Clarity | Maximizing Marketing in Economic Downturns

Join Alec McChesney, Ed Seguine, Lea LaFerla, and Tess Dugan on The SCORRCAST as they discuss how to maximize marketing efforts during economic downturns. Discover strategies for achieving clarity, prioritizing resources, and maintaining impact even in challenging times. Learn how smart marketing decisions can help businesses thrive, adapt, and emerge stronger from economic challenges.

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Music. Now I am really excited for everyone to have a chance to listen to today's episode of The SCORR cast, which is actually a replay from a LinkedIn live that SCORR marketing did last summer, featuring Lea LaFerla SCORRs President Tess Dugan, who heads up the account strategy team at SCORR Marketing, and then Ed Seguin, who is now the CEO at Elemental Machines. And the topic of today's conversation that you're about to listen to is on maximizing marketing and economic downturns for life science companies specifically, we understand how difficult it is in marketing and business development, and then you add on the economic downturns, the shifts a little bit of this roller coaster that we've been on over the last four years, especially since the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic. And how do we stay strong? How do we stay consistent with our marketing and ensure that marketing is still supporting business development, supporting the revenue goals? I think that's all I'm going to say about this. I think you're going to have a fantastic time listening to this Ed is brilliant. Talks about how you have to position your marketing to support the overall goals moving forward, and how you can really stay consistent during an economic downturn. Enjoy this episode. I am getting the notification that we are officially live. So welcome everybody. We are maybe a minute or so ahead of schedule, so we'll let everybody join in while Lea Ed and Tess and I just continue to stare at each other as you're as you're joining there's a comment section on the right side of your screen where I kind of said, welcome. Let us know where you're watching from. This is also going to be the the comment section where, if you want to ask a question of our fantastic panelists, this is the section where you can do so all you have to do is put a comment in there. I will see it, and then I will ask the team that question. I see we got Caitlin's watching from Kearney Nebraska, so I'm very excited to have some team members join in here from the SCORR team, and otherwise we're going to go ahead and get started in about 10 seconds, we're talking about leveraging marketing as a life science company in an economic downturn. I think this is a really important conversation. You can see, we've got a fantastic cast of characters, if you will, with our panelists here. We've got Ed Seguin, we've got Leo laferla, and we've got Tess Dugan. We're going to have each of them introduce ourselves or themselves. But really, the goal for today is to rip the band aid off and have an extremely transparent conversation about the state of the industry, the state of the the economic downturn that we're in, and how life science companies can can use marketing in order to leverage you know, the next 612, 18 months. So with that being said, we are at the top of the hour. So let's go ahead and officially get started. Ed, I'm going to toss the the proverbial microphone to you for a quick, you know, 3045, second introduction, while you give us your background, and then we'll toss it over to Leah and Tess and we'll go in from there, sure. Thank you, Alex, and thanks for inviting me on. It's a topic that is certainly timely, something that has a lot of strong opinions behind it. By way of background, I've been in the clinical trials industry for about 20 years. The last 13 of those, I've been the CEO of clinical Inc, taken that company from really three stages Zero to Launch as a founder, then kind of early commercialization, and then kind of an Excel accelerated growth stage, and all the everything that entails with growing the company through different stages. Prior to that, I had previously sold a company that was kind of a troubled situation, wound up turning that around and selling it to metadata. So was there shortly and then, even in the far distant past, have been one of the founding members of Eli Lilly's technology Venture Capital Group, where we invested in a lot of small companies throughout the space. So got a different perspective as a as an executive, as an investor, you know, from small just startups to kind of how you evolve over time. Wonderful. Well, we are really excited to have you here. And just in that quick background, I know that there's going to be a lot of value for those watching this, either live or, you know, at. The recording in this conversation. How about you? Leah perfect, I'm Leah laferla. I'm the president of SCORR marketing. I come to the agency with 25 years of sales and marketing experience in the life science started my career at Merck in their sales organization. I went to a smaller biotech company in based in Omaha, and held a number of different roles within that organization, but really including leading the global marketing function for a number of years. But really my passion is that alignment between the marketing, the business development and sales folks, and really making sure that marketing is meeting the business objectives and helping our clients grow their businesses, executing on, you know, our marketing programs consistently optimizing along the way, with the goal of really demonstrating value and return on investment in marketing. And I've been in marketing long enough to remember pre digital and how difficult showing that ROI was, and now that we have all the tools and technologies definitely making sure that we're helping drive towards what is that return? How are we going to market and supporting the business with our tactics and strategies? Wonderful. Thank you so much, Leah, and appreciate you making the time today. Tess, how about you? I'm Tess Dugan. I'm the director of account management and a senior account strategist here at SCORR. I started with the agency about a decade ago. Now, back in 2014 had the opportunity to grow my career at the agency and hold a variety of different positions in the client services team. I actually had the opportunity to work with Ed as his head of marketing for about three years, and then I did a short stint as a director of marketing in industry at a clinical trial intelligence firm, and jumped at the opportunity to come back to SCORR and oversee our team of account strategists, as well as manage my own client portfolio. And I'm really looking forward to today's discussion, because this is really what I'm hearing from my clients, day in and day out, around where they need support and how they can help get through these difficult times, and so really looking forward to the conversation. Yeah. Thank you so much. Tess and Thank you Ed Leo. We're really excited about this. I already see, you know, we've got Kelly from Kansas City, Gregory from Westfield, New Jersey, Haley, Cleveland hero from New Jersey as well. We've got a lot of people tuning in today, because this is a topic that is being talked about on a day to day basis. I feel like you can't get on LinkedIn or listen to any podcast, go to a trade show without the conversation about, how do we handle the pressure that's being put on companies right now, in the state of the economy that we're in, from a marketing from a business development standpoint, and