Why Attention Is the New Moat in B2B Marketing | Conquête

Description

To receive our marketing & growth strategies by email: https://bullishbulldozer.substack.com/
To work with Bulldozer: https://bulldozer-collective.com

Most B2B marketers can't define what makes their brand magnetic. Trevor can and he calls it Aura.

In this extract, Trevor breaks down why attention has become the most important resource in B2B marketing, what Aura actually is, and how Profound measures something that is more felt than tracked. He covers the three proxy metrics that matter, why event waitlists are one of the most honest signals of brand health, and why employer brand is the most underrated indicator of Aura in the market.

He also makes the case for treating your marketing team like a production house, launching every product update like it's the most important thing in the world, and looking at B2C brands like Liquid Death and Taco Bell to understand what great B2B marketing should feel like.

WHERE TO FIND TREVOR: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-pyle/

DISCOVER PROFOUND: https://www.tryprofound.com/

WHERE TO FIND JORDAN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanchenevier/

WORK WITH BULLDOZER: https://bulldozer-collective.com/

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WHAT IS BULLDOZER?

Bulldozer maximizes marketing & sales performance for SMBs and Scale-Ups across their entire funnel. Our hybrid agency/collective model gives us access to the best talent on the market and allows us to act on every performance lever for our clients (Outbound, Paid, SEO, ABM, RevOps, Data…). In 4 years, our strong social media presence, talent pool, and 360° vision of growth have fueled rapid growth and attracted 250+ clients (Aircall, Qonto, Doctolib, Hexa…).

Our ambition for the years ahead is bold: design and operate world-class growth strategies and become a global leader on the topic by 2030.

