276: What Your SaaS Marketing is Missing - with Nathan Yeung

Matt Wolach: 0:10

What do you think of when you hear the word marketing? Do you think of cool ads that have all these crazy pictures? Do you think of great emails that are composed just the right way that get people to take action? If you think of a website that looks awesome and generates leads, I bet you're thinking of all those but I bet you also don't think of some of the backend execution and operations stuff that has to happen. The dirty side of marketing the things that you need to have, or else all that awesome creative doesn't really work. Well. Nathan Yeung came in, he's with fine your audience and Nathan did a great job of explaining all the things you need to have happen. So you don't miss out on the benefits of all that creative stuff that you did. Check it out. I think you're gonna like this.

Intro/ Outro: 0:49

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: 1:06

Yes. Welcome to Scale Your SaaS. Very glad you're here. And thank you very much for joining us. My name is Matt. And our goal is to do exactly that to help you scale your SaaS so you can understand the right ways to generate leads, close those leads. Have an amazing team do it for you, and get to where you gotta get and I'm super pumped. Today we're joined by Nathan Yeung. Nathan, how you doing?

Nathan Yeung: 1:26

Doing? Well, Matt, thanks for having me on today.

Matt Wolach: 1:29

Awesome. You're welcome. I'm really excited for our conversation. Let me make sure everybody knows who you are Nathan. So Nathan is the Vice President and CMO at Find Your Audience. He has helped numerous companies build their marketing teams from scratch delivering successful go to market deployments and launching new products into the market. He leads teams of marketing managers, graphic designers, media buyer coordinators, freelancers, all the above it sounds like he's a he's, he's a rockstar. And he does this to develop and implement marketing strategies for organizations. So when it comes to marketing and generating interest and demand, Nathan knows his stuff. I'm really happy you're here. Thanks for coming, Nathan.

Nathan Yeung: 2:08

I'm excited for the conversation. And especially, you know, we're gonna be talking about SaaS today and we deal with a lot of SaaS.

Matt Wolach: 2:14

That's awesome. SaaS is such a great industry. Before we get into that, just tell me, what have you been up to lately? And what's coming up for you?

Nathan Yeung: 2:23

You know, what's been lately, you know, I content creation has been a huge thing as as of recently, I've literally just been talking to some of our organizations about content creation. And you know, I think it's a buzzy word. It's a super buzzy word. And I feel like, um, you know, our organization really excels at what we call us marketing operations, which is really the unsexy part of actually getting the marketing done. And we're really trying to help companies really understand how much it takes to create content, I think, I think a lot of people think it's far easier than then, you know, they kind of think it's quite difficult. There's a lot of nuances, there's a lot challenges, and also a lot of emailing recently. So a lot of email infrastructure stuff. So so really helping clients understand that on a technical perspective,

Matt Wolach: 3:04

I love that that's something I literally was just talking with a client about right before this is making sure that their emails are set up correctly for when they're doing cold. There's a lot of bad things you can do tech wise if you're if you're doing cold emails, but you said something in there, I think is really important that a lot of people don't quite understand is that split between the operations side of marketing and the creative side? And sometimes when people think marketing like oh, yeah, I just come up with like this really pretty picture and we go put it in an ad and it's great, right? But you're right. There's there's an operations component. That's, that's really important. Can you kind of explain first for some people who don't know, what are the two components? And really, how do you make sure that you're allocating enough effort to both?

