Episode 6: Marketing Trends

Saoirse Hinksmon, Apiiro

Episode 6: Unveiling Effective Product Marketing Strategies with Saoirse Hinksman

In Episode 6 of the Launch Gravy Podcast, host Larry Weber interviews accomplished marketer Saoirse Hinksman, Sr. PMM at Apiiro, about her journey in marketing and the innovative approaches of Apiiro in the application security posture management (ASPM) space. They delve into the critical balance between creativity and data-driven marketing, the evolving emphasis on brand trust, and the importance of strategy in modern marketing efforts. Saoirse shares her insights on overrated marketing tactics, like the traditional press release, and underscores the necessity of quality over quantity in lead generation, content marketing, and social media. The discussion highlights the significance of alignment within marketing teams, data utilization for strategic decisions, and the challenges of distinguishing a brand in the competitive B2B landscape. Connect with Saoirse Online: Saoirse’s LinkedIn

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Connect with Launch Gravy on LinkedIn

Transcript:

• Introducing Saoirse Hinksman and Apiiro

  Larry: Hi everyone. And welcome to the launch gravy podcast. I'm your host, Larry Weber. And on today's show, I'm going to be speaking with Saoirse Hinksman.

  Saoirse is an accomplished marketer having played numerous positions in a number of different industries, product adoption and brand recognition in public health, demand gen product marketing and digital content at SmartBear product marketing at Veracode and now Apiiro.

  Saoirse, welcome to the launch gravy podcast.

  Saoirse: Thank you. Thank you.

  Larry: Hey,

  Saoirse: here.

  Larry: Awesome. So let's get into it. What do you do? And what does your company Apiiro do?

  Saoirse: Sure. So I'll start with Apiiro first and then I'll explain what I do there.

• Understanding Apiiro's Unique Approach

  Saoirse: So, Apiro is setting the diamond standard for application security posture management, which is a pretty new market term, but you'll see it if you're in the AppSec space. It's sort of the brand new SPM that everybody is talking [00:01:00] about. There are a couple different approaches to this, but the overall goal is to help AppSec teams get more of a single pane of glass view into what's going on across their entire security posture. And being able to operationalize some of that data with things like workflows, policies, and all of that jazz. Appiro takes a little bit of a different approach though, starkly different. Contrasted approach than a lot of the competitors out there. We start with more of a code based approach. So we

  What we call our like patented deep code analysis to be able to connect to your code and understand. all of the activities going on around that so that when you're looking at risk, you have the information that you need to understand the likelihood and impact of a risk and that unique risks real impact on your organization

  What you need to prioritize and do first. So we really help organizations streamline their ability to understand risk and then address it. And then be able to look back on that, optimize that process, make sure they're making a [00:02:00] real impact on their security posture. So super exciting really fun space to be in. I work on the product marketing team. So I help understand What are we building? How do we communicate that value and how do we position that appropriately? One for our customers and prospects, and then within the market as a whole, how do we make sure that we're differentiating and that people know what we're doing differently? So

  Larry: Cool. Cool.

  Saoirse: fun, super exciting space to be in.

  Larry: Yeah, I know. And I want to dig in a little bit on how you got into product marketing and where you're at today, but I do have a couple of questions specifically on Apiiro and kind of your approach, just, I'm curious. You're getting into the code base. Who's your persona for this, right? Who's the buyer and who's the user?

  Is this security teams? I'm sure they're involved. But. How much is the developer involved as a part of this process?

• Connecting Security Teams and Developers

  Saoirse: Yeah, so this is more so geared towards security and application security teams in general. To be very specific, most of our users are AppSec managers. We do have some CISOs that are involved, especially if [00:03:00] once you start getting into things like reporting and getting a broader level view of like your inventory and what guardrails you want to set and aligning those across the organization.

  That's sort of where you get a little bit more of executive level input, or at least Some visibility there, but for the most part, AppSec teams are our core buyer user base. On the developer side though, what we do help with is making sure that AppSec teams can connect with developers in their natural workflow without having to do anything crazy.

  So like you would never have a developer go into the Appiro platform, but you would have Alerts and things from Appiro that are tailored to that specific developer. So what we're able to do, that's a little bit different from some other tools that are available on the market, just from a security standpoint is we can tie each of the risks that we identify back to that code owner. So when a developer gets an alert, it's for something that they're hyper familiar with. Code that they've worked on. There's no real question around like, Oh my gosh, why is this coming to [00:04:00] me? What do I do with this? And if there are questions around the risk specifically, we work with companies like Secure Code Warrior to be able to link training videos.

  So it's like super in context of Hey. I just got this issue back. I am being asked to fix it. If you don't know what to do, you can understand really quickly okay, what is this vulnerability or what is this risks and how do I get around that? So that's where we play with developers is definitely more of an inactive touch

  Larry: Yeah,

  Saoirse: like having them as like an interactive engaged user.

  Larry: got it. So like low friction, meet the developers where they are and then augment with, secure code warrior as education, right? So if they run into anything they want to know more about, so minimize the amount of friction you're going to offer into their space.

  Saoirse: Yeah, so that's definitely our goal. We're tailored more towards security teams, but developers obviously are going to be involved in every single process, especially when it comes to fixing issues, finding issues, so we try to make it as easy as possible for those two groups to connect without more bottlenecks or problems for either group.

  Larry: [00:05:00] Super good. Super good. So let's turn it back to you now, right?

• Saoirse's Journey into Marketing

  Larry: Like how'd you get started in marketing? Tell us a little bit of your origin story and how you got here.

  Saoirse: Sure, so I will go all the way back to the real origin here.

  When I was in school, I actually Like, for the longest time I thought I was going to be a lawyer, everybody told me that too. I did mock trial for like years, like since like fifth grade to the end of high school. And when I was in college, I just realized that there, you know, Wasn't really a creative outlet when you're talking about going into law, especially things like corporate law, or if you wanted to do mediation, that's a little bit like an emotional overload for

  Larry: Creative corporate law. That would be a good one, right?

  Saoirse: I mean, it could be fun. Listen, if somebody has cracked the code, it just certainly wasn't me. And I felt like there was something missing there. Like I liked to be able to. Take information, digest that, and make it digestible for other people. Like crafting an argument or like trying to connect for, on the mediator standpoint, right?

