The Marketing Share

Mastering Demand Generation: Scaling Strategies with Carly Botelho (Ep. 28)

• Alec Cheung & Barb VanSomeren • Episode 28

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Are you struggling to scale your demand generation efforts? 

In this episode of The Marketing Share, our hosts Alec Cheung and Barb VanSomeren chat with Carly Botelho, Director of Demand Generation at Intellimize, about practical tips on building and scaling demand generation from the ground up.

Carly breaks down the key steps to get demand generation running smoothly, from setting up the right tools and infrastructure to executing campaigns that drive results. She also talks about how to strategically place your marketing bets, when to experiment, and how to adapt as your company grows.

If you’re a marketing leader looking to improve your demand gen strategy, this episode is packed with real-world examples, expert advice, and actionable insights to help you grow faster and smarter.

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Cheers.

Barb VanSomeren (00:02.099)
Hey Alec, Barb Van Sommeren here and my co-host Alec Chung. How are you Alec?

Alec (00:06.954)
Hello, Barb. It's good to be back in studio as always.

Barb VanSomeren (00:09.862)
I know, welcome to the Marketing Share. We are here today with an exciting guest. I'm super psyched. She's a friend of the Marketing Share, Carly Patello. Carly is the Director of Demand Generation at Telemize that has recently been acquired by Webflow. So she's probably got a lot of fun stories to talk about there. If anybody's been in that space before, I know I have. But welcome, Carly.

Carly Botelho (00:34.562)
Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Barb VanSomeren (00:36.744)
Yeah, so congratulations on the merger. Can you tell us a little bit about your career journey and what's happening? It's pretty exciting.

Carly Botelho (00:45.218)
Yeah, definitely. So I've been working in demand gen for over 10 years now, which is crazy to say. I started my career at large companies like VMware and Cisco, and then slowly made my way into the startup world with Envoy first, most recently Intellimise. And yeah, we were recently acquired by Webflow. So it's been a fun journey so far and been interesting to be back at like a more, I'd say more established organization. I don't know if Webflow would think that, they still think of themselves as a startup, but know, 700 employees is definitely a different animal.

Barb VanSomeren (01:15.048)
Yeah, that feels more like a scale up to me.

Carly Botelho (01:16.578)
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's definitely been a wild ride.

Barb VanSomeren (01:21.96)
It's always fun when I think a company goes through that, you know, it's an exciting time for employees and depending on what section you're in, right? How many times you've been through this, it can be either nerve wracking or it can be really a fun ride for people. Are you feeling it the fun ride or what?

Carly Botelho (01:38.366)
yeah. Yeah. It's been fun. Cause I mean, I didn't tell them I was, only have like a handful of marketers and a handful of salespeople. And so to get to see like that scale now come through to like a marketing team of 60 people and a sales team of 60 people. And the sales team is really taking this and running with it. It's really cool to see like that transition from, our little scrappy team to, we're achieving scale now. Like we're having, we're like having real conversations. It's like a definite, it's a, it's been really interesting.

Barb VanSomeren (02:04.616)
You know, I don't know about you, you know, seems like, you know, Alec and I have worked in startups and scale-ups and it seems like demand generation is the hot topic of the day, especially in these young companies that are really trying to, you know, make it happen quickly. What are the first steps that you kind of pull together in a newer or younger company to get the demand generation engine moving?

Carly Botelho (02:30.752)
Yeah, so I think this might be a different answer than most people would say, but I would say it's really about making sure you have the right tools and infrastructure in place to make sure you can actually capture that demand when it comes in. I think it's a big miss when people don't invest in marketing operations in the beginning. I once joined a startup that I first joined in their contact us forum on their website was completely insecure. It was basically just driving pure spam. They were getting like hundreds of spam leads a day. So they just weren't looking at it.

I was like, this is insane, right? This is like your number one way that people contact you. So like first step was like, okay, we need a marketing automation platform, right? We need to make sure we have a secure forum on the website. We understand where these people are coming from, where is all the spam coming from, but also where the good people coming from more importantly. And so understanding that as like the baseline is super important. Then you get into the more fun stuff, right? Like establishing who's your ICP, what channels are those people on? Like how much should you be investing in order to hit your targets?

