Tag: CMO

Chatbots: Keep It Human With Your Bots

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Keep It Human With Your Bots

Call an Uber, order from Amazon, book a hotel… You can do all of these things instantly—even at 4 AM. People today want commodities quickly and with round the clock access. Believe it or not, your B2B buyers are also people, and they probably want the same. Now, most businesses can’t man their websites 24/7 (unless you’re shelling out for night shift employees or lots of coffee)—this is where the chatbot comes. But there’s an art to the bot—they shouldn’t replace humans, but should help facilitate conversations with customers. Proper use can result in tremendous boost to lead generation, and can radically speed up a company’s growth.

Dave Gerhardt, author of Conversational Marketing and VP of Marketing at Drift, joined RTU for a chat bot chat, and really digs into the value, and ideal usage, of these automated critters. Beyond that, Dave touches on a few broader subjects, including how marketing efforts need to be rooted in empathy and humanity. After all, you’ll always be marketing to people.

Hear why businesses big and small can benefit from chatbots—listen in!

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What You’ll Learn

Conversational marketing: why you should nix your lead form

When Drift nixed its own lead form, they did so to teach the market about conversational marketing! Drift needed to practice what it preached. Drift utilizes bots to capture leads. Instead of a form submission, there is a conversation with a potential customer. Dave shares that a form is binary while a chatbot allows a conversation to occur. Today’s technology is so good that from a single email address, your company can get ample information. Because of this, companies should feel free to focus on the conversation.

For the whole article: http://bit.ly/2U8k33i

Timeline

    • [2:40] Get to know Dave, and why he was first attracted to Drift
    • [6:15] Information from his book, Conversational Marketing
    • [11:11] Is there every information on a website worth gating?
    • [14:03] Why chatbots
    • [20:20] Embedding a calendar-like function to a chatbot
    • [25:20] The point of moving from a chatbot to livechat
    • [28:16] Why speed matters!
    • [31:37] The importance of empathy in sales conversations
    • [35:40] Using chatbots for customer service and post sales
  • [39:35] CQL’s and why they will save the world

Connect With Dave Gerhardt:

    • Connect with Dave Gerhardt on LinkedIn

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Buying is Broken — Here’s What We Can Do

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Buying is Broken — Here’s What We Can Do

Nothing like a live audience to keep you on your toes! Third-time guest Brent Adamson, Distinguished Vice President, Gartner, joins Drew for a live conversation in front of an elite collection of B2B CMOs to chat about smarketing—and no, that’s not a typo. Brent dives into why sales and marketing—“smarketing”— must work together and fully align to connect with customers.

Beyond that, Brent explains why buying is broken, the pitfalls of working with a large buyer committee, and why companies need to make customers reevaluate themselves rather than products. Don’t miss that and more on this week’s Renegade Thinkers Unite!

You’ll enjoy this episode, so be sure to listen!

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What You’ll Learn

Smarketing: sales and marketing collaboration

Marketing has long been coupled with the digital while sales has been dominantly in person. In this mindset, marketing is early on in the process of working with a customer while sales is later. However, Brent suggests that this linear view on sales and marketing does not have to be, and in fact, may not even be the best. He introduces the term – smarketing: the combination of sales and marketing. He suggests a workaround on the functional divide of sales and marketing. When looking at how buying happens, you are looking for information needed by the client, so the solution is to put this information together for clients and deliver them through multiple channels with sales and marketing supporting this.

Why buying is broken, and how to put B2B sales back together!

For B2B sales, there used to be approximately 5.4 people involved in the buying process. Over the past number of years, this number of people involved has jumped up to 9-10. The more people involved, the more difficult buying has become. There are more opinions and prerogatives, so this slows the process of B2B sales down. Brent shares that in studies done, it is not optimal to personalized message for each of these 10 stakeholders. Instead, to market to all of these buying persons, you must find a common denominator. Creating content around this common ground can help buyers reach a decision. Be sure to listen to hear Brent share an example of this!

Commercial insight tools

Brent further explains 3 commercial insight tools that can be used to help motivate buyers:

  1. Connector: A connector is a set of information or tools to identify who needs to be involved
  2. Advisor: An advisor is a buying guide or a set of steps to be followed
  3. Diagnostic: A diagnostic is a framework that is created for a segment of customers that allows them to diagnose their performance to help identify where they are on a continuum of performance (where they are and where they want to be!)

