Joining Watchmaster

Alex Kracov: So we're going to spend today talking about e-commerce. So I'd love to start today's conversation with your time at Watchmaster. Because that sort of seemed to be your first serious foray into the world of e-commerce. I know you were doing a bunch of B2B SaaS stuff before. But I would love to hear the story of what is Watchmaster, how did you end up building that company?

Casey Armstrong: Yes, so I actually got connected with the team because a good friend and business partner of mine, Patrick Vlaskovits, we did a bunch of growth workshops and tours all over Europe, which is another story. We actually did 11 countries in one year. Then the next summer, we did five countries. It was actually at our event in - it might have been in Berlin where I met the CEO and founder of Watchmaster. And so, from there, we started talking and then - he hadn't started the company yet. And fast forward nine months later or so, he messaged me. He's like, "Hey, I'm going to be in California," which people just think California is like everything is close to it. But he was in NorCal. He's like, "Let's connect. I'm starting this company. I would love to chat." So I actually flew up and met up with him, and we started talking about it. I just thought the concept was extremely interesting for Watchmaster. I actually moved with - I had one child at the time. So my wife and my one-year-old at the time, we moved to Berlin to help him get started and scale the business.

Alex Kracov: So cool. So what was the concept? Was it just like a luxury watch community? Are you selling it online, or was it a new watch brand? What was Watchmaster?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, so it was more of like a marketplace. And so we would buy directly from the vendors and also a lot of the gray market stuff. We would buy from all the major watch companies: Rolex, TAG Heuer, Breitling, Omega. It's your typical like 80:20. In this case, it was more like 95:5, where it was so heavy on Rolex. And even within Rolex, there were a handful of models that sold extremely well. Within those models, there were a couple of colors that sold extremely well. So it's a fascinating business. And so, honestly, we buy and then just look for markup arbitrage as we'd sell directly to consumers or we'd sell to businesses as well.

And so another way I position it too is kind of like that arbitrage. And so we buy in the south in, let's say, the poor countries of Europe, to be honest, where also there is just different VAT structures. So we'd buy like let's say in Greece. I think the VAT there, the VAT is like 23%. Then we'd sell them in the north. And so we'd sell in Germany. We'd sell in the Nordics. We'd sell across the UK. This was pre-Brexit. I think in Germany, I could be wrong because I don't remember all these numbers. But I think the VAT there is like, which is their tax, is like 19%. So that alone. Even if we sold the same good, depending on how we purchase the watch, that gives us - if we sold it for the same dollar amount, which we wouldn't, because Germany is more affluent and we could sell it for more money. That's 4% in profit for us right there, granted sends shipping and fulfillment and customer acquisition costs and all that. And in Europe and actually in the UK, we'd actually mark it up quite a bit. So yeah, it was pretty interesting.

Alex Kracov: So interesting. It's crazy how much the watch market has exploded. I don't know how deep you are watching TikTok. But all those watch guys on TikTok, I think they're all in New York going to each other's shops and doing the markups and all the games. I mean, it sounds like you're doing that but at scale on a digital marketplace. Is that correct?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, I mean, honestly, if we just would have sat on all the watches and then once the COVID craze came, watch prices just skyrocket. I mean, you look at just the best seller which is the Submariner. I mean, the price of those alone, I think we were buying those for around Ä5,000. I don't know what they are today, but they're a lot more than that right now.

Growing to $30mil

Alex Kracov: And so you're responsible for growth at Watchmaster. And so I believe, I think the numbers were like you grew to 30 million in revenue in the first year. I think my notes are right. You can correct me if I'm wrong. But how did you grow it? Was it just that the prices were so attractive that you were able to sell things efficiently, or were you using a lot of digital advertising to draw people in? How did you sort of think about growing Watchmaster?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, it was a lot digital, and so there were a lot of people involved. I remember there were a lot of people. We had a very small team. But there were multiple people, of course, involved. So I'm not by any means taking all of the credit. And so like this guy, Philip, on the team was huge in just from all the digital sides. A lot of it was digital. But one of the things that helped us a lot - again, other than aggressive digital strategy - and so one of the projects that I helped spearhead that helped a lot too is, we essentially built this pricing engine. We would look at, okay, what did we purchase the watches for, and what is our - then how did we purchase it? Because there are several ways you can buy it which impacts how you can do the tax and the sale afterwards. What is our target margin? Then we basically would crawl all of our competitors every single day. Then that would feed into our pricing algorithm.

And so we would try to undercut them to the nearest $5 increment in euros every single day. Then we'd apply that multiple times a day into - so our number one channel was actually, at the time, Google Shopping. And so we would upload that because we actually had - people knew they were searching for a Rolex Submariner or a Rolex insert the blank. Actually, one of the best sellers that we had was - I forget which James Bond movie came out at the time. But Omega had a James Bond watch. It's just we could not sell. We just kept increasing. We didn't even use our pricing engine for that. We just kept increasing the price. And so that was a huge factor. And so we would just use that and run our algorithm there to feed into our pricing engine and update Google Shopping every single day. And so that helped a lot. So then we were just always getting, let's just say, the Google version of the Buy Box. And we're always just that much cheaper just to pull those people over.

