0:05
Shanie Zimerman
Okay everyone, thank you all very much for joining. I am Shani and I manage the strategic partners over here at Oktopost. This is our 13th episode of from the Experts and I couldn't do it without you all. So thank you again. With me today are Colin Day, our managing director over here at Oktopost of EMEA and Apac and we have a very special guest we one of our dear friends over here at Oktopost we have Yonatan Sneer. Yonatan is the VP Marketing of AMIA and Apac over at Stratasys. Today's conversation is going to be really exciting and a little bit different to what we're used to. We're talking all about having to flip that switch on how we used to market a physical product to better fit and withstand this digital world. So just reminding everyone, you are on mute if you have any questions at all. There is a Q and a box and a chat box just below and we will definitely have time at the end of the webinar to get to those, so just feel free to drop them in. So Jonathan, let's go ahead and start with a little introduction, a little background on stratasys and really 3D printing in the B2B market.
1:20
Yonatan Snir
Sure. So happy to be here. A bit about me and Stratasys. So starting with Stratasys, we're about 32 years old. It's a combination of two companies, one called Objet, which is Israeli based and the other Statist which is from the US merged in the beginning of around 2012 I think it was. We are traded in the NASDAQ, more than $600 million revenue, operating in 13 countries, 155 resellers, four manufacturing locations, 2,000 employees plus and the big market we are looking at something that's growing from 7 billion in 2017 to 21 billion in 22. So very interesting customers like Airbus, Boeing, BMW, all the big brands in the manufacturing arena. And a bit about me. So I joined Stratatus just three months ago, pretty new, still learning a lot beforehand. I had my own startup called Qliklap, which a friend at Oktopost know very well. It was running four and a half years and beforehand I was also a director of marketing, operations and demand generation at a company called Nice, which we were a customer of Oktopost and before that half of my career was in IT in business applications or different types of things. So I'm kind of a hybrid between marketing and technology. So that's what I bring in. That's it background
3:03
Shanie Zimerman
that's Great. So you mentioned just very quickly, just so that I know Stratasys is a kind of a combination of two companies. What was the original. What was the original kind of business? Was it always in the. I mean, 32 years ago, was it always 3D printing as the objective? Was it always. Was that the direction or did that evolve also?
3:28
Yonatan Snir
These two companies that merged were the pioneers of 3D printing in the world. Each one bringing different technology. The one is Polyjet and one is called FDM, doing 3D printing, what we call additive manufacturing, but in different technologies, different, a bit different purposes. And today there's more technologies that we have acquiring. Just in the last two months, we acquired two companies with two different technologies, one in the uk, one in San Francisco. And we're kind of. Covering all the latest and greatest technologies in the polymer printing space.
4:12
Colin Day
Jonathan, how big is a 3D printer?
4:16
Yonatan Snir
It can be from a desktop size, like you can put one right behind you and up to a huge one that can print parts of airplanes and cars. So it really depends on your needs.
4:32
Shanie Zimerman
I'm fascinated by this world, I think. I mean, I'm 31, so not for 32 years, but for a long time. It's been a huge interest of mine. I just think it's a really fascinating world and industry. Can you tell us a little bit about how 3D printing fits into that B2B market?
4:55
Yonatan Snir
Sure. So when you look at 3D printers, you have the low end that are more for, I would say, people that like to do craft and things. It can vary from $800 and above, but that's not our game. Our game is more in the industrial manufacturing space and prototyping. So our machines start at around $3,000, $4,000, and then it goes up to a few hundred thousand of dollars based on the application, based on the technology, the size, as you mentioned, Colin. And what's amazing is that you can, you know, I cannot imagine any physical product that cannot value almost, you know, from 3D printing in a way. So we are playing in, as I mentioned, in the aerospace, in the automotive, in consumer goods, in packaging, in what we call jigs and fixtures. Even in healthcare, we have in dental and other printing models for doctors, tubing, kind of practice their surgeries on, you know, printed hearts and printed brains and even, you know, simulating tumors inside the human's body and seeing exactly how it looks from, you know, from the computer into actual physical feeling and size. So it's pretty unlimited, I would say. It's all about, you know, the eye of it and what's the. The need of the customer and how to adjust the right technology, machine material to their needs.
6:30
Colin Day
It's a little bit like marketing though, right? In so much as. Do you know what. What you've just described. Yeah. Is it's all about the art, the possible. Right. Like what you print in the 3D space is really like up to your own imagination. Yeah. And is that not running a marketing campaign?