To work with us 👉 https://bulldozer-collective.com/

Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I was talking with our CEO and co-founder. I thought it was very fun that he thought that that was one of marketing's most important metrics to track.
Speaker #1
Your CEO admits that for him as well, like, all right, the thing. But how do you measure this? Like, what metrics should you follow?
Speaker #0
If you create an event and you have a wait list for it immediately, you've done something right. It's not always something you can measure, but it's something that you can feel. I think that most good B2B teams will kind of start to treat an arm of their marketing department like a production house. like a media group i think the more that you can make your product feel just alive and visceral and kind of from a competitive set like the customers looking at you versus a competitor being like how would anybody compete with them and then just doing things that are just genuinely not boring and interesting that means taking swings and like missing sometimes it's it's
Speaker #1
Directly linked to a question I wanted to ask is you've said something that is attention is the new mode. And I think this is directly linked to what you just mentioned. And I think you would. Yeah. Can you please elaborate on this? Attention is the new mode. I think it's an interesting take.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah. And I will 100 percent admit that I have stolen this from George Bernanke at Ramp, who's their VP of growth. And I think that they've just done. Uh, they've been a long time user profound. Talked to him a few times. Um, he's spoken at our conference zero click. And I always just think his perspective is really interesting because he came from being like an analytical chemist to being a very performance channel driven marketer to being somebody who's like, yeah, we should probably do some like stunt marketing and brand things because that's just what work is working. I think that traditional performance channels just got pretty like watered down and just like very, very crowded. No. came very hard cpcs were rising like all of us saw this and then i think especially with the advent of ai new competitors are ending the field left and right right like yc is shooting out companies every single day and i think it's hard to like just maintain that category dominance just from pure performance i think that you have to stay top of mind for people and i think the b2c and b2b are blending so getting into the channels that people just people not like enterprises or companies are in is really, really important in staying on top of it. I think that most good B2B teams will kind of start to treat an arm of their marketing department like a production house, like a media group that is creating generally like valuable, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing content that is related to the value prop, but is more related to connecting with the audience in a more detailed way. So I think that you can create attention with kind of that quality of content. And then I think you can also create and maintain attention with pace and velocity, making sure that your engineering team, your product team, your marketing team is making launch moments for everything that you're doing and just trying to stay kind of like above the bubble as much as possible. So kind of quality and pace are really important for us here at Profound. And I think that's the way you kind of capture some of that attention.
Speaker #1
Is that what you call aura?
Speaker #0
I think so. I think Aura is maybe like, it kind of started when I was talking with our CEO and co-founder and, you know, I thought it was very fun that he thought that that was one of marketing's most important metrics to track. And I agree with him. And we do believe that it's just downstream or if you just kind of create like a coolness around what you're doing, the people at your company and what they're doing, investing more in employee brand and things like that. I think it creates more trust with your buyer and it creates more believability. If you're saying, you know, hey, this the face of marketing is changing. New roles are emerging. Here's how you approach AEO. These things never existed. They're nascent. So I do think that you have to have a little bit of like aura to create some belief and believability. And I think that's why you're seeing like a lot more marketing teams, like making the people in their company a lot more apparent and making them those people like. influencers of themselves and micro channels and moving away from like building on the actual like how many followers does the brand page for LinkedIn have maybe that matters less than how many followers like James or our CTO or head of research or myself have and how that matters to the respective audience so I think that like by investing in the people you just create some more interest around the brand so yeah I would I would probably define that as that as aura and then just doing things that are just genuinely not boring. and interesting. That means taking swings and like missing sometimes. But I think maybe we're in a little bit of a TikTok brain culture, unfortunately. And that's that's how you have to capture some of the attention.
Speaker #1
So yeah, if you've got like the trick not to be boring, I'll take it.
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. I think you should always follow what great leaders are doing. And I think you should look into B2C more. Like as a B2B marketer. Yeah,
Speaker #1
I agree. I agree.
Speaker #0
Go follow what Liquid Death is doing. They're a water company. But they are a marketing machine. I mean, even like how Taco Bell. is consistently launching products and refactoring things and doing interesting collabs and things like that. Like, I just think there's a lot we can learn from what those very creative and consumer brand marketers are doing, as well as following some of the B2B greats too. And like starting at the top, George is great at this. The Ramp team is very good at this too.
Speaker #1
And so, yeah, I was about to say disclaimer, I haven't posted the episode yet, but I just recorded with George an episode. And so, yeah. Oh, there you go. We can send the listeners to this episode because we discussed about the stunt that he does at Ramp, etc. So yeah, it's directly linked to this.
