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Franco Caporale:
Hello and welcome to new episode of the Demand Generation Club podcast. I'm your host, Franco Caporale. Our guest today is Jean Cameron, head of Growth Marketing at Flosum. Flosum is the leading end-to-end DevOps and data backup platform built a hundred percent natively to Salesforce.
The company helps enterprises around the world accelerate digital transformation by making the release process fast and easy, increase developer productivity, and remain secure and compliant. In her current role at Flosum, Jean is moving the organization forward with her extensive knowledge of traditional marketing principles and innovative approaches to building an audience. A proven marketing leader with over 15 years of experience, Jean is dedicated to making data-driven decisions and focus on lead generation and pipeline development.
In her previous roles, Jean's responsibilities ranged from managing a diverse and talented team of marketing professionals, developing go-to-market strategies, overseeing product launches, and executing regional and global programs. So I'm really happy to welcome today Jean Cameron, head of growth marketing at Flosum.
Jean, I'm really happy to have you with us today at the Demand Generation Club Podcast. Thank you again for joining us.
Jean Cameron:
Thank you so much for having me.
Franco Caporale:
Can you share some details about your story, your background, and what you do today?
Jean Cameron:
Sure. So I am currently the head of demand generation at a company called Flosum. My background has always been in B2B tech marketing. I've got work for companies like SAS and SPSS and IBM, and an ECM company called El Fresco for about nine years. So I've always been very involved in the B2B tech space, and just trying to sell and enable technologists to innovate.
Franco Caporale:
That's fantastic. And you have been now in a company called Flosum, right? For a few months.
Jean Cameron:
I have, yeah.
Franco Caporale:
What do you guys do at Flosum?
Jean Cameron:
Sure. So Flosum is a native Salesforce DevOps company. So our big mission is to enable developers to be able to innovate on the Salesforce platform to send out releases faster, to be more productive, and just ensure compliance within their organization. And so we love talking to our developer community, they are our rising stars.
Franco Caporale:
And tell us also a little bit about your role, what you do at Flosum, how's your team, and kind of your responsibilities.
Jean Cameron:
Sure. So my role, like many marketing folks, is ever changing. So I lead up our demand generation efforts, and that can consist of emails, events, channel marketing. It is evolving into running all of marketing, so including communications, product marketing. I have a very small team of two amazing coworkers, and we work really hard to do everything that big companies need to do with 30 person teams, and there's three of us to do it. So we do the gambit of everything when anybody needs something.
Franco Caporale:
And that's the life in a startup.
Jean Cameron:
Exactly, yep.
Franco Caporale:
And you have been working for large companies as well, so I was really intrigued from our conversation on your approach in terms of the role of marketing, especially now in the startup. So I'm curious to kind of dig into a little bit more on how do you think marketing, and everyone in marketing, can help driving the vision and the goals within a company, especially in a startup?
Jean Cameron:
Yeah, definitely. I think in the startup world, unlike your Series Cs and DS and your IPO companies, everybody has to have hands in everything. And in marketing, we've become more strategic leaders in developing the company's vision and what their future's going to look like five years from now.
So that's always been kind of a role with the CTO and the CEO, and now marketing's getting involved in that conversation. And I think that's super great because we're the ones that have to push out that message to our audience and help define who we're going to sell our technology to and what's working and what's not working from a customer standpoint. And so I think the input that marketing can provide is we talk to customers day in and day out, all day every day. So we know what the customers like and what they don't like about the product, what they're responding to and what they're not responding to in terms of messaging.
And I think that will help shape the strategic vision of any organization, especially in a startup when we're just trying to figure it out and what's working and what's not working. And so I think marketing's becoming this strategic leader and an executive management team to help define what the strategy is for the organization from the top level of, "Here's the vision and what we're going to see five years from now," to "Let's plan out 2022," or that next fiscal year, and what strategies we need to make sure that we're hitting revenue goals and customer satisfaction goals, employee satisfaction goals, et cetera.
