Directive

Sometimes, the truth hurts

They say marketing channels can't buy happiness? Look at the smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby. You want details? Fine. Focus here: 1️⃣ Paid Search – Control your destiny with high-intent traffic. 2️⃣ LinkedIn Ads – B2B targeting on steroids. 💥 3️⃣ Organic Search (SEO) – Long-term, compounding growth that keeps giving. 4️⃣ Review Sites – Word of mouth, but make it 2024. Anybody who tells you marketing is the root of all evil doesn't know how to control their channels. There is no question whether you can be successful. The only question is how many times over. (And if you need help, you can always chat with us.)

Can you guess what massive SaaS company these headlines are for??? 1. Humans with agents, driving success together 2. Simplify Your AI Journey 3. Anywhere your imagination takes you You can huff, puff, and guess as much as you want. But I doubt you can identify these massive brands through their taglines. (I know I wouldn’t be able to). These headlines lack specificity. They don’t leverage a psychological trigger. They don’t inspire action or intrigue. The good news? You don’t have to write headlines like this. You can do what I do and take inspiration from the greatest admen on the planet… Billboard copywriters. In the first episode of my new series, The Breakdown, Ross Simmonds and I dive into one of the most creative billboards that we have ever seen. On The Breakdown I team up with the smartest marketers in the world to breakdown the marketing that inspires us. Why should you care? Glad you asked. In under 5 minutes, you get real life marketing examples + deep insights into how you as a SaaS marketer can apply these examples into the world of B2B. Watch the first episode below. (Answers to the above headlines in the comments)

Directive is a remote company, but man do I miss going to lunch with the team. I miss walking around the office. I miss hearing the team playing pool at 3:45pm (and trying not to get upset that we weren’t more focused on our customers). That’s why tomorrow I am flying most of the company (85 people) to a resort in Arizona. No work. No clients. Pure fun + connection with my teammates! Remote work is great and has given Directive the ability to scale globally with full-time labor that is directly employed by our local entities across Mexico, Canada, UK, Australia, and America. Having a global labor force allows us to better service our customers and attract the sharpest SaaS marketers in the world. But…and it’s a BIG but… It has one massive drawback: Human connection. When your coworkers become avatars on a zoom screen, something changes in your work dynamic. Empathy is throttled. Connection is devalued. Work becomes work…and not in a good way. I hate that part of remote. For all these reasons, we used to fly 1/3 of the company out for an offsite every four months. The problem was that we still did not have all of us together. It was cheaper and simpler to plan, but we were not a whole team. We were pieces of what make Directive special. So, we decided to do something different. Now, we are doing one event a year, but we will all be there together with one shared goal: connection. I can not wait and am pumped to do my favorite thing in the world, hang out with my team. PS I am supposed to give a speech and already know I am going to get emotional. Here’s to leading with your heart and a little of your head.

