Shownotes
How do you not only keep up with seismic changes as a SaaS marketing leader but also proactively confront them?
In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel of The Connective Good talks with Wanda Cadigan, SVP of Marketing for Cloudinary.
Wanda shares how she delivers on the 'supply chain of revenue' in an environment where AI has joined the buying committee. From growing organic traffic when buyers arrive far more informed, to orchestrating smartly across PLG and enterprise motions, to building trust not just with humans but with AI-driven gatekeepers, Wanda offers valuable insights for leading SaaS marketing teams.
You will learn about:
- Treating the entire go-to-market as a revenue supply chain, not siloed teams
- Why experimentation can go off the rails if it’s “a mile wide and an inch deep,” and how to drive disciplined experimentation with rapid prototyping by micro experts
- Treating AI chat agents as a persona to market to, since AI is now part of the buying committee
- How PR teams will experience an opportunity to really prove their worth and connect to more commercial intent by leaning into citations, structured data, and micro-influencers, and optimizing for discoverability in both human- and machine-driven ecosystems.
- Designing an org with both Swiss army knives and scalpels: a mix of broad generalists and more narrow specialists to tackle specific experiments and channels
- Orchestrating across PLG and enterprise motions without siloed thinking
- Smarter interviewing: Defining not just questions, but also what good, average, and great answers look like to align interviewers across the org
- Protecting your time: Staying fiercely focused and resisting the “people pleaser” trap
Notable quotes:
- "Nobody just wakes up one morning and says, I'm going to submit a Contact Us form. Of course not. It's been pre-planted in your head. You've learned about a company or been educated about a problem that you may have been grappling with, and you could be exposed to press relations, analyst reports, events. You might have seen a vendor at an event. All of these great marketing programs do influence the final point of conversion of, Hey, I'm going to reach out and talk to these people. I think they can help me with my problem… so it's a supply chain."
- "Your time is your most valuable asset. Be ferociously protective of it and resist the common marketing challenge of being a people pleaser."
00:00 Introduction to The Get Podcast
00:29 Meet Wanda Cadigan: SVP of Marketing at Cloudinary
01:26 Wanda's Journey and Marketing Strategies
03:47 The Dual Funnel Approach at Cloudinary
08:31 Navigating the Tsunami of Change in SaaS Marketing
13:05 The Role of PR and Brand in the Age of AI
16:10 Experimentation and Micro Experts in Marketing
21:43 Hiring Strategies and AI in Recruitment
28:22 Final Thoughts and Advice for Marketing Leaders
31:59 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser
The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcripts
Welcome to The Get, the podcast about driving smart decisions around recruiting
Speaker:and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:This season, we're looking at how SaaS marketing orgs are changing
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:How can you be the type of leader who is not running from change, but proactively
Speaker:responding to it, and even driving change?
Speaker:My guest today is someone who's more in the camp of smartly
Speaker:responding and driving change.
Speaker:Wanda Cadigan is SVP of Marketing at Cloudinary.
Speaker:They are known as the industry standard for developers, creators, and
Speaker:marketers who are looking to create and personalize and manage their
Speaker:video and images at massive scale.
Speaker:Today, we are going to talk about how Wanda has actually grown organic
Speaker:traffic in this market, how she structures her organization, how PR
Speaker:is having a surprising resurgence in the age of AI, how she hires, and the
Speaker:advice she would give her pre-CMO self.
Speaker:So Wanda, thank you for joining and welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thank you, Erica.
Speaker:Looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker:All right, so let's just start.
Speaker:I've given a little intro and I'll say, you're Canadian, so we might
Speaker:hear some process and project.
Speaker:You will hear project.
Speaker:I have my tells.
Speaker:I have my tells.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I don't know them, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker:Can you share a fun fact just to get us started?
Speaker:Sure, sure.
Speaker:I'm probably one of those rare marketers who has actually
Speaker:walked a mile in sales shoes.
Speaker:So I started as a product marketer, loved it, and then an early mentor
Speaker:of mine basically encouraged me to take on a broader mandate of sales
Speaker:and marketing, and I think that early, really foundational experience
Speaker:helped me become a better marketer.
Speaker:Certainly helped me understand the commercial nature of business a lot
Speaker:more than previously I would've been exposed to just as a product marketer,
Speaker:and ultimately helped me become a more revenue focused marketer.
Speaker:Yeah, great.
