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The Hybrid Planning Model for 2021

Posted on Oct 22, 2020 | 25 min

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About the speaker

Max Altschuler is the VP of Marketing at Outreach.io
Max not only leads 170+ sales professionals as the CEO of Sales Hacker, but he has also taken on the role of VP of Marketing at Outreach.io. In this interview, we discuss the shift in Marketing execution since COVID-19, and the need to stand out in a saturated online marketplace.

Marketing Priorities and Planning

• When prioritizing marketing and budget, figure out what your focus is and then work backward from that. In the current economic climate, it’s important to double down on your focus and let other things go because budgets shrink, resources shrink, and attention spans shrink.
• Since in-person events aren’t happening, everything shrinks to virtual. So now everything is more saturated and noisier than ever before. Double down on things that work and, and then pivot over time as things get more saturated.
• During times of economic downturn, people might feel alienated by a brand that tries to lead with selling first, rather than acknowledging the situation and focusing on the customer. Brands that lead with their storytelling are the ones that come out ahead.

Nurturing

• The ability to market to people without having to spend a lot of money in a time like this is so important.
• Nurture your leads and keep delivering value. Focus on building a community, building an SEO content engine, and nurturing them so they come to you when they’re ready to buy.

Giving Back is Smart Marketing

• Max was inspired by gratitude to help people who had been hit by the pandemic and had lost their jobs. To give back to their customers, he created a job board at Outreach.io for those that were still hiring.
• It was a low-cost way to build a marketing campaign around something that added a lot of value for his customers. The campaign was built in three days for about $3000 and had 10,800 views in the first 48 hours.
• For Outreach’s customers, the job board was also a good way to attract hires because sales reps could see that they would be joining the best companies that empower them with the best sales engagement solution.

Sales Enablement Leads the Conversation

• The conversation between sales and marketing should always be led by sales enablement. Sales enablement is the central hub. They’re not just rep training and on-boarding, but ongoing enablement.
• Sales enablement is the knot in the middle of a bow tie with sales and marketing engines on either side. And sales can go back and say, “Hey, here’s what we’re hearing from the front lines.” Sales enablement can take the feedback and go back to marketing and say, “Hey, here’s what we need.”

Staying Nimble

• Being responsive and able to act on things as you see them and not having rules for the sake of rules is crucial to marketing and sales.
• You make the rules and you don’t have to do things the way you’ve always done them.
• Early-stage companies can take more risks and ask for forgiveness later, but middle-stage companies can use what they’ve learned over time to put better processes in place.
• Eventually, best practices can become rules. And, that’s where you lose the balance. It’s better to have an AB test mindset; a growth mindset.

The Future of Marketing Events

• When everything opens back up people will actually want to go to conferences again, and they’re going to be excited to get out of their houses and go back to in-person events. But after that first year of conferences, they will lose their luster again.
• When conferences open back up, they will be smaller, with a hybrid of in-person and online versus for a long time. Virtual is working well and there’s no reason to get rid of it.

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