Molly Clark has spent the last decade and a half working all across the marketing industry, beginning with a role as an interactive marketing coordinator at a pharmaceutical software company. 

Through the years, her passion for marketing, advertising and logistics has grown — but Molly also discovered a second passion for marketing operations along the way. This led her to becoming Director of Marketing at her current company, inMotionNow, a B2B SaaS company that offers a workflow management solution. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified with Justin Brown, Molly discusses the collaboration between her marketers and the sales team. Applying a multichannel approach to the sales funnel, the teams work hand-in-hand to convert leads into signed contracts. She describes them as having a “healthy tension” but at the end of the day, determining who gets credit for a specific lead doesn’t matter.

“We have shared goals amongst our two teams, so that we're always trying to work in lockstep to accomplish the same overarching goal, because then both of our teams win,” says MollyMolly shares that inMotionNow’s customer base includes marketers, advertisers and creatives — the same people her team is made up of. This works to their advantage, as they understand how to relate to their target audience: through educational content marketing that explains how inMotionNow’s product can bridge the gaps in their work processes. Molly’s team also uses customer stories to share how their product is used as well as customers’ achievements.

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.

Working alongside sales has always been a priority for Lori McInerney, the current Vice President of Marketing at Hunt Club. 

As a recruiting firm, Hunt Club functions as both a B2B and B2C organization, attracting both businesses and job candidates as its customers. Because of this unique structure, sales and marketing must drive demand on multiple fronts — and it’s partly why Lori is a fervent supporter of a strong sales-marketing coalition. 

The other reason: her experience in both fields. Lori originally started her career in B2B marketing before trying out sales for four years, an experience she calls “one of the greatest career choices” she’s ever made. In fact, she credits her time in sales with making her a better marketer; she even describes herself as “a marketer always wearing a sales lens.”

On this episode of Tech Qualified with Justin Brown, Lori talks about her approach to sales-marketing collaboration and the strategies her team has implemented in the post-COVID era. 

“Marketing is fully responsible for bringing in demand and for working closely with sales to convert that demand and to bring in the right leads. I think the better our teams can work together, the better success for the company. We're all striving for that same goal,” she 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.

Phil Rimmler’s entire job revolves around marketing crushed diamonds. 

“We help companies attach a digital record to a physical object, similar to inventory management, anti theft detection, things like that. And we do that by crushing up diamonds, literal diamonds, and mixing them with a UV epoxy,” he says.

That UV epoxy, when applied to objects such as fine art, creates a one-of-a-kind tag for the object, and finding customers for this niched product is Phil’s job as Marketing Manager at DUST Identity. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Phil discusses what it’s like working for a fairly new company selling a product that’s only appealing to particular high-end or high-profile clients such as the military. Phil explains how much of his day-to-day work is detailed ethnographic, user and competitor research to keep DUST both appealing and relevant — particularly during a global pandemic that causes customer needs to change constantly. 

“What our efforts are mainly focused on is creating that collateral so that during that customer journey when an organization knows that they want to solve this issue, how can we best position ourselves to seem like the likely and logical and economical answer?” 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.

Marketing isn’t about taking advantage of people — although that doesn’t stop some brands from taking an exploitative marketing approach. Andrei Faji, the Vice President of Global Marketing at Shopgate, wants to do the opposite. 

“We've intentionally decided not to go down that path. We found that we had a real opportunity to level-set and get to the bottom line around what actually matters,” he says.

On this episode of Tech Qualified with Justin Brown, Andrei talks about what marketers should really focus on: starting and maintaining conversations with consumers, especially now in light of the pandemic. 

For Andrei, marketing is about communicating your organization’s value sincerely, with the goal of solving a problem rather than selling a product or service. To do this, it’s important to create a message that accurately reflects your company, one that every employee can get behind.

Andrei applies this to Shopgate’s strategy with direct response marketing, which he feels cuts through the noise of today’s digital chaos.

“Direct response allowed us to put together some unique offline campaigns to really get in front of decision makers and make a real statement,” Andrei says. “I think one thing that we as marketers sometimes take for granted is the power of being bold and making a true statement, knowing full well that not everybody is going to respond to that statement, but the statement still needs to be made because you need to put a flag in the ground.”

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.

You could say that data has informed most of Derrick’s professional decisions — starting with his first job as an SEO specialist. 

Derrick moved his way up the marketing ranks before eventually joining ConvertKit, an email marketing platform that makes email easier and more robust for professional creators. 

As ConvertKit’s Marketing Director, he helps online creators grow their businesses to earn a living online.

During Derrick’s first year at ConvertKit, the leadership team noticed a dismal lack of growth. Taking a look at the data, they decided to drastically change their core product.

 

“We decided to innovate by leading with a core product change to achieve a better product market fit,” says Derrick. This didn’t come without challenges. He notes, “Our current customer base wasn't super excited about it. Part of that was because of our market positioning.”

