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Arti Sharma is the CEO and Co-founder of Measure Marketing, a company she started in 2008 after a 15-year tenure bringing thought leadership to various business sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her company specializes in inbound marketing, account-based marketing, and other data-driven strategies. Passionate about mentoring and philanthropy, Arti serves on boards for various nonprofits and actively mentors young entrepreneurs. Her expertise in b2b marketing, especially in manufacturing and SaaS, has consistently led clients to define their ideal customer profiles and obtain substantial revenue growth.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [03:50] The unique combination of services that sets Measure Marketing apart in the industry
  • [05:21] How Measure Marketing pivoted to meet evolving client demands
  • [12:14] Understanding demand generation, capture, and conversion
  • [15:04] Common mistakes to avoid during the demand capture phase
  • [20:48] Common pitfalls in the demand conversion stage and solutions to avoid them
  • [27:22] Arti’s recommended resources for personal and professional growth
  • [27:52] The impact of SEO and strategic branding on a company’s profitable customer segmentation

In this episode…

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, businesses face the challenge of not just generating leads, but capturing the most profitable ones. As companies strive to navigate the complexities of digital marketing, the emphasis has shifted from mere lead generation to targeting and converting the right kind of demand. What does it take to attract, nurture, and efficiently convert the right leads?

Arti Sharma of Measure Marketing delves into how her team approaches the challenges of not just attracting leads, but ensuring they are the right fit for the businesses they serve. With a unique blend of data-driven strategies and a keen eye for the ideal customer profile, Arti and her team have mastered the art of demand generation, capture, and conversion. By emphasizing the importance of understanding a business’s most profitable customers and optimizing the buyer’s journey from attraction to conversion, they have helped companies significantly increase their bottom line. From SEO to sophisticated data analytics and tailored marketing strategies, Measure Marketing’s approach is all about aligning marketing efforts with a company’s ultimate business goals.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz hosts Arti Sharma, CEO and Co-founder of Measure Marketing, as she discusses the importance of aligning company offerings with client needs, the evolution of services based on market demands, and the pivotal role of data in strategizing and measuring marketing success. Arti highlights the critical stages of demand creation, capture, and conversion, offering insights into how companies can navigate these phases effectively.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related episode(s):

Quotable moment(s):

  • “If you have been paid $1 by somebody for your service, you’re already in business. You just now have to figure out how to scale that.”
  • “Everybody wants their phone to ring with more leads, but it’s crucial to attract the right kind, not just any kind.”
  • “The biggest mistake in demand capture is not knowing what happens after someone fills out a form. Engagement is key.”
  • “In conversion, the misalignment of marketing’s promise and sales’ execution is where most failures occur.”
  • “We’re not just marketers; we’re business strategists. We aim to influence, inspire, and impact everyone we work with.”

Action step(s):

  1. Define your ideal customer profile to focus on the most profitable segments: This aligns marketing efforts with the customers who will drive the highest revenue.
  2. Invest in technology that streamlines the customer journey from initial interest to conversion: This improves engagement and reduces friction points, which is critical for effective demand capture.
  3. Integrate marketing and sales processes to ensure consistency in brand messaging: This alignment can prevent sales funnel drop-off and enhance conversion rates.
  4. Regularly analyze your business data to adjust marketing strategies and measure success: A data-driven approach enables informed decisions and optimization.
  5. Incorporate methodologies for structured business growth and leadership: Synergistic strategies can foster a balance between strategic focus and operational execution.

Sponsor for this episode

At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.

We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.

What do you need to start a podcast?

When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.

The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.

We make distribution easy.

We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90xAtariEinstein BagelsMattelRx BarsYPOEOLending TreeFreshdesk, and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.

Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?

Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.

Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

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Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Arti Sharma of Measure Marketing, you can check them out at measuremarketing.com.

Arti, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. We were actually introduced and met through Jason Swenk and his group. I had him on twice. One, he talked about how he built up his agency to over eight figures and sold it and the second was, how he was buying up agencies. And obviously, he’s got a mastermind for agency owners that we talked about as well. So check those episodes out. Also, a really good one was Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech. Kevin had an agency since 1995. And he talks about the agency landscape, the internet landscape, the business landscape over the past few decades. I know Arti, you also have been in marketing and business for a while as well. So we’re gonna talk about that. But that was a very interesting episode, check that out. And also a mutual friend, Duncan Alney. We did an episode on social media marketing, and business as well. So check that one out. He runs the Firebelly Marketing podcast, and he’s got some great guests there.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. You know, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and Arti and I were just talking about how, you know, we do the strategy to make sure it makes sense of the business. We do the accountability to make sure it happens. And then we do the full execution and production. So we’re gonna like magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the host so they can literally just have the conversation, develop relationships and run their business. So for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. Happy to answer any questions that you have.

