Original Marketing Podcast
For this episode of the Essential B2B Podcast, Joe was joined by VP of Strategic Engagements at Directive, Brady Cramm! They talk about Brady's podcast, Original Marketing Podcast, how B2B has been influenced by B2C and go through some of Brady's suggestions for inspirational thought and sales leaders!
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Transcript
Joe: Hello and welcome to the Essential B2B Podcast brought to you by Lead Forensics. I am your host Joe Ducarreaux. This episode is a conversation I had with Brady Cramm, Vice President of Strategic Engagements at Directive. Brady tells us a little bit about the differences between B2C and B2B marketing, how he got started making his own podcast, Original Marketing Podcast, and which thought leaders inspire him.
So without further ado here is Brady Cramm’s episode with the Essential B2B podcast.
Joe: Do you find that working with B2C clients and with B2B clients, is there much of a difference these days or are they starting to look more similar would you say?
Brady: I would say B2B is and should be more inspired by B2C. I think there was the robotic B2B marketing that is phasing out due to some of the leaders. I follow Peep Laja, the owner of Wynter and what he’s doing with positioning within his platform. I think it’s connecting better with humans and being less robotic. So I think that’s the transition that’s happening, is B2B becoming more like B2C.
Joe: It’s certainly almost the motto of this show is that people buy from people.
Brady: Exactly.
Joe: Adopting that sort of mentality to your, even to your B2B companies, it’s essential now. So you are also, and this is what I’m very excited to talk to you about, you are also a podcast host. So tell us a bit about the Original Marketing Podcast and why you wanted to start a podcast in the first place.
Brady: Yeah, so my CEO, Garrett, he’s always done content really well. He’s always been into these shows and he called me, Hey Brady, I want to do a podcast and he wanted me to do it with him. So I said, yes, I’ve never done it before. I was scared to do it and that’s usually a good feeling I’ve realised in my career in life. Hey, if I’m worried about this and I’m scared, that means I’ve never done it before and I’m not comfortable and it’s going to be a good growth experience. So I said, yes and our goal is to do something a bit new as well. All of our marketing has been specifically to the Director of demand gen, the CMO at SaaS companies.
We wanted to do it in a way where you’re not a marketer but you learn, oh wow, this is behind the scenes of marketing and when an e-commerce site says only two left and they have a price slash, that’s all done for a reason, it’s to make more money. So it’s been a fun journey.
Joe: Something that I would have to commend your show on, is it is extremely accessible. I think you can have any sort of level of marketing and sales experience at all. There’s definitely something for you in there. So I urge everybody to go and listen to the Original Marketing Podcast. It’s a really good listen.
Brady: Yeah, I appreciate it.
Joe: So has it proved valuable for your career then, would you say? Have you seen any sort of upswing in any aspects of your work life?
Brady: I think it’s been a good routine for me. I think it’s just good to be challenged with bringing a new ad to the table every week. It talks about marketing, a random industry every week. So I think just for mental aspect, it’s been really healthy for my career. That’s where I’m at with it right now. It’s been interesting. Some of the TikTok posts have blown up half a million views on one clip on TikTok, which I didn’t expect to happen and seeing the reactions of comments and people agreeing, disagreeing, it’s been fun.
Joe: I think even from that one clip of TikTok sort of blowing up from that, having a podcast, it really gives you the opportunity to nurture a community around it as well, which is a very powerful tool. Is there an absolute must-listen podcast that you’d recommend?
Brady: So it’s interesting, I watch a lot of comedy podcasts. So that’s my podcast in life is the Kill Tony podcast in Austin, Texas. I’ve really learned marketing and get inspired through video. So I don’t know if Rory Sutherland has a podcast, but I’m always watching his keynotes and conversations on YouTube. That’s just my channel and allows me to search more by topics and choose the content I want to
watch.
Joe: What do you love about your industry, Brady? And is there anything you would change about it?
Brady: Yeah I think for me in my position, so I have the title of VP of Strategic Engagements, what the heck does that mean? I’m more on the executive sales side of things and I’ve taken my career in operations and I’ve brought it to sales. I have the I think unique opportunity of getting, even if they don’t become a client for whatever reason, I get access to advertising accounts every week and I’m diving in there.
The most common one is Google Ads and probably LinkedIn. What I see on a consistent basis is just the lack of deep focus in advertising platforms. When you mentioned what do you think needs to change, I think due to the macro economy, this is actually changing right now. I’m talking to more CFOs and Chief Revenue Officers when talking about Google Ads, there’s a spotlight on these line items on the spend sheet and the cost of goods sold and it’s more of a focus that’s ever been there before in my career.
So I think that’s what needs to change and is changing . I see so much wasted spend in these platforms. I segmented out search partners in Google Ads in their account yesterday and saw that the Google search network had a 2X row ad in the search partners network and they were losing impression share due to budget. I know I’m getting very technical right now, but this is what I do all day, every day is just finding these things in platforms. You’ll see spend going to international countries when the campaign is set to the US and they’re paying a tax on that spend and they don’t even know it’s happening because of the way Google reports on locations.