Franco Caporale:
So I'm very curious to understand the details on how this conversation happens within your company, your experience, but in general as well. So I assume probably you are planning once or twice a year, so soon as we're going to go into planning for next year. How does that evolve? Who is part of that conversation within your company, and where do you start?
Jean Cameron:
Sure. So with Flosum, we're still a pretty small company. So we're allowed to get input and able to get input, unlike larger organizations, from just about anyone. So I will bring in my employees to understand historically what's working, what conversations have been happening. I'll always bring in the head of the customers, so the CSM team or the chief customer officer.
So your executive level team is going to start having a strategic conversation on going into next year, what do we think we want to talk about, and who do we want to be and how do we want to define ourselves? And that's just a brainstorming session on, "This customer has said this about us."
We're big on G2 reviews and app exchange, Salesforce app exchange reviews. So we take and reread every single one of them and say, "Our customers are saying this. This seems to be a common theme. Let's talk about this. Here's the challenges that they're facing."
And then, obviously bringing in our product marketing team on competitive differentiation. So where do we compete and where do we not compete, and where do we want to play in that space? And so that really helps define that overall strategy for that given year. And then we talk about... Each team will break off. So our customer team will break off, our product team will break off, our finance team will break off, our sales team will break off, and marketing breaks off. And we go through what we call an initiative discussion with our teams. So our teams then will talk about what initiatives should that sub-team have to help reach this strategic vision, the strategic goals. And so it could be we've got to drive demand for the platform because we're still a startup company. We work with developers, and so we know developers love talking to other developers, and we want to start building that community.
And so then one of our strategic initiatives becomes, "Let's develop a community." So then, the management team and the executive team all come back together and say, "Here's the initiatives that we all came up with." And we'll see if any of them match with a small company. And with Flosum, having certain competitive differentiators and people that are in our space, it matches most of the time. I've been at organizations where it did not match at all, where one subdivision's over here and we're over here from a marketing standpoint, and that just becomes a very calm and active conversation and discussion around what it should be until we can come up with about four key initiatives, four key themes that the whole organization can focus around. And then those initiatives drive everything from product development to customer success to marketing campaigns and how finance works and operates. That's kind of how it starts, from developing that strategy.
Franco Caporale:
So you talked a lot about this kind of initiatives and overall objectives like, "Let's get more visibility with developers," or other strategic things. What about the actual numbers? Because I'm assuming that the C-level, the executive team, they also have a specific dollar amount in terms of-
Jean Cameron:
They do.
Franco Caporale:
... And a number, so how that conversation goes as well. Once the strategic initiatives and the objectives, how do you go into the numbers and how to achieve those numbers?
Jean Cameron:
Sure. So it is a lot of math, a giant Excel spreadsheet. And I'm sure other organizations can use things like Tableau and other type of tools, we get to use Excel, and it is crunching numbers to conversion rates, really. So from a marketing sales perspective, we know what ARR numbers, sales quota is, we've got a hit for that given year. And then I've got conversion rates on the marketing funnel. So the top part of the marketing funnel of, "I've got to bring in this many leads to generate this many MQLs, to generate this many SQLs, to generate this many opportunities, to generate this many closed business to hit a certain number." So I know, backing out from that number every month what lead volume I need to drive in order to make sure that sales hits their number.
And then, that gets even more complicated because if I drive a lead today, I'm not going to make a sale by the end of the quarter. So our sales cycle and most B2B tech organizations is anywhere from six to 18 months. And so then you've got to back out the numbers of... With this high level math, that you've got to kind of attribute that you've got to drive a certain number of leads in a certain month in order to hit that revenue target for the following month.
And so not only are we planning 2022, we are also planning the first part of 2023 when it comes to lead volume and where our sales needs to be. So we are always looking forward over a year, more like 18 months, when we do our planning. And then, when we get those sales goals and we all agree from a leadership perspective that this is what we need to drive from new business and sales, so us working with our SEs, our AEs, and then also upsell cross-sell, so us working with the CSM team, we'll be able to then come up with the marketing metrics, and that really becomes your standard metrics.
