In a fireside conversation with fellow speaker April Dunford, Hana will explore marketing as a tool to solve business problems as she considers the fundamental question: what is marketing's Job To Be Done?
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Grow Turing Fest 2022
Hannah Abaza & April Dunford - What Is The Job To Be Done of Marketing?
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We're gonna be chatting about what is the job to be done for marketing. And really what we wanna talk about is is how does marketing actually serve the business? And and we have the amazing Hannah Baza here. But I I kinda wanna start with, like, you've been at Shopify for six years.
Like Yeah. What you've been doing over there? What I've what I've been doing for six years. Yeah. I mean, I joined Shopify originally to build out marketing team for Shopify Plus. So for those of you that might not be familiar, Plus is really the division of Shopify that goes after that mid market to enterprise.
So historically, was super focused on entrepreneurs, small businesses. And at that time, really, we're trying to figure out how to kinda stretch up market. So that was really the first four years at Shopify. Then four years in, flipped the company on its head, massive reorg.
And then I moved into head of revenue marketing. So included the Shopify Plus scope as well as That sounds like a fancy big deal job. It's it's it's something. Yeah. It it really the focus on it was what are the different levers we wanna pull to drive revenue.
So, yes, mid market to enterprise, but also things like cross sell, upsell, and really starting to kind of stretch beyond that focus a little bit. That's pretty cool. So coming back to the topic of this marketing being in the service of business. Why is that important?
Yeah. I mean, so this is something you and I have jammed on a bunch. Also, disclosure, some of these questions were really formed over a couple of pints of beer. So bear with us as we go through these. But I think too often what I see in marketing teams, what I see in startups a lot is marketing for the sake of marketing.
Right? So you see a lot of activity happening, a lot of output happening. And it's not always related to an actual business problem we're trying to solve. And the job of marketing isn't just to do marketing things. Right? The job of marketing is to figure out which marketing lever to pull in order to solve the business problem at the end of the day.
And that's a subtle difference, but thinking about it that way really changes how you actually execute across a lot of the marketing initiatives that you're looking at doing. So like, give us an example of that. Like if you go back to the, you know, when you started at Shopify and you were running marketing for Shopify Plus. Like what was the business job to be done there?
Like Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I alluded to this a little bit earlier. I think for Shopify, the objective was really, you know, how do we actually start to shift Shopify at market? And how we got there was actually really interesting. So as I mentioned, historically, Shopify focused on small businesses, entrepreneurs.
And Shopify got really, really big, really, really fast by focusing on that segment of the market. Something interesting happened during that time. Those small businesses also started getting really, really big, really, really fast. And they weren't small businesses anymore. Right? They started making tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
And Shopify Plus started, like many things do in tech and startups, as an experiment in the most stereotypically startup way, which is let's just slap enterprise on our pricing page and see if anybody clicks the button. I had I told you that story, but I actually had a conversation with somebody, like a junior marketing person inside Shopify.
And I said, hey, what's Shopify Plus? And they said, it's Shopify, but it costs more. I was like, I don't like that positioning, which Really? Bad bad positioning. Bad bad positioning. I I'm gonna also say that was pre Hannah positioning. Absolutely pre you.
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So so I mean, but but that's what it started. And like, candidly, that's what it was. It was Shopify, but it costs more. And there were some services wrapped around it. And there were account managers, and all that kind of stuff.
But here's what was actually really interesting, and actually touches on the business problem that actually had to be solved. So what started off as really a mechanism to upgrade people and have them stay on Shopify because what happens when businesses get really, really big?
Right? One of two things happened on Shopify. They'd actually churn to an enterprise e commerce platform. Or they would just figure out a way to make it work on Shopify. So that experiment with Plus was like, how do we help them stay on Shopify longer?
Throw it up on the pricing page, start to upgrade people. That actually started working really well. And then an unexpected thing happened. People that had moved off Shopify or were on another platform were like, oh, Shopify has an enterprise thing? Oh, cool. So let's migrate to Shopify.
And that actually opened up the realization that there was this white space in the market at the time. You had Shopify. It was SaaS. It was serving a lot of the sort of small businesses. You had the super enterprise y guys. So, like, the Hybris' of the world, Demandware, later acquired by Salesforce, etcetera.