6:55
Yonatan Snir
Right.
6:55
Colin Day
It's like, you know, it's like as a marketeer, it's really up to you. Right. To bring your creative juices and get them flowing and bring that to the fore. I mean, that's what people are doing with 3D printers, right?
7:12
Yonatan Snir
Yeah. But, you know, eventually we are replacing actual processes that today are done much more. You know, it's more sophisticated in the way that it's been done or the process has more steps in the process rather than having just one print. So, for example, when you go into prototyping, there is the design part and then the, you know, the engineers who want to see that it fits well and that the materials are, you know, strength and all that. So today when you don't have a 3D printer, it's like doing these things separately and takes much longer. And with one machine that we have today that has both multi materials, multicolors, 5,000 colors if I'm not mistaken. I hope the team won't kill me if I am wrong, but you can get in, you know, overnight, actual finished, good in how it looks, how it feels, and the strength to kind of feel it. And for designers, for example, in that case, it's a huge leap because they very quickly can show the end customer what they're going to get, like how the end product will be very similar, very close to the actual one, including some moving functionality and stuff like that. So it's pretty amazing.
8:28
Colin Day
How many colors did you say?
8:30
Yonatan Snir
I think Overall it's like 5,000 variations, including very high quality transparencies and gradients, which are pretty amazing. So if you want to kind of illustrate, let's say perfume bottle. Right. You can actually make it look as if there is liquid inside in different gradients.
8:52
Shanie Zimerman
It's endless possibilities.
8:55
Yonatan Snir
Yeah, yeah.
8:57
Shanie Zimerman
And this is why I've been fascinated for years in this, with this industry
9:02
Yonatan Snir
pretty much. And from marketing perspective, you know, it's a very interesting and challenging world because we have those smaller machines and then we talk about high volumes. So marketing a machine that costs 5,000 is not the same as marketing machine that costs 100,000. So we need to do different types of marketing activities and campaigns to fit in the mathematics of smaller machines versus higher machines. And how do we build short funnels versus long funnels in terms of decision making? Then add to that, you have materials, you have software. It's kind of like you have in one company, multiple, I would say funnel streams that are usually done in one company, one kind of go to market. Right. And you don't have this variance, which makes it from my end very interesting, but also very challenging in terms of the focus and how to execute.
10:06
Shanie Zimerman
No. And that actually I didn't want you to stop talking. I just wanted to bring us into that actual being able to market this physical product in this digital world. And you were just starting to speak about it. But what happens when we need to feel a product and we need to actually visualize it and put our hands on it to understand its value and its worth? What happens when now suddenly everything is switched to digital?
10:32
Yonatan Snir
Yeah. So definitely in 2019 and beforehand, before I joined, we were very event driven. Right. This is a world of physical event, industry event, where you go and show your merchandise and people can see printing and fill the parts and talk, you know, with ourselves, experts to understand exactly how to do it. And then suddenly everything was closed. Right. So I think Stratasys and that's before my hand with me joining later, you know, only in beginning in November 2020. It was so really after the pandemic was already digested, I would say in the company and the team moved to digital and did a lot of webinars and to do some virtual events in a way and move to more doing email campaigns and so forth. So we were able to get to our numbers, but it was challenging. And I think that what's amazing now is that in the software world, without putting the easiness on this, it's hard to market it, but you don't need the physical feeling and the physical presence. And over here it is challenging. But the fact is that the world changed so fast in the last one year that even our customers, you know, I'm not saying for the big boxes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's a big investment. But for the smaller boxes, they can even buy them online sometimes and there's less of a need to physically see them. It's enough to send them, for example, if it's a high potential customer, what we call Pebbles, which is kind of samples of the prints to show the capabilities of the colors and the feeling of the different textures and so forth and what we're building in from what I can share for now is a lot of digital experience that will kind of leap between what people are needing to, what we can deliver through digital experiences.
12:46
Colin Day
Yonatan just picking up on that, right? It's like the feeling and the texture, right? Words that you use there. Totally get that right when it's when you sent me a sample or when I'm on a trade show floor. But how do you get that, that sense across, right, like in the, in the digital world. I mean, you talked more about like, you know, email and you know, traditional, you know, B2B marketing channels there, right? Like add to that social, the web, etc. How do you, how do you paint that picture, right? How do you get that. The texture in the field to come across in those strategies?
