Welcome to The Get, the podcast about driving smart decisions around recruiting
Speaker:and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:This season, we're looking at how SaaS marketing orgs are changing
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:How can you be the type of leader who is not running from change, but proactively
Speaker:responding to it, and even driving change?
Speaker:My guest today is someone who's more in the camp of smartly
Speaker:responding and driving change.
Speaker:Wanda Cadigan is SVP of Marketing at Cloudinary.
Speaker:They are known as the industry standard for developers, creators, and
Speaker:marketers who are looking to create and personalize and manage their
Speaker:video and images at massive scale.
Speaker:Today, we are going to talk about how Wanda has actually grown organic
Speaker:traffic in this market, how she structures her organization, how PR
Speaker:is having a surprising resurgence in the age of AI, how she hires, and the
Speaker:advice she would give her pre-CMO self.
Speaker:So Wanda, thank you for joining and welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thank you, Erica.
Speaker:Looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker:All right, so let's just start.
Speaker:I've given a little intro and I'll say, you're Canadian, so we might
Speaker:hear some process and project.
Speaker:You will hear project.
Speaker:I have my tells.
Speaker:I have my tells.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I don't know them, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker:Can you share a fun fact just to get us started?
Speaker:Sure, sure.
Speaker:I'm probably one of those rare marketers who has actually
Speaker:walked a mile in sales shoes.
Speaker:So I started as a product marketer, loved it, and then an early mentor
Speaker:of mine basically encouraged me to take on a broader mandate of sales
Speaker:and marketing, and I think that early, really foundational experience
Speaker:helped me become a better marketer.
Speaker:Certainly helped me understand the commercial nature of business a lot
Speaker:more than previously I would've been exposed to just as a product marketer,
Speaker:and ultimately helped me become a more revenue focused marketer.
Speaker:Yeah, great.
Speaker:And you're a Boomerang at Cloudinary, right?
Speaker:This is interesting.
Speaker:I am, I am, I am.
Speaker:I'm one of actually a growing number of folks I think are
Speaker:doing the Boomerang thing.
Speaker:But yeah, Cloudinary has been a fantastic company.
Speaker:Basically, I'm here for change.
Speaker:So it change, inflection points.
Speaker:And I came back to the company about ,I'm gonna say, two and a half
Speaker:years ago, and took on a broader mandate as SVP of Marketing and
Speaker:helping grow to the next stage.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:For context, can you give a quick overview of the size and the
Speaker:structure of your marketing org?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:We're about twenty-two people full-time.
Speaker:But as I'd love to get into probably one later question, I'm also a big
Speaker:believer in the use of micro experts for very specific tasks and channels
Speaker:as we do our experimentation program.
Speaker:So about thirty-eight folks all up, including full-time and contractors.
Speaker:And that really runs the gamut of marketing and the SDR organization.
Speaker:One of the big unlocks for us has been breaking down any artificial
Speaker:barriers between, I call it the supply chain of revenue.
Speaker:So marketing creates the conditions upon which your brand
Speaker:should be known in the market.
Speaker:It creates the conditions upon which a prospect may find you, learn about
Speaker:you, but then also all the way through to demand gen, reaching out, grabbing
Speaker:that interest, bringing that interest into the funnel, and then also
Speaker:qualifying that interest until the magical handshake between marketing
Speaker:SDRs and sales happens, and that enters the funnel as qualified pipeline.
Speaker:That's how the team is orchestrated here.
Speaker:It's also interesting, we have a dual funnel here at Cloud
Speaker:and Area, as do many companies.
Speaker:Cloudinary started as a PLG-focused company, so extremely strong product.
Speaker:We're also close on hitting a major milestone in a number of developers.
Speaker:I won't scoop myself, but stay tuned.
Speaker:That's gonna be a big announcement coming up in a couple of weeks and months.
Speaker:And it's all about, how can you balance self-service, which is
Speaker:registrations, putting a fantastic product out into the marketplace and
Speaker:getting registrations at the top of the funnel, and also enterprise sales.
