← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
4 Reasons Human Connection is THE Marketing Strategy with Haley Janicek, Head of Creator Community @ Kit | Ep. 355
00:36:03
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials. I'm Tamara Gorminski and I'm stepping in as your guest host while Daniel's out on paternity leave. I'm a career product marketing leader and the former VP of PMM at high growth startups like Kajabi and Unbounce. Now I'm the founder of PMM Camp, a community and newsletter for product marketing leaders. And while Daniel's off doing dad things, I'll be here bringing you fun conversations with some of the smartest marketers I know. Joining me today is Hayley Larson Janicek, the head of creator community at kit, an email marketing platform for creators. Hayley is one of the most thoughtful marketers I know when it comes to blending product, community, and experience. I recently had the pleasure of attending Craft and Commerce, an event she helped to bring to life, and it reminded me just how powerful those offline moments can be. And so today's episode is all about the difference between online and offline experiences and how to design each with intention. We'll dig into what each format is best suited for, how to create moments that actually stick in people's minds, and why the most powerful brand experiences don't always feel like marketing. Hailey shares how Kit thinks about fostering real connection with customers and how those moments strengthen not just the brand, but the community too.
- [01:18]
B
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up.
- [01:44]
A
Haley. Welcome to the show.
- [01:45]
C
Hey.
- [01:46]
B
Hey.
- [01:46]
C
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
- [01:49]
A
I am really excited for this episode. This is one of the ones I was really anticipating recording. I was just at an event that you hosted not so long ago. So I'm really excited to dig into all things events today. And so I want to start us off just by talking about online and offline, because I think nowadays almost all of marketing happens online, but we're seeing a really strong pull back to offline. Why do you think we're seeing that poll and like, what do you think that says about what people are craving right now?
- [02:20]
C
Yeah, you know what's funny? It's like, I think what's. It's different today than it was like right after we'll say, you know, the COVID Are we allowed to say that now? You know, like following Covid. It was one of those things where it was like everybody was craving, right? The surgeon general came out and said, you know, we're in a loneliness epidemic. And it was just like everybody wanted human connection again. And now I think with the use of AI, Everybody's thinking, like, what actually is human? And the reality is that I think there's always gonna be waves around what's causing people to want to be in person. But it's actually the most natural way that humans connect is being in person. And I think that we're always just gonna crave it, no matter what.
- [03:07]
A
I think that's really fair. And when I was down at Craft and Commerce, I was actually there a few days early participating in Jay Clouse's the Lab Offline, which was. Aw. Jay actually started that event with a slide where he put up, this is what I think online events or online connections really great at. This is what I think offline events and offline connections, really great at. And it was kind of a pausing moment for me where I was like, even in my own community, I was thinking about, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But I know you've thought a lot about this. So in your perspective, are there certain types of either learning or interaction or experiences that just suit offline rather than online and vice versa?
- [03:46]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think I'm curious what Jay said, you know, what he actually. What. What the slide said. So you'll have to tell me about that afterwards. But here's the thing. I think online is meant for scale and repeated touch points, and I think that offline is meant for deeper connections. And so offline, I just don't think that you can have, like, there's so much nuance to being in person, right? Like, there's body language and. And it's like true excitement. Like when you get to hug a friend that you met online for time in person, how much more deep does your relationship become over time? Right? It's usually like that. That tipping point from taking a friendship or a really a work relationship to a much deeper level usually happens once you guys have met in person. And so I think online is really good for scale and really good for repeated touch points. And I think on offline is. Is really good for, like, really increasing that deeper relationship that's necessary to take something to the next level.
