Spiraling Up — Marketing For Professional Services

Google Veo 3 is here and we're DOOMED...or are we? + B2G Power Plays with Megan Battaglia

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In this episode of Spiraling Up, the team dives into the implications of Google's new AI product, Veo 3, which can generate highly realistic video content from text prompts. What impact will this have on marketing? On humanity? 

Then, the hosts welcome Megan Battaglia, VP of Marketing at ThunderCat Technology, for a game of 'B2G Power Plays.' Megan shares valuable insights on building a government-focused marketing strategy, leveraging vendor partnerships, and ensuring event success. Don't miss this engaging discussion on the future of marketing in the B2G space!

00:00 Introduction
05:31 Pivotal Story: Google Veo 3 
16:50 Introducing Megan Battaglia
19:13 Power Play 1: Going from Solo Marketer to Small Team
32:35 Power Play 2: Impact of Administration Changes on Marketing
39:13 Power Play 3: Running a Successful Charity Golf Tournament
52:03 Ultimate Power Play: Mission Focus Mindset
53:33 Outro

Connect with Megan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganbattaglia/
Learn more about ThunderCat: https://www.thundercattech.com/

Austin McNair:

In today's episode of Spiraling Up, Google's VO three is here, and I'm convinced we're doomed. It's over. Our team is gonna discuss and then we're gonna be joined by Megan Bataglia, VP of marketing at one of the fastest growing B two G firms in the country for a game of B two G Power plays. Welcome everyone. This is spiraling up with Hinge. Welcome everyone to Spiraling Up the podcast for professional services marketers and business leaders where professional services marketing comes to life through engaging interactive discussions with industry leaders. My name is Austin McNair, and as always, I'm joined by my colleagues Mary Blanche Kramer. Hi, me

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Hey, hey.

Austin McNair:

and Joe Pope. Joe, how's it going?

Joe Pope:

You for somebody. You sounded so doomed in the intro read. You're seeming pretty chipper right now.

Austin McNair:

I don't know what you're talking about. We'll get to that topic in a minute. Uh, as we get started, I wanna say thank you to all of our listeners and those watching on YouTube support the show by giving us a, like, subscribe to the show. Uh, we are just getting started with spiraling up, so every bit of algorithm love will help us out a lot. Joe Mb I'm excited to catch up. We are in the season where vacations are starting. We just had Father's Day. Joe, happy Father's Day to you. Happy

Joe Pope:

You as well.

Austin McNair:

Although in Brazil, father's Day is in a different, it's totally different month. It's in, it's not until August. I don't know why, but it's, uh, it's different. Uh, mother's Day is the same. Every other holiday is pretty much the same. But Father's Day special treatment, I guess I get kind of like one and a half versions of Father's

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

I love.

Austin McNair:

Joe, I saw that you were busy over the weekend doing some beer brewing, some barbecuing. Tell us about that. It looked really good.

Joe Pope:

I was busy pretending to be an Instagram influencer. Emphasis on pretending, uh, no. We, uh. We decided as, uh, my neighbors and I, I, I live on a fun cul-de-sac. We all, you know, have kids go to the same schools and so forth. And, uh, we have similar more passions. Beer brewing is one of them. Barbecue is another. And uh, we decided that on Saturday for Father's Day, that we would, uh. We would document a, an Instagram reel story of our attempt to brew two beers and smoke a 10 pound brisket, uh, over, you know, 10, 12 hours.'cause honestly, it takes quite a long time. So the brewing of the beer was to fill the, the middle part because frankly, if you know anything about smoking meat, uh, it really takes a lot longer than you think it should. Uh, but it was, it was a good time. Uh, I would, I would give the. The smoked brisket, uh, probably a six and a half out of 10. I, I, the other folks seemed to really like it. I, uh, I actually originally built my timeout for a seven pound brisket, and if you add three pounds to something, you add multiple hours to something. So I had to kind of pick it up a little bit so we didn't eat it. 10 30 at night. Beer brewing though, so this is, uh, yeah, it's something I got into a few years ago and, and, uh, partially by request, uh, Mary Blanche, uh, we created a knockoff of a Pacifico. This is a pale lager Mexican style beer. And then we took it a step. MB is very beer. Uh, the, the, uh, the other thing we did was to take that beer and then pour five pounds of honey into it, which makes a really alcoholic beer. If you know anything about fermentation, sugar and honey, and, you know, yeast makes a lot of. Alcohols. And so we have a Pacifico and we have a honey Pacifico, and those are our two beers. Uh, those I would give a high ranking to though we do have to wait, a few months for them to, uh, do their thing. Usually about five, six weeks, uh,

Austin McNair:

I was gonna

Joe Pope:

ready for

Austin McNair:

can we get a live taste test, uh, on, on, on air in a future episode of Spiraling Up? Maybe would that change the content warning on our, uh, YouTube channel or something? I, I don't know.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

I'm

Joe Pope:

spiraling out, not spiraling

Austin McNair:

Yeah, that'll be the after hours podcast. Mayor Blanc. I know you were, you were back from a nice vacation out in, what was it? Hilton Head. How was that?

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Yeah, it was good. It was good. We go there every year. Um, there's a, it's a, it's a great place to go, especially for the age. Nine girls are, they're eight and nine and um, yeah, like beach pool, restaurants.

