Ep. 123 – What is a Marketing FLYWHEEL? GUEST: Jen Spencer [CEO SmartBug Media 2x HubSpot Partner of The Year]

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You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. All right.

I am so excited for this episode of do this not that. We have an awesome guest. For real. We do. All right, so who's here?

Let me tell you about our guest before we bring her on the stage and let her talk about herself. But Jen Spencer is here. I'm sure you know Jen, but if you don't, she is the CEO at SmartBug. What's SmartBug?

You say it is a full service digital agency and they help businesses get the most out of their full customer life cycle. And they are HubSpot and Klaviyo Elite partners and the Google partners, all this stuff.

And I asked Jen to come on here because we're going to talk today about big words that I don't understand, but she does, which is going to be amazing. So Jen, welcome to do this, not that.

Oh, I'm so pumped to be here. Thanks for having me.

Amazing. Thank you. So before we get into the topic of the day, give everybody a rundown. How did Jen become Jen?

I guess my career progression story is very, very strange. I'm going, I'm going to give you all like give you the Cliffs Notes version of this.

Started my career as a high school English and theater arts teacher and then transitioned into PR and marketing by way of nonprofit professional theater through community engagement and got to work at a, at a, at a Nonprofit where after 8 years I was then running sales and marketing for the organization. Then moved over into the B2B SaaS side space and took a company through a nice acquisition.

Worked early, early stage startups and got to know smartbug. I the kind of person who in my roles, I've never been able to separate marketing from sales.

It's like my greatest strength and my greatest weakness at the same time.

And I found this like beautiful place for me at SmartBug Media because I'm like, wow, I get to market and sell to like marketers and Salespeople and now customer success professionals, too.

I then became our chief Revenue officer later and then president, and was part of a succession plan. And so I'm now CEO of this extraordinary organization. We've got almost 300 people and fully remote, and I love what I do every single day.

First of all, that story is amazing.

I didn't know that full backstory, and in a lot of ways, it is super inspirational because for the listeners out there, you could literally be in any walk of life right now. And here Jen is, CEO of this major agency. And that's not what her plan was when you were in college.

That is, if someone would have told you when you were back in college, okay, you fast forward X number of years, you're going to be the CEO of this big agency. You'd be like, what?

Well, if I back. If I go back to high school days, what I really wanted to do was I wanted to be the person who, like, who, who.

Who named the colors of nail polish like nail polish samples, you know, or like paint, like the paint samples for. For the. When you went into, like a Home Depot or like, that was like, I was like, who. Who does that?

You know, wow, you had really big goals. You would walk. I mean, that is amazing. Well, you've surpassed naming paint colors. All right, so today I want to talk about.

I specifically want to talk about one word that I don't really understand. That. Well, that's all in the marketing universe, and that is the word flywheel.

I always hear people talking about, you know, the flywheel needs to be part of your. Your strategy and, and growth. And everyone needs a flywheel. And. And I have imposter syndrome. And I don't want to say, what's that mean?

But internally, I'm like, what does that actually mean? And so you're like, captain Flywheel, I think. I don't know if you are, but that's when I think flywheel, I think Jen Spencer. So what.

What is flywheel? Why is it important? Should we care?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think the flywheel as a business concept has been around for. For a while, but it was at a HubSpot event. I think it was at Inbound.

And Brian Halligan, the co founder of HubSpot, Was talking about looking at a business as if, as is a flywheel.

You think about the idea of a flywheel is, it's this, it's this thing that's in motion and you can get it to, you can get it to split speed up when you apply force to it and you slow it down when you apply friction.

And if you think about your business as a flywheel, how does that change the way you think about your priorities and where you're putting energy, where you're applying force and where you might be like consciously applying friction or unconsciously applying friction that's not serving you. And it made, especially made marketers think, think very differently about their funnels. And there was, you know, this idea that, wait a minute.

We've been so focused on like a funnel. Like someone's experience with our brand is like they don't know who we are. They.

Then they come into contact with us and we kind of narrow them down until they become this like this customer and then there they are and then it's like this, you think about like a, like a, an assembly line kind of this machine and, and we just keep like funneling down and creating new, getting new awareness and new customers. But then those little dots, those little things on like those little customers, like where do they go? Like what happens?

But the truth is that those customers actually can be used to add, apply more force to your flywheel, to generate more leads for you, generate more opportunities for you to expand revenue when you stop thinking about your business like a funnel and you think about it instead like a flywheel and think about, well, how could we, what can we be doing to like more actively engage the customers we have? Or, or how do we delight customers we have? Or how do we delight people in their experiences with us?