I am excited to introduce Arti Sharma. She’s CEO and founder of measure marketing. She started back in 2008, after spending 15 years bringing thought leadership to Fortune 500 companies, franchise systems, startups and everything in between. She has grown her company to over 29 people. It includes inbound marketing, account based marketing managers, search marketing, data analysts, CRO SEO, web designers, developers, they have an amazing team over at measure marketing. She also serves on the board for nonprofits such as food for kids, and some others and she loves to mentor the young startups and businesses. Arti, thanks for joining me.

Arti Sharma  3:24

Well, Dr. Jeremy Weisz, thank you so much. Is it okay to call you Jeremy?

Jeremy Weisz  3:27

Definitely.

Arti Sharma  3:29

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to be here. I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Jeremy Weisz  3:35

Why don’t you start us off with just talking about Measure Marketing, and what you do. And as you do, there is a video component so people can check it out. I’m going to pull up Measure Marketing site, and then we can take a look. So talk about Measure Marketing, and what you do.

Arti Sharma  3:50

You know, we’re a very unique combination of agency that does not just focus on demand capture, demand conversion. Both aspects of it were very much into the performance based marketing suite for b2b agencies and b2b companies. What really separates us is our data backed approaches. We’re very data driven, as the name suggests. So from generating demand, as in capturing the demand to converting the demand to measuring the demand and the impact of the demand on your bottom line revenue. That’s all we do. From MQLs. I don’t like to use the word MQL anymore, or SQL. It’s more about qualified leads, you know, that really have an impact on your bottom line. So servicing about four different niches, manufacturing, specialty manufacturing, predominantly SaaS, how to take on e-commerce, that’s what we really do. And in terms of our offering, we, as I mentioned, we really focus on the demand and the capture in which may require different techniques for different companies in different industries to demand conversion, which may require different techniques and strategies as well. So it all just depends on what the client needs are, where the clients really want to go and where we fit in. And to help them achieve those goals successfully in a timely manner, you know, so that’s what we do.

Jeremy Weisz  5:07

Measure marketing is a really good domain. Hmm. Talk about the idea. First idea for the company, and in the name measure marketing, you came up with it.

Arti Sharma  5:21

You know, it’s very interesting ,and I’m so glad that you asked. Actually, I have not been asked this before. But I will tell you a little story about it, which is, I was involved in marketing and helping companies, you know, succeed and what used to work in the corporate life back then. One of the gaps that I saw at the time was, everyone’s talking all about all the different digital marketing strategies, because digital was evolving in 2004, 2005, 2006. I think 2007 was the cusp and everyone wanted to get behind it. 2006-2007, I would say. And I self taught myself search on engine optimization, but I kind of saw back then, I saw that everyone was talking about marketing and digital marketing, but nobody was talking about the impact of measuring that marketing efforts. So we definitely wanted to kind of be in that space where I wanted to be in that space to explore that. That’s how the name came up. And one fine day just, you know, on a couch, I’m looking for domains. And for those of you don’t know, I really buy domains. So that’s kind of my side passion project.

Jeremy Weisz  6:26

You do buy domains. Yeah, and Measure Marketing is a good one.

Arti Sharma  6:30

Yeah, we do, we do. And I do have almost 250 domains related to marketing and some other business ventures that I want to start in the future, so yeah.

Jeremy Weisz  6:39

Can you share any of your favorites? Some of your favorite domains that you’re.

Arti Sharma  6:42

Yeah, we want to put an event together sometime in the fall, so I bought onedaygrowthcon.io, and then I have ascend.io for a product that we want to launch, you know, digital launch of the product. You know.

Jeremy Weisz  6:57

I always joke around, you can tell how ADD an entrepreneur is by how many domains they own.

Arti Sharma  7:03

Oh, my gosh, that’s a new one. Well, I do have that. I was diagnosed, now you have said it out in public.

Jeremy Weisz  7:11

I know people that have a lot more than that, but obviously a lot less than that, too. So yeah, you’re in a healthy space. It was interesting, and I was doing some research. There was kind of a blog post that triggered you to go full time. Talk about the decision to go from when you were doing it part time to actually just going all in on the business.

