How Auvik’s CMO Cracked Reddit: The Untapped Goldmine for B2B Marketers

Summary

Marketing Trends Podcast Summary
Episode: How Auvik’s CMO Cracked Reddit: The Untapped Goldmine for B2B Marketers
Host: Stephanie Postles
Guest: Suzanne Rodriguez, CMO of Auvik
Release Date: May 28, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Marketing Trends, host Stephanie Postles welcomes Suzanne Rodriguez, the Chief Marketing Officer of Auvik, to delve into innovative strategies for reaching highly technical B2B audiences. Suzanne shares her experiences and insights on leveraging unconventional marketing channels, balancing promotional and entertaining content, and fostering a culture of radical candor within her team.

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Marketing Channels for Technical B2B Audiences

Reddit as a Key Channel

Suzanne Rodriguez emphasizes the effectiveness of Reddit in reaching Auvik’s target audience—network administrators and IT professionals. Despite Reddit’s reputation for being challenging to advertise on, Auvik has successfully navigated its intricacies.

"Reddit has been very successful for us because it's really popular with our audience," [08:43] Suzanne Rodriguez.

She highlights that finding the right subreddits, such as the sysadmin subreddit, is crucial. Auvik’s approach involves launching targeted ads and building genuine community engagement, which has given them a competitive edge.

Facebook and Instagram's Effectiveness

Contrary to common B2B marketing trends, Suzanne reveals that Facebook and Instagram outperform LinkedIn for Auvik’s campaigns.

"Paid ads for us on LinkedIn do not work. Facebook and Instagram work," [00:00] Suzanne Rodriguez.

She attributes this success to the platforms' robust advertising algorithms and the presence of IT professionals who are active on Facebook. Instagram, in particular, serves as a venue for entertaining content like memes, which resonate well with their audience.

LinkedIn Ads: Lack of Success

Despite being a popular platform for B2B marketers, LinkedIn ads have not yielded positive results for Auvik.

"We have yet to find any success with LinkedIn," [35:14] Suzanne Rodriguez.

Suzanne shares her frustration, noting that while LinkedIn is theoretically a valuable platform for reaching decision-makers, the engagement and conversion rates have been disappointing.

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Content Strategies: Balancing Promotional and Entertaining Content

Use of Memes and Authentic Engagement

Auvik employs memes as a core component of their content strategy to entertain and engage their technical audience. These memes are crafted to be both humorous and relevant to IT professionals.

"Memes are popular with our audience... Meet the right audience with targeted humor," [20:07] Suzanne Rodriguez.

One notable campaign involved a Raspberry PI giveaway on National Pi Day, which used a popular meme from 500 Days of Summer. While the campaign initially faced backlash for perceived sexism, Suzanne’s team responded authentically, turning a potential misstep into a constructive community conversation.

"We responded authentically and addressed the backlash without being defensive," [16:15] Suzanne Rodriguez.

Balancing Entertainment and Promotion

Suzanne discusses the internal challenge of balancing entertaining content with direct promotional efforts. While entertaining content like memes drives engagement, promotional content is essential for conversions.

"There's a huge push and pull with promotional versus entertainment content," [02:29] Rose.

To address this, Suzanne manages separate teams for demand generation and community engagement, ensuring that both content types receive appropriate focus and resources.

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Search Visibility and the Role of AI

Suzanne underscores the importance of search visibility in today’s AI-driven landscape. Auvik focuses on appearing in AI-generated search results and optimizing for key terms that potential customers use during their buying cycle.

"We focus on key terms people are interested in during a buying cycle and ensure we're appearing in all of them," [31:30] Suzanne Rodriguez.

This strategy ensures that Auvik remains visible to prospects actively seeking network management solutions, leveraging tools like ChatGPT to stay relevant in search queries.

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Challenges and Team Dynamics

Push-Pull Between Demand Generation and Community Engagement

Managing the balance between demand generation and community-focused marketing poses significant challenges. Suzanne admits to the internal conflicts arising from differing priorities and budget allocations between the two teams.

"It's a huge struggle on the team. It's also a huge internal conflict," [25:11] Suzanne Rodriguez.

Her ongoing project involves educating the community team on the importance of demand generation to foster better collaboration and resource allocation.

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Leadership and Team Management

Radical Candor and Authentic Feedback

Suzanne champions a leadership style rooted in radical candor, fostering an environment of open and honest feedback. Inspired by Kim Scott’s Radical Candor, she believes in providing frequent, mostly positive feedback to retain high performers and encourage continuous improvement.

"I believe in authenticity and being radically candid. I give feedback very often, and over 90% is positive," [43:34] Suzanne Rodriguez.

This approach not only builds trust but also ensures that team members feel valued and motivated to perform their best.

Hiring Practices: Data-Oriented and Culture Fit

When hiring, Suzanne prioritizes candidates who are data-oriented and fit seamlessly into Auvik’s collaborative and candid culture. She recommends using behavioral interview techniques to assess a candidate’s data-driven mindset and their ability to contribute positively to the team dynamic.

"First and foremost data-oriented. I don’t care what your opinion is, I care what the data says," [50:04] Suzanne Rodriguez.

She also values candidates who can bring fresh perspectives without preconceived notions, allowing Auvik to rely on data-driven decisions.

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Lightning Round Highlights

Overhyped Marketing Trend: Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

When asked to identify an overhyped marketing trend, Suzanne points to ABM, arguing that its promises often exceed its practical benefits.

"Probably ABM. It's been overhyped for a while," [58:14] Suzanne Rodriguez.

Marketing Strategy: "Meet Your Customers Where They Are"

Suzanne succinctly describes Auvik’s marketing strategy as meeting customers on the platforms they frequent, ensuring relevance and engagement.

"Meet your customers where they are," [59:25] Suzanne Rodriguez.

Memorable B2C Ad: Nike’s Emotional Campaign

For memorable B2C advertising, Suzanne highlights Nike’s emotionally charged campaigns featuring female athletes, which left a lasting impression on her.

"Nike featuring female athletes... made me cry," [59:38] Suzanne Rodriguez.

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Conclusion: Key Takeaways from Suzanne's Marketing Approach

Suzanne Rodriguez’s strategies demonstrate the value of embracing unconventional marketing channels like Reddit and Facebook for B2B audiences. Her emphasis on authentic engagement, data-driven decision-making, and fostering a culture of open feedback provides a blueprint for marketers aiming to reach niche, technical communities. Balancing entertainment with promotion and staying adaptable in a rapidly evolving digital landscape are essential components of Auvik’s successful marketing framework.

