The Importance of Brand in B2B Marketing Strategy with G2

Calling all B2B marketing professionals out there — our latest episode of In Conversation is not one you'll want to skip. Today we're sitting down with Palmer Houchins, currently Head of Marketing at G2 (maybe you've heard of it).

In our latest episode, Palmer and Bill dive into Palmer's early days at MailChimp, the tricky science of measuring brand ROI, the future of B2B marketing, and so much more!

A huge thank you to Palmer for joining us on the podcast and for sharing so many nuggets of wisdom.

Resources:

• 2030 B2B Trends Report from the LinkedIn B2B Institute
• Exit Five B2B Marketing Community
• Palmer's LinkedIn Post on B2B Branding

Full Transcript:

[Bill Kenney]

Hey everyone, this is Bill Kenney, CEO and co-founder of Focus Lab and Odi, two global B2B brand agencies. I'm back with another episode of In Conversation, where I sit down with people in and around our industry and we talk about a variety of things.

We talk about process, perspectives. In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Palmer Houchins. He is the Head of Marketing at G2. If you're in the B2B SaaS space, you certainly know who G2 is. One day, I was on LinkedIn and Palmer was posting about brand. He was referencing an article by Peter Weinberg, who was previously at the LinkedIn B2B Institute. One of the best documents I've read on brand in a very long time, years and years. It is so on point. Palmer was referencing a piece of information from that. I got excited. I got on my soapbox.

And then I realized I should have that guy on [the show]. So that's what we did today. Palmer and I sit down. We talk a little bit about that, but we talk about brand. We talk about marketing. We talk about the overlap between the two. We talk about his background working at MailChimp.

You want to talk about a company that really focused on brand? Yes. MailChimp is that, and everything in between. Tons of insightful points, really interesting conversation, ton of value. I hope you enjoy.

[Bill Kenney]

All right, Palmer. I'm excited to finally sit down and chat.

[Palmer Houchins]

Yeah. Glad to be here, Bill. Thanks for having me.

[Bill Kenney]

We're going to talk about branding and a bunch of different capacities, surprise, surprise. But first why don't you just take a minute, grab the mic and just tell people who you are and what you're doing.

[Palmer Houchins]

Yeah, sure thing. My name is Palmer Houchins. I've spent, probably, the last, not to date myself, 13 years, kind of in the SaaS, SaaS marketing space, uh, currently I'm Head of Marketing at G2, um, we're, you know, kind of the world's leading B2B software marketplace. I've been at G2 for about three years, before that I led, uh, marketing at a kind of phone call tracking conversation, intelligence, marketing analytics company called CallRail, here in Atlanta.

And then before that, kind of got my start in the SaaS kind of B2B marketing world at MailChimp. I was there for about eight years, and wore any number of hats, um, started as a brand manager and then wore any number of hats. Maybe some might say too many hats at times, uh, throughout my time at MailChimp.

And prior to that, I was in the digital marketing space as well, but more kind of agency side and working and kind of music and entertainment and things that are, very much not B2B marketing, but, fun learning, regardless.

[Bill Kenney]

Which is why all of those experiences that you've just shared on very lightly, is why I wanted to chat with you today. So this kind of spawned off of a LinkedIn post that you had posted. Um, you're kind of like on this brand soapbox and I'm like, yes.

Let me go over there and get on my soapbox. And after that, I was like, I need to be around this guy more. I need to talk to this guy.

So doing a little bit of that loosely and lightly through, uh, through LinkedIn, if you will, but excited to sit down and chat. But let's just start with the fact that early in your career, you were at MailChimp, a company that really kind of values, dare I say, lives and dies on this idea of brand with Freddie.

I got Freddie up there. He's going to be blurred out because of the nice camera I have, but I got a frosty Freddie back there. He's white and baby blue. Um, were you really early there? I mean, that sounds like a while ago. MailChimp is not all that old, right? They're not 20 years old or anything.

[Palmer Houchins]

Surprisingly MailChimp is pretty old, but it started as a, uh, as an agency and they spun off MailChimp, uh, MailChimp just kind of became this thing that was bigger than the agency. I think they, um, they started hiring in earnest outside of the two or three guys who started the agency in 2009.

And then I joined at the very beginning of 2012. At that point, it was, it was still under a hundred people. Like it was a very, um, not, not what you think of when you think of MailChimp now. That sort of giant kind of Titan of the marketing world, especially the email marketing kind of B2B marketing world.