  Like trying

  Two different groups of people. [00:06:00] but I took a branding class and that sort of hooked me and it was really fun and interesting to me. And so that sort of kickstarted my like interest there. But for more of a, a career perspective, I sort of stumbled into the technology space.

  Every single position that I have had has been accidentally super technical. So I've just had to adjust. Like my first real career job ever was at making, a new market for infrared cameras. So that was really cool. Selling to like the government, like very, very crazy level of detail there. And then I moved into the software side on more of the health management, so outbreak management systems. And then from there just dove into software on all, you know, whether it's like quality testing with smart bear, or if you're looking at more of the networking side, I worked at a company called Bennu, which has since been acquired, but they worked in the 5g and sassy.

  So service access edge space. And then we moved on, went to Veracode and [00:07:00] now I'm sort of in the security space. So starting with more of application security testing and then moving with the Piro into how do you optimize. market and solve some of the same challenges for the same groups of people, but in a completely new way.

  Larry: Cool. Wait, I need to go back. You mentioned something and I just have to ask and for clarity what it is because I, in my mind, it's getting a little scary, but outbreak management system in the health space. Are we talking like disease outbreak or what, what, what do you, what do you mean by that?

  Saoirse: I,

  Larry: It's like a movie or so it's like pre COVID now.

  Saoirse: I mean, it was pre, it was pre COVID, but it was like, right before or around the time of Ebola as well. So that

  Larry: Oh yeah.

  Saoirse: like the big projects that our team worked on was like, how do you, and at the time it was a Privacy laws were a little different, so like, sharing information between systems was super challenging, so like, how do you, do you manage an outbreak when you can't share information?

  That's since changed, obviously, [00:08:00] drastically, but yeah, it was a, definitely an interesting space to be in, not for the faint of heart if you're, you know, get a little, you know, Uh, creeped out by some of those stats or just understanding how things pass across and where information needs to be passed along within the software chain, so to speak.

  So definitely an interesting, interesting area. I'm sure that they're, they've moved on to bigger, broader challenges now, but

  Larry: Yeah,

  Saoirse: something we tackled back in the day.

  Larry: I hear you. I, I'm dating myself, but when I went back to I got my master's in computer science one of the trainers that we had when we were doing a programming interface was on, um, missile and missiles and how fast they travel and the radius. And you're like, Kind of cool. Kind of not right when you start thinking through like,

  Saoirse: sudden, I don't know math. I don't know physics. What is, what is this?

  Larry: okay, is this for good or for, for peace or for war anyway?

  Okay. So, so look, you've been around for a number of different organizations, industries, [00:09:00] areas of marketing. So I I'd like to focus with kind of your breath and having good insight in different areas. Dig into kind of your thoughts on marketing and how this is evolving and I don't know, maybe some of your takes from the trenches, so to speak.

  Cause it's part of what we do on this podcast is really making sure like we understand what's going on. And it's like part of launches, a part of product, a product, part of just coming out with new technologies, and the marketing process and the product management process around it.

  So here's one, like a lot of things are out there. There's a lot of like, Hey, this is a great product, uh, marketing strategy or, Oh, buy me do this.

• The Value and Evolution of Press Releases

  Larry: A lot of things are on AI right now, but can you tell me a little bit, like what you think, tell me a popular marketing strategy or tactic that you think is overrated.

  Saoirse: Sure I could go on for ages, but I won't. I will try and keep my thoughts succinct. But I, just to add to I, I take a little bit more of a holistic [00:10:00] look at marketing when I think about this. It's not something that I, can really control even. So usually when I'm trying to think of or understand like a strategy, there's always multiple layers to this, right?

  So take what I say with a grain of salt. But in my experience there are a couple of things that stand out or that at least are top of mind for me right now when we're talking about tactics, strategies that lot of organizations will do because it's something that's been done. And that's not necessarily bad all the time, right?

  If it's, tried and proven and you've seen like, okay, yes, everybody does this, but everybody does this for a reason. Um, there are a couple of things that people do or organizations do now that I don't think we really need to do anymore. So the first thing would be whenever you're launching anything, really, even if it's like hiring a new person, launching a new product, a new feature, what have you. One of the sort of standard tactics that you'd use is to have a [00:11:00] press release. back in the day, press releases were great for a variety of different reasons. Usually it's a really quick and easy way to understand like one, what are they releasing? Who's it for, what's the value there. And then you have some input from either internal folks or customers that are using the product or partners that are involved with building this product or this feature or supporting that organization. But nowadays it's. And I don't know if people are fully aware of this, but to put a press release on the wire, it's pretty expensive. And usually you do it by the number of characters or the number of words. So you're really, if you're, even if you're a big company and you're looking to not spend as much on a launch, like you're limiting yourself with what you can say,

  and

  You're paying to put this information that's pretty structured in a very like un bendable way up on this site that doesn't really get you anything back. So a lot of the times you're thinking, okay, I'll put this on the wire. It'll go out. [00:12:00] Everyone will see it and everyone will care. And unfortunately, so many companies are doing this in every different industry across everything that like, there's so much noise that it doesn't actually help you at all.

  And so you've invested all this money to make this announcement that really isn't getting you anything back. Even from an SEO standpoint, it's not a super great lasting. Impact on your domain score or anything like that.

  I would challenge that. I think there is value in having an announcement, but. But sticking to the structured outline and standard that you need to release on the wire just like a standard press release is not really adding as much value. You can syndicate content across different publications, that's so much more valuable.

  Or creating videos, like, things that people don't have to read through all of the content that you have written. Or even if you have some of the quotes from the folks that are included in the press release, if you had a video of

  Larry: yeah.

  Saoirse: or even like an audio clip, something like that's a little bit more engaging and can really show purpose of that quote, right, which is to [00:13:00] show the excitement and the value and the passion behind it, a lot of that's lost, unfortunately, in press releases today.

  So that's one thing I would challenge.

  Larry: Let me let's dive a little bit here. Cause I, I agree. Partially with you. So I, I still like a press release if it's done correctly and there's a real good customer quote in it and there's, it's meaning to get picked up. Meaning you're setting a press release out there cause you want media and you have to follow up with it.

  It's not just like, Hey, press the magic button. And then, you know, you expect everyone to come, right? It's the same way with this podcast. I put it out there and five people show up, whatever, unless you talk about it, unless you share it. And so unless you have a strategy. To work with, different publications, different media outlets then it's you're, you're lost and you're right in the sense that if you're probably better set doing customer videos or, like even blogs or blogs are overdone nowadays, unless you put enough content and credit in it, but you need a full strategy, full court [00:14:00] press, and it needs to be the right strategy for.

