Hey Guys!!!
#LetsGetCandid season 2 is live
We all agree that scaling is no easy job even for business tech leaders. You need the right people to develop, market & sell that product/service. To help you more on the scaling systems we have Steven Schmidt the Founder & CEO of Tidal a company that rose from $0 to $100 million in 90 days. To discuss all the aspects which are of utmost importance to drive the revenue.
In this episode, Steven has beautifully explained how different aspects of B2B selling like lead gen, omnichannel, organic marketing can help you to move towards your desired revenue generation.
Hey Guys!!!
#LetsGetCandid season 2 is live
We all agree that scaling is no easy job even for business tech leaders. You need the right people to develop, market & sell that product/service. To help you more on the scaling systems we have Steven Schmidt the Founder & CEO of Tidal a company that rose from $0 to $100 million in 90 days. To discuss all the aspects which are of utmost importance to drive the revenue.
In this episode, Steven has beautifully explained how different aspects of B2B selling like lead gen, omnichannel, organic marketing can help you to move towards your desired revenue generation.
00:00 to 01:06 – UnboundB2B & Host Introduction
01:06 to 02:26 – Steven's Interview
02:27 to 03:55 – The latest Happening in the B2B industry
03:56 to 07:36 – The area of improvement in 2022
07:40 to 09:57 - #risewithtidal
10:03 to 18:36 – Fundamentals of Marketing & Sales
18:37 to 29:18 – Case Study: Scaling System with Tidal
29:30 to 29:58 – LinkedIn’s SEO
30:33 to 33:22 – Honest Opinion
33:36 to 38:27 – MarTech Stack
39:41 to 46:42 – B2B Influencers Marketing, Personalized Branding & Word of Mouth
49:42 to 49:34 – Channels for Lead Generation
49:38 to 50:17 – Omnichannel Strategy
50:20 to 1:03:32 – The B2B trends to keep eye-on in 2022
1:03:38 to 1:06:40 – Message to audience
1:06:41 to 1:08:18 - Outro
Janvi: So, Steven, uh, welcome to let's get candid. And for starters, I would love to know about your journey in B2B industry.
Steven: Yeah. I've been doing B2B now for gosh, 23 years. And so. I think until I was in my twenties, I didn't take this. I liked what I did. I was a salesperson, so I was an account executive. And this is long before, like today we hear in sales about the SDR. If you will, the person who's setting up the appointment, we didn't have any of that. We didn't have any of that. We just, we did it all and that's, we didn't know anything different. And so, we would get in the office in the morning, make a bunch of phone calls and then get in our car and drive to the appointments. And that's what we did every day. And I think at a very early age, just understanding that the activity has to be constant. What's the one thing I've learned. And so, but in my twenties, man, I didn't take it seriously. There wasn't the internet was just becoming a thing. So, all the people that we learned from on YouTube and all that, um, unless you called somebody, there was no zoom call. There was no, you'd have to literally pick up the phone and say, hey, I've heard of you from somebody else. Can you hop on a phone call with me? I think we maybe had conference calls, right? So, it's a while ago, I'm kind of aging myself.
Janvi: Okay. So, I think a B2B marketing earlier was just a field and now it has grown to a full-fledged industry with all the different types of tags and all the help that you can possibly imagine to grow your audience or grow your pipeline and ROI in the end.
Steven: Yeah. Well, I think so Chris Walker, who's somebody I really look up to at refined labs, put it very eloquently last week where he, there is a Renaissance movement in marketing, right? So, you can get all the tools and spend all the money and look at the analytics of marketing. But unless your message is that actually authentic, personal and has a human element to it. Um, just like anything in life. When we go hyper AI and data, we dig into it, we do the opposite, right? Cause everybody wants what they can't have. So, when we go all, all data, we all go look at all this data and then. The actual engagement with the person, because we're so worried about the metrics that we forget, that you, John DRA person who has feelings and thoughts and, and you are not just a transaction as much as we want to go, go, go swipe, swipe, swipe credit cards. Um, the message in 2022 that's loud and clear is let's revisit the idea of creative marketing that is truly engaging versus just pumping out SEO left and right. Got texting in hopes that that will add up to a lot of money. People are catching on. People are catching. ng.
Janvi: Yes, they are. So, in 2022, the one thing which I concluded from the stand position is that you don't even need to focus on poor messaging map, that they are lacking into their mood, focusing into data as metrics and all the numbers, but they're missing the basic element. That is the messaging, what message as a brand, as we want to give to our audience for our customers, if you are lacking with this basic element that I don't think so, any data or metrics then, you know, fill in those gaps and can deliver the results we decided.
Steven: Yeah. I mean, we've, we've partnered with a great company out of India that we're going to be doing our SEO with. And, um, it's not going to be the cure all like we like our first year of growth. I cannot overemphasize enough. I mean, we're not even to our full word. Sorry, 10th is our 10th month. We bet customers 450, 406. We're going to finish around just shy of 500,000 monthly revenues. And we have never once spent any money on marketing. It has been 100% LinkedIn posting organic. Yeah. And so, people go, oh really? And I go, yeah, it just has. Um, so this idea, that word of mouth and authentic experiences and getting on a call with somebody, you don't know, zero SEO, we have zero paid ads. We, we just, now we're getting onto G2. So, our marketing budget for this year, as we approach 10 million in revenue, year two is, is only a hundred thousand dollars. And most people would say, that's insane. 1% of our total. I mean, it's usually 20, 30% of your revenue goes back into marketing. We're doing 1% and I'm not saying marketing is bad. Marketing is awesome if it's done right, but we haven't done it yet. We haven't done it. We've only done LinkedIn, organic. We just, we just six weeks ago pick up and made our own first two. And I know that it's working because it's the same methodology we use. But now we have to couple that with authentic marketing and this, this is marketing, this is marketing. Like we will take this. Somebody will learn from this. We will splice it up in a little second and create a library and we'll say, okay, here's something on authentic marketing, here's this. And those are very [00:05:00] educational. And it amazes the me of the amount of people who don't. I mean, we're just in a content library, building exercise, right? So, we've got 300 videos of. Me saying blah-blah-blah this and that, right? So, it's not just me, it's other people. And we say, gosh, guys, we should organize a library here. So, we say, this is videos about cold calling. Here's about objections. Here's, art's take on LinkedIn, organic marketing, like just file those away. So, we can dish that information out to as many people to give as much free knowledge away as possible. That's marketing that doesn't cost us much money at all. This is free. I get to know you you're far away on here, but marketing is touching one person at a time, not 5,000 in one fell swoop. I mean, we may get a lead off of one of these pieces of content. I don't care if we do, it'd be great. But if nothing else, if you keep putting out free advice, if you will, like Chris Walker does, like, we started to do like Jake Dunlap does go down the list that will drive, that will drive your business. Cause people say, Hey. That person taught me something. We have a need. I now trust them a little bit more. Cause they gave me something for free. I didn't sell them an e-book. I didn't say pay for my course. I'll teach you everything. It's just, Hey, here's some free stuff. And that to me is one of the most under looked portions of marketing is just to be able to not ever talk about your company. Just talk about how you help people. Some of the struggles you have and how you overcame them and people will go, oh good. Then I don't have to make that mistake. Steve made it for me. I'll go. Great. Now you don't have to wait.
