Scaling Beyond the Plateau: Accelerating Growth with Data-Driven Marketing

Courtney Kehl: We’re super excited and going to go ahead and kick off this webinar. Keep it rather conversational. As opposed to just slide after slide, but regardless, I want to dive in with the topic around Scaling Beyond the Plateau. A lot of folks, I’m sure, can relate to just kind of having that sort of hitting that wall and hitting that buffer where it’s just harder to break through as you’re looking to continue accelerating growth and scale.

Courtney Kehl: So with that, said, Let me introduce our two panelists and speakers here. Experts from ZoomInfo. And we have Veronica Hudson, our Director of Product Management and Kaitlin Sanders, Head of Business Value and Insights. I’ll let you give your intro. I’m sure I can’t do it justice

Veronica Hudson: Sure I can go first.st I’m Veronica Hudson. I have been at ZoomInfo for about 6 months now, but I have been in the product management space for 10ish years. Primarily focused on marketing technologies, email, ad space, etc. And I’m very excited to be here and to share some tips with you all today

Kaitlin Sanders: I’m Kaitlin. I’ve been here for about 2 and a half years. I work in the kind of a bridge between the CX and the sales space and also product. But I’ve been in the ABM space for many years. I came from a demand base before I joined ZoomInfo. Great to be here.

Courtney Kehl: Love it, love the experience and actually on. We’re looking at how to kind of break through that plateau and hit the next milestone as business grows. I think your backgrounds obviously speak really well to it. I mean one of the things that I’ve learned is that the Expert Marketing Advisors were preferred partners with ZoomInfo, and love working with the relationship.

Courtney Kehl: But where we were a year ago to where we want to be in 5 years. We can’t do the same things. And things. You just the tools start changing, the team starts changing. And as that growth happens, it’s really important to recognize the things that are needed. And hence, you know, ZoomInfo, really pulling in that data.

Courtney Kehl: So with that, let me see the next one here, I’m just going to kick it over to both of you. Sort of why do you guys see growth stalling. And what are some of those roadblocks? And people are trying to break through that ceiling?

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah. So why, growth stalls? I think a lot of it has to do with scalability automation. You know how large your team is, you know how much you can scale at a time is something I hear constantly on calls. So, having technologies in place to help scale your efforts can really buy results. Veronica, I know, even though she’s on the product side. She has been on the CX side. So what have you experienced as well, I guess same kind of that lik fragmented sales marketing, not being able to scale.

Veronica Hudson: Not having data definitely the scaling challenges. I do think you know, it’s called out here, inefficient targeting. That’s something I have seen in my years working on the email side. I see it now in the ad space where people assume casting the widest net possible is the best route to go when really you need to be very focused about, not only creating your team and your ICPs, but segments within each of those, so that you are making sure you’re targeting the right groups that are searching for the right intent topics with the right content in the places that they live on the Internet.

Veronica Hudson: If you’re not doing that, you’re probably wasting ad dollars. You’re probably wasting resources and you’re not going to get a super high Roi. So that’s something that I’m very passionate about, but something that I talk to all of our customers about about being really intentional, about who you’re talking to, what you’re saying to them, and where you’re meeting them.

Kaitlin Sanders: That’s great.

Courtney Kehl: I was gonna say, it is worth taking that time and doing it, you know, really setting up that foundation and doing it with care and intent, because it will, of course, speed up your conversion and shorten your sales cycle all and above you’re not, you know, casting that wide net that doesn’t land. So that’s a good point.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah, going on the intentional side, too. I completely agree with this outcome, more of a shifting into an outcome driven environment being intentional with how you’re segmenting your audiences, what micro journeys you’re creating within. Those are really important. And then aligning relative buying signals to those different micro journeys. So I know it can be a little bit complex. But if you start small and you see that small, you know layer of success, you can take that, and use that as your framework for building out a larger program

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, great point, yeah. And actually to that, as folks are hitting different milestones and the growth challenges of processes are often looked at, what worked before may not necessarily work in the next stage and phase, and we were actually just kind of spitballing a little bit earlier. And of course there’s, you know, there’s no way to talk about processes without bringing up AI. So but what are maybe some of the other components that you’re seeing come up there

Kaitlin Sanders: Yes, so I’m in AI a lot. So is Veronica. A lot of things that we see are, and something we were talking about earlier is the inauthenticity when you 1st start using an AI bot, I know typically it. It can take some time to train a bot to be able to understand, like what you’re trying to say and to output it in the right framework and in the right voice. So a lot of what we’re seeing is kind of the copy paste motion here, where we’re getting kind of like a really enriched answer. It looks great, awesome.