Nathan Yeung: 3:43

Sure, and it really depends on the impact, and then the spends right or the type of campaigns but the creative part of it is really just making sure that one, your messaging is very clear. Your messaging is on point in the sense of, it's really hitting what your ideal customer profile wants, in terms of pain points, making sure you're communicating well. And then of course, taking that messaging and communicating that well inside of an asset. So whether that asset is audio, whether that asset is video, whether that asset is just an image, whether that assets also just like your sales enablement tools, translating that messaging and making it that into one cohesive package is really the creative exercise. Now, what ends up happening on the back end of that is there's the operational exercise, the operational exercise could be as simple as hey, so you got this brand new, amazing sales enablement tool. How are you distributing that amongst your sales members? How are you making sure that everyone within the organization is fully aware that you have brand news case studies that you just did, and you spend $10,000 do videos with your with your clients on there's often this huge disconnect of like sales enablement production, and also the velocity to the salespeople actually even knowing that they exist. That's like a very nuanced operational thing. If we really want to talk about the operations in a different format, I'll give two Great examples on a technology perspective, I know that we're listening to you, a lot of your listeners are SAS people. So you're going to be like, hey, Nate, how do I deal with international translation? Well, I'm going to tell you, there's no shortcut when it comes to international translation, and if you have an active demand gen funnel, and you're actively in different markets, I'm going to tell you, your marketing team is going to hate you. Why? Because Auto Translate does not work. Okay, so whoever thinks Auto Translate works fine. It maybe works for the, the one market that like is 10th on your priority scale, and you just don't care. Sure, that's going to do fine. But it's not going to work for any country that you're actively wanting to go into market and actually penetrate. So what does marketing have to do? Hey, hey, we got a sales enablement tool. Great. Let's translate this in 10 different language, only, I need a landing page. Okay, we gotta get that in six different languages. Now, the time for us to produce all those things. That's the operations part, right? And then making sure that that's consistent because the last thing you want, is your head of Turkey going Hey, I heard from the last meeting that we've got this great new sales enablement tool, why don't I have anything for me to use in my in my deal, right. And that's like a huge problem. And that really annoys salespeople. And you know how valuable those people are, right? So operations of marketing, we have to actually stay on top of that, we have to build the SOPs, the standard operating procedures to ensure the velocity of that content being distributed fairly amongst the team members. The other part is just like your CRM system, right? Ensuring that your CRM system even has proper workflows. Yes, that does kind of bridge on the idea of sales. But often, you know, I like to kind of in a pardon, stepping mat your toes because you're a sales expert. But you know, I always envision salespeople are really good at two different things. One, having technical solution type sales, conversations, three building, to building an amazing relationship with someone. And everything else should really be marketing. So I don't want my sales guy going into HubSpot. Going into Salesforce building workflows, building dashboards, I kind of just, you know, maybe you either pay like a Salesforce consultant or HubSpot consultant do that, or have marketing do that, because I want them focus on what they do best, which is just selling. And and so often on our operational standpoint, marketing really takes care of that marketing takes care of the nurturing marketing sometimes even takes care of the funnel, and the rules of the funnel, because when they go stale, we'd actually need to pull that data and put them into a nurturing funnel. So that's all technical operations work. That's, that's not creative work. That's just technical operations work. So that's really like the classification of operations. Creative is honestly where every single person who wants to go into marketing wants to be because it's sexy, and it's fun. And you get to see it really quickly, right, but, but there's really this unfortunate dark side, which is like, incredibly critical to the success of whatever you're doing. And it's kind of sits behind the scenes, so so we do a lot of that we do a ton of operational work.

Matt Wolach: 7:57

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's completely vital to actually getting results and making things happen. And, and I agree with you, if you're gonna pay a lot of money for these salespeople, and train them really well to sell. You don't want them doing anything else like you. It's frustrating when they have to go into the CRM and try and fix this workflow and update this or add this, like stop that, like get somebody else to do that so that we can have salespeople selling. And I love that I think you feel the same as it same way as I do. But sales and marketing I think you've gotten too siloed in many organizations, and they're kind of on their own doing different things. And we really need to create this this meshing of sales and marketing my friend Dan tire, he's one of the leaders at HubSpot, he's he calls it marketing. So it's all kind of together but it you know, there's there's kind of these blending of of roles of sales and marketing into a CRO a conversion rate optimization role. You know, how do you see this, this happening now in the best way? And and how do you see this impacting businesses going forward?

Nathan Yeung: 9:01

It's, it's getting weird, because I think so much of marketing is bleeding into sales, especially on the technology stack perspective, right? The sales stack and the MAR stack, like, you know, you really look at what each of those stacks do, they're really getting blended like there, they used to be kind of separate, but they're very much not separate at all anymore. So for me, I generally actually look at marketing and sales becoming a rev function, like literally just a revenue operations function. And the reason I say that is because I and I completely agree with him that like we're far too siloed I kind of always say, you know, a lot of people like to pigeonhole marketing into like these MQL and random KPIs because they feel like that's best in class to use right now. But that's just because they're listening to a whole bunch of people and they're not really thinking about the nuances. The nuance is, is marketing is a function that is meant to amplify revenue or sales. It does not matter what our function does. So long means that is the outcome. So if my function is is I'm creating better workflows, guess what? I'm not doing MQLs. If my job is to create better sales enablement, guess what, I'm not creating MQLs. If I am doubling or tripling the productivity of your sales team that is definitely not on my KPI structure. So this whole idea of like marketing, being pigeonholed behind demand generation, performance marketing, inbound leads content, whatever gated content downloads, like, well, whatever term you want to quantify, it's just kind of short sighted. And the reason it's short sighted is because you always end up forgetting the game plan is you need to have quality leads, and quality conversions. If I want to just again MQLs then I call that amateur hour kind of KPIs. Why? Because I can get 1000 MQLs. And I can be wasting my salespeople with a bunch of unqualified people. So that's not great for anyone, right? That's not great for the stock rate for the salespeople. It's not great for the organization. But you know who it's great for me, because you gave me stupid KPIs to follow. So so I'm incentivized to get you 1000, you know, MQL, let me go do a newsletter. Let me go do a webinar, right. So I find that, you know, if people are actually really smart about approaching marketing and sales, they are going to come to the same conclusion, it's very much a revenue role. It's a revenue function. And our responsibilities are uniquely different. But they are all for the same outcome. And so this idea that sales and marketing has to be separate entities, I think is very much going away. And technology is really forcing that matter faster.