We were very much, uh, Sort of an underdog, uh, Constant Contact was a publicly traded company and way bigger than us at the time and had way better brand recognition and was out there running like expensive ads on, uh, on NPR already. And, uh, so it was, uh, it was a different dynamic then and what you may think of when you think of MailChimp in 2024, um, but a lot of, a lot of through lines.

[Bill Kenney]

So I had no idea that they were an agency beforehand. Hearing that. I can't help, but wonder, do you think that DNA, like what, what type of agency?

[Palmer Houchins]

A web design agency. So, uh, Ben and Dan, who are the two co-founders of MailChimp, they started, uh, they were working for Cox Media here in Atlanta. And they got laid off kind of in the dot-com, the original 2000 bust. And they were like, they were, you know, one of them was kind of a designer. One of them was a developer.

And they're like, Hey, we'll just. We'll go be an agency and just like design some websites for, uh, you know, build out work that way. Um, Ben actually went on How I Built This on NPR and it's a great podcast. I think it's the best summation of the MailChimp story and, and sort of his role in it, um, that, that he's done throughout the year.

So highly recommend anybody who wants to go deep on MailChimp checking that out. But it's, um, it's interesting. They built MailChimp as just kind of like, Hey, one of their clients needed an email sort of tool. And so they built it on the side. And then we're like, Hey, we'll open it up and let other folks do it.

And I think long story short, Ben does a much better job than I ever will. That's sort of retelling this, he just says like, Oh wow, this thing's making way more money than our agency businesses. We should focus on that. And so, you know, that one thing leads to another and by 2009, they're hiring, you know, building a company.

I joined two or three years later and it's already, I mean, it's on the path to where it is today. By then it's quickly, it was easy to kind of realize it was going to be, it's going to be special.

[Bill Kenney]

Do you think there's something going off script already five minutes into the conversation, do you, do you think there's something in the fact that because they started as an agency, they're kind of, let's call it creative appetite to have a mascot as part of the kind of identity of the company and how playful that brand was early.

Do you think it's rooted in that?

[Palmer Houchins]

I think so. I don't know. I don't know that I would go as far as to say, okay, because they were an agency, that I would say that. They, um, they were designers and marketers at heart. And so I think that just came to life. And a lot of times you don't necessarily.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Palmer Houchins]

You don't necessarily see that you'll have folks who think of themselves more as entrepreneur or a business guy or whatever.

And I'd say you can't be all of those things and not to say that you can't come at it from a business lens and also lean into that. They're not mutually exclusive, but I think they just kind of had that mentality based off sort of experience and interest.

[Bill Kenney]

Really interesting. How did I miss that fact through all these years that they started as that? You hear about that in the 37 signal story? Right. Okay. Basecamp was very similar, kind of built out of a necessity, which became the product, which was then bigger than the service-based company itself.

[Palmer Houchins]

I think, I mean, the one thing the agency side, I think built into them is that sort of that bootstrap mentality of like, that was never really this idea of we've got to go raise a gazillion dollars. It's just like, we've got to make this business work and keep going and keep going.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. Yes.

[Palmer Houchins]

I think being like running an agency where you don't, you don't think some venture capital firm is going to come in and throw you a few million dollars.

Just kind of ingrains that mentality into you.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. I got to love the underdog story. I don't walk around calling us an underdog, but it is this idea that you're talking about, right? Like we, in a way our business models are such that we can feel like that, and are that from a just we got to grind it out perspective. That's how we win as smaller service-based, um, kind of engines and businesses.

So having worked there, that's a great lead into my next question. There's this idea that brand is really hard to measure. It's really hard to quantify and qualify. And how do I know it's worth it? And I just did an AMA last week and, uh, Dave Gerhardt's, uh, Exit Five community, if you're familiar, all B2B marketers in there, uh, And, I knew the questions were going to come, which were kind of ROI based on those, those can be very hard, to answer because it's really hard to pin down exact ROI and where I'm going with this question is you are at least able to see that at some sizable scale at MailChimp.

Even from early days to later in the days, and then we'll come off MailChimp stories. But at that scale, were you able to see the kind of mass return effect of brand or at least the gravity that it can pull?

[Palmer Houchins]

Yeah. I, you know, I'll say kind of two things. The first is it, it takes a strategic belief probably at the executive level that you need to invest there. And luckily we had that, um, there was no, there was no, there was a question of how we were going to allocate, but it was never like, do we do brand marketing or do we, do we not?

It was just built into sort of the DNA. Um, even when I joined early on that we were, we were going to focus there. So, early on, we didn't have massive budgets there. We weren't doing, you know, global campaigns. We were trying to be scrappy.

