Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
Why Your CRM Implementation is Failing (Start with Goals, Not Tech)
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, host Kendra Corman welcomes Paul Schmidt, a digital marketing strategist and CRM optimization expert from SmartBug Media. Paul brings a unique perspective to the conversation, having transitioned from a career in music to becoming a full-funnel marketer focused on solving complex customer challenges.
Together, they dive into how businesses—especially small to mid-sized ones—can better leverage CRMs and customer marketing to drive real business growth.
Common Pitfalls in CRM Implementation
- Why choosing a CRM based on competitors’ choices can backfire
- The importance of mapping out goals and processes before selecting a tool
- How poor data hygiene sabotages CRM success
- Why your CRM must reflect where your business is today, not 10 years ago
Rethinking the Role of CRM
- The value of a “single source of truth” for customer data
- How a CRM bridges marketing, sales, and customer success
- The cost of fragmented data: lost productivity and missed opportunities
- Why understanding the customer journey post-sale is just as important
Building a Culture Around Customer Marketing
- Why most companies underinvest in current customers and social proof
- How to shift from new-logo obsession to full-lifecycle marketing
- The challenges of measuring customer marketing—and why it’s still worth it
- Real-world strategies to surface and capture meaningful client stories
Creating a Case Study Pipeline
- Treating case studies like a sales process: stages, approvals, publishing
- How five-star reviews can feed your customer story engine
- Managing internal alignment with CSMs and account managers to gather testimonials
- What to do when clients say “no” to using their logo (hint: anonymize it!)
Key Takeaways for Marketers and Business Owners
- Always start with your goals, not the tech
- Use CRM to unify and elevate—not just automate
- Customer success stories are marketing gold, but require intention and process
- Everyone on your team—from sales to support—can contribute to your social proof engine
Bonus Wisdom: Discovering Your Marketing Superpower
Paul shares his biggest lesson learned in marketing: the importance of discovering and developing your "superpower"—whether that’s SEO, CRM implementation, or AI. He encourages professionals at every stage of their career to become known for something specific, then evolve it over time to stay relevant and valuable.
Whether you’re just starting with a CRM or ready to scale your customer marketing efforts, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you make smarter, more strategic decisions.
Are you ready to stop phoning in your CRM and start building a foundation for future growth? Tune in now and learn how!
Connect with Paul Schmidt:
Website: https://www.smartbugmedia.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drumming/
Youtube:
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Korman, and I'm excited today to be talking about CRM optimization and customer marketing strategy with our guest today, paul Welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Kendra, thanks for having me Looking forward to today's conversation.
Speaker 1:All right. So how'd you get into this? The question I love to ask people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I actually started out as a musician and in the music world and that's really like that was my entry into marketing in general and how I came to get into marketing. You know, I really started out thinking. You know, thinking I really want to be in the music world and the music products world and that's really where I started my life and I've been a musician pretty much my whole life and really how I got to getting into marketing is that the music world is such a creative space. When you are a musician, you're in that space. You get a lot of times playing with, spending time and thinking about creativity, but honing my skills as a musician, you're in that space. Like you get a lot of times playing with, spending time and thinking about creativity, but honing my skills as a musician, you know there was so much time that you really start to think about some of the more like quantitative and sort of like as left brain types of things. And that's really where, in evolving from going in the music products world, I just, like there were, I started to get into consulting from there.