Speaker:So we have also an amazing growth marketing team that primarily
Speaker:covers the self-service funnel.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I love this idea of a supply chain of revenue, because
Speaker:- Yes.
Speaker:- that would help CEOs and investors realize that it's not just bottom of the funnel.
Speaker:It's not just marketer comes in and spits out bookings.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I have a really interesting analogy for this is nobody has a fever dream
Speaker:and just wakes up one morning and says, I'm gonna submit a Contact Us form.
Speaker:Of course not.
Speaker:It's been pre-plant in your head.
Speaker:You've learned about a company or been educated about a problem that
Speaker:you may have been grappling with, and you could be exposed to press
Speaker:relations, analyst reports, events.
Speaker:You might have seen a vendor at an event.
Speaker:All of these great marketing programs do influence the final point of
Speaker:conversion of, hey, I'm gonna reach out and talk to these people.
Speaker:I think they can help me with my problem.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it is a supply chain.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I firmly hold that opinion and I think that's really the
Speaker:way you need to look at it.
Speaker:Can you talk more about the dual funnel thing?
Speaker:Because I think a lot of companies, they have one type of motion
Speaker:and then they try to add another one and it doesn't go so well.
Speaker:Maybe they're not as patient as they could be, or they have a hard time
Speaker:spreading their resources across both.
Speaker:Is that hard to manage?
Speaker:How do you navigate that and how much cross pollination is it across
Speaker:the teams doing of those things?
Speaker:It is, and it depends on the personas that you have in your ICP as well.
Speaker:So Cloudinary is blessed with a number of different products.
Speaker:We started very much in the developer space.
Speaker:Number one for image API, video API, and then we also expanded our offering
Speaker:so we have a digital asset management solution, which tends to be more,
Speaker:let's say, the first party personas around business users, marketeers,
Speaker:content marketers, et cetera.
Speaker:So it really depends on which product you're building a pipeline plan for and
Speaker:what is the front door of that plan.
Speaker:I like to say that typically on our website, I call it the
Speaker:red door and the blue door.
Speaker:It's kinda like the matrix you take, the red pill or the blue
Speaker:pill and it really depends on the type of campaign you're running.
Speaker:Because if you're running a very technical campaign that is predominantly
Speaker:focused on, let's say, video API or image API, and your targeting is video
Speaker:engineers or developers, web developers, if they come to your website and
Speaker:they have two doors to choose from.
Speaker:One is a self-service registration door where they can play with the product.
Speaker:They can touch it, they can feel it, they can download documentation.
Speaker:That's one choice.
Speaker:Then the other choice could be a contact us, where you're
Speaker:probably gonna talk to a seller.
Speaker:Because you need some additional help to either fully understand
Speaker:your problem and how that Cloudinary can help, or any company can help.
Speaker:So you really need to build plans for both of those funnels,
Speaker:and they're not the same.
Speaker:You really need to have a bespoke plan for each.
Speaker:Ultimately, what you wanna do is there are a lot of amazing
Speaker:self-service registrations that are coming into our funnel every day.
Speaker:Some of them will be students, some of them will be hobbyists.
Speaker:They'll have one or two projects.
Speaker:But guess what?
Speaker:Developers also work at enterprises.
Speaker:So there's a wealth of opportunity in the self-service funnel in the PLG motion.
Speaker:If you're looking out for the right signals then yes, they
Speaker:could be well-served by a paid plan, but once certain signals and
Speaker:intent is identified, guess what?
Speaker:Those are a fantastic enterprise, potential opportunities and that's
Speaker:when you engage with the SDR organization, the AE organization to
Speaker:help reach out and connect the dots.
Speaker:That's that collaboration between funnels and when you can get that
Speaker:working, that's the ultimate goal.
Speaker:Is it relevant to cross train people on your team for both
Speaker:PLG and enterprise motions?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I think there are a couple of reps that are very proficient in our PLG motion.
Speaker:And in fact, they're almost like our human algorithm.
Speaker:They know what's good.