Kaitlin Sanders: Let’s just pop this in port or a you know, a strategic blueprint and call it a day, and we need to be really careful to read the fine print of those, and to to, you know. Just kind of modify and trim some of that down.

Courtney Kehl: Right? Yeah. I mean with ZoomInfo. Those of us that have used this tool before, or perhaps those of us that are just kind of exploring the intent signals, and then knowing when and and what to say, and and how is a big one. That’s it’s like I always call you guys like sort of the premium of all of the various options. And it really brings that together. So something to clarify there.

Courtney Kehl: Veronica, you were saying, when you said you have to think about essentially treating AI as an intern?

Veronica Hudson: An intern, an entry level employee. You know I am now in a managerial role. Have been for a few years now, and you make assumptions about people coming onto your team, how much they know, how much context they have, how they will receive feedback?

Veronica Hudson: A lot of people make those same assumptions with AI, or even more so because they just assume it’s incredibly smart. But you really need to think about it as an entry level employee that knows nothing. It’s their 1st job out of college. They don’t have the right context. They need feedback on their output. They need very specific instructions. And so, as you are working with AI, and you are feeding, it prompts. It’s really important to provide that context in the way of, you know, uploading documentation. So we were talking about personalization earlier. If you are wanting to create some email copy or ad copy, you should be uploading good examples that you’ve written in the past. So it is in your own voice. You’re thinking about the customer.

Veronica Hudson: You need to be specific about the segments that you are sending to, and you need to do multiple rounds of feedback. You also need to check their work. AI hallucinates. You might get responses that are not accurate or really far off base from what you had expected. So you need to check that work. You need to give that feedback and just really be in that mindset of this is not technology that is smarter than me. It is technology that I need to train to do the thing that I need to do

Kaitlin Sanders: It’s basically gonna take your idea and expand on that. But it’s not going to give you the idea. So it’s yeah. It’s really going piggybacking on what Veronica was saying with these bots like, you really need to to provide it with those with the right resources. If it’s if it doesn’t have any background on the company the org thinks of, like your best marketers, right? And your best sales reps.

Kaitlin Sanders: They’re particularly research driven just like the bots. Think of it this way, too. They’re research driven. So the more information you’re feeding them and the and then providing them with a templatized way to respond like, think of tone! Think of Eq. Think of the formatting! Think of really understanding your customer and their goals and feeding them all that.

Kaitlin Sanders: Who are you presenting the information to? Is this just for internal use? If it’s external, what’s the persona? Is it a CMO, is it? Svp of sales? So, providing that to the bot will really elevate how you can use it, and you’ll be surprised like how much you can scale after training it, correcting it.

Kaitlin Sanders: You could eventually not have to give it all that detail. There’s a lot of AI programs where you can make projects where you put a very detailed template of the output you want, and then you’d be like if I give you this type of question. This is what I’m associating it with, so it can get easier where you don’t have to. Provide all that context over and over again, just the initial implementation.

Courtney Kehl: Right.

Veronica Hudson: One other thing I would want to add to is just, you know, we have market shifts on this screen as well. It’s not just you using AI, you have to assume that your customers are as well. They could be using AI to research different businesses to pick the best solution for them, a solution or product, whatever they’re looking for.

Veronica Hudson: And so you also need to be cognizant of how you are showing up in their AI work in the future, I think in the not far future. We’re also going to see bots, for example, that are able to trial software for us and run that PLG motion themselves. So it’s important to think it through. Not just AI, as like it applies to your business, but that aspect of like your own customers and their how, how they’re using it and applying it to their everyday life, as it relates to your business

Kaitlin Sanders: That actually gave me an idea, Veronica, thinking of how AI or how your business looks within as a research that’s a test you can actually run internally. So by asking it, you know questions that your customer would have about your business. And if you’re not typically a lot of these bots will pull or scrape the Internet. If it’s not a blocked site, or if it’s you know, if it’s public.

