Understanding Customer Needs in Marketing

What’s up folks, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Alison Albeck Lindland, CMO at Movable Ink.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:14) - In This Episode
• (03:10) - 1. Movable Ink's Platform Evolution
• (04:19) - 2. Alison's 3 Stage Journey at Movable Ink
• (05:08) - 3. Using Customer Relationships to Future Proof a Marketing Career
• (09:50) - 4. Building AI Literacy in Marketing Teams
• (16:17) - 5. How to Spot AI Literacy in Marketing Hires
• (21:35) - 6. Fostering AI Experimentation Across Your Team
• (25:43) - 7. AI Point Solutions vs Platforms
• (30:37) - 8. Align CMOs and Boards on Long Term Marketing Goals
• (33:37) - 9. How to Measure and Maximize the ROI of Video Podcasts
• (40:23) - 10. Building a Customer Strategy Team That Drives Enterprise Growth
• (49:36) - 11. How To Build Lasting Influence With B2B Buyers
• (55:49) - 12. Creating Energy and Balance as a CMO

Summary: Alison believes marketing careers thrive when you stay close to the people who buy from you, and at Movable Ink she has built that into the culture with a customer strategy team, advisory boards, and events that create real connections customers carry into new roles. She applies the same thinking to AI, starting with shared tools and boundaries, then layering in structured experimentation and custom apps that live inside daily workflows. Alison hires people who tinker on their own time, keeps experimentation alive with weekly check‑ins and show‑and‑shares, and cuts projects that do not deliver, like ending a podcast to focus on high‑impact testimonial and “hero” videos. Through it all, she builds influence by aligning teams on one scorecard, sharing loyalty stories that prove long‑term value, and helping buyers see her platform as part of their personal playbook for success.

About Alison

Alison is the Chief Marketing Officer at Movable Ink, leading global marketing, brand, strategy, and communications for the AI-powered personalization platform used by the world’s top brands. In her 12+ years at Movable Ink, she’s had three distinct phases: rising through customer success, founding the company’s now-influential strategy team, and stepping into the CMO role nearly three years ago. That journey (across constant evolution and new challenges) has kept the work “never the same company for more than six months at a time,” and helped shape Movable Ink’s role as a leader in enterprise personalization.

Customer Relationships Can Future Proof a Marketing Career

Alison argues that the best way to future proof a marketing career is by knowing your customers as actual people rather than abstract data points. Marketers who thrive over time make it their job to understand what customers want, how they think, and why they buy. "You have to know them personally and pretty intimately," she says. "You’ve got to be constantly advocating for their perspective around the table." That kind of understanding does not happen in a spreadsheet. It happens in conversations, often unplanned ones, that give you unfiltered context about their challenges and priorities.

She has turned this belief into a repeatable practice at Movable Ink. Her team builds ongoing contact with customers through multiple channels, including:

Quarterly fireside chats with CMOs who share their challenges and ideas.
A hybrid customer advisory board that rotates in staff members to observe and participate.
Strategic placement of marketers at in-person events where they can form real connections.

These interactions do more than collect feedback. They create a loop where customer input shapes campaigns, product positioning, and content. Alison credits these relationships with Movable Ink’s staying power. Marketers who use their platform often bring it with them when they change roles or companies, expanding the brand’s reach through personal advocacy.

"We spend a lot of time now trying to bring our team members in close contact with our customers in more than just a servicing capacity," Alison explains. "They need to develop personal relationships that inform the work they are doing, whether it is content marketing, events, or ABM."

Alison also leans on product marketing as a partner in capturing deeper customer knowledge. She highlights win-loss interviews as especially valuable. Unlike survey data, these conversations expose what is working and where gaps exist with enough specificity to guide real change. Her team uses these discussions to refine strategy and make decisions with authority. Marketers who adopt this mindset do more than execute tactics. They become trusted voices in shaping what their company brings to market.

Key takeaway: Build constant, meaningful contact with your customers. Use advisory boards, interviews, and live events to hear their unfiltered perspectives. Treat these conversations as fuel for your campaigns and strategies. When you consistently advocate for customers with authority, you position yourself as someone whose work will stay relevant no matter how the tools, titles, or industry trends shift.

AI Literacy in Marketing: How to Build AI Literacy in Marketing Teams

AI literacy in marketing takes shape when organizations stop treating AI like a playground and start building a framework for real, coordinated adoption. Alison Albeck Lindland pushes for a model where alignment and enablement come before experimentation. “You need to make sure you’re all singing from the same songbook,” she says. When teams skip that step, they end up with scattered projects, compliance headaches, and wasted time. A clear, shared framework turns AI from a set of personal experiments into an enterprise capability.

This is why the updated Pyramid of AI Literacy begins with organizational alignment and standardized tooling at its base. These steps give teams a shared understanding of the company’s AI strategy, ethical guidelines, and compliance boundaries, along with enterprise-grade tools that build institutional knowledge instead of one-off fiefdoms. Alison’s point is direct: enterprise AI can only scale when everyone is using the same platforms and working from the same rulebook.

“OpenAI is great, but we’re using a tool that lets us build institutional muscle and share learnings across teams.”

The middle of the pyramid focuses on practical proficiency, experimentation, and model literacy. Teams develop real competency with structured prompts and multi-model workflows. They also learn how large language models work and how AI connects to data, workflows, and machine learning systems. Experience does not come from a training course. It comes from giving teams space to test ideas, share lessons learned, and build the muscle memory to use AI effectively.

At the top sits strategic leadership. This is where marketing leaders guide the organization with clear purpose, challenge hype, and embed AI into the company’s growth strategy. At Movable Ink, this looks like dedicated business analysts building custom AI apps that plug into daily work, from a brand voice checker to a natural language search bot for surfacing industry-specific content. These tools live inside workflows, making AI part of the operating rhythm instead of a side project.

Key takeaway: Use the pyramid as your blueprint for building AI literacy. Start by aligning the organization on strategy, ethics, and enterprise tools. Then train teams to get real value from AI through structured prompts, model literacy, and cross-functional experimentation. Finally, put strong leadership at the top to guide adoption with purpose. That way you can move AI from scattered experiments to a unified, scalable capability that drives ...