Listeners gain valuable insights into how to effectively target hard-to-reach B2B segments, the importance of authenticity in community engagement, and the significance of leadership in cultivating a high-performing marketing team.

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Learn More:
To explore more about Suzanne Rodriguez and Auvik’s innovative marketing strategies, visit Auvik's Website.

Transcript

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Paid ads for us on LinkedIn do not work. Facebook and Instagram work.

[Stephanie Postles]

I know for IT people especially.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Every time I say that, I do it with a little bit of shame. But it's true.

[Stephanie Postles]

Tell me. I want to hear more. Like how do you get this to work this conversation around? Like, no more websites. Zero click everything. Who needs a website anymore?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Use case type content is where I think the website disappears. I hate direct traffic. You don't know where it's coming from. We get a ton of direct traffic that never converts. It's about search visibility, including showing up in Google generated AI results on key terms people are interested in in a buying cycle and making sure we're appearing in all of them.

[Rose]

Also, I did look it up OnVig as number one that came up for top SaaS network mapping tools.

[Stephanie Postles]

Damn. And there you are. What is something that you believe right now that you're getting the most pushback on from your team, from leadership, from friends?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

What's one thing I actually want to say out loud on the podcast is for the real question, whatever you first.

[Stephanie Postles]

Thought was probably the best one. But Rose. So we just wrapped up with the CMO of avic, Suzanne Rodriguez. What I loved about this interview with Sarah, Suzanne was just how hard it is to reach these very technical buyers that they're selling to. And I don't think we've had a ton of marketers on the show who've really dove into their methods for like, how do I reach an IT admin? What spaces am I playing in? And I mean even hearing about some of the marketing channels that she's betting big on, I mean, when she said.

[Rose]

Facebook, we both were like.

[Stephanie Postles]

I was like, what? Yeah, Facebook. Tell me more. Hearing about these strategies that she's rolling with that are working really well and these memes that you pulled up, super funny.

[Rose]

The memes that me not even having a full understanding of network mapping, I could still laugh at these memes. Cause they were funny.

[Stephanie Postles]

So it's really good hearing about the channel. She's betting on how to reach hard to reach communities, these really niche ones. How she's thinking about the future of search and how to show up in these search results and yeah, just super fascinating. I think there's definitely a lot of lessons for any B2B marketer, especially any B2B marketer who is trying to reach a very niche hard to reach community. This is definitely the episode.

[Rose]

And any marketers who have this push and pull that's promotional versus entertainment. I thought that was really interesting to Hear the challenge that she faces as a leader of those marketing teams. Of what do we focus on more? Should we be focusing more on our entertainment content or more on promoting our products? That was really interesting.

[Stephanie Postles]

All right, well, let's get into it. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Marketing Trends. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, and I also have my amazing producer Rose in the house. Everyone say hi to Rose. This is her second episode, yes?

[Rose]

Yeah, I think so.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay. And today's guest is Suzanne Rodriguez. Hi, CMO of Avic. Suzanne, welcome.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Neighbor.

[Stephanie Postles]

Neighbor. We are neighbors. I mean, that is crazy. Yeah, you're also. Did I tell you, you're the second person within a month, the CMO of GoDaddy, also semi neighbor of ours.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Really?

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. I had her come in and she was like, I'm so close by. I'm like, who knew? Who is Suzanne?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Who knew?

[Stephanie Postles]

We won't tell anyone where we live though.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Full of CMOs. Yeah, exactly.

[Stephanie Postles]

So, Suzanne, I want to start with what do you do? Like, what do you sell? Because I really want to get into like this hard buyer that you're trying to reach. It's very different than other CMOs that I've talked to. And so I'd love to hear like, what do you sell and who is your buyer?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

So, so Auvik offers network management software. And so we sell to a really, really technical buyer, usually a network administrator. You can think of it as in a corporate office. It's part of the help desk team. So you know when your computer's not working or something like that. I feel like that's the easiest way to explain it to marketers. And we're selling a solution. It's a solved problem. So our buyers don't need to be educated on what a network management solution is or why they should buy one known problem with a known solution that's existed for many, many years. And so we work to demonstrate to our buyers that our solution is better than the one they're currently using. We focus on getting IT pros to switch to switch to Aubic.

[Stephanie Postles]

Is this the first time you've been in a company where you're like, I don't have to educate the market like.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

They already know it's not and it's my preference.

[Stephanie Postles]

Interesting. Tell me why.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Because you see results really, really quickly. So I have worked in enterprise sales in Companies with a 12 month PL sales cycle and I prefer a shorter sales cycle, the high velocity motion. Mostly because you know what I do today in a high velocity business Impacts the quarter, the month, and you can see results quickly. And so that coupled with more or less skipping the education and nurturing phase, I literally can do something today that will result in revenue in six weeks, which is awesome. You see results quickly.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay, so for your buyer is this like director and above level.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

So we have, we sell to, we call them because we're marketers and we like little clever names, buyers and triers. And the triers, that's really the practitioner. So that would be like a network administrator.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

And that's the person that is the user of the software. And then the buyer is most commonly an IT director, depending on the size of the company, sometimes a VP. And then we do really well in MSPs. That's an industry that we're a great fit for. And in that case, the buyer is really the owner of the msp.

[Stephanie Postles]

Interesting. Okay. And so when thinking about like not having to educate a market like this, is there ever a point when that would change? I'm just thinking about like right now, this, all these tech spaces are changing really, really quickly and it feels like all these new providers can just pop up and you've got these like one person companies all of a sudden having enterprise clients. And like, do you feel that shift right now or do you feel like you still have a moat around the space that you're in?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I never feel like I have a moat around the space. I'm always paranoid, which I think you could be. It's so funny when you say these one person start popping up immediately. What comes to my mind is like, yes, and they get to build everything from scratch and do it right. Like they don't have all this tech debt and you know, all of that. So I'm always paranoid. I absolutely don't feel like it's gonna be like that forever. It's interesting because we have a second product that we recently launched and I've been working on a plan to take that to market. It's a different, it's still a highly technical buyer, but it is a different Persona and it is very different in the sense that it's not a well defined problem with a known solution. So it's, you know, I'm going breaking out. I need to go back to sort of Marketing Basics 101 with the education of the market.

[Stephanie Postles]

So now you're doing both then?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yes, we'll be starting to do both. But the lion's share of our business is still this network management software.

[Stephanie Postles]

That's interesting because I see with the space of so many people now don't have to be technical to do technical things. And then probably also you have to be very technical for network solutions. It's like this interesting divide of being able to do a lot with little, um, and then still having to have deep knowledge. So now you're playing both places, which is cool.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yep.