Janvi: So, uh, you know, without marketing side, as you said, that Tidal is, it's a complete organic marketing of Tidal, but still we can see Tidal each and every way, like the moment you had that post that you made a hundred million dollars in 90 days was the most talked about topic at that particular time. And even at till date. So great marketing, great brand value, great messaging. It's like you have all those elements, which marketers are trying to figure it out in the puzzles, you know, bits and bits of everything.
Steven: Well, they want to, so that would be like a case study, right? It's like people say, did you really do it? And I said, sure, yeah, we really did it. And we're at 200 million now in the past year and a half. So, we had one big client, right. It was COVID and everybody was trying to get PP all over the world, whether it was India or Japan or Russia, everybody needed this thing. And everybody said, well, that must be easy to sell. And I said, oh no, it's not actually, when everybody's trying to sell it. And it costs five times the normal amount, it is not easy to sell. And so, when we built that team, I'm not saying we were the best thing ever, but that lift, I mean, we did a lot of transactions that were two, four, 6,000 dollars at a time, but we were doing 20 or 30 or 50 a day. And the margins were only 12% because prices were already being gouged. So that the net of that, the net of that was still 8 million and people go, oh, the company only made 8 million. I said, yeah, just 8 million. In 90 days, they were acquired for 70 million by a publicly traded company. I chose to go start Tidal. They are now a part of another company. They required that, that is every start-up's dream get acquired in six months and get a bunch of money and say, that was good. Let's do it again. I'm like, yeah. Now could I go do that with, if someone said, can you sell a hundred million dollars of software in 90 days? I'd say, no, absolutely no longer buying cycles. Um, not everybody needs it. Right. It's not saving people from dying. Yes. You're not overstocking on what you don't need, so you can have it later. So, I said, no, it's different story. And some, he goes, well, that's not applicable. I go great. Then you go sell a hundred million hours of PP and tell me how easy it is. And then you'll understand that fundamentally sales and marketing are the same thing. Like this is whether I'm selling PBE or a piece of software or diet mountain Dew. I mean, why do I like diet mountain Dew? I just I'm loyal to it because I, when I drink it, it makes me feel a certain way. Now, if someone took it away from me, would I be okay tomorrow? Yeah. I wouldn't even notice. Yeah, I'd go drink something else. But I have a personal experience of diet mountain Dew. They've never, once I've never seen a commercial, right. But if someone said, can you go sell a hundred million dollars of the diet mountain Dew? I said, no, they're doing fine without me. They don't need, they don't need us. I think it's so many. And I'll end with this. As I see companies there's India has such a big movement right now, I believe. And I will agree with everybody in, in five to 10 years in America, our entire idea of, of business and venture capital will be turned upside down on its head. We've been going to a global economy now where everybody across the globe, can you on the same. And actually, the innovation happening in India is far more progressive than that in the United States. Um, now those companies in India all want to enter the U S market. Why? Because we have a bunch of money and we're dumb Americans. We buy everything, right? Like, it'd be the software, give me the software. We don't really, but we, we over purchase it and then we forget to use it, right. Because we fall in love with what it can do and then we buy it and then we go, oh, I've got to use this every day. I just thought it was pretty cool. And, um, I believe that the more companies from India from Japan and China. There's a cost of entry, right? If you want to enter the U S market as you and I both know it's expensive. I mean, we have a customer in India right now. And when we told them our price, we said it's $15,000 a month. They said, you realize in India, that is exponentially more. Yeah. I said, it's like $45,000. I get it. I said, but we can't compromise our price because we have to. So, it's a, it's a balance where we're trying to also be able to scale globally to accommodate because they don't want somebody from India. No, I mean, not because other than they know that we can cold call we're from America and they want to enter the American market. I go, okay. There was a cost of entry marketing on the other hand is the same cost wherever you are. Yeah. I mean, because you're going to pay the same price for the internet, no matter what you're using on the internet, across the globe. So, if you want to buy SEO in India or SEO in America, it should cost about the same thing, because there's no people, there's no services tied to it, usually. Right. Software here, you use this. Now, if you tie services, you wouldn't matter. Put the people in India, Russia, Japan, it doesn't matter because the end result is the same. What they want with us is I want an English-speaking US native. Okay, that's going to cost you money. It's cold calling is a very expensive way to get into the market, but it's, it's one of the best, I would say cold calling, LinkedIn and SEO, coupled with intelligent intent-based reverse prospecting to a domain level is a hundred percent what everybody should do. If they want to have a Bulletproof sales and marketing strategy. Now people will fall in love with SEO. They'll fall in love with cold calling. They fall in love with LinkedIn. Those are all just little sprinkles, right? Sorry. I'm on a Chris Walker tip because he makes so much damn sense, but he said, if you want to take your whole team and say, hey, everybody starts posting organically on LinkedIn. That's the way you will fail because it takes a long time. I've been doing this for. Every day for a year and a half. Cause walk has been in every day for three years. I say, if you, if you can develop content, that's meaningful that thousands of people will consume on a daily basis. For three years, you should start a company. And if you can do that, which most people will say, why don't, I don't really have anything to say or I'll do it for a day. And then the next day I got too busy. I said, when we do content, we block off three hours every week to make content that can be consumed. We don't just turn on a zoom camera, go, let's hit it. You know, it has to be thoughtful and it has to be consistent enough. So, when people say, oh, Steve Schmidt Tidal, oh, Candace Tabor Tidal, oh, you go down the list. They go, yeah, I know what they do. Right. They're the people who talk about this, this and this. So, I think LinkedIn is powerful for video. Now. I don't see on my field. Globally. I'm starting to see in a, in a Mia more videos. I don't see a lot of videos coming out of India. And then you've got China and Japan, which have a communist country. So, the internet is a very delicate thing. It's an issue. Yeah, it's an issue. So, I don't, the video thing has a unique advantage in the U S because we can just, we can get on a video and, and swear and, and nobody has to go, oh, can we do that? Sure. If you want to, but then now, like, because you can do anything, be careful what you say, because it's still your brand. Like once in a while, I will swear. And somebody goes, do you think that's okay? And I say, I don't know, I, I don't really care because at the end of the day, if I say a swear word and I say it a passionate moment, well, that's just who I am. You know? So, I, I, I guess I need to be mindful of that. Right? Some people would say, well, if he swears and I don't want to do business with Tidal again. Okay. Fair enough. Uh, then if I get really passionate about something that I say something I shouldn't always say, please forgive me. I'm just very passionate about the topic.
Janvi: Yeah. That’s the best way Okay. So, speaking over, uh, you know, what you were saying that Chris Walker, you know, had this much amount of time, three years at a strech, every single day, you would, uh, you know, blogging on LinkedIn for such a long period. I think a good content, or you want to have, uh, you know, desired ROI out of it. It's going to take an eventual because neither you neither Chris Walker or any person had that mindset that if I'm blogging for one day, I will have that return what I want. It's not like that. It's like you just have that patient and you have a good original content for that.
