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Episode 324: Breaking Through the Noise While Building a Brand with Amber Herndon of Signal Insights

Episode Summary

Amber Herndon wears many hats. Whether she’s sitting in on sales calls, managing new clients, or brainstorming content strategy, Amber is always laser-focused on driving leads and building an engaging brand.

While she’s living the typical startup life and wearing many hats in her role, her official title is Director of Marketing and Client Success at Signal Insights — a customized “daily digest” platform that delivers news, updates, and content trends on competitors and key accounts.

On this episode of Tech Qualified, Amber talks about how you can transform discussions with prospects and clients into valuable marketing material, what she did to break through the noise of countless other B2B Martech platforms, and why you should always ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

Guest Profiles

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Key Insights

Episode Highlights

“It’s definitely hard to [break through the noise] because we just launched in April so no one really knows who we are. We’re still ramping up and signing on clients — when I first started out, we really didn’t have many clients at all so not having a lot of testimonials or case studies to share can make it difficult. But one thing that’s really working for us is just really taking the approach of why we’re better than Google Alerts. After doing dozens of demos, we found out that’s really how people are tracking competitors. Google Alerts have really been the key differentiator for us because so many people are familiar with it.”
“Lead generation pieces have really helped a lot. So we have a tip sheet on conducting competitive analysis available for download on the website. We use it in email marketing, we use it with LinkedIn ads, and that’s proven to be valuable with people downloading that piece of content, and then being able to nurture them through email and getting them to book a demo.”
“One positive thing that came out of [starting my job during the pandemic] is we found that people were open to demos because a lot of people were working from home and they had fewer meetings … so it was easier to get people to book a demo and get them on the phone to show them the platform. We’ve definitely hit challenges with people who have their budgets frozen or their budgets were cut due to COVID, so we’ve been able to pivot and find ways to where we can still get people on the platform, but get some sort of commitment from them for when they’re able to spend money again and they have a marketing budget again.”
“The biggest challenge is increasing our reach. Because we are a startup and we just launched about three months ago, [it’s] getting out there in front of people and figuring out where that audience is. Primarily, starting out, I focused a lot on LinkedIn because we’re B2B, so that’s where a lot of B2B people live. But now I’m trying to research and read more and figure out if there are other channels we should be on, whether there are forums, or do we need to try Twitter, do we just keep hammering on emails? Maybe I need to widen our targeting and not be so specific so that we’re sending out information to more and more people.”
“I like Neil Patel’s podcast a lot — I listen to that. I started listening to you all, which has been really helpful. I read a lot of content on HubSpot because that’s a tool we use every single day and they have content that covers every hat that I wear, from marketing, sales, and service, because I do manage clients after they onboard. So I like having one place to go where I can read different articles or watch videos that kind of covers all those bases.”
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