How to Build a Dynamic B2B Marketing Team: Mitch Fanning

Transcript lightly edited for spelling and punctuation. The conversation is unabridged.

Mark Evans: You're listening to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight, tools, and tips for marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches in twenty minutes or less. As the intro suggests, I'm interested in talking to marketers who operate in the trenches, people who build, operate, and optimize marketing engines to drive growth in competitive markets. Today, I'm talking to that kind of marketer, Mitch Fanning, VP marketing at RentSync, which provides marketing software and services for the multifamily industry. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Mitch.

Mitch Fanning: Thanks for having me on there, Mark.

Mark Evans: Maybe we can start by telling me a little bit about how long you've been at RentSync and what RentSync does.

Mitch Fanning: So I've been at RentSync for about a year and a half. And as you've you've already kind of mentioned, RentSync provides marketing solutions for the multifamily. So one way you can think about it one way the listeners can think about it is that it's multi it's sorry. It's HubSpot for multifamily, but just with services. My big role is not only to help shape product strategy, but to formalize and execute on the go-to-market and scale operations.

Mark Evans: So what is multifamily? Just to give us a little bit of color on what that involves.

Mitch Fanning: Okay. So this is interesting because my background is not on multifamily. So multifamily is really the owner-operators, the investors, the property management firms that essentially, you know, buy, manage, and, essentially invest in apartment buildings. And what's really interesting to me, at least, in this space is that this industry, when it comes to marketing, is kind of where the B2B space was, like, ten years ago. Meaning and what I mean by that is when it comes to technology, when it comes to their technology stacks and the things that they're doing, they are just kind of catching up to the to the B2B space. So it's almost like history is repeating itself.

Mark Evans: So as a marketer, if you're dealing with customers who may not be terribly tech-savvy, does that mean that a lot of your marketing is around education? Because you've got people who may not be using a lot of technology at all. Do you have to win them over to the fact that technology is a is a valuable and useful tool and then convince them that your software is something that they they should consider?

Mitch Fanning: I think it just like, I would say any, any industry or any situation, when things are, kind of, ahead of its time, I would have said that was the case maybe three, four years ago. A couple things have, have changed that. Number one, you're getting into a situation where, you're finding a lot of young people are running these marketing, company marketing teams in, in multifamily and two, COVID. People have had to change the way they've done business, and I I know that's probably a recurring theme on this podcast, but, multifamily is no different.

Mark Evans: So over the years, you've held a number of leadership marketing roles at a variety of companies. And I I think it's given you some really interesting perspective on the marketing landscape and how it's evolved over the years. Can you talk a little bit about the role of a CMO at an early stage company? Because it's a really important job, but often it comes after the product's been developed. It comes after a sales team has been created. And sometimes the marketing person is late to the game for at least for literally speaking. So what is their role, and and how do they establish themselves so that they can have a a seat at the table?

Mitch Fanning: This is a great question, and we probably could probably talk a lot longer than fifteen minutes on this one particular subject. I I would say, first of all, if I'm being if I'm being honest, you as a marketer, you really need to be honest with yourself. And what I what I mean by that is you really have to ask yourself, am I a builder or am I a farmer? And what I think that means, at least to me, is not everyone is designed to be in an early stage tech environment. And and that also includes anyone else outside of marketing. It can include product, etcetera. But if you are that person, the one thing I would say is you're you need to be really good at standing things up and that that's everything from the technology. That's that's that's everything to do with the programs, etcetera. But I think you also need to be really good at understanding the business. And I think one of the things and I would say that no matter what stage of the business you're in, but I think a lot of times early stage marketers come in as, individual contributors, and they get stuck there. And the problem with that is they get siloed and they're not able to connect what they do to business results. So I would say that's number one, but I would also say you have to really understand other other functions outside of your own. And I don't think a lot of marketers spend enough time understanding business in general, whether it's SaaS, understanding what SaaS means, the business model behind that, the metrics that that, you know, and CEOs actually track. And two, they don't spend enough time outside of their own discipline.

Mark Evans: So what do you mean by that?

