Welcome to The Echo Chamber. Quick riffs and hot takes from around B2B Marketing.
On today's show the guys discuss a recent pricing change Refine Labs made and its potential ramifications.
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Welcome to The Echo Chamber. Quick riffs and hot takes from around B2B Marketing.
On today's show the guys discuss a recent pricing change Refine Labs made and its potential ramifications.
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Transcript
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Conversations from the front lines of marketing. This is B two B growth.
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Welcome back to the Echo Chamber,
a little series we're playing around with here
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on B twob growth. My name
is James Carberry, I'm the founder of
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sweet fish and I'm joined today by
Dan Sanchez, our director of audience growth,
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and today we are going to be
talking about refined labs, the darling
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of B Two b marketing land right
now, and how they have recently changed
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their pricing a bit. So I
got a text message from you, Dan,
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the other day and you were like, Hey, this is super interesting.
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Refined labs load their highest tier price
uh and before, I believe,
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they only had one price. It
was like thirty eight K a month,
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and now their highest tier prices thirty
one five, their lowest tier prices fifteen.
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You can also work with them at
nineteen five a month or two or
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five a month. So ill like, relatively, I mean, we're an
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agency, our pricing does not look
like this. I thought this was a
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really smart move for them to capture
more of the market that they have so
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much attention in right now. But
Dan, what were your thoughts? You
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were obviously the one that sent me
the text. So what was going off
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in your head when you saw this? Man? As soon as I saw
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this, I was like, oh
my gosh. One, did I change
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their pricing tier? Two, I
actually know what they're doing. Now.
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For two years I've been kind of
watching their website as they've grown in popularity,
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and there they would just offer one
price point and every quarter it seemed
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like it went up by a multiple
of five k a month. So it's
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like fifteen thirty and I was like
how high can it go? Like,
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what do they what do they even
do? It's like one of the first
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things I check when I'm trying to
check out our products. I go to
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the pricing page before I even go
to the product page, because usually the
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pricing page gives way more clarity as
to what the heck you're buying. Right.
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I don't know what it is with
Sassin, like B two B services,
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but the pricing page is gold as
far as like what this company's actually
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about, what their offer is and
everything. So I when I finally went
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to refined labs and saw the pricing
tiers, they gave a really clear snapshot
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of as too, far as what
the value they were offering, how they
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were pricing it and how they broke
it out. It's also an indicator of
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kind of what's going on in the
economy. They probably could have stayed on
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that same pricing tier had demand kept
going up. Why Change? It's kind
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of like people are knocking, beating
down your door without a lot of clarity,
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without a lot of pricing options.
Just keep only offering them the highest
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price tier. Why do more?
But the SAS market, the tech market
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overall, is kind of taken a
hit over the last six months and that
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kind of changes things. So now
they've had to pull back their top price
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and offer more options, which I
think is an indicator of what's going on
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in the market for somebody who has
as much demand as refined labs. Yeah,
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I think it's so smart. I've
talked to people on their team about
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kind of the evolution of their pricing
and and how they were just doing paid
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ads and then they started layering in
creative. So that was a reason for
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a price ump and then and then
they started layering in. It was either
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consulting or there was some element of
blanking. Right now on like kind of
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how they how they phased it up. But right now on their on their
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side. For fifteen km months you
get demand advisory. So it's essentially just
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consulting. It says you execute with
our strategic advice. The next phase up
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at nineteen five. Uh, they
actually help you with your paid media and
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then you phase up to four five
and that's you know what they what they
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have on here is you want to
be a category leader. So they're loading
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in creative. They've got to know
they've if you look at their who works
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for refined labs on Linkedin, they've
got a really stacked creative team. So
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now you're you're not just getting paid
media, you're also getting the creative,
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which we all know. The creative
is really what makes the paid media sing.
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And then that last stage, full
service. You want maximum growth.
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I would imagine that's integrating probably more
of their consulting, maybe some their higher
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level consulting. I know they've got
a structure where they've got a VP of
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demand Gen and a director of demand
Gen. You might get a little bit
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more of that vp of demand Gen. I don't know for sure because they
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don't have it is spelled out here. Well, I guess they do.
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They've got a they've got checkboxes under
here. So under that highest. Here
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it says revenue insights and demand strategy, which is included for everything. Subscription
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to the vault, which you know
this is data insights, playbooks. This
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is a product we've been seeing Chris
talk about for probably close to a year
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now. I feel like he's he's
really been wanting to to product size the
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business in this way for a while
and so it looks like that's starting to
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to come to fruition. I know
they've got some Beta users in there using
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that access to private community trainings and
events, which again is included with everything.
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Paid media optimization and execution. And
then demand creation for category and brands.
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So again a little vague on on
what the actual execution is there.
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But then below here create demand for
category and and includes category and competitive positioning
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analysis, messaging and design optimization campaigns
focused on demand creation, platform specific messaging
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and design, and the new campaigns
launched every six to eight weeks. So
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they're they're refreshing that creative and those
key messages over and over and over again.
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I love what these folks have done. I mean I just think,
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you know, really the way they
name and claim things dark social demand creation
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versus demand capture they're giving B two
B marketers language that we we haven't had
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before, and some people crap on
that. So well, you're just given,
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you know, the thing that we've
always known, a new word,
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but they've, to me, executed
it brilliantly. Chris is so consistent on
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Linkedin. So I think this is
a really smart move. I think they're
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gonna be able to work with now
a whole lot more companies by opening up
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the pricing a bit. One last
insight from this page that I got that
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I thought is really smart for a
B Two b service agency, and I
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think sweet fish will probably do something
similar in the future, is that before
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you can get to the pricing,
you have to scroll through a different part
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of this. The top part of
this is, uh, your your refined
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labs demand creation team. So they're
giving you pictures of like the team that's
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going to work for you. Because
once you look at the price and you're
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like thirty one K A month,
a month, I could hire a couple
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of people for that, like well
paid people. What's stopping me from doing
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it? Well, but can you
hire all six of these people and can
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you actually attracted to come work for
you? The same way refined labs can.
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That's the difference and that's what he's
using it by putting that on tops
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like well, you get access to
a VP of demand Gen a director demands
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and a performance marketer, creative director, senior graphic designer and senior copywriter,
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all going to work to make your
brand number one. Can you do that
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for thirty one K A month?
Probably that's what they're trying to position by
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putting these roles up front, and
it's smart. It's super smart because that's
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the first thing I think of a
marketer. As a marketer, I'm like,
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can I recreate this on my own? Yeah, and if you know
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refined labs and have already been like
eating up what he's been putting down on
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Linkedin and on his podcast, you
look at that and you're like nope,
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probably can't. Um At least I
imagine that's probably what's going through most people's
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heads as they're visiting this page.
So it was just a smart move for
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a service agency to do, to
put that upfront. Yeah, I think
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it's super smart. Again, I
think Chris is doing a lot of smart
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stuff. Christ and team over there, or fine labs, are doing a
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lot of smart stuff. So I
really enjoyed this conversation. Dan. We're
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gonna do it again. If you
are listening to this and you're you're liking
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these echo chamber episodes. In last
week we broke down an episode are on
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Nick Bennett and something that he did
gifting folks that are are fans of of
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Alice when they gave g two reviews. Is it ethical? Is it not
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ethical? We broke that down,
so if you haven't listened to that episode,
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go back and listen to that episode. Uh, and we're going to
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do another one of these next week
as well. If you're liking these echo
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chamber episodes, just reach out to
Dan or my self on Linkedin and let
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us know. We love hearing that
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