Episode Summary
Amy King’s path into marketing was a little unconventional. She got her master’s in art history, and along the way, discovered it was really about critical thinking. This ultimately led her to product marketing for ad tech and software companies.
Amy is now the VP of Marketing at Zaloni, a data management and operations software company that helps customers streamline their data ecosystem by making it run faster, better and at a lower cost. Amy has a multi-channel marketing approach, relying on inbound marketing to get to know Zaloni’s customers and ensure her team is attracting quality leads.
On this episode of Tech Qualified, Amy talks about how marketing at Zaloni evolved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how inbound marketing became its most valuable source of leads. She also shares about the highly personalized and long sales cycle its prospects go through, using a mix of different content types, in order to get them from the marginally interested phase to wanting a demo.
Guest Profile
- Name: Amy King
- What she does: As the VP of Marketing at Zaloni, a data management and operations software company, Amy works with technology teams to grow marketing for the organization.
- Company: Zaloni
- Key Quote: “I see marketing as: If we do our job well, then sales is happy. We want to make sure that we're giving them good quality leads and the number of leads that they want. We want to make sure they have all the collateral, messaging, positioning and things that they need to be successful.”
Key Insights
- Use a variety of content types to move prospects down the funnel. To ensure that SQLs have the highest chance of turning into opportunities, Amy uses a variety of content types personalized to what the team believes the prospect is interested in. “We tend to find there's at least seven to nine touchpoints for NQLs before they reach the level of having a phone call with one of our SDRs. So, it's a pretty heavy journey but we have a lot of content behind it,” Amy says. Amy and her team always use a mix of different content types in order to really get them from being marginally interested to wanting a demo.
- To become a thought leader, be the voice of your product. A lot of B2B marketers struggle with establishing their organization as a thought leader and authority in their space. Product is always at the heart of Amy’s marketing approaches. “From a thought leadership perspective, we're often leaning on people in our product department or in our engineering departments to help us with topics that they're finding really interesting and their colleagues are talking about,” Amy says.
- Inbound is only becoming more important. The number of great intent tools, marketing automation tools and ways to capture people's attention mean inbound is becoming increasingly important, according to Amy. “Getting people interested is tough but there's a lot of really great data-driven applications that are going to help you get there and start building that early. Obviously measuring is important and credible. But thinking about really growing each of those levers on the inbound as early as you can,” Amy says.
Episode Highlights
- Make inbound and outbound a tag team
“We drive everything into data, [using] Google’s Data Studio, … Marketo and Salesforce and SEMrush and all the other Google Analytics tools … to really look at how many MQLs we’re driving each week. And then we have an SDR team on top of that, that takes people who’ve moved to the SQL level and they pursue them individually. So it’s a tag team effort between inbound and outbound to make sure we’re grabbing more hand-raisers at the top of the funnel and then really nurturing them with a lot of Marketo and outreach streams and personal outreach through the SDR team to get them to convert to opportunity.”
- Let your audience choose what content they want
“Next week, we’re doing what we’re calling a virtual event. It’s a two-hour open house for a new platform. We’re allowing people to drop in and out by attending the sessions that they like. It’s a great way for us to bring new people into the fold. We’ve just found the flexibility of having these virtual events that give all kinds of attendees the potential to consume just the content that they want to see to be very successful.”
- Good engagement between sales and marketing is vital
“I see marketing as: If we do our job well, then sales is happy. We want to make sure that we’re giving them good quality leads and the number that they want. We want to make sure they have all the collateral, messaging, all of the positioning and things that they need to be successful. We want to make sure everything is teed up for them to have a really great conversation with their customer. We want them to have the use case, case studies, quotes and stats that are there. The toolkit needs to be filled for them.”
- Finding the right angle to captivate an audience
“Many people are great at either talking or writing about what they do and then it’s just a matter of putting a story behind it or an angle for that story to be successful. We have found that if you can come to someone with the perspective of what they have to say matters — that they are an expert in their field — they will help show us what people in their field are seeing, what they’re reading or what they’re finding interesting. And that will become a story that I promise someone else is interested in, too.”
- Start your inbound efforts early
“Getting people interested is tough but there’s a lot of really great data-driven applications that are going to help you get there and start building that early. Obviously measuring is important and credible. But thinking about really growing each of those levers on the inbound as early as you can — there’s no one silver bullet there but they all work in coordination.”
