Ashley Faus: Community Building, Powerful Thought Leadership, and Human-Centered Marketing
Ashley Faus has graced the pages of Time and Forbes, commanded stages as a performer, and now leads strategy sessions as a marketer, writer, and speaker. But how did she make the leap from the spotlight to the strategy room?
On The Sound of Inbound, Ashley breaks down her four pillars of thought leadership and dives into her new book, "Human-Centered Marketing." She and the team explore what it really means to build authentic human connections in a world increasingly dominated by AI—and why the intersection of marketing and the arts matters more than ever.
Check out this episode on YouTube and Spotify.
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Aaron (00:00.302) Hello everybody and welcome to season two of the sound of inbound and we begin season two with somebody who has gone from the stage to the strategy room and she certainly knows how to captivate an audience. She has been featured in Time Magazine and Forbes in the Journal of Brand Strategy and she has taken the stage at major conferences such as HubSpot's inbound conference where she and I met. She's a marketer, she's a writer, she's a speaker, she's also the head of life cycle marketing at Atlassian and recently she has just released a book called Human Centered Marketing, How to Connect Audiences in the Age of AI. I would love for all of you to please welcome to our first episode of Season 2 Ashley Faus.
Aaron (00:51.47) Ashley, thank you for joining us today.
Ashley Yeah, Aaron, thanks. Again, we were talking before we hit record about how we need somebody who's like our hype buddy. And so you were like, I wrote you an intro. I'm like, I'm so excited to hear what it is. So I love the intro from the stage to the strategy room. I might have to steal that from my LinkedIn.
Aaron You are, because you do hit the stage quite a lot and you're in a very unique position because you do get to see and meet people from all around the world. Actually, could you share with everybody for just a moment, how many speaking engagements have you had in the past few years?
Ashley Oh man, that is a hard question. Are we counting podcasts or are we just counting the inverse?
Ashley (01:34.892) Yeah, conferences, I tend to speak roundabouts once a quarter in person. So it's probably, you know, four or five times a year. You know, in some cases I get to go across the US and in some cases I just get to grow, go across the Bay, which you would be surprised at how long that takes to actually do.
Aaron Would you say it's a playground of opportunity out there? I'm not like dropping any hints about your book, am I?
Ashley 100%. I like the little breadcrumbs we got going on here. This is gonna be a good conversation already.
Aaron Well, I think the first thing we should let everybody know is how we met. I think that's kind of fun because one thing that we, well a couple of things that we do share, not only a love for marketing, but I think we're both opportunists and we both have an interesting point of intersection in our backgrounds. just kind of an, it started off as a passion for me and I think it still is a passion for me. I wish it was more in my life right now, but musical theater.
Ashley Yeah, so I've been doing the whole singing, acting, dancing thing since I was really young. I actually, my whole family is very kind of musical and performance oriented. And so we, actually grew up doing like the church productions, like the big Christmas production and Easter production. And so anytime it was like, we need a family. And it was like, yep.
We're all in it together. And then, you know, I did choir and all of that stuff in high school and college. So I actually started college as a musical theater major. Freshman year, I had some medical issues with my vocal cords. I nodes. For the listeners that know what nodes are, it's a very common issue. It's basically like calluses on your vocal cords. Fortunately, I didn't need to do the whole surgery thing. I was able to just do vocal rest. But that obviously was a pretty pivotal moment to realize that I was not going to make a living doing this.
I found my way into marketing and realized there's actually quite a lot of parallels and transferable skills from musical theater and performance and choir and all of that into marketing. So I've been a marketer and I do still get to perform in a couple of shows a year, which is awesome.
Aaron I had no real goal in college, like undergraduate, other than maybe one day directing an orchestra or band or something like that. I didn't know what I was doing because I was a piano performance major and also learning music theory and composition. And then at the end of my cycle in undergrad, my mom is a piano teacher. Actually, my passion when I was little got my mom into piano teaching, which was kind of fun. And that's what kind of locked me into music my whole life. But my point is when I finished undergrad, I didn't know what I would be doing.
and then ended up pursuing a graduate degree in music, film and filmmaking. that was actually during that time is when I got into marketing while I was in graduate school. I got a little side job with the school to help build their first website. And I had no idea what marketing was at the time and I had no idea what I was doing. But I felt like all the skills that were being learned in those music classes and theater classes, film classes and all that kind of stuff are so transferable to the work we do now today.
Because we're frontline, you know, we got to be out there and we got to be willing to go for it. And that's kind of what you learn when you're in the arts. You just got to go for it. Don't you love those exercises they make you do when you're kind of getting the cast all loose and they're trying to get you to do all this improv?
Ashley (04:44.91) Yes, okay. I had the most awkward thing in high school. It was supposed to be this like coming to the door exercise. And so I, I don't know, man. I thought, and it was like, oh, be a teacher, be a parent, whatever. And I'm like, I 15. I don't know how to be a parent. So I like knock on the door and I'm like, and you know, my scene partner is like, who is it? I'm like, it's mom. And I'm like, wait, it was, it was terrible. Our theater teacher stopped us was like, what are y'all doing? Like in theory, in...
In improv, there's supposed to be no bad improv. I was the bad improver. Like, it was real bad. We don't know.
Aaron Well, this is really interesting. Here's how Ashley and I met. We are both given an enormous amount of opportunity and a shout out to the organizers of HubSpot's Inbound Conference, where they invited people from all around the world to learn and share about all things marketing. And every now and then they have these really cool activations or opportunities for folks. And I'm not sure exactly why we were all chosen in the end, but we were both selected to meet Amy Poehler.