[Stephanie Postles]

So for this year, I mean, what are a couple channels that you're betting on to reach this? Let's just stick with a more technical buyer. Like, what are your most interesting channels that you're betting on?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Reddit. Reddit. Reddit.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay, tell me more.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

So for us, Reddit has been very successful. Look, I'm on Reddit. Probably y' all are too. Reddit's very popular. It's really popular with our audience. And in particular, there are certain subreddits. Like there's a sysadmin subreddit. It's where our buyers are, it's where our potential customers are. And why it's been so successful for us is that it's really hard to advertise and build any sort of community on Reddit. So starting with the advertising, Reddit's pretty new to this digital advertising. You know, using air quotes game. The team had to go old school and find the subreddits where our buyers are, launch ads for this specific segment, do the testing themselves, all of that. It's very different from the experience with, say, Google, where everything's just happening for you. So it's hard, which I think gave us a bit of a leg up because we are willing to make the investment. And in terms of building a community in Reddit, it's also really hard because each of these subreddits has a, you know, these unpaid moderators that take that job very seriously. And it is very easy to get your hand slapped, you know, to get flamed, to get all of this. And there's not any, there really aren't any controls. It's up to, you know, oftentimes once this admin in the basement decides whether, you know, our post stays or not.

[Stephanie Postles]

So that's pretty wild.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, it is.

[Stephanie Postles]

When you're going after these sub communities, like how I'm trying to think, if you were to teach your team how to do this, are you telling them, go after communities of this size or here's things to look for, or are you just hiring a subject matter expert in the space, in this admin space to then be like, go do whatever you want to find those communities? How do you teach this playbook?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, so it's definitely not a volume game, which is a little hard for me. I really like high velocity businesses where you are, you know, I like to say giving the sales team lots of at bats and so lots of volume. But in Reddit and in other places it's really the right buyers. So it is finding subreddits where the people in that subreddit are more or less exclusively our buyers. Like, look, a network admin is going to participate in some sports themed subreddit, but the majority of the people there are not. So we've chosen to go really focus. I am more interested in hiring. You can be one of two things in hiring a marketer and what I'm looking for. I definitely have folks on my team that really, really deeply understand IT pros. Those would be the members of my team that I am counting on to recommend spaces where we should be where IT pros are. Or I'm looking for someone that has deep functional experience in a completely unrelated industry. And the reason I say that is that, you know, if you have been generating demand for socks and you are an expert on certain channels, the good news is you bring those skills to AAVEC and you don't come with these preconceived notions of what should work right. So you are able to just completely rely on the data and listen to the data. Where I've found it tricky is trying to, you know, insisting on hiring someone who has experience marketing to IT pros. They sort of do, they know enough to impress the three of us, but really don't. And what happens is we lose that authenticity because then someone is, you know, presenting themselves as knowing a bunch of stuff. And this is an audience that loves to prove you wrong, call you out, do that sort of thing. I also find you can become too attached to what people should want versus just actually listening to it Pros tell us what they want and listening to the data.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Okay, so then for something like Reddit, like what are maybe. Are there any times when you have gotten your hand slapped where you're like, oh, that's like that. So then anyone who's listening can just not do that.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Well, it actually can be a really good opportunity to engage. So a very recent example is we. There is March 14th is PI Day, National PI Day, and it's a real holiday that is actually celebrated. And there is something called a Raspberry PI, which is a teeny little computer. And, and that's a very appealing product for our audience. And so we ran a campaign around National PI Day with a Giveaway. Come to Auvik, Start, activate, deploy a free trial, and you can get a free Raspberry PI. And memes are really popular with our audience. Look, memes are popular with marketers. You know, it's universal. And we had several different memes that we were testing for this campaign, and. And there was one in particular from 500 Days of Summer. It's so funny. I still have not seen the movie, but I feel like I know so much about it at this point. There's this famous scene where the guy is. He's at a party, and it's about his expectations versus reality. And the meme is talking about Raspberry PI. And it shows one of them picturing the pie that you eat and another one picturing this mini computer. And we had two variations. One where the female was thinking about the pie that you eat and vice versa. And like we do with everything, we put it out there and let the data tell us which creative one. And it happened to be the one where the female was thinking of pie, the food. And so we went out pretty big with that campaign, and we got a lot of rightfully so backlash in, you know, on Reddit, talking about why. Why does the female have to be the one that doesn't understand what a computer is? You know, all of that sort of stuff. And as much as I wanted to say we tested it, it was the data.

[Stephanie Postles]

You chose this.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yes, exactly. It actually was an opportunity for us to be authentic and address it, not ignore it.

[Rose]

And.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

And so, you know, went on Reddit and apologized and, you know, opened an honest conversation without being defensive and, you know, apologized, changed the creative to the one we already had, but it became a real conversation starter so that we're in this community where our buyers are, and it's an interesting conversation with a company that's being authentic and real. And that campaign did really well after you changed it. Well, it.

[Stephanie Postles]

Or just in general.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

In general. But I would say after we changed it, Reddit started performing really, really well, just because it's coupled with a conversation we're having in the community, as well as paid advertising and being able to tie those two together.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay, and then did you as a company come in and respond? Because I'm also imagining what might work in these Reddit communities is, like, someone from your company representing you all versus the company.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yep. As I. So in community, and Reddit is no exception, authenticity is so important. And so I have someone on my team that leads community, but he posts under AVIC official, so our cut. He post is the company. So, you know, he's not trying to come in and pretend to be a network admin or anything like that. So we're very transparent, very clear. So we absolutely were posting as the company and saying, you're right, our mistake. We own it. Let's talk about it. So it is a actual human, not a robot, not AI, but certainly posting as a vic.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay. I'm kind of surprised that works in Reddit and I just have this view. And I'm not on Reddit all the time, but I just have this view, especially in the IT space, that people are like, looking like, are you trying to give me an ad? This is a company. Like, you're not actually an admin. So I'm surprised that works well.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, so it worked well because the conversation was a complaint about our company. Oh, right. I mean, it was a complaint about Avic's ad in the market. So Avik, the company responded in kind. Other things that worked are Avik participating in a conversation where we're not trying to sell something. It is authentic. What I worry the most about is us trying to be super creative or even worse, clever in something like Reddit and, you know, pretending to be something we're not. I mean, that happens once and it's game over.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. I wonder if that's a strategy, is like putting out a ad that triggers people to get more attention.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

It could be. You know, I used to say this a lot more. Maybe when email was a bigger channel. But I love a good oops email. Like anytime there is a mistake that's big enough that you have to actually re email everyone and say oops. The engagement on those emails is amazing. So, yeah, you might be onto some, you know, posting some controversial ads just to start a conversation.