Steven: It was four and a half months before I ever had a decent. I never had a comment on a post. And I remember thinking, I don't know if this is working, because it'd be like five, like seven likes as like my friends. I was like, man, I hope this works. Cause, cause you know, after a while you start to doubt yourself and you don't see the results and I just kept forging ahead. Um, but I also hired a content team. So, you got to like, a lot of people are going to say why can't pay someone else? And I said, well, when your company depends on it, you can and you will because they pushed me when I didn't want to do it. I'd wake up and go guys, I don't know, it's not working. They'd say keep, keep doing it. And then month five happened. And it was just like, whatever happened. It was a hundred million dollar sold post and it was never, it's never stopped since ever because when people see that, of course. That's a lot of money. How did you do that? How did they do that? And they ask you questions. You go, oh, here's how we did it. And they go, I wonder if that will work for me. And you say, I don't know, will it, but it gets a conversation started. And I don't know a lot of other people who are going to make a post saying I sold a hundred million dollars in six months. I go that's our 90 days. That's pretty interesting. Tell me more about it because I would want to know, and it's not that I'm that special. It's just, that's what we did. And we were there at that time. So those posts, I call them banger posts, right? It's high impact. Like if you know, you're going to deliver something that's a little bit controversial or heavy impact, those will always net leads. Now it has to be real. It has to be told in real life. So, if you don't have great stories, then start with what you know, and, and you'll be amazed, the amount of people who go, hey, I have another question about that. Um, hey, can you tell me more about this? I tried this SEO and it didn't work and people just go, oh yeah, let's hop on a phone. I'll tell you about it. It doesn't mean I'm gonna sell you something. I might just learn from you. So, I think this exchange of free ideas will drive more revenue than ever imaginable. And marketers are trying to keep up going, how do we monetize organic? How do we monitor? Like if these people are just going to get on camera and talk, we don't make any money. And I say you do, because now you have to take that clip and make it go all over the internet. And that is your new SEO vehicle tie back links to the clips. And that's how you do it. See, I know marketing, I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm learning
Janvi: We all are into the learning phase that I'm learning from you and just like the exchange of knowledge at the global.
Steven: Yeah. There you go. See, we're doing it. We're doing it right now. This is how it's done.
Janvi: Definitely. So, moving forward with the, you know, interview, uh, we are talking about diet. So how did you use the scaling system for the Tidal and what was your entire framework?
Steven: Um, so there's always a tech stack cost me of a sales team. Right. Cause you have to assemble them and you have to have tools. Um, so I had to ask for a lot of money from this company because they had hired at the time Tidal was just me. It was called Tidal consulting. So, when I came in and said, you guys just hired me, you're not gonna pay me a base salary because they want a commission. I said, what? I want 5% of everything we sell. Okay. Well, they thought we'd sell about a million, not, not a hundred million. And I said, well, we're gonna need to invest at least a quarter-million dollars in Salesforce sales, loft, ZoomInfo drift. And they said, do we really need all that? I said, yeah, you do. I said, and on top of that, we're going to buy conversica. Which is about $6,000 a month per seat. And I said, we are going to put a loop into every top 100 healthcare system and, and hit everybody at every position 30 times in 20 days. Okay. We're going to call them, text them, email them, call them, text them, email them. And they, and they said, okay. And so, we did that. And then once, once the email, the emails were happening, conversica is a very interesting technology. Are you familiar with it?
Janvi: Yes, yeah.
Steven: It has auto attendance. So, it works in the background. So, it might say this, but the auto attendant says this and it loops me in as the sales person when they're ready. And so all of a sudden you get an email, you go, where did this come from? Well, the attendant was working at the same time. So, we had Monica, Tiffany, Stacy goes down the list. Cause they have female names for whatever reason. And we had 22 people who weren't even real, you know, they were just, and if someone said, yeah, I'd want to find the pricing out on this. It would say, great. I'm going to introduce Steve or someone on my team. So, we started there and once we got our first, it took us. Like 16 days to get our first sale of 900 grand. We said, this is working $900,000. And then we didn't know that within a few more months, we were going to do 8 million, $10 million transactions, one at a time where these people were buying enough nitrile gloves to fill up three shipping boats, full of containers. And so, it got pretty wild. Um, and once you started making profit and they could do it, of course, they said do more, do more, do more. And pretty soon seven of the top 10 healthcare systems were all buying everything from us every week. And that was interesting because then the pressure comes with, oh, they want it, but now we gotta go. So now I've got to call somebody over in Malaysia. I've never met before. I don't trust. I don't know them. And we ended up hiring an ex-FBI agent to go over and live in Vietnam just to do investigations on the people and run background checks that we were getting the materials from. Okay. So, then we'd have to pay them with the money that we got from the healthcare system and cross our fingers that, that showed up $8 million. If it didn't show up, we'd have been on the front cover of the New York times. It did show up all, but about two of the times that we refunded their money, because there was no way to get it now backing out of semantics if you will. But I, I bring that up because when you have physical inventory that people want and they can't get it, they will do just about anything to get it. And I always tell people how in software and marketing do we make whatever we have. So, appetizing that people say, I have to have it. I have to get this thing. It will make my life better, easier. And unless you can resonate with people who have a problem, I always say pain is a symptom of a problem. I'll give you an example. If I break my, if I break my leg, I'm going to probably my hip will hurt and I'll go and they go, well, maybe your hip hurts. I go, yeah, my hip really hurts. But if they start working on my hip pain without realizing, because my legs broken, I'm putting more weight on my hip. That is a symptom of a problem. The problem is the broken leg. So, I'm not going to fix your hip. Hip is a as a pain, right? The problem is the broken leg. So, I'm going to focus on getting your leg rehabbed. And once the leg is gone, the problem will go away. Now, if you keep your leg broken long enough, your hip might sustain everlasting damage and you might have a hurt hip for the rest of your life. And I'll say, yeah, if you don't get rid of the problem, it starts to call it syrup, solves pain points all over and you go, oh, there's a pain point. There's a pain point. What's going on? Well, if I can just fix the problem, all those symptoms go away. I don't need to solve for the pain because if the problem goes away, the pain is gone. And so, if you have a product that can truly solve a problem, and this is the thing, most people don't, they have a thing that is looks nice. It's a nice to have, and I'm looking at this going for me. I'm going to live in the must Haves. Cause if I have a nice to have, you have an option to say, oh, I can live without it. I go, yeah. But is that really fun? Once you rather buy something, that's going to change your life, make your life better. Think about this. I'll tell you when the remote control is lost. Do you have a TV remote? Where's the remote who took the remote? Can't find it as you go. And at that time, if someone said, I'll give you the remote, but it's $10. He said, give me the remote. Here's 10 bucks. Cause you just want the damn remote. You don't want to spend a day looking for it. And it shows up on the couch. Cushions, you go, whoa, that wasn't there yesterday. It was, you were busy. And, and, and uh, but at the time you would've paid $10 to say, just give me the remote. And that's where people need to say, if I can solve a problem like that, when people go, where's my remote and you go here and they give you money. Now you have, now you have something that you can market. Here's this thing. If you have this problem, this will solve it like this. And he goes, and you have to tell it in the simplest way possible gong does a fabulous job marketing their strategic narrative change recently. Um, I got to look at their website quick, but