Timeline

  • [2:13] What is new with Brent Adamson
  • [3:34] Prepping for a recession as a CFO or CMO
  • [8:16] Smarketing! Sales and marketing working together
  • [12:04] Buying is broken – why and how to help as a marketer
  • [22:55] A good example of commercial insight
  • [28:00] Audience questions: Connie O’Brien and Denise Broady
  • [40:56] Commercial insight tools: connector, advisor, and diagnostic

Connect With Brent Adamson:

  • Brent Adamson’s Bio on Gartner’s Conference Website
  • Connect with Brent Adamson on LinkedIn
  • Follow Brent Adamson on Twitter

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

F Content Marketing – Don’t Just Create Content, but Leverage It!

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Why Uberflip Says “F*** Content Marketing”: How to Best Leverage the Content You’ve Got

If a tree falls in the forest… You know the rest. But, if Randy Frisch doesn’t attend a conference, did people there still talk about content marketing? It’s quite possible—but perhaps not with the same enthusiasm, and likely not from the same angle.

On this episode, Randy Frisch, the CMO & President of Uberflip, a content experience platform for marketers, talks about cutting through. Randy shares that you have to “Trojan Horse” your idea with ideas that are already being talked about to be heard! Don’t just preach some crazy idea—change the narrative. Content marketing has to cut through and get attention. If not, in the words of Randy himself: F#ck content marketing. To learn more about properly leveraging marketing materials, creating provocative content, scaling personalization, and more, listen to today’s episode.

This episode is especially relevant for today’s marketers. Listen in!

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What You’ll Learn

Why Uberflip’s marketing isn’t all about Uberflip

Randy shares that when he is booked to talk, no one wants him to talk about Uberflip’s technology. Instead, he needs information and a story to drive people to his product. He tells people about the best framework for content creation and does not push his product.  Instead, he shares the things that businesses must do to do content creation well such as centralizing and organizing all content so it can be leveraged. Be sure to listen in to hear more on what Randy says!

Common mistakes content marketers are making

Marketers are falling for the trap of not wanting to overwhelm consumers with information. They are following the “send 7-9 emails over the course of a few weeks ideology,” but by doing this, they are creating dead ends for consumers who would like to know more. Randy says don’t wait for the next email to share more information and most certainly do not create a dead end on information. Send people pieces of content and make sure there are several interesting paths forward from this content. Similar to Netflix series, consumers often want to binge information, and marketers are doing themselves a disservice by not providing a path for them to do so.

Randy also notes that content marketing needs to be personalized. He says that Spotify does an excellent job of curating music to individuals’ tastes. In the same way, content marketers must also create an experience for different individuals’ tastes. By delivering more custom content via email or a website, marketers will be able to connect better with people!

Five takeaways from Randy Frisch on content creation

  1. Have a strong point of view! Be the CMO that leads the way, disrupts the market, and evangelizes for his product.
  2. Make sure your content is personalized!
  3. Create content that the consumer can binge. Allow the consumer to choose his own adventure and follow a path of content as far as he would like.
  4. Keep everything focused on your brand!
  5. Focus on technology last, not first. Make sure you have your team and process in place before you implement technology.

Timeline

  • [2:40] Who is Randy Frisch
  • [7:36] Top priorities as a CMO
  • [18:01] President and CMO: how this affects marketing
  • [25:37] More on Uberflip’s marketing
  • [29:32] Most common mistakes content marketers are making (and solutions!)
  • [43:05] What happens when you scale
  • [48:04] Episode overview

Connect With Guest:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Eating At Their Own Restaurant: How SurveyMonkey Powers The Curious Internally and Externally

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Eating At Their Own Restaurant: How SurveyMonkey Powers The Curious

“Eating your own dog food” didn’t sound so appetizing, so folks started “drinking their own champagne.” SurveyMonkey didn’t want people thinking they were sipping too much bubbly on the job, so now they “eat at their own restaurant.” Put simply, they lean heavily on their own offering to strengthen their marketing, grow their company and—as they like to say—power the curious!

From finding out how much a person uses technology, to determining how a company’s culture is developing, the options are endless on what info you can gather with SurveyMonkey, and their marketing efforts put that to test. Leela Srinivasan, SurveyMonkey’s CMO, chats with Drew on how everything at SurveyMonkey—from campaign development to internal culture—is about creating and supporting a world of curious people.

