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

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dave-gerhardt-show-from-exit-five-4554232/building-a-marketing-machine-from-scratch-with-erin-may-cmo-at-user-interviews
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dave-gerhardt-show-from-exit-five-4554232/building-a-marketing-machine-from-scratch-with-erin-may-cmo-at-user-interviews.md
Podcast: [The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dave-gerhardt-show-from-exit-five-4554232)
Published: 2026-03-12T08:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/5ce5e1ea
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/media.transistor.fm/5ce5e1ea/25cb8dd6.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-dave-gerhardt-show-from-exit-five-4554232/episodes/building-a-marketing-machine-from-scratch-with-erin-may-cmo-at-user-interviews
Duration seconds: 3017

## Resource

#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…

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