Tag: CMO

Spotting Terrorist Plots and Rental Car Scratches: How This Startup Stays Flexible

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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.

Spotting Terrorist Plots and Rental Car Scratches: How This Startup Stays Flexible

UVeye is putting together technology that has an immense range of uses, is wildly innovative, and is—putting it plain and simple—cool! The company produces under vehicle inspection systems, that use deep learning—a sort of AI-derived machine intuition—to say “hey, something about this car doesn’t seem right” and flag it for inspection. This can help stop dangerous contraband or weapons from being smuggled into secure areas, but the use cases don’t stop there.

Though in an ideal world these scanners wouldn’t be needed, Ohad Hever and David Oren understand the importance of having this sort of capability. As COO and CSO, they’ve had to figure out how to market this product in a fairly private industry, while leveraging a bunch of partners, and all on a meager budget. Learn how they do it on this episode of RTU:

Don’t miss out on Ohad and David’s experience. Tune in!

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What You’ll Learn

Raising awareness of a challenge your company can solve

Imagine this: it is 2019. Acts of terrorism are on the rise worldwide. Protection is a need, but how? Drew reminds everyone of the B2B marketing technique called the “FUD factor.” Creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt is a way to raise awareness of a challenge your company can solve. UVeye does just that by reminding its audiences of this issue of safety. UVeye also positions itself as the company to solve this problem. Through demonstrations and videos, UVeye shares how it can detect abnormalities under cars, such as a car bomb or even an oil leak. This technology can be sold to government agencies or individuals. No longer do you need to rely on a security guard crawling beneath a car to see if it is safe to drive, this surveillance of a car’s undercarriage is efficient and able to detect abnormalities as small as a USB. It can also protect the average person by detecting when car maintenance is needed.

How to foster brand engagement

As a brand, UVeye has several audiences. They must foster brand engagement with each. For governments, UVeye provides security. When approaching governments with its product, UVeye looks for a local partner. These partners are already in communication with government and are known companies in distribution or sales.

Currently, UVeye is focussed on breaking into the market of car manufacturers. Its technology can help provide data and preventative maintenance on cars. To create brand engagement, the company is focused on implementing a brand that provides a competitive advantage. What can UVeye offer to the manufacturers to make their lives easier? David and Ohad explain that their goal is creating a brand around “certified by UVeye.” Meaning “certified by UVeye” provides protection of having a vehicle inspected completely from the inside out. They want this term to be a stamp of approval, known by the average Joe.

 

Marketing on a limited budget

David and Ohad explain that as a startup technology company, the majority of their funding went to creating the product. 14 million was spent on developing the inspection system and distributing it to other countries. There was little money left for marketing. However, UVeye has found that its team can attend conferences even without having an exhibit. These conferences have been a lower budget marketing tool that can create lead generations and partnerships. UVeye has been a part of large security conferences, which are very niche and cost-effective. UVeye has also attended CES. CES has been so effective in the past – even with a tiny display – that David and Ohad used their small marketing budget to have a larger exhibit and demonstration. Prior to the conference, they generated a lot of buzz around the fact that UVeye would be at CES and what they would be sharing. This created engagement prior to the event.

Timeline

  • [2:03] UVeye’s beginnings and how the product works
  • [5:22] The process of development and going to market
  • [7:52] Brand engagement: targeting governments
  • [10:22] Running a successful pilot
  • [14:55] Where UVeye chose to spend its money as a new company
  • [20:47] Target audiences: who will buy the technology first?
  • [24:45] Lessons for those wishing to start or run a company

Connect With Ohad Hever and David Oren:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

 

 

 

A Former CMO-Turned-CEO’s Approach to Strategic Marketing

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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.

SMS SOS — Text-Enabled Business, and Marketing With Your Own Solution.

