Video Transcript:
NICK: Welcome everybody. Today, we have a very special guest, Patrick Ward, vice president of marketing at Rootstrap. Rootstrap uses outcome-driven development to help companies scale people, processes, and products. Patrick, welcome to Growth Marketing Chat.
PATRICK: Thanks for netherland whatsapp number having me, Nick, really excited to be here.
NICK: Thank you for being on. So Patrick, maybe we can start by having you tell us a little bit about your journey through marketing. What led you to your current role with Rootstrap?
PATRICK: Yeah, so I started my journey in marketing, like many people in the advertising industry. I worked at an ad agency, as my accent belies, in my home country of Australia, and I'd done that for a number of years. It was a fine agency. We had a lot of interesting clients, most notably Fiji Airways. I can tell you that was probably one of my most memorable experiences in my early career. But I really wanted to test my marketing skills and what better place to go than the home of advertising, the United States of America.
So I packed up everything. I left my family, my friends, and the job that I had at the time and I just decided to chance my arm, come over to America and see what sticks. And so I'd been through a couple of different industries. I'd done some stuff with ad tech, which is an offshoot of advertising. I'd done some stuff in finance. And then I really found my home in the space of technology, which is where I am currently. And I think what attracted me to technology is one, it is a very necessary industry. I mean, you look today, it doesn't matter what industry you are in, there is always some level of technology component to it.
And I think the other thing that attracted me is unlike other industries that are a little bit more transactional, the way that you are truly successful in the world of B2B technology is you have to build relationships. And I think that was always critical for me as a marketer to want to get to this fundamental idea that marketing is really at its roots about human behavior. And I wanted a field where I could flex that muscle and that's where I am today.
And that is the best testament you need, because as much as we might think that yes, we live in a capitalist economy, yes, there is a lot of competition, but there is still a way to do business in an ethical and responsible way that actually helps people accomplish their goals without having to tread on people. As much as I like to believe that, it's nice to see demonstrable examples where people who have acted in the wrong way get punished for it, and then when we act in the right way, we get rewarded for it.
NICK: Yeah, absolutely. That's the best case scenario, but it does take, I think, a certain level of comfort and a certain level of confidence in knowing who those ICPs are, the ideal customer profile. And you were marketing hire number one, did you play a role in formulating those ICPs? Was that part of what you did in the beginning? Because it sounds like you understand the ICP really well, and you've really customized the entire funnel around this persona.
PATRICK: Yeah. So for us, the key ICP is VPs of engineering. This is kind of ironic for myself as a non-technical person, but I have it on good authority that our developers have really rigorous and high coding standards. And the great thing is, it's very transparent. You can go to our GitHub repository if you are a technical person and you can see the standards that we apply. And I think that's why we've been really good with that particular ICP.
But I will say when I joined, there wasn't a lot of focus. It was again, a standard agency where they look to everyone. Can we do things for this person? Yes. And are we in a position to turn it down? Not really. Now, that's all well and good when you're starting and I understand, you have to be a little scrappy in the very early stages. You just have to make enough cash flow, make sure that it keeps the business afloat. But one of the key areas that I focused on is no, we need to stop speaking to everyone, we need to hone in on one person that constantly gives back to us time and time again.
So we focused on this VP of engineering persona and more importantly, we focused it within the realm of ed tech. So for those who don't know our major client is MasterClass that has been our largest client for a number of years now. And slowly but surely, we're starting to win more and more business in that ed tech space. We got a company called Emeritus, which sells online certificates from various high level educational institutions. We also did one with Eye Level Learning, which again is a tutoring company based in the APAC region.
And so when you start to focus your messaging, when you start to focus on who you're targeting with that ICP and excluding others, the irony is you still get business from other places. You don't miss out on that, just because you're not speaking to them. You can still have compelling offerings, but more importantly, you really start to hone in on people who are going to care about you. And I think this was the critical thing for us because we know that, yes, we can control the marketing messaging that we ourselves put out, we control the channels that we focus on when we invest in them, but one of the biggest ways that agencies grow is that word of mouth. And in order to tap that word of mouth, you need to look not only at the clients who you get money from right now, but who do you impress so profoundly that they cannot help but speak to everyone about you.
And this is what we really saw in that VP of engineering persona. We saw constantly clients who would start at maybe a director level, they'd get promoted to VP. So they're very happy about what we've been able to provide them from that perspective. They go to somewhere else, suddenly they're dragging us along. They're opening a new account for us and a new account and a new account. Now, they're not on our sales staff, they don't have to do that, but clearly we're providing enough value to those people that they want to keep hiring us time and time again. And I think that's one of the biggest areas that marketing doesn't necessarily focus on, but it is the biggest flywheel effect. If you can start creating that messaging that targets the ICPs that really work for you, they'll start to do some of your marketing for you without you even having to. And this is the key of growth, especially as you're looking to hit big numbers. I know a lot of B2B companies, whether they have got investment or not have huge growth aspirations, many have that unicorn status that they're trying to reach.