Kaitlin Sanders: So if you are not showing up in the right way that could show a gap within, maybe what content, you know, maybe there’s a lot of outdated content on site. Maybe we need to shift perspective on how we’re marketing the advertising campaigns, messaging things like that. So to Piggyback, if you’re running that test, and it’s not showing up. You’re not showing up correctly. Ask the bot, you know.

Kaitlin Sanders: This is how I would like to be or I would like to come up. If people are doing active research on our company, how can we take steps to ensure that this is the output moving forward so.

Courtney Kehl: No, that’s great. We mean, it absolutely pushes folks forward. In my opinion, I think that those that are not using AI would definitely hit that ceiling as we’re speaking? Veronica, to your point. The AI bots you have to think about. What is it going to be? How is that going to be perceived on the other end of the receivers? And we were kind of jokingly, I think, last week we had a call with a prospect, and you know we were like, well, let’s just get his AI bot together with our AI bot, and let the 2 of them hash it out because it’s just like, you know.

Courtney Kehl: But yeah, it’s definitely changing the way we go about things. Yeah, great. So on the buyers, behaviors. And such is that, is it? Really? I mean, I don’t want to make this all. AI, but I mean, it does seem that where you’re seeing some changes in the focus, you know, in the intelligence of people. It’s sort of like saying think smarter, not harder.

Kaitlin Sanders: Hang on!

Courtney Kehl: And finding that as our buyers are finding us.

Veronica Hudson: Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Kehl: Cool. Okay, so on to just maybe, like how this actually looks when it’s laid, you know, sort of through. And of course, nothing’s ever in a straight line. But it’s the power of data. Data is king. Some of the points here we can kind of dig into.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah, align. So going into aligning sales and marketing with AI driven insights. So this kind of leans I’ll kind of scrape on copilot. So we have some tools offered from our I guess our sales tool copilot where you can where you can uncover those insights. Not only you know, through their digest, but there’s like a ton of features like an AI chat where you can dive into the signals, and the company company from a graphics. So think of an AI bot. But its data foundation is ZoomInfo. You know how it operates, so it can kind of pull out all those business insights, scoops, and, you know, relevant signals that could indicate interest or buying

Courtney Kehl: And I’ll cover, and oh, sorry! Go ahead.

Veronica Hudson: I was gonna say it also. So you know, we have a sales product and a marketing project, co-pilot and zoom info marketing. A lot of those signals that you’re able to pull through to copilot are marketing signals. So someone an account engaged with a campaign, someone visited your website we recently launched Buyer Id. So with some degree of certainty, we can tell you, not just the account, but the person that visited your site they filled out a form, and that’s all passed on to sales as a signal of this is an account or an individual you should probably act on sooner rather than later given their engagement with marketing.

Veronica Hudson: And so then we’re able to kind of get that flywheel going if that engagement happens on the sales side. We have some of that data, and we’re able to then communicate to marketing what was performing best. And I think that flywheel motion. It’s something that we’re building out, but is going to become incredibly important in leveraging AI.

Veronica Hudson: We traditionally think about sales and marketing alignment as a handoff marketing gives a lead to sales. Sales does something with it. It’s really more of a closed loop. Where or should be sales, does something with it. Marketing learns about what worked and what didn’t, and they feed that into future marketing endeavors

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, yeah, no 100%. It is much more of a circle, the same on the customer retention side and expansion side. Just, I always look. I like marketing works for sales, and we’re providing that air cover. But we need to, you know, work in tandem together to make sure we’re all you know. The right hand is talking to the left, right? That’s it.

Kaitlin Sanders: Absolutely, and marketing just doesn’t stop at the, you know, at the Presale motion. It should, you know, go into post sale. I’d say, most of the customers I work with are working on expansion opportunities within their existing customer base on top of trying to capture net new. So it is definitely important to have that insight.

Kaitlin Sanders: You can use those signals that are available. And you know databases like zoom info, or solutions where you can kind of, you know, differentiate like, okay, let me start to segment my signals by what’s, you know? Relevant to that particular solution. So think of not only just solution based signaling. But pain points, opportunities use cases, functional areas. Think of signals in a different way from like, not just like what it is. Exactly. They’re researching. But what they could be experiencing that would lead them to be interested in that or lead to an opportunity within. It could be more of that holistic view.

