Turning Challenges into Viral Marketing Triumphs, Culture Counts and Why Your Company's Reputation Precedes You in Modern Marketing

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Larissa.

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She is a fractional chief marketing officer with many great years of experience in marketing.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thanks, eric, thank you so much.

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Why don't we start by you taking a minute or two to share a little bit about who you are and what you do?

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Yeah, I am a perpetual student but by nature, by trade, I'm a three-time chief marketing officer 20 plus years in marketing, primarily in technology, digital environments, a stint in fitness, a stint in commercial real estate and hospitality mostly technology, saas businesses and software.

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And yeah, now I'm out there just helping a ton of really interesting young, growing upstart companies figure out their messaging, their audiences and how to get noticed and how to grow.

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And that's been really fun because I get to work with so many different companies in so many different industries.

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That's awesome, and it's always good when you can have a little bit of variety in there.

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Sometimes, when you're the CMO for one company, you're a mile deep and it's great to get a little bit of variety in there.

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But we are ready to be inspired.

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So share with us a story about some of the marketing that you've done that you're the most proud of.

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That is.

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It's such a good question, it's such a provocative question.

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It made me think about a lot of things that have been fun to do, some things that were not so fun to do but maybe still works.

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But one that I chose to talk about that I thought would be fun is from so I spent five and a half years at a company called Aptoro, which helps retailers with manage their returns and returns.

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We all return stuff, but not always good for the planet, not always good for company bottom lines and not always a great customer experience.

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One of the businesses that came out of that that Aptoro pioneered was taking a lot of these returns and packaging them up into big boxes, big pallets, for resale, and any one of us could go to the site that we created called bulkcom B-U-L-Q and buy these pallets of returns.

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Now why would you want to do that and buy these pallets of returns?

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Now, why would you want to do that?

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Because when you buy these pallets of returns, there's gold in those boxes.

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Sometimes, so many returns just come back undamaged, not dented, the boxes are even still intact, and there's just a change of heart, reason, and so you can buy that product that maybe cost $100, buy it for five and resell it for 75.

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And that does happen.

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And so what we found was happening was a lot of people were finding this as a legitimate side hustle, and some of these side hustles turned into small businesses and then some not so small businesses, and what people were doing was doing unboxing videos, of getting the bulk box to their house, unboxing it on YouTube and then talking about the treasure they found in the box and then how much money they made reselling.

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This was happening organically and so, as marketers, we said this is interesting.

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Maybe we should meet some of these folks and talk to them and interview them and create some fun stories around what's happening just naturally in their lives.

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And so we did that and we met some incredible resellers, some incredible business people, some incredible entrepreneurs.

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I've never had a company video that was like an anthem video for bulk, a company video that just that got a million views without a ton very little paid promotion behind it.

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But we just featured the people.

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We featured the resellers.

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They showed their stories.

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They just had fun moments opening the boxes and people saw themselves in these resellers with these videos that we helped produce, and when you see yourself, you see somebody else doing this, you say I can do this too.

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And then people started doing that too, and so it was inspirational for people to see this.

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It was relatable, it was fun, it was funny.

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Some of the stuff that comes out of those boxes I probably can't even talk about on this channel.

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There's just some interesting moments, some funny moments and some just really relatable.

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And wait, I can make money on the side, I can do my own side hustle.

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So not only did it help get the bulk and Optoro name out there in a fun way, it actually inspired a whole new set of entrepreneurs and businesses that got spun out of that and we helped people make some of their dreams come true.

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So I'd say, like it hit on the marketing side of it, but it hit on a human element side that we just tapped into what was already going on and helped amplify those stories.

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Like I said, over a million views on YouTube the second highest one got a quarter of a million views with virtually no paid promotion, and you can watch those stories to this day on YouTube and see them and get inspired all over again, and I'm sure people will.

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I love this story because you turned a problem for the business of returns into an opportunity for viral marketing.

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Right Is that?

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Do I have that right?

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Essentially that is what we did, yeah.

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And I've seen some of these videos on TikTok of the unboxing where people were doing this, and some of them were pretty funny and inspiring, because sometimes they would sell them off and somebody would be like, oh, I like this, I'm going to play with this, I'm going to use this, and they would be on hoverboards and they're doing all these crazy things.

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Yeah, and when we did these, TikTok wasn't even really it might've been around, but it wasn't what it is today With TikTok.

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If I were still running marketing over there, I would definitely be tapping into that now as well, because that's a tremendous opportunity.

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That's a great story.

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Thank you for that.

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Let me ask you what are you seeing as trends in 2024 that marketing leaders should be thinking about in order to be successful, based on the market we're in today?

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Well, I'm going to say the AI word.

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I'm sorry but I'm going to say it, but I think actually, more than AI and some of the productivity that can and does unleash for marketing teams in terms of ideation, content creation, having a thought partner, doing competitive analysis, there are so many positive uses for that.

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The negative consequences are people can start putting out content that sounds the same and sounds generated, and sounds insincere and doesn't sound.

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Let's face it particularly interesting that buyers are very comfortable making their own, doing their own personal research and making decisions, even for, like in B2B, like million dollar purchases.

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They're going to do their own research, they're going to make their own decisions.

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They're going to want to be inspired by a company and actually have real, human, relatable content that they want to react to.

