Susie Hamlin: Higher Conversion Requires Simpler Messaging

Sourabh:
Everywhere I look, we're talking about ai. We're talking about agenetic AI. And AI will do everything. Is messaging still human, or can we do most of it with AI?


Susie:
I think it's, I think if used correctly, you know, can be a great tool. But I do believe that the human aspect is, is still really critical because there's such a nuance in it. You have to find the emotion to make that connection. It's a powerful tool. You can do the research, you can gather competitive insights from it. So I would combine the two. But at the end of the day, to get to a really core message that you think is going to land emotionally, I still believe the human needs to be needs to be involved in the process.


Sourabh:
Okay. So that's where AI is now. Let's assume it keeps getting better, right? And like you said, you are able to give it a little bit more tone, a little bit more of a voice or a perspective... Do you feel-And I'm going to put a time frame on this, Susie, so you can you can qualify your answer. Do you feel by the end of next year, by the end of 2026, could we be using AI to finish off personalized messaging like email outreach and things where it is 1 to 1?

Susie:
100%! I think that's the that is the advantage, I think. I think if you start from a core and it's human and it's insights-based and it's, you know, you find that emotional connection, I do believe you can personalize it. It's the way to try to scale. And you, you'll be able to test it. Right. You'll be able to see is it landing, is it landing as well as that first iteration of it. And obviously you're targeting there are things that come into account. But I do believe that that is a great example of where I can help messaging scale or help you scale. So it's more about in the origination of that core messaging framework. And what do you stand for and understanding, you know, the emotion behind it 100%. I am more than comfortable saying that that AI will help in the personalization.


Sourabh:
Okay. I'm going to interpret that as we keep the meaning with humans. But we allow the AI, introduction in the mechanics of it and then the versions of it. But you still want the core messaging, you still want the key meaning coming from people.


Susie:
Yes. And for now and, you know, absolutely we are training AI based on our brand tone and voice and standard. So it will continue to learn. But I do think that sometimes that can get insular. Right. Your, your it's your point of view. I think it's always important to have that external point of view as you look at that messaging as you look at that messaging to, you know, evolve to stay relevant.


Sourabh:
Perfect. I'm going to give a quick reminder because everyone always blames us when this is over. Is wait that was so quick, right? We only have 15 or so more minutes. Please drop your questions in however you like. Chat question however or we will run out of time.

Okay, so you mentioned something there about testing and then you can see how that compares to what you originally had versus what you know, it was able to produce. So what are the metrics that you use for messaging and positioning? Susie, how do you measure if it's effective?


Susie:
Primarily on engagement? You know, is the message working? So, you know, I'll give you an example, social post. Where, you know, we wanted to say something and then it shows the post where we jumped on, you know, a conversation happening in the market. The engagement on that piece of content was significantly higher. And so great lesson, which is maybe you can go try to build that on your own, or maybe you should just, you know, be participating in a conversation. But testing it. And, you know, there's obviously the formal ways that you can do message testing. But I think nothing will ever simulate a real life. Rather than just putting it into market. And some of these are so you can do it in your own channels and you can see it.

But I think engagement is is a critical and view time. Right. You're building something that's four minutes long and people are staying for three minutes on the blog. for three minutes on the blog. That's a pretty good percentage rate. Are you writing a video, completing a video, and people are making it to beyond what the industry benchmark tells you. You know, we look at all of those things, which is is a message is a resonating. And then are they staying as long as we're hoping they'll stay.


Sourabh:
Perfect. So that's the craft, right? That's the more artistic side of it I'm going to get now to the very difficult scientific part of messaging, which is, you know, Pure Storage sells more than one thing, right?
You're a challenger. You're you're going after much larger players and and you're winning in many, many markets. Right. But that that voice, that tone that consistency, how do you maintain that across different, solutions that are targeting different buyers within the same company?