Speaker:And you're a Boomerang at Cloudinary, right?
Speaker:This is interesting.
Speaker:I am, I am, I am.
Speaker:I'm one of actually a growing number of folks I think are
Speaker:doing the Boomerang thing.
Speaker:But yeah, Cloudinary has been a fantastic company.
Speaker:Basically, I'm here for change.
Speaker:So it change, inflection points.
Speaker:And I came back to the company about ,I'm gonna say, two and a half
Speaker:years ago, and took on a broader mandate as SVP of Marketing and
Speaker:helping grow to the next stage.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:For context, can you give a quick overview of the size and the
Speaker:structure of your marketing org?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:We're about twenty-two people full-time.
Speaker:But as I'd love to get into probably one later question, I'm also a big
Speaker:believer in the use of micro experts for very specific tasks and channels
Speaker:as we do our experimentation program.
Speaker:So about thirty-eight folks all up, including full-time and contractors.
Speaker:And that really runs the gamut of marketing and the SDR organization.
Speaker:One of the big unlocks for us has been breaking down any artificial
Speaker:barriers between, I call it the supply chain of revenue.
Speaker:So marketing creates the conditions upon which your brand
Speaker:should be known in the market.
Speaker:It creates the conditions upon which a prospect may find you, learn about
Speaker:you, but then also all the way through to demand gen, reaching out, grabbing
Speaker:that interest, bringing that interest into the funnel, and then also
Speaker:qualifying that interest until the magical handshake between marketing
Speaker:SDRs and sales happens, and that enters the funnel as qualified pipeline.
Speaker:That's how the team is orchestrated here.
Speaker:It's also interesting, we have a dual funnel here at Cloud
Speaker:and Area, as do many companies.
Speaker:Cloudinary started as a PLG-focused company, so extremely strong product.
Speaker:We're also close on hitting a major milestone in a number of developers.
Speaker:I won't scoop myself, but stay tuned.
Speaker:That's gonna be a big announcement coming up in a couple of weeks and months.
Speaker:And it's all about, how can you balance self-service, which is
Speaker:registrations, putting a fantastic product out into the marketplace and
Speaker:getting registrations at the top of the funnel, and also enterprise sales.
Speaker:So we have also an amazing growth marketing team that primarily
Speaker:covers the self-service funnel.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I love this idea of a supply chain of revenue, because
Speaker:- Yes.
Speaker:- that would help CEOs and investors realize that it's not just bottom of the funnel.
Speaker:It's not just marketer comes in and spits out bookings.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I have a really interesting analogy for this is nobody has a fever dream
Speaker:and just wakes up one morning and says, I'm gonna submit a Contact Us form.
Speaker:Of course not.
Speaker:It's been pre-plant in your head.
Speaker:You've learned about a company or been educated about a problem that
Speaker:you may have been grappling with, and you could be exposed to press
Speaker:relations, analyst reports, events.
Speaker:You might have seen a vendor at an event.
Speaker:All of these great marketing programs do influence the final point of
Speaker:conversion of, hey, I'm gonna reach out and talk to these people.
Speaker:I think they can help me with my problem.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it is a supply chain.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I firmly hold that opinion and I think that's really the
Speaker:way you need to look at it.
Speaker:Can you talk more about the dual funnel thing?
Speaker:Because I think a lot of companies, they have one type of motion
Speaker:and then they try to add another one and it doesn't go so well.
Speaker:Maybe they're not as patient as they could be, or they have a hard time
Speaker:spreading their resources across both.
Speaker:Is that hard to manage?
Speaker:How do you navigate that and how much cross pollination is it across
Speaker:the teams doing of those things?
Speaker:It is, and it depends on the personas that you have in your ICP as well.
Speaker:So Cloudinary is blessed with a number of different products.
Speaker:We started very much in the developer space.
Speaker:Number one for image API, video API, and then we also expanded our offering
Speaker:so we have a digital asset management solution, which tends to be more,
Speaker:let's say, the first party personas around business users, marketeers,
Speaker:content marketers, et cetera.
Speaker:So it really depends on which product you're building a pipeline plan for and
Speaker:what is the front door of that plan.
Speaker:I like to say that typically on our website, I call it the
Speaker:red door and the blue door.
Speaker:It's kinda like the matrix you take, the red pill or the blue
Speaker:pill and it really depends on the type of campaign you're running.