  My opinion, of course like for the product at hand, is it a product launch or announcement? Is it, okay, fine. Let's say it's something you want to give to the security teams. Holy, are they reading press releases? I don't know. But most likely they're going to be going to look and where they get their information.

  They're going to be a black hat. They're going to be in other places, right? That you can communicate and share with them. And so I think what you're getting at is Really getting hyper focused on the customer and on the way they consume information, which is always changing. And it's definitely gotten away from, the old, I would say the old press release that goes out there.

  But I will say when properly done. Press releases are wicked important but it shouldn't be to be like, Hey, we've got a new CMO and she's awesome and come on man. That's that. Unless you're trying to get.

  Saoirse: would honestly, Larry, I would even challenge that though, because it's like the value of that is, is your PR strategy, not like writing the actual press release, which doesn't usually like, if you [00:15:00] go back and read some press releases in the content, it's like a lot of it, unfortunately is lost because you're structuring it with this standard templateof like, you know, this is, this is how it's done.

  So this is how we're going to write it. But if you have a. example, we worked with Adam at 10K Media. I think he's great. There's some other agencies I've worked for in the past who, on the press side, who, they do a lot of work to connect with the right publications to make sure that ahead of time they already know. of the time, actually, you're writing something specific for them to let them know hey, this is what we have coming

  Larry: Yeah.

  Saoirse: This is why it's important to all of your audience. And they'll take that and write their own post with it. The press release usually, has no real impact on that as a strategy.

  It's just here's the link in the first sentence of like, whatever they write. So I would argue like, if you could come up with a better way, like to encapsulate all those and have a little bit more flexibility with like, how you're telling the story, I think that would do you a world of [00:16:00] good and spend that, instead of dumping that money into the wire, dump it into engaging with more of those publications or having a little bit more of a broader reach, I think that will, that will knock it

  Larry: I'm on board. I'm, I'm on board with that. I think. I think. Yeah.

  Saoirse: I don't know.

  Larry: Then the mechanics,

  Saoirse: behind

  Larry: the mechanics of the wire, I'm in agreement, right? That's so, yes, that's less important than the media strategy, the PR strategy and all that I am a big fan of. And this gets back to my old Amazon days as a PR FAQ, right?

  Where the press release forces you. The writing of it to get your mind clear and really understand what it is you're putting out there and how you're going to talk about it and how you're going to say it. And that I enjoy, but the mechanics of the wire. Yeah, I'm, I'm in agreement, right? There's, there are much better mechanisms to really go and communicate the value of your products to customers and get people jazzed and excited.

  So I think I'm on board with you on that.

  Saoirse: And I, to your point, I do [00:17:00] love a good PR FAQ. I think it helps. It helps align everybody on like the core, core value, right? Instead of just saying, Oh my God, going to be great. It's going to help on every single function, team possible. Like it helps you, forces you to refine what you want to say so that people can digest it.

  But yeah, I think there's, I think there's room for optimization there. There's room to evolve is, is what I would like to see or I guess challenge the market to do now.

  Larry: yeah, no, beyond the wire. That's the next episode. All good. So,

  Saoirse: Beyond the

  Larry: so, all right. So I, I think I'm on board with you on that, right? There's much better ways to get the word out there. And, and, you know, it really starts with your whole PR and a strategy rather than just pressing the button on the wire for a launch.

  Okay. So you were mentioning something else. I interrupted you.

  Saoirse: Oh, the other thing that's very, I think every marketer who's ever gone, and you know, it's salesperson as well, go to market team as a whole.

• Event Strategies and Lead Quality

  Saoirse: Anybody that's gone to a conference will understand this pain, [00:18:00] right? I think there's, Often this panic usually it comes at like the end of a quarter or a time when you need to pull reports and you're like, Oh my gosh, I, we need more leads.

  We need more pipeline. We need whatever it is. There's this mad dash towards quantity

  Larry: Uh,

  Saoirse: of a bunch of stuff. And that can be from content to social posts, to all sorts of things, like all over the place. But that I think is usually. does more harm than good,

  Larry: course.

  Saoirse: of different reasons.

  And the best example that I can give, or that I like to give, is when you go to a conference. If you go to a big conference, for example, Black Hat's coming up, In a month, people will be in Vegas, tons of people will be in Vegas, there's a giant show floor, a lot of companies that go to this show invest a lot of money to be there so for the marketing team, there's very much this, like, how do we make sure that we get the most out of this show. And if you've ever walked across any of these conference [00:19:00] floors, every single organization will have some form of swag or something fun that they're doing to help One, engage people as they come to the booth, but also, two, make sure that whatever they're proposing is memorable and everybody has a good booth experience.

  It's not just you walking up to, a printed one pager of they sell. So there's something to engage with, something fun, something to show the brand personality a little bit. But! One of the sort of trends that, I don't know when this started, but it started long before I joined the marketing realm was that if you have swag and you want to give it away, you trade that for a scan of somebody's badge

  Larry: Yep.

  Saoirse: the show.

  So it counts as like a lead. Now, I will be the first to say, I hate doing this because it doesn't really show a ton of value. It just shows that you. Congratulations. Someone took a sock. Is that really something that you want to track [00:20:00] as a lead

  Larry: Yeah.

  Saoirse: within your organization? No. Cause you get, then you're going to send these folks back to the sales team with no context. And they're going to be hammering these people saying like, Oh my God, you came to the booth and you talked to us and you loved our stuff. Like, can't you wait to talk to me? And they're like, listen, man, I, I just got some socks or like a little, one swag pieces for my kid. And it ruins the experience, honestly, as like a, prospect or a person who took that swag, now you're like, I regret all of the choices I've ever made in my life. So I would love to, to be a little bit more, strategic and pragmatic with like how you accept quality over quantity across all avenues. But that's just one in particular, that's an easy one to understand where it doesn't bring you a whole lot of value and you're really just making up numbers to pat yourself on the back

  Larry: Yeah. Yeah. Like,

  Saoirse: any results.