Mitch Fanning: I think what I mean by that is they so here's the thing. When you go from an individual contributor to leading marketing, the the toughest thing beyond the things I just mentioned is managing up and educating internally. And I don't necessarily think it's it's something that just marketers have this inflection point, but I think it's just a hard thing to to train yourself to do. In other words, continually trying to communicate what the vision of the company is, what marketing is doing externally, but also internally.

Mark Evans: One of the things that I've written about recently on LinkedIn is the ability or the necessity for early stage marketers to establish a partnership with the CEO. Because if you look at the evolution of early stage companies, it's usually the founder who is the jack of all trades early on. They drive product development. They drive sales. They drive marketing. And and over time, they'll give up some of those responsibilities. So it could be product development. It could be sales. But marketing is always very close to their heart because it's their company, it's their vision, it's their story. So when a marketer comes on, there's a dance that the CEO and the marketer have to go through because they've got to not only delineate, okay. This is what I do. This is what you do. This is what you're responsible for, and this is what I'm gonna own. But the lines are blurred when it comes to marketing. So from your experience, how do you establish a partnership with a CEO, with the founder, the the person who's very vested? And marketing can be very close to the heart, and it does put a lot of pressure on marketers because they have to perform, but they also have this other stakeholder that they have to dance with at the same time.

Mitch Fanning: Probably the answer I'm gonna give is not obvious, but it it may not be the one that people want to hear. It's, if number one, you should know you should ask really good questions before you get into that company around that particular subject and get a sense for is that CEO actually going to essentially give up that function and let you kind of run it. And if they don't, don't go there. Two, if you see that that's happening early on, that's a red flag, and it's probably not gonna change. One thing I would say is if they're not like that, I would say definitely you need to show them you've gotta build a relationship with them. I mean, this is something that we all know. But, again, just like, you know, educating, communicating internally to, to the company at large, what marketing does and what, you know, what the company is, doing as far as where it's going, I think it's just something you have to do, and work at first. You've gotta show some early wins, of course, and then you've gotta build out that strategy and start to think long term.

Mark Evans: On the flip side, and I'm talking from personal experience here, is what happens if you run into a situation where you have a CEO, they definitively declare that they want to do marketing. They believe that the time is right for marketing to help scale and accelerate growth. But when push comes to shove, they don't give you the engagement that you need. They don't want that partnership. So you're trying to tell their story, reflect their vision, do what the things that they believe in or they believe should be done. But when you do them, that you get pushed back because apparently you did the wrong things. What you didn't get from them was engagement, so you're left to your own devices. So what do you do in those situations where you want a partner, you want someone to contribute and go with you on the ride and that's not happening?

Mitch Fanning: This is what I would call the hard things about the hard things. Right? I mean, it's it's the things that you don't actually read in a marketing, in a marketing book or any type of marketing resource or marketing podcast. Like, how do you actually basically effectively it's change management. Right? And so these situations are are hard, and it's you're not gonna read that in a book. I would say, again, go back to rule number one, meaning, you know, you have to understand that if they're not going to be, the type if they don't see the value in marketing and and they're not letting go of that function or in a way, again, we can kind of go down this rabbit hole, but in a way, you know, interrupting or, again, not letting that function go, that's a red flag. But at the same time, you know, when you bring them something, you have to be willing to take that constructive, you know, feedback. It's not an easy answer for sure, but I think people know when they're in that situation. The problem is just like a lot of times, and this has to do with everything, not just marketing. It's the inaction. We don't act when we're in those situations. We don't make a decision to leave that situation. And I think that's really what it comes down to. It's the inability to act and remove yourself from that situation.

Mark Evans: Assuming that you've found yourself in a good situation, you've got a relationship with the CEO, you've got terms of engagement that have been established, and you start to build out marketing. So you put together your brand position. You've got a marketing strategy. You wanna make things happen, and you come to that really sticky juncture or the really interesting juncture or that challenging juncture when you've gotta build a team. You've gotta figure out who do we hire internally because a lot of functions are being secured from third parties these days. And do we hire someone from ops first, or do we go with analytics first? How do you put together that marketing HR plan? Like, what are the things that you need to consider, and are there any sort of common beliefs or common approaches that a marketing leader should take?

