Driving ROI and Predictability with Revenue Marketing: Yaagneshwaran Ganesh

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Mark Evans: You're listening to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight, tools, and tips for marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches in twenty five minutes or less. It's funny how you meet people. Yag popped up on LinkedIn last year when I noticed his post, and I checked out his profile, which starts with the top 100 marketing technologists. Now that's good marketing. Along the way, we connected and commented on each other's posts, and then we both jumped on Clubhouse. Fair to say we've been circling each other for months.

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Hey. I'm super excited, Mark. Thank you for having me here.

Mark Evans: One of the places where I wanted to start is the concept of of revenue marketing. This is something that you mentioned when we were preparing for the podcast. And to be honest with you, I haven't really heard of revenue marketing. Obviously, we hear a lot about ABM, social selling, content marketing, social media. So maybe you can explain what revenue marketing is and why it matters for B2B brands.

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: You know, if you look at it, fundamentally, the CEO, the CFO, the COO, and the CRO, they kind of speak the same language. Right? So in a sense, like, everybody's talking about revenue. They're talking about profitability. They're talking about, you know, pretty much what happens at the business level. But the issue is, you know, not many when it comes to the marketers, the language is totally different. You know, we are talking about demand gen. We are talking about branding. We are talking about a lot of intangible things that directly don't contribute to the bottom line of the company. You know, with that in context, it doesn't really matter, you know, how sophisticated your Matic stack is or how many people are there on your marketing team or how big your budget is unless you really know what is working for you and what is not and what is contributing to the revenue, what is contributing to the profitability, etcetera. So, you know, a lot of companies tend to spend big budgets that don't really contribute to any tangible results. Now talking of tangibility, know, I'm not necessarily saying that everything needs to be tangible. This podcast that we are recording right now, you know, it may not be tangible. It it for example, you cannot measure the results right away. But, you know, a few months down the line, somebody might connect with you and say that, hey, Mark. You know, the other day, you and Yag were having a conversation about revenue marketing, and I found that part interesting. That's how that's how I'm connecting with you right now. And I when I went back to your profile, I saw that you are a fractional CMO, and you are into this business. MarketingSpark is into this business. So I thought I'll connect with you and today be having this conversation. That attribution can happen, but it is gonna be intuitive. But at the core of revenue marketing, you know, the idea is to move from outputs to outcomes, you know, to be able to build that set of repeatable processes and programs that not only drive customer acquisition, but also more in terms of, say, recurring revenue. The the idea basically is to make sure that, you know, you are reducing the ratio between CAC, that is your customer acquisition cost, and the customer lifetime value, that is CLV. And I came up with a framework around this called the game model, which is g a m e, stands for gather, agree, map, and execute. And I've also written a book around this, which is called the revenue marketing book for the listeners of this podcast. You know, if you're interested, you can hop on to Amazon and check out this book. And if you have a Kindle, it's it's the ebook version is completely free. So this is a broad overview of revenue marketing, Mark.

Mark Evans: One of the things that I read about revenue marketing is the idea of predictable ROI. And that fascinates me because marketing in many respects is an experiment. You try different things, you leverage different channels, and ideally, you get to predictable ROI. You know what's gonna work and what's not. Can you talk to that concept and how you how you can build it into a revenue marketing effort?

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Right. So when it when it comes to predictability, it's it's all about running smaller experiments and to see what comes out of it. Like, say, for example, you know, instead of betting on 10 different channels, you look at which channel is working the best for you. Like, say, for example, in terms of social media, I might have run ads on LinkedIn. Might have run ads on Facebook. I might have tried Google Ads. But if my max ROI is coming from LinkedIn, then I'm gonna double down on that channel. So, basically, trying to see which one works the best and multiplying on that. Predictably is also in terms of you know, once you've identified what is working for you, you go back and map down your strategy according to that. And you can say that, hey. Through this channel, I'm gonna drive so much contribution to revenue, and then, this is gonna channel down further into a, b, and c. So it's it's all about, you know, running experiments and finally narrowing it down to what is gonna work for you.

Mark Evans: So if somebody were to decide that revenue marketing was something that they wanted to embrace, how do you get started? Is it a completely different way of thinking? Do you have to use different tools? Do you have to use different, KPIs and metrics?

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: The fundamental is that you have to stay away from all possible vanity metrics. You don't have to invest in a lot of tools, but you probably have to so one of the key things that I talk about in the revenue marketing book is also that you need to go back and audit the set of tools that you already have. In the sense, like, you know, you might have been you might have invested in a lot of tools that you are not even using right now. So go back and check that. And say, for example, if you have invested in a lot of events I mean, I'm talking pre COVID. If you have invested in a lot of events, you need to go back and understand that people who come into the come into these trade shows not necessarily come to visit your booth. They come there to network, and they come come there to listen to, you know, the people that the top leaders that are there in that particular industry. From there, the point of view is that, you know, you you don't invest on a separate set of tools, but you you kind of streamline whatever you already have and try to map it to what's working. Try to map it to as much tangible outcomes as possible.

