Episode
Building a Marketing Machine from Scratch (with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews)
- Published
- Mar 12, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3017
- Processing state
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- https://share.transistor.fm/s/5ce5e1ea
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Summary
#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 (06:47) - How Erin identified the right audience to go all in on (08:49) - Building the UX Research Field Guide and the early SEO strategy (11:18) - Why she went ungated and still captured 13% email conversion (14:59) - What she'd do differently with content strategy today (17:35) - Stacking channels one at a time instead of doing everything at once (20:14) - How to plan for the next phase of growth before you need it (22:45) - Introducing Bangers: the quarterly marketing OS (25:13) - Top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel Bangers (30:44) - How LinkedIn and employee advocacy fit into the Banger playbook (35:03) - Why Erin started a podcast seven years ago when no one else was (38:26) - How to think about podcast ROI when attribution is fuzzy (41:18) - AI expectations for her marketing team (45:46) - Why the brand vs. demand debate is stupid (48:58) - The real secret: making your customer the hero Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/ *** Brought to you by: Optimizely - A no-code AI p…