Influence | How Branding, Storytelling, & Positioning Shape Market Success

Discover how branding, storytelling, and positioning can set your business apart with Addison Gumbert on The SCORRCAST. Learn how to craft a compelling brand narrative, connect with your audience, and build lasting market influence. Explore strategies for differentiation, trust-building, and creating a strong brand presence that drives success in a competitive landscape.

Transcript

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Music. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The SCORR cast. I am really excited for today's episode, because I've got a feeling that there are going to be a couple of hot takes that come out from this 30 or 40 minutes with Addison our guest today. And I'm only saying that because I've prompted Addison with that request to have a couple of hot takes specifically around branding and value proposition and really what we're referring to lately as this sea of sameness. And I'm also really excited for this conversation, because Addison and I connected about six months ago on LinkedIn with the intention of just touching base and having a 30 minute meet and greet. And I think we each canceled a couple of times. And then fast forward, four and a half months later, we finally met about a month and a half ago, and instantly it was like, hey, we need to hop on the podcast, and we need to talk all things marketing, branding, value proposition, development and and sticking out in a really crowded market. So before I start running, and I already am, I'm really excited about this episode of The SCORR cast, because it's also, we're also in the 50s now. So Addison, you should feel, I don't know if honored is the right word, but you know, we are in Episode 5051, 52 recording this week, which is so awesome for the SCORR cast and for everybody listening, and for all of our guests, but for the people who don't know you, Addison, would you mind just giving us your introduction, your background, and then, you know, maybe something that you're really passionate about, excited to talk through today, and then we'll be off and running? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Alec Addison gumbert, I am the owner of Premier clinical marketing and I'm ultimately a marketing strategist for small to medium sized businesses. So if you're in a startup phase, or, you know, making, you know, maybe less than ten million a year, I'm typically working with you to create cohesive brand messaging. We do competitor analysis, market analysis, and then ultimately create a customized strategy that fits your organization specifically. So a lot of the steps are the same across every organization, but they're tailored directly to whatever your needs are. So I've worked with sites, technology vendors here in the clinical research space, but admittedly, I've been in marketing for 10 to 15 years, so I've been been in a lot of different industries, like Home Improvement, things like that. So relatively new to the clinical research industry, being here maybe three years now, but I've learned a lot, and definitely see the need for these types of conversations. So I'm excited to have it today. I love it, and you already hit on something that I want to jump right into which is, I'm an outsider in the industry. You're an outsider in the industry. And what I mean by that is, we weren't born in it. We didn't start our careers in it. And within the last three to five years you come in, you mentioned home improvement. I was on a smaller B to B, like local B to B, clients. I did B to C, I did non profit. And then you come into this industry before we even get into the marketing. I'm curious, why have you stayed in this industry? What? What do you enjoy so much about this? Is it because you see so much opportunity from a from a marketing, branding, messaging, storytelling perspective? Is it the industry itself, the people, what? What drives you to stay within this space specifically? Yeah, so I have a, I am a women's health statistic. Okay, so my big passion in getting into clinical research is to support women's health. Now, I've worked with sites that do multi therapeutic so not necessarily totally cornered into that one therapeutic area. But you know, it took me eight years to get diagnosed with endometriosis, you know, and lots of doctors in the meantime. And so I have participated in clinical trials before, before I was in the industry, and I'm a big anatomy and kinesiology nerd, so I used to go in and read research papers from the NIH like, you know, just, just for fun. And so once I actually got into the industry, I could see, you know, kind of the inner workings of of how it all works, and worked with some really powerful people, and as well as some great therapeutic areas where I've seen huge benefits come out of it, Women's Health being one of them, a bunch of pediatric stuff as well. And so what fuels me to stay and keep going is, especially from a marketing perspective, being able to. To be that megaphone for people who are truly looking for new solutions. You know, there are people who do clinical research trials regularly, like they're they love contributing to that advancement and being involved. And then there are also people from a therapeutic and condition standpoint that truly, truly need other options. And when I've seen the impact that these trials have had on some of these different populations, it's, you know, whether they're lacking access or financials or just true resources, you know, they've tried everything that's already on the market. That's kind of where that's that warm, fuzzy feeling, and my why, of why I've stayed in it, and the fact that I can apply my skills to help amplify all of that is a bonus. You know, I love