Parallel Pathing: Accelerating Short term Wins alongside Long term Strategies for Explosive Business Growth

In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, host Kerry Curran and special guest Casie Gillette, Senior Director of DemandGen at Customers.AI, dive into "Parallel Pathing: Accelerating Short-term Wins alongside Long-term Strategies for Explosive Business Growth." 

Business leaders will learn how to balance immediate revenue generation with sustainable growth strategies. Casie shares insights on breaking down silos between marketing, sales, and customer service, emphasizing the power of real-time feedback and collaboration. 

Discover how to enhance your marketing efforts, align them with sales goals, and drive your business forward. Tune in for expert advice on achieving explosive growth in today's competitive landscape.

Transcript

Podcast Guest: Casie Gillette

Host: Kerry Curran

Topic: Parallel Pathing: Accelerating Short-term Wins alongside Long-term Strategies for Explosive Business Growth

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, the ultimate resource for business leaders eager to skyrocket your company's growth! 

I'm your host, Kerry Curran, and this episode is, “Parallel Pathing: Accelerating Short-term Wins alongside Long-term Strategies for Explosive Business Growth” With special guest Casie Gillette, Senior Director of DemandGen at Customers.AI.

In this episode we dive into the importance of parallel pathing initiatives to achieve both short-term and long-term success. We also discuss the importance of cross-team communication, revealing how breaking down silos between marketing, sales, and customer service can lead to explosive growth. Casie shares how her team leverages real-time feedback and collaboration to create impactful marketing strategies and drive business success.

Are you looking to enhance your marketing efforts and align them with your sales goals? Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.786)

All right, and welcome Casie. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your extensive experience.

Casie Gillette (00:09.422)

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Kerry. My name's Casie Gillette. I'm currently the Senior Director of DemandGen at Customers AI. We're a visitor identification platform. We're helping with remarketing, a SaaS company. And that's really my background. I actually started in SEO back in 2005, not knowing what SEO was, what the heck I was doing. But I figured, gosh, I should probably get a job.

So that's really where life led me. I've really worked in the age, you know, most of my time has been spent in the agency space, specifically on the B2B side working with SaaS companies. I've worked in -house before I'm back in -house. So it's always such an interesting mix and it's always like a cool, you know, it's cool to see both sides and I think it's been nice to really get that experience. So, you know, excited what you're doing with the podcast, excited to talk about marketing and … 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:00.766)

Hehehe

Casie Gillette (01:04.718)

… you know, what we're doing these days.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:07.194)

No, excellent. Thank you. And I know we've talked a bit about how working in the agency space, you get such a broad view of experience like different clients, sizes, industries, business challenges, budgets, and flexibility. So it's definitely a very valuable background and it must be interesting going client side, like what would have been the biggest kind of changes or observations.

Casie Gillette (01:34.638)

Yeah, I mean, like you said, you know, when I worked in -house previously, you know, I made it about three years before I was like, all right, I'm a little bored because I think on the agency side, you know, like you've done it for so long that you're so used to just having a million things happening all at once. You're constantly going back and forth from clients. And I will say like the first couple of weeks, I was like, I don't ...

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:43.898)

Got it.

Casie Gillette (02:00.174)

… have a thousand meetings. Like this is glorious. I'm done. So much done. But I think what's actually really cool from a learning perspective is that it's such a benefit is that when you're on the agency side, there's this piece missing of business goals, perhaps, or the data side, perhaps. And so I love being back in Salesforce, right? Using tools like that, like really understanding like …

What are the conversations being had? You know, especially when you're on the agency side, you're just told these are our goals and here's how you need to, and you got to figure out how to achieve it. But you know, it's cool being in that decision of what are the goals? How do we get there? What is the strategy? So I think the other piece too is just having that deep understanding of what's happening next, right? I know the product so well, and as much as you want to understand the product and the customers when you're on the agency side, like, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:35.13)

Great, great.

Casie Gillette (02:54.222)

It's just not the same because all of your time isn't spent there. So I think they both have pros and cons, but it was definitely an adjustment, but I think in the best way because I've done it before.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:05.498)

Yeah, no, definitely. No, and they're lucky to have you again with your broad experience. So it's definitely a good place to be. So when you're kind of talking to your industry peers and clients, like what are you hearing? What are some of the questions or business challenges that they're coming to you with?

