Matthew Kay - " How to rethink list building"

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right on.

Now, you've, um, you've mentioned a couple of times ICP, and one of the things that I find is true when I work with SMBs in ways that is still often true even in larger organizations, is that there's a bit of a mystery about the process of defining your ICP, about segmenting your customers.

And I think, you know, I'm consistently surprised at how uncommon a, a certain amount of rigor and discipline are on this particular topic because it doesn't feel like there's a lot of like really, really great black and white blueprints for how to do this out there.

How did you determine that that was your, your ICP specifically from a business...

So like, I understand your personal preference, but as you get into like professionally, um, what made that, what made that ICP attractive?

So there's a few things for us, uh, that I ha- having done this for a, for a period of time and, and I've worked with a couple of, you know, one or two people companies, um, that is a challenge because, um, sometimes marketing and sales activity is, is potentially seen as the thing that can help save them, when sometimes that might not be the case or can help them really kick them onto the next level.

Um, you know, the, the, the, the reason why from a business perspective that we typically work with companies where they've got at least 10 employees is that, you know, um, that is a very good sign that the company has established customers or a handful of customers.

And fundamentally, look, there's no exact measure for product market fit, but they're either very, very close to it or they've already got it, right?

Right.

Um, but then you don't get into that top end of company, um, where you get those, you know, levels of data protection officers and all that sort of stuff.

That means that, you know, we, we end up slowing down and have to go through, you know, campaign approvals and all that sort of stuff.

Um, so, so I think that, that, that was a, a definite factor from a business point of view.

In addition to that, like h- honestly, um, there are companies designed to work with businesses that charge, um, you know, tens of thousands of dollars every month for, for, for their support, right? There are also companies out there that may work on a few hundred dollars a month, right? And, and, and, and we're in that gap in between, right? You know, we're not charging a few hundred dollars and we're not charging tens of thousands dos- of, of dollars every single month.

Um, and in my opinion, and the business' opinion, that gives us enough ba- bandwidth to be effective.

This is really interesting.

Do you put most of your energy into the places with your clients where you thought you would, or do you find that each of your engagements often requires something unexpected, something that there's like, "Oh, we have to remove this hurdle first before we can actually get to the thing that we want to do with you"? Do you find that with a lot of your clients there's, there's that kind of thing that gets in the way early in a relationship?

Sometimes.

I think it depends what it is, right? I mean, you know, when we work with clients initially, certainly earlier on, we're looking for ways that we can drive value as fast as possible.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know- That might mean actively mapping activities onto a matrix where, you know, we look at low or medium effort, but high potential impact.

Um, and that's what we, we, we try to focus on.

If that means that, you know, we need to remove this thing or, or, or get this blocker out of the way in order to do that, um, then, then sometimes we know about that in advance, and other times it comes out in a wash and, and, and, and we do it then.

So, um, uh, I, I, this is such a marketer's response, but, but, but, but it, but, but it depends on, it, it depends on the client.