SaaS Marketing Makeover for Splunk, with Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing at Help Scout

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This is a podcast episode titled, SaaS Marketing Makeover for Splunk, with Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing at Help Scout. The summary for this episode is: <p>In this live show, CEO and Co-founder of Directive, Garrett Mehrguth, and a SaaS marketing leader work together to build a strategy for a recognizable SaaS brand - as quickly as possible.</p><p><br></p><p>The company will be randomly selected by spinning a wheel at the beginning of the show, and together, the two will craft a strategy for SaaS marketing leaders everywhere.</p><p><br></p><p>Our guest... Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing at Help Scout</p>

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the SaaS Marketing Makeover. I am very excited today to be joined by the one and only VP of Marketing at Help Scout, Adam Goyette. Welcome to the show, Adam.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Garrett. I appreciate it.

Garrett Mehrguth: How'd I do? We didn't talk. When the intro music goes and I don't ask how to say your last name, I get so nervous. How'd I do?

Adam Goyette: No, you nailed it. Yes.

Garrett Mehrguth: All right, let's go. I was, maybe it's a Goyette. He's got a crosstalk

Adam Goyette: No, no, strong French accent on it.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, yeah. Exactly I was, Oh man. It reminds me of the quinoa commercial where they have the parents. Well, I'm excited to have you here, Adam, and excited to see who's on the wheel. I genuinely have no clue. I know you don't either.

Adam Goyette: No.

Garrett Mehrguth: Who do you hope it is not?

Adam Goyette: Who do I hope it's not? Maybe G2 because I used to work there. So. Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I'm going to look through all of G2 in a wayback machine just when Adam was in charge, no. Well, this is awesome, man. Let's see who's on the wheel today Shaleigh, who do we got, Shaleigh? Okay. All right. Who're you hoping right here?

Adam Goyette: Freshworks would be interesting because I know that pretty well.

Garrett Mehrguth: Splunk, the monster. All right. Shall we? I'm going to share my screen.

Adam Goyette: Yeah, let's do it.

Garrett Mehrguth: And we are going to look at Splunk. Do you know what Splunk does?

Adam Goyette: A little bit, I believe. It's not really my wheelhouse though, but.

Garrett Mehrguth: We did everything for Sumo Logic, pre IPO, and then we do lot of stuff for New Relic. So a little bit in this space, not myself personally, all day, every day, but I really like this website. It's actually totally different than what I normally see actually.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Especially for the IT audience.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, that enterprise, dev op type tool, you know what I mean?

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: I like that they're leading with free trial. Maybe a little context between this H2... They could have a body paragraph that speaks towards why you should take the trial maybe.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's... Looking at the headline. The thing that I always look at is, if I'm just new to the site, do I know exactly what you do? Right? And to me it's a little ambiguous, I'm not exactly sure what the offer is here. So I think either in the H2 providing a little more clarity around that, and then the screenshot, to be honest, I don't love just because I hate product screenshots where it's, what am I looking at? Right? I don't know, maybe it's so I think the more I crosstalk

Garrett Mehrguth: I do this all the time, this is my golden standard for screenshots, is mixed panel.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Because I can read it. You know what I mean?

Adam Goyette: Exactly.

Garrett Mehrguth: I think that was a really good call out. I think this is cool too. There must have been a hack that's driving, probably some industry demand. It looks like.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: So that's cool. This is a part I actually really love. They're using social proof and it looks like someone else is saying this, whether they are or not, they've made it look like someone else is saying this, which I think is pretty cool.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Yeah. I like the actual stats and stuff. I think, again, I like the 82%. The more specific you can get in terms of when you're sharing stats, it makes it feel so much more believable. So when I first saw the 70, 90%, I was like, oh crosstalk

Garrett Mehrguth: I agree with exactly what you're saying. Give me a more honest number. I agree. Right? That was 71 and 94. I feel like this would've been even better now.

Adam Goyette: Yeah, exactly.