- [04:47]
A
I love that I always say one of my favorite things in the world is like, making an online friend an offline friend. And my partner does not work in the online space at all. And he always thinks it's just absolutely bizarre that I even have online friends that are like real friends. Right. But it's true. It's like, oh my God, I have seen you and talked to you so many times on LinkedIn or at these events. And just the hug, like it really does create that extra level of font. So at Jay's event, so what he did have was very similar to what you're saying. Also though, he talked a lot about teaching style and how online is really great for like, let's say like one to many kind of teaching. So hey, I'm going to teach you this course or I'm going to walk you through a framework versus the in person being much better for discussion of those topics. So I think you're getting at that with the breadth versus depth piece. So at Jay's event we didn't have any like keynotes, we didn't have any presentations. It was all small group discussions or like individual work where we then worked with each other at our table to really go deeper into help me interrogate how I'm thinking about my business or help me, you know, brainstorm other ways I could grow whatever it might be.
- [05:54]
C
Yeah, I think the other thing that online versus offline are like one really important distinction is a level of vulnerability. I think it's really hard to be vulnerable when you're online or like in that online environment and you're thinking of one to many from a scaled perspective. Whereas if you're sitting around and we do this at a mastermind that we host at craft and commerce as well. Right. You're. If you're sitting around a table with eight people, it's so much easier for you to be vulnerable. There's not really an opportunity for that in as many online sort of one to many. When I, when I think about that, there's not as many opportunities for that. And I think the vulnerability of people being able to say like this is actually a big fear that I have in my business or a struggle that I'm really working through. There's not nearly as much time to do that.
- [06:40]
A
I, yeah, I completely agree. And I think those repeated offline touchpoints also create more depth of that vulnerability as well. Right. And I want to talk a little bit today about the integration back of that because I noticed even myself having been offline meeting with some people from the lab, now being back online, I feel more connected to them and there's an integration piece there. One thing I'm curious about, like I have never, I mean I host online events I guess through my community, but I've never Hosted events or offline experiences to the scale that you have. I'm curious about how you think about like designing them and even deciding whether an experience. I talk about experience a bit broader than event because I think it is more than an event. An experience should be offline or online or connected. Like do you start kind of like a product marketer would like, let's define the customer problem or outcome we're solving for and then you kind of back into, well, what does this look like? What does programming look like? So tell me just a little bit more about your process and how we should be thinking about it.
- [07:36]
C
Yeah, I think the thing that I'm looking for is like, what's the experience that I'm looking for the attendee to have? And then how am I going to accomplish giving them that experience? And often that the answer to that might actually be online. Like I can actually achieve that experience by doing something online. Or the ex. The answer might actually be, okay, this is actually going or needs to be an in person sort of experience. And so with like craft and commerce, for example, you know, there's, we do large scale and small scale events pretty consistently and or we show up in person to another event. Right. And that's a totally different experience that I'm trying to create. But with craft and commerce, I'm trying to create an opportunity for other people to connect. My goal is to serve the attendees and I obsess over their experience. Like everything from like they walk in, they see sponsors, you know, like, there's food, there's cocktails, like every, like what are the chairs like? Which, you know, we, we're going to change that for craft and commerce next year. In case you're listening, you know, the chairs weren't so comfortable. But like we obsess over the actual access experience of the attendee as they walk in. But to answer your question specifically, I'm looking for like what, what do I want the outcome to look like? And then I back into what experience is going to help create that outcome.
- [08:54]
A
I can attest having been there, I definitely noticed those little details. Like I remember even at the welcome party, the fact that like the DJ was a creator resonated so deeply because I was like, wow. It's like so often these companies and like I've worked in the space as well before being a creator. It's like, you know, we say we support creators, but like do we actually support creators in every little decision we made? And I felt like that kind of showed up a little detail that you might not have thought of that. I noticed, you know.
