
This week on Modern Marketers, Kipp Bodnar, CMO of Hubspot, joins Google’s Joshua Spanier to discuss how to make B2B marketing creative better, how to convince your CFO it’s OK not to attribute 100% of your marketing spend, and the importance of...
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Kip Bodnar
If you could be the rare company that has some resources and can move fast and knows what to do, you can change the world. And why not be that? That is what matters and then that is the right behavior and that is something to aspire to.
Joshua Spanier
Hi everyone, this is Modern Marketers by Think with Google. I'm Joshua Spanier, VP of Media Lab within Google Marketing. I lead teams around the world who plan, invent, execute and measure marketing programs on behalf of Google's brands. Each episode I talk to game changing marketers and founders who are delivering modern marketing today. Today I'm here with Kip Bodnar, the CMO of HubSpot. Let's dive right in. I'm very excited today to be talking with Kip Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot. Although that's just the start of Kip's work and work profile. He's an author, he is a social media expert, he is a B2B guru. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation as part of our Modern Marketers series. Hi, Kip.
Kip Bodnar
Hey man. Hey Josh. Thanks for having me. So excited to be here.
Joshua Spanier
We appreciate it. And you are, to my mind, a podcast expert. I've listened to many of your podcasts. I hope everyone listening to here has listened to your podcast. When did you first start regularly podcasting yourself and hosting a podcast?
Kip Bodnar
Oh, gosh, I've had many podcasts over the years. I think my very first attempt at podcasting was 2009, which was rough. Early days of podcasts. My most recent podcast is called Marketing against the Grain. We've been doing it for just a little over two years now, so we've done a couple hundred episodes. Myself and my friend and former colleague, Kieran Flangen, we talk about all things marketing, AI tech. It's awesome. But it is the output of many other failed attempts in the podcasting realm over the years.
Joshua Spanier
Well, every time I get something wrong, kick me under the metaphorical table and let me know what I'm doing wrong so I can learn from.
Kip Bodnar
You're nailing it.
Joshua Spanier
So, just going back, you said 2009, but when did you first become aware of marketing in your life?
Kip Bodnar
I think breakfast cereal, right? I think wanting Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Lucky charms and the TV commercials when you're 4, 5, 6 years old. That is my first real conscious memory marketing. So.
Joshua Spanier
So yeah, that's kind of funny. I didn't grow up in the United States, but we had the Tony the Tiger back in the uk.
Kip Bodnar
Oh, I love Tony the Tiger.
Joshua Spanier
The Saturday morning Cartoons. So, yeah, that's fun. I actually can pinpoint it to. There was a candy called Pesos, which doesn't exist anymore.
Kip Bodnar
Oh, okay.
Joshua Spanier
And it was a little bit Starburst. And in the advert, the kid would eat the Pacer and his sweater would turn green and white striped like the candy. And I was very young, and when I had a Pacer, I thought that was gonna happen for real. And I was actually so disappointed.
Kip Bodnar
The downsides of marketing, sometimes we can't deliver on the promise.
Joshua Spanier
You know, I believed it, but that sort of sparked my love affair with marketing. Okay, enough about me. Let's get back to you. What brands do you love personally, in your life?
Kip Bodnar
Oh, gosh, I love so many brands, old and new. Let's just do it. I mean, I love New Balance. I love Nike. I love Prada. I love. These are all brands for very different things. I love Rivian. I think that is an awesome, cool brand. That's, like, very clear on what they're trying to be. I love the brand that the NBA has built. And a lot of the NBA teams, like, I think as a sports league, they are absolutely nailing it. I love the Netflix brand. I love lots of brands, but those are some of the. Some of the hit list.
Joshua Spanier
For me, those are all good ones. Is there anything that makes you nervous at work or within marketing right now for you is sort of personal.
Kip Bodnar
Personally, what am I nervous about is a whole host of things. I think I'm most nervous about the shifting technology landscape. It's not just AI. It's AI coming to heads with globalization and data privacy and ubiquitous broadband and compute costs coming, like, down exponentially year after year. Like, we're just the precipice of a ton of change. And so I think of nervous is not necessarily a fully negative term. Right. Like, nervous is. Is like, I am both concerned and excited about these things. And that is how I think about it, is like, oh, there's a whole host of opportunity. I am most nervous about not taking advantage enough, not learning fast enough, not evolving fast enough, and becoming a laggard. I live my life with a deep sense of urgency. Like, I just. I can't sit down. Like, I'm just always trying to do something. And so it really makes me nervous to feel like I could fall behind.