And really making sure you have a full funnel approach. that, the way I like to think about it is if you know how many opportunities you need, back that out to figure out how many leads you need. And then if you're still not hitting that goal, but you're seeing the leads, then you can start to diagnose each of those funnel stages, right? If you just have an MQL goal, you're probably not gonna hit your opportunity goal as an example.

Alec (03:49.112)
Karli, what about what, like, I like what you're saying. You got to get the fundamentals in place first. So then once you get into it though, I think one of the hardest challenges often is as a marketer, you're trying to figure out where do I place my bets and how do I figure out where to put my demand generation efforts? So how much in your mind do you allow for a little bit of experimentation and testing out? Because sometimes you don't know until you actually try it. I mean, do you even agree with that premise?

Carly Botelho (04:19.296)
yeah, definitely. You don't know until you try it. And also sometimes when you try it and you don't execute it correctly, it may look like it's not working when it could be. An example I didn't tell them is when I first started, they were not running paid search. They're like, we had an agency, it wasn't working. And I was like, okay, that's like fair. But I think it can work. So like, let's like take a step back and figure out like, why wasn't it working? Let's start with like a small amount of budget, see where we can start to invest.

Alec (04:27.81)
Yeah.

Carly Botelho (04:47.54)
in that channel to make it work. And once we start to see those results, okay, now let's ramp spend until we hit our cap rate of, okay, this is now not efficient anymore. You've kind of like figure out that sweet spot and then move on to the next channel, right? But with that said, would caution just investing in one channel at a time. I think having like a full funnel approach is better. So maybe you say, okay, we're gonna try paid search, LinkedIn, Facebook and an event, and then check all of those and see how did those compare against each other?

And did those things help the results of each other, right? And versus just paid search, probably not going to see the results that you want.

Alec (05:25.902)
Okay, so even if you have limited budget, you would still advocate for splitting it up in some way to test a few different things? Okay, all right. How much?

Barb VanSomeren (05:33.576)
Because the layering effect seems to always help. It helps your web traffic. It helps, you know, so many different things. least that's in my experience.

Carly Botelho (05:42.978)
Yeah, definitely.

Alec (05:44.078)
Another question, actually another question I have about just unfollowed that. How much time do you give to a campaign before you decide, okay, we've given it enough time for me to determine either it's not working or I'm executing it wrong?

Barb VanSomeren (05:44.138)
What's the

Carly Botelho (05:59.138)
I think it really depends on the budget. You know, because I think generally I'd say about a month, but if you have a lot of budget, you may want to spread that out over like a quarter, right? And then see how that does over time. So I guess it really does depend. I also think quality is more important than quantity. So understanding where is the right channel, like targeting marketers, we know LinkedIn is the right channel. We know marketers are on

So understanding how to make that channel efficient is like a different strategy than well-paid search work at all. And then therefore the timing of those or like how much you're going to invest may be different.

Alec (06:35.746)
Yeah. Okay.

Barb VanSomeren (06:37.23)
I'm kind of curious about, know, I mean, it's kind of related to what you said, Alec, which is risk tolerance for your client, right? Or your company. I mean, I was just on a piece of business where the risk, you know, yes, it was like a month and it was LinkedIn and it wasn't very efficient for sure. We knew our customers were there because where else, you know, is a, you know, healthcare buyer? They're not on Facebook, right? I mean, it's like,

So, you know, we did paid search and we did some other things, but it seemed to me like the timeframe that we had and the budget was kind of really light to learn. Are you experienced that people don't want to spend much more time than a month?

Carly Botelho (07:21.066)
Yeah, I think it does depend. I think it's a story that you're going to tell, right? And setting that expectation at the beginning. Like I think generally I'd probably give something a quarter at the end of the day in order to really test it. But if you're only going to have $10,000, like spreading that out over three months is going to be challenging. So yeah, it does depend on the channel and what it is that you're trying to test. But sometimes a month can be enough. Like we saw pretty early success on paid search. I'm like, OK, the right titles are coming in. The right people are coming in. Now I need a little more budget to test this effect.