- [09:20]
C
Yeah, here's, here's like a really stupid or simple example of this. But it's like, okay, I always say, hey, look, what I'm creating for or optimizing for is human experience and human connection. Right? Those hallway sort of conversations. And for our opening party, we used to have this like overly kind of, we'll say just like programmed opening party. And because I, I think that's what a lot of conferences did. So you're thinking like we want to do that or we'd have really loud music, you know. And I remember it was like two or three years ago. I was just like, turn down the music, turn down the music, turn down the music. Because all people were wanted to do right when they got there was talk to their friends. And so rather than optimizing for this over programmed opening and closing party, to be honest, you know, I wanted to optim for human connection and opportunity. So we had more couches and we had more seating areas and we had, the music was a little bit lower and the DJ played for not nearly as long because I don't think people want to necessarily party. They want to connect with their people. And so we would find that people might leave, you know, let's say the closing party, because the music started way too early and it was too loud and you know, they didn't get that final sign off with the people that they had just built all these relationships with and they were just standing outside at the venue talking because it was too loud inside. And so I think that's, you know, an example of like me overly thinking about the experience that I'm trying to create for the attendee.
- [10:50]
A
No, I love that. I think it's one of those things of like you always want to leave them wanting more as well.
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C
Right.
- [10:55]
A
So it's like how do you have them leave the opening party be like, oh, I wish this would last longer. I can't wait to come back in the morning and kind of continue. How do you think about creating connection online? Or is that something you ever do think about? If it's, if it's a connection based outcome that you're looking for, is it always the default goes to offline or how do you balance that?
- [11:14]
C
No, I mean I think of online like again, one to like to scale. Right. Like we're thinking one to many and so we do online events all of the time. And Shiv, who's my co emcee at Craft and Commerce, he's, he's our creator Educator internally. And we've run a ton of online sort of educational things. You know, whether it's webinars with partners or whether it's things like we're actually we. For a long time, we ran a series where we were trying to build relationships with people that didn't have an opportunity to connect offline in order to help promote, promote and encourage Creator Network connections. And so we are creating these, like, rapid, like, hot seats where people could get connected and they could, you know, meet people from different, like, complimentary industries. So that way they could create connections inside of the creator network. And so I think when I think about online versus offline, I mean, there's just so much nuance to it, necessarily. And I think the experience for online is. Is more centered around, like, very specific and intentional teaching for the most part. And then again, conn is more something that I think about offline. It was really hard to create, and that was just a lesson that we learned, but it was really hard to create that connection in that environment when we were trying to, like, really build out the creator network. Because it's really hard to scale offline. Much easier to scale online.
- [12:35]
A
Yeah. And I do think, depending on how it's done, online connection can feel forced sometimes, you know, 100%.
- [12:43]
C
100%.
- [12:45]
A
Nothing more awkward than having to, like, think of an answer to an icebreaker in the moment. And yeah, it's uncomfortable. Before we dig into a few of the other initiatives you've worked on, because I have some questions about those. Just curious about anything else that you think about when thinking about creating, like, a moment that kind of sticks in the minds of attendees. You know, days, weeks, maybe even months after participating in an event. It could be online or offline or even an event you guys go to. I love that you mentioned that as well.
- [13:13]
C
Yeah. We had this moment that I really loved in a mastermind that we hosted beforehand with craft and commerce with our partners at Ultra Speaking. So Tristan and Michael from Ultra Speaking, who are some of our. Tristan Montebello was one of our keynotes, and they did workshops as well. And they led a session in the Mastermind, and they actually created this experience right where we were playing some live games. They did this in their workshop as well. Did you participate in that workshop by chance?
- [13:42]
A
I did not, unfortunately. There's so many good ones to go do.
- [13:45]
C
There are so many good ones to go to. And the thing about it is, is that we had a couple of creators come up. Actually, my favorite moment was Tim Grohl. So they're describing this exercise that they're gonna have somebody do. And I'm standing off to the side, and I see Tim Grohl, who's one of my favorite humans, and he just has this giant smile on his face, like super big smile on his face. And they called for a volunteer. And I said, I'm volunteering someone. And I was like, volunteering Tim Gr. Because the smile, it was just. I was loving it. And he was like, what?
- [14:17]
A
What?
