302: How to Use Smart Marketing to Win New Business - with Leanne Dow-Weimer

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this week’s episode of Scale Your SaaS, marketing strategist Leanne Dow-Weimer shared valuable insights on the ever-evolving marketing landscape with host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach. 

From her background in STEM to her journey into the marketing realm, Leanne offers a unique perspective on the industry. Dive into key takeaways from the podcast, exploring Leanne's thoughts on customer conversations, the importance of value proposition, and strategies for effective marketing.

PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE

Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach

Episode: Episode No. 302, “How to Use Smart Marketing to Win New Business - with Leanne Dow-Weimer”

Guest: Leanne Dow-Weimer, Marketing Strategist at Luther Burbank Savings

Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor

Sponsored by: Leadfeeder

TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Follow Evolving Marketing Trends
• Use Strategies for Effective Marketing
• Leverage Social Media for Customer Research

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• From STEM to Marketing
• The Power of Conversations
• Account Based Marketing (ABM)

TOP QUOTES

Leanne Dow-Weimer

[07:30] "Start with customer conversations because, from every single anecdotal conversation, you can pull out a test."

[18:20] "Account Based Marketing is the idea of narrowing down your target market to a specific group of accounts and then marketing specifically at them."

Matt Wolach

[08:11] "Sales never ends. There is no portion where being better at sales does not improve your outcome."

LEARN MORE

You can also find Leanne Dow-Weimer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leannedow/ 

For more about how Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com.

Head over to leadfeeder.com and sign up for a 14-day (no strings attached) free trial: https://www.leadfeeder.com/ 

Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:

• Sales Tips
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

Transcript

Matt Wolach: 0:10

The early days are tough. You don't know where to start, what to do. How do you drive new leads? What are all these terms? I'm hearing like ABM and content marketing. What is this? Well, fortunately, Leanne Dow-Weimer was here she came in to help us out to make sure we understood all the ins and outs and she gives very practical advice on how you can find your first customers how you can connect with potential buyers, what to even ask them when you're talking with them. She's given all kinds of great stuff around marketing, so you can start to drive early buzz early leads, and get your business rocket. Check this out.

Intro/ Outro: 0:44

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exit brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach,

Matt Wolach: 1:01

and welcome to Scale Your SaaS Thank you very much for being here. By the way, if you are new here, our goal is to do exactly that help you Scale Your SaaS scale your software company. So if you're looking to generate a bunch of leads for looking to close those leads, if you want to scale your team so other people can do it for you. Definitely subscribe to the show. You do not want to miss any of the amazing guests and collaborators we have coming in helping you understand how to grow your company. And one of those amazing people is here with us today. We've got Leanne Dow-Weimer, Leanne, how you doing?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 1:29

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Matt Wolach: 1:31

Absolutely. I'm really glad to be here. Now let me make sure everybody knows who you are. So Leanne. She's a marketing strategist. And what she does is she provides a blend of Product Marketing, growth, marketing, organic content and strategic insights to advocate for long term growth and short term wins. She has great experience in online marketing, demand generation and Product Marketing, as well as direct customer service and sales roles. She has a track record of success in strategically driving growth for b2b businesses. Now, she's also a podcast host. So definitely check out her show. It's called Markigy. It's the science of marketing strategy podcast. It's a bi weekly podcast, where great marketers discuss their favorite marketing strategy study by study. So when it comes to knowledge about how to grow your company, and how to have amazing marketing Leanne is it. So Leanne. Thanks for coming to the show.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 2:21

Yeah, thank you so much for pumping me up. I'm ready like, let's do this. Good.

Matt Wolach: 2:25

Good. I'm glad I got you excited. Now, tell me what are you? What are you doing lately? And what's coming up for you?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 2:31

lately, I have been focusing a lot of energy on that podcast. I think that having conversations with those around you and your customers, which we'll get into is the best way to level up your expertise. And so that's been a lot of my like time and effort outside of my day job. But also I provide consultative, like work and some things on the side. So I'm always in the mix of it. Whether it's chatting, talking recording, guesting I'm here for the conversations.