Speaker 2:And in getting into consulting, like you're faced with so many just different types of industries and verticals and things like that. And you know, coming from the music side of things, I realized that it's not just like creativity and music, which I love. It's not just like that where I like to spend all my time and I love to like think about problem solving and like learning how different people's like solve for their customer. And I think that's really where how I evolved from going in the music and art side of things and then going into the consulting side of things, and in consulting you know, once you're in that side, like there's so many different that can mean a lot of different things. But I really evolved from working really at a small SEO type of shop and evolved to where and we'll get into this later to doing full funnel types of marketing and that's really what I spend my time doing today.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is so interesting. So I told Paul before I said, by the way, I have my guests introduce themselves now, because their story is way more interesting than me reading their bio and that is way more interesting than me reading any bio. So that is so cool that that you made the connection from something that you're super passionate on and that it connected you with something that makes you money and that you're hopefully passionate about too. So, very cool. Thank you for sharing that. I had just had a conversation with a client earlier today and they were talking about a CRM. I need a CRM and I was like, okay, why we started getting into those questions. But CRMs are important and in marketing. So, since you do a lot of CRM optimization, what are some of the mistakes that you're seeing when people are implementing CRMs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really good question. You know, I think that so often when companies are thinking about implementing their CRM or a new CRM, is they really like jump to, starting with the technology first and thinking, oh, all of my competitors, they use this CRM, so I got to use the exact same one. And there's so many companies that fall into that and it's really like I think the biggest mistake is like, instead of like jumping and picking like out of CRM right away, you need to think about like your own process, your strategy and your goals. You know there's many great CRM systems out there, but it's like before you just say, oh, I'm going to get this one, it's like what are you trying to solve for first? Because once you can think about what that goal is, then from there there's you choose the right tool set based on and kind of work your way backwards, instead of picking a CRM and then force fitting your business structure and strategy around that. So that's what I think. That's the big mistake first.
Speaker 2:Second, I would say, is like data hygiene.
Speaker 2:Big challenge and that I see so many clients have, is they're using a CRM system and they just want to like lift, lift and shift their all of their data into the new system, and I think when you're migrating and implementing a CRM, it's your opportunity to like think about this.
Speaker 2:You have the current, accurate, proper data structure for you where your business is today, not where it was 10 years ago when you implemented your last CRM system. So I think data hygiene is like one area is like if you don't take the time to fix it before you move to your new system or at least address it to some degree like, you end up with a bit of a same sort of headaches that you had in your last system. When you think about where we're going from an AI perspective, it's all about high quality data and if you're like, ai can solve for a lot of like data hygiene issues. But if you have conflicting data, you know if you have a lot of data, poor practices from from back in the day, like your AI and the outputs that you're getting from AI are going to be reflected in what that what you're getting from that new system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, first off, on the data hygiene it is so important and it is so overlooked. Even I know small business owners that don't even have a CRM system, just have an email marketing system, and their data hygiene and their email marketing system isn't even good, right. I mean, it's just data gets out of control. I was the Jeep advertising manager like a lifetime ago and we had data problems. I mean, it's like it doesn't matter like how big or how small you are. I think everybody has data issues because you only clean it up so often, because it is a pain in the butt and nobody wants to do it. So I love that. But let's go back to the first point that you talked about and that was starting with the technology, and you said you should start with goals first and your processes and your business, your strategy. What are some examples or questions that somebody should be asking themselves to get some of those answers? Because I find a lot of people start with the technology because that's easier.
Speaker 2:It's a good point and there's a lot of great CRM systems out there. So it's easy to just say you know, it's easy to just jump onto the flashiest new AI powered system out there. But I think the questions that I like to ask is when you think about you as a business three to six months from now, what does success look like? And I think if you ask that question, it's like well, ideally this team is managing these kinds of deals and the new inquiry comes in, and then this is how they're going to manage it, and then from there it's going to go to customer success or whatever it is. And so I think you ask those types of questions and you know my favorite things to do is like get your marketing team and your sales team in the same room and you map this out together.
Speaker 2:And I think by doing that, get together in person, like actually in real life. Like spend the money, get together, map it out on a whiteboard. Everybody gets to like see, you know what are the most important parts of it and where are the breakdowns happening today. That's a key to like doing the proper implementation is really mapping out. What does that flow need to look like from initial inquiry all the way to like when someone's a customer, and you can even map out during the customer success process as well. But I think those are some of like the first questions that I always ask my clients.
Speaker 1:If you're not looking at what success looks like in the future and how you want your processes to go, no CRM is going to fix that. Right? If you don't know the answer to those questions that I don't think you need a CRM yet, Right? A lot of people I talk to they're like oh, I need a CRM. I'm like why? What are you going to do with it?
Speaker 2:And they don't always have an answer tool like MailChimp or like a, just a, like an emailing tool or an SMS tool and like they just have sort of information in stored in a lot of different places.