Alex Kracov: It's fascinating. I feel like so many people are thinking about, I mean, the creative. What words do I put in my ads? All of that stuff. But I think this is such a good story of, okay, it's actually the price that ultimately matters and all of that backend work you're doing when it comes to your pricing algorithm. Just undercutting by just a little bit. I mean, I'm sure it just moved the needle a ton. It's so interesting.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, it was very numbers-driven. I mean, to take some parallels to B2B, we wanted to get at bat. And so sometimes people just - it blew my mind. People sometimes just buy. Our AOV was like Ä5,500. This is not a cheap purchase. Oftentimes, though, they'd want to talk to us on the phone, make sure that we're a real company, get some social proof, understand what they're buying, see if we have other things for sale. But again, so that's where we want to tell. We always use the price, or at least give ourselves an at bat and give the sales team a chance to close it. Because without that, then obviously you have no shot to close.

Joining ShipBob

Alex Kracov: And so after Watchmaster, you kind of went into the technology and software side of e-commerce. And that's where you still are today. So you're the CMO of ShipBob where you've led the marketing team for a number of years. But I'd love to go back to those early days. What made you join ShipBob in the first place, and can you explain just like what was ShipBob like at the time?

Casey Armstrong: Yes, so before Watchmaster even, a lot of my background was more in B2B SaaS, and I've done some B2C. I always liked the B2B side a lot more. And so when I left Watchmaster, I knew I wanted to get back into just B2B software, and specifically in e-commerce. And so I actually joined BigCommerce. So I was at BigCommerce for a few years, which was a lot of fun, and I learned an insane amount. We had a very talented leadership team that I was able to learn from as well, along with some of my colleagues.

Then when I was there, ShipBob reached out. I still remember getting the email I had. I was not looking for a new role. I hadn't interviewed anywhere else during my whole time at BigCommerce. I got the email, and I just deleted the email. I go about my day. Then that night, I'm like, what was that company with that funny name that's allegedly growing this fast, and I've never heard of them? Because at Watchmaster, we did a lot of things really well. We obviously scaled very, very quickly. But I think inventory management and supply chain management and fulfillment, we did not do well. And that was so important for us because, again, we're shipping these extremely valuable goods. And so I felt that pain firsthand. I was like, okay, if I can partner with these people that want to create essentially the easy button for fulfillment, which is a very painful and labor-intensive and expensive process, then that would be pretty amazing. And so just from my work in the B2B SaaS space on the marketing side again. At the time, ShipBob was newer and their presence wasn't extremely well-known. I just thought it'd be a strong fit. And so yeah, I just met the founders and saw the product. And instantly, I was like, okay, I need to find a way to join this company.

Alex Kracov: And so just so I understand. ShipBob sort of solved the problem of, I guess, all of the shipping. So what happens after you actually buy a product online? There's the fulfillment centers. Where does all this go? And so ShipBob sort of handles all of, I guess, the backend infrastructure of actually how do you get it from somebody placing an order on the website to a customer's door.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, so first, some background. Because a lot of people won't necessarily know what ShipBob is. So we are a global fulfillment platform. And so we just really make things easy for these small, medium, midsize businesses to be able to sell online, to fulfill orders online. And so we have our technology which is how they can power their entire supply chain through our technology. And that sits on top of our physical infrastructure. And so we have 40 plus facilities, fulfillment centers, in the United States. Then we've got another dozen or so in Canada, in the UK, across the European Union, and Australia. So you can send your inventory to us. We hold it. Then whether you're selling it on your dot com store like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Woo, you're selling it through marketplaces like Amazon or Target, you're selling through physical retail, and so you need us to send it to Nordstrom, or Saks, or something like that. We actually power fulfillment for TikToks, if you want to sell through TikTok. And so no matter how you want to sell and no matter where you want to sell from a global perspective, we can actually do the fulfillment for you. Then you can use our software to manage your entire supply chain.

Alex Kracov: I'm curious what ShipBob was like when you joined. Because I imagine it took a long time to build out all of those different distribution centers and fulfillment centers. How big was the company? What was the state of the marketing team revenue? Can you kind of paint a little bit of a picture for us?

Casey Armstrong: Yes, we've fortunately, I think, kept the overall company relative to our size, rather lean, including the marketing team. So I oversee the marketing team. I also see the partnership team as well. But yeah, when I joined, we had four or five fulfillment centers in the US that I was at. We were pretty much solely focused on direct-to-consumer. So we didn't do all things omni. I mean, we did some stuff through Amazon, but that was really it. The marketing team, I think, was like three people at the time, plus me. So we were definitely earlier stage. The company was really founded off of outbound sales. And so when I joined, marketing was really like call it a year into its evolution. I joined in 2018, so I've been there for five and a half years.