Veronica Hudson: Yeah. And I know, Kaitlin, yeah, you’ve had a lot of success with incorporating scoops. If we’re talking about refining, targeting and personalization and optimizing as well.

Kaitlin Sanders: Hoops are amazing. They think of them as your validator for not only timing of interest, but also for validating what they’re researching online, especially. I know a lot of customers where they’re targeting. I’ll use universities as an example where there could be a lot of noise. Let’s say, with that 3rd party intent research, where you have professors, students, faculty, everything. And we want to drill down to, you know, are they really in the market or not?

Kaitlin Sanders: So the scoops are a validator for that. Think of it like a change in leadership, hiring plans. It could be a project, expansion or tech consolidation within marketing. You can drill down to specific departments, specific projects, pain points, and then you can leverage the database. We have to access those scoop descriptions within the sales component but we can also select the timing on that. So think of it like a typical project. You think of propensity modeling? So a project typically spans what like?

Kaitlin Sanders: Veronica is probably more versed on this, like in your space, like what? 6 to 8 months, maybe like a sprint. And so that might, you know, that’s an opportunity for marketing to nurture that account, whereas think of a pain point more like a security breach or a, maybe they you know, a CMO just stepped down and a new one stepped in. They’re gonna be doing a heavy evaluation of tech stack.

Courtney Kehl: Displacement.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah, insights will also align with certain levels of urgency. Or, you know, do we just hand this to sales? Or do we need to nurture this further. So by combining different types of signals, scoops, 3rd party intent and things like technographics and all the firma graphic, you know info or predictive scoring, to make sure that account is also a good fit. When that all comes together, you then have a more accurate, but also like idea of how to target them and what journey to send them down.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I find the scoops really valuable. For quite some time I feel like scoops have been a part of the ZoomInfo offering for half a dozen years or so. I don’t know myself. But yeah, definitely. And also across competitors, too, as you kind of see who’s coming to the table there. That makes a difference.

Kaitlin Sanders: So a great play for competitors that I will typically run is, I’ll select well, 1st we build out the target account list. Then when I go into technologies, I’ll select the competitors. So series of that, either. I’ll select them all in one bunch. But if there’s a lot of variables of what they excel in versus the other. I might segment it out once I have that selected, then I wanna say, okay, what if they own a competitor? What would trigger them to evaluate us? So I’m thinking about CMO changes or tech consolidation. And then, if I’m doing consolidation. I’m like, who do they own our sales solution, too?

Kaitlin Sanders: So they’re looking to consolidate. And they already own one of your products. That’s gonna be an easier entry point conversation. Yeah.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, no, that’s great. So with all of that, I feel like we’ve made it from aligning to refining to optimizing the automation piece is really the next level, and that’s, I think, where folks can really break through that barrier which is the, you know. But setting these bases, setting these 1st ones up is really that foundation.

Kaitlin Sanders: Absolutely like that. I mean, that’s the reason people will typically invest in an Abm technology to scale and automate. So not only, you know, automating where you’re syncing your audiences to whether it be LinkedIn Meta or targeting programmatically or to email. But think of your audiences. I can remember back in the day like the start of my career, like digital marketing, having to refresh audiences like once every 2 weeks, or once a month, because they went stale and we needed to identify those signals again. So, having dynamic audiences where the signals are refreshing every day, and you can kind of set it and let it run throughout its cycle.

Kaitlin Sanders: The only thing you really have to worry about is not to worry, but plan, for now is swapping out assets, will, which I’m sure will soon be a thing of the past, with all the with all the growth with AI and everything. And that can. Veronica can speak to a lot of that, and how our product is adapting to be more intuitive and automated.

Veronica Hudson: Yeah. And like, even like where we are today, I think a lot of audiences. And this is something Kaitlin and I have talked about extensively that is created in service of a campaign. So a campaign is oftentimes a point in time with a set budget. But you can also use our audiences to scale your understanding of your TAM and your Icps and your penetration in that market. So you know, creating a TAM audience that you can just look at in terms of how many people are in here. What are they doing? How are we measuring it? And we’re looking to scale that up as well.

Veronica Hudson: So we know that there’s audiences that you’re not going to like always being active like I said earlier like don’t necessarily always cast the widest net. That’s true in some circumstances, but not in most. But you should still be able to look at and measure what is my penetration into that market. But we’re also looking to automate in smaller ways.