- [14:18]
C
And it was a pretty. You know, he's in front of 60 of the biggest creators that are in the room or 60 or 70 of the biggest creators that are in the room. And he went through this actual exercise. And then we had Thomas Frank, who's a large YouTuber. And then he got up and he did this other exercise where. And I'm blanking on what it was called maybe the roller coaster or something. Oh, conductor. And they had to increase, you know, and increase their volume based on a number is as far as when they're public speaking and the actual practice of doing something and then live coaching them through this practice, which is something that's ultimately going to help them become more comfortable with public speaking and engaging their tone and, you know, and whatnot. That was one of those. I can't put my finger on it exactly. But if I had to say the number of people that came up to me to talk about the experience they had with Ultra speaking. North of 50. North of 50. People came up to me just to say they're like, Tristan is like the human form of Xanax. And like all, you know, like, I loved that quote. I thought it was amazing, but it was because what they. They actually taught while they. They brought somebody up and they were teaching and people were experiencing. They weren't just saying, this is what you should do. And I think that was something that. That really connected with people.
- [15:39]
A
Yeah, I try to do that in more of the events I'm doing as well. And Justin Moore actually did that in his workshop where Justin Moore's workshop was like how to pitch a sponsorship. And it was stressful in the moment because it's like, who wants to come up? And we had this calculator thing that would just create a brand that you needed to pitch for.
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C
But he was playing those sponsor games.
- [15:59]
A
Exactly. The sponsor games. Yes. But that has stuck around in my mind. And there was a few other workshops I went to that. That haven't stuck around is. And not to say they weren't great, but there weren't those sticky moments.
- [16:11]
C
It's it's really like the actual. I mean, what I want for the workshops, right, is that somebody walks away. Because at the end of the day, you go to these events and you are o. You are flooded with information. Now, what I know is there's a lot of practical things that you learn at an event. The number of notes that I have from events that I've been to where I've never actually implemented some of the things I wanted to implement. So the goal with the workshops, right, are ultimately to actually get something done in some capacity. And maybe that's practicing a thing like the way that Justin Moore facilitated it, or maybe it's sitting down silently and building a ChatGPT or a custom GPT with, you know, with Jordan, you know, from System saved me. And so the actual act of doing something, when you walk away, you're like, I don't have to implement this next week because I've already implemented it then. And I don't know if that answers your question, like, what's super memorable about it? But it is something that like, you can immediately take away and apply to your, you know, in the weeks following.
- [17:08]
A
I mean, I think how I'm interpreting it and even how I'm processing it as we're speaking is, is more than just listening, right. Like, all of the things we've just talked about have been engaging and tangible in some way. And so that is what I'm taking away from this is like create some sort of collaborative experience as part of that event, even if there is a teaching component to the event.
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C
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
- [17:31]
A
So I'd love to shift gears just slightly because another project that you also work on and have worked on for a while is Kit Studios, which, you know, you know, maybe people are going to be like, why are we talking about that when we're talking about events? But what brought it to mind for me was I think it's a very important in real life experience that is a continuation of your product and your brand. And so I would love to just hear more about maybe for the folks who have no idea what we're talking about, what is Kit Studios? And then, you know, what sparked the idea for this?