gong, you know, gong, the call recording company, the conversational intelligence company. Yeah. They got a $4.5 billion valuation they used to there. Yeah. Big unlock reality. Fuel your revenue engine. What does that mean? Everybody goes to, will tell me what does that mean? Right? That says nothing to me, but they're smart because under that it says. Oh, give your teams and leadership, complete visibility into all deals, team performance and market changes. Oh, okay. How? Know for sure. What is exactly coming down the pipeline each month? How they never say how I have to go click in the website. Now they go, Ooh, we got ya. So, they have a strategic narrative. They're just using teaser words to get you as a call to action, to say, tell me more, tell me more. And they visually tell me a story that says, oh, I get it. Warning talking for 70% of the call discovery is this call recording software. Tell me more. Oh, it also records soon calls. So, I can see my team now. Here's the deal. Everybody buys this stuff and goes, I love this. I can record calls to say great. How often do you use it? They say great. I, they say I just bought gong. I go awesome. How often do you use it? They go, I record every call. I go. How often do you go back and re. I'm too busy. I say, then why the hell did you buy this software? It does not be like, you're not even, you're not using it. You love the demo. You don't love the discipline of using it. So now you're spending 50 grand a year and you're recording your calls, but you're never sitting there and going, let's review this call together. They should sell a call coach with it, right? Because nobody coaches calls. Nobody sits there unless they're in a call center and goes, let's listen to these five calls and I'm going to coach you. Instead in the US they hire as fast as possible. They'll hire somebody who's just out of college is 23. They have no idea what they're doing. They show up day one. They send them a backpack, um, uh, a little coffee mug and they say, take a picture for LinkedIn and go, yay. I just got hired at so-and-so and I go, six months, they'll be gone. Cause they're going to give them all this software. And they're going to forget about them on day three. And they go now make some calls and they go, okay, who do I call to go? Just call anybody. You have the software, make the magic happen. And now you've got a 23-year-old who's been hired because they're cheap. Who has no manager, nobody coaching their calls. Every call is being recorded, but they'd never listened to them. And their product, product marketing manager never listened to them to get insights on what people are doing. And I go guys, guys, time out in one month here, we're implementing someone to just analyse this all day long, all day long. Their job is to sift through over 200 calls a day and pull out the information to give to our clients. So, they don't have to listen to the call because we know they won't. So that's the, that's the importance of a test now? That's we spent 50, 60, 70, 70 grand on this conversational intelligence. It's a guy, if we don't start using it, we're going to rip it out because why do we care? Unless we use it about spending 70 grand a year. So, it all goes back to marketing though, because this is the big forceful outbound motion, right? I'm calling somebody to, uh, why how'd you get my number? Okay. Like, it's not fun. Like it's not fun to think most people go. I don't want to do that. That sounds terrible. They want to go and buy ads because that's great too. Like ads work too. You have to do everything you have to do. You have to understand what your market responds to. Is it. Is your MRR sub-2000. If it's sub-2000 a month, don't do cold calling. It will never return on the investment. You can't sell enough to ever have that catch-up. If it's below 2000, um, dark social pay-per-click SEO, again, not a marketer, but I know from personal experience that that is where the money's at for us. We're $15,000 a month. SEO. Isn't our best strategy because everybody goes, well, I want to know the pricing and we go, we don't show pricing on our website. They go, everybody shows pricing. Well, we don't really say why you go. I have no idea what you want us to do. How would I understand to give you a price that is we're $10,000. Contact us for more information where we do good on SEO is thought leadership. Because when you go on platforms like LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a very powerful SEO. If you type in my name or your name on Google, it's going to pull up LinkedIn as the first option. So, post content like that is the best SEO ever, you know, because if you're talking about it in your posts, it will show up on Google, on a search and then ah, free SEO. It's happening automatically. But exactly.
Janvi: So why to invest in technology, which you already have it in a freeway and you can have the best out of it. For an example, because it's not just with, you know, a particular person because we are aligned to marketing. With everyone, even a normal person needs to have a LinkedIn account. And if he types in his or her name, then the first photo or the information on the Google show is with the LinkedIn. So, I think people need to maximize use it. And again, as you said, that some strategies like is SEO work well for you, what it is not the strategy, which is meant for you, but it can be for the other person. For an example of scaling up the stack, right? Scaling up the MarTech, might works for you, but may not be working for another person. Here marketers also need to understand is if that a strategy, which is, was working for A Company may not work for the B company, if you don't have same product or services, if your motives are different, if your brand values are different and you know, that changed the entire thing.
Steven: Yeah. It's, it's why I, I wish more companies said, well, we do a little bit of everything, right? Cause otherwise I got to go to you for SEO. You for outbound you for this. And I go, why can't I just get a team to do it myself? And then he goes, yeah, just hire them. Right. And I go, well, the best people are the people who don't work for companies. I'm just being honest and bold. Like they are going to be someone who says you can pay me money and I'll do it. And then they go, well, I'd rather have an employee. I go great. But you have to realize you're getting what you pay for. And if you're going to an expert and they cost a lot of money, it's probably for a reason. If you hire somebody who's in a median salary range, who's got two years of experience. You can train them, but now you've got to invest your time. They might leave you in eight months, you know, turnover is never been higher right now. And so, to your point, if I were like, the way we've done it is you're one week outsourced a lot of stuff. We outsourced finance, um, marketing. Like, although we weren't spending on an SEO, we outsourced our content generation partner. I have 10 different outsourcing partners because to hire all that year one, when we don't know what we need, we would be foolish now. What we do. And what marketing does is when a start-up happens, they get 10 employees and they get their first little pre-seed or angel round of a million bucks, which sounds like a lot of money. It's not as you know, um, and there, their investors go now, spend it as quick as possible and see if you can make money, they go, oh, we got to go hire an SDR. And how much has that a hundred grand? Oh my God. A hundred grand. I say, yeah. All in health benefits. And then, yeah, they're going to leave you probably on the eighth month and their data will suck and they will never enter anything. So, you start all over. I think you might get lucky on the second hire and they get someone who's really good and they go, hey, I want to be an AE, and you know, we already have one and they go see AE, I'm going to go to a different company because I want to be an, account executive and you go, man, I can't get this. Right. I said, yeah, it is a very task orientated function. Outsource it, get, get your founder to sell. If they're not, if they're an engineer, they don't sell, hire a salesperson. Um, because if you can't make revenue, you don't have a company. Yeah. Definitely get the revenue engine going. I mean, gong, I just copied them. Get the revenue engine going, figure out the rest later.
Janvi: Yeah. Yes. Because sorry to cut you, but it's its revenue in the end. What we are all major focusing on over here. It is because if you're not generating revenue, then there is no point of any kind of marketing strategies that is no point of how much of, you know, employee strand you have. Because if that is 10 employees and you are generating this much of your, uh, you know, you are, having the profits in the end, then those 10 employees will, you know, I'm much more evaluated then those 1000 or 500 and place which are in your company, which I just don't use. If you're not using your resources correctly,
Steven: you get it down. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. No, no, please continue. Please. I've already forgot what I was going to say. It was just a trailing thought. You go ahead, Janvi.