I think, you know, we talked about this before we went live. I think the best way to start with this is just to kind of rip the band aid off. We have some submitted questions, kind of before, when we were, when we were kind of promoting this. And the first question is, kind of just starting with, how can you effectively convince your board to allocate resources to marketing initiatives, and then what strategies or approaches can be employed to really demonstrate the value of marketing? And I know that is such a lofty question and a lofty place to start, but I think if we can start there, talking about how we can demonstrate the value of marketing, and how we can convince a board or a CEO or an executive team if we can start there, I think we're going to have a really nice conversation. It's going to lead us to a ton of questions after that. So Ed, I'm going to put you on the spot right out of the gate for that question, and then Leah test, feel free to jump in and we'll just run from here. Yeah. So I think the answer to this question is a very much depends on the stage of the company that you're in right now. And I don't want to appear schizophrenic, but I've made vastly different decisions at different stages of the company. Yeah, if you are a company that is kind of free product, or, you know, not quite there with your product yet, because in technology, you obviously have to build a lot to be able to say you've got this link of product driving go to market strategy. Then the priority is get the product built. And so you need to be able to then say, okay, then our marketing initiatives are going to be a little less, you know, they are going to be, sometimes second tier to a product priority. But then those that would then drive how you would prioritize certain initiatives, maybe more foundational messaging around what you're attempting to build as your future vision, so that you we are becoming. This, because you're not necessarily able to say we're going to just, like, answer this question. That is so, I think naive and immature, I must say, just generate leads. Like, that's like, you know, that is not just marketing. That is a as a whole layer of things. So in times of like this, I've made decisions at an earlier stage where said we need to do free up resources so that we can prioritize development, but in a later stage, where there's more of a going concern, the product's been developed, there's the ability to deliver on, you know, a large portion of the value proposition, and you're not essentially selling futures, basically selling your future vision, selling right now. And so then I kind of equate the conversation around marketing investments needing to be on a par with product roadmap investments, and which is, and for some reason, I've just found that, because there's a technology mindset to many investors, that it's like, almost like, some of the product roadmap is, like, sacrosanct or sacred in that, like, of course, we're not going to, like, reduce that because we'll, we'll get killed in the market because They're wanting this feature or button or whatever, and both actually without too much discipline to justify, like, what? What is that? Whereas marketing is expected to produce this, almost like rock solid, definitive outcome, and it you kind of give it a pass, so the leadership team, before you go to the board needs to have already hash that conversation out. If you're relying on your board to tell you how to allocate resources, you're already behind the eight ball. So your team between, you know, the CEO, the head of commercial, the head of product, needs to, and I mean head of commercial, I'm assuming marketing is within that sphere, have been able to say, this is our proposal for how we're splitting resources. And then you can come up with a strategy for positioning that to your board, not having the board impose it upon you. If you've done waited till that you're like in trouble. Yeah, there's, there's so many nuggets in there. I think the prioritization and kind of already being behind the eight ball if you're waiting for the board, but I think before we go down that pathway, Leah, it felt like you might want to jump in and add a little bit more there too. No. I mean, I think EV is exactly right. I mean, I sort of said in my opening, maybe not as articulately is like we are firm believers that marketing needs to support the business. And if the stage of the business that you're in is, you know, pre product, pre commercial, I think, you know, making sure that there's that understanding of allocating resources in the correct way is absolutely the number one step. I think the other thing that we think about to, you know, is like making sure that the strategy is driving overall what we're doing from a marketing perspective, and so, you know, having those conversations, understanding the goals of each product launch, of each, you know, service line, and making sure that the plan that we're developing really helps grow and meet the goals of those business units and the company overall. Yeah, and I think, Tess, I see you shaking your head up and down here, because one of the things that you and I talk a lot about, and a lot of the questions that I get in the business development cycle is about the business goals, and how can we make sure that the business strategy and the marketing strategy are aligned? And I know, I know we talk a lot about that, but I think, you know, whoever wants to jump in on this, one of the questions that was asked is, you know, how can businesses and really Head of Marketing ensure that there is that alignment at the beginning? So as we talk about the CEOs, we talk about the C suite before it goes to the board, how can we make sure that there is that alignment across the board? Yeah, I think from a marketing leader's perspective, thinking about managing up as a skill set that you need to have, and I think we talked about kind of those critical relationships within the business, but emphasizing your relationship with your sales leader or commercial leader to make sure that you're really in sync on the language that you're using, the strategies that you're deploying, so on and so forth, because you will really succeed or fail together. And the sooner that you can build that relationship and build that alignment, the more effective both of you will be. And I think, you know, ad spoke to some of those key components that you're going to need from your leadership team, but I would encourage all marketing directors to know that you can go ask for those things if you don't have them and you need. Them to be able to do your job successfully. Be that proactive individual that brings the stakeholders to the table, especially in times like this, where there's growing concern among the market, be the person that says, is our strategy still right for what we want to do, for our go to market motion, for our company, and if not, have a conversation about it. And I know that seems overly simple advice, but I think we would all be surprised at how busy we get and how we move from task to task to make sure that we're taking a step back and really thinking through that search strategy and strategic component to help that conversation, because as like a leader over time, too many people put a lot of merit in, like we're getting together as a meeting, we're having this conversation. And I get so irritated with the conversations over and over. And I've always said, If you can't put it down on a piece of paper, you haven't you don't know what you're talking about, or you're just blabbering about it. So, and