Talking Marketing w/ Katya Allison | builders podcast

0:00Play in the gray space. If you are always banking on yourself and you know what you're able to do, play in the gray space because you're never going to know if you're always sitting back waiting for permission. Don't be afraid to take the initiative.

0:18Today I speak with Katya Allison. She is a senior marketing leader and operator, and she has her own podcast on marketing called Let's Talk Marketing. We talk about what's happening in marketing organizations today, the big challenges, the big opportunities, growing your career in marketing, and how to talk to the C-suite.

0:41Today, I'm speaking with Katya Allison. She's a marketing leader and a host of her own podcast on marketing. Hi, Katya. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for asking. Well, good to see you. And I want to talk a lot about marketing today. And like me, You talk with senior leaders every week on your podcast, mostly about marketing. You talk about their careers or point of view, how they're leading growth initiatives in their company. When you kind of think about all the conversations you had this year, what do you think is the hardest part of marketing in 2024? I feel like, one, this is definitely a loaded question for sure.

1:17I aim to look at things in the positive view. But when I really am pushed to answer this, I would say one of the biggest challenges in my eyes is being swept up and swept in to the emerging trends that are happening in the space. You know, whether it's AI, whether it's, you know, everything's got to be on TikTok, whether it's, you know, no more email marketing and any of those trends being so swept up in them, I think is the biggest challenge for marketers right now. because you always have to have a solid foundation. And I think that when you get swept up into them, you start to lose the tried and true of what works.

1:59As marketers in organizations, we have people internally saying, what's our TikTok strategy? We have external thought leaders talking about how TikTok is the most important thing you can be doing. But as marketers, like we need to have proper execution and we need to put it in context of an overall marketing plan. Maybe we can focus on TikTok because I know that it's a platform that at least you consume if you don't do your own marketing. In that right, you were telling me about some hot takes that you saw on TikTok recently. Well, I was scrolling. I definitely am a consumer of it. I do have the podcast on TikTok as an experiment this year to be like, what works?

2:49What doesn't work? When do you post it? Like, do you post it on your phone? Do you post it on computer and all that good stuff? But yeah, I was scrolling through TikTok and, you know, I called her a young thundercad because she's pretty young. And not that there's anything wrong with that. But her take was that, you know, search and Google is gone. You don't need to worry about SEO and search anymore. people are more gravitating towards searching for TikTok for everything that they need. If, you know, find the local coffee shops, right? And then you get an aggregate of not only the coffee shops, but like reviews on the coffee shops and things that they do.

3:28I'm not completely against what it is that she's saying. What I am up against or what I am against is the forget the SEO, forget Google search. These items still matter. They are foundational to marketing as itself. I think that what you have to do is take a look at, all right, what for my business do I do with TikTok? Is there a strategic play for me for TikTok? Is it search? If it is search, then I've got to craft my content in such a way that hits the nail on the head when it comes to that goal. So like, I mean, that's also why I talk about like those trends that get that you're getting all swept up with.

4:11Like, that's not totally true. That's such like a myopic perspective on marketing tactics. In my opinion, obviously, somebody who maybe has the opinion that that search is dead, doesn't, you know, doesn't own a doesn't own an eight figure P &L from from S from SEO and search. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think like the, the better conversation to have is what is happening with search with all of the trends, right? Like that as marketers, we do not, and this is not being swept into this is figuring out how to, how do I become more strategic with this trend coming up and not being swept into it, right?

4:50Like the play on AI with Google search, what that's found foundationally going to change how I'm crafting my content, right? Like voice, that's also going to change how I'm going to craft my content because long tail is now much more of a thing than it was, you know, even just a few years ago. That's a, that's a really great way of framing it up. I mean, the way that I'm thinking about search or wondering about it right now is I'm asking myself, is the, is the pie getting bigger? Meaning are more people, are more people in America, let's say going to search on Google next year than they are this year.

5:27Maybe not. So maybe the pie isn't getting bigger. So you have to be more strategic about where you're focusing. And then also, you know, some of the new Google features, whether it's an AI overview or whether it's, you know, Reddit, you know, Reddit sort of being at the top of the results on everything. How does this impact how you're trying to reach people in the biggest, sort of the biggest open search market on the planet? Absolutely. But back to TikTok, if a brand was to ask you, Katya, how should we think about TikTok? We have this quote unquote traditional digital marketing business. We don't know whether we should do TikTok or not.

6:03How would you think about them approaching that question? My advice for TikTok is like, you know, well, one, where are you at with your other social channels? Is something not working on the other social channels? And that's why you're now looking to TikTok? Or are you looking to TikTok to be like, is there a play? And I think it's ultimately what are your company goals? What are your brand goals? And also, where is your audience? Like is your audience on TikTok? Then most definitely like then what's the strategy for TikTok? If your audience isn't really primarily on TikTok, then like you don't necessarily have to be on there.