And even though it was like a minute, minute and half to say hello to her, it was still really fun. And I'm coming out of that and I'm like, we just met. We were behind each other. Yeah, we were just standing next to each other in line. And I think after just 10 seconds, we realized we had too many things in common and we had to stay connected. And that's it. In marketing, I think there's a lot of folks out there that if you're going to be in this industry, you really have to go for it. You really can't just like wait for things to come to you. You got to go after it. Would you agree?
Ashley (06:14.944) I think so. The other thing too about our meeting in particular and realizing, we connected over the musical theater thing. We didn't connect over the marketing thing. And this is something that comes up all the time and not to take a hard right turn into pitching the book. But when we talk about being human centered, that connection over musical theater and our backgrounds, that's the thing that AI can't do.
It can't have that conversation. can't stand in line and recognize that you and I have this kind of shared background. And we could have just talked about like, Aaron, what do you do from a marketing perspective? And you can ask me, what, you know, where do you work? And I say it last hand and that's all we say. The thing that actually made the connection was the stuff we do outside of work, the stuff that makes us human, the stuff we do for our souls. Right. And so I actually think that, yes, there's an opportunistic piece of it.
But it's opportunistic in being human. It's not, who is this guy and what can I get from him from a transactional perspective? It's, we're two people who just got to share this pretty cool experience and we're walking together. What are we going to say in this moment that might actually be interesting instead of just like, I'm Ashley and I work at Atlassian. It's like,
Aaron I mean, it's the same thing. It's that some of these systems that are out there trying to give people, I recommend you talk to this person or connect with that person. They're thinking more binary because we have exactly the same degree, went to the same school or went to live in the same town or have the same type job title. And it's not thinking about the complementary connections. And that for me is also something only human right now. We have the ability to kind of feel and appreciate. yes, that that inference that you can see when you're talking to folks, especially in live events, I love live events.
is not ever something that I feel like AI can replace. And I've been learning that more and more and more as I go to all the different conferences and events and shows throughout the year. And I love how that's been about your book too. Because I'm very much about the fact that we are creating a connection between people, not robots. At least right now. We're doing that. And I certainly want to make sure that when I think about...
Aaron (08:30.254) how we could all engage with each other. We should take into consideration all of the old school things that have been working for years. It's like, it's about building relationships. That's what this is about. From your perspective, when you go to a show like Inbound, do you still feel like you're learning some net new ways to keep the human connection going? And it's not just about the software yet. Do you have anything about that?
I feel like it depends on the show and the year. Inbound is huge, right? You have the ability to just go down a technology track 100%. You have the ability to just go down a human track 100%. This year for me, I was prioritizing more of the human track and prioritizing going to the sessions of like, these are my friends, I wanna hype them up, I think they're smart.
These are the events I want to go to, again, from people that I already know and I already have that relationship with to connect with them and talk with them. for me, this time around, I prioritized more of the human connection versus the technology and tool connection. And I think this is something where it's almost like a philosophy. People ask me, they're like, what's the best way to do in Mound? And I'm like, I think you should pick kind of the goal. Is the goal to understand kind of the trends and the direction of your own?
Industry and craft is it to get outside your comfort zone and learn something new is it to make connections? You know for a job or a promotion or for educational opportunities or speaking opportunities or sales opportunities like what you know What is that human connection? And so I think it's really hard to do all three of those Show like inbound just because there's so much to do. So yeah, I It's kind of a roundabout way to answer with like standard marketing. It depends but it's like
What are your goals? For me this year, my goal was really more around the human connection because I've been so steeped in the technology, both from a day job perspective and from a LinkedIn echo chamber perspective. Like I get it, we're doing the tools, we're doing the AI, that's fine. But I'm about done forcing myself to be in those conversations. I'm naturally in those conversations. So let's go find the conversations that right now are harder to get into.
Aaron (10:44.93) The conference world is, for me, it's best suited for when you can go in with a number of wingmen. I feel like your role is to network, learn, and sell. And so you can't do all those things all at once. And if you're in one mode, it's hard to kind of switch between all these different kind of roles that you might have at a show. So when I'm talking to our friends and colleagues about when they head out to these conferences, I usually say to them, it's a big investment, so bring a few colleagues because you're not going to be able to play this job the entire time. You need one person there that's dedicated.
for just selling, that'd be great for them. And then they can be at the booth. One that's just out there networking, can be going off until the evening and doesn't care how long it takes. And then one that's learning, go to the classes, you know, and actually take some intelligence from it. It's just extremely difficult to kind of go into these conferences and say, I'm going to do all the things. It's exhausting. Here's the thing that I'm most curious about, because it is in your book, which everybody should check out. There's this concept of the content playground. And the thing about
I'm interested in these days is as I talk to more people about what modern marketing looks like, what are all those different channels that people are thinking about? Traditionally, we might have just said, okay, you've got your email and you've got your social media and you've got a landing page or a website or a blog post. And I'm now wondAarong what's outside of that, outside that content playground in your mind.
Ashley It sounds kind of cliche, but I actually think the smaller intimate events and the more community focused events in private communities are going to be the big differentiator at least over the next five-ish years because AI has saturated all of the digital channels. So you can automate all of your email sends, you can automate all of your social media posting. You cannot automate the human piece of it, which is the smaller dinners, the community events.
closed communities. So we're seeing a rise of private communities on Discord, Patreon, Substack, right? Where it's like, I want to just be with the people that I know have really interesting insights and are humans, right? Like it's a lot easier to see in a smaller community if somebody's just doing AI generated comments or insights is the wrong word. It's like AI generated posts basically.