Joe Pope:

golf.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Yeah. Um, it was also my mom's 70th birthday while we were there, so we gave a little celebration to her. But yeah, it was a good time. It felt like a short, um, a short trip, but yeah, relaxing and, and fun nonetheless.

Austin McNair:

Excellent. Well, feeling refreshed. Ready to go for another episode of Spiraling Up. Uh, we've got a great guest. If anyone is in the two G space or anybody is, you know, does any kind of, uh, selling to the government. You're gonna wanna stick around for our interview with Meghan Bataglia, super sharp, super smart, um, uh, marketer, who's been with her company for over eight years. But first. Why don't we get to this week's pivotal story?

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Alright, marketers, we need to talk because the way we create and consume video is about to be completely unrecognizable. Today we're exploring a development from Google that is set to dramatically reshape our digital ecosystem. The launch of VO three. This new text of video AI model, can generate incredibly realistic. Minute plus video clips with complex camera work and sound all from a simple text prompt. This capability is being called astonishingly realistic and transformative for the internet. And one thing is for sure, the quality of this technology will only increase from here, but the tool also brings many concerns. What does the future of the digital channels look like when it's completely flooded with AI generated video content? Now, Austin, I know you are pretty eager to talk about this one. Um, what are your thoughts on how these tools could impact professional services marketing?

Austin McNair:

I, I am full of thoughts. You're right. I mean, there is a part of me where I'm just thinking, yeah, it's over. We're doomed, we're cooked. It's time to officially hit the panic button. People were panicking about SEO. People

Joe Pope:

Not panicking about SEO anymore, are we?

Austin McNair:

No, no, no. This is way bigger guys. This is like, this is crazy. I, I, I. I think we crossed a threshold. I, I think I published this on LinkedIn. I, today's date doesn't really matter. I published this on, on June 9th because it was, that was a Monday and it was the weekend where I think it was like raining down here. Kids were sick. I was inside a lot and I was on my phone a lot, and it was the first time where in my doom scrolling experience, I saw videos where I was like, I don't know. If that was a real person or not. And, and I consider myself to be someone who's online quite a bit. You know, I'm in marketing, I'm following the development of this technology pretty closely. And if I am already, I mean, this came out like three weeks ago, VO three with Google, it's been three weeks and this stuff is already kind of hitting my feed. Um, and if I'm having a trouble, I, I just think a lot of people are gonna have difficulty. Deciphering what's real for what's not real, um, right now. Um, so yeah, I have a lot of concerns. Um, if I had to give one piece of advice right now to marketers is that, uh, don't pretend to be a sociologist. Don't pretend to like you have a crystal ball. None of us really know what's gonna happen with this te this technology. And we need to be looking to thought leaders and influencers, not ai like real people who are kind of processing this data and following these changes really closely. I think it's gonna be one of the things that we have to, um, pay very close attention to, uh, over the next, I mean, forever. Like I said, I mean, what now that we've crossed this horizon, there's not any going back. I mean, we're talking about video. With sound that is generated from text. I mean, this is like, like you said, Mary Blanche only gonna get like harder to decipher. So, uh, in that spirit, I actually wanted to show you guys a video. It's not an AI video, she's a real influencer. Uh, her name is Ask Chat, ask Cat GPT. Uh, she seems very smart on these issues and I wanted to show you guys a video she put out recently about this and get your thoughts. How does that sound?

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Yeah, let's do it.

Joe Pope:

We love bringing influencers in on this show.

Austin McNair:

All right, let's watch, uh, watch the video from Kat.

Ask CatGPT:

I'm standing out against the flood of AI slop on social media. Audiences wanna follow and support creators that they know are human. Of course. Then the question kind of becomes, well, how do you know that I'm human? Really, the negative side of this is that human creators might find it's getting harder and harder. Stand out within a sea of AI slop that has been engineered to flood our brains with dopamine and human creators like me won't stand a chance. Number three squarely in the negative camp is that the internet becomes an unusable source of information. Real events are indistinguishable from simulations and the truth. Becomes unknowable. Very, very negative. Now, one ironically positive side effect of this is that the negative effects of fake news will effectively go away. If none of us trust anything we see on the internet, then that means that all of the disinformation campaigns also lose their bite. Number five and number six are more predictions around culture and business. First, if we can't trust anything we see online, then certain things are gonna gain a premium, like in-person events and physical media. I call this. The analog renaissance and the last one. When people get fatigued from constantly questioning what's real, they'll retreat into things that feel more realistic because they're pre ai. Think old YouTube DVD, because it feels safe and familiar. Alright, what do you think? Are you more on this side or on this side? Leave your thoughts in the comments and for more non pretentious, non patronizing education about ai, follow this page.

Austin McNair:

I love

Joe Pope:

wanna be pretentious. Yeah.

Austin McNair:

Yeah. Yeah. We definitely don't. Uh, so I, I think I've already kind of hinted that I'm more on the pessimistic end of the, the spectrum here, but, uh, Joe, Mary Blanche, I kind of wanna turn it over to you guys of the kind of scenarios that she painted there. What stands out to you?

