Tell Engaging Stories Like a Fearless PMM

0:02Hi friends, welcome to Product Marketing Adventures, the only show that takes you beyond theory and into the real execution of product marketing. My name is Elle Grossenbacher, your trusted guide and host of this show. In each episode, I bring in expert product marketers to co-host two segments of this show. First, a case study example of their work, followed by a messaging critique for companies we admire. So if you're a PMM looking for practical guidance and inspiration, you're in the right place. Are you ready? Let's go.

0:41I want to paint a familiar picture for most of you. Imagine you're walking a trade show floor and booth after booth, everything sounds the same. Same buzzwords, same safe messaging, same we help you drive efficiency and unlock value. It all just blends together. This is what happens in B2B. We're trying to speak to so many stakeholders that everything we do gets watered down. We play it safe and we lose what actually makes someone care. So how do you break out of that? How do you go from sounding like everyone else to actually connecting? Today, we're getting into one of the hardest and arguably the most underrated skills in product marketing, how to take something, well, boring and make people actually care.

1:29And we're doing it with someone who has built a reputation for doing exactly that. With that, I'm so excited to welcome Stefan Goldbach to the show. Stefan is a product marketer at Pushpay, but you guys, that's just the baseline. He's known for his viral, unhinged and genuinely hilarious satirical videos that have taken over product marketing on LinkedIn. What makes Stefan so perfect for this episode is that he isn't just creative, but he also knows how to bring organizations along for that ride. He helped Pushpay transform their approach of storytelling in a pretty cautious market, that non-profit donations kind of market.

2:09And he did it inside the company with stakeholders, brand guidelines, all the risk aversion. And if you haven't been there before, take my word for it. That's where it gets really hard. But Stefan makes it look easy, and he's here with us today to share his playbook. Stefan, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Those are very kind words. I never know if having unhinged content is a good or a bad thing, but I'm going to take it as a compliment. And yeah, I've listened to the show a couple of times. It's really good. So I'm happy to be here. Yay. Yeah, I know. Bringing in all of the great minds who do take the bold grist.

2:43It's all good. Okay. So first and foremost, just help me and any listeners out there who may not know, like bring us up to speed a little bit. What is PushPay exactly? Yeah, PushPay is in the church tech industry. And I best describe that as a CRM mixed with payment processing for donations, you know, and this is all for churches and nonprofits. So if you think about churches, they basically act as like an entire small community, right? They have schools, they have groups, they have events. Some have thousands of congregants. So to run an organization as complex as that, you need a lot of software.

3:17And that's basically where Pushbit comes in. And I would imagine having software that you feel like you can trust. And once it's super integrated into so many aspects of that community, it's probably really important. So the content that you put out probably plays a really big role in building that trust. So it kind of makes the case study that we're about to dig in here a little bit more interesting and relevant with this aspect of building trust with your audience and internally with your stakeholders. So I don't want to give too much away. So again, for the first segment of our show, we're doing a case study.

3:52And today we're talking all about how you introduced more creative storytelling through the various types of content that you put out. So tell us more about what was going on at Pushpay when you realized something needed to change. Sure. I've been a product marketer for over eight years. I worked across multiple industries. But I started at Pushpay a little bit over a year ago. And this was my first time working at Church Tech. I've never been anything close to Church Tech before. And I took a look at a lot of our content outputs from product marketing. And a lot of it was safe to the point of making me fall asleep, right?

4:28Which is never really a good sign in marketing. It was a lot of stock photos or stock videos of people hugging in churches, a lot of cliches, a lot of those terms that we all love, the transforms, the revolutionize some of the generic benefits of save time and money. And as a part of my competitive research, I looked at our competitors and a lot of them were doing the same thing. Honestly, to the point that if you just switched out the logos between different content and ours, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, which in marketing is really the last thing you want to do. If you want to be anything in marketing, it's to be different.