13:28
Yonatan Snir
So first of all, I think it's about building a right funnel. So the first step is getting the awareness that such a machine exists. Many of our potential customers don't even know the capabilities of 3D printing. They know it exists, but they don't know how advanced the technology is, has gotten to. And so, you know, when we start a campaign or when we want to target specific customers, we of course, like in any marketing, we try to understand what's the challenges and how do we improve and so forth. And then we go through the regular kind of types of content. Video is a killer because we're in a very visual world, right in 3D printing. So the more videos we create, the more people will see. And it's kind of, you know, if you are an engineer or designer, it will immediately catch your eyes when you see parts that are within your industries, that you see them in a case study and one of our customers. So that's kind of the first step to get you engaged, right? And then we're talking about engineers and designers. So these are people who are talking about materials and thickness and sizes and, and different. So then you need to speak the language and then, you know, even if they don't feel or see it, if you talk the language and you know how to explain to them how they shift from what they are doing to what they can be doing and what's the value that they will get, like how it shortens their, you know, their life cycle of the prototyping or how we save them, the cost per part or different types of values that we are learning that they, they gain from our solutions, then that's the next step. Once they understand that, that's when they want to start fitting and then believing right so that's when we can, you know, when there's no issue with traveling, we can get them to one of our resellers. We have more than 155 resellers around the world, so almost in every country. So they can see and get, get the fitting. But also as I mentioned, we can send parts through mail and get them to fill and see it. Because the machine itself, what they need to know is the specs and what it requires to put it in your office or to put it in your bank. But what's important is the end result of the machine, right? What other parts it's printing and how they look.
15:59
Colin Day
So you're Sam in that, right? Like some of the things that I've picked up on, like you mentioned education, storytelling, value exchange. You talked about the use of traditional mail, snail mail. If I think of all of that's not too dissimilar to what my sales team go through here at Oktopost. And it's not a physical product that we're selling, it's a SaaS based software offering.
16:29
Yonatan Snir
As you know,
16:32
Colin Day
what I'm taking away from that is it doesn't matter whether it's physical or whether it's an intangible, like an intangible asset that you're selling, the strategies that you're going to bring to bear are somewhat the same, if not identical. And when you talk about the use of physical mail and you talk about the use of email and video, etc. To me there, it's all about creating an integrated campaign strategy.
17:07
Yonatan Snir
Right.
17:08
Colin Day
From a marketing perspective, can you give us a little bit of color as the, you know, as the head of marketing over there, what you think of when you think about your campaign strategies.
17:21
Yonatan Snir
So first of all, back to your point, I think it's very similar till you get to the bottom of the panel when they need to get the actuals right. So you can easily demo.
17:31
Colin Day
I'm not delivering that thing on a jumbo jet, mate. I'll leave that one to your logistical department.
17:38
Yonatan Snir
Yeah, but you know, eventually it is similar just at the end part on how to get them to an opportunity and to close it, that's when we need to go more physical. I think then beyond that it's all digital and very, very similar. Now, you know, when we look at our campaigns and planning a product, physical product oriented company is very much built on NPIs, what we call new product introductions. So every business unit that we have here and we have about five business units in the company so far, they work on Innovating new technologies, new materials. Right. So their kind of cycle is NPIs. So for them, you know, there's like, if you compare us, you know, to Apple, so every new iPhone, every new iPad. Right. That's the cycle that these types of companies with physical products go through. However, when we talk about B2B, it's creating a lot of challenges to work in that direction because it's like turning on a campaign every few months to launch a new product. And that's very not cost effective. And that's why one of the things that I'm doing now is we're kind of changing it to be just like integrated campaigns that were used in the software area, but incorporating the NPIs into those integrated campaigns is part of it. So let's say I'm now targeting certain campaign for across the year that I'm building for a certain audience that we are targeting. I'm trying to push those relevant NPIs into the relevant campaign. So it will be like boosters within the campaign rather than standalone activities, for example. So this way we can better leverage the funnels and the dimension we're building also for the NPIs rather than building new demands each time for each NPI, for example. So this is a major change that we are doing now which requires some internal education in the company. In certain areas it's clear. In other areas it requires some process changes, but very interesting, I think, and much more efficient in the way we will operate our campaigns. The content production, the focus, the ability to build the content to fit into the campaign stages like the top panel, middle panel and bottom panel, rather than, you know, educating and nurturing and closing deals just by one NPI. Also, NPIs are very product driven and that doesn't work right. We need to start from the value and product is only mid to bottom funnel. So we cannot leverage NPI content if it's not talking also about value. And that's part of education as well.
