In this Martech Zone Interview, we speak to Vice President and Partner at Walker Sands. Erin is an accomplished public relations and marketing professional with a passion for helping B2B tech companies grow. We discuss the three keys to success when selecting and working with a B2B Marketing Agency. From strategy to execution, Walker Sands provides transformative B2B marketing solutions to drive the awareness, credibility and conversions needed to surpass them. They're unique in the industry since they work across the spectrum of branding, creative, demand generation, public relations, web services, and marketing strategy for their clients. Over the years and working with hundreds of B2B technology companies, they've identified three keys to success: How to identify and align goals between the partner and ocmpany. How to develop both short-term and long-term growth strategies. How to ensure the company and associated technology can accomodate and sustain that growth. As companies look to become more efficient and effective - especially during difficult economic times - finding and working with a partner can accelerate the growth of your marketing efforts. In this episode, we discuss that and more!Special Guest: Erin Jordan Spanski.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Walker Sands — From strategy to execution, Walker Sands provides transformative B2B marketing solutions to drive the awareness, credibility, and conversions needed to surpass them.

On this episode, we interview Jack Klemeyer, a veteran business coach with 25 years of experience. Jack provides his insight into the current uncertain economic future of business and how leaders should respond, react, and succeed. On this episode, we discuss some key issues that are near and dear to leaders' hearts during these troubling times: How do leaders continue to motivate employees in a downturn? How can leaders continue to maintain optimism? How do leaders know when to pivot when their industry and cashflow are impacted so severely? How do leaders make tough decisions… without making them too late. Jack provides some fantastic advice on leading your organization through these uncertain times.Special Guest: Jack Klemeyer.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Grow Your Business™ Coaching — Jack Klemeyer and his elite group of certified Grow Your Business™ advisors and speakers are available to provide talks, workshops, seminars and keynote speeches to groups in all industries and all sizes. The skills, strategies and educational materials included in the Grow Your Business™ Programming is highly flexible and can be customized to fit your particular group and address your specific challenges. From marketing to mindset and from speaking and communications to sales strategies, we’ve got you covered – in a way that will be energizing, fun, inspirational and motivating.Live2Lead — Live2Lead is an annual global leadership event with world-class leaders. Created to share leadership principles and personal growth techniques so you can go and CHANGE YOUR WORLD!

In this Martech Zone Interview, we speak to Janet Mesh, CEO and Co-founder of Aimtal. Janet is an advocate and practitioner of agile marketing with her internal team and external clients. With daily (virtual) stand-ups, collaboration software, and weekly sprints, Janet and her team have perfected the Quick Pivot, a process to pivot strategies based on the results of her clients' campaigns. Janet and her team have built their wildly successful online marketing agency through focusing on a variety of elements, agile marketing being one of them. To market with agility means to be constantly improving your techniques through taking on high-value projects, working in small increments (sprints), and then analyzing your results and continuing to improve them from there on out. One of the most important elements of agile marketing is teamwork -- something Janet is very passionate about and loves to speak on. In this episode we'll discuss: What is Agile Marketing? What is the agile marketing process that takes place internally with Janet's team? What are the tools necessary to maintain an successful agile marketing strategy? How can it be applied to omni-channel marketing efforts like content, social, and ad campaigns? How do you keep expectations set with clients on deliverables? What is the Quick Pivot strategy? In this time where the vast majority of companies had to quickly pivot their marketing strategies - many moving from in-person to digital mediums - agile marketing is becoming an essential culture and process to adopt with your marketing teams or agencies. This episode has some great nuggets to get you started!Special Guest: Janet Mesh.Sponsored By:DK New Media: Douglas Karr is a recognized influencer in the marketing technology industry. Hire Douglas to speak at your next event, develop an online webinar, host and develop your company's podcast, or train your marketing team. Promo Code: dknewmediaSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Aimtal — Aimtal is a remote-first company and have a team of brilliant marketing strategists, account managers, graphic designers, copywriters, and researchers who are committed to delivering delightful digital and content experiences to customers and their audiences.Trello — Trello’s boards, lists, and cards enable agile marketing teams to organize and prioritize projects in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way.Slack — With channels in Slack, you and your marketing team know where to go to ask questions, share updates, and stay in the loop.

In this Martech Zone Interview, we speak to Ravi Chalaka, chief marketing officer and VP of product marketing at Jifflenow, a Meeting Automation Platform. As corporations canceled their in-person meetings and conferences, and moved their sales and marketing teams to work from home, they had to overcome a ton of challenges. From interfacing via video for sales to designing online events for marketing... every company scrambled to develop strategies and momentum to maintain their marketing and sales efforts. Since Ravi is an expert and works with a company focused on meeting automation and the associated measured results, we interviewed him to capture some advice. The Jifflenow Meeting Automation Platform (MAP) is designed for the sole purpose of automating the scheduling and managing of virtual or in-person B2B meetings. Jifflenow will help you convert your virtual interactions with prospects and customers into meaningful meetings that, in turn, can help advance the sales pipeline and shorten the sales cycle. Special Guest: Ravi Chalaka.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Jifflenow — Close deals faster by converting leads to marketing qualified meetings with Jifflenow. Book hundreds of customer and prospect meetings, partner, and supplier meetings with internal executives or experts to advance business opportunities. Jifflenow MAP is trusted by over 60 of the Fortune 1000 companies to drive their B2B meetings.