Joe Pope:

Well, I, I don't know if I would say pessimistic was a good word for doom and gloom. Austin, I think that's where you were. Uh, you, you kind of started this conversation. I, I feel like, uh, miss Cat GPT brought up some really interesting points. The analog Renaissance thing is, is I think we're seeing that more and more, and honestly there's precedence for that anyways. Uh, I mean, we're talking about this now in terms of. AI and, and digital and all those types of things. But even though it was like 10 years, 20, 30 years ago as new technologies, laser discs, CDs, MP threes, as we've kind of worked our way through these different tech, there's always kind of that longing for what came before. So I, I think that there's a definite tie there in terms of where we might see folks and to be. What that might actually then do is for creators like, uh, mis, cat, GPT, or, uh, we can even start to go up the bigger end of the spectrum with the, the Paul Brothers and Mr. Beast and so forth. The folks that create original content that have done a very good job in growing their brands and their reputations, I, I don't see how those folks will, will lose. If anything, I actually think in a lot of circumstances, they'll, they'll gain, they'll win because of the nature of people. Just like people like you, Austin, thinking that the world's doom and gloom, uh, they're gonna go to what makes sense, what makes, uh, what makes them happy and, and what makes good connection to their interests.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

it's perplexing, right? Like this idea of not being able to like living in a world where you don't really know. What you can and can't trust. Um, so I think there's a lot of validity to what she said in terms of what that ultimately could look like. Like I think that's a very interesting point talking about, uh, the things that will gain, will gain a premium, like those in-person events, um, you know, that subject matter expert that you know that you can trust. Um, so yeah, very, very interesting. It's a very interesting time.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, I mean, I, I go back to some of the stuff we've talked about, like what are the strategies professional services firms are gonna have to think about. In this era, right? Because I, I have no doubt that this problem is going to immediately make an impact in our sector, and especially for marketers. I mean, we are as professional services marketers, we are marketing expertise. We are marketing people. So on one in one hand, on one hand. There is an advantage that we have, right? Because our people are expertise, you know, and people are all different, right? And as long as people's personalities are coming out and people's true kind of technical expertise is being brought to the table, being brought to the spotlight, then we should be able to kind of rise above, you know, AI slop for example. But the challenge is, you know, as marketers going and harnessing that out of experts, right? Spending the time that it takes to actually get to know the experts at your company and raising their, helping them raise their profiles. A lot of experts don't even want their profile to be raised. They're cool, kind of just being behind the scenes or, you know, they're, they're cool, cool. Being like that local superstar, just kind of with their clients. But as marketers, it's a real challenge, right? Because out there in the space on, you know, on PLA channels like LinkedIn or even your email inbox, like. All these places are getting disrupted rapidly. And like I said, like for me, you know, it was my Instagram feed and that changing like over one weekend, how quickly it's like this technology came and boom, it's on my feed. That, you know, the effects of these changes are gonna be coming so quick and so fast. And I think what marketers need to continue to do is like bring that human side out in their marketing more. Joe, I like what you said, it resonated with me as well. Kind of that, um, analog renaissance. I think there's no doubt that that, that that's coming. And B, we experienced that when we went to the, to the conference a few months ago. Right. Just like how great it was being there with people, seeing people face to face. I mean, that. A a, a pretty significant difference. What does like the end of that look like though? I mean, this is the kind of thing that I, I, it, I am a little bit doom and gloom because I'm doom and gloom on the things, you know, the way that we've done things are over, you know, it's, it's, it's, we are stepping into kind of a totally new frontier and it's, some of it will feel familiar, especially that like analog renaissance part, but a lot of us are gonna be introduced to things and trends and. Um, challenges that we've never seen before. So I guess if I could offer one last piece of advice, it would be go follow influencers who are talking about this, who are more futuristic thinking, who are, um, guiding you and kind of presenting you with strategies and principles that go beyond kind of the day in, day out. Because we gotta have something that we hold onto if we're gonna, if we're gonna kind of surpass and kind of survive through this. Tidal wave of change that's coming.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, Austin. I, I think that's well said and, and a really good piece of advice. And, you know, other than the fact that I felt like you were about to tee up, that they should just continue to follow the Spiraling Up Podcast for such great information and insights. Um, I think you nailed it.

Austin McNair:

Well, absolutely, they absolutely should do that. Uh, we will continue to talk about this and we'll continue to bring you guys interesting pivotal stories. Um, great one mb thank you guys. Um, I. Let's turn now to, uh, what I'm really excited about, a great guest, super smart, super sharp. We talk about bringing in a practitioner who knows what she's doing and who has really developed her, uh, expertise in her industry. Very excited for our conversation coming up with Megan Bataglia. All right. I wanna Welcome to the podcast. I. Megan Battaglia. Megan serves as the Vice President of marketing at Thundercat Technology, a service disabled veteran-owned small business based out of Reston, Virginia. Thundercat is a leading solutions provider to the United States government, educational institutions, and commercial companies. With over eight years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, and communications, Megan leads. All marketing efforts to enhance the company's visibility, drive business growth, and strengthen relationships, uh, with key customers and partner. Megan, welcome to Spiraling Up.

Megan Battaglia:

Thanks guys. Thanks for having me.

Austin McNair:

Absolutely. It's nice to meet you. Uh, of course, though, I, uh, we're meeting you for the first time, but my understanding is that you and Joe know each other outside of the spiraling up and the hinge and the Thundercat world. Tell us about that.

Megan Battaglia:

Yeah, so Joe and I, um, are friends to a mutual friend, and I was a groomed woman and he was a groomed man and his wedding, and so we spent a. Week long trip down and outer banks together. So that's kinda how we know each other. And Joe likes to play in our charity golf tournament when I can squeeze him in.