But like that mid market piece, is really where Plus had sort of started, pure white space. There was like maybe Magento? Magento. Like a couple of smaller ones. There were there were few of those that were like clunky on prem software that was really hard to hopefully, nobody here works for Magento.
But but but but really, that was the only alternative. So, like, you started to actually see this really interesting market pull for Shopify at market. Figuring out how to capitalize on that and actually how to do that was really the job to be done there.
And marketing was a lever in order to do that. Right. And there were a lot of challenges as we were kind of going through trying to Yeah. What was the like, how did you manage the perception problem? Yes. Because I get this question a Like, companies that are trying to move up market.
So we you know, and particularly given the scale you were at when you folks tried to do that. Like you're well known for being this SMB thing. Yes. And now you've got this enterprise thing. Like talk about that. Like how did you? Yeah. So here's the part that was really interesting.
It's like Shopify was so inherently rooted. Like its identity, both externally and internally, was so inherently rooted in like we're for the entrepreneur. Right? We help people start businesses. We help small businesses. And and it still does that. And that is Yeah. Such an important part of Arming the rebels. Shopping.
We're arming the rebels, as Toby would say. We're part of part of Shopify's mission. And, like, there's this really interesting tension when you're arming the rebels, and then you're also going after the bigger guys that starts to get created. So so there are two things really needed to happen.
The first thing was there was this market perception problem that we had to And this touches squarely on positioning, which I know is your jam. April is like positioning guru expert. Read her book. All the things. I do think I should get commissioned for But It's more talk, Hannah.
This is not my talk. I know. I know. I know. But like but it's worth saying. It's worth saying. And because positioning actually was the the number one thing, the fundamental thing we actually had to do Yes. Before anything else could happen. We had to take the thing that was at Shopify and figure out how to reposition it in a completely different market context.
And what I mean by that is it's a different competitor set. It's a different buyer. It's a different environment. It's a different understanding of the landscape. When I went to Shopify, I went to Shopify from, like, the Martech space. Right? And in the Martech space, everybody understands SaaS.
Everything is SaaS. Everybody here knows what SaaS is. When we were talking to customers at Shopify, like e commerce, they didn't really understand SaaS. They were like, oh, but I need an on prem solution. And I was like, what? Prem? Are you kidding?
And the the rationale was like, oh, we need to control all the things. Well, they thought they needed an on prem solution because the main competitor in that white space market was an on prem solution. We actually spent a bunch So Yeah. We spent a bunch of time educating people on why SaaS is actually good.
Meanwhile, if you look over at, like, Martech or SalesTech or other other areas of the tech space, I mean, Salesforce wrote that book fifteen, twenty years ago. Yeah. You wouldn't have to talk about that all. Talk about why SaaS. So so really, really interesting dynamics at play.
And part of the levers we had to pull to shift that market perception is we had to wrap wrap it around like, we had to create a new wrapper, hence Shopify Plus. Right? So you've got Shopify, but hey, there actually is this whole new thing called Shopify Plus.
And here's what it means, and here's what it means for your business, and here's who it's for. Yeah. Which was, I think, an exercise in positioning. And yeah, there's a brand element to it. There is a market perception element to it. But it really came down to the positioning piece.
And then what about just operationally, internally? Because the way we're selling from a sales and marketing Total execution, what are we doing, is very different upmarket than what you would do in this completely zero touch, you know, sales model for something in SMB?
Yeah. I think the so, like, really when you're looking at very small businesses, and I think most of people in this room know this, it's more of a consumer motion. Right? Like, that's kind of what you're doing. Yeah. And as you start to shift upmarket, you start to introduce humans into the sales cycle and sales team, it shifts.
So what part of what we had to do or part of the perception challenge we had to solve was actually external. The other part was actually internal to Shopify. It's how do we retool a company that is so used to that b to c motion to actually start to understand and sell to and build for, from a product standpoint as well, this segment that's actually upmarket.
And the job of marketing there internally becomes really, really important. Right? Because then it becomes, how do you actually intersect with all of these teams? How do you intersect with sales? How do you intersect with customer success? How do you intersect with products? Right?
To be able to inform this entire shift that had to happen, which was many, many years. Like, it was not a one conversation and it's done. This is like a multiyear process that it took. I bet. I bet. And then we had an interesting conversation when we first started talking about doing this fireside chat.