Garrett Mehrguth: So this is cool though. So we get a little high level for a second. I like what they're doing here because most people in this space are pretty obsessed with confusing you. So what I mean by that is, they don't call it security. They call it something else. They don't call it observability, they call it something else. They don't call it IT operations, they call it something else. Do you kind of get what I'm saying?

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I like that approach that they're taking here. It's also interesting the variety of reports they're citing from. Right?

Garrett Mehrguth: It is. Yep.

Adam Goyette: Which is kind of interesting. So because you have Gartner on there, magic quadrants. Some market leader reports and stuff like that.

Garrett Mehrguth: inaudible.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: No, I'm right on it, bro. I totally agree with what you're saying. I find this part slightly interesting. So notice they've taken... So this is... At a high level I like to kind of look at how they're thinking. Right? So, see how they have functions, Security, IT, DevOps.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: I don't see a throughput. So watch what I'm saying here. So they've got Security, Observability, IT Ops. That's not technically Security, IT and then DevOps. So they're kind of missing observability here. Right?

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: And then if you go to Products, you've got Security and Observability, but not IT Ops. I find that interesting in the sense that they did such a good job I think here, but then I don't know if it's through putted.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Into their universal product marketing so much as their web team is running a dope homepage. You kind of get what I'm saying?

Adam Goyette: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see where they get the most eyeballs and click throughs on this section. Right? What is driving the bulk of it? Is it Security? Is it IT operations, because that'd be really interesting data.

Garrett Mehrguth: And then you could create a constant. Right? And then you could change the positioning to know if it's the product or the position. Does that make sense?

Adam Goyette: Yeah, exactly.

Garrett Mehrguth: That would be cool. Actually. That's a really dope test. Because I would understand, I think, a little bit of how to then position your menu based off of consumer demand, based on their understanding of your brand.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: In other words... Because what I want to know as the CMO, do people see us primarily as Security, Observability, IT ops? Where do I land? And then how do I expand? And then how do I focus on where I land to then increase the chance of expansion?

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah. Agreed. I also love the.

Garrett Mehrguth: Because this is a nasty sell.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. I also love the," Trusted by 92 of the Fortune 100."

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was so excited to get to this Adam, thanks for getting us there because this is the dream of copy in my mind.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. And to me, I would put that in the header. Right? I would have crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah baby. Same here.

Adam Goyette: Way further up top, put that right underneath the button. Right? Any spot you have a CTA because if you're looking for security, right, and you're that IT... A big part of it's social proof. Right? Is this a solution that I can actually trust for scale and stuff like that. And so especially if they're selling into the enterprise, if you're one of those eight, you're probably wondering, why aren't we using this? Right? And that's the kind of missed out opportunity you want to focus in on?

Garrett Mehrguth: I completely agree. I think if you either put this below and then their brand theme above it or vice versa, I think you got to get this right next to the free trial. And that would make a massive impact for them.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Agreed.

Garrett Mehrguth: Because what's so cool that I think people don't always realize and that I've started to try to learn is, your shiniest logos rarely pay you the most money. It's the aspirational upper mid- market customers or the people who are trying to break through the challengers that are aspiring. And so I think when you use this kind of copy, you get the people who want to be in the fortune 100, even more than you get the other eight.

Adam Goyette: Yep, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If you're one of the 100, 500, you're still massive companies. Right? But you're looking at that being, oh, if we want to elevate our brand or our security to the level of these other companies, this is a tool we should be using.

Garrett Mehrguth: I'm obsessed with this homepage, man. I don't say this lightly, the way that they... This is the first original thinking I've seen in the IT, DevOps space. Look how cool this is, Quick Links, Trials and Downloads, Documentation, Answers, Insider, Forwarder. I don't know, to me, for some reason, I love when people are willing to create a better user experience than the industry default. And I think they've done that exceptionally well. It's all centered. So it's going to do well on mobile, the blocks I guarantee you, translate well. Let me see. Let's check it out. I think I can do that here right? Device? Yeah. See how the blocks translate super well that they're going with. Oh, you can kind of scroll on them. Yeah man, that's a really clean site.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Yeah. I also am a big fan of, like you said, giving people the answers they want right up front. Right? On so many sites, the only CTA they have is get a demo or something like that. And the reality is, people need to explore the product more and get more in depth into features or whatever it might be. And so I think having all these resources right up front for people, like finding a partner, looking at the crosstalk

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh I was going to say. Right? Isn't this the biggest nervous pain point when you're going to do a roll out of something like Splunk is, okay, who helps us with implementation?