Alec (07:47.982)
Mm.

Carly Botelho (07:50.466)
versus like, or as a different example, Facebook, like you were saying, Facebook not performing IntelliMize. We were like just getting junk. We're like, we're over this. But not to like promote too many channels, but at Webflow they have Clearbit and being able to use Clearbit targeting on Facebook, we're seeing like way better results. So being able to test it again, even though we're paying for Clearbit, that cost per lead and the quality that's coming through is so much stronger.

Whereas in Intellimise we just were like, no, we're not going to do this. So there's a lot of nuances to it. And we're targeting the same audience, right? So it's definitely interesting to see that difference.

Alec (08:18.702)
Yeah.

Barb VanSomeren (08:24.147)
Mm.

Alec (08:24.174)
So, okay, once you figure that out, let's say you do it, and you're like, hey, this is working, like in that example. I think then the next thing that comes to mind for me usually then is, all right, is this going to work if I scale? So I don't know if you have some thoughts on, these are the things to watch out for though, as you're scaling. And then probably the part B, maybe I should split these up and wait. But the second part of that also is,

Carly Botelho (08:40.844)
Hmm.

Barb VanSomeren (08:49.834)
you

Carly Botelho (08:50.242)
Thank

Alec (08:53.326)
I often find that it's working, then, I don't know, three months pass and then all of sudden, wait, how come the campaign isn't working as well? So then you have to kind of, you're like a detective. You have to figure out, what just changed? Because I didn't change anything. So market changed, algorithm changed, I don't know. So I don't know. Maybe I just gave you two things at once, but tell me what you think about those.

Carly Botelho (09:05.055)
Thank

Carly Botelho (09:08.598)
Yeah.

Carly Botelho (09:15.64)
Yeah, definitely. So I think at least for me, it's like you generally have a general cost per MQL target, or you're going to have like a CAC target, depending on the type of business that you have. So you've kind of calculated out like how much am I willing to per leader per MQL. so scaling a channel to the point where you're not passing that, or maybe you're passing that. But when you blend it out across all your channels, you're still hitting your target. Like at Webflow, we break things up in terms of like demo requests and content downloads.

So obviously, we're going to pay more for a demo request than we are for a content download. But we look at that blended cost per MQL in order to determine those different channels, or we'll assign different values. But so I would say you generally can scale up until when you're hitting that upper limit of how much you're willing to pay. And if you're not able to scale, then yeah, think having more of a full funnel approach is where it starts to make more sense. So that's what I definitely think that like,

That's like the key piece of that. Also, some channels though, the more you spend, the better your efficiency is. We spent a lot more on LinkedIn at Webflow than we did at Intellimise and our cost per lead is much lower. So I think it also does depend on the channel. Sometimes, you you start to get some economy of scale, especially with like something like content syndication, right? Like they're going to give you a lower cost per lead as you spend more. So it sort of does depend on the channel and what your...

looking to do. What was the second part of your question?

Alec (10:42.958)
just about how then it's working fine one day and then like the next month you realize, how come our scores, how come our results went down? We didn't change anything.

Carly Botelho (10:47.538)
yeah.

Carly Botelho (10:52.746)
Yeah, it's like the yeah, I don't know the million dollar question, right? But I think that also does depend on the channel. I think one thing I've noticed is having some flexibility in your budget and what it is that you're doing is really important. So there are definitely weeks where paid search is doing terrible. it's like, okay, let's like scale down paid search for this week and scale up something else. And then let's scale paid search back up and scale down something else back, you know, like having that flexibility across channels, I think is important.

Alec (10:56.642)
Right, yeah.

Carly Botelho (11:20.898)
And then, like you said, like looking into it, are there certain... Google does change things a lot, right? So like on a random day, all of a sudden we're getting a bunch of, you know, junk or like the quality's gone down and I'm like, what's going on? like Google decided that it's a phrase match is now basically so broad that we were just seeing like a bunch of irrelevant keywords. doing the work of like negative scrubbing is, okay, now we're back to where we wanted to be. So yeah. And then also new content, right? Like I think at some point like...