[Stephanie Postles]

Try it out. Anything that people are getting extra triggered by, that's the one. All right, so because you just mentioned memes and how they work, producer Rose has pulled up a couple of Avik's memes.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Okay.

[Stephanie Postles]

And I'd love to get reactions from both of us because I'll probably just be very confused. Maybe, but at least you'll know context. And so hopefully, hopefully you will also be confused, which would be great. All right, Rose, take it away.

[Rose]

So top one says Auvik will automatically map your network in minutes and they'll give you a ubiquity. Am I saying that right? You are APU7Pro for trying it out. IT professional who's getting goosebumps.

[Stephanie Postles]

I think it's funny only because I have no idea what the first part means. But just the goosebumps and the whispering in the ear is funny. And I'm like, did this one work?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Well, it did. So, I mean, it's classic marketing 101 with just the image, look and feel and attention getting. And then what she's whispering in his ear is very, very targeted to an IT pro. To the point about Rose saying, am I saying ubiquity correctly? It's targeting the right audience.

[Stephanie Postles]

Where did that one go? Was that Reddit?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

It was social channels, so. Including Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, but yep, including Reddit.

[Stephanie Postles]

Who thought of that one? And did you think it was a good idea?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I am. It's less about me understanding the details of the meme in the ubiquity giveaway. I, as you know, have two young kids and I feel like I'm not as caught up on pop culture as I should be.

[Stephanie Postles]

Same.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Right.

[Stephanie Postles]

It's a problem in, like, what movie?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Who exactly? At this point, I have an amazing team that I've learned to trust, and they're always testing. And that meme was absolutely not my idea. None of these memes are. It is the brilliant people on my team.

[Stephanie Postles]

Do these perform better than. I mean, I would assume better than a white paper. Like, do you actually see clicks, conversions, people going to your website? Like, tell me, and then we'll go to the next meme in a second.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Absolutely. So that is not. We do have memes that are just entertaining. That is an ad. That was an ad for a campaign where we wanted you to start a free trial of avik and you, in return would get a free ubiquity switch. So. Absolutely.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Which is a big deal to get this switch. Right. Okay. All right, Rose, next up.

[Rose]

All right, this one looks like a LinkedIn post. So nobody will remember your salary, how many tickets you closed, your uptime percentage. People will remember when you spelled it. Data warehouse. That time you accidentally blocked the CEO's IP on the firewall. The day you pushed out an empty update to a security product. That one was pretty good.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

And I mean, it. You could see how changing, you know, the three hit points to something that's relevant for a marketer. It's the same sort of concept.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yep. Yeah. Well, that one's good because I also feel like it would resonate with so many people, and it doesn't feel like there's a big. Like, there's not a product push in it.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Correct. It's to entertain.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Yeah. How much of your content is entertaining versus this one needs to go Towards a specific thing.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Less entertaining, more going toward a specific thing. That's why I was hesitating, because I would like it to be the more entertaining inverse. Well, just because you think about the marketer I want to be is always providing value. We're starting to entertain more than we used to entertain and inform. We still do a lot of ads that are asking for a trial.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yep, Yep. I've got some ideas for you. We've been getting into the humor space and trying to find the right people to work with. And I'm like, this IT audience. They would love humor and skits and, like, challenges live and reality tv, like they're still humans and they tries to watch.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

So, yeah, we'll talk, but okay, I'm excited.

[Rose]

All right, Rose, this is another entertaining one, and I'm a Parks and Rec fan, so love this one. I typed your symptoms into the thing up here, and it says you could have network connectivity problems that lined. Have you seen Parks and Rec?

[Stephanie Postles]

I actually have. Thank you for checking.

[Rose]

And this was this. This is just me nerding out, but this was completely improvised by Chris Pratt, which I thought was so cute.

[Stephanie Postles]

That's a good one. I like that.

[Rose]

And then last one, my personal favorite. When everything is urgent and everyone is.

[Stephanie Postles]

A vp, is it biting?

[Rose]

It's biting.

[Stephanie Postles]

How did that one do?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

That one did well. And it's the, you know, it's addressing a real pain point where with our audience every day, you know, everyone that is in, you know, air quotes, important, a VP is having a absolutely, you know, urgent must address issue. So, yeah, it performed well.

[Rose]

Feels like a tiny little baby hippo just biting on your leg all day long.

[Stephanie Postles]

I like it no matter what. And now that I think about it, the idea of, like, VPs, like, everyone's a VP too, that's kind of funny. Rose, is there anything you want to add to this Reddit section that we've been diving deep into?

[Rose]

I have a question about just entertain. Entertaining content versus promotional. Is there a lot of push and pull with that just in your own team?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Oh, so much.

[Rose]

How do you, as a leader, like, facilitate that conversation and push people creatively, but then also push the storytellers and the creative people to, like, think strategically and pay attention to metrics that matter?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

It's hard because I have two different teams. One is a demand gen team with a budget and a target and, you know, metrics to hit. And then I have another team who is tasked with building relationships with IT pros in the community. And so they're both, you know, going after the same person and unfortunately those interests are often competing and the budget is bigger on the demand gen side. Let's just put it that way. I have done a better job of educating the, you know, inform, inspire, entertain team on the importance of demand gen. I've yet to do the reverse. So that's my project through the rest of the calendar year. But yes, it's a huge struggle on the team. It's also a huge internal conflict.

[Stephanie Postles]

Right.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I'm sure as well.

[Stephanie Postles]

So yeah, I'm sure if you're on the entertaining team too, you're like vice versa. I want to be over there or they get all the budget.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Exactly.

[Stephanie Postles]

That'd be tricky. The last thing for Reddit, did anything get impacted when I think Google had their partnership and then Reddit closed down their API and then they made it paid. Did you start thinking, oh, this might be a different strategy that I have to go after now when that happened?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Absolutely. Because there was protests and we were sweating it out for a little while there. Where we are now, that's old news in ancient, so it doesn't matter now. So we correct generally meaning that it has continued to be wildly successful. But absolutely there was a little bit of time there where we thought, we're going to take a big hit to our business. We need to find other places to reinvest.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Reddit was your first channel, which I love. Thank you for going deep into that. What's your second channel you're betting on this year?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

One of our big bets is conversion on the website. And so we get a ton of direct traffic. And like any like Reddit. Well, but I mean that's the problem. This I hate direct traffic. You don't know where it's coming from. Let me rephrase. We get a ton of direct traffic that never converts is really what, you know what's happening. We have always been focused on conversion optimization and testing on our website, but we are really investing in making a big bet on being able to convert more of this unknown source of direct traffic into eventually customers. So that is a big bet for us. It's pretty basic, but it's reallocating resources from known programs in order to fund different tools and really pulling in different contractors, consultants to help advise us is our big bet.

