There’s a lot of jargon and types of marketing strategies floating around in marketing, and...
This current series of Avidly Talks is exploring how the digital marketing and sales landscape has changed dramatically and reached a pivotal point. It's a whole new world thanks to rapidly changing technology, AI-tools, privacy features, user demands, search habits, attribution availability...
It goes on.
But the internet has changed from a search-first to a social-first content model and companies need to rapidly address how they go-to-market. This is what we explored in episode 122 of our podcast with Mark Kilens (ex-HubSpot, ex-Drift, now CEO of TACK).
In this episode, Mark Kilens discusses the importance of a people-first go-to-market model and how it can help businesses grow. He explains that a people-first approach focuses on storytelling, relationships, and partnerships as the foundation for bringing products to market.
This is in contrast to a company-first approach, where the company represents itself in the market. Kilens emphasizes the shift from a search-based internet to a social-based internet and the need for businesses to adapt to this change. He also discusses the role of AI in marketing and the importance of building trust with customers.
Takeaways from this episode
- A people-first go-to-market model focuses on storytelling, relationships, and partnerships as the foundation for bringing products to market.
- The internet has shifted from being search-based to social-based, which requires businesses to adapt their marketing strategies.
- AI is an important trend in marketing, but businesses should focus on the outcome and experience rather than just the technology itself.
- Building trust with customers is crucial in a people-first approach, and businesses can do this by leveraging real people, creating authentic content, and partnering with influencers or figureheads.
- Businesses need to rethink their established ways of working and consider integrating storytelling, relationships, and partnerships into their marketing strategies.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:05 Understanding the People-First Go-to-Market Model
05:37 The Shift from Search-Based to Social-Based Internet
08:18 The Role of Storytelling in a People-First Approach
11:42 Utilizing Real People and Partnerships
16:14 The Importance of Trust and the Rise of Influencers
20:41 The Impact of Technological Developments on Marketing
23:23 Rethinking Established Ways of Working
28:41 Getting Started with a People-First GTM Strategy
29:26 Conclusion
Full video transcript
Paul Mortimer (00:02.798)
Welcome to Avidly Talks, a mostly marketing sales and HubSpot focussed podcast each week we explore topics to help you do better in your work and try to make smile on the way this week we're joined by Mark Kilens of asset that right former HubSpot and Drift employee but now CEO and co -founder of TACK and he's on a mission to help B2B companies match their go to market to people actually buy today
Mark Kilens (00:16.128)
Yes, that's right.
Mark Kilens (00:30.177)
Yeah, thank you Paul, it's going well. I'm excited to have this conversation. I've known Avidly for a long time, way back when HubSpot was just getting their Dublin office off the ground, so way back.
Paul Mortimer (00:41.966)
We've only just realised - or i've only just realized that as we start to talk before doing the show so yeah you know some names that we know we're going to meet up terminus inbound
Mark Kilens (00:55.799)
Terminus, the Terminus TACK event coming up at Inbound, yeah. If you're listening to this after Inbound, hope Inbound was awesome for you. yeah, we're doing a couple of events at Inbound and I just love Inbound. mean, this year's crazy where they sold out earliest they've ever, have ever sold out. I think the quality of the audience has just really gotten a lot better since COVID happened. The strategy before when I was at HubSpot was keep making it a big, big, big event, a lot of free tickets, grow the numbers, but now.
Paul Mortimer (00:59.022)
Tell us about that.
Mark Kilens (01:24.055)
since COVID happened and the whole change in how kind B2B events should look and feel, it's been more focused on like, you know, not intimate, it's still 10 ,000 plus, but like, know, quality of the audience.
Paul Mortimer (01:35.386)
Yeah, I'm finding it's... Well, it's amazing. I first went in 2017. It seems to get... Even though don't know if the numbers are still growing, like you say. I think they're pretty... There or thereabouts in the same ballpark, but just what's going on seems bigger and better every year. Different stages emerging, different areas on the shop floor, on the trade floor. Yeah, no, it's good. More events like yours happening around it as well, it feels like. So that's good. Nice. Right, so...
you've got your coffee, it's morning where you are, I'm over in the UK but we'll be in person soon and hopefully get you on camera to plug this. Now we came across each other on LinkedIn, you were sharing a resource that was super interesting and on point for where our brains are and this series of the podcast is about. So let's dive into people first, go to market model, what is that and why does it matter?