When you have to reach out to someone quickly, what do you usually do? Exactly! Send a text. So why aren’t more businesses text-enabling their phone lines? That question is at the center of Brightlink’s text-enabling solution, designed so that company phone lines—usually reserved for saying ‘no’ to pesky cold calls— can handle informative text conversations with prospective clients. Given the nature of their product, Brightlink has also been able to utilize it as their own marketing tool, a simultaneous demonstration and use case—a real situation of killing two birds with one phone!

On this episode of RTU, Drew chats with Rob Chen, Brightlink’s CEO, and a former CMO. They chat about how Rob’s marketing background informs his current role, how to put their technology front-and-center in their marketing, and why a clear company culture is king.

Be sure to listen in – this is a valuable conversation!

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What You’ll Learn

Using your own technology as a marketing vehicle

Rob is a believer in drinking your own champagne. To that end, Brightlink currently uses its own technology of text enabling any phone number as a marketing vehicle. The company is able to override and enable any phone number to receive text messages, which is an extremely beneficial feature for the millennial generation. Brightlink is currently taking a traditional email campaign and offering the customer the ability to respond back by phone, by email, or by text. Through its own technology, Brightlink text enables sales and corporate phone numbers. Using key-word prompts, the sales team at Brightlink is able to respond via text to answer questions, provide solutions, and much more. Not only does this connect the Brightlink team with customers, but it also highlights the technology they can provide. Listen in to hear more on how Brightlink uses its own product as a marketing vehicle!

Your target audience affects your marketing

Rob shares that Brightlink utilizes different strategies depending on whether the primary target is a small business or large enterprise. For a small businesses, Brightlink focuses on co-branding and a partner with the ability to add value. They rely on a partner who knows the needs of each small business because use cases tend to be more specific. This allows Brightlink to market to and speak to the individual needs of small business. For large enterprises, Brightlink takes their product directly to the company because their needs are broader and many times the entire product is used.

3 key lessons for CMOs

Guest Rob Chen and host Drew elaborate on 3 important lessons for other CMOs.

  1. Have one key, very focussed story. Know what your company is about, and be able to say that succinctly.
  2. You have three target audiences: employees, customers, and prospects. Make sure to have your employees on board with core values and your product. They will be advocates for your brand and remain loyal. Create content that is valuable to your customers, and it will also be intriguing to prospects.
  3. Simplify your plan. It is hard to do everything. Brightlink’s plan is integrated around its own product. It is a demonstration and a use case at the same time!

Timeline

  • [1:55] Rob Chen: Bridging the gap from CMO to CEO
  • [5:40] What Brightlink is and does
  • [10:47] How to use technology as a marketing demonstration
  • [18:36] Who Brightlink targets in its marketing
  • [22:55]  Successful marketing examples
  • [26:33] Key lessons from a CMO turned CEO

Connect With Rob Chen:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

The Need to Fail, Cars That See, and Defining Market Needs

Posted on by Drew Neisser

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.

The Need to Fail, Cars That See, and Defining Market Needs
CES never fails to be a revelatory experience, but this year marked a significant step closer to one of humanity’s longest-held dreams (or at least, one of Drew’s longest-held dreams): A Jetsons-style flying car! A key component of these tech-driven marvels is an astoundingly impressive “LiDAR” system—think radar detection, done with laser technology. In simpler terms, a new way for machines to see things. Granted, the implications are much broader than a flying car, but it provides an interesting way to demo this new system.

On this episode of RTU, Drew speaks with Louay Eldada, CEO and co-founder of Quanergy, the company helping cars “see”. They chat about the range of potential uses for such powerful tech, and the why to market it, they had to first understand the problems that people need solved. Don’t miss this tech-heavy episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, recorded at CES 2019.

 

Louay shares various ways Quanergy can creatively solve problems! You won’t want to miss this episode!

 

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What You’ll Learn

 

A virtual wall – an effective way of protecting the border

 

Quanergy is proposing the creation of a virtual wall on the border of the United States and Mexico. Currently, a physical wall is being proposed to the country. Louay points out that this kind of barrier could disturb the environment. Quanergy has targeted the United States government as its audience to market their technology to, speaking with politicians on both sides of the border protection debate. Using LiDAR, Quanergy creates a dome of protection by setting its giving computers eyes to monitor the border area. LiDAR uses its “eyes” to see anything coming to the border and can allow authorities to be dispatched to the area. A virtual wall addresses the issue of protecting the border but does not create more problems as a physical wall could.