Ashley (12:55.65) There's just nowhere to hide.
Aaron We have got to, at some point today, we got to get into how people should not do any more cold emailing, especially with the cold prospecting tools. But I'm going to agree with you on the content playground front. do consider the live events hyper critical. Having people come and visit as well, if they're willing to do so. Marketing to me is how fast can we get people to the conversation? And then it's on sales job to close it.
But my job is all the time, like all these different content channels in the whole playground, which I love. I'd be on the water slide, by the way, that, you know, there's going to be a lot of different activity happening. But at the end of the day, I just want to know when people are willing to talk. That's the part for me that is the conversion for me. And so folks are willing to come into town and spend time with us. Of course, I take that very, very seriously. I want to make that experience as much fun as it possibly can be. And I see that as part of that content playground too.
Like all the things they're going to have when they get off the plane and we're going to go out for dinner, we're going to meet them, all those things, know, just all those little touch points count towards the end goal of seeing if we want to get into relationship with each other. So I see that as a part of it as well.
Ashley It's so funny, one of my hobbies, got into like cake baking during the pandemic. I had already been through my bread phase, so I switched over to the cake decorating side of things. And so that's a hobby that is very complimentary to my theater hobby, you know, the green room. You got to have treats in the green room, right? But so for the first time, because Inbound was in the San Francisco Bay area this year instead of Boston, I was actually able to bring cupcakes up. And so...
Ashley (14:30.734) I told everybody, was like, I'm gonna do a little cupcake meetup, super casual, it's just gonna be in the lobby of my hotel. I had never actually been to this hotel before. So I was like, they're like, where will you be? And I'm like, in the lobby. you have a lobby? And so I brought like three dozen cupcakes. I ran a little poll on LinkedIn and I was like, hey, if you're gonna come to this, I just need to know how much to bake. So like, please hit yes. Like I didn't even have a formal RSVP. I literally was like, I'll be in this hotel. I don't know, around this time.
So I'm walking around with boxes of cupcakes and it turns out they have this huge atrium that's like just up the escalator from the proper lobby, but there's also space in the lobby. So I'm just like wandAarong around with three dozen cupcakes and I see some people like watching me and whispAarong to each other and I'm like, hey, are you guys here for cupcakes? And they're like, we are. And I'm like, awesome. I guess we're gonna sit right here, right? And like that kind of serendipity and everybody was, you could tell people were kind of like, so what are you?
doing. And I'm like, I just like to bake. And it's the first day of inbound. So I figured I'd bring cupcakes. And people were so confused that I was not selling anything. And I'm like, yeah, I if you want to buy the book, I have a few copies, but I'm not selling anything.
Aaron Here's the thing I'm getting from that and I agree you could drop the needle at a lot of these conferences and it feels like a high school reunion like you can find a friend all over the place and to just like do a meetup around cupcakes that's hysterical It can happen. It doesn't it's that's the kind of like let's leap and try and just try things I'm all about those connections to that is a sterile. I almost feel like I got to go like bring treats to the next conference I'll probably make a ton of friends
to do it. It's the best. And people took pictures. This gal, Dahlia, she said it was like vibe eventing. She's like, you created this whole event. It's like everybody's talking about vibe coding and you did a vibe event. I was like, yes, if this is my legacy, I am winning.
Aaron (16:29.462) It's the Ashley vibe. I like that. No, that's the kind of stuff again. I think that that kind of spontaneity is impossible with AI. It's impossible with just digital. I do think that the connection between events is something that I'm still trying to figure out and solve. So I'm very connected with the HubSpot community and as I know, as you are too. And there are a lot of things that they're working on to try to make sure we feel like we have community. And in the last month and a half, I put on a local
founders focused dinner here in North Carolina. And that felt so much more genuine, authentic than having to do the typing, typey typey on all the Reddit channels and all the other channels online. they don't, again, you don't get the inference unless you're together. so I told them when we went to the founder focused dinner, they were all, people were just like, what is this really about? Like, we're just talking, like, you're not selling anything? Not selling anything or just hanging out. I read something.
long time ago about Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and how back then for entertainment they would have these debate groups and they would just get together to debate and I was I was reading this years ago. I like who would do that? And then here I was at the founder focus dinner going. my god. I'm doing exactly what he did hundreds of years ago. It's still it's still relevant. It's still relevant. I love that. I love that So here's something I thought we could jump into I think that you know, we're in this
It's part of something I just want to reflect on before we get into the second half of this conversation today. But how do you feel like AI has evolved in a positive way so far this year?
Is it bad that I think the positive thing is that the adoption cycle and reality is finally catching up to the hype cycle and we're like coming back to reality? one of the big things I think especially toward the end of last year and obviously coming into the early part of this year, the hype cycle was just off the chart. We were at like peak hype cycle and it was very out of sync with the adoption cycle. And I think that the fact that the conversation
Ashley (18:30.4) is now actually starting to turn back toward reality and true kind of where we actually are on the adoption cycle. I think that is positive because peak hype cycle also meant peak fear cycle and peak chaos cycle where it's like, replaced our whole marketing team with AI and we did that for three months and we realized we still need humans. gee, now we have to rehire the humans. And I'm like.
Okay, and so now you're actually starting to see people rethink that relationship between a tool, let's be clear, it is a tool, it is not magic, it is not autonomous, this artificial intelligence thing, like a human still has to prompt it and push the buttons and do something with the output. And so I actually think the fact that we're getting back towards reality instead of being peak hype cycle and all of the potential
downsides of being at peak hype cycle, I think that's the most positive turn as we're getting back to reality.