Susie:
I will say the fundamentals are starting, starting with a framework. Even if your small, just starting with this framework and the vision, the mission, what are you delivering. And it's so important that that's an outside in perspective and not an inside out. Because a lot of times you'll see messaging built on what we want to tell people. And at the end of the day, that doesn't solve the problem, right? That doesn't solve the problem when 95% of the market, you're just trying to condition the market and what you stand for.

But at some point you have to start grounding it in, you know, why are you relevant? Why should they care? Why are you different? Right. And so there's jobs to be done at every phase of that messaging. And they have to be connected. But at the end of the day, there's a nuance at every phase and eventually they actually want to hear from somebody else. They want to hear from your customers, right? They want to hear what are your customers, how have they applied it, and what is their benefit. So it's really, really important that you're thinking about the job to be done to in that messaging. Because otherwise if you just stay too high level, you get too deep, too fast. You're going to lose the audience.


Sourabh:
You segue automatically. I didn't even plan this right. Segue to where I was going to go next. Is that outside in that customer perspective? Right. So now I'm going to break this question into a couple of parts. So you can you can help the audience with this. Right. With most technology. Right. We've got messaging around the problem state around the issue or the challenge. Right. We've got messaging around the solution, the technology itself, how it works. And then we've got messaging around the use cases. If you're using the technology, these are the outcomes you can expect from your experience.

You and I have done this a really long time. Which parts should we be leaning on our customers for the pain point? The solution or the outcomes?


Susie:
Well, I think you know, the the data will tell you the customer, you know, testimonials and references are for the whole entire journey. But I do believe that nothing, nothing is better than having a piece of the decision level that says, this is why we went with this is the problem, because a lot of times your customers will state both their problem and the solution. And what you'll find is they'll make a statement and you're like, oh God, that's brilliant. And you, you can use that directly in your messaging.

Right. And I think the, the caution I would have is, make sure that it's, it's more than one customer when you, when you want to put it into the messaging. Right. The number of times it's like I heard it in an ABC, it's like, well, that's a case study of one. Let's make sure it's actually validated by, you know, a number, a same thing with sales. Oh, I talked to this customer. You want to see this being quantifiable and saying like, okay, it's happening in 10 to 15% of our customers or multiple customers are having this. And you can do that research as well, what are the big pain points. And if a customer states it, that's that's like the holy grail of getting a customer voice into a piece of content.


Sourabh:
Yep. That. Absolutely. And we've both done this. I'm sure we've both done this. Where you found a wonderful use case, but it's so niche. It's almost alienating. Where the person reading's like, "Well that's great, but that's not me," right? So I'm going to flip this, right? Yes. Marketing has a ton of data. We spend time with customers, but not nearly as much as sales. So how does messaging evolve as a client or a prospect moves through the different sales stages? And I'm going to ask you this twice. Is it one for net new account, which is where everyone's always focused? But I'm going to come back and also ask you about this—the growing existing accounts. But let's start with net new first. How do sales use messaging, and how do you help sales?

Susie:
I think that's a—that's always the key piece, right? Which is, again, you can't stay at a high-level message in a brand if you're not going to connect it through for sales. And it's really important to not only enablement but inform sales what's coming out. What are you saying so that they don't get surprised or a customer doesn't say, "Hey, I've heard this." But I think it's really critical that we understand the nature of the sales cycle these days, right? They actually want to spend less time with sales. So the job for the journey is really in your content, in your messaging, and keeping that consistency to a point where they would want to reach out to sales. And at that point, you need to make sure sales is enabled with what you've been telling them, you know, prior to that first engagement—especially on those new accounts.

Sourabh:
And before we move to the existing accounts. Right. Let's talk about sort of the, the, tools that sales has available that marketing can help produce .Right. We've obviously got the deck or deck, right. We've got the battle cards. If you're going up against providers and in your space, that would be the case. A lot of people would have a solution, but they need something better or different. Right. We've got the demos. Are the demos coming out of marketing where the demos coming out of sales.

Susie:
Demos are coming out of marketing.

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Sourabh:
Okay, we've got the demos, right? And then what else? What else does sales need at that time of engagement, in your experience?