20:30
Shanie Zimerman
Great. I think, like Colin said, that there's definitely a lot of overlap between that software marketing and that physical product. But I think the end result is always going to be where they differ. And I think also that 2020, and not even just 2020, putting 2020 aside, I think technology these days has made it easier to adapt and to be able to adjust to that digital world. So where the look and feel might not be physical anymore, I think technology has come in and design has come in to be able to give you that effect through the computer more or less or through, you know, through a specific Piece of technology.
21:14
Yonatan Snir
Yeah.
21:15
Colin Day
Yenatan, Just thinking about that as well. Right. You mentioned that the majority of pretty pre you joining the organization and pre2020. Right. Like, you know, a lot of the marketing spend was. Was physical events. I think that's, you know, the same can be said across many industries.
21:35
Shanie Zimerman
Right.
21:35
Colin Day
But more so for you guys.
21:38
Yonatan Snir
Do you.
21:39
Colin Day
When. When do you feel the events industry is going to. Going to come back?
21:44
Shanie Zimerman
Or.
21:44
Colin Day
Or is it. I mean is it going to be the same. The same thing for you guys going forward or now that you've experienced experience, the fact that you can drive these results through a digital experience and probably cheaper as well. Right. Like do you see that this is you guys, you know, your marketing strategies changed forever and in person physical events may be a little bit of a thing in the past.
22:10
Shanie Zimerman
This is a question that came in similar to a question that came in.
22:15
Yonatan Snir
So I don't know when it will be back. What I can tell you, I just had to decide if I want to renew a contract we have with a vendor for physical events scanning processes for building the leads from the booth. And I told my team, listen, for now let's cancel it. We can always renew. I don't know when it will be back, but definitely changed. It's not that we'll be able to avoid the physical events once they're back, but I don't think that we will be investing so much, you know, in building the big kind of booth designs and stuff that we used to do on every event. We'll be working closer probably with our resellers to enable them to do so instead of being on every single event by ourselves. It makes more sense. So definitely change. It's not gone, it's. We will be using it because it's very important in this industry, but the mix will change definitely.
23:19
Shanie Zimerman
I think there's just more tools in your tool belt now and you don't have to necessarily rely on one outlet or one resource versus another. When you see that digital does work to its extent.
23:32
Yonatan Snir
I think the tools were out there before and we knew how to use them. It's more about the customers being more ready to do some of the things also. Yeah, so that's very important piece because if in the past they, you know, they wouldn't do a demo or online through, you know, through web apps, now they understand it's possible and actually it's time saving for everyone. Right. Travel expenses, time. So at least the first stages till they need to take the action decision. Definitely a big time saver.
24:05
Shanie Zimerman
Sure.
24:06
Colin Day
I guess the difference, Yonatan. Right. Is if you're spending 800 bucks. Yeah. Guess what? If I get it wrong, you know, shame on me. Right. If I'm spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a, on a 3D like printer and I get it wrong, that can be like a life changing event for the person that made that decision. Right. So that's why you're always going to want to get someone that, you know, he wants to touch it and feel it. If they're, if they're making that type of investment in it. It's no different to software.
24:38
Yonatan Snir
Right.
24:38
Colin Day
If you're making that kind of investment in software yet you want to go and have a, you know, a reference visit like you know, to someone that is already using that product and that service is exactly the same like thing in that regards, right?
24:59
Yonatan Snir
Yeah, definitely. But you know we're not a startup so we have so many case studies and use cases and all that. So I don't think anyone is risking assuming they have the need. So once they understand the capabilities and the need, I think it's just a matter of selecting the right vendor and the right solution for yourself because you know, it's not that we need to prove it works. It works, right? It works. It works great. Ours works the best. Right. So no questions about that. It's more about your ability to invest because it is an investment that takes time to return and there's different business models to sell it. So you know, opex, captex, different ways but eventually, you know, we need to find the customers that understand the value and they want to make that progress or want to upgrade. Some of them have older machines that are not capable of doing what we're capable of doing today. Volumes, types of materials and you know, the way we print things in is more precise. So definitely a lot of potential there that we can conquer if we hit the right target audience. Right. Like every marketeer is challenged by how
26:16
Colin Day
do you measure success as a marketer? You know, with inside, you know, when you, when you're marketing a physical assets like you know, how do you measure success?