I need that too. I need that kind of assurance. Because as agencies, we all freak out when these new technologies come out, wondAarong if we're going to get replaced. Or a couple years ago, there was a company that said, you know, one, I think it was during the Super Bowl. It was like, with this one click, you'll build your entire website. How's that going to work? And right afterwards, I started playing with the tool and realized, man, everybody's website is going to look exactly the same. Or it didn't really build out anything that was of value. We still have to populate it all. Or the design just felt kind of flat.
And there were so many aspects of that that I felt like, okay, a group that's dedicated to the creative arts, like an agency can be, is still relevant again. And you don't have to be so worried about it. But when AI came out this past year, I really felt like it took off to a certain degree, and everybody has been playing the catch-up game. But when I start to ask deeply, people using it, adopting it, they're like, no. I'm like, okay, so we're just kind of playing with it as a tool right now, as a toy. And they're like, yeah, we're referencing it, but it's not as core as I think...
Aaron (20:30.146) there's this thinking that there is a lot more organizations really building all around it. And I think they're still using it as like, it's on the outside a little bit more than I think we all had anticipated. We're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to come into the conversation around your strategy and talk a little bit more about your four pillars and maybe more about where the industry is going to go and some other kind of fun things like that. You up for that, Ashley? Okay, all right. Hang on.
Let's do it.
Aaron (21:05.192) We are back with Ashley and we're going to get into some of her strategy because as she and I are both super fans of inbound marketing, it's all about thought leadership. And in her book and in her strategy and her talks, she gets into some four pillars that she wants to get kind of people centered around. I think when it comes to inbound marketing, there's a lot to consider, but it's really just about making sure people can find a way to trust you. We're trying to find all those trust signals and I think Ashley has done a wonderful job.
Coming up with some strategies for people to think about and be more mindful of so why don't we talk about your four pillars Ashley would that be okay?
do it. So the four pillars are credibility, profile, being prolific, and then depth of ideas. And so the pillars work together in tandem. And for a lot of folks, they're kind of starting at the bottom in at least one pillar if we're having this conversation. And then you work your way up in all the pillars. And so one question I frequently get is like, which pillar is the best pillar? And I'm like, there's not a best pillar. You have to have all four. When I originally
created this framework. I was basically wrestling with this question of what is thought leadership, who is a thought leader, how do we build thought leaders in our organization. And so was very focused on thought leadership with the rise of the creator economy and the lower barriers to entry to create and share content on LinkedIn, on YouTube, TikTok, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, like all the channels now. I have actually kind of adapted it and I...
this to me is indicative of a good framework is like, can it flex into different use cases? It's not a rigid set of rules. It's can it actually be a proper guideline? Yeah, different conversations. And so I've also kind of adapted it to talk about different types of creators, including subject matter experts and influencers. So those four pillars, depending on how you score in each pillar, you might be a subject matter expert, you might be an influencer, you might be a thought leader.
Aaron (22:48.782) scale.
Ashley (23:07.038) And then obviously the next question is, okay, well, which is the best type of creator? And I'm like, well, it depends on the goals of the person and the goals of the organization, because these people help you achieve different things and the cost and the investment required to become each of these things is quite different. And so from my perspective, you can make a lot of money as any of-
Any type of creator, right? Whether you're subject matter expert, influencer, or thought leader, you can make a lot of money for yourself or for the organization. From a marketing mix standpoint, you need all types of creators because they help you solve different problems and they require different investments and different time horizons. So I'll pause there because there's a lot we could kind of dig into.
I think that a lot of folks are always wondAarong about how to apply it. I think let's just start off for the moment. Let's take a case. Let's say it's a small business, but it's a business of business. So they don't have the, let's say the luxury of thinking about that transactional stuff that you can see a lot of on Instagram, on TikTok, where it's like, have a fun video and then get, you know, $35,000 today because they're all going to buy your shirt. And you don't get that opportunity. You have to be a lot, it's a lot harder for that small business that's doing the B2B kind of thing.
So how would you apply it for that situation for those folks that let's say it's a service organization, B2B, that's small and cannot just kind of go out there and do a dance. Maybe they would do a dance on TikTok. These days they might, but they're not going to go there. So what would you say they would do?
think starting with the kind of channel is actually the wrong, like that's the last place to start because you do need to understand who is the audience, where do they spend time. The other question, so some of the questions that I ask is again, what is your goal and what is that time horizon for that goal? If your goal is immediate conversion, thought leadership is actually not gonna be the best way for you to drive that because thought leadership is really about having that conversation in the future. And it's
Ashley (25:05.848) hard if you're sharing something that's very disruptive or very innovative. If you're defining a new problem space, if you're defining a completely new solution space, that's really hard. You have to educate people on what the problem is. You then have to educate on why the current solutions don't work, right? Like, that is a long cycle to get people to come along with you. And you're not going to close in the short term. And so if you're actually trying to drive
short-term conversion, thought leadership is probably not the right place. You might actually be better served with influencers or with subject-to-matter experts as the people that are showing up as kind of the face of the brand, right? And so then the next question is around the channel, like where does the audience spend time? And obviously if you're a large brand and you might have goals around attracting employees, attracting talent,
it might make sense for you to be on more of the consumer apps like TikTok or Instagram where people are looking for entertainment, edutainment, Hanging out of just like vibes, I like this brand, maybe I'll apply, right? That's a completely different set of goals than short-term conversion. And what your audience wants when they're spending time on a platform may or may not actually align with what your goals are. And then the third piece is what gaps do you have and what...
skills do you have in house? And I see this a lot where people are like, we have, we don't have anybody who likes creating content, who's good at creating content. They hate posting on LinkedIn. They're terrible on video and they're terrible at articulating their thoughts, but we're going to make them post. And I'm like, why do you hate yourself? Like, why do you hate yourself? You know, you would, you know, and, and again, the question of what are you trying to do? Well, we need to reach
a bunch of net new people. And you're going to do that with somebody who has zero audience. So you're first going to have to build an audience with somebody who is bad at articulating things and hates sharing. Why would you not hire somebody that already has an audience that's very good at articulating things and likes there?
