How do you even start to plan marketing when everything is brand new every day?
How do you get customers?
How to attract talent (and keep them)?
How do you structure your team?
If you’re a marketer working in a highly volatile industry OR want to know the future of content marketing, you’ll want to read this.
I sat down with Meghan Keaney Anderson (VP of Marketing at Jasper) to get a behind-the-scenes look at how Jasper gets customers, plus how they grew in an industry where everything changes constantly.
I can’t wait for you to apply these insights to your own company.
What you’ll read here are words. Some Meghan’s. Some mine.
— Brendan
Below, we’ll explore:
- Jasper’s top marketing channels
- How to keep marketing in lock-step with product
- Jasper’s blended strategy approach to team structure
- Why “assembly line marketing” no longer works
- 2 steps to prevent high-performer burnout (even when things are changing constantly)
1. How far out do you plan your marketing in detail, and how has that evolved over the years?
Different parts of marketing have different timelines.
Every quarter, Meghan gets more detailed around metrics like inbound leads and demo requests. Then planning the activities to get there.
But what if they plan for a product launch but it gets delayed?
How do you stay in close proximity to product?
She came up through product marketing and has great relationships with product and marketing.
She has the trust where they’ll tell her if things are starting to slip.
We can lose trust with them by treating product’s V1/MVP as a final version and marketing gets disappointed because they can’t hit timelines or don’t get the launch “boost” they’re hoping for.
Misalignment happens in definitions of what “done” is.
5 steps to build trust with product:
- Product/engineering gets to decide what “done” is and they have a say in when we market it.
- Sometimes marketing and sales get too far ahead of product. Regularly check to see if this is the case.
- We can’t see product launches as a windfall that we’re counting on (treat it as a bonus on top of everything else)
- Plan to meet goals without the launch and the launch pushes us *way* over the top.
- It’s okay and probably preferential to separate the product launch from the marketing launch of the product. Ex: Do promo campaign a month after launch.
Outside of product launches is Jasper’s editorial planning including brand and messaging.
Their POV *has to* sit in the context of the world we’re in, so they can’t plan more than 3-6 months out.
2. Do you use OKRs (e.g. objectives, key results, 70% goals, etc.) in some form?
How Jasper sets OKRs:
- Starts with the finance team.
- VP of finance gives EOY 2024 revenue projections.
- Budget in terms of headcount and program spend.
- Compartmentalize it back to sub-goals that are drivers (marketing pipeline, opportunities, demo requests, mqls)
- Then back into what each team drives + channel owner drives
They’re learned there’s lots of room for error in the aggregate, though.
The top-down waterfall approach is almost never right.
Therefore, constant re-assessing of the model is important.
They may set forward a directional model and learn in month 1 where it’s broken.
But, having the model is still incredibly helpful because it gives them something to work with.
3. Who does marketing ultimately report to, and has this changed over the years?
Currently, marketing reports into president / COO who oversees marketing, sales, CS and revops (operations)
Other half of the company reports into CEO → product, engineering and design, finance, legal
Overall, this structure has always been this way.
This means, one person oversees growth + one person oversees product/company.
4. For marketing strategy, who comes to these meetings, who runs the meeting, and how often do you meet?
Weekly → exec team meeting where they talk about (listen to replay) revenue, churn
Weekly → business review (almost like standup) focused on hitting numbers
Everything rolls up to ARR (new ARR and net ARR that then get backed into individuals goals)
With Jasper, there’s two GTM motions (that each have their own goals):
- Sales driven motion → leads and demo requests to inside sales team that try to focus them
- Self-serve motion → free trial to purchase
5. How many marketers do you have? How has that team changed over time?
Meghan joined when the team was 2 marketers. Small team. Little strategy.
Now it’s 13.
Right now, there aren’t plans for growth as Meghan wants to see the shift they’re undergoing right now play out before they make bets.
Where are the risks? Where are over-dependencies?
From there, they’ll set strategy and see if there’s a skill gap.
If so, they’ll hire or have a person grow into that.
Thus, in her industry, they shouldn’t think more than 6 months in advance.
“You have to have a good handle on the volatility in your industry to make those types of hiring bets. We don’t want to get over our skis.”
If your industry is at all volatile, hire 1 quarter at a time. If you have a budget for 10 hires, hire far less than that.