Speaker:Because if you're running a very technical campaign that is predominantly
Speaker:focused on, let's say, video API or image API, and your targeting is video
Speaker:engineers or developers, web developers, if they come to your website and
Speaker:they have two doors to choose from.
Speaker:One is a self-service registration door where they can play with the product.
Speaker:They can touch it, they can feel it, they can download documentation.
Speaker:That's one choice.
Speaker:Then the other choice could be a contact us, where you're
Speaker:probably gonna talk to a seller.
Speaker:Because you need some additional help to either fully understand
Speaker:your problem and how that Cloudinary can help, or any company can help.
Speaker:So you really need to build plans for both of those funnels,
Speaker:and they're not the same.
Speaker:You really need to have a bespoke plan for each.
Speaker:Ultimately, what you wanna do is there are a lot of amazing
Speaker:self-service registrations that are coming into our funnel every day.
Speaker:Some of them will be students, some of them will be hobbyists.
Speaker:They'll have one or two projects.
Speaker:But guess what?
Speaker:Developers also work at enterprises.
Speaker:So there's a wealth of opportunity in the self-service funnel in the PLG motion.
Speaker:If you're looking out for the right signals then yes, they
Speaker:could be well-served by a paid plan, but once certain signals and
Speaker:intent is identified, guess what?
Speaker:Those are a fantastic enterprise, potential opportunities and that's
Speaker:when you engage with the SDR organization, the AE organization to
Speaker:help reach out and connect the dots.
Speaker:That's that collaboration between funnels and when you can get that
Speaker:working, that's the ultimate goal.
Speaker:Is it relevant to cross train people on your team for both
Speaker:PLG and enterprise motions?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I think there are a couple of reps that are very proficient in our PLG motion.
Speaker:And in fact, they're almost like our human algorithm.
Speaker:They know what's good.
Speaker:They know what a good opportunity is, and that's been very helpful for us.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:And you have the SCRs and BDRs on your team
Speaker:- Yes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:So we're talking this season about how SaaS marketing orgs are changing,
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:We've been talking just in the industry, as well as you and me,
Speaker:about this tsunami of change.
Speaker:And you said, well, we knew that the tsunami was coming, you prepared for it.
Speaker:And so you actually have seen your organic traffic go up, which is so
Speaker:interesting 'cause so many orgs are like, oh, my organic traffic is down.
Speaker:It's like, well, HubSpots is down 70% as well.
Speaker:Can you reverse engineer that, and what do you attribute
Speaker:this organic graphic boost to?
Speaker:Yeah, so, like everything, there's probably no one magic pill or solution,
Speaker:but I think one of the things that we did really well, and again I have to
Speaker:call out our growth marketing team.
Speaker:They've done a tremendous job at executing this.
Speaker:But I remember we had a QBR at the beginning of the year where
Speaker:we talked about what we wanted to accomplish in terms of organic search.
Speaker:And discoverability, it is so very important as an organization to know
Speaker:where your digital watering holes are.
Speaker:Where are people finding out about you?
Speaker:So I remember we had a QBR at the start of the year, and of course, as
Speaker:most plans do, they focus very heavily on Google, maybe a little bit Bing.
Speaker:And at the time, I remember I was hearing a lot about Perplexity as
Speaker:an example, and ChatGPT, of course.
Speaker:One of the questions I posed was, we don't know this what this thing is yet.
Speaker:I do think it's going to impact us as a business.
Speaker:If we were to, right now, start trying to mitigate for that coming
Speaker:change, if it does turn out to be something, what would we do?
Speaker:What would we do?
Speaker:Very nascent.
Speaker:By the way, the other thing I always say, nobody's an expert in
Speaker:this space yet, let's be honest.
Speaker:It's happening real time.
Speaker:We're talking the week that ChatGPT just launched.
Speaker:The 5.0 just launched.
Speaker:There's gonna be roll on effects for months to come.
Speaker:But I knew something was happening.
Speaker:The team took the challenge, and they said, okay, let's figure this out.
Speaker:So the whole era of discoverability is going to be a tsunami of change.
Speaker:Again, a lot of organizations are just now finding out about this,
Speaker:and they have to pivot very quickly.
Speaker:That is one thing that we were able to do.
Speaker:We got ahead of it and we started to implement some experiments.
Speaker:freshness of content super, super important.
Speaker:You have to publish fresh content.
Speaker:Citations, really important.