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And so I think companies that lead with brand, companies that lead with experience, companies that lead with something that I can hold onto, that feels real and different, those are the ones that are going to stand out.

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There's going to be a lot of AI generated sameness and there is a big sea of sameness out there already but the companies that can again just have a human element, have a human experience that their brand stands for and then amplifies.

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Those are the companies that you're going to remember, whether it's D2C or B2B, so I think it's stand out in the sea of AI.

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Sameness is my ultimate message.

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I like it.

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I think that AI does have the potential to whitewash things for people, for companies.

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There's good use cases for it.

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But I think there's also use cases with AI that give you the generic hyperbole.

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I have a list of words that I've been creating that the language models like to use, like maestro virtuoso, and you can tell when those words start coming into it that it is generative AI.

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So I like what you're saying about experience.

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I think that the buyer experience is really interesting because there's so much information available to buyers today, why wouldn't they spend 80 or 90% of the journey on doing their own research instead of talking to a salesperson who gives them information that is often biased?

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The research says that 70% of a buying decision is made before they even enter your pipeline.

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I've had CEOs tell me they think it's more like 90%.

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They even enter your pipeline.

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I've had CEOs tell me they think it's more like 90%.

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So the content you put out, your website, your executives, linkedin these are things that they look at before ever deciding to maybe put you on their shortlist.

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And so if you're doing those things and giving them the information they're seeking, then you get on the shortlist and you have a chance to close the deal.

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If you're not doing any of that, if you're not paying attention to your brand, to your website, to your digital footprint, to that of your employees, to that of your executive, to that of your CEO and the like, you're probably missing out on a significant amount of potential buyers who are writing you off before you even have the chance to pick up the phone.

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That's right, and there's a lot more involved in that, as you say, than just having a good website.

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It's the whole experience of your reputation online and all of your content.

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There's a lot of variables there that you have to work on to give that right journey experience right 100%.

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It's the story you tell.

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But then also there's a lot of companies now will tell you that the best move is to even put your pricing on your website, which I know a lot of people shy away from in the B2B space.

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Why waste time with someone if your price point isn't what they're able to commit to or afford?

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It's just give people what they need, let them consume the information they need to consume and then come to you once they've decided you're a pretty good fit.

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Let me actually have the conversation now.

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You have to think of it that way, as opposed to like the first touch point being the salesperson finding someone cold and then magically they go through your process.

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That's just not how it works anymore.

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Yeah, I often do things when I'm looking at vendors these days of, not only do I go look at their reviews online, like on a G2 or a Trustpilot or a site like that multiple sites often I will also go to look at their Glassdoor company reviews to see what sort of culture is within the company, because that's where a lot of the interesting trash talking is happening.

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We're losing all of our customers because our product stinks and I'm really unhappy here.

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It's like really interesting to do your own research and find things like that.

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I also like to find customers of the company that they don't recommend to me and then talk to the people there and ask them what was your experience with this?

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That's where you get some of the most interesting research right.

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When you can do it on your own, a lot of people are happy to share those things right.

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Yeah, and that's exactly what happened.

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People want they just want the real, like the unbiased, real experience answer and that's what they're seeking, no doubt, and so I think those private didn't call them like dinner conversations, Slack community conversations, conversations you have just with your peers.

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You're asking those kinds of questions.

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Does anyone, has anyone used this?

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What's it really?

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Absolutely.

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Yeah, your reputation often precedes you these days as a vendor or a supplier, when there's communities like we've both been a part of Pavilion, which is for tech executives and sales and marketing and people go into the community and they'll just ask each other hey, I'm considering using this what other people think.

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So then it just really starts to come down to what reputation have you built for yourself, and that really makes business leaders think about all of the things they do in their business.

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What is their reputation Because your reputation often precedes your brand, right and what business practices do you follow?

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And how do you treat prospects, customers and employees all of those things combined, and so I think it's a really different way of thinking than 10, 15 years ago, right, yeah, it's funny, I was thinking about this very thing this morning about I really do believe that how a company treats its employees is how it treats its customers, and how they treat their vendors is how they treat their customers and their employees Like.

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These characteristics, the set of values with how you run and lead your business and your company, matter a lot and they're going to show up in all areas of the business.

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Some might be able to be hidden for longer, but, yeah, I believe that reputation and character is everything.

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And people, just again, they want the real, unvarnished truth to something.

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Not to say that every one of us has to be perfect, because no one is, but I do think that these characteristics that they exhibit in multiple areas of running their business are actually the true testament of what the company is really all about.

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Culture counts right.

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Yeah, it does, and the good news, I think, on that front is the it's gotten a lot more balanced.

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In some ways there's still a lot of room to go, but employees also the top talent looks for companies where they're, they are top talent, they're seen and regarded that way, and so I think that just makes like a rising tide, lifts all boats.

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Companies that treat their employees well attract the best employees, who then have the best customer experiences because they care about their work and they do great work for the customers.

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And all of that starts to build upon itself for something that a lot of people want to be a part of.

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Absolutely.

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Thank you very much for sharing these insights with us today.

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If people like to learn more about what you do, I can link to your website and your LinkedIn in the show notes so people can easily reach out to you and find out more about the great stuff you're doing.

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We really appreciate you sharing your insights and being on the show today.

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Thank you, Eric.

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I appreciate you too.

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Thank you.