Joe Pope:

I've always been very appreciative, Megan, of when you do squeeze me in, uh, usually, uh, joining with the iHeartRadio crew, I think they always end up only sending one or two folks. So, uh, no, Megan, it's, it's great to have you on and when we were talking about guests, when we were creating this podcast, I. Uh, when it came to the B two G space, uh, you were the first mind that came. Uh, you were the first name that came to my mind, uh, as somebody who I thought might have some fun with this format of a style of a podcast, the no more boring podcast approach.

Austin McNair:

I would echo that, Megan. We're excited, we're excited to have you on. You know, we want to talk to practitioners, people that are, you know, in the trenches every day, and that can kind of bring some of that industry perspective. So, um, with that, that's how we kind of came up with today's. Game. Today's challenge, what we're gonna be talking about. So Megan, when deciding what game to play today, um, we decided that as fans of the Washington Capitals ourselves, we wanted to give a nod to, uh, thundercats advertising partnership with the Washington Capitals. I think it's gonna be something we talk about in today's segment a little bit, but we're all fans of the caps, uh, and so we wanted to design a brand new segment that we're gonna call B two G Power plays. All right. So Megan, in this segment, uh, we're putting you in the role as our head coach. So we're gonna present you with some challenging B two G marketing scenarios, many of which you've overcome in your career. Uh, and we want you to draw up your best power plays. What are, what, what are the, you know, how would you outline a strategic moves to help us increase visibility? To achieve success, you know, as we're in this market of selling to the government, you, you ready to share some, some drops in plays for us.

Megan Battaglia:

Yeah, let's do it.

Austin McNair:

All right. I love it. So, Mary Blanche, I think you're the one who's gonna kind of run us through the challenges today. Why don't you get us set up with our, uh, our challenges.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Cool. All right, let's do it. So for scenario one, you are tasked with building out your marketing function from a solo role to a small effective team. You know, the importance of. Diverse opinions, but the budget for new hires is tight and external resources must be strategically justified. So in this scenario scenario, we want you to kind of drop a couple different plays for us. So what is your phased approach to scaling your marketing team and leveraging external partnerships to ensure robust support and broad expertise, all while avoiding the one thought process pitfall.

Megan Battaglia:

Yeah, for sure. So I think a more phased approach when you're trying to scale your team, especially when you don't have a large budget or you're only going from one to maybe three people, is to kind of prioritize those T-shaped marketers. So somebody who's broad across the channels, and then they're deep in like one to two areas. So they specialize in maybe graphic design or digital marketing, but they have a knowledge base across cybersecurity, ai, cloud technologies, and can do multiple campaigns with multiple vendors kind of at a scale and then. Once you kind of have people who fill those gaps, then we've done this in the past and, and other people can do this as well. It's like you hire those freelancers for specific events or campaigns. So like we will work with third party like digital design teams if we want to make a commercial.'cause we do advertising on TV and we don't have the bandwidth, nor do we have the budget to hire somebody who can specifically just. Do video editing and all that stuff. So that's where we'll kind of start to leverage, um, our outside media vendors for more of those like niche tailored projects. And then, of course, uh, leveraging your partnerships. So in our space, we work very closely with all of our manufacturer partners and while. Those types of companies have larger marketing teams at scale. We kind of tap into their funding and resources and collaborate with them to promote their products. So I think you can leverage your different partnerships as well when you don't have a large team.'cause then you're getting those outside perspectives and they're the ones who are really going to tailor the messaging of their own solutions with yours. And something that I always do and I still do now, even when I was just a team of one and now as a team of three, I always, always, always ask for other people's opinions that aren't even on our marketing team. So if I'm doing a cyber campaign, I'm meeting with our SVP of cyber sales, I'm meeting with our cyber CTO, I'm making sure that. Who we're partnering with and what messaging we're putting out there, that it aligns strategically with what our sales team is doing. Because sometimes it might we'll have partners who have all this money and they're like, let's do this. But if we're not selling them or it's not strategic, that's not who we wanna go to market with. So I wanna make sure that like our technical team and our sales team and marketing are all aligned and it kind of gives. Different perspectives for a campaign. So I think that's kind of a good thing too, to add to your team when you don't have a ton of people already to provide different outlooks.

Joe Pope:

So Megan, uh, one of the things that I think is definitely a little more unique to the B two G space, and you certainly can run across this in some of the other value added resale type. Breakouts, but certainly in the government space where you do actively resell services and provide your, your support. This idea of being able to leverage your vendor partners in the marketing of Thundercat or whatever your organization might be, how do you typically, you know, push that forward? I mean, certainly there's other companies that are gonna try to sell Dell or whatever it might be. Uh, like how do you basically maximize that? Is it, is there a process that you go through?

Megan Battaglia:

Uh, we, we do a lot of different types of things, um, because it is such a niche market and, and everybody kind of is working with the same vendors and things like that, so there's a lot of government vendors like GovX, I've Gov, CIO, merit Talk that are tailored to the government. We also kind of like to take that funding in those campaigns and extend to the customer outside of their nine to five and reach them as just an individual. So when they're, they're driving home from work and they hear us on the radio, or they're at a CAPS game and they see our banners around the arena or on TV during an Orioles game or something like that. So we try. I think it's good to kind of look at a customer and not just be like, okay, they're in a federal building in DC No, they, they live in Maryland, they live in Virginia. They're going to sporting events with their families, or they're driving long hour commutes to and from the office. So we try to extend reach that way as well, and, and leverage not only our own marketing, but then like our partner marketing too.