Mark Kilens (02:27.681)
Yeah, absolutely, so to define it, let's just define it out of the gate. It's a way to grow your business, a way to bring your products to market that uses three things as the foundation of how you grow and bring products to market. One is storytelling, two is the relationships you and others have within your company with other people and other companies at other companies, and then three, partnerships.
which are taking relationship and turning it into something that's structured, more mutually interesting, viable, economic -wise, whatever. it's more, I'd say more structured is the way to think about a partnership. those three things are the, like I was saying, the foundation for how you wanna think about using a people -first approach. The opposite of people -first.
is kind of what most companies do today, which is company first. Hey, the company's gonna bring itself into the market. We're gonna have the company represent itself in the market. And of course, there's people at that company, don't get me wrong, but the company's creating content, right? The company is sending the emails, the company's in the ads or are the ads, if you will. The company might be.
trying to grow and go to market mostly alone. Like they don't have a really strong partnership foundation. They're not leveraging relationships that all of their employees have, you know, that could, they could leverage to help them grow. They're not really focused on messaging and positioning, which is core to storytelling at the brand solution product level. in,
The reason why I think this is such an important shift is one is the internet has shifted from being a search centric or search based internet, Paul, to a social based internet. If you think about like when HubSpot started back in 2006, social media was just getting going. Like Facebook like basically just went from a college only platform. I wasn't one of the first colleges to ever get Facebook back in 2004. And then it opened up and Twitter was just founded I think then, right? So, HubSpot was
Mark Kilens (04:48.395)
built on this premise of search and information and people use search engines and you can find stuff and you're gonna pull people in, know, magnet, you know, like a magnet into your website using good content. That's great, that works, but now that everyone has done that, how do you cut through all that and how do you do it in a more genuine, authentic way? And the other thing that's created this paradigm shift is,
We all are now content creators. We all now can create things so easily thanks to hardware and software advancements over the last 15 years. The mobile computing revolution, the messaging platforms have been built into all of these different social networks and other products. Those things have shaped the internet to be much more social -centric, which lends itself to more people -first approach. I'll pause there, we can dive into it a lot more, but we wanted to kind of set the foundation.
Paul Mortimer (05:37.473)
And why is that something that's so important to you? Why are you leaning into that so hard?
Mark Kilens (05:45.131)
Because it's a trend that's undeniable that we can't really stop. You either get on that train or you don't get on that train and you're probably left at the station. If you look at the trends that are undeniable that are even bigger than market drivers, like market forces, like a market force or a market driver, this is just a thing that's affecting all humans who have access to the internet in terms of how we communicate.
how we buy things, how we learn about things, using less the search engines and more social networks. And how, what do mean, like the search engines to social networks?
Paul Mortimer (06:22.005)
Explain that, explain that a bit.
Paul Mortimer (06:27.918)
how people are using it and how people are using the internet basically. Break that down for us.
Mark Kilens (06:32.917)
Well, they're creating their own online identity. now your online identity is fragmented, right? Because you sign up for hundreds of things over time. But you have your top three things that you use, if not even just top one or two. And those things are really core to how you either both behave and act professionally and personally. So a lot of people in the B2B world, LinkedIn is a big thing.
lot of people might not be posting, but there's a lot of people like consuming, right? So it's like, all right, well, are you gonna pay attention to another brand on LinkedIn? No, you're gonna pay attention to another person. know, Facebook, threads, Instagram, TikTok, sure there are brands on there that are doing interesting things and you're you'll look, but like, you're gonna connect more with a person because of how we as people are wired than just a brand. So this shift that B2C has picked up on much earlier than B2B.
using the classic term of influencers or creators or whatever, figureheads, that's part of people first, but it's much more than that. It's changing how you represent your brand in the market because how we as people live online is changing and it's becoming such a big part of our lives.
Paul Mortimer (07:50.074)
Totally. What comes to mind is I'll try and put this on in the edit but there was a presentation I've been giving for the past month or so that shows that with a scroll through on your phone of your app library. And that's just the folders. And each one of those has got about 20 in. So, and you go to your different apps for, you know, I'll come to TACK for...
