The Marketer's Journey

Because there are so many important roles and departments in marketing, it can be a bit too easy to think of things in silos. But today’s guest, Caleb Rubin understands that to be successful in our marketing, we need to ensure departments are working together, and think of things like brand story and data science synergistically, rather than in silos. Caleb Rubin is Head and VP of Marketing at EQ Bank, a digital first bank working to change banking to enrich customer lives by shifting financial and lifestyle value to them. Today we discuss Caleb’s career journey, the buyer journey at EQ Bank, and the importance of collaboration and synergy in marketing. Key takeaways from this episode: Your product is what you do or what you make but your brand is how people feel about what you do or make-- they are both equally important.In many ways, marketing for startups is about how you get people through the funnel with technology and tools rather than large scale  budgets.Good marketing teams are always focused on how we learn and the great ones instill systematic ways of learning and gathering new insights.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Mauricio Barberi, a Fractional CMO and consultant with a rich background in engineering and marketing, shares insights on building successful marketing teams. He emphasizes that hiring A players is essential for long-term success and addresses the fear of replacing oneself in the workplace. The conversation dives into the importance of aligning marketing and sales efforts, utilizing tech stacks effectively, and the evolving dynamics of B2B marketing. Mauricio also highlights the significance of understanding a client’s buying team and leveraging data for impactful outcomes.

Tangerine may have made strides in making banking “cool” by aligning themselves with brands like the Toronto Raptors, but is building a cool lifestyle brand enough? It may be for some, but not for everyone and a key part of every marketing strategy is understanding where to find your different customer segments and meeting them where they are. Some customers buy because a brand stands for something while others buy because a product fills their need. Brands that can achieve both can build even stronger bonds with their customers. On this episode of the Marketer’s Journey, Tangerine CMO Martin Fecko chats about how he got his start in the finance world, bringing banking and tech together, and achieving product market fit for Tangerine’s wide customer base. Key takeaways from this episode: When you’re starting your career, it’s important to leverage opportunities as they present themselves. Even if you don’t have a roadmap for where you want to land, utilize the chances you’re presented with and shape them into something.As a CMO, ultimately what you’re doing is taking various components and figuring out how your brand is represented when you consider all the moving parts.The ability to understand both business and technology is important because technology is the future for so many industries and businesses.Building a good brand is less about building something “cool” and more about adapting to the changing needs of your customers. This is how Tangerine has reimagined banking.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Content encompasses more than just pretty videos and social posts-- it can be technical copy, sell-sheets, product manuals and more. Now more than ever, how we understand and consume content is undergoing significant changes-- it’s relevant to much more than top funnel and we need to make sure there’s consistency across all channels. Dayna Rothman is CMO at OneLogin, and a seasoned content marketer by trade. She knows that the role of a content marketer is not just to create content, it’s to think of the impact and role of that content and how it aligns to different stages of the buyer journey.  Key takeaways from this episode: Don’t discount your passion and your drive. It’s a key motivating factor on why people would hire you, even if you don’t necessarily have the right experience.Content marketing is definitely not the most direct route to becoming a CMO but content marketing skills are so unique and valuable. Focus on understanding demand generation and how your content drives results and you can be on the C-suite path if that is your goal.We’re no longer creating content that is top funnel. The desire to consume content has increased exponentially and buyers want to engage with custom content throughout the decision making process.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Today’s guest Andrea Kayal asks an important question—is pipeline dead? Another way to put this is, what’s the benefit of tracking pipeline? Where does this data get us? And if we don’t track pipeline, how do we understand marketing’s contribution to the business? To Andrea, it’s important to keep metrics simple and tangible. Influence is important, but it’s even more important to understand what is driving sales. While multi-touch attribution is important, we can’t over justify every touch point because ultimately, every touchpoint extends your sales cycle.  Multi-touch attribution is great but ensuring as few touches as we can have is going to create a more efficient sales cycle and a more efficient company overall.Rather than tracking everything and pulling the numbers that make us look the best it’s important to look at the data behind successful sales cycles and figure out what led to the successes.There are benefits to marketing both “painkillers” and “vitamins.” With vitamins, you need to convince a market of the viability of your product and with painkillers, the need is already established but the market may be over saturated.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Like many of the other 90s kids that taught themselves how to build websites before building websites was cool, Alex Schmelkin eventually grew up to run a web agency. This gave him a great perspective on what customers need in order to launch their digital initiatives and bring them to market. After decades in agency, Alex eventually went on to become CMO of Unqork. The important role of product in B2B marketing has never been lost on Alex. As CMO, though he is focused on his customer, refinement and excellence of his product is what helps him reach those customers. To him, they go hand in hand. He uses understanding of the commonalities in all of his customers to refine his product roadmap and drive solutions for his clients. Key takeaways from this episode: B2B marketing doesn’t have to be self-promotional and amidst a pandemic, it really should not be. It’s about communicating how your product can help your clients find solutions to their problems.When you’re creating a software and marketing to CIOs, it’s important to focus on how your product could drive efficiencies for their team-- and do so in a way that does not seem competitive.It can always seem daunting moving from agency to brand or vice versa but each builds important skill sets that can be relevant in the other, just remember to highlight them and be open to learning.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Throughout her career, this week’s guest Melanie Marcus learned to pursue roles that gave her a bit more of what she liked and a bit less of what she didn’t. This philosophy eventually led her to become CMO at Surescripts where they’ve had to change their marketing mix from “very in person” to  “very digital”. Retooling her events team to develop new skills and execute on a wholly different strategy was a key reminder of something Melanie has known throughout her career -- it’s important to be constantly reinventing yourself. Key takeaways from this episode: Pivoting is a great opportunity to bring ideas to the floor-- but sometimes you don’t have the time. It’s important to ensure your team has the time and permission to bring more ideas to the table even amidst something like a pandemic.Marketers are typically the ones selling the company message, and as such, they need to believe in their company message to succeed. It’s important to love marketing, but believing in your company’s  value proposition is essential.We think of “incubators” as specific to the tech and startup world but Melanie says she was involved in many incubators early in her career. To her, these were larger projects she was given permission to do, even in very junior roles. It allowed her to learn at a rapid pace and develop key business skills.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Leadership is something we talk about a lot, but according to Rossa, something that doesn’t get enough focus is followership. He knows that much of success can be about ensuring your boss looks good and is empowered to do the tough work. As a marketer, he understands the importance of marketing himself to ensure he is nurturing his professional connections, and categorizes people into two groups: radiators and drains. The people he seeks out for his team are radiators -- they are eager to learn, promote a positive atmosphere and remain nimble and adaptive through challenges. Rossa attributes some of his success to ensuring he makes a good impression with everyone he works with, whether it’s his boss, a peer or even a report. The world is small, the industry is smaller and he knows it’s not just about who you know, but also about who cares about you. While it’s clear that emotion and creativity are important in marketing, Rossa is also focused on ensuring that marketing is driving value and is solidified as a core business pillar driving success for sales and operations. Key takeaways from this episode: “Followership” can be just as important as leadership -- we need to go above and beyond for our managers and our peers to promote a great environment and drive success.In business, you never know when a connection is going to matter. It’s important to always put your best foot forward and make a good impression with everyone.Personalization is about adding value. Without relevance to your market any personalization is really just for the sake of itself.It’s important to think of marketing as a core pillar of your business but emotion also plays a huge role in decision making so creativity and relationship building can be just as important.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

