Nikki Engel's Framework for a People-First Marketing Funnel

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Thanks for tuning into this exclusive edition of GTM News Desk presented by the

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TAC Network.

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This show is hosted by me, Nick Bennett, and my co-host, Mark Killins.

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Now let's get to the goods on with the show.

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Alright, welcome back.

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This is the exclusive content for TAC Network subscribers.

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If you are not a TAC Network subscriber yet, head over to tacknetwork.com,

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click the subscribe

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button in the top right corner, and not only will you get access to Nicki's

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exclusive content,

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but you will get access to a lot of other exclusive content.

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So let's dig into it.

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We're going to talk about the actual frameworks, the actual stuff that matters,

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get really

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detailed.

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And Nicki, the first question that I have for you is before you go into your

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framework,

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before you share that secret sauce, what led you to create your framework?

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So I'll paint the picture for you.

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My last company, North Pass, before it was acquired by Gainsite, we were having

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a problem

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with bringing in qualified leads.

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We had a lot of leads, but these leads were not turning into pipeline because

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they just

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weren't in our ICP.

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They didn't have a product market fit.

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And so I was newly promoted to VP of marketing at this time.

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This was really my first order of business.

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In fact, within a month of being promoted, the leadership team basically was

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like, we

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have a board meeting three weeks.

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Figure this out.

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So I reviewed--

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Nice.

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Exactly.

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So I reviewed our product.

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I reviewed our customer account list and solidified who our ideal customer

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profile

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really is and who it should be based on the customers we had, based on the

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meetings I

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was listening in on.

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And our objective was to come up with a marketing plan that would help us

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expand our market

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and increase pipeline of these specific qualified leads.

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Sounds easy, no problem.

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So I created a plan and a framework.

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And it actually wasn't until months later when I saw Mark actually post on

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LinkedIn about

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a people first go to market strategy that I realized I just created one and

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just didn't

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call it that.

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So I used my background in product marketing and unintentionally.

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I just had this background in product marketing and I took more of a product

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marketing approach

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to our funnel and our messaging strategy.

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And I really started at the bottom of the funnel and the pipeline and I worked

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my way

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up.

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So thinking about questions because that's what product marketers like to do,

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ask questions.

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What do they need to know before taking a meeting?

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What do they need to know to get them to care about the solution that we

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provide?

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And do they even know how bad of a problem this really is for them?

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So for us, we had a lot of good eye-opening stats and great ROI calculator for

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leaders

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to better understand the cost of the alternative or of what they're doing today

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So basically if they are not using digital customer education today, whether it

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's with

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us or someone else, we wanted to show them the inefficiencies and what that

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choice is

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costing them.

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So then the framework was really born.

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I outlined it into the really four parts that coordinate with the funnel.

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So making those who are unaware of the problem, make them aware of it.

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Making those who are aware of then the problem, now that we got that, we had

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those who are

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aware of the problem, make them aware of the solution.

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Then those who are aware of the solution, great, we're bringing them down.

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How do we make them aware of us?

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And then making those who are aware of us understand why they need it now.

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And then the framework was born.

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I love it.

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Let's pull it up.

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Let's show it visual folks.

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We have a very special treat for you today.

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Nicky was kind enough to have this visual created for us.

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So you just walked us through this at a high level like pulling people through

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the funnel.

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Love that.

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Don't push anyone folks.

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It's not very nice.

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Pull people.

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So you have the goal, the strategy, the message.

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Yeah.

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So first before you go through this deeper, I love, love how you took a product

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marketing

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standpoint because how Nick and I define people first go to market, it's three

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things.

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Storytelling relationships, partnerships, storytelling.

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The first thing that is core to great product marketing.

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Yes.

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So I just, I just.

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Having the right narrative going in the right against sequential order and just

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it's all

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about product marketing is empathizing, empathizing with the prospect,

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understanding what what

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it's not just about selling them the product, right?

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It's like, what's in it for me?

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What's the benefit to me?

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Why isn't valuable for me and pulling those things out?

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And I think you could apply the same thing in your marketing funnel messaging.

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If you look at the message column, why not?

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What you do today?

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Why the solution?

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Why us?

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Why now?

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It's kind of a riff on like, why change?

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Why now?

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Why XYZ company?

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But it's a little bit different.

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Maybe I'm practicing a bit.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Absolutely.

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So the framework to put together, I'll say it goes back to marketing 101.

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I mean, like you see on the left hand, like I'm not the first person to create

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this like

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create demand, create capture demand, convert leads.

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I would love to take credit for that.