  Larry: I'm, I'm, I'm an agreement, but I will say there's a value to even [00:21:00] having a person's email and knowing that they're at the event and they interfaced with your brand. But there's a big, but though, and you started getting into it and it's, it's how your sales organization works. It's about how your marketing organization works and, and tags that account.

  You need to be like very, very good about saying, Oh, this is. A person who's not interested. They're just at the show. Maybe we can introduce like more brand information at some point in time with them or something about the product, but no, by no means have a seller call on them at this event. And so you just need to be very, very clear.

  About the customer and making sure you're giving them a good customer experience, even at the event. And they're not just going to get bombarded with some crazy garbage from some like agency or whatever unless you're giving them more free socks, maybe they'll take that. But,

  Saoirse: maybe we'll just ship the whole

  Larry: well, I think, but, but.

  I think there's value to capturing a lead, but there's more value associated with [00:22:00] the way you handle it and the way you process it and the way even you work with like leads and qualifying them, throughout their life cycle. And that's where you're getting to is I think there's always a rush.

  People push it over the fence to someone else. The sales team says, I just need names. And then marketing runs out there and the events team's like, ah, this better be successful because if I don't get a hundred leads. It's going to look like my ped looked horrible. I did a bad job. So now I'm thinking about it in real time.

  It's really about, it's a blame game, right? Who's, who's going to push the blame to someone else. And a lot of times the marketing team, the product marketers get screwed or someone does, because you're going to get a lead and it's going to look bad. And it's going to be whoever was taken that, you know, what, Saoirse, why'd you do this?

  So this person hated it. So at the end of the day, though it's going to fall back on the events. Team and the quality of the lead. And I think just, organizations need to get better about how they clean them and how they manage them. So.

  Saoirse: I [00:23:00] think that's actually like a really good point that is challenged. I think for every, in every organization I've been in big and small is data. Like, how do you accept that there is data that you can have for example, somebody's email of somebody who grabbed a sock, have, not to use, to engage with, but rather to understand. a pattern of behavior. Like for example, if that person only grabs a sock at the show you don't really have a chat, but you put that in your CMS or CRM, whatever, to make sure that you have a record of them and then if you have something on your website that's able to connect. visit back to your internal system and say Hey, yeah, this person went to the show.

  We didn't have a conversation, but we know that they've actually looked at our product page. They filled out a form. If they take filling out a form, maybe it's a bit dramatic, like that shows a hot interest. But if they take some other, steps following that to show that they're engaged and interested, then I think that's when you have some real magic [00:24:00] there.

  You can start to understand, like, how should I best engage with this person

  Larry: Yeah

  Saoirse: open to learning a little bit more about us? How do we get better with that? And I think you can use that for a little bit more of passive tactics, like retargeting. There's a lot of ways you can do that feels seamless and nice as opposed to taking it in as a passive tactic. lead that needs to be followed up on when in reality it's not there yet.

  Larry: I would even,

  Saoirse: I think, the grace to have a break in between or to let them, to understand what this person wants further before hammering them with outbound

  Larry: yeah, look, look, look. Yeah. And the reason why I think it's important to even have the name and the address and the, and if they're willing to give it to you, that means that they've opened up and maybe it's for some socks or not or whatever, but it doesn't have to be just about the product itself.

  It could be leveraging that person because they've seen your experience. They've listened to you. You could use them for a survey. You could be, Hey, you know, we, we know this gets in the quality of the data and what you're tracking, right? We [00:25:00] know that we gave you a pair of socks. All right. Okay, great. You know, did, did you like them?

  Do you want a t shirt? Do you want like, or is it, would you like more information, anything, but you can go and ask them, right? Hey, how was your experience at our booth? And, you know, sure. If you ask us this, we'll, we'll give you something, you know, light to, to, you know, walk away with, but it's, you don't have that information today, right?

  You don't have an idea about that unless you communicate and you do it in a smart, good way. But that takes data, takes data quality, and it takes that maintenance of the data as well that you've been getting into.

  Saoirse: Yeah. I think that's something that it's an area of opportunity. I think a lot of companies can do with that and use that to make more impact with what they're doing.

  Larry: Sure deal. Sure deal. So, so wow, we dug into that one for a bit. Um, I got, I got a question for you here.

• Debunking Marketing Myths and Misconceptions

  Larry: So we, we talked about a couple of things that are overrated, how about marketing myths or misconceptions, right? [00:26:00] That you think need debunking that we need to pull away from that. We need to kind of, because overrated is one thing you're all running after leads are great and wonderful.

  Yeah. What, what, what do you think we need to debunk here?

  Saoirse: I think there's two things that are top of mind for me. The first would be around, and they're sort of intertwined, right? But especially more so on the B2B side. But I think there's this idea that content marketing and that social media marketing are very easy. Like they're just like, what do you mean?

  How is that difficult? You just. You get up and you just post stuff. And there's so much that goes on behind that, behind the scenes, to make both of those things happen in a seamless, on brand, impactful way, that I'm just not sure that folks understand. And so it's always interesting to me. You get into a conversation with different stakeholder groups and they have, big thoughts and feels on Oh, we should just be [00:27:00] posting, hammering social with all this stuff.

  And I, I agree that there's value in posting often on social, but there's this disconnect too. It needs to be, Part of your strategy. Everything I think that we're going to talk about today is going to come back to strategy, really. It has to have meaning and it has to be aligned with what you're trying to do from a bigger picture brand perspective and a bigger picture organizational perspective.

  If you want to be known as a thought leader in a company, Like the ASPM space, just because we're on that topic, right? A lot of what you need to talk about has to be in line with that. It can't just be around like any sort of trends that you feel like talking about today, or just because if you have, Gen AI is a big topic, right?

  If you don't have something unique and interesting to say that's aligned to your brand on that, I don't know how much sense it means. It makes to just,

  All of a sudden dive into topics that you can't really give a unique opinion on or help. Emphasize like the tone, personality, purpose of your product, voice of your brand, [00:28:00] all of that jazz.

  So I think there's, and that expands to content too. Content is a little bit even more complex because there's a lot of things that you can focus on building out, writing out, but it's not as simple as it usually seems and you can churn out anybody can churn out blog content all day if they want to, but it, to what end, right?

  Like it has to Useful. impactful, has to take a little bit more of an interesting perspective

  Rewriting all of the same content. Otherwise what is the purpose there, right? You're spending all this time and effort and if people have already heard that song before, they're gonna be like, wait a minute, this looks

  Larry: Yeah,

  Saoirse: as well, because there's obviously a plethora of content. Everybody's investing time into their blogs and their social, engagement and being able to really hone in on that audience and make sure that you can use that to your brand's benefit.