Adam Goyette: She is very nosy today. I'm sorry about that.

Garrett Mehrguth: Our expertise, your advantage. I don't know. And then the community, 13, 000 active members. This to me is, once again, they're doing such a good job with psychological friction, if that makes sense. These are the things I'm like, I don't know if I'm ready yet. And I feel like they're really hitting them.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah. Agreed. I'd be curious to see, where does the Get Started button go and that's... In that CTA does it go to a free trial?

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh. Let's. Okay. So cloud and then enter. Does this mean they're not cloud?

Adam Goyette: I don't know.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. Because this I thought was really cool, this free Splunk. I've never seen anyone do a CT like that. And for some reason I actually kind of think it's clever. I don't know why I like it so much because it's not really saying anything. It's almost like free Splunk from captivity, but like Free the Kraken. You know what I mean? But I kind of really like it. I don't know why.

Adam Goyette: Does that go to the same page as that?

Garrett Mehrguth: Let's check it out. I was wondering. Okay, now this I don't love. I'm not going to lie.

Adam Goyette: No. Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: This is like the most overwhelming, crappy thing for such a good website.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. That is not a great experience. Also really interesting, like you said, the enterprise offering that is not cloud- based, which maybe it's, I don't know. I'm so used to everything being in the cloud here that it's, oh, people still do installed software. Is that a thing?

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, I know. I was kind of thinking that same thing. This is what we did for Sumo Logic back in the day, was just more of a popup with social proof on the right. And then simple one step kind of sign up. I would copy that if I was Splunk.

Adam Goyette: Especially too, and maybe it's just your experience here, but to me it's like someone puts an email address, you should be able to pull a lot of this data. Right? Using a Clearbit reveal, especially if you're selling into the enterprise type companies. Most of them are probably logging in through VPN. Your match rates are probably a lot higher than the normal 60%. How much of this can you just get pre- populated for people to lower that friction.

Garrett Mehrguth: A thousand percent. ZoomInfo's a customer and then Clearbit's partner. Both of them have a product for this. I think you got to leverage technology if you're Splunk at this point. Especially with who they're selling into, they're going to have a really high match rate. And even if you don't... It starts with email and then you can go multi- step and it'll either pre- fill or not pre- fill. Ooh, will it let me watch without a form? What do you think? What are the chances? Yes. No. What do you think?

Adam Goyette: I'm saying no way.

Garrett Mehrguth: No way. Okay. Let me see. I want to see this. No. Wait, wait.

Adam Goyette: Is it gated?

Garrett Mehrguth: Ungated. Yes.

Adam Goyette: There you go. Look at that.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love it.

Adam Goyette: I eat my words.

Garrett Mehrguth: How long is it though? Four days. Let's see. Under 20 minutes.

Adam Goyette: Okay.

Garrett Mehrguth: Not freaking bad.

Adam Goyette: I wonder if they have CTAs throughout or towards the end, at least, inside the video would be a cool experience. Because also, to me, if you're on this page right now, I would love a CTA, rather than the related video underneath. A sign up now call to action. Right? Because this is such a high intent page for them. But if someone's actually watching the video, try to capture them right on this page. Even whether you have... You can have the video still ungated, but underneath I would almost have a form right there, say like, Hey, get started because crosstalk