Alex Kracov: What were your initial goals for the marketing program? You said that the company was traditionally on outbound sales when you come in, and you have this small team. What do you do to start building a marketing program at ShipBob?

Casey Armstrong: It was a combination of a few things. And so especially on my day one, focus was not just marketing but also the partnership function as well, which leads into some of the marketing, which I'll talk about in a second. And so a good friend of mine who also was on my team at BigCommerce, he left and launched his own SEO agency, which was one of the huge needle movers we had at BigCommerce. And so I knew, and one thing I want to do is like - I think a lot of B2B companies make this mistake, whether they're early stage, whether they're later stage. It's like not focus, like not prioritizing channels. They'll try to do everything under the sun, or they'll look at, let's say, where we are at ShipBob today and say, "Well, ShipBob is doing paid search and paid social and affiliate and TV and out of home and podcasts and everything under the sun." But yeah, we evolved to that stage. We didn't start really going beyond really three core marketing channels and I'd say five demand gen channels, including outbound and partnerships, until we were well over 100 million in annual revenue.

So people, I think, just spray and pray way too much. So for us, it was like, okay, what are the channels? And so I won't, unless you want me to, get to it. But we essentially like create this two-by-two grid which was essentially impacting confidence. It's essentially creating this ceiling and floor measure of the different channels and sort of okay, well, what channels are going to move the needle? Like in B2B SaaS, SEO is a proven channel and we're a known entity. And so we solve a known problem. And so e-commerce fulfillment, e-commerce repeal, those types of things. There are search queries for what we do. Or some solutions, they just - it's tough to even describe what the solution is, and so people can't even search for it. So, okay, well, there's a known problem. So an SEO works for B2B SaaS. We're going to focus on SEO. Paid search, same thing. Again, maybe it's lower in your two-by-two grid because it's so darn expensive. But there's a lot of benefits you can get from that, including data and then affiliate marketing. And so we're like, okay, we're only going to focus on these.

Then SEO, I think a lot of people think, well, it's going to take so long. I think if you do it right and you know how to scale it, you can actually scale SEO really quickly. And so SEO was a huge home run for us early. And at the same time, with partnerships too. Because I think with partnerships and partner marketing, e-commerce is such a tight knit ecosystem where we're really able to get, I think, with a lot of the larger partners or they're larger than us at the time. I mean, to be honest, what I jokingly told my team there was: treat this like you're in high school. So at the time, I'm like, "Shopify is like the star quarterback. We want to be going to - we're at the party or whatever with the star quarterback." It's a popularity contest. And so who are these other companies? There's BigCommerce. It was really big at the time. Klaviyo is huge. How do we gorge us as a very up and coming company? How do we partner and do things with these other brands, leverage their brand awareness, leverage the confidence the consumers and sellers have with these brands or these technology partners of ours, to just really elevate our presence? And so huge focus there, let's say, on the branding side. It was more like the partnership side. Then on the marketing side, it's really, how do we leverage SEO and how do we leverage paid and the data between the two to really drive a lot of just decision making across those channels?

Scaling SEO Quickly

Alex Kracov: I love this answer honestly selfishly, because I think this is how I've been thinking about investing in Dock. I mean, Erik, who's quietly listening as the producer of this call, his background is all in SEO. And that's where we've quietly been investing for a long time, and we're slowly getting into the partner game. One selfish question I want to ask is, how do you think about scaling SEO quickly? Because we have definitely - we see it working. But it does take some time, I think. And so are there any tricks of the trade you can scale that fast?

Casey Armstrong: I think just to simplify SEO, there's really like there's what happens on the site, and there's what happens off the site. And so off the site is really just link building, which is like old school SEO one on one. And it's kind of painful, but that's part of the task at hand. And then on site. And so we spend a lot of time, which we can chat about after this call for sure, it's like the pre-writing. And so we probably spend just as much time doing the research in advance of what we're going to write than what we actually write. Because there are ways you can look at signals the different solutions have out there. And so we essentially just have like a playbook. Like what should we write about? So let's just say the query is 'e-commerce fulfillment.' Well, what are the complimentary topics that we also need to discuss to put ourselves in the position to actually rank? So what is actually valuable? Because we definitely need to write that, so people actually click on it and stay on it and share it. But also, there are solutions out there. Well, Google will essentially tell you the signals of the topics that you should also include in it.

Alex Kracov: I don't know if you just ever use that tool, Clearscope.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, we've been using Clearscope, for sure.

Alex Kracov: Right. That is one of those tools that really helps, I think, helps you understand those keyword clusters so far. I'm writing about credit cards. I should include the word Visa and MasterCard, and they're probably into it because those are clusters.