Alec (11:26.936)
Yeah.

Alec (11:44.75)
Yep.

Carly Botelho (11:51.094)
bringing new content into the fold is important. Yeah, that's generally what I see.

Barb VanSomeren (11:52.722)
Yeah. Frushing it up a little, right? you know, people do get, I mean, there is a thing such as thing as fatigue, right? I mean, after a while, you can't run something forever and expect it to be completely the same impact. would think maybe it'd be to be it's different, you know, on a separate, spectrum. I'm glad you talked about the notion of, you're willing to pay more than target for certain things, you know? So I'll give you an example in a business that I had, I was trying to generate.

tests for people who are 65 years old, right? the, you know, channels were really different and everything. And I would actually pay more to get a consistency on one channel when it was even not as efficient as another channel, because I needed the volume per location, right? So you're willing to make those trade-offs, I think, depending on what the needs of the business are, right?

Carly Botelho (12:45.44)
Yeah, exactly.

Barb VanSomeren (12:48.344)
recently we spoke with a friend of ours, both of us, and we talked about the idea of, you know, an attribution strategy is not always really necessary. I don't know, you know, I'm always, it seems to me like I'm always being asked how we're spending the money in order to really be able to articulate that. Well, do you have to have an attribution strategy? What's your take?

Carly Botelho (13:10.102)
Yeah, I think it ultimately depends on what your definition of an attribution strategy is, but I definitely think you need some type of attribution strategy. Like you just said, people wanna know, I'm spending this much on this channel, what am I getting out of it? And so, obviously there's the high level metrics of cost per lead, it's fine, you can compare X and see how much does that lead cost versus Y, but that's not ultimately what you want. You wanna know how many opportunities am I getting out of this and how much closed one.

So I do think you need some kind of attribution strategy. Now the type and like all of that gets very nuanced and I think it can get really complicated really quickly. so understanding your data and like what makes sense for your business and like trying to just get a baseline is important. But like me personally, I look at records one by one sometimes. Like I'm like, where did these demo requests come from? What's the story here? And that helps me understand.

Is our attribution model even right? Or do we need to change it? And then also, think at maybe a higher level where I would start that conversation is I think a lot of companies want to do marketing versus sales. Did marketing drive this, or did sales drive this? And I hate that. I think one goal, marketing and sales should have a shared goal. Outbound should be considered a channel. We do want to know how outbound is doing. But it shouldn't be like, they outbounded, but

Barb VanSomeren (14:23.507)
me too.

Carly Botelho (14:33.703)
know because they had a marketing touch at this point never like fighting over who got the lead like it does it does not matter yeah it doesn't matter

Barb VanSomeren (14:37.384)
my God, right? I've been there too. It's the worst. know, facilitate teamwork. Don't, you know, put us into an adversarial place. I think that's a pain.

Carly Botelho (14:43.798)
Yeah.

Carly Botelho (14:47.434)
Right. And if you're doing your marketing correctly and you have an awareness strategy, then when your sales rep out bounds, they're probably more likely to get that meeting. Right. So these things are going together anyway, even if like your UTMs aren't tracking that at that specific level and like understanding that's important.

Alec (15:00.302)
Hmm.

Alec (15:04.29)
Do you incorporate outbound in all of your, like a combination of outbound and inbound in your demand generation efforts? Yeah, you always do? Okay. And what do you use for outbound?

Carly Botelho (15:11.242)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Carly Botelho (15:18.306)
So at Webflow today, we do have an SDR team. So they're only focused on outbound. And so historically, has been a lot. They're generating a lot of their own campaigns. What we're actually trying to do now is really bring in like a full account-based marketing strategy, where I think that that outbounding effort is going to see a lot more success, right? Because what we were just talking about in terms of like, you've got the air cover for marketing against those accounts. You have sales also working those accounts. The likelihood of success is much higher.