So you've got that high-level funnel where you've got to drive awareness and you've got to get people interested in your brands, and get them reading content about what you do. And that is page views, likes, Facebook followers, that's unique website visitors, click throughs and emails. So you make those metrics based on historic data. So I am very data-driven, so always look at that historic data and then industry trends and where we think we need to be. Then you've got your next part of the funnel, which I like to call your decision-making.
And so you've fed them all this content, and you've driving them to make a decision. So this is where you're really driving those leads, those MQLs. So doing more value-touched marketing activities like in-person events or digital events now that we're still in COVID world, driving leads that are not just high-level awareness pieces. This could be how much time they've spent on the site. This could be how many shares your post had or how many people commented. Everything is not just, "Did this one activity drive revenue?" Because that's not how marketing's measured.
That becomes the third phase of converting leads to opportunities. And so this is truly them purchasing licenses, or however your business is set up, and that's driving opportunities and that's looking at the conversion rates of how much pipeline you're driving. And then, we can't forget about what I call the final stage, or kind of that second half of a bow tie, because we talk of funnel but I always talk about a bow tie, is customers.
So advocacy, it becomes a huge measurement. In my world and in marketing planning and strategic world, is are people happy with your product and/or service? And that becomes, "Are they a repeat customer? Are they getting more sales because we're upselling or we're selling more licenses? Are they talking about the product? Are they willing to be case studies?" So how many case studies are you driving? How many reviews for us on G2 or the app exchange? So having people talk about your product, are they talking about it on webinars or in-person events, or on these types of podcasts?
All that needs to be measured and have measurements against it. And so I think when marketing leadership thinks strategic, it's always KPIs around these hard data numbers of how many leads did you bring in? How many opportunities and pipeline are you selling and driving? When my measurements definitely focus on that, but it's also things like how many case studies are we having, how many reviews did we get, how many page views are we having, the time on site and all of that. And how you kind of measure that is let's look at the industry trends, let's look at historic data, and set realistic goals.
Franco Caporale:
And in my experience, this becomes a pretty intense discussion over budget obviously, right? Because you have all these different areas where the company could invest budget to potentially get the same results. The typical question that I see is why should I spend another, I don't know, million dollar into demand generation and growth marketing versus hiring four or five additional reps that will just take over, that will have a quota, a million dollar each, and I will be making 5 million dollar from that million dollar?
Jean Cameron:
Yeah, I wish it was that easy, right? So that's where the sales marketing head "but" conversation always happens. So I always like to take it kind of one step further. Like I said, I'm very analytical when it comes to marketing and metrics. And so this then becomes a conversation with sales leadership on what's the cost of acquisition? So your cost of customer acquisition. So I'm paying the sales rep $300,000 a year. They're driving a million dollars in business. How much time are they spending if they're on their hourly rate to get a customer versus how much money is demand gen spending in order to get a customer?
And that says if I need 2 million more of business, I've got the numbers to say, "CEO or head of sales, This is why marketing deserves X amount of dollars," because I can drive that with my cost of my acquisition cost or my cost per lead, my customer acquisition costs. So I think, for me, it always comes down to let me prove it out in the numbers because you can't really fight back on the black and white of math." It's right or it's wrong. And sales will always say, and have always told me, I'm just going to hire somebody else." And I always say, "That's fine. I still need to drive them leads too." So it always comes back.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah, it's something that you see more and more often, but from what you're saying, you are tracking each stage of the funnel and the cost of each stage of the funnel. So you are going to see a significant difference if a single rep has to warm up a lead from scratch and then convert into opportunity and then drive and close that opportunity versus having that being supported by demand generation and marketing.
Jean Cameron:
Yep. And then we also have to take in consideration with sales, doing cold prospecting, their time to value is going to be a lot longer than marketing. And so that also you've got to take into account is do we have 18 months versus six months to bring in all this revenue? They've got to ramp up. They're a new employee. I mean, there's a lot that goes into that. So all that data, from what my seat is, is I've got to have that data in order to show sales and to show leadership that investing more in demand generation may be the right call.