Garrett Mehrguth: I'm on the exact same page as you. I think they got to do a better job here. And then I would have everyone who clicks into this in a separate retargeting campaign as well.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah. And then I would love to know the data on... They've got that gray banner underneath which just eats up space. I doubt many people are sharing on social. So eliminate that. How many people are clicking into the case study video? Just understanding what people are doing on this page as the next step, when they're actually watching the video, I think would be super interesting data to look at.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. I have a... I guess a guy help out. Here's his website. He does something really cool with video that I love, which is the video pre play. Adding value like this because I think Splunk is missing that. And I took that from Lessonly, which got acquired by Seismic. So let's see if it, no. Okay. One second. They do that on their homepage. I think something like this. I have no idea what's going on. Seismic. Let me get to you. Okay. They had something up here where the video kind of pre played.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: I think that would be cool for Splunk if they had that because this space to me is an awesome area to tell people about your brand and engage with them right here.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Totally agree. Yeah. And I think especially the pre playing of a video there versus that screenshot could be really interesting. I also like what Seismic was doing with the stats, how they were counting up. It just makes it so much more interactive when you first loaded that page, it just draws your eyes right to it. So.

Garrett Mehrguth: The size of the quotes is pretty cool too. Look how big the size is.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: No, I love that. Now when we go back here, let's go into their product marketing for a second and just see how they connect, let's say all their products to their platform. So let's look at a product first then we'll go to the platform. I think it'll give us something. So let's look maybe observability. That's a pretty big space right now. Oh, now that is weird.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. That is a weird place right there.

Garrett Mehrguth: Sucks. This image sucks. They're way better than this. So Splunk you're better than this. Fix your hero shot.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. That little video for the demo is a weird experience. The way crosstalk

Garrett Mehrguth: Why not just throw that thing right here?

Adam Goyette: Yeah, exactly. You have the space there. And also if you have the video there, you can eliminate the overview video button, which I'm assuming goes to the exact same thing.

Garrett Mehrguth: I bet it doesn't. No, no, no. I bet you this is a demo. So watch this. I bet you this is their demo video, which actually looks really clean once again. demo video plays That's actually kind of cool. So I don't mind that intro and everything, that's pretty dope. And I bet you it's different. Wait. Yeah, it is different. There we go.

Adam Goyette: Okay. So yeah, that to me is a little jarring, because you have three CTAs in the header that you're asking people to do. Right? And anytime you're asking people to do lots of things, they just won't click on anything. Most likely. Right? I also don't love the video takeover. That's just the whole screen where... Then I have to click out of it. Right? Put it on the actual page, like you said in the hero, and just let it play there. Because when you go to that full screen video, you've lost all navigation, all the branding, all the CTAs, all that sort of stuff.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. So they're doing something interesting here that we got to call out. So what they're doing that's interesting, in my opinion, is they're running a separate menu infrastructure for this product, but then they remove the CTA. I think that's a little wrong. They got to put this free trial right here. Don't use your valuable real estate for people who already pay you in the sense of support.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: And then don't have a stretched out hero shot like this. Come on Splunk. Everyone of your cus... Every one of your users is using a monitor. There's no dev who's on their lap... Come on. They know their audience so well I feel like this is just... For how good their homepage is, this could be better.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Agreed.

Garrett Mehrguth: I've been so impressed with them. I'm always disappointed when I get to certain things, I'm like man, Splunk. What happened? These are okay. What do you think about quotes that... Do you think anyone cares anymore? I've been stuck on this for my own self. Case studies, nobody actually, I feel, reads them and then quotes, do we trust them if they don't have photos anymore? What's your take on that?

Adam Goyette: Yeah. I was going to say, the one thing I would say is add in the photo into the actual... Or the company logos or the people that are there. Right? Something to grab your attention a little bit more. I think having the photos here and they have the logo, I think they did crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: And they got the big quote, with the inaudible number. This to me is a way better poll than this.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. And this is a lot of copy. Right? And so to me, it's, what is the thing you want to highlight in this quote? And so I would almost bold out the piece of the quote you want people to jump out of the page, because most people are just going to scan the page real quickly. Right? And so you want to be able to call out those big things you want their eyes on. So I think that's a big one. And then on the screenshots, maybe their whole product is built in dark mode. To me, it's kind of hard to see, just looking at it because it's so small. It's in dark mode. I would almost say, focus in on one area of the screenshot or make it a little bit larger to eat up a little more of that page.

