Marketers of Technology
00:00:00 · Thalía Diedrick, Andres Figuera
[00:00:00] S0: Took over the team, took us from having a team of 13 and spending around 1,200,000 a quarter, all the way down to spending about 262,000 a quarter, while actually substantially increasing the growth and conversion rates across our org. Hey, [00:00:24] S1: everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Marketers of Technology. My name is Andres Figuera, and this show is brought to you by Front Lines, Silicon Valley's leading podcast production studio. If you're looking to launch your own show, we offer a full podcast as a service experience. All you need to do is show up and host, and we'll handle everything else. And with that said, let's dive into today's episode because today I'm here speaking with Thalia Diedrick, Chief Marketing Officer at GoTu, a company that is committed to empowering dental professionals to take charge of their career. So Thalia, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you doing today? [00:01:00] S0: Good. How are you doing? [00:01:02] S1: I'm doing pretty well. Can't complain. Very happy that we're here and able to record this episode right now. And just so that we can hit the ground running, Thalia, would you be able to tell me a bit more about your background, how you came to become chief marketing officer at GoTu, and then what GoTu does in your own words?
00:01:21 · Thalía Diedrick
[00:01:21] S0: Yeah. Thank you. Well, first off, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Actually, it's funny. When I was in school, I studied philosophy mainly. I had an interdisciplinary studies degree, but a lot of my course load focused on philosophy and I really enjoyed formal logic. So, if anyone's familiar with that, it's basically word math. And I had an opportunity early on in college to work as a marketing project manager that I really enjoyed the automation side and the operation side of work that I was doing there, helping them set up some basic automation, some basic workflows. And I was like, oh, this is really similar to some of the stuff that I'm learning when it comes to formal logic, if then statements and word problems. So, I spent a good chunk of my time as a marketer of one at a smaller company local to the area that I was studying in. And I fell in love with marketing there, but specifically marketing operations and the technical side. So, all of the motions that connected everything together and propelled the message of our business at the time forward. From there, I actually joined a company called Cardone Training Technologies, which is, if you're unfamiliar, they're really well known for the amount of email marketing that they send out. So, they send out quite a lot hundreds of millions of emails every year, and quite a lot of text messages. So, there I owned the automation side of their motion and facilitated a lot of their broadcast marketing as well on the email and SMS side. So, the communication side in general, and moved up pretty quickly at that organization as well to eventually own their entire marketing communication arm, as well as their CRM and their map as well. Same thing, really loved the operation side. And that's how I then ended up at GoTu actually starting off as an IC, as a marketing operations manager, helping them build out their lifecycle marketing arm, their reporting and analytics. I've been here for three years now and have just continuously grown over the past couple of years. I took over the team, took us from having a team of 13 and spending around 1,200,000 a quarter, all the way down to spending about 262,000 a quarter while actually substantially increasing the growth and conversion rates across our org.
00:03:59 · Thalía Diedrick
I sat as Interim Head of Marketing for a bit after being promoted to Director of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations. And then most recently in the last couple of months is when I was formally promoted to CMO, which I'm really grateful. It's an amazing opportunity, especially to be at a company that is making such a positive impact on the world and the dental industry. And so I'll take that into who GoTu is. So GoTu is a dental talent marketplace that basically functions similar to like an Uber or an Upwork or a Fiverr, but for dental. So dental offices can post a shift on our platform and it pings hundreds, if not thousands, of dental professionals in the area. The professionals can counter the rate, counter the hours, or apply to the shift as is, and the platform handles it autonomously from there. So, we're tackling the staffing crisis that's currently going on in the dental industry on the dental hygienist and dental assistant side to the provider side. And not only that, but staffing crisis this staffing crisis disproportionately impacts low income areas, low income people. When dental offices don't have the people or the staff that they need, sometimes one of the first things or first people to be impacted are people who have Medicaid coverage and so on. So, it directly is correlated with the overall oral health and physical health of the country. And so it's a really, really amazing thing to be a part of.
00:05:38 · Andres Figuera, Thalía Diedrick
[00:05:38] S1: Wow. Like, okay. So first of all, let me make sure I got this straight. So with GoTu a dentist then, the agency or what... Or that party, they place the appointment availability, and then whichever independent dentist can take it, they can then make sure to look at that patient via the application. Is that how it works? [00:05:58] S0: Yeah. So it's like, think of it like an Uber. So it's usually a dental office who posts the shift. So it's almost like if you were the rider and you request a ride. So they post the shift and then either a hygienist or a dental assistant or an associate dentist can look at the shifts available, pick the one that they want to work. They can even say, hey, I'd actually be willing to work this for a couple more dollars an hour or for a different set of hours and they apply to the shift. The offices can review their candidates and everything handle is handled pretty much autonomously through the product. So what was traditionally solved by like a brick and mortar agency, pen and paper situation, we've turned into a marketplace. [00:06:42] S1: I love it. And then the marketing per se, is it more to dental offices so that they use GoTu and make more requests for availability or any appointments that they have? Or to whom do you really market this service in order for it to be used even more?
00:06:42 · Andres Figuera, Thalía Diedrick
[00:06:42] S1: I love it. And then the marketing per se, is it more to dental offices so that they use GoTu and make more requests for availability or any appointments that they have? Or to whom do you really market this service in order for it to be used even more? [00:07:00] S0: So, I think that's what's really interesting about working at GoTu. It's truly both. We're always kind of like walking this tightrope of figuring out like, where do we need more offices? Where do we need more professionals? And where how should we allocate our efforts, our resources, our budget? So, we do a lot of heavy work on both sides of the market. [00:07:22] S1: Okay. And since... And you mentioned that you... You've been three years at GoTu. Right? And all the trajectory you've had within. And how was it at the beginning marketing the service to now? Like, could you do a comparison of how it has been?
00:07:22 · Andres Figuera, Thalía Diedrick
[00:07:22] S1: Okay. And since... And you mentioned that you... You've been three years at GoTu. Right? And all the trajectory you've had within. And how was it at the beginning marketing the service to now? Like, could you do a comparison of how it has been? [00:07:37] S0: Yeah. So when I joined the team, I really was filling a gap, in my opinion, of being a more data driven marketing organization. We were very brand centric initially, which is very common in dental. I think dental and healthcare in general can take a more branding approach because it's traditional, it's less digital, trade shows are very common, out of home marketing is very common. And where I really focused on was utilizing data and analytics and my strengths to make a case for more digital channels, for a more digital approach in general, and for being just more strategic with our spend by really implementing harder and more rigorous attribution methodology specifically. So, when I compare when I joined to now, I would say that now we're very aggressive with attribution. We test fast and we kill even faster. We like to experiment, but we're also we're not willing to do things just because they're the things to do, especially in our space where things like trade shows or things that are very branded brand heavy are common. We want to question everything and we want to make sure that we're keeping ROI in mind.