Casey Armstrong: Exactly. Actually, Patrick, who I mentioned earlier, who I did the tours with, there's so many businesses that never got off the ground and far enough. We actually had a company. We were trying something called - we call them semantic intent. It's exactly what Clearscope did. And so we just never productize it. It was so stupid of us. But whatever. Those closed doors opened up others. And I'm glad to see Clearscope and a couple of others, they've done a great job with these solutions.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, that's really interesting how, I don't know, how all this marketing industry sort of evolve over time and mature, and people start figuring it out. I don't know. That's what makes marketing kind of a fun game. It's just a constantly evolving landscape.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah. What I think partner marketing helps too is by - because link building, for example, is like very few people enjoy it. And it's kind of a pain. It's not like it used to be or called 10 years ago. And so that's where I think partner marketing can help too. Because oftentimes, you just need to build the domain authority by leveraging some of your partners. And so when you start doing these things, let's say, with the Shopifys and Klaviyos and BigCommerces of the world that are just extremely strong domains, they're going to be referencing you anyways for the webinar that you're doing or the content that you guys collaborated on together. And so those can just more organically just increase your ability to rank as well.

Partnering with Bigger Brands as a Startup

Alex Kracov: So when you're building these partner programs you talked about, how do you think about going to these partners, catching their attention? What does it actually look like? Are you writing articles as you just said? Are you doing webinars? Are you giving them money to sponsor a conference? Is it all of the above? How do you sort of think about the co-marketing programs you're building with these different partners?

Casey Armstrong: It's all of the above, but our focus at the beginning was a lot on webinars and digital events. Because those were very scalable. And the guy we had at the time that was overseeing that at ShipBob, who I'd worked with before, he was just very proficient at that. And again, it's very scalable. At the time, it was in high demand. I'd say it waned a bit post-COVID, but I think it's picked up again lately. You just need to be very creative on like - at the end of the day, especially if we can run these programs, our partners will gladly participate with us. And if we can fill them with our ideal customer and their ICP as well, they're going to always show up. And so our goal even today is like when we host webinar, we want it to be, both quantity and quality, better than anything else that they'd get anywhere else. And if they're going to host it, we want to be number one on their list of partners that drove attendees to theirs. Because that way we know, anytime we do something, the partners are going to want to join ours. And anytime that our partners do something, they're going to come asking for us to join.

Then obviously, you need to make sure that there's overlap in what the value of the products drive. And so, for example, if we're doing all of the fulfillment supply chain within the e-commerce space and then we have, let's say, a platform, there's just this natural crossover of the value that we drive. Or, if they're a customer support tool, which is essentially focused on the post-purchase experience like we are, there's just a natural overlap with our products being very complementary with each other. And if we're going to have the same customer and, again, the value I talked about earlier, it just naturally aligns rather well.

Alex Kracov: I'm curious what you recommend how should startup sort of think about this. Because I think one of the problems with partner marketing is, as a startup, you don't have a big email list. You're still figuring things out. But you want to go get that big brands audience, and get their attention. So how do you go about approaching a bigger brand and sort of convincing them to partner up with you? Is it just like, hey, we're going to do all the work. Slide in here, and we'll help drive a little bit of leads? How do you sort of think about working with those bigger partners?

Casey Armstrong: You have to think about, based off of your team, where you can provide the most outsized value. And so you always need to start with that. It's like this very unselfish view of like, well, how can we be the ones? How can they at the end of the day, just be like, okay, well, actually, they overperformed? And so maybe you have an amazing founder that knows the space extremely well and can come on. Maybe people know him or her. Maybe they don't. But they can come in and just add a ton of value by joining and sharing their insights or sharing the data from the company or sharing customer stories, whatever it may be. And so they're just an awesome person to speak.

Another good thing could be, well, maybe the marketing manager, whoever it is, is good at hosting these. Because they're not easy. I mean, they're not - there's a proven playbook for this. But it requires time. It requires the know-how of how to tie everything together from your marketing automation platform, to your podcast platform or your webinar platform and getting all the partners involved. You're herding cats. So maybe it's that. Maybe you are the destination where people can have these, and you can grow them over time. And again, you just got to start somewhere. So like during COVID, we launched this thing called Operator Series where we just interviewed customers and started off, I'd say, rather small. 10, 20 people would come. And at the end, we had several hundred people that would be joining for these things. And so don't expect your first one or your first few. I'm sure you felt this way with the podcast. It's not like you're going to be number one trending webinar on day one. But you've got to start somewhere.

Alex Kracov: Yeah, we did this webinar play all the time at Lattice. And in the early days, it was hilarious. We had 10 people sitting on there, and I'm sitting in our founder's apartment trying to get it going and build anything, any audience around it. Then you slowly - BambooHR was like a big partner. We would just beg them to do anything, give them money. We'll do all of the work. We'll drive all the leads. Just send one email to your list, please. But then, over time, it just compounded. And eventually, I mean, we ran a virtual event with 20,000 people. So it got there over time.

Casey Armstrong: That's a lot.

Alex Kracov: It took five, six years to kind of build up that email list.

Casey Armstrong: I bet that helped you guys so much also from a brand perspective. Because Lattice's, especially in the B2B SaaS space, Lattice is so well-known. And I'm sure it's from doing things like that.