especially in this context, we I always try to visually depict the competitive landscape that we're trying to emphasize. So is, are we competing on? You know, a complexity to simple scale is, if it is decentralized trials, is it? What's the degree of decentralization? Decentralization like, how do you it at least allows you to then start positioning things, and then people react to digital inputs, and you can talk about those things, and then it suggests courses of action. And we would, I would then relate that to, you know, our product roadmap, but visually like, Okay, we would use a bell chart, like, which percentage of our studies need these things? Because a lot of, you know, I would say this, every private equity person, like, loves to run businesses by spreadsheets. And that's, you know, those are in instructive data points. And so you need a way to kind of almost put color or a story to the spreadsheet pieces, and by depicting it pictorially, or some way of identifying it helps understanding and get people on the same page. And then you can point out, okay, this is where some of those spreadsheet metrics start to come in. But if you're looking at tables of numbers in these conversations, it's super hard to get engagement and thoughtful contributions. Yeah, got some different understanding of their business. So like, you have to find a way, and it may be multiple ways of trying to depict it, to have this competitive landscape, yeah, and I think to add to what you're saying, I you know, one of the things that I hear a lot is people are like, Okay, well, I'm being judged by this metric, and I can't go out and watch a brand and build demand generation in three months. So how do I have that conversation? And I think to add point, thinking about how you illustrate that, and thinking through what those initial signals and indicators are that your strategy is working or not working, and being able to articulate that plan in a way where you can say, at three months, we hope to see these indicators at six months. We hope to see these by nine months, we should be generating X percentage of pipeline and being able to talk about it in a manner where you set yourself up for success and stop having the same conversation about how many leads to marketing bring in. Yeah, I think, you know, I think we can go four different directions. And I want to call out the part about if you can't put it onto one page. I think back to the, you know, the the one page strategy plan, the one page marketing plan, a great book where if you can't put that on one piece of paper, and then somebody else in a different part of the organization, or even externally, couldn't understand exactly, you know, what role you play and what your strategy is, then all it's going to be is eight meetings, one after the other, and you're kind of just talking around in a circle time and time again. But you did mention a little bit about private equity and and that is a question that we get a lot about is, you know, and we talk about managing up and private equity really caring about the numbers. And one of the things that Leah and I say all the time is, you know, most CEOs, most private equity, they're going to care really about two things, is the story that's being told, and then the revenue. But how can marketers we've got 47 people that are watching this right now live. Most those individuals are going to be marketing or maybe commercial, a couple of CEOs, what are some of the things that we're seeing from a private equity standpoint, the pressure that's being placed on them in the life sciences, and how can teams kind of work together to combat what's happening from a private equity standpoint, life sciences? Yes. So private equity investors respond to market inputs, and so in, you know, historically, like when I say history, in recent in the recent past that has valued bookings growth above, above all, are you growing? And that's an in that bookings growth is kind of a leading indicator, and there's different versions, because, you know, the indicators in our space are slightly different, and it's actually, I think, contributing to some of the problem, because you've got a lot of traditional SaaS investors, Software as a Service, investors who are coming and having an interest in this space. But we're this space by and large, it's not truly pure software as a service. It's projects. It's project we have to a term that you've been using to kind of help them as it's project recurring revenue, which has some characteristics that are similar to us, like a software license term like you would get for like sales supports or NetSuite or whatever. And so trying to kind of interpret that language is important, that this is project recurring revenue, so we do have ups and downs related to some starts. And so there's some education that needs to go on about some of those dynamics. Because I remember having conversations in the very recent past about like, how can you get consistent, consistent bookings growth month over month? Phase threes are different than phase two, so that's a first battle to make sure there's an understanding that you should be getting consistent monthly revenue growth over time, if you're a decent company. But where the pendulum has swung recently is from that emphasis on revenue growth, whichever the top line is to say, are you driving EBITDA growth, like profitability, and that has then swung this big spotlight to like cash out of a pocket expenses which are marketing. Now, many cases, marketing is the easy. Is a very easy target, because a lot of marketing spent is truly like cash out of pocket, out of the company, whereas a lot of other places are embedded in head count. The only way to affect Deb is to, like, reduce headcount size, like, we're buying a bunch of stuff or whatever to, you know, there's no manufacturing elements in this, these services that are going on. And so that hesitancy to say we're going to, you know, cut costs, there's a feeling of like, oh, this is a temporary thing. We can dial it up and dial it down, because it's mostly external spend versus we've got head count, and there's a degree to that, but it's not it kind of confuses the situation a little bit in terms of the comparators. But the reality is, there's been a decisive switch to prioritizing FEMA dot profitability, or if you're not profitable yet, cutting your burn rate to extend your runway in a relatively uncertain environment. So that's really what's like. The Public Market effects have affected the way that private equity is looking at at this. And so, you know, that's that's really a cyclical kind of thing, so it's normal and expected that there would be some scrutiny into what's going on. Leah, any extra thoughts on that? No, I mean, you know, I think what you said, Ed about marketing, a lot of times being external makes a lot of sense, right? And I think there's also that kind of the squishiness around when you talk about brand awareness and laying some of that foundation, those types of metrics that you know isn't demand gen or isn't lead gen, I think maybe are a little bit misunderstood, and how quickly that can happen. We talk a lot about, you know, it takes a minimum of seven impressions before somebody recognizes the brand of the company, and as many as 50 before you can expect any sort of action from a potential buyer. And so this idea that like, oh, let's just cut that spend and turn it back on. I think there's, it's naive in the fact that that it's not just an immediate turn back on, like, there's, you know, that consistently and executing consistently, really, as a piece