Building a Marketing Machine from Scratch (with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews)

#337 | Dave sits down with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews, who joined as the company's first marketer with a two-page website and zero recurring revenue and helped grow it to $20M+ ARR over eight years. Erin breaks down how she picked one niche audience and went all in, why she led with ungated content, and how she built a quarterly operating rhythm around "Bangers," tentpole marketing moments that get the entire company involved. They also get into podcasting ROI, what she'd do differently with AI-driven search today, and why she thinks the brand vs. demand debate is just noise.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - Intro: 8 years, one niche, a two-page website, and $20M ARR
• (06:13) - How Erin identified the right audience to go all in on
• (08:15) - Building the UX Research Field Guide and the early SEO strategy
• (10:44) - Why she went ungated and still captured 13% email conversion
• (14:25) - What she'd do differently with content strategy today
• (17:01) - Stacking channels one at a time instead of doing everything at once
• (19:40) - How to plan for the next phase of growth before you need it
• (22:11) - Introducing Bangers: the quarterly marketing OS
• (24:39) - Top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel Bangers
• (30:01) - How LinkedIn and employee advocacy fit into the Banger playbook
• (34:20) - Why Erin started a podcast seven years ago when no one else was
• (37:43) - How to think about podcast ROI when attribution is fuzzy
• (40:35) - AI expectations for her marketing team
• (45:03) - Why the brand vs. demand debate is stupid
• (48:15) - The real secret: making your customer the hero

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