Speaker:Your backlink strategy.
Speaker:Really important.
Speaker:Understanding and having a differentiated keyword strategy.
Speaker:Super important.
Speaker:Because sadly, you just mentioned, it's true, a lot of companies are
Speaker:seeing a decrease in their organic traffic because why is that happening?
Speaker:Well, because when I ask a question, when a prospect asks a question, it's going to
Speaker:ChatGPT and getting the answer directly.
Speaker:So it's cutting the need to have to go to the website to
Speaker:get those questions answered.
Speaker:But I will say one of the unintended or downstream benefits of that is that
Speaker:that traffic, when it does come to your website, is a lot more educated.
Speaker:It's willing to take action and they tend to be better qualified leads.
Speaker:So I think just understanding that, that's been a big unlock for us.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I remember you mentioned something about one of your personas is the AI chat agent.
Speaker:I just love the way you thought about that.
Speaker:So can you say more?
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:Isn't it insane?
Speaker:But traditional marketing, traditional product marketing, your personas
Speaker:are head of web dev or director of e-commerce or insert title here.
Speaker:Yes, that's true.
Speaker:That remains true.
Speaker:But the other persona is we have two market for chat agents, for ChatGPT,
Speaker:Perplexity, Grok, all of these answer engines that are out now.
Speaker:So when we produce content, yes, we have to produce it for humans, of course,
Speaker:but we also have to be cognizant, sometimes to get to those humans,
Speaker:you have to make sure your answers are surfaced in things like ChatGPT.
Speaker:In fact, one of our new personas is chat agents.
Speaker:Can you believe it?
Speaker:But it's true.
Speaker:We have to make sure that that is a top level persona for our marketing efforts.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think it's right.
Speaker:I mean, I think we, as an industry, we understand that, we know that
Speaker:inherently, but to pinpoint it that way, I think it's really great.
Speaker:The other thing that I saw the other day, it was Cady had been at
Speaker:Klaviyo, I forget where she is now.
Speaker:She had written about the rise of an influence engineer.
Speaker:So not so much the brand person, although it kind of is that, it's like
Speaker:the person that's going to find those micro pockets where those watering holes
Speaker:- Absolutely.
Speaker:- and be asserting influence and authority in an AI first world.
Speaker:So I'm wondering if you can talk about the role of brand, and I hate
Speaker:to say brand, it's such a four-letter word for some of my clients.
Speaker:Anyway, PR and what we will call a brand and influence, and that
Speaker:seems to be having a resurgence.
Speaker:Can you talk about that?
Speaker:How you see that, and who are the players that you think are gonna be,
Speaker:you know, who are the PR-ish, brand-ish people who are going to be rising
Speaker:above the fray, given the changes?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I'll start from where PR has been.
Speaker:To your point, brand has been a little bit of a dirty word.
Speaker:And there's a pendulum that swings.
Speaker:We all know it.
Speaker:Every marketer that's been in this space, it's brand heavy one year
Speaker:and then, two years later it's all about performance management and
Speaker:things you can count and click.
Speaker:So there has been a little bit of a under appreciation of things like
Speaker:PR, historic in the last iteration, certainly of the phase we're in now.
Speaker:But I do think with the advent of the generative engine optimization, so geo
Speaker:as a new strategy, some companies are gonna really experience, and some PR
Speaker:teams will experience an opportunity to really prove their worth and
Speaker:connect to more commercial intent.
Speaker:And it's all about the citations.
Speaker:Not true for every industry, but certainly a lot of industries having really tier
Speaker:one companies covering you, having brand mentions in public relations, in
Speaker:placed articles, organic content, and then having back links back to your
Speaker:website, that's extremely important.
Speaker:That builds citation.
Speaker:We need to take a look at PR a little differently.
Speaker:Yes, of course, we're going to continue to use wire services and issue news release.
Speaker:I consider that almost old school PR, and yes, we need to keep doing that, but PR
Speaker:teams, if they can connect their value to this new world of citations and how
Speaker:that helps again in the discoverability engines that is opening up.
Speaker:It's a bit of a renaissance.
Speaker:It can really help drive and prove the value of things like PR.
Speaker:I will say though, and you, I'm glad you covered it.
Speaker:There's a growing field of influencer marketing, which is amazing.
Speaker:And it's not necessarily about having even the quantity of
Speaker:followers, but the quality.
