AI Isn't Taking Marketing Directors Jobs... Yet Ft. Laura Bavetz, Idera | S2 Ep 5

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (00:01.646)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Optimize Your Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Ian Binek and today I'm joined by a special guest, Laura Bavetz Laura holds an MBA in marketing, and she is the marketing director at a company called Idera which is a very large software company. She has some really cool insights to share today, and I'm so excited to ask her about them. So Laura, thanks for being on today. How are you doing?

Laura Bavetz (00:29.971)
Great, thank you for having me.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (00:33.134)
It's a pleasure. The pleasure is all ours. I'm really excited to just dive into some of these questions. As you know, I sent them to you ahead of time, but I'm really excited for your answers. So before we dive in and we get started, I want to address the listeners so they know what to expect. So for our listeners, we're going to be talking about Laura's experience at Idera, especially as a marketing director. There's a lot of things on her plate. So how does she...

prioritize things and what is her biggest responsibilities right now. We're also gonna be talking about some of the success stories that she may have, especially in the demand gen space and other priorities that she's been working on. We're gonna talk through AI and where we think it is going to affect marketing directors in the position as a marketing director. And then finally break into my favorite two questions that we ask every single one of our guests, which is, what do you think is the most overhyped and underrated?

marketing strategy in 2024. So those are the questions in 30 minutes we'll get through them. So Laura, are you ready to get started?

Laura Bavetz (01:38.771)
Sure, let's go for it.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (01:40.783)
Awesome. All right, Laura. So as we mentioned, as a marketing director for a large SaaS company, there's a lot of things on your plate. What do you think is your biggest priority right now?

Laura Bavetz (01:56.947)
really understanding your marketplace, like really the understanding, deep customer understanding, especially when you're in a niche market, you really need to know who your buyer is, but it's not just who the purchasing decision maker is, but who are you first catching the attention of and then making sure you're providing them with the information they can take to the decision makers that are going to actually purchase the product, right? So, you know, you really have to look at

what goes beyond just the demographics and look at their pain points, what their buying process is. And so many different industries have different buying processes and different budget allocations and fiscal years. So making sure that you're really tying into that customer journey is really important.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (02:43.886)
I love that answer. I think something like so brief and you just mentioned it so subtly but is really important is it's not just about the demographics, right? It's about the psychographics. It's about analyzing potentially what kind of, how are you gonna get in front of them? How are you gonna break through the noise? And so that could be through like fear messaging or FOMO messaging. And like you said, understanding the buying cycle. In your space, I imagine the buying cycle's pretty long. So.

Laura Bavetz (03:12.147)
It can be. It can be. Yeah. In some instances, it's, you know, average on more of a 90 -day cycle for, you know, for test automation, for example. For, I guess even for our DevSec brands, it's averaging around 90, you know, but it can take longer.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (03:35.054)
And even 90 would be considered, I mean it's not super long, right? I've worked at companies where the buying cycle's two years. But for 90 days, that's still rather long. And that is sort of the definition of B2B, I guess, at the end of the day. So as far as touch points go, I know this isn't a question that I prepped, but I was curious. You're talking about the buying cycle and understanding it. How do you...

How do you make sure that from a marketing perspective, you're staying top of mind with those longer buying cycles, especially with people that maybe have reached out to you or filled out maybe a lead magnet or they just filled out a contactless form. You know it's gonna take about 90 days to get them to close. Is there anything specific that you're doing right now that will increase the probability of them signing with you guys? And maybe this leads into our next question. So if you feel like it is.

Laura Bavetz (04:30.963)
Yeah, that's kind of going to tie in a little bit to the collaboration with the sales department. But I really do believe that it's really data -driven decision making from the marketing standpoint, actually even from the buyer's standpoint. But you really have to understand your buyer's journey and where they came in, what point of the funnel did they come in, top of funnel at an MQL, or did they come in mid funnel and go straight to the trial as a sales ready lead.