Mark Evans: That's great. And if anybody's interested in learning more about revenue marketing, I would highly recommend that you go to Amazon and get hold of Yag's book for free. So let's turn our sights to podcasting. You and I both have podcasts. I jumped on the podcast bandwagon last June, and one of the things that I kicked myself for is that I should have done it a lot earlier. The benefits of podcasting in terms of meeting people and prospects, the ability to generate new and evergreen content, and just have fun in terms of learning new skills has made podcasting probably the best marketing channel that I've embraced in a long time. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you is just your take on how enthusiastically b to b companies are embracing podcast. You and I obviously have a biased view of the world because we think that podcasts are great. Are b to b companies in fact leveraging podcasts? If they're not, what's the pitch for them to actually start doing a podcast?

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Two weeks back when I was doing a podcast recording with my good friend Christopher Lockett, you know, he he said a very strong thing. He said, like, if you are a b to b company and if you don't have a podcast, you're insane. You know, you cannot get more clearer than that. But if I have to break you, you know, the context from my viewpoint, see, there are right now about 650,000 active podcasts. I'm talking active podcast, not just the millions of podcasts out there. You know, what is happening in the podcasting world right now is it is going through the exact stage that blogging went through in and around 02/2010 when HubSpot was coming into the scene. So the way I look at it is you need to have a clear sense of purpose as to where podcast contributes to your marketing flywheel, whether it's gonna be your top of the funnel and demand generation, or are you using it for brand building? Or is it gonna be something that contributes to your ABM, that is account based marketing, where the idea is to, you know, build relationship with the people in your target account? Like, say, for example, if you always wanted to build a relationship with one of the decision makers in those target accounts, invite them as a guest on your podcast, build relationships because, you know, the focus is on them, and you're you're, you know, talking to them in a non salesy atmosphere. So that makes a lot of sense. So the fundamental point of view is you need to have a sense of purpose as to why you're doing your podcast. Otherwise, you know, it becomes yet another channel. You're very present, and you're gonna be one among the millions of podcasts out there. And it's it's not gonna contribute to your bottom line or even your brand or anything in any way.

Mark Evans: I I totally agree with you. And in fact, James Carbari, who runs Sweetfish Media, suggested on a LinkedIn post a couple weeks ago that all b to b companies are gonna have a podcast at some point in time just like all b to b companies have blogs right now. And I totally agree with that view. It's a complete no brainer for lots of different reasons, many of them that you've talked about. But the other thing about podcast for b to b companies is the ability to take a podcast and repurpose it into lots and lots of different types of content, whether it's blog posts, ebooks, social media snippets, social media updates, and the list goes on and on. Given the growing emphasis on content marketing, you gotta look at podcast as as being the engine for a lot of content. And that's why I think most companies will find it impossible to resist having a podcast at some point in time.

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: You know, the the opportunity, as you said, to leverage the podcast is way more in the sense, like, today, right now, we we have too many transcript softwares. One of my personal favorites is Descript, which allows you to, you know, break down your podcast into a proper blog or a proper transcript. And it also helps you in editing the podcast as well. So it's it's a multipurpose there. And right away, you can cut it out into smaller chunks. You can use apps like Headliner, and, you know, you can put out audiograms. Like, there are multiple ways. And if you're shooting it as a video podcast, then, you know, you can also put put out video, you know, video snippets. So the idea is you need to think about again, as I said earlier, you need to think about where you're gonna use this, how it's gonna contribute to your overall marketing plan, which part of the flywheel is it gonna contribute to. And you start from the viewpoint of how you're gonna distribute and then come down to the topic. Because what you need to know who your audience is. You need to know where they are present and what format of repurposing makes sense in that channel. And then if you can map that to the set of questions and the set of topics that you prepare and the kind of guests that you get into your podcast, I think it it all works backwards.

Mark Evans: That's great insight. So let's talk about Clubhouse. You know we've gotta talk about Clubhouse. I've been on for about ten days and spent some time, not a lot, experimenting, dabbling, hosting rooms, just trying to get a feel for the value of Clothouse. There's a lot of people right now that are totally into it. They spend hours and hours listening and hosting rooms. I don't know where they at the time. Personally, I'm busy with work. And and and what I I do try to get on sometimes after work, my wife says to me, what are you doing? Why are you spending more time on the Internet? I'm I'm a bit ambiguous about Clubhouse right now because I'm not sure how to fit it into my professional world. To be honest with you, I've gotten so much value from LinkedIn over the last last nine months. I'm really reluctant to start to dilute my digital marketing efforts. I'm curious about your experience with Clubhouse and what you're getting from it so far.