Franco Caporale:
And also, that cold prospecting is going to hit a ceiling at some point. There is so much cold prospecting you can do before it gets old. One more question on this because now you talked about you know what number of leads you need to hit based on the conversion rates and all the number, you probably know the cost per lead so you can form a budget, right? So if you have to bring a thousand leads, there's a hundred dollars per lead, you're going to need about a hundred K. A hundred K or probably 10 times that, or a hundred times that. But now that you have a budget, how do you allocate that budget across all the potential channels and initiative that you could use to drive leads? What kind of data do you look at?
Jean Cameron:
Sure. So when I get a budget number, it is a number per quarter. And sometimes it's an annual number, and I've got to break it out on where's the sales metric coming from. So my budget's always divvied up by what our sales goals are. So I know if sales goal is a million dollars and my cost per lead is a hundred dollars, I know I've got this much this quarter to get to that million dollar mark. I always, first and foremost, will start with fixed costs. So what is my website cost going to be? What's my marketing automation cost going to be? Because I think when people think budgeting they're like, "Oh, we've got a million dollars. Let's go run campaigns."
But I've got to put in here swag buys because developers, our customers, love swag. I've got to put in here, I always set aside money for development for my marketing team, and so investing in my employees to make themselves better marketers. And so I've got to get rid of those fixed costs first and then talk about, "All right. Now how do we divvy this up?"
What's nice about, again, being very metric-driven, is I always take a look at what lead sources and very granular lead sources and campaigns are driving the most revenue. And that comes through the whole conversation around attribution and whether it's first touch or last touch or multi-touch, and that's a whole other podcast and a whole other conversation.
And so it becomes is what we're doing driving conversations and driving revenues and hitting our KPIs? And then, that really determines what's working and what's not working. I've been at organizations where direct mail has ROI five times than an in-person event. So great, I will invest in direct mail five times more than in-person events. Some things, as a marketing person and all marketing people have to do, we have to just show our face. And so then how do you get the most out of that at events or webinars or with vendors, and that type of stuff? So then, that becomes kind of how I divvy up the budget by lead source is take a look at what's driving those opportunities.
Franco Caporale:
Now, you mentioned the direct mail. I'm one of the biggest proponent of integrating the direct mail with all the other digital channels.
Jean Cameron:
Yes.
Franco Caporale:
But you also mentioned events, and I know you have a ton of experience in driving events, hopefully in person soon. Everyone is looking forward to-
Jean Cameron:
I hope so. I know.
Franco Caporale:
And so I would like to understand from you what's your experience in incorporating events into the demand generation activities? And how do you manage the other stakeholders? Because there is a lot of opinions like going to events all the time.
Jean Cameron:
There are, and that is one of the most fun jobs you will ever have, and the most stressful jobs you'll ever have. I think when I was looking at stressful jobs in America in 2020 or 2019, event planning was number five. When I think of events... So my background has always been field marketing, so running events and corporate events.
And with events, a lot of marketing always takes that as one-off. So we've got a big IBM event, or Microsoft or AWS, and we're going to do something big at that event, but nothing before and nothing afterwards. Events have to go into the strategy of that campaign. So holistically, you've got to think about an event as a milestone inside that campaign's timeline, not just a one time thing that's going to happen and come and go because there's a start and end date.
So then, you've got to build up the excitement leading up to the event. And that could be, if I'm running an event with Salesforce, I'm going to do a big Salesforce podcast or webinar leading up to that event. The event's going to happen, and we're going to make a big bang at Dreamforce coming up. And after that event, I'm going to follow up with all those leads and we're going to invite them to a secondary event, whether that's a webinar or do a direct mail campaign, or we're going to host a happy hour or a coffee event.
But then, you've got to take it one step further and say, "We met with a lot of Salesforce people, and Salesforce is pivotal to our success, so I've got to do an event specific to the Salesforce people." So not just prospects, but to our channel as well. And so then, your event becomes kind of a momentum part of your campaign rather than, "All right, Dreamforce is here. This is great. Let's do it. Let's get it over with. What's next?"
