Ben Ard00:00 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Heidi. Heidi, welcome to the show.
Heidi Wurpel00:05 — Thanks so much, Ben. Pleasure to be here.
Ben Ard00:07 — Yeah, Heidi, I'm excited. This is going to be a ton of fun. You have the coolest analogy for our subject today. But before we get to that, let's get to know you a little bit. If you don't mind sharing with the audience who you are, your work history background, all that kind of fun stuff. That'll kind of set the stage for today's conversation.
Heidi Wurpel00:24 — Fantastic. Yeah, is it the coolest or is it kind of geeky? We'll let the listeners decide that in a few minutes. But for the time being, I'm Heidi Wurpel. I'm the head of marketing for Emburse. If you haven't heard about Emburse, it's a very cool company. We go all the way from purchase order through payments, and then we do everything from virtually spinning up a card for you to spend money, get approval to spend money at your company, all the way through your reimbursement of spending, and then add expense intelligence on top of all that. So finance people love us, but others love us too. And yeah, we have some great stuff available for folks.
And I came to Emburse six years ago, and my history's been really the brand side, corporate side of marketing comms. Journalism undergrad with a focus in advertising, and then did my MBA, totally changed my world, and decided to go into technology. For ten years, worked in corporate IT and then came over to Emburse to do SaaS marketing and haven't looked back.
Ben Ard01:25 — I love it. That's so cool. Well, Heidi, you and I were emailing back and forth about the subject, and you have this really cool analogy. There and back again, the story of a marketing dollar, obviously a play on The Hobbit. How did the analogy come here? Like, let's start there. Obviously you mentioned it's nerdy. I think it's not nerdy. I think it's awesome in every way possible.
Heidi Wurpel01:47 — Okay.
Ben Ard01:49 — But how did this come about? Where did this come from? And where did the analogy kind of show up?
Heidi Wurpel01:53 — Yeah, I think, you know, so The Hobbit was my favorite book when I was little. I read it all the time. And this concept of, like, there be dragons, right? And I was working on, as so many, you know, leads in marketing, CMOs do, a budget. And I thought, I need to go get more gold. I need to go get more money, right? And sometimes I think that can feel like a battle, like a grand epic journey of how do you go, who's with you, who's gonna be against you, what are you going to have to overcome?
And I just sort of started being very geeky and thinking about it almost as like little me with my, you know, sword going off into the world. And I started slicing and dicing my budget in every possible way. So my CEO is absolutely brilliant, just probably the smartest woman I've ever met in my life, Marne Martin. And she said, well, look at bookings. And I did. And I don't think, as CMOs, we often pause and look at bookings because we say, but, you know, the sales team takes it from pipeline on. It's not my fault if it doesn't close, if it doesn't convert. But instead, I backed in from bookings all the way back to my budget, every dollar. I sliced it and diced it by segment, by vertical. So Emburse sells to small businesses, mid-market businesses, and enterprise. We are international, we sell to a wide variety of industries and a variety of personas. And so as you can imagine, it's like a grand matrix of data that I did. I just created taxonomy and started slicing and dicing every single booked dollar by size, industry, channel, campaign. Let's see, any other ways? Persona, I think I went as well, and then took the dollar spend as well as I could and started doing percentages of our marketing spend against each of those. And when I had that giant matrix, I found a bunch of goose eggs, a bunch of zeros where I went, my gosh, do we have zero return on investment here? And so that really became the there and back again.
And then if we experiment and we go back in, is this a content issue? Is this a messaging issue? Is this a channel issue? Can I explain this? It just opened up this world of thoughts. And, Ben, of course, that's where you and this podcast came in. Like it's a meaty topic that I think others might benefit from.
Ben Ard04:21 — I love it. I think that's so cool. I love the journey. I love, like you said, you went and you found the end result that you were looking for. You went back to the source and said, wait a minute, maybe these two things don't line up how I originally thought they would. Now, when we're looking at it, obviously when you're looking at marketing strategy, one of your points here is that looking at your budget is actually more indicative of your strategy more than like the strategy document you may have created, or any other kind of like thing that you may be focusing on internally, maybe even KPIs. How does your marketing budget actually represent your actual strategy in like the most authentic, genuine way? How does that actually show off what you're really caring about?