5:01Absolutely. And I feel like I personally have been here before, probably multiple times, to be honest, where you feel like that stock content that you're referring to. I would bet every B2B marketer out there listening right now has experienced that with their own brand and cannot resist the urge to purge it as soon as possible. So how did you approach that situation? Like you're looking around, you're seeing all this like stock stuff and you're realizing like, this isn't making us stand out in a good way. Like what was your task at hand as you evaluated all of this? Yeah, really the task was to make the content more interesting.

5:40You know, how do we make customers care about our marketing? How do we make customers feel something when they see a piece of our content? How do we get them to start engaging on social media? And kind of most importantly, what can we actually get away with? We are marketing to churches after all. So there's some lines that you just can't cross, right? I think there is a misconception out there that churches are more uptight and maybe wouldn't like funny. But I promise you, your average church administrator is spending their free time on TikTok and looking at memes just like the rest of us. Everybody likes funny.

6:08But for this group, we need to be respectful of certain things. So part of the challenge is kind of finding where that line was. Right. So I would bet, I would guess a lot of experimentation. And again, I can't help but thinking just as you're talking, that trust aspect to me just would keep popping up. And even as you're explaining, like you're trying to find where the line is because you don't want to lose their trust. You want to keep their trust, but you want to also ignite some emotional connection. And a lot of this is from a content perspective and with marketing, it's all empirical, right?

6:40Like you can see it and believe it. Like we know I can look at stock photos and know that this isn't genuine. This isn't authentic. Like you saw that when you went in and, you know, started evaluating this stuff. So I'm curious, as you were seeing all the empirical evidence of all of this, were there any metrics or measures that kind of signaled to you that like, okay, I can see that we have all these stock photos. I know that that's off just because that is one of my guiding principles as a marketer. But was there anything else from like a metrics or, you know, was it revenue? Was it pipeline?

7:16Was it engagement? Like, was there anything else that was kind of slipping or just like not hitting where you needed it to hit? Yeah, yeah. Engagement or launches probably wasn't the best, you know, on both like Pendo guide notifications and email open rates and things of that nature. We have product videos that maybe get, you know, one to two likes on social. So these situations, I like to look at who in the industry is actually making noise. What are they actually giving our target audience that we probably aren't? Pushpick is the market leader in the industry, but we have a crazy amount of competitors.

7:46And one competitor in particular, they weren't taking a lot of business or anything like that, but they were generating a lot of buzz and getting more attention. And I was looking at the product and the product itself really wasn't half as good as ours. So that situation I'm asking myself, okay, so what are they doing to actually get that attention? And a lot of it was because they had this young, good-looking founder. And he was very brash and sold a vision very well. So while the product may have not been as good, he made customers feel like they were part of this big movement to reinvent church tech.

8:17And that kind of marketing of a brand centered around a charming founder really broke through the noise of the endless competition out there. So in that situation, I'd ask myself, okay, so how can we also get prospects to care? How do we make ourselves stand out? How do we appealing to those same human elements that was making our own competitor appealing. Yeah. I like that you didn't immediately jump into like a copycat strategy, which does happen a lot with marketers, right? Like, let's put our founder out there. And, you know, because I'm like, gosh, I've been there with another company where they were so obsessed with the competition.

8:54It just started looking like a me too, rather than something that's authentic, different, connected. So how did you do it? How did you inspire the company to make a really big, bold move that was differentiated but didn't cross the line? Yeah, I think anytime you want to make any kind of changes, you have to establish credibility first. So I was walking into PushPay. The first thing I wanted to do was crush it with some easy wins across departments, such as updating some sales enabling pieces, improving communication in a few areas. And then about one to two months into the company, I talked to a few stakeholders, my boss, a few others, and just outlined what I learned so far by analyzing our market and our competitor efforts and offered a couple ideas for making our product videos just a little bit more fun.