[Stephanie Postles]

Do you think other companies would have a similar problem here or do you think you only have this problem because people are already educated on the market and they already are knowing what they're looking for and so maybe that's why there's like the conversion thing gets to be focused on here where other companies are focused on educating and maybe they're fine having people just hanging out and.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Oh, absolutely. If your offering is not as straightforward, not known solution to a known solved problem and you are trying to get folks to your website, you're focused on. Okay, once you come to our website, stay here, go explore, go read, go do this. I am all about, once you get to our website, what do I have to do to get you into the product?

[Stephanie Postles]

So yes, okay, and then what about this conversation around like no more websites, zero click everything. Who needs a website anymore? How are you doing taking that into account, if at all?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, I feel like technology is going to advance so much that this will prove not to be true. But for where we are now and how I'm able to put myself back to sleep when I wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night worried about this is that this is where we do have the advantage of being an alternative to an existing solution. Meaning we are a budgeted item. People are using something now, we're an alternative to what they're using now. And that's where the, you know, I'm making blanket statements and exaggerating slightly. But that's why we don't have the need to do as much education. And so if you think about folks that are, we are targeting and attracting, they are searching, whether it's, you know, in ChatGPT or Google or Reddit or anywhere for alternatives to what they're using today. And that's different from what is network management, what is snmp, you know, all of that, you know, use case type content is where, you know, I think the website disappears for us, we're in better shape because, you know, even if you're in ChatGPT and you're saying, you know, give me the top 10 vendors in this space, we're working to make sure we're on that list. But then in order to go see the product, you are still, I mean We're a SaaS product, so customers log in on our website. You're still going to that site to try it.

[Stephanie Postles]

So to be found when people are looking in the market for what you offer, how do you, I mean, are you just making sure you've got content out there in all the forms or how are you thinking about making sure that you're found?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, so we are really focused on search visibility including showing up in, you know, Google generated AI results as well as appearing as a reference in actual AI content. And it's about focusing on key terms people are interested in in a buying cycle and making sure we're appearing in all of them. So, for example, we're really focused on best network management software vendors or alternatives to SolarWinds, alternatives to PRTG. Those sort of things is where we're focused on showing up. We also do. We talked about the memes and this switch giveaway is a really successful campaign. And I do worry about us being known as aavik, the company that gives away free switches. So we are investing more in community efforts and more advertising based on who AVIC is and the value we provide. So we're not just that company that. That gimmicky company that gives away free switches.

[Rose]

Also, I did look it up on ChatGPT and AVIC is number one that came up for top SaaS, Network Mapping Tools 2025.

[Stephanie Postles]

Damn. And there you are.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yes. Today. Today it changes so much, but yes.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Do you see any, like, patterns of, like, why, like, who's right? Because to me, I'm imagining a world where as a company and you can tell me if I'm totally wrong, if I'm a company and I'm writing about here's the top 10 network spaces, or let's just say CRMs, because I can understand that better.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

Here's the top five CRMs, here's why you should use HubSpot, here's why you should use Salesforce, here's everything in between. But when it's coming from maybe like an influencer in the space or someone who doesn't have deep ties within a company, it seems like that's what ChatGPT would rely on in the future versus HubSpot wrote an article saying, here's why we're the best and here's like five others down at the bottom. But obviously we're the best. Like, what do you think about a company telling a story and showing up like that in those results versus finding the people who are already in these communities and having them talk about it.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah. So that's the ultimate goal, is finding people in these communities to talk about it. Because that's where ChatGPT or AI is going right now. It's imperfect because it's not referencing who AVIC says the top 10 are. It's referencing third party sites. So a lot of, you know, all the review sites out there. It's definitely pay to play. And there are a lot of influencers. Yes. Who have these sort of top, you know, 10 vendor lists, but they're also pay to play. I feel like it's the big secret.

[Stephanie Postles]

All of it is the future's only, I think, getting more authentic with what's being sold. And like, back in the day, you could have a ton of ad money. You could be, you know, paying to be on all these review sites and Gartner recommending you. But now with AI, it can literally look at thousands of customers and what people are saying in Reddit and what's actually happening in real review sites. I'm like, that feels more interesting because it's like the best player actually gets to win versus who has the most ad budget and who's paid the most review sites to get in their articles.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

You're exactly right.

[Stephanie Postles]

So when it comes to things that you've cut, I would love to hear what you're not doing in the future that you maybe bet on Big semi recently or like last year, we have.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yet to find any success with LinkedIn. And I feel like marketers love LinkedIn, myself included. We continue trying, but the data is the data and paid ads for us on LinkedIn do not work. Facebook and Instagram work.

[Stephanie Postles]

I know for IT people, especially.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Every time I say that, I. It's true, it works. It's what the data says, but I do it with a little bit of shame. But it's true. It's what works.

[Stephanie Postles]

Tell me. I want to hear more. Like, how do you get this to work with IT people? I can get it for a lot of other spaces. It would make sense, especially reaching, like, entrepreneurs and small business owners and people of certain generations who are still on Facebook. Tell me how this works for IT people, especially Instagram. What are you doing there?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

So, you know what you just said about small business owners, entrepreneurs, really? That's LinkedIn.

[Stephanie Postles]

Oh, okay.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I mean, if you think about it.

[Stephanie Postles]

I'm like, I'm on there. People try and reach me.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Surprisingly, they're on LinkedIn. And it pro is like the rest of us scrolling through Instagram and Facebook, perhaps because they're of a certain age. Your words, not mine. So on Instagram, we do a lot of these memes and these, you know, funny, entertaining content.

[Stephanie Postles]

From your company account or from our company account.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yep. So everything is from our company account. And it's this authenticity. We're not trying to pretend to be something we're not. We certainly do a lot of thought leadership and, you know, just thoughts and perspectives on LinkedIn especially. But we're never. It's never, you know, someone secretly from our company. It's always Overtly posting from aavec.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay, so Instagram, I'm kind of understanding why that one could work. Facebook, Tell me more of like, and is it different content strategies of like, what you're putting on Instagram is different than Facebook or different?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

It is just by the nature of the platforms and for advertising, you know, ROI on advertising. It really is Facebook. Look, Facebook is set up for advertisers. So different from Reddit how I mentioned that it is like doing digital advertising in the early 2000s where you have to go and do everything yourself. That's not Facebook. They have an algorithm for everything. And so we're able to set up lookalike audiences and sort of the standard digital marketing efforts and. And our IT pros are on Facebook. You know, for whatever reason, I am less interested in why they're on Facebook and more interested in how we reach them and talk to them on Facebook. This sort of goes back to the, you know, the conversation about having a deeply technical audience and Auvik as a company and also the marketing team at Auvik. IT being so important that you show up authentically and you're not trying to pretend you know more about IT pros than the next person or you know, more about IT pros than an actual IT pro. It's about showing up and saying, hmm, let's see what the data tells us. The data tells us that IT pros are on Facebook. I'm not trying to tell them they should or should not be. I am meeting them where they are and they happen to be on Facebook.

