Today, I interview Suzanne Coblentz, the head of marketing at Go Ape. She has over 18 years of experience in marketing. She navigated the dynamic advertising landscape by challenging assumptions, staying on top of emerging technology, and putting the right process in place to fully leverage and replicate success. She is results oriented and an eternal optimist.

Transcript:

– [Suzanne] There’s facets of marketing that, you know, are a piece of your retention. So, you know, you do need to think when we talk about our funnel, you know, our funnel doesn’t end at that first step conversion. Your funnel is extensive.

– Welcome back to another episode of More Than Marketing. I am your host, Arsham Mirshah, and I am joined by the lovely Suzanne Coblems?

– Coblentz.

– Coblentz.

– I married into it.

– Sorry. Cline is the maiden.

– Yes.

– I’m putting it all out there. Suzanne, we’ve known each other for a while and I saw, I looked at your LinkedIn, you’ve been– It’s like you go in-house to agency to in-house to agency and now you’re in-house again.

– Yes.

– You’ve seen it all.

– I’ve seen it all.

– Seen it all.

– Worked both sides of the fence as they say.

– Yep, exactly. And I think that’s really interesting for all our viewership ’cause it’s like, you know, you’re in your role now and in other roles you’ve used agencies but you’ve also been in agencies. You kind of know the hustle and bustle that is on that side.

– I think it has advantages if you have agency experience. I also think it’s advantageous on the agency’s side to have brand experience. You better understand the pressures of your clients. You better understand the changes in budgets and how things can shift on a dime.

– Yeah.

– Which I think allow you to be a little more responsive to your client needs.

– Right.

– From the flip side–

– I was gonna say as a client then, how–

– Yeah, as a client you understand agency competency, you know what you’re going after.

– Right, that makes sense.

– You also have an eye on how to evaluate what you’re getting out of the relationship.

– Sure.

– I think there’s less subterfuge if you will.

– ‘Kay.

– You know what’s going on behind the scenes. You know a lot of things.

– Yeah, that’s a good point.

– Amazing things were done. But maybe within the last, I don’t know, 17 hours.

– Right, right, exactly, it’s like, “Hey!” You know, nothing was done and then pop, you know. But I, and also you probably know that like the communication is key between client and agency because, you know, from the agency’s side, it’s like all this stuff is happening at the client but we may not know about it.

– 100% I am publicly unusually transparent with my agency partners but I think it builds trust and again I think the operative word there is it’s a partnership or it should be a partnership.

– I would agree.

– And you have nothing to be gained if you put up barriers.

– Sure.

– They need to understand what your challenges are. They need to understand even what the unique pressures are for your team.

– Yep.

– Resource constraints, changes, turnover, all of those things.