Matt Wolach: 3:04

I love it. I love that stuff. Now, tell me, how did you get into marketing? What made you want to pursue that?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 3:08

Yeah, I mean, I started off as a STEM major. I realized early on that one of the things that I was just really good at was science, and I love figuring stuff out. So learning about like the layers of things that go on in the human body was really cool. So my undergraduate was actually kinesiology exercise physiology. And so that's pretty nerdy form of PE like it's not PE anymore. It's actually pre physical therapy. And from there, I realized that it didn't matter what what type of like job I did, if I didn't know how to make it a business and make it make money. I was never going to be as successful as I wanted to be.

Matt Wolach: 3:55

We'll be right back. Game Changer in lead generation lead feeder. One thing that super frustrating when I work with clients is driving traffic to their website, but then not knowing who those visitors are. You can't tell who these companies are. But guess what, there is a tool and it's changing the game and supercharging your lead gen is called Lead feeder. Now imagine having the power to identify companies visiting your website track their behavior in real time and seamlessly integrated all with your CRM leafier is not just a tool this thing is your secret weapon for efficient and targeted lead engagement and what sets lead feeder apart. It's the ability to provide detailed insights into visitor behavior helping your sales team prioritize efforts and close deals faster since got customizable notifications lead scoring GDPR compliance it's loaded lead feeder is really changing the game if you're ready to revolutionize your approach to leads and deals head over to lead feeder.com for your free demo today. That's l eadfedr.com. Don't miss out on the future of successful lead generation with lead feeder And we're back.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 5:07

So I went back and I got an MBA. Instead of going to PT school, I went to business school, and and I chose one that had more of a holistic approach, where, you know, we did entrepreneur leadership, but we did it from a 360 degree way to really understand everything it is that goes into being successful in business.

Matt Wolach: 5:29

I love that. And I think I think that's critical to look at it that way. Yeah.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 5:34

And from there, I had a period of time where I was in sales, and I was like, I'm not really the person that's picking up the phone to do cold calls as much as like the people around me instead of trying to like, you know, pinky in the brain my way around this. And like, I'm writing content calendars, I'm saying, Why aren't we on social media, I was like, Maybe I should just do marketing. Maybe this is where my brain goes to to make the process smoother and reduce friction, because I always felt that if we warmed up the audience, if we warmed up, the people were calling or, you know, we somehow gave them more context and more value upfront, then the act of cold calling them wouldn't be so brutal.

Matt Wolach: 6:20

Yeah, I think there's ways we can absolutely be smarter there. And I think it's a lot of struggle that companies have when they're trying to do some of that, quote, unquote, sales work. But marketing really hasn't given them any help to get them prepared, or to give them some, some even ammunition or to pre kind of sell the prospect for you so that they already feel good about the brand. They're already thinking about the product. It sounds like that was something you learned pretty early on.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 6:44

Yeah, yeah, I felt it in my soul. I was like this hang up, you know, this is the million times someone's been so mad at me. And, and, you know, I really wish I had a better script, I really wish I had better enablement, or I really wish I could refer them to these resources. And, you know, I think there's a number of ways where we can make it feel better for everyone where it doesn't have to be the used car salesman approach.

Matt Wolach: 7:07

I love that. That's definitely something we want to avoid. So what changes and what trends have you kind of seen evolving in the marketing landscape over the past few years?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 7:17

Um, I think the move towards more of the AVN/ product marketing approach, I think, is is right on and being more data literate. And, you know, we're moving from using data and like calling it that and kind of like picking and choosing and being like, Oh, well, I have this thought feeling. And I can find something that says that that's true. You know, really aligning it throughout the layers, not just like marketing, but customer success, customer service, and sales and really finding where that Northstar is, defining it. And then enabling through the different channels of product and demand data, and you know, all of these things.

Matt Wolach: 8:07

Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned ABM, I think that's something that is really important, especially as you're starting to go up market and target enterprise. Now a lot of people on the audience may not understand what ABM is, can you explain Account Based Marketing, and just let everybody know kind of what that what that means?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 8:21

Okay, so this is where Leannes version of Account based marketing and everyone else's version of Account Based Marketing are not always the same. So I say that with a disclaimer that I am not your ABM source of truth. Account Based Marketing is the idea of narrowing down your target market to a specific group of accounts, and then marketing specifically at them. And so in my mind, it's going from a wider net to a smaller, more identified net. And where I see people make a mistake with this is thinking that this maneuver, this strategy, this this way of executing marketing, is they think that it's completely sales, or they think it's completely tech platforms that dictate whether or not its Account Based Marketing. Now, it's a series of behaviors at a more targeted set of accounts that are more likely to be the right person, in my mind.