Austin McNair:

That I think is a big, uh, challenge for a lot of professional services marketers in I, I think regardless of industry, I think. I, I've talked with so many of our clients, prospects, people in the industry where I think they would dream about like, you know, doing more of that. Like, let's reach people outside of their normal business hours. But the, the question always comes back to like, well, okay, well what's the ROI, right? Can you talk to us about how you overcame that objection? Because I think, you know, in terms of like a solo, solo marketer, you know, trying to really maximize impact, I love that play of, you know, going out and like being, doing more brand awareness. But how do you overcome that objection of ROI.

Megan Battaglia:

It's, it's a hard one. And everyone in the marketing space knows, like advertising and ROI is very difficult when it's not just straight B2C. Like I'm not selling a t-shirt, that people are gonna go click on an Instagram ad and and buy it. Um, so for us, what we tend to do, or just me in general as like a marketer, we built a kind of a dashboard to help track all of our analytics. So we're able to see, and I also like to do partnerships where. We can see kind of like timestamps and almost like, okay, at this time is when our commercial ran during a game or at this time is when an ad was placed on websites. And then we kind of track on our dashboard engagement on our website. If traffic has increased during that time, if certain pages on our website are being looked at based off the type of campaign we're running. So per se, if we wanna run a campaign in. The state of New York targeting financial institutions and from May 1st to June 1st, our commercial New York page on our website had like 3000 more views than normal that we can use as kind of an example to like our leadership and our sales team. Like, Hey, this is contributing to the traffic. And while you can't say, oh, I contributed$10,000 this month at first, but. Working with the sales teams and being close with them we're, it's an ongoing process that we're always trying to improve, but right now we're in that area where it's like, as long as you have the tools in place to just track different analytics, that's really just a great option to start at. I think.

Joe Pope:

How are you, how often are you all in a sense looking at these analytics? Is this kind of like a monthly type thing or quarterly, or how, how does that typically function between you and the other leaders at Thundercat

Megan Battaglia:

So I, I look at our analytics every week.

Joe Pope:

every day? Yeah.

Megan Battaglia:

every day, but especially too, um, I. In the space, like when new executive orders drop or anything along those lines to see like a spike in interest in the company. Like we will, we kind of track that. But from just like a marketing team, I'll, we'll run monthly reports and so, we'll, we have a social analytics tracker and we looked to see, okay, how many new people followed us on LinkedIn, how many people engaged in what social posts we're putting and. Studying those trends to see, okay. A lot of people liked more elements on our website or on our, um, LinkedIn page if it has like a human element to it. So when we're talking about people at Thundercat or places will be, those are more engaged in than if you're just throwing up an infographic. And I think as long as you kind of keep that human element to things, it's definitely. It relates across any field or um, area.

Joe Pope:

Would there be any tactic, you know, you're growing a small team, you know this, uh, Megan, I think you were marketing employee number one right at Thundercat, and now you guys have gone through such, uh, significant growth. Would there be something that maybe you did do over these last eight, nine years that you would actually say, yeah, I didn't really see. And maybe put on the bench as a part of this power play unit.

Megan Battaglia:

I know this might be an unpopular opinion, especially when it comes to, uh, government marketing.'cause everybody is very lead generation focused, where they're like, oh, if we're gonna do this campaign and we're getting 400 leads, it's so great, but we could do an event where there's only 25 to 50 and it's so much better. So I would say.

Joe Pope:

Quality.

Megan Battaglia:

stages, I was probably focused more on quantity rather than quality, just to show like engagement. But now I definitely feel like it's quality over quantity. Like I'd rather have like 10 really good sales qualified leads than 300 marketing qualified leads. Like it. It's gonna, in the end, pay off more, even if some of those. Cost per leads are a little bit higher. It just depends on like the activity you're running. So I would focus more and I still, I know it is harder today, especially with people being able to get travel approved and budgets and all that. But anything that you can do face to face will always pay off more than doing an online webinar or something like that. Like I'd rather sit down in a breakfast briefing. And learn more from the customer about what their challenges are and have that interaction than just kind of like presenting a solution, if that makes

Joe Pope:

Sure. It absolutely does.

Austin McNair:

And I, and I think that actually reflects some of the results that we see in our high growth study too, Megan. Um, when we asked government contractors about, you know, what are, you know, where do you put the most effort and where do you see the most impact from various marketing techniques. It was all of the techniques that were like more personable in human, that kind of. Made it to the top of the list. So things like marketing partnerships and internal team members, like doing nurture calls to, you know, their, their relationships. And actually really high up there on the list, exactly what you just said. Networking at targeted campaigns, trade shows and events. It's like right there at the top for level, uh, of impact. So, um, we're getting it from your perspective. We're also seeing in the research. I think that's absolutely, um, a trend.

Megan Battaglia:

Mm-hmm. And I think when people, when people think about the government, they just think of this like large. Entity and they, and they tend to forget that there's like actual people making decisions over there and people that, like our sales reps have formed relationships with over the past 20 years. So it, it tends to lose that when, when you're initially thinking of like marketing to the government, you're just thinking of like DC as a whole, but really it's still. You wanna understand your, your customer and the human element, and like treat them as like a basic consumer. Like what are their pain points and how can we make those better?