Heidi Wurpel05:04 — Yeah, you know, I think if you think of marketing groups or businesses maybe in like three big buckets, you've got your startups, right? And as a startup, you're trying to find your ICP, you're trying to get those first sales, you're really looking for, I don't know, the cost of gaining opportunities and just can you find those first buyers? Are they happy? Are they staying? Right. Like you've got that on there.
So if your budget is really leaning toward ICP and persona exploration, that's gonna be telling to you. You then I think have this giant, most of us are in this growth or growing, you know, budget phase. This is where you think of things like pipeline efficiency, right? Optimization of your marketing spend, going to more channels. Maybe you're entering new markets. And I think that was an aha moment for me. You're probably also thinking a lot about net new. How do we get new clients, more clients, et cetera? And so you're really looking at that efficiency dollar spend. And then I think, you know, some of us are lucky enough to be the top of the market, right? Where we're defending our position.
And I think your marketing budget shows that strategy of defense as well. That's when you're starting to think like share of voice, total accessible market share, white space, how do we retain, how do we grow within our existing customer base? And if you slice and dice your budget by customer, that's what I did when I said segment earlier, I did customers for small, medium, large, I did net new for small, medium, large. And I think that's really telling to say, you know, are you really working to grow and defend within the customer base you have, or are you acting like a growing company? And so I think sometimes growing companies can act like growth companies or small startups. I think sometimes growing companies can act like those defending their market share, but that's gonna give you first and foremost your strategy. And then you peel it back to more like the tactical strategy.
Are you entering new markets? Have you found a new area that, holy cow, why is the return on marketing investment so great here? And is that a lever you can actually like pour more money into and replicate in other places? So I think that's what you start to find is it whether it's showing you where your strategy can go or where your strategy is.
For me, that was an aha moment of, wow, we're saying that our most important group is our customers. Are your dollars supporting that assertion? Right? Or we're saying that, you know, we really want to go up market or go more B2C. Are your dollars supporting that assertion? And so you don't have to tell anybody that.
Ben Ard07:55 — I love that. Okay. There's so much there to unwrap.
Heidi Wurpel07:56 — Yeah.
Ben Ard07:58 — I love the concept here. There's so much to think about. One of my questions that kind of comes to mind when you're looking at the budget, there's obviously other components other than the dollar spent, right? There are things like headcount, the amount of time, resources, things like that. How do you wrap those all into like an all-encompassing budget to see where those priorities are at? Do you look purely at dollars spent? Do you look at headcounts? You know, like at what level of like actual expenditure are you looking at from the budget perspective?
Heidi Wurpel08:27 — I think at first I just started with actual dollars out, right? So truly if you gave me first programmatic versus headcount, right? Budget, looking at how much of our spend is actually going to place ads in the market. And so I looked at that first. But I do think that you should layer in, and I did layer in, headcount as well at a certain point. Now that's not always clean. You know, usually you have a content writer or an editor or a strategist, and they're covering every single industry. They're covering every single segment. Maybe you're blessed enough to have a customer-specific marketer really focused or a few focused folks. But again, that's where the percentages come in.
You just say thirty-three, thirty-three, thirty-three. Where are they spending their time? Fifty, fifty, twenty-five, twenty-five, right? This doesn't have to be a perfect science. Again, this is for you to uncover aha moments for you as the leader of marketing. This is not for finance. This is not for your CEO. This is for you to say where am I optimized and where am I speaking and where am I actually acting? So I did layer in headcount eventually, but it wasn't my first go at it.
At first I just wanted to know actual dollars out and levers I could move. Could I pour more money in and essentially get more pipe out? And could it be as simple as that? Some yeses from that, some nope.
Ben Ard09:54 — When you're looking at this, and I love that you kind of explained that this isn't for the rest of the company or organization. This is not a document you're taking to the board and showing them all this information. It's for you. What format does it live in? Like, where is its home? How do you read it? Is it a spreadsheet, Google Doc? Is it a handwritten note? Like, what have you found to make this really productive for anyone thinking, okay, maybe I should really invest some time and energy here? What are like some elements here that you found to be really good for documenting that and being able to read it yourself?
Heidi Wurpel10:28 — Yeah, I think, you know, with that whole Hobbit analogy, like you need your dwarves with you. You need those who will tell you
Ben Ard10:33 — Ha ha
Heidi Wurpel10:36 — honestly where the spend is. So I really have a great finance team, and I happen to be blessed with an incredible product. So Emburse does expense intelligence. So we're really lucky that we drink our own champagne, as the saying goes.
So I'm able to see analytics dashboards and slice and dice and have people say, you know, the spend of this money went to this event specifically or went to this digital platform. Now that took me really far, and I can slice and dice down and go into specific analytics. But then I also did some back-of-napkin type of things in Google Sheets where maybe you wanted to look at, you know, the headcount, for example, which isn't again the dollar spend out. And Emburse is really good at tracking dollars, but I'm not putting my team's compensation, for example, in there. So I would say it ended up being a mashup then. But you know, it's really nice to have software that shows you the information that you need right at your fingertips, so you're not spending your entire weekend essentially typing in from your finance team what the marketing spend is. But you can, you can. Certainly I think you could do this in an Excel or Google Sheet for sure.
Ben Ard11:50 — So you definitely have the shortcut, the inside route. That's really powerful.
Heidi Wurpel11:54 — I do.
Ben Ard11:55 — So one thing I loved is that you went to the CEO and she said, hey, go look at the end, look at the bookings. Now there's a journey between the spend that, you know, going back to the analogy, there's a journey to connect that data together. And there are human hands that touch the CRM and all sorts of things. Data is never perfect. I've never talked to anyone who said the CRM data is flawless. I love it. It tells me everything I need. Like, not a soul has ever said that once. How did you find your tolerance level for good enough? And how did you start connecting those things? Any advice there? Cause I know a lot of marketers are like, every time I have to touch the CRM or whatever it is, you know, I just get so frustrated because we're not documenting everything we should and all that fun stuff.
Heidi Wurpel12:40 — Yeah, I think you do have to be honest with yourself about your attribution models and the pros and cons of them, right? If you are first touch, period, right? You're going in and you're saying, then you need to know that there's gonna be a bias to brand awareness and brand activity, right? So PR and AR should be looking really, really good. Organic should look really, really good to you. Any out of house should appear pretty well, you know. That would make sense if you're starting to say, wow, a lot of people clicked that QR code or interacted and saw that. So first touch. Now I go a little more of sort of last touch before going in. And so then that tells you a different story. You're gonna see higher in your email, your paid digital. Of course organic still, I think for everyone, remains a major touch point. And I think it is increasing in a world of AI citations. We're seeing maybe SEO go down, but that shorter velocity of organic intro to actual conversion really, really getting tight. But that's a different episode.
So I think for me, looking at the CRM data after you really nailed down your attribution model, that's where you just know that your budget's gonna be biased. And again, you need to be able to explain things. Numbers can tell any story that you want them to tell. And so what I'm really doing is pressure testing my assumptions here. So again, we use last touch attribution. That made me know, hey, it's gonna be biased to paid digital, et cetera. Again, that's why I started with the actual dollars out to give me that information. So we do have a really complex and excellent operations team. Props to my team and all that they can do in tying the data. But it's never going to be perfect. But again, you're looking for directional things. So find your baseline, get directional, apply some thought to it. Does that make sense? Does that not make sense? It's not going to be perfect. This is directional. Again, why you're not sending this to your board, why you're not sending this to your CFO, but why you might be asking yourself, can we get more here? Am I surprised by any of these goose eggs is really the question. Or am I surprised by an incredible return on investment somewhere? And should I do more there? Is it underperforming because I'm underfeeding it? I'm not giving it enough money. And that's where some of the arguments come that you can use with the others in the business.
Ben Ard15:08 — Well, and something I've seen, and I love that you're touching on this, I've never seen someone get in trouble for having a goose egg. I have seen people get in trouble when someone else finds out the goose egg and that leader didn't know about it. If the leader is the first one to show up and say, hey, we just spent all this money on this one initiative and we got nothing. It was a waste of time and money. We're moving our budget over here, and here's why. All of a sudden you look like a rock star.