Speaker 2:And the important point of like having a CRM system is that if you have a single source of truth for all of your data, for your customers, for all the transactions that they have, for the companies that those those customers work for, for all the tickets that support tickets that they may have as a customer, if you have all that information in one place, you just have a much more complete look at the customer.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have that, like, your people across your organization are making assumptions or they're spending a lot of time, hours a day, piecing the full picture together. And that's why I think it's so important to have all that information ingested by a single system. So you have that single view of the customer you have. You know the date that they came in, you know what channel they came in from, you know all the conversations that they had with your sales team, what products that they're using today and you ideally know what products that they're going to need three months from now, next year. And having all that information in one place is like the ultimate dream and that's why customers that take it seriously. They're the ones that can have that complete view of the customer at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that that's really good. So when people don't have this, they're not investing in their customer specific marketing right and they're losing out on money. How is this affecting their bottom line? How are they losing out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean customers that under invest in setting up their CRM or under invest in customer marketing specifically. That's another area we spend a lot of time in. You know they're like so often the culture of like how they're investing in is they're just investing in like net new customer acquisition and net new logos, and that's really an important part in most marketing teams. That's where they do. A majority of their investment goes into net new logo acquisition. But you know the organizations that that are under investing in customer marketing like they're missing out on so much additional recurring or ongoing revenue and social proof that they could be building if they were to invest in customer marketing.
Speaker 2:And one of the reasons why that organizations under way under invest in customer marketing is because it's it's one it's harder to measure, it's harder to attribute recurring revenue back to that, that customer market, those customer marketing efforts to like there's a cultural shift that you have to make to start investing in customer marketing and it's like you know you have to think about like hey, like your existing clients, that they're paying you today.
Speaker 2:Like you need to think about like how how can you provide more value to them and how can you share those stories and key studies and things like that on your own channels which, at the end of the day, like that type of social proof, is some of the most impactful type of marketing you can do. But I think that's really where marketing organizations they very much under invest on it because it's it's a short term thinking type of thing. It's like Google ads, like you stick twenty dollars in, you get one hundred dollars out or you get whatever, you know, whatever that ratio is, and I think it's that type of calculations a lot harder when it comes to customer marketing and I think it's.
Speaker 1:That type of calculation is a lot harder when it comes to customer marketing. Okay, so you talked about customer marketing, about reaching out to them, to having these conversations, retaining them, and then the social proof stories. So I love the social proof. The key thing there is how do you truly get that? So I was just actually talking to somebody last week and they were saying that they were trying to get stories out of people. They can't get anything out of anybody and if they do, it's just bland, middle run of the road, watered down stuff. Do you work with people on how to get that?
Speaker 2:Again, it takes building a culture from this stuff. Do you work with people on how to get that? Again, it takes building a culture from this and you almost need to think of building a case study pipeline, like you do like a deal pipeline or an opportunity pipeline At SmartBug. We think about building, like we want to be launching, you know, two, three case studies a month of this type of social proof, and what it takes is like talking with the account managers on an ongoing basis to get to some of those stories from them Like what was this thing you guys launched, what was that campaign? Like that, you guys launched this last quarter and then thinking about, okay, they launched some new project like this quarter and maybe next quarter, once the fruit is starting to bear from, we're starting to get results from this. Then you start to share some of those stories and so we think about it as like building a pipeline of case studies, because we know for the next few quarters what those are going to look like. And I think if you think proactively about that, it's easier to plan.
Speaker 2:You're not looking at a blank white page. What are we going to write about today? What's our case study this month going to be about. You're constantly thinking about and you're feeling that, but I think the stories part, it's like you have to have the marketing team has to have good relationships with the customer or the account managers, the customer success managers I think that's the important part and constantly be spending time with them, like talking about their customers and learning about that, and it can't just be like a sort of like a one and done thing, like they need to be spending time together, like, put, a recurring monthly meeting or a quarterly meeting with that CSM so that, like you can just talk about their customers. Where are they winning, like what are they doing? Well, and I think that's those are some points where you can start to get some interesting nuggets and it's not just like the same case study kind of regurgitated over and over.