Austin McNair:

All right. So I think we got a lot out of that one. Um, we go into our, our next challenge.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Yeah. All right. Let's do it. So for our next scenario, your firm has a strong track record of success in securing high value government contracts. However, evolving procurement priorities under a different administration, such as a focus on vendor consolidation and modifying contract structures is. Is reshaping how that visibility is perceived. Um, so how in this scenario would you execute a B two G marketing strategy that sustains credibility and reinforces your firm's value, while also aligning with evolving government expectations and then still maintaining a constructive presence among procurement decision makers?

Megan Battaglia:

regardless of the administration that is in office, it's always important to focus kind of on that. Mission outcome and that we're impactful and how we can provide value, um, to the government and to the taxpayers as well. Um, because obviously technical solutions that we're implementing into the government's infrastructure is going to, at the end of the day, make America a better and safer place for all Americans. And that's what kind of. Our mission is, and I think a good way to kind of market that is through actual use cases and areas where you can show that real time outcome. Like for an example, how we've worked with companies that can provide AI solutions to stop human trafficking. And those are types of things that will resonate with people on that personal level and and kind of show like what we can do and how we can be of value.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, I mean, I think everybody can get behind some of those mission pieces too. I mean, I think the word mission sometimes gets thrown around quite a bit. Uh, that's a, that's a definite government contracting phrase. Um, but when you do talk about results and you know, the, the, uh, the proof is in the pudding and, uh, you know, like we see across any. Professional service offering, whether you're providing products or services or a combination of the both buyers want to buy from the experts who get results. So I, I think that is a time honored, tested in, in fact, across professional services and, and, uh, you people can con sometimes get away with that or get away from that. And, uh, those are the folks who I do think are probably more, like you've said, more susceptible to. Dealing with the pains from a potential administration change with some voter mandates or whatever you want to consider it. Uh, and it, it, it's not, uh, it's not the place to be. You wanna be doing what buyers want to buy from. They, you wanna be speaking in their language.

Megan Battaglia:

Yeah.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

there situations though where you ever have to make changes to, to marketing materials or websites or, or anything like that?

Megan Battaglia:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we constantly are having to change our messaging. It's just like. It's basically like you would treat an administration change or anybody in the government, like if one of our contracting officers changed and somebody new was coming in, you're gonna treat them how you would, any new customer you wanna learn kind of about their persona and what they're looking for and how you can tailor your messaging towards them. So we're constantly having to evolve our website, our messaging, and really tailoring it to the people who are are, are looking at our stuff.

Austin McNair:

That makes a lot of sense, Megan. One of the things that we see in our, um, in our high growth study data comes again, kind of when we think about like the impact that government contractors are getting from the marketing techniques. One of the things that stood out to us this year is that, um, the fastest growing firms were getting a lot of, uh, perceived impact from. Like writing for external publications or like other digital PR opportunities, um, where they were kind of making headlines about, you know, like some of the stuff you were talking about, right? The ways that they're accomplishing the mission, some of the storytelling behind that. Um, the, the mission, the, the, all of that, that kind of stuff. And maybe bringing those experts into channels that, you know, are in that space. Have you guys done any of that? Do you see that as a tactic that's, that works well for you?

Megan Battaglia:

W we have in the past. I mean, it's always good to kind of have those thought leadership pieces out in the press. Um, we try to take a more solution focused approach, um, and we'll have our subject matter experts sit in on a panel at a conference or an event and then kind of take. What they've spoke about there and put that into a content piece and then push that out into the media as well. So it kind of, it hits a few areas. You've got that in person piece, but then it's online too. And I definitely think it's important to make sure that your messaging is being pushed out to the right audience For sure.

Austin McNair:

Going back to kind of our conversation earlier about like how do you build the team, like your marketing team with like a small group, do you find that it's better to try to handle that more internally with like firm leadership and kind of, you know, what you have like internally or do you work with external PR resources to help support and amplify different, uh, earned media opportunities?

Megan Battaglia:

We, that's something that we look for outside. So again, being a small company, sometimes that PR and communication falls right on me. And so I'm like, oh, I'm our PR team, our publicist, our marketing lead. So, but I do think it's important'cause we also have a legal team as well. So the legal team is very involved in, um. Anything along that nature. But there are specific companies out there that tailor specifically to PR towards the government. So we've, we've worked with those companies before and it's nice to kind of like give them information and they're able to kind of take all of our thoughts and so they almost like interview us and then put that into a piece of. Good content that is absorbable and easy for any, any customer level to kind of understand it and get our point across.

Austin McNair:

All right. So we've got one other scenario slash challenge here for you. Uh, so far I, I feel like I've learned a lot about the government space that, uh, I hadn't really thought about it that way before. Um, mb what's our, what's our last challenge here?

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Yeah. Okay. So in this one, uh, you are in charge of your organization's annual charity golf tournament, um, which we know has grown to include over 50 sponsors, each with, uh, their own unique funding process. Your small marketing team is stretched thin and behind the scenes, chaos is a constant threat. So in this scenario, what would you say are your top three operational power plays to ensure a well-oiled machine for this high stakes event? So everything from sponsor management all the way to the day of logistics. Despite limited resources and that inevitable, one thing that goes wrong.