that answer. Addison, you have me fired up, you know, five minutes into the podcast, but it's interesting, especially on the marketing and sales side, hearing the stories of whether it was personal experience, or there was a moment at a trade show or a client that you worked with, and you're like, Yep, I'm not, I'm not going to leave. And I say all the time that, you know, 10 years ago, if you told me that I was just hyped up to understand the latest FDA guidelines in clinical research and how then market against that or with that, I would have told you you are out of your mind and and now going on four years here at SCORR, it's like, I don't want to, I don't want to leave this industry. I don't, I couldn't imagine marketing anything else, you know, the fulfillment in terms of the stories that we get to talk about. I i feel like almost every episode I mentioned, you know, Project outrun, or the Oliver patch project, and just kind of the work that they do, and you have one meeting with them, and you're like, Okay, I can never leave. I am just like, tied in. I'm ready to run through a brick wall that podcast you recorded with Brian and Andy from those two organizations. I was crying on the podcast. I was like, if I'm doing that, like, that's, you know, and I get to be a nerd about marketing, so it's like, I get to tie in these different things. I I'm completely sold. So it's so cool to kind of hear your background, and what's led you to really stay engaged and curious within this space, too. Yeah, absolutely, it's been. It's been unlike any other industry. I'll tell you that it's definitely got its quirks, and it was a steep learning curve at the beginning, but here we are, and, you know, feels good and ready to keep running with it. So yeah, well, I also love just kind of the concept that the industry needs marketing and you know, I I make this bad analogy or joke. I don't know if it's just a cry for help sometimes, but I always reference that if marketing itself rebranded to revenue marketing or to revenue support, that there would be a lot more investment in in in marketing in general, and especially when it comes to branding, because branding does not turn on a brand switch tomorrow. Lead comes in. Roi equals. Here it is, who you are, it's it's the whole thing. And yet branding is so often overlooked and so I promised I would ask at least one bad podcast host question, and this is one of them. I might ask another. Let's go. What do you see as the hurdles for branding? Like, is there something that you notice that you're like, hey, here's maybe why branding is not widely accepted or it hasn't been needed. What? What's your thought just around the presence of branding in our in our industry right now? Sure, I have kind of two approaches to this. One being that a lot of people assume branding is logo colors, you know, products type of thing, like, really high level, you know, we use these fonts, we use this and all of that is true, like, all of that is part of branding, but, and we'll talk about this more, I'm sure. But like, you miss your your messaging, like, Do you know who you're talking to? Do you know why you're talking to them? Do they know why you're talking to you? What kind of voice are you using? And I think that's something that gets missed a lot, like, how, what kind of words do you use, and how do people understand them, right? And especially when we're in such a competitive industry where a lot of our tools are the same, or, you know, there's not a whole lot of differentiation between them, how you talk to people and how you make them feel when they're reading through what whatever you're presenting is often going to be your differentiator, right? Like, if it's one against the other, like taking two sales people, you they could tell you the same exact thing, but you might resonate more with one than the other, because it's their personality. And so I think. Like from a brand perspective, personality is missing when it comes to branding a little bit, and the other one is gone. But I'll, we'll, I'm sure it'll pop back up, and I'm sure we will come back to it. But I think one of the things that you said that is so important is kind of this story that we're telling, what? Are the words that we are utilizing to talk to our potential clients? And I think what is often overlooked is that the brand is who you are every day. That is your internal language. It's your external language. If somebody comes to Alec and says, Alec, talk to me about SCORR, how I answer is our brand. Now, if somebody went and asked one of our clients, hey, talk to us about SCORR, how they answer is the brand. And so you have to have this well established Foundation, because if I say something and then a potential client says something differently, and then our media team says something differently, and so on and so forth. There's just going to be confusion and and in our industry, with how much competition there is, if there's any confusion at all, you're, you're shit out of luck, right? Like, yeah, you are. You are out there are too many competitors doing the exact same thing, or pretty damn near the same thing as you. I think that you make a really good point that the brand is is not just the logo, it's not just like a tagline, it's all of these things. And now I think the challenge is convincing people that that the brand can provide ROI. And so this isn't a bad podcast host question, but it's a tough one. Somebody asked you. Addison, you know we're interested in the rebrand. We know we need to evolve our messaging, but how do we measure it? How can we say that a brand is successful? How can we say that it's doing what it's supposed to be doing? What are your thoughts when you start to approach brand and a successful outcome from that