Speaker:If you have a particular niche product and there's an influencer
Speaker:in that space and partnering with them for influencer marketing?
Speaker:That's the new PR.
Speaker:So it's really important to know where are your digital watering holes?
Speaker:Where are your prospects going to get educated and influenced
Speaker:about problems that you can solve?
Speaker:And then coming up with a list of influencer marketers and partnering
Speaker:with them, and that is another change that we've been doing.
Speaker:And that's a big focus of the leader on my comms team right now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It is interesting.
Speaker:I wonder if we'll start seeing people get hired into these kind of PR comms
Speaker:roles that have less of the traditional background and more of the call it
Speaker:influencer marketing, AI forward to their background, even if they don't
Speaker:have the depth of contacts and such.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Very interesting.
Speaker:Let's talk to you about org changes or org choices that you have made that might
Speaker:be a little bit unique from the outside, as compared to other orgs, or was there
Speaker:something that you did that might have felt risky at the time or just unusual?
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:I think I'm a big fan of experimentation and listen, we all know there's not
Speaker:enough hours in the day, arms and legs on marketing team or budget to
Speaker:test everything that you wanna do.
Speaker:It can be a bit of a trap for a marketing team.
Speaker:I call it going a mile wide and an inch deep.
Speaker:You try to cover everything, everything, but that doesn't necessarily help you.
Speaker:So one of the things that we have been leaning into is
Speaker:this notion of micro experts.
Speaker:There are so many channels you can test.
Speaker:Proliferation of channels, especially social media is exploding.
Speaker:There's always a new social media platform du jour that you can test and it's
Speaker:impossible to keep up with everything.
Speaker:So being able to leverage micro influencers to really bring out
Speaker:specific testing on a specific channel.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:You have to make funding decisions.
Speaker:Do I defund that channel because it's not performing or is it just maybe
Speaker:I don't have the right resources, the expert for that channel to
Speaker:get the results from that channel?
Speaker:I use the analogy of does this need a Swiss Army knife or a scalpel?
Speaker:Because sometimes you need a Swiss Army knife.
Speaker:A hundred percent.
Speaker:A hundred percent.
Speaker:But sometimes if you have limited resources, budget, time, money,
Speaker:hours in the day, and you wanna test the channel, do you wanna bring a
Speaker:Swiss Army knife to that channel, or do you wanna bring a scalpel?
Speaker:Someone that knows that channel, that's had proven expertise and success in that
Speaker:channel, then you can find out, hey, this channel is actually worth us investing in.
Speaker:And maybe it does warrant a full-time hire.
Speaker:But it's also a really good way for you to understand that channel's not for us.
Speaker:And you know what?
Speaker:I can defund these two channels and focus on this other one that we can
Speaker:see is really driving pipeline growth.
Speaker:So I really like the idea of using micro experts as rapid prototyping
Speaker:to figure out where I should be paying the most attention.
Speaker:That's been a bit of an unlock for us.
Speaker:I like that because often marketers will do these experiments and then the
Speaker:board or the CEO can get exhausted.
Speaker:Like, okay, you've tried that for two weeks, turn it off.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But I guess you're saying if you can get to a yes or a no faster, that's the
Speaker:- Correct.
Speaker:- that's the benefit.
Speaker:With the right resources.
Speaker:Because it's impossible.
Speaker:Things are changing so fast.
Speaker:For example, we, again, we just said ChatGPT-5 just launched, so there
Speaker:is no expert in ChatGPT-5 right now.
Speaker:But all of these changes are happening real time.
Speaker:So if you're trying to maximize your chance of success for whatever the channel
Speaker:may be, you wanna bring a scalpel, not a generalist that may not necessarily have
Speaker:a lot of experience with that channel.
Speaker:It's been working for us.
Speaker:It helps us rapid prototype, figure out really quickly what channels
Speaker:we need to double down on and what channels are okay to part with.
Speaker:One of the hardest things in marketing is to say no, either way.
Speaker:Because everything, you wanna do it all, it's so exciting.
Speaker:And look at this just launched and we wanna have a presence here.
Speaker:And it's really hard as marketers to say no, but I think, fundamentally,
Speaker:you have to remain really laser focused on your commercial goals.
Speaker:Doing these rapid prototypes with micro experts in whatever channels
Speaker:helps you figure out where your digital watering holes are and what your
Speaker:funding investment strategy should be.