Aaron (27:19.278) Well, this is a great discussion point because there are so many organizations out there that just think, it's happening, so we should do it too. And you're completely on point when you're saying things like, well, thinking about a thousand analogies in my head, like you wouldn't use a spoon to like build a building. You know, you just wouldn't do that. So why would you put the person who doesn't want to be out there in front line trying to represent the business? It's not a good fit. Look for your brand. So I completely get that. But I do know that
And I should have been more specific about this scenario, but in that little business, business to business study, case study I'm trying to explain, I think that these are the kind of organizations that do need the long tail building of trust, but they don't exactly know how to leverage those channels in the best way. And you said something perfect. If your goal is going to be all about converging sales tomorrow, inbound marketing may not be the thing for you right now. It's going to have to be a long play.
That you're really having to think about things are gonna be a lot more today What can we convert on today and we have so many groups that we work with that are just like that They want to do inbound marketing But just kidding we got a launch tomorrow and it better be a big splash and we better get some sales and some sales in the pipeline And I'm looking at them going nobody knows who you are
mean, and this, this, I think this is the other thing, like, while I have developed this framework, and I am very bullish on thought leaders and putting the people forward and building an audience, from my perspective, for most B2B companies, there is a huge opportunity on LinkedIn. The reality is, that's just one piece of the marketing mix. We don't call it thought leadership and marketing as the exact same thing.
Thought leadership is part of the marketing mix. And if all you need is broad reach and broad awareness, there's an excellent channel for that. It's called advertising. And you can spend dollars to get impressions. And like that is a valid tactic. And I think this is one thing that I get riled up about from a marketing perspective is...
Ashley (29:23.658) We get into these silos and we think that we have to just, you know, I've decided that I'm a content marketer and therefore the only thing that matters in marketing is content. I'm a performance marketer, a digital marketer, paid marketer, whatever term we're using. The only way to get any kind of traction is to ad spend and optimize your ad spend. I'm like, hear me out. We can work together. You know, when we talk about a demand gen team,
or demand creation or demand capture, right? Whatever semantics we're talking about in marketing, that is all of these are tools and tactics in the greater marketing mix. The fundamentals, the four Ps of marketing are the same. There is a human on the other side of the screen. And the way to reach a lot of humans is to have a really big megaphone. And you kind of have to pay for that.
Wait, what are your four P's of marketing you mentioned?
four P's of marketing, these are like the fundamentals. This is product, price, place, and promotion. And we've all decided that within promotion, whatever the tool of the day is, when HubSpot first kind of introduced this inbound methodology, inbound marketing became the bright, shiny object of the promotion piece of the four P's. Now we're all jaded with that, and now, right now, creator marketing is having a moment.
and influencer marketing is having a moment in promotion. And, we're not gonna do that terrible advertising stuff. No, no. What are you talking about?
Aaron (30:54.496) It's all advertising. So when you when you think about inbound marketing, the inbound marketing signals are what can help drive personalized outbound marketing too. So for me, think that I used to be, my gosh, if you give me like a pie, and you told me to put how much do you want to do of inbound and outbound, I would have put like the tiniest little slice for outbound. But you can't prime the pump without the outbound. So
I do feel it has to be in balance. That's the latest version of Aaron. And I do think that when you're considAarong any kind of advertising program, the old school spray and pray, we call it, is just ridiculous. do find it's funny that some of the conferences that you and I have attended have said, we're all going to be about brand awareness now, so let's go back out there and go do that. I'm like, are they invested in one of those billboard companies? So they're going to try to sell more billboards.
But that's the only place right now that I can think you really don't have much of an opportunity to personalize the content for who's driving by. You have no idea who's driving by at any given day. And I think that is the old school that's going to have to go away. I think we're all expecting that when you finally reach me, it better be worth it. I want to see things that are relevant to me. And we laugh at, we all laugh at our own families when they're browsing in something that's totally unrelated to what you love. And then you pick up your phone and you're like, are we buying a new mixer?
I didn't think you're buying a new mixer. Are we buying a new mixer? I'm getting a lot of ads for mixers. And also, see a ton of ads for a new purse. So who's looking at purses? And that to me is hysterical because I know it's getting personalized based on who is my friend network and all that kind of stuff. So I want it to be personalized, I think, as a consumer and maybe even as a business to business organization as well. Yeah, I don't know if it really gets to the point of like, what's the perfect example of how a small B2B goes to market. But you're pointing to a bunch of things that they have to be in consideration of. It's like it's not a one size fits all.
You really have to think about your audience and what they're going to want and where you need to hang out and all that kind of stuff.
Ashley (32:51.158) It's definitely not. And I think the other hard part is too many companies either when they think of their niche and they niche all the way down, but they're not willing to do the small scale thing. This is a consumer example, but I think it's actually really interesting. Do you know about Kalo rings? They're the like silicone, basically silicone wedding rings.
no, of course I wore one for years. Yeah.