Veronica Hudson: For example, when a campaign is launched and we send those accounts engaged with a signal to the copilot. We want to also populate seller outreach emails with the context of the ad and who looked at it. So when a seller does decide to send an outreach email. They don’t have to think about it like they don’t have to know what the ad was about. They don’t have to have seen it. We’re already kind of writing them an email that they can use for outreach.

Veronica Hudson: The purpose of that being quite obvious. We’re giving them that content. But you also know that with Sellers they don’t want to do outreach. It’s like, Hey, I saw you were looking at our pricing page, or Hey, looks like you click through an ad that we sent like. That’s a little creepy for people. It’s not necessarily something that people respond to very well.

Veronica Hudson: But if you know the kind of initial engagement point for them, and you can assume there was some resonation there because they clicked through, or they visited that page of the website. You can automate a lot of that outreach and a lot of that content writing based off of that context in a way that Sellers don’t really have right now. And there’s also a lot that we are planning to do with automating campaign creation, using AI tooling in the future as well as better leveraging our workflows.

Veronica Hudson: So I think workflows are a tool within zoom info that haven’t gotten quite as much traction as as you would expect, but being able to associate a workflow with a campaign or an audience to yeah, have more of that syncing, but also to move an audience or an account from one audience to another based on how they engaged, and then automatically drop them into a new campaign. So there’s a lot that we have planned there. There’s a lot that we already have on offer. But that’s a real area of the product that I’m very excited about. As we move into the second half of this year.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, that’s very cool. We have a lot of folks that we come across where they’re sort of in their earlier stage. Or, again, hitting that sort of wall, and they think they know their ICP. They don’t have it really proven. They don’t have the data to back that up, but they have a pretty good idea. Well, this makes sense with these people operations here, these people here on the, you know. So it is a great way to sort of look and see if there’s other markets to break into, even on the partnership side and channels and such. So really making sure that you’re not leaving money on the table as you’re looking for it.

Kaitlin Sanders: Funny. That’s a prompt I designed for the co-part. We have a Copilot Chat Feature. You can go into the account profile and ask, what gaps and opportunities am I missing? And it will identify those for you which is really cool.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah.

Kaitlin Sanders: But yeah, there’s definitely I know. We’re probably talking like a lot and probably sounds very complex. But for everyone on the webinar, I want you to know, like this is totally attainable and doable and scalable. Just start small and simple, and then work your way like in a layered approach, and just keep building on top of that framework. You can start small.

Courtney Kehl: Right.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, no, I think that’s definitely a big takeaway is, don’t be intimidated. And just, kinda you know, chip away at things. So yeah, with that, businesses with the data driven approach really puts their, you know, their dollars in the right place and their time in the right place. So I think we have a use case or a couple here that just I’m taking a quick time check. I know we kind of blocked out half an hour for this, so we might be going a little fast here toward the end. Just want to encourage folks to put questions into the chat or the Q&A. And maybe we can go through some of these examples here.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yes, this is do you want me to dive into the story?

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, go for it. Yeah.

Kaitlin Sanders: So this is one of our enterprise accounts. Where do you know? Again it was a scale. It was an identification issue. So it was needing the database or access to the database to identify net new contacts and having the automation to a social platform like LinkedIn in order to target those.

Kaitlin Sanders: But not only those as a standalone having the ability to combine them with signals. So you again have a dynamic audience, and then you’re sending that over. The list is being refreshed. So they don’t have to worry about targeting stale accounts or stale leads. With that we were able to get an immediate jump in engagement with this one account, or with this one customer from there they wanted to pilot the Dsp to launch a multi Channel campaign.

Kaitlin Sanders: We were able to see a ton of success there by just starting small. So we started by just adding in, you know, intent signals. Let’s prove that that works great. Once that works. Let’s you know, then evolve to be brand aware and retarget great that works. Let’s expand full funnel brand awareness. Retarget pipeline. Great. Let’s add in. Let’s add in more signals. So we’re chipping away little by little, it’s like you want to see what works great in that way. You’re not trying to test everything at once, and you’re trying to figure out what’s not working. It’s like a needle in a haystack.

Courtney Kehl: Right? It’s just fully understanding the information and giving you that like empowering us for the next decision.