Janvi: All right. So, moving on to the next question we are talking about, you know, MarTech stack that you have invested a lot in the technologies and, you know, it did very well with you. Uh, so coming back to, intent data, the necessity for intent data has increased. You know, it's going to be, uh, you know, it's going to be first, second, third party intent data in 2022 people will look out for more data, right? So, one intent data play, uh, you know, what was the role of intent data in strategy?
Steven: We, um, we had intent data and we stopped using intent data. Not because it doesn't work. It works very well in. For, for marketers, they know how to use intent data. Right. You're going to take everybody's domain and you're going to go reverse and do pay-per-click and try and find those and hunt those people down. Well, that's, that's a one-to-many action, right? So, you can kind of make it happen. If, if an outbound team says we're going to take intent data and call every company, thinking that my decision maker went to search for our topic, they're missing the point because he had to call everybody. Like, you have to find out who it is and what do you call when you call them? They're not expecting your call. Like, and if you called me and you're like, hey, my name is Steve. And I'm calling because, um, you just so happen to be looking at, um, software. I'd be like, no, no, not me. Who was it? Who was it? Your company? I have no idea. Like I have no idea. And, that's where marketing can do it for less of a cost and get a higher conversion rate where outbound I'm. I am against personally are people using intent data. Cause they all go, Ooh, intent data. This is awesome. And I said, yeah, look at all these people who are maybe interested in something you have to offer doesn't mean they're looking to buy it. They might've just been curious. They might have a cousin who works there. They might have a, this and have that. So, does it work? I would say that for marketers. Yes, absolutely. The challenge is how do sales and marketing work together? We call it ABM. Right? Everybody talks about ABM account-based marketing. So, can you use intent data for ABM? Sure. You can measure your progress. A domain heat up. You're doing ABM. Now you go, this is working. I go, okay. It works when they stopped. Curious to raising their hand and saying, I'm ready to talk. Now you go, now it works. Might take you two years to get there. They may be in a big contract with a competitor, or you have no idea. So, you've got to be willing to have the burn rate. If you're going to do a patient intent data ABM approach, where you're going to kind of wait until they're ready and try and get, well, not wait, you're catching them by going out to them. But that doesn't mean they want to buy.
Janvi: They are just not in that stage to buy what he basic understanding of new.
Steven: Yeah. It's a great marketing tool because when they are ready and if you market to them correctly, they will think of you. But with all the intent date in the world, I will say nothing beats a strong video post or something where people can say, I think I already know who I want to go with. It's this person, because they struck an emotional chord where they go, that person gets it. And they don't want to meet with six companies. They don't want to go through the whole process of who are you. I'm a vendor. We'll make a decision in two months. They'd rather go, Hey, you, Steve Schmidt. We want to work with your team and it's not going to be for four months, but we need to start planning now and say, fantastic. What, what was it about the video that made you think that we would be a good partner to work with? And if you start there, you probably understand the problem now with SEO and marketing again. Great. But I can't get that information. I might get a web forum. I might set a meeting, but I'm walking into it completely blind. I have no context, but if they saw a video and they say, I loved your video, you talked about maximizing the morning for cold calls. I'm automatically going do people. Don't do cold calls today. The, so they're calling us because they're going, we want to do that. Right. And I go, well, we don't just make cold calls, but sure we do it. And here's how we do it. They go tell me more, no matter what we tell them there, people aren't going to get that information. Oh, so tomorrow we just go do it, Steve and his team did, they'll go. No way. Am I making 2000 cold calls tomorrow? I just not doing that. So, they're going to have to hire us if they want that result. Just like with marketing, if you want to have an aggressive ABM approach or coupling that with marketing, you're probably have to go outside your company, not just software, but people who have successfully run an ABM campaign to be your Sherpa and your guide to get you through the unsettling times where month for you, SEO, isn't working. They go, I said, six months. Why does it take six months ago? It hasn't changed. It's six months of consistent SEO posting. We'll get you working at the pages. I don't want to wait six months ago. Tell me a way that works better. There isn't a way that works better. Right? You have.
Janvi: Um, marketing, you know, it's an industry, it's a field where you need to have loads of patience within yourself. If you're thinking that posting this SEO blog, and I will have that as your ranking, what I desire then it's not going to happen because it's going to take. Right. And many marketers, many, many marketers, you know, after interacting with so much of influencers and, you know, getting bits and bits of information from everywhere. What I have observed is yes, as a marketer, as a sales person, some people do, uh, you know, have that gap of patience or they do lack of patience because the other day I had the ball and somebody saying, oh, you haven't made it lines or this and that. I'm like, wait guys, we have just started in fences marketing and it's going to, it is going well. It's going to take a time to build the audience. What we desire. You can't have the 500, 600 people of audience in one particular interview. And then you will want, like, you know, this is not having, you know, uh, fun, a lot of Piper now, diamond, it's a step-by-step process.
Steven: You just brought up something that I'm super interested in. You said info, influencer marketing for B2B. It's a thing and it's happening. I am starting to get about one offer a week of people offering 200 to a thousand dollars to mention their company to post, which blew my mind at first. Cause I'm like, I don't have that big of an audience, but I think that organic influencer rate is the people who are willing to talk about a brand. And of course, you'd love to get paid for it. I'd rather do it without getting paid. I'd rather just say, I don't want your money if you get a deal and they say my name, sure. Send me a check. I don't care. Right. But I would rather just say, regardless of what you think or what I get out of this, this is what I would do. And this is why I would do it. Dave Gerhardt, Chris Walker. Think of those people when they post, there he goes, that's the Bible, Josh brown. And he goes, that's it. That's the truth. Yeah. That's a heavy influence and we've got big impressions. Now I could be better off spending $10,000 for Chris Walker mentioning my company's name. Then I am going cold, outbound cause Chris has a big audience. And if Chris Walker says, Tidal is great, every single Tidal is great. And I'll say just cause he said it now the future of budgeting. And I also believe that VCs are going to start to invest in personal brands because there's no better marketing engine. It started with Gary Vaynerchuk. Well, it didn't start with him, but he was the best example. This guy gets up on video, you know, Gary V right. Do you know the name, Gary? Yeah, he goes better than it talks. And he goes, oh, he makes me excited. Like, oh, F this and blah, blah, blah, where wherever he goes, I love this guy. And I said, but nobody knows him for what his company does. Nobody knows that he has Vaynerchuk. Yeah, that's a personal brand because they think Gary V, he talks about garage going to garage sales. He doesn't talk about marketing. He'll say something about personal brand, but he doesn't talk about the semantics of it. He's Gary V you can wake up and put a picture to make it a great day. 40,000 likes within a minute. Great. That's personal branding.
Janvi: Yeah. So, what I have observed with the person and then ended the alignment of, or, you know, mentioning about marketing, as you said, the people who are successful, we knew refined labs from, uh, you know from Chris Walker, we know majority of the, you know, uh, podcast like Mark Schaffer and this remarkable name with the, you know, with whatever experience that person experience they share on online. And yet to use to know about it and said that, okay, what company or what consultancy you never go and Google that. We just want to have their daily thought process, you know, what did, uh, you know, the sharing of information, what are personal experiences and how can we learn from them?