Quanergy’s is a leader in effective technology marketing

Quanergy tells and shows customers what they need. They allow customers to observe the product, so they know they want it. Quanergy provides a vision of what customers can do, and how they can solve problems. This creates new markets for its technology.

Quanergy’s technology, LiDAR, is marketed to many different industries. Each market has its own experts, so Quanergy uses partners to improve solutions. For example, Quanergy partnered with 6-Watch to help create a virtual surveillance partner for Boston’s police vehicles. 6-Watch was an effective partner because the company is well connected in the law enforcement space, helping Quanergy break into that market with its technology.

Creating a culture where it is okay to fail

Louay says if your company doesn’t run into things that don’t work, then you are not trying hard enough. Everything is not feasible until someone does it. If a problem is worth addressing, try until you find a solution. Louay creates a company culture where failure and bad news are okay. This gives his employees the ability to take risks and be creative. In order to lead a company where there is the courage to take risks, Louay says he must have an open door policy to hear about issues and ask what can be done solve problems, what have the employees learned and what can be changed. This culture of risk being okay has helped propel Quanergy to the frontline in LiDAR technology as well as marketing technology.

Timeline

  • [1:13] Louay’s inspiration and Quanergy’s technological core
  • [2:23] Technology for a flying car
  • [6:08] Reasons and opportunities for attending CES
  • [8:08] A virtual wall – an effective way of protecting the border
  • [11:30] A CEO’s take on marketing
  • [14:10] Quanergy’s most effective marketing
  • [17:58] The importance partnerships
  • [19:24] Biggest lessons to share with other entrepreneurs
  • [20:53] It is ok to fail!

Connect With Louay Eldada:

  • Louay’s bio on Quanergy’s website
  • Connect with Louay on LinkedIn
  • Follow Louay on Twitter

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Copper, Blue + Pink: An Artful Name Change / Rebrand

Posted on by Drew Neisser

If you took every tech company logo and stacked them by color, here’s what you’d see: some red, some shades of black, grey, and white, some green. But all those stacks would be in the shadow of one color: blue. Samsung, Facebook, Lenovo, PayPal, hp, Dell—the list of blue logos goes on and on.

So what did Morgan Norman, CMO of Copper (née ProsperWorks)? He went pink. With a dash of creative, and a spritz of data analysis, Copper went bold and rebranded in a major way. But—a rebrand isn’t just a name and a color. The new mentality has to fill up every nook and cranny of the company, employees need to buy in, users need to be kept informed. On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew Neisser talks with Morgan Norman about the keys to a rebrand, some common hurdles, and more about B2B marketing.

Tune in here.

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What You’ll Learn

Why a company name change?

Before its company name change, Copper was a very successful business. It was not looking for a different name to boost sales or to pull itself out of a slump. However, there were still various reasons to change its name. ProsperWorks was a hard name for people to remember. It was even harder for people to say. Prior to its name change, it was in 110 countries, and the name ProsperWorks was hard to translate. Studies were also showing that customers were consistently misspelling its name. All of these reasons culminated in a desire to explore new company names.

Just a coat of paint, or a complete overhaul?

When ProsperWorks changed its company name to Copper, it did not just change its name – it changed its entire brand. Morgan explains that every bit of product was overhauled, from customer interactions and existing content, to its brand and the company’s roadmap of where it wanted to go. He said that with the new name, the brand changed to revolve around relationships.

How Copper used a relaunch to generate interest in its brand

Copper used its relaunch to help generate interest in its brand in several different ways:

  • They launched a new advertising campaign: CRM Minus the Bad Stuff. Their ads were enough to make the public curious enough to finish the story by finding out more information on the product.
  • Copper utilized billboard ads. They ran 2 at a time in San Francisco near the airport. This captured the audience of people flying in. They also put a human face to CRM.
  • They produced massive amounts of content about the company and its new name. The name change was surrounded by information on the company.