  But would like to shatter that. illusion that [00:29:00] like, it's just super easy and you can just go on and do whatever. You absolutely can. I would just love to see the results of that and see if it's something that works for you or if it hasn't. In the past, I've seen that fail time and time again.

  So again, coming back to strategy, you gotta do it with heart. You gotta do

  Larry: yeah,

  Saoirse: and have it be aligned.

  Larry: the whole AI thing, at least where it's at today with Gen AI, right?

• The Impact of AI on Marketing

  Larry: It's, it, you're scouring content that exists today and you're reformulating it. And look, it's going to kill marketing. It's going to kill this kill at the end of the day, if everyone has access. To the same technology, pulling the same information from the same place.

  This gets, it's going to be a little different when people are leveraging their own data internally. But it's look, it's a starting point.

• The Importance of Authentic Content

  Larry: And right now I would say it helps augment and speed up some things like content marketing and social and other areas, but at the same time, it's. Man, if you [00:30:00] have a team of content marketers that are just generating via Gen AI and they're not putting an understanding into the product or nuances or company heart and soul into it and with a focus on educating the customer.

  And you're dead on arrival. That's everyone. How many got another top 10 list of like happy, fun things for BS products? No, like people don't want that. And there's too much of it.

• Challenges with AI-Generated Content

  Larry: And you're going to be able to tell real quick, those companies that are using like AI in the bad way, or they're sloppy, they're lazy, like nothing's worse than lazy content or lazy social.

  And what you're getting at is those social media managers that are, have an editorial calendar that are putting heart and soul, putting personality in there. And thinking out ahead of time, right? And they're tying their products in to new. Sure, AI could maybe, Hey Larry, what's the best day that I should put?

  Okay, great. Because you're studying information. You're looking at, that's one way to do it, right? And that's helping me. Get better, faster, [00:31:00] stronger. It's like my exoskeleton, so to speak, or I don't know, making this up, but it allows me then to, to be a better version. Okay. And to get better things out there quicker and maybe more insight perhaps about the word I'm trying to get at.

  But if you rely on it only. Man, you know how many sloppy blogs there are with that same look and feel from, the AI images that are out there and like, uh, like, come on, you can't even spill words on the picture. You got like, you know, so

  Saoirse: honestly,

  Larry: that's that right there. If I see that, no way. I'm not spending a dime with you.

  Saoirse: shading Gen AI completely. I'm not.

• Leveraging AI for Content Creation

  Saoirse: Because it's actually so helpful for me. One of the things that I really struggle with is I tend to use same adjectives. I get sick of hearing myself because I write a lot of content all the time. So there are times where I'm like, I just need a different word.

  But it has to mean, like,

  Larry: Oh yeah.

  Saoirse: and this three words together. Like, super helpful for stuff like that. Super helpful even to take yourself out of your own voice for a second. If you were a team of one, I think it's so helpful to have [00:32:00] somebody like just put it in and say Hey, can you just, can you make this sound a little less or a little more approachable or something like that?

  Larry: Yeah.

  Saoirse: give you something back. Sometimes it's trash, but sometimes you're like, Oh, you know what? I never really thought about combining those two sentences or whatever. Having helpful, like second eye to look at what you're writing is great.

• Balancing Brand Voice and AI

  Saoirse: But again I, one of the challenges I think that will come up with that specifically, like with generating content, without having, to your point, without it taking in your internal data and using that as like the foundation for its knowledge, would be like trying to align that to your brand voice is gonna be super challenging. It's super easy to see titles or social posts, even nowadays, that are, I know, I'm like, that came out of ChatGPT where it's if you're, all of a sudden, you're seeing like, game changing, this and that, revolutionizing this. Unlocking this. Unleashing this. There are certain words that I actually would love to go on [00:33:00] Google Trends and see the impact of using GVT to write some of that stuff because you're going to see some of these verbs or like adjectives.

  All of a sudden the usage has just exploded, but it's, that's one of the things I think is going to be hard, right? Just making sure that you are able to retain the and sustain and protect your, what you've already developed from a brand perspective and from a different differentiation, positioning perspective if you're choosing to, to rely on that without having a real baked, internal strategy around that or without coming to the table with your own first or

  Larry: Yeah.

  Saoirse: outline for what you're trying to do.

  Larry: Yeah.

• Understanding Customer Needs

  Larry: I, where my head goes to right away is the customer and the personas and having worked with like developers specifically, people who their goal, they want to build, give them the tools, help them on their way, get out of their way, from his AppSec space. The last thing you want to do is a [00:34:00] screw up a developer.

  You want to make sure that you're augmenting, you're building, you're helping. And the content marketing side. If you rely just on, chat GTP or whatever, maybe it can get you there. It can start you. But it's not going to take you further. You need right at this, at least today's day and age.

  And I'm assuming it's going to be, you need to understand the customer first. You need to understand what they're looking for. What's going to help them. Can I help AI help you? Sure. Is it at the stage right now where, Hey, you could generate code for them. Great. But if you're going to develop an ebook and it's, talking about some.

  New issue with society that you want to drive a change of their heart, unless you think about what they're doing, their goals, where their head is at, man, like you need that mind, you need that cleansing today at least. And it scares me thinking of as I'm walking through, I'm like, well, Larry, in five years, is that not going to be true anymore?

  Right. Like, ah, man, you're getting me worried now, but, but.

• The Role of Marketing in Business

  Larry: I, I think, I don't know, I'm a fan of anything that's going to help [00:35:00] us help like, let me back up here and I'm going to have a little topic here on this, but why do businesses exist? Why do companies, why do products exist? And theory of product is out there helping a customer solve a problem.

  Okay, or a person or whatever, that's your customer. And what is marketing's job? Marketing helps break that down, helps, illustrate and educate that customer, whether it be the problems, the challenges they're facing today, get a better understanding of that, or how this product's going to help them in that journey.

  And I could probably dig into this way longer here, but we don't have the time for it. But. That's the purpose. It's, it's helping people in many ways, right? We need to get out of this mental state where market is like what you're talking about with leads, like spamming people and, ah, more is better, right?