You can’t trust Linkedin’s ad targeting. Before you launch your next ad campaign, here's why you need to MANUALLY verify your target account list (and exactly how to do it): The backbone of LinkedIn ad targeting is industry. The problem is it is user generated. And most company pages were set up 15 years ago by a 22 year old intern who had no clue what they were doing. Here are a few examples: - Account: New Relic - Linkedin says: Software Development - In reality: Monitoring Software - Account: SumoLogic - Linkedin says: Software Development - In reality: Observability Software - Account: Greenhouse - Linkedin says: Software Development - In reality: ATS Software This is the #1 reason why your CAC is high. But the good news is you can fix it! Here’s how to manually verify your target account list: Step 1: Review your current customers When launching a campaign on paid social it’s imperative that you focus on a specific niche. The best way to pick a niche is to audit your current customers. Are most of your customers B2B? Great. Then go deeper. Are they in SaaS? Are they in Manufacturing? Then, focus on employee size. Don’t use revenue, private companies don't report it. Plus, ZoomInfo and Apollo (who give you revenue data) are simply deriving it from employee count anyway. The key: get specific, have some confidence, be bold and be something for someone, not everything for no one. Step 2: Export Data and Enrich Now that you have audited your top customers and built your ICP, it’s time to export your data from someone like ZoomInfo or Apollo. From here, we use a BPO vendor to manually verify that each organization has the following: - Active website that does not redirect - Confirm their active employee count on LinkedIn matches the data provider - Validate that they are actually a company in the vertical you are targeting In general, even with this thorough approach, we find almost 50% waste or a non-fit rate after manual verification. Don’t forget to ask for a credit from your data provider for the bad fit accounts! Step 3: Upload Everywhere Manually verifying your TAM unlocks your ad strategy. Want to run a CTV campaign to your exact ICP at scale, using LinkedIn’s new CTV product, you can now use the same audience to run TV commercials too as well as conversation ads and sponsored content. Want to run our gift card playbook on Meta? No problem, by using a tool like Primer you can now upload your TAM and advertise to the exact title at the exact account you are looking to break into. TAKEAWAY: You can spend more aggressively and creatively if you know that every impression is going to a manually verified account. Because focus is more important than breadth. Remember: You can’t trust a platform’s data. You need to bring your own to the party. P.S. If you want to manually verify your target account list, connect with me, comment VERIFY below and I’ll send you a copy of my Manual Verification template.

Wait did you hear that? That's the sound of your SQLs slipping through the cracks and into oblivion when they were right there for the taking. If your B2B marketing strategy isn’t converting leads into SQLs, you’re missing the point. This isn’t about getting more leads—it’s about getting qualified ones that actually turn into revenue. But how do you turn a cold lead into a hot SQL? We’re handing you the exact playbook to do just that. This is your roadmap to increasing SQLs with data-backed strategies that actually work—no more guessing, no more fluff. From fine-tuning your messaging to optimizing your sales funnel, this guide has everything you need to start turning leads into serious opportunities. 🔑 Why this matters: • Get deeper into the mind of your prospects • Learn to create irresistible offers that convert • Maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts 📈 Ready to supercharge your SQL game and finally get the results you deserve? 💥 Dive into the full playbook and win. #SQLBoost #B2BMarketingMastery #LeadGeneration #PipelineGrowth #MarketingPlaybook”

Every agency is underinvested in onboarding. We have a simple rule at Directive, if you wouldn’t feel comfortable putting a strategist on a family members account then we can’t give them a client. From Directors to specialists, every one does onboarding and every one has to pass. The end result? 4.25/5 CSAT across 182 surveys YTD. It seems obvious that every strategist/consultant in an agency has been onboarded, vetted, and trained in this agencies unique methodology. Unfortunately, that is not true. Most agencies lack formal onboarding and use clients as guinea pigs. Here’s how Agency owners can break from the herd and develop a real onboarding program: 1. Appoint a Leader and Make them POWERFUL The key to onboarding being successful is that the leader of onboarding is powerful enough to tell their peers that someone is not ready for a client. This is critical because this has meant that Directive has had to pause sales twice in the last 24 months because we did not have enough properly vetted + trained labor to keep up with demand. If the wrong consultants still get out of onboarding and get clients, your program is not working. Because of this, don’t optimize for pass rate. You’ll bastardize the program. Instead, focus on client goal attainment against a cohort of legacy labor to evaluate efficacy. 2. Build your mock assignments off your SOW and SOP It’s critical that your onboarding program matches the deliverables you perform for clients. That's why the backbone of our onboarding is based on mock assignments. No more talking about what you have done at your last job, time to prove you can do the work and present it (as if the person you are presenting to is the Director of Demand Gen at a SaaS company). If they can do a great mock assignment, they will do great work for clients. 3. Match your mock assignments to your presentation stage in the interview process The tricky part is that most people talk a bigger game then they can back up. And, they can usually hide or the agency gives them clients who do not know marketing. Both are not ideal. If you do onboarding correctly by having high standards and not crumbling to the pressure of new business, you will immideately have a pass rate problem. The key is not to lower your onboarding standards but instead do a better job hiring. To improve your pass rate it’s crucial that you have applicants do a presentation in the interview process that emulates your final mock assignment in onboarding. If they do well here, they will pass onboarding. No hopeful hiring, keep your standards high and be patient. **Ran out of space! Post continued in comments 👇