process. Yeah, actually, this takes me back to the piece I forgot I love. So, so I think another reason that branding isn't as isn't as popular or prioritized is exactly why you just said people don't think it's linked directly to an ROI right. You're doing lead generation campaigns or some sort of thought leadership or posting on LinkedIn, you can immediately see the engagement that comes from that right. Like, how many views did you get? How many engagements did you have? All of those types of things. And so people think branding, you could just skip that whole step and go straight there, but you haven't established any trust, right? And so I think trust is a big component of of sales. And be you know, people want to buy what they trust, yup, right? So if you can't establish trust early on, and you're constantly changing your language, they don't know what you're talking about. They don't know exactly what you're selling. Like, I've seen it very common that a lot of vendors, sorry, vendors, I have things to say today, but I promise it's fine. They change their messaging far too quickly, right? And it'll be like, okay, full rebrand, and we're going to talk about things completely differently, and then six months down the road, it's not really working, and so they're going to try to re scrap it and do it all over the people don't understand who you are or what you're doing if you don't stay consistent. And so can you tie a hard ROI to branding? Probably not, but does it set the stage for every other initiative that you're going to launch absolutely like it is the foundation in which all of your channels should be sprouting from. And you know? So you can say, you know, sure, it's not lead generation directly tied to ROI, but if people don't know who they who you are, and you're not going to be top of mind, they're not going to think about you to perform your services or to buy your product. And you know, it's, it's kind of that first step in, into establishing trust. Yeah, I I love, I love all of it. And I talk all the time about in order for someone to buy from you, they have to first know you, and then they have to like you, and then they have to trust you. And I resent and if they don't know you, they cannot ever trust you. And the brand is an unbelievable way to to allow them to know you, and then also to get to know and like you from a personality standpoint. Yeah, you stand for. What is your position in the marketplace? And if they don't know you, you're not going to be in that consideration. Set the top three, top five, when it becomes time to to make a buying decision, or to go to RFP, or whatever that process looks like. Yeah. The other thing in this industry is that the damn Sam sales cycles are so long that we're talking about, you know. Some kinds that we have, you know, okay, four or five months, a lot of our 912, 18 months and year and a half, yeah, you look at it right, how many people in the market right now are actually able to sign a contract tomorrow? 3% Yeah, if that right. And so then, when you look at it, most of our marketing is not lead generation. It's going to be based on the other 97% which is when they are ready. I want them to call us, and I say all the time, you can hire five sales people, but if no one knows who your your brand is, they're going to be picking up the phone. They're gonna be doing outreach, and no one is going to answer and and they're not going to engage with you. And so I love all of that, and then I do have to go on one other tangent, and then tangent is going to lead to a question, I promise. But I sent you a video that I had recorded this weekend on LinkedIn that was talking about there's a big difference between having the attention and keeping it and kind of to your point about, okay, you've got different tactics, and you've got messaging, and you've got sales people, and you're doing all these things. That's secondary, because if you have the attention and it's the wrong message, it's the worst case scenario I hear it all the time, well, we tried this and it doesn't work for us, but we tried this and it doesn't work for us. Well, we tried this and it doesn't work for us. And it's like, well, what, what position were we owning in the marketplace there? And the answers are like, we just sent them to a landing page. Well, we just sent it to our homepage, or we just used our brand logo. And, you know, learn more, and it's like, well, there's our problem. Yeah, somebody engage with that? Would you engage with that? And so the question here kind of goes to, when you think about branding, and you talk about the message and the look and feel, how much do you think about, like, the actual position of a company in the marketplace. Like, what positioning do they own, their their stance on things, and then that actual, like, what makes us different than just choosing company, a, company B, Company C. How do you think about positioning within all of this and position within the marketplace? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting market to be a part of. Because, again, disclaimer, most people, we talk about sameness, right? Most people believe that they have, like, the best product, and they know all the secret sauce, right? Like, oh, we're not like them. We have the secret sauce, you know, like, proprietary information. The more I talk to people, the less proprietary information I find is actually out there. Yeah. Um, so when it comes to, like, straight messaging, your products are the same. Um, there might be a little bit of user interface here for a tech company that's different, or there might be a little bit of a different demographic for this site, but for the most part, it's the same. And so when it comes to like, that differentiation, I think it's really, there's it's kind of, I don't know it could go both ways. So it's really important to have you know your competitors, and see what it is that they're doing, how they're positioning themselves, and then the differentiation is on top of that. So there's a fine line between, this is how the industry understands and talks about things, right, versus here's what makes us competitively different. And I think I have a couple of examples from I would love to hear examples external industry stuff about marketing and positioning and and, you know, it's not always about the product, right? So one is think about, so there was a study done about Wawa. You know, Wawa, the like convenience store gas station in the East Coast, yeah. So their normal gas station, they've got rest stops on the side of the highway, like every other gas station, but they decided, maybe in the 90s, early 2000s that they were going to tout cleanest bathroom in the Northeast. Okay, that has nothing to do with their product, but it's a differentiation, right? And so like everyone knows that, it's a gas station convenience store, whatever. And they didn't even go about product differentiation. They went full, you know, random thing that you're gonna remember, right? Um, same with, like, buckies. I love this, yeah, like, they, they're a gas station convenience store, barbecue joint, like completely things that you would never put in the same bucket, but they did it, and they've got strong branding with that beaver. They don't even have a sign anymore. It's just the image of Bucky, right? Yeah? Um, so. And if you look at like Southwest Airlines, they're no longer offering free bags, but. It. That was how they got their foot in the door, right? So a lot of times when you see differentiation, it's either like quality of a product, price point or or not. I can't remember what the other one is. I think the Bucha is, is the perfect example of the like. I think so much of this is how you demonstrate that in the market, and you're right, there are so many that are just doing the same thing. So I say all the time is there's so much telling, hey, we do this, we do that, we do that, and there needs to be more show and demonstration of this. But I think one of the examples that you were referencing there kind of brings me up to, I don't remember what book it is, but they're talking about how brand architecture in terms of, like, if you are a hero, or if you're an every man, or if you're the the jester, like this is who you need to be consistently. And that's not something that, you know. I'm not a huge believer in, like, the archetype anymore, but the book goes through this whole section about Nike, where, in Yeah, in the late 90s, Nike starts to fail out of nowhere, and they fired basically their entire marketing team. Brought in an outsourced agency to come in and review everything. And at that time, Nike had just had Air Jordan, like everything is coming. And when they went through this entire review process, they found that Nike was just trying to be too much to everybody, and they were trying to play in all these spaces. And in the book, I'll have to put an asterisk on this break. You can you can bleep this, but in the book, and Nike shouldn't fucking sell a Snuggie. It's just like we are the hero, be the hero. And I think what happens a lot of times in this space is you, you might have a strategic positioning of being a little different or being a little bit bold or being weird, and because the industry is naturally conservative, we take a step back from that, and so we go close to the line, and then actually we end up at data driven insights. We go close to the line, and then we come back, and you have kind of these, this playbook that results in the sea of sameness, which is everybody basically saying the same thing, which means as a as a CEO, as a Chief Commercial Officer, you're now competing a lot of times on friendships like your network going to be how you have to win every contract, and that shouldn't be the case. Marketing and Sales can do more of that for you, and I don't want you to have to compete on just flat out, do I know that person from a gas company? Do I know that person? Or do I not? You know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think there's more. I think there's more that can be dug up. Obviously, within clinical research, we've got more legislation, we've got the IRBs, we've got things like that that we're required to to go through. So it limits a little bit more of that innovation. I would say, you know, like opportunities that we could potentially have to create a new message or have an entirely new position are usually not angles that are totally compliant. Sometimes right, like we can't make certain promises, even if we could prove it, right? So, but, yeah, I think, I think it's, it's, it's a, definitely a balance. We have to walk a tight rope line for it, with it right now. So, yeah, so talk to me a little bit about we've just created a kick ass message. How do we, how do we articulate this? Like, what's your, you know, you talked about in your intro, kind of like, okay, so essentially, you're the marketing strategist. How do we go from we just created this great brand to making sure that it's the right message, right audience, right channel, right time. What do you think about in terms of now distributing and putting that message out there to the target audience? What comes to mind? First, who are you talking to, and where do they spend all their time? So the two pieces I was like, You can't talk to. Just keep going. Just keep going on those two thoughts, just pull that thread. Keep going. You should not theoretically, okay? In theory, you should not be talking to a CEO of a site the same way that you're talking to a CRC. The mentality