Casie Gillette (03:26.222)

Yeah, I mean, I think we're in such an interesting spot right now, specifically just with all the changes that are happening in marketing. I actually said to a friend recently, I was like, gosh, I'm glad I'm not doing just SEO anymore because I think it's becoming exponentially harder. Same thing with Google Ads, right? 

Same thing with a lot of these demand gen tactics where you know, now you're seeing how different the search results are with AI, right? Google's trying to adjust. Everybody is trying to adjust. Ads are becoming more complicated. On top of it, like we just lost, we're losing cookies, right? We just lost a portion of cookies. Like that's going away. And I think as marketers, I think it's a cool time, but it's also a little bit scary . Wow, this is like in my time of doing this in almost 20 years, to me, this is one of the biggest shifts I have seen.

And so it's really interesting to see how people are reacting. I mean, I find myself, you know, looking like I'm constantly doing research on what's happening. What are people talking about? What do I need to be thinking about? And for me as well, like, you know, just thinking from a demand generation perspective, like I came into this role thinking I got this. I know SEO, I know ads like.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:43.098)

Yeah.

Casie Gillette (04:44.686)

And I really had to shift it and start thinking about what other tactics can we be doing because even just, you know, trying to do some SEO, like I wasn't seeing the results that I was typically used to seeing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:55.706)

Yeah, no, and especially in the B2B space, it just takes longer and it's so much more competitive these days as well. And so you were saying that your company has shifted their business goals or there's been some evolution, I should say, since you started. So how have you approached that from the marketing side and the changes that they've been rolling out?

Casie Gillette (05:20.59)

Yeah, so one of the cool things about coming into a startup is that things move really fast. And when I came in, so previously the company was a chat bot and you know, they had gained a lot of traction. The company has been around for like, I think almost six years. I only started about eight months ago.

And I think it was probably about six months prior to that, that they shifted to this website visitor identification platform, like the remarketing tools. And so seeing that evolve has been really cool. And just thinking about how we shift what we're doing, it's kind of like reestablishing your brand a little bit. People had known, hey, I'm sort of familiar with that company, but...

Now it's a different company and I think you guys do this, but now we do this. So, you know, it is really cool to have to go through that, but I do think, you know, that evolution of the brand is such an interesting thing to be a part of. Because for me, you have to take a step back and you all really have to figure out like, who are we talking to? What resonates with them? You know, we're really just iterating all the time to see what it's like what people respond to.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:34.042)

Yeah, and you need to reiterate quickly and learn fast, fail fast, learn, keep going. Definitely. And so we talked a bit about your team structure and how you have a very tight -knit, nimble team. And there's a lot of need for brand consistency as it goes from the marketing channels to the sales team. So talk a bit about how you're tackling that and ensuring that communication.

Casie Gillette (07:06.062)

Yeah, you know, I mentioned earlier, you know, one of the cool things about moving in houses, you have more access to data and you have more knowledge of products. And that's one of the things that I feel like I've been super fortunate about, especially because we are a smaller team. So we have three people on the marketing team. So I report to the VP of Marketing, the VP of Marketing reports to the CEO. That being said.

I see the CEO every day, right, or talk to him every day. We have meetings with products once or twice a week. I have meetings with CS once or twice a week. So that knowledge and being able to stay consistent is easy.

Because those communication lines are so open. I remember when I was working in -house at Grasshopper, like at the time, I thought what they did, one of the things they did was like the coolest thing to me as a marketer was that we had weekly meetings with support.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:42.874)

Mm-hmm.

Casie Gillette (07:58.158)

We had weekly meetings with sales. And so I was always preaching even at the agency, like, hey, how do we get in front of, how do we get meetings with these people? How do we get in front of these people so that we can really understand? But I think in terms of consistency, I mean, of the three marketing members, we talk multiple times a day, every day. It's just easy when you have that. But I think the key is that we're also able to get out ahead of things.

we're meeting with a product and I know what's coming a month from now. I know what's coming in three weeks from now. And so we can start planning for that. We know what's ahead. It just makes it so much easier. Get on the agency side. It was like, hey, we have this now and we need you to go talk about it and write about it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:49.178)

Yeah.