Joshua Spanier
I can understand that. You spent a long time at HubSpot, so you've lived through and marketed through serious marketing transformation. So maybe even before we get to AI, Right. And the next five years, what year did you start at HubSpot and just talk about the sort of the technological transformation and marketing transformations you've seen in what you were worrying about or nervous about 10 years ago versus today.
Kip Bodnar
Yeah, so I started at HubSpot in the beginning of 2010 and if you think back, that's 14 years ago. If you think back 14 years ago, is marketing on the Internet wasn't commonplace. Like there was still a lot of organizations. Like I don't know if this Internet marketing thing is going to be important.
Joshua Spanier
Right.
Kip Bodnar
And so that was wild. Right. And so you had to convince a whole generation of people that the Internet mattered and that marketing on the Internet was going to be this big important thing, which was just bananas to think about. You had all These emerging technologies, YouTube, Google search, social networks like everything coming together. Essentially a whole era that democratized publishing and communication both around information and around social connections, which was literally just a crazy, crazy period of time. If you look at it really started in 1999, started with Blogger, Google search, all those things like really scaling, starting to scale up. You had Facebook, Twitter started in 06. So from like 99 to 2009 you had the kind of technology establishment. And then from 2009 to essentially now you had the scale up ad platforms, monetization, all of those things. And now we're basically starting the next era of AI. And so I think the next 15 years is going to look way crazier than the last 15 years. And I just lived through it and I thought that was pretty crazy. So that is like kind of what's top of mind to me.
Joshua Spanier
Yeah, completely. You know, the shift of programmatics, I mean just the shift to mobile. Right. I mean in large parts of the world there never really was a desktop era, but in the us, UK and many sort of western markets, just the transition to mobile has been a significant shift inside of Google from a technological perspective and absolutely from a marketing perspective. And obviously AI is, is becoming its own thing. What about the B2B world? I mean HubSpot operates in sort of in the B2B space. You literally wrote book on B2B marketing strategies. How do you see B2B marketing sort of evolving over the last 10 years to where it is today? What's the change? And you already mentioned inbound marketing, so maybe that's the point to go off on that.
Kip Bodnar
Yeah, I mean we pioneered this idea of inbound marketing where you were creating content and using all of these Web 2.0 tools to bring people into your business in a much more cost effective way. And that's really been the last 15 years, combined with the rise of amazing ad platforms, YouTube, Google Meta, and that's been pretty awesome. It turned marketing a little bit into knob turning and iterating. So it's like, oh, well, cool, I did this ad, I'm going to try to make the performance of this ad 10% better. Or I did this video, I'm going to try to make the next video create 10% better, which is good and great. But we lost a little bit of the high level creative concept kind of. I think what was great about the Ogilvy era of advertising, like the true obsession with copywriting, differentiation, all of those things. And I think those things are starting to come back now as we kind of swing the pendulum back the other way. Looking forward to the next decade. And so to me, inbound marketing was huge and democratized marketing and growth, especially for small and medium sized businesses. It was incredible and still works very effectively.
Joshua Spanier
Okay, so I have a specific B2B question I want you to answer for me. Right? Here's my point of view. Creative in the B2B space is largely a sea of sadness.
Kip Bodnar
For me, it's not very good. It kind of stinks.
Joshua Spanier
Undifferentiated, ugly, confusing. So look, you're a B2B CMO. You're helping companies with their B2B strategies. Overall, how can B2B marketers raise their quality of their marketing and creative output and gain a competitive advantage, have the.