When they first started, their whole niche was Crossfitters. And that's it. Just people who do Crossfit. And they basically had like three colors of rings. They had black, white, and gray. And that's it. And so what they did is they literally went to all the local gyms, which are called boxes, right? And all of their marketing was about going and doing pop-ups at the local Crossfit box. And then they sponsored like regional Crossfit games. Like they were...
So that was all they were doing was CrossFit. And then they were like, OK, now we're going to do first responders. These people have extreme jobs. It's highly dangerous for them to be wearing jewelry that would have to get cut off if you're a firefighter, right?
radiologists start to come into, right? Radiologists with your hair?
Ashley (34:04.826) Yeah, but so when you look at it in retrospect, to me, right, I look at it in retrospect and I see where they are now, which is anybody who's active and now they've got all sorts of colors and, you know, different designs and whatever and like, you're a busy mom with your toddler and you don't want to wear your ring that's going to scratch your toddler's face, right? But in retrospect, they started with just CrossFitters.
And then they went to first responders and then they went to doctors, right? And then they went to anybody who doesn't want hard jewelry on their hands. Now you can wear this ring, right? But if they had started with that, who are to take over the world? Like they would not have found their niche. And so I think it's an interesting thing because if you tell me as a marketer to go set up just with this one niche and this one segment,
Yeah.
Ashley (35:01.742) Most of us are going to be like, no, no, no, surely there's other segments. And it's like, OK, but if the people who will buy from you are hanging out in this one place, it's not unreasonable to focus in on that one place. You don't actually have to do. You'll have to go after every potential buyer to start getting traction.
love this. me just say really quickly, there are so many companies that have this exact problem where, I'm acting frustrated because we work with groups that are very aspiring to do a ton of things. And as I talk to you right now, and I've said this to other people too, I'm talking linearly. I can't talk in multi-streams. I mean, my face could say something different, I guess, but as I'm talking to you, it's one message at a time. And so what I try to tell a lot of organizations, like start somewhere.
It just what's the one message? What's the one audience? What's the one thing that will open the conversation and let you people understand who you are? So as you mentioned about the Silicon Rings, yeah, they knew they could probably work with one group. And if it did work there, it could start to look at other groups. They didn't go after the whole thing. I mean, that's brilliant. I love that idea. And I love that they did that. And it was successful because a lot of companies, especially B2B, they always want to have a case study of showing like, oh, did that did that work for somebody before? Who did that work for? I want to know how it worked for them. And can I do that too?
You know, they need that like, they need that example before they're actually willing to just do it themselves. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I thought for a second, because you've built a wonderfully personal brand, and I'm just wondAarong from, I just would love to see what this answer is. If you had to summarize your personal brand in a word, what word would you, what word would that be?
That's like the hardest question ever. You give me one word?
Aaron (36:45.934) Remember, this doesn't have to represent everything. No, I'm just joking.
What is my core identity for the rest of my life? how dare you?
You're a professional, you can do it. No, but this is the thing about a lot of organizations, they have to think about that one ownership idea. And you've built such a wonderful personal brand. And I think that has extended into the work you have in your professional career and all sorts of other places too. if you had to summarize it for a moment, what word would you pick?
I think I would go with approachable because it's funny, I walk very fast, I talk very fast, I have really good posture, especially when I'm like presenting or out in the world. And that for a lot of people is very intimidating. That's a feeling of like, she's on a mission, she's going, she's, you know, on and on. So I've had to work very hard to...
help people understand that I am approachable and I want to have the conversations. I like to help people grow in their careers. I want to move my industry forward. I want to work with smart marketers, right? I want to empower marketers to do good marketing and to match problems and solutions for humans. And that can only happen if people are willing to ask the questions and willing to have the conversation and willing to test.
Ashley (38:13.474) the ideas that I'm putting out there, right? So I think for me, showing up in an approachable way is probably the thing because I have the confidence, you know, I have the ideas, I can go kind of in any direction. I don't think that there is like a right set of tools or tactics. I think it evolves as the market evolves and as the tools evolve and the tactics, all of those things, all of that evolves. So I can't say like,
my brand is about this one marketing idea, I think it's more about the feeling and the conversation. And so I think I'll go with Approachable.
I love it. Has it evolved for you? Would you say if you were to go back 10 years, would it have still been approachable?
Probably, it probably evolved from, I think this is hard, right? Where you're asking me to choose one word. I have always wanted to be seen as an expert in my industry. And I think that when I first started, if we look at my four pillars, I needed to grow more in that credibility pillar. And so because of that, if you're trying to grow more in the credibility pillar, you have to show up a bit more like,
here's my credentials and here's the things I've done and here's the validity of my ideas versus now I have that credibility. And so I'm probably trying to grow more on that profile pillar. And in order to grow more on the profile pillar of growing that audience and attracting people to my ideas, I have to be more approachable. So I think it has evolved, but I think it's more a function of which pillar I was weaker in previously.
Ashley (39:57.55) than my mindset, if that makes sense.
It makes a lot of sense. I love that. I love that you can arrive at it and you didn't have to think you hadn't thought about the shit. I totally caught her off guard with this question, everybody. But she did a great job. I do think that organizations as well, we talked through this quite a bit, that they have to figure out their brand ownership idea. But I think individuals have to have that too. Because if you're going to join a company and you have a specific expectation of what your job is, and as Ashley mentioned earlier, all of a sudden they thrust you into being like the TikTok dancer.