Don’t miss what Leela has to share!

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What You’ll Learn

Power the Curious campaign

Prior to going public, SurveyMonkey did a brand refresh with its Power the Curious campaign in 2017. The company defined its mission as Powering the Curious. SurveyMonkey’s products and solutions enable organizations everywhere to measure, benchmark, and act on feedback. If these organizations can listen to this feedback and have a curious attitude towards it, then the feedback can drive growth and innovation.

Leela shares that she loves the notion of curiosity for two reasons. One, the notion of curiosity was one that their audience was leaning into. The smartest people display curiosity. Secondly, if you think about the idea more broadly, the value proposition for employees is massive. This campaign not only set SurveyMonkey up to market to the business realm but to employees and potential employees. SurveyMonkey could be the place where the curious come to grow, which is exactly what bright minds are looking for in a workplace.

How to build a culture of curiosity internally

SurveyMonkey uses its own tools to build a culture of curiosity. Leela shares that SurveyMonkey leverages its own platform to obtain living feedback from its employees. These surveys measure employee engagement and to find places that can be improved to make a company with more inclusion and belonging. All leaders in the company are given scores for their departments, and they are shown how their scores stack up against other departments in the company. All of this information pushes SurveyMonkey to be curious internally. They are given results and scorings that can drive its leaders to be curious and search for solutions on how to how a healthy organization.

Big drivers to marketing SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey partnered with 4 influencers to show that curiosity is self-defined. Serena Williams, Arianna Huffington, Draymond Green, and Jeff Weiner each created concise surveys to engage different audiences. These surveys were advertised on social media, billboards, and more to let the world engage with these influences. Curiosity was at the top of the whole thing. Success was measured by the volume of responses, and there was a lot of engagement. Throughout this campaign with these four influencers, a conversation was generated that said, “you can do this every day of the week by using SurveyMonkey. Find an idea you want to tap into. Bring these ideas to market and explore the things where you are involved in the world.” Be sure to look below in the resources mentioned for the findings from the influencers surveys.

Timeline

  • [3:07] Who is Leela Srinivasan
  • [9:07]] Launching the Power the Curious campaign prior to going public
  • [15:42] How to build a culture of curiosity internally
  • [21:00] How to teach curiosity
  • [26:05] Big drivers for marketing at SurveyMonkey  
  • [29:50] The Curiosity Conference
  • [32:35] Lessons learned from rolling this campaign out  

Connect With Leela Srinivasan:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Not Your Grandma’s Banking – How to Market Banks When Everything is Going Digital

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Not Your Grandma’s Banking – How to Market Banks When Everything is Going Digital

Whether you’re a small business catering to a consumer, or an enterprise tech company targeting fortune 500 giants—the changes in how banks are approaching branding and marketing can provide a great template for successful marketing in the modern era.

When most people have a banking issue to resolve, they usually open up their mobile app, or visit a website—in-person banking is starting to take a back seat to digital mediums. That’s the shift Paul Kadin and Sarah Welch, of analytics and advisory firm Novantas, are wrangling. In this episode, they discuss how banks are evolving, and how those banks are championing new, universal principles of successful B2B and B2C marketing.

Listen in! You won’t want to miss this episode.

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What You’ll Learn

What banks need to do to succeed?

Paul and Sarah share that successful banks have three things in common. They satisfy what people expect from them. A bank will not succeed if it does not offer basic customer service or features. Secondly, successful banks are distinct. They answer the question, “Why should I choose this bank over another bank?” Their products and service must set them apart. Lastly, successful banks make their voice heard in the marketplace. Banks can have all the right feature but must spend sufficiently enough to raise their voice enough to be heard.

Banks that are distinctive and why

Paul, Sarah, and Drew discuss multiple banks that are killing it on being distinctive.

  • Huntington Bank markets itself as being on the side of the customer. They are living and breathing their value proposition on products, pricing, marketing messages, and customer experience.  Banks are known for nickel and diming customers, but Huntington extends a 24-hour grace window, allowing customers 24 hours to write a check to cover an overdraft, before incurring a fee.
  • First Republic is a bank that goes above and beyond, helping customers. This bank is very specific on what companies and individuals it takes on as customers, and focuses on the more affluent. Because it has a more niche customer base, First Republic is able to serve its customers how they would like to be served.
  • USAA is a bank with extreme intimacy around one focus group – those who have served in the military and their families. If you are in this target group, their service is unbeatable. They also hire retired service people, so they hire from the target demographic they serve.
  • TD Bank has branded itself as America’s most convenient bank. Everything they had decided is based on convenience. For example, they are open on Saturdays and Sundays.