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Right. So I've been into Clubhouse for, I would say, now about ten or twelve days, I guess. I very recently lost my party hat, which means I've completed a week or a little more than that. And for me, what happened was, you know, something that I really love about the way Clubhouse was promoted was it was all around the FOMO, the fear of missing out. And I had one of my friends from Romania reach out to me and say that, Jag, you need to be on Clubhouse. The best of the best people are here. You get access to these people. You know, you can connect with them, and it's very authentic and blah blah blah. And I came in, and I was like, this is totally different. You know? I can I could not even go and DM anyone or ping anyone? It it was all wise. So what I like about Clubhouse is that, you know, you cannot come in prepared. Right now, if somebody is into a specific room and they are discussing a specific topic, then if if whether you're gonna ask a question or you're gonna answer something, it's gonna be on the fly. So it's not gonna be reversed. It's it's always you know, it's gonna be authentic. That is something that I really love. And the second part is I see it as an extension to the relationships that I've built on LinkedIn. In a sense, it was a no brainer for me to connect with the people here on Clubhouse with whom I had already, you know, built relationships on LinkedIn. So that that helped. And through them, I also got introduced to many other people. But the best part is with certain people whom I've seen on LinkedIn for a long time, like, say, yourself. You know, you and I have been interacting on each of those posts for a long time. But when we came out to Clubhouse, we could hear each of those whys and, you know, really put a voice to that opinion, and the conversation and the relationships got much deeper. So this is one thing that I see as a straightforward advantage because as a person, I'm all about building trust and relationships. But the other way around, what I see is missing in Clubhouse right now is, you know, they have prioritized Instagram and Twitter. But I would love direct integration to or connectivity to LinkedIn because that's where I see the maximum connect. I mean, what's what's your experience? What is that you think you're missing out there?

Mark Evans: Well, I agree with you that Clubhouse is a great way to drive new connections and then to extend your relationships with people that you already know. So there's a lot of people have migrated or are experimenting with Clubhouse who I've connected with on LinkedIn. And that in itself takes it to another dimension where you can actually hear somebody's voice. That's pretty awesome. The problem I have with Clubhouse right now is it seems somewhat random. There's no TV guide to tell you that, for example, that a certain speakers will be hosting a room on Thursday at 06:00 so that that you can actually set your schedule because part of the problem is that it I tend to dip in and dip out. If there's something interesting, I listen. If not, then I don't know what's going on. So I think I'm missing out on a lot of conversations. Like, don't know where Kleppos is gonna go. I don't know where they're gonna make money. I don't know where the what the secret sauce is gonna be. But one of the theories that I have, and I wrote about it earlier this week on LinkedIn, is that Clubhouse could emerge as the next great podcasting platform. Right now, podcasting is essentially me talking to you or a single person talking, and it's a very sort of one dimensional medium. We produce this podcast. We broadcast it. There's no interactivity. There's no q and a. There's no participation by the audience. What I see could happen is that Clubhouse could evolve into a podcasting platform where you and I could talk and then somebody from the audience could raise their hand and ask a question and you could create this really dynamic conversation. Clubhouse would allow you to do two things. One is that you could download, record and download the the conversation and then edit it and produce it and publish a podcast, or Clubhouse could do that all by themselves. Now I think that would be probably a lot of work and they probably couldn't scale that kind of thing. So I think the latter the former is gonna happen. People will let you record and download a podcast for a fee, of course. That's how I see Clubhouse really catching fire aside from the conversations. What are your thoughts about that?

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Right. I I totally agree. And, you know, the second part here is that, when it's a prescheduled, meeting as well, in the sense, you know, that does not work for me the same way, it would for a Zoom call. For instance, the way I I approach Clubhouse is that say, for example, I treat it as I'm walking into a trade show. And the when I look at the hallway, there are different topics, different rooms, you know, where they're discussing different topics. And I look at it, and I feel, okay. If this is a topic of my interest, I jump into that room. And there are two things that happen. Either the topic has to be relevant to me or the set of people in that room, you know, need to be set of people that I already know or people that I think are relevant to my business. So I get in and then look at the conversation. Yeah. From there on, it goes the way it goes. But but one thing for sure is that once you get into a room, it's it's like you never know how much time you are losing. You know? I I plan for about, like, fifteen, twenty minutes. And suddenly, I realized that we have lost about, like, say, almost an hour, an hour and a half.

Mark Evans: That's great. I I'm in the same boat. One of the things, Yag, that I wanted to ask you is about personal branding. I wanna talk a little bit about that. As far as your own personal brand, on LinkedIn, to be perfectly honest, I don't come across a lot of Indian marketers. There are obviously some amazing Indian software companies, but not so many Indian marketers with your profile. So maybe you can talk a little bit about your own personal branding experience and why we don't see more Indian marketers with a high profile on LinkedIn, and then your general thoughts on on personal branding.

