Marketing Evolution: Matik's Story with Head of Marketing, Bex Sekar

I’m so happy to have you with me Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be on.

I’ve been in marketing for over 10 years, which feels like a long time, but most of my background has been in startup companies. I think Series A to Series C is my sweet spot. I’ve been really lucky in the sense that I’ve worked for companies that have indexed on enterprise solutions, so working closely with sales teams, to companies that have more of a self-serve PLG motion, so getting to work closely with product teams, and a lot of different industries, from Fintech to SaaS, be even a little bit of B2C as well. Yeah, that’s my history, if you will.

I was working at a medical device company and got an outreach from a recruiter. I was intrigued because the problem they were solving was one that I was very familiar with and he knew others were familiar with. Then got to know the team. Both the cofounders were amazing. The product was awesome. It just became a really clear decision to move forward.

Yeah. Another way We talk about what Matik does is we automate the personalization of content. The data aspect is that we automate the creation of data-driven elements like tables and charts. Some of the most compelling use cases for our product are things like business reviews or renewal decks, things where teams like customer success have to go pull data that is specific to the account, like usage, for example, and then weave it into a Google slide or Microsoft PowerPoint PowerPoint presentation or even an email. Matik connects to the data source, a pretty cool tool in the sense that we query data, we don’t ingest data, so implementation is super easy. We connect to the data sources, things like data warehouses, so Redshift, Snowflake, CRMs, BI tools, spreadsheets, wherever your data may live, we connect to it. Then you just set up a template, a Google slide or PowerPoint or email template in Matik, and then just tell us like, Hey, I want to create a table based on this query. You can design it any way you want, whatever you can do in a Google slide presentation, or Microsoft presentation, you can do in Matik.

That way, when customer success teams are trying to create business reviews, rather than going to dashboards to pull the data and do all those things that can take hours to create, they just go into Matik, say which account they want to create the deck for, and we spit it out.

I think in answering this question, it’s really important to understand the environment we’re in today. The economy is a lot different than it was five years ago. When it comes to the tools in your tech stack, there’s a lot more scrutiny. Cfos are getting involved in evaluating budgets and whatnot. All of that leads to a situation where whether it’s a current customer or prospect, you need to be constantly showing ROI. When doing that, you need to have data feeding into it and supporting it. This new world we live in now requires everyone to be including data when they’re communicating with their customers. It’s a great way to build trust with customers because you’re not just saying, Hey, you’re just using this feature, or, We think you can do something. You have hard concrete evidence to show them. It’s a table stake now. All of that to say, the problem is lots of these traditional GTM teams, they’re not data savvy. The idea of going to a dashboard is one, can be overwhelming, and two, can be very unscalable. If you have over 30 accounts, that’s probably months of work that goes into creating this content.

That’s where Matik comes in and differentiates itself. We automate more of the workflow than others. It’s not just creating tables and charts. We have smart automation, like conditional logic. You can even be prescriptive on, Hey, include this slide or don’t include this slide, based on what the data is. Then the second part is we’re delivering all of that data and all that storytelling in a format that GTM team members can use, like a PowerPoint slide, Google slide, or email. It’s not, Hey, go into Salesforce and pull this data, or something like that. For those two reasons, I think Matik differentiates itself from the market.

I think one of the top things you can do is iterate. People think of launches as a one-and-done initiative. You spend a week launching the product and that’s it. But to effectively promote a new feature or a new product, it’s something that’s going to take months. During that time frame, you want there to be a lot of testing and optimization, not just from a GTM perspective, But also from a product perspective, too. The second thing is don’t try to target everyone. I think a lot of people build features and products and are like, Oh, so and so can use this. Also this person or this team or this use case. What ends up happening is you have a muddled message where no one can fully comprehend why they should care. Starting with one use case and then planning to expand is a great approach that ensures that you’re nailing your promotion to a specific market. It’s good. But that doesn’t mean you can’t experiment. It’s almost like an 80/20 approach. Put 80% of your time and effort into one use case and 20% on testing out others.

Yeah, right now where we are seeing a lot of success is with customer success teams. They’re the ones that, A, have access to data on users, and two, like I mentioned before, there’s a huge and urgent need for them to communicate that data and showcase ROI. The reason I feel confident saying we have success with them is, that when we usually roll out Matik to those teams, there’s just a lot of excitement from the customers, and the CSMs because we’re solving a huge pain point for them. Secondly, more often than not, customers end up wanting more of us, too.

At Matik, it’s mid-market and enterprise. So think greater than 250 employees.

Yeah. Gosh, it’s something that’s constantly evolved over the years. But there are two things that I think make messaging successful. The first is you need to be able to speak directly to a pain point in audience testing. Then the second is you need to be able to speak about it in their language. I think people are good about nailing the first part, but fall short when it comes to the second part. The best way to nail that second part is to talk to your target audience and listen to the words they’re using. What are they saying when it comes to describing their problem? I usually start with customers, so I do a lot of persona research when I join a company and I try to connect with customers on an ongoing basis. Two of my favorite questions to ask is, Hey, if you were talking to a colleague, how would you describe a product to them? Then the second is, what are the top three benefits you would highlight? Again, just hearing the exact words, it sounds very simple, but I think in marketing, there’s almost a tendency to want to make things very creative or whatnot.