Kip Bodnar
Courage to be different. Most B2B marketing is not good not because the people are not good and the people are not smart. It's because the companies, the leaders, do not have the conviction to be different. Right? Like I love the founders podcast, shout out to David Senra. And you know, one of my favorite episodes he did was on James Dyson. And James Dyson has the. Has a quote that is different in everything, different for the sake of it, right? When you go buy a Dyson doesn't look like any other vacuum cleaner. It isn't priced like any other vacuum cleaner, right? You know, the science is different. Like literally everything is different. And it turns out when things are different, the stories are much easier to tell. You know, and maybe if you're listening to this, you're like, look, I don't build the product, I don't run the company. I can't make this extreme James Dyson differentiation. And like, fair points, here's what you can do. You can build a team of people, whether they're contractors, agencies, people who work directly for you, who are not like everybody else in your industry. Like the people who work for me, none of them worked in B2B SaaS. Zero of them in terms of my direct reports. Because, like, I work at B2B SaaS. You know what's not hard? Understanding B2B SaaS. You know what is hard? Telling great stories and doing great marketing. I'd rather teach somebody an industry that is really great at marketing than take somebody who knows an industry really well and try to get them to be good at marketing. That just turns out to be a much harder proposition to do.
Joshua Spanier
Yeah, I agree. I. I worked at creative agencies, media agencies, on the client side in various different roles. And it's kind of fascinating working across B2B and consumer brands. The mindset that there are truths to marketing, right. You're trying to engage with real people in the real world, and people tend to respond to things which are simpler, consistent, beautiful even. And we often get that wrong in marketing. We overcomplicate it, we make it kind of ugly, and then we chop and change our tune the whole time. B2B particularly can make that problem acute.
Kip Bodnar
Yeah, B2B. It's easier to hear and follow your customers than in B2C. Your competitors versus your customers. And your competitors can fog your judgment and cause you to create another. Also ran kind of version of something versus a better, simpler, more unique version of a story or of a product.
Joshua Spanier
Just building on that, the question which perennially comes up, and we all know about contextual targeting, behavioral targeting and stuff, but from a B2B marketer's perspective, do you see more success or what do you advise your team or what do you think about reaching out to and finding your audience on a B2B website when they're in a B2B mindset versus reaching that same customer or potential customer when they're watching Major League baseball or doing something, you know, for parenting or whatever it is, you know, the different contexts they have, what works for you guys, what do you think?
Kip Bodnar
You know, I think the world is not as compartmentalized as everybody wants it to be. So, for example, like, if you think about brand awareness, right, if you're at home watching a football game, what does seeing an ad for a business do there versus a consumer product? I think it's kind of the same. I think if you know, your audience watch, you know, like, I sell sales software. You know what a lot of salespeople do, they like to watch sports. And so, yeah, you know, where we should do, we should market some as part of, you know, we should have some sports marketing in our mix that seems fair and reasonable. But at the same time, you know, there's a way to also find the creative middle ground. You know, like an example of that is the sponsored WI fi on a plane. It's like, you know who really wants to get on the Internet? A business traveler, Business user wants to get on the Internet on a plane. And if they see your ad in the moment right before they're about to open up some other CRM system that they don't like and they see the ad for yours, that's a pretty compelling moment in time. Right? And so, yeah, I want to have that occasional football ad and everything and that's great. But I also need the right kind of point in time. Moments that are super contextual to like that are really going to attach into that person's mind in a better way.
Joshua Spanier
Speaking of which, B2B in your world typically has pretty long purchase cycles, right? This is not a decision you just jump into. Can you talk about your relationship with your CFO and how you sort of explain and articulate the sort of short term business results you get from your marketing and media programs versus sort of the long term impacts of that? It is a delicate and at times complicated thing to try and have your finance partner understand.