- [18:03]
C
Yes. Okay, so Kids Studios is essentially a free, fully capable recording, video, recording podcast studio that we make accessible to all of our clients. If you're a paying customer, you have access to Kit Studios. And so we have Boise location, which is kind of our hq, you know. Cause Nathan myself, I also live in Boise. And Nathan, we have his home recording studio there. And that's where we launched. And so we have five recording studios, all for different kind of use cases. We have a dual person studio, a group studio, and then we have two solo recording studios that are really good for folks that are making a course or maybe they're recording a podcast like this. So they're dialing in remotely and they all have teleprompters and the best mics and the best cameras. And it is designed to where you can literally just plug in your computer and hit a single button and you are recording and listening live. And so that's essentially Kit Studios. We're opening up another one in New York, hopefully in the latter half of the year. And the starting point of it was, you know, in 2018. I remember sitting. We were at our team retreat. We were in Oceanside, California, and Nathan gets up and he always does this company address. At our team retreats as a remote company, we do them twice a year. And, you know, it comes. Comes on a slide decks. You know, it's like, it's like creator community space or something. And he wanted like a coffee sh. You know, where creators could all come together and do lots of different things. And over the years that just. I wouldn't say it evolved, but it just kind of dissipated with other things that we were doing. And there wasn't really a clear vision for it before it was. He knew that being in community with creators was wildly important. And, you know, that's craft and commerce is an example of that, as that had launched the year prior. And he just wanted a space where creators could spend more time together more often. And last it was two years ago now, we were in Mexico and we had been looking at real estate. And Nathan says, you know, I was like, all right, Nathan, like, are we going to do this? You know, and he goes, I mean, gosh, I really want to do it, but who's going to do it? And I was like, screw it, I'm going to do it, Nathan. I'm going to do it. Not my job necessarily, but I knew how important it was to the business, like from a branding perspective. I mean, there's so many great elements from a branding perspective, you know, and we can talk about those later. But ultimately, I think as a business, one of my favorite things that we do at KIT is serve our customers and serve even people that aren't or creators that aren't our customers, is teaching everything that we know and creating, creating these studios allowed creators. There's this moment when we launched Chicago where there was this woman and she was sitting and she. She sat in this chair and I was like, this is my favorite camera angle. I want you to sit here and then I want you to look up on that screen and see how you look, right? And she, like, it was the first time for her and her creator business where she was proud of the way that she was showing up. And we made it so easy and accessible because camera equipment's not. Expense is expensive. Microphones are expensive, recording equipment is expensive. The SD cards that you're recording onto are expensive. And, you know, for the first time, she just, she showed up and she looked the way that she wanted to look. And I think that in that moment was the moment where I realized, like, how incredibly powerful and impactful it was, what we were building. So I don't know, that was a long story long, but there you go.
- [21:47]
A
No, I love it. And I think I first heard about Kit Studios on, like, Nathan's podcast. I was listening and you were guys talking about it, and as a product marketer, I was kind of breaking down like, oh, that's interesting. Why do I think they did this? What are the benefits? You know, and one of them is obviously differentiation as well, right? Like, you know, if people are comparing platform to platform, they may be looking for these little benefits of, well, I do have a big course I want to record. I could go in person to do that.
- [22:14]
C
So, I mean, you know, what's crazy is that we've had the number of people that we have had fly from across the country to record in Boise for their course. So they'll fly from New York to Boise. They will stay in Boise in a hotel for several days. They will record for, you know, two to three days straight because the cost is still less expensive than finding a studio in their own city. It also gives them, you know, the ability to, like, hyper focus on. On a project. And there's all those other benefits, but the fact that we made it so accessible and so easy and the cost is still, I mean, it's a huge cost for a lot of. A lot of creators, right? You might be paying five to $10,000 just to produce a single course. And that is a huge differentiator when people are making decisions from one platform to another. Plat. And. And we'll say, especially with the speed of development at feature parity. And I'm not saying that we have feature parity with all of our competitors, but if someone's making a choice and a decision, they're like, hey, I live in New York City. I'm choosing between these two. And there's a kit studios that's right around the corner that I get access to for free if I choose kit. I mean, that's a reason in itself, right?
- [23:25]
A
Totally. I think so too. I currently live in Canada. I'm in Vancouver, but I'm moving to London and so may I suggest that your next question. Kit Studios be in London.
- [23:35]
C
I am. I love that you're moving to London.
- [23:38]
A
I.
- [23:38]
C
We go there fairly often. I'm going to be back in September and. But no, actually I am constantly pushing for London. We have a huge creator cohort or like, you know, customer base there and I'm like, oh, London. I. So I do all, I always do user research when I'm there. I'm like, hey, what studios do you go to? And would you like something like this? And amazing.