Alex Kracov: Totally. And I think my best partner marketing trick is - I always find it funny that for SaaS companies who have conferences, they ask money for partners. And it's like no. You don't need the 20k-sponsorship package. Just get them to drive leads. And so we would do lead-driving packages. And that's how we got 20,000 people there. It was like, "Hey, Bamboo. Don't give us 20k. Just drive 5,000 people to this event, and then you can be here for free." And so that play, I think, worked really well. Underrated play, I think.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, and that's a lot of people. Congrats.

ShipBob's Positioning

Alex Kracov: It was during COVID, so I think everyone was just bored and needed something to do. I'm curious how you thought about ShipBob's positioning. Because it seems like you were going after a known market fulfillment centers. But did you have to evolve the positioning? Did you think you were sort of reinventing an existing category? How did you think about that? Then one side question is, like, I've heard you use Amazon on your website a lot. So you seem to sort of anchor ShipBob's positioning like Amazon-level fulfillment and logistics. How do you think about this complex thing of how do you describe ShipBob to the market?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, so we don't use the Amazon-like experience verbiage really anymore. But when we were getting started, we had to because people didn't know who we were. I remember even explaining to my friends. I'm here in Southern California. So tech has increased, but it's not like it is in San Francisco and New York and elsewhere. So I remember I should explain to my friends when I joined BigCommerce. They're like, so what do you do? I explained it, and they just couldn't understand what the heck I was talking about. Maybe that's on me. But when I explained ShipBob, I'm like, oh, it took me no time at all. We do fulfillment. We're providing this Amazon-like experience for these direct-to-consumer brands. And in two seconds, they're like, "Oh, that's cool. I totally get it." And so we used that a lot, just few words as possible and succinctly as possible. You just want to give this clear message of like, what do we actually do? So you can skip through. You know how it is when we've all evaluated software. And I'm sure you guys dealt with this some at Lattice, because Lattice offers so much. People are like, so what do you do? What's the value you provide me? But if I'm like, yeah, you get this Amazon-like experience on your website, instantly, they're hooked. Because that's what everybody wants. And so we used that a lot, again, especially before people knew who we were and what we offered. And before, honestly, fulfillment - and I can to this in a second - before fulfillment was, I'd say, really more in the spotlight, we were really going after SMB brands.

And so for us, I think what makes ShipBob interesting is - not that software is easy. Because it's not by any means. But what's interesting with ShipBob is like, I really view building these companies as like there's really your product and engineering access. Then there's an access that's like go-to-market. You need to have those aligned. That's what's going to drive the business. With us, there's like a Z axis, if you will. It's like operations. And so everything we do on product and engineering needs to mirror or work well with what we do in these physical operations and vice versa. And that takes time to evolve a lot, because now there's just more stakeholders and, again, moving physical goods. But as our products evolve, we've been able to evolve our messaging. Because now - when I started, again, we didn't have global. We didn't have omni. People didn't really know who the heck we were. We couldn't really service mid-market and large mid-market brands like we can today. And so again, that's evolved quite a bit.

Alex Kracov: You touched on it there. But I'm curious, what was that like ICP journey like for you? Because it sounds like you started SMB, moved up market slowly over time. Did I get that right?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah.

Alex Kracov: How did you sort of think about evolving the customer you were serving?

Casey Armstrong: So this is where I think marketing and sales need to work extremely closely together. And it's because you can drive all these leads. But if they're not turning into SQLs or opportunities, whatever nomenclature people use, then basically, where sales says yes, this is a lead that we have a chance to close, then what's the point of those leads when those leads are not valuable, or at least not valuable today? Then if those SQLs or opportunities don't turn into closed ones, then what's the point there? Because then, they're not turning into revenue. And so I think that's where we're working extremely closely with the sales or the revenue teams as important. Because then you can understand. Because maybe they're not bad leads, but they're just bad leads today. Or maybe they're not bad opportunities, but they're bad opportunities today. And so just constantly evaluating that.

And so we actually did that early on when I joined, where we're able to set a bunch of, let's say, huge opportunities, but we weren't able to close any of them. And so it's like, okay, well, why? We're really digging into there. It's like, okay, well, they need A. All these companies need A. All these companies need B, and all these companies need C. We don't have those yet. And so it's I think getting a lot of feedback from the deals that you lose, especially those larger deals, to help inform the product roadmap. And so that really was, again, fed into things like global and omnichannel and customization. Then all of a sudden, once you start rolling those things out, then you can start leveraging that in your marketing, regardless of channel. You can start leveraging those in your sales and sales enablement.

