Edward Ford’s Post

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Unexpected elevator ambush! 😳 Might’ve been caught off-guard (and under-caffeinated) stepping out of the elevator, but I’m always ready to share a supersnack on how Supermetrics offers quick wins for agencies by automating all reporting. Thanks Kristina for swooping in on me like that, I'll always be on my guard when getting out of the elevator from now on... 👀

5 major marketing milestones on Supermetrics’ growth journey… We’ve grown a lot over the last few years. With 200k users, 16k customers in +120 countries, and more than 15% of the world’s advertising spend running through our systems (that’s a lot of marketing dollars), there have been some key inflection points along the way. Reflecting on our journey, here are five big marketing milestones from each of the last five years. 2020: Launching our podcast A podcast is something we’d spoken about earlier within the team, but as we all got to grips with the pandemic we saw the increase in podcast consumption and felt it was the right time to jump into this space. It would be the right compliment to our self-serve PLG engine and even if it wouldn’t immediately move the needle, building an audience around marketing analytics and measurement is something we’d benefit from in the future. 2021: The “legendary” brand test As we grew and scaled, we asked if the brand was the right reflection of where we were headed. But in true Supermetrics style, instead of building our brand based on gut, we ran the most comprehensive A/B test ever. We developed two wildly different brand identities (one emerging and one established), used our existing brand as baseline control, and ran a full-funnel brand test that let data tell us what direction to go. 2022: Doubling down on events The big bet for 2022 was events. It’s something we had done here and there, but this year we got systematic about it. We have some great partners and so we teamed up with the likes of Spotify, HubSpot, Amazon, and LinkedIn to provide high-value content to our audience whilst elevating our brand through these partnerships. It worked. 2023: Going big with SuperSummit If 2022 was the year of doubling down on events, 2023 was the year of tripling down. We launched SuperSummit, our flagship digital summit bringing together the largest brands to discuss the big shifts defining marketing measurement and data. We had over 8k people sign up, not bad for our first ever online event. And the SuperSummit brand evolved to the offline space with local meetups around the world - SuperSummit NYC is happening next week! 2024: Community That brings us to 2024. Over the years we’ve built a community around our product. A community around our podcast and content. A community around SuperSummit and our local meetups. And now it’s time to double down on that word and bring it all together in one place. Needless to say we’re super excited to launch the official Supermetrics Community. If marketing data, analytics, and intelligence is your thing, then head over - Senni will drop the link below. Meet industry peers, ask questions, share insights, and find inspiration — oh, and share your favourite marketing analytics trick and win $200 worth of goodies! And so my question to my fellow marketers now is, what’s your best advice for building community? I’d love to hear your thoughts. #Marketing #Community

I've been a big fan of Victor Eduoh and his product-led storytelling framework for some time, so needless to say it was very cool to be invited on his podcast, Growing with Content. We covered how we use content as part of our growth engine at Supermetrics, our approach to library vs publication content in B2B, and why you should always start content production with distribution — spoiler, see quote below. Link in the comments if you want to check out the full episode. #B2BMarketing #ContentMarketing

“Hey, do you do advisory work?” A couple of years ago, a CMO at a scale-up SaaS company reached out to me with this message. They were looking for a growth advisor to come in and work with their scaling marketing team. I had always thought about doing advisory work, and this was the nudge I needed to take action. It was another inflection point in my career and I quickly had to figure out how to deliver a service and how to practically set it up. Well, it turns out that other companies had the same challenge. And they were keen to benefit from the experiences I’ve had working with multiple SaaS companies, scaling a growth marketing agency internationally, and being part of a SaaS hypergrowth journey from the early days. Since that message. I’ve now worked with a select group of clients from B2B and tech to help them build a solid marketing foundation, develop a clear growth strategy, and scale their business. So today I’m excited to launch Edward Ford | Growth Advisory. Here’s what a few of my clients have to say: “Edward was a fantastic advisor to us in Workvivo during a critical period in our growth.” – Richard Barrett, Director of Marketing @ Workvivo “Edward’s long experience in B2B SaaS marketing combined with his warmhearted coaching style has really impressed me and always leave our sessions energized with clear next steps in mind.” – Anniina Turunen, Global Head of Marketing @ Howspace “Edward was a game changer for our team at TalentBee.” – Siiri Laaksonen, Co-Founder @ TalentBee “Edward’s ability to become an integral part of our team was remarkable and it’s set the stage for our GTM to thrive.” – Mikko Seppä, Co-Founder @ HeadQ “I’m really pleased with the results and happy to recommend Edward if you need a growth advisor. Yes he’s expensive, but damn he’s worth it!”  – Samuli Salonen, CEO & Co-Founder @ TalentBee #B2BMarketing #SaaS #Advisory