Yeah. That I thought was so cool, so I want you to talk about it. Talking about like unit economics and how do we actually, like once we decide we're gonna do this upmarket thing, and we recognize that that's different. You know, what are things unique to Shopify that that you had to consider or maybe optimize around?
Yeah. So I think there's like, there's a there's a few things that I think were interesting. There was like, when you come in, you figure out the market perception piece. That is you're always doing the work. You figure out the internal, how do you shift perception internally and like tool the company to be able to go after that segment of the market.
And then it's like, okay. Cool. But in the context of Shopify, what are some needle movers we can actually really identify as we look across this segment that we're really looking at doing? So one of the things that we were asking ourselves is that segment of Shopify that's already on Shopify that's upgrading to Plus.
So that first group of people that we started with, maybe they were born on Shopify, maybe they started on a lower plan, lots of ways to get there. A good part of the Plus business was like actually those upgrades. Right? But we were putting them through that same sales cycle.
It's like you come in, you raise a hand, or sometimes you, you know, you get a marketing email. Right. So talk to a sales rep. Blah blah. Go talk to a sales rep, etcetera. So we're looking at this process for upgrades. And there's a bunch of signals that are telling us, hey, like, does this need a sales cycle?
Right? Forget the price. Plus is way more expensive. Way, way, way more expensive than than Shopify. It starts at two thousand dollars a month. Shopify plans are like twenty bucks a month. Right? And forgetting that for a second, if you actually look at the dynamics of what was happening during that buying process, it was super, super short.
It was super transactional. The decision to go from a lower Shopify plan to a higher was like usually pretty binary. Right? I either need this feature or I don't. It either makes sense economically for me or it doesn't. Right? And like, usually the sales reps were like order takers.
And they ******* loved it. Right? Because, like, it's commission. Right? Like, it's like, it's a thing to churn through. And, you know, if any of you worked with sales teams, and I think a lot of you probably work with sales teams, their behavior is directly related to how they are gold.
Do we have any sales reps in the room? Okay. Good. I can kind of **** on sales teams a little bit. No. I love our sales team. But it's human nature. Right? Your behavior is going to be directly related to how you are gold.
Right? So we're looking at this thing. We're like, these people are already on Shopify. Right. Like, it's costing us money to get them to upgrade when it maybe shouldn't cost us money. It's like all the signals are like, do they really so the question was, can somebody or will somebody pay two thousand dollars a month for software without talking to a human being?
Turns out they will. So what we started experimenting with was what is this self serve model for that type of a buying process? It can't just be click a button and sign up for the plan, because in like a list of features on a typical pricing page, you actually had to show the value from a product perspective.
And you had to help them understand what it is that they're buying. Because this is not an insignificant amount of money for somebody that's on a twenty dollar Shopify plan. So we started through this process. Turns out people will pay two thousand dollars a month in the right circumstances, in the right context.
Not everybody, but some people. And what that actually allowed us to do is number one, make that upgrade process way more efficient, significantly reduce the unit economics on it. Amazing. So like far lower CAC when you remove a human from the And it actually allowed us to identify new opportunities and actually increase that pool of eligible upgrades into Plus.
Because we didn't really know that much about the non Plus folks that were really prime to upgrade. We really were looking at, okay, how much money are they what is their GMV? How much money are they making? And cool, cool, cool, they're ready.
But, like, obviously, that is, like, a terrible way to segment any kind of customer base. In general, blanket statement, revenue is a terrible way to segment a customer base. Yeah. We should talk about that at some Yeah. Yeah. It opened up that pool.
And actually, then we started upgrading people into Plus as soon as we were able to really understand what the right criteria, eligibility criteria are for them. So that is a really interesting one because the problem we're really solving there is, like, the unit economics of an upgrade is, like, not as good as unit economics of somebody coming in from, you know, a larger company and migrating as net new business.
Right. Super interesting. Like so that's a that's a lot of stuff. Right? That's a lot of stuff. You're working on there. And like coming back to the theme of this this talk, like what is the job of marketing? And how does it how how do we make sure that marketing is is focused on doing things, you know, in service to a business problem.
As opposed to just marketing for marketing's sake. Like talk about that a bit. Yeah. So marketing for marketing's sake. I think they're, How do we make sure that we're not doing marketing marketing's sake? Is there any, like what are the signs? Yeah. Like maybe this has gone off the rails?