Marketing banks: finding an emotional pitch and making it real

Marketing banks is hard. Banks have thought about things in terms of creating new features and improving functionality, but there is a whole other dimension: emotion. Money creates emotion: anxiety or satisfaction. Banks have to appeal to the emotional side of the customer, but this must also be lived out in experience. As banking moves away from person to person and towards digital, banks must figure out how to be emotionally connected through a digital relationship. To make this happen, Sarah and Paul share that banks must have a clearly designed core target, and then drive experience around it. All experiences, whether in person or digital, need to be serving the bank’s brand.

Timeline:

  • [1:55] Introduction to Paul and Sarah
  • [8:50] Bank branches are decreasing, but brand, marketing and digital are increasing
  • [10:24] What banks need to do to succeed
  • [14:19] Which banks are distinctive in today’s market?
  • [17:43] How focussing on a designed target can help banks
  • [21:33] How banks (and other businesses) can distinguish themselves
  • [24:30] The need to find an emotional pitch and make it real
  • [31:07} How to make media spending cut through the noise
  • [35:51] B2B vs. B2C marketing for banks
  • [40:54] What is state of the art in attribution modeling

Connect With Paul Kadin and Sarah Welch:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Be the Big Fish in Many Small Ponds

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Be the Big Fish in Many Small Ponds

You’ve heard it said, “be the big fish in a small pond.” But have you ever considered being the big fish in many small ponds? Sage Intacct, a provider of cloud financial management, is doing just that. To pull this off, Sage Intacct first defines different “micro-verticals” by breaking down larger marketplaces, like manufacturing, into more granular categories, like toys, planes, and cars. Following that, they become experts in the field, and begin producing valuable, category-specific sales materials and insights.

Vice President and Head of Marketing, Ian Howells, chats with Drew on this episode about how his employees get to know these different markets—or ponds if you will—and the rigorous process of becoming the biggest fish in each.

Be sure to join in!

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What You’ll Learn

1% penetration to a desired goal – how to get started in micro-targeting

Ian shares the process of penetrating a new market. Sage Intacct works hard to reach out to multiple companies to conduct interviews and research. It is Sage’s job to understand this customer and understand what is going on. What are the pains of the customer? Are there similarities between this company and others Sage Intacct work with? Ian’s interviewers must gain understanding and draw correlations between companies in the same micro-target. This interview process gives understanding into a micro-vertical. The more companies you interview, the more you know about this subset of the market: associations, key influences, key applications… All of this information affects positioning and messaging for that micro-vertical.

How to know you have achieved success in a micro-vertical

Many times companies believe they have achieved success in a micro-vertical too soon. Ian explains that you have achieved success in a current micro-vertical, and should add another when you have at least 20 clients with the same pattern and pains, and you can predict what the client will say. This shows you understand the current micro-vertical, and you are in a position to begin learning about a new one.

The importance of website content and collecting data

Sage Intacct’s website overtly lists its competition. It compares what it offers to various companies.  Ian explains that you must over communicate what your company does and why it is the best. By comparing Sage Intacct’s products to others, clients can quickly see why Sage is different and the best for them.

On several demo videos, Sage Intacct stops the video to collect viewer information. This is important for several different reasons. Collecting information allows Sage to know what industry this person is from. When the video resumes, the viewer gets personalized content. If you’re from a nonprofit, you get specific messaging. By pausing the demo, Sage is also able to collect data from potential clients and know how interested the viewer really is.

Timeline

  • [2:04] What Sage Intacct does
  • [4:30] Ian’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment
  • [13:16] How Ian got started in microtargeting
  • [16:40] The process from 1% market penetration to your goal
  • [19:45] How to get interviews, who conducts them, and where they’re shared
  • [25:49] When to add another micro-vertical
  • [29:00] Telling customers stories
  • [30:17] Over communication on website content
  • [34:51] When to move on from a micro-target

Connect With Ian Howells:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew