Tech Qualified

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. 

For Melissa Greiner, establishing a human connection is the key to developing — and keeping — a successful customer, no matter what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re at.

Before entering the B2B marketing world, Melissa studied journalism in college. It gave her valuable experience that would eventually land her as the Director of Marketing at WizeHive, which is a SaaS platform for nonprofit organizations. 

On this episode, Melissa discusses her strategies for developing successful content, including planning for every stage of the customer journey by leveraging and learning about what the customer is looking for, their pain points and exactly why they need WizeHive. 

“You have to make sure you have that broad breadth from the very beginning to the very end, so that [at] the end of the day, you’ve spent time making sure that every stage and every possible way people are coming into contact with your name and your brand and your product has been covered,” says Melissa. 

She also shares how WizeHive’s messaging reflects and takes into consideration the tough time that many nonprofit organizations are facing due to COVID-19 and the approaches she and her team are taking to ensure customer satisfaction.

“We are individuals at the end of the day, so if we can keep that in mind and really just be respectful of everyone’s situations right now, I think it will make all of us trying to move forward a little bit easier.”

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. 

Marybeth Sheppard spent years working at a B2B marketing agency before joining Seamless, the online food-ordering service owned by Grubhub.

She spent more than five years there, marketing the product to hedge funds, law firms, tech companies — really, anyone who was ordering large amounts of food or catering company events.

Now, Marybeth serves as the Senior Vice President of Marketing at SEVENROOMS, a hospitality technology company. 

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Justin Brown interviews Marybeth, who is more than three years into her time at SEVENROOMS. She talks about the process of growing her marketing department to a team of eight, how her team works closely with the sales department and how she keeps her employees motivated.

Marybeth also addresses how COVID-19 has reshaped day-to-day life for SEVENROOMS, a company that focuses heavily on the restaurant industry. She shares the steps the SEVENROOMS marketing and sales departments have taken to continue to drive leads and close deals despite the shuttering of restaurants around the country.

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. 

At Lessonly, a training software company, marketing and sales play on the same team. And Chief Marketing Officer Kyle Lacy wouldn’t think of having it any other way. 

“Part of the reason why I wanted to move the BDRs and SDRs under marketing is that you force alignment,” Kyle says in this episode of Tech Qualified. 

At other companies, the marketing department might focus on attribution or proving influence. Kyle’s goal is to focus the marketing team on revenue. He says they’re not quite there yet, but he aims to have the marketing team influencing 100% of revenue.

He doesn’t mince his words: “I think this idea that marketing is an influence

metric is just a load of BS because you’re going to be the first one cut, nobody’s ever going to

align to you because they don’t need to — you’re just going to be an order-taking team.” 

Kyle shares some of Lessonly’s major marketing initiatives since COVID-19 hit, which includes doing virtual whiskey tasting with enterprise prospects. He also discusses his personal process for professional development — and why he focuses on learning from people rather than books.

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. 

In her role as the lead marketer at a small company that offers IT services, Megan Battaglia says she has the best of both worlds.  

After beginning her career in consumer product marketing for the popular spice company McCormick, she next landed a role working on the tech side for a health company. Now at ThunderCat — where she is Director of Marketing — she gets to combine her creative side with her tech background. 

“I kind of have the best of both worlds with marketing for a tech company,” she says. The veteran-owned business provides IT services for the U.S. federal government, state and local governments, and Fortune 500 companies. 

Megan’s goal is to create marketing campaigns for the business’ B2G and B2B sides. “We’re really just bringing awareness to the company that, hey, we’re not just government, we’re also commercial. We’ve really used our name and our reputation in the government space to brand ourselves in the commercial space.” 

In this episode, Megan shares some of her most effective marketing strategies for reaching prospects in the government as well as private industry. COVID-19 has affected marketing strategy, but she says the company has been digital-first for a while. Though she says about 60% of the marketing budget is for digital activities, the remainder was for trade shows or other kinds of in-person events.

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. 

Account-based marketing isn’t a buzzword Juliana Pereira can get behind. 

“I actually call it marketing because I think that’s the only type of marketing you should be doing,” says Julianna, Vice President of Marketing for Flow, which provides software to help brands and retailers build a cross-border e-commerce business.

In pre-pandemic times, Juliana invested carefully in getting the right people to Flow’s events. Of course, in-person events are no longer possible given the current state of the world, but she’s still keeping the focus on people and relationships. Instead of bringing crowds together in physical spaces, Juliana has put emphasis on webinars. In this episode, she also describes how she’s getting Flow’s well-connected investors to help her scale relationship-building with important partners. 

Juliana is also all about finding creative ways to get the message across. She’s published assorted content formats to keep Flow top of mind for potential customers —  including a calendar with specially commissioned cartoons that was sent as a 2020 gift. The cartoons speak to prospects’ familiar e-commerce pain points. Before they were used to illustrate the calendar, the cartoons were featured on Flow’s blog. 

Plus, Juliana uses the cartoons in prospecting emails, which have gotten some good responses from prospects who identify with the pain points and want to talk further.

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.