B2B advice. I'll go to LinkedIn for see what the market at large is saying. I'll go to that account on Instagram for a recipe that I trust. it's a way to get in front of those people in those kind of places by the sounds of it. How does storytelling layer in? How does storytelling layer in?
Mark Kilens (08:34.037)
Yeah, the job to be done. Yeah, sorry to interrupt you, was just saying, think you hit it, yeah, you know, hit a good point, Paul, sorry to interrupt, it's like the job to be done. You use all these different apps or websites for maybe one job only, but it's an important job and you're gonna follow people and brands to get that job done.
Paul Mortimer (08:56.196)
How do companies, particularly B2B, weave in the storytelling element? if you read any copywriting advice, any brand advice, everybody says we know we need to tell stories. What's your practical way of helping people do that?
Mark Kilens (09:13.313)
first thing you do is you have to understand that your business exists for some reason outside of just what it sells. And if it doesn't have that, like you should really think hard and long about that. So the classic idea of like starting with the why and the who, it's both the why and the who. Like who needs what you're saying and talking about? And why do they need it? That's sure the pain, the problem. The other why though is,
Why would they pick you over someone else? So differentiation, So products are gonna become more and more copied, commoditized faster. It's just a spectrum. When is it gonna happen? It's gonna happen. So how you actually get remembered is not so much by just innately product value. Super important. You have to deliver your product's value and you have to do it well, but.
When you think about like what people remember and then latch onto and stand for, there is deeper meaning that has to be established that you have to create for your brand, which is this story that gets people to say, yes, I believe in this thing. mean, the extreme example is religion. They created a story, right? There's all these stories, the Bibles, all these things, different religions. People latch onto that, right? So.
You need to do that at this brand level, your solution category level and product level and find a red thread. There's these two red threads I talk a lot about. What is the red thread of your point of view distilled down into one or two words? For HubSpot it was inbound marketing, inbound. And then what's the value red thread for HubSpot is leads. It's at the end of the day, it's more than that now, but they help people get more leads. For Drift it was conversations and meetings.
For someone like Commisore, it's networks and introductions, another early stage startup that's up and coming. So how do you tell that story that is gonna get people to listen to it and how do get those people that are within your company, that are within the audience you're trying to get in front of, build a relationship with, how do you partner with those people?
Mark Kilens (11:34.625)
to help you craft that story but also then share that story broadly for those that believe in it. So that's another aspect of People First.
Paul Mortimer (11:42.432)
it and then when it comes to choosing people practically and getting those people in as the front and centre just perhaps a obvious question maybe I don't know are you meaning literally employees being being the ones posting on LinkedIn being the ones who appear having a spokesperson for the brand that is what you mean
Mark Kilens (12:03.233)
Yes. Yeah, so at Drift we did this at HubSpot. HubSpot we did it really early days. So one of the things I built at HubSpot was HubSpot Academy. And we deliberately positioned people on HubSpot Academy that were customer facing, that were teaching, creating content.
Paul Mortimer (12:18.925)
that's one of the things with inbound i remember the first time me and my colleague when we like where do i know that person always a spark of the
Mark Kilens (12:22.06)
Yeah.
Mark Kilens (12:27.569)
Yeah, and we position them as professors, right? Like, okay, maybe that was a little pompous, but like, it worked, right? So like these people built up identities and it wasn't HubSpot Academy teaching, you know, it Kyle Jepson, right? It was Sarah Frazier. It was, well, she was at Drift actually, sorry. It was, yeah, Sarah Bedrick, I was gonna say. But again, you see, like it's that, like, so then at Drift, we actually created a podcast network.
Paul Mortimer (12:48.215)
No, get the point though. I know what mean. It's...
Mark Kilens (12:56.491)
and we had five different people at Drift get shows, and we helped them produce the shows for specific personas we going after. And there were some of these shows still exist today, like Sean Lane, we allowed him to take his show with him as he left Drift, Operations, it's a super successful podcast for rev ops people, like that is how you do this. You could just have people just like post and share stuff, but like if you take it to this next level of being deliberate to say,
Here's the audience we want. We have this person who's doing this job. We wanna enable them and they're super passionate about this. It's not Drift doing a podcast, it's Sean Lane who actually works at Drift who's super passionate about rev ops. That's the deal.