9:41And after getting that buy-in, I slowly turned up the heat. I'm a big fan of the frog and the boiling pot analogy. If you really try to go crazy all at once with your content, you're going to get kind of shut down probably by the stakeholders. you know it's better to start small and keep pushing a little bit each time and kind of prove your strategy your credibility and then once you can do that you kind of dial it up more so i worked with our videographer and we started slowly kind of gradually moving away from the street kind of talking head videos and some of the stock footage and just adding a little bit more movement being a little more playful i started using like a whiteboard and using kind of fun drawings to kind of explain concepts just kind of make it a little bit more you know appealing and then after that We've actually been graduating to more complex skits recently, kind of putting ourselves in the customer's shoes and tell stories in a more fun and engaging way.

10:30Yeah, yeah. Sounds like a very similar style to some of the videos that you put out on product marketing, that skit style, which not very many brands do. And the ones that do, it can either go really cheesy. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it's okay to be cheesy. I'm cheesy sometimes. but it's hard to nail that and get it right. So I guess just real quick, before we jump into a playbook, tell us what happened at the end. It's probably still ongoing, but once you started to do some of the more bolder pieces of content, what was the result of some of that? Yeah. And first off, I think cheesy can be good.

11:12I think cheesy, especially now in the days of AI and content saturation and all those things, Cheezys and adding a little human element can actually be a good thing, actually kind of a bonding experience to their customers. So I would push back on the element that maybe Cheesy is always bad. It can actually be a pretty powerful marketing agent. But in this situation, the first good sign was that people were just kind of talking about our content, right? I was just getting those little things like, oh, that whiteboard was actually pretty cool. I love the way that you kind of explained that complicated concept.

11:42That was pretty interesting. And then for metrics, we saw increases in email click-through rates, average time spent in-app guides went up. And our launches actually started increasing our leads as well. So I was looking at those different aspects. And even recently, a prospect actually messaged me on LinkedIn saying that a recent skip video was actually hilarious. I like Pushbay so much more now. So it's even those small things, like even when a prospect tells you that, they're going to consider Pushbay in a more positive light. I think that's something that I was really brought up to hear. Yeah, it's all validation that you are building trust with the customer, with a community that surrounds your product.

12:17So yeah, I feel like every B2B marketer out there right now has dreamt about doing something like this. Like taking the boring B2B content and making it more bold and more creative and having a stronger connection. And what a huge compliment to actually have a customer reach out to you saying that they liked your content. Like customers don't do that. Like they don't pay a marketer compliment like that, at least not very often. So that's really cool. Okay, so now I want to jump into turning this into a playbook. So if someone is sitting out here thinking like, okay, my content is really boring, but my company would never go for a bold or it would be really hard to do that.

12:58Where do I start? Like what would step one be for the marketer who's kind of stuck in that situation? Yeah, step one is definitely, you know, deeply understand your customer, you know, and like, like my aspect, I probably use a lot of humor and humor is really one of the more like powerful marketing tools that you can use. But what people find funny varies across different demographics and industries, right? So I would strongly recommend to get to know your customers, interview them, hop on sales calls, attend events, you know, et cetera. And for me, I have a few customers now that I'm kind of close with close with.

13:31So if I have a little bit more of a wacky idea, I'll just ask them and run it by them first. Like, Hey, would you find this funny? Does this, does this speak to you? You know, and I'll kind of take that into account. It's like your little built-in message testing. Yeah. Yeah. My old built-in notes attached to you. And then I'll kind of take their feedback and kind of adjust from there. And they've stopped me just making bad decisions before. So I always appreciate their feedback. That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay. So assuming that, you know, most creative content has that emotional connection and like, I guess, how do you actually get closer to that emotional layer of your customer?

14:04How do you find it? I mean, you mentioned kind of doing a little bit of the message testing. Like, is there anything more in that understanding your customer step that you do to make sure you are emotionally connecting? So what I'll say here is go beyond the basics, right? So everyone defaults to the values of their products and just a few cliches of save time and money. But those benefits don't actually elicit emotion. So try to go a little bit deeper. And I'll use an example here. So let's say you're marketing a sales coaching software to sales managers. And I know this audience well. I was a former seller, so I can speak to it a little bit.

