Cat Nguyen
Summary
Ricky Pearl talks to Cat Nguyen, the founder of the branding business Empirical, in this podcast episode. Cat shares her unique view on marketing, especially for small businesses that provide a service, such as Managed Service Providers (MSPs). The difficulties of standing out in crowded places, getting leads, and making sales are talked about. Cat stresses how important it is to know what a company's main value offering is and how it fits with the founder's or CEO's original vision.
They talk about the mistaken belief that price is the only way to set one product apart from another and consider the idea of focusing on expensive positioning. Cat also gives advice on how to get leads, stressing how important it is to provide great service and only ask happy customers for suggestions.
Aligning sales and marketing is what people are talking about most. Cat sees these tasks as a group effort to make money and stresses the importance of a unified plan. She says that companies should start by looking at their marketing and sales plans to make sure they are in line with their total revenue goals. The talk covers the difficulties of judging marketing success in ways other than traditional ones, like website visitors, and stresses the importance of looking at the whole business plan.
Cat and Ricky talk about how hard it is to run a business and do sales and marketing at the same time, especially as the business grows. They stress how important it is to have a clear strategy, put it into action, and have management that can understand the results and change the plan as needed.
Cat talks about the sales pipeline and outbound efforts in terms of data, breaking them down into things like the number of calls, conversations, and sales. She stresses that sales and marketing need to work together to boost measures for data quality, targeting, and the efficiency of channels. At the end of the talk, the role that marketing can play in outbound campaigns is brought up, especially when it comes to targeting and choosing the right channel.
They stress how important it is to make sure that your sales and marketing tactics work together for the best results. They stress how important it is to deal with problems with the value proposition before dealing with problems with lead creation. Cat says that her company, Empirical, is a full-service brand and marketing team that offers strategy solutions.
The talk covers a range of topics, such as how marketing should improve messaging for outbound efforts, how sales leaders should handle personality profiles, why there needs to be a shared scorecard, and how important it is for the sales and marketing teams to be able to communicate clearly with each other.
Cat gives useful advice on ways to get leads, like SEO, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, and Meta ads. She also stresses how important it is to test messages and make key measures work better. There is also talk about the idea of including salaries in the cost per lead and the need for sales and marketing to work together on a plan.
Ricky and Cat talk about the handoff point from marketing to sales within chances and get into the specifics of the sales process. They talk about the idea of marketing helping sales through collateral and sales training. Cat stresses how important it is for marketing to understand the lead journey and give leads the right information at the right time.
At the end of the talk, ideas are shared about how to keep measuring and improving things. It is suggested that a monthly strategy meeting and a scorecard with key metrics be used. They talk about the people involved in working together between marketing and sales, stressing how important it is for them to communicate, share plans, and have a common culture.
Overall, the talk gives useful information about how to align marketing and sales efforts and gives useful advice for companies that want to improve their revenue processes.
