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
- Name: Amber Herndon
- What she does: As the Director of Marketing and Client Success at Signal Insights, a web-based platform that provides valuable insights on competitors, Amber Herndon drives interest and nurtures customers from prospects to loyal brand advocates.
- Company: Signal Insights
- Noteworthy: Amber serves as an adjunct professor at Indiana University Southeast, teaching college students about global marketing, consumer culture, and new media.
Key Insights
- Make sure sales and marketing are aligned, regardless of the size of your company. Signal Insights is just a team of four, but Amber works very closely with the co-founder and head of sales. Staying in constant communication helps "figure out the shortest way to get someone to close" and ensures sales have all of the marketing materials needed. While Amber doesn't do any of the pitching herself, she sits in on demos with prospects to make sure the conversation is aligned with whatever marketing they have already been exposed to.
- Amber has learned the value of acting and asking for forgiveness later — not waiting for permission. It wasn't easy transitioning from a heavily structured, established agency to a startup environment. "At first, I was really cautious to even publish a blog post without showing it to the three other people on the team, or launching a campaign without someone looking at it," Amber says. She realized that everything moves fast in a startup environment and, when you're wearing multiple hats, you need to "trust the decisions that you're making and just go with it."
- Use client conversations to fuel content marketing strategy. "A lot of the ideas we've gotten for content have come from either clients that we have or people that we've spoken with," Amber says. They'll ask questions like 'do you have something that dives into all of your features?' or 'do you have a one-page overview you can send me so I can show my boss?' Use these questions to create blog content and shareable documents for new prospects. This ties in with making sure marketing is involved with sales: if your marketing department is part of the daily conversations happening with both potential and existing clients, they can use any questions or pain points discussed to create highly engaging, valuable marketing materials.
Episode Highlights
- Breaking through the noise by finding a key differentiator
- An effective lead magnet goes a long way
- Pivoting in the COVID-19 era
- Increasing your reach by leveraging the right channels
- Staying up to date on marketing trends and best practices