Building a Marketing Machine from Scratch (with Erin May, CMO at User Interviews) — The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)

#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
(03:58) - How Erin identified the right audience to go all in on
(06:00) - Building the UX Research Field Guide and the early SEO strategy
(08:29) - Why she went ungated and still captured 13% email conversion
(12:10) - What she'd do differently with content strategy today
(14:46) - Stacking channels one at a time instead of doing everything at once
(17:25) - How to plan for the next phase of growth before you need it
(19:56) - Introducing Bangers: the quarterly marketing OS
(22:24) - Top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel Bangers
(26:41) - How LinkedIn and employee advocacy fit into the Banger playbook
(31:00) - Why Erin started a podcast seven years ago when no one else was
(34:23) - How to think about podcast ROI when attribution is fuzzy
(37:15) - AI expectations for her marketing team
(41:43) - Why the brand vs. demand debate is stupid
(44:55) - The real secret: making your customer the hero

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