Elise Connors

I’m gonna mix a little bit of info with a lil sharing. If you know me this is pretty standard behavior. I was chatting with someone about programmatic direct mail and incrementality. When I think of incrementality I think of stickiness vs reach. Showing your ad to a new person is dope, but the data shows that channel diversification is more about breaking through the noise then unlocking a new audience. If you’re spending in the millions there’s a pretty good chance you’re hitting a lot of your target demo on digital channels. Tell me the last 10 meta ads you saw? 5? Tell me one meta ad you saw today? (This brings up another convo of frequency in this evolved digital age but Idk best practices) it takes a lot for something to stick so if you’re going to a new channel for incrementaltiy choose channels that are going to stick. Hence programmatic DM. When you start testing I’d think of it as a lift channel. Part of your lifecycle nurture flow. Test with unconverted audiences and see if it lifts. Then use the lifted to lal for prospecting. Ok the other thing. I was chatting with a brilliant marketer who complemented my posts and it gave me the biggest imposter syndrome ever. I thought about it a bit and I think it’s because all of these posts are the results of failures, experiments, and learning from other great marketers. Plan A has worked so rarely I could count it on my hands. The speedy pivot to plan B, C, & D is the real gold. I’m learning new stuff constantly because I care about marketing (I’m learning about social media right now). I’ll probably suck at it for a bit and then I’ll get good and write something about it if I think it can be helpful. Idk just thought I’d share.

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For professional services marketers, one of the toughest things to do is *not* follow all the advice you find from B2B product/SaaS marketers. Most of it is plain wrong for a service business. The product peeps are selling widgets. You're selling relationships that will last for years (ideally). They're obsessed with website traffic because their customers can and do buy right on their website. Buyers of professional services don't do that. The sales process is much longer. It requires building a trust-based relationship, something that doesn't happen with a website visit. They need to sell thousands and thousands of seats. You need your next five clients. But there's *so much* B2B marketing advice that comes from SaaS marketers and while it's smart for them, it's wrong for you. You're playing a different game, so don't follow their rules. *** Find this post thought-provoking? There's more where that came from - sign up for our emails at https://lnkd.in/e2-iNhcs

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Hot take: agencies that churn through contractors don’t survive long. The experience is worse for everyone. Clients can’t establish a long-term relationship. The agency CEO spends too much time hiring. Employees don’t work long enough to get context on a project. You can’t just keep hiring and firing and expect to thrive. We retained 100% of our team in 2022 and 92% in 2023. We’ve worked with some clients for years, and kept the same development team throughout the whole process. Thats powerful for both the client and the agency. This keeps the relationship cohesive and helps us work together better.

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These are great tips for all marketers, many we should be doing regardless of the marketing stability within your company. #1 and #2 are underrated skills that I try to coach up to my early career peers. I wish I had a time machine to go back and record all the early wins (and failures) through the early phases of my career. The data and case studies are invaluable during interviews and can be used to build your LinkedIn voice.

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Tracking Call Types and Count of Calls in HubSpot on Deals🤔 I’ve been working with some sales teams recently, and they've been handling a large number of "follow-up calls" for deals. I wanted to find a way to pull a report from HubSpot that shows me the count of calls per deal, and more specifically, what number of follow-up calls we're up to. 🔍 After trying different workflows, I found a few solutions that I think are pretty cool. Here's a quick rundown: 1. Customize call types: In HubSpot settings, add specific call types like discovery call, follow-up call 1, all the way through to follow-up call 9. 2. Mandatory call outcomes: Ensure every logged call has an outcome noted. Two reports I’ve set up: Report 1: Counts the types of calls made by each deal owner this month and how many follow-up calls they made. Report 2: Shows the deal owners and their monthly call counts, breaking them down by call type. This helps us see how many follow-up calls we need per deal and how many it takes to convert leads to closed deals. 🧐 Have you tried something similar or have a better approach? Please share your thoughts and feedback, I’d love to hear what you think! #HubSpot #SalesReporting #HubSpotReporting #HubSpotHelp #HubSpotTipsandTricks #salesfollowup #CRM #salestools