Mitch Fanning: Again, what I would say is, you know, my personal hiring philosophy is hire for grit first. Everything else is secondary. And what I really mean by that is, again, a lot of people are attracted to that high growth startup or tech company because it's just it's romantic. But what they don't understand is every year, sometimes every six months, not only does the company change, but they actually have to change within the company. And that's not for everyone. You need to have a growth mindset. And that really is what I mean by grit. Someone who's passionate at really evolving as a person and they're persistent. They've got perseverance. They're willing to do the hard things. When it comes to building a team though, I mean, it really depends on what the business is looking for. So I always think about it as the OKRs. What are the objectives? What are the strategies? And then build the team structure around that to actually execute. But if you were just asking me point blank, how would I go about building a team structure? Number one, if it was just like a blank slate, ops and analytics first. You need at the end of the day, you need metrics, you need someone owning the tech stack, and that's what somebody in ops would do. If it's obviously software, it would be the product marketer. That would be the second person I would bring on. And the reason why I'm in that order and then, obviously, from there, it's comms or brand and demand. And the reason why I would go in that order is, again, tech stack. Right? It's the it's the engine. The product marketer is important because what happens is you start doing demand, and the first thing you're doing is you're creating original positioning. You're creating original messaging. You're creating and the demand person is doing that all the time. And what happens with if you get a product marketer and you get that positioning, that messaging in place, then they can just use that content to fuel their programs.

Mark Evans: Rand Fishkin, who runs a company called SparkToro, recently wrote a blog post saying that companies should outsource as much of their functions as possible to agencies or contractors. As someone who runs marketing, as someone who's an internal marketing leader, what's your approach to that? How much can or should an early stage company outsource so that they can be cost-efficient, they can drive productivity, and they can allocate their resources in the most efficient way?

Mitch Fanning: I definitely wouldn't outsource ops. I definitely wouldn't outsource product marketing. When it comes to demand, it depends. I would say you need someone who's running demand, but when it comes to building out or as you get as you grow, you're gonna have, specialties on that team. So for example, I'm looking to have someone who's just gonna own paid channels or paid advertising. Now we're looking at actually outsourcing that position. So someone actually who is going to fit in that position, who's a specialist, sure, in that situation. And also too, it's also because we're not sure of the actual, essentially, the bandwidth for that for that position. So I think when it's very specialized, sure. I wouldn't outsource thought leadership again, so brand or content. So when, you know, our comms and content person does essentially thought leadership and that is essentially brand. I wouldn't outsource that. You want somebody within the company who can be as a domain expert or several, and you definitely don't wanna so I guess at the end of the day, if it's specialized, sure. And you're not sure if they're going to be a full-time position, that's probably how I would approach it. And that's actually how I am approaching it.

Mark Evans: Now as the marketing landscape has evolved, it's almost like there's two sides to the marketing landscape. On one side, you got the brand experience, brand content people like myself who are focused on brand positioning and messaging and thought leadership and all those good things. On the other side of the house, you've got the data geeks. You know, the people who are running the numbers, who are trying to optimize everything. It's all about little tweaks and watching the data and making data-driven decisions that drive sales and marketing activity. I understand and I recognize that metrics are a necessity, but here's the question. Here's the $64,000 question. Should everything be measured? Does everything have to be measured just because it can? And what are the perils of relying too heavily on data to make marketing decisions?