But if your head of sales or your head of finance or someone comes in and says, why in the world are we spending all this money? We have zero return on it. What are they doing over there? All of a sudden it becomes an issue. So I love that you can kind of hedge that and always have that understanding up front and can always be the first one to bring that conversation up.
Heidi Wurpel15:51 — Yeah. And talk to your people about it, right? Talk to your subject matter experts. Ask them, did you know? Did we do something different? Can we A/B test here? What do you think's going on? Did something shift, market dynamics-wise? Like marketing is often the first to feel what's happening out in the world and the trends. And then, you know, we're that leading indicator of something is not right here or something has changed here.
But in my journey, I entered the market in the recession of the 2000s, you know, the early 2000s. And that was my first career. I worked in luxury marketing. So B2C, I was selling jewelry. Well, I was the marketing person selling for a jewelry chain. And you know, what a time to say you should buy diamonds, in the 2008 recession, right? And e-comm came about. Nobody, nobody thought anyone was going to buy diamonds sight unseen, right? And then Blue Nile came along and started eating everybody's dinner, right? And it was this, we need to do something, we need to do something fast. And who sees that, right? The numbers of traffic, those walking through the door, those checking when you're open. Marketing often sees those early indicators and starts having those conversations. I think something might be changing in the economy here. Why is our buyer looking different than it used to be? Why are our sales, you know, our outcomes, conversions lower than they used to be, whatever it might be. Now, in the end, it was a great store. We ended up even growing during the recession. So I'm very proud of what we were all able to accomplish during that time. But it was hard. It was a hard battle. It was hard won. We had to go old school experiential, event-based marketing to achieve what we achieved. And that was a different way of doing things, right? And so, you know, we went both e-comm and experiential. We did a two-prong strategy. And again, that's because we saw what was coming down the line. And this is 20 some odd years ago, but I think applies to the current world we live in where AI is again moving things for us. The economy shifts. It's good for some, not for others, if we're to believe the economists, right? And so what do you do with that? And where does your persona or ICP sit in that sort of K-shaped economy, and what can you do there as well? And again, your goose eggs are those things that last year were great and this year aren't great, which I didn't mention. I did this for 2025 and 2024 and I looked for trends as well. I mapped
Ben Ard18:23 — Mm.
Heidi Wurpel18:24 — it and said, you know, we're performing, our return on advertising spend is way better now. What does that mean? Right? Or it's way worse now. You know, we didn't get the money out of that experiential campaign. What happened there? So yeah, I think that that's really telling as well. So think about your strategy in that way, and the budget will indicate things that might be shifting in the market.
Ben Ard18:47 — Fantastic. I love that. Heidi, I always like to end with a very specific kind of question. I'm curious if you have any tactical advice for anyone in marketing leadership listening to this episode who is nodding their head during this episode saying, you know what, Heidi's telling the truth. I need to focus and maybe take a little bit deeper look at my budget and see what it's telling me about my strategy, about what I really care about, even if I may not really be focusing on certain elements. Where am I putting the budget? Anything that they can do this week or this month to kind of start down this pathway that you've seen to be really productive in this journey.
Heidi Wurpel19:22 — Yeah, I think step one, create that taxonomy essentially. Create those slices that you want to see. And don't boil the ocean initially. Find your three or four big slices that you want and just try it. Try applying those good enough percentages you were talking about, Ben, to, well, I think about a third of so-and-so's time goes to this and about a quarter of our paid digital spend goes to that. Or our events tend to attract our upmarket folks. So let's say all events are going 100%. So I'd say that's where you start is figure out your slices in taxonomy, add those percentages in your mind of what you can do, and then again, just be prepared and open to what the data says, and keep that really open mind as to what you're probably gonna learn along this journey because you're not going back to the Shire with the same perspective that you left with, I guarantee it.
Ben Ard20:22 — Love that. And that's a great way to end the episode. Heidi, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is amazing. For anyone wanting to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Heidi Wurpel20:31 — Yeah, I'm Heidi dot Wurpel at Emburse dot com.
Ben Ard20:34 — Love it. And for everyone listening, scroll down to the show notes. We'll have Heidi's contact information right there. Heidi, again, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is amazing. Really do appreciate you sharing this journey with us.
Heidi Wurpel20:46 — My pleasure, Ben.