And then making sure that there's a lot of storytelling. So I feel in marketing, the best way that you can nurture your prospects during that buying cycle and keep them engaged is to really bring forward that thought leadership, build that trust of where you stand in the industry and understanding that you might need to educate them a little bit more. You would hope in the industry that we're in, they pretty are already

pretty much know, you know, the industry as a whole, but they also need to believe that you know the industry, right? That you're just not a pop -up online SaaS business that is selling a product, right? And really looking at what did they click on? What did they read? You know, where are they at and what is interesting to them and then provide that to sales so that they also have a good entry point into discussions, you know, with the

with the buyer, you know, and making sure that content is the 360 complete circle from the blogs to the webinars to the videos to your web page, you know, and how you are really doing that and build that brand advocacy, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (06:17.102)
Right, yes. That's actually so interesting and I love that you're getting so in the weeds with it. I think I have talked to some marketing directors and they don't necessarily know how that segmentation works. And what's really cool though about what you just said was that you're bringing, you're tying everything together. So whether they clicked on an ad, you're able to see what keyword was triggered from that ad. And then based off of that keyword, it sends them to a specific landing page.

maybe there's a lead magnet on that landing page that's considered thought leadership, or maybe they just filled out the contact us form and they went right to sales. But it sounds like with the operational efficiencies going on in the background, that you're sharing that information with sales so that they're tailoring their pitch to whatever they're interested in, right? Because like you said, okay, so like you said,

Laura Bavetz (07:06.099)
Yeah.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (07:09.614)
There's some education that needs to come into play here, especially in a somewhat longer buying cycle of 90 days. They need to understand what they're getting themselves into as well. That's really cool. I love that. In that content, I guess you're doing it through content. Does that include marketing email nurture sequences? Does that include social media posting? How are you nurturing those people, I guess, from a tactical standpoint?

Laura Bavetz (07:34.995)
So from an inbound standpoint, which is my primary lead source, it really is hitting it from all angles. You really want to build that engagement through social. You also want to make sure you're utilizing your SEO with your keywords. You get it organic. But on a pay -per -click level, it's really important that.

that story be told properly, right? So you wanna make sure that that ad goes to a landing page and then the story continues on the right path so that it makes sense to the buyer. And then from there with the CTA and the form fill out, you wanna make sure that they're getting the information back to them that yes, we received your information or yes, here's your link to your trial or whatever that may be. But like, for example, if I'm driving them to a trial,

The next best thing you can do from there is actually give them the little links to help guide them through the trials so they get the best experience while they're trying it so that they do want to make the next step. I've always felt that if you give them too much information and they feel they have enough information to make the decision on their own without talking to somebody getting a custom demo from a sales solutions engineer or whatnot, that you're leaving a lot on the table, right?

So you really want to be able to set them up in a way that you're intriguing them to be very interested in the application, but not give them so much that they might miss a whole bunch of features, right? Because software is feature rich. But if you just talk about the features and you don't talk about why or how this really brings them ROI or brings them solutions that can solve problems, then they're just looking at the tools on their own.

So it's really important to give them those email follow -ups and keep that connection going while sales is trying to reach them and customize their experience to where they can really fine tune the value proposition, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (09:39.598)
That's very in depth and honestly very much needed for these kinds of deals. So that's really cool. I was taking notes. All angles basically is the answer. You're just hitting them from all angles, making sure that you're telling that story in every single way you possibly can. But what stood out was that you said you're not giving them too much information. And I think that is...

a really good insight because even for the companies that do product -led growth where you just sign up on the website, you go into the platform, you have your 14 -day trial or whatever it is, you don't necessarily know everything about the platform. You don't know about all the features or the capabilities. And for that reason, I feel like there is a lot higher churn in that situation. But if you do this B2B approach where sign up for something, sales is trying to reach out to them,

While sales is trying to reach out to them, there's marketing, you know, nurture sequences going. There's more thought leadership ads, maybe from a retargeting sense and on LinkedIn and maybe even Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, maybe. Like that's really cool. And I'm sure that whenever you're tying all that information together in your CRM or even if you're looking at it through your Google Analytics, you can see the touch points. So that's...

Really cool, I'd love to dive more into that, but we'll keep it at that for now, because we can go really deep.

