Building out a marketing channel is like building product. It takes countless iterations and constant market feedback to get right. This session will introduce tactics on how to slowly and methodically test, assess success and eventually scale a marketing channel until it hits a ceiling and it's time to move to the next one.

1. Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Building Marketing Channels Slowly to Achieve
Massive Scale
Alex Rosemblat
CMO
Datadog
@alexrosemblat

2. A marketing channel is built
like a product
It takes constant iteration and a ton of feedback to
get right

3. Expectations of what “Marketing” covers are vast

4. It’s easy to get spread thin
Is all this work even turning into revenue?

5. Slow and Steady Scales Marketing

6. Narrowing your Focus and Setting Goals (realistically)
- An individual (or team) can truly
work in a fully dedicated fashion
on one thing at a time
- Thus, pick 1 marketing channel
- Then, pick 1 campaign (or
campaign type) in that channel
- And to allow this campaign to
meet its goals, that’s it
- Until… (set criteria to be met)

7. Explicitly Declare things You
Will not be Doing
Quality vs Quantity is the measure (at first)

8. Setting Expectations with Management and Board
- Management will expect work on
many things concurrently
- You will have to declare that your
scope will be limited
- Sharing hard data + goals will
help your case
- Relating this goal (which will
become more reliable with full
focus) to the main business
objective will go a long way

9. Data Collection and Instrumentation
- Good quality, hard data will be your
currency
- Marketing data is typically
imprecise, but, directionally correct
- Are you collecting data currently?
- Are you collecting the right data
to make your case?
- Do you trust that data?

10. Embarking on a hypothesis-driven approach
- Someone has an idea for a campaign… great!
- Is it clearly thought out how this campaign will work - mechanism, time limits,
budget limits, expertise on team or vendor, and who knows what else?
- Is it clear what the minimum result has to be to declare this (somewhat)
successful - are there actuals from other campaigns to compare to?
- Is the team/vendor actually equipped to run this campaign as needed to
achieve and measure that initial result?
- Has anyone not involved in setting up the campaign played “devil’s advocate”?
- Are you able to capture the data to make the assessment of the campaign’s
success?

11. Concentric Circles of Channel Experimentation

12. When you hit something that
works, go big!
Don’t be afraid to go ludicrously big

13. On Hiring
- Once a campaign feels like “old
hat”, it’s time to pass it off
- Write up the playbook
- Hire a specialist (or eager beaver
if that’s what is available)
- Hiring an experienced leader for
a channel can drastically shorten
the learning curve
- If there are 2 FTEs working on a
channel, it’s probably time to start
looking for a leader

14. Maintaining Excellence in your Scaled Channel
- You can always do better
- Changes in platforms, markets,
personas, competitors, etc is
constant - an edge will erode
- At certain inflection points in
scale, campaigns will have to be
taken apart, retooled and put
back together
- The same goes for teams...
beware team member 10!

15. THANK YOU