52 min
Fintech Marketing: Creativity and technology is a killer combo (episode #50) How I Made it in Marketing
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- Marketing
We had a recent SuperFunnel LiveClass (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/website-and-landing-page-design/lpo/), and I was giving conversion optimization advice to a participant – it’s live optimization, we see the landing page for a few moments, and then give advice. And the page seemed off to me, so I had specific thoughts on the design and wording and such.
And then Flint McGlaughlin went next, and he took a very different approach then I did. He didn’t talk about the page, he talked about the entrepreneur behind this page. Why this offer? Why this product? How many books have you read about this topic in the past 24 months?
He hit the underlying problem with the landing page. Not what was on it, per se. It’s what wasn’t beneath it. It didn’t tie into the entrepreneur’s personal value proposition. This person was not tapping into his passion, he was trying to get an offer out into the world and just make money.
Who can blame him, you might say. Isn’t that our job?
Pushing pixels on a page is not enough – when you don’t truly believe in what you’re selling, it will hurt your marketing effectiveness. Our latest guest tapped into that caution as well. She said, “If you don’t believe in the company or the product, your job as a marketer is going to suck.”
So true. And I would add – your marketing is going to suck as well.
You can here the story behind that lesson, and many more lesson-filled stories, from Melissa-Ann Chan, Head of Marketing, Arta Finance (https://artafinance.com/).
Chan helped take a product from 0 to 100 million users, has worked on many lean teams at Google, and currently works on a team of three, along with a “bunch of contractors,” at the Series A startup.
While in stealth mode, Arta Finance raised more than $90 million from Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Coatue, and more than 140 tech and finance luminaries.
Some lessons from Chan that emerged in our discussion:
If you don’t believe in the company or the product, your job as a marketer is going to suck. Put the most effort into figuring out what’s the magic ‘a-ha!’ moment of your customer, and relentlessly drive all your marketing efforts towards that. Putting the user first doesn’t always mean doing whatever users want.High-performing teams don’t happen serendipitously Creativity and technology is a killer combo Cross-functional Power: Bring together product, engineering, UX, and marketing – and watch the sparks fly – in a good way! Related content mentioned in this episode
Content Marketing: Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton discusses surprising consumer behavior research (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/content-marketing-consumer-behavior-research/)
Customer-First Marketing: A conversation with Wharton, MarketingSherpa, and MECLABS Institute (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/consumer-marketing/wharton-interview-customer-first-marketing/)
Above-the-Fold Psychology: How to optimize the top 4 inches of your webpage (https://meclabs.com/course/sessions/above-the-fold-psychology/)
Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application
We had a recent SuperFunnel LiveClass (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/website-and-landing-page-design/lpo/), and I was giving conversion optimization advice to a participant – it’s live optimization, we see the landing page for a few moments, and then give advice. And the page seemed off to me, so I had specific thoughts on the design and wording and such.
And then Flint McGlaughlin went next, and he took a very different approach then I did. He didn’t talk about the page, he talked about the entrepreneur behind this page. Why this offer? Why this product? How many books have you read about this topic in the past 24 months?
He hit the underlying problem with the landing page. Not what was on it, per se. It’s what wasn’t beneath it. It didn’t tie into the entrepreneur’s personal value proposition. This person was not tapping into his passion, he was trying to get an offer out into the world and just make money.
Who can blame him, you might say. Isn’t that our job?
Pushing pixels on a page is not enough – when you don’t truly believe in what you’re selling, it will hurt your marketing effectiveness. Our latest guest tapped into that caution as well. She said, “If you don’t believe in the company or the product, your job as a marketer is going to suck.”
So true. And I would add – your marketing is going to suck as well.
You can here the story behind that lesson, and many more lesson-filled stories, from Melissa-Ann Chan, Head of Marketing, Arta Finance (https://artafinance.com/).
Chan helped take a product from 0 to 100 million users, has worked on many lean teams at Google, and currently works on a team of three, along with a “bunch of contractors,” at the Series A startup.
While in stealth mode, Arta Finance raised more than $90 million from Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Coatue, and more than 140 tech and finance luminaries.
Some lessons from Chan that emerged in our discussion:
If you don’t believe in the company or the product, your job as a marketer is going to suck. Put the most effort into figuring out what’s the magic ‘a-ha!’ moment of your customer, and relentlessly drive all your marketing efforts towards that. Putting the user first doesn’t always mean doing whatever users want.High-performing teams don’t happen serendipitously Creativity and technology is a killer combo Cross-functional Power: Bring together product, engineering, UX, and marketing – and watch the sparks fly – in a good way! Related content mentioned in this episode
Content Marketing: Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton discusses surprising consumer behavior research (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/content-marketing-consumer-behavior-research/)
Customer-First Marketing: A conversation with Wharton, MarketingSherpa, and MECLABS Institute (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/consumer-marketing/wharton-interview-customer-first-marketing/)
Above-the-Fold Psychology: How to optimize the top 4 inches of your webpage (https://meclabs.com/course/sessions/above-the-fold-psychology/)
Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application
52 min