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This might shock you...but one of the most valuable roles on a marketing team over the next decade is going to be this person... 👉🏼 Not the data person. 👉🏼 Not the designer. 👉🏼 Not the campaign manager. 👉🏼 Not the BDR, SDR, or the VCR. 😬 So who's it going to be? The writer. Yes, it's true. THE WRITER! Think about it... If you think that Chat GPT can replace a good copy writer, then you've never seen one, nor have you ever unleashed a good copywriter to do what only they can do. Great copywriting is the KEY to digital marketing success. Without someone to emotionally craft sentences that move hearts and minds it doesn't matter how good your GPT is, you're done-for! I believe that great writing is going to be come more valuable than ever as AI increases and people opt for replacing their writers with it. Also...at the brand level this is going to become more valuable than ever as well. Brand messaging, brand strategy, storytelling, headlines, hooks...AI is just "ok" at these things. It's the writer who takes the discovery "gold," the competitive landscape, the findings, and the data and crafts words that make people BUY. Should writers learn to use AI? Yeah for sure. Should writers be replaced by AI? Only if they're bad writers. 😬 Have a great writer? Hold on to them for dear life. Their stock is going up. Know a writer? Tag them. Huge them. Pay them. #humanitysells #writers #copywriting #b2bmarketing #b2btech #humancenteredtech

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Gotta show off the PDX carpet On my way to LA to speak about SEO I heard I'll get a recording, I'll be sure to share with y'all if that's the case. I'm discussing "What *Really* Matters to Get to the Top of Google." Of course, I'm focusing on local SEO. So my question this morning is: What do you think is *really* important for local SEO? 🤔

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Content Marketing has a PR problem. At least that's what "The State of (Dis)Content" survey is telling me. "[we are] viewed in an org as a service provider, not a strategic partner." "My company refuses to see the strategic role that written content can play." "[When] you also have strategic goals to meet, most of the times the goals are pushed aside for yet another "urgent" ask from sales or execs." Thing is... content is on the front lines of all inbound and bridges the gap between company and customer. So what can content marketers do to become seen as more strategic partners. I've got my own thoughts that I'll share in the final report, but I'm curious to know what you think?

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There’s a big problem with content marketing today: It’s siloed from the rest of the GTM org.  It’s misunderstood and undervalued. It’s looked as a “nice to have.” It’s time content marketers start advocating for a better approach. Content marketers aren’t just order takers.  They’re strategic partners.  They’re deep thinkers.  They’re storytellers. They’re here to make their customers and audience the stars of the show. But how do we make that a reality? Beam Content 💡 talked to 400+ GTM professionals to ask them for their honest thoughts on content marketing as a function and its relationship with the GTM org. Here’s what stuck out to me: "Content marketers are not order takers. They’re strategic partners. They're storytellers and interpreters and deep thinkers who make their customers and audience the stars of the show."
 This quote is powerful because it changes how we think about content marketers. 

 It shows they are important in shaping how a business connects with people. This idea lifts the role of content marketers from just making things to being key players in business strategy. 

 This can help teams see the value of working closely with content marketers. It’s time to pave the way for top-notch content marketing that’s understood, advocated for, and bought into by leadership. Check out the full report: https://lnkd.in/eTGw9uyG PS: See me in the video?! How cool.

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Traditional marketing agencies are becoming dinosaurs. The old days of: - 1 month on-boarding process - Layers of project managers & account managers - Broad team of generalists that can "do it all" - Same, repetitive deliverables every..single...month - Repetitive playbooks - 3-4 day response times - Fluffy decks & "strategy" - 6-12 month contracts - Fancy offices; with high overhead are losing their value in the market. SMBs need too many things Too many martech tools Subject matter expertise goes into too many places Needs are changing too quickly This is being replaced with: - Flexible team of fractionals; with deep subject matter expertise - Direct connection to the strategic partners - Deeply embedding into daily project mgmt & workflow - Evolving set of deliverables; focused on outcomes; not output - Shorter, value based contracts - Rotating cast of team members; based on sprint - Fully remote teams with little overhead - Highly nuanced agencies that are THE expert in a given task 2025 will continue to deepen this gap AI will allow fractional firms to remain even more nimble & agile Agree / disagree?

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I’m convinced that the top 1% of marketers all have one trait in common. For context, I've worked directly with: - The former Head of Growth at Hinge - The first Director of Paid Media at Bombas - C-suite at publicly traded companies And the absolute best of the best all have this trait: An uncanny optimism around problem solving. Let me explain. Anybody can point out problems, it’s not hard. In fact, most people do it lol. But I’ve noticed that few marketers can consistently, - propose solutions - test them quickly - have the willingness to work until they find something that works. It’s hard to teach that. It’s just something people are wired for.