Speaker:Where do you find your scalpels?
Speaker:It's, it can be difficult, I will say.
Speaker:Sometimes you think you find a scalpel and it's still a Swiss Army knife.
Speaker:[they laugh] So it does, it's trial and error.
Speaker:It's trial and error.
Speaker:There's some great freelance platforms out there, Upwork, Fiverr, multitudes of them,
Speaker:and we tend to look there, certainly.
Speaker:Network referral, as well.
Speaker:People that are, they hang their shingle out and they're very, they're experts in
Speaker:x, y, z space and there's back channel references, so that also helps as well.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It makes me wonder if we're going to this of org structure where you
Speaker:have specialists externally, and generalists internally, at where the
Speaker:soft skills of being agile and curious and able to learn, and all of that are
Speaker:what's important internally, and then externally you have these scalpels.
Speaker:It could very well be.
Speaker:And I think the other thing and we haven't talked about it explicitly yet, but
Speaker:there are so many AI productivity tools available to marketing organizations
Speaker:now where you can see just incremental productivity, whether it's from things
Speaker:like content production and generating a content engine, and that's something
Speaker:that we're doing here as well.
Speaker:Again, we had to feed the beast.
Speaker:We talked about generative engines earlier.
Speaker:That's not a trivial task.
Speaker:You have to keep feeding the beast fresh content, great citations.
Speaker:So that's an ongoing job and really you need something like an AI content
Speaker:engine to be able to keep up with that.
Speaker:So yes, I think you need trained specialists, depending if the channel
Speaker:is worth it to you, maybe you bring those specialists internal or you
Speaker:just keep them as contractors.
Speaker:Then AI, the getting AI embedded in your marketing organization, that
Speaker:can really 10x your productivity.
Speaker:Between the scalpels and the AI, I think that's really the way of the
Speaker:future in terms of marketing orgs.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:Can you talk now about how you hire for full-time roles?
Speaker:We've talked about the scalpels externally and the tools.
Speaker:What about the actual, the hoomans as, uh, my dog would say?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker:So this is probably the last two years that I've really, I think,
Speaker:had a bit of an unlock there.
Speaker:And I have to credit someone I've never met, Claire Hughes.
Speaker:She's the former COO of Stripe, and she wrote an excellent book called Scaling
Speaker:People, and she presents this notion of an interview framework, but with a rubric.
Speaker:Of course, we've all had questions, you do your standard, okay, we have
Speaker:to ask these ten questions, but the unlock for me was no, you have to go a
Speaker:step further and actually put it into an answer rubric as well, and identify
Speaker:what does an okay answer versus a good answer versus a great answer really look
Speaker:like, and come up with your internal scoring criteria, even in advance to
Speaker:be able to say, yeah, they knocked it outta the park on that question.
Speaker:They went really super deep.
Speaker:They connected different disparate data points.
Speaker:So that's like an A+ in that answer.
Speaker:It's very difficult when you're interviewing many different
Speaker:people, different backgrounds, everyone has a different skillset.
Speaker:It helps you really crystallize what's super, super important for this
Speaker:role and how am I gonna evaluate it.
Speaker:Then I also share that rubric with others that I've asked to interview
Speaker:as part of the interviewing committee, the hiring committee, when they do
Speaker:their interviews as well for peers.
Speaker:Then they can see, okay, Wanda's really valuing X, Y, Z, and it helps
Speaker:everybody get aligned in terms of what a good hire really looks like.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Do you think that's helpful for CEO hiring CMOs as well?
Speaker:Yes, I do.
Speaker:I would even take it one step further.
Speaker:I think CEOs hiring CMOs, because it's like the oldest trope in the world, right?
Speaker:CMO has a very short tenure.
Speaker:And I don't think there's necessarily bad CMO hires per se.
Speaker:I think it may be bad understanding, or a lack of clarity around
Speaker:what type of CEO is needed now.
Speaker:So the best thing a CEO can do - and it's hard, listen, I'm not saying it's
Speaker:an easy or trivial task - is having a real point of view and clarity
Speaker:around what type of CMO is needed now in this journey for the company.
Speaker:No external candidate will know that.
Speaker:So the CEO really has to have a good understanding, talk to other CEOs,
Speaker:talk to other CMOs in your network to try to understand, okay, what is
Speaker:the growth stage we're at right now?
Speaker:And what are the most important skills that a CMO can bring right now?