And, uh, and so where that led us to was to some interesting things like podcasts. Uh, we saw, we saw, Hey, these are, they reach a lot of folks, but they're not that expensive. So let's go try, and see what we can do there. What sort of return we can get from that. And the other thing that I would say is that we always had what I like to call a really good catcher's mitt.

We would invest in the performance side in paid search and things like that, alongside, uh, brand investments in podcasts and billboards and things like that. So even early days, we wanted to make sure we had that good kind of, let's call it a Goldilocks balance of, brand and demand or brand and performance, whatever you want to, whatever you want to call it now, as you know, MailChimp grew by the time my last couple of years there, you know, we were working with, uh, you know, global media agency investing, you know, tens of millions of dollars in, in paid media.

That is when you can put that like math on it, and sort of prove it out. And that's sort of what I, I think I referenced in that LinkedIn post is, you know, you can actually do some testing around it and see like, Hey, let's, let's just pull our demand. Let's pull our brand advertising. Let's stop doing those brand focused, social or video or whatever, whatever it may be and see what happens.

And so a common test we would run is, pull stuff out, like pull dollars from the top of the funnel, double down on the bottom of the funnel. And that's when it sort of creates that, um, little bit of a mirage kind of sugar high effects where it's like, Oh man, we're, we're super efficient, like we're killing it.

We're going to, we're going to massively over perform our trial or free signup goal here. And, depending on how big your budget or what your flighting is, you know, week or two, a quarter, something like that, and then you eventually turn the corner and you're like, And it starts going back down, going back down, going back down.

And so the only way to keep things fresh, to keep that, um, to keep that funnel sort of adequately sort of supplied or, or hydrated is to invest in the, in the top of the funnel. And, that in many cases takes the form of really good brand advertising. So, long story sort of short of saying like, yes, you need to have that like first get that sort of strategic buy in to go do it.

And then when you get to the scale and can measure it, measure it. Um, and, and I think that the return is in there. It's not always one to one and it's in some, it's some ways like directional at best, um, but you'll, you'll be able to prove it out or see it in performance.

[Bill Kenney]

I love the sugar high point because it does create a bit of an illusion, right? We can pour gas on this thing right here and we can see conversion. You keep pouring gas there and you keep pouring gas and you become so tunnel vision, do you actually lose the larger perspective of, Oh, wait a minute. We've missed all the other people out there that are just trying to even determine which company they're going to go with and brand really is that bigger grab up there right before you start to get them deep into the bottom of that funnel

[Palmer Houchins]

Yeah. And I think one of the things too, is the presupposition of all of this is sort of like, you've got to have a brand, like you've got to be able to have a company if you're only selling on like a pure product basis or just like really, really low in the funnel, like. It may not work for you, but if you're, if you're holistically invested in sort of building a brand, um, and, and again, like, I think folks just hear that and they're like, oh, I've got to go spend millions of dollars on like out of home advertising.

No, it doesn't mean that it can, it can take the form of like, uh, you know, building up a community based approach, a social based approach, even, you know, content based approach. There's all these different ways. To go do that, that don't involve, you know, shelling out millions of dollars. And so it's, it's, it's just more about where are you going to kind of place those bets?

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Well said. I don't, um, I don't recall the article this was in, but I shared it in the AMA. Which was somebody basically saying that that marketing spend should be about 50/50, which would be more of that top of funnel spend versus the bottom of funnel. And I think what, what that person was arguing in that article is right now, it's massively, uh, outsized to the bottom of the funnel.

Right. If not, 75% or more goes there because it's so easy again to measure and to see, but you get stuck in the well there and all of a sudden the well runs dry. It needs to be balanced.

[Palmer Houchins]

I think that was sort of the, the article that inspired me to make that LinkedIn post was, was written by these two guys who I forget the name of the company now, but they were at LinkedIn kind of running their B2B Institute for a long time.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes.

[Palmer Houchins]

And their whole idea was like the flippening of like, at some point soon in B2B marketing, we're going to cross this threshold where folks are spending more than half of their budget on sort of brand top of funnel stuff versus like bottom of the funnel.

And that's an interesting sort of, I like, like, it's tough to prove that out, but I think their ideas, we're talking to folks, we're seeing it in our data that there, there's this level of comfort and Level of belief that that's the right way we should allocate it versus just sort of down, down, down, down funnel.

Um, and so it'd be interesting to see that, that come, come to life. It's a long time coming, but I think it's the right next step in the evolution.