In the process, we lose the message and the heart of what we’re trying to say. Another great way of doing this, too, is by following the thought leaders in the space. I join a lot of different communities that support our target market and just hear and listen to what they’re saying and how they’re talking about the problems and always incorporating and testing it out in messaging. I know I talk about testing a lot. I die by I think that is key to everything in marketing and things being successful is just to test. Even if it’s something that you hear from the sales team, Hey, they mentioned this. Run an ad and see how it does. Use all that research to develop hypotheses and then test it out to see what works.

Yeah. Paid ads. It’s important to know Matik is a Series A company. I think what stage your company is at really influences the channels you index and lean on more. Right now, as we’re building awareness, we lean into paid ads. LinkedIn and Google have been great for us. LinkedIn in terms of pushing out our messaging and getting in front of people, and Google in terms of meeting people when they’re searching for problems we saw. Paid ads, we’ve been doing a lot of partnerships. The CS community, I think, is very unique in that everyone’s so kind and friendly and wants to help and support one another. There’s been a lot of great people we’ve had the opportunity to partner with. Events have been great for us, whether it’s in-person dinners or virtual summits, just in terms of helping bring that community together and giving them opportunities to connect while also raising awareness for Matik as well. But those are some of the primary ones, partners partnerships, events, conferences, and paid ads. Obviously, SEO is stakes. It can take a while to build. We spent a lot of effort into it middle of last year, and we’re seeing some of the benefits of it now.

Sorry, can you repeat that question?

Yeah, it’s a different partnership. For example, some organizations have communities like Slack communities. Partnering with them, whether it’s for content syndication or sponsored webinars, those individuals who are thought leaders in communities, partnering with them in terms of getting them to speak at our virtual summit or co-hosting a dinner. There are a lot of different flavors, but referral programs, I’ve seen success with those in the past, and it’s something we will likely explore, but takes a lot of effort to get set up.

No, we don’t.

At Matik, we don’t have a freemium product. Our product requires you to talk to sales and purchase. Again, just because, at least for right now, that’s where our focus is the bigger companies, and there tends to be a little bit more lift required on their part. But in past lives, I’ve encountered this thing. It’s like, how do you convert signups into paying customers? Yeah, I can speak to that if you want.

Yeah, I think it’s a different beast, right? Because in the self-serve PLG world, the product is who you’re speaking through if you will, or working with to convince those prospects. Whereas in the sales world, it’s not only, Hey, the sales team is the one interacting with them, marketing supports and helps and strategizes. But at the same time, the buying journey is also very different. Fundamentally, It’s different. In self-serve PLG land, there’s usually really one person, i.e., the user you need to convince. But in the sales world, it’s a whole other ball game because there’s the person who’s using it, there’s the person who may be the admin, then there’s the Team leader, the C-level, decision maker, etc. I think when it comes to what’s been the most effective, it’s, working closely with the sales team to understand what are the top reasons people are dropping off. Marketing, I think the best way you can help the sales team in those instances is, one, by doing research and arming them with the knowledge they need to better counteract those objections, and two, by giving them the content and air cover to handle that as well.

So creating collateral they can send out or doing more education further up the funnel so that by the time someone is talking to them, they’re already educated and it’s less of a hurdle to overcome.

The one thing that helped us was personalization. I think when it comes to, especially if you’re using email because no one wants to take a call to talk through a $20 per month product, it’s not just about educating people on the features. It’s about helping them connect the dots on how they can use it and how they can realize its value. Focusing on one message, I think the human tendency is to just add, and list out everything, which works out for early onboarding emails when you’re trying to give them the scope of what you can do, but it can be overwhelming. Subsequent emails should really dial in, and that’s where personalization comes in. It’s what team are you on. What are you on? What is your possible use case? Then focusing all the content on what your product can help them do and confirming them to realize that value. Might be something as simple as, Hey, you’re on this team. This product can help you accomplish X, and this is how you accomplish it.

Oh, man. It is so incredibly important. If you think of it from the prospect perspective, if marketing is saying one thing and sales is saying something else, it creates confusion and also makes the company look so sloppy. I think it’s critical for sales and marketing to be aligned. What I’ve seen be key to achieving this alignment is no one should be telling anyone what they should be saying. It’s a joint partnership. I think a lot of the friction comes from one team trying to exert their power or their control or whatever it may be. But the way you should be approaching it is, Hey, Both of us are trying to figure this out. We’re both going to be running tests, whether it’s in phone conversations with prospects as sales do, or maybe through ads or the website that marketing can do, and sharing that feedback on what’s working, what’s not working, testing together, and coming up with the hypotheses together. At the end of the day, when you have all that feedback, both quantitative and qualitative, it helps build a case for a certain message, for certain messaging and makes it easier to align.