Ecommerce Growth

Alex Kracov: I'd love to talk a little bit more about the Z axis, as you mentioned. Because ShipBob is a fascinating business. You have software, but there's all these serious costs. You own warehouses and trucks. And so I assume you just don't have the classic SaaS margins. How does that impact the decisions you make as a business, especially those go-to-market decision? Does that mean you just drive a more efficient CAC? Are there other interesting implications? How do you think about that dynamics? It's pretty unique to ShipBob compared to other SaaS companies?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, so we're asset light on that. So we're partnering within these facilities. And same with our trucking partners and the carriers. And so that allows us to have, I'd say, a lot better margins than people would probably expect. But regardless, we have to keep an extremely close eye on payback, as do all companies. And so I think it's there. Again, just maybe the overarching theme is working closely with the business leaders across other teams. And so it's working closely with, let's say, whether it's your sales ops team or it's finance about understanding what channels are driving which deals and making sure. What are acceptable ROI, or LTV to CAC, or paybacks for your business? Then I think, importantly, it's looking at it. It's never perfect, and I don't want to get in a whole spiel about multi-touch attribution. It's like every marketer's, it's like the bane of their existence. But even with a simplified attribution model, how are you able to attribute what is actually driving specific revenue? Because a channel might drive a ton of leads and a ton of opportunities, maybe they're all tiny, and the payback does not really pencil. Or maybe your fine having that be a lost leader. But what is actually really driving the revenue, and how can you invest more on those channels?

Alex Kracov: One channel I'd like to talk about is TikTok, because I think TikTok has had a major impact on e-commerce brands, especially recently. And I'm curious how you think about TikTok's impact from your perspective. And is it similar to what Instagram's impact was a few years back? Does it feel different? How do you sort of think about TikTok as a channel for e-comm?

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, I think that you're spot on. Sometimes you're like no, or hopefully beforehand not retroactively. Like okay, this is like a channel that I have to pounce on. There is always like - I talked about earlier about around prioritization. But sometimes, there's that shiny penny that's worth going after. And so with TikTok right now, I think for these e-commerce sellers, you have to carve off time to invest there. It is such an exciting channel. What TikTok has done on, I think, helping change consumer behavior and taking a lot of what worked in the East and having that work here in the West has just been fascinating, how they've really focused on the whole customer experience in the post-purchase process and everything like that. But yes, it is a channel that is blowing up. And all brands should look at that. I think it's the most exciting thing for any e-commerce seller since Instagram ads and the heyday when people were just building these million-dollar businesses essentially on top of like Shopify and Instagram. And so I think people should be jumping all over this.

It reminds me of very early in my career when there was this Google Apps Marketplace, which was - I forget. I don't even know what they call it now - the Google Suite, if you will. Gmail for business. They had this marketplace for apps, and we were able to leverage it like crazy. Google was subsidizing a ton of it as well, including a lot of the paid search. You could search for project management, and they were essentially paying themselves or project management tool or project management software. And the number one paid ad was their app store. Then we were ranked number one, and we weren't paying anything to rank number one. I wish that the game so we could be number one. And so we're basically getting all the clicks at the top for project management software and paying nothing. So anyways, there's sometimes these arbitrage opportunities - Instagram ads and now TikTok.

Alex Kracov: Do you see any arbitrage opportunities for B2B companies today? Because I've messed around with TikTok. We'll probably put a clip of this interview up on TikTok. But honestly, we haven't had a lot of success. It's like we get 50, 60 views, like two boring guys talking about B2B SaaS. But yeah, is there any arbitrage opportunities you see for B2B that you want to share, you want to keep a close?

Casey Armstrong: Nothing right now, unfortunately. But I'd say, still, so many people neglect SEO. Depending on the team and the experience and skill set and, of course, the product, if people actually search for what you have, I think it's just such a no-brainer for people to invest in.

Alex Kracov: I think even stuff like podcasts and just building brand. I think what people trip up at B2B SaaS is, everyone starts going down these marketing paths because I think they think they should, or they see other people doing it. But then they lack the consistency and the rigor over a long term. I think the trick with any of these programs is, you just have to stick with it. You have to keep doing it, and you build a brand. You can't look for that immediate ROI. Because if you look for the immediate ROI, we'd have stopped this podcast after 10 listens on the first episode. But I look at this as like, alright, five years from now if I could be a mini Joe Rogan for B2B SaaS, great. Even if I had 5,000 people listening, that would be huge. And it could drive compounding effect for the business. So I don't know. I think consistency is a funny arbitrage opportunity for a lot of companies.

Casey Armstrong: Agreed. Also, it's not just always quantity. What is the quality that you're getting? Because if you're viewed as this voice in the ecosystem for your industry and then these larger companies will then take you more seriously earlier in the journey, that could have massive ROI.

Alex Kracov: One fun thing I saw you guys do is, I think you brand your ShipBob trucks, right? So you say you don't own them, but you brand them. Can you talk about how that came to be? I don't know if that's a fun story. But I saw it and I was like, oh, that's cool. I want trucks that have my brand on.

