“One plus one equals three is the secret sauce of partnerships and partner marketing. Anytime you put together two great minds, you bring the best of the best together - that can be a super powerful force. ”
- Nicole Rogers, Matterport
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Follow the host Brad Hammond https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-hammond
#thelifelongcustomerpodcast #customerjourney #marketingleadership #b2bmarketing
“One plus one equals three is the secret sauce of partnerships and partner marketing. Anytime you put together two great minds, you bring the best of the best together - that can be a super powerful force. ”
- Nicole Rogers, Matterport
//
To listen to more The Life-Long Customer podcast episodes, follow us on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/thelifelongcustomerpodcast/
Follow the host Brad Hammond https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-hammond
#thelifelongcustomerpodcast #customerjourney #marketingleadership #b2bmarketing
Introduction: 0:04
From Revenue Rhino, I'm Brad Hammond, and this is The Lifelong Customer Podcast. We're interviewing successful sales and marketing leaders in discussing ways in which they're building lifelong relationships with their customer.
Brad Hammond: 0:19
Welcome to The LifeLong Customer podcast. I'm your host, Brad Hammond. Today, we have Nicole Rogers from Matterport. Nicole, it's really nice to have you on.
Nicole Rogers: 0:29
Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Brad.
Brad Hammond: 0:31
I'm really excited. So Nicole, can you tell us a bit about yourself and about Matterport?
Nicole Rogers: 0:38
Yeah, so a little bit about myself. I'm originally from the East Coast. I grew up in New Hampshire, went to school in DC, then went to work for a company called Ektron, which was focused on the web content management space. Then got a job offer from Box. I saw it was actually from Los Altos, California, and immediately thought that was in Los Angeles, in SoCal. But then I Google Mapped it and saw that it was in Silicon Valley. That moved me over to the Bay Area. I thought the technology bubble would be super cool to work in.
So I was there when we went public, then moved over to Google Cloud, specifically for partner marketing. After that, went to WeWork for some time. I joined Matterport a little over a year ago, focusing on partner marketing. When I joined they told me I had a blank slate to work with, and how right they were. It's been a year of building everything from scratch, introducing new processes, MDF, having marketing launches, like the Platform Partner Program, Facebook, Amazon, and others. Yeah, just really fortunate to be here to collaborate with an awesome BDN channel team.
A little bit about Matterport. We're a software platform that creates a dimensionally accurate digital twin of a physical space. So we're essentially digitizing the built world, which is a $230 trillion asset class. You think of the built world, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty huge. This encompasses homes, office spaces, retail stores, schools, factories, and more in any building in any built space out there. And now anyone can see these spaces from wherever they are in the world with our technology.
You may want to shop for a new home, virtually, you could even visit a museum, my manager actually sent me a climbing gym that's been Matterported. All of these spaces in the world have been captured of Matterport.
Brad Hammond: 2:47
That's really cool. Let's talk about partner marketing at Matterport. Sounds like you have been able to come in and build things from scratch. What does that look like? What do you have going on? What have you set up and built and all that?
Nicole Rogers: 3:02
I would say with partner marketing, I always think of two key areas. One is building brand awareness and consideration of our joint solutions. And two is driving partner-influenced revenue. Now everyone says with partners, one plus one equals three or equals five or ten10. And as cheesy as that sounds, it's so true. Because let's face it, partners are so critical in our sales cycle. They extend our product reach filling gaps in product portfolios. And with partners, namely technology partners, you can create new joint solutions. Partners basically extend our sales cycle. So whether it's extending our product reach, like filling gaps in our product portfolios or extending our market reach into new geographies, new verticals, and industries, or really increasing value to our customers by providing those services and support.
Partners also have great brands. When you put two great brands together, the market notices. So to answer your question, how do you market with them? I really think it depends on the partner type. Now at Matterport, we have alliances partners that really are better together story, and how do you go to market by way of co-selling? So that could be GSIs, marketing with SIs, marketing with agencies and hardware partners. We also have channel partners, so our value-added resellers, as well as selling platforms. We have data partners, we have platform partners. But again, I think the way you approach marketing, it could be programmatic marketing, or it could be that I call it one-on-one marketing or where you go deep with co-marketing with a particular partner.