Steven: I don't know about you, but. Far more from them than I have from sales books. I mean, marketing books, sales books, you can go down and listen, you can learn a ton, right? But this sort of learning that I can do from my mobile phone, from my computer, I can take notes. I can apply it right away. I can try it. Um, like Chris Walker posted yesterday and I'm saying his name for the fourth time, and let's just stay on him about dark social and the principles around dark social. One of his better posts in the last month, because everybody is curious about it. Cause they don't know what it is. Especially in sales, they go dark social. What does that, is that the dark web? I go, no, no, no, no simple text messages, uh, WhatsApp, uh, every place that can't be tracked, they go, oh, so like when I messaged somebody a text, I go, that's dark social because nobody can track it. Therefore, it's dark to them. They can't pay for it. Now of course there's all these attribution companies were trying to hop in on the dark social game and say, I can attribute it and go great. Bye-bye. Hacking into the internet. Of course, I can find out anything. I can steal money from your bank account to I choose not. I choose not to because it's illegal and it's unethical, but it's possible. So yes, anything's possible, right? Everything and anything you've ever watched. I always tell people, if you don't think you're being tracked, go to Google, go to your console and then go to the little page that you forgot you clicked. Yes. To for everywhere you've ever been. That's tracked you by location. How much time you spent there and they go, oh my God, I never knew I go, guys, if you didn't know that the get ready because we're tracking everything. Like everybody's tracking everything. I know how much you sleep; how much you eat. We all put on these watches and wearables and everybody's looking for the right answer. And there's going to give me more data. Give me more data. LinkedIn polls. That's data, right? LinkedIn polls. That's data. Let's talk about LinkedIn polls for a second.
Janvi: Yes, I do. I do. I use the majority of my decisions if I'm, you know, I'm confused about anything, uh, you know, a tagline or any XYZ thing, I definitely put up with it and I'll see what is the audience's reaction for it? And then responded back, okay, this is what I think, you know, and this is the audience review about it. So yeah, it's a heads up a thumbs up for every LinkedIn poll is great.
Steven: Now that the marketers are also trying to reverse a poll to there's software out there that says, if, if this person answered this way, then send them this email, right? And this person this way. So, there's marketing there. It's free marketing. You could say, hey, what do you think of this? And people say, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Right? They say what they think and polls get traction. Everybody knows that they're annoyed by them and go test. Crap deal with it, right? Like it, but what it's doing is you can gauge a thousand responses and go. Now, if I share that with people who are curious, great, and I go, well, what else think of, well, I don't know. The polls just don't go guys. No, you can now go after those people and nurture them. Don't sell them in a way, based on their curiosity. And you might get 200 of those thousand people are now newsletter subscribers. One of those will buy eventually so that everything is a marketing opportunity. You know, I walked down the hallway and someone says, how are you doing? NASL I'm good. My Mac computer isn't working great. And they go, oh, you know what? I have a Mac person. I know that's marketing word-of-mouth referral. Right? Can't track it. You may as well call a human conversation, a hallway, dark social, because nobody knows it's happening. Right. When I walk into the store and nobody goes, hey, where'd you hear about us from? And so, I walk out, I spend money, I buy a Mac computer and they go, hey, the ad must have worked on Facebook. I go, no, I never saw it. I came to you on word of mouth, which is free. It just costs you being good to somebody else. So that's that Renaissance where I'm talking about Chris Walker and like more creative, it's just got better at what you do so people can evangelize you in communities. Sure. Grab an influencer to who authentically believes in what you do do that. Do SEO do outbound. That is a fool proof method. Now you've got to have the money to do that. And that's everybody goes, well, I don't have the money to go well, then you can't do it. I don't know what to tell you because you have to pay to play like that's business. One-on-one right.
Janvi: Yes, definitely. Great. So, I'm moving on to the Intent data, the topic of the interview. So, you know, um, you mentioned, uh, that, uh, you know, you don't use much channel or you don't use intent data that much. Okay. In your strategy specifically, what are the channels? What are the channels for lead generation for demand generation on your channels with.
Steven: We've only, we've only used LinkedIn organic. Now we will be ZoomInfo as intent data. Right. So, we will be deploying a huge intent data campaign on February 15th. Okay. So that plus I should say we started cold calling on December 10th. We have one person, Casey Navale she's phenomenal is doing the same thing we do for our clients for us. And it is working. We have two deals that have closed off cold calls and that's about 200, 140,000 Dollars of business. Okay. Pretty good for cold calling, you know, so that we consider that a channel. Um, and we are looking at the SEO. So, Friday we'll secure a contract. We are going to start building and backlinks, right? So, over the next four to six months, we'll be building up our SEO and next to the intent data on, uh, Google. Now we also have intent data. I would say website visitors, our intent data should be relabelled, curiosity, data, right? Because. We've gone after everybody, who's gone to our website the last two months and not a single one of them has converted because they were already there. They went to the next one and the next one and the next one, they forgot about us. They went to six places. And so that to me is not a great tool for converting revenue. It's a good tool to nurture. I said, guys, this is nurturing. Don't go after the immediate right. Reach out to them. Start to nurture. And if you get, we have 25 website visitors a day, not a ton, not a little bit. Right? So, 25 times guys, this is like 6,000 people. We can put into a nurturing cadence a year. If you can convert a half a percent of that, you convert 30 deals. That's pretty good. It's a really good for us. That's like a half a million dollars in revenue. So, the intent data is extremely powerful once we can laser and focus it on. If they go to G2 and, and we know they're looking for outsource lead gen, they are there for a very specific reason. That's intent data. That's very valuable. Okay. Now, if someone goes on the internet and types in outsource lead gen, that's also valuable to me. That's why we're building the back links, but we have to build the SEO. So, we will have a full-blown SEO and intent data strategy by Q4 of this year, but we're not just going to go do it because it's the right thing to do. We have to carefully plan it, understand how we'll treat them, how we'll nurture them. How we'll measure it. Dare I say that. Right? So MQL is things like that. Like, so we do need to measure it and I'm willing to bet 10 to one that, our organic will always outperform intent data about four to one. I'm just guessing.
Janvi: Great. So, um, you know, we are talking about channels over here, right? So, what is your omnichannel strategy for coming here in 2022 for Tidal?
Steven: Omni-channel would be, uh, we've added one. So, we have, um, social, dark social is now a fifth on the channel category. So, things like Quora, Reddit, WhatsApp is tough. I mean, slack there's communities. I, so that's a fifth Omni channel outreach and we use the phone SMS and email, right? So, we have five points of omni-channel outreach, phone, phone books, 84%. Everything we do is by phone. So, I wish that would change. The phone is expensive. So how do we get more leads, but bring the phone down to 50%. That's the puzzle we're trying to solve.
Janvi: Okay. Yeah. So, you know, when I was reading the trends to follow in 2022, you know, out there on the internet and you have loads of the trends and everything, what the major highlight and which I would like to discuss in this one is dark social, one is intent data, third is omnichannel present, and another is lead quality, right? Which is the major of all factor that if you are doing each and every strategy, if you're doing everything, but still the lead role is in the quality's poor. That is a lack of email. That is lack of phone number, then everything, then all the strategies of new use. So, what are your views to improve the lead quality in 2022?