I mean, like I think it happens all the time, everywhere. I think it does too. And and I think like there's a there's a few things that you can sort of like watch for where you see marketing for marketing's sake. I think number one, the activity that's happening is not clearly connected to a business outcome.
Now this is actually a tricky one. Right? Because in marketing, in growth, in general, you wanna make sure you're placing short and long term bets. Right? And figuring out how to prioritize against different timelines or time horizons is really tricky. And really understanding which initiatives or activities are really in service of driving short term growth, and also laying the foundation and placing a long term bet is also tricky.
But that's not the same thing as doing stuff that's not directly connected to a business outcome. And I think that that is really something to scrutinize yourself if you're a marketer, if your team is doing things. Because marketing teams at any size company, but especially startups, have a tendency of going way too broad way too soon.
So Oh, true. They start to do a thing, and it's like, cool, cool, cool content. And then, like, we're gonna do this thing now, and then we're gonna do that. And now they're doing this really broad scope of things. They're not doing anything particularly well.
And they're not actually sure nor can they explain where the growth is coming from. Which is, I would say, the biggest warning sign of, a bunch of marketing is happening just for marketing. That's red flag. Yeah. So that's problem number one, I think.
And then problem number two is you get what I call puking rainbows a lot. You're laughing because we've talked about this. And I rant about this, and my team also rolls their eyes every time I'm like, stop puking rainbows. But but what what I mean by puking rainbows and and here's a really, really great example of it.
How do we have a lot of marketers in the room? Yeah. Have a lot of marketers in room. Okay. So, like, I am betting that all of you have experienced this. I have definitely experienced and participated in this myself. It's like, it starts with a calendar invite. Yes.
You get a calendar invite that says brainstorm session. Oh, yeah. Worst run screaming when you get a calendar invite that says brainstorm session. And then what happens is you get a bunch of marketers in the room with a whiteboard. Cats have a whiteboard.
And then they start talking in really flowery terms about the narrative and the story and the blah blah blah blah blah. And pretty soon they're talking about, like, ice cream and, like, cookies and rainbows. And then they just start puking rainbows with all these flowery terms.
And because marketers are really good about spreading the word, everybody in the company starts puking these rainbows and talk talking in all these flowery terms creative ideas. The narrative and the blah blah blah. Anyway, so so the problem with that is it's very rarely rooted in, number one, a solid understanding in the problem that we're trying to solve for the business, and the actual business outcome we're trying to influence.
And it is very rarely rooted in actual insights, and either quantitative or qualitative data in how to solve those problems. And and that's when you get puking rainbows. And if you're not a marketer, if you are a founder, you're like not quite sure what's going on.
You're squinting a little bit, and you're like, I smell ********, but I don't know why. That's why. That's why. It's because there's a whole bunch of people. And often there's a bunch of marketers going, no, we have to do this. Yes. This is stuff that we have to do.
You just don't get marketing. Yes. Yes. But here's the thing. Marketing's not that hard. Like, it should be explainable. You should be able to say why. You should be able to point at, hey, this is the thing that is driving x y z outcomes.
And and, yes, it's hard, and sometimes measuring is hard, and attribution sucks, and all of all of that stuff. But you should still have, directionally at least, an understanding of the impact that you're having on the business. If you don't have an understanding of the impact you're having on the business, you need to circle back and understand that.
Yeah. So super important. And then last one. So if we think about Shopify Yeah. Past few years, like, you guys have been in this period of incredible growth. Like, so when Hannah started at Shopify, they were around six hundred million revenue. And in six years, they've they're now five yeah.
Revenue in six years. Yeah. It's been a busy busy six years. Yeah. So coming back to this idea, like like, you know, how does the role of marketing change Yeah. When you're in this period of completely bananas hypergrowth? Yeah. I think it does it changes a lot in that period of hypergrowth.
It also changes depending on the context of the business, and as the context of the business changes. And teams need to be set up in a way where they can actually not just evolve with the business, but can step change with the business.
And that's the piece that's really important, particularly if you are in hyper growth. It's not about slowly and gradually building the team. It's about how do you make step changes in your team so that they can be slightly ahead of where you need to be.
And in the early days of Plus, that was it was hard, but it was a little bit easier because there was so much foundational work to do. Right? And there was also a lot of what I would call low hanging fruit. Now, the problem with low hanging fruit, particularly if every time you turn around, it smacks you in the face again, is it makes prioritization really difficult.