  That's why I think the theme for this is like more is not better, quality. Focus. And,

  Saoirse: why we, we can't have the, people don't want to know that you're, I can't tell people on the show floor that I'm a product marketing [00:36:00] person because they're going to be like, I'm not going to listen to you. I actually don't even believe what

  Larry: you might have some socks for me though.

  Saoirse: there? You get there because of things like this, right? Where it's like, you just, you need to. There's the potential to re shatter the trust that you, you're building and weaving in and that's to me, I'm like that, I'm not willing to sacrifice that, but you know. You gotta take calculated risks and go for it,

  Larry: Yeah,

  Saoirse: But,

  Larry: yeah. It's, it's,

  Saoirse: a challenge for sure.

  Larry: one thing I'm seeing in this podcast series is there's so much to go dive into and I almost feel in many ways it needs to be a follow on conversations on some of this stuff because it's like opening up a can of worms that people feel passionate about. So I, I'm,

  Saoirse: a roundtable.

  Larry: Yeah, we definitely will.

  Um, so let's, I want to pivot to this guy, a couple other questions here.

• Trends in B2B Marketing

  Larry: I want to dig into part of this is getting understanding of, what also, what are some trends that you're seeing right now? And from a marketing lens, from where you see you've been with different companies, [00:37:00] different areas, different sizes, and you wear different hats. But so what are you seeing right now that excites you the most? All this has been negative up till now. Right? Oh, this is not good. Or what? Like what? Give us a positive.

  Saoirse: This is how, sometimes you just gotta go down the hole. And talk about all the things that are, they're not negative, they're opportunities for,

  Larry: True that. True that. Yep.

  Saoirse: okay, for optimization.

• The Importance of Brand Trust

  Saoirse: But no, one of the things, and I can really only, I guess I could speak as a consumer, but for, with my career hat on, uh, one of the things that I'm seeing in more of the B2B space that I, it excites me, I don't know how other people feel about it, but I've noticed that more so than, There has been, at least since I've stepped into this space, there's a lot more of an emphasis or a weight, I suppose I should say in the buying process around a company's brand and like how trustworthy they are and

  Larry: Hmm. Mm

  Saoirse: they are. [00:38:00] I think it's particularly important in the software space, obviously I think it was a couple of years ago now when the executive order went out for. The software bill of materials. There's been this whole like, Oh my God, we need to understand and get, pull behind the veil a little bit, understand what's going on with the companies that we buy from, the companies that we work for or work with all of across your entire supply chain, essentially.

  So a big part of the buying process now has shifted to be able to say okay even if this other product maybe is more ahead of, This other product that we're considering. I don't trust their team. They don't do as good of a job with their messaging, the way that their buying process works.

  Obviously pricing is always going to be a huge impact, but like their collective opinion on Whether or not they want to work with this brand as a partner

  Larry: hmm.

  Saoirse: more and more important Which I love because that gives me an opportunity to be like you guys let's be a lot more transparent Let's push the boundaries a [00:39:00] little bit with showing the people behind the product and the people behind the company and showing what it's like to be able to work with the folks that are behind the scenes trying to make sure that Our customers at the end of the day, get what they need and have the best experience possible. So that's a trend that I'm happy to see. I think it'll challenge us to do better. And I think that it's also a really important thing nowadays, because as we alluded to earlier, if you are trying to buy a software solution right now, almost every single market, like regardless of what industry or segment you're in, there's a lot of reuse of the same words, the same positioning, the same sort of technology.

  So it's really hard as a prospect or a buyer to understand and to immediately, like quickly get to the point of what makes you different versus other companies

  Larry: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

  Saoirse: you know, savage with trying to understand, but just from the baseline, it's like, [00:40:00] I don't understand. Like, you're all saying the same thing. But you don't do the same thing. Trying to pull that, those pieces apart, I think people are getting really tired of that. So if they can able to connect quicker, and understand, if you're a brand and you're, or an organization and you're like, listen, I'm, this is no frills, this is what we do, this is why we're different, this is our team, we believe in our team, they're really awesome, we'd love to work with you, that is making a huge, huge difference. In what they're going to buy and the perception that they have. So crafting that, building that trust is becoming more and more important, which is why I think it's a little interesting that people are panic moving into like quantity over quality and getting a little sloppy with putting guardrails on their brand essence, essentially.

  But that's a trend that I'm interested to see how that plays out across, especially in the AppSec industry. I'm super, super interested to see how that plays out over time. So

  Larry: Yeah. [00:41:00] It's

  Saoirse: see.

  Larry: it, the brand. Yeah. That's another, another Hornet's nest in many ways. The brand itself. Specifically in the tech, security matters, right? And if you're talking about the security market, that's one where brand is super important because you need that brand. Do you instill trust? Do we trust you?

  Do I have the feeling that if I bring you in house, you're going to protect us? And that's important. And so a lot of times in security, that history, those customers, who's using you? Why are they using you? Where are they at? Super important. Not saying other industries are not. I'm just, it's kind of kicked me off a little bit in the head around, around security, where the importance of that is so, so important.

  And then another piece of it is how do you, this ties into the brand.

• Differentiation in the Tech Industry

  Item deLarry: It's the product as well, depending on where it's at is how do you differentiate? How are you different than others in the market? You got to be trusted. That's, table stakes. Everyone needs to, sometimes it's more important.

  But how do you differentiate your product and how do you stand out? And I think, [00:42:00] I don't know, I'm getting back to the whole gen AI issue where people are just moving quickly. Like I got one thing you learn real quick in enterprise software and it's almost a march to the death in many ways is speeds.

  War. Hey I came up through data warehousing and databases, and it was always, who's faster? How do you do this faster? And you, we'd have these old benchmarks. It would be IBM versus Teradata. Teradata was always really good about this. They would have these giant benchmarks, but you'd always cook the benchmarks to your own or you'd set up the system to just do the benchmark, but it wasn't necessarily real world.

  And you'd run these things. It's kinda like drag racing, right? Or if you're on a strip somewhere, right? Like what? Is that the real world or is that unique experience that you've tuned the car for? And that just gets me. And I think where my biggest irritation is when tech firms don't have enough creative and tech marketing, sorry, don't have enough creative essence to [00:43:00] go beyond speed.