Speaker:They know what a good opportunity is, and that's been very helpful for us.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:And you have the SCRs and BDRs on your team
Speaker:- Yes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:So we're talking this season about how SaaS marketing orgs are changing,
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:We've been talking just in the industry, as well as you and me,
Speaker:about this tsunami of change.
Speaker:And you said, well, we knew that the tsunami was coming, you prepared for it.
Speaker:And so you actually have seen your organic traffic go up, which is so
Speaker:interesting 'cause so many orgs are like, oh, my organic traffic is down.
Speaker:It's like, well, HubSpots is down 70% as well.
Speaker:Can you reverse engineer that, and what do you attribute
Speaker:this organic graphic boost to?
Speaker:Yeah, so, like everything, there's probably no one magic pill or solution,
Speaker:but I think one of the things that we did really well, and again I have to
Speaker:call out our growth marketing team.
Speaker:They've done a tremendous job at executing this.
Speaker:But I remember we had a QBR at the beginning of the year where
Speaker:we talked about what we wanted to accomplish in terms of organic search.
Speaker:And discoverability, it is so very important as an organization to know
Speaker:where your digital watering holes are.
Speaker:Where are people finding out about you?
Speaker:So I remember we had a QBR at the start of the year, and of course, as
Speaker:most plans do, they focus very heavily on Google, maybe a little bit Bing.
Speaker:And at the time, I remember I was hearing a lot about Perplexity as
Speaker:an example, and ChatGPT, of course.
Speaker:One of the questions I posed was, we don't know this what this thing is yet.
Speaker:I do think it's going to impact us as a business.
Speaker:If we were to, right now, start trying to mitigate for that coming
Speaker:change, if it does turn out to be something, what would we do?
Speaker:What would we do?
Speaker:Very nascent.
Speaker:By the way, the other thing I always say, nobody's an expert in
Speaker:this space yet, let's be honest.
Speaker:It's happening real time.
Speaker:We're talking the week that ChatGPT just launched.
Speaker:The 5.0 just launched.
Speaker:There's gonna be roll on effects for months to come.
Speaker:But I knew something was happening.
Speaker:The team took the challenge, and they said, okay, let's figure this out.
Speaker:So the whole era of discoverability is going to be a tsunami of change.
Speaker:Again, a lot of organizations are just now finding out about this,
Speaker:and they have to pivot very quickly.
Speaker:That is one thing that we were able to do.
Speaker:We got ahead of it and we started to implement some experiments.
Speaker:freshness of content super, super important.
Speaker:You have to publish fresh content.
Speaker:Citations, really important.
Speaker:Your backlink strategy.
Speaker:Really important.
Speaker:Understanding and having a differentiated keyword strategy.
Speaker:Super important.
Speaker:Because sadly, you just mentioned, it's true, a lot of companies are
Speaker:seeing a decrease in their organic traffic because why is that happening?
Speaker:Well, because when I ask a question, when a prospect asks a question, it's going to
Speaker:ChatGPT and getting the answer directly.
Speaker:So it's cutting the need to have to go to the website to
Speaker:get those questions answered.
Speaker:But I will say one of the unintended or downstream benefits of that is that
Speaker:that traffic, when it does come to your website, is a lot more educated.
Speaker:It's willing to take action and they tend to be better qualified leads.
Speaker:So I think just understanding that, that's been a big unlock for us.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I remember you mentioned something about one of your personas is the AI chat agent.
Speaker:I just love the way you thought about that.
Speaker:So can you say more?
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:Isn't it insane?
Speaker:But traditional marketing, traditional product marketing, your personas
Speaker:are head of web dev or director of e-commerce or insert title here.
Speaker:Yes, that's true.
Speaker:That remains true.
Speaker:But the other persona is we have two market for chat agents, for ChatGPT,
Speaker:Perplexity, Grok, all of these answer engines that are out now.
Speaker:So when we produce content, yes, we have to produce it for humans, of course,
Speaker:but we also have to be cognizant, sometimes to get to those humans,
Speaker:you have to make sure your answers are surfaced in things like ChatGPT.
Speaker:In fact, one of our new personas is chat agents.