Big business and startups may seem like two things that are mutually exclusive, but they don’t have to be, and according to this week’s guest, they shouldn’t be. Growing up, Jennifer Anaya, Ingram Micro’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, learned about the many facets of business over dinner with her entrepreneurial parents. It helped her learn about everything that went into running a business -- and ultimately where she wanted to fit. She’s carried this entrepreneurial mindset with her throughout her career because, from Jennifer’s perspective, entrepreneurship is defined by the ability to drive change. Jennifer describes herself as a “change agent” and she knows better than anyone that innovation can be just as important at large corporations as it is at growing startups.  Key Takeaways: People are attracted to startups because they can shape where the organization goes but you can also do this with larger organizations and it’s equally important to drive change to stay relevant.There have been significant changes to who is buying technology--it used to be CTOs and tech teams. Now business leaders are buying tech to give them a competitive advantage, so it’s important to communicate the business advantages technology can drive rather than simply explaining the tech itself.It’s important to be resilient and adaptable. Things change quickly and the best marketers are eager to learn and excited to make things work.The best managers embrace opportunities to educate the people they work with. It helps with retention when you’re giving your team the chance to learn and grow.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play! 

When it comes to content, we used to believe that if we built it, they would come, but with the amount of content our buyers need to sift through, we need to begin taking the approach of guiding our buyers to water before we can expect them to drink. On this episode of The Marketer’s Journey, we discuss building content with context for our buyers, providing value to our shareholders and the importance of sales and marketing teams working hand in hand. Our guest Paul French is EVP & CMO at Axway, where he worked for several years before pursuing other opportunities at companies ranging from startups to larger organizations, eventually returning to Axway as CMO and having the unique opportunity to, in his words, fix problems that he may have even been the cause of, years ago. Paul is an advocate for marketing with authenticity and ensuring your buyer perspective is top of mind with everything you do. Key takeaways from this episode: Marketing starts with one thing: the customer perspective. This is why good marketers aren’t order takers. They understand cross referencing customer expectations with outcomes you’re trying to accomplish and building a way to get there.Content is queen but context is king. You can build content that aligns with your business but you need to ensure you’re also building content that aligns with your buyers’ perspectives and needs.Every company is different but they all share a need for growth and progress. Your shareholders are all different but they all want to know you’re moving forward.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer’s Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play!