Kip Bodnar
Yeah, you can insert, even instead of cfo, you can say cfo. Anybody who isn't like a marketer. Marketer, Right. Who doesn't deeply understand marketing and the kind of misconceptions of marketing. If you're just a business leader who doesn't understand marketing, the first thing you're going to say is like, oh, what's working the best? Can we just spend more money on that? And you're like, yes, I would love to do more of that, but I can't do. There's only so many people searching for this thing. There's only so many people watching videos on this topic. Right. Like there are some limitations in the, especially in the short term, right around what you can do there. And then the point you're getting at is like, oh, the time to value on marketing is very tricky because you get some value in the immediate term, some value in the medium term, and you get some value in the long term. And here's what you gotta do. If you don't have enough short term stuff that works. Nobody gives a about the medium and long term stuff doesn't matter how beautiful and eloquent your explanation is. It is not gonna matter. So you have to be good enough at the blocking and tackling of marketing the short term to drive demand and support your sales team, then if you're good enough at that, which is fantastic, then you've earned the right to think and execute longer term. And what you do on the longer term stuff is you come up with some, there's some type of rationalization. Look, you can rationalize anything. And really all CFOs I think are looking for is that you've thought through the rationalization of this thing, that you're doing a smart and thoughtful thing with this money and you have some reasonable estimation of how that's getting paid back. And so that normally comes with some type of attribution model that you, you know, depending if you're a very small business to an enterprise, you're going to have very different attribution models. Right? Right. But for us, a lot of it's thinking about it at spend, right. Like you're not going to spend 100% of your marketing dollars, especially in B2B, on really hard to attribute things. You might spend 20, 30% of your dollars on hard to attribute things. And that's something that not only can you rationalize well, but there's, there's a little give and take with your CFO being like, hey, I've got really good math on like 75% of this stuff. Give me a little bit of breathing room on the other 25% know that I have math for it, but the math is going to be less perfect. Right. It goes back to the old Ogilvy quote of like, I know 50% of my marketing's working, I just don't know which 50%. And we've gotten obviously much, much better than that. But marketing is still imperfect in terms of attribution.
Joshua Spanier
Ironically, 100% agree with you. So yeah, we use similar sort of things. It's like 70%. It's proven to the nth degree to the next dollar, 20% is in some sort of adjacent area. We find where it's like the signal is not as good. We don't quite know if it's working as well, but there's a path to understanding and learning. And then 10% is in the. What the hell? This just seems like a, you know, we're never going to learn. We're just going to optimize ourselves into a corner if we ever only ever say no to things we have to try things that we never thought to do.
Kip Bodnar
Well, I'll give you an example of this is a fun story. Right. It's hard to explain to people that being Cool matters, right? And like I take. One of, one of the responsibilities I take as a marketer is like my job is to understand what cool is to the group of people that I'm spending this time with. Right. And we talked a little bit earlier about the sports stuff and that I have an audience, especially in sales, that is interested in sports. And so a few months ago, before the NCAA football championship in January, a guy named Alex Lieberman tweets out like, hey, I'll do anything for your brand if you pay for eight tickets, 50 yard line in the national championship so that me and my Michigan buddies can watch and root on Michigan. We'll, I'll, we'll create content, we'll wear whatever you want us to wear, all that. I DM'd Alex. I was like, I did a quick search and I was like, oh, it's gonna cost us like 40 grand. I was like, alex, let's do this. I'm in. We get the. We, we. We just say, yes, we do it. It goes completely viral online. Tens of millions of impressions online. And then like we didn't get that much. Like it's not like we got on tv, but we had people looking for them at the game. We had a lot of word the night of the game. But the online chatter around that, hard to quantify. But all I know is I was at south by and like every person that came up did not ask me about my big budget brand campaign that I ran. They asked me about my little marketing stunt that I did that cost essentially a rounding error of money. And that is the price of being cool. It's the price of doing something that other people wouldn't do. Doing it quick and doing it in an interesting way.
Joshua Spanier
You know, it's a great, great example. It hit my radar.
Kip Bodnar
Oh, nice.
Joshua Spanier
I think something you just said that quick is important, right? And I think one of the things about business today is the ability to run a team and to basically people to bring ideas and be able to move fast and not sort of, you know, process yourself in to never get anything done. So do you do guys. I mean this moved fast and just sign off on. It happened quickly. And maybe you're the person signing off. So it was. But how do you sort of spark that culture and that mindset across your team to always be ready to flexible.
Kip Bodnar
And move well to do that, you have to lead by example, right? And so I saw Alex's message within minutes of him posting it. I was going back and forth with him within the hour and it was done that afternoon. Right. And yes, in this case it worked because I was the decision maker. But I guess my point is most people who have a job like I have wouldn't be trolling Twitter for business influencers to engage with. Right?
Joshua Spanier
Right.
Kip Bodnar
But I do because, like, I think there's magic in that. And like, I have this thing where like, big companies have all the money in the world, but they don't know what to do and they're too slow. Small companies are fast, they know what to do. They just don't have any resources to do it. If you could be the rare company that has some resources and can move fast and knows what to do, you can, you can change the world. And why not be that? And I'm in the fortunate position where I could be that and I can lead a team of people in a way that they can see that that is what matters and that that is the right behavior and that is something to aspire to.
Joshua Spanier
I love that answer, finding that middle ground. You know, whether you're big or small, it's always good to give you an opportunity to really plug something. We are in this AI era now and everyone's rushing to sort of turn on this AI tool and that AI tool and measurement tools and attribution and media mix models and you know, I feel like we love to make marketing complex. Are there any tools or systems or processes that have really helped you at HubSpot?
Kip Bodnar
We've done a bunch of tests with all different types of LLMs. And it turns out that LLMs are much better at guessing things than marketers. And marketing is essentially strategic guessing. And I can use LLMs to create perfectly crafted one to one emails in a way that a marketer just couldn't, doesn't have the scale to do and recommend the right next step, recommend the next content, all of those things. And that is magical. And I think that is going to be the big unlock for the next couple of years.
Joshua Spanier
HubSpot's been a real vocal proponent for privacy, safe measurement. Can you just talk a little bit more about your point of view and what you sort of been advocating for in the measurement world?
Kip Bodnar
Yeah, I mean, look, data privacy is a huge topic in the world today and we think there are great ways to measure your marketing. We've worked really closely with Google on a lot of the work that you all have been doing and that you've started to roll out within Chrome and kind of the reduction of cookies. And we think there is great targeting, great modeling that can be done with respect to data privacy and we're starting to see that. And we believe you can live in a world where you have really great personalized experiences without being overly invasive on data consumption, data usage, data storage, all of the things that people have real concerns about.
Joshua Spanier
Yeah, this technology is adapting, evolving as needed, might be based upon new regulations and new systems. I completely agree with you that marketing serves a good in society and helping people do the things or get the things that they need to do whatever it is they do. And there's a great role for advertising and for marketers to actually sort of make themselves accountable for that. You quoted the 50% of marketing doesn't work and or does work earlier on. I would love to get to a world where we are 90% accountable and I think that's sort of. Yeah, it's already happening.
Kip Bodnar
It's going to be possible in the future. So I agree with you.
Joshua Spanier
Yeah, this has been great. Kip, thank you so much for spending time with us. Really enjoyed this conversation. Really wish you continued success at HubSpot. I know the team there is and you are going to keep delivering on that. And thank you for spending time with us today.
Kip Bodnar
Awesome. Thanks Josh. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it everybody. Have a good day.
Joshua Spanier
A huge thank you to my guest this week, Kit Bodnar, the CMO of HubSpot. If you like this episode, please subscribe to get the latest updates and the next recording as soon as it's ready. We'll see you next time. For Modern Marketers by Think with Google.
Kip Bodnar
Thank you for listening to Modern Marketers by Think with Google. Our host is Joshua Spanier. Modern Marketers is brought to you by Google and attention. The podcast is produced by the Google Ads Marketing team and Frankie Guadagnino, Nagina Niazmatova and Emily Behrens for attention. Our technical producer is Kevin Fisher. Modern Marketers is edited by Sean Colello and this podcast is mixed and mastered by Andy Inglot. Our theme music is by Jerry Matei. Thanks for listening.
Marketing Voices and Perspectives: HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar on Compelling B2B Creative and Quick Business Results | Modern Marketers
Release Date: September 6, 2024
In this episode of Marketing Voices and Perspectives, hosted by Joshua Spanier of Modern Marketers under Think with Google, we delve into an insightful conversation with Kipp Bodnar, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of HubSpot. Bodnar brings a wealth of experience in B2B marketing, podcasting, and social media expertise, offering listeners a deep dive into modern marketing strategies, creative differentiation, and the evolving technological landscape.
Joshua Spanier opens the episode by introducing Kipp Bodnar, highlighting his multifaceted role as an author, social media expert, and B2B marketing guru. Bodnar reflects on his journey in podcasting, noting his first attempt in 2009 and his current podcast, Marketing against the Grain, which has amassed over two hundred episodes discussing marketing and AI technologies.
Notable Quote:
"I've had many podcasts over the years... my most recent podcast is called Marketing against the Grain. We've been doing it for just a little over two years now, so we've done a couple hundred episodes."