Casey Armstrong: A book that I'm sure other people mentioned a bit as well, so Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message" where he essentially says, like, how you get in front of your customers is equal, if not more important than what you get from your customers. That's essentially the crux of the buck. And so for us, as we're fulfilling goods, I really want to think through that, of like how we can get in front of our customers. It's very important. And that's simultaneous with - at the end of the day, we're this fulfillment technology solution. It doesn't really get much more boring than that. But you know what's pretty cool is some of the brands that we work with. We work with some really cool brands. And so why can we position ourselves alongside these cool brands? So now you'll see across New York, and LA, and other regions, it's us with Jennifer Aniston's LolaVie brand. Or, it's Tony's, which is like one of the hottest items out there. If you go to any Target for kids, it's one of the hottest toys out there. We've got our trucks with Tom Brady's TB12 brand. And so it's really, how can we partner with our customers who we're delivering all these goods for anyways, and just really elevate their presence because they love that as well? And it's helping elevate us alongside these cool commerce brands as well.

Alex Kracov: It's a great marketing campaign. And I do see that tactic a lot, a lot of like the billboards in the Bay Area. SalesForce has the giant one on the 101. They're always swapping it in with whoever their latest big customer is, like the F1 drivers or some healthcare system and stuff. I don't know. It perfectly makes the brands seem cooler. But then also, everyone wants to buy software from people who have helped a business like them before. And so it really helps them put themselves in your shoes. You'd be like, oh, okay, well, if people use ShipBob for this, or if that brand is using ShipBob for something, I could be using it too. So yeah, I love that, that type of marketing campaign.

Casey Armstrong: And we often more just blend in the background with our customers, which we're totally fine with. Like them never having any idea, that the consumers not knowing that we're part of the equation. But this is, as we evolve our brand and evolve our business, it's one of the first forays into just getting more into the consumer mind.

Managing ShipBob's Marketing Team

Alex Kracov: I'd love to talk a little bit more about the marketing team you've built at ShipBob. What does the team look like today? How is it structured? How do you think of the different functions you've sort of built across the team?

Casey Armstrong: So to simplify it, we have our digital team. And so they focus on a lot of paid search, paid social, marketing analytics. We've got product marketing. We have content and SEO. Fortunately, the team lead there, she's well-versed across a lot of stuff. And so she oversees marketing automation and our designer and developer as well. We have our global marketing team focused in the UK and Australia. Then we have partner marketing. And under that, they run all things, events as well. So digital and in-person, too.

Alex Kracov: Got you. Then what do you do all day? You're a CMO. What does it mean to be a CMO?

Casey Armstrong: Good question. Marketing partnerships is a huge focus. I work very close with our sales team, and so I jump on sales calls almost every day. I'm just trying to find the biggest impact that I can have, whether it's be trying to unlock things or enable my team to hopefully have success and also just rolling up the sleeves, my sleeves. Again, whether it be a sales call or a different marketing campaign. I met with our team earlier, and we're rewriting some of our podcast ads. And so I think it's always staying close to the individual contributor work as well, to understand what's happening every day. Then of course, working with other team leaders across product, across finance, our CEO, as well.

Alex Kracov: How do you think about managing up? Because I think so much about CMOs are, you got to work with the executive team and the CEO and the board and to communicate what you're doing. How do you think about kind of doing that?

Casey Armstrong: I think one of anybody's jobs or job is to make their direct manager's life easier. And so it starts with, of course, doing your job very well so they don't have to think about it. I think it's, especially at the beginning - I've been at ShipBob for five and a half years. But I think, especially at the beginning, it's like over communicating not just with your direct manager but other stakeholders. so they understand not just performance but why, why are you doing things. People like to learn. And how can you share that as succinctly as possible? Again, you don't want them to have to think about it. And so anytime you start a new role, people are naturally like, they're hopeful that their new hire is going to do a good job. But how can you get their confidence level as high as possible so that they can focus on other parts of the business? And again, I think that's really the focus, especially at the start.

Alex Kracov: I'm curious how you thought about building your own marketing career. Because you've done a lot of different things. You've done e-commerce. You've worked in B2B SaaS, both at Mavenlink, Bigcommerce, and ShipBob. You've actually, I think, ran several digital marketing agencies in your career. How do you sort of think about, if looking back on your career journey, for younger marketers who want to be a CMO one day, what do you recommend they do? Should they go spend time in agencies? Should they go in-house? Should they develop skills in a specific functional area? How do you think about advising the next generation of marketers?

Casey Armstrong: I think, especially with the first agency that I ran with my business partner - he's actually my cousin - we fortunately worked with these earlier stage companies, where they're like maybe they said, I need X. Meaning like maybe they need paid search, or SEO, or whatever it may be. What they really were saying was, "I need revenue." And so we just had to figure out through any channel possible for those specific clients what's going to actually drive not just leads, not just opportunities, but revenue. Because it's early stage. And so if they're not able to show revenue growth, then they're not going to be able to afford an agency or even have a business to stand on. So I was very fortunate again just to get a lot of visibility until basically standing up all these channels. Then we got involved in product, and engineering and a bunch of stuff because we just would have to build all these things.

