1.
@davegerhardt

2.
@davegerhardt

3.
April 5, 2016
@davegerhardt

4.
50,000+ businesses using Drift
@davegerhardt

5.
50,000+ businesses using Drift
@davegerhardt

6.
@davegerhardt

7.
@davegerhardt

8.
@davegerhardt

9.
My apartment.
@davegerhardt

10.
@davegerhardt

11.
@davegerhardt

12.
@davegerhardt

13.
“We should kill our
lead forms and stop
gating our content.”
@davegerhardt

14.
“Excuse me?”
…my job is to generate leads.
@davegerhardt

15.
“Modern
marketing has lost
it’s way.”
@davegerhardt

16.
“Marketing today is all about gaming the
system and get rich quick schemes.”

17.
SEO
SEM
Re-Targeting
Nurturing
CRO
Pop-UpsAlgorithms
Facebook Ads
Automation
Pop-Ups
Pop-Ups
Gated Content

18.
@davegerhardt
This is what best in class B2B marketing looks like:

19.
@davegerhardt
(I am guilty of it too)

20.
You and I are more skeptical than ever.
We don’t buy this way.
So will our customers?
@davegerhardt

21.
https://www.coelevate.com/essays/growth-is-never-done
Oh BTW: It’s Harder Than Ever To Get Attention
@davegerhardt

22.
And We Have To Fight The Law Of Shitty Clickthroughs
@davegerhardt

23.
This Is What Our Landscape Looks Like At Drift
@davegerhardt

24.
@davegerhardt
“The only way we’ll stand out is if we create a real
connection with people.”
So we had to do things differently.

25.
We claim to want to be more than a flash in the pan, but at no
juncture do we stop and consider how to increase longevity and
shelf life. Instead, we use whatever is hot, cool, trendy, and selling
well as our benchmarks. As a result, we have to produce more,
market harder, sell out worse. It’s a treadmill and it’s getting faster
by the day.
“
@davegerhardt
Ryan Holiday, “Perennial Seller”

26.
@davegerhardt

27.
@davegerhardt

28.
@davegerhardt
1. Brand
We focused on building a brand.

29.
@davegerhardt
2. Conversations
We optimized for conversations, not form submissions.

30.
@davegerhardt
1. Brand
We focused on building a brand.

31.
@davegerhardt

32.
@davegerhardt
#3 is where SaaS is today.

33.
@davegerhardt

34.
A brand is a company’s most important asset. A company
can’t “own” it’s facts. If the company’s facts (speed, price,
quality) are superior to the competition, any good
competitor will duplicate them or improve on them.
“
@davegerhardt
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

35.
So our philosophy as a brand is give, give, give, ask.
@davegerhardt

36.
And that’s why we don’t gate our content.
@davegerhardt

37.
@davegerhardt
54,000 views
700 shares
1k shares
120 backlinks
154,000 views
500 shares
It’s all about spreading our brand as
wide as possible.

38.
@davegerhardt
Anyone can use Drift.
We give our product away for free too…

39.
You and I are more skeptical than ever.
We don’t buy this way.
So will our customers?
@davegerhardt

40.
@davegerhardt
The result? Virality drives 30% of our leads.
+ countless “Saw you on someone’s website.”

41.
And our marketing is all about treating people
like people — not leads.

42.
@davegerhardt
80% Open Rate
28% Click Rate
71% Open Rate
21% Click Rate

43.
@davegerhardt
Blog Post
Facebook Video Ad
Product Video

44.
@davegerhardt

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@davegerhardt

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@davegerhardt

47.
The best marketing channels for us today all have one
thing in common: trust.
@davegerhardt

48.
@davegerhardt
You don’t have to pick between generating leads and
building a brand anymore.

49.
@davegerhardt
This is the playbook your team
should be studying.

50.
@davegerhardt
2. Conversations
How we capture leads without using forms.

51.
@davegerhardt
We optimize for conversations with the people
interested in Drift.
Website
Blog

52.
We surveyed 433 B2B SaaS companies to see how
long it took sales teams to respond to new leads…

53.
@davegerhardt See the full results: blog.drift.com/lead-response-survey
7% of companies responded within 5 minutes.
55% of companies took 5+ days to respond.

54.
@davegerhardt

55.
@davegerhardt

56.
But most businesses haven’t changed to
match the way people want to buy today.

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@davegerhardt
That’s why we’re focused on conversations here.
Website
Blog

58.
@davegerhardt
And it’s not more work for our sales team.

59.
All Kevin has to do is
connect his calendar
(and then sell).

60.
@davegerhardt

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@davegerhardt
We’ve generated 20% more leads via conversations.

62.
@davegerhardt
And they are our #1 source of demos booked.
43% of our demos come from conversations.

63.
@davegerhardt
They are also our #1 source of opportunities.
HALF of our pipeline comes from conversations.

64.
@davegerhardt
And they convert twice as fast.
It takes 3 days from an initial conversation to demo.

65.
@davegerhardt
Bigger companies prefer to talk to us first.
The bigger the company, the less likely they are to fill
out forms

66.
@davegerhardt
In the month of October, we booked
1,000 meetings for our sales team without
using gated content or lead forms.

67.
We have created a fast lane for our best leads and
made it easy for our customers to buy.

68.
@davegerhardt
“Today's marketing tools leave you perfectly suited
for a world that no longer exists.” - @dcancel

69.
Don’t settle for the traditional way of doing marketing.

70.
Thanks.
Drift is the world’s first and only conversational marketing and sales platform.