 

In this episode, Derrick discusses how ConvertKit revamped both its product and business model, and how this shift affected its marketing strategy. Besides product changes, he’s seen the brand’s marketing evolve considerably in just two and a half years. 

For instance, when Derrick first joined, ConvertKit relied heavily on affiliate marketing. It has since expanded its marketing avenues to include organic search, podcasting and video storytelling. Now, Derrick’s team is focused on product marketing; to complement ConvertKit’s strong brand advertising, they hope to better convey how its product brings value to users.

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.

COVID-19 hit the hospitality industry hard. So much so that Heath Shatouhy, the VP of Sales and Marketing at the staffing marketplace Jitjatjo, reports, “If you look at the recent jobs report, nearly two-thirds of people filing for unemployment are from the hospitality and leisure industry.”

As a staffing platform that focuses on connecting companies and workers in the hospitality industry, the pandemic has thus taken a big toll on Jitjatjo. Yet this hasn’t stopped Heath and his team from working hard to support Jitjatjo’s gig workers. In fact, since the emergence of COVID-19, the platform has cut its margins to keep money in the hands of workers, or talent, as it calls them.

On this episode of Tech Qualified with Justin Brown, Heath explains how his team has adapted to get through these difficult times and help those struggling. Knowing that many workers join the hospitality industry because they want to help others, Heath felt there was no better way to support them than by protecting their livelihoods.

“If you approach clients and customers with a genuine desire to help without worrying about paybacks, it will come back to you. It may not be today. It may not be tomorrow, but it will come back because they will remember you because you were genuine and you did try to help them out as best you could. And that really goes a long way,” Heath 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.

For Ewa Baska, Marketing Director at Buildout, a SaaS company that creates marketing software for commercial real estate brokers, the marketing fundamentals she learned in school and early jobs have always been her inner guidebook. 

“I always knew that I wanted to go into marketing just by always wanting to know more about brands and studying all the exciting things that companies can bring to humans,” she says.

But some things you can’t learn from school — like what to do when a pandemic hits. 

In such circumstances, it’s important to think before you act, Ewa says. For Buildout, that meant taking a step back to reflect and create a strategic marketing response plan rather than reacting hastily. It was a move that’s made all the difference in connecting with new customers and retaining current ones.

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Ewa shares how her team conducted an audit to adjust their marketing strategy in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. She also discusses the value of adding a human touch to Buildout’s brand messaging, one that focuses on being humble and genuine.

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.

Taking the reins of an established marketing team shouldn’t mean throwing out everything that’s come before. Put the hard work of your predecessors to good use.

Adam Lambert joined scheduling software company Calendly as its Senior Content and Digital Marketing Manager in January 2020. He spent his first three months studying what his team had achieved before his arrival.

“Customer service was really strong: people had good resources to answer current customer questions. So I didn't have to spend a lot of time with current customers, compared with connecting with people who might find this tool useful,” he says.

Adam identifies content marketing — especially video — as one of the strongest mediums for getting word out about your product.

In this episode of Tech Qualified, Adam tells Tristan Pelligrino why and how marketers should put their time and budget into video.

“The money doesn't hurt as bad when you're getting 12 pieces of content. You're making this video, a transcript and a blog about this video, and you're doing thought leadership because you're going to share clips,” he says. “You're doing a lot more than the one deliverable that's laid out on the contract.”

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 more than 20 years in marketing, Steve Wagner has watched the demand generation concept “grow up,” so to speak. When he was starting out, it was in its “baby phase,” and he has since watched it become an integral part of the marketing life cycle.

Steven started his career on the account management and sales side of business — which helped him better understand and appreciate those teams — before working his way over to marketing.

These days, he’s the Senior Marketing Manager at Webbula, a data quality platform, where he heads marketing initiatives for its data hygiene and enhancement solutions for email marketers.

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Tristan Pelligrino interviews Steve, who gives us an overview of what email marketing looks like in today’s climate. He discusses the importance of targeted email campaigns and explains why it’s important to have a “clean” email list. (Did you know companies get assigned sender reputation scores?)

Since joining the team more than a year ago, he talks about how he’s prioritized his marketing efforts, and he shares what he hopes to accomplish post-COVID.

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.

Audio has always been Jaclyn Schiff’s favorite way to consume information. Whether it was a book on tape or early versions of podcasts, she was right there listening — donning a cassette player or nestled up by her desktop computer. 

With about 15 years of combined experience in journalism and content marketing, Jaclyn started PodReacher — a company that helps podcasters increase their brand visibility by turning each episode into engaging content for their website. 

“I think any savvy marketer in 2020 understands that content today is about getting in front of audiences in the format they prefer and wherever it is they hang out,” Jaclyn says. It’s not enough to just record a podcast, hit publish, and call it a day. 

In this episode, Jaclyn breaks down why every podcaster needs to transform each episode into meaningful content to post on their website and across social media. 

Jaclyn also talks about what it takes to create a successful podcast, why turning podcasts into content is beneficial for SEO, plus how it fits into your overall marketing strategy and helps build a loyal customer base.

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.