On Tuesday, April 25, Cait Vlastakis Smith will be presenting at #TMCtonight. Her presentation will be focused on journey mapping and how marketers can use this tool to improve how they interact with customers. So, if you haven’t RSVP’d yet, go ahead and check out the TMC Meetup page. This will be an awesome event that you will not want to miss!

The Interview

As most of you know, we conduct an interview for each of our TMC speakers. We do this each month in order to help you all, our awesome members, get to know the presenters and relate to them on a more personal level prior to sharing their message. In preparation for our next event, I was given the opportunity to interview Caitlin Vlastakis Smith and learn about her career.

Once we arranged a time to conduct the interview, I began creating a list of questions to ask Caitlin. On the day of our virtual meeting, I placed my laptop in front of me, grabbed a bottle of water, and had my questions ready to go. After everything was in position, I called Caitlin to begin our interview.

If you don’t mind sharing, could you tell me a little about yourself?

I went to college for art and creative writing, and even as my career has evolved to focus more on the business side of things, I still believe creativity is what drives us forward. I love creative problem solving because it’s both art and science.   So, throughout my career, I just followed that same truth: chase down interesting problems, try to look at them differently and, most importantly, work with great people.

Do you have any cool hobbies that you love doing outside of work?

I like to hang out with my daughter and husband, which means going to the playground and acting like a big kid…I try to go down the slides with my daughter, even though I’m much too large. You’re never too old to play!

I also do a little bit of art on the side. I like to sketch and draw. I also like to write whenever I can. Not working within the constraints of a business problem, just drawing and writing for fun.

What led to your desire to have a career in marketing?

I never had a moment where I realized, ‘Hey! I want to be in marketing.’ I just followed what I was interested in and that has led me through various roles that are either within marketing or tangential to marketing, like technology, design and content strategy. I love figuring out what makes people tick and understanding the “why” behind their behaviors. Humans are interesting creatures, and I like studying them.

What do you enjoy most about working in this field?

I enjoy the blend of creative and analytical thinking. I enjoy not living in just one area but being a connector across different disciplines. That allows me to flex different muscles, and I really enjoy that.

In your opinion, what does it take to become a successful marketer?

Relentless curiosity. I believe the most important trait for a marketer—and any professional, really—is to remain curious and to always ask, “Why?” The answers will often take you down many different roads, and you’ll realize how much everything is interconnected. As marketing, technology, and business become tangled together even further, it’s going to be important for people within neatly categorized departments to expand beyond their siloed group and remain curious about the larger ecosystem. One of my personal favorite pieces of writing is this one, where I wrote about obsessive curiosity and uncompromising idealism.

I saw that you have been published in Advertising Age and Content Marketing Institute. Could you tell me a little about that?

For the Content Marketing Institute article, “Content Planning: How to Use UX Research to Uncover Hidden Needs,” I was writing from the perspective of a user experience strategist and seeing the really important overlaps across UX research and content marketing, and how understanding customers better can help marketers with their work.

For the piece in Advertising Age, “Four Lessons from Losing a Pitch,” it was an interesting moment for me because it required taking a risk: being vulnerable and sharing a failure. I’d recently read ‘Daring Greatly’ by Brene Brown and recalled reading about the strength and importance of being vulnerable and talking about failure openly, so we can learn from it. I had no vision of actually submitting the article to Advertising Age. I credit two awesome people, Erin Grohs and Brittany Kotary who saw the potential in the piece and submitted it. I’m very grateful to them for that, as well as to my team who submitted insights that I packaged into the article itself.

At the TMC event in April, you plan to speak about “Journey Mapping for Marketers.” What do you consider to be your favorite thing about journey mapping?

It is a way to bring people together and get them focused on solving problems for the end customer or end user. It drives really important collaboration internally and gets cross-disciplinary teams rallied around the customer to create meaningful experiences and content.  Journey mapping helps us get out of our own way, get out of our own mindset and focused outward on our customers.

Do you have any specific advice for marketers who may have never created a journey map before?

You can do it! That is my only piece of advice.

Where do you see journey mapping and marketing going within the next five years?

Journey mapping within some organizations turns into, ‘Oh, look at this pretty map or this pretty artifact that we created,’ and there isn’t any action applied based on the activity of actually building the map.

So, my hope is that we continue to focus more on the insights and the actions from the journey mapping activity and focus less on just creating a really pretty artifact. Speed over perfection is important.