14:38A service level of pain would be using that sales coaching software to hit your pipeline numbers, right? That's how the generic output of what most marketers would use. But that's really the boring story here. So let's go a little bit deeper. What actually bothers a sales manager on an emotional level? It's probably being stuck in meetings seven hours a day, doing endless forecasting, and basically not having enough time to coach their reps, which is why they probably became a sales manager in the first place to actually do that coaching. So if you're telling the story of the sales coaching software, appeal to that negative emotion of a before state of really being stuck in meetings, not being there for your reps when they're struggling and they need you, and then tell the after-state story of using that coaching software to regain time back, create structure, and becoming the caring manager that really they always wanted to be.

15:24So that's really just one example, but just always dig deeper than that surface level and think about what actually bothers your customers on that emotional level. Yeah, I love that you called out, and I'm going to steal this from you. Don't worry, I'll give you credit, in the future. The boring benefits. That's why you just uncovered it. That's why B2B is boring. Yeah. Because it is. There are some shatting examples, but yes, by and large, it is boring, which makes standing out fun, actually, and actually makes it a little easier. It does. It does make it easier. It's counterintuitive because it's hard to get there, but then once you get there, it's way more fun.

16:04Okay. So step one was understand your customers. What's step two? What's the next step? Yeah. So back to boiling the frog that you talked about a little bit earlier. So don't turn the heat up all at once. And this is both for internal and external purposes. So internally, if you go crazy and you haven't built credibility first, you're going to get shut down fast. I've been there before. You got to have that street cred first before you can have that trust. And externally, you may not know your target audience as well as you think. And you could face major blowback if you haven't tested some smaller things first.

16:39So I always advocate for dialing up the heat, testing it, getting metrics, establish yourself, and then to continue to kind of keep pushing a little bit further each time. Got it. Okay. So what you're explaining is sounding like mini experiments, right? Like going a little bit further, seeing what works. Was that really deliberate for you? Or is that just how you operate? Like I'm imagining, do you have a strategy with a content calendar? Talk me through what that looks like for you. I mean, at PushPay, I always knew our end goal was to make entertaining content. I'm a little more wacky and fun of my personality.

17:19So I know that's always the end goal. But there's different types of wacky and fun, like I'm talking about, and knowing your audience. especially when you're marketing to a more conservative audience like we are. So for me, it's kind of have a plan on how to escalate that boldness, right? It's the speed. It's how we're going to be bold exactly determined by those testing metrics. So I always want to get bold, but how I'm getting there and the speed of it and everything like that is going to vary by the situation and what the tests are telling us at the time. Got it. Okay. But you had these little experiments to gradually turn up the heat, so to speak.

17:55on boldness. And you said that was intentional of both internally and externally, which I think is so smart because you don't want to, especially in the type of market that may be a little bit more just generally, broadly speaking, risk averse. So yeah, it's smart to do that. So you don't totally shock your audience internally and externally. And it sounds like it would be if I were to try to replicate this strategy a bit, putting together like a mini experiments on, okay, where should I draw the line in the sand? And then also, as you mentioned, like have your customer, have a customer or two that's a friendly customer who can kind of give you guidance on like, no, not funny or like too risky can kind of help guide you on like how bold you should go with some of those mini experiments.

18:51I guess like what's next after I have all those things in place as I'm running experiments? Is it just execution? Walk me through where do I go next? I would say prepare to handle objections. You're going to face questions. Is this off-brand? Does this match your current marketing guidelines? A lot of people just don't like change. So some people will feel a little uneasy about anything different than what we've been currently doing. So I'd be prepared to answer those objection questions and be able to back it up with the metrics that you've been kind of accumulating as you've been doing the testing along the way.

19:25Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I've done as, I mean, I haven't done this kind of experiment, but I've done other kinds of experiments in my marketing career. And one thing that I found works really well, I didn't necessarily think about it for objection handling. So that's a really good perspective on it. But one thing that I found that it helps to keep my stakeholders happy is to tell them that I'm going to run an experiment and why and what it's going to, what it's going to tell us. Um, not necessarily what's what the experiment will outcome will be, but at least like it's going to inform us on what, like, that's the kind of thing that I would do.