Susie:
A couple of things that we've done are sales scripts, right? So if it's an inbound or an SDR, we'll enable them with, "Hey, here's a messaging," or, "Here's a campaign." The other thing—obviously enablement. That's right. The walking deck, as you call it. But a lot of times we'll do—if we're doing a thought leadership piece—we'll do an executive summary or a cut-down version, a page or two of some of that thought leadership. But, you know, an exact summary, so that they have an entry point to talk to a customer. And so, giving them a new tool that may not be in their typical toolbox, but it helps them soften into a conversation with a prospect.

Sourabh:
Now I'm going to come back. I'm going to come through. And I promise, Susie, how does this change? How do we move existing clients through the various stages, right? How do we help sales do that? And I want to put a caveat that a lot of organizations—marketing doesn't. Customer marketing is still a very weak field for a lot of companies, right? So what are you guys doing that helps with expansion within existing accounts?

Susie:
There are, you know, again—I think also sort of historically, right? We've also—you have customer marketing, customer success. That's where it's really, really critical that there's also a connection between customer success. Because a lot of times, customers that are onboarded in the adoption process—customer success will help there as much as sales. Obviously, there are opportunities to do some of that marketing within the product again. So, sort of, "Hey, we noticed that you're almost at capacity," right? And so there's interesting ways to use the insights and use the data.

But for growth, it is also—you know, don't pretend you haven't met them, right? You're not on the first date with these customers, right? They know you. And a lot of times, in our case, they love us. So you don't have to oversell on a lot of that. But you do want to say, "Maybe you haven't looked at this in a while," right? And so it's a positioning of, "Have you thought about... did you know this feature was available?" So it's really making sure that they're getting the most out of what they've already bought before you try to upsell them or cross-sell them in some cases.

So I think it's really critical in that adoption marketing piece that—it’s not the "Hi, I'm Pure Storage, this is the first time you're meeting." It's not—that's not the case. You have to understand who you're talking to. I always ask this question when someone comes in with a request: "Who's going to care that you're seeing this?" Right? Because if it's not everybody, then the tactic you use to reach them is really critical. So the channel is as important as the message a lot of times.

Sourabh:
Yeah, I think that's—that's wonderful. Oh my gosh. So I'm going to ask you, because you have a lot of experience. You do have a lot of enterprise experience, but you've also worked with startups and small companies, right? At smaller brands, right? As a smaller company, where the solution may be the company—it may just be one or two things they do, right, because they're growing—how can you create great messaging if you only have one or two team members? You don't have a lot of resources. What's sort of the secret when you're small?

Susie:
I think understanding the core of the product—first of all—like, what is the promise that you're making? And I would say the one thing I see is focus. You need to focus, right? It's much better to get the one message right, rather than try to be all things to everybody. And start with a—you know, understand the market. Where is the potential? Is it in product? Is it in the customer success? Go to that first, land that first, and then expand. Because too many target audiences, right? You're going to get overwhelmed.

This is another area where you can use AI. You can use AI to go surface—like, I want to go talk to a customer success person. What are some of the biggest pain points customer success is having today, and how can this product actually help them? Because at the end of the day, it has to be—you know, we're not in a world, in a lot of cases, where it's a need-to-have. In some cases, it's a nice-to-have, right? So you have to get over: why am I going to be—why are they going to open the door, pick up the phone, open that email?

You have to give them a reason to believe. And a lot of times it takes—without that first level of trust that you are—you understand what they're trying to accomplish, and you're delivering. You know, I think we all get those cold emails of, "Have you thought of—" Do you think I thought of it? Do you know what area of the business I actually support in, right? So it requires—like I said, it's the message, but it's also just making sure the tactic that you're using to reach somebody is relevant to them as well.