Kaitlin Sanders: And that way. It’s not overwhelming. And you’re not like this or that. You can’t start small. We built the framework up, and this is all account level multi signal based for the most part. But we are shifting into persona targeting now. I know a lot of people are within the space. So creating more. So of those micro journeys.

Kaitlin Sanders: One thing that’s important to emphasize is like, don’t kill what’s already working right? So just because you’re shifting to persona based targeting doesn’t mean you have to scrap that entire strategy that’s been really successful for you. And to start over.

Kaitlin Sanders: Let it’s more about just evolving it, keeping the same framework you’ve had at the account level. But then matching those signals to the persona level, and then so it’s just elevating what you’re already doing, instead of having to completely redesign your framework

Courtney Kehl: Sure that sounds like it would also apply for folks that are updating their messaging or pivot, not just on the vertical or persona approach, but messaging, too, as you really see what what’s working and what’s not

Kaitlin Sanders: And the persona targeting really allows you to become hyper personalized at that point where. And you know, it’s accurate, right? Because a lot of times, and I’ve seen this with other tools where they have, like a personalized tokens on ads that will like, say, a company name or the industry, and it’s great, but a lot of times sometimes, if it’s not tracked correctly, it could. It could produce the wrong company or cookie I’ve or company, or company, name or industry.

Kaitlin Sanders: But I mean these hyper personalized journeys, then allow you to tailor that content, but with a platform like ZoomInfo or another abm platform. You’re then able to scale that at a multi-channel level. So think about a single audience within ZoomInfo marketing at the persona level. I can build out a persona based funnel. I can then target them at different areas of the funnel, but then on different channels that would be best suited for that persona and that objective.

Kaitlin Sanders: So it allows you a lot of options and flexibility and your targeting strategy and kind of how you’re interacting with these accounts and users at these accounts.

Courtney Kehl: What sort of timeframe would something like this take, or what would you recommend? As folks are thinking about their calendar year, and such.

Kaitlin Sanders: Timeframe for building out a strategy like this?

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, just as you’re kind of testing. You’re putting that, you know that 1st layer, then the next layer, you know, I mean a lot of folks. Of course they want to. They wanna just jump right to growth and push a button.

Kaitlin Sanders: I’d say, from the marketing side it might be and Veronica feel free to chime in. It might be easier to start from the influencer champion and end user perspective. That’s typically gonna be more top funnel interactions. So start with a brand aware play target, that kind of like a larger span of personas with high value, and like kind of like an educational resource type of content.

Kaitlin Sanders: Because if you know, they start engaging. And they’re like, Oh, how can this make my job easier? How can I scale this? So you know, what can I learn here? And then kind of expand out you know, into that decision maker realm. I think a lot of times. What I’m seeing is they want to jump right to the decision makers immediately.

Kaitlin Sanders: And they’re like, I wanna target all CMOs and CEOs for brand awareness campaigns for this educational resource. And I’m like, okay, like, let’s figure out 1st what resonates with this group the most. And we wanna make sure that that content and that messaging aligns. We wanna make sure we’re not just serving a bunch of, you know. Enterprise level. CEOs.

Courtney Kehl: Right. And taking into account, the champions are right. The actual ones that you wanna really get that stickiness with and then that support.

Kaitlin Sanders: Something I always do, a great strategy, too, is if you have a long sales cycle and if your marketing team is supporting sales during that cycle. I always have them run a campaign to target those end users, champions, and gatekeepers around content like product comparisons about like if there’s some like a new release on a feature, or if there’s something that will elevate or make their job easier during that process, they’re going to be the ones that are whispering to

Courtney Kehl: Right, right.

Courtney Kehl: It’s almost like, look at them as an advisory board you want. You want to really listen, get that feedback, and and of course ensure that they feel very valued, and and all of their input is taken into account

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah, and that’s something you can lead a little on. AI, i with AI with, if you’re unsure, what type of content resonates with what personas and what type of content resonates with like, what area of the funnel? Ask AI and give them that. You know the detailed description of who you’re targeting and what your goal is, and they can definitely give some great suggestions.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, yeah, awesome. I know we’ve run over a little bit. So I do want to be conscious of everybody. We did get a couple of questions here. Do we have time to hang on a little longer? 5 more minutes?