[Bill Kenney]

I'm going to look that up so we can name drop because that article I've also mentioned a couple of times and it's worth really spending a time to kind of go off track here and find that because I, I really felt like that was one of the best articles I've read in a long time.

[Palmer Houchins]

I, and they've been,

[Bill Kenney]

On the topic of brand, so good.

[Palmer Houchins]

the B2B Marketing Institute at LinkedIn they do great, um, great work. I think it's actually the B2B Institute, uh, but they do a lot of great marketing, uh, studies and insights. And it's interesting. I mean, cause a lot of folks will look at LinkedIn and be like, from a paid perspective, like that's a down funnel channel for us.

Like we're trying to convert and capture leads. But you know, sort of the data that they're seeing is it puts just as much value sort of on the brand building activities as it does the down funnel activity. So it's an interesting, um, it's definitely something to watch, but I think it's also just this sort of belief, um, that we've maybe over intoxicated ourselves and sort of the attribution and sort of tracking pieces of things.

Not, not to say that they're bad and we shouldn’t use them. But I think that we've like, Oh, we've got to have this like perfectly wrapped present of, of all these things and show you kind of what's going to go where and how it all works. And sometimes it's just a little bit, it's not that it has to be messy, but sometimes it's just a little bit more directional than that.

[Bill Kenney]

Sure. Yeah. Um, well said. And again, to quote Dave, we're going to, we're going to name drop a lot of people, I guess, apparently today, Dave is also big from the marketing side on the like, I'm not the measurement guy. I'm the, I know how to create and kind of build momentum guy. And I don't need to measure everything to know what is working and not working instinctually.

And I love that. Um, cause I'm like, yes, that aligns with how I think and feel too. And also the dilemma my business is faced with, which is like, Hey, we want to hire you to do a big rebrand. How are you going to prove that it's going to work for us? I literally can't, I can't prove it other than track record.

I could say, here's the 600 projects we've worked on and here's the percentage of all of them that have gone on to either raise new funds and have success in some way, acquisitions, whatever it is. It's not 50% of the people fail kind of thing, right? The number of success is high. And I just attribute that to people that care and invest in brand at any capacity, have a leg up.

And to me that seems straightforward. Eh, that's not always going to win in the sales process. Coming back though, it's Peter, Peter Weinberg was the author. I think there was actually an additional author of that article from the B2B Institute. Peter's moved on, but it is worth noting his name because it was such a fantastic article.

We'll link it in the show notes for the people that want to read that. I think it was the 2030 Brand Report they're basically trying to think forward a decade of what would be true. And it was really all about brand. Of course, as a brand guy, I'm like, hell yes.

[Palmer Houchins]

Bring it on.

[Bill Kenney]

Maybe won't be true, but I, my bet is on that.

Uh, okay. Moving us along. Was it, was there something you were going to say though, before I jumped in there with Peter's name drop?

[Palmer Houchins]

Well, no, I mean, I saw a really good presentation. I was at the Forrester B2B Summit last week. And, Shane, who's the CMO at Webflow, he's been several other places as well, really, really smart marketer. He was, uh, kind of, he had this presentation where he was making the point of like, we're moving to this like next evolution of like, we started, you think back to nineties, early two thousands, it was like, loud, big brands sort of like Nike, just do it stuff.

And then we kind of moved into this era of marketing technology. Cause it was, I mean, truly it was technology we didn't have before. And so it's like, we all kind of got high on our own supply of that, of just like, Hey, we're going to put this everywhere. And again, listen, I'm all for technology and using that to do marketing well, but I think that's run its course.

And so his sort of, his thesis was like, we're moving to the era of like the creative strategist. And so it's like, sort of like less specialized as a technology and more of just like understanding holistically, maybe you call it the marketing strategist of like how all these pieces work. And, and I think there's like an AI component of that too.

Like AI is going to be able to optimize those campaigns that you used to have to go manually in there and do, and AI is actually going to be able to help you create some of that content that was there. And so it's more about what's the strategy, how does it all go forward? So, um, you talking about that just made me think about that for a second.

I thought that's, that'll be an interesting framework to watch.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. I think it's all going to be quite interesting to watch with the speed of things these days. You kind of talked about it, this like 99 bubble burst, like what tools did we have back then to all of a sudden we have all the tools and more tools coming out daily. B2B SaaS is just like a million tools.