Speaker:Can you believe it?
Speaker:But it's true.
Speaker:We have to make sure that that is a top level persona for our marketing efforts.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think it's right.
Speaker:I mean, I think we, as an industry, we understand that, we know that
Speaker:inherently, but to pinpoint it that way, I think it's really great.
Speaker:The other thing that I saw the other day, it was Cady had been at
Speaker:Klaviyo, I forget where she is now.
Speaker:She had written about the rise of an influence engineer.
Speaker:So not so much the brand person, although it kind of is that, it's like
Speaker:the person that's going to find those micro pockets where those watering holes
Speaker:- Absolutely.
Speaker:- and be asserting influence and authority in an AI first world.
Speaker:So I'm wondering if you can talk about the role of brand, and I hate
Speaker:to say brand, it's such a four-letter word for some of my clients.
Speaker:Anyway, PR and what we will call a brand and influence, and that
Speaker:seems to be having a resurgence.
Speaker:Can you talk about that?
Speaker:How you see that, and who are the players that you think are gonna be,
Speaker:you know, who are the PR-ish, brand-ish people who are going to be rising
Speaker:above the fray, given the changes?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I'll start from where PR has been.
Speaker:To your point, brand has been a little bit of a dirty word.
Speaker:And there's a pendulum that swings.
Speaker:We all know it.
Speaker:Every marketer that's been in this space, it's brand heavy one year
Speaker:and then, two years later it's all about performance management and
Speaker:things you can count and click.
Speaker:So there has been a little bit of a under appreciation of things like
Speaker:PR, historic in the last iteration, certainly of the phase we're in now.
Speaker:But I do think with the advent of the generative engine optimization, so geo
Speaker:as a new strategy, some companies are gonna really experience, and some PR
Speaker:teams will experience an opportunity to really prove their worth and
Speaker:connect to more commercial intent.
Speaker:And it's all about the citations.
Speaker:Not true for every industry, but certainly a lot of industries having really tier
Speaker:one companies covering you, having brand mentions in public relations, in
Speaker:placed articles, organic content, and then having back links back to your
Speaker:website, that's extremely important.
Speaker:That builds citation.
Speaker:We need to take a look at PR a little differently.
Speaker:Yes, of course, we're going to continue to use wire services and issue news release.
Speaker:I consider that almost old school PR, and yes, we need to keep doing that, but PR
Speaker:teams, if they can connect their value to this new world of citations and how
Speaker:that helps again in the discoverability engines that is opening up.
Speaker:It's a bit of a renaissance.
Speaker:It can really help drive and prove the value of things like PR.
Speaker:I will say though, and you, I'm glad you covered it.
Speaker:There's a growing field of influencer marketing, which is amazing.
Speaker:And it's not necessarily about having even the quantity of
Speaker:followers, but the quality.
Speaker:If you have a particular niche product and there's an influencer
Speaker:in that space and partnering with them for influencer marketing?
Speaker:That's the new PR.
Speaker:So it's really important to know where are your digital watering holes?
Speaker:Where are your prospects going to get educated and influenced
Speaker:about problems that you can solve?
Speaker:And then coming up with a list of influencer marketers and partnering
Speaker:with them, and that is another change that we've been doing.
Speaker:And that's a big focus of the leader on my comms team right now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It is interesting.
Speaker:I wonder if we'll start seeing people get hired into these kind of PR comms
Speaker:roles that have less of the traditional background and more of the call it
Speaker:influencer marketing, AI forward to their background, even if they don't
Speaker:have the depth of contacts and such.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Very interesting.
Speaker:Let's talk to you about org changes or org choices that you have made that might
Speaker:be a little bit unique from the outside, as compared to other orgs, or was there
Speaker:something that you did that might have felt risky at the time or just unusual?
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:I think I'm a big fan of experimentation and listen, we all know there's not
Speaker:enough hours in the day, arms and legs on marketing team or budget to
Speaker:test everything that you wanna do.
Speaker:It can be a bit of a trap for a marketing team.
Speaker:I call it going a mile wide and an inch deep.