  Like I've got a need for speed. Oh my gosh. Right. Don't we all, don't we all want to do a quicker, better, faster. And if you're going to differentiate yourself with speed, you better be able to come, you better be able to come illustrate how you're doing that. And, and so anyway, sorry, I'm on my pedestal here with some of this, but I think that's where you have to have real differentiation, real understanding of how you're different at solving that customer's problem.

  Hey, you solve their problem faster. Awesome. Show me right. Don't just say faster. Show me, help me.

  Saoirse: the challenge with it too is like, and I, I've said this before and it's hard. It's, I will say it's really hard to get out of this pattern. But I think a lot of it stems from years ago, there, and this is like years and years and years ago. We started with Hey, we are, we're releasing this like feature. This is what it is. Then it changed to okay, this more value driven marketing, right? Like customer centric, [00:44:00] what is this going to do for you and lead with that? But now we've almost shot ourselves in the foot where it's like, everybody's saying that, we can help you reduce your, the total number of alerts that you have we can help you move faster, do all these things.

  And that's like the end result. But what people really want to understand is how. that first conversation should be like, how are you doing this? I already know that hopefully like it, hopefully your product has a value and that you can help me move faster. I'm now that's like table stakes assumptions.

  Like I, I would hope that you're, you can help me go faster. Otherwise what's the point

  Larry: Right. Yeah,

  Saoirse: now, but they need to be able to quickly get to that conversation around like the way that we do this. is this. Then they're able to understand really quickly what you do, how you do it, technologies are in play.

  And you can ask follow up questions, of course, like if you have, this is any software company will have say to some degree that they have, their own [00:45:00] XYZ engine that does something and that makes things better. That's frustrating for a lot of prospects to hear sometimes, but it's like you can then go in a little bit further of well, this is how the engine works. This is why it's a little different. We take this information differently or we source things from elsewhere, or we use our, the data that we've had, like historically that we've built up over time, like there's a ton of different avenues, obviously, that you can go down to explain the magic sauce without revealing all the ingredients, so to speak, but think that we really need to be better about getting to that how quickly and understanding that our audience is not dumb.

  Larry: yeah, yeah,

  Saoirse: to them all the time and that shouldn't be the lead. So, yeah, there's. There's definitely a lot of work that can be done there around differentiating quickly and trusting that the people that you're talking to will know what you're talking about to some degree.

  You don't have to wouldn't it be great to, make sure that you're fixing all your problems [00:46:00] faster? Like, of

  Larry: yeah,

  Saoirse: like, yes, it would be wonderful. I'd love to have more free time, but how do you help me get there is what I would need to know.

  Larry: yeah. I think there's the education and the help and it's all in a context, right? Like it's faster in what context compared to what what are you currently facing today? What's your current challenge today? I, and look, I'm not trying to say like talking about speed's a bad thing. I think it's important.

  Sometimes it's table stakes. But I think it's important to quantify. Maybe that's what I'm getting at. You need to quantify compared to what the customer is used to being challenged with. Hey, I'm getting scammed by a lot of, threats. Okay. My surface area is getting nailed by hackers. Okay. How do I stop that?

  Like speeds of the essence. But is it today? Is it today? Is it minutes? Is it microseconds? Declare what it is. If you can't declare how you're faster. Okay. Like my opinion as a customer, if you run away, right? Unless if someone's pushing on speed and you can't clarify, like why run the heck away, or [00:47:00] at least it could be in the notes somewhere, whatever.

  Let me, let, let, let me, let me look, I want to convert this a little bit though, too. So we're talking, I don't know, opinions right now, and we're talking what we think and what we know all good. All good.scription

• Balancing Creativity and Data in Marketing

  Larry: And, but if a marketing, I have a question for you. How do you, you know, these ideas, creative ideas, how do we balance creativity?

  And the idea of a product marketer marketing general with data driven marketing, because the data, in my opinion, it's just showing the numbers, that's the details. How many leads you're getting? Tell me more about how you would balance creativity with data driven marketing.

  Saoirse: Yeah, I think a great question and I love, I love talking about this specifically because if you would have asked me about the data when I was just starting out, I would tell you, oh my god it scares me so much. Mostly because there's, especially in marketing, I think there's a lot of fear around not showing [00:48:00] enough results or if the data is something you, example, you dumped a bunch of money into a campaign.

  You're super excited about it. Now it's time to report on it and see like, how are we doing? If that data doesn't show what you want it to show, it can be super disheartening and then you have to go back to everybody and be like, oh, it, look at these results weren't great. Not what I was hoping for.

  But it's super, super critical to be able to start with the data first, or at least start with some form of data. If you're starting from scratch and you don't have, any historical performance or anything to grasp, like there's plenty of benchmarks and stuff that you can use, but using that as a foundation for your creative plans, I think is so critical.

  And it'll help you over time become better and better and better. And once you're able to understand that, even within, I know we're talking about the marketing team in general, but expanding that and using data from The whole organization is super [00:49:00] helpful in being able to align and make a real impact.

  And so if you were to plan your year, for example, around a shared goal, let's say like you are at a company and they're saying, okay, we need it is, like 15 million in net new. opportunities. As a marketer, if you take that as that is your top goal and you can roll all of your strategy tactics around making that number, rolling that number rolling your tactics up into that number, you have a winning strategy around okay, this is the foundation for what we know we need to get done. This is how we know we've converted in the past at all of these different touch points. Now, what do I need to get to this next step? this spot or this number. And then once you have that foundation, you can start to get a little bit more creative around like, all right how do we want to execute on that?

  What should that look like? Should you. Should we try a new, different piece of content? Should we try a new channel, a new partner a new, anything really. The door opens and it gives you a little bit [00:50:00] more flexibility on like how you want to execute versus being locked into something that you've done historically in the past.

  It gives you, understanding that data gives you a little bit more flexibility and knowing where you can pull some of those levers to try new things and test out new things. information are different strategies and paths there, so. I, I think it should always be your starting point, but you shouldn't let it hinder you, and then you should always measure after, and then use it to optimize your

  Larry: Yeah,

  Saoirse: plan.

  Larry: like the number one thing for me with this is no matter what, you can have a wonderful idea. You. Hey, Larry, I think this color is better than this, or I have an opinion on this. A couple of things. Number one, always bring data. And if you don't have data test, fail fast, go experiment, go try it out.