Sourabh:
Oh my god. Yes. Right? Lead with empathy, please. Just look at my website before you call me, right?I am at Lead2pipeline, right? We're like a demand originated in the fifth largest database in the world. And I get calls: "Would you like us to help you with your leads?" And I think, I'm good, buddy. And you know what I do, right? So that’s happening on the sales side. Clearly, the marketing is way off in that situation, right? And I get calls like that—I would say every month. It’s not rare. So I'm going to ask—I’m going to ask a question here. I'm going to reword it slightly—that I got—which is: what do we do when sales doesn’t use our messaging? And of course, there’s layers to this. Because, one, you’d have to know that sales isn’t using it. But I guess that’s happened. So, how—I guess the question is: how do we get sales to use marketing’s messaging, you know, when they’re working on a deal, as opposed to maybe just going off on their own?

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Susie:
It's hard, right? Because there's a comfort level in doing what you've always done. I think it's really critical. And again, I think I'm a big fan of the RevOps model, you know, which is—then you have that connection at the beginning. I think it is really critical, whether it's a marketing lead or a, you know, customer success lead. That connection with sales is really critical because, at the end of the day, sales have to understand that marketing is there to help. You know, everyone has the same job. Sales is in marketing, and marketing's in sales, right?

And so it's—it's not these two things. And it is—it is looking at the win/loss data. I look at win/loss data. Why did we lose? Oh, okay. I'm finding, you know, this thing is a theme. I'm seeing this theme in some of those lost data. I'm going to go talk to sales and tell them I'm going to start incorporating this into marketing just to help when people are doing the search on their own. It's hard. I'm not going to—I'm not going to pretend it's not, you know? But I think it starts with a relationship for sure. But I think one of the things that you can do is—you know, 85%, right? I think was the latest Gartner—85% of sales are happening without sales.

So you can control what you can control for a while as well, which is: you can show, "I'm putting the right messaging in the market, and I'm getting that engagement, and I'm getting—you know, I'm getting that hype built." And so I think it's—nothing beats data. You have to have the data if you're going to go have—you know, have the conversation. But it's easy enough to do if you know you've done the research to get the insight on what you're building, and then you measure it, and then take it to sales with a credible—a credible approach. But nothing will beat metrics. You can't—opinions don't matter. You know, brand trackers don't matter. Data. Data will give you—data will help you make that case.

Sourabh:
So I'm going to—I'm going to follow up with—and this might be our last question. I know we're running out of time, and this is a hard one, so I'm saving it for this. Right. But you did mention this—all-season marketers look at win/loss data because you've had the conversation, right? Both sides have been at the table, and it's really where you will learn from your post-engagement or your sales strategy and your sales performance. Here's the really tough question, Suzy: there's also win/loss data which is not as clear—pre-engagement—which isn't a sales loss. It's a marketing loss.

And what I mean by that is: you see folks that you've been targeting. You see accounts. You see activity. You see engagement on your website, on your pages, maybe even on third-party sites that you're working with, right? But then they disappear. What—one, how do we know what's happening? Two, what are we supposed to do?

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Susie:
It's hard to know why, right? I'm not—I'm not going to—I'm not going to pretend you do. We do a lot of social listening, so we are figuring out kind of what the—again, what the conversations are. I think the importance of clarity and conciseness and consistency, right? Those are—those are three things that if you are those things—like, again, don't promise something that you can't deliver, but don't promise something and then make another promise. And you know, don't want the best—you know, if your competitor's not going to say, "I'm not the best," or "I'm not easy to use," then you don't actually have a differentiated message, right?

And so it is really, really important to think about that "jobs to be done." You could see—and I've seen it over time at places—where it's like we spend too much time at the top of the funnel and too much time at the bottom of the funnel, and no one's filling the middle. And that is where the decisions are going to be happening, right? That's where the self-journeys are continuing. And a lot of times, you want to talk about the nice, the pretty things or the pretty assets, or—nope—I just want them to do a form feed. And it's so important to remember that you have to connect that middle to what you're seeing at the top and the bottom. And I—I would imagine the drop-off is happening because I'm not giving them any—I'm not giving them the why. And then I'm not giving them proof, right? I'm not giving the social proof that another customer had actually had success doing that.

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