In the right path, I mean, I don't think there's any right path. It's kind of like the crappy but honest answer. I think there's so much value. I think it's just maximizing what you can get out of wherever your starting point is. Again, if you're an agency, the beauty of an agency is, often, you can see many different clients and spread yourself across so much in maybe a bunch of different channels. Often, the problem is you can't go that deep. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to go in-house. It's because I just really wanted to go - because I felt like a lot of the stuff I was doing was at a surface level. I wanted to go much deeper. I mean, deeper in the sales process, deeper in just the entire product stack. I think if you work at a larger company, something that I didn't fully honestly until I was a little older, I didn't really see the full value of until I joined BigCommerce is, not only the relationships and knowledge you'll get from your marketing colleagues but also from people across so many different departments. And so, again, I think it's more of like, well, where are you today and how do you maximize that?

And so, again, if you're at a larger company, it's like, okay, great. I bet some of our leadership is extremely strong. How do I learn from them? Maybe it's like, okay, I love what she does. I'm going to do that. But I hate what he does. I'm never going to do that. You can learn from the bat as well. You can learn who are the top performers on sales. Go sit with them. Who are the top product managers? Who keeps getting promoted? You'll talk to them. And so I think it's just like maximizing your time there.

And so something that I talk to my team a lot is like, if you think of - you just got to view your career over a very long time horizon, and you're trying to add all these skills that will then compound over time. And so maybe you start off within, I don't know, paid search. But then you can understand. Well paid search informs SEO. So then I can learn SEO. Then you go, okay, well, there's some similarities like affiliate. And so then I was in the ad affiliate. Then you go okay, well, where are these leads going? I need to understand sales. So now you start understanding the sales process better, maybe revenue operations better. And so you just start adding these different skills over time. Then the value of those just continues to compound. Because those channels or those skills together, I think, elevate everything. But then, just as you continue to spend more time there, you just continue to get more and more proficient.

Alex Kracov: It's such a good answer. Because I think, I mean, it's basically what I'm hearing. It's like if you want to be a well-rounded marketer, you need to run towards your weaknesses. Not just focus on your strengths of, oh, I'm really good at paid search. But okay, if I don't know something about SEO or these tangential things, I actually need to go seek out and learn and talk to people and figure it out. And once you do that, that compounds. And that's how you can be like a marketing leader one day. So yeah, I really like your answer.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, and I think it's always going to make the right decisions. I mean, people often say, oh, you're - like with startup, it'd be like, oh, you guys went up into the right. Yeah, there's like so much craziness that happens that underneath. And so it's more of like, well, what are some skills that will complement what I do today? Maybe it's storytelling. Maybe it's understanding product-led growth better? I don't know what it is. I think when you look at it and just diving deep, and so again, yeah, it is seeing maybe your weaknesses or what you don't know that well. Like what can really complement what you do today?

The State of Ecommerce

Alex Kracov: I'd love to end today's conversation just talking about the state of e-commerce right now. Because it's been a crazy couple of years. You had the boom cycle in COVID that kind of maybe a bust cycle right after that. How is e-commerce feeling at the moment? And then I don't know if you have any insight into where it will go. That's always a funny question. But yeah, how are you sort of feeling about e-commerce today?

Casey Armstrong: Well, naturally, I'm very bullish on where it's going to go. Or else, I wouldn't be in this industry. Post-COVID was maybe tougher because there wasn't "free growth." But there was still a lot of growth and a lot of growth for a ton of companies. So whether it's the brands or the vendors that support them. I think what it forced is what a lot of people were reading, whether it be mainstream media, whether it's in a bunch of different industries is really like a focus on just running a much stronger real business. And so, again, poses are like you just have to have a much closer eye on all costs, because money is more expensive.

And so I think people just really cleaned up how are they running their business - whether that be headcount, whether that be who their partners are, whether that be how they manufacture goods, maybe how they ship goods, maybe the marketing channels that they go after, maybe allowing for slightly slower growth so that they can really re-accelerate later as they clean up their house. And so I think that the brands that are doing well today are just set up for just so much long-term success. I think people have also just been looking at different channels. And so a lot of people were focused maybe just on direct-to-consumer. But now there's a lot of the social networks like TikTok, and Instagram, and YouTube shopping that are blowing up. There's just a lot of the retailers. I think Target has pull a lot of this forward. But a lot of the different retailers are starting to work with brands at an earlier stage. And it's not just selling within their physical stores, but they also have their marketplaces. Then fortunately, not to overly plug ShipBob, but there are solutions out there that will allow these companies to sell across all these different emerging channels and platforms or ERP solutions will help them manage their business. And so I'm really bullish on just where commerce in general is going because people aren't going to stop buying stuff. And I think that a lot of these brand operators just have their businesses in such strong positions compared to maybe where they were a few years ago.

Alex Kracov: I think that's a great place to end it. Thank you so much for the conversation today, Casey.

Casey Armstrong: Yeah, Alex. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.