Paul Mortimer (13:38.978)
yeah that makes sense, makes sense. You see so many good examples of that in the marketing space as well, particularly like Drift and HubSpot, that's great marketing to marketers and salespeople. What examples have you seen or can you give for say, I don't know, manufacturing companies or construction companies or financial services, you know, to their own?
Mark Kilens (14:00.491)
I got one right now. Yeah, it's a customer. So Ivan, A -I -V -E -N, help them launch a podcast. We have podcast production packages at TACK with distribution. Ivan, they sell to engineers and developers, CTOs. So they have their field CTO. His title is Chief Technology Officer for the field. And he is the host of their podcast. And he is now, he's done season one, it's out. He's doing season two now.
That is now an example of him bringing customers and non -customers into this podcast, thematic season -based, and growing his brand through Ivan. So it really doesn't matter what you are. You could go back to what Marcus Sheridan did early days. He didn't do a podcast early days, but he did a great job with content. The pool example from HubSpot, same thing. It's just about finding...
like the person who's passionate about this and who's the right fit and who ideally already has trust with the buyers that you wanna turn into customers. Because that's also the kind of secret of people for a GTM. It's not really a secret, it's just like the natural hack, which is well, if you partner with someone who already has an audience and a following that trusts them, that has a relationship with them, and you give them the ability to do more for themselves and then add more value to their audience, it's a mutual win -win.
Paul Mortimer (15:27.97)
Yeah and I think that trust bit is leading back to what you talked about before with people not trusting Google. I mentioned my son who's just appeared next door and we're hoping he doesn't burst into the office.
But yeah, he gave us good example last week of not trusting results on Google. Because an article was written by a content marketer like me with incorrect or basic information in. Let him down, and there's a distrust there in Google. What we are doing with this series is that we can see SEO content sort of saturated with marketers spoiling organic results with picture getting a recipe. You want a recipe for a good lasagna.
You've got to read the person's story about their grandma from Italy who brought some tomato seeds over or the holiday they went on to Rome and the back streets and all this fluff until you get to the actual recipe. More and more stuff is like that. AI overviews have then come and you've got that space where you turn to the person you follow on Instagram or you message somebody privately for their advice. All of that's got us to this place where...
People are distrusting content that's out there from companies. They turn to people, like you're describing. We've now got tools like Search GPTs at its wait list for people. Google AI overviews are spreading to different countries now. You're going to chat GPT connected to live sources.
I put a question in to ask you around what you make of the past few months in particular where it's really gone 100 miles an hour on these kind of landscape changes. And you changed the question to the past few years and not just digital marketing, the marketing landscape generally has changed over the past few years. Why did you change that to the past few years instead of the past few months of technological developments? Why, what are you, yeah.
Mark Kilens (17:28.759)
A couple of reasons. Yeah, no, sorry, I'm just trying to cut you off. I mean, just a couple of reasons. One is like, I think we're in this big bubble with AI. Like, no one's gonna talk about AI in like 10 years. Like, it's just stupid. Like, no one cares about AI. They just care about the result, the outcome, the experience. It's kind of funny what's going on right now, honestly. Anyway, it's almost like everyone was like doing like a dot com.
business name back in the 97, 98, 99.
Paul Mortimer (17:59.573)
yet default corporate bro or the sales incident parity with the what we do for a start -up in the really struggling for minutes
Mark Kilens (18:04.863)
A little bit, yeah.
Mark Kilens (18:12.959)
It's yeah, just as the name the company AI or dot AI, right? Anyway. So I think there's like this part of that part where we just don't know what we don't know. It's so new. It's so early. There's a lot of a lot of big promises. I would say there's not so much to back it up quite yet. There's just a lot to be figured out. And really like that is a thing that's part of this. I in our five things that make up people first go to market like the change. Why change?
Paul Mortimer (18:16.228)
Yeah. .ai, yeah.