And so I love the integration and the examples, because I think that's something that more brands, especially B2B, should be paying attention to. You talked about being able to meet with your client services team to get the case study data, the sales team. The sales team has such a wealth of knowledge because they're hearing firsthand what the prospects are, what are the questions they're asking, why are they even calling you in the first place? So that's definitely an example that more B2B teams and marketers need to be thinking about especially with that integration and communication across the team. So I love that example.

Casie Gillette (09:25.838)

Yeah, and I think just to expand on that, you know, one of the, for me personally, you know, in the demand gen side of things is I'm always thinking about, all right, what content do we need? What are we going to talk about? Like, what are we posting on social media? What messaging are we putting in our ads?

And excuse me, so a lot of times what's neat about it is that I know what the product is saying, or I'm sitting with the CEO and he's saying, hey, this message is kind of resonating, like let's go with it. Or for case studies, for example, you know, we have these weekly meetings and CS will present something of, hey, here's this really cool thing, here's what's working.

Well, now I can go post that. I can create, like I just built two case studies around these examples that CS had just provided to us. I just posted some LinkedIn posts. I have a copy of these testimonials and we wouldn't have that if I didn't have that direct line. So I think it's super cool to be able to do that. But also it just goes to show, you know, I think I just saw something recently where we know case studies and testimonials, especially in the B2B space can drive conversions by like 35 % can improve conversions by 35 % or something. So we're in, anyone knows getting a case study made is really hard. So if we have happy customers, like we're not out there searching, like I'm being told, Hey, this is the person they're happy it's working. So those direct lines of communication are just so important to be able to do that kind of stuff.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:54.906)

Yeah, definitely. And definitely need more examples of that.

So we talked a bit about how you're balancing your short term and long term goals, building up the new brand and connecting with your expanded ICP while bringing in the revenue. So what's your strategy for balancing the long term and short term goals?

Casie Gillette (11:21.998)

I love this. So when you and I had spoken, you said, you're parallel pathing. And I was like, I haven't heard that term. And I was like, yes, that's exactly, exactly what we're doing. You know, when you're in, whether you're an agency or a startup environment, there's a lot of similarities there. You don't have the luxury of time. You really don't. So it's very much a, how do we drive results right now? So there is no, let's build this strategy out for four months and then see that it works.

Right? Like we have to be doing things in the meantime to get there. So I think a good example of this is, you know, we have an ABM program and for it's, it's been like a huge lead driver for us for a really long time. It does really well. Well.

We're evolving that. So now we're taking that list and we're segmenting it into these very particular audiences, right? So now we're going to that next level of, okay, let's get these personalized lists for people who are interested in Klaviyo, right? Or let's get these e -commerce lists, people who use Shopify. And so we're still continuing with our ABM, but at the same time, we're starting to refine that. Same thing with ads, right?

We run ads, well, we've had these awareness ads and we're testing a new message. All right, well, I can put that up and put this into a new campaign while this existing campaign is running. So yeah, we just, you just really have to think about, all right, what is our long -term goal? What are the things we have to do to get there? And a lot of times, especially in this environment, they're bigger goals, I think, right? It's like, hey, we want to get to this next level of revenue or we want to get to this MRR. 

But at the same time, it's like, all right, well, what are we doing this quarter? And what are the immediate things? That's one of the things I absolutely love about our team. My VPN marketing is just brilliant. You know, we met in June and it was like, what are the five priorities that we need to accomplish in the next four weeks? Right. And so it's like, okay, these are both short term and long term, but they're the things that are going to have the biggest impact. So yeah, I really love that parallel path thing idea. I just never gave it a name, but I thought that's exactly what we're doing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:34.978)

Yeah, we're just making up words here, but no, I definitely it's it's that's but that's sped on, right? And I think that's what we've been hearing is a lot of B2B companies are doubling down on sales and reducing marketing budgets, right? And they're like, because we need the sales soon, now, quickly, and you're going to miss out on that relationship building that takes more time. And so it's just, yeah, you need to be doing both. You need to be parallel pathing for sure. And one of the things, too, we talked about was your SPF SDR, BDR role and how that's kind of evolving within your organization. I feel like stronger marketing can really benefit the SDR, BDR role and it too often it's so segmented. So tell us a bit about how you're structured and because I think that would be really beneficial for other companies to consider.