[Stephanie Postles]

That's a good hot tip for marketing to technical people. Go to Facebook. I haven't been on there in like a year, but.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Or at least try it.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, or try it. I think LinkedIn, because I. They're probably still there, but I think LinkedIn is just lame content. And the ones I see standing out on LinkedIn are the ones who are doing ridiculous things, like all out ridiculous content. Kind of like what I was talking about earlier of like humor. Just making it an interesting place to go.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

So I wonder if that would work because right now, especially any B2B content on LinkedIn, I'm like, that's lame. You guys don't know, like, how to make me actually want to look at what you're making.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah. LinkedIn is really where our. I did this concept of buyer's triers and the trier being the practitioner. And if we think about a lot of what we offer is the product, a free trial of the product, get in the product, see it, use it so a lot of the practitioners are not on LinkedIn, but the buyers are the people that are approving the purchase. And it's not that uncommon that we reach the buyer and they say, hey, practitioner, hey, member of my team, go try this. So it's still an important audience. It's just we're still developing our success strategy on LinkedIn.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. As I think most are. I can't think of too many companies that I'm like, nailed it. That one's doing great.

[Rose]

We mentioned kind of backlinking. Is that something that's like a newer priority because you're talking to people that are previously educated? It's a very complex industry. So is backlinking really important or is it a particular challenge for you?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

It's a good question. You know, I don't know if it's a particular challenge for us only because, you know, we have an agency and every week I'm getting an update on our, you know, search visibility and we have a score for this and a score for that, and the target we're striving toward, they set. So I, you know, it's not something I understand enough about that I'm really anchoring toward. But I want as many advantages with Google because we're, you know, talking about how everything's changing, but you know, Google is still the place to be and you know, particularly now with Reddit, Google's even more important. So as many advantages as I can get Avic to get Google to view us favorably, the better. So that's sort of a non answer, but it's the truth.

[Rose]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay. Yeah, it's interesting. I was just at a. It's like this mastermind with this guy Dan Sullivan, and I brought up ChatGPT in a certain prompt that I was going to do to help me come up with my unique ability or whatever. And most of the room still had not used ChatGPT and I was like, and I think that's normal actually. Like, if you look at the data, like we get caught up in this, the world's changing so quickly. Which it is.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

Search is changing this, that everything's gonna be coming from these LLMs now. But then when you look at it, you're like, most people actually probably still use Google to like search for things.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah. And so I think once you start, I mean, my, literally my jaw dropped when you said that because I was like, I cannot, you know, I'm affection call chatgpt her. So I talk about her all the time. She's my Best friend. No matter what I want to know. I took my kids to Disney for spring break, and without her, we would have had no trip. I mean, I use it for everything.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yep.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

It's just me, too. Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

I'll have to send you this meme. Maybe you've seen it. We can probably pull it up at some point, but someone's walking. It's like a white person.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

[Stephanie Postles]

That'd be a good one for y' all to use.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

About 50 people sent it to me. Oh, yeah. They know how I refer to her.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. And so, Rose, it's like a person sitting on a bench and there's like, a white little figure. It's like chatgpt.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Her best friend.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, her best friend everywhere. It's really good.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

That's me.

[Stephanie Postles]

I love that. Okay, so I want to get into your leadership style, because I know when we talked previously, you talked about this concept of, you know, radical transparency and being really candid and how you work with your team and why that's helpful. And so I'd love to hear first, like, how you developed that. Like, tell me a bit of the history there of why you lead in the way that you do now.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, I like to pretend it was this whole deliberate strategy. I love the book Radical Candor by Kim Scott, and I think that's helped me channel it. But the reality is it's my authentic self. I am a person that tells it to you straight. You know, one of my greatest flaws is speaking without thinking.

[Stephanie Postles]

Same, perfect. Like, oops. Oh, that was a little too far.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah. So I have, you know, I believe so fully in authenticity, both with, you know, as a company to our customers, but also just, you know, how I show up at work. I am at work, work who I am at home. And that doesn't work for everyone, but it's so. It's very natural. It would be exhausting for me not to be radically candid. So I think that gives me a really big leg up when I think about leveraging this framework and the Radical Candor book. It helps me channel that in the most productive way. The reason I really latched onto and really love what Kim Scott talks about in this Radical Candor book is that most, if not all people, no one comes to work and wants to do a bad job. Everyone comes to work wanting to do a good job. I'd say everyone comes to work wanting to do a great job. And people assume they're doing a good job until someone tells them otherwise. And how crappy to be going about your business for a couple years at a company and then all of a sudden finding out you're not doing a good job. That's just patently unfair. And so it sort of starts from this place of leaders. It's not even courage. It's a responsibility to give feedback. My perspective is when people say feedback, they're usually talking about criticism. And I very much disagree with that. So I give feedback very often, and I would say 90% plus is positive feedback. And that is, some of that is natural to me, but it also is. I don't want to spend my time as a leader focusing on fixing low performers. I want to spend my time making sure I am retaining high performers on the team. And so a lot of that is reinforcing the right behaviors, recognizing good work. And as part of that, I'm a big praise in public. Be discreet about any criticism you have one on one. But if you hear me all the time giving feedback, which is really part of it is stating an opinion, and if you hear it so often and it is overwhelmingly positive and recognizing good work, then it comes across as authentic and, you know, having good intentions, which I do. I want people on my team to bring their best selves. And the intention of giving a criticism is to help people improve. But I can say that, you know, all day, like till I'm blue in the face. But by me focusing a lot on positive as well as negative feedback, I think that's an important part of it.

[Stephanie Postles]

So, I mean, what's interesting, we just had a guest a couple episodes back, Keith Farazi. So he wrote Never Eat Alone and some other books.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Okay.