“The bastard with the spreadsheet always wins.” - Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK So if the bastard with the spreadsheet always wins. Make sure you’re the bastard with the spreadsheet. #Marketing #Analytics

“The Funnel” has to be one of the worst metaphors in marketing. It can cause you to make hazardous assumptions, such as: - All I need to do is improve conversion rates between all of our funnel stages - Everything stops at the sale and marketing to customers doesn’t matter - Getting more people in the top will get more people out the bottom - We control and dictate the buying journey, not the customer - You’re in our funnel so therefore you’re in a buying cycle - Only one person is involved in the buying process - Nurturing workflows will take care of everything - Just move people downward along a path - The buying journey is a linear process - People all buy in the same way - My focus is only short-term The truth is, buying journeys are messy. They vary wildly from one customer to another. And that means marketing is messy. Instead of simple funnels, there is a super complex web of touchpoints. Consumers navigate backwards and forwards between different brand websites, search engine result pages, videos, social media, out of home, TV, apps, wearables, in-store experiences, and peer/friend discussions and recommendations - the list has become endless. So now it’s about giving marketers the freedom to effortlessly navigate through their data in a way that makes sense for them. Marketing data is now about freedom, not funnels. And one other thing about the metaphor, if you put one litre of water in a funnel, you get one litre out… #JustSaying What do you think? Is it still a useful metaphor or is this the end of the marketing funnel? #MarketingData #MarketingAnalytics #Funnels

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Global Director of Demand Gen & Affiliate Partner Program at Supermetrics!

In January I celebrated my 5 year superversary at Supermetrics! 🎉 It’s been a crazy journey and as I reflect on the last 5 years, here are a few key learnings on B2B SaaS marketing hypergrowth… ▶ Operating as a small startup is completely different than an SMB scaleup. We’ve gone from 30 people in one room to +400 all around the globe. Our marketing team has grown from 4 to over 30. In the early days you do everything yourself; product launches, webinars, ops, content, podcasts, social media, product marketing, sales enablement etc. Later on there’s more focus, more process, and more structure. It’s actually really tough to reinvent the way you work for each stage of growth, but this is what "jumping aboard a rocket ship" means in practice. ▶ You need to constantly reinvent and refine your marketing playbook. As you grow and scale, the things that worked for you aren’t going to cut it anymore. Layer on new strategies, channels, and tactics as you grow. Stay ahead of the curve. ▶ Distribution is everything in marketing. No, really. ▶ Your best copy comes directly from customer quotes. Interview them and use exactly what they say in your ad copy, headline copy, and landing page copy. ▶ Trends come and go, but marketing fundamentals never go out of style. Double down on the core marketing principles that have always held and always will. Btw, who remembers Clubhouse? ▶ Use data as a gut check and to define your next best step. There have been countless times when I’ve been almost certain on what our next decision should be, but when reviewing data, I’ve proven myself totally wrong. Lean on data as your trusted sage that accompanies you on all your marketing adventures. ▶ Brand conquers all. You need to constantly invest in building your brand and understand that everything you do as a marketing team (and company) can either add to it or take away from it. ▶ The bigger the company gets, the more important internal stakeholder management becomes. Fact. ▶ Marketing is a long game. Yes, there are the quick wins, the low hanging fruit, and the growth hacks, but ultimately this is a long game. Make sure you play it the right way. ▶ Working with awesome, smart, and humble teammates is the key to success. You’ll spend a lot of time with your colleagues so you need to surround yourself with people who are great at what they do and fun to spend time with. One of the core roots of our success is hands down the amazing people I've had the privilege to work with. ▶ A black & gold hoodie is quite possibly the most B2B SaaS way to celebrate 5 years at a B2B SaaS company — and I love it! There are countless more and this list could go on forever, but these are some that sit top of mind. A big thanks to Mikael and Zhao for giving me the chance to join this rocket ship back in late 2018. It’s been a crazy adventure so far, and I’m excited to see what lies ahead… #Superversary #Reflections #GoldenHoodie

One of my top podcast finds in 2023 was The Loop by Cognism - there’s lots of great stuff on B2B marketing, SaaS, and demand gen. So needless to say, I was pretty stoked when they actually invited me on the show to be a guest. At the end of last year, I caught up with Canberk Beker to dig into the Supermetrics full-funnel brand test — which they called “The Ultimate Brand Experiment" A big thanks to Canberk, Gaetano Nino DiNardi 🇺🇦, Fran Langham and Co. for having me on the show, this was one of the best interviews I’ve done. #BrandStrategy #Measurement #B2BMarketing