Garrett Mehrguth: I'm on the same page as you fam. I think you got to use this entire thing here and then notice what I did on their copy. Just do this, just do this. And if you are trying to call this out, which they are doing by using a darker font and a bigger size, go all in on it. So see how this font sizes running like 21, watch what happens to make it go on 31 and then they use the bigger image here in. You're going to get the effect you want. I think they just haven't fully committed. And then my thing with copy is never do three lines without a page break. So every three lines your brain... I have literally found people's brains do not consume content more than three lines when scrolling, compared to breaking it up.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. And I think some of these are... Again, the quotes are great and everything, but I would almost shorten them too." We're alerted to issues in seconds compared to a 10 minute latency with our previous solution." That alone is a great quote. This allows us... Just almost eliminate that. Right? Because that is the problem you're solving for someone and they're calling it out for you. So.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Look what this would look like. Right? So if we did it the way we're recommending. Right? So we got four lines instead of three. So watch... Literally what just happens is a slide area where I increase the font size. We have the new font size and then we have, let's say," Get insight into cloud native microservice and monolithic applications and gain visibility into performance and trace data and gain visible performance." There we go. This is for you to run on. There you go. I think that right there tells your story quite well.

Adam Goyette: Yep, exactly. And it's also so, if you're just scanning the page, like we said, it's so much easier to get a quick understanding of what exactly they're saying. Right? Nobody wants to go read, okay, what is the Splunk log observer? I have eight lines of texts here I have to read through. That's a small font. Make it very obvious. If you're going to have that much text or copy, do bullets or something like that. Break it down into more digestible little formats for people to just quickly scan because that's what most people are looking to do on the site.

Garrett Mehrguth: I agree. And I don't love this menu situation too, where I've got products on products, solutions on features and different style... I'm a little lost. I'm not going to lie to you.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: As to... Because I have Pricing, Resources and Resources and I don't think these are the same. So this is going to, I think. Yeah. You want to.

Adam Goyette: Is that just changing the little slider there or is that actually taking you out somewhere?

Garrett Mehrguth: It's going to the bottom of the page and this takes me somewhere else. You see what I'm trying to explain? That's not it.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: And it pre-fills Observability as a toggle here is what it's doing. It's a filter link. Yes. It's filtering to here.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. It would be a really interesting journey mapping. Right? To see how are people interacting with the site? Where are they actually going? Because they're putting a ton of stuff in here. Right? You look at the main nav and stuff between the products and the solutions. And then it looks like they had industries and then the resources, there's a lot in there. So yeah. I think simplifying, which is a lot of this experience, would be really valuable.

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, so what it is. Right? We all kind of get out of the game. Right? You got... Splunk's got probably massive product marketing team for observability and they're trying to essentially build an entire website out of this. Right?

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: That's what they're doing now. I guess, the question is, is how well do they pull it off? I give them, eh, I don't love, for example, this kind of... This pricing page. I think they'd even admit is not their best work in the sense that I've got a section on section on section. And now I don't know if it's 65, 95 or 110 and what the hell is going on? To be honest, this is a little confusing. What do you think?

Adam Goyette: Yeah, I think it's definitely a little confusing. Give me one table with all of it. Right? Because what is the difference here between the one on the bottom?... It doesn't say the$ 65 starting and then the ones below were different packages, but you don't tell me what the$ 65 package is. And if it's a free trial for any of it, just have a free trial and put them in the highest package. Right? And then kind of go from there is what I would think. Unless there's big varying differences for how you might use the product.

Garrett Mehrguth: I'm on the same page as you man. I'm looking at this. I haven't. Okay. So last time when I was doing this for Sumo, we had it all above the fold really, really clean. They did a little different, kind of block stuff now. I was just trying to look at them because we were in the same kind of space. Right? They've got observability, multi- cloud, log... Same thing, Security, Ops, but very similar competitors for sure. Splunk's the gorilla in the space. They're amazing.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: So that's why I'm... They're the golden standard of this industry. And so I'm kind of looking at their pricing. Maybe it's different too by product. I wonder if each product team... Yeah, see this one has no price, really. Notice?