6:44I think there's such a good way to leverage TikTok as a brand, but it's not just to have it because everybody else is having it. So like for me, my advice is always like, hey, let's lay all our cards on the table. Is this a good strategic play for us or is it not? Like, what are your goals? So I go back to like your goals and your personas, which to me is always like back to basics. What are your goals? What are your personas? If your audience lives there and you do have a play on it and you're maybe you're crushing it on other social channels. Let's see what what purpose we can leverage for from TikTok.

7:23And there's also this eternal struggle that I feel like I have as as a marketing leader in marketing organizations is with the team size and the bandwidth and the budget you have. How many things how many things can you do really well? And if you had a choice between doing one channel really well, best in class, or two or three channels, okay or good, what's better for your organization? Generally, I've seen doing one thing or two things world class is much better in general. You're definitely preaching to the choir with that. I feel like oftentimes, and especially with social, people feel like they have to have all social channels.

8:00They need to be part of absolutely everything, but then they don't take the time to curate their content for those particular channels. And they're all leveraged so differently, right? People consume content differently on the different channels. Like for TikTok, it is, you know, if I am a brand that is looking at like, where's my social play at? And I'm looking at TikTok. Like to me, TikTok is a really great way to like personify your brand. Give me behind the scenes. Give me like the sneak peeks. Tell me your brand personality. Give me some facts, but like definitely use an 80-20 rule for like the content that you're putting together.

8:37And honestly, I think that you had mentioned this already. Like when you look at your team, do you have the bandwidth to do TikTok well? Same thing with Twitter or X, right? Like that is meant to be very fast paced. You have someone that's going to be looking, that's creating lists, that's part of chats. Like, do you have someone for that? Or are you a brand that is much more like a visual? Now let me take a look at Instagram and then I can dabble in Reels, right? Like I also think that Instagram and Reels is a great way to test out like, do I need to do a TikTok account because my Reels are really popping off?

9:15And then, you know, Facebook is great for, you know, groups and, you know, a slightly different demographic. Absolutely. So I thought about the same question that I posed to you. what was the hardest part of marketing in 2024. And I'll tell you what my answer was. And it's this year, but it's not necessarily different than a previous year. It's to me, it's attribution and understanding how consumers make decisions based on your marketing tactics or strategy. I feel like it's still the toughest part of the job, despite like, I've got a lot of data. I've got a ton of data. The issue is how the data from different platforms talk to each other, how I interpret the data, how I understand what customers are reacting to.

10:08It's still, to me, the hardest part of marketing. What's your reaction to that? I think that you're right. Attribution is always going to be one of the biggest challenges in my mind, I feel like we're always chasing attribution. Like, no, I brought in that lead after they saw 12 ,000 different things that I had posted out, right? Like, I think we're always in a company, you know, always trying to take credit for like the lead that comes in when in reality, it's like a group effort. So how do you attribute what marketing is doing to that? And there's all of the different attribution models. I think that we need to get more sophisticated as an organization, not just in marketing on attribution models all the way around.

10:54Like I think the sales team needs to get educated on attribution models. Executives need to get, you know, educated on like attribution models. Like what does this actually mean? So I think we're far from it, but yeah, I would also say attribution is always just going to be a challenge. And what was that? What was the second one? The customer? Yeah. Kind of understanding how consumers make decisions, like being obsessed with your customer. I was talking to a friend of mine last weekend who started his marketing journey at Procter & Gamble. They do a lot of that. It's all about customer motivation, understanding your customers.

11:32And I'm like, even though that's considered sort of like a traditional way to start your marketing career, it's probably more important than ever. Yeah, absolutely. I think that customer marketing is probably one of the most undervalued areas of marketing that, that brands just don't invest in. Like to me, that's how you understand how your customers make decisions. You have to develop relationships with them to get that customer voice, to have a good understanding of that. And you have to continuously, in my opinion, really be researching and asking the questions and not like waiting for the responses.

12:12I think like there's such an opportunity with every tactic that you do to get to garner some information, right? Like it's never a failure. If you're getting some kind of Intel, like, does this work? Does email work for this? And I put the CTA here, like maybe it doesn't. And that does tell you something about your consumer. I think there's broader research that can be done for all consumer information. And it's really just kind of staying up to date on that. I also think there's a play on behavioral science when it comes to that. What's the psychology behind how people are making decisions? Because also anything that you read five years ago is so out of date now because digital has just blown up in such a way in even the last five years.