Um, to what's the next evolution of that? And I think to quote the late, great Biggie Smalls, as you just did high on our own supply of this, just like, do I need 10,000 tools to measure stuff? Or can I get back to basics and actually have a bit more of a holistic view using some of this, some of that, and just pure gut does pure gut.

Does Liquid Death, do they need to measure everything they put out there or do they know that just by nature of how they act in the market, it creates the momentum and it comes back to them. Now, big companies can't operate like I just said, but they know it to be true, right? Their brand is winning. It's winning for a reason.

They don't need to like A/B test a button color shade to determine, um, you know, how much more they're going to sell. They basically need to stay true to who they are.

[Palmer Houchins]

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's also interesting. I mean, I think through just like the B2B SaaS lens, you know, we went through such a boom period and COVID and then let's call it the two years after that. So we're like, I think in a lot of ways. Folks just onboarded software to solve all of their problems.

They're like, great, like budget's not an issue. We're going to buy this piece of software. We're going to buy this piece of software. And, and now you're getting back to this area of sort of efficiency and you've got, you know, CFOs do we really need this? Like, what's it going to do? And, and again, that can be a painful process to go through, but I think what it gets back at, is it like for marketers in particular, it's just like, focus on the basics, you don't need a hundred pieces of software.

You do need a few. Um, but then like, what are the fundamentals that are actually going to like, push this program, push our strategy forward. And, and I think that's, um, like a healthy, uh, I know, like marketers love to hate on, you know, the, the, the office of the CFO and like, Oh, finances won't let us do anything.

But I actually think that that's like a good, uh, Uh, push and pull there, um, to kind of get folks like software isn't going to solve all of our, all of our problems. And there's some, some marketing fundamentals that are much better use case for our time.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. CFOs are listening. They're like, yes!

[Palmer Houchins]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Marketers, the marketers that get it.

[Palmer Houchins]

It's just like challenge in a good way.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes, yes, yes. So that, I think that is a fantastic push and pull inside any organization. Now that we don't have CFO level. We're only 20 something people.

[Palmer Houchins]

Yep.

[Bill Kenney]

But our COO, she's good on the gut check. Do we need that? Are we using that?

I don't feel like that's actually necessary right now. We could probably operate without it. Thank you for saying that, cause you can get lost in the more tools to solve my problems.

[Palmer Houchins]

More tools and more time that you have to commit to like implement them and use them the right way.

[Bill Kenney]

Which how else do we measure brand? And big brand brains will say this, which is like, brand is what your customers say it is.

A la G2, right? That's another way, right? If I'm curious about a tool or a platform, I can go to G2 and be like, how do people feel about it? Like literally anytime I go on Amazon, I first thing I do is I read like the top 10 most recent reviews. If I could get past those without a big, giant, scary answer, bad review, I'm like, okay, this thing is probably fine.

Now I'm picking out maybe from personal preference, uh, from products. So I don't know. I'm not even posing a question here. I guess I'm just, I'm doing a nod to G2 to say like that’s really helpful.

[Palmer Houchins]

No, I mean, that, that, like, that was the catalyst for, for G2 in general. I literally, our founders, they'd come out of, you know, a successful exit at their previous company. And they were like mulling around a bunch of ideas of what do we want to do next?

And I think that their light bulb moment was, Hey, like I can find hundreds of data points around a $100 a night hotel room, but I'm about to buy this $100,000 piece of software and I can't find anything about it except talking to a salesperson.

Which listen, No hating on the sales folks are great, great partners for, for the marketing side, but some, at some point you want to be able to do some research to sort of validate things yourself.

So that's a lot of, uh, where G2 came from, but it also just ties into that broader brand narrative. I mean, to, you know, uh, to go back and quote Dave again, I mean, it's like your brand is your reputation and sort of like that, this is one way it comes to life through, through customer reviews, um, in an area that used to be a pretty, um, I don't know, like we were trying to shine a light on an area that maybe didn't get as much visibility.

Now, granted, B2B software has grown a ton over the past 10, 20 years, but also trying to bring the same sort of like visibility to that world, um, that ultimately helps software buyers make better decisions.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. I hadn't thought about it through that lens. That's a fantastic point. You know, I'm about to. You know, I'll look up a review or be relentless on even a site like Yelp over a $30 dinner decision. But what about $100,000 spend on a new product trying to get on-boarded into it? Where, where do I figure out? You have to go to your network.

That's old school, right? You have to be talking to friends and family. Oh, have you used this?