Steven: Um, so for us, we we'd prefer to say this is interesting. I just, I was just talking about this last night. I am big. You don't have to be ultra-qualified for me to want to talk to you. I don't, I don't, to me, that's just like, my time is valuable. So is yours. Everybody's equally valuable equally for every human being a person who has 10 seconds left before they die, has their time is more valuable because they have 10 seconds left. Right? I'm just, I have nothing. If, if I talk to you and you can't buy my stuff, I've still had a conversation with, from you. So, can we better qualify by specifically targeting the companies we work with? Of course, we know at, at Tidal pre-seed to series C companies with 10 to 200 employees at the CEO level only no other call point is how we get into companies. Because if I'm a VP of sales, my job feels threatened because I'm a COO. I go, I don't want to manage salespeople. I've got enough going on. Although we work with a lot of fantastic CMOs who love us, and we love them because it works harmoniously, that lead quality is good because it's going to be really about, you're saving your time and their time, and that's optimal for everybody. Um, but I don't need you to qualify to say, do you have the money? Are you the decision maker? What's your timeline? Just if I can just have a conversation with you and you learn a little bit, it might be in two years, or you might tell somebody, call Steve Schmidt. I go, fantastic. That's wanting money well spent now on the front end that you mentioned dark social. I'm okay with not monitoring dark social. If you, if your content is doing good, it's working, you will know, like we know right now it's working how well it's working. I have no idea which article did what no idea if they mentioned it. Cause we say, hey, where did you hear about us? And nine times out of 10. LinkedIn. I need to start saying, hey, which post was it? You know, because then we'll know what's working. I cause the CEOs that we meet with, aren't the ones who see LinkedIn, never someone else told them about it. They don't like it. They don't comment it ever. Every one of our decision makers who said they heard of us from LinkedIn has never once commented or like anything we've done on LinkedIn. Oh, isn't that crazy?
Janvi: It is because you can see that the visibility, uh, you know, this many people view your post, your profile or, you know, XYZ, but they're never really involved in whatever you don't think your post out. Is it either it's either it's some information or XYZ thing, you know, it's a simple, like a hundred people. See your posts, 10 people, 10 people that actually were involved in it either by like, that's the issue we are facing right now, 10 is to one. Yeah, that's the magic right? Is, is, um, 10 to one. Well, 9 to 1, they aren't nine to one.
Steven: Okay. Well, they are out there, but they rely on other people to inform them, right? So, a CEO might not sit and peruse LinkedIn for an hour. They might go on for five minutes, a day, maybe 10 minutes a week. Um, but the person who can get their ear and their company, or more than likely a fellow peer will say, you know, I worked with the Tidal, cause they're going to say, we got to get more leads. We need more business, but they don't say we need more cold calls. They just said, we may need more business. Now I could say, talk to Janvi about digital marketing. Talk to her about intent data. Or I can talk to Steve about cold calling. When they tell us, they go great. And then within a minute they email us. Hey, I want to talk to CEOs are very decisive and when they are ready to move, they move quickly. Um, they don't need permission from anybody. They just say, I want to do it right now and I have the money. So, send me the contract let's get started. Um, that's ideally how it would happen. Right. Um, I think that going off the other point, the, the, the other one, uh, what was the second point on that? Janvi? You just, again, I don't have it in front of me on the 2022 trends.
Janvi: One was a dark social, intent data and omnichannel presence.
Steven: Yeah. So omnichannel is, is, is the two pillars. So, everybody's had calls, emails, nobody uses text message effectively, not even us. Like we need to learn how to not spam people on text and build momentum. That's a big channel. And I know everybody has platforms, but nobody's really figured out, like I work with a really cool company parrot. They're a client of ours. They figured out is it it's an app it's maybe 10 bucks a month or something like that. And what it allows you to do is I can, um, send you a. Um, I can text you. So instead of like, I buy from stitch fix these clothes, I don't shop well, I dunno. They, they send me clothes. I go, thank you. But if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have any clothes because I don't like to shop. Right. And so, they send me an email two weeks later and say, Steve, if you like this little sweater, we have another one just like it. And I go, Ooh. And then I go, ah, I don't know, it's a little bit too much money. Then I forget about it. Right. Well, pair, it figured out that if you just text somebody and say, Hey Steve, this is a sweater we thought of you click yes. To purchase or why to purchase or no. Yeah. Boom done. That's it. That's easier for them, I get you. This will work for you and you, oh yeah. Send it. Boom. ransaction's done. No big website interface, no marketing. Just a text message, which is marketing, but it is a text message with a picture and you just click yes or no. That's not intrusive. Our Clickstop to unsubscribe. Oh, stop to unsubscribe. Right? So that if, if we in B2B can start to say that, and we all know B2B starts to act. We need to start to act like, pardon me? More like B2C more friendly, more interactive or more convenient, or I just want the pricing. I don't want it to call in and then have to meet with an SDR and then get pricing from an account executive and then have a customer success. Oh my God. Just sell it to me. When I call it Salesforce, I had four people to talk to four different meetings before I could buy five licenses. When this company first started, I said, I know what I want to buy. Well that persons on vacation. We can't do it till next Tuesday. So, can I just buy it? You can't, you gotta meet with them. I'm like, this should be a little more frictionless. Like this, just click the button by five. I don't need any help. Thank you. That's it awesome.
Janvi: Customer-centric, more of a customer approach. Thank the customer. Ease of, you're not having business with you. It's not like we have to, as you said, you have group talk with three different guys. What that one budget is, which is just not fair. Neither. It's like wasting modal body a, you know, a time of both the parties at the same time.