Speaker:You try to cover everything, everything, but that doesn't necessarily help you.
Speaker:So one of the things that we have been leaning into is
Speaker:this notion of micro experts.
Speaker:There are so many channels you can test.
Speaker:Proliferation of channels, especially social media is exploding.
Speaker:There's always a new social media platform du jour that you can test and it's
Speaker:impossible to keep up with everything.
Speaker:So being able to leverage micro influencers to really bring out
Speaker:specific testing on a specific channel.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:You have to make funding decisions.
Speaker:Do I defund that channel because it's not performing or is it just maybe
Speaker:I don't have the right resources, the expert for that channel to
Speaker:get the results from that channel?
Speaker:I use the analogy of does this need a Swiss Army knife or a scalpel?
Speaker:Because sometimes you need a Swiss Army knife.
Speaker:A hundred percent.
Speaker:A hundred percent.
Speaker:But sometimes if you have limited resources, budget, time, money,
Speaker:hours in the day, and you wanna test the channel, do you wanna bring a
Speaker:Swiss Army knife to that channel, or do you wanna bring a scalpel?
Speaker:Someone that knows that channel, that's had proven expertise and success in that
Speaker:channel, then you can find out, hey, this channel is actually worth us investing in.
Speaker:And maybe it does warrant a full-time hire.
Speaker:But it's also a really good way for you to understand that channel's not for us.
Speaker:And you know what?
Speaker:I can defund these two channels and focus on this other one that we can
Speaker:see is really driving pipeline growth.
Speaker:So I really like the idea of using micro experts as rapid prototyping
Speaker:to figure out where I should be paying the most attention.
Speaker:That's been a bit of an unlock for us.
Speaker:I like that because often marketers will do these experiments and then the
Speaker:board or the CEO can get exhausted.
Speaker:Like, okay, you've tried that for two weeks, turn it off.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But I guess you're saying if you can get to a yes or a no faster, that's the
Speaker:- Correct.
Speaker:- that's the benefit.
Speaker:With the right resources.
Speaker:Because it's impossible.
Speaker:Things are changing so fast.
Speaker:For example, we, again, we just said ChatGPT-5 just launched, so there
Speaker:is no expert in ChatGPT-5 right now.
Speaker:But all of these changes are happening real time.
Speaker:So if you're trying to maximize your chance of success for whatever the channel
Speaker:may be, you wanna bring a scalpel, not a generalist that may not necessarily have
Speaker:a lot of experience with that channel.
Speaker:It's been working for us.
Speaker:It helps us rapid prototype, figure out really quickly what channels
Speaker:we need to double down on and what channels are okay to part with.
Speaker:One of the hardest things in marketing is to say no, either way.
Speaker:Because everything, you wanna do it all, it's so exciting.
Speaker:And look at this just launched and we wanna have a presence here.
Speaker:And it's really hard as marketers to say no, but I think, fundamentally,
Speaker:you have to remain really laser focused on your commercial goals.
Speaker:Doing these rapid prototypes with micro experts in whatever channels
Speaker:helps you figure out where your digital watering holes are and what your
Speaker:funding investment strategy should be.
Speaker:Where do you find your scalpels?
Speaker:It's, it can be difficult, I will say.
Speaker:Sometimes you think you find a scalpel and it's still a Swiss Army knife.
Speaker:[they laugh] So it does, it's trial and error.
Speaker:It's trial and error.
Speaker:There's some great freelance platforms out there, Upwork, Fiverr, multitudes of them,
Speaker:and we tend to look there, certainly.
Speaker:Network referral, as well.
Speaker:People that are, they hang their shingle out and they're very, they're experts in
Speaker:x, y, z space and there's back channel references, so that also helps as well.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It makes me wonder if we're going to this of org structure where you
Speaker:have specialists externally, and generalists internally, at where the
Speaker:soft skills of being agile and curious and able to learn, and all of that are
Speaker:what's important internally, and then externally you have these scalpels.
Speaker:It could very well be.