Laura Bavetz (11:07.475)
It's really about the consistency and the transparency in my opinion. And nothing's an exact science. I mean, you know, we're constantly evolving and constantly enhancing and getting to this end point that I just discussed, right? So, you know, it's organic. A lot of people feel like you can put something in place and set it and let it go. But you really have to be willing to, you know, be very agile, right?

and be able to optimize things as you're reviewing the data. So the data, data is big, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (11:44.11)
I love that you mentioned optimize. It's funny because anytime we can, I will shamelessly plug that that's what our agency does. We found that, but it's like kind of our niche is that the larger companies will maybe set it and forget it. And the thing is, is you just can't do that. I mean, your competitors are always changing. So keeping an eye on the competitive landscape and seeing what they're doing and what they're saying and when they're advertising.

where they're advertising, that's really important. But also from an organic standpoint, like you said, is you're gonna be posting content, right? And some of that content is gonna do better than others. And the best way you can hedge your bets against your ad campaign doing well or not doing well is choosing the organic content that already performed well and then amplifying it with some paid ads dollars across platforms where your ICP is. And that's it, so.

I love that, I love that you kind of just mentioned that and yeah, like I said, anytime I can, I will always shamelessly plug that.

Laura Bavetz (12:46.131)
It's never a perfect science, right? And you have to be willing to fail to succeed in marketing and not everybody understands that, especially outside of the marketing department. But, you know, the strategies and the thought process behind all this, you know, it doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and, you know, you have to be willing to, you know, tweak it. And, you know, even within my own department, we're not where I want to be yet, but

principles behind it is what we're working towards. And that's what you, and if you only look at that and you, and you don't over expect stuff to be done overnight or perfect the first round, but you know that you're going and growing towards this goal, you know, and that's what really makes the team a little more successful and also helps to, you know, handle that stress you've mentioned in that last question you're going to be asking me, right? Of the demands of all this stuff.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (13:40.558)
Yep.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (13:44.366)
Yep, we'll get to that in a second. But okay, great. Laura, we kind of talked about marketing sales alignment, so I want to get into, before we head into the whole AI discussion, I want to quickly just touch upon examples of success that you maybe have seen from a demand gen campaign standpoint, or from any other standpoint, from your role, if you'd like to highlight any of that that you've seen while you're...

at your time at idea.

Laura Bavetz (14:15.187)
Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, we didn't actually go deep into the sales question specifically, but before we jump into the demand, you know, one of the things that's really important and I, and I've always had this thought process in my brain regarding the sales marketing, because in so many circumstances, so many companies, there is that, you know, that rub, right? And I think if people can take the approach, it's just like if you hire an outside agency,

the company is the client. Well, with an internal marketing department, I look at sales as the client to me being the agency, right? And I think if you take that approach, because everybody has the same common end goal, which is grow revenue, right? And I think that if you can think of them as your client, that I think that you then have a better working relationship and meeting regularly. And one of the things that I like to focus on with sales,

One, understanding how many leads to get, how many calls to get, how many opportunities, right? Or how many appointments to get opportunities. So your basic 10, five, two, one. Knowing that really helps. Sometimes getting to that number is difficult, but if you can work through the steps to get there, I think that really helps the marketing and sales work together. And then I also think really understanding.

the objections, if it's a common objection that sales is running up against during their sales process, find a way to tell, to do that storytelling to help soften that objection or meet that objection before they even get to sales. So those are two key things that I think are really important to having that cohesive relationship between sales and marketing and let them know, look, I have my own department and I have my own strategy, but.

I, you are my client and I want to make sure that I'm building that strategy not just for the company or for marketing, but to help grow that revenue, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (16:13.006)
It's a really interesting take. I've never heard it stated that way, but to me as an agency owner, it makes perfect sense. And treating sales as like maybe they were a client. That's so cool. And I wanted to just like highlight one thing that you said there, which was you're not afraid to have that conversation with them about, okay, if we need to hit X revenue goal, how many Y leads do we need? Because if we take those qualification rates from the top and bring them all the way down,

It's really just data and science at that point. And so you can tell pretty early on if your strategy is going to work or if you're falling behind. And so that's really cool. And...

