Chris Walker, CEO of Refine Labs, has built his career on demand generation. Refine Labs, a Boston-based demand accelerator for B2B SaaS companies, has grown to fifty employees in less than 30 months.
Chris credits that growth to doing fewer things better. “We do things in a modern way, and we think differently.”
“We commit to strategy. We don't do all the dumb stuff that everyone else does. It's super simple. We spend no time on SEO. We spend no time on lead gen. We don't spend money on content syndication. We don't go to trade shows. We don't buy Google ads. We don't do all the stuff that companies do. All we do are the things that work best,” Chris continues.
Trinity Nguyen interviewed Chris Walker on The First 100 Days podcast about combining marketing sub-disciplines, B2B influencer marketing, and effective social media strategy.
Want to hear the full conversation? Here’s the link to the full interview Marketing is your greatest offense with Chris Walker. Here's how to win in marketing.
Editor’s note: The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Specialization is everything
Chris believes in the specialization of roles at scale. “Product marketing, field marketing, sales enablement, demand gen brand content, advertising, RevOps. You need to understand each of these areas to become a strong marketer. That’s how you become a good marketer,” he explains.
And everything starts to come together once marketers start combining these sub-disciplines.
“The biggest impact comes from combining these disciplines – brand, demand, account base into one mix. Not a lot of marketers think that way,” Chris says.
But before all that, you need to go back to the fundamentals.
“You need to have clear fundamentals. You need to understand customers deeply, know how to segment them. You need to have a clear position. You need to hang out in the places where you get a constant stream of consumer insights, you need to understand what's resonating with them, and have the infrastructure to provide value and a content engine that those people want. Those are the fundamentals,” he explains.
“The problem with most marketers is they pick a lane, like field marketing, and then they get to a director level, field marketer, and they don't know how to do any other parts of marketing. And they’ll stagnate at that level,” Chris continues.
Influencer marketing for B2B SaaS companies
Influencer marketing has existed for years.
“Many marketers are just discovering it, but industries have used this approach for years.” Chris says.
He’s been running influencer marketing campaigns since 2014—when it was called key opinion leader marketing.
“We would have physicians who used our products speak at conferences about how they use our product for a specific use case. It was 100% influencer marketing,” he explains.
“For it to work best, it has to be integrated into the entire marketing mix. It must be integrated with other marketing efforts,” he continues.
Some marketers still view influencer marketing from a transactional lens.
“I'll pay you $30 to post about how great our company is. That approach doesn't work. That’s more like affiliate marketing. If you do that, you’re going to turn your audience off,” he says.
How to use social media effectively
Many B2B folks don’t believe that Facebook and Instagram work beyond providing awareness or some degree of engagement. Chris disagrees.
“You can basically cover the entire population of the United States across those two platforms. You can get mass consumption unlike any other platform in the world right now,” he says.
“Most companies miss this opportunity. These two platforms combined offer more scale than television, the Wall Street Journal, or any other medium, that has as much scale as those two platforms combined,” he continues.
However, most companies misuse it.
“Companies will take $2,000 and they'll go into Facebook with a lead generation mindset. They'll run lead forms on $2,000 and collect 20 low-quality leads. They'll have bad email addresses, personal email addresses, bad contact information, the wrong name, and bad data because people don't update Facebook. They’ll collect 20 leads, say the data isn't good, and then give up and stop,” Chris says.
“What they actually did was they went out and tried to hang a picture with a wheelbarrow. They used the wrong tool. They used the wrong approach with the tool. And then they’ll give up and get confirmation bias—confirming all the things they already believe. And then they keep doing anything else that they're already doing,” he continues.
When it comes to paid Google Ads, Chris doesn’t think they are a cost-effective tactic.
“There are better opportunities elsewhere. Focus on tactics that drive meaningful impact. It’s either you’re doing something because it’s going to make an impact or you ignore it,” he explains.
“Would you rather take a hundred thousand dollars a month and spend it that way to get $20,000 a month back? Or would you rather take a hundred thousand dollars, go put it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, a podcast, different things like that and drive 300X ROI instead of 2.2X ROI?” he continues.
Chris explains why buyers trust peers over search results:
“The reality is buyers trust their peers way more than the results they get. They know there are affiliate links. They know there's pay-to-play stuff. They know that the vendor’s blog isn’t objective. And so, when people are making buying decisions, they make those searches elsewhere. They make those searches in places where their peers are – a Slack community, a Reddit channel, a Facebook group, a direct message, an email, or a Zoom. They talk to somebody that they trust more than the results they get in Google.”
Three principles for marketing success
“Marketing has more leverage now than ever," says Chris. “Marketing is the lever that can create growth – and a trajectory of growth – that no other function in the company can.”
But you won't succeed by chasing quick fixes.
“Marketing is an aggregation of a thousand touch points and activities every day that drive the outcome you're looking for overtime. Anyone looking for one hack or one thing, Marketing requires a different approach. You find three, four, five, or seven things that you do consistently that all make that impact,” Chris says.