Steven: Yeah. The efficiency's gone. And as you know, whether it's marketing and you scare them away because the poor messaging or poor placement or the customer signing, and then not hearing from anybody for three weeks, which is very common in SaaS, right. SaaS signs them up, they get them. And then all of a sudden someone signs it and they; you know, they sign it and they go, oh man, buyer remorse has never hire. I just signed a contract. I go, oh man. And then I don't hear from somebody for two weeks. If I go, hey, Steve, I want to onboard you. And like, I've already been paying for this for two weeks. And I just heard from the onboarding specialists, like they talk about customer centric. I'm going, I don't think so. And everything's self-service. I don't think so. Where's the 800 number we don't use that we use chatbot. I say, great. Give me an 800 number because if I have a problem with SalesLoft, like we met with SalesLoft in ZoomInfo. I said, guys like your customer service are terrible. Like you have great platforms, but when we have a question, we can't get a hold of anybody. I said, you guys don't even have a number. They said a phone number. They said, well, we don't have a phone number. I said, call me old-fashioned, but I'd like to call somebody when I have a problem and say, I need help. Instead of going to a bot where I go, I don't think this understands what my problem is right now. And so, we need to also be customer-centric to get revenue customer-centeredcentered, to keep revenue. Customer obsession has never been higher. Why? Because people go anywhere. Anytime. Um, employers are being forced to be employee obsessed, right? Tufts. Pardon me? I won't swear. Tough crap deal with it. Like it is just now it will reverse. Just like I talked about before in five years it will be employer centric. I guarantee it because everything just goes like this. Teeter-totter when this is high, this is low. And now it tips back and you go, whoa. So, in American, the eighties, everybody pegged their jeans. They real tight at the bottom and roll them up and it looks stupid, but everybody did it. So everybody, everybody took their gene like this. Pegged it up like this. And I thought that's the stupidest thing. It will never come back. And, you know, and, and, and my wife in women's fashion, she always goes, everything's cycling through every 20 years. Right. So, what was popular 20 years? It'll be popular again in B2B in tech data ultimately will last forever, but something else will, will be better. Okay. And then intent data that will make a comeback and it will evolve. And so as long as we're willing to be aware of the seismic shifts happening, and as long as you're willing to pivot and know what's working and then make it work, then I would say, without fail. Most businesses should be able to implement a strategy that works. And a lot of them don't as you know, you talked to a lot of them, right? The reason they need help is that their core expertise is not what you do. It's their product. Yeah. And even, and so they rely on other people to help them get to market. And I think that's the interesting part about intent data. And I'll close on intent data with this. Um, ultimately, if we could read everybody's brain and you heard everybody who said something about your company today, that'd be marvellous. Right? You could hear every hallway conversation where they said, I'm thinking about it, outsource lead gen. And you could just know where that is. I mean, that's utopia. Every go, oh my God. Look at all these customers, well, world doesn't work that way. Right? So, we rely on the internet, we rely on phone calls to parse that information out. So, it is there. It's like the internet is a hallway conversation. You just need to go find it. So, get onto dark social interact without selling. Because if you can't sell on dark social, you have to just, you have to just observe and interact Quora, um, start with two Quora, and Reddit if you haven't yet, right. Start with those two, typing your topic of interest and follow them every morning. I get an email from Quora with seven or eight interesting articles of people who I'm trying to get to know answering questions about topics I'm interested in. And I, I don't just look at one. I go, oh my God, Jason Lemkin from Sasser. I'm going to, you know, I take it in, learn over multiple months. And then I say, Jason, my name is Steve Schmidt from Tidal. And I'm going to be very personal with that email on things. He said that we'll likely get a response. He doesn't know me, no reason to know me, but since I've interacted and watching me answer questions, I know now his thoughts on things and his approach and that sort of reverse engineering of dark social is patience. It also needs to be patient. You need to have a dark social pipeline, right? Yeah. And that's a whole new thing where I think that intent data married with dark social can give you your pay-per-click advertising data if you do it in the right way, but you need to know. Like for us, what would be the best thing? We assume that everybody, without even going to dark social in our target audiences, SaaS CEOs tend to 200, but I'm not going to target CEOs on dark social. Cause they don't go there more than likely. So, I'm going to find their, their people in their company. They'll tell me what the company's up to, by what they say. And then I'll use that messaging and go back to the CEO and say, here's what I've learned about your company. I can help if you've still got this problem, do you, I've helped. I've helped this person and this person, which you know, and, and they are active case studies, social proof, right. And then I need a call to action. Let's meet. So anyways, I think there's ways to do it, that you have to break it apart and be very calculated versus just, oh, we do dark social. Well, what does that mean? We do intent data. How, how do you measure it? How do you measure the impact? That not just the ROI, like truly. How much has the intent data, how much of that is turning into customers and how long from when you said to, when they convert, you have to measure all those things, right? KAK, KAK, and software, right. Cost of customer acquisition.
Janvi: Yeah. Great. So, coming back to the last question of the segment, which I love ask, what message you would like to highlight from your journey to the demand managers out there, or the people want know to achieve something, you know, from, from your inspiration of tidal case study, what is the message that you would like?
Steven: I would just say two, two things. Um, if you're passionate about something and you're not already working on your own and you feel like you could be, um, anybody can do it. It's just, it, it is not for everybody. Right. So, I always just because I'm an entrepreneur or you are, does not mean it's great. Um, so it's okay to work for a company. Number one, you don't need to always work on your own. Not everybody needs to be the next Chris Walker. Do you have your heart? Like, trust me, it's hard to be a thought leader. I didn't want to be when I started, I am a practitioner, right? So, for me, it's something that I'm always thinking about. It consumes me the money in the businesses is the last thing I think about. I wake up and think about cold calls, intent, data, dark, social, and the money will come be passionate, follow it. And money comes. It's just the way that the world works. It really is. Number two is. Is everybody all the time is talking about sales and marketing, not getting along. And, and it's, it's almost a redundant conversation because I always go, well, where's the basis for this? And then they say, well, measure them on the same thing. Give marketing sales quarters. I go guys. No, because it's different things. Like I need marketing to have a quota of do it all the time and do it good. That's it. And measure it. So, we know what to spend. I need, I need sales to bring in revenue dead day. So, sales and marketing are a form of marketing can be both short and long-term and sales has to be consistent all the time. But if marketing does a great job, we all know what makes our job much easier. Now this is the thing marketing's here. Sales is here. Where does personal brand. Don't know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because if I work for company ABC and I have a personal brand and I'm getting a voice out there, it benefits everybody. And it's a new channel. I will say this, this is my party devices. If you're really serious about organic, take everybody in your company is doing organic and make it a field that says this, the lead source was this and putting notes, which article put the link there or the video. So, I can now go back and attribute what's working with which employees, because if employee ABC's over here, and they're getting really popular somehow on LinkedIn. Number one, they're probably gonna leave pretty soon because they got the ego go on there. Ooh, I'm the thought leader. Now people like me, I can go start my own company B where it happens all the time. Number two is, um, start to compensate them for what they're doing. They are bringing you revenue. So, find out how to pay people by talking about themselves in your company online when it benefits your company like that is that sales. So, if it's 10% for a sale, but they refer to him 10% and you'll see people want to do it more because it benefits them. That's my advice and that's what we do. Yeah.
Janvi: Because people in the end, something language, what is benefiting me is this job rewarding, you know, uh, being a rewarding at the same time it is, is it fulfilling my personal life? Is it, is it aligned with my life or not? So, you know, each and every bit of everything, which we need to take that as a company, as an employee, as a brand value, as everything it's like mixed source everything, and you build something beautiful out of it.
Steven: That's what makes it fun. And if it's not fun, it sucks. And so, I mean, I know you have a blast doing this I do too. Yeah. And the end. It has to be fun. It has to be a Candace, be about the money. Ask me if you have to go, like when you go to sleep at night and you look at your partner, your spouse, or your kids, or whatever, you should feel tired because he worked hard, but you should have time with them. You should wake up. Like today I was running around and trying to get a diaper on my three-year-old while I'm doing a call with our team. But I'm at a great time. Like, I'm just like, you know, I loved it. I could drop my kid off at day-care. I said, I love you. Give me a big hug, started crying. I cry a little bit. I get on a cold call. Cause mom's over traveling on business. I've got four kids, three kids to get home feed tonight and I go that's okay. Cause when you love what you do, everything else becomes easier. So, I really had fun talking to you, Janvi. So, this is great.
Janvi: Thank you so much for being on this show. It was great talking to you. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching this video. I will walk you back. It is available on Spotify right now that you can listen into any of them. Anyway, he's like, and share the video and subscribe to our official channel for the latest happening. Keep watching.