Laura Bavetz (16:53.939)
Well, yeah, because how many times, Ian, have you heard sales say, I'm getting too many junk leads, or I need more leads, or my quality leads aren't good. And you're like, well, what does that mean? Can you give me examples? And they can't. And they won't. And even if you've increased the leads by 50%, you've increased the quality by 30%, they're still going to complain about the two leads that they had to disqualify. And two leads is not enough to make a radical change in your marketing. But when you think about them as a client,

And you understand where they're coming from, from a company perspective, a revenue perspective, and the individual salespeople, what do they care about? They care about their commission. So they're going to be focused on that. They don't want big changes. They don't want extra work. They just want to grow their commission. So if you have that mindset of where their mindsets, it makes it a little easier to understand, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (17:45.87)
Exactly. And kind of like what you mentioned was those weekly calls or maybe bi -weekly, whatever it is, right? You're having those sinks and you're understanding those objections because that's probably the best way to overcome that problem. If they're saying they're junk leads, well, what is actually happening on those calls, right? And I would say nowadays it's probably easier than ever to understand because you have...

softwares like Gong and you have the AI recording softwares that you can basically just watch the video and it could even probably pull out the objections for you. You don't even need to watch the video anymore. So it's just making that communication between marketing and sales a little bit easier. So that's really cool.

Laura Bavetz (18:28.531)
Well, and when they do talk about the prospect of needing higher quality, it's subjective per each individual salesperson. So I like to look at what's my website traffic, how many people actually filled out a form, hit submit, and then how many of those turned into opportunities. And you look at that percentage. If that data statistic is growing,

then your quality is increasing and you can base it more on the actual fact of the data instead of the subjective conversation from one person to another because one person might like a lead that another person didn't, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (19:08.078)
Exactly. And that very tactical piece of advice, I think, will definitely clip that because I think so many organizations just need to know that. And it's just sort of a north star that every marketing director or VP of marketing needs to understand is as long as your opportunities are increasing at a percentage rate, then it's not the sales view. I mean, it really just comes down to subjective preferences from the sales. So I love that. I love that insight.

Laura Bavetz (19:35.507)
It does. And this is like the ideal situation. It doesn't mean that it's perfect. It doesn't mean you have ebbs and flows, right, of how well sales and marketing is doing together. Or, you know, it doesn't mean you don't have to course correct, or it doesn't mean you don't have to give more. They don't have to give more. It just, if you try to follow that philosophy, I think that your relationship between the two departments improves.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (20:01.006)
I love that. I think we've hit it now. We've hit the marketing and sales alignment now. So I would love to get into that, those success stories, or maybe just one example of a campaign that you've run and that you've seen pretty good results from.

Laura Bavetz (20:17.395)
Yeah, so just for you know, non -disclosure purposes. I don't want to go into too much specifics on specific things but what I can say to success stories on the lead gen campaigns is Making sure, you know so many people want to like my gosh, let's do this today You know and you really want to put your thought into it You really want to build out that entire storyline and I think where we have the most success in our lead gen or on

demand type Campaigns is when we really do think of it from start to finish, right? And that's where the success comes in when you think about not just capturing the lead but how to nurture the lead and how to bring that forward whether it's the trial download and and if you have a good trial 14 days full access to the platform and things like that Those are great because you can really focus on getting them into the product. But what made it successful is following up

with, you know, here's a getting started video. Once you've gotten logged in and you've started, you know, here's some sample scenarios that you could try if you don't have one already preset that you want to do for your own situation. And then walk them through these things, giving them the video walkthroughs, the tutorials, the how -tos, but then also remembering that you want to keep reminding that in that story that.

we can give you a customized live presentation and figure out what it is that we can do with our software that can highly benefit you, right? It's really about bringing to them, how are we gonna reduce tester stress? How are we going to bring product to market faster? How are we gonna increase your ROI? A lot of people wanna talk in software, feature, feature, feature, feature, me, me, me, me. And you really need to talk about, you know,

the customer, what it does for them, how it brings them to a better place with higher revenue and faster production, right? And I think that that's where those success stories on your lead gen really work. Your flip question to that was failure or not as successful. And I really feel that in that scenario,

Laura Bavetz (22:37.651)
not having a good go to market plan or bringing something to market sooner than it was ready or not having the full nurture in place or the full campaign in place. When you try to rush something, that's when mistakes happen, right? And a lot of people don't understand the steps and the time, you know, that you go through to build these out in marketing, right? They just think, whip a video together, right? Or let's put this out.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (23:03.63)
Yeah.

Laura Bavetz (23:06.067)
And that's great, but if you can have the supporting blog, the supporting white paper, if you can pull together some success stories from customers and third party validation and really pull in the ROI from surveys and substantiate what you're doing with some validity, right? To bring validation to it, I think that you have the better success.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (23:31.47)
Great answer. You went above and beyond with talking about the failures too, which I really like.

