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.

At business intelligence agency Praxis Metrics, AJ Yager and his team harness the power of data to help e-commerce companies grow. The agency evolved from an offering AJ launched within his marketing agency Yager Media Group. Referrals have been huge for expanding Praxis’ business in the early days — and AJ found a lot of success by being a guest on podcasts hosted by people in his network. The agency grew around 400% in 2019, which he attributes largely to being a guest on five to seven podcasts that got him in front of the right audiences. With the help of Praxis’ Marketing Director Spencer Connell, the agency has increased inbound leads through an expanded content library. Once a lead is in the funnel, they go through the nurture sequence with the goal of getting them on a sales call. “All we’re trying to do is get people from understanding what Praxis does, get them excited about what Praxis does, and then get them on a call. That’s our marketing ideology,” he explains. On this episode of Tech Qualified, host Justin Brown talks to the duo about their latest content strategies, which includes the launch of a new podcast and videocast series of their own as well as a potential book. “Now what we’re doing is saying we want to own this conversation around data. We’re going to simplify the complicated subject of data,” AJ says.

Unlike most SaaS professionals, Aaron Stillman didn’t end up in software because it was a longtime passion. Instead, he wanted to drastically increase his fresh croissant intake. In other words, he saw his first SaaS job as an opportunity to live in Paris while developing his product management — and eventually marketing — abilities. That first role kept him in the global market, where he now works for international customer experience optimization platform AB Tasty as its “director of storytelling” — or, as some prefer to call it, director of product marketing. On this episode of Tech Qualified, Aaron discusses the importance of using a multitude of marketing tools to reach customers and why it’s vital to pay attention to which tools are most appropriate for a particular moment in time. Currently, the tool he finds most effective is video. “Video’s really a first-class citizen for us,” Aaron says. “I want to make sure that our story gets across in a video in a way that will have that human impact when somebody watches it. When people log in to use our platform and … create a personalization campaign, they’ll receive a video helping them understand the key value propositions and the how-tos of using the product.”

Half a year doesn’t seem like much time to take a marketing department from idling to racing ahead, but Mary Ford moves fast. Mary recently became the Chief Marketing Officer of CENTEGIX, an internet of things (IoT) company making emergency alert software. Its main clients are K-12 schools and hotels. School safety is a potentially heavy subject, but Mary focuses on the positives of what CENTEGIX’s product can do. “My job as a marketer is to help people understand the day-to-day value the solution brings to those who feel more protected because they’re empowered to get help when they need it,” she says. Although Mary only joined this year, she’s been busy improving CENTEGIX’s brand awareness and profile. When she first came onboard, the company had a website — and not much else. “We needed to build some basic marketing competencies and fundamentals,” Mary says. Under her watch, the CENTEGIX marketing team launched a social media program and started producing white papers and email campaigns, improving internal communications (especially with sales) and hosting webinars. Fortunately, working at four startups in the past has given Mary a taste for juggling lots of projects at once. “I like to build things, and it’s fun to see how our marketing function has evolved over the past six months.”

Michelle Tilton fell in love with B2B marketing while working at a small boutique agency after college. It wasn’t the “glamorous B2C space” everyone else wanted to get into, but something pulled her in and she’s been in the B2B world ever since. Now, Michelle works as the VP of Marketing at Infutor, a data solutions company that helps its clients better understand their customers through data. Michelle uses a multi-channel, multi-touch marketing approach to drive demand and integrates processes between marketing and sales to ensure a consistent, high-quality lead flow. On this episode of Tech Qualified, Michelle talks about how Infutor nurtures different MQLs and the seamless handoff between its sales and marketing teams. She also shares about how she properly attributes lead data and the ways each team in her company works toward obtaining highly qualified leads and closing a higher percentage of sales.

Laura Scruggs attributes her company’s “astronomical growth” to a strong alignment between sales and marketing. As the Director of Marketing at Mindgrub, a full-service digital marketing agency that focuses on tech companies, Laura tailors both Mindgrub’s and its affiliate companies’ marketing strategies to the changing needs of the B2B world. In a time when marketing budgets are slashed each quarter and most businesses are just trying to stay afloat, it’s not easy to stay relevant. “That window of relevance got so much smaller once the crisis hit because there are so many industries who are in absolute crisis right now,” Laura says. “If you’re trying to approach them with a sales-forward message, they’re not going to be receptive to that,” On this episode of Tech Qualified, Laura details Mindgrub’s successful marketing strategies, which include segmented advertising and creating content for every part of the sales funnel. She also shares about the importance of building authentic partnerships with clients instead of seeing them solely as a source of revenue.