Mark Kilens (18:41.195)
the convergence of AI is one of them, right? Which means I think because so much more of what we're doing is gonna be artificially created to some degree, when it's authentically created, you know, there's something to be said there, right? There's something that probably is gonna be better, right? But if you look back further and like you look at like just the things that are like definitely have happened or are happening at mass scale,
Paul Mortimer (18:48.281)
you
Mark Kilens (19:10.923)
Because AI, if you look at the AI adoption metrics, very few people use it every day. Like, there's a good amount, still not the majority that use it every month in terms of like these AI search engines, chat GPT, et cetera, but like very few people are actually using it. It's still, like the adoption curve is so long, but like, if you look at these other things, social networks, messaging, consuming content, creating content, it's way past the majority.
Paul Mortimer (19:39.649)
Yeah, I think it's good point about the change curve. One of my colleagues, you can get sucked into this sort of AI AI buzz. But yeah, that change curve is long and we still are at the early stages of the overall change curve. I'm interested then when you say that to surely we're going to accelerate through that with things like Google AI overview and Apple intelligence coming.
Mark Kilens (20:07.617)
Sorry, say that one more time. You kind of broke up there for a second, sorry. Sorry.
Paul Mortimer (20:10.394)
I'll repeat the question and we'll chop that. it's interesting you talk about the... Hold on, stop. It's interesting you mention the change curve because there is that long change curve and particularly for people like us in the digital marketing space and LinkedIn, buzz about AI. But everybody uses Google, everybody uses their mobile phone that's for 90 % of people Google or Apple. Apple Intelligence, Gemini, Google AI Overview.
What's your take on that then? wasn't expecting you to say this about AI and the change curve because people aren't going to... if Google gives them an AI answer, they are now using AI.
Mark Kilens (20:52.363)
Yeah, well, yeah, true. if you, I guess it goes back to like, what is use? Like, what is, so, use is an interesting word, right? Like, I'm using something that could be highly interpreted in many different directions. if you watch the Olympics, if you watch any kind of major sporting thing, right? Because that's really, like, for live TV, like, the only thing people really watch live for the most part these days is like sports. So,
Paul Mortimer (21:16.909)
Yeah.
Mark Kilens (21:20.149)
you saw all these brand awareness commercials for Gemini, mostly Gemini, because the Apple stuff still isn't out. I actually hadn't seen one for ChatGPT, I don't think. I saw some for Salesforce, B2B, but my point is, they were just trying to get the masses to even know that this stuff even exists. We're in a bubble with marketers, salespeople on LinkedIn, to your point, et cetera, et cetera. So then it's like, wait a minute, well if I'm using it, what can it really do for me? And that's where the education comes in.
and integrating it into someone's workflow to start with, like a search, is very smart, because then you're like, wait a minute, what is this thing? I see it, cool. But then from there, it's like, well, how am gonna actually get value from this, right? So I think once it starts to get integrated into workflows like the apps you showed on your phone, like the services you use every day, and you become that much more efficient, because ultimately AI really is about efficiency, there's some creativity, but efficiency.
then people will be like, okay, yeah, I get it. And then again, then it's not even AI, it's just like, I'm using Google. you know what mean? Like.
Paul Mortimer (22:23.544)
yeah yeah yeah I'm using Apple intelligence like it's it's gonna be that's that's where it's yeah anyway we digress before we this into an AI podcast back to the the they're the tech changes that I think could you know gonna accelerate us through that adoption curve but it's just one of the many things you've talked about with user habits changing you mentioned Facebook one of the first places your college to get Facebook Twitter
that all inbound era with people searching and coming, a website being a magnet to attract people, but those user habits have changed, privacy laws have changed. What do people need to rethink or revisit from their normal ways of working to do what you are saying, to build in that storytelling, those relationships with real people instead of a brand, to utilise partnerships, what do people need to think about from their established ways of working for the past 10 years?
Mark Kilens (23:23.701)
It really starts with, I get this question a lot, it starts with understanding what we talked about today a bit more, so you can go to tacknetwork, tackinsider .com to learn more about this, but it's really like, you believe in how you bring products to the market, how you do marketing and sales needs to change? Because if you don't, don't bother trying this then probably, right? You could try it on a small scale if you want, but to really,
Paul Mortimer (23:47.768)
Why?