Megan Battaglia:

Yes. Well, it's always hard to avoid that one thing that goes wrong because it's different every year. Um, so you can't even predict it. But how, I mean, we've been doing a charity golf turnout for eight years, and so we've kind of got a robust system down. But I think for any. Any company or any team that's like looking to do just an event in general, or if it is a charity event, is to be very specific with team kind of roles. I think sometimes it's harder when you've got, even if it's only three people, but you're all doing the same things and you don't know who's reaching out to who or. Who's in, everyone's doing invoicing and then two people send the same invoice. I think that that is where it can get chaotic. So we have a very big, we've created almost like a playbook of a spreadsheet, essentially our, we call it our master spreadsheet, and everything is very like tailored, like. We have one, one person who's very focused on doing the invoicing and sending those sponsorship confirmations and being that kind of main liaison between the partner and our team, and then. We have someone who does all of our inventory and it's making sure that what we have from last year is here this year, and then what do we need to order and then kind of ordering that stuff. And then we have someone very focused on sponsor procurement and reaching out to the partners and, and players and having them come on board and, and having some local teams donate items to the raffle and things like that. So we try to make it very siloed as to kind of what roles each. Person is doing. And then at the end of the day, like it, you can only do so much as a three person team or even if you have a 10 person team. So you'll always need volunteers, um, from your company or even like, you can hire outside companies as volunteers too, but I think it's important to kind of have an idea as to. you want people stationed to throughout the day and almost kind of like delegate, like, you're in charge of this, you're in charge of this table. Um, but so that's kind of how we like focus it on. I do think another, a third thing that I would say is important to kind of plan out is those prebuilt comms cadences, where like six months out, save the date, three months out, this many sponsorships left this like two months out. More information about the charity. Having those messages pre-built is definitely something that's gonna help. And then kind of just relying on that, again, personal connection between like us and the partners to build, um, sponsor procurement. So it would, I recommend people do golf tournaments. No, it's, it's a lot. It's, uh, it's kind of crazy because you would think that all you have to do is show up in golf, but it's so much more, more than that.

Joe Pope:

what I do.

Megan Battaglia:

yeah, Joe just shows up in golf, but, or running around the back like,

Joe Pope:

Great event.

Megan Battaglia:

it's, and

Austin McNair:

No, I'm having flashbacks right now.

Megan Battaglia:

yeah, it's.

Austin McNair:

I'm having flashbacks right now because I came outta the nonprofit space where our community-based nonprofit shout out to Brain Injury Services, they did a charity golf tournament. Every year. And for three years I ran that show and oh my gosh, hearing you go through that list of stuff, I'm like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it is, it's basically a full-time job. And that, uh, fortunately we did have someone who was events oriented there. She was very, I. Detail oriented, very, um, just like, uh, like nearly a, she was a perfectionist. She had to be to kind of make everything run smoothly. Um, but all those details, yeah, it, for me it was, it was such a challenge. Um, I wanted to ask, so in my experience running a golf tournament, one of the biggest concerns every year was like, how do you get the right people to show up? Because at the end of the day, you or your organization is investing a lot into. Putting all this together, bringing all these people to the table when it comes to like the actual people that show up and they, you know, they're hitting the tees, like, how can you make sure that those are the right people that you want to be in front of?

Megan Battaglia:

So that kind of comes down to like our, our sponsor procurement. So most of the time. Pretty much everybody who comes to play out is from our industry. So we really rely heavily kind of on our sales team's, like personal engagement with these reps, people that they know or people that they want to come out so that they have more time to kind of develop those relationships with them. So like we'll have, some of our reps will go and play with partners, and so they'll like be on their foursomes and then we have a networking. Reception afterwards. So it's really kind of tailored to that like one-on-one, um, rep to rep engagement rather than being customer focused since it's a charity event, we're there for the charity, we're there for, for everyone to have a good time and we really are you leveraging it as a partner kind of enablement engagement event where it's something fun that people can come out and enjoy all for a good cause.

Joe Pope:

Right. It's a cultural piece too, right? I mean, so in a sense, kind of setting your expectations from the jump is, hey, we're, we're here for a charity and we're here to continue to build our relationships up. But you know, maybe, maybe we're not gonna have the end user customer as that target person, but we've checked those other boxes. So like having that expectation piece. Honestly, I think there's a lesson to be taken from that. In all marketing activities and tactics because, you know, it's, it's not always about that quantity of leads, right? It's about the quality. And if you can get quality using a variety of different channels and tactics, uh, then, then all more power to it.

Megan Battaglia:

Yeah, you make, I mean, you make a good point. It's, you almost have to market yourself to your partners as well as your customers. So a lot of people just focus on marketing to their customers, but really you have to market yourself to your partners because they can go out and partner with anybody and you wouldn't be like, no, this is why you need to partner with me. So it's, it's very important to. Keep that relationship building with them just as much as it is to build those relationships with your customers. Because a lot of times too, your partners are gonna trust your relationships with your customers and, and vice versa. You'll trust the relationships that the partner has with the customer and it, everything is kind of built on trust essentially.

Joe Pope:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel that, uh, you know, having run this for as many years as you have and, and you know, the fact that it's pretty much taking up, you know, two 18 hole courses now, I think, and now you run this, uh, any, any lessons of activities or tactics that you did in growing this event that you would, uh, shy away from? For example, I know you guys did a hit on the local news station in the lead up and you were touting the charity. I mean, those all seem like. No-brainers, especially if you've got the relationships established for it. But what's a, what's a tactic you did in trying to grow this event that didn't quite work?