So yeah, that’s a little bit more on my day to day and I think the change that’s happened in B2B, specifically SaaS is what I experience every day, is just a deeper focus on what these ad channels are actually doing for revenue impact and not just dandy metrics.
Joe: What would you say is your greatest achievement? Personal or professional, what’s your greatest achievement?
Brady: Man, that’s a big question.
Joe: That’s why I asked it.
Brady: I would say personally, getting married, that happened a little over three years ago. So that’s a big life accomplishment I’d say. Career-wise it’s tough to pick one. I think moving to Directive, I’ve been here like I said for over seven years. So I think doing all the hiring I’ve done, talking to people on the sales side and Director of demand gen roles, CMO roles. It’s usually oh, yeah I’ve been here for four months, been here for a year. I rarely talk to anyone who can match the amount of time I’ve been at this company.
So I think that’s a big accomplishment just with the knowledge of how many people are hopping around to new roles as their career path. I think committing to the one company and getting the experience I’ve gotten here has been pretty special.
Joe: I think they’re two very worthy achievements. In terms of making the jump to Director, as we touched on earlier, growth can only really happen outside of your comfort zone. So I think you’re right is an accomplishment to recognise that you went. I don’t know what this is going to be like, let’s give it a go!
Brady: Whatever gets the heart rate pumping a little bit. It’s usually good or a really bad thing. I guess I can go both ways there.
Joe: Just enough, it’s about finding the sweet spot. Who are you inspired by?
Brady: Yeah, I think I already mentioned Rory Sutherland inspires me a lot. I love just watching him talk, one of my favourite things with him is how he talks about time. And with a lot of challenges, the solution might be to reduce the time and he always finds these new solutions. One of them was a long escalator ride and they wanted to do a very expensive project to make the escalator faster. His idea was, let’s put a mirror on the side of it and all the complaints about the length of the escalator ride dropped. He has brilliant solutions.
Then I’d say my CEO, Garrett. We’ve been along for this ride for so long and we’re around the same age, 31, and the agency is 10 years old. Just witnessing witnessing him as CEO do this journey himself and pull in insights from other leaders that inspire him and then me kind of channel that learning through him., I’d say definitely looking up to him this whole time.
Joe: What do you find motivates you, Brady? What really gets you out of bed at the start of the day, start your week? What motivates you?
Brady: I think for me, it’s always goals. Just trying to achieve something. I think personal life goals financially are very connected to my career, obviously. So it’s not just like my internal goals, hey, sales team, this is your quota. We work on a trimester schedule, which is unique. I just know how that impacts me personally and financially, in those goals of wealth long-term and owning properties and being financially independent and retiring one day. That’s really why I keep grinding and trying to learn things outside of work, like investing and failing there and hopefully finding some wins every now and then.
Joe: We’ve talked a lot about your work and your career and that sort of thing. We touched on your podcast which probably factors into this slightly, but how do you decompress from work? How important is that divide between work and personal life for you?
Brady: Yeah, I think that’s a good topic to talk about since remote life has happened because what I’ve learned is it’s very difficult to disconnect when your office is one of the bedrooms in your house or for some people the dining room table. I think for me it’s sitting up, even going down and refilling my cup of cold brewed coffee. Going on walks as small as that sounds is important. I enjoy landscape photography. Video games are another. Just playing video games and watching TV with my wife. I love Family Feud. We try to watch an episode every day.
Joe: Brady, this has been a really lovely conversation. I’ve really enjoyed finally getting around to getting to know you a little bit better. If you had one top tip to give to the listeners of the Essential B2B Podcast, what would you like them to take away from this conversation?
Brady: I think I may have touched on it a little bit when talking about auditing platforms and the state of B2B marketing, but be a realist when it comes to your advertisement. And when I say that, really understand who is seeing the ads, when they’re seeing the ads, how they’re feeling when they’re seeing the ads and don’t get lost in too much of the tables that all these platforms offer in terms of click-through rate and cost per lead and form fills. If you get stuck on optimising that, you could be driving pipeline in the wrong direction.
So I always like to challenge the realities of the advertisement. It forces you to spend more time in a search terms report, spend more time searching those search terms, seeing what Google is ranking for those terms, and asking yourself, are we aligned here? Are these people, could they ever become a customer? People have intent for this and this is the content Google’s algorithm is offering.
But it takes time, but I think that’s the mindset, be a realist and really try to understand what’s actually happening and don’t leave digital and techy platforms as an excuse to knock it down to reality, because it’s simply people on the internet searching things. That’s all it is. It’s a pretty simple concept. Google Ads and even LinkedIn, but it’s easy to get lost in the spreadsheets and tables and all the metrics that these platforms come with.
Joe: Brady Cramm, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Essential B2B Podcast.
Brady: Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I’m glad we made it happen after crossing paths in London.