of the puzzle that we, I know, Tess and I, when working with clients, spend a lot of time talking about, like, can't just turn it on and expect all of a sudden everybody's going to know who you are and know who you are and know your value proposition and want to buy from you to that end. But being able to categorize the type of marketing spend is key, because not all marketing spend is has an immediate result. Have talked about, but in an environment like this, where you also get a slowdown in buying decisions, just because you are juicing your expense related to trying to generate leads doesn't mean you're going to close them any sooner. So I actually, and this is just my personal advice, I've always felt there has to be a baseline level that's just your foundational messaging, that if that's just substance based on what does you know Company A do better than anybody else, you always have, that it's that sets a foundation for substance and expertise that you can then build now, then your specific initiatives. We talked about this being related to company objectives, like, you have to be really clear commercially, like, where are we getting our customers are we was recently talking to one company that's they sent me a list of their top 20 customers. Instantly, I could see there were four different types they're going to buy for different reasons. At least understand why they're buying. Because how you generate leads from four different customer types is totally different. You might have some your service is delivering, but be able to identify we're doing these initiatives towards this customer segment. I remember clinically each year that we're going to target a therapeutic area, what are we doing about that? And we would have metrics that said we expect X dollars worth of growth in this therapeutic area. And we tried to be really clear about why we were choosing that therapeutic area, and what were the this is the tide of the product, because your tech company, what are the features and elements that we have to have in the product to be able to do that? And so I always kind of link, um, commercial and products like directly. You can't have a go to market strategy that's disconnected. So we would be able to segment and identify, Okay, this is for this initiative, like, very clear, and we, this is what we've we've got the sales team aligned to do that. And there's some metrics around, you know, at least a plan. And part of the purpose of the plan is so that you can pivot when it's not, you know, when something's changed either better or worse. Yep, yeah. And I kind of like to think about marketing in like three different categories. There's your brand awareness, company, visibility, your story, there's marketing's role to generate demand, and there's marketing's role to convert demand. And I think as marketers, we need to have a really good understanding of where we're strong in those categories and where we have opportunities for improvement, because your tactical approach, if you struggle with converting demand, should be different than if you struggle with generating demand. And I think we also know when we're talking about brand awareness and generating demand, those are longer term tactics, and they are more tend to be more expensive and take a longer time to execute on. And so I think we need to be considering all of that, and then also looking at your attribution model and just thinking through, does this make sense? Is this reporting in a way where we see it following the life cycle. And so what I mean by that is, I mean, you could talk to any marketer, and you'll probably have a different philosophy. But there's first touch attribution, there's last touch attribution. We are strong believers that there is no silver bullet, and so making sure that we're not short sighted, and saying, Oh, when I look at this data, if I look at last touch, touch attribution, it's x tactic, and then we're only going to focus on that, and you missed kind of that buyer's journey from the top of the funnel. And so making sure you're looking at all of that data that you have. And you know, if you aren't set up in a way where you're generating great data today, where you can use that to make information you know, use this as a time to reset and think about how you are collecting data and using it to help drive your decisions. And I think I'd add a fourth category to that test. Is that customer's role in customer retention, right? We've all seen the statistics about the cost of acquiring new customers versus retaining existing customers, and I think just making sure, especially, you know, I started my career as a salesperson, it was much easier to sell more to the people that knew me than it was to go out and convince somebody who didn't know me to buy something new, and so really looking for those opportunities of cross promoting and building those relationships and delivering on you know your promises so that you can retain the customers that you do have when you know budgets are tight and times are a little bit harder. So the great point. Yeah, yeah. And I also think it goes to what Ed and Tess you were talking about, is that each of those top 20 customers that you want to have on the list are in different phases of their life cycle, right? Somebody might need the brand awareness because they're not aware of your company. Somebody might already know who you are, but they need to know why your company is the one for them. Then there's the one that's like, I'm ready to convert and buy today. And then you have the current customer that's at least four different types of messages to four maybe different segments of companies that you have to have in order to be successful. And I think the other big thing, and I actually got a question as a as a direct message. And so I do want to bring this question to the table, because it is, it's a tough one that we're seeing a ton of right now, is the sales cycle is extending now, you know, maybe it was six months, maybe it was nine months. Now you're seeing 1218, months. How come then the expectations of marketing is that, hey, we might cut a budget, but there's also a need for the leads in the pipeline to be full within 30 days. And so, you know, the question is, kind of, how do you almost coach back to your internal team when they do say, Okay, we're running this campaign now. And Ed, you kind of alluded to it when you started with Leads. Leads. Leads is that that those can't be the expectations in a normal environment, but especially the environment that we're in today, and if we're cutting the marketing budget as well, yeah, the the thing I would say on is that it's critical that everybody within the company see the same problem set. So you should have a set of metrics within your organization that everybody, everybody buys off bound as these are the Indicative ones that we're using. Because frankly, every time someone creates a new PowerPoint and a different set of numbers, it's like, what the hell went into these numbers? Like it's that is what lends some lack of credibility to the justification for the decision needs to be a consistent set, and it doesn't need to be 100% accurate, like, as long as it's directionally, you know, in the indicative, it's good enough to then say, we're going to use this consistently, and guess what next year, switch it up or make another change or whatever. But everybody has to see the problem defined in the same way. And when I was talking about on a one sheet of paper, the way I've always have done this in the recent past, was we were trying to get a bigger organization that