Speaker:I would say yes, the methodology and the rubric is definitely important,
Speaker:but it's even more important to self-identify what stage you're
Speaker:at and what you need right now.
Speaker:Right, right.
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:It's funny, I think CMOs can be great at hiring for their teams, and then when
Speaker:CEOs hire for CMOs, they can get stuck.
Speaker:It's very hard.
Speaker:It's really hard.
Speaker:Because if you are not from that area you don't know the difference between a brand
Speaker:marketer and a revenue centric marketer, or what marketer would be best for a PLG
Speaker:motion company versus enterprise sales?
Speaker:There's a lot of variables I can appreciate it's a difficult task.
Speaker:How about AI in hiring?
Speaker:How does that play a role for you internally or what roles that you've seen?
Speaker:Is it my agent will talk to your agent?
Speaker:What are you seeing there?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Certainly AI tools can help scan.
Speaker:And this has been, like, ATS, that's always been happening in
Speaker:terms of scanning, and I'm sure there's a next iteration of that.
Speaker:I know certainly a lot of candidates, you can tell if someone is maybe
Speaker:leaning a little bit too heavily on the AI influenced resumes and I'm sure
Speaker:you can see that a mile away as well.
Speaker:By the way, it's a counter impact now that there's a lot of tools that can scan
Speaker:for how much of this was written by AI?
Speaker:So that's something to be cognizant of.
Speaker:I can help someone tell you what they do, but live interviews will
Speaker:tell you if they can actually do it.
Speaker:So nothing replaces one-on-one talking, being able to have
Speaker:meaningful conversations.
Speaker:Yeah, it's probably a tool right now, but there's no replacement for live
Speaker:interviews or sign me live interviews.
Speaker:Although I do wonder sometimes when I'm interviewing somebody is somebody
Speaker:just recording it all and getting their answers fed to them in real-time by AI?
Speaker:You know, listen, ChatGPT-5, probably possible now.
Speaker:That's a crazy model.
Speaker:I think there's a lot of potential.
Speaker:There's still a lot of pitfalls, too, with this new technology that
Speaker:we're gonna have to work around.
Speaker:When you're hiring, do you have a favorite interview question that you ask that you
Speaker:find really revealing?
Speaker:I
Speaker:ask everybody on the podcast about this.
Speaker:I love asking - again, part of my interview rubric and it's
Speaker:one of the standard questions, everyone asks about your successes.
Speaker:The ones that I tend to ask about is tell me some when it went wrong.
Speaker:When did something go horribly wrong?
Speaker:When did you have to push back on a big plan that you had to launch?
Speaker:Because I don't wanna know just about their wins, I
Speaker:wanna know about their messes.
Speaker:And let's be honest, we all have messes.
Speaker:It's called the messy middle.
Speaker:You have great laid plans, something changes.
Speaker:Okay, how do you respond to the change?
Speaker:And that really helps me understand, can they handle stress?
Speaker:Can they be adaptable?
Speaker:So I tend to ask about the messes, the messy metal.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:But it's not just tell me about a time when you failed, but tell me about a
Speaker:time when your playbook went wrong.
Speaker:Out the window.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:A competitor launch first or the product has to be pushed out a month
Speaker:because something is not working properly or ready to be launched.
Speaker:So how do you handle that?
Speaker:I think that tells a lot about a person's character.
Speaker:I'm thinking if somebody asked me that, it might turn into a therapy session where
Speaker:I would go on and on and there was this factor and that factor and everything.
Speaker:How much time do you give somebody to really get into all the specifics of it?
Speaker:If they take ten minutes to answer that question, is that ok?
Speaker:It's, it tells me how comfortable they are with sharing their own messes,
Speaker:or it's not necessarily their messes.
Speaker:A lot of this is you're on the receiving end of maybe a change in a launch
Speaker:schedule or a competitor of movement.
Speaker:So it's not directly under their control.
Speaker:I think if you dive a little bit too deep into it, that's telling.
Speaker:Because it's like, you know what, it's okay to be in the red on
Speaker:some things on your dashboard.
Speaker:You just gotta accept it and, okay, this is how I dealt with it and then moved on.
Speaker:I'm looking for a positive acknowledgement - yeah, that was an issue.
Speaker:This is how I dealt with it, and moved on.
Speaker:That's the best way to answer those questions.
Speaker:Okay, cool.
