Driving the Next Phase of Growth at a $150 Billion Software Giant with Nate Skinner, SVP of Marketing at Oracle

Fewer demand challenges are greater than driving growth in a mature market. But it’s not impossible, according to Nate Skinner. On this episode of Demand Gen Visionaries, Nate explains how he has been able to help drive growth at Oracle by stepping in and understanding the landscape, identifying opportunities, coordinating with sales, and clearly articulating value.

Key Takeaways:

• In today’s digital environment, it’s impossible to predict the exact journey someone will take toward becoming a customer, so it’s important that every touchpoint reinforce the desired customer experience.
• There is no shortcut for talking to customers. Great demand gen marketers have to talk to customers and understand their needs.
• Especially with larger brands, it’s important to be coordinated across functions. Great campaigns are ones where sales, marketing, product, and everything other function are on the same page.

Quotes:

• “The journey your customer follows to get to your brand is nonlinear. They can come in through a case study, an ad, a demo, etc. Every one of those touchpoints is an opportunity to influence that relationship and engage that customer. And now more than ever, we have to bring those things together and really engage that customer on their terms in the way that they want to be engaged.”
• “I can't be good at my job unless I understand what's working and what's not working. Then we can do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Then you can look for those opportunities to change the game.”
• “If you go back a few years, we all were learning about or knew about the ideal customer profile. But now it's no longer necessarily a persona that you need to market to and engage with. It's a committee of personas."
• “You have to make the website as simple and approachable and concise as possible because people have such limited attention spans. And in addition, right now everyone is sitting at their home on their computers, searching the internet. So if you're not doing your best to make sure your website attracts them when they find you, you are losing right now.”
• “There's no shortcut to talking to customers. Nothing drives me crazier in marketing professionals than those that don't talk to customers all the time.”

Sponsor

Demand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.