Before I dive right into the meat of this very first blog post (!) I thought a quick introduction was in order.

Hello World! Welcome to the Reframe blog. This space is intended to be a resource for customer facing teams. We will explore relevant topics that matter to marketing, sales and services teams. You won’t want to miss the hilarious comic doodles, created by yours truly, summarizing the most salient topics from the post. So make sure you read all the way to the end :)

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Without further ado, let me cut to the chase. For this first blog post, it’s so fitting that I had the opportunity to interview my friend and magical marketer, Holly Enneking. Holly and I first met at my last role and we have known each other for over 4 years now. She is currently Head of Marketing & Partnerships at Bolster, an executive search platform. I would describe Holly as a humble craftsman, fearless leader and thoughtful strategist. I think her perspective and story will help you.

Jan: Holly, tell us about your background. How did you get into marketing?    

Holly: My early career after graduating from college was not labeled as “marketing”. But in hindsight, that’s exactly what it was. I started in video production. I managed production of video content for a number of sports brands. As a producer and project manager I managed clients and internal teams. From there I spent some time at a marketing agency before going to work for my alma mater. I managed email marketing and social media to engage alumni. And I STILL didn’t really consider myself a marketer at this point. My role at Return Path was my first pure marketing role. I led brand and digital marketing. I had never heard of landing pages or transactional emails and Return Path was a great crash course in what is now considered a very typical marketing function. This was also during a time when I took on more leadership roles too. When I joined Lev, I got the chance to build something new within marketing. There wasn’t an established marketing team before. I had a chance to make marketing a more strategic partner in the business. I also learned some new angles to the marketing function at Lev with partner marketing and talent marketing being a big focus. Now, at Bolster, I am building a marketing function in a growth stage business again.

Jan: What have you seen evolve the most in marketing?

Holly: The biggest evolution has been in digital marketing, of course. Back in 2009 and 2010, when I was in video production, there were some minimal digital projects. Then email and social media really took off. Today, digital is the bulk and the rules are still so unwritten. What works this month may not work next month. Everyone really embraced digital during COVID but now everyone is bringing back in person experiences again. The evolution cycles are tighter and faster. There is a big difference between digital and traditional channels. Most notably there is a lot of room for interpretation for what good looks like in digital.

Jan: What is important in 2024?

Holly: Budgets are smaller. Marketers are asking questions like how can we do more with less? How can we get the most out of every option? How can we repurpose everything?

But in times like these, landing the plane is where the best marketing teams really stand out. The best marketing is happening when people take the big moment of activity (like an event) and push that through to conversion down the road. They are asking questions like how are we tracking what was done? How are we following up with leads? Are we sending meaningful content? Are we getting leads into the hands of the sales team? What do handoffs look like? What worked and what didn’t work? Do we have the mechanisms that measure that?

These are the questions a mature marketing team is asking and this is where the magic happens.

Jan: How do you reconcile budget constraints with experimentation?

Holly: Marketing is about failure. Good marketers are good at failing. Marketers are good at that but people around us are not always good at that. There is a bit of art to communicating test results back to the people around you. Tell the story around what you did to learn lessons and arrive at what works. You have to be excited about trying something new. This can be overwhelming. Some plays that used to work don’t anymore. The amount of touches needed to convert has really increased in the past couple of years. Bring people along on the journey with you. Be realistic and open about what didn’t work.


Jan: What are B2B marketers overlooking?

Holly: Finding compelling entry points for someone are about them and what they need is always a challenge. I need a compelling reason for someone to engage with us. For a B2B brand it’s hard to manufacture. B2B marketers have to do a lot of educating to connect dots from problem to solution. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket. We may need to do 7 things when we used to do 3. A lot of B2B companies are doing fun and creative things but then how is that leading to transactions and conversion. Creativity in service of the business is hard to balance. Two opportunities marketers should lean into are:
1. AI - I love using it to help with staring at a blank page. Get some ideas going. Put it in the right tone and voice. It’s a great start. 
2. YouTube shorts. 5-10 min episodes on Youtube. Repurpose video content into YouTube short format. 1 minute clips to drive traffic back to the website. The audience for YouTube shorts is huge and I think warrants experimentation.

Jan: How do you balance getting offers out there with humanizing the brand?

Holly: Bolster has a great team of experts between our recruiters and our executive team. In many ways we are selling the expertise of the team. So marketing needs these experts to be out front talking about what they do. People want to hear from people. They want to hear from the experts because they understand the problem really well. Marketing can set up building content for experts to try out different messaging. Leading with individuals on the team. Use the Bolster brand to amplify the message of our experts. A lot of our content is driven by the team. We do lots of surveys that we can then turn into content.

Jan: If you could have dinner with a marketing legend (in a traditional or non-traditional marketing sense), who would it be?

Holly: As a traditional marketer, I would pick Seth Godin. His book Linchpin was transformational for me. It helped me learn how to show up and be a strong team member, how to make an impact and be a person that other’s turn to. As a non-traditional marketer, I would pick Shonda Rhymes. I love all her TV shows. Her ability to tap into the zeitgeist and create things that are so different and yet so consistently engaging is amazing.