Matt Wolach: 9:30

Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think a lot of people think it is just either sales or either marketing but I think it's really the team working together Account Based Marketing is really where marketing and sales work really closely. In fact, one of my friends one of the, the initial people over at HubSpot Dan Tyre, he calls it Smarketing (Sales and Marketing) puts it together. And I think that that's where Account Based Marketing comes in. It's using your marketing capabilities and your sales towards very specific targeted accounts and more than just I'm going To find one person over there, hopefully they like me, it's there's four or five, six people that we start to go after at one company. So each of them starts to kind of feel this buzz and starts to think about what they can do to improve their company with the tool or with the product that you're selling. I think that if done well, and you have a plan and a strategy around it, it works really, really well. Right?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 10:20

Yeah, and sometimes for earlier on people, it's just identifying which companies you should even go after. And so if you're looking to start that kind of maneuver, then just start with who, in general, like what companies, what, you know, seed stage, what Herb seed stage what stage of investment they're at, and in growth stage and things like that, how many people are in their organization? What really is the problem that you're solving?

Matt Wolach: 10:51

Yeah, I think that's a good way to think you to really get it right, you've got to plan it out. And you've got to answer those questions of yourself. I think that's important when you're working with somebody, or when you're coming up with these strategies yourself, what, what are some of the approaches that you take to really make sure that your marketing is very effective,

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 11:09

I start at the beginning, and it sounds so simple, but I see so many people get this wrong, you need to start with understanding your value proposition, and what that means for your customer, and why that makes them your ideal customer. So one of the things that in the day to day like you could do this right now is you can make a list of what your company does, and all the potential ways it solves a problem. But only some of those are gonna stick with the people that are relevant. And the only way you're going to know if that's really how they see it is by talking to them in some way, shape or form.

Matt Wolach: 11:51

I mean, I think that's critical talking with somebody throughout the buyer journey. And throughout, actually, the company lifecycle is absolutely vital. It's something that I've had a lot of software founders on the show. And I always ask them, like, how did you understand what the problem was, and the best ones always come up with, we had tons of conversations with perfect potential prospects or buyers. And we wanted to make sure we we got out of them, what their struggles were what keeps them up at night and really understood them from the inside out. And from that you can develop your marketing avenues and your channels you're going to go through and even the messaging you're going to use you can develop your sales process and how you're going to effectively work within all the stakeholders that they might have at these companies. And even more the product itself can come from those conversations. But like you said, it doesn't stop after you've made that initial push to get to know your market, you should continually keep asking questions, keep talking with your, your prospects, your customers to even evolve what you're doing throughout your strategies, is that right?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 12:55

I love that you said evolve exactly, you need to evolve with your customers, because they're going to evolve to no one here is in a static place forever. We didn't just all start at some finish line, a start line and none of it. So the best way to do this is to create ongoing dialogue by providing different channels for feedback, you'll hear people talk about feedback loops. And you know, just to define that real quick, it's where you got feedback. And then a process occurs and you get feedback again. And so it's kind of this mechanician of this like kind of little carousel that comes back to a feedback spot. And eventually, instead of a single carousel, what you'll start to get is more of these kind of like roller coaster loop de loop de loops. And then eventually, if you're lucky and you do it right enough, and you take that feedback and you change with it, is you'll end up with more of a crochet pattern. So now you evolved from all these different household items. Or, you know, maybe you don't have a roller coaster in your house. But you get something richer and fuller, and the depth of dialogue is important. And there's a few key ways to get that type of situation going. And none of it is accidental. You have to do it on purpose. And thoughtfully.