Speaker:So, curious to know what advice you would give yourself years before you became
Speaker:a marketing leader with twenty-plus, thirty-plus people reporting into you?
Speaker:I think I would say, your time is your most valuable asset, and I know
Speaker:that's very cliche, but it's so true.
Speaker:And I think you have to embrace saying no.
Speaker:A lot of us, especially in marketing, we're people pleasers.
Speaker:We wanna do it all.
Speaker:We wanna do it all.
Speaker:But guess what, that three-day project that someone just put on your desk,
Speaker:or hey, can you just sit in on this two hour advisory board real quick for
Speaker:something that's not in your mandate?
Speaker:All of this chips away at the time and focus you have to
Speaker:give to your primary mandate.
Speaker:So I think learning to say no.
Speaker:Again, it's hard.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:It's hard.
Speaker:But ultimately you are here, you're at a company to deliver commercial results.
Speaker:And you have to do that, and you have to be ferociously protective of your
Speaker:time and remain true to the task.
Speaker:So learning how to say no.
Speaker:It can be hard.
Speaker:And it's taken me several years to get there.
Speaker:But it's hard.
Speaker:It's an ongoing challenge.
Speaker:Yeah, you and me both.
Speaker:There was a podcast recently with Adam Grant.
Speaker:Do you know Adam Grant?
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:He's at Wharton, and it's all about, how do you say no?
Speaker:It's very good.
Speaker:Okay, you gotta connect me because I'll have to go look for that one.
Speaker:I'm still working on it.
Speaker:I'm a work in progress, admittedly.
Speaker:Yeah, you and me both.
Speaker:We talked about this a little bit earlier, but what is your advice to a CEO who
Speaker:has failed at hiring a CMO in the past?
Speaker:For a CEO, I'll just go back to my earlier analogy, you
Speaker:don't want a Swiss Army knife.
Speaker:When you're trying to bring in a leadership team, you want a scalpel for
Speaker:this particular moment in your journey.
Speaker:What do you need at this particular moment in your journey to help
Speaker:you get to the next stage?
Speaker:And by the way, it is totally fine, sometimes CMOs or CROs or
Speaker:whatever the case, they come and go.
Speaker:And that's fine.
Speaker:Just understanding what do you need right now for this stage in your journey?
Speaker:And maybe then when you get to the next milestone, you need another type of CMO.
Speaker:Totally fair and reasonable.
Speaker:Just understanding what you need right now.
Speaker:I think that's probably the best advice.
Speaker:I've seen that in my recruiting practice, too, because you often have these
Speaker:companies, oh, we're X in revenue and we wanna get to five x, and then in
Speaker:the search, you kind of yo-yo back and forth between the person who's more
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Or the person who's more scaly and
Speaker:- Right.
Speaker:- nine times outta ten, or maybe ten times outta ten, end up
Speaker:focusing on what do we need now?
Speaker:If the company is in some kind of 100x growth per month, maybe that's different.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:But you often come back to okay, what do we need right now
Speaker:over the next eighteen months?
Speaker:Especially 'cause
Speaker:- Absolutely.
Speaker:- leaders can cycle.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:I know we're running short on time.
Speaker:My final question for you is just, we're looking to season that our theme
Speaker:of how SaaS marketing orgs are changing in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:So if you could put in one or two sentences, how would
Speaker:you describe that change?
Speaker:Could be something subtle or something seismic.
Speaker:I think the buyer's journey really now has two audiences, human and AI, you have to
Speaker:build trust and authenticity with both.
Speaker:That's what we're all gonna be facing.
Speaker:It's not just humans anymore, it's AI, that comes with a lot of potential.
Speaker:Some cautions, as well.
Speaker:But I think understanding your audience and building trust with both.
Speaker:We all have a new persona, whether we like it or not.
Speaker:It's chat bots and AI, so we have to prepare for that future.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Wanda.
Speaker:It's been great having you on the show.
Speaker:Thank you, Erica.
Speaker:Love the conversation.
Speaker:That was Wanda Cadigan, SVP of Marketing at Cloudinary.
Speaker:Stay tuned for the next episode of The Get Coming in a couple of weeks.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top
Speaker:marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:If you liked this episode, please share it.
Speaker:For more about The Get, visit TheGetPodcast.com.
Speaker:To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the
Speaker:make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.com.
Speaker:The Get is produced by Evo Terra and the team at Simpler Media Productions.