— Kipp Bodnar [01:16]
Bodnar shares his first conscious memory of marketing from childhood TV commercials for cereal brands like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms. He emphasizes the significant transformations in marketing over the past 14 years since joining HubSpot in 2010. Bodnar outlines the shift from the nascent stages of internet marketing to the integration of advanced technologies such as AI, globalization, and data privacy concerns.
Notable Quote:
"From 99 to 2009 you had the kind of technology establishment... now we're basically starting the next era of AI.”
— Kipp Bodnar [05:10]
Joshua shifts the focus to B2B marketing, acknowledging the often lackluster creative output in the sector. Bodnar candidly agrees, characterizing much of B2B marketing as "not very good" and attributes this to a lack of conviction to be different. He advocates for building diverse teams outside the conventional B2B SaaS expertise to foster innovative storytelling and marketing strategies.
Notable Quote:
"Most B2B marketing is not good... because the companies, the leaders, do not have the conviction to be different.”
— Kipp Bodnar [09:07]
Bodnar also discusses the importance of simplicity and clarity in B2B marketing, contrasting it with the often overcomplicated and inconsistent approaches prevalent in the industry.
A highlight of the conversation is Bodnar's anecdote about a spontaneous marketing stunt involving securing tickets to the NCAA football championship. By swiftly responding to a viral tweet for a relatively modest investment, Bodnar's team generated tens of millions of online impressions, demonstrating the power of agility and creativity in marketing.
Notable Quote:
"I was at south by and like every person that came up did not ask me about my big budget brand campaign... they asked me about my little marketing stunt.”
— Kipp Bodnar [16:50]
Bodnar emphasizes the necessity of fostering a culture that prioritizes speed and flexibility, allowing marketing teams to seize unique opportunities and execute innovative campaigns without being bogged down by bureaucracy.
Transitioning to the topic of artificial intelligence, Bodnar discusses HubSpot's experimentation with Large Language Models (LLMs). He highlights how these AI tools surpass marketers in "strategic guessing," enabling the creation of personalized one-to-one emails and content recommendations at scale—capabilities that are transformative for B2B marketing.
Notable Quote:
"LLMs are much better at guessing things than marketers. And marketing is essentially strategic guessing.”
— Kipp Bodnar [20:29]
Bodnar views AI as a significant enabler for the next phase of marketing innovation, providing tools that enhance personalization and efficiency.
HubSpot's commitment to data privacy and safe measurement is another critical topic discussed. Bodnar outlines the company's collaboration with Google to navigate the evolving landscape of data privacy, particularly in light of Chrome's changes and the reduction of cookies. He advocates for achieving personalized customer experiences without invasive data practices, underscoring the balance between effective marketing and respecting user privacy.
Notable Quote:
"We believe you can live in a world where you have really great personalized experiences without being overly invasive on data consumption.”
— Kipp Bodnar [21:11]
Bodnar also touches on the challenges of marketing attribution, acknowledging its imperfection but advocating for a balanced approach that includes both reliably measurable and exploratory marketing activities.
The episode wraps up with mutual acknowledgments of the discussed strategies and a reaffirmation of HubSpot's and Bodnar's commitment to innovative, responsible marketing. Joshua Spanier commends Bodnar for his insights and contributions to the field, and Bodnar expresses gratitude for the engaging conversation.
Notable Quote:
"You can change the world. And why not be that? That is what matters.”
— Kipp Bodnar [00:00]
Key Takeaways:
Differentiation in B2B Marketing: Standing out requires courage and a willingness to deviate from industry norms, often necessitating diverse and unconventional team compositions.
Agility and Creativity: Quick decision-making and innovative stunts can generate significant brand buzz without substantial financial investment.
AI as a Marketing Enabler: Leveraging AI tools like LLMs can enhance personalization and operational efficiency, providing a competitive edge.
Balancing Data Privacy and Personalization: It's possible to deliver tailored customer experiences while respecting and safeguarding user data.
Attribution and Accountability: Effective marketing requires a balanced approach to measurement, acknowledging both quantifiable and exploratory activities to support short-term and long-term objectives.
This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of modern B2B marketing strategies, the integration of AI technologies, and the importance of creative differentiation, all anchored by Kipp Bodnar's extensive experience and visionary outlook.