[Palmer Houchins]

Which I mean, I think what we're seeing, we've got not to, um, do the plug, but we every year do a, uh, software buyer behavior report. We go out and interview. I think this year is over 1000, just like software buyers across the globe and trying to kind of track. How's that buying behavior changing? And, and I even saw this called out in some of the Forrester research last week is, um, the buying committees are getting bigger and the buyers are getting younger and that's just changing the behavior.

So it's less about. Hey, I want to go request 10 demos and set them all up and talk to the sales team. It's, I'm going to go ask my network. I'm going to go into, I'm gonna go ask my friends. I'm going to go and ask my network, which could be social. It could be community like Exit Five, where you kind of go get input, or it could be review sites like, like G2.

And that's like, what we're seeing is that's the. That's how folks make the short list. Now it used to just be a little bit more top down of like, here's what it is. It doesn't mean you're going to go spend a hundred thousand dollars because your friend said this is a great tool, but that's probably going to make the top three because you're, you're from the endorsement or because they're the category leader on G2. Like I think those things have, um, have some weight to them. And, and that just has an influence sort of down, down in that buying process.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, absolutely. Especially in a world that we've already said is getting more competitive, right? How do you stand out? Brand. As a brand guy, like brand is a way to stand out visually, verbally, et cetera. The product obviously still needs to perform. Hopefully it has some features that can't be copied, uh, and commoditized, but ultimately what the community has to say about it and some type of inroad from that gets you way higher up in the list of the purchasing decision.

Yes, sir.

[Palmer Houchins]

100%. It's all part of it.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. You cannot look past that. Um, speaking of, we're now active on G2. As a service provider business, we definitely want to start leveraging G2 more. We serve B2B tech very specifically. So essentially every single one of our customers are on there and all of our new not yet customers are on there.

So we just figured we might as well be in the place that they are having them write about us.

[Palmer Houchins]

One of the like G2 use cases that's just ingrained in my mind, uh, is, is from a company that you all know well, um, here in Atlanta, Salesloft. And we did an event, uh, with Kyle, their CEO and co-founder.

Uh, this was, you know, two or three years ago. And he talked about how he literally had time on his calendar held every week to read all of their reviews, like he would read every review that came in for Salesloft and not just from G2. I think for many other sources as well. And for him, it was just product feedback.

It was like a continual loop of like, it wasn't like, how are we showing up? It was, where do I need to have my team's focus? Like, what do we need to be doing better? And I mean, like, listen, it's great to have social proof. It's great to be able to build the, the badges and the reports into the campaigns you're doing, but that's just, uh, what he's doing is using G2 for something that folks like, you know, in other cases have to go out and hire like an insights, uh, firm or hire a research team internally to do.

Um, and I'm not saying it does all of that for you, but it's a, it's a great sort of triangulating data point there.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Another good hack because it's straight up unbiased feedback, right? If you go out there and you try to ask people, if you build it into your product and you're in the UI and it says, leave your feedback here. Nobody wants to do that shit. Nobody wants to, it’s like, leave me alone.

[Palmer Houchins]

Especially the CEO of a company, if the CEO of a company reaches out, Hey, what can we be doing? You know, it's like, oh, it's great. I like it. You know, I mean, maybe if you really know the person, they'll give you honest feedback, but, um, you want to make sure you sort of, uh, you're, you're getting that honest unvarnished truth.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Great. I hadn't even considered that, how the customers might use that. Shout out to Kyle. Salesloft team. Yes, we know them. Well, we did their big rebrand. Uh, gosh, it sounds like four years ago now?

[Palmer Houchins]

That was a while. I, yeah, probably so.

[Bill Kenney]

Kind of getting there. Yeah.

[Palmer Houchins]

I will say, um, you know, one of the, when you're talking about tracking, if those things work, I think one, one way you can tell if those, those rebrands work is do you see folks who start, um, branding similar, I guess, doing similar to that. And I've seen a lot of things that have been very similar to that, uh, since y'all launched that.

So, uh, and that was something on the MailChimp side too. We did a couple of things. It's like, oh, wow. Um, I'm seeing a lot of folks kind of, and again, like, you know, imitation is a great form of flattery. I'm not, I'm not in any way trying to insinuate this is below board, but that's one of the ways from a brand perspective, you're like, all right, we made the right choice or we did something, we did something good here.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Sometimes people have to be the courageous people to cut the first path. First person through the door type of effect. And we did the work with Salesloft. The goal was to make it not feel like B2B tech, especially not like a sales platform, which can get real stuffy and it only cares about money.

Right. So it was really to bring the human side, which was in is the culture of Salesloft, which is why they ended up with the logo type they ended up with, with the, with the big accentuated serifs on it, make it feel more human and not just like another sans serif, logotype that is just screaming tech.