Matt Wolach: 11:35

I think that's really insightful. I totally agree. I've been in those rooms, where sales says, You pointed sales, how come you're not closing anything? Well, the leads we're getting are terrible. We're getting you lots of leads, marketing says, and you have this back and forth, and it gets nasty. And I agree, I think that the smarter people who are being intentional about this are really focusing on how can we blend these roles, these divisions, these departments, these people and come up with the same goals, right? And I think that that's where it has to be is, what are the goals of where we're trying to get as an organization and I love it revenue, we need revenue. And we need to get those conversions to get revenue. So let's make it happen as a team.

Nathan Yeung: 12:14

Yeah. And that's kind of why I go to a lot of companies and I sometimes go, you know, sometimes my first job my first outcome, when we're hired by companies, I might actually end up telling them, I was like, Look, your demand generation sucks. Your content sucks. You don't have anyone to produce content. So that's not happening anytime soon. So what I'm hearing is, is that you have an amazing sales team. And they're running your conferences, meaning they're also the ones booking your conferences. They're ad hoc ly building out their sales stack. So every single sales member doesn't have the same deck, these are all using their own. So how about this? Why don't for the first month of six months of my engagement, my focus is actually double or tripling the productivity your sales team as a marketing function, so it's less about brand, it's less about all these things. But marketing's are really going to come in there and support the sales team in everything that they're not technically sufficient to do. You want a new deck, that's my job, you want a new, you want a new enrichment list based on your Tam, that's my job. You want a new cadence? Well, we'll help you with the cadence, you can polish the cadence, but don't write the Cadence from start. Right. So this this, this idea that we have to produce MQL is I just I really think is is incredibly frustrating. And I think people need to be more mindful. Again, it's all about the revenue. So just focus on that. And that could mean I'm just helping salespeople.

Matt Wolach: 13:36

I love that. And as a CEO, That's music to my ears. So when would a company when would a SaaS company say, Okay, we need to have someone help us with this when when is the best time for that?

Nathan Yeung: 13:47

So that's a great question. And I you know, I think every podcast I've ever been the goal, like how do you build like as a marketing team. So here's, here's generally what I'll say. Your first and second marketing hire kind of sucks. Why? Because generally speaking, the average marketer is likely going to be wide in skill sets, and shallow in their technical capabilities, or they're going to be incredibly, not wide, but narrow, and incredibly technical only in one skill set. So Jen, I

Matt Wolach: 14:20

would say, to interrupt you, I feel like most of the time, early stage companies, when they make their first marketing hire, look for that person who's wide. They're like, Hey, can you do this thing? Can you do that? Can you that can do that. And they they're not really good at any of them. But they have done or think they can do all of those different things. And that gets tough.