And how does that, how does that continue to like fuel us? And, and it changes, it changes the way you think about allocation resources and, and, and where you're putting effort as a marketing team.

So give me some, a real like 10 foot level practical way. Because in my business we have a funnel. We got, you know, we know certain content is real top of the funnel content and then people engage with it.

They go further down the funnel. Oh, they want a demo, they want this, they want that further down the funnel.

What is like a real practical way to say, okay, we're not doing funnel anymore, now we do a flywheel because we are doing this.

So okay, I'll translate it in like services for us, right?

So we have, we have a client right now who was Previously a past multiple time client of ours doing some like some website development and design work. But we, we thought about how do we continue to engage the people who are our customers in a non salesy way. Right.

But we are like continuing to like nurture our, those, those individuals with information about like modern, you know, improvements, modern day technologies, things that we're seeing across, across various tech stacks and then we're also engaging with those individuals through social media on LinkedIn.

Like we're not just thinking about, we're not just thinking about the, all of the tools, the resources we have at our disposal and how do we find net new people.

We're also thinking about how do we engage what is that individual left her company and now is CMO at a new company and came in and said hey, all of these other services, these like migrations, integrations, all these services I never needed from you before, I never used from you before, I had such a great experience with you and I know what you're capable of.

And that person comes back in and says all right, I'm send me a contract, I'm in this organization and I want to move my stack from our keto and salesforce over to HubSpot and I need this for paid media and I need this integrated into my plan. And so it's, that's an example of like our flywheel in action.

Because that, that lead that did not come from any one of our like organic like traditional, like like a marketing motion that came through having a really great experience with us, but also us investing in making sure that she's aware of other ways that we could support in a way that was really empowering.

But do you think then I'm just trying to understand. So do you think that maybe it's having less people that are in your universe?

Meaning that's a lot of hand holding, that's a lot of personal attention. It feels like if you have a flywheel you're really giving a lot of love to your everybody that's in your database, whoever you're interacting with.

Whereas a funnel, you're giving love to the people that are going further down the funnel. Is that part of it that's kind of like taking a closer look and saying we don't need to be casting as wide of a net as we have been.

I mean definitely. And I think it's, it all comes down to segmentation, right?

So it's like we know if you properly segment your audiences when you're, you know, you're going to be more successful Right.

Sending like a, a segmented email campaign with very specific messaging, very specific content to that audience than something where you're just trying to boil the ocean and you send out this blast to Latino to everybody. Like, we know that. We have that data, right? So very similarly, when you think about who you're, who you're investing in, right?

It's, it's investing in having, or, sorry, having really good segmentation.

So having a CRM and marketing automation platform that's going to allow you to segment your audience, having the ability to track, you know, how people are engaging with your content today and what's resonating with them and then continuing to feed them more of what, like they're showing you. They're. They're literally telling you through their actions that they're interested in.

And then it's like it's, it's delighting them and doing really, really good work and then leveraging that and creating more content over that. That was kind of the next piece was like, you do really great work. Do people know about it?

And that's a way that you, that you could use that content to kind of fuel, to fuel your flywheel, to bring in like, net new people.

So it's not, the flywheel is not just about, it's not just about like returning customers and it's not just about upsells and expansion revenue, although that's part of it.

The other piece of it is like, if you invest in the success of like, people who are really good customers for you, that will continue to propel your flywheel, continue to propel your business, both through their expansion of revenue, their introductions to other people, their ability to be a reference for you, and then also your ability to document the success that you have with that, with that organization or that customer and then use that for some of your other marketing opportunities too.

So would you. I'm just curious because to me, sometimes I feel like marketing automation is like the best and worst thing that, you know, a marketer has.

You know, it's best because it's like this always on thing that, okay, at least we're doing something. But it's the worst because it's like pumping out just garbage. It's like who even knows what's in our stream or whatever.

Is a marketing automation stream like anti flywheel? Because it's not really, you know, thinking about things the right way or is it exactly what you need in your flywheel?

I think it's exactly what you need as long as it's configured properly, right as Long as you have, as long as you have the strategy.

So, so it's, it's having a, having a like customer platform, both like marketing automation and smart CRM that can help you be aware of what matters to all of the people in your database that will help tell you, show you like this is where you should invest more time and this is, these are the types of messages you should be sending. And so it's, it's. Without marketing automation, actually I don't know how you do this.