For channel, for instance, you could start developing collateral. Those are the sales and marketing assets that they can use. You could communicate regularly with them through office hours, as well as what are the partner program initiatives. Could you do a partner summit? Could you do a webinar program? There’s demand generation. How do you enable partners to create demand and build pipeline with out-of-the-box campaigns?
And also incentivizing partners, so in the case of channel partners based on what they achieve, let's say sales, they can then get awarded, like a premium partner directly through your listing or a newsletter, so a feature. It really depends on the partner type.
With alliance partners, for instance, that's when you go deep and really working with them, and then building out that campaign with them specific to market those solutions.
Brad Hammond: 5:51
Totally. Obviously, there's a lot of opportunities when it comes to partner marketing. For the marketers out there listening that are maybe setting this up at their company or are looking to really succeed at partner marketing, how do you prioritize what partnerships to pursue, what to invest your time and resources in, and want to maybe set aside for later? How do you decide what to do with limited time and resources?
Nicole Rogers: 6:22
That’s a great question. Prioritization is super key. It’s important for any marketing leader out there. For partner marketing, I would say it's really getting alignment with, in my case, the business development team. For others, they may call it the partnerships team or the channel team, the alliances team. So what are their priorities? What deals are they closing? How can we market that accordingly?
At Matterport, I would say I was building out the foundation for our channel and just having those foundational pieces in place like do we have partner comms? Do we have marketing development funds that you can use cold marketing dollars for partners? Do we have sales and marketing enablement in place?
It would be aligning internally with your counterpart, which is, for me, the BD team, and just understanding priorities and mapping accordingly. It’s setting up that foundational marketing structure. But then, again, going back to how do you build brand awareness for the company? How do you continue to optimize revenue as well, and figuring out what partners should we go after? What partner should we do marketing with? And approaching it at all levels, but also looking at it from a global scale.
Brad Hammond: 7:55
Totally. So, what are some things that you start to see at your company when you start to succeed with partner marketing? Obviously, I imagined partnerships, but what are some of those indicators of success that you're looking for as you build out the program?
Nicole Rogers: 8:11
In terms of measurement, I would say, A, you want success for both parties. So it's not only the company that you work for, but any success within partner marketing is success for your company, but then also success for the partner organization. Really figuring it out from the beginning what are the metrics to get you there? Are you trying to gain new customers? Are you going live with a new product launch, and you're filling in product gaps for both sides? Again, that one plus one equals three model, where you're going to benefit from partnering with that org.
I would say revenue is key for both. It's the joint customer stories. It's how is the market picking it up. Is the market noticing all the amazing announcements that you're going live with? Are customers happy? Really looking and hearing and staying close to your prospect or customer base and hearing from them. Is this what they want? And if not, you change accordingly.
I think it really gets back to starting at it from that level of what are you bringing to market? What are the use cases? What are the customer pain points? How can you solve that together with the partner to answer those needs? How do you become a customer-first organization by joining together two forces and bringing that to market?
Brad Hammond: 9:44
Totally. I love that. You mentioned this concept, one plus one equals three. What does that mean to you?
Nicole Rogers: 9:51
I would say one plus one equals three is like the secret sauce of partnerships, as well as partner marketing. You can go after customers just single-handedly. But anytime you put together two great minds, or even like back in the college days when you're working on a group project, bringing in the best of the best together can be a super powerful force out there. That's the power of it. When bring in two different technologies, for instance, bringing that to market, you can create something new. Instead of going and, “Hey, we're going to build this on our own.”, There’s a lot that a partner org can bring. There's a lot that technology at another company can bring. And by pairing up with the right companies, you can go live with something new and create something new in the market, which is amazing for customers.
In addition, on the channel side, you can only extend so far with your own sales team, like they're going to do great. They're going to go after enterprise deals. But how can you use your channel to target new industries or new markets or countries that you don't sell into to really be an extension of your own team at the company? So this could be for sales, the one plus one equals three could be for new joint solutions. Depends where you're going to market with, but it's really an exponential factor, I would say.
Brad Hammond: 11:28
I love that. Let's look at an example of that. I know you've had some exciting partnerships you've mentioned. Could you share with us an example of what that successful partnership might look like?