Speaker 1:I really like that, because if you don't do this intentionally, it's not going to happen, and I think people really forget about that and they think, oh, I can get that later, or oh, here's what this person said and I'll ask them for a quote later, and it's like you can't ask people, I don't think, always to fill in the blanks. You really need to do that for them after you get that core information, because people are, I'm going to say, inherently lazy, but they are right, you're just not a priority to them. So the best way to get what you need is to get what you need in a timely manner right, and having that pipeline, I think is really important. When you're creating that pipeline, are you like? Is it just recurring tasks? Is it just part of expectations of certain roles? Is it something that pops up in the CRM system as a task to follow up with a client? How does that work for you guys?
Speaker 2:I'll give you a little pro tip on this. So, in terms of like, building a case study pipeline, if you can connect that with, like, your review building or review generation campaign, they kind of can tie together. And so how I think about it is like when a customer gets a win, that's when you, like, you've helped them launch a very successful campaign. That's when you ask for that five star review. And if you've gotten that five star review, they left it on whatever channels that are important for your audience. From there, ok, they're the, they're the sort of like your prospects for case studies, because they've already shown that, like, they've already told them the Internet that that you're, that you know you do good work for them. From there, you can then take it to the next step and say, hey, like you know, you've left us a great review from this. We'd love to feature you as a customer story.
Speaker 2:And then from there, then they're sort of like, they're sort of a prospect in your case study pipeline, to then nurture them to the point where they're like, yeah, let's do it. And then, like, ideally, like at the end of the day, like the customer will let you use their logo and say you know, let you use their name on your, on your case study. Like that's ideal to have, like third party logos, that type of social proof on there. But you're going to hit the points where customers are like can't use my logo, legal team says no, but you can still use that story, an anonymized version of it. Like you can still like, share that type of stuff and it still does provide a level of value to people that are maybe that may consider using you in the future. And so that's kind of how we think about. It is like we need to have, like we need to keep fuel in this pipeline, regardless of like what, what the end point is going to be. We got to get customer stories out the door.
Speaker 1:And I love that. I love how starting with reviews, those are people that are already open to it, right, and them sort of opting in to maybe answering more questions is really, really helpful, right, so that's fantastic. If somebody is looking to start or elevate because we'll say that they've been phoning in their customer marketing, right, they've been totally phoning it in because their data hygiene might be a mess or they have the the wrong tool or it's set up in an incorrect way. What are, like, the first three things that you would recommend that they do? Or what are the? What's the first thing that you would recommend that they do to really look at that and get started with it?
Speaker 2:What we like literally did was build a pipeline in our CRM for case studies. So, like that's, that's a good, like foundational area is to like think about it like structurally. Okay, what are the stages that you need to go through to get to like to do case studies? Because it's not just like it's a sales process on its own to like convince a customer to like spend 10, 15, 30 minutes with you doing an interview, writing the case study them, approving it multiple levels of approval and then publishing all that kind of stuff. So you need to think like the process a little bit. Like what is that going to look like for you and your customers? But from there, it's like when you start working with a new client, obviously they hired you to make them successful or solve a problem for them.
Speaker 2:And I think like framing it early on, even during those first few meetings with like discovery meetings with a client when they come on board, is like talking with them, like look, we want to make you, we want to make you the most successful client for us, um, and be able to share your story one day.
Speaker 2:Like that is, we have both, have you know, aligned interests in making that happen you being very successful and us sharing that with the world that you guys are very successful.
Speaker 2:And so I think it's like it's setting it up, like thinking about that process, mapping that out and then like baking it in very early and setting those expectations with your CSM.
Speaker 2:That it's like with your CSM and account managers it's not just about like retention and like keeping them around. Like it's that's very that's. I mean, that's the most important thing is like to keep paying their bill every month or however often you bring in revenue. But like that building that social proof is like that should be an expectation for your CSMs as well. And you're, at the end of the day, it's like you're going to see your CSMs who are very successful, who retain their clients, who generate five star reviews, who build case studies for their clients, and those are the ones are like you know they're, they're going to be rewarded the most handsomely and and so that's kind of like how you think about it is like setting that building that into like the CSMs, like job description is that it's not just about like kicking clients off and like like get just serving them the products like you need to like think about how, at the end of the day, like they're going to be involved in like a social proof building to some degree.