had gone from 100 people that 350, people in like, three years, we just put everything on a we called it an eight, three, basically, what's the situation? Five, whys? What are all the reasons why this is going on? And make sure everybody understands that. And then here's our action plan, not a plan to understand but a plan to do something about it. And if everyone's aligned around that, it makes it a whole lot easier to have collective credibility together when you're talking to a board that either needs to be educator or confident that you're moving in this in the same direction. I've been in board meetings where the bias was to do a certain set of actions, but because there was such a clear articulation of the rationale for open in a different direction, and everybody was saying the same thing was consistent. Like, it was like, Okay, let's, let's go this route. And, and I just can't that's in one sense, it sounds pretty basic, but it's at least if you're showing the same numbers week after week or month after month, there's less questioning of what is this showing us? Leah Tess, any thoughts on that? I think I've covered it really well. I see Go, go ahead. Leah, no, I was gonna say, I know you. You're familiar from your time working with that and those numbers and the importance of making sure that you were all on the same page and reporting that. So I think it's a good perspective. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's we get into this trap, right? Like, how many MQLs? But MQL means something different to the marketing leader than it does to the sales leader. Like that doesn't matter. And so I think a lot of what I took away from the exercise that I did with all of us is like that shared language and like getting to the bottom and spending the time at the beginning to say, this is how we're referring to it. This is our goal. This is how we're going to track. And then everything from there goes, you know, much smooth, much more smoothly. Okay, we are at the half hour mark. And so I want to call out that if you are here, we've got 40 plus individuals here. If you have any questions for Ed Leah or Tess, go. Ahead and pour them in, and we will answer them. I do want to go to arguably, you know, probably the hottest topic, if you will, is in the face of budget constraints, what are some of the strategies that marketing teams can do to achieve success? You know, we kind of said, How can companies maximize their current marketing efforts to still be able to contribute in the short term, but also keep that foundation for the long term. Leah, we talked a lot about this yesterday, so I might put you on the spot here, starting with that question kind of about, how can we still maximize our current spend, and then we can open it up to Tess and Ed, well, I mean, I think we've, we've hinted at this a little bit, but, you know, fundamentally, foundationally, the messaging, all of the strategy, work that needs to be done is done, and assuming that you've got the right message, targeted at the right person at the right time, I think it's really looking at how much time you have to invest in a in a particular strategy, and what that return on investment and the impact on the results is going to be, and trying to really find that balance of, you know, here's something that we can do that's efficient with our time and has the biggest impact of results. And so, like Ed was talking about the piece of paper, drawing that quadrant, and really looking at what's worked well in the past, you know what has has needed to be tweaked and optimized, and figuring out you know how to get how to get there with the least amount of spend or effort from your internal teams? Yeah. Ed Tess, any thoughts on that one, I think Aliyah said it, well, it's like a resource allocation exercise, and I think that that's going to be a different exercise depending on what the setup of your marketing and commercial function is. It's going to be a different approach if you have team members on your team that have capacity that could take on certain marketing tactics, but your paid spend has been cut, or vice versa. One of the things that I think really helps is looking at your channels and understanding which of those are owned channels and which of those are paid channels, and seeing what opportunity you have to do more with those channels that you own. So if you have a strong email database, can you think about doing more of a creative campaign? Because you don't have to pay LinkedIn to be able to deploy that, which, again, is going to depend on your budget and your team set up and all of that. But that's one area that I think can be helpful for people to dig into and really understand so that they can maximize the resources that they do have available to them. I would just kind of tell a little convey a little story, and Tess knows this, but February of 2020 we had done this great plan, and had spent several months on all the foundational messaging and framework for launching a brand, a new brand, and that was intended to convey like, what does clinically do? So we chose to launch this at scope, like I said, early February 2020, and everybody knows we had the pandemic that shut things down, like six weeks later, and so we were like, What the heck we had to then substantially pivot to say, how do we reprioritize some of these channels? But that this, that's also why I'm so convinced that this foundational effort is always has a place to be consistent over time, regardless of the yo yo effect of the current momentary dynamics, and that allowed us to very confidently say, Okay, we're going to pick one or two channels, experiment with them to figure out what the heck was going to work. Because nobody knew right? All of us were in a different situation, but because we had a very solid foundation for what we were doing, the degrees of differences as we tried different things were not attributable to like, gosh, we changed our message at the same time. Where we were it reduced, and said, Oh, we can now actually almost have, like, an experiment, like, hey, we tried this, we tried this, and things were changing dynamically. But I attribute our success in navigating that and the momentum that was generated out of that, because clinically, grew dramatically, I would say, at the upper tier of anybody's growth during that period of time, both top line and bottom line, because we had a foundational message that characterized what the company did well, and we could adjust it and target it. And we did have cut things. Obviously, we didn't do in person events, right, right? We were like, hey, try these. You. Which I'm I'm against, like, these stupid virtual meetings where we create little virtual booth or whatever we did that, but didn't work. I mean, it gives you some more freedom if you're confident in your foundational message. That's why I'm always, like, you always have to have some degree of foundational messaging, and that's, I include that in, like, the sales support and collateral that you're using with sales teams. I haven't figured out the best way of doing it, but, you know, marketing should get credit for, you know, all of the sales that are generated because they all are using sales collateral and messaging that has been created. But the only way I've really been able to do that is say, hey, there's a baseline, you know, X percent of sales that has to be devoted, and I've done it out of up at the sales budget, total budget, that a bottom line, x percent of the sale of commercial budget has to be at least this in marketing. Let me figure out how to, how to split that