behind each of those roles is entirely different. The CEOs priorities, their priorities are different, right? The CRC wants to be able to get their work done. They don't want to get tied up and add up in admin work. They want to see patients, you know, they want to work through those steps CEOs care about resource allocation and the ROI that it's going to bring them and, you know, their cost savings and all of those types of things. And so I. Trying to talk to and generalization, of course, but like trying to talk to a CRC about how this is going to change the company's like, working capital budget and, like, establish an ROI, they probably don't really care about that. They want to know if it's going to make their job easier. CEO doesn't necessarily care if it's going to make their job easier. He wants to know how financially or resource wise it's going to fit into the company, right? So that's kind of the first step. Is like, Who are you talking to? You also wouldn't talk to a CEO the way, same way you talk to a patient, or, like a PI to a patient, when we're using these big therapeutic area words, you know, even things like orthopedics, like, if people aren't really familiar in the healthcare industry, those are still really big words that they might not understand unless they've had to deal with the condition like that themselves. So who are you talking to? Right? And then the second part is, where do they spend their time? So if you're looking for CEOs, LinkedIn is probably going to be one of your better social channels to go through, or, you know, even phone calls. I feel like people have all resorted to email. Some people don't pick up the phone and call anymore. Old School tip turned back around to a new school tip, obviously email as well, but less effective as email campaigns have become so much more popular, and we're all getting spammed about everything all the time. It's hard to differentiate what's important. It's not sometimes or like patients. You know, if you're looking for an older demographic of patient, maybe they use Facebook. They're probably not very technology friendly. So like, where do they get their news? Are they watching the Morning News? Are they reading the newspaper? Do they have a senior article or, like, subscription of something they subscribe to, where they get paper news, right? Um, versus trying to recruit a Gen Z person, Tiktok or Instagram is probably your best option, right? And so it's really determining who are you trying to talk to, what are they going to understand? And then how do you reach them? Like, what? What is your biggest likelihood of where they spend their time? And then sometimes that's in office, like, if you're talking to patients, sometimes that's in the physician office, and that's where your marketing should be. So yeah, the long winded answer, but keep going. Especially, you know, of all the industries that I've done marketing in, this is the one that has the most complex buying behaviors. And for sure, it might be six or seven people you're gonna have the CEO, like you said, the CRC, the CFO, Chief Technology, like the chief scientific officer, you could have 4567, individuals that are relevant to this process, while some are influencers, some are decision makers. Some you just need to make sure aren't mad at you. How do we communicate to all of them and where is completely different. And so like that hits the nail on the head for me, because if you don't know who you're talking to and what role they play in the buyer's journey, again, it's it's almost irrelevant. And and that's where to go on another soapbox, like the relationship between sales and marketing in this industry, which I think is, is is a huge pain point for a lot of companies, has to continue to improve, because sales and marketing need to be in constant communication. Hey, I'm actually talking to this level of a person. How can we tailor it a little bit differently? I'm actually presenting to this individual, and they're only worried about X, Y and Z, and so let's, let's make sure we have content for that specific role. Because if you don't have that right, and you're just doing the main brand messaging, the main overall messaging to everybody, you're going to miss out on a lot of understanding of your value proposition and how it can actually be applied inside their organization. Absolutely, you have to relate it to that decision maker or that champion or whatever, right? If they don't, if they don't think it's relevant to them, because it's not language that they have trained themselves to look for, right? Like these roles, you've kind of been trained or trained yourself like what the priorities are. So if you don't hit that, it's gone like there's not even you. If a CEO says ROI, maybe they'll pause for that extra second. All of a sudden, there's a recognition there. And I think to go back to your point about sales and marketing. I know people have varying perspectives on it. I know you and I think pretty similarly, but from from my perspective, processes work best. Marketing works best with sales when, like, sales, marketing, product and customer success are all kind of aligned, right? So I've worked in organizations where they're like, Oh, you're just marketing like, you don't need to know those things. And I understand now that this. The perspective of a lot of people, where it's like, no, no, you just do your little social media thing and you know, or make us an email. It's like, I, I can you want me to step in and make you some social media graphics, sure, but just making them on a whim, that's not going to do anything for you. And if you know, we can put as much stuff out there as we want for marketing, but if we're not making sales, or if it's not bringing more leads into the pipeline, and