Speaker:And I think the other thing and we haven't talked about it explicitly yet, but
Speaker:there are so many AI productivity tools available to marketing organizations
Speaker:now where you can see just incremental productivity, whether it's from things
Speaker:like content production and generating a content engine, and that's something
Speaker:that we're doing here as well.
Speaker:Again, we had to feed the beast.
Speaker:We talked about generative engines earlier.
Speaker:That's not a trivial task.
Speaker:You have to keep feeding the beast fresh content, great citations.
Speaker:So that's an ongoing job and really you need something like an AI content
Speaker:engine to be able to keep up with that.
Speaker:So yes, I think you need trained specialists, depending if the channel
Speaker:is worth it to you, maybe you bring those specialists internal or you
Speaker:just keep them as contractors.
Speaker:Then AI, the getting AI embedded in your marketing organization, that
Speaker:can really 10x your productivity.
Speaker:Between the scalpels and the AI, I think that's really the way of the
Speaker:future in terms of marketing orgs.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:Can you talk now about how you hire for full-time roles?
Speaker:We've talked about the scalpels externally and the tools.
Speaker:What about the actual, the hoomans as, uh, my dog would say?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker:So this is probably the last two years that I've really, I think,
Speaker:had a bit of an unlock there.
Speaker:And I have to credit someone I've never met, Claire Hughes.
Speaker:She's the former COO of Stripe, and she wrote an excellent book called Scaling
Speaker:People, and she presents this notion of an interview framework, but with a rubric.
Speaker:Of course, we've all had questions, you do your standard, okay, we have
Speaker:to ask these ten questions, but the unlock for me was no, you have to go a
Speaker:step further and actually put it into an answer rubric as well, and identify
Speaker:what does an okay answer versus a good answer versus a great answer really look
Speaker:like, and come up with your internal scoring criteria, even in advance to
Speaker:be able to say, yeah, they knocked it outta the park on that question.
Speaker:They went really super deep.
Speaker:They connected different disparate data points.
Speaker:So that's like an A+ in that answer.
Speaker:It's very difficult when you're interviewing many different
Speaker:people, different backgrounds, everyone has a different skillset.
Speaker:It helps you really crystallize what's super, super important for this
Speaker:role and how am I gonna evaluate it.
Speaker:Then I also share that rubric with others that I've asked to interview
Speaker:as part of the interviewing committee, the hiring committee, when they do
Speaker:their interviews as well for peers.
Speaker:Then they can see, okay, Wanda's really valuing X, Y, Z, and it helps
Speaker:everybody get aligned in terms of what a good hire really looks like.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Do you think that's helpful for CEO hiring CMOs as well?
Speaker:Yes, I do.
Speaker:I would even take it one step further.
Speaker:I think CEOs hiring CMOs, because it's like the oldest trope in the world, right?
Speaker:CMO has a very short tenure.
Speaker:And I don't think there's necessarily bad CMO hires per se.
Speaker:I think it may be bad understanding, or a lack of clarity around
Speaker:what type of CEO is needed now.
Speaker:So the best thing a CEO can do - and it's hard, listen, I'm not saying it's
Speaker:an easy or trivial task - is having a real point of view and clarity
Speaker:around what type of CMO is needed now in this journey for the company.
Speaker:No external candidate will know that.
Speaker:So the CEO really has to have a good understanding, talk to other CEOs,
Speaker:talk to other CMOs in your network to try to understand, okay, what is
Speaker:the growth stage we're at right now?
Speaker:And what are the most important skills that a CMO can bring right now?
Speaker:I would say yes, the methodology and the rubric is definitely important,
Speaker:but it's even more important to self-identify what stage you're
Speaker:at and what you need right now.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:It's funny, I think CMOs can be great at hiring for their teams, and then when
Speaker:CEOs hire for CMOs, they can get stuck.
Speaker:It's very hard.
Speaker:It's really hard.
Speaker:Because if you are not from that area you don't know the difference between a brand
Speaker:marketer and a revenue centric marketer, or what marketer would be best for a PLG
Speaker:motion company versus enterprise sales?
Speaker:There's a lot of variables I can appreciate it's a difficult task.