In this Martech Zone Interview, we speak to Katie Mares, author of Earning Her Business: The Importance of Tailoring Your Brand Experience to the Female Consumer. Although the female movement is interwoven into our social world and people preach girl power, Katie has seen that this mindset hasn't penetrated business branding or the experience businesses provide to women. Most businesses have a transaction process to deliver the service they provide, but very few businesses focus on elevating interaction so that a brand experience includes a personal connection with the consumer and addresses their genuine interests and needs. This branding disconnect is a problem not only for female consumers but also for businesses that lose potential sales and women's loyalty. Earning Her Business is about showing businesses how to transform the transactional service a woman currently receives into the alluring, interactional experience she craves. In this interview, Katie explains how women influence purchase decisions , the impact on a business' bottom line, and how to shift your organization's experience to accomodate them.Special Guest: Katie Mares.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Katie Mares — Katie is a leading voice inspiring positive, actionable change using self-confidence as a catalyst. As a Certified Speaking Professional, Katie has inspired audiences around the world to think differently about customer service and leadership. She imparts skills to change behavior, which has a positive effect on the experience offered to customers and team members.Earning Her Business: The Importance of Tailoring Your Brand Experience to the Female Consumer — Earning Her Business sends the clear message that true power comes when businesses focus on providing a brand and consumer experience women the world's most influential consumers can't live without. When businesses start doing that and doing it well they can cultivate trust, build loyalty, earn referrals, and make top-line sales, and their female customers won't want to go anywhere else. Katie Mares' book is for anyone in business who wants to completely upend their industry.

In this Martech Zone Interview, we interview Susan Marshall, founder and CEO of Torchlite. Susan shares the organization's partnership and focus on supporting small businesses with their Salesforce Essentials implementations and support. Salesforce Essentials is a CRM that's specifically designed for small businesses from Salesforce. In true Salesforce fashion, the platform can be tailored to your business, is quite flexible, and has a ton of integration capabilities. Implementing, integrating, or customizing the platform is possible but some companies often don't have the resources or expertise to do it. Torchlite worked directly with Salesforce to develop a team of Flexperts that can be hired as needed to assist your small business. As well, Torchlite offers a number of affordable Playbooks - standard packages to get your business up and running.Special Guest: Susan Marshall.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Torchlite for Salesforce Essentials — Torchlite is a certified Salesforce Partner with a wide network of trained Advisors ready to help small businesses utilize Salesforce Essentials, Salesforce’s small business solution for customer relationship management.Salesforce Essentials — Get started fast with sales and customer support on the world's #1 CRM for $25 a month.Trailhead — Chances are, your next job will require Salesforce skills. Learn them for free today!

In this MarTech Martech Zone, we speak to Award-winning Microsoft storyteller Miri Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez is responsible for finding, crafting, and leveraging stories that motivate and connect with the modern consumer. Now, she’s offering practical tools to help you become a skilled brand storyteller, both at the personal and business levels. A brand’s story has become so crucial to its marketing strategy that Microsoft has an entire department devoted to storytelling. Unfortunately, most companies struggle to make genuine connections, resorting to outdated strategies to engage audiences. If you don’t have the budget for a storytelling department, how can you stand out from the crowd? In her book, Brand Storytelling, Ms. Rodriguez wants to bring you back to the heart of brand loyalty, consumer behavior, and engagement as a business strategy, revealing how storytelling triggers the emotions that humans are driven by. Her book will guide you to assess, dismantle, and rebuild any brand story, enabling you to celebrate and strengthen your success, rather than simply trying to win it. On this interview, Ms. Rodriguez discusses: How to tap into authentic brand loyalty and human connection by aligning brand voice with individual customer values, experiences and aspirations The five essential elements to humanize your brand through storytelling The Robin to Batman effect: Why it’s essential to make yourself the ‘sidekick’ to the customer’s ‘batman’ in every story Empathy Matters: Why this soft skill is essential to storytelling in the digital age Four magic tricks that can rev up your brand story into action, and make it enchanting and unforgettable Get comfortable with being uncomfortable: Why vulnerability is key in the practice of telling stories Ms. Rodriguez's advice is more important than ever in a time where consumers are demanding your brands take a stand for social justice.Special Guest: Miri Rodriguez.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Miri Rodriguez — As the child of a Preacher, Miri was exposed to the art of storytelling since before her fledging brain could even make sense of this skillset. It always amazed her how social influencers knew just the right mix of story elements, structure, and techniques to take their audience through an unforgettable storyworld. Miri used to think this alchemy was reserved for an elite few, but story design showed her different - and now she spends a good portion of her time turning story words into worlds.Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of your Brand Story — In today’s digital world, the words "story" and "storytelling" are often being misused or misunderstood. In Brand Storytelling, Miri Rodriguez wants to bring you back to the heart of brand loyalty, consumer behavior, and engagement as a business strategy, revealing how storytelling triggers the emotions that humans are driven by. This book will guide you to assess, dismantle, and rebuild any brand story, enabling you to celebrate and strengthen your success, rather than simply trying to win it.

