90 - How To Get People That Will Never Buy From You To Passionately Recommend You (Kathleen Booth, SVP Marketing at Tradeswell)

05/23/22 • 45 min

I invited Kathleen Booth, SVP Marketing at Tradeswell, to the show and we had a blast talking about how to do marketing the way it SHOULD be done - with a customer/audience-first approach focused on community, great content, and building a brand that people love, whether they buy from you or not.

Prior to Tradeswell, Kathleen served as CMO at clean.io (Series A). She's also the host of The Inbound Success Podcast and Board-level advisor to several tech startups.

Tradeswell was founded in 2019, is based out of Baltimore (MD), and has 38 people. They've raised Series A ($18.8M). Tradeswell is the real-time operating system for e-commerce. Like "mission control" for growing e-commerce businesses. Tradeswell is creating a new category called “real-time operating system”.

Here's what we hit on:

How buyers used to buy and how buyers are buying today (HINT: they go to peers, communities, Slack, LinkedIn, etc.) and how "meh" marketing still follows the old approach;

To truly succeed you need to win the hearts and minds of the buyer and the people they’re talking to;

How we organize our budget (HINT: it's not the usual 10% of revenue is spent on marketing);

What marketing channels are working well (HINT: podcasts, community, niche newsletter ads);

What marketing content are you leaning into this year (HINT: your content should shine a spotlight on your audience PLUS we have data that nobody else has access to);

How are you building out resources this year;

What are your top marketing challenges (HINT: saying no can be hard AND we're creating a category and that's a challenge for sure but there are things we are looking for in the short-term);

How we're aligning really well with sales (HINT: don't pit marketing against sales, it's about the channel and not the team);

What are the last 1-2 really good, creative marketing ideas you’ve come up with (HINT: niche Substack newsletter sponsorship, check out the link below to learn more);

Some goals you want to accomplish (personal, professional) in 2022.

You can reach Kathleen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenslatterybooth/

Find out more about Tradeswell: https://www.tradeswell.com/

Check out Swapstack for niche newsletter advertising: https://swapstack.co/

For more content like this, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen.

You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com and you can also subscribe to Anna's monthly newsletter by going here: https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba

Thanks for listening!

Prior to Tradeswell, Kathleen served as CMO at clean.io (Series A). She's also the host of The Inbound Success Podcast and Board-level advisor to several tech startups.

Here's what we hit on:

How buyers used to buy and how buyers are buying today (HINT: they go to peers, communities, Slack, LinkedIn, etc.) and how "meh" marketing still follows the old approach;

To truly succeed you need to win the hearts and minds of the buyer and the people they’re talking to;

How we organize our budget (HINT: it's not the usual 10% of revenue is spent on marketing);

What marketing channels are working well (HINT: podcasts, community, niche newsletter ads);

What marketing content are you leaning into this year (HINT: your content should shine a spotlight on your audience PLUS we have data that nobody else has access to);

How are you building out resources this year;

What are your top marketing challenges (HINT: saying no can be hard AND we're creating a category and that's a challenge for sure but there are things we are looking for in the short-term);

How we're aligning really well with sales (HINT: don't pit marketing against sales, it's about the channel and not the team);

What are the last 1-2 really good, creative marketing ideas you’ve come up with (HINT: niche Substack newsletter sponsorship, check out the link below to learn more);

Some goals you want to accomplish (personal, professional) in 2022.

You can reach Kathleen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenslatterybooth/

Find out more about Tradeswell: https://www.tradeswell.com/

Check out Swapstack for niche newsletter advertising: https://swapstack.co/

For more content like this, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen.

Thanks for listening!

Previous Episode

89 - BONUS 2-Minutes Anna Unfiltered: Your Positioning Is The Fire And Fuel For Growth

Time for another solo episode! This one's fast but packs a punch. I started creating TikTok videos weekly and posting them to LinkedIn and so far it's going well and I love how it takes just 4 minutes to record, add a title, and add captions and do it all myself. Talk about scrappy AND engaging. Video works, ya'll. So I'm stripping out the audio and adding it to the podcast.

In this quick episode, I cover my conversation with someone I know at a super cool VC firm that helps his portfolio of companies with marketing and growth. He said something and at first I was offended, and then I realized there's some nuance that needs to be unpacked and I do it right here.

For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen.

Thanks for listening!

Next Episode

91 - Marketing Planning Series (Kyle Lacy, SVP Marketing at Seismic)

Happy Memorial Day if you're in the US!

WOWZA these episodes are popular...so let's keep this going! Sprinkling in another episode for the "Marketing Planning Series" where I invite back top startup founders and marketing leaders to talk about their marketing plans going into 2022. We'll dive into marketing channels, budget, resources and so much more.

Kyle Lacy is SVP of Marketing at Seismic (Series G). Prior, Kyle was CMO at Lessonly (Series C) for almost 5 years where he 20X’d revenue growth (70% sourced by marketing).

I've had Kyle on before - check out Episode 31 where we talk about “the power of irrational ideas and golden llamas” among other things.

Seismic was founded in 2010, has ~1,175 people, is based out of San Diego, CA, and Series G funded. Seismic is the #1 global sales enablement solution. Lessonly got acquired by Seismic in 2021. Lessonly is focused on training and coaching sales teams and Seismic does way more.

Here's what we hit on:

2022 Marketing Plan, budget splits (HINT: the board really cares about the one metric LTV/CAC so as long as that stayed in the lane we can do whatever with our budget);

Marketing channels you're leaning into this year (HINT: organic should be primary, and should always be primary);

Marketing content you're leaning into this year;

How you're planning to build out resources;

What's your secret sauce to managing such a big (marketing) ship?? (HINT: hire people that understand how to move quickly but also have empathy/EQ because it's easier to have those difficult conversations;

You need to build the marketing plan that's right for YOUR team, resources, etc;

Goals that Kyle wants to accomplish in 2022.

You can find Kyle on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kylelacy

Find out more about Seismic: https://seismic.com/

For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen).

You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit my website: www.furmanovmarketing.com

Thanks for listening!