those leads aren't closing, even though there's a much longer runway for it, what we need to be talking to sales Right? Like, what is the issue? Why aren't these people closing? What are they confused about that might be inhibiting them from considering us as a as a product or a service or a vendor, and so I think that's a huge piece and customer success too. Like, especially with tech vendors, who I work with a lot, so no shade is just the engineering brains are a little bit different. And so they they're highly product focused, right? Like, they want this to be the best of the best of the best. And they're good at they're great at their jobs, and they're great at doing that, but not necessarily explaining it in a way that's tangible for for the user, right? And so they don't, they sometimes have issues seeing the full picture of okay, features should be informed by customer feedback, right? Or like, or what the market is saying, like, what the people in the industry are saying that they need, not necessarily customers, but like, rolling out features. To roll out features isn't always the move, and if sales, marketing and product and customer success could kind of all work together, usually there's some better oversight there. Sales is struggling. What can marketing give them to close these deals better? People are confused on this part of our product. How can marketing put up how easy it is, or, like, some simple steps for, you know, to make that transition easier in the future? So, yeah, long winded soapbox, but like this, this is what I see, and I really think it's a hole in the understanding of of how cohesive, true marketing strategy, or a solid marketing strategy, it could actually bring to an organization like there has to be some through lines between those departments, otherwise, you're just operating in a silo, and it's not going to be as effective, and you're not going to get the outcomes that you were looking For, you know? And there's always a little bit of back and forth that has to happen. There's compromises, there's editing, like all of these things, but you end up being way more aligned when you can have all of those teams work together. Yeah, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause and just let that and I always joke. Okay, Braden, this is the that's the snippet when you control F on the transcript, looking for a snippet. That's the one right there, because you hit on everything. I say all the time that silos between marketing and sales, and I love adding in product, customer service, when, when there are silos between those teams, that's where revenue goes to die. It's just flat out, the lack of a relationship between those channels and teams, the lack of communication between them, is where revenue is going to fall flat. And it there is nothing more frustrating to me than when it's like, well, what does success look like? He's like, I don't know, you know, we've got some leads, and I don't know where they're at and, you know, maybe the sales team followed up with them. It's like, what are you talking about? Like, I want you to meet, I say monthly. I want you to meet weekly. Like, if there are leads coming in, I want a BD team and a marketing team member. If you're a massive company, 100 50 million, you've got 40 people on each team. I understand you're not going to do that, but maybe you have one and one, you know, a lot of the clients that we work with are in that 10, 3040, 50 million, you know, range. You've got five sales team members and you've got a four person marketing team. Meet. Just meet and talk through, hey, that lead that came in. Where is it at? Is it? Were they okay? You know, was it the right person? Are you trying to get in the door? You we got in at the influencer level, and we now need to try to get in at the decision maker level. What could we do? Could we make a deck for you? Could we make a sales sheet for you? Like, have that communication? Because, again, if your pipeline is 100% network based, and if, even if it's 100% network and sales based, that pipeline is going to dry up. At some point, it's absolutely going to dry up. And the marketing side of this has to be able to start to own more of the pipeline. And marketing led, pipeline is a great way to look at how all of this can be successful. Yeah, I've actually read a book called market based management. Got a lot of these tools, and it kind of walks you through customer profiles and market positioning. And it's, it's exactly what you were just saying, right? It's like, you know, all of that has to be together. But I'm curious. I'm gonna ask you a question now. Oh, I love this. Let's do it. What do you Okay, so one thing that's unique to clinical research industry that I have not necessarily seen in my other roles in other industries is the variability in closing and sales pipelines, right? So, from your perspective, when, when you're talking through clients, and this is a loaded question, it's loaded. Every time I love it, I love it. But like, how, how do you benchmark success, right? Like, when every study is different, when you know, technologies are used in different ways for different trials, or, you know, therapeutic areas vary greatly. Sponsors vary greatly, sites very greatly. Like, there's so much range. So like, for, for people who are looking for that baseline, it's very hard to establish, so what? What do you do? Yeah, it's a it's a hell of a question. And I think that there's the good answer the bad answer, and they're kind of the same, and they blend together. And I think is this market right now 2025, post election, still post COVID, the uncertainty of everything? VA changes. Yeah, we're doing start stops, and so that makes it harder to control. This contract got signed, but the book to