So like that's something we're actually still implementing now.

Barb VanSomeren (15:51.7)
Good. So, okay, I know that this, it depends by business, it depends by wanting, but let's just take an example, like, you know, in the case study world, okay, a SaaS business in the B2B tech world, right? What are your go-to top three to five channels that typically you will go to for demand gen on a regular basis?

Carly Botelho (16:11.01)
Mmm.

Carly Botelho (16:15.872)
Yeah, so I guess I think I'd say, you paid channels we were just talking about. Like I do think paid search is important though executing it correctly can be a challenge, especially for B2B SaaS. Paid social LinkedIn and Facebook. Obviously folks are getting into like TikTok that are more creative and things like that. I will say I have not experimented with that yet though. think we probably should. Events are another big one, both for trade shows and also like just

general networking events. And then I would say more the stuff that goes in the middle of your funnel, Like email and webinars and really being a thought leader in this space and really being able to nurture folks. They may not be ready the second they come in, but they will be ready at some point or at least be interested in learning more. And so I think those are channels we definitely should not ignore and are important as well.

Barb VanSomeren (17:08.659)
Yeah.

Alec (17:11.086)
I think a theme there, what struck me when you were saying that thought came to mind was like, you cannot half step your way into demand generation. You've got to be willing to commit enough in order to cover the span of the things. you've said, hey, multi-channel is better split it. You're to get better results that way. But then you're also talking about hitting all the different stages of the funnel. So don't just hit one part of the funnel.

consider the other channels that also allow you to hit mid-funnel and even end-of-funnel.

Carly Botelho (17:46.806)
Yeah, definitely. Like one channel I didn't mention that I do think some companies see success with is Content Syndication. But that's a hard one sometimes because it is very top of funnel at the end of the day. they're not downloading the content from your website, right? They probably don't even know where they got the content from. And so having a really strong nurture strategy can drive results from Content Syndication. But if you don't have that, you're kind of missing a piece of the puzzle, It's that you're not going to see the test from Content Syndication.

Alec (18:11.054)
Hmm.

That's a great one. I don't hear much about content syndication. That's a good one that you brought up. That actually leads me to another follow-up question, which is, let's say you're a smaller team, and I think you have some experience on this. So you are limited resources. What are the areas in demand gen that you would look to outsource to an expert versus still try to do

on your own, whether it's you or maybe you've got just one marketing staff person. What things are easier to maybe carve out as like, I'm going to get a specialist. I don't know if it's content syndication, but I'm going get a specialist to do this area. I'm going to find a contractor to do this area. Any thoughts or suggestions there?

Carly Botelho (18:57.472)
Yeah, that's a great question. think if you're a sole marketer, I would definitely look for an agency for marketing operations because I do think that can take a fair amount of time or have like a contractor or something on that front, per what we were talking about at the beginning. And then a paid media agency helps a lot, especially if you're trying to set up pay search at the beginning. It's a painful process and you need to be in there like negativing, negativing, I'm like, that's not even a word, putting negative keywords in there like every...

Alec (19:06.797)
Mm-hmm.

Carly Botelho (19:24.47)
hour, maybe every day. It's a huge time set. And so like, you know, when we first launched it, I'm in there doing that. like, ultimately, like, this is a waste of time, right? Like, we need to find somebody else that can have a better lens on this and also make sure we're seeing that success. So I definitely would say a paid media agency and marketing operations is where I would probably start.

Alec (19:45.95)
Okay. And then which would you bring in as you so that if you start to grow, what would you bring in first? you could mark that. Okay.

Carly Botelho (19:53.61)
Also marketing ops. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think that making sure you have that infrastructure and able to tell the story about what's performing well, like if you don't know, if you're investing in these channels, you actually know how they're performing. Like you're not going to get anywhere. So I think, I think that's really important. And then the second would be more of just like a generalist.

DemandGen manager, can work across all those different funnels we were talking about. Could manage a paid media agency, but could also write and set up emails in Marketo, right? Or like can also set up a webinar program, like the sort of like more programmatic approaches to DemandGen and actually the executioner on those is really important.