13:00So you have to be a scientist in marketing, right? It's such a good balance of science and art, but you really do have to be a scientist. How are people behaving nowadays and what does that mean to my brand? You hit on so many good points. I want to go back to something that you were saying about attribution, how everyone in an organization needs to understand it better, including executives. And I was going to ask you about this a little bit later on, but I think it's a good segue. So I think marketers often struggle with justifying or explaining their work to executives. There are some things that are marketing that are no doubt they're hard numbers, but there are many things in marketing that aren't.

13:43And so what are some of the things that you've learned along the way about presenting to executives or what advice would you give to a marketer who might be challenged with that? I would say become a data dork because definitely executives respond to numbers. And there are, like you said, those hard numbers that everybody can take a look at, right? Leads, conversion rates, open rates, all of these numbers that you can get that you should also communicate back to. So it's getting those numbers, but it's also putting numbers behind the qualitative that you're getting as well too, right? Like if you're conducting a webinar, it's getting the NPS score and it's getting the quotes.

14:25There's a lot of values that comes from the qualitative feedback that you get and the qualitative information that you get from marketing. So I think the first piece of my advice is become a data dork and collect all of the data and then become a data storyteller. I think that's that part that we need to be able to bridge those two things. So it's one thing having the data, but I've led so many different teams as well too, that they're like, this is great. I'm going to report all of these numbers that really end up looking like a receipt for marketing versus like a, okay, but what does this actually mean?

14:59Right. And you have to start with like your, the numbers that you want to collect based on the goals you have before you even start things. Like a great example of this is, well, I'll go back to like email marketing. I don't know why I'm on an email marketing kick this morning, but I am. So like, let's say it's email marketing and I'm doing a pre-event promotion for ultimately what a webinar is going to be. What I'm looking at is maybe I want to try four different pre-event emails based on four different segments. The information that I'm trying to get is like which one of these groups responds the most to this particular event because the content is covering this part of the marketing funnel, right?

15:42Like I'm getting super granular as to like even setting up a pre-event email for that. What I then am reporting back to the executives is like, Yes, we did this webinar that got these great marketing receipt numbers, right? But more than anything, this is what I can tell you about the audience, right? I tested four different types of segments based on this kind of audience. And the ones that gravitated to it the most had like the highest NPS scores, the highest open rates. So I think that we should target them with this particular campaign. So to me, it's I've collected the data. I am now telling them the story.

16:23And then the third part of it, I'm creating an action plan based on all of those things. I think where we really fall short as marketers is not connecting all three of those things because nobody just wants to see the numbers and nobody just wants to hear the story. They want to know what the action is based on those first two things. Does that make sense? Yeah, I love it. I think it's, I think it's almost like an outline that I'm hearing is, is, is yes. Like the headline is here, here are the numbers. But here's what we were trying to learn or accomplish or achieve. Here's what we did learn. And then here's what we're going to do about it.

17:01Like, like for, for an action oriented CEO or CFO that, that only has a half an hour this week to think about this topic. Exactly. It's, it's like, you've got, you've got to hit on all those four things. The other thing that I would recommend that I was thinking of when you when you said that is um is I think it's a good idea with your CEO or CFO to say what's on your mind when it comes when it comes to marketing like are you thinking you know are you thinking right now about are you worried about retention and churn rate are you thinking about what people think about our brand are you thinking about if you know when they have the the 10 minutes to two hours a week to think about mark if you know what's on their mind then And when you're able to capture them in the room or over email, you'll get them to lean in a little more because they feel like you're addressing what they care about most.

17:53Now, I definitely agree. I think that you do have to be aligned with executive leadership. And even if you are not the one that's talking to the executive leadership team, you're the one that's supporting the person that's talking to them. I think communication all the way down is so important. I, as a leader who am the one that does present to executive leadership, it is my job to also inform my team, like, Hey, these are the things that we are trying to solve. This is our why. So you guys are executing on these tasks, but you have to understand our why, because I want them to get just as excited as well, too.

18:30One last no on like that, you know, quote unquote framework that I had for those three is I also always end with, I've got more of the numbers if you want to be able to see it. So I don't want them to just think like, okay, I've delivered this to you. I've been in meetings where executives want to dig into the spreadsheet. Fantastic. I've got all the numbers. If you want to be able to see like a more detailed breakdown, I'd love to be able to send you all of the numbers. Like I can dork out, but this is like, you know, the TLDR of like whatever it is that we're executing. So I think you always have to be prepared to provide the receipts as well.

19:10That's a great, great point. You know, you had the positive spin on that. I mean, my kind of like, my other spin was just to make sure that the leadership team doesn't feel like you're cherry picking, you know, cherry picking. Oh, absolutely. Like, here are the wins we've had. Here are the losses we've had. Here's how, you know, being totally open and candid about all that stuff is super important. Hold on. Before you move on to that, I almost want to challenge that too. I think that we have to stop framing it as a win and loss. Because even in something that's not successful, if you use that framework of like, this is the why we did this, you are always showing a return on time invested that you've done.