Courtney Kehl: I know our days are always back to back. So we suggested businesses use data to find their best customers and scale faster. And you’re saying, just if you haven’t already started this process. Don’t be afraid. Layer it in common scaling mistakes that you’ve seen. Maybe we can double down on that one, and how companies can avoid those scaling mistakes.

Veronica Hudson: I think you just kind of touched on that caitlin with a couple of points that you made like one wanting to like jump to target like CEOs and CMOs right away like that is more of a strategy mistake, probably because it’s not necessarily a scaling mistake, because that’s a much smaller bucket than the other groups that you had mentioned. And I also think about your point about like, you don’t need to scrap strategies that are working because you want to try something new. I think marketers are natural born tinkerers and experimenters.

Veronica Hudson: I’ve worked with people on email automation where they just want to tweak every little piece of an automation and just to see what happens. But sometimes I can like shoot us in the foot when like, you can scale net new while still also focusing on what’s worked by making minor tweaks. If you’re scrapping what’s worked every time you’re starting from square one every time, maybe with some learnings.

Veronica Hudson: But you know you have that huge ramp up period. You should be as you’re ramping up on new customer categories or ICPs or areas of targeting. You should also still, yeah, focus on what’s worked and and think about tweaking there versus starting fresh entirely. Yeah.

Courtney Kehl: No, there’s so many times I’ve seen folks where they’re pivoting their messaging so often that they’re not letting any of it actually resonate, and that, and then getting sort of that, that full circle, that full loop!

Kaitlin Sanders: Absolutely. And there’s a lot of points, too, like looking at the data to give you the answers. And a lot of that when you’re unsure of what to adjust or how to scale. Like if you get a high CTR, but a high bounce rate at this like it’s it’s probably a misalignment between your messaging CTA and your asset. And then what’s on your landing page, especially like the header, or like your focal point.

Courtney Kehl: Top of fold. Yeah, but there are disconnects and it’s identifying. Wait, this is not quite where it needs to be and always improving upon it. Yeah.

Veronica Hudson: And that’s another good. Oh, sorry! Go ahead, Kaitlin.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah. Go ahead.

Veronica Hudson: I was going to say, that’s another good use of AI tooling like sometimes that data can be a bit overwhelming, or you’re like, I don’t have time to sift through this. I’ll like, take data, set upload it to Claude, or even just like within Google sheets. Use Gemini to say, what is this telling me? You definitely have to check for hallucinations, but it’s good. It is a good way to at least get some like jumping off points for areas to dive deeper into. Because, yeah, oftentimes I that’s a scale issue for me personally or like, I don’t have time to like sift through all this data. And like, figure out a story here. So that’s an area where I use AI.

Kaitlin Sanders: For that, too, just to add on to what you’re saying to help it, to limit the hallucinations, instead of just saying, What is it telling me? Let them know. What is this telling me based on the goal I needed to achieve?

Kaitlin Sanders: and then also be like, what is this telling like, point out what you’re noticing on a human level. Be like, I’m noticing that there’s like a really low CTR or this, and then ask it to be like, do you need any other context to give me a more accurate answer, and it might ask you to upload your assets or get share with them. Your landing page is like going back to what Veronica said in the beginning, talk to them like you would an intern, or someone that is just, you know, joined the company.

Kaitlin Sanders: They’re brand new. How would you teach them? Would you just be like this isn’t working? Why, you would give them a ton of context like, here’s everything like, go to town and do your deep research and figure out what’s not working. The more you give it the better the output’s gonna be.

Courtney Kehl: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, I think, without a doubt, but a huge takeaway this year in particular, folks are leaning in whereas last year there was a little bit more fear. Surrounding, you know, sort of bringing on all the tools and different different options. Of course it’s like a playground of tools out there. But I do feel, you know, there’s the ZoomInfo to the world that will ultimately bubble up, and I think that comes down to just meeting user friendly and being comprehensive.

Courtney Kehl: So great. Well, I’m I’m gonna wrap here, folks, if you want to reach out, you can find us really anywhere on our website, LinkedIn or the email here, and we can certainly get you in touch with Kaitlin and Veronica as well.

Courtney Kehl: I want to thank you very much for joining me, ladies, this is fun. I always love talking shop so hopefully. I have some good plans for the weekend, and can unwind, and then hit the ground again next week, as we do.

Veronica Hudson: So, yeah, thank you so much everyone.

Kaitlin Sanders: Yeah, thank you.