- [23:59]
A
Well, we'll have to connect after about London and that sounds awesome. Okay. One thing I have wondered around Kit Studios is how you're evaluating the success of it because I imagine you could go in a couple different directions here like, oh, this doesn't need to be profitable at all or this is just a big brand play or a differentiator. So just walk me through how you and the team think about evaluating the impact of Kit Studios.
- [24:25]
C
Yeah, so we do measure pretty much everything. We measure the number of attend like people that are coming in, we measure all of their feedback that they're coming in. We measure the guests that are coming in that aren't and aren't are in our customers. It's a little bit tough because right now in Boise, there's not a massive creator community in Boise. You know, the same way that there are in, let's say Chicago, New York or LA or Austin. And Chicago's still in a soft launch and that's because the building itself isn't completely completed. And so we were just waiting on things like the elevator to be done, you know, and stuff, stuff like that. But no, we track and pretty much measure everything. Having said that, we are lucky in that we don't make our money through the podcast studio and we aren't planning on, you know, trying. We're never going to charge for it. And so we don't have to rely on the studio making money to measure whether or not it's successful or not. It's mostly usage. The more we can get people in there is we want to just from a real estate perspective and a cost perspective, we want to make sure that it's being utilized and if it's being utilized, then we're winning. And so that's the number one metric. And if it's being utilized, quite quite frankly, I don't even think that I've received a single piece of. I wouldn't say I don't think I've received a single piece of critical feedback when it comes to the studios. Actually at Craft and Commerce, we had one gal, she says, it almost seems like you're trying to hide this from us. Like the fact that you have this, like you don't market this enough. And I was like, I feel like we're talking about it all the time, are we not? And she was just like, I had no idea how insanely valuable it actually was. So the primary metric is usage.
- [26:07]
A
I love that. I think that makes sense. And I do think to the marketing thing, this is something I constantly remind myself of. We do need to say things over and over again because people don't hear it and people want to hear it. Especially when it's a value add message like that. It's not like you're saying, oh, you have to pay to come here. It's like, come use it. Yeah, I love that. I'll also say one of my other favorite parts about it is that it is Taylor Swift themed, if I'm not wrong.
- [26:31]
C
You're not wrong at all. In fact, every single one of our songs. So Nathan, our CEO, as many people know, is literally the biggest Taylor Swift fan of all time. I mean, I'm a mega Taylor Swift fan as well, but, like, Nathan is like, massive, right? And for a mid-30s dude, that's pretty funny. And yeah, no, so all of our. All of the podcast studios are named after a favorite Taylor Swift song or the feeling. Like you go into it, know it's the feeling, you know.
- [27:01]
A
So, yeah, I love that so much. Yeah. Big, big Taylor Swift fan is why I went to two eras shows during Love that had to. Okay, I want us to zoom out just a little bit as we're kind of coming towards the end of our convo. And I'm just curious about your perspective on if. And if so how do you make sure that these offline experiences that you're creating, whether it's the conference or kit studios, feel like a natural extension of your product, which is the software itself?
- [27:32]
C
You know, I would say I don't know if I think about that all that often in full transparency. And that's because the. For offline, I really don't focus. We do a lot of teaching. Right. So we do a lot of mastermind sort of events. And things like that. But my goal for it is truly connection. My goal is truly to connect with the people that are using, is to build deeper relationships. We did a bunch of studies a long time ago, or not a long time ago, a while ago, asking, like, why is it that people are most connected to Kit and most like choosing Kit as a brand. And actually the biggest extension was Nathan, is that, you know, they were connected to Nathan and his story of him being a creator, like by creators for creators. Right. Him launching Kit as a creator. And so when I think about just.
- [28:35]
A
Being.