26:28
Yonatan Snir
So KPI wise you mean what's our.
26:31
Colin Day
Yeah, what's. Yeah, what are the KPIs that you guys are metrics?
26:34
Yonatan Snir
Just the same. Just the same as every market here. This KPIs we're measuring this year is number of MQLs, number of opportunity and attribution to close one. Using multi touch attribution to drive our marketeers and also working with the channels not just for demand generation, but also for nurturing across the sales cycle. So very similar to whatever has been done. The challenge is, and that's not special for what we are doing, it's working a lot with channel marketing. So once the opportunity is being managed by our channels, we need to have very close relationship to make sure that leads are being handed, no balls are dropped, and that we provide the right value to execute for the channels as well, not just for ourselves. So I think that's a major thing to do. And I didn't work a lot with channels before Stratasys and I think it's fascinating to see this type of operation in terms of marketing, sales channel.
27:40
Shanie Zimerman
So let's talk a little bit about the globalization of 3D printing and how it's really kind of taking over. Really every industry I think can benefit and I think it's applicable like you said, from healthcare to aerospace to automotive to really every single aspect of, of life. You know, there's value in being able to bring these ideas to life and you know, take it from paper into, into a physical need.
28:14
Yonatan Snir
So let's take a small example. Let's say your air conditioner behind you breaks some, some part that breaks right? And let's say your manufacturer is not manufacturing or any more those kind of air conditioners. So basically all they need to have is a file that they can send to a local 3D printing vendor or service bureau or maybe they have their own facility and they can print it and you can get it the next day without having stock, without having to keep parts seven years back. And think of the time saving and the cost saving that this can provide. And that's one single application that I can give you from endless applications that we have that are very exciting in the healthcare example. So in dental we have like the ability to provide, you know, very fast paced production for the dental needs. Don't know yet all the professional terms that I won't try to say. But we have very interesting dental use cases in the healthcare for as I mentioned, you know, for universities, hospital universities to train. Really, you know, any example you will mention we can touch and we can discuss how 3D printing can support it in a way.
29:43
Shanie Zimerman
And I think it's, you know, there's no end in sight. Like you said, it started at least 32 years ago and I think it's only, only developing and only growing and the needs and the use cases are, you know, only continuing from here.
29:58
Yonatan Snir
I think that, you know, if you look more on the mass side and the areas where things are Evolving into. If you're looking into the near future, it's actually in certain areas replacing production lines. It's about the speed and volumes and the quality and. But we're getting there in a lot of places. So we started with, you know, with small amount of printed parts per machine per day, per month. And as the technology evolves, it's becoming in certain areas where it's not a high volume production that it can certainly replace regular production line that is very expensive to maintain and not as flexible as putting a machine instead and replacing the files whenever you want to change a product.
30:50
Shanie Zimerman
It always seemed like such a far off, you know, dream or product that, I don't know, not everyone can get their hands on it. And you picture it as this massive, you know, massive piece of machinery that you need to store in a warehouse. And it just sounds like, you know, again, with time and with development, it's becoming much more accessible on the individual level and also on the business level. And being able to, you know, have these things at your fingertips. If it's a dentist's office having their own 3D printer to be able to, you know, print dentures or whatever the case might be, or, you know, invisalign retainers, whatever it might be. It's no longer, you know, I think as with any technology, it takes time to develop it and it takes time to make it that much more accessible. And it sounds like this is the direction. Maybe I'll have a 3D printer of my very own one day.
31:48
Yonatan Snir
You can actually have creative. The consumer ones are not as expensive. And it's a good point to start actually in education in universities and schools. That's also another segment that we have a great success in. So starting from schools that have a lot of investment in creativity and stuff like that, and into the engineering schools and the design schools. These guys must have today 3D printers, like, you know, they must have computers today because if they want to educate their future designers or the future engineers, when they will go into the design shops or the manufacturing floors, they will meet 3D printers. So they must take this as part of the education plan.
32:40
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah, I always like to kind of wrap up the conversation of the webinars with a little bit looking towards the future. And I know, you know, we spoke about this when we were initially speaking about the webinar and kind of building, building this out. It's not so predictable in the sense that it's just constantly changing. But what would you see or what would you kind of pinpoint as some of Those trends that we can look forward to.