It’s less about, Hey, marketing thinks we should be talking about the product this way, or sales only likes saying these things on a call. It becomes more of, Hey, this is the right messaging because we’re both seeing it work when we take it out to the field.

One thing I would add to that is it’s top-down. It comes down to leadership and the culture of the company. I’ve been at companies where marketing sales are just budding heads constantly. It’s like a very doggy dog. Everyone is quick to blame the other. I’m really fortunate at Matik. It’s been a true collaborative partnership. We’re all very eager to hear and learn from the other team and just work together. I can’t tell you how great it is to have that one team, one dream mentality versus having not only to focus on the KPIs but the politics, too.

Revenue. It all comes down to revenue.

Hold on. Let me finish. It really does come down to revenue, right? It’s both the directly attributable, hey, marketing brought this deal in, as well as, How does marketing influence revenue? Maybe it’s a cold outbound email from SDR that secures the meeting, but how did marketing maybe raise awareness about the product and service so that they decided to open the email and respond? There are other metrics we look at, like leading indicators, looking at the funnel, qualified opportunities, meeting schedules, and then channel-specific ones, click-through rate, depending on ads or emails or whatnot. But I think at the end of the day, in today’s environment, revenue is the end-all-be-all. Now, I think the marketing leader’s responsibility is to ensure others understand that we may not see a revenue impact in month one. Especially when you’re launching brand awareness campaigns, it takes a good 4-6 months to see maybe a deal close or even a lot of meetings come through. That’s the marketing leader’s responsibility to both lean on what you know, and what you are hiring, and educate people on, Hey, we’re launching this content campaign. There are some leading indicator metrics, but we’re going to let it run.

Unless there’s some huge red flag, six months from now, we’ll analyze and see what the impact was.

Yeah, that’s like marketing’s Holy Grail, I feel like. It’s the one tool that will track everything. Of course, all of Google and Everything is tossing things up with cookies, and just when you think you have it, something changes. Just a little bit of context. When I started at Matik, I was the first marketing hire, and there was no marketing infrastructure. I like to work from the bottom of the funnel up. It was first like, Hey, let’s start with tracking where do people sign up for a demo, what was the last channel they came from? Starting there, we do all of our attribution tracking, which I would say is pretty robust right now all through Salesforce. First starting with, Okay, demo request, what channel did they come through? Let’s track those UTM parameters. Then it was moving further up the funnel. It was like, Hey, we are going to start putting content out there. We do gated content because we’re still in the process of figuring out which content works. When you gate the content, you get insight into who’s downloading it, and if those are the people you want to attract.

But then using Salesforce’s campaign structure to track, Okay, which content are people interacting it with? Which channels are they doing? We’ve now come to a point where between Salesforce and a Google Sheet, we can track not only direct attribution but the influence. Hey, this opportunity came through. On the account level, what content did they interact with? What if our events did they go to? The next phase is going down on contact level, but for right now, where we are maturity-wise, account level works.

Yeah. Content has evolved so much. It’s 10 years ago, just having a blog was enough. But now between Google’s expectations for SEO and also the appetite of the market. It’s a table steak, but I don’t know if people are reading blogs as much as they used to. So when it comes to content, what I found works is actionable things, things that people can read or download and immediately do something next. There’s the next step. Templates are great, and playbooks are great. It also allows you to leverage whatever your competitive differentiator is in terms of knowledge, your unique knowledge, and share that. Thought leadership, again, is great, and you need to have an opinion. But more often than not, people are trying to solve a problem. If you have content that helps them do so, that doesn’t require you to download a product something, then yeah, that’s what I see succeed. For distribution, it’s like, initially, we’re focused on paid ads, partnerships, and communities, and starting to build SEM.

If you ever encounter an opportunity to try something new, whether it’s an initiative in the company or maybe even a completely new role. If the only reason you’re hesitating to take that opportunity is because you feel like, I don’t have enough experience. I’m afraid of failure, or whatever it may be, take it. Take the opportunity. Because at the end of the day, not only would you have learned something new, but you’re also building the muscle to try new things, like getting over that fear and also learning how to figure things out. Especially in marketing, where the landscape is constantly changing. Again, I’ve been here for over 10 years, and it almost feels like a completely different discipline from when I first started. But that ability to try new things and figure things out is something that will set you apart and help you make a company successful.

I think you’re right. That’s the fun part of marketing. It’s just always something new.

Yeah, let’s do it.

The need for perfection. I think it’s something that started back in school and school days, but it’s something that I constantly remind myself of. It’s better to get something done than to have it be perfect.

Oh, yeah. I have plan A, plan B, and plan C to Z.

Vacuuming. I don’t know why. I hate it. It’s maybe the fact that I have to push this thing around the house. I would much rather do anything but vacuum.

History, especially. I know this is weird. Medieval history is super fascinating. I think mostly because humans just do the same thing over and over again. It’s always fun to read up.

This is going to be very nerdy. Neonatologist. That is the doctor who takes care of premature babies.

For a pair of pants. I’m looking for a specific pair of pants, and that’s what I searched for. Awesome.

Thank you for having me.