The inspiration for your next brand campaign is sitting in Gong. Here’s the exact process we followed to develop our latest brand video campaign ("Need a New Agency?"): Step 1: Choose an Emotion to Evoke It was critical for us to decide how we wanted our audience to feel. How could we create an emotional experience and what emotion would we want to evoke? We chose curiosity and jealousy. We have found that marketers always want to make sure they are working with the best. That they are not missing out on something. We have also found that HOW they discover us is often what they want service for. So, if a CMO gets our Convo Ads on LinkedIn, they often convert and want us to do Convo Ads. They are jealous of our campaigns and wish they were doing something similar. The same applies for video, SEO, content, design, etc. Step 2: Setup Listening Triggers for Sales Calls We wanted to know what prospects were saying on intro calls with our sales org. So, we setup listening triggers for certain keywords in Gong. For example, if sales or the prospect mentioned the word “Agency” we could see exactly what they thought of their current agency and why they were leaving. We learned about the following drivers: - Lack of ROI - Junior level talent - Lots of transitions - No new ides being pitched - Missing accountability to revenue From here, we now understand the pain points of our audience and can start to be creative for how we articulate our value to them. Step 3: Develop a tagline + copy The key here is that we are pulling our ideal customer into our brand. We know that we are (almost) always hired by an organization who is working with another agency. We want to speak to that. We also know that people think we are more expensive than we are so sometimes they don’t think they can afford us. From that research, we came up with the following: Campaign: Need a New Agency? Tagline: The agency you always dreamed of hiring at a price that you just might be able to afford. The goal being that if they are in market they will be intrigued and we hope to evoke their curiosity by communicating that they probably could afford us. TAKEAWAY: The inspiration for your next brand campaign is sitting in Gong. Emotion needs to be considered and optimized for. Not all advertising should be focused on “Pushing” into your TAM with direct response. Sometimes, you need to “Pull” people into your brand and allow them to become fans. And if you want to work with Directive, DM me.

ATTENTION B2B MARKETERS: If you’re playing it safe, you’re already losing. FACT: Your leads don’t care about another soulless whitepaper or a “thought leadership” post. 😴 If you don’t start using B2C tactics TODAY, you might as well kiss your pipeline goodbye. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s survival. 🔥 We made the ultimate worksheet to show you EXACTLY how to turn your boring B2B playbook into a lead-gen machine. If you don’t download it, well… good luck explaining that to your CEO. 👀 Read the blog. Download the worksheet. Don't get left behind. #B2BMarketing #B2CStrategies #NoMoreExcuses #SurvivalMode

In only 3 years, we increased client goal attainment by 92% after making one simple change: We set a NSM (North Star Metric) for every account + integrated it’s visibility into the entire company. What does this mean for our SaaS company clients? It means that every single client’s results (startup to enterprise) are reviewed by the CEO to the specialist every single month. What does this mean for an agency? It means you have real visibility into your agencies ability to deliver on its brands promise. No ruinous empathy. No ignorance is bliss. No blind belief. Every Director, Associate Director, Account Director, Strategist, and Specialist, are on a public leaderboard (organized by overall and by business unit). Each performance review is based on client goal attainment. Top performers are rewarded and lower performers can quickly be supported and developed. You might be reading this and be thinking, “Damn, that sounds intense.” I would agree. The reality is that every time Directive is hired we are expected to get results that have never been accomplished at that organization and the last agency failed at attaining. It takes a competitive culture to accomplish the never been done before. It takes a competitive culture to consistently deliver in the performance marketing space. The most competitive consultants are the ones that are always consuming content, applying their findings, and refining their POV.