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Those are not my words.

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Those are, you know, marketing 101.

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But what I did was I reapplied that to our industry and the problems that we

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were facing.

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So I don't have an official name for this framework, but we can think of it as

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this four

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step people first framework to build pipeline.

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And so what we did was, okay, we're in this awareness phase.

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I mean, we were going after an untapped market, an audience that we wanted to

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help them really

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understand what use case they might need us for.

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And so the creating demand, it really became like making those that are unaware

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, aware

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of the problem and creating that need.

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So they don't even know they have a pain.

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My example before was they know they have churn fine, but they don't know what

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's causing

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that.

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So we're here coming out and saying, well, maybe it's not that they don't love

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your product

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or they're dissatisfied with your customer service.

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Maybe it's simply that they don't really know how to use your product.

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So we're helping them identify what those symptoms of the problem is.

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So I had this like template here of like why not blank.

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So like for a North pass, it was why not manual training?

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Why is the way you're doing it today not working for you?

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And then you can see like since I said before, KPIs are important, putting

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engagement in

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there, things like traffic to your website, attendees, registrations,

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engagement, just

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what your LinkedIn are they clicking?

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Are they expanding?

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Are they visiting other pages of your website?

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Things like that.

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And you go into the second one, capture demand.

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Great.

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We're only going to capture demand of those who are aware of the problem.

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And so we want to make sure that we're solving the problem.

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We've acknowledged it.

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There is a problem.

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They know it.

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They just don't know what this solution is.

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They know they have a turn problem.

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They understand that their customers may not know how to use the product to the

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best

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of their ability.

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So what am I supposed to do?

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And so this is where we don't even talk about us yet.

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We're just bringing them a solution.

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We're going to tell you about digital customer education and why going digital

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is now going

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to resolve all those problems we just talked about in that first phase.

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All the problems we brought to you telling you how much your manual team, CSMs

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and onboarding

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teams and whoever else, how much time they're spending on repetitive training

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when you can

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put that on digital.

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And so at this point, maybe we're shooting ourselves on the foot.

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They can now go to any LMS, right?

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Like we've solved the problem for them, but we're hoping that because we

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brought this

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problem and solution to them, they have a little trust in us.

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We've built some credibility there.

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And so that's all about getting those qualified leads.

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Now that people are interested in that problem and in that solution, we've

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qualified them.

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So then it's all about converting them, right?

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So how do you demonstrate the value?

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How do these people that now know about the problem, know about the solution,

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are researching

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probably other products that provide that solution.

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How do we show that ours is better?

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Through differentiators, through case studies, through proof points, by just

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being a partner,

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providing additional resources.

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And so are you getting that meeting because of it?

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If you see that like the person who just brought you the solution that you

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never thought

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of before, and maybe that person, but business, is now showing you how others

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in your other

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peers that they're helping, then you want to get into and see how you could

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also reduce

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your turn and improve your turn really.

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So then the last part that sometimes even gets dismissed is enabling sales,

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right?

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Like they're the ones doing the first meeting.

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As much as pipeline is part of marketing, you still have to rely on sales to

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like actually

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make the first move.

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So equipping them with the right insights to tailor the solution to each of

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their individual

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problems.

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Obviously, the problem at the top is this kind of wider issue, but now they're

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all going

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to have their own nuances.

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And so really tailoring the use case to that prospects needs and then based on

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their own

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challenges and really getting them to understand like why do I need to do this

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today versus

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wait in a year from now when I have more budget, more people or something like

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that.

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I love this.

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It's exactly what Nick and I are trying to do with our kind of product, if you

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will.

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We talk about generic go to market and how that's hurting businesses and trying

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to think

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about generic go to market as it relates to how it hurts your revenue and how

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it hurts

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your economics of your business.

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Then we introduce the solution, people first GTM, that we introduce, hey, there

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's a way

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to implement this that isn't super expensive with our on demand services.

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And then we tailor our on demand services, Uber for go to market leaders

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through a custom

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solution, right?

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That's spot on Nicky, right?

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And some people then might say, well, this kind of reminds me of category

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design, right?

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Name the enemy, name the problem.

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There's a little bit of that in here, right?

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I mean, but at the end of the day, it's a story.

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You don't have to create a category to do this.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I kind of also stand from I was writing their narrative for our company

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, for our product,

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and it naturally went in this order.

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I couldn't just jump into a room of 200 people at a trade show and talk about,

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well, first

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of all, I don't want to be sales eight, right?

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So like you got to talk about the problem, get people to understand it.