- [28:38]
C
Offline and I think about, like, how we serve customers, we do teach about the creator economy or like, let's say we'll zoom out. And we don't actually teach. If we're doing a small mastermind, we don't teach. This is how you create tags and segments and so on and so forth. We might say this is how James Clear got 10,000 reviews and this is the flywheel that he actually built in order to do that. And a very small component or focus on that actually might be on the Kit software itself, but it's really the creator business as a whole. And we are just the kind of like, ecosystem at the middle and the center of that. We don't do a lot of, like, major teaching, like digging into the technology at offline events. It is more like, how can we provide a more roundabout value and not have it feel so salesy, if I'm being totally honest, you know, because all that stuff can be done online. There are things that cannot be done offline. And so I don't, I don't think about that as much. I think about providing different types of value for offline experiences.
- [29:49]
A
No, I really respect that. And I think again, putting my product marketer hat back on, it's like, okay, when I look at a customer segment, I recognize there's a variety of problems that need to be solved for them. The product solves some of those problems. But then there's others, like some that you mentioned, like, wow, I want to be inspired as a creator or I want to know, like, how to do things beyond my email tool that are important and part of that journey. And I think it is worth recognizing that the same way different parts of your product, product solve different problems for the end customer, so can different parts of your brand experiences as well. Right. They don't all have to solve the same one.
- [30:24]
C
Yeah. The other thing too is that from an offline perspective, you know, a lot of times what I'm trying to do is I'M trying to like, create again, create opportunities for people to make connections. And so I, I, I feel like it's really narrow minded to come in and, and if I'm tied, regardless of creator type, it's really narrow minded to just be like, email is going to solve all of your problems because it's just, just not right. And so even if you look at your business, you know, you're saying like, okay, I've got a community platform and I've got email and I've got social media. And it's really hard for me to just say like, this is what you need to do with email without thinking about all of the other things. And so if I just narrow in just on email, then I'm leaving so much out there on the table to really allow me to serve like creators the best way that I possibly can. Or just one small sliver of it.
- [31:15]
A
Absolutely. All right, well, we're coming to the end of our time together and we like to end every episode of the Marketing Millennials with one question, which is, Haley, what is one marketing hill that you would die on?
- [31:27]
C
Oof. Okay. I love this, I love this question. I thought about this a lot beforehand. So I would say this. So many marketers focus when they think about events. They're like, is it really valuable? Should we do this? It's so hard to prove what is the, you know, what are the number of accounts that we, that we got and we closed and how are we going to measure this? And you know, I think about, I go to events for three reasons. I go for client retention, I go for client acquisition and brand awareness. And I might go for all three to a single event or I might choose to go to one event for only one of them, right? And so let's say for sake of argument, I go to a, a food content creator event, right? And I have a handful of competitors that we really compete against in that specific market segment. I can go to that event only for client retention and say if I can save five customers, right, or I five people. Because if I didn't show up, right, and there was another booth of a competitor, for example, that's there, and they get 30 attendees to show up and then they convert 30%, right? That cost alone right there could essentially cover my entire event budget or the cost or the reason, the value reason for me attending that event. And so I'd really encourage people that are creating sort of, or like let's say sponsoring events or creating in person experiences to stop and only like, stop focusing only on new client acquisition but focus on retention as well. I think it's a huge reason that we go to we should be going to conferences is the relationships with our customers and not just, you know, net new. Mrr.
- [33:13]
A
I love it. That's a great one. Haven't heard that one before on the show.
- [33:16]
C
There you go.
- [33:17]
A
So Hayley, where can folks learn more about you? Maybe learn more about Kit? Follow along with your journey.
- [33:22]
C
Yeah, you can go to kit.com for all things kit. You can follow me on LinkedIn @haley janicek or maybe Instagram @haleyjani. And yeah, I'm trying to show up more on LinkedIn, as are the rest of the creators in the world. So I would say probably their Instagram sounds great.
- [33:39]
A
Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
- [33:41]
C
Yeah, thank you.
- [33:44]
B
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.