[Stephanie Postles]

And he talked about this concept of like 360 feedback, where everyone's just giving everyone feedback. And they did this at Elf Beauty cosmetics company and how like, employee retention skyrocketed, performance skyrocketed, but it was the manager giving feedback and saying, here's one thing that you did amazing and something you can keep in mind for next month or next quarter. And then they would also give their manager feedback too, which I haven't heard of. Too many cultures where it's like revolving constant feedback between everyone. How do you think about that versus, yeah, just being the manager, giving it, or like incorporating feedback all around.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Huge proponent of it not being tops down. Feedback is always about the work, not the person. And so I'm not the only observer of work. So absolutely. People definitely have to have a high sense of psychological safety. I will say that the marketing team is really great at being Open and transparent and candid. But in no way do we live in this world that I. It's how I think, you know, Kim Scott paints it in her book where everyone is just walking around constantly giving feedback. That's not the culture we have. And I just don't know how realistic that is. But you start by asking and you always ask anything for me. Anything else I can do. You get to the point where you're asking so much that people are like, God, I've got to say something so she'll shut up and stop asking me. You know, you just sort of put it out there so often and again, it's about the work so it should be able to come from anyone. And you know, I do see that this, you know, me being so. And it's not just praise, it's just I'm genuinely excited about results or a new test or learnings or anything like that. And I do see that being contagious on the team. You know, I've definitely gotten feedback from my team members and I think it's just takes a lot of practice making a habit out of it.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, giving it is, I feel like hard as well, even good, bad, any of it. But I can imagine that having to be a skill, especially as like a team member to learn. How can I give feedback to someone who's above me? Yeah, my manager, you know.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

You know what helps is getting a lot of feedback.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Because then you can model how it's done.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, that's good. So what do you look for when you're hiring like your marketing team, especially in this coming year when you're like building out this power squad, like what kind of things do you look for in someone who's applying?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, it's a great question, particularly for marketing because every role is so different. So part of the BDRs at Aavic are part of marketing and we have in full a team of almost 30 BDRs and we have a very well defined profile of a bdr. And it's all the same profile with marketing. Every single marketing role is so different that it so depends on. On the role in terms of functional experience. But generally what I'm looking for to join AVIC overall and certainly to join marketing is first and foremost data oriented. And it's this. I don't care what your opinion is, I don't care what you think. I care what the data says. Show up with the data, believe data, leverage data is first and foremost. And then fitting in with the team and the company and what I mean, by that is, you know, being collaborative, being open minded, being able to bring new ideas to the table. I mean, certainly fitting in with this culture of being radically candid. And then beyond that, it really depends on what the role is in terms of, you know, deep functional experience or a need for really appealing to the target audience. Sort of a non answer, but no.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. So data oriented culture fit for data oriented. How do you test that with someone? Because I'm like, if you gave me a data set, now you're like, show me your data oriented. I'd be like, cool. I mean, I am because of my background, but most people could just drop it in ChatGPT and be like, what's this data showing? What's a pretend I'm the CMO of Avik. Like, what would she be looking for? Poke holes in it. How do you hire for that?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Now, I'm probably old school on this by now, where I still use the behavioral interviewing style, but you can just pick up on cues. When you're asking someone to talk about work they've done in the past or projects they've done in the past, are they talking about looking at the data or why was it a good idea? And anyone that just had a hunch or just knew it was or just had a personal preference versus someone who's. That's what the data told me. I love when people have stories about having a hypothesis, testing it and they were wrong. I mean, that's what being data oriented is all about, is always testing the hypothesis. So I feel like there's. There's a lot of clues in just listening to people talk.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. And that discernment of information is probably more important than ever with data or.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Anything, because otherwise ChatGPT could do it for us. Yeah.

[Rose]

When we had your prep call, I remember talking a lot about the prove Suzanne wrong kind of saying. I guess if that's fair phrase that circulated a lot in your team. And the first place my mind went is I imagine someone could be a great culture fit and is data oriented. But sometimes people can come in with their guard up, maybe from a previous role or some trauma from past leaders, not speaking from experience or anything. So that radical candor approach, I imagine could be intimidating for some people. Is there a framework you use to kind of disarm people? Does it come down to a hands off, I trust you kind of approach? Or is it more personal and intimate and your relationships with teams? Or do you kind of just focus on building them up and letting them nurture their own kind of culture and community there.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah. So there's a lot there. So one. And you know, I've been at Auvik for four years, so I had a lot of time to build trust with the marketing team. So it certainly didn't happen overnight. The vast majority of my team is Canadian and Canadians are not necessarily known for being radically candid. Right. So I also. It's a. We're fully remote and I joined in 2021. And so there's, you know, I didn't meet a lot of my team members in person first. So I. I may be making it sound like it was super easy. There's a lot more there. And when people, new people come in and join the team. I love this and I've really focused on it and talk about it all the time. This concept of prove Suzanne wrong, where we have a slack channel for marketing and we're always posting ideas, or my team is always posting ideas with the, you know, sort of like wink and a nod out to prove Suzanne wrong. And just reinforcing that just sets the tone early that I'm not some scary CMO that always has to be right. I love when people prove me wrong. And I pile on when someone, you know, when we have an example of, you know, we talked earlier about education and nurturing and I had a woman on my team that felt really strongly, strongly about content syndication and putting white papers out there. And, you know, I said, I don't think it's gonna work, but I hope you prove me wrong. And that's how it started. Cause it was really successful. So I think, you know, anchoring on things like that, that sort of say out loud in public with reinforcement from other team members, the way I am and what I like to hear. But it's tough. Like I, you know, it took me years to earn trust so that people understood that I really had good intentions and, you know, certainly rubbed people wrong, you know, at first, I'm sure.

[Rose]

Especially in a remote setting.

[Stephanie Postles]

Right.

[Rose]

Like things get lost over slack or teams or whatever you use so easily.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah. You know what's interesting though is I've decided that I find one on one zoom conversations with video in many ways more intimate than in person because you are so focused on each other and the person, you know, looking each other in the eyes and having these conversations in a way that I feel like in person just lacks some of that.

[Stephanie Postles]

Right. Tell me more about this.

[Rose]

I know.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. How does. Cause to me when I'm in person, I can like feel into someone's energy and how their day might be going and all of that. And on zoom, I just have no idea, really.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

So it's different because it's. For me, it's only one on ones. Right. So you know, just you and one other person. And yes, in person connections happen, but I feel like they happen more in group settings or socializing after the meeting. So for example, in a. I have regular one on ones with everyone on my team, and it's a set amount of time. So say 30 minutes. And I'm gonna talk to you for 30 minutes. So I am, you know, whatever topics you have, and then, you know, tell me what's going on in your personal life. Tell me about this, tell me about that, tell me about this. Versus in person it is. You would just swing in by my office to ask me a question, and then once that question was answered, you're off and you leave. It's more deliberate.