Well like I, it's hard for me to even, it's hard for me to even imagine it would be so labor intensive because it's, you're talking about something that's not scalable, that having the right tech stack allows you to provide hyper personalized white glove experiences at scale.

So what is. Okay, I'm buying in. Okay, I'm moving to a flywheel. I'm going to have a flywheel. What is like the low hanging fruit, the pitfall to avoid.

They're like, don't do this because that will be, you'll be, you'll fall off your flywheel.

I mean I think it's, it's, it's don't, don't try to, don't try to use the same content across every stage of the customer life cycle.

So when you're thinking about content that you're going to create, whether it's an email campaign, it's some kind of an asset, it's a webpage, a video, what have you. We as marketers, we think about the audience, right?

Like okay, who is this going to, going to, what is the action that we're hoping that they're going to take but to look at it through a multifaceted way. So don't just say I'm going to take this one thing and now I'm going to send this to my prospects and my customers and my partners.

Like it's not going to resonate. You're going to, you're going to end up disengaging with that audience.

So instead think about what are some minor modifications we can make to this content or how can we use like smart content if that's available to you in a marketing automation platform like HubSpot to send something once but have slightly differentiated messaging depending on if they're an existing customer of yours, they're a potential customer or there may be a partner or, or a past customer who might be referring you business.

That's, that's a great way to look at it and it's A great way to, to frame it. I feel good. I feel like I could have a flywheel. Now it's happening. I want, I want to ask you something about.

You mentioned earlier that you guys are fully remote. I know this is like a 180, but I'm just curious about something. You got 300 people, you're fully remote. I'm fully remote also.

How do you keep company culture? How do you keep everybody feeling connected to one another, working remotely?

It's, it's a very intentional exercise. It's an intentional activity. And what I learned when I came to SmartBug is that we literally like, we almost like over. Correct, right? We like we.

And this is because we've been remote from the beginning. So we, when, when, when covet hit and people were kind of forced to go into remote work, it was already kind of normal. Normal to us.

So one thing is understanding who people are like as actual individual, like and what they care about. And so we have a number of different affinity that folks are part of. So that's a big part of it.

We do a lot of like cameras on a lot of their silliness. Right. Like we don't take ourselves all, all too seriously within our slack groups.

But then we do invest in getting the team together once a year in person. So we. This year, yeah, so we have.

It's called Smart Bugapalooza and it's, we bring everyone together and it's like a day of like work and like team bonding and programming and training and then like a day of fun and we have our awards. And so that honestly like that like kind of fuels a lot of the culture for like throughout the year because that's where so many memories are made.

And we also do encourage our team, now that we've got like such a large team, we start to have these pockets in different cities where we've got a group of smart bugs who are, who are living there and we encourage them to get together for IRLs and we fund it, you know, so we actually say okay, yeah, like $50 per person. You can do two a month and get together with people. Because we still believe in that human connection, like the one on one on one connection.

So the, the work stuff is easy. The work stuff is all system process checklists, time tracking, results monitoring.

Like you know, if people are doing what they're supposed to be doing, right? Because like works either getting done and you're rocking it for clients or, or, or else, you know, no, like we're failing.

So we try to connect the humans. So you've got people who are like, I'm in the theater bugs channel.

You probably see, like in my background, if I move my head or something, I've got a bunch of playbills. So there's a group of smart bugs who love theater, and we just dish about theater and share our experiences together.

And there's probably other conversations like that happening in other channels that I'm not a part of, like video games that I don't belong in the channel. But but it. For someone else. Like, that's their theater bugs channel. So we do things like that. I think that really help.

Oh, my God, I love that. What a culture. Smart bugapalooza. I mean, let's go. I love it. That's amazing. It makes me just like, warms my heart. It feels good to hear all of that.

So let's move into the last segment of this thing called. Since you didn't ask. When we talk about things that are totally ridiculous, I'm going to ask you ridiculous questions.

So you are a theater person, and I'm wondering if you're a horrible person. Like, I'm a horrible person, but probably not. Have you ever walked out of a show, like, been like, this sucks. I'm out of here.

I have never walked out of a live theater performance ever. I haven't. I mean, I guess the only thing not where, like, I was a patron, right?

I have worked, having worked in the theater, where, like, I was like, I have seen this show now 12 times. Like, there's a point where you're like, I'm gonna go and do something. I. I'm gonna watch the first half because I like it the best. But.