  But you want to make sure it's a, as I say, one way door and two way doors. And, a two way door is, Hey, I can make a decision. I can make a decision. Hey, it doesn't work out. [00:51:00] Hey, come back and try it again. Good. Those are good to test with one way doors like pricing, don't lower the price on something and expect to raise it at some point, right?

  You're hosed. So you need to make sure you're cognizant about what those are. But yeah, always be experimenting. Always be testing. Always, who's to say what's create, like create, I don't know, this is kind of a garbage word in many ways, but who's to say what's going to resonate with someone who's going to resonate with the customer?

  How are they going to like it? How are they going to interact with it? Is, is it, if you, if I created a tutorial how do I test that it's being leveraged correctly? It's could be something that, people aren't using, Oh my God, they must hate the tutorial. I better stop it.

  Maybe they never even saw it. Maybe they didn't even got to it. So you have to also test how you're getting into the hands of them. So I have to go put a can of worms with some of this, I think people misunderstand marketing, specifically product marketing many times as, what are the metrics at demand gen, you don't [00:52:00] understand, MQLs, you got, leads coming in.

  I got, Product marketing. How do you measure product marketing? There's a lot of ways you can measure product marketing, right? You can test out like education is an example. You have a a satisfaction score. I had people hate that sometimes, but like how did you like this? There's a whole slew of things that you can implement as types of metrics to study the effectiveness.

  Are people reading the materials and go ask the customers, go get out there. And I'm, I'm getting on a tear now, but like. I would say the other biggest one is, um, focus groups or even reaching out to a customer, but getting a group of customers to give you feedback. And that maybe that was what I was trying to get out.

  When we have the event, you have an email address of someone is that that's someone who felt good enough to at least give you an email, whether it even be for a pair of socks, treat that with respect, right? Don't, don't throw that out there and, Hey, sales rep du jour, go call on them and irritate them and make them like give thumbs down to the company.[00:53:00]

  But nurture that person. And it doesn't mean give them more, spam emails. It's give them something valuable and return. Hopefully they're going to give you something valuable and create. And that's where relationships are founded in many ways. Anyway look I think we all need to get better at data driven marketing.

  And, specifically if we're going to talk product marketing, making sure that have people have those goals and alignment around that to know what you're working against. Otherwise. I don't know. If you're doing things the wrong way, my opinion, and I'll be quiet on this one is people that write blogs for the sake of writing blogs without measuring if anyone's actually reading those blogs, I should have write a book on that.

  Cause I feel almost every company I've been in, everyone's writing blogs and they think that's another great thing to do. No, it's.

  Saoirse: abysmal! And it's like, why are we doing this? It's been, it takes a lot of time. Yeah, there's a, again, strategy and that strategy should be data driven, should be born from the data. But also on the data point too, and the goals it's, [00:54:00] for product marketing, I think it's really important to be able to align those goals across the team, right?

  So that everybody understands this is what we're gold against, this is how we can roll up into it, track it over time. All that jazz. So

  Larry: If I had a dime for every time I've talked to a company, interviewed with a company and the idea of a marketing plan is like new to folks. Like what? No, you need a marketing plan. And that's what you're getting at is the strategy that's articulated and written down with goals and things you want to do.

  And if you don't follow that, That's the quickest way to get lost. And it's the quickest way to go after. So some people use the term chasing squirrels. Like that's the quickest way to go start chasing squirrels is if you don't have something written down that you and I and the team and the CEO and others are aligned on, Ooh, that's when it gets dirty really quick.

  Saoirse: is the most important part, right? Though, that you have buy in [00:55:00] from all of the stakeholders across there. So I think that's actually the challenge. Cause you can, I've seen plenty of fabulous, amazing strategy, but if the people who are in, you know, really pivotal in making sure that everybody is on board and committed and aligned to that, and also. Facilitating the collaboration across teams of that like it that can fall a strategy can fall down very quickly because at the end of the day It's a concerted effort and everybody has to want to work cross functionally Collaboratively to help achieve that so I would love to see it I think it's the key to it's the easiest key to success that you could have and get people excited about it and especially if you're able to Like in the most successful strategies that I've seen and that I've seen executed, we had, everybody was involved with creating the strategy, the folks that are going to be executing on all of the things. [00:56:00] Um, but everybody was also able to align across that the leaders across all of the major go to market teams, all the, even all the teams, to be honest, but go to market in particular for what we're talking about,

  Larry: Yeah.

  Saoirse: they were bought in. Right. And they were like, right, this is what we're doing guys. It's like, this is, if you want to. Exhibit A. If you want to massively change your social engagement and your social posture, for lack of a better word you're gonna have to have the whole company involved too. They're gonna have to be out there engaging with the posts creating their own posts if they want, resharing content, all of that stuff.

  That's just one example. easy example of why you need to be concerted. There's a plenty more that we can jump into, but yeah, I would love to see that executed well again. That's my next mini goal is to be able to that appropriately.

  Larry: Got it. No, all good. Hey, I'm looking at the time and we have chatted away here. So I gotta close this up. But I last parting word for you or [00:57:00] question, actually leave us with it. What do you see as any future trends that you seeing shaping any, anything around product marketing specifically, anything you want to give insight into.

• The Future of Product Marketing

  Saoirse: I would say, I don't know if this is so much of a trend, as it is an outcome of some of the trends that we've talked about. For product marketers in the software space specifically, it's getting like more and more challenging. We talked about being able to differentiate quickly, appropriately, transparently, authentically. I think there's going to be a lot more of a skew toward being able to do that without some of your, I don't know, like SEO power juice, whatever, what have you. I think there's going to be less of an emphasis on trying to use those buzzwords. Just to, splatter them across your page, but to be able to, how do you find, strike that balance between using buzzwords, ranking [00:58:00] for first on the SERP, and being authentic and true to your brand, what you do, and connecting with customers.

  So I'd love to see, I don't think that I've seen a brand yet that can play that balance well. But I'm hoping that will be an outcome of some of the stuff that we're seeing across recycled adjectives and a real challenge for prospects to be able to understand what the heck is going on with all the vendors that they're trying to buy from.

  Larry: We're faster, we're faster, we're faster. No kidding.

  Saoirse: always.

  Larry: Awesome.

  Saoirse: the things.

  Larry: No, seriously. Awesome. Hey, thank you so much for, for joining us on the show today. And yeah, let's let's connect soon, but thank you again.

  Saoirse: thank you.

  Larry: Take care.Item description