You don't actually know where to focus. Right? And just because it's low hanging fruit doesn't always mean that it is easy to execute on. Right? It might be an easy opportunity to spot, but it's not actually always easy to to execute on. So in the early days, was really just sorting through, like, what is actually the highest impact thing that we can be doing here?
Because And is that how you were prioritizing it? Like, just impact? It it was it was impact, and it was also impact over short and long term time horizons. Yeah. That is by far probably the most difficult thing to do, not just in marketing, but in general, is how do you how do you prioritize over short and long term time horizons?
Because problem is if you over index on short term prioritization, then clearly, you're actually making sacrifices in terms of laying foundations for long term. If you over index on long term bets, you're potentially risking short term outcomes. So that balance is really, really tricky to strike.
It sounds conceptually, everybody gets it. Yes, that makes sense. It's actually really hard to do in the context of a really chaotic environment. So that was a lot of what we focused on in the early days, was really how do we how do we understand that.
And then over time, you start to build the teams out. You start to think about layering on additional growth levers. Right? And again, being careful to not go too broad too soon. I think where it started to get completely chaotic is when COVID hit.
So I think Yeah. Like you guys, that chart of what your revenue did when COVID hit. Like, man. Yeah. It's wild. It's wild. And probably the most chaotic time in my life, frankly. And I mean, the position we are in now, I mean, drastic, stark difference to the we're all in right now.
But when COVID hit, internally, there was a ton of a ton of spin around, okay, how do we need to pivot when COVID hit? And the interesting thing that happened almost immediately, and I credit Toby with this, who's the CEO, is he basically came in and said delete all plans.
And like very rapid start stop continue across the business. And a lot of stuff stopped. And a few things continued. And a few things started. But the focus really narrowed. And our job there was actually how do we now, a, be there for our merchants and our customers during like this chaotic time.
Yep. But then how do we position ourselves in a way where we can actually capture the insane demand that was generated as a result of the tailwinds that we were hit by with COVID? Because here's the thing. A lot of folks will look at that and say, oh my god.
That's a great position to be in. All the tailwinds. Right? All the COVID tailwinds. Shopify has got all these customers coming. All the money coming. So does every other e com platform. Right? When it is an external force like that, it is not a foregone conclusion that you're gonna Right.
It's just not. Right? Everybody is getting hit left, right, and center. And if you if you **** it up, you're gonna lose the opportunity to capture that demand. So the job there was, like, quite literally, don't **** it up. Don't **** it up. Easy. Don't **** it up.
So we're sitting there. And really, it took a ton of refactoring of the business. And it comes back down to positioning. Right? The way we were positioning Shopify and Plus pre pandemic was completely inappropriate for, like, pandemic times and for COVID times. So that required an entirely new, very rapid repositioning of the entire company.
And you had to do it in a way where you didn't have time to enable all the sales teams. Right? You didn't have time to actually train everybody up on this new positioning. So marketing actually played a massive role in how do we now shift the company and reskin it, basically, to accommodate for the times that we're doing.
And that was probably, I think, the biggest lesson for Shopify. In not just moving quickly. Shopify has always moved at an incredible pace. That was like breakneck speed. But also, how do we actually build that resilience to be able to do that time and time again?
Because we didn't just do it once in COVID. Right? Like Wow. It kept happening. Yeah. So last last thing. Yeah. And and maybe like so you've you've your your situation has changed a little bit as of a couple of weeks ago. Yep. You're not at Shopify. No.
I'm what what's what's next for a superstar, rockstar marketer like you? What's what's what's you gonna go do next? Nothing. Nothing. I like that Nothing. Maybe we deserve a break. Yeah. Yeah. And and I knew April was gonna ask me this, and I was kind of I kinda yelled I yelled at her a little bit about it, and I was like, okay.
Fine. But, yeah. I think I'm gonna sleep for a month. And then like that. Yeah, I'm gonna sleep for a month, and then I'm gonna have some fun. And then I'm gonna do nothing for a little while, is the plan. That's it. Awesome. I don't have a better answer.
That's a good answer. I like that answer a lot. Alright. Well, thanks so much. This has been an awesome and fun set for Hannah. Thanks, both.