Mark Kilens (23:53.567)
make a shift in how you market something. For example, you could try to send all of your emails from a real person in a much more conversational story -based tone, that stuff, and you probably will see better results. Great, check that box. Then it's like, wait a minute though, if those emails don't, because email's a channel number one and email's a tactic. It's not a strategy. So if you don't believe in a different strategy, it's only gonna get you so far.
So I should say, you could definitely try it to your point about why. Try and do things, but to actually make a big change in how you think about the brand representing itself and how you think about messaging and positioning and how you think about what you invest in. Do you invest in paid ads, social search, et cetera, or do you invest in some of that, but you're investing in other things that are more people first, maybe more events, maybe more content creation on social networks.
Maybe more research. That's literally like research is awesome because it's literally people answering questions that you can then do so much with. So anyway, my point is it comes down to dollars and cents and what you believe dictates a lot of where your dollars and cents go. So try it. You can crawl, walk, run this. I'm happy to teach anyone. We crawl, walk, run for all the different things in the model. But if you...
If you don't have some level of conviction that this could be a good, better way, the results won't be astonishing.
Paul Mortimer (25:31.044)
give me an example of crawl walk run
Mark Kilens (25:35.733)
Yeah, mean, so start with is the email. I'll just go back to that example. All right, we're gonna send our newsletter now, not from the brand, but from a person who represents the brand. Cool, let's see how that goes. Which overhaul the entire thing. We tons of examples of this in TACK Insider, but like we're gonna do people first email marketing. Okay, we did that. Now we're gonna overhaul all of the email nurture, right? We're gonna overhaul everything. We're gonna overhaul all of our sequences. We're gonna overhaul all of that. So that's like walking now. Okay, cool. Now running with that is like, all right, well we have,
really designed a people first email programs. Like our email marketing is coming from people, using storytelling, using a much different tone, much different conversational approach, all these things. But how does that integrate into the rest of the experience? Like they're getting emails because there was probably some type of engagement trigger, right? Some type of action that made that happen. So now it's like how do I tie that?
more into these other things, which we call integrated revenue campaigns, which might be a topic for another day on the podcast, but like, how do you integrate then this one channel and these set of tactics in this channel with the other things? So you could pick any channel. You could do paid ads. Hey, I'm gonna do paid ads. mean, Google search you can't do because there's no images, but like, I'm gonna make my paid ads much different in terms of how we write the copy, how we do the visuals, how we design the landing pages, how we think about like using customer evidence, customer proof, people.
images, storytelling on those landing pages, how we do follow up from those landing pages. Like again, going back to email nurture or like just direct one -to -one follow up that happens from an actual human, relying a little bit less on AI SDRs, like crap like that, right? Like, so yeah, I mean, hopefully that gave you some context.
Paul Mortimer (27:23.636)
I'm just thinking a load of follow -up questions and conscious of the final two minutes we've got so I'll just ask a couple more instead. So something else we wanted to talk about was sort of the rise of these integrated teams doing what you've just described. how fast is this growing and how fast do people need to sort of look into this in your opinion?
Mark Kilens (27:51.471)
I I think you just look at your goals. What is working and not working? And how has that changed, trended over the last two to three years? Or five years, if you're more established company. If it's going down, then you should change and try this stuff. If it's flatlined, still, try and change. If it's still doing well and it's still going up, okay, maybe you don't need to do much. Maybe you're already doing this. But I think it comes down to like,
your guardrails or goals and budget. And also, if you just look at your landscape of your competitors, where you play in the market, there could just be a ripe opportunity for you to take this approach because if no one else is doing this in your marketplace and everyone sounds the same, well then break out. Break out through the noise. This is the time to do it.
Paul Mortimer (28:41.377)
Nice and in regards to getting started with this, what's one thing somebody listening to this can do in the next seven days in regard to people first GTM strategy?
Mark Kilens (28:52.321)
Sign up for TACK Insider and I promise you in seven days you will have a crowd, we have a whole course on this. We have nine classes on this in TACK Insider, Paul. That walks you step by step how to do it.
Paul Mortimer (28:53.837)
Hahaha
Paul Mortimer (29:02.709)
Thanks
Mark Kilens (29:06.399)
Exactly.
Mark Kilens (29:26.668)
Thank you Paul, it's been a lot of fun.
Cheers.