Matt Wolach: 14:26

I agree. I think that's super smart. Now, what are some of the best strategies? What are some of the best practices and tactics that some of the smart marketers are using today?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 14:35

Yeah, first of all, understanding the way that you frame your questions you'll see on certain broadcasts segments, leading questions, right. We all know that, you know, there's a certain way where you're trying to get a certain answer from someone, especially if you're in sales. So if you're leading the witness or a leading question to get a certain outcome, you're not actually asking a question, you just want to review or testimonial. And while that's helpful, and there's a time and place for that, it's not with the intentionality of trying to improve. If you're really trying to improve, you need to hear what you're doing wrong, just as much as you need to hear what you're doing right. So providing psychological safety, providing a safe space, providing open ended questions, giving different survey points. If you're only doing it one way, you're missing out, it needs to be deep and rich, with a 360 degree approach.

Matt Wolach: 15:39

Yeah. Can you talk about that? What that means getting deep and rich and that approach?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 15:44

Yeah. So if you're getting deep, you're not having a five minute conversation, you're allowing for a longer conversation. You're asking questions that have follow up questions, it all starts with, you're in your hearts and texts, right? If you're listening to talk, you're not listening. If you're listening to listen, then you're listening. And when you question to wait your turn to talk, that's not a real dialogue. So that is one way of getting deep and rich is just framing the conversation with the expectations and the communication. Hey, I'm Leanne, I'm from blah, blah, blah. I wanted to set aside some time with you to talk about how things are going for you. I want to know about you know, your life outside of our products, how our product is serving you, what could we do better? And then you know, along the way, ask and follow up questions and get to the matter of it.

Matt Wolach: 16:49

We'll be right back. Game Changer in lead generation lead feeder. One thing that's super frustrating when I work with clients is driving traffic to their website. But then not knowing who those visitors are. You can't tell who these companies are. But guess what, there is a tool and it's changing the game and supercharging your lead gen is called Lead feeder. Now imagine having the power to identify companies visiting your website track their behavior in real time and seamlessly integrated all with your CRM lead feeder is not just a tool, this thing is your secret weapon for efficient and targeted lead engagement and what sets lead feeder apart. It's the ability to provide detailed insights into visitor behavior, helping your sales team prioritize efforts and close deals faster. Since got customizable notifications, lead scoring GDPR compliance, it's loaded lead feeder is really changing the game. If you're ready to revolutionize your approach to leads and deals head over to lead feeder.com for your free demo today. That's l eadfedr.com. Don't miss out on the future of successful lead generation with lead feeder. And we're back. And

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 18:01

when you have those conversations, you need to listen for what's being said and the subtext of what's not being said. Because people hate confrontation unless you've already pushed them over the edge. But what makes you better is going to be listening for that little crack in their voice or that little pause or that hesitation where they're like, oh, yeah, it's um, it's great. Okay, if you're reading on our transcript, that's that's one thing, but you're a human being. And you can hear that it's not really great. And you need to investigate that. In a kind hearted, not pushy, I'm here to help you kind of way.

Matt Wolach: 18:45

Yeah, I love it, you're actually just exactly mirroring the type of stuff that I trained within our training programs from a sales perspective. So where are you do this, like you're saying in marketing, we also talk about you need to do the same thing in sales. First of all, you need to read between the lines, right? And if they're saying something, you need to be good enough to understand your market to know your buyer personas to really get what do they really mean and what's really happening on a deeper level. And the second thing you said is, if they say something, don't take it at face value, dive deep. Ask them further questions follow up and get to actually the bottom of what's going on so that they can vocalize that and you can really understand what's happening. Just like we teach that from a sales perspective, it needs to happen on the marketing end as well. Whether you're trying to learn more about starting a new product coming out or launching a new product coming out, or whether you're trying to get initial interest, anything like that, that you need from a marketing perspective, the same rules apply all the way through the buyer journey. It's amazing how that works, right? Yeah,

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 19:50

Yeah, sales never ends. There is no portion where being better at sales does not improve your outcome. Whether you're selling to people on your own team because you had an idea. And you think it would really help and you need their buy in, whether it's selling to investors, because you need more cash runway so that you can invest in different tools or people or things, or whether it's selling directly to your customer. And, and when you frame up sales as creating relationships, and you frame up marketing as creating relationships, that's where the long term value like comes from, that's where you're in it to win it like you aren't in it like to like, you know, check a box you are in it to, you know, say I won, but you're in it because you are creating a relationship that is both give and take. You can't take take take, you have to give a little too. One of the things that we talked about, without, like prior to this conversation was how are some ways where if you don't have customers yet? How do you get that information? How do you have those conversations? It's okay, if I go off that tangent? Yeah,