[Rose]

That makes sense.

[Stephanie Postles]

On zoom, I like it. I'm here for it. All right, Suzanne, let's move to the lightning round questions. So lightning round is where I ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer whatever comes to you.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Can't wait.

[Stephanie Postles]

Are you ready? Okay, first one. What is a marketing trend that you think is overhyped right now?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I mean, I want to say AI, but I just said that she's my best friend, so probably not. I'm going to go with abm. It's been overhyped for a while. Remember, I like high velocity models and.

[Stephanie Postles]

You don't like ABM anyways.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

But I just think all of the promises of showing intent and at the account level, I just think it's over hyped.

[Stephanie Postles]

Do you think that one's overhyped for the space you're in or just in general?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I think in general, in general. I have a lot of experience with abm. I did it at an enterprise sales company. And yes, the technology's advanced since then, but it was still overhyped about how much information you could get on one account from digital data.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, I love it. Okay, did you have anything else you want to add?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

No. I was gonna say someone can prove me wrong and ABM me to buy something and maybe I'll change my mind.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, let me think. We gotta ABM you.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Stephanie Postles]

It'll be so sneaky. You'll be like, damn, Steph got me. Now I'm in here buying something.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I know, right?

[Stephanie Postles]

Describe your marketing strategy in a couple words.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Meet your customers where they are.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yep. Which is like the whole concept of this episode with.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, for sure. Yep, yep.

[Stephanie Postles]

What is the last ad? And let's stick with B2B ad that you remember. And you're like, that was, that was good.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Oh, B2B.

[Stephanie Postles]

I know. Okay, you can do B2C if you want to.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Well, I'll do, I'll do two. Yeah, the B2C that like really stuck with me was. I hope I get this right. I think it was Nike. I mean, how's that for effectiveness?

[Stephanie Postles]

Oops, maybe it's Adidas. I don't know.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I think it was Nike featuring female athletes. And it was about being. It like made me cry the last time I talked. You know, I saw a commercial, it's about being like weird or bold or strange and it just features all of these female athletes.

[Rose]

It's shot almost in all black and white too, which I think is really cool.

[Stephanie Postles]

And it was Nike.

[Rose]

It was Nike.

[Stephanie Postles]

Good memory. Good job. Nike winning all around. Okay, so where do you as a CMO hang out? Like, what are the communities that you're in that you're finding the most value in?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

You know what's interesting is that I have been more company leadership oriented as of late versus marketing. So, you know, I'm on pavilion, I'm in, you know, CMO coffee talk. And I used to, I wanna say find more value as probably I was looking for more specific things, but. So for example, I'm on pavilion, but I spend most of my time in the sales space at like looking for information there or finding information from finance teams about. I don't know if it's my, you know, me, where I am, in the stage of my career, at the stage of the company I'm at or what. But it is really interesting that I have such a strong team that I rely on them for the latest and greatest with marketing. And I feel like I'm more focused on more general leadership. But Pavilion and the CMO coffee talk, I mean the slack and being able to search for anything in that slack is invaluable.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. My team members in their slack as well for the sales stuff and he was showing it to me the other day, I'm like, whoa, this is very helpful.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, like anyone mentions a vendor search.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's interesting what you just said because a lot of guests who've been coming on have been saying that is that they're very focused on this cross functional, like C suite collaborators. Less about the tactics and more about how do I pull in my cfo, how do I pull in the CRO or the CEO and make sure everyone is betting with me on something and not just me as a marketing leader, doing my own thing.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

And so it seems like that's been a big shift over the past, like, couple years, is pulling everyone together to, like, lead the company in a cohesive way.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Stephanie Postles]

Okay, well, good. Good job. Yeah. You're on track.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Perfect for me.

[Stephanie Postles]

If you were not in marketing, what would you be doing?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

An interior designer. I would love that job more than anything. I don't know if I. But I like my taste.

[Stephanie Postles]

Have you tried it at your house?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Of course.

[Stephanie Postles]

Now I want to see.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yes. You know, we. This. I feel like this whole episode was about how my opinion doesn't matter. It's about what the data says. This is one place where it is my aesthetic and what I like. I just think it's so fun. Yeah, I would love to do that.

[Stephanie Postles]

I definitely want to see your house. And now I'm like, are you judging my house? No, don't look.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Your house looks great.

[Stephanie Postles]

Don't look anywhere. Kids stuff everywhere. Lego.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Too late. I've already looked around your house.

[Stephanie Postles]

It looks cardi peaked. Thank you. What is the best way to start the day as a marketer?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Not how I start my day, which is being jolted out of bed by a five year old in my face screaming, good morning, Mommy.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yep.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

I'm a morning person, so mornings are super productive for me. I like to do the hard, big problems sort of thinking early in the day and then the, you know, more learning. I want to research this topic or I want to listen to this podcast, or, you know, that comes more naturally for me later in the day. I have a lot of peers and colleagues that, you know, insist that starting their day with a certain podcast or anything like that. But for me, outside of my, you know, sun screaming in my face, good morning. Once I can put him on the iPad, it's quiet time for me. And I'm, you know, half awake drinking coffee, which I feel like makes me have better ideas because I'm not, you know, in my whole rational head, I'm able to be a little bit more creative.

[Stephanie Postles]

I love it. I love it. Okay, last one. What is something that you believe right now that you're getting the most pushback on from your team, from leadership, from friends?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Oh, what's one thing I actually want to say out loud on the podcast is for the real question, whatever you.

[Stephanie Postles]

First thought was probably the best one. But do what you want.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

This concept of sort of back to the basics and what I mean by this is that it's so easy to go chase the shiny thing. New product, new this, new that, new Persona, new all of that. That I'm a big believer in doing one thing really, really well and then moving on to the next. Look, I'm a woman, so I'm great at multitasking. I don't mean that, but just really getting back to the basics and the fundamentals and getting that right and then building upon it.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah, that's a good reminder for right now where everyone's like, there's so many things. I'll try everything. That's good. Well, Suzanne, this was awesome. Thank you for walking over here today and joining us in studio. Where can our listeners, our viewers, everyone learn more you and what you're up to at AIK?

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Yeah, definitely. Aik.com A U V I K is the spelling. And thanks so much for having me. Neighbor.

[Stephanie Postles]

Yeah. Neighbors. Now we're having neighborhood parties.

[Suzanne Rodriguez]

Exactly.

[Stephanie Postles]

Thank you. We'll see you again soon.