Laura Bavetz (23:36.883)
Hey, you have to fail in marketing to succeed, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (23:40.27)
Very true, honestly in life really. Laura, one thing that I wanted to comment on was you probably meant this too, but we have this whole thing in our agency where we say the difference between demand capture and demand gen. And you basically hit the nail on the head. Demand capture is talking about product features, saying like, hey, we are a website agency. And then demand capture is we build.

Laura Bavetz (23:42.835)
Exactly.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (24:09.422)
a beautiful, stunning website that your customers are wowed by and we build it in 30 days or you don't pay. That's like demand gen versus demand capture. And I love that you kind of brought that in and just saying like, hey, our platform, we reduce stress, we grow revenue. We're not talking about the features of what we actually do. You can learn that in the videos that we share later. But just getting them on the hook with that demand gen is really cool. So, love that you mentioned that. I think that's...

the perfect way of looking at it, especially from a storyline standpoint.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (24:45.646)
Cool. All right, so Laura, let's get into the AI question. What are your thoughts on AI? How do you think it's going to impact the marketing industry as a whole, especially as your role as a marketing director and being a leader of a team? Do you think, are you scared of AI or do you feel pretty safe? I'm kind of curious.

Laura Bavetz (25:06.579)
scared of AI at all. However, that being said, I feel that I even have, I have a vendor that we use for some writing and they immediately said, do you want to switch to the AI blog writing? I said, no, you know, it's one thing to use AI for ideas. And I think that it's a great tool to get more product out of marketing to

you know, the website, you know, with blogs and SEO, but I don't think that you can just take AI and take it for what it is, you know, utilizing it to say, you know, I need some fresh ideas on some really good new thought leadership. You know, here's some websites, you know, of our own and our competitors and, you know, of the industry and the newsletters, you know, what do you think would be some up and coming topics? Great. Now we write the top.

Now we write the blog, right? You know, and that's only, you know, if you are coming up with some dry ideas, you know, writers can only come up with new fresh stuff, you know, as often as they can. The other value proposition I see from AI is if you put how you pose the question and getting a different tone to the to the voice, right? So if you have a content writer on staff and you have that one content writer, that tone of those articles are always going to kind of follow that.

same writer's tone. So I think that AI can bring in some variation to that. And the reason why AI doesn't scare me is because you have to have a human to generate the AI content. And you have to learn how to pose the questions to actually get quality content.

whether you're going to use it raw or edit it or get ideas from it, right? And you can pose that question six different ways and get six different pieces from AI, right? So I think that there's a place for AI, but I don't think it belongs everywhere. And AI to me is such a broad term.

Laura Bavetz (27:15.219)
So many companies now are saying AI, AI, AI, but are you talking about what we started with in AI years ago, which is machine learning, which a lot of us have already? Are you talking about complete autonomy of AI where the computer is literally building everything based off of one input or behavior? So I think that it's too broad of a term that it needs to start getting its little segues, right?

machine learning to me is a far more exciting piece of AI which we have had for a while because in marketing I really feel that behavior is what you really base a lot of your information on and whether it's the buyer's journey, the steps they take, how they interact, that plays a big part and that's where machine learning really excels in my opinion.

I just don't think it fits everywhere, but I don't think it's a bad thing.

I don't think it's gonna replace people.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (28:24.558)
I have to agree. I think that the way you're basically putting it is that there's AI synergy between humans, or like humans and AI can work together. And I think that that is the way forward, and I really hope that that's the way that the industry continues to view it. We actually had a guest on about a month ago now. He was an SEO agency, so he write a lot of content. And...

really interesting was that he mentioned how they use AI in their agency. And it was, they use AI to satisfy the SERP's needs to get it to rank high from a SERP perspective, search engine results page. So essentially, he's making sure that AI is including all the keywords in the blogs. He's using AI to make sure that it's structured appropriately. He's scanning the web and the competitors' websites to make sure that they are.

at least in the ballpark of word count. So, great. Check mark. Great job, AI. But, yes. But he was like...

Laura Bavetz (29:29.331)
Yeah, that's a great use of it. It takes the heavy lift off of the tedious, you know, manually doing it, right?