33:14
Colin Day
Yonatam, I guess she's asking you to 3D print the crystal ball, right?
33:19
Yonatan Snir
Yeah, exactly. So we have those but actually printed like crystal balls, crystal brains, whatever you want, but you've got it when you walk. I'm new so I don't have any models to show off on the camera. But every other office next to me has these amazing models from people have their own prints of the miniatures printed and up to like fruits on their table that are 3D printed that if you give them a bite you'll break your teeth. But they look so real. Actually looking on social media. I think there was a post there for video like yesterday about that that you can see like a banana and a pear and it looks like totally real. So I think, you know, design realism is already there and we're just getting better in it also, you know, from textures as I mentioned, and the kind of look and colors and up to the very small letters. Personalization is a big thing here. So of course currently it's only for very expensive parts. But for example, in the fashion world we're now having great success stories with top designers, you know, printing on printing on their designs. So it's very unique. And then you can also personalize and make one offs, right As a kind of products in the high end consumer products that you know, you can basically go if you want and design your own gig, you know, for your spouse and then it will be printed and shipped to you from the top designers in the world. So that's in one direction and the second direction as I mentioned and I'll put healthcare aside because I'm not an expert there, but it's really amazing what can be done there is the production and manufacturing floors. That's where things can get much more agile, much quicker and better. With 3D printers, the only challenge there is the quantities that we are as we go and as the technology evolves, we are able to print more and more parts with lower cost per part. And it's becoming very competitive with the traditional course, which is very interesting for us. And I think it, you know, in the pandemic the manufacturing business unit was relatively hard to other units because there was a sudden stop because there was no shipment and you know, people were consuming that. But it's back and I think it's going to to go and grow and we're investing in all those directions a lot. So again, I'm not an expert yet, only three months into the job, so I cannot predict too much and also some of it, you know, it's confidential from how we are building our go to market. But you know, it's really a matter of imagination. And I think, you know, I remember that when I heard first of Stratasys, way before I joined, I had a friend that is six years here, she used to work with me. Nice. And she was telling me, listen, think about it. Instead of like we are working in the aerospace industry. And she said instead of, you know, putting in the rockets, in the spaceships, all those tools that you need to maintain the spaceship, which are very heavy and space consuming, all you need to do instead is put a 3D printer and some materials and you print the tools you need on the fly based on the, you know, on the failures that you have instead of having all those tools. Just as one example, that was amazing for me and that was six years ago. So, yeah, you know,
37:18
Shanie Zimerman
I just. As a side note, when I put this out on LinkedIn, I had a friend tell me that Stratasys was her dream job, her dream company to work at. So I'm not the only 3D printing nerd. That's probably not the best word to use. It's not nerdy, but it is very, very cool.
37:34
Yonatan Snir
I'm hiring a director of SDR if anyone wants to join the team.
37:38
Colin Day
So, you know you're not allowed to poach our staff. Come on. That's not. That's not why we invited you onto this webinar.
37:48
Yonatan Snir
Not. Not the team from Oktopost, but anyone on the.
37:50
Shanie Zimerman
Not the team.
37:51
Colin Day
Anyone on the. Okay, right. The hundreds of people that are with us at the moment, if anyone's out there. Yonatan's hiring.
38:01
Shanie Zimerman
So thank you so much. We do have a couple of questions that came in, hoping we can take a couple of minutes just to get through those. What constitutes a lead and is there agreeance between marketing and sales as to what that lead is?
38:17
Yonatan Snir
Yeah, certainly. So again, just like in any other marketing case. So we have a good definition of what's a lead in terms of the Persona, the definition of which companies we're targeting and so forth. We start counting leads in an inquiry stage where they show initial interest. We mql them based on the scoring mechanism that we have. We're using Marketo for that and integrated with Salesforce and eventually it also varies between countries and there's different rules in certain areas. We have SDRs in place in most countries to kind of be the ones that are filtering out and qualifying based on our band. And we're looking to improve that process as well. That's why we're hiring an SDR director. But eventually, just like in any marketing space, we have a very clear definition of who is the right buyer, what's the right industries, and then what's qualifying to move them on to sales in terms of their readiness and needs. Hope that answers the question.
39:28
Shanie Zimerman
It does. And just on top of that, this just came in also. Is it one lead scoring model or do you use multiple lead scoring models to.