Speaker #0
He's awesome.
Speaker #1
Yeah, he's great. All right. So great. Getting back to Aura, Brand, etc. How do you measure this? Because you mentioned different metrics like, hey, my follower counts on LinkedIn, like the personal follower counts, etc. and your CEO. admits that for him as well, like, oh, right, it's a thing. But how do you measure this? Like, what metrics should you follow?
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a really good question. And I don't think I have a super, like, here's exactly what you measure and put in front of finance, but I have a perspective in what works for us as well. I think one, which is, you should look at performance lift across all of your channels, right? I think that that makes sense. It's traditional brand marketing, right? Like, are you seeing in the direct response digital channels, the performance is improving alongside a brand campaign. And maybe that's geo-fenced into the specific like geos and areas that you're targeting. Maybe it's not. You just want to see if that's like working and improving. I also think that like in-person events are very important for us. So I think seeing the type of pull and demand that you get whenever you launch an event means that you've built aura properly. Like if you create an event and you have a wait list for it immediately, you've done something right. If you have people like just clamoring to get into the room because they think that they're going to learn a lot, they think there's going to be other cool people there who are kind of pushing the boundaries. They want to meet members of the profound team. You've done a good job. I think like a third underrated category that you should look at as well is employer brand. So we track source for a lot of our people who are coming in and joining the team. And you I know it sounds a little bit silly, but like when we see consistently, it's like, oh, I saw this video on LinkedIn or I saw you're out of home in the Union Square subway station. Or I saw the truck that you all bought and drove around Union Square during the Knicks finals game. Right. Which are very much like aura activities. I think that that's like very cool to see. And then you kind of create this like confidence within the internal team that they feel like we're constantly externalizing the work. we're doing that creates like this kind of flywheel momentum internally. So it's not always something you can measure, but it's something that you can feel. And I think just having consistent check-ins, like literally like, you know, every couple of weeks, like what's our aura meter at? How are we feeling? What else are other people doing? That's cool. And how do we loop that into our brand? And just like quickly moving on that is, is something that we do. So it starts with the traditional performance channels. And then it works all the way down to like employer brand and kind of just like confidence your internal team has.
Speaker #1
Number of candidates that you have is actually a really good KPI. I feel to have a fill of your aura on the market. I think it's interesting.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's kind of a good proxy for us, actually. They just mentioned, yeah, you all are doing cool work. I see it. It seems like.
Speaker #1
I want to be part of the story, you know, like the right message, you know?
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. It's I think for us, it makes a lot of sense. And I think another one you could look at is like, how often do other brands and I think we're in a fortunate place where we market to marketers. So we kind of have to up level and take swings consistently. Like if we do run in the middle stuff, marketers are just going to like kind of roll their eyes and keep scrolling. Right. But if we're able to measure like for our customers that we bring on. One, we make them successful. Two, how likely are they to co-market with us to record a customer story together? How much do they want to attach their brand to our brand in a way that they think actually benefits them and benefits us? So I think you could just kind of look for that, like attractiveness your team has to. from other marketing teams. And that's a good measure too. But it's definitely something you can feel and not always measure, but you should see in performance channels.
Speaker #1
Do you feel what are some good levers that you can play with that have a really big impact on this topic? You know, because on my side, I feel that, for example, raising a lot of money is actually something that attracts... a lot of ground to co-market with you, et cetera. You know what I mean?
Speaker #0
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that helps. I think making every single thing possible, a marketing moment. Like think if there's a story to tell on anything that we're doing. I think that, you know, I come from a product marketing background. So, you know, maybe a few years ago, I might've thought, okay. Well, this is a tier one launch, a tier two launch, a tier three launch, like whatever. And here's the bill of materials associated with each one of those like launch kits. But I think that that's kind of the wrong way to look at it. Like maintaining a constant product velocity and launching every single thing that you do, whether it's like an integration or a smaller update, like it's the coolest thing in the world and putting a ton of production quality and value behind it. Just making sure you're architecting your team to move fast on that stuff, I think helps to build this. I think the more that you can make your product feel just alive and visceral and kind of from a competitive set, like the customers looking at you versus a competitor being like, how would anybody compete with them? I see a new product launch like three times a week. And obviously you have to have like a good engineering team to do this, but I think you have to have a marketing team that's really attached to any of the output that engineering is doing and making sure to make a story of it and have the system set up to like do release marketing really fast. So I think that that's one mechanism you can pull to kind of just make your product feel very alive that bleeds into aura pretty, pretty quickly.