up well. And I think the point Ed about having a plan and having your metrics and knowing what you're driving towards, but then also recognizing and it doesn't take a global pandemic to pivot right. Like we say all the time, the plan is only as good as the day you wrote it down, if you're not checking in, if you're not measuring against your KPIs, if you're not optimizing along the way, or, you know, reevaluating because of what's, you know, market dynamics or other things that are happening, then, you know, what's the point? But you'd be surprised at how many people that we talk to that don't have a plan, that are just focusing on tactics and are just kind of shotgunning it all out there, and when it comes time to reevaluate, they don't really know where to start or what to do, because it's all been just focused on, let's, you know, do some digital tactics, run some Google ads and see what we get. Yeah, and I think that that alignment around the brand and the foundation and that message is really what enabled us to make decisions quickly and move faster than other companies at the same time where, you know, Ed was dealing with everything that a CEO was dealing with during COVID, and had every single department head fighting for his time, I knew that the company was aligned on what that brand and what that Foundation was, so we were able to move super quickly because of that. And sometimes that speed is just as important as anything else. And then I think, as a marketer, you know, this conversation is a little like, oh, the market's not good right now, and you know all of that, but that was one of the most fun times in my career, because it was like, no one's done this before. We're gonna do an experiment. We're gonna make bets where we think we're gonna be able to succeed. We're gonna figure out if that worked or not, and do the same thing again. And so I think you know, for all of us, thinking through this like this is an opportunity for us in this time to think of those out of the box. Wow, ideas. Try something different. There were lots of channels that we tried during COVID that we ended up continuing after, because they were very successful. And I don't know when we would have tried those if we had followed that kind of a natural plan. Yeah. I mean this, this idea that this concept of like, a consistent baseline investment in your foundational market marketing capabilities. I don't know why it's it seems like it should be so on and off. We don't do that in our financial lives. I guarantee that almost every single one of you does what's called dollar cost averaging in your 401, K. You put the same amount into your 401, K every single month, regardless of what's going on. And you essentially that's a term called dollar cost averaging. It basically says you're consistently doing it whether things are going up or down. And that's the same mentality that I believe should exist in supporting a baseline level of foundational marketing effort. And then you start enumerating specific tactics that you're doing. And I will say this, one of the difficult things is, you know, marketing exists in the world of broad external kind of relationships and activities. What is everyone else doing? And to the extent that some companies, I would say, sometimes engage in some arguably frivolous activities that are maybe harder for an external person to deduce, what's the linkage to this, like it makes everybody else is marketing a little bit harder. So don't be the company that's peeing in the pool by doing something stupid. Like, so you're creating your own problem for your colleagues. But, like, but what the point of that is that the specific initiatives that you're doing have to have a real clear tie to, you know, um. A commercial objective, and, you know, some either a customer segment or a product focus that you've got these times, times like this are not the time to be, you know, launching just general like feel good, random videos about whatever I know. Mentioned things that I think are well and and I think that's that's a fantastic point, and it kind of bounces off Tess point of being able to try some new things and new channels. But for me, one of the things that I hear and I see is that marketing is kind of viewed as that, oh, it's it's cute and it's clever, and it's an expense, whereas, you know what the three of you are really honing in on right now is that it's an investment in the business. It's an investment into the sales team, because it's going to make the lives of sales team team members a lot easier. But one of the things that we hear all the time when times are tough is, do we really need marketing, or can we hire another BD rep, or can we hire, you know, a sales director, even if the messaging and the foundation isn't on point, and so maybe not so much a question, but thoughts on that opportunity of, Okay, we can either invest in marketing or we can invest in another BD, rep and kind of the thought process and strategy there. Well, I think you kind of said it at the beginning, Alec, right marketing owns or, you know, founders care about the story that's being told about their company and revenue as a personal opinion, I fundamentally disagree with marketing laddering up directly to sales like a sales functional leader, because I see that as a short sighted decision that will ultimately come back to bite you, because marketing does have to manage both of those components, and there should be portions of your marketing that's specifically focused on pipeline, on converting demand, and that is likely going to be more of your focus in an economic climate like we have today. But the same with brand awareness, with your story. It's the same thing about some of these tactics that we talked about, that you can't just turn on and it happens overnight, and so when you get to a place where you're looking to scale an organization which, if we think about our industry and most companies being private equity backed, that is an expectation for everyone, and without the ability to tell an effective story, have an effective foundation and be able to grow your market and your market share, you won't be able to scale to hit those goals, and you have to have both of them focus as short term and long term, and without a marketing department, you're not going to be doing that. You're only going to be focused on closing the next sale. And that may work at a certain scale. In my opinion, it will not work to effectively scale to the future. I wrestle with this. Let's hear it, and that's why we're here. Yeah, conversation, yeah. We didn't talk about this part before, but like, you know, at and this comes down to kind of a point in time for companies, larger companies, yeah, they can support that separate when you're a smaller company, 10 million trying to get to 50, or, you know, even 50 trying to get to 100 there's A, there's a crossover in there where marketing is is self sufficient? Do you need a capable, competent marketing, you know, leader, yes, at every stage the direct reporting relationship, I've typically managed that through commercial organization to say the results now you that puts the onus on a commercial leader who is not just a myopic, focused body guy, body shop guy or girl that is like, Okay, we just, We just hire more BD reps, and I've seen that. I actually have seen that much less, much less of an emphasis on, we need more bodies, at least. And I don't know if that's just the way clinical link has been, because that's where I've been the last 13 years. And it was my personality to just say, hey, just because you have more people doesn't