We are a tech company. Tech, tech, tech and going with this green, which was really unseen in the space.

[Palmer Houchins]

Like 2015 to, you know, I don't know, let's call it 2015 to 2020. It was like every tech company had a blue logo, like blue coloring, like san serif and that, that was, that was it. Um, and so it's nice to see, you know, thanks to, you know, the courageous greens of Salesloft and yellows of MailChimp that we've finally gone down some different paths here of like, that is one way to differentiate yourself to not just do the same color as everybody else.

[Bill Kenney]

That's right. Yeah. People think like, well, what's the importance of color? I don't know. When you walk into SaaStr and there's, I don't know, 200 booths and one of them is screaming yellow, I don't know that MailChimp is screaming yellow. And there's not really much yellow anywhere else. That's one immediate advantage. That's a visual signal. This is who we are. And now people know, Oh, that's, that has to be MailChimp. That's nobody else. Um, yeah, we love playing with color.

[Palmer Houchins]

Yeah. I mean, it's a good thing. It's like you, I think every color you pretty much throw out there, they're like, Oh, I can think of something like there's been a branching that's happened, that's kind of, kind of nice. And I mean, I think also a lot of times in B2B marketing, you can go back like, why blue?

And you can be like, oh, Salesforce, that's why it's blue. Because like, you know, every level sort of like

[Bill Kenney]

Who leads the movement?

[Palmer Houchins]

Right, right, right. The Godfather is back there and, uh, Um, but no, it's good to see that evolution happening. And I think we're, um, we're poised to, to, to see, the B2B software side, at least get a little bit more vibrant and, you know, maybe a little less monotony there.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. I think we see it on both sides. It's always interesting. Like it just came off of a meeting where, um, this current company might be considered more vibrant, but they're trying to go up market. Right. So for them, that means to appeal to that. We want to look more mature. So in a way they will actually be working backwards from what we've just said, which is sometimes startups want to come out and they want to be real punchy, real creative, right?

Big splash. But then after that, there's a bit, there can be a buttoning up effect of like, okay, we're going up market now. So we're going to tighten ourselves up. But we're okay with that. Like we've, we don't need to be so loud and expressive anymore. So we see people going in all different directions.

[Palmer Houchins]

G2 has been on that path of where it like started out and was a little bit of that Salesforce blue kind of, um, you know, a little bit monotonous than maybe five years into it, they did a rebrand and that's actually what G2 was originally called G2 crowd, uh, when it started and then rebranded to just G2 in 2018, 2019 and brought in a lot of the color.

That, that we see right now. And, um, but, but again, as we focus more on the enterprise and commercial segments, we're like, well, what's the, like, we definitely want to have that, those components there and be part of it. Um, but what's the right balance between those, those two things? Like how much, how much color is too much color?

How much, how, how much life is too much life? Maybe that's the wrong way of putting it, like what's a little too lively versus, uh, just, you know, going to facilitate easy communication here.

[Bill Kenney]

Yep. Yep. That's, uh, that's why a company like mine, hopefully we'll stay in business for a while, even in the grips of AI in the new world. But we won't get into that conversation today.

[Palmer Houchins]

I mean, all I'll say there is if anyone's tried to, to do your job through AI, you'll quickly understand. It's not, it's not, it's not quite there. It's good for some hacks and some brainstorming, but in terms of replacing creative work or even doing some basic data stuff.

It's not quite there yet.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, yeah. It'll be interesting to see how fast that goes. I'm not losing sleep over it. I could also be the person that wakes up in 10 years and goes, wow, I should have lost more sleep over that. I roll with the punches, so we'll see where it goes.

All right. So let's let's finish on this. I'll hit you with maybe a loaded question, but I'll give you two parts to it. So maybe you don't have to just pick one. If you were speaking with another peer, any marketer out there, and you were really trying to tell them, listen, there's a lot of tools we've kind of talked a lot about that today in the episode, there's a lot of tools out there. There's a lot of different types of leadership and founders that they may be working with on what matters, what doesn't all those things considered from your perspective, if there's just two things that they could do and just do them really well.

That would either create the most impact, bring the most value. What would you tell them? Those things are good luck, sir.

[Palmer Houchins]

Thank you. Um, well, the first thing I'll say is, is an easy one because I think it's, it's not marketing specific. It's what I would tell anybody who's in just sort of this broader, like who's, who's working at these types of companies that are like a lot of folks probably listening to this are the G2s or the MailChimps of the world is, be the type of person that folks want to work with.