Nicole Rogers: 11:41
Yeah. So one of my favorites was the Facebook launch. Facebook was a great company to work with. We collaborated with the Facebook AI research team to go live with the world's largest dataset of 3d spaces for academic research. This consisted of 1,000 digital twins made up of residential and commercial spaces. Today it’s being used to further advance embodied AI, which is the study of robots or AI assistants. Essentially, researchers will be able to use this data set to teach robots how to navigate real-world environments so that you can ask a robot like, hey, where did I leave my keys or my laptop? And they can go get it for you.
Together, we had to coordinate this launch. So it was going live with a press release, a blog post, quotes, a video, social media posts, and more. We had bi-weekly meetings to keep everything on track and had to be super tightly organized internally but also with them. So it's always double everything. Usually, when you go live with a product launch in a company yourself, you have to coordinate everything across departments.
But when you do so with a partner, you're doing that internally, but also externally with them. And then they're doing that same thing inside their company. It can be a huge win for both companies. You're putting two great brands together. Everyone, of course, knows who Facebook is and Matterport is known as the spatial data platform market leader. So I think that's the power of it. It's just like working together with great brands, great teams, and putting together, in this case, a data set, which is being used for academic research in introducing these new cases, new use cases to the industry.
Brad Hammond: 13:46
I love that and just kind of digging into that example, what are the things that Matterport brought to the table, and then what are things that Facebook brought to make this a successful partnership?
Nicole Rogers: 13:58
I would say for both, it was our technology. With Facebook, it’s Facebook AI research. They brought their Habitat simulator. For us, we have all of these 3d models, different spaces around the world. And putting those two kits together, you could actually teach these robots within their simulator how to move through these different spaces, all virtually.
If you think about it, without Facebook, without Matterport, we couldn't do that separately. What's amazing is the teams both had the ideas like how do we collaborate together to bring something new? We've been getting questions asked about this. Facebook was interested in this, Matterport was interested in this. It was what I'd call a win-win solution for both parties. I think that's what's great about partnerships at any company, as well as at Matterport.
When you bring two great technologies together, you can go live with new things that people have never even heard of. And before this, people may have never thought of like, oh, I can teach robots like how to navigate the built world. Because that is that will be the future that we live in and just focusing on that today so that we can really transform the way that we work and live in the future. It’s possible through bringing those two technologies together.
Brad Hammond: 15:31
I love that. Well, this has been awesome, Nicole, chatting with you. And as we're wrapping up here, what advice would you have for other marketers out there, especially when they're thinking about partner marketing?
Nicole Rogers: 15:44
Yeah, that's a great question. I have gotten so many words of wisdom over the years myself, I think I would take a step back and really focus on just marketing in general because this advice would be probably for not just partner marketers, but any marketing leader out there. And I really would say it only starts with asking yourself the question like, what is your purpose? What is your superpower? We always used to ask that question back at WeWork. What is your superpower? What are you doing now in your career to get there because let's face it, so many hours of our lives are spent at our jobs. And if you're not doing that, how do you get there? And once you're doing that, once you're in that dream job working on marketing projects, is what you're doing making you feel uncomfortable?
So I'll tell you a bit of a story. At WeWork, two of my colleagues, Patton, and Fitz, and I presented a marketing plan to our manager, Robin. Robin was like, hey, it's good. But are you sure of it? I was like, yeah, yeah, we're sure. Then he asked me, does it make you feel uneasy? And I said, no. And that led us to chat about how the uneasy ideas, the ones that put you on edge are the ones that make you question and think to yourself, oh, my God, if we do this, this could be beyond great. Well, we're taking a lot of risks, and it could potentially go wrong.
Those are the ones that you should do once in a while. So as a marketing leader, how do you 10x an idea? If you had all the resources in the world, what would you do? It may make you feel a bit uneasy, but I think that those crazy ideas are how you get to epic. And whether it's an epic launch, an out-of-this-world campaign, or the best customer partner event ever, you've got to challenge yourself. That would be my advice. There will be projects that you work on that are foundational, and that you need to do. But for the other ones, what gives you almost like those butterflies in your stomach to take a risk and to know that, like hey, if we do this, this could be amazing. Greatness is not for the faint of heart. So dream big and really going for those.
Brad Hammond: 18:06
Totally. I love that advice. Well on that note, thanks, Nicole, so much for joining and sharing all your wisdom and advice here. I really appreciate it.
Nicole Rogers: 18:14
Thanks, Brad. Appreciate it. It's been great speaking with you today.
Brad Hammond: 18:18
Totally.