Episode 299: Developing Creative Marketing for a Well-Established Organization with Megan Battaglia at ThunderCat Technology

Episode Summary

In her role as the lead marketer at a small company that offers IT services, Megan Battaglia says she has the best of both worlds.

After beginning her career in consumer product marketing for the popular spice company McCormick, she next landed a role working on the tech side for a health company. Now at ThunderCat — where she is Director of Marketing — she gets to combine her creative side with her tech background.

“I kind of have the best of both worlds with marketing for a tech company,” she says. The veteran-owned business provides IT services for the U.S. federal government, state and local governments, and Fortune 500 companies.

Megan’s goal is to create marketing campaigns for the business’ B2G and B2B sides. “We’re really just bringing awareness to the company that, hey, we’re not just government, we’re also commercial. We’ve really used our name and our reputation in the government space to brand ourselves in the commercial space.”

In this episode, Megan shares some of her most effective marketing strategies for reaching prospects in the government as well as private industry. COVID-19 has affected marketing strategy, but she says the company has been digital-first for a while. Though she says about 60% of the marketing budget is for digital activities, the remainder was for trade shows or other kinds of in-person events.

Guest Profiles

Name: Megan Battaglia
What she does: As ThunderCat’s marketing lead, Megan has had to help get the company’s name into B2B as the company transitioned from being a government-only service provider.
Company: ThunderCat Technology
Noteworthy: She joined the company when there were about 53 employees — just three years later ThunderCat has almost doubled its employee count.

Key Insights

Consistency and using the right tools is critical for ensuring a marketing campaign’s success. Megan and her team use Hubspot for social media scheduling, email blasts, etc. “We use two platforms and we’re really trying to build that up and kind of have some consistency to our campaigns that we’re doing.”
Megan says aligning yearly marketing goals with sales goals inspires more collaboration between teams. When going after big contracts, the teams utilize geo-targeting to suggest specific types of content based on location and consumer interest. “We’ll work with them and say, okay, who are your targets? How can we help? How can we push this along?”
Leveraging the different media platforms government agencies follow for news — including GovLoop and Government Executive — helps drive awareness and engagement, says Megan. They are also sure to repurpose content into a variety of formats like turning blog content into something more interactive. “If they don’t want to read something, they can listen to it,” she says.

Episode Highlights

“When COVID-19 hit in March and everything was shutting down, we shifted our sales approach to kind of tackle more of the secure remote access campaigns. So because of everything that was being rushed with COVID-19 hitting and having to get these in place, I think the customer journey kind of spun up a little bit. Usually it could take six months to a year, even longer. And I think in this time people were purchasing within weeks of finding out what was going on…”

“You really have to be adaptable to everything. And so we kind of flip the switch with our in-person to virtual events. And we’re like, how can we make the best out of these virtual events that we were going to get in person? We use a lot of tools over here at ThunderCat for marketing. We use two platforms and we’re really trying to build that up and kind of have some consistency to our campaigns that we’re doing.”

“We’re doing ads on the radio. We’re doing ads at the Capital One Arena, right in DC, really trying to spread our market — and not just look at the government. Our commercial reps are taking their customers out there, working with them relentlessly. They’re really trying to bring awareness and trying to advocate for the company, in different ways that we necessarily can’t do with the government.”

“We’re running marketing campaigns where we are tracking ROI, we’re getting leads, whether it’s from downloaded white papers, attendees on a webcast or even people we set meetings with at trade shows. I work very closely with my reps. I’ll even go to shows with them and kind of manage those meetings. And so we’re really focused on staying connected with our customer … if I’m running a campaign, I want them to be pushing it out to their customers that we think it will attract.”

“I’m on LinkedIn a lot. … there are some great resources that other marketers that I follow are putting out. There are a lot of free courses online. I did some digital marketing classes over the past few months, during some of my downtime. And now I’m kind of looking into doing some more training with SEO and other types of things that can just kind of prepare you for all of the online world of marketing.”

Episode 299: Developing Creative Marketing for a Well-Established Organization with Megan Battaglia at ThunderCat Technology

Episode Summary

Guest Profiles

Key Insights

Episode Highlights

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