Nathan Yeung: 14:39

Yeah, and it's and it's an overestimation of what people can do. And it's also just like a general under appreciation of like, how complicated marketing is, because that's like our problem, right? Marketing. People make marketing easy. That's our whole shtick, right? Like, we've made things simple. And so so we inherently have people who undermine marketing because they think it's actually Easy because it's the it's the outcome of other great marketers making it sound easy. And so you generally speaking, you're probably better off hiring someone who's narrow, and what narrow are we looking for, then I'm gonna say someone who's very good at product marketing. And to me, the way I define product marketing is very much being accountable and responsible in ensuring that your product or service actually fits a very large whitespace that's worth your time actually has features or benefits that really hit pain points, and ensuring a constant feedback loop from the sales team back to either the product team or the service team or the executive team to ensure that your services and products are being involved with the market. So their entire role is really just focused on making sure you have fit. So that's that's what I think is great. Why, because everything that they do directly translates into sales enablement, tools, and that's something that they can do. Now, they're not probably going to be an amazing graphic designer, but you're going to have all the great context, your salespeople don't have to write this out. And ultimately, this product person can do it. Now, if you don't want to hire just a product person, my honest suggestion is, don't bother trying to find an individual until you can afford about three to four marketing people, you're probably likely better off with an agency. And the reason I say that is just because an agency is going to have the wide kind of breadth of skills, but they will have the technical depth in all those skills because they have scale, right. So for example, I have 2526 employees, I have a full time developer or multiple full time developers, I have a professional media buyer who specializes in particular platforms. So when you go on these, these, these tangents, or these these campaigns, some companies like to call it, you will get proper execution, instead of your poor marketing manager who claims to know SEO media buying content writing graphic design, who's probably going to do honestly a piss poor job. So So you really don't benefit from trying to find that person to do at all, you end up just kind of shooting yourself in the foot, because you need to execute on what limited tactics you can execute on, and you need to execute on them well, so you're not going to find that on your first employee. And you're really not going to find that on your second because generally your second is either going to be a coordinator, or maybe like a content writer of some sort. So you're really just going to be stuck with these kind of mediocre executors. So you might very much are better off hiring an agency to do it. And then when you get big enough and you can actually hire four people, then you then you scrap the agency and you build a team

Matt Wolach: 17:44

makes a ton of sense. So that's one big mistake that SaaS leaders are making. What would you say other than mistakes that they're making with regards to marketing?

Nathan Yeung: 17:53

I'm spreading yourself thin I think that's that's like that's like number one, right? Every every SaaS leader wants to jump on every shiny object. And this is like the one thing I've heard on multiple calls. You know, people are always go what's working in your industry. Now, I do think there's a propensity for some categories or into industries to have tactics that work better. So I'll give you a great example, cybersecurity sales. Cybersecurity sales notoriously difficult, notoriously difficult. Why? Because like, like, chief security officers, chiefs, like technology officers are like, incredibly skeptical of anything cybersecurity, and of course, if you think about the, like, the manner of that business, it is meant to be skeptical, like, you have to be hyper skeptical. So so the chances of you selling something through an email, which is, you know, predominantly a form of phishing for a lot of people, especially in this industry, they just don't like it. So in the in the cybersecurity industry, the tactic that generally works are associations and conferences. Why? Because you actually need to be in person. So if you're a cybersecurity company, and you're predominantly selling in cybersecurity, guess what your main function should be a corporate and events function. Why? Because generally, that's what this market needs and this and that ICP wants. Now, if you're in other industries, right, other tactics work a little bit easier, like email will work or phone will work. But it always comes down to what can you actually do? Well, this is what I always end up saying, right? So you know, you you can try to force the issue in the sense of like, I want to do tik tok because Tik Toks the coolest thing. But if you don't have someone who is you know, proficient and creating content, who actually has a role and who can do it sustainably, then you're just gonna have piss poor execution. So it doesn't matter that you're doing ticked off, you're just doing a bad job. So I always tell people that it's always about sustainability and practicality. Your whatever tactic it is, you just have to look at your organization and really go What can I do sustainably and practically, what can I do for a long period of time without worrying about it, and what can I do well, and if you can't do it, don't bother. Not until you have scale not until you have budget. Why? Because you don't have by So stop thinking you do, you don't have time. You don't have you don't have time budget, you don't have money budget, you don't have human capital budget. So whoever is doing whatever your marketing tactic is, they gotta focus on at least only one or two things Max and it has to fit under that sustainable and practical principle.

Matt Wolach: 20:19

I love it. Super, super good advice, something that people definitely need to listen to. And Nathan this has been awesome I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all your knowledge. Where can people learn more about what you're you're doing and of course of what you guys are doing it find

Nathan Yeung: 20:32

Yeah, awesome. So I have like an Instagram real your audience? channel you can find me at FYA.marketingbites and that's with a Y you can also find me Of course on LinkedIn Nathan Yeung spelt ye U ng or of course my website www.findyouraudience.online.

Matt Wolach: 20:49

Okay, cool. And we'll make sure we put that all into the show notes. So everybody listening, you'll be able to see it there and YouTube. If you're on YouTube. You'll see it down below in the description. Nathan, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing all this with us. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate the time. Absolutely. And everybody out there. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate you being here. Make sure you're subscribed to the show. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any other amazing leaders like Nathan, giving you all their best wisdom. Hit that up and then we will see you next time. Take care.

Intro/ Outro: 21:21

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