Casie Gillette (14:32.846)

Yeah, I mean, well, first off, I'll say one of the things I do feel very fortunate about is our CEO comes from a marketing background. So have such a good understanding of, we need marketing to get sales. And I think that's really important and understands fundamentally like we have a very, it's very, hey, if we have X sales people, we want X marketing, the ratio, right? So we have a good understanding of what that should look like.

But yeah, you know, one of the things we've been talking a lot about is we have our sales reps and, you know, I'll look, I'll just give an example. we have, we work with agencies, so we have agency partners and right now, you know, marketing brings in the leads and then our sales, our agency sales rep goes and meets with them, kind of talks to them and then sends them on to see us. We're really trying to move that up funnel to the marketing team so that marketers, you know, the marketing team is actually making sure that they're qualified, that they're the right partner that we already kind of have a relationship before we're sending them to the salesperson who then is going to become more of that relationship manager versus just, hey, we're going to have you sign this agreement on that. And that's kind of it. But you know, the other piece to that that we're really thinking about is, okay, what is like we have such a good relationship with the sales team is that they give us that immediate feedback. So hey, …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:38.138)

I know.

Casie Gillette (15:54.606)

… these are good leads, these are not good leads. Here's why they're good leads, here's why. That is just unbelievable and you don't always get that feedback super quickly. But yeah, you can't have more sales unless you have marketing. And I think you don't have that feedback, you don't know because the data can lie. You can say, well, we just had our best month of leads, but if those leads aren't good, it doesn't matter.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:08.506)

Yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:19.002)

Right, right. Now, it's so important and it's… if I'm taking anything away from your experience there, it's the communication and breaking down the silos and barriers between the business units and the teams and the benefit of having a leader that understands marketing, which I'm sure many of your peers would enjoy that as well. But it's definitely, you're building a lot of really good foundations there, it's clear.

So I'd love to hear if you, you know, what's your overarching recommendations or advice to other brands or marketers out there that needs to kind of really improve how they're connecting marketing to the other business units or especially to their sales teams.

Casie Gillette (17:13.422)

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing that, you know, when we go back to what's changing in marketing, I think what's really key here is that, you know, you mentioned like the shift to sales and what that has resulted in is a lot of cut budgets.

And so that can be really difficult for marketers because, you know, it's very much a, what have you done for me lately? And if you found these things that work and suddenly your budget's cut, now you're scrambling to figure out, well, what else can we be doing? And so what we're really focused on, and I think what marketers as a whole have to really be thinking about is what can we scale? You know, so much of marketing is just tactics.

And so there has to be that strategy of, all right, well, if we only have this budget, what are the three things that we can do to scale this and still continue to drive leads? Going back to the idea around the communication side, I'll just give an example here. We had started working, we started partnering.

With High Level, which is a platform like a marketing automation platform, kind of a contact management system for agencies with like very lead gen, kind of smaller organizations. So we rolled out this partnership, this integration, we started talking to them, then we started hearing more and more from these high level users of, hey, we love this, like, how do we get this? Like, how do we get these plans? And because, you know, we're hearing that on the marketing side, the salespeople are hearing that, we're seeing it online.

We were able to adapt to that. And so within like three weeks, we had high level pricing plans laid out. We started working with affiliates. So high level has this huge affiliate program. So we were able to connect with some of these people to get them integrated. And it's something that like it wasn't necessarily there, but because we were able to adapt and see, hey, this is a scalable thing. We were able to move pretty quickly on it. So I think just as marketers like you have to be agile. You kind of have to go sometimes where the wind takes you. But I think it's really focused on, you know, again, it goes back to it does go back. It goes back to sales and revenue. But how do I get there and how do I get there?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:12.89)

Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, this is great. Thank you so much, Casie. I really appreciate all of your experience and knowledge, and I hope we can have you on again soon. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to take a quick screenshot for a picture.

Casie Gillette (19:34.67)

Anytime. Thanks so much for having me.