39:39
Yonatan Snir
So basically the lead scoring model, which I think needs to be revised, I didn't touch it yet, but it combines the behavioral and demographic scoring. So very, very similar to what we have. One of the things I'm looking at now is, you know, we know that, for example, executives don't get as quickly as others to the MTL score. That is needed. And that's where we need to look deeper into the leads that we build into the funnel and see how we can push better to fdr. Those people that are not likely to be seen again on our digital assets and yet they show the interest and it's worth accelerating and trying to get them on board faster rather than waiting for them to mature. So it's really. I think scoring models are challenging. I don't think they're accurate. I think they're a compromise. From what we can do today. You have more advanced tools that are able to do predictive scoring that we're not using currently. Also those I think that I don't know. In some companies, they work. In others, it really depends on the quality and the amount of data that you have to use. Those AI engines and predictive engines that also use intent data from around the web. It's also based on industries and locations in the world. So eventually it's all the time monitoring. I think your funnels to make sure that, you know, you feed the best leads to your SDRs and to your sales and if they're starting to push more and if they are overwhelmed, to set the bar higher and wait till we push lower quality not to waste their time. So it's like balancing the cues and scoring just helps it. I don't think it's like something you can really count on the math.
41:32
Colin Day
Yeah, I mean the lead scoring model and say the lead scoring model Yanatan is one way. Right. It's an indicate. It's only meant to be an indicator of. Yeah, it helps. Right. Add to that like the intent data. Right. Like that's again, it's just an indicator because if someone spikes because, you know, organizations or People inside their organization have gone out and done, you know, multiples, like Google searches for a particular word or phrase. Does that mean they're in a buying cycle? No, it just means they've gone out and done an extortionate amount of searches for that particular word or phrase. Right. And that's exactly what a lead scoring model is. Someone's engaged with multiple assets, marketing assets of yours. It's just a view and a lens to. To view into the sales world.
42:34
Yonatan Snir
Exactly. And that's why I think, you know, when you look at overall marketing, that's where really content comes into play. It's all about, and it's not a cliche, it's bringing value. And if you create value so people will understand one, that you are the company they want to business with. And second, they will I think accelerating their buying decision because they will quickly understand that if they need it or they don't. Right. Not just bombard them with content that bring no value, which I think many companies, including us sometimes are doing and kind of crystallizing the journey of what is the value that we can bring those customers in each stage of the discovery. So I think that's the main challenge, not the scoring. Because once someone understands the value, they will hit inquiry on your website. They won't wait. Once they have that aha moment, it will move forward. They will want to see a demo, they will want to speak with sales. So we want more what we call those fast tracks rather than MQLs. MQLs are really the tougher ones and just like everyone and it's all about building the right engagement, content, value, you know, forums for them to get nurtured from our experts, from our customers.
43:53
Colin Day
And that really then comes down to something that you mentioned earlier on. If it's not lead scoring, what you're really talking about there is you need to better understand the attribution because that's what's then going to drive you in the future. Did client A and client B Slack engage with these types of assets in this particular order? And clients seeded it in a different way and there was quicker Slack velocity through the sales channel for client C rather than client A and B. So how can I then tell the story differently to them next time in order to get them to model things in the C world?
44:39
Yonatan Snir
Exactly. It's a lot about reverse engineering success and failures and then learning from that in order to optimize so data. Of course, I'm not inventing here, anything is key so we have enough data to look back and to see what's working and what's not and how to optimize by using Bizible as a multi touch attribution tool. So it's very clear for us at least from what the tool can provide, which types of assets attribute to different stages in the funnel. And so that's very helpful and we're trying to constantly look into that where we have a very good marketing operation team here to analyze that and to help the teams optimize and improve. Not just for the numbers but also for the quality of the marketing that we do to our prospects and customers
45:30
Colin Day
as modern day marketers. We also need to be data scientists. Right. It's all about how do we. The organization with the most data isn't going to be the one that wins. It's going to be the one that is able to take that data, interpret it, understand it and take meaningful businesses decisions off of the back of it.