In this MarTech Martech Zone we speak to Courtney Beasley, VP of Marketing for Walker Sands, about how companies can best adjust their messaging in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some businesses are going through a ‘moment,’ flourishing during the pandemic while many others are seeing negative effects on sales, revenue, and operations. Given that the spectrum of outcomes is vastly different, the standard We’re here for you messaging isn’t going to cut it for everyone. Marketers need customized insights to better navigate the uncertain times brought on by the pandemic if they want their messaging to directly correlate with the state of their business in an impactful way. Courtney discusses the different ways marketers should adapt messaging based on their situation. Courtney is also sharing insights from Walker Sand's new tool, the 2020 B2B Marketing Insights Playbook for COVID-19, to address marketing's place in the current state of the world. The playbook is a peer-based, industry-segmented, real-time customizable tool based on the level of impact the company has experienced (positively, negatively or severely negatively impacted) and based on real insights that not only include Walker Sands’ own vast B2B marketing knowledge and experience, but it also shares learnings from marketers around the country. Special Guest: Courtney Beasley.Sponsored By:Highbridge: With a minimum of a decade each in the technology industry, Highbridge are leading the way on helping clients maximize their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud investments. Promo Code: martech zoneSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Walker Sands — Since 2001, Walker Sands has been pushing the limits of what B2B marketing can do to get the results and recognition their clients deserve. They pride themselves on helping B2B brands reach their goals — whether that’s increasing revenue, pushing into new markets, attracting top talent, going public or getting acquired — and they always play for high score.B2B Marketing Insights Playbook for COVID-19 — A peer-based trends analysis for B2B marketers amid the pandemic. From budget cuts to full operations pivots, marketing teams are navigating unprecedented challenges. Using results from this survey, this resource provides timely, actionable insights from your peers.

In this MarTech Zone interview, Douglas speaks to entrepreneur, John Qualls. John has had an incredible career launching and leading several companies. His most recent company is Purposely, a platform to empower employees or individuals to benchmark and optimize their culture to improve employee performance and satisfaction. Talent optimization is one of the most critical factors that will determine if your business is able to reach and exceed your desired business results. While most business strategies focus on technical and functional aspects talent optimization should be a central part of your business strategy. With talent optimization, use a human lens to convert your business strategy into a compelling story that will engage employees. With so many companies laying off people the last couple weeks, Marketing departments that were already scarce are now at critical levels. For companies looking to thrive, they need to find and keep the best talent. And for those who were laid off, they need to evaluate their purpose and try to find the role that aligns with it. Having found his strengths and blazed a path in the technology industry, John is now sharing his wisdom with other people and then putting the tools in place to help them. We discuss how critical this is to both individuals and to companies - especially in times of economic challenges.Special Guest: John Qualls.Sponsored By:DK New Media: Douglas Karr is a recognized influencer in the marketing technology industry. Hire Douglas to speak at your next event, develop an online webinar, host and develop your company's podcast, or train your marketing team. Promo Code: dknewmediaSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Purposely — Helping companies understand and empower their employees.Purposely Assessment — Find your purpose with their free assessment.

In this Martech Zone Interview, we speak to Marc Stein. Marc is responsible for Dell Technologies Customer Data and Insights. We discuss the advancements that Dell Technologies has made to provide a single view of their customer across all continents, products, and services. Marc leads a team comprised of data scientists, design thinkers and program managers who translate operational, financial and customer experience data into emerging insights and then drive cross-functional programs to improve customer economics and NPS. Dell Technologies is unique in the world in that they've actually developed a single view of their customers from thousands of different data feeds through a data lake. It's a fascinating advancement and Marc explains the journey they've made, their goals, compliance concerns, and ultimately how the companies within the Dell technologies family is utilizing the data.Special Guest: Marc Stein.Sponsored By:DK New Media: Douglas Karr is a recognized influencer in the marketing technology industry. Hire Douglas to speak at your next event, develop an online webinar, host and develop your company's podcast, or train your marketing team. Promo Code: dknewmediaSupport Martech Zone InterviewsLinks:Boomi — Boomi’s customers have successfully connected to 1500+ endpoints, breaking down data silos and unlocking productivity.Dell Technologies — As a powerhouse of seven technology leaders, Dell Technologies is committed to transforming businesses, shaping the future of innovation and developing technologies to drive human progress.Collibra — Data Intelligence empowers people, transforms processes, and pushes progress. When everyone in the organization understands their data and how to use it, they can transform the way data works for them.