment with that, and the rest of your team, right there the rest of the company, especially like sales and product, right. And so, the way I think you can approach it is by working with them to define the budget necessary to hit kind of, you know, the stuff that needs to be tracked, right, like, yeah, we can go on down a rabbit hole there, but stuff like so for instance, like if I need to generate, doing the backwards funnel math, right, where if I need to generate x customers, that means y opportunities, you know, z, z SQL, and SQL and so forth, right? And then you kind of work backwards, the budget, you need to go capture that stuff. And then once you have that, then you’re probably going to be left with some budget that’s outside of those programs. And I think that is how you kind of set aside budget for the squishy stuff. And I think there’s always exceptions, right? You’re gonna have programs that are ideas, you’re like, oh, man, like, what if we did X, Y, and Z, right. And those are honestly, like a special pitch I’ve, I put together many special pitches on like ideas and stuff like that on like, special projects that didn’t necessarily make it into the budget. But that is how I would approach it. I think at the end of the day, it’s about the culture of the teams and the people you’re surrounded with. And they’re kind of experience working with marketers and kind of reaching that compromise where it’s like, okay, we know we can’t track this, but we know it’s important. And then kind of, balancing that with your more kind of the budget that needs to be trackable, which is really kind of tied towards, call it lead capture and funnel stuff.
Pranav Chimulkar: Yeah, other boring stuff. I mean, that’s written down, you don’t have much to experiment there. I think there are set rules that you need to follow and you know, what is your cost per acquisition going to be wanting to cross the turnover?
Matt Fleming: Exactly.
Pranav Chimulkar: So the actual part which can set you apart from the competitors is the other side or the sides, which is possibly like a campaign that can go viral and can possibly be a lot more like or not higher on the return.
Matt Fleming: I got an example for you, we literally had that exact same thought. So one of the things we did again, this was kind of COVID times right, it’s still COVID but you know earlier this year when I was crazy. We did a driver giveaway, where basically send us a photo of you and your truck and enter to win a gift card for 500 bucks, right 500 bucks in the land of marketing is not like a huge you know, a chunk of money, it’s money, but it’s not a huge chunk of money. So but because we did that and just the mark. You know, the soft marketing that went around that campaign, you know, social the emails, we recorded videos of the driver saying thank you for receiving the award. We got free press out of that, right. So like we engaged with our carriers like we got so many like, I think we got something like 100 like selfies or something like that back. And then we also got free press out of it. Because just because of the organic stuff we were doing around the campaign. So like, that would be probably an example of what you’re talking about.
Pranav Chimulkar: I think once you like, once the word of mouth gets engineered, I think it just like there’s a lot of what you call buzz that gets created. And then it spreads. Right? Totally stop word of mouth. Good word of mouth. spreading around.
Matt Fleming: Yep. And the one other thing I was going to mention here, right, and I think I’m not going to take credit for this. This is like Wistia I’m sure you know those guys, right. But uh, you know, they had the was maybe like two years ago, they had to change the channel event, right. And it really there was kind of, at least in my mind, kind of at the forefront of where vendors started to pick up on like, Oh, this kind of creating, like video series and content and stuff like that is literally the way for part of the way forward. Right? And one of the things that they pointed out was Listen, like your ability to acquire customers is only going to become more costly with paid advertising, right, like ad budgets or compounding call it you know, what was it 20%, year over year, right. So like, we’re continuing to spend more to acquire the same people. And that’s not going to change. So actually, like in the medium to long term, your most efficient lever to acquire people is through building brand and brand affinity, right. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about a little bit here, right is like in the medium to long term, your best way to acquire customers and acquire them efficiently is almost to build a movement. And that’s kind o a little bit in the ballpark of what we’re talking about today.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. I think it’s amazing that you mentioned Wistia. Again, love those guys. I mean, a couple of years back, I happen to come across a video that they put out again, a small team, and the way they hustle to get their content out. And they also happen to work on this amazing campaign called the one ten 100.