And it becomes, "Well, we know this is what's next because we've been planning for it, like Dreamforce, for the last six or seven months."
Franco Caporale:
What's your recommendation to manage this, all this inputs that come particularly from sales usually? You have a plan for this event you want to do for 2021, 2022, and then they keep throwing you new events because some prospect is attending or is in a cool location. So how do you manage these expectations?
Jean Cameron:
So the cool location's always hard for me because I'm like, "Yes, I will go to Sydney all day, every day." Hawaii, there's always a big government conference in Hawaii every year, and our government person's like, "Can we go?" I'm like, "I will go. I will volunteer for that."
But how I always like to say it is every sales organization I've been a part of, every sales AE has always had some sort of focused accounts. Whether that's they're focusing on enterprise accounts, so 5,000 employees and above in a vertical, or, I mean, even horizontally, or it's an ABM strategy and they've got 25 accounts.
My rule for sales is do your due diligence, and if the event that you want to attend, 35% of the attendees in the past are within your target account bubble, so whatever that looks like, I will go and research the cost of it. I will go and research what it takes to get to that event, to have a speaking slot, if our competitors are there. So I will actually go to that event's website if sales can tell me that 35% of their target account list is going to be attending that event based on past events or what is shown on the website.
That kind of narrows down the noise, I would say, probably 75% because a lot of the time it is like you said, sales wanting to go to a cool location or, "This has the word DevOps in it, we should be attending." And you're just like, "That's not right. You guys do your due diligence, tell me if the accounts are there." So sales, you can pretty much manage the noise using that type of strategy.
And then, the rest of it is marketing owns that. We own the events. We own the marketing strategy. I've never been shy. I've always had great relationships with my sales leadership, and I've never been shy to just say no. One, I may be too busy. I mean, being in a startup organization with three people, we are busy working long hours. We may not have the bandwidth.
It may not be great timing. So if it's around other events that we're trying to do fall and spring are event seasons, and so there's a lot of events, especially now with COVID kind of getting us in person, but maybe not. There are a lot of events in the spring and the fall, so we have to be very picky about what we do and where we want to showcase our stuff.
And then it may not be bright strategically for the organization. Our competitors aren't there, a lot of our partners are there, so we'll use them, and they can exhibit and talk about us rather than us going and investing in it. And so it's really just sitting down and having a conversation with those stakeholders on why this is important to them, and the answer "cool location" can't be on the list. And then also, why marketing can or cannot do it.
Franco Caporale:
Yeah, I think you saw it much less with the virtual events. They were less like, "Oh, we absolutely need to."
Jean Cameron:
Oh yeah, they definitely didn't want to sit on those Zoom calls all day.
Franco Caporale:
No. Awesome. I have one more question for you, and it's something I like to ask to every guest, and is what is top of mind for you right now? This is something that is really keeping you up at night that you're trying to solve or particular problem or something?
Jean Cameron:
Yeah, it's a good question. So we are in the midst right now of planning 2022. So we just finished our strategic plan, built out our campaigns, and so now it's finishing off 2021. We are going through a new website, rebranding, so it's going to be a lot of work for our small little team.
So what I think what keeps me up at night is just being too ambitious. So I am always about, "Let's try it, let's do it. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, at least we can say it didn't work and never do it again."
And so, taking on all these massive projects, just making sure that the team doesn't burn out, making sure they're still motivated, making sure our customers are still happy and satisfied while we're delivering the best service that we can, and making sure sales gets what they need for marketing because obviously, they're one of our customers, and that we're not just signing ourselves up for too much.
And so, I'd say the last two weeks while we're building out our strategic plan and our campaigns has been, "So how much time is this going to take? Let's map this out. This is a two-week thing. This is a five-week thing. This is a three-month thing." And making sure that my team doesn't get burnt out because we've got a lot of work to do.
Franco Caporale:
That's fantastic. Jean, I absolutely enjoyed the conversation, so thanks again for joining our podcast.
Jean Cameron:
Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.