Description

To receive our marketing & growth strategies by email: https://bullishbulldozer.substack.com/
To work with Bulldozer: https://bulldozer-collective.com

Most B2B marketers can't define what makes their brand magnetic. Trevor can and he calls it Aura.

WHERE TO FIND TREVOR: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-pyle/

DISCOVER PROFOUND: https://www.tryprofound.com/

WHERE TO FIND JORDAN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanchenevier/

Our ambition for the years ahead is bold: design and operate world-class growth strategies and become a global leader on the topic by 2030.

To work with us 👉 https://bulldozer-collective.com/

Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Transcription

Speaker #0
I was talking with our CEO and co-founder. I thought it was very fun that he thought that that was one of marketing's most important metrics to track.
Speaker #1
Your CEO admits that for him as well, like, all right, the thing. But how do you measure this? Like, what metrics should you follow?
Speaker #0
If you create an event and you have a wait list for it immediately, you've done something right. It's not always something you can measure, but it's something that you can feel. I think that most good B2B teams will kind of start to treat an arm of their marketing department like a production house. like a media group i think the more that you can make your product feel just alive and visceral and kind of from a competitive set like the customers looking at you versus a competitor being like how would anybody compete with them and then just doing things that are just genuinely not boring and interesting that means taking swings and like missing sometimes it's it's
Speaker #1
Directly linked to a question I wanted to ask is you've said something that is attention is the new mode. And I think this is directly linked to what you just mentioned. And I think you would. Yeah. Can you please elaborate on this? Attention is the new mode. I think it's an interesting take.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah. And I will 100 percent admit that I have stolen this from George Bernanke at Ramp, who's their VP of growth. And I think that they've just done. Uh, they've been a long time user profound. Talked to him a few times. Um, he's spoken at our conference zero click. And I always just think his perspective is really interesting because he came from being like an analytical chemist to being a very performance channel driven marketer to being somebody who's like, yeah, we should probably do some like stunt marketing and brand things because that's just what work is working. I think that traditional performance channels just got pretty like watered down and just like very, very crowded. No. came very hard cpcs were rising like all of us saw this and then i think especially with the advent of ai new competitors are ending the field left and right right like yc is shooting out companies every single day and i think it's hard to like just maintain that category dominance just from pure performance i think that you have to stay top of mind for people and i think the b2c and b2b are blending so getting into the channels that people just people not like enterprises or companies are in is really, really important in staying on top of it. I think that most good B2B teams will kind of start to treat an arm of their marketing department like a production house, like a media group that is creating generally like valuable, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing content that is related to the value prop, but is more related to connecting with the audience in a more detailed way. So I think that you can create attention with kind of that quality of content. And then I think you can also create and maintain attention with pace and velocity, making sure that your engineering team, your product team, your marketing team is making launch moments for everything that you're doing and just trying to stay kind of like above the bubble as much as possible. So kind of quality and pace are really important for us here at Profound. And I think that's the way you kind of capture some of that attention.
Speaker #1
Is that what you call aura?
Speaker #0
I think so. I think Aura is maybe like, it kind of started when I was talking with our CEO and co-founder and, you know, I thought it was very fun that he thought that that was one of marketing's most important metrics to track. And I agree with him. And we do believe that it's just downstream or if you just kind of create like a coolness around what you're doing, the people at your company and what they're doing, investing more in employee brand and things like that. I think it creates more trust with your buyer and it creates more believability. If you're saying, you know, hey, this the face of marketing is changing. New roles are emerging. Here's how you approach AEO. These things never existed. They're nascent. So I do think that you have to have a little bit of like aura to create some belief and believability. And I think that's why you're seeing like a lot more marketing teams, like making the people in their company a lot more apparent and making them those people like. influencers of themselves and micro channels and moving away from like building on the actual like how many followers does the brand page for LinkedIn have maybe that matters less than how many followers like James or our CTO or head of research or myself have and how that matters to the respective audience so I think that like by investing in the people you just create some more interest around the brand so yeah I would I would probably define that as that as aura and then just doing things that are just genuinely not boring. and interesting. That means taking swings and like missing sometimes. But I think maybe we're in a little bit of a TikTok brain culture, unfortunately. And that's that's how you have to capture some of the attention.
Speaker #1
So yeah, if you've got like the trick not to be boring, I'll take it.
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. I think you should always follow what great leaders are doing. And I think you should look into B2C more. Like as a B2B marketer. Yeah,
Speaker #1
I agree. I agree.
Speaker #0
Go follow what Liquid Death is doing. They're a water company. But they are a marketing machine. I mean, even like how Taco Bell. is consistently launching products and refactoring things and doing interesting collabs and things like that. Like, I just think there's a lot we can learn from what those very creative and consumer brand marketers are doing, as well as following some of the B2B greats too. And like starting at the top, George is great at this. The Ramp team is very good at this too.