19:51If you remove the, this is where we won and this is what we lost, we're gaining something in everything that we're freaking doing over here in marketing. We need our own little PR department on how marketing is viewed because everything is as much internal as it is external when it comes to that. That was just a final note on the win-loss. No, I'm glad you said that because if you're able to justify why you did something, even if it didn't work out the way that you hoped, then you're right. You're putting into the learning column. There's so many parts of your career I want to ask you about. I'm going to kind of jump around.

20:24Let's do it. If that's all right. So you spent a meaningful amount of your career in the area of like content and communities. And that's not important. That's not important for every brand, but it's important for many brands. And I think one of the questions right now is when it comes to interacting with community or creating content, what's the appropriate role of AI in that? And I wonder if you have, if you have a point of view, because we're all, we're all sort of thinking about that as marketing leaders. Well, one, I'm obsessed with AI. I absolutely love it. And I think it definitely plays a role.

20:57But before I even get to that, I will say, you I think content and community is for every single brand. For some brands, it is like 12 layers deep. And for other brands, it's maybe two layers deep. So I think that you have to evaluate it. It's the customer marketing part that people are really missing out on. If they are not thinking about community for one, also content fuels lead generation. So it touches everything. In regards to how you're leveraging AI for content and community, I see AI as my buddy. It is my buddy to be able to automate, to do the quick things that I do not have the time to do that maybe do not need as high of a human touch that other things do.

21:44For me, one of my biggest challenges is the blank screen of writing. I love to write, but to get started, real tough. One of the tools that I use from an AI perspective, and I can give you a list of all the tools that I use because I use many and I subscribe to everything. I'm a software adopter and an AI adopter. I'm always trying to hack things. But, you know, one of like the ways that I use it is to get past the blank screen. I want to like write, I give it a really great prompt and I'm like, I'm going to throw all of my ideas on here. And then based on these ideas, what is the overarching thing of what I'm trying to say?

22:32Like that has turned what would be a whole day of me procrastinating and going back and forth and getting something to eat and then getting something to drink. Like the ways that I can avoid writing something is unbelievable when like I have that writer's block. But to be able to do that and then have it come back and then like go back and forth gives me a starting point. So to me as a marketer, I think like that's a great way to use that. I also think from a community perspective, it's, hey, let's say I do a community meetup. I've got a post-event survey and people have said, one of the questions are like, what do you want to see in the future?

23:13That is something I can input into AI and say, I'm trying to craft the next five meetups. This is what they have told me on all of this. Based on this information, what are some suggested topics that you think will really help, you know, scratch that itch? That's not exactly what I would write into, you know, like a chat GPT, for example. But like, that's a great way to be able to leverage that. I think too often people are like, oh, you know, AI is writing all the blogs. AI is writing all of this. I think if you use it as a buddy and a partner, like that's where it helps with content and community.

23:49I like how you're talking about the prompts and that you use the term buddy. Because I talk to, I've been using Gemini a lot lately. I talk Gemini like my buddy. And I would say something like, I have a webinar coming up. It's about this. I'm having a writer's block on how to describe it. Could you give me a couple of ideas? And then Gemini may give me three ideas I don't like. And I say, oh, I don't like these. Here's why. Can you think of something else? And you're right. It's like the creative spark that can get you going. I think that's great. You said something earlier on about community.

24:29I wanted to make sure I understood it. And you were talking about how many levels down you go. Were you talking about how narrowly you define a community? Because that's something I've been thinking about lately. Well, now I need you to dive a little deeper into that. Unpack that question. What do you mean by that? Let's say you're a brand that helps people save money. Is the appropriate level of community people that like to save money? Or is it people that are obsessed with shoes and want to, you know, want to save money on shoes? Or is it, you know, or is it parents that, you know, that want to save money?

25:11You know, they've just had a new baby, whatever. Like, like what, because there's the broader you go with a community, you may touch more people, but they're a little bit less obsessed with what you're talking about. And as you go narrower, they become more obsessed, but you're talking to less people. Anyway, that's where I thought you were going. So that was the nature of my question. I did not mean that, but I think that that's interesting to me. The way that I define community is just people with a shared goal, a shared goal in mind. And in the example that you gave is people who are interested in, you know, finance, right?

25:52I think what you're describing from like a niche perspective, I think those are also communities as well, too. And this is where content plays into it, right? Like, while the person who is interested in shoes, and that's why they're interested in finance, because they want to maximize how many shoes there are, it's a subset of that bigger community, but they're still interested in like the overarching umbrella topic that like that bigger community would have, it can be an offshoot, right? I think you can get super niche and then eventually you end up with two people that end up being best friends forever.