45:52
Yonatan Snir
Right? Yeah. I think today marketing is a combination of data science and sales organization. So if in the past we like we are very sales driven in the region. So what that means is we constantly look at numbers, the dashboard that our sales teams so our marketing teams have are the KPIs that they need to hit and the top one is the attribution to the closed one. Although a sales cycle can take even a year, but still we want them to be accountable for the entire buying journey and not just for demand generation. So that's kind of a key to turn your marketing team into be more data driven but also into hitting their targets and not just counting leads or doing the events and executing. It's about executing the right activities that attribute to the bottom line and that's very important. And luckily here there is a good infrastructure that I joined and I don't need to build anything that we are already having the capability of measuring it. So we can go in those directions and just improve them as we go rather than building it from scratch which is much harder.
47:07
Shanie Zimerman
Sorry, another question. I just want to be conscious of the time here. How does social fit into your marketing strategy? Wonder where that question came from.
47:16
Yonatan Snir
That's a great question because. Oh, because of Oktopost. Good connection. So yeah Oktopost the way I see it. So this year we're going to invest a lot in employee advocacy. I think that's a kind of not free in Oktopost, but free in terms of, of the actual spend. Repeat media. Right. So it's all about connecting the teams, the customer facing teams into our campaigns and into our messaging and to make sure that they feel part of what we are doing and then executing now to do that. There is a few steps that we are going to take in order to implement it. We're going to build a strategy. Just keep in mind that I'm in the region. Right. We also have corporate marketing and we have marketing in America. So we're not owning the social channels. However, we are part of it and we want to execute. So we are building together with corporate marketing in alignment, I would say the social media strategy that we want to leverage and I want to go very creative here. As I mentioned, we are a very visual company. Right. So it's very easy to stand out which is a must today in order not to get banner blinded or content blinded. Right. And we're going to build into that and execute both in organic social media and also on paid build contests and other things in our domain that are very interesting for people to participate in. And as I see it, it's a big chunk to build into because designers and engineers are living in Instagram, in Pinterest, in of course in LinkedIn. So in the western countries and of course in Asia Pacific they have their own WeChat and Baidu and other channels as well. But again they are consuming content there. So a big one for us this year to evolve into. We're already doing a lot. We have many followers, we have engagement, we want more. I think it's a very good channel to communicate with our profile.
49:28
Shanie Zimerman
Well, we have to agree on that. I think we know that. All right, one more question and I was saving this for last. What is the strangest thing you've seen 3D printed?
49:45
Yonatan Snir
I haven't been here.
49:46
Colin Day
I'm going to put my hands up and that came from me. So apologies but I had to ask
49:50
Yonatan Snir
it
49:53
Colin Day
the audience falling over themselves for this one Yonte.
49:58
Yonatan Snir
So I think one, everyone's thinking it one of the models we have here and if I had more time I would go to one of the offices here and grab it is like human head that is kind of transparent, that shows the inner organs of the eyes and the brain in like in pure realism. So like you see a transparent head. That's kind of amazing. You see like, you know, I love that different. Very, very detailed. Just as one example I think. But I'm sure that if you ask me next year Colin, I'll have much better examples to give you.
50:41
Shanie Zimerman
Oh, we're doing a follow up next
50:42
Colin Day
year we're going to come and visit you Yonatans like yeah, we're going to see Those. We're going to see those in person, sir.
50:50
Yonatan Snir
Yeah, definitely more than welcome.
50:54
Shanie Zimerman
Well, I hope so. But for today, I think we're going to call it a wrap. We've gone through all of the questions. We had a great conversation. I was really eager to learn a little bit more about this industry, about this space. And I really appreciate you, Jonathan, taking the time to share this information. And I know, you know, it's still a little early on in your 3D printing career, but I do hope that, you know, we'll reconvene if it's next year in person or a few months down the line just to see some of the new information you've learned. I know I would love to hear a little bit more. So thank you very much for joining us. Colin, thank you as always for being my co host on this webinar. And if anyone has any questions, our emails are here. This is going to be followed up with the recording and with this deck so that you can run through it. And this was great. Again, thank you both so much for taking time out of your day to join me today. And I look forward to our next conversation. It'll be next month at the end of the month. So I'll see you all there. Thank you again.
52:04
Colin Day
Thanks, Shani.
52:05
Yonatan Snir
Thank you very much for having me.
52:07
Shanie Zimerman
Bye, guys.
52:07
Colin Day
Thanks, everyone.
52:08
Shanie Zimerman
Have a good one.
52:09
Yonatan Snir
Bye.
52:09
Colin Day
Bye.
52:10
Shanie Zimerman
Bye. Take care. How do I stop this? There we go.