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Right. So you you're so right in a sense, like, you know, when I was when I was getting started in the world of marketing in and around 2008, 2009, I saw that a lot of people look at Indians as tech savvy people, like, you know, the the CEO of Adobe or the CEO of Microsoft or CEO of Google are all Indians. We've never noticed somebody who's a star from the marketing side in India. So that that was always there at the back of my head, and that's why I started spending more time on social media or trying out a lot of things that were in my area of interest. In a sense, like, I was never interested in the proper IT management or tech tech side of things, but I was always interested in marketing. So marketing and tech kind of marry together. That's how Martech came into my my landscape. But, honestly, I never tried to brand myself into something. In fact, the LinkedIn sorry. The Martech top 100 came in as as an effect of what I was doing and, say, writing books or be it the speaking around the world. Like, all of those things happen naturally. So, you know, I would say what started as me being a natural person doing the things that I do, it worked out positively. But when it comes to personal branding, I do have a very strong opinions in the sense, like, how people need to approach it. In a sense, you know, most of the people who are there on LinkedIn, what they do, for example, is their posts are more like a news board of what their company does. For instance, they will be talking about things like, hey. You know what? My company acquired this company or this product, or we are launching this new product. And you just become that bulletin board. You're you don't come across as a human. You don't come across as a person that people want to connect to. And that said, there is also the totally opposite spectrum. You know, you see this template where everybody goes on to this racks and riches story, you know, which goes on something like, I was a shit and, you know, I did x and suddenly became a hit. And you can also try this if you see a fit blah blah blah. So that that template is kind of, you know, boring people to death because almost everyone has started to use that. And that, in my view, is not how personal branding needs to be done. You know, you need to go about developing expertise on a very specific domain that excites you to the extent that you can have opinions about. You know, be known for a specific domain, be known for a specific niche. You start owning the niche. And then what happens is if you are a founder, then it helps you in attracting the right kind of audience or, you know, probably even the right kind of VCs because they go by they invest on the people than just on the product or the the concept. And similarly, if you are a job seeker, again, it's not about the company. But if you establish a niche or if you carve a niche for yourself, you can start looking at companies that fit your worldview and set up products that you would represent into. For instance, I can I can never see myself, you know, working with an insurance company or working with an IT management firm or anything other than Martech Because this is what I relate to? This is what I can have my strong opinions about. This is where I am I I'm feeling that this is my home. So I think that's that's what is fundamentally more important when you go about establishing a personal brand.

Mark Evans: To be honest with you, when it comes to personal branding and and I read a lot about the value of personal branding and how to do it. I don't really think about it. I just do what I do. So when it comes to LinkedIn, for example, I post try to post insightful, useful content on a regular basis. I'm not trying to sell my my services. I'm not trying to promote my the successes that I've had. I'm not there to sell. What I'm there to do is establish a presence, to build trust, to create new relationships with people and that builds my personal brand. That allows me to be more authentic, to be more real and for people to connect with me. I think that's the key to personal branding is I think people try too hard. They think that there's a method to the madness when in fact, I think it's just a matter of being yourself and trying to offer value to other people.

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: Absolutely. You know, to give you a quick story around this, you know, way back in 2012, I was writing a book called is your marketing in sync or syncing? And every time I write a book, I always strongly believe that it's not just my opinions that matter, but I go about, you know, interviewing a lot of people around the world who have been there and done that and cast those stories or glean into their experiences and put it into the book. And it so happened that I connected with a guy called Chris in Netherlands who was a CMO of a marketing agency there. And he gave me a twenty minute appointment, which went on to become a two hour conversation. And fast forward six months, you know, he hosted me at his home. Like, we became such good friends. He took me to the chamber of commerce. Like, you know, we started working together on a lot of projects together. And, you know, to this year, I visit him at least once a year and spend about ten days there, you know, except except the 2020 season. So, yeah, I I really believe that, as you said, you know, it's all about being yourself and building those honest relationships. And don't really look for a transaction while you start. If something happens where you work end up working together on something, well and good. But at the end of the day, it's all about building that relationship and that trust.

Mark Evans: Yeah. That's great insight. So where can people learn more about you and what you do?

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh: You know, after my house, I you know, the most time I spend on is LinkedIn. So people can just my name is little unique. So the moment people type in y a a g, it's a I'm hard to miss. And apart from that, you know, people can also hop on to the ABM Conversations podcast. We are a one year old podcast, but, you know, we managed to quickly become among the top 1% b to b marketing podcast in the world. So if you're interested in this domain, catch up, with us there as well.

Mark Evans: Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. For show notes of today's conversation and information about YAG, visit marketingspark.co/blog. If you'd like to suggest a guest or learn more about how I help b to b and SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, consultant, and adviser, send an email to Mark@MarketingSpark.co. I'll talk to you next time.