But no, otherwise, no, I am too. I am way Jay. I'm way too empathetic. I'm way too empathetic to do that because I know firsthand how much ever energy.

Like, how much it takes to like, put something on stage, and those people are there. And I have the utmost respect for, like, the craft and what people are doing. And so no, I. There's times I wanted to leave. I just. I can't do it.

You're a good person. Wait a minute now. I'm all in on theater. I got so many theater questions. So I just. I saw Mean Girls recently. That was. That was great.

Thanks. Yeah. Yeah.

When I'm curious how often. So I'm watching the show and I know nothing. I'm an idiot. Okay. And they seem like they got it all down. They seem like they don't miss a beat.

They're walking in the right place, they're saying the right things, but I don't know what I'm looking at. How often do the people on stage screw up and us, the audience, have no idea. They just missed a line or they didn't walk the right place.

Does that happen, like, every time?

Probably. I mean, I don't. I, I, I used to love, when I worked for Arizona Theater Company, our. Our stage manager, show notes.

So, like, at the end of the show, like, the next morning, you would, you would read what you know, anything that was like a strange, like, anomaly, any kind of mistake or whatever happened. And there's rarely. I don't, I don't think I ever remember there being show notes that were like, everything went as planned.

Right, Right, right.

I don't think I ever, ever remember that. So there's always kind of something. I mean, that's kind of the beauty of it, right? And like, you just. You just sort of have. Have no idea.

And it's all. It's all just kind of happening. Happening in real time.

So, I mean, I have so many random questions. All right, you said earlier. Now I have another question.

You said earlier you were an English teacher, which is, like, so scary to me because I have the worst grammar ever. Are you internally at your company, you like the grammar police?

Like, if somebody sends you an email and they use, like, a semicolon, which, by the way, I have no idea how to use or whatever, do you write back? Be like, excuse me, you don't know what you're doing? Is that your. Is that, like, you or is that not you?

So it's no longer me. I'm gonna, I want to own up. I want to own up to a couple things. One is, when I was a teacher, I was so.

I, I was so obsessed with grammar, and I inspired. I was able to inspire this group of students that created a grammar awareness club. And they, we had, they made shirts. It was called gak and it was.

So cool, by the way.

Oh, so cool. Right? And. And the, and the back of the shirt, it says, if you're not with us, you're probably out using good instead of well. And so it's like.

Yeah, it was.

What is that? I don't know what to do with that information.

I don't know.

For a long time now I know.

The Grammar awareness club. Yeah. So that was fun. And then. And then my. My husband has lovingly, unlovingly called me, like, correct correctors. And so I. But.

But I'm telling you this like, it's like the second I became CEO, it's like I lost that part of my brain. I am like, I say, like, send communications, text messages, slacks with, like, with. With, you know, the wrong. You know, not non capitalization.

No, I'm definitely not. We have, and we have an editing team at SmartBug. So there's. There are people at SmartBlog that are. They are far more serious.

They are the true, like, correcty correctors. But you know what does make me crazy? It's like there's certain things like p. Like sneak peek. So when I see.

And I see it in email, like subject lines, and it makes me absolutely insane where it's like sneak peek. And it's like they write it as P E A K instead of P E E K. We don't like. I mean, I, I am.

If, if one of my teams, if I see someone do that, like, I won't publicly.

I'll try to like, publicly, like shame them, but I will send a side message with like an emoji that's like, like eyeballs and then like, and then like a mountain and say like, that is amazing.

That is amazing. I'm so scared to ever email you again. Oh, my God.

No, no, I'm telling you, it's like it's disintegrated. It's like, it's crazy. Like, what happens when you're put in charge of everything?

It's all of a sudden you're like, brain can only handle so many things.

Well, you are clearly wild in high school. We got that out of today. No, this has been amazing. Thank you for putting up with all of my ridiculous questions. I feel really good about a flywheel.

This is awesome. How does everybody get involved with your world? Where do they find you? What are we going to do?

Yeah. Yeah. So smartbug media.com is our website.

You can subscribe to content, blogs, our newsletters, all of the kind of great tools and templates that we're creating.

So I would go there and then I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so just hit me up on LinkedIn, Jen Spencer, and let me know that you heard me on the do this not that podcast. So I have context.

Amazing. And yeah, Jen is a Great follow on LinkedIn. We're going to put all this in the show notes as well. Thank you everyone for being here.

And Jen, thank you for being here.

Oh, it's been awesome. Thanks so much.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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