mean you need more. You need set, you need to arm these, these people, with the right capabilities in the first place. So this is like you can be anywhere on the pendulum. But what's what's needed is a as a strong marketing leader to a. On this is who has a good relationship with the Chief Commercial Officer, head of sales, to say, this is how we're supporting where you're targeting. If you're doing marketing initiatives that are targeting somewhere else, like, forget it, and then the sales team is targeting somewhere else. Like, that's that's obviously a waste. But that's also why, when you're smaller, I've always had it together. Yeah, I think, as a marketing person, you can't, you don't have any saying really. I mean, there's very few of you that can really influence, like, I'm going to report to so and so I want to report so it's like a losing battle anyway. Like, deal with, focus on what you can control, which is the substance of your content, and the relationship with that, those initiatives and the core foundation to your, you know, sales strategy, in terms of how you're aligning the reps, like, Okay, we've got X number of BD reps, targeting, CROs, X Number of targeting, biotechs, targeting, you know, pharma, what's the relative proportion of quotas that's assigned across there? You could at least draw an analogy or a draw a link to say, Okay, what's, how does our marketing spend align proportionally along those? Or be intentional, and says we are going to intentionally misalign it so that we can drive higher growth to get penetration into a new one. But we're doing that intentionally, with the knowledge of the sales team and where we're going to be focused. I was just going to echo ed that I think, you know, from my perspective too, having been at large organizations and then smaller organizations, to me, the alignment isn't so much of who reports to who, as it is about sort of the understanding and building the relationship and the respect that that exists between the two different disciplines. And that, you know, without marketing, sales is a lot harder. And without sales, marketing is not really being able to demonstrate any sort of ROI so that, you know, education and building that bridge and making sure that you've got that strong connection, either through, you know, the commercialization team, or through your counterparts within sales. But I mean, I've worked at an organization where, you know, the two functions were completely separate, rarely spoke to each other, and weren't successful either way. So I think, you know, making sure that there's that understanding and the fundamental respect between, you know, the groups and not the finger pointing that sometimes happens, especially when times get tough, right? It looks like marketing is not bringing in enough leads, the BD team's not closing what we are bringing them, and so making sure that you've got that relationship there, and an understanding that you're on the same team, essentially at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, this is a little bit like off, but it was just a thought that came in as I was thinking about, like, different ways of organizing, but like, one thing I think would be helpful is for marketers at different companies to reach out to each other, like and have some relationships across other companies, and that gives you some insights into what's going on, like, it doesn't there's a lot that's competitive, but there's also a lot that's just, you know, General Dynamics that you're experiencing. And I would share that like the the number one competitor for clinical Inc, their head of marketing and I kind of loosely known each other for years. And so when at the beginning of this year he reached out, like, Hey, we're getting a lot of pressure about, like, what's the right level of marketing spend? How are you guys handling that conversation, and what percentage are you doing? How are you positioning it. So I said, like, I want, like, this is an industry. I want them to be like, their competitive, like me, telling them how we're dealing with it, generally, in terms of working with our board, was not giving away, like state secrets, but kind of brainstorming a little bit. And they were similar to us, but you know, we're competitors, but, like, there's also this relate, that we're dealing with some of the same dynamics. Because we we sell into the same customers, the same market dynamics affect us. That's not a bad thing at all. Yeah. Yeah. I would echo that completely. The that building that network and sharing the best practices and, you know, obstacle handling, I think is, is really valuable, yeah, okay, I've got a question here that's that's talking about, it's June 21 all of a sudden, and people are talking about, you know, rest of the year, you still have goals and expectations for 2023 but if you shift, and you were to turn off marketing today, or cut marketing today, knowing the sales cycle, realistically, you're hurting sales in 2024 and so kind of considering the current landscape, what are some of those things, either initiatives like we've talked about with the brand, or, again, talking about. How we can manage up into a board, into private equity, whatever that looks like. About how marketing right now in 2023 is actually setting us up for success in 2024 and really aligning with the long term vision of an organization, it's a heavy one, and add you look ready to jump in though? No, I was just thinking because, quite frankly, there is some argument that, if you're an EBIT dog crunched or cash crunched company, to say, Yeah, we're going to take this out right now, and it's an argument that has to be based on a little bit of faith or some expectation that says, Okay, how quickly can we build momentum back? Which is why I've always been a believer in it. So it's better to target like initiatives, like rifle shot initiatives, than the foundational basis of marketing in the first place. And so that may mean, gosh, we're not going to go to a couple of events. But unfortunately, what that means is, I with events, you often pay for them already. And so what I would say on that is that sometimes you can do some accounting tricks around, like, you know how you're attributing into which year based on when you're spending or if you're deferring it about where you're recognizing expenses. That only works if you're an already profitable company, and that's one of the things you're looking at. If it's cash, you can't going to another event, is like irrelevant, because you already sent the cash you should go to the event. And so just understand, is this a cash issue, or is this an EBITDA maximization optimization issue before you decide to start, you know, shutting off initiatives. But anything that shuts off a long term investment is like, you know, you're, you're trying to rebuild momentum. And it's like, just to use another financial analogy, and investing, it's really, really hard to time a market to say, Okay, we're going to invest because we think it's going to June is going to be up five and a half percent, which is, that's what I looked at. The financial markets were up, but that's after and we thought, oh gosh, it's it's challenging. And so timing things, you're already behind it if you're trying to time something. So you need to consistently have this core, baseline, foundational investment, so that you're ready with a strict, consistent, strong messaging wind up to kind of starts floating things up, otherwise you're like, behind the eight ball, and you can all, I, and that's why, like, you can turn off initiatives easier than