Barb VanSomeren (20:32.371)
Yeah, because if you're doing events and you're doing paid and you're doing, you know, you've got to actually work in all the execution for that. Cause that's a lot of execution that you're looking at. what about the rev ops person? Do you put the rev ops person later on in a larger team?

Carly Botelho (20:48.786)
In terms of like sales operations more so than marketing operations. Yeah. The strat. Yeah, I think it really did. I've seen it set up many different ways in many different companies. We had a sales operations contractor most recently, which was really helpful. I think I've generally seen sales operations sit on sales and I've generally seen that come before marketing operations. Like generally they've had that person beforehand. But I guess it does depend. I have also worked with marketing operations people who can

Barb VanSomeren (20:52.632)
The Straddler.

Barb VanSomeren (20:58.792)
Yeah.

Carly Botelho (21:17.43)
dabble enough in sales ops that it's at a small company. think that's important. Like hire a marketing house person that knows Salesforce. Like it will save you a lot of heartache, at least in the beginning, before you have enough resourcing to hire a full-time person.

Barb VanSomeren (21:19.902)
Yeah, yeah.

Barb VanSomeren (21:31.208)
Yeah. mean, example, just, I just worked with a marketing operations person who is really like a sales enablement person at this company who was really, really terrific at it. Right. So somebody who cares enough to track every single lead, knowing where it's going and making sure that, we have the appropriate content back is huge to close up that funnel. so talk to me about some of the biggest wins that you've had. love stories about, you know, when somebody

Carly Botelho (21:37.708)
Yes.

Carly Botelho (21:51.297)
Yeah, definitely.

Barb VanSomeren (22:00.906)
hits it out of the park. I've heard you're a big ball hitter out of the park person. So I would love to hear some of the wins stories.

Carly Botelho (22:05.666)
Yeah, I won't say which company this was, but when I first stepped into a role, I didn't really know what I was walking into, and I joined my first pipeline call, and they had two open opportunities. The pipeline call was five minutes. They were like, here's the two ops we're working, and then it ended. And I was like, what did I sign up for? gosh.

And looking into what's happening, just basically did all the things we just talked about. They did not have a demand generation funnel at the end of the day. had a website. The forms were working. The basics from the marketing ops standpoint were there. But the channel mix was wrong. We weren't investing in the right areas. We weren't able to really track and see which of these were coming from where. And so it was all the things we were just starting about, starting from the beginning of getting those things in place, showcasing that we have to test some of these channels again.

test some events that maybe we haven't gone to in the past, things like that. And it ultimately over like six months led to like, we were then at like over a hundred opportunities. So it was a huge win and really exciting to see that growth in that scale. But yeah, it was a fun at the beginning. The other thing I'll say is like, one thing that was fun at Intellimise is we were able to run, we were marketing to marketers, right? So we got to run really fun campaigns. And like that, I think we don't, as marketing teams, especially if we're like,

Barb VanSomeren (23:24.266)
Yeah.

Carly Botelho (23:27.926)
talking IT or we're talking to security, like it can get kind of boring, which we're marketing to people, right? And like, let's have a little bit of fun and let's do things that are going to stand out amongst everything else that's doing. And so having the opportunity to run really creative campaigns and see the results from those specifically was really exciting. We did one on Convert-a-Palooza, which was this whole, we like all sat down and created these like crazy marketing rock star names, like all this stuff in like,

It really got our brand name out there, it was doing something different.

Alec (24:00.395)
That's fun.

Barb VanSomeren (24:01.204)
I love that. That's awesome.

Carly Botelho (24:02.004)
Yeah.

Alec (24:03.926)
What's been your toughest market to solve like because of the target is very difficult to understand. It was for you, know, very difficult to understand or to get a get a handle on.