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: So it's pricing without pricing and let's see IT, which is probably... There we go. This is what I think that... See. Just why not go three columns? You know what I'm saying? On this Observability one.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah, exactly. I think, yeah, that's a great call out. I think of having it... And consistency. Right? Because part of it is... I'm assuming their buyers are looking at multiple solutions. Right? From Splunk, so have a consistent layout on the pricing pages. So every time I go, I don't have to relearn the page. I can just look at it and say, okay, I get what they're offering here and here's the table of what I'm getting. Also, I hated that little slide over where it's, did you find this page useful? Especially since I.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh they keep doing that to me and it's, I don't even... Why would you ask me that? It's a very weird like Qualtrics type thing it looks like.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. And also you didn't engage with it the first time. Don't load it on me again. Right, right. It's like, yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: That's probably just a CSS thing that their web team hasn't got to, but you're right. That is a glitch. I think... My biggest issue is, I think, ideally right, if I'm them, I want to get the highest AOV possible on average. Correct?

Adam Goyette: Yep. Right.

Garrett Mehrguth: That's what's going to drive my cash on hand. That's going to drive my gross margin. That's going to drive my EBITDA. Well, how the hell do I buy this thing? I think it's a very... I got... You follow me. Right? I got IT, Security, Observability, all in the Splunk cloud platform and I'm getting excited. I'm, all right.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: And then this pricing, this thing sent me on a loop that makes me think, oh man, I'm going to be in trouble. What is Ingest Pricing? If you have to try to tell me about something like this and I have to... I definitely... Oh then it's Workload Pricing. I definitely, at this point, am over my head, if that makes sense.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Entity Pricing. Holy crud.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. I'm thinking just dollar signs. Right? How expensive this. Right? Right? When I see stuff like that. And I also think too... I'd be curious to know... It seems like they're pushing the free trial. I'm assuming most people... If you're 92 of the fortune 100 companies, they're talking to your sales team. I doubt it's just a self- served thing where you have Coca- Cola signing up for this giant security tool. Right? Just completely untouched. So it's interesting that they try to drive you into a free trial experience.

Garrett Mehrguth: Everyone does that because they, I think they pioneered it. So everyone had to follow them. I'm not exactly... I'm not the one on this account, on frankly, any of our accounts. So I miss some of this very nuanced tier of in the DevOps space, which requires cross- departmental selling, massive contract and insane amount of executive oversight, why do we push people to trials? It's not air table or notion or... You know what I mean?

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Also if it's a confusing experience in the trial. Right? How many people get in and are, this is confusing? And maybe that doesn't happen to IT people, I don't know. But as a marketer, as my simple marketing brain works, when I get into trials and it's... This looks like a lot of work or I look snapshot crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: For three different pricing types of models of which I've never heard of, unless I already have a tool that uses ingest, entity or workload pricing. I'm a little, I'd say, intimidated. Because the way I always say digital works is the champion buys not the decision maker.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. What I mean by that is the chief security officer or the CSO or CTO, whoever it is that's in charge of this, goes to their director, who then goes to an analyst and says, get me three quotes. I'm going to pick my favorite two and then I'm going to bring them to the boss. That's essentially how people buy online. And so I was trying to help our clients with that because our clients are very much obsessed with marketing to the C level, even though the C level only buys from McKinsey and that's it. You get what I mean? There's not a lot of C level digital buyers in this world.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Because we work through our direct reports, as a C level, I do not go out and do demos. I might find something and send it to somebody, but I don't do demos. This is not how the game works. I need... Because I'm not the one rolling it out. Right.? That's not how you lead an organization.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: And so I'm very curious as to who would have enough confidence as their champion to know if this fits their little RFP or their needs list. I don't know how to do that when it comes to this platform. Does that make sense?

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah. It makes total sense. Also interesting on that last page, it said 91 out of the 100. So.