Speaker 1:I really like that because people want to see that social proof. You can't build your business without it right. So I mean, you're not going to be able to scale your revenue or your business or any of that without that social proof piece, and I think that that's really important and I think it's regularly overlooked because it can be a pain in the butt to try and get insecure and you know what I mean and build that pipeline, especially when you're getting started, if you don't have a pipeline right, and so I think that that's really important. This has been awesome. I love it.
Speaker 1:I love CRM. I love talking about CRMs. I love talking about processes and data management probably because I can't build a flow chart to save my life, but I love it because it's something that I need and can leverage when I'm using data right to create campaigns and to reach out and even, you know, in segment lists and, to you know, for email and all of the good things that come from having good quality data. And that always starts with a CRM and, again, it starts with your goals, not the technology, which I love, the tool, I should say, which I love. That you mentioned that Before I let you go, though I do have to ask you the question I ask all of my guests, and that is the show is called Imperfect Marketing. Marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way?
Speaker 2:You know, the biggest lesson that I've learned along the way is like, especially early in my career was sort of finding what my marketing superpower was right away and I didn't know like this was so important. But as I kind of reflect in the last like 15 years and doing marketing, it's like you need to be thinking about whatever stage of your career you are is like what is your superpower that people are going to go to to you for that, to go to to you for that? Early on in my career I started in search marketing, doing SEO and PPC and like really honing those skills, understanding you know the things that worked well and didn't for clients, understanding how search search engines worked, everything like that. And when I went to my next role I moved over to HubSpot, the P. You know I was like the SEO guy. I was like the person that was like people had a customer that had an SEO issue. They'd hit me up and they'd bring me onto their customer calls and that was like figuring out what that superpower was early like helped me then frame out how I could then maybe lead trainings internally for that be the SME when sales needed somebody that could speak to that sort of thing that has evolved over time too.
Speaker 2:It's like I'm not I'm not like 15 years later or like still the SEO guy, like I can still answer SEO and things like that, but it's like I'm constantly thinking about like what thing can I really like drill in deep and be that subject matter experts?
Speaker 2:When people like come to have a training need or a sales need or service need or anything like that, it's like they know who they can go to and trust. And that has evolved over time started at search, then it became, you know, paul's the HubSpot expert for this thing and it's now it's continuing to evolve with all the AI stuff that's happening and I'm trying to really think about how can I specialize in learning agentic AI, so when people have clients that are interested in that area, like they have someone they can go to. So I think it's, you know, learning, learning along the way and continuing to like hone in on what those, what your superpower is at any one time. I think is just ups your market value and it's something that you know. I would encourage a marketer at any stage of their career to be thinking about what their superpower is.
Speaker 1:Well, I think all business owners in general should think about what their superpower is. I mean, what you're talking about there is what you're going to represent and stand for, at least for a period of time. Again, like you said, it can evolve over time, which is totally fine, and actually it probably should, right? I haven't seen a switchboard operator in a really long time, but it was a really important service back in the day.
Speaker 1:So, again, when you're looking at what your superpower is, I think it's even more than just what your marketing superpower is. What's your business, what's your specialty, no matter where you are? And if that's your business Because that's what you stand for that's where people start to call you, that's where you start to getting the speaking gigs and being a guest on podcasts and really building a reputation for yourself in that area and specialty, which I think that just can carry on so much and go so big that that is a fantastic lesson learned. So I think everybody can take something from that, starting with their personal superpower all the way up to, like, their business or corporate. How are you making a difference, right? What are you? What do you know? What is it that you're really good at and what's that difference that you can make? Because I really do think that that's what's going to differentiate you your, your personal brand or your company's brand overall, right, and that's what we want to do is stand out in the marketplace and be remembered for something. Stand out in the marketplace and be remembered for something ideally right. So that is so awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your time today. For those of you listening or watching and you want to connect with Paul and SmartBug Media, we have his information in the show notes or the video description down below, so be sure to check that out. Definitely connect with him, because he's got a lot of value to share. As you've seen. If you've learned anything today and got some value out of today's podcast, it would really help us out if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Until next time, have a great rest of your day.