Carly Botelho (24:14.91)
Yeah, I worked at a startup where we were an API. was kind of like the B2C, where they were going to white label our solution and then use it on their side. And so it was a totally different dimension motion. This was not an inbound motion where you're waiting for people to come to you. This was like, there's probably only 200 companies in the world that are going to use this. So we have to go after those 200 companies.

like really hard. And so it was a like basically only account based marketing. So a very different approach than what we've been talking about today. But setting that up from the foundations of okay, have making sure where you like have a company's marketing tools and like a totally different set of activities that you're going to do against those accounts and working really closely with the sales team. So that was like a big learning curve for me and still was like a but it was an interesting challenge.

Barb VanSomeren (25:12.68)
Yeah. You know, I'm in love with, when you're able to get some of these wins on, your resume, right. And it talks about how you improved, you know, the cost per acquisition or, you lower these things or you, you know, improved ROI and those kinds of, so is that some of, is that some of what you've obviously, if you went from two opportunities to a hundred, that number has improved, right? we have a couple of those that you could speak to. mean, cause that's, I mean, that's

Carly Botelho (25:34.132)
Yeah. Yes, yeah.

Barb VanSomeren (25:41.938)
amazing, right? When you can talk to that kind of a number.

Carly Botelho (25:45.77)
Yeah, definitely. And I think it goes back to that attribution point too of like, you can look at individual channels and see that ROI. Like I was saying, you know, paid search wasn't working. We got it to work. That was exciting. And like a channel level. But I think more interesting is when you find the right mix so that your overall metrics are improving, right? You know how much your marketing budget is. You know how much the marketing team is driving. And as long as you're driving more than you're spending and you're hitting your targets, like that's ultimately what matters.

And so I see a lot of times where people are like, like this channel is not working. Let's just like turn it off, but it is fueling some other channel that is working. And so you start to see that like your results start to get worse when you stop investing in the channel you didn't think was working and vice versa. So I think like, obviously if you can like clearly see a channel isn't working, not saying we've been on, but I think that there is some, you know, it's really interesting when all these things play together and you're hitting your targets in that way to improve like results, like exponentially versus just like, okay, I improved pay search by like 5%.

Barb VanSomeren (26:44.008)
Yeah, no, I've been there as well, right? The blended number is the number that you care about. I mean, you have to learn about the individual channels, but if you can, know, if, you know, I did an overall cost per acquisition reduction, you know, of like 15 % on a very super stable old business that had been doing it for a long time. And that's huge money. You know, you have to, you kind of have to tell people what you're doing and what it means to their business a little bit too.

Carly Botelho (27:10.89)
Mm-hmm. And the other channel I think is interesting and we haven't talked quite as much about as events. Like I've seen a lot of people are not investing as much in events because they're not seeing that direct ROI. And so it's like twofold. It's one, like I do think there's a place for events. Like if you completely cut events out, like I was saying, you're going to start to see your overall results go down, especially if you're going to the right events, but really making events like more.

impactful and thinking through like how you can make the most out of an event like just going and having a booth and like standing there. Yeah, you're not going to see the results that you want. So making sure you have a full strategy and like pick the right events is super important.

Barb VanSomeren (27:41.343)
Yeah.

Alec (27:49.806)
I.

Barb VanSomeren (27:50.442)
Yeah, and you don't have to display all the time, right? Sometimes you actually go to an event to meet key individuals or that kind of thing. It's not always about the booth and the exhibition, right? But you're exactly right, right? I mean, if you pull that out, that's a serious risk to many, B2B businesses.

Carly Botelho (28:07.82)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alec (28:10.382)
What are some ways that you can make events more impactful? I like that recommendation. What would you say?

Carly Botelho (28:15.072)
Yeah, I mean, first I think is just like what Barbara was just saying, like networking. Like networking is really important. I've gone to events where salespeople just want to stand at the booth and they don't want to go and walk around and talk to people. And I'm like, I don't know why I brought you. So like go out there, go talk to people, go have conversations. You don't have to be selling to everybody. It's more about getting to know your buyer. And then they're going to want to learn more about what it is that you're doing. I've also seen ancillary events, like tack something on, like your audience is there.

host a happy hour, host a dinner, host a breakfast. And then you get to control the conversation a little bit better too. And I mean, I think this one's obvious, but I won't go to an event if we don't have a speaking session. Like a way to get in front of the audience to drive traffic to your, know, to your, have conversations with you afterward. If you're not doing that, you're just at the booth, like it's not gonna work.