Speaker:How about AI in hiring?
Speaker:How does that play a role for you internally or what roles that you've seen?
Speaker:Is it my agent will talk to your agent?
Speaker:What are you seeing there?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Certainly AI tools can help scan.
Speaker:And this has been, like, ATS, that's always been happening in
Speaker:terms of scanning, and I'm sure there's a next iteration of that.
Speaker:I know certainly a lot of candidates, you can tell if someone is maybe
Speaker:leaning a little bit too heavily on the AI influenced resumes and I'm sure
Speaker:you can see that a mile away as well.
Speaker:By the way, it's a counter impact now that there's a lot of tools that can scan
Speaker:for how much of this was written by AI?
Speaker:So that's something to be cognizant of.
Speaker:I can help someone tell you what they do, but live interviews will
Speaker:tell you if they can actually do it.
Speaker:So nothing replaces one-on-one talking, being able to have
Speaker:meaningful conversations.
Speaker:Yeah, it's probably a tool right now, but there's no replacement for live
Speaker:interviews or sign me live interviews.
Speaker:Although I do wonder sometimes when I'm interviewing somebody is somebody
Speaker:just recording it all and getting their answers fed to them in real-time by AI?
Speaker:You know, listen, ChatGPT-5, probably possible now.
Speaker:That's a crazy model.
Speaker:I think there's a lot of potential.
Speaker:There's still a lot of pitfalls, too, with this new technology that
Speaker:we're gonna have to work around.
Speaker:When you're hiring, do you have a favorite interview question that you ask that you
Speaker:find really revealing?
Speaker:I
Speaker:ask everybody on the podcast about this.
Speaker:I love asking - again, part of my interview rubric and it's
Speaker:one of the standard questions, everyone asks about your successes.
Speaker:The ones that I tend to ask about is tell me some when it went wrong.
Speaker:When did something go horribly wrong?
Speaker:When did you have to push back on a big plan that you had to launch?
Speaker:Because I don't wanna know just about their wins, I
Speaker:wanna know about their messes.
Speaker:And let's be honest, we all have messes.
Speaker:It's called the messy middle.
Speaker:You have great laid plans, something changes.
Speaker:Okay, how do you respond to the change?
Speaker:And that really helps me understand, can they handle stress?
Speaker:Can they be adaptable?
Speaker:So I tend to ask about the messes, the messy metal.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:But it's not just tell me about a time when you failed, but tell me about a
Speaker:time when your playbook went wrong.
Speaker:Out the window.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:A competitor launch first or the product has to be pushed out a month
Speaker:because something is not working properly or ready to be launched.
Speaker:So how do you handle that?
Speaker:I think that tells a lot about a person's character.
Speaker:I'm thinking if somebody asked me that, it might turn into a therapy session where
Speaker:I would go on and on and there was this factor and that factor and everything.
Speaker:How much time do you give somebody to really get into all the specifics of it?
Speaker:If they take ten minutes to answer that question, is that ok?
Speaker:It's, it tells me how comfortable they are with sharing their own messes,
Speaker:or it's not necessarily their messes.
Speaker:A lot of this is you're on the receiving end of maybe a change in a launch
Speaker:schedule or a competitor of movement.
Speaker:So it's not directly under their control.
Speaker:I think if you dive a little bit too deep into it, that's telling.
Speaker:Because it's like, you know what, it's okay to be in the red on
Speaker:some things on your dashboard.
Speaker:You just gotta accept it and, okay, this is how I dealt with it and then moved on.
Speaker:I'm looking for a positive acknowledgement - yeah, that was an issue.
Speaker:This is how I dealt with it, and moved on.
Speaker:That's the best way to answer those questions.
Speaker:Okay, cool.
Speaker:So, curious to know what advice you would give yourself years before you became
Speaker:a marketing leader with twenty-plus, thirty-plus people reporting into you?
Speaker:I think I would say, your time is your most valuable asset, and I know
Speaker:that's very cliche, but it's so true.
Speaker:And I think you have to embrace saying no.