Garrett Mehrguth: I know highlighted that.

Adam Goyette: Spot check their stats here.

Garrett Mehrguth: No, I know. I was, oh, we lost a little trust at the moment of trust. Right? I'm about to give you my info and you got a different number.

Adam Goyette: But yeah, I think, to your point, it's not the C level person getting into these products. Right? And so I also think... That's where I think the social proof piece matters so much for buyers because if you're recommending a tool, you want to have the confidence it's the right tool because it's not just about the tool and can it do the job, but it's also the job security. Right? No one ever got fired for bringing on Salesforce. Right? That's kind of the angle I think. And so the more you can instill that.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah.

Adam Goyette: Across all the different touch points here and CTAs, I think is super important.

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, I'm on the same page as you. Splunk is that. So, once again, I think this is a great page here by Splunk. I just think... This is the hardest part for these types of companies, man. How do you organize a consistent website experience across all these different business units and product teams? And the truth is, is they haven't necessarily perfectly done that quite yet. I do love some of this stuff. The CEO, Doug Merrit, discussed how Splunk and AWS worked together. This is cool. C level buyers want to feel this comfort right here. You know what I mean?

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Yeah. I like the savings calculator, it looks like they have there right in the middle.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Right here. This one. Oh, they have two of them. Yeah. They have a savings calculator. They have a data analysis. Let's see the savings calculator. Yeah. See, this is like... They do a really good job. They genuinely do.

Adam Goyette: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: It's just... I think in this moment of psychological friction, I don't know the difference between enterprise and cloud because you're not saying on premise. To be completely honest, I think they need to call it Splunk Premise versus Splunk Cloud or something like that because it's not... I'm assuming enterprise is non- cloud. Is that a... But what if it's not? Genuinely, what if enterprise is cloud driven? Yeah, see it's operating on your choice of cloud. See what I'm saying? So they're making me think it's not cloud, what it's really saying is you can use any cloud, I think.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like don't even... Do you even need to lead with that question of, which one do you want? You know what I mean? Because they're trying to put that qualifier up front and it's maybe just have that in the discussion. When you get someone on the phone, it's, how is this going to get installed? Or how's it going to work within your company? Maybe make a point of, you can install it any way you want. It could be cloud based or installed locally if that's the angle. Right? But that doesn't need to be a point of differentiation at the very top of the funnel.

Garrett Mehrguth: Or you just go like this, you call it Splunk Platform and then Splunk Enterprise. Totally fine also. I genuinely was convinced Enterprise was on Premise based off of the way it was organized as naming conventions.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah. They also have a lot of CTAs that are going to varying different things. So, again, back to real estate, this is, again, the form is kind of rough here I think. Splunk Enterprise 8. 2. 3.3... You can just get rid of that crazy.

Garrett Mehrguth: It's a world of crazy. Yeah. We're back to this weird CTA of try Splunk Enterprise. Who would you Splunk Enterprise for?... That's what I don't understand, and maybe we're stupid. Which is totally fair Splunk. We're stupid. I actually... We are stupid. So I'm going to preface it by that. We're all on the outside here. However, do you think Coca- Cola is, Hey, you know what we're going to do for the next 60 days?

Adam Goyette: Yes.

Garrett Mehrguth: Spin up Splunk. I don't know. That seems like a bit of a stretch.

Adam Goyette: Also the no credit card required feels weird because, to your point, the Enterprise company, it's.

Garrett Mehrguth: You don't buy it on a credit card. They're going to invoice this and Splunk wouldn't accept a credit card because their processing fees would be 1. 2 million dollars.

Adam Goyette: Exactly. Yeah. So yeah. It's an interesting spot here. Also the download piece of it is really kind of interesting. Because this is for the installed version.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Adam Goyette: Right?

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Because they have that on their form fill right over here where you're, do I want the cloud trial or software download?

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah. So.