20:04And then I would conduct the experiment and then I would go back again and be like, Hey, remember that experiment I told you about? Like, here are the results. And then here's what I'm going to do next based on that. And I found that work really well. I love adding, having all of those metrics in for objection handling feels like it would help. But also I could see that being such a, you know, just a bummer buzzkill, like, you know, losing momentum. Like, how did you handle that? Like, how did you not let it slow you down? Yeah, you know, back to turning up the heat, you know, every time you do those tests, have evidence how you did it.

20:36If someone internally doesn't like something, but you could point back to hard stat and why perform better, that will answer a lot of objections. And, you know, just be very confident and stand up for yourself. You know, I know that sounds small, but a lot of marketers kind of cave at the first kind of pushback from a higher up. But it's much better to hold your ground a lot of times and speak up for yourself and speak confidently on what you're doing. Right, right. Okay, so what do I do if I I have my customer insights and I have my content experiments planned out, you know, that like gradual boldness.

21:09And I'm ready for objections, I think. Isn't it? No, is it just, is it go time? Just start executing? And do I just keep, you know, kind of going on those steps? What else is next? It depends on the organization, right? You know, because the last piece is collaboration with other marketers. Unless you're at a tiny startup, you'll likely have to create content with other teammates. At Pushbay, we have this videographer. Her name is Marianne. She's amazing. And she does the filming of her content. But it took a while for us to kind of find a groove. She had mostly done those kind of corporate style videos.

21:45And I'm a guy who makes kind of ridiculous, wacky videos for LinkedIn. So it's kind of a clash of styles at first. So it was a little difficult to understand each other. So even back then, like the turning up the heat, like was the best way to figure out like how do we work, you know, best together. And now that we filmed at least, you know, 70, 80 videos together and we kind of tweaked it each time, like, hey, let's try this something different each time. Now we're kind of lockstep in what we do. So, you know, my other advice is figure out how to work with other marketers in your team and be understand their styles and how you two are kind of mesh bet the best.

22:17Yeah. 70 to 80 videos. So many videos. You haven't been, I mean, I guess you've been there. A lot of them are small, but yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's so many videos. Okay. So understand your customers. Turn up the heat gradually. Be ready for objection handling. Work well with your stakeholder marketing team, the other marketers who are going to help you execute. And then wrapping all this up is the fifth step of this playbook, like just continuing to iterate and finding that groove and evolving it based on how your customers may be accepting this new style of content that you're putting out in the world.

22:58Yeah, it's never-ending refinement. Even as the business expands, right? A lot of times we're going after different types of customers. Your ICPs can kind of slowly shift in time. So you're constantly kind of evaluating the market, your customers, who you're trying to go out after, and then making tweaks in your messaging to kind of match situations. So it's a never-ending process. But that's what makes creativity fun, right? It's always a new challenge out there. And it's why I love marketing at least. Yeah, it's super fun. I totally agree with that. Okay, and speaking of fun, part of, in my opinion anyway, there's like three parts of the fun.

23:36There's like the aha moment when you're like, ooh, I have a good idea, like based on maybe some insights that you're getting about your customer, like whoever's going to be on the receiving end of whatever it is that you're creating. And then there's the act of creating. It can also be very fun. And then the last thing that's just very gratifying is the end result of feeling like that worked really well. So I guess help us understand how do you know when something is working versus it's just noise versus like, okay, oops, that went too far. Like, yes, the metrics, but like, is there anything else at play here in terms of, is it customer sentiment?

24:16Is it pipeline? What's your go-to, okay, yeah, that worked outcome? Yeah. I mean, anytime you try something new, I'm watching engagement, click-through rates, time on content. Those are going to be kind of your early signals. But vanity metrics can kind of fool you, of course, as we all know as marketers. So I try to back a couple of things up with something happening downstream. Are leads moving? Are prospects mentioning the content and sales calls. The last one's my favorite one here. When a prospect brings it up unprompted, you actually know it kind of stuck. Like I said about that prospect message.