Docebo started off as a great place in marketing. I had a fantastic director along with some amazing colleagues that consisted of top talent, in search engine optimization, email marketing, social media management, graphic design, and more!
It was an amazing experience finding synergy with my colleagues, especially during SMKO (Sales and Marketing Kick-Off) when we met other departments in the United States and Europe. Everything looked, but I was unfortunately wrong.
Our director resigned from Docebo (I don’t blame him), but what became a state of an emergency in finding a stellar replacement resulting in a department fragment from mismanagement.
The pandemic had its challenges when working from home, but it was great to see Docebo thrive after becoming a publicly-traded company. Kudos to them since their company stock obtained so much momentum. Credit definitely goes to the BDR department in closing deals with high profile enterprise companies. The grass wasn’t as greener working on the paid acquisition side of the business.
After we lost full-time leadership, the demand generation part of the business was practically on its knees with a lack of support and understanding from C-Level executives. So what did they do to get us back on track? They hired a part-time consultant which was very hard to believe. A company like Docebo obtained high profile clients, I can say it was a very amateur decision to get a part-timer running what was the backbone of sales. It was also a department that had so much scrutiny due to competitive factors, costs, strategy, and so forth. It was difficult to speak up in such a department when your voice is neither recognized and eventually brushed aside.
From February to April 2020, we ran robust paid acquisition campaigns with hefty budgets, and that was important since we were against some major competitors. What very confusing reporting to a part-timer is that he had a lack of visibility on what was going on, hence many decisions made were based on assumption. I admit, I overspent that month, but I was getting scrutiny to deliver cases on situations that happened in April up until June 2020. Keep in mind, April 2020 had the highest MQL and In Qual data at least when I was there. Food for thought.
By May 2020, he was so focused on reducing the budget, but meanwhile, he hated our landing pages. I understood that part, they weren’t very attractive, but our quality score was good. Being in the position where he was, he bragged a lot about ‘having nothing to lose’ is in the position that he served, but it was hard to understand why he worked backward. In this business, obtaining a trial and demo were the most important conversion actions, but he was so bent on creating a new landing page for an ebook campaign that did not deliver MQL’s. I will never understand that logic, but I was just doing what I was told. We launched a sole ‘demo’ landing page with a robust budget, then our quality score began to decline, and our cost per conversion started to drive upwards. I found myself doing so many cases and justifying the ‘why’ on what resulted in these metrics, but it was clearly evident it was done on the watch of the part-time consultant he was pulling the strings. During this time, he was adamant about shutting off all trial pages while driving traffic to demo pages only. The math is simple; large budget, one landing page, low quality score, and high cost per conversion. But again, I was just doing what I was told.
I have to give him credit because he was great at dodging questions by speaking in metaphors and reciting passages from the 48 Laws of Power, but it did not deliver MQLs or In Qual leads. His cost reduction strategy lingered until Fall 2020 when our BDR put their foot down in justifying how leads drastically dropped. As 2020 progressed, I had to make my own executive decision as to the search engine marketing MANAGER by re-activating trials. I was proud to see that performance went back up in August 2020 based on the decisions I made. The irony I found was the BDR team compared current performance to Spring 2020 when MQLs opened, but the spend was higher. Did it seem like we tried to fix something that wasn’t broken? I was embarrassed when our consultant said 'let's mimic what we did in April', but that was a period where I had to justify cost scrutiny for months, but now you want to go back?
Back to scrutiny, I had a hard time understanding why I was assigned tasks that really didn’t make any sense. Our consultant assigned a quality score assignment on what ‘resulted in the drop’. I worked diligently with our Google reps who were amazing people and advised that a high volume of traffic went to very few entry points (landing pages). As I came back and reported this, the answer I got back was ‘we already knew this’. So why did I waste my time with such a task?
A huge disappointment was the lack of landing pages. We had such much potential in creating a robust landing page strategy, but our consultant was too focused on revamping an ebook landing page that did not deliver MQLs and a competitor landing page. As a top tier company, you’re violating a code by having your competitor's name in your ad copy. But again, I was just doing what I was told. But remember, the idea they wanted to leverage was generating PAID traffic….I repeat PAID traffic to a competitor landing page in hopes of getting conversions. I scratched my head when I was asked ‘why the lack in conversions’. Maybe because the intent was not strong as a conventional strategy? I have to add this to the board of 'amateur decisions' made by a top tier LMS company.
We obtained a new VP of marketing, who I can say was a reasonable person. I noticed a pattern of Asana tasks that didn’t become action items, but just ideas that the consultant was assigning to himself. I had to fight harder in reviving search engine marketing by getting down to the bottom of landing pages that were tucked under the carpet. It was baffling to see that it was so difficult to get landing pages that mattered, but competition and ebook landing pages that had absolutely no value were getting prioritized. Near the tail end of my departure, I had to tell our VP to pay attention to projects that are actionable vs projects that are just ideas.
Our EMEA department was a neglected department because we were so focused on the US jurisdiction. I can honestly say that meetings with our EMEA became ‘noise’ from our consultant because again, it was just ideas versus actionable items. A moment where I really shook my head was when we had a collaborative meeting, and our consultant virtually had no answer to give then mentioned it was ‘my last week at the company so we need to pause on these meetings’. This was before the news broke out.
I can go on about my experience, but I honestly feel these details were important to detail. Being a Search Engine Marketing Manager, I can say was a very siloed position with a lack of support from upper management, since we virtually didn’t have upper management. Demand generation needed a holistic approach, and had there been full-time leadership, a dynamic department could have been retained. I also want to mention moments that became extremely tense from C-Level executives which resulted in toxicity. Such examples would be calling out content from great content writers publicly on slack when they could have been handled quietly without an audience.
It was good at the beginning, but when I began to see my peers flee. I knew it was time for me as well.