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SEOs, I urge you to start talking in terms of "Search Market Share". You'll instantly level up the way you get buy-in from the C-suite. One of the most difficult thing about SEO is to consistently communicate the value of search to other stakeholders. Too often, we as practitioners use metrics such as links, site speed, technical issues or monthly search volume when trying to get buy in for particular initiatives. While these all have their time and place, sometimes they can be harder to communicate when talking to more seasoned C-suite team members. Using "Search Market Share" is an instant shortcut for all of this. Market share is a metric that everyone in business can understand, regardless of their experience with SEO. Doing this, immediately puts the value of search and where you're at in language that a senior marketer can understand. It also directly pits your search performance against competitors. The great news is that pulling this data is really simple. You can do this using a tool like Ahrefs: 1. Plug your site into Ahrefs and to "Organic Competitors" 2. Ahrefs will automatically create a bubble chart that showcases your market share against predicted competitors 3. Use the "Custom" dropdown to insert your own competitors manually. This is generally the best way to do it.  4. The bubble chart will show you how you compare against competitors. The X-axis represents "Traffic Value" and the Y-axis represents "Traffic". By using Search Market Share, you can easily get buy in for different types of initiatives you want to implement: 1. What are competitors content strategy? How do we build one to reverse-engineer share?  2. How are they setting up their technical SEO? Do we believe this is having an impact on their ability to have strong market share?  3. Which specific queries are they owning? Are there prominent ones that we want to go after to take share away. Doing this can put search in a perspective that all levels of marketers can understand and help you get the buy-in you need to do your job well. 

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Are your HubSpot email open rates going down and you need to fix it-- FAST? These four things set the foundation for deliverability and you need to make sure your emails are set up correctly so they end up in the inbox, not spam.

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This is so obvious yet so difficult to change in many organizations.

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If I were to turn back time, I'd approach my VP of Marketing role differently. I used to think the job was all about strategy canvases and metrics munching. It is some of that. However, I'd have far more impact had I invested in high-leverage tactics. When B2B SaaS marketers take up such a leadership role, there's pressure to impress the higher-ups. That sometimes leads them to over-index on bold decisions like: - changing the branding - overhauling the website - going through a marketing reorg That's not to say these are necessarily "wrong" decisions. In some scenarios, they might be what's required. Better judgment should prevail. However, such moves require strong "buy-in" and are often met with high internal friction. They also take time to complete which "waterfalls" impact. Then, you have the usual suspects. Talk to customers. Attend sales calls. Meet key accounts. All useful. But apart from that, if I were to do it all over again, I would focus on: 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀-𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲. - Identify core pages that are failing to convert. Frame a hypothesis based on available analytics. - Tweak sub-optimal copy and key visuals to quickly lift CVRs. - Consider adding high-fit landing pages. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 - Create category evangelism content on social media. - Convert topics that resonate with audiences into live webinars. - Record those webinars and distribute snippets across video mediums. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗮𝘀 𝗣𝗥 - Get leadership to share on LinkedIn. I've realized that a CEO that speaks the customer's language bolsters their B2B brand. Helps with inbound too. - How? Record a call with the CEO for 30 minutes every 1-2 weeks on a focused topic, transcribe it, and solicit a writer to turn it into a series of posts. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 - To improve lead gen, I'd need to understand lead quality, objections, ICP issues etc. - so, when aligning with sales/CS, I'd pivot conversations more toward key questions than discuss mere wishlists. 𝗣𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗯 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 - If tracking has gaps, I'd prioritize fixing that and instrumenting full funnel metrics. - I'd build a looker dashboard to consolidate multi-channel reports that I can tell a story with to leadership. 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵-𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀 - Arming sales with anything that helps them close deals is a top service. - I'd listen to their go-to talk track, read call summaries, hop on calls, talk to customers. - then, for areas where it would help, I'd build out a targeted slide deck, battle card, or interactive demo to better quip them for future deals. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗱 I'd drop the cost per MQL by working with ad specialists to turn off non-performing campaigns till we figure out the right experiment to run. What are your tips?