Barb VanSomeren (29:04.136)
Yeah. I think the kickoff meeting is mission critical, right? What are we here to do? What's our job while we're all here, right? Aligning the team on what we're actually doing. If it's shaking a couple new hands, yes, it's always about business, of course, but sometimes it's about, I want you to get 10 new friends that are going to have a meeting in the next quarter with you, right? I mean, it's, and having some targets in mind is probably good. And they don't always have to be

Carly Botelho (29:09.899)
Yeah.

Barb VanSomeren (29:32.148)
you know, wait for the booth, wait for somebody to place an order. Because that is kind of rare today, right?

Carly Botelho (29:37.162)
Yeah, one thing I saw a company do once I was really impressed by and I've always wanted to replicate it is at a trade show they had pre-printed a bunch of like, don't, it was like a study of some kind, but they had printed the people's names and their companies on them. They were like personalized, like it was like an ROI study type deal. And as we walked by, my friend worked at a large organization and they were like, Sarah, like we've been waiting for you. Like here's your personalized like state. And I was like, wow, that was like.

And I'm surprised I don't see more people doing that now. It's like if you can create something that's related to your business, that's Impactful to folks like you should

Alec (30:07.779)
Hmm.

Barb VanSomeren (30:14.206)
Yeah, like an ROI or performer or something like that. I love that idea.

Carly Botelho (30:16.492)
Mm-hmm.

Alec (30:18.166)
What do you do to track events? Like how much tracking do you do? Just like, you know, all the names and everything like that. Is it just basically that or is there any other tips or suggestions that you have on how to somehow measure the effect of the event?

Carly Botelho (30:32.256)
Yeah, so one thing I didn't mention I think everybody should do is at the beginning, like especially now with like chat between and stuff, like get the list in advance. there, like I was hearing like, we don't have the list. And I'm like, don't we have access to the app? Like get in the app, like get the names now and do some pre-hour each first. So hopefully we already have a list, but then on top of that, yeah, tracking, like who did you meet with? You know, obviously there's like the booth scans, the ancillary events that you had, who attended your speaking session and be really specific with your.

follow up from there in terms of like, what did that person engage with? And like, you know, if we talk to them on the show floor, like make sure it's that personalized experience for that person, especially from the person who was there and spoke to them, like have them do the initial follow up. But I do think just like looking at that and like, you know, your CRM or whatever, and being able to track that specifically, we can directly tie like how many ops do we get out of this event or even in the future, I think we tend to see like,

We get ops like right after, and then maybe like three months later, people come back through. so making sure, you know, you're able to tie those back to like, okay, we met with them at the event. And then they later came back to know like, was that worth it?

Barb VanSomeren (31:42.462)
experience that too right after the event and three months later and you know it's almost like there's a strategy there right which is hey let's re-bet let's dial back to these folks at this particular time they're probably thinking about again probably budget time you know and this is the actual perfect time to do it it's just like thinking through your strategy and making sure it's not about one event even though it's an event

Carly Botelho (31:44.992)
Yes.

Carly Botelho (31:51.202)
Thank you.

Carly Botelho (32:04.982)
Yeah, definitely.

Alec (32:07.384)
Well, Carly, we really appreciate the time. Yeah, coming on to the marketing share and sharing your expertise. If people want to find out more about you or just connect with you, where can they go?

Barb VanSomeren (32:07.422)
Well, awesome. Thank you.

Carly Botelho (32:18.318)
yeah, definitely LinkedIn, message me on LinkedIn. That was probably the best place. I'm not savvy enough to have a website yet, maybe one day. Thank you.

Barb VanSomeren (32:27.86)
Well, good luck to you. mean, super exciting on the web flow and everything in your future. And we wish you the best. Thanks a lot.

Carly Botelho (32:35.062)
Thank you so much.

Alec (32:35.598)
Thank you.