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (29:40.142)
Exactly. But what was really cool about his answer too was that was check mark number one. He has two check marks. And what he would do is he would go on a call with the salespeople in the organization and record the call using like Gong or any of the AI tools. And then from that call, getting like a subject matter expert's opinions, he would then take those opinions and write on those opinions, like in a human context.

So he's satisfying the AI's piece for the SERP, but then he's also getting an opinion, which is what people want to read when they're reading a blog. They don't just want to read some crap that AI wrote. They want to understand how someone actually feels about it. And so when you put those together, he's like, that's how we saw amazing results. And so again, it's just piecing together the AI and the human interaction, I think, is key here.

Laura Bavetz (30:29.747)
Those are two great check marks because it kind of lines in exactly with what I said. You need to have that human touch or the quote from the expert or the person that's actually experienced it. The computer hasn't experienced it. And the person writing the software to control the AI or have the AI generate, you know, whatever data you want by searching Google and the World Wide Web, you know, you don't know what sources they're pulling it from.

And so I think that AI is a great tool for.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (30:57.39)
Exactly.

Laura Bavetz (31:02.515)
you know, kind of picking up that tedious task or coming up to fill a writer's block, open up the mind. But then I do really think that you do need to do some of your own manual writing and research and have some quotes. And I think it's a combination.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (31:20.302)
Love it, love it. Okay, let's get into my favorite questions. These are the ones we asked all of our guests. So, Laura, the digital marketing industry right now, digital marketing strategy, it's very all over the place, probably more complex than it's ever been, but also easier to approach than it's ever been, maybe, or maybe I'm wrong. But what I wanted to hear from you is what you think the most overhyped...

digital strategy or tactic is right now in 2024.

Laura Bavetz (31:51.091)
exclusivity deals, micro targeting obsession. Those are two pieces that I think are pretty overhyped. I definitely think that you can very much specific your target audience, especially when you're in a niche like we are, but you don't want to make it so micro that you're missing out on people, right? You need to have a little bit of flexibility and maybe bring in people that aren't there yet.

but they didn't fall into that niche because they didn't belong to that newsletter, right? And exclusivities, you know, we, you know, it's a lot of people have partners with exclusive deals and this and that. And I think that you really cut yourself off at the knee. If you have too much exclusivity, you know, you really want to open up and be, be more open and flexible in those regards too.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (32:44.238)
Great answer, actually the very first, it's a very unique answer I would say based off of what we have heard from our previous guests. A lot of our other guests would say something more tactical, but I think your strategic insights. Very cool, I like the micro -targeting obsession. I've never heard that before, but as I've learned more about content and getting content out, you can't.

you can be super, like very, very targeted, right? But at the end of the day, if you're able to hit that same target, but then also a few other people, thousand other people, whatever, you're still getting in front of them, right? And it's just, you're opening up the opportunity for new segments to see your content that you may not have even thought of that could actually benefit from watching it or from your services. Like seeing your services and saying, hey, like this is a new market we can go after.

and the tam is really big, let's go after him. So I love your approach.

Laura Bavetz (33:44.819)
Yeah, I mean, like for test automation, anybody that wants to test web mobile or desktop, right? That's your market or for your industry. Now you've got different target audiences and personas in terms of the users and the buyers, but you know, it's not so micro targeted that you can't like expand a little bit, right? So demographically and industry wise, you know, we can focus a lot. Now I do, I do agree with narrowing the target.

If you're talking about finance, that you actually bring in some of those buzzwords that the finance industry uses and you make that a separate campaign than say healthcare or automotive or government. But that to me isn't so much micro targeting, it is being more specific to your target audience and there's a difference.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (34:34.638)
Love it. All right, Laura, let's get into underrated now. What do you think is the most underrated digital marketing strategy or tactic in 2024?

Laura Bavetz (34:46.323)
underrated. That one is...

That one's a little bit more underrated. I think that things that are underrated really are looking at storytelling. I think people do underrate the value of telling a story. I think that.

There's a lot to be said.

for basically controlling the user journey, right? By telling that story and leading them down that path, you're guiding them from the UIUS experience where you want them to go. And even though there's many people that see the value and the importance in it, I think it is a little underrated.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (35:36.814)
Do you follow the Storybrand framework at all in your company?