Speaker:A lot of us, especially in marketing, we're people pleasers.
Speaker:We wanna do it all.
Speaker:We wanna do it all.
Speaker:But guess what, that three-day project that someone just put on your desk,
Speaker:or hey, can you just sit in on this two hour advisory board real quick for
Speaker:something that's not in your mandate?
Speaker:All of this chips away at the time and focus you have to
Speaker:give to your primary mandate.
Speaker:So I think learning to say no.
Speaker:Again, it's hard.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:But ultimately you are here, you're at a company to deliver commercial results.
Speaker:And you have to do that, and you have to be ferociously protective of your
Speaker:time and remain true to the task.
Speaker:So learning how to say no.
Speaker:It can be hard.
Speaker:And it's taken me several years to get there.
Speaker:But it's hard.
Speaker:It's an ongoing challenge.
Speaker:Yeah, you and me both.
Speaker:There was a podcast recently with Adam Grant.
Speaker:Do you know Adam Grant?
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:He's at Wharton, and it's all about, how do you say no?
Speaker:It's very good.
Speaker:Okay, you gotta connect me because I'll have to go look for that one.
Speaker:I'm still working on it.
Speaker:I'm a work in progress, admittedly.
Speaker:Yeah, you and me both.
Speaker:We talked about this a little bit earlier, but what is your advice to a CEO who
Speaker:has failed at hiring a CMO in the past?
Speaker:For a CEO, I'll just go back to my earlier analogy, you
Speaker:don't want a Swiss Army knife.
Speaker:When you're trying to bring in a leadership team, you want a scalpel for
Speaker:this particular moment in your journey.
Speaker:What do you need at this particular moment in your journey to help
Speaker:you get to the next stage?
Speaker:And by the way, it is totally fine, sometimes CMOs or CROs or
Speaker:whatever the case, they come and go.
Speaker:And that's fine.
Speaker:Just understanding what do you need right now for this stage in your journey?
Speaker:And maybe then when you get to the next milestone, you need another type of CMO.
Speaker:Totally fair and reasonable.
Speaker:Just understanding what you need right now.
Speaker:I think that's probably the best advice.
Speaker:I've seen that in my recruiting practice, too, because you often have these
Speaker:companies, oh, we're X in revenue and we wanna get to five x, and then in
Speaker:the search, you kind of yo-yo back and forth between the person who's more
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Or the person who's more scaly and
Speaker:- Right.
Speaker:- nine times outta ten, or maybe ten times outta ten, end up
Speaker:focusing on what do we need now?
Speaker:If the company is in some kind of 100x growth per month, maybe that's different.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:But you often come back to okay, what do we need right now
Speaker:over the next eighteen months?
Speaker:Especially 'cause
Speaker:- Absolutely.
Speaker:- leaders can cycle.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:I know we're running short on time.
Speaker:My final question for you is just, we're looking to season that our theme
Speaker:of how SaaS marketing orgs are changing in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:So if you could put in one or two sentences, how would
Speaker:you describe that change?
Speaker:Could be something subtle or something seismic.
Speaker:I think the buyer's journey really now has two audiences, human and AI, you have to
Speaker:build trust and authenticity with both.
Speaker:That's what we're all gonna be facing.
Speaker:It's not just humans anymore, it's AI, that comes with a lot of potential.
Speaker:Some cautions, as well.
Speaker:But I think understanding your audience and building trust with both.
Speaker:We all have a new persona, whether we like it or not.
Speaker:It's chat bots and AI, so we have to prepare for that future.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Wanda.
Speaker:It's been great having you on the show.
Speaker:Thank you, Erica.
Speaker:Love the conversation.
Speaker:That was Wanda Cadigan, SVP of Marketing at Cloudinary.
Speaker:Stay tuned for the next episode of The Get Coming in a couple of weeks.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top
Speaker:marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:If you liked this episode, please share it.
Speaker:For more about The Get, visit TheGetPodcast.com.
Speaker:To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the
Speaker:make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.com.
Speaker:The Get is produced by Evo Terra and the team at Simpler Media Productions.