Timeline

  • [2:30] Who is Morgan Norman?
  • [5:52] Why ProsperWorks changed its name to Copper
  • [7:31] Which came first: the name change or the URL
  • [12:24] Why the name Copper instead of Copper CRM
  • [15:43] Why Copper chose pink in branding
  • [17:46] A complete overhaul: from name to product
  • [21:34] Internal involvement before a name change
  • [27:25] The launch of Copper’s new name
  • [30:18] How to use a relaunch to generate interest in your brand
  • [35:22] Top lessons from name changing
  • [38:47] Key metrics that matter in marketing

Connect With Guest:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

The Key to Achieving Sales and Marketing Alignment in B2B

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As the marketer of a software service product, Meagen Eisenberg isn’t just a CMO. She is also a salesperson, which is why her alignment with MongoDB’s sales team proves critical to the company’s rapid success. Through her influential roles at multiple B2C and B2B tech companies, Meagen can attest to the fact that any company, no matter its audience, can create a pattern of collaboration and success in creating a unified buying path.

From insights about demand generation, to Martech, to work-life balance, Meagen’s marketing insights apply to CMOs everywhere, whether you’re B2B, B2C, or even B2D. When reflecting on her career, Meagen shares that the alignment of sales and marketing teams has transformed companies that she has worked for, including MongoDB.

On this episode, you’ll hear Meagen’s top 5 ways to increase your company’s internal collaboration, as well as discover the engaging marketing strategies MongoDB uses to attract developers. She also explains why the marketing and sales funnel strategy isn’t dead, and how it can be used in innovative new ways. For more on B2B demand generation, check out our 6 tips in our special report, here. 

Learn why collaboration is the future of marketing by listening here.

                  Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

Meagen’s top 5 ways to increase your company’s sales and marketing alignment

Just like countless other companies, MongoDB has struggled with sales and marketing alignment, as well as collaboration between teams. As a tech company that offers a database as a service, Meagen has learned to overcome the challenges of managing teams made up of employees with varied skill sets. Developers, salespeople, marketers, and more all want MongoDB to succeed, but approach it in different ways.

From her years in both engineering and marketing, Meagen has learned how to create the ultimate environment of collaboration. Check out all the details behind her top 5 strategies for alignment on this episode.

  1. Understand your sales funnel and how it converts leads into customers
  2. Intentionally build all of your systems together
  3. Focus on authentic communication
  4. Identify the stopgaps in your sales system
  5. Invest in your tech stack (but don’t add more tools until you’re ready)

MongoDB uses creative and engaging strategies to hook their audience

After Meagen and her team built a solid team, together they were able to develop creative marketing strategies. They hook interested followers through live events, energetic brand advocates, and a speedy website that always delivers to their followers. They fill their robust website platform with content that educates and inspires. This content is found in many forms, such as white papers, blogs, thought leadership pieces, product demonstrations, and compelling customer stories.

Marketing and sales are about putting the right information in front of the right people at the right time

Alignment between your marketing and sales departments doesn’t happen overnight. Meagen and Drew discuss how a business that sells directly to consumers as well as to other businesses can approach their content marketing strategies. For example, when a B2B prospect visits your website, they most likely need to be connected to an account manager and salesperson that can address their specific needs and questions. A B2C prospect, however, is much more likely to explore your website and fill out an inquiry form all on their own – without ever speaking to a salesperson. The key in content marketing and sales is to make it obvious to your followers who you are and what you do, that way you can address their questions before they even think of them.

Timeline

  • [0:30] MongoDB is a massive resource for CMOs
  • [2:04] Meagen’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment
  • [12:16] Alignment between sales and marketing is critical – use these strategies to succeed
  • [16:03] Connecting with developers is key
  • [19:16] The sales funnel is not dead in today’s marketing world
  • [21:35] What’s the difference between MongoDB and a datalink system?
  • [23:11] MongoDB hooks their audience through a variety of creative marketing tactics
  • [30:32] Balancing B2B and B2C audiences for your business
  • [39:24] Meagen’s problem-solving thoughts for the challenges facing marketing

Connect With Meagen:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Your Next Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy: the Talk Trigger

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Far too many marketers believe that “competency creates conversation,” thinking that a word of mouth marketing strategy will simply appear out of thin air. Jay Baer, entrepreneur and author of his new book “Talk Triggers,” joins this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite to convince you otherwise.

Word of mouth marketing is essential to B2B businesses. After all, 91% of all B2B purchases are made because of its influence. Despite this overwhelming need, most B2B companies don’t have a specific word of mouth marketing strategy in place. As Jay shares, it’s all about doing something different in your company’s operations that makes customers chatter — a “talk trigger”. On this episode, you’ll hear about several successful talk trigger stories, like the ingenious DoubleTree cookies, along with the 4 main criteria any talk trigger needs to meet. Jay also shares his expert advice on following his book’s 6-step process to creating a successful talk trigger. His message on word of mouth marketing says one thing loud and clear: “same is lame”, so don’t just follow what the other guys in the industry are doing.

Learn how to get your customers talking in all the right ways.

                 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

What are talk triggers and why do you need them in your word of mouth marketing strategy?

Jay explains talk triggers as, “something that you choose to do differently that creates conversation.” They’re not marketing tactics, they’re operational choices that are designed to specifically generate discussions about your business. It’s the most important part of B2B that no one’s talking about – until now.

One of the best examples of a recent talk trigger is UberConference’s “I’m On Hold” song that plays in their virtual waiting room for conference calls. Instead of going with predictable “elevator music,” they had a unique song composed specifically for them that now generates conversations about their service every time users are on hold. Jay shares even more great examples all on this episode.

“Same is lame” – follow these 4 criteria to create a great talk trigger

Many marketers revert to mimicking successful strategies rather than create their own original ideas. But when your business starts down that path, you’ll be resigned to being second-best, rather than an innovative industry leader. Jay explains that to break out of this pattern and start creating great talk triggers that enhance your word of mouth marketing strategy, your trigger needs to follow these 4 criteria:

  1. Remarkable – it needs to be worthy of remarks from people outside of your traditional audience
  2. Relevant – it cannot simply be about gathering attention
  3. Reasonable – different enough to be remarkable, but not so “out there” that people are wary of the offer
  4. Repeatable – a talk trigger isn’t just a one-time stunt

Jay’s insider advice for entrepreneurs looking to avoid getting stuck when creating talk triggers

On this episode, Jay warns marketers of 2 main “sticky points” to watch out for when developing talk triggers. As tempting as it may be to sit around coming up with fun marketing ideas, the best talk triggers don’t come out of one or two brainstorming sessions. He encourages marketers to consider using a third-party company that can have an objective look at your business while researching what resonates with your audience.

He also explains the importance of measuring you talk trigger’s impact. By sending out a survey to your recent customers and followers, you can begin to understand what’s been working and what didn’t. For the full list of questions to consider asking, be sure to listen to this episode.

Timeline

  • [0:30] Word of mouth marketing expert, Jay Baer, is Drew’s guest for this episode
  • [7:02] What are talk triggers and why are they important?
  • [8:25] Word of mouth marketing is 100% critical for B2B businesses
  • [12:05] Marketing departments shouldn’t be the only ones developing talk triggers
  • [15:51] Same is lame – the 4 criteria to follow to create great talk triggers
  • [26:19] The 5 types of talk triggers
  • [30:48] Take a look at this example of talkable empathy in the B2B space
  • [37:28] Learn from Jay’s 6-step process and work through the “sticky” points by considering these 2 things
  • [45:58] 2 do’s and 1 don’t to follow when creating talk trigger

Connect With Jay:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew