Despite coming from a fine arts background with aspirations of becoming an actor, Katharine found her calling in marketing and has since become an expert in her field. She believes that the communications role within the marketing funnel is essential, and it needs to be approached as a full-funnel and broken down by channel, using data to develop the strategy.

Introduction

1:00 I started out in my professional career as an actor actually. I went to a conservatory. I never considered myself anything other than an actor or an artist, ever since I was five years old. I always shied away from numbers, data, math and science. They were never my strong suit. 

So I went to an acting conservatory. I graduated. I had a great agent. I was trying to make my way in New York City. But in that journey, I realized that acting and the actual work that went into it every day meant that I was pretty lonely and isolated. Except when I got into the audition room, which was a few hours a week really. And I noticed that a lot of my friends from conservatory were maybe 10 years out of school and they were still struggling. Still struggling to build careers in the arts.

And I thought, well, this is making me pretty unhappy right now. I’m not doing something that gives me joy every day. You know? I’m just working on scripts and not actually getting to act. So I really want to start building out how I can be happy, right now.

So truthfully the way that I got into marketing and into product, and working with technical products was kind of an accident. My boyfriend at the time who’s now my husband had just gotten an invitation to an exclusive social networking site called ASMALLWORLD. It was one of those first starter social networks. It’s actually still alive today and they were taking on product interns. I had no idea what a product intern meant. Absolutely none. You know, products to me were like a pen, for example. I really didn’t get it. But thankfully for me, they saw something in me and they brought me on and I became a product intern. 

However, I really held that work at a distance for a long time. I was still trying to act. I started a yoga clothing line that was produced out of New York City. I was really trying to find ways to make artistry become my career. Still holding the marketing and product work at a distance. And then something really big happened to me. I got really sick. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. I almost died. I got salmonella. Had a hip replacement. All my hair fell out. It was a year of my life on the couch. And I had a lot of time to reflect and to ask for support.

And what I realized is that I was holding this world at a distance. Data, technology, marketing. Something that was more supportive in its environment than acting. Right? In the marketing world I had colleagues and systems that I could lean into to learn from. I really wanted, needed, and was craving that structure. And then I realized that I could put my artistry into it. Art wasn’t necessarily this “other thing” that was away from the world of corporate America. I could actually have the two combined.

So from there, I made a decision, I closed up shop at the yoga clothing endeavor. I decided to tell my agents that I was done acting. And I fully invested in a career in marketing and in communications. So I spent some more time  at ASMALLWORLD really investing in the work this time.

From there, I decided that I wanted to do something that felt a little bit closer to my heart. So I decided to make a transition into a non-profit in Brooklyn, New York, which is where I live. It’s my community. There I was the sole marketer supporting 500 internal employees and about 13,000 clients externally. It really felt like getting my masters in marketing. Everything in that work came from the heart. 

I see new developments are happening every day in the nonprofit space. I’ve seen really cool companies come up with ways to support technology practices in nonprofits. But what I found during my experience working for one, was that I didn’t have access to the tooling that I really wanted in order to make data driven decisions around my marketing efforts. So, I ended up taking a role with Flatiron School, which was a part of WeWork. They were growing like gangbusters. They are a boot camp that teaches data science, software engineering, UX/UI design and cybersecurity. For the first time I was not only able to get hold of the kind of platforms that I was really interested in, in order to get data driven results for my campaigns, but I was also just actively talking to engineers every day. Additionally, I was marketing to people who wanted to career change into engineers. So I found myself kind of swimming in a pool of data every day.

From there, I had a couple of blips during the pandemic trying to find my new work home. I spent a really nice period of time at MongoDB. So again, diving back even more so into the world of data. There I was really able to meld my interest in still supporting tech education while leading product marketing for their freemium product which was essentially where you learn how to utilize MongoDB. I was working with curriculum engineers while being able to flex my creativity as the sole marketer working on putting this product out. I was doing everything from nurture campaigns, to launching new courses. 

I then have found a work home for over a year now at ActionIQ. And I am really feeling very solidly at home. I’ve had an opportunity to take that artistry that I’ve talked about, and meld it with working in tech. I currently lead our brand at ActionIQ and we just spent a year prepping to go through a rebrand and then launched it in June. I was lucky enough to be able to lead that effort. So I’m working with graphic designers all the time. I’m working with our product team. I’m working with our sales team. I’m working with our product marketing team. I’m working with our demand gen team. My role here is a really lovely way to incorporate all of these skill sets that I’ve developed my entire life. But at the same time, still stay really immersed in the world of data.

Role of PR in Marketing

8:18 I think that, at least for my piece of the communications puzzle, it really is starting at the top of the funnel and going all the way down.

What I’ve been working on for the past year has been taking this very complicated undefined market, and saying how can we translate our product within it, into something that resonates with heads of technical teams, heads of marketing teams and heads of marketing operations teams, just by looking at our website? So instead of communicating who we are in a very black and white kind of chunky technical way, how do we bring them in? I think sometimes we get lost in B2B marketing thinking that it is about marketing to a business. No, it’s not. It’s about marketing to people. People make decisions for businesses.

We have to create a way for people to see data in a very friendly way that draws them in. It’s really even down to that granularity of literally incorporating data in our visual designs and still keeping it inviting. For instance you’ll see some of our visuals that we’ve created on our website homepage have actual code in them from our platform. All of that is done in a very meaningful way for us. It’s more subliminal for the viewer, but it makes an impact. So data is literally influencing the design at a very high touch level. And then it comes all the way down to really trying to pull traffic to our website. So for instance, yesterday, I was working with our social media team on figuring out how we really understand what we’re using social media for and looking at the metrics by channel. I think that we’ve been trying to use organic social as a lead generation tool, when really, it’s more of a brand awareness play. Or it can be.

So we’ve been dissecting the data. Going through how much of what we should be doing is really lead gen focused, how much of it is really brand awareness focused and how we can be divvying that up per channel to get the most effective push. Are we really going to measure all of social media as hitting demand gen targets or should we be thinking of it more as share of voice metrics or engagement metrics? Things like that. And which one of those is supporting which function of the company?

I truly see the communications role within marketing as being full funnel. It’s full funnel and it has to break down by channel in the way that you think about it.

Favourite Campaign

11:35 I think that the most interesting and the most impactful campaign that I’ve ever run has been this repositioning and rebranding I’ve mentioned. We’ve just repositioned ourselves from a customer data platform to a customer experience hub. A more intelligent robust tool that the market is currently talking about. We’re already seeing ripple effects from this launch that we just did at this point, I think about three months ago.

The reason that it’s my favourite is because we’ve been pulling qualitative and quantitative data from the very beginning of the process. We started with interviewing our team. If we’re repositioning our entire product and we’re rebranding the entire company, we have to start with the source, the people who are building it and the people who think about it every single day. We interviewed our employees to ask, what do you think we do? Who do you think we are? How do you talk about us to your mom, to your best friend, to somebody at an industry event and what are the differences there? Looking at that kind of data, the not so numbery data, right? How are people, internally, talking about us?

What are the words, the verbs, that people used to talk about us? So starting at that level. Being able to have that kind of understanding shape the beginning of the process. Then going to our customers interviewing them, interviewing people who got to interact with different iterations of the brand as we were trying to build it. That kind of information was incredibly valuable to move us along and get to something that would be effective out in the market. Not just a reflection of what we thought. And now after the launch we’re starting to see conversations happening across different channels that indicate people are really interested and engaged. 

Our head of product just wrote a really wonderful piece that went up on LinkedIn about a week ago. It was written within this new voice and tone that we’ve developed. Trying to debunk some of the things that we’re hearing in the industry from some of the really big players around their promises about CDPs. And we’re seeing this really shake up and make ripples in the market. So we’re watching this new voice, this new positioning really starting to pay off, not just from a metrics perspective. 

Getting started in MarTech industry: Tips for structuring oneself

14:38 I think that in terms of making an effective team in the MarTech space and specifically for communicating out the differentiator of your particular product. It takes a lot of different communication functions within the marketing team to make this effective. There’s an entire team within our marketing team that’s dedicated to just communicating with our customers. To understanding their point of view. To gathering insights from our customers to not only impact product and product roadmap and things like that, but to pull out those kernels of truth that they have about their experience with our product. So whether that is an interview or a webinar, getting that customer feedback in communication ready form is really important.

We then have a content team that takes that feedback and is working closely with our product marketing and PR team to really put out the right kind of content to be able to educate the market. We’re not only putting out press releases about new product features or awards that we won. We’re also creating a lot of educational content for the market because our positioning is still so new. We have to educate everyone all over again about who we are. So the content team works with the product marketing team churning out solutions briefs and guides. Anything that can prepare our customers. For instance, we have a lot of retail customers. So we invest in making holiday readiness guides. Or in another case, third party cookie deprecation is a huge topic for us. Creating a lot of content to educate people on how you can use customer data platforms or the new CX Hub structure to support you as Google deprecates their third-party cookies. That’s a whole other function as well.

What we’ve realized by looking at data around what works with our customers and prospects is that we need more video content. We need to be producing more videos. Video is kind of the ultimate on a few different platforms and on our website. So we’ve been developing how we can do a lot of video creation and editing in-house while we’re still so young. And on the other hand, when it makes sense to take those projects to an agency and establish those relationships as well. So we do a lot of script writing.

We’re doing a lot of thinking about how we’re utilizing some of the really easy to access platforms. Like YouTube. It’s essentially a “how to” platform at this point. How to use a customer data platform? You know? So really thinking through what’s the kind of content, what’s the kind of communication effort, that we can be doing there to educate the market on who we are and how we differentiate ourselves. I really see the work of communications for our tech company at this stage, really being about shaping out what the differentiator is for our product. And then thinking about that intelligently per channel. Thinking about what is the right structure for communicating that differentiation across each channel, and how can you get it done on the cheap? 

Metric to Measure

18:23 Metrics that I’m looking at on a daily basis right now are our social media metrics. We’re paying a lot of attention to our social channels right now and how we really optimize our presence among them. Engagements are what I’m really interested in, especially since we’re trying to create some conversations that might shake up the space a little bit, right? I’m really interested in those on a weekly basis. I’m looking at performance on our website. Organic visitors specifically is what I’m focused on.

I’m looking at any kind of capture that we’re doing to have people download content, essentially our conversion rate. Which is really people asking us for demo requests. And then sifting through all of that to discover which are actual viable leads. There is a part of manually having to sift through to identify if these are actionable leads and conversion metrics. 

Then I’m looking at our share of voice across social and PR. I am looking at our blog numbers. Our blog is a really important tool for us right now. As well as our SEO metrics which are really important for us to pay attention to. 

I’m looking at our SQL and SAL numbers. I’m really concerned about our SAL numbers right now. That’s when we end up booking a meeting that we think is a viable meeting. So that is what I’m really concerned about because that is really helping us build our pipeline. We have a pretty long sales pipeline. I want to make sure that our pipeline is healthy so that in six months, what we’re seeing at the top of the funnel now is what we’re going to see at the end of the funnel then. That is probably my most concerning metric, although there’s so many different teams and functions within the organization that play into that number. So, those are my weekly metrics. 

Dream metrics

21:11 I’m always eager for a multi touch attribution model. I have not yet been at a company that has been able to have an effective multi touch attribution model in place. However, ActionIQ is working on it and I’m really excited to see what those results will be, once we get that in place. And then, you know, something that I wish that we were able to get more of and that was easier to get is … I really want qualitative data.

I want more customer feedback. I would love to be able to tap into my customer base and ask them any question at the drop of a hat whenever I wanted to. But unfortunately, you know, nobody’s life is about giving me the numbers and the feedback that I want on a given day. So, we do have to be quite strategic in what we ask of our customers. They have very busy lives. They lead really big teams. We have to be very strategic about what and when we ask them.

But if I had it my way, I’d have them on our website testing out new things all the time and giving us feedback. Maybe one day we’ll just be able to, I don’t know, ping into somebody’s brain and extract a thought.

Well, hopefully not. That’s actually a little bit scary. But, yeah, that’s what I wish we had more of.

Increasing trend of businesses investing in PR budget

22:50 I do see more efforts to spend in the communications realm. I see it currently right now being dedicated toward in person experiences. So that is a little bit maybe outside of what we’ve been talking about in this conversation. But I think that because we’ve all spent so much time being so afraid to interact on a person-to-person basis, we’re seeing the conference circuit explode. Conferences are selling out. Every conference that my team has been going to has been absolutely selling out.

It was hard to get our CMO a ticket to one conference that she had been promised a ticket to. I see more spend going in that sort of space. Brand awareness and personal experiences. In providing excellent 1 to 1 personal experiences. Of course that can be done in a digital realm, right? That’s what ActionIQ does. But I think that in person experiences are where we’re going to be seeing a lot of spend. 

I think that you have to be really strategic about the way you approach those experiences. You have to be giving really exciting, differentiated in person experiences in order to get the quantitative data to then utilize later. So we’re experimenting with some really fun differentiating experiences in our in-person events coming up. Things that really do help us lock in those meetings that we really need with people. That’s one of our most important metrics, when we book highly qualified meeting. Any kind of effort that you can make in those in person moments, to really drive your business’s most important metric is where you need to be spending your time thinking. 

One of my colleagues just thought of the most beautiful, easy tool that we’re implementing that I’m happy to share. You know, everybody is carrying around one of these. (Holds up smart phone.) If you’re at a conference, you have one of these in your hand. Put a simple background on your locked screen with a QR code that anybody can scan. And have it lead to your website or to a form field that’s important to your business. I think obviously the collection of data is key because you’re not going to be with those people one on one for more than five minutes. So to have simple, easy ways to promote a follow up, that’s where people need to be putting their focus.

My 2-cents

26:01 It’s really hard to know when you are really young, what you want your life to look like. And let’s be real. Your work is a lot of your life, especially if you’re deciding to move into the marketing communications realm for tech companies. For companies that care about data. 

Trust yourself. That is really my advice. Trust yourself. If you’ve decided that there’s something that’s missing and you see a way to go after it, go after it. There’s nothing wrong with adjusting, with changing. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from one of the best conservatories in the world. I’m not doing that anymore! Right? 

I’ve made a lot of shifts to get to where I am and what I’ve done is followed what’s important to me. What was important to me was that I found stability. That I found something that was infinitely interesting, that I could always be curious about. That I was working for a product that I loved. And that I could support my family and those needs. Those desires changed over the course of me graduating college and where I am right now and they will continue to change. And so if I’ve learned anything so far from being out of school it is that you can teach yourself anything. Just start doing it. Identify what you want and then go do it, and you’ll find that your life changed in a direction towards what you want.

So, I mean, I don’t think there’s any magic. I don’t think there’s any magic in this situation.

It’s about doing and about doing what is going to bring you joy.

P.S.- This interview was taken when Katharine Lucic was working with ActionIQ.