Okay, nevermind, disregard then. Have you heard of them before? Okay, yeah, yeah. So basically, founded by this guy named Donald Miller about a decade ago, maybe longer, was this agency that basically came out and they introduced this line of thinking called the StoryBrand Framework. And it is all about the buyer journey. And...

Laura Bavetz (35:48.563)
Mm -mm. I'm curious.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (36:11.854)
They structure all of the websites that they build and all of the collateral that they build for the companies they work with. And they walk them through the buyer journey. And so it starts with the one -liner and then it introduces the problem and then it introduces the solution and the guide. And it's really cool. And I highly recommend you check it out, especially since I know you're so focused on story storytelling. I think that would be a really great addition to your skill set.

Laura Bavetz (36:38.515)
I think it really ties in with bringing out that thought leadership perspective, really talking about the value propositions and stuff. And again, we can think of these great ideas and these great strategies all day long. And in reality, getting through the minutia and getting them actually built and executed 100 % across the board, it takes time. And we're still in that process of really executing on everything. But...

You know, it's been my philosophy for a long time in marketing, you know, from previous companies to this company and it just, it just takes time.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (37:16.622)
Very true, very true. Alright Laura, time for our last question. We want to discuss something that I think is under discussed in the professional space, which is just mental health and dealing with stress. So as a leader of the marketing team, the book kind of stops with you, in a sense, if something goes wrong.

Yeah, you can blame other people for maybe some things or you can look at outside sources, but at the end of the day, I mean, you're ultimately responsible. So how do you handle stress, Laura?

Laura Bavetz (37:47.219)
End of the day, it's me. Yup.

Laura Bavetz (37:52.371)
Well, I mean, I fully believe that you have to own the mistake. And if it's one of your team members that makes the mistake that you're managing, then you ultimately own it. And I really think that transparency within the team and being able to discuss and learn from those things is the key takeaway, right? And I have no problem saying, yep, sorry, you know.

we messed up as long as we learn from it, right? In terms of dealing with like the stress of meeting the deadlines and, you know, understaffed, whatever it is, under budget, not having enough budget, I try to just kind of like get through highest priority to lowest priority. I try to make sure that if I am getting a little frustrated,

and we're all humans so it doesn't always work, but it's really important to not react and take a step back. And a lot of times I'll just get up and walk outside because I do have five acres with animals outside. And so a lot of times I'll just go up and go brush my horse or take a minute, you know, to just stretch my legs and animals are unconditional and very supportive.

just to the just to people in general. So I think that takes you know that little bit of anxiety that you might have animals are great at that. So I utilize that as my as my stress reliever or I get on the tractor because when you're on the track you can only go so fast you're just sitting there looking at the beautiful sky you know all of a sudden brain you know a lot of times when I'm on the tractor ideas pop into my head right.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (39:42.35)
I love that. That's so, you know, they say this about people that live near the mountains or people that live near the beach, that they live longer, and I think that has to do with a little bit of stress, right? Like they have less stress. They walk outside and they realize there's something out there that is, you know, it's bigger than the problem that they're facing now. And...

Laura Bavetz (40:02.419)
Yeah, when I was in California, I'd go to the beach, even though I had horses in California as well, but they weren't at my house. So, you know, a lot of times in California, when I lived there, I would go to the beach, you know, just the sound of the ocean, you put your bare feet in the sand, you know, you connect with earth. And here, you know, I've got endless views and amazing, you know, Mother Nature puts on a display every day in my viewpoint of my sky. So, you know, it's kind of cool.

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (40:32.078)
I love it. I love it. Well Laura, that is all the questions that I have for you today. Thank you so much. This is great insights. I feel like we learned a lot. And for our listeners, thank you so much for listening. Andy, potentially watching if you're on YouTube. But if you found this useful, please leave a five star rating. This really helps us grow the podcast. And...

Feel free to follow us on our social media profiles. We post one of these podcasts every single week and so moving forward I'm really excited to have more guests like Laura on but Laura like I said, thank you so much for being on today It was wonderful. Maybe we'll have you on again in a few months. We can discuss more things but until then Yes, thank you so much for being on

Laura Bavetz (41:18.963)
Well, thanks for having me. My first

Ian Binek - Optimize Your Marketing (41:24.686)
You did amazing. You were very well prepared. All right. Thank you so much, everyone. We'll see you in the next one.

Laura Bavetz (41:31.219)
All right, thanks.

‍