You're like, that's not my ownership idea. I didn't come here for that. And so you have to kind of think about what's the thing that you want to own and you want to be representative of wherever you go. And it's your hook. It's the thing that everybody else wants to. It's the one thing you want to be remembered by. When people have gone off, they met you at a show like I did with Ashley and she was quite approachable. So that works really, really well. And so you were like wondAarong what would be a way to remember them by. And I think that's a great way to think about for you. That's really, really great.
I keep thinking, and no one has asked me, so you don't have to. But I feel like it has evolved over the years, and I wish it hadn't.
Where did you move from and move to?
Aaron (41:09.878) I named the company Inventive because I want to always be inventive. Like I want to be that, come up with a net new things. I feel like these days people see me more of as a creative problem solver, which could be an aversion of inventive as well. But I'm always interested and so excited about learning net new things and about how they can have a great impact on all sorts of other aspects of our lives. And so I get very excited about invention. And I would love to be
known for that and about what can I invent that people took and they found it to be wildly useful. I had a group in a company a long time ago and our tagline was seriously creative and I'd love that kind of juxtaposition of being something that you're like, you're serious. but you're creative. how does that work? And then they kind of find that to be fun. But I think these days, instead of just being creative, I think people see me more as a problem solver. If anything, though, I have heard people too that just say our team has really great energy.
One of our writers puts on a slide about how to remember inventive by and they put a unicorn on there that we're just fun to work with. I mean, if that's one thing you'd be remembered by, hey, that's it. We're just really fun to work with. And then all the other things kind of open the door after that.
I do think there's a difference between the core idea that you're known for and like the vibe or the energy or the, you know, sense. And from my perspective, the ideas can evolve. I think the core sense of like who you are and your identity, that's the thing that probably needs to stay more steady because that's you, right? Like there's so many factors, there's so many external factors that would change
The idea, right?
Aaron (42:49.39) I think that, and maybe you and I share this from being in the arts, I want to be creative. If I could just find that zone all the time and people know me as being creative and that's the creative thing. Yeah, that's probably my word. And I just want people to want, I want that to be the magnet for me. know, the inbound part for part of Aaron is like, you need something creative, you would go to me. That's kind of the fun thing I think about. And working with other creatives too, that together we make even a stronger magnet, you know, and then we can continue growing on that.
So I never thought about that before I should use that somewhere, but that's that's something But there's something I'm very excited and passionate about about how do you take an idea and come up with a creative solution? Creative output from it that we think people would really want to engage with so yes creative All right a couple extra things. I just thought we would talk about before we go First off just you are in California, correct? Correct. Were you always in California?
grew up in Texas. So yeah, but I've been in California for almost 15 years now. So definitely love it here. We've got the weather and the outdoors and obviously I built a great community. I've got my theater, you know, performances that I can do. So yep, yep. But you're originally from Texas.
So I want to get to a career question, but I'm excited to hear about where you got started. Was that in Texas? Did you get started in Texas with your career?
Yes. So I did my undergrad degree in marketing there, and then I also did my MBA there. And then I started out, came to California for a little bit. My husband is a software engineer. So as you do in the early 2000s, you go to Silicon Valley. Exactly. Bopped back to Texas for a little bit. I worked in aviation when I was in Texas, and then finally made my way back to California.
Aaron (44:27.022) It's happening, yep.
Ashley (44:38.432) managed to come back, which was great. So.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think that there's always like the origin story for everyone. I want to hear more about, you know, working in aviation for a second. But if you had to give anyone advice about getting into marketing these days. So they're in school right now and they're watching us and they're trying to figure out, OK, these are accomplished folks that Aaron's bringing on a show. I'm not going to say I'm accomplished, you know, actually, it's extremely accomplished. OK, all right, we'll take it.
You're accomplished.
But you have done a lot of things that have built up your own brand to where you are and you're doing a lot of really interesting things right now. And if you're going to be in marketing, I think you have to be considAarong of that. So where would you suggest people get started?
my perspective, and again, I'm highly biased on this, but LinkedIn, like even if you're a student, go start talking about the classes you're taking, how you're seeing that show up in the real world. Do you agree with what you're learning in school? Does it jive with what you're seeing in the real world? If you're doing internships, talking about what you're seeing, what you're learning. I think sometimes people think that LinkedIn is about spouting off all of your knowledge and showing that you are the smartest. And so a lot of
Ashley (45:48.096) Students or early career folks are like, well, I don't know anything. I'm just learning. That's not like LinkedIn is not about just broadcasting your knowledge. It's about sharing your journey. It's about finding other people. building on LinkedIn, first thing, second thing, this is something I did very early in my career. And it was, I joke, I'm like, my poor husband was like, you talk about marketing a lot. you need to talk about it to me all the time? And there are no other people you can talk about it with, right? And at the time,
LinkedIn, know, Twitter, et cetera, all of the social media platforms were not as prominent, so I didn't have that outlet. So, started a blog. I was blogging, you know, short to medium form blogs, like five times a week from 2009 to 2013. Start a blog. Like, have some form of creation. It doesn't, it could be YouTube videos if you like YouTube. It could be a blog if you like written content, but some form of a channel that you have to feed.