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Breaking through on organic social is one of the black arts of marketing. When it works, it’s awesome (ex: Lambda School’s acquisition was mostly off the founder’s Twitter). But it’s gotten very saturated. Recently, I’ve seen startups spending $6K+/mo on agencies like StoryArb trying to replicate that playbook, with no success. I recently heard this interview by Peter Conforti with Peter Walker, Carta’s Head of Insights, on how he built this machine (link to the original interview in the comments). Carta entered the organic social arena late in the game, and took a different path: they built a content engine that gained 100,000+ LinkedIn followers without a founder-led approach. Instead they built one of the most successful data programs I’ve seen in years. Here’s what jumped out at me from the interview: 👇 🟦 (1) Leadership made a big upfront commitment When I tried to launch a data program at Codecademy, it was just one of many content approaches that our tiny content team was pursuing. But the Carta team made a substantial, intentional bet. They hired a dedicated person with a journalism background—experienced at turning raw data into compelling stories. Carta didn’t just hire Peter and leave him to figure it out. They gave him support from data scientists. This is rare, as data scientists are usually focused on the leadership, product team, and growth team’s priorities. 🟦 (2) Proprietary data that is aligned with stories their customers want A data program won’t work for many businesses. But Carta’s a case where there’s incredible fit. Great data storytelling requires three things: - Large swaths of product data (most businesses don’t have data at huge scale) - Interesting stories within it (some data is boring—Carta’s data is juicy) - Alignment between your target customer and the audience that finds your stories valuable. This alignment is rare! 🟦 (3) A non-founder as the persona voice—not the company page Initially, Carta shared insights on its corporate LinkedIn page, but the posts flopped. Peter took over, sharing the same insights on his personal profile. Around then is when engagement took off. He now has 100,000+ followers and has driven 30,000 newsletter subscribers. My takeaways: 🟩 (1) Breakthrough content requires intentional investments. Most companies won’t make the bet Carta did—hiring a journalist, dedicating data science resources, and mining proprietary data. 🟩 (2) Personal voices > corporate branding. Even if it’s risky. If you want organic reach, you need to put a real person at the center. But who? I’m surprised they chose to elevate an employee: when an employee leaves the company, they take their personal LinkedIn Profile (and those 100K followers). I imagine they considered posting from a Carta co-founder’s handle and decided the co-founder wouldn’t be comfortable, or would need to be in the loop, which would slow the entire process down and cause it to fail.

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B2B marketing is so cringe to me. We use so many empty phrases like 'OpTiMiZe ThE DaRk FuNnEL' and 'We ArChiTeCt DiGiTaL ExPeRiEnCeS tHrOugH StRaTeGy aNd TeChNoLoGy' and 'EnHaNcE YoUr CuStOmEr LiFeCycLe.' I'm sorry... what? Who talks like that IRL? Nobody I want to be friends with, that's for sure. But I get it. It's hard to verbalize the value we (as businesses) provide to other businesses. In professional services — which I've been in my whole career — I think it's even harder to verbalize the intangible value companies provide. I even cringe thinking about all the corporate-jargon-filled things I've created over the years. But, especially with proserv, the play is usually that you want to demonstrate your expertise, which means trying to look like the smartest person in the room, which means using fluffy buzzwords to inflate your perceived expertise. I'm canceling that at Stitch🤷‍♀️ Instead of using big, dumb words, we talk like humans. We let the facts speak for themselves. ⭐️ We work with huge, global brands (experience). 🏆 We're the Braze top partner on G2 (client value). 🤓 We have more Braze certifications than any other company in the world (expertise). 🤩 We have legitimately incredible customer stories — like helping a major casino bring a decades-long marketing dream come true, a huge cosmetics brand increase monthly app users by 125%, building a highly innovative matching game as an in-app message for a huge quick service restaurant, and a lot of other cool stuff (client value)!! 🪡 We also hire the very best people who are solely motivated by helping make our client's day-to-day jobs easier (client experience + value). These are the real things we say to real humans with real value behind them. I am very intentional about ensuring our brand voice reflects our humanness (humans helping humans). I read our entire website end-to-end at least once a month (thankfully, it's small right now) to ensure that not a single sentence that doesn't sound like someone talking to their friend. There are many things that make Stitch stand out, but our strong brand is undoubtedly one of them. And I know it's because of the intentionality we put behind it. So, my pro tip for the week to my B2B marketing friends is to read your website. If you would never say any of the stuff on your site out loud, it's time to rethink your messaging. Next week, we'll be chatting more about professional services marketing and sharing our hot takes, ideas, and lessons learned in an informal virtual morning coffee chat. Join me and Amy Kenly on July 18th at 10a ET/9a CT. Link to sign up in comments!

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You don't absolutely need 45-60 minutes of someone's time to get good information. If SME and customer availability is what's holding you back from conducting in-depth interviews, why not use remote capture tools to drip the questions out so your interviewee can answer on their own time?

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