Bill ratio, or it got signed, paused, or it didn't get signed, and it's, it's, yeah, up in that, in that world. So, you know, for us, I think one of the things that we like to differentiate with is that we believe that marketing should be held responsible for revenue growth and and so that is, like at the the foundational element of whose SCORR is, is revenue growth, and anything that we do, you're going to have marketing metrics, but those marketing metrics are indicators for the success that we want to be reporting on, and we want to be tied at that level. That is the good answer. That is the that is the corporate answer. It's the blanket answer. It's also how I answer, right? It's how I feel. However, what we have started to shift to is dollar amounts being associated to marketing tactics in the pipeline. So if we go to a trade show, I don't want to know that, you know, you scanned 270 people's badges, right? I don't want to know that. I want to know six months later how many opportunities are in the pipeline that have $1 amount associated with it that we can give the trade show 70% of the credit for. So every time I talk about this, it's like, well, they actually we email them four months ago through the sales team, and it's like, I don't care. I'm not an attribution junkie. Like, I think attribution is the worst thing that happened to us, because now everything like, we write a blog, and it's like, where are the leads and how many clicks? I don't care. So for me, if it's 70% of that opportunity is because of a really good conversation happened at a trade show that I'm going to associate that dollar amount directly to the trade show presence that we had at scope. And so that's how I think about like paid search. It's how I think about LinkedIn is I'm not thinking about it as even just form fills. It's really for us, if all marketing can control, and a lot of times all sales can control, because, again, environment and just external factors is that there was enough interest and enough alignment between us and the prospect that there is $1 amount associated to an opportunity that really is what we think We can control and how we want to report. And so that's really where we we've been putting more of our focus over the last, I'd say, even I'd say a year, but the last six to eight months of 2024 we started to get that gage that there are a lot of projects that had the funding, and then the funding paused. You can't, you know, it's tough to put that on one entity or one person or one reason and so again, yeah, really associating i The pipeline conversation has opened a lot of doors for me, and I'm getting it over and over again, but marketing led pipeline is what we want to track there. Yeah, absolutely. I think people get i, so I do think it's important to track metrics, right? Like you want to see what the views are, you want to see what those engagement metrics are, because it's showing you who's who's attention. Is it capturing Yes, right? Is it a caption? Is it okay? Is it capturing anything? Is it capturing anything? Exactly, right? But it doesn't. It also doesn't mean a whole lot, you know. So it's great to have as a benchmark, and we're like, Okay, this type of content on an analysis does better. Yes, let's do more of that. This one got zero likes. Nobody cares about this topic. Let's either completely change how we talk about it or not talk about it again, depending on importance. But, but, yeah, yeah. I think that we get a bad rap, because there are specific agencies out there that hide behind impressions and metrics, and I vanity metrics Correct. I want to be very like I want to be very honest to those that are listening to this. And my President, our President, SCORR Lea LaFerla always says she's never met a CEO who gives a shit about impressions, that CEO is going to care about revenue, right? Like, impressions are great, and it showcases that something is working. But I'm not going to tout, oh my gosh, our SEO is up by 174% as we're laying people off, right? Like, that's because that's, that's the problem with marketing metrics, and that's the problem with the way that people think about agencies, how they think about marketers in general. And so I think that shift to like, let's think about this as like, marketing sourced pipeline is, is going to make us, is going to make us way more successful. But like you said, you still need to have those metrics. It's just, I'm not going to a boardroom and I'm not promoting impressions and click throughs. I'm going to go and say, you know, we've gotten x amount of leads that have turned into X amount of opportunities. And I think, yeah, the last thing that I was saying on this, because now you got me all fired up. Addison, good point. I said we'd record like 3035 minutes. Here we are at 42 I'm fired up. Is we've been in this situation before, where you have two campaigns running on Google. One Campaign has minimal impressions and four form fills. The other campaign has 100,000 impressions and 50 form fills. And it's like, well, let's put all the money to this campaign. And it's like, well, hold on, the four form fills in the 50 form fills. Do we know which ones are successful? And it's like, oh, shit, I don't know. Actually, let's take a look at it. And the four that came from this campaign over here are all marketing qualified, all sales qualified, and one have closed. You look over here at the 52 are qualified, and one is sales qualified. The other 48 were just interested in some other thing, and they were not ready. And so it's like without that tie in to the sales pipeline and to the revenue, absolutely make mistakes based off of vanity metrics, because it looks good to have 50 form fills. But I don't give a shit if it's Sydney form fills, if 48 of them are bad, I want the four that are good. You know, yeah. And I do think, I do think there are organizations out there that that like agencies that do do that, they're like, I would rather send you 50 patients. Um, yep, throw them over the fence. We'll see if they fit, you know. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing either, because if sites are trying to build their database, research interest to patients, sure they could be repurposed later, right? But like me running a Facebook ad campaign that got five leads versus another company, and, you know, sponsor paid that's getting 50 leads, who's going to convert, like, you know, and so there is value add, if you're just trying to get people into the pipeline for later stuff. But like, even then, I don't know, I don't know if there actually is, you know, like, sure you're building your database, but what's, what's, like, an amount to So, yeah, okay, I've got a final question. And this is just, this, just, this is just a pure play, what's on your mind, type of question, but like, what's, what's the, what's the final takeaway, or, like, what's the big hot take for you that you would, you know you would, you would die on that hill. You want to throw your hat in the ring for that piece of this conversation, something that you will just repeat over and over again to all of your clients, and that I can pull out as a video snippet and share with you and share with the world. What's, what are your thoughts? Addison, it's such a, by the way, it's such a BS question to me, and I'm sorry. It's true. I need it. I need I need your thought. Um, what is my thought? I mean, honestly, I feel like I said at the beginning they have this secret sauce, but they don't. I love it. I like just because your company doesn't make you special, just because you're a company doesn't make you special. You have to convince people that you are, and that's where marketing comes in, you know. And maybe there is an element that's special, but again, nothing is novel, like in, you know, the iPhone was novel. That was like a something that broke the broke the technology. Technology world, right? But we don't see things like that anymore. So yeah, marketing, differentiation, simplifying this down to it's not enough to show up anymore. Like, if you just show up, you're not going to be successful and say all the time, like you'd have the greatest technology of all time. But if no one knows about it, who cares? And and so I love this concept of, listen, just because you're a company, there's so much of this that is table stakes. Now if, oh, you've got 20 years of experience, and you you're founder led, and you got high quality and you guys care, like every other company, can say that exact same thing, and so in marketing, is how we can actually say that differently or showcase it differently in a space that is saying it the exact same way over and over again. Yeah, and to go back to that building trust piece, like, yes, building trust is paramount for businesses, whatever that looks like, whoever you're trying to build trust with. It's paramount for your brand. And then the next step is that differentiation, like there are studies on a lack of company, differentiation, leads to lower revenue, strong trust, strong differentiation within your market, is correlated to higher revenue. That's there's just, there's studies that prove that. So, you know, if you needed a little jab in there, like, there you go. There it is. There it is. I love that. I how I finish a lot of the episodes, when we talk about this, specifically, in any conversation I have, is investment in the brand is an investment in the company. And, if you don't see it that way, it's time to start seeing that way, or you'll get left behind, because your good people will leave, your talent will leave, recruitment will be harder. An investment in the brand is an investment in the organization, and I think that is is really important. Addison, this was 50 minutes long. It was more I want to say it's an app. It was an absolute blast, and I already know that we've got to record another episode in the summer, and so this episode is airing. People are listening to this in April. Let's, let's, let's already get on the books, and we'll get something scheduled for June or July, and have an episode when everyone is traveling for holiday, and you know, in between trade show season, and we can maybe rant about brand execution at trade shows or something. But I just want to say thank you so much for spending 50 plus minutes with us, sharing your expertise. Anybody that's listening and you want to ask Addison a question. Reach out to her on LinkedIn. You can send a note to me, and I can foster that communication. Or you can reach out to her directly on LinkedIn. That's how we first started talking. It was just a LinkedIn message, and I know that she would be pumped about that. And then for everyone listening I mentioned at the beginning, but this is episode 52 I think, or somewhere in there, I'm not really sure, because we've recorded a lot over the last couple of weeks. But if you are listening and you thought, holy cow, what an unbelievable episode, Addison is the best you are, right? You can leave a comment on Spotify now, and you can say, hey, this was a great episode. You can leave a five star review. I'm not doing it for the reviews, and I don't plan on being on the top 100 chart of Spotify anytime soon, but it is nice to know that you guys are listening, because the feedback that we get is is always appreciative. So with that, Addison, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and soon, absolutely All right. Bye. Music, as always. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The SCORR cast, 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.