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So what I love about this like messaging strategy is that it can be applied to

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everything,

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to your narrative, to your ad campaigns, to your marketing funnel.

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I think that your story needs to be coordinated and you need to think about

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like what they

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need to know in the right order, your ads and your retargeting needs to, you

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know, same

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way they need to be hit with understanding of the problem before you engage

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them with

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the solution.

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So I think that, you know, you can use this for everything.

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I'm sure you can use this when you're dating life too.

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Nick, did you hear that?

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I can use this when dating life.

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Yeah.

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I guess I'm like 10 years or yeah, 10 almost 11 years behind that.

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It's crazy.

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I agree though.

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Tell me the one last thing before I dive into the last question that enables

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sales piece.

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I agree that that's often undervalued or missed because as a failed market,

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that was something

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that I was always super like the sales team was my internal customer.

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And so working with them to enable them on all of the campaigns, all of the

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strategy,

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all of the tactics that we're doing was a huge piece.

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I would say it was almost, you know, 40% of the job to a certain degree,

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depending on

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the company.

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So I think that's absolutely a great piece there because I see it, I mean, Mark

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and I

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we work with a lot of clients right now and there is a lot of not enabling of

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sales teams

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happening.

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So this is fantastic.

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Let's dive into the last question.

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One more piece.

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Again, the secret sauce here.

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What's the, what's the advice that you would give to leadership who's looking

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to create

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more effective and efficient marketing funnels?

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And if you could talk to them and be like, listen, go do XYZ, you'll be in a

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better place

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than you were yesterday.

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Telling them to not rush the process, to trust the process, cliche, but the

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leadership team

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wants pipeline.

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So again, just like dating, like you can't expect a husband after one

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conversation.

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If you received your proposal the first date, you'd freak out.

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So my advice is just don't rush to the end, make sure your messaging aligns

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with each

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stage while thinking about what does my buyer need to know before I tell them

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about my

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product.

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And maybe even like, like showing them the wrong way, showing them like a sales

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call

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gone wrong and pointing out the reason why is because we didn't actually go

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through this

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narrative.

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And they'll start to see why that orchestration needs to work, you know, in a

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sequential order.

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You just gave me a great idea for something that we got to do, which is this

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idea of love

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is blind, marketing is blind.

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Ooh, I love it.

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You keep going back to the dating things.

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So then I know, you know, I was thinking about their analogy, but it was just

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like you

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rushed to it.

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I mean, look, I've been married for 10 years.

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So like, I'm not in this right now, but like, yeah, just like you rush the

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process, you

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you go out, look for a husband, at least a lot of girls think that way.

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You're going to first day, you're like, ooh, can this be it?

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But you need to be courted.

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And I think as marketers, we need to court our prospects too.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I bring up love is blind from the last thing you said, because I was, I

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was pulled

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in, maybe pushed into watching that.

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You binged.

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I was pushed.

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Well, I was pushing my fantastic show, by the way.

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I also was maybe poking at least season one.

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I don't like the show at all.

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But go ahead.

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I don't know.

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I thought season one, I don't even how many seasons they're on now, but like

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season one,

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I don't know.

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I was very interested.

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In season two, I got a little less interested and then I just kind of cut out

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after that.

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But very interesting concept.

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Don't know how much of it's with stage, but like, I don't know.

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I follow all these people on TikTok now and they, they seem.

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That was a problem.

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I saw the social media, like news stories after and I was like, well, now I

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have to watch

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it because I don't know what's going on in the world right now.

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Yeah, they get you.

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They get you.

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Nikki, thank you so much.

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Thank you.

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And this framework's awesome.

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Where can people find you if they have questions about the framework?

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I'm on LinkedIn.

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Nikki Engel, E-N-G-E-L and love to talk marketing with everyone.

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So thank you for listening and I hope that you do apply this framework and let

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me know

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how it goes.

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All right.

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You heard it from Nikki, folks.

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Go do that right now.

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And when you create your own people first, buyer first funnel, tag Nikki on

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LinkedIn,

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tag Nick and I, we'd love to help you get it out to the masses because there's

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not enough

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funnels built for the actual buyers and people.

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There are too many funnels built in a vacuum in a silo and that needs to stop

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today.

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So Nikki, thanks again.

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We'll see you on another one, everyone.

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Thank you for joining us for this exclusive edition of GTM News Desk.

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If people first content like this is your jam, you should think about joining T

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AC Insider,

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our community and resource hub for GTM tech folks like you.

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You can find more info on our website at tacinsider.com.

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And until next time, keep it people first, everybody.