Garrett Mehrguth: It's inaudible. Okay. So how I would love to always kind of finish these. You are... Congratulations Adam. Sorry, Help Scout, you're now the CMO of Splunk and you've got three things you can do to make a big impact in your first 12 months. Forget a quarter. Okay. That ain't how the Splunk's going to move. Okay. So we got three things we can try to do in 2022. And by the way, if you get all three done you'd be their greatest CMO ever, I would imagine. So what are the three things you want to really get right for Splunk?

Adam Goyette: Yeah. I think number one is, I'd get all the product marketing leads who are developing these product pages and be, we need consistency in the experience on the site. Right? So I think the CTAs varying and headlines and just all the pages crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: Menus and sub menus.

Adam Goyette: Yes. We need a consistent experience so when people are going through, they understand they're not relearning the page every single time. I think that would do a lot to increase. Number two is, that form's brutal. I would think, you see, and maybe they don't, but that... How many fields are there? One, two, three, four, five.

Garrett Mehrguth: At least go two column on this. You can go first name, last name, job title, company, email, phone number. You could at least visualize this in two columns. Whose name is... Look how big your name would have to be to need that much space. You see what I'm saying? It creates a very overwhelming layout.

Adam Goyette: Also if you're taking over the page, because you're blurring out, just slide it over even more. Right? Like why is it such a narrow column?

Garrett Mehrguth: Where's my social proof? Give me amazing quote from the REI thing you got everywhere, from maybe a personalized video from the CEO about your values and trust, the impact Splunk has on the world. Give me something that gets emotional connection to wanting to do all this work.

Adam Goyette: Yep. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's a big one, I would try to update is that form. And then I think again, I think back to the consistency piece too, is, the way they're talking about the products seems like it jumps around a little bit. Like you've mentioned, in here the boxes that are showing here don't necessarily align with the navigation. It feels like there's a big navigation problem here across the site. Right? Because it seems like they're trying to put so much on there that it just creates a very confusing experience. If I'm just looking for this baseline, what's the pricing and all that sort of stuff. And I think they do a great job with social proof on these points across the pages, but then they just stop selling on the signup page or the signup flow or the pricing page. And that to me is always a big no- no because it's, Hey, just because they got here, doesn't mean they're convinced they're going to fill out the form. Right? And so I think adding that incentive, see why 92 or 91 out of the top fortune 100 companies trust us with their security and then voted, whatever, number one in Gartner's quadrant or whatever stat you have there to be, oh, okay. Right? I think you have to keep pushing people down those funnels and stuff like that. So I think those would be the three big areas I would focus in on.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love where your head's Adam. I completely agree. And I also... Their homepage is phenomenal and they need to implement this to the rest of the website.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh look, humans actually work at Splunk. You kind of get my point. They do such a good job on this homepage of humanizing, organizing and articulating. And I get from this to this.

Adam Goyette: Yeah. It goes from feeling like a very forward, easy to do business with type of company impression you get on the homepage and then you jump to a page like this and you're, oh, this is an enterprise.

Garrett Mehrguth: It is. You went from, oh my God, Security. Maybe this could help me with what I... I don't know. It's a real quick thing in their branding and their articulation of their brand's values and emotions. So Adam.

Adam Goyette: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: Phenomenal work today. Awesome having you on the show. Really, really amazing to learn from you and hear your insights. Hopefully I think the audience really enjoyed this one. What's the best way for anyone to kind of learn more about your journey, follow along kind of what you're doing?

Adam Goyette: Yeah. Connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter, I'm on both spots. And then yeah, that's pretty much it. We share a lot of content through Help Scout blog and In the Works, which is our founder focus content hub. So.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Adam, and for all of our listeners, that right there is another episode of the SaaS Marketing Makeover. Thanks and have a great day.

Adam Goyette: Thanks.

DESCRIPTION

In this live show, CEO and Co-founder of Directive, Garrett Mehrguth, and a SaaS marketing leader work together to build a strategy for a recognizable SaaS brand - as quickly as possible.


The company will be randomly selected by spinning a wheel at the beginning of the show, and together, the two will craft a strategy for SaaS marketing leaders everywhere.


Our guest... Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing at Help Scout