Megan Battaglia:

Oh gosh. Um, that's a tough one. cause I think we didn't grow, we didn't try to grow super fast. Um, when we started eight years ago, I think our first year we only had maybe, maybe 30 less than. Actually, no, we probably only had like 15 sponsors. Like, so it was very kind of small to now compared to like the 54 to 56 sponsor level that we do. Um, I think something that I would, that's something I would tell like people to avoid is don't try to go too fast too soon because then you are gonna outpace yourself, you'll outpace your team and at the end of the day it's like. Quantity over quality you wanna throw, you still wanna have a good quality event rather than just a large event. So I would say I would probably go with that. And then the second thing I would probably, I would've done better at is definitely having that master sheet. Built out from the very beginning instead of trying to just one person track everything. I think that was very hard. So definitely getting those roles assigned right away to those specific people, and then having them do those same things every year as long as like your, your team's not turning over or anything like that. Um, now with with my team, we, we've been pretty solid for the past four years together, so we're at this point where. Everyone kind of already knows what they need to do, but I think, yeah, that's definitely something that I think it's hard for a lot of like event planners is to just feel like they need to do everything themselves, which you can't do because you will miss something.

Joe Pope:

Did when you guys launched this tournament, uh, and, and just events in general. Did, and now that you've kind of got your weld oil machine, I'm, I, I know you kind of run it through the internal side, but did you lean into outside resources? Did you bring on, for example, like an event coordinator and so, so, so

Megan Battaglia:

We did. Yeah. So when I first started, um, in marketing, I, I. I was 22 years old. I didn't, I didn't have the connections that like I have now, nor did I have the knowledge of the government space like I have now. And so I really, really relied on the public sector marketing community to. Kind of not only build our brand, but build my knowledge base too. And there are several resources in, in this area and in the public sector marketing space that are specific agencies, marketing agencies, third parties who. Who can help with those types of things. And that was who I leaned on. And they were the ones who helped me come up with this idea to do a charity golf tournament. Because we were sitting there brainstorming about different events we could do. And I said, I was like, you know, all these partners constantly ask us to sponsor golf tournaments and, and our team loves to golf, but we don't have one. We don't do one ourselves. And they were like, well, why don't you. It, it would make sense like you guys are in that space. So that's kind of just sitting around the table. There's like three of us just brainstorming, um, was kind of how we came up to it and I pitched it to our CEO and he was like, yeah, let's do it. And I was like, alright. So we, we worked with our outside, an outside vendor who came in. They kind of provided the day to day like event management team.'cause this was. Before we even had a ton of people at the company who could volunteer. We were still pretty small. I think maybe we only had 60 some people at the company at that

Joe Pope:

how large are you all now, Megan?

Megan Battaglia:

we're around like one 40 now. So it, it's grown so much since then. And um, so once, yeah, so for a few years there, when I was still a team of one, I had to rely heavily on those outside sources to help. Run the team and, and event management companies are great because they, it's what they do, it's their bread and butter. So they come in, yeah, tell'em what they, you want and they kind of help build out that master spreadsheet, and then we kind of use that as a template and go from there.

Austin McNair:

All right, Megan, so I want to, I want to kind of present you with one final question here about what is your ultimate power play? I, I wrote down as you were talking a, a, a few of the things that you said, you, you talked about quantity over quality. You talked about building trust with your partners. Uh, you said be about the mission outcomes. Uh, adjust your messaging to your audience. Reach buyers outside of their nine to five and get outside support. Um. What would you say is kind of your ultimate power play right now for the BDG space? Like what is the, what is the essential, you can't live without it, kind of tactic play that, that you go to right now?

Megan Battaglia:

I think the go-to is, is being that mission outcome, focus. I mean, it's like, just think about your typical buyer. When I go and buy something on Amazon, I'm looking for reviews. I'm looking for photos. Like I'm not gonna buy it unless other people have. So when you're focused on a mission outcome and you have those use cases that pe, that's what people wanna read. They wanna be, what's your success story? I don't think you can really. Get better marketing than that. Essentially,

Joe Pope:

Mm-hmm.

Austin McNair:

I love that. Well said. Well, Megan, thank you so much for joining us on, uh, spiraling Up. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they learn more about Thundercat?

Megan Battaglia:

they can go to thundercat tech.com or visit our LinkedIn page and we're constantly posting out there.

Austin McNair:

Excellent. I love you. I love it. So thank you so much for, for joining, uh, the podcast today. For those watching, make sure you hit the like button, subscribe, leave a rating if you've enjoyed the time today. We love talking to guests and practitioners like Megan. Uh, we've got a lot of great episodes lined up. So for for Joe, for Mary Blanche, myself, for Megan. See you on the next one. Take care everyone. All right guys, let's rerecord the introduction. In today's episode of Spiraling Up, Google's VO three is here, and I'm convinced we're doomed. It's over. Our team is gonna discuss, and then we're gonna be joined by Megan Bataglia, VP of marketing at one of the fastest growing B two G firms in the country for a game of B two G Power plays. Welcome everyone. This is spiraling up with Hinge. Oh, and one more thing. I'm not really Austin or am I? Ha ha. You can be the judge.

Mary-Blanche Kraemer:

Oh man.

Joe Pope:

Austin, I will say that Robot Austin is terrifying