Mitch Fanning: I love this question. So here's how I would answer that. So number one, I think everything can be measured to some degree. Even I would even go as far as to say brand can be measured. The way I would look at this though is the way I initially look at it is demand subsidizes brand. Meaning, you have performance metrics. Performance marketing needs to be measured a 100%. But that piece of the marketing org or the marketing engine can, to some degree, subsidize brand marketing. The way I would kind of think about this though is you need to first nail your category because that's the context and who your best-fit customer is. The analogy I give is, you know, Mark, if I were to ask you, do you wanna go out for dinner tonight? You know, what do you feel like? Your first initial thought would be, well, do I feel like Italian? Do I feel like Chinese? Those are categories. Then if you nail the category, if you said, let's go for Chinese, then we'd started to think about, well, what are the best Chinese restaurants? That's brand. Now if I looked and I told you, wait a minute. There's a two for one deal on Facebook for this particular restaurant tonight, and that would happen to be the second best Chinese, restaurant in Toronto. We'd maybe end up going there. That's demand. You have to look at the fact that not everything can be measured. Sure. But if you don't actually go through that framework and nail all the components, you're gonna be hard pressed to actually make the metrics work for you. Now going back to brand, I will say you probably can measure it. The way we're looking at measuring it is by, kind of a proprietary metric called reach. I won't get into that, but the key here is the way we're gonna do a long term is you basically do, an aided or unaided brand awareness study at the end of the year. You basically ask, you know, and an unaided brand awareness study is this. If or sorry. An aided would be this. If I said to you, Mark, which one of these, software companies do you like best or do you recognize? Coke or Pepsi? You would rank them, you know, one and two. Now from a perception point of view, that's the other side of how you can measure brand. If I said to you, what's the sweetest one of the two? You would say, well, Coke is the sweetest. And maybe that's the positioning that Coke is going for. And then you basically just do the same study year over year and see if you've got a lift off those two metrics. So the point being is you can, but should you do it early? No. Sometimes it's you know, sometimes, again, early stage, not everything has to be measured right away. You've gotta build into those type of metrics.

Mark Evans: One of the questions I'm asking marketers these days, especially B2B marketers, is that with the evaporation of conferences, the places where you connect with prospects and customers and those serendipitous relationships that are built simply because you sit beside someone during a panel session, those are not gonna happen. I don't think those are gonna happen for a year, at least a year, and that's just my own view of the world. How do B2B companies spark conversations with prospects? I'm not talking about a chatbot or somebody reaches out and on a contact box or fills out an ebook download, but real conversations where I get on the phone and we're talking to each other and we're connecting and we're beginning to establish a relationship. I think a lot of brands are having a hard time doing that. Any thoughts about how you can make that happen? Either, the approach that RentSync is taking to address that challenge?

Mitch Fanning: It's not an easy answer for sure. Probably the answer I'm gonna give is going to seem like it's a cop out, but it's doing the things you should have been doing anyways. So, you know, for us, we're providing thought leadership in the form of a podcast and rental or industry reports through LinkedIn organic. And, you know, we're kind of going the tactics that are involved in all of those initiatives are, you know, can vary. You know, one thing, you know, my CEO, and I gotta give him credit for is he's willing to go the long play. So again, get the right company with the right leadership team, the right CEO because they see value in the long play and that's content. In the meantime, we are running our demand gen. We're going account-based because that's the play for us in our industry. But I don't really think there's a silver bullet. I think you need to have that air cover and you need to run demand and you need to do a combination of both. At the end of the day, it's usually about figuring out what works best and that's just experimentation. So it's more about the process you're going through and are you improving than it is what is that silver bullet.

Mark Evans: Yeah. I wish there was a better answer. I wish there was a more definitive answer, and it's a very tough question to be asking these days because it's a new marketing landscape, we're all trying to adapt, we're all trying to figure out ways that we can differentiate ourselves and really get those conversations going. Mitch, thanks for coming on Marketing Spark today. If people are looking to find you online, where do they find you? Are you on LinkedIn? Do you have a podcast or website? Let us know the information about where people can learn more about what you do.

Mitch Fanning: Yeah. I mean, you can just Google Mitch Fanning. I think I'm gonna be the first that shows up. Yeah. I run a podcast called Built to Scale, but, yeah, LinkedIn is always the best place to find me.

Mark Evans: Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. For show notes of today's conversation and information about Mitch, visit marketingspark.co/blog. If you have questions, feedback, would like to suggest a guest, or want to learn more about how I help B2B companies as a fractional CMO, consultant, and adviser, send an email to Mark@MarketingSpark.co. Talk to you next time.