And that can mean a lot of different things, but it's like, be a good cross-functional partner. You know, like, come in and be someone who's a problem solver who wants to come in and build consensus. And that doesn't matter. Like, sometimes that may mean, okay, we got to go work on this performance marketing side.

Like, we got a problem in the funnel somewhere. We need to go work on that. Other times it can be zooming out and helping figure out the strategic layer. Other times it can be, you know, like really getting that buy in from an executive, executive level, but you're, if you come in and have that mentality and are that type of person, I just feel like that's what opens doors, both, both in your current role and in future roles.

And then I guess the second one is sort of maybe a little bit more of an in the weeds one, but that we're certainly, um, we're certainly wrestling with at G2 just from, from, a team perspective is, uh, I, we've talked about all of this tooling and, and like, there's so many different kind of areas you can apply yourself.

And I think that that's true and it's not changing, but I, I do believe it not to be the, like, this is not a doomsday-er thing. It's just like, AI is going to unlock a different way of doing things. And so I think we should be. Um, you should be building that experimentation into what you're doing.

If it's just, Hey, how can I, like, we have our, our initiative is sort of 10% more efficient. Like, how can we use AI to just be 10% more efficient? Again, it's not replacing anyone's job. It's just like helping us be better at what we do. And so, um, You know, that's sort of a soft skills and hard skills answer is, is, is what I would give there.

And, and I don't know that on the AI one that I really know what the, uh, the answer is there or how it, like how it affects my role day in and day out. But all I know is that like, I'm trying to, to jump in and use it where I can to, even if it's just, uh, you know, being a sounding board, just like, Hey, could we, uh, like, let's like do a little high level brainstorm with AI and see where I end up with something.

Um, I don't, I still think my LinkedIn posts are better when I write them than when AI writes them.

[Bill Kenney]

Amen.

[Palmer Houchins]

Like sometimes they can come up with some good ideas, you know, like, Oh, like the good framing, or, I mean, I love to like, here's a 30 page PDF, can I throw this in ChatGPT and like hit me with the five basic points of it, um, again, not saying you don't have to read it, uh, not to read anything ever again, but sometimes you just, you need to know the key takeaways and, uh, Anyway, that's my, that's my off the cuff answer there.

[Bill Kenney]

Okay. All right. So it's, be a good human being. Basically good at the soft skills.

[Palmer Houchins]

It's a good human being and a good partner. I think there's like kindness is like parent, like you got to be nice, but then also like, be the person who like, yeah, table stakes is being kind, but like, be the type of person folks want to work with because you're timely in your communication, like you're willing to go the extra mile and help someone with something.

Uh, and that's sort of the soft skill set style. And like, that's how, especially early in your career, when you know, you don't know everything. Like that's how you can go get those opportunities to learn more. It's just diving in that way. And then the, the, the hard skill side is more of just like, be open to experimenting, be open to, to trying new things, um, especially as they relate to your role.

[Bill Kenney]

It sounds to me, sir, like you've said, there's a common thread in there: It's be open in both capacities.

[Palmer Houchins]

True. I like it.

[Bill Kenney]

It’s have an open mind. Have an open mind. And I would plus one the hell out of that, which is like in any role or any person I've ever had on my team or interacted with another on another team, partner, whatever, having an open mind, being open to what is possible.

Um, this idea of not being so kind of like stuck. Oh, we can't do that. That's not how things are done. No, I don't want to do that. That's not why I'm here. You know, it's not to say that people should wear 17 hats.

[Palmer Houchins]

Right. I mean, like, it'd be reasonable. Don't overcommit yourself.

[Bill Kenney]

Within reason.

[Palmer Houchins]

Don’t be doing somebody else's job. That's not it. But like, we all know those moments when like someone needs a little extra help or like, Hey, there's this, you know, it's like important project where you could jump in and help out on it.

And it's really gonna, you know, unlock a few things down the line for you. So, um, certainly

[Bill Kenney]

The social capital gains in those efforts is huge,

[Palmer Houchins]

Absolutely.

[Bill Kenney]

All right. We did it. We went around the world and back. We went from Freddie's to G2 badges to what people should do in their career and everything in between. I appreciate you, sir. I look forward to crossing paths. Maybe we'll cross paths at a B2B tech conference, maybe somewhere else.

[Palmer Houchins]

I’m sure we will. Thanks for, uh, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed the conversation.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, pleasure. Thanks buddy.