Hire the reality you’re in today.
6. Do you structure your team around channels, products, user types, user journey, outcomes, or something in between? Has this changed over the years?
Structure dictates strategy and vice versa.
Structure does need to shift when your company grows/changes.
Ex: This past summer, they took their focus to B2B because they’re more differentiated there.
Meghan also did this at Hubspot a lot (there they changed every single year – lots of re-orgs because strategy would evolve).
So, how do you make it not feel unsettling?
You have to get the team acclimated to that kind of a culture.
2 ways Jasper prevents burnout in a (potentially) volatile industry:
- Be really clear about what the strategy is. Don’t be willy nilly about it. If the strategy evolves (versus swinging wildly) be clear about the reasons we’re evolving. What’s unsettling is arbitrary changes. Team changes *must* be important ones.
- Setting the expectation that change is a natural part of our team and we’re gonna do it often. Bad news is change can be unsettling. Good news is there’s opportunity. If you’re trying to grow your career, you don’t want it to be linear because there’s a slower path to growth. You want new opportunities and a chance to stretch, learn, expand to different strategy priorities.
Meghan takes a blended approach to team structure:
- Single “strategic” team focused on moving a revenue target for an audience
- Enterprise marketing team → certain value/pipeline (business)
- Self-serve team → trials (prosumer)
- Plus, they have channel owners who have to increase health of overall channel AND support each strategy team’s goals
With this team structure, organizing around single north star goals reduces conflict.
7. What’s your primary tool for tracking tasks and campaigns? And for production?
They’ve tried every project management and haven’t found one that’s really solved the problem.
Meghan has found that PM tools are too divorced from the content/work.
The plan and the tracking tool are too separate and too easy to get out of sync.
She notes that marketing project management hasn’t been elegantly solved (yet).
So, for marketing goals at Jasper, they have a master dashboard.
They have it at KPI level for company that’s reported on weekly
Then, a separate dashboard for individual campaigns and channels
8. Is there something unique or philosophically core to how the marketing team and leaders think about acquiring customers?
Most companies don’t spend enough time or investment in the moment after conversion.
Everything flips to transactional after a customer buys or starts a trial.
A lot of companies think about teams as an assembly line:
- Marketing gets in the door
- Sales closes those people
- Product delivers on the promise we made to them
- Success is a buffer in case we don’t
We put all that effort into getting somebody to believe in a product and then we close the door behind them and say “good luck.”
Most marketers have no idea how many customers they lose that way.
We should be partnering with product on the customer’s first product experience.
9. What were the best performing channels for you? Did that change over time?
By the numbers:
- Direct is best → function of brand + word of mouth
- Followed closely by organic (branded & unbranded)
- Referrals & partners (affiliate, agencies, co-marketing, tech)
- Then, paid.
Meghan loves (loves loves loves) partner marketing.
We’re headed to a place where organic will get more difficult with search changing due to an influx of information and content getting more commoditized.
In that world, what elevates in importance is trust and relationships.
In a world where information is everywhere, perspective is going to become invaluable.
Ex: Krista Doyle is evolving their content strategy by switching from “how to” to ”how I” with more original interviews and expert perspectives.
People want to know who they’re hearing and learning from.
“Attach to key people. Not keywords.”
Lots of people are just trying to (not maliciously) play the game they were taught to play over the last decade.
In this world of AI-content, people are going to become more valuable so they’re investing big in partnerships.
The hard part is activating this type of content and organizing it in a reliable way. It’s messier than paid or organic channels.
But if you can master community and referrals, that’s a great win.
How to use this info:
1. Send a DM to your teammate: “Ashley — I read about how the team at Jasper is re-thinking content strategy in 2024 and beyond. I thought there’s X things in there that might really help our team. Mind if I send them over?” Then send her this link.
2. Meeting with your boss: “Our industry feels like it changes every day, and so does our strategy. I picked up a few interesting points on how we can still attract (and retain) really talented marketers for our team. Feels like that’s our most important north star right now, yeah? If so, this might be worth bookmarking.
3. Linkedin Post: Why every B2B company should ditch “assembly-line marketing” and invest in activation, retention and expansion. (make sure you connect with & tag Meghan!)
Thanks for reading!
This is the seventh of a long series.
If you have a tip or feedback, I’d love to hear it.
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