Arti Sharma  7:41

Yeah, and the gentleman who really inspired me to do that is none other than Dharmesh Shah, the CTO and Founder of HubSpot, as we all know him. He used to run a community called OnStartups back in the day. And when he ran that community, I was new to LinkedIn at the time, as part of that community OnStartups and our daughter was born and one fine day while I was a stay at home mom, and trying to kind of, you know, build something part time just to see how marketing and measurement will be a good combination for the future, I came across that blog, where he said, If you have been paid $1, by somebody for your service, you’re already in business, you just now have to figure out how to scale that and get more people to pay you that dollar. So at that time, when he said that in his blog post, I think it’s somewhere on LinkedIn, it’s still live. And I sent a note to him once and I said, you’ve changed my life, that blog posts changed my life and my family’s life and so many others that are now part of measure marketing, either as you know, clients or team members. So that was the turning point for me, you know, and at that time, I was already you know, as a part time business owner I had replaced my full time salary job at the corporate, so kind of, you know, it was a push to me to say, I got to explore this, I enjoy doing this, I’m really having an impact, changing, changing how people think about marketing and measurement of their marketing spend.

Jeremy Weisz  9:23

Talk about the evolution of your services. So when you first started, what were you offering, and then we could fast forward today on the services you offer?

Arti Sharma  9:35

Yeah, it’s been a journey. And I think the good that has happened at measure Marketing is that we were not afraid to pivot. So when we first started, when I first started, I had learned SEO, search engine optimization, more likely, you know, on media space. I was going to storefront conferences, learning it on my own. So we were more of an SEO shop. And then to kind of, you know, work on that search engine optimization side of things, we really needed to have some conversion metrics and you know, user experience and technology started to play in the role. So we started developing our website, design capabilities and web development capabilities. And then we won several awards for being the, you know, the web awards, per se. So we became really good at that as well. And then as it started to, the evolution started to happen, and we wanted to measure more impact and more demand creation. My interest in paid advertising was there, but I never had the resources, or probably never actively built the resources up until like, 2013-14, when we started doing a lot more paid advertising.

And since then we never looked back. Our performance marketing and paid media, you know, start of the business started to kind of explore a lot more and then search and paid became one of those two cornerstone activities. And of course, alongside came content, the responsiveness of search engines to relevant engaging content was important. So that became our strong suit. And again, there was some missing point in terms of our measurement. We were still using Google Analytics, and we really wanted to do more, because our client base was evolving. So our client base was moving more towards, you know, from SMB segment to mid tier segment to manufacturing and SaaS companies who really understand the need for data driven approaches, and they kind of have the budgets to invest in sophisticated data driven methodologies. That’s when we started to build our growth team. And today, we’re a full stack team of growth marketers, who really are focused on performance data analytics and measurement of the full funnel. And search engine optimization, content, marketing, paid media, still are part of our offering, but they kind of more in the demand capture stage, you know, the attract stage of the funnel. And we still have more to offer than companies, they already have their built in departments for the demand capture, but they don’t know how to convert the demand or kind of measure the demand and the impact. That’s where we can also come in. So the company has really evolved, Jeremy, from, you know, being an SEO company to becoming a full stack, data driven, I’d say, performance based company for B2B organizations.

Jeremy Weisz  12:14

Can you just talk a little bit, I know, we were chatting before we hit record, about three things, which is demand generation, demand capture, and demand conversion? Can you just talk a little bit about those, and how you think about, maybe start with the demand generation? Because obviously, that leads to capture, which leads to the conversion part?

Arti Sharma  12:34

That’s great. Yeah. So we understand that, you know, customers really want more leads. Everybody you know in the business would say, hey, I want to keep my sales teams busy, and I want to build a brand, you know, get my phone to ring. Well, that’s, that’s not as easy as it sounds, unless you have a really defined ideal customer profile. Sometimes the phones could ring for the wrong reasons and wrong type of leads. So that’s not good. And that’s really wasting your dollars. So our programs really start with, if you don’t know who you want to service, then let’s explore that and strategize on who is your ideal customer? What are their pain points? What does their buyer journey look like? Where do they really hang out? What kind of work? Are they looking to kind of outsource or do? Or what are the needs and pain points? From there, we start to kind of build up what channels will be really important for them to capture their interest and their demand and to attract them to your brand as a client, right? So that’s the demand capture piece of it.

I think that demand capture is one aspect. Then the second aspect is to convert that demand or the third aspect I said is the conversion of the demand. Right? So between the demand creation to demand capture to demand conversion, the creation would be of course, when your brand has to be put out there, but you need to make sure that you put the right brand out there. And that starts with your ICP, your branding and making sure that you have some way to put yourself out there through relevant engaging positioning, voice tone and messaging. And then demand capture would be when you have a fantastic platform, some sort of a website or your LinkedIn strategies are in place to attract those people to your brand, which is where you capture the demand through a search and paid media or some sort of, you know, Account Based Marketing Strategies to bring them to you.

And then the other aspect is the demand conversion. Once you have a healthy pipeline, from there, you go into converting your pipeline into relevant sales ready leads that your sales team can really engage and convert them from prospects to customer customers, right? So that’s where the three aspects come in. So yeah, demand is very vague in itself and we want to make sure that we drive customer success along the way in all those three different areas.

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