your core. You wanted me to say that, but that is true. No, yeah, it is true. And I think if you're in that situation, it becomes like, what can you do to set yourself up for success in the future? And you know, maybe all of your paid sign gets cut, but your company is able to keep the resources that you have in the department today, like, what can you be doing now to help that ramp up period when you're able to turn it back on be faster? And so I think a lot of this is about the mindset that you approach it with, because in all reality, you know if this is going to happen, it's going to happen. If your budget is going to get cut, it's going to get cut. So I think it becomes, what can I do now as a contributor to this organization to best set us up for success when I do get that spend back? And I think that you see that those people that can really dig deep and and take a positive approach during some of these times, really come out successful on the other side of data that you've got already with your existing customers and what's going on, if you partner with a couple of the BD guys to really understand what's going on, you're you're going to be in a much stronger position. I'm always there's just so much data and existing customer relationships and contracts that I think we under estimate the value that's hidden in there in terms of the insights that can be derived. And that's actually a low cost, very cheap way to understand and create plans other initiatives that will give you a running start when you need to kind of say, Hey, we're going to pause an initiative or cut it off and then start it up. If you have an even more solid, foundational understanding of what's going on already with your existing or recent customer, wins well. And I think the other. Thing going back to Tess your point about being able to shut some things off, it goes back to that budget planning in the first place. You know, you talk a lot about 70% of your budget is, you know, on things that you absolutely know, and then maybe that 30% is, hey, we're going to try something new. We're going to try something a little bit different, or we're going to do a paid campaign for the first time, or we're going to do an ABM campaign. Okay, now when that budget is cut, let's look at that 30% and see what we can cut first, and then you kind of work your way back into that larger 70% as well. Okay, we have two minutes left. Ed, I did not prepare you for this, because I wanted to put everybody on the spot at the end of all of our LinkedIn lives, I asked for 30 seconds. I'm going to get the timer out. We're going to do 30 seconds each on your final thoughts. If there's one takeaway from today's conversation that you think people should have, we're going to cut it up. We're going to make it look really pretty on LinkedIn. It's going to be great. We're going to go Tess, and then we'll go ed, and then we'll go Leah. So Tess, I'm putting you on the spot first. You have 30 seconds. Whenever you're ready, I will hit start, I would say, to focus on controlling what you can control, and looking at the resources that you have available to you and thinking outside of the box. I think that marketing is supposed to be a creative function, and sometimes in this industry, we, I think, hold ourselves back from unique and different approaches by nature of what it is that we're selling. But I think if we shift our mindset and use the resources we have available to us, you can come out of this stronger than you were before. Excellent. You went. You went six seconds over, but I was really, I was really enjoying it. While you went, I just want to call out Stephanie Swanson commented, talking about Ed's analogy, analogy of viewing your marketing investment as a 401, K dollar cost averaging mentions, it's so important to stay consistent, even through an economic downturn. So appreciate Stephanie. You watching and Ed for that comment, but now, Ed, you are on the clock 30 seconds whenever you're ready. Okay, the most important thing is to clearly separate between foundational initiatives and foundational efforts and initiatives. And there is a place always for foundational work. Those initiatives have to have a very clear linkage to product capabilities and commercial strategic objectives. If you can't draw that link solidly between those three things, you know, the marketing initiative, the product capabilities and commercial initiative or strategy, you are at a loss, and you're going to be fighting uphill. And so that linkage is, is critical, awesome. Also only six seconds over. Usually when we do this for like 25 seconds over. So Tess and Ed, we're on we're on fire. Leah, final thoughts here. Yeah, I might be able to save us a bunch of time. I mean, I wholeheartedly agree with what both Tess and Ed Said, as far as you know, making sure you've got the foundation, making sure that you're strategically aligning your initiatives to the to, you know, goals and and measurables, and reporting on those, and not being afraid to say something isn't working, and bringing that forward and pivoting to something else. I think sometimes we set goals and we want to achieve them, but there's no harm in saying, you know, this isn't working. How are we going to change it? And, you know, rolling up your sleeves again and getting creative. We say a lot at SCORR that, you know, we like working with the size of clients where, you know, we have to be pragmatic and scrappy with the budget and and really make sure that what we're putting forward is aligning with how we can support our clients, and so, you know, view it as an opportunity. And again, educate as much as you can evangelize internally on that importance of the foundation. And I agree. I think the 401 K analogy is perfect. There are times in recent history where I haven't looked because I joked that my 401 K was my 201 K. But I just kept investing because, you know, time is on our side. And while things are tough, and especially in the biotech market right now, you know, we know that long range this, this industry is solid, and you know, we'll bounce back. And I think making sure that you have the eye on the future with, you know, doing as much of that foundational work consistently as you can is important. You You don't want to know what I stopped my timer at. But I think that was a fantastic end to this. And I think my only you know, my major takeaway is, is going back to Ed on the community part. You. You are not alone. You know, if you think that, you know, the world is crashing in on me and my marketing department or my sales department, this is happening across the industry, and so whether that's, you know, within your network, if that's reaching out to an organization like SCORR, all of the above, this is something that a lot of different teams and a lot of different individuals are dealing with and there is a pathway through So Ed, really appreciate you taking some time out of your day to join us. Of course, Tess and Leah, the same goes for you. If anybody who is watching this has any questions for any of these three panelists, just feel free to send them directly into the chat or send them to me as a direct message, and I will make sure that we get some answers for you. So thank you guys, and have a great rest of your your Wednesday, yeah, thank you appreciate it. As always, thank you for tuning in to this episode of The SCORRcast, brought to you by SCORR marketing. We appreciate your time and hope you found this discussion insightful. Don't forget to subscribe and join us for our next episode. Until then, remember, marketing is supposed to be fun.