Aaron Where you can build those skills. It gets you thinking about whatever your craft is. Again, from a marketing perspective, right? Like I wrote about the Starbucks treat receipt. Do you remember that program that they had? And I was like fascinated by this. And I was like, am in marketing, we talk about pricing. I'm gonna think about pricing, right? Listen, I am under no illusions that those observations were smart. They were not, they were very basic. But for me,
It felt like, okay, I'm going to analyze this thing using these skills that I just learned with my fancy piece of paper, right? But it got me thinking about how I experience my craft and my skills, how I apply those to real world situations. So that's what I would say. Pick a channel, and from my perspective, it should be LinkedIn, where you can have conversations, you can start to connect with other people in your industry, and then pick a channel.
where you can learn and hone those skills around articulating your point of view, noticing things, and just applying those skills because you may not get a chance to do that in your day job. so having that space and that blog opened up so many opportunities for me. So I had been writing with zero readership. Like I had no idea about SEO. I didn't know it was a thing, right? So like the blog itself have very few readers, but
Ashley (48:14.454) I stumbled on, and this was when it's now called The Muse. It's a huge site. When they first launched, they were called The Daily Muse. I stumbled on them when they were still in stealth mode. And so I was like, I basically sent them a note and I was like, hello, do you need guest writers? I can write. And they were like, can you? And I was like, yeah, here's my blog. Right? That blog proved that I can show up every day, I can write, and it's decent.
and I'm probably easy to work with, right? And so they, pitched them a couple of stories, they picked them up, and that I wrote probably 10 or 15 articles for that site just as they were coming up. And they needed writers, they needed people who could turn stuff around quickly and who were easy to work with. And my blog was proof that I could do that.
I think that marketers need to practice and you mentioned some things that if you don't try again, if you think you're going to get into marketing and you're not out there, you think a resume is going to get you a job, try again. You got to show that you're trying all the things. so even if you're not a writer, I think still trying to put some reflections together, that observation is what a marketer is supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be observing and seeing what the signals are again, and then putting strategies together to help.
kind of coax people down a pathway that we're trying to design for them. So why not do that for yourself and see how it works and you'll see how hard it is. And then that alone would be good experience to have for the first job that you get into. And it doesn't matter what that role is in that company because you're going to have a lot more appreciation for the different people in that organization that have to support your role. Even if there's designers and writers and developers and all the other good folks that are in there, you have to build as a marketer. You have to have a lot of skills across many, many modalities, I guess we'll call them.
Because you do are you're out there being the generalist I kind of joke with folks that on one day and this is he's a real stories But I won't mention to who one day you're out there literally collecting dirt from a lot because they're having to sound send little vials out to everybody that Didn't get their present after the groundbreaking So you're out there filling glasses of dirt and then the next day you're running a press conference and the day after that you're doing an advertisement then you're putting together a show that's gonna be like with a huge booth every day is different and they're like, it's all your job like
Aaron (50:31.126) I'm in marketing, I guess it is my job. So you're running all over the place. I think it's a lot of fun. I think it's a lot of fun. And if you're not trying to try before you buy, know, especially when it comes to your career, you're really missing out. I do think hashtag not a sponsor LinkedIn. Yes, it is the place right now that you're going to find inspiration in a lot of different areas. And it's not it's not unlikely that if you reach out to a person they'll just ignore you if you have real genuine, authentic kind of request, you know, I'd say an ask from them or a question for them. They're more likely to get back in touch with you. I think Ashley and I are so bombarded with the garbage that we're getting every day. The cold emails, the cold LinkedIn, you invitations, hey, we can get you 15 meetings a week. Does that sound familiar, everybody?
Ashley If I got some kind of invitation from a student in a school that I'm learning marketing and I just want to understand some things, I had some questions, I'd be more than willing to jump on a call with them. And I would respect the fact that they reached out to me and that they had some questions and they were prepared. I mean, that to me is all good signals towards, okay, they're serious, which is inbound marketing. know, this has come back to inbound marketing. Okay.
Aaron: Ashley, you've written a book and I want to give you a chance here to let everybody know a more about it and how to find it online before we go. So can you share with everybody what your book's all about one more time and where they can see that online?
Ashley: You can get the book. It's called Human-Centered Marketing, How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI. It's on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. It's on the Kogan Page website, which is my publisher. So pretty much wherever you buy your books, you should be able to find human-centered marketing. At its core, it's really about building trust and making the journey seamless, delightful, and impactful for both the audience and the business.
Ashley (52:19.23) And I introduced a couple of frameworks to do that. One is the playground, which we talked about a little bit earlier, and basically getting away from the linear funnel or the looping decision journey. Part of the reason we've clung to those two frameworks is because we haven't had a good replacement. So I offer a replacement, which is the playground. I also talk a bit about the social media spectrum and really thinking about how do you show up and build community, have conversations in the right way.
These days, it's no longer just about broadcasting that message again from an advertising perspective. That is still a tactic, but it is very different than how you should be showing up on social media and in communities.
And then finally, the four pillars of thought leadership, which also gets into some of the other types of creators in the marketing mix. So yeah, I do talk about how do we evolve our metrics if we're going to evolve our overall approach to go to market, if we're gonna evolve how we show up in different channels, and if we are gonna evolve who says things and where they say them, we also have to evolve how we measure all of that.
Aaron Ashley, this has been amazing. As everybody can tell, she has a lot to share and it's so valuable. Everything that you shared today was amazing and now you have a book out. It's like a Mount Everest thing for me to say that I can ever write a book. So you've climbed Mount Everest in my mind. So that's fantastic. Congratulations on that. You're going to find Ashley online on LinkedIn because she's there too, very active, which I love it. You'll see other interviews that she's done. She's been all over the world. It's amazing. So check out Ashley's content there and on her website, which we'll put down here on the screen. Ashley, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Sound of Inbound. Just absolutely appreciate the time today. Thank you.
Ashley (53:56.29) Yeah, thanks for having me. text goes here