Unlike most SaaS professionals, Aaron Stillman didn’t end up in software because it was a longtime passion. Instead, he wanted to drastically increase his fresh croissant intake. In other words, he saw his first SaaS job as an opportunity to live in Paris while developing his product management — and eventually marketing — abilities. 

That first role kept him in the global market, where he now works for international customer experience optimization platform AB Tasty as its “director of storytelling” — or, as some prefer to call it, director of product marketing. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Aaron discusses the importance of using a multitude of marketing tools to reach customers and why it’s vital to pay attention to which tools are most appropriate for a particular moment in time. Currently, the tool he finds most effective is video. 

“Video’s really a first-class citizen for us,” Aaron says. “I want to make sure that our story gets across in a video in a way that will have that human impact when somebody watches it. When people log in to use our platform and ... create a personalization campaign, they'll receive a video helping them understand the key value propositions and the how-tos of using the product.”

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

Half a year doesn’t seem like much time to take a marketing department from idling to racing ahead, but Mary Ford moves fast.

Mary recently became the Chief Marketing Officer of CENTEGIX, an internet of things (IoT) company making emergency alert software. Its main clients are K-12 schools and hotels.

School safety is a potentially heavy subject, but Mary focuses on the positives of what CENTEGIX’s product can do.

“My job as a marketer is to help people understand the day-to-day value the solution brings to those who feel more protected because they're empowered to get help when they need it,” she says.

Although Mary only joined this year, she’s been busy improving CENTEGIX’s brand awareness and profile. When she first came onboard, the company had a website — and not much else.

“We needed to build some basic marketing competencies and fundamentals,” Mary says. Under her watch, the CENTEGIX marketing team launched a social media program and started producing white papers and email campaigns, improving internal communications (especially with sales) and hosting webinars.

Fortunately, working at four startups in the past has given Mary a taste for juggling lots of projects at once.

“I like to build things, and it's fun to see how our marketing function has evolved over the past six months.”

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

Michelle Tilton fell in love with B2B marketing while working at a small boutique agency after college. It wasn't the "glamorous B2C space" everyone else wanted to get into, but something pulled her in and she's been in the B2B world ever since. 

Now, Michelle works as the VP of Marketing at Infutor, a data solutions company that helps its clients better understand their customers through data. Michelle uses a multi-channel, multi-touch marketing approach to drive demand and integrates processes between marketing and sales to ensure a consistent, high-quality lead flow. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Michelle talks about how Infutor nurtures different MQLs and the seamless handoff between its sales and marketing teams. She also shares about how she properly attributes lead data and the ways each team in her company works toward obtaining highly qualified leads and closing a higher percentage of sales.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

Laura Scruggs attributes her company's "astronomical growth" to a strong alignment between sales and marketing. As the Director of Marketing at Mindgrub, a full-service digital marketing agency that focuses on tech companies, Laura tailors both Mindgrub’s and its affiliate companies’ marketing strategies to the changing needs of the B2B world. 

In a time when marketing budgets are slashed each quarter and most businesses are just trying to stay afloat, it’s not easy to stay relevant. 

"That window of relevance got so much smaller once the crisis hit because there are so many industries who are in absolute crisis right now,” Laura says. “If you're trying to approach them with a sales-forward message, they're not going to be receptive to that,"

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Laura details Mindgrub's successful marketing strategies, which include segmented advertising and creating content for every part of the sales funnel. She also shares about the importance of building authentic partnerships with clients instead of seeing them solely as a source of revenue.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

AnnaMaria Turano is Vice President of Marketing at Synzi, a company that was facilitating telehealth services before it was cool — or, rather, before it became an overwhelming necessity because of COVID-19. 

“In late 2017, entering 2018, we figured out Synzi was the right name, the right brand. And then we determined the look and feel of what that brand identity should be, including the colors, including the font, etc., to be markedly different from everyone else in the telehealth space,” AnnaMaria says. “We saw ourselves as having been a pioneer of bringing forth a different type of solution and a different way of thinking about how that solution would actually work in a provider organization.”

Because Synzi started using the term “virtual care” before other telehealth providers, AnnaMaria and her marketing team knew it was important to establish the company’s unique identity. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, AnnaMaria discusses marketing’s role in making a company stand out, the importance of maintaining customer relationships (and adapting based on their changing needs), and how helpful it is to think of varying marketing objectives as working hand-in-hand rather than achieving separate things.  

“We've got all these things we're doing at once. They're all important. They all feed into each other, and there is no reason to just put one aside versus the other,” she says. “You can't drive lead gen without strengthening brand awareness, and at the same time … you're going to have to enable sales and make sure that your sales force has the right tools they need to close the deals, but also the right tools they need to get the customer started.”

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

Heather Knutson is a seasoned marketer who has spent the last eight years in the housing industry space and data market. In the beginning of 2020, she took a new role as VP of Marketing at Ascent360, a computer software company that supports B2C marketers with its comprehensive customer data platform.