Speaker #1
And so, yeah, I was about to say disclaimer, I haven't posted the episode yet, but I just recorded with George an episode. And so, yeah. Oh, there you go. We can send the listeners to this episode because we discussed about the stunt that he does at Ramp, etc. So yeah, it's directly linked to this.
Speaker #0
He's awesome.
Speaker #1
Yeah, he's great. All right. So great. Getting back to Aura, Brand, etc. How do you measure this? Because you mentioned different metrics like, hey, my follower counts on LinkedIn, like the personal follower counts, etc. and your CEO. admits that for him as well, like, oh, right, it's a thing. But how do you measure this? Like, what metrics should you follow?
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a really good question. And I don't think I have a super, like, here's exactly what you measure and put in front of finance, but I have a perspective in what works for us as well. I think one, which is, you should look at performance lift across all of your channels, right? I think that that makes sense. It's traditional brand marketing, right? Like, are you seeing in the direct response digital channels, the performance is improving alongside a brand campaign. And maybe that's geo-fenced into the specific like geos and areas that you're targeting. Maybe it's not. You just want to see if that's like working and improving. I also think that like in-person events are very important for us. So I think seeing the type of pull and demand that you get whenever you launch an event means that you've built aura properly. Like if you create an event and you have a wait list for it immediately, you've done something right. If you have people like just clamoring to get into the room because they think that they're going to learn a lot, they think there's going to be other cool people there who are kind of pushing the boundaries. They want to meet members of the profound team. You've done a good job. I think like a third underrated category that you should look at as well is employer brand. So we track source for a lot of our people who are coming in and joining the team. And you I know it sounds a little bit silly, but like when we see consistently, it's like, oh, I saw this video on LinkedIn or I saw you're out of home in the Union Square subway station. Or I saw the truck that you all bought and drove around Union Square during the Knicks finals game. Right. Which are very much like aura activities. I think that that's like very cool to see. And then you kind of create this like confidence within the internal team that they feel like we're constantly externalizing the work. we're doing that creates like this kind of flywheel momentum internally. So it's not always something you can measure, but it's something that you can feel. And I think just having consistent check-ins, like literally like, you know, every couple of weeks, like what's our aura meter at? How are we feeling? What else are other people doing? That's cool. And how do we loop that into our brand? And just like quickly moving on that is, is something that we do. So it starts with the traditional performance channels. And then it works all the way down to like employer brand and kind of just like confidence your internal team has.
Speaker #1
Number of candidates that you have is actually a really good KPI. I feel to have a fill of your aura on the market. I think it's interesting.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's kind of a good proxy for us, actually. They just mentioned, yeah, you all are doing cool work. I see it. It seems like.
Speaker #1
I want to be part of the story, you know, like the right message, you know?
Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah. It's I think for us, it makes a lot of sense. And I think another one you could look at is like, how often do other brands and I think we're in a fortunate place where we market to marketers. So we kind of have to up level and take swings consistently. Like if we do run in the middle stuff, marketers are just going to like kind of roll their eyes and keep scrolling. Right. But if we're able to measure like for our customers that we bring on. One, we make them successful. Two, how likely are they to co-market with us to record a customer story together? How much do they want to attach their brand to our brand in a way that they think actually benefits them and benefits us? So I think you could just kind of look for that, like attractiveness your team has to. from other marketing teams. And that's a good measure too. But it's definitely something you can feel and not always measure, but you should see in performance channels.
Speaker #1
Do you feel what are some good levers that you can play with that have a really big impact on this topic? You know, because on my side, I feel that, for example, raising a lot of money is actually something that attracts... a lot of ground to co-market with you, et cetera. You know what I mean?
Speaker #0
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that helps. I think making every single thing possible, a marketing moment. Like think if there's a story to tell on anything that we're doing. I think that, you know, I come from a product marketing background. So, you know, maybe a few years ago, I might've thought, okay. Well, this is a tier one launch, a tier two launch, a tier three launch, like whatever. And here's the bill of materials associated with each one of those like launch kits. But I think that that's kind of the wrong way to look at it. Like maintaining a constant product velocity and launching every single thing that you do, whether it's like an integration or a smaller update, like it's the coolest thing in the world and putting a ton of production quality and value behind it. Just making sure you're architecting your team to move fast on that stuff, I think helps to build this. I think the more that you can make your product feel just alive and visceral and kind of from a competitive set, like the customers looking at you versus a competitor being like, how would anybody compete with them? I see a new product launch like three times a week. And obviously you have to have like a good engineering team to do this, but I think you have to have a marketing team that's really attached to any of the output that engineering is doing and making sure to make a story of it and have the system set up to like do release marketing really fast. So I think that that's one mechanism you can pull to kind of just make your product feel very alive that bleeds into aura pretty, pretty quickly.

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