Matt Fleming: Oh, yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. It’s like, it’s two narratives, right? It’s like the actual one time 100. But then the real kind of campaign is the backstory all along that and the fact that they bought that out.
Pranav Chimulkar: That day released was like, amazing, and I hope if somebody from Wistia is watching this, or we time get this clip across to someone from Wistia I hope you are watching this and you come on the MOV podcast, we’d like to discuss your strategies and and and dissect some of your achievements here. So yeah, shout out to Wistia. Absolutely. Yeah. Coming back to your narrative, to your philosophy, I think also that I read in one of your previous posts, is that you have this strong opinion that the prospect has already made up their mind before they fill your form. So the targeting of any messaging that has to be done is possibly far like before they actually land on your website and possibly leave their contact details. So you need to start targeting, you need to start communicating to potential guys a lot early in the discovery phase.
Matt Fleming: Completely agree, I think. But, what I was gonna say is, I think for a lot of the time, people in marketing, not even just people in marketing, but also like the company, right, like, they tend to think not speaking about the funnel necessarily, but they tend to think of the lifecycle of a lead or a prospect as beginning at the moment, they fill out a form. And that is wildly untrue, right? Like the perception that person has of your company, what you do, the value it provides, they’re formulating that, well, before they click on a paid ad, right and fill out a form the reality is like if they formed a negative perception, or they don’t have a perception, they’re not going to fill out the form, to begin with. Right. And this kind of goes back into the demand generation stuff a little bit. And I think if your goal is to like build demand, like that has to happen before the acquisition, right, like one of the funnels, I really like to think about is, was it startup metrics for pirates, right? So it’s like, awareness, activation, acquisition, revenue retention. I love that funnel, right. But most people think it starts at acquisition. Like it just it doesn’t. And the problem there, right is exactly what we’re talking about now, which is that stuff before the acquisition, it’s hard to track. A lot of the time, especially with the content that’s actually the most impactful right, so you can get out some of it right, like through video, like, depending on the platform, you can see the companies that are engaging, right? And if you’re running like account-based marketing, then you can kind of correlate Oh, well, these are the companies that are engaging with video, like, and their targets. So like it gets XYZ points, right in terms of like, you know how marketing is kind of tracking, attribution, and stuff. But yeah, that’s the short stories, like people have kind of like a narrow aperture in terms of what they think the customer lifecycle is. And that tends to focus marketing, too much down the funnel as opposed to the top funnel.
Pranav Chimulkar: Right. I think I also want to touch upon the fact that you have an interesting background, other than just being in marketing, you also happen to be a product manager, but Director of Product Marketing at one of your previous roles, I want to know how does that differentiate you from other marketers the way you think? What is the perspective that you have which is different from someone who’s possibly not seen product management? What should you be talking about the product? And what should you not be talking about?
Matt Fleming: Yeah, there are probably a few different angles there. Honestly, one of the things and I think if you’re in marketing, right, you’re really good or not necessarily really good. But like, you know, what you’re doing, like you’re doing user interviews, to begin with, right, but I think user interviews become infinitely, not necessarily more important, it probably just as important product management as they are in marketing. So I think one of the things that really got drilled into me and kind of doing product management, a few years ago was on, the process and structure and how you kind of conduct those interviews and capture that information and translate them to product requirements. And then also kind of taking, being able to translate requirements from the market to engineer speak. Those are very different things. Because I think in writing, like a feature spec, or a product spec or something like that, it’s as much about what the product should do as what it shouldn’t do. So stuff like that, it really helped. And I guess the other thing for me, I’ve always been, I’m a nerd like I love programming as I taught myself, Python, I’m constantly working on some half baked idea or something like that. But the point is I think part of the reason why I went into product management was just what makes me tick is I love understanding how things work and understanding at a pretty deep technical level. So I think, that was partly why I went into that, but it’s also something that I think is helped me especially when working on more technical products, right, I did a little bit of big data, a little bit of predictive analytics, stuff like that. So, yeah.