Matt Wolach: 21:00

please do. That's great stuff.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 21:02

So this is where I love social media. I'm a big fan of social media polls. I'm not a big fan, if we're doing one of those ins and outs for 2024. OUT is pitch slapping, IN is using comments and polls and social listening to see what other people in your ICP are thinking and feeling. And because you're creating a relationship. Imagine that you are on a perpetual first date, where you cannot ask someone's entire life story. But you can ask getting to know you questions. And so a really fun one I did on Instagram one time was I have this very engineer and when I say like engineer, I mean like aeronautical or mechanical engineer, ICP. Or physicists. And so I asked the question in the Instagram poll, among other questions that were more like, customer research based by us. Which one's better Star Wars or Star Trek?

Matt Wolach: 22:08

Oh, yeah, start a lot of battles.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 22:12

Everyone wants to engage. And when you have engagement, and you're getting to know people, you're creating relationships, even if they are parasocial ones. So after they feel more inclined, they're like, Oh, that was a good one. I've got a strong opinion about that, then you can start to sprinkle in things from things that they've established they prefer. So for example, if everyone said Star Wars, then you know, you say is the gravity on the thing. Is it more like the gravity on Tatooine? Or is it more like the gravity on Mars, and all of a sudden, you've sprinkled some delight into your customer research while also you know, getting just just getting to know people. And while for a platform that is a SaaS that is maybe it's an accounting solution. That might be like a little bit. You know, the Star Wars one isn't relevant. But if you start asking accountants how they feel about different Excel functions, they've got opinions.

Matt Wolach: 23:16

Oh, for sure. They've gotten so know your market and start to pull out those opinions asking those questions. That's what you're saying. It sounds genius.

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 23:25

Yeah, it'd be a little silly. It's a first date. You're not there to like, make or break them. You're there to get to know them. Yeah,

Matt Wolach: 23:32

I like that. Have some fun. Yeah. Okay. Cool. This is awesome stuff. Leon. So what advice would you give to leaders who need to improve their marketing? They want to get better? What would you tell them?

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 23:42

Start with the customer. Start with the conversations, because from every single anecdotal conversation, you can pull out a test. And you aren't always going to be able to talk to someone for 45 minutes and be like, Oh, that's all of our customers. No, that's not all of your customers, it's a starting place is a place to pull out a test. Okay. So we were saying that, you know, we are x that solves this for, you know, this population. But that person they said, Well, yeah, I use this because of, you know, maybe it's a different exact word. So what you can do is you can create a and b test on your website or in your copy in your ads. And you can then see if I substitute out the word that this person said in their anecdotal conversation, did it perform better with our ICP and and you can start to have more informed testing and, you know, then scientific method, you know, only test one thing at a time, you know, go through your approach and see what vibes better in what you know, creates longer relationships.

Matt Wolach: 24:52

Fantastic stuff. I hope everybody's taking notes because that was a lot of gold right there. Leon This is awesome. How can anybody in our audience get to know Are you a little bit more or learn more about your podcast Markigy?

Unknown: 25:03

Yeah. First of all, I am chronically online. That means that if LinkedIn is open, I'm probably there. So you should you should find me on LinkedIn. It's Leanne L E A N N, E, Dow-Weimer, d o w dash W E I M ER, my podcasts, Markigy is on all podcast platforms. And I do also talk about it incessantly online. So, find it wherever you find podcasts, M A R K I G Y, a fun made up or talking about the blend between science, creativity and data.

Matt Wolach: 25:44

It's fantastic stuff. We'll make sure we put all that into the show notes as well. So if you're listening, go check that out. You'll see it there. But Leanne, this has been fantastic. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thank

Leanne Dow-Weimer: 25:53

you so much for having me. i It was a blast. Likewise,

Matt Wolach: 25:56

and everybody out there. Thanks for being here. Make sure that if you thought this was helpful, please leave a review. We want to make sure that we grow the reviews so that other people can see that this is a show that's going to help them so hit that Review button and give us something so we know that you're helping you. Thanks for being here and we will see you next time. Take care. Thank you.

Intro/ Outro: 26:15

Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for more help on finding great leads and closing more deals. Go to Mattwolach.com