On this episode of Tech Qualified with Justin Brown, Heather explains her marketing philosophies and how she strives to keep Ascent360’s marketing strategy fully aligned with its sales team. She also shares her love for thought leadership and why it’s a big “vein” in her marketing strategy.

“I'm big into having good thought leadership where ... you don't want to give everything away — but you want to give enough information that you pique interest,” she says.

Heather goes on to discuss building a library of content that she can use to repurpose across the industries that Ascent360 works with. The library helps her set processes in place, reuse good content from platform to platform and better align with the sales team as they go after customers in the pipeline.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

Knowing when to play it cool and let the customer come to you can work better than a hard sell.

As VP of Marketing at Narrative Science, Cassidy Shield has learned that the most effective approach for drawing customers to the company’s product is by showcasing its abilities and the brand’s values. 

What exactly does Narrative Science do? The brand calls itself a “data storytelling company” — its software Lexio transforms analytics data into plain language stories that people can easily understand and use without a degree in data science.

Cassidy says it takes a special type of customer to understand the product’s value. “They're not afraid to make a decision that's against the norm,” he says. “We're looking for early adopters of technology.”

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Cassidy explains how he’s restructured and reinvigorated Narrative Science’s marketing team since joining 18 months ago, and why a subtle marketing approach works for the brand.

“It's been largely that strategy of building content we feel is valuable and providing experiences, and putting our people first so we’re seen as humans, which is critical to establishing that trust and relationship. People then get comfortable taking the next step, which is, ‘How can you help me?’”

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

With almost 30 years of experience in the IT field, the majority of which was spent in sales, Andy Jonak isn’t your average marketer. 

As Director of Marketing at Vicom, an IT solutions provider that services enterprise firms, Andy approaches everything in his work with the perspective of the sales team in mind. 

To strengthen Vicom’s thought leadership and expertise, Andy leverages data from internal subject matter experts and members of the sales team to give customers exactly what they're looking for. After all, he points out, “They’re talking to the customers on the front lines, talking to our customers and our prospects each and every day.” 

It’s thanks to these experts that Andy’s team can produce quality content across Vicom’s digital marketing channels — but that's only one piece of the company’s overarching marketing strategy. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Andy talks about how he approaches marketing in a highly competitive B2B market where differentiating factors can be few and far between. 

Andy also shares why he sees telemarketing as the "unsung hero" of marketing, how he nurtures prospects into loyal customers and the unique insights he leverages to establish Vicom as an expert in the IT space.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

Anusha Sethuraman has been creating and promoting content ever since her days on the theatre production team at R.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore. These days, however, it’s a lot more business-oriented creativity. 

Currently, Anusha is the Head of Marketing for explainable AI platform Fiddler. The company is a startup, a business structure she has prior experience with, though she came to Fiddler after working at Microsoft. While Anusha credits her time working for companies of all sizes and stages with making her a more well-rounded marketer, startups are her passion because they’re where she can make a bigger impact. 

Her current role as the sole marketer for Fiddler certainly allows her that opportunity, but it comes with its own set of challenges. 

“I just wish I had a lot more time to actually sit and write content,” she says. “I used to do a lot of this in my previous roles, especially at New Relic. … Developing an abstract and trying to reach out to a writer to help me write it — it's hard because sometimes the topic means a lot of reading and knowledge and research, and that's not always easy to come by in a writer. … That is something I’m figuring out.”

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Anusha discusses how she executes Fiddler’s marketing strategy as a one-person department. (Spoiler: She’s all about outsourcing to freelancers and agencies, although this process requires careful vetting.) She also shares how she navigates demand generation marketing with the help of ex-colleagues and industry experts that act as a sounding board.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.

The past seven months have been a whirlwind for Nick Bennett. In March, he began building his personal brand on LinkedIn by commenting on others’ posts and sharing his own content. Within six months, he grew his network to 10,000 followers. 

What got Nick started on crafting his personal brand in the first place? A simple LinkedIn challenge from a former colleague.

“I was really the only one that kind of stuck with it,” Nick says. Along the way, he learned that consistency was critical: “If you're going to do it, you have to do it consistently. You have to invest time into it if you want it to be successful.” 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Nick, the Director of Field Marketing in North America at Logz.io, shares about his experience in all things personal branding. 

For Nick, the most significant thing to come out of this initiative is the community of like-minded people he now feels connected to. 

“I just want more people to join my community, to engage in the content that I put out there. … Going forward, my only goal is to continue to put out content that adds value and to grow the number of people that follow this journey,” he says.

This episode is produced by New North. New North is a strategic B2B marketing agency specializing in working with tech companies. Going beyond conventional tactics, we craft a personalized marketing strategy, conduct research, lay a solid foundation, execute dynamic campaigns, and continuously refine our approach through analysis.

With New North, your small, scrappy marketing team transforms into a powerful growth engine, achieving your goals with less pressure and more precision.