Pranav Chimulkar: Exactly, I think it makes you well suited to like market tech products. An interesting question that comes up to my mind. And I mean, the general answer that I get is okay, all marketers think alike, but then I want to know that there should be some different DNA in a b2b marketer and a b2c marketer. Right?
Matt Fleming: Hmm, that’s an awesome question. Um, I don’t know if it’s different DNA, but they are different, right? So they’re different. And they’re becoming the same Actually, that’s, that’s what’s interesting like they’re actually getting closer together, but they are still different in some ways. So they’re becoming closer together in the sense that b2b brands are kind of getting their swagger, right? Like, I’ve been in plenty of b2b brands, where it’s just like really dry, stale marketing, right? It’s like solution and power, like, leverage, and stuff like that. It’s just like, Oh my God. But I think what you’re seeing now, and for whatever reason, b2b brands were kind of afraid of showing personality. Right. And I think that’s changing. We spoke about drift, drift, a great example of that, but brands are kind of, or b2b companies are not as afraid about the brand and being human and actually, understanding that being relatable and authentic, like actually really matters. So I think they’re becoming more similar in that sense, where I think they differ is sales, how the sale actually gets done, right? on the consumer side, a lot of products You’re not looking at a six-month sales cycle, you’re looking at something that’s very transactional, and it might just be with one person who likes, literally, they see a video, right, they click the video on Facebook, boom, they enter the credit card details, it’s done. Whereas if you’re selling, enterprise, software tech, that sales cycle will involve multiple departments, each with different, different politics, right? different concerns, different wants needs, and it could happen over the course of six months. So that’s where they’re a little bit different. So that’s where they’re kind of becoming the same, but are also still fundamentally different, I think.
Pranav Chimulkar : Absolutely. I think that brings me to one question, which I happen to ask all my guests on the show. Why is my Matt mad over videos?
Matt Fleming: So again, why am I mad over videos? Yeah. I love it. Uh, why am I mad over videos, because I think it’s an incredibly cost-effective way to connect with the prospects you want to serve. Right? So like, you’re not going to see a building that human connection. There’s no better mechanism at scale than video. And so that’s number one, right? Like just the channel, it’s naturally well suited to that. And that’s becoming increasingly important, right? Beyond awareness, you’re trying to build affinity, you have to build a connection between people, video does that. The second thing I was gonna say is, I don’t think a lot of and this might be selfish for me, but, if you’re an account-based marketing shop, right, like the accounts that you’re trying to target. And I don’t think that ad networks have necessarily figured out how to extract every last dollar from sponsored video and stuff like that, right? So to paint an example, like, we’ve literally run these studies, where it’s like, are these experiments where we can get we started calling, like, $200, CPL, something like that, right? for like a for an SQL or something like that. And then we got it down to $37. And then we ran some sponsored video experiments, right, and there were a few apples and oranges, right, it’s not like we had lead capture on it. But what we did was, so we ran the same, like sponsored video against that same kind of matched audiences on Facebook and LinkedIn. And basically, for call it 20 cents, I can have that same prospect, watch a video 20 times, it’s like, so when you start to think about, why video, it’s like, one, it’s an incredibly effective medium, but to depend on kind of what your model is, like, it is incredibly cost-effective to get that video in front of the right eyeballs, more so than a lot of other channels. And I think, ad networks will get privy to that eventually, they probably already are, but they’re still kind of figuring out how to best monetize it. But I think it’s a little bit of an arbitrage opportunity there just because it’s so cost-effective.
Pranav Chimulkar: Absolutely. Massive last question to you for the day is what is the advice you would give someone who’s looking at marketing as a career and who’s looking to, not maybe not looking at, like, marketing as an early part of his career, but then I’m talking about somebody who’s trying to experiment with videos as well in his career. I mean, he could be a traditional marketer but is not exposed to this side of things. That is my first part of the question. And the second part of the question, which I really want to know is what kind of goals you’ve set for yourself in the remainder of this year.
Matt Fleming: And that’s a good one. Okay, so, the first part of the question, my advice to more kind of traditional marketers who are looking to experiment with video, a couple of things, script before production, right. So more than the production value of the video, there are companies that can make videos look amazing. contract, just get whatever. You need to have a script that actually is authentic and human. And, especially That first video, right? Like we’re all feeling the time’s right? Like that COVID kind of carrier video. That video worked. Yeah, the production was good. But that video worked because the script was on point. So like, think about the story, think about the message you are trying to say, and think about how you tell that in the most authentic human way possible. Right, then worry about production. I think that’s key. And then the other thing I would say is, this stuff takes time, right? Like, you’re not just going to like launch the first episode of your miniseries, it’s going to be perfect. And, you’ll acquire big following stuff like that. The reality is, its like, it takes time to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Excuse me. And then the last piece of advice on the traditional side was what was I gonna say, there was one more piece of advice I have for you guys. Oh, yeah, constantly try and level up. If you’re doing a series, right, one of the things that, and by the way, it’s someone on my team, Aaron Roseman, who’s driving this, he does a fantastic job. But like, one of the things like he, and I, discuss all the time is like, how do we level up with each new episode we bring out? Right, whether it’s the script, adding a little bit of production value, like how do you kind of continually level yourself up? Um, so that would be my advice to kind of the traditional, markers looking to kind of get into video. Um, and then your other question was, what was your other question again, one more time.
Pranav Chimulkar: I want to know what kind of goals you’ve set for yourself for the remainder of 2020. And the year to come, because I don’t know how this how long this is going to continue, like, the situation that we are in. So we have to adapt, we have to come back, I think most of the companies that had stopped marketing and got gone back to their shells, don’t realize that, okay, they’re losing out a lot on, like, communicating with their customers at this point, when possibly a lot of their competitors are not. So I want to know, what kind of goals you’ve set for yourself and the company.
Matt Fleming: Yeah, um, loadsmart is growing very, very quickly, right? So part of, marketing’s role right is not even necessarily tied to the awareness stuff, right, that’s just stuff we kind of, we have to do, we just do, but a lot of it is kind of support, the growth of the company just in terms of, net new customer acquisition, stuff like that, that’s a huge priority for us. And then we have a couple of product launches along the way that, obviously we need to support, but I’m specific to kind of a lot of what we’ve talked about with video, right, and kind of awareness and, activation. Um, we’ve I think we’ve learned a lot in launching our series, and we’re continuing to make them better. I think one of the things we’re thinking about is how do we improve distribution? And then how do we also kind of giving beyond just like, we do our main focus is native video, right? Like YouTube? Yeah, we put them on YouTube, because we have to put them on YouTube. We should, right. But it’s really native video that we care about like on LinkedIn. But how can we kind of create a more of an x, where these videos live, but also thinking about how do we kind of create an experience around those videos, right, like, where do those videos live? Is it a load smart property? What should that property have on it? Right? Like, I know Wistia does some stuff like this, right, like, just in terms of like, their stuff, but like, those are the types of things that we are thinking about right now. Just as relates to the kind of what we’re doing with video.
Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome. Thanks a lot. I think we’ve touched upon a lot of things today. And I think anybody who’s looking at video marketing would have at least five different takeaways today and I am sure I’ve been taking some notes, I think I have gone to things that I’m going to be putting out after the podcast is over. And I hope I’m wishing that loadsmart grows close at like lightning pace and and hope to see you guys do a lot more videos and a lot more experiments and videos because I think that as a creator as well, as a marketer, I’m super excited when somebody is trying out a new format, somebody is trying out a different way to communicate the same thing that you see, everybody is doing. So I wish you and your team the best for the future and and hope we could do, like work together sometime.
Matt Fleming: I appreciate that. This was a really fun conversation for me. It’s the type of stuff I really like talking about. So I really enjoyed chatting with you on it.
Pranav Chimulkar: Awesome society this time and hopefully see you guys for the next episode of the MOV podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great day.