What is one major key takeaway that you hope the TMC audience leaves with after hearing your presentation?

The one key takeaway I hope they take home ties back to question five about becoming a successful marketer, and it’s that in order to truly understand your customers you have to be genuinely curious about who they are as humans. Journey mapping is one activity that can help you remain curious, and it’s a springboard for asking smart questions.

Caitlin is an awesome person to network with, and she has a lot of great advice and experience to share. If you’d like to reach out to her before the event, check out her website, Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I can’t wait to hear her presentation and learn about journey mapping on April 25. I hope to see you all there!

This blog was written for Triangle Marketing Club.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a successful salesperson? Or, just a great, well-rounded business professional in general? Well, Triangle Marketing Club presenter, Jack Kosakowski, knows just what it takes.  

During an interview I conducted with him, Jack shared some valuable knowledge relating to his sales experience, and he gave me a lot of great advice. For instance, he stressed the importance of giving back to others, being adaptable with change, networking with smart people, and continuously innovating.

I learned a lot about Jack during my conversation with him, and you can too at the TMC event on July 25th.

The Interview

It was a cold Monday afternoon, at least for me anyway. I was in the little town of Willow Spring, North Carolina and was about to call Jack Kosakowski, who was in Arizona at the time, to conduct a speaker interview for Triangle Marketing Club. Despite the fact that Jack will not be presenting at TMC until July, I wanted to talk with him as soon as possible to learn about his exciting career path. Due to the fact that we lived states apart from one another, we were unable to meet face to face, so we decided that a phone call would suffice.

After I had all of my interview materials in place, I dialed Jack’s number and eagerly waited while the phone rang. Once he answered, we greeted each other and discussed how we have both heard great things about one another thanks to our mutual connection, Chris Douglas. After chatting a bit, I explained the TMC speaker interview process and then we began the interview.

Could you tell me a little about yourself?

I was born and raised in Iowa so, I’m a Midwest boy. I currently now reside in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I came out here to go to school. I’m a 12-year sales veteran, I guess you could say, now almost 13, and essentially, I have been in all types of sales.

Google pay per click was my first sales job before anyone knew what or who that was. Then, I worked as an assistant director of admissions at a nursing school, so I worked in higher education. After that, I went into manufacturing sales and sold manufacturing equipment for a pallet rack manufacturer, then I got into the world of SaaS.

I was with Act-On for about two and a half years. I did about $1.3 million in revenue with the startup and the average deal size was about $9-12k so it was a pretty big accomplishment. I guess, per se, what I found was social selling, or what they call social selling these days, was the real deal. So I was in sales, and then I learned how to become a marketer, and the main reason was because I was selling marketing automation software to marketers. I knew nothing about marketing but knew a lot about sales and then I realized, I can’t sell to marketers until I knew what the hell marketers do.

So, I started to understand social media from a marketing perspective and then kind of evolved, left Act-On, and started the U.S. division of a global agency called Creation Agency. And actually, the owner of Creation Agency, which is based out of London, United Kingdom, was my customer at Act-On. So now what I do is run a digital agency of the U.S. division and we have seven of the Fortune 500 as clients.

There’s my story in a nutshell.

So what led to your desire to pursue a sales career path?

I have two degrees in hospitality and restaurant management. I did hospitality for a long time so I worked in every department of a hotel you can think of. Once I graduated college, I was going to go into the management and training program at Starwood Hotels. Right before I was supposed to go in, I met with the manager that was kind of getting me into the program.

I looked around his office and saw that he had pictures of his kids everywhere evolving age as they grew up. So I said, ‘Why does it look like you have an evolution of your kids all over your desk.’ And he said, ‘Because I live the life of my kids through pictures. Get used to it that is the lifestyle that you are choosing.’ And I said, ‘Nope, not going to happen.’ So I decided because my family has a background in sales, and they’ve all been pretty successful at it that I would go into sales.

I never looked back after that… that wasn’t the lifestyle for me.

What is your favorite thing when it comes to working in sales?

People. I love people, and I love solving problems and disrupting people’s mindsets. I love to see the outcome as a result of those that listen to me.

Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing in your free time? Do you have any hobbies?

I love to travel. I just got back from Paris and London. I’ve been to 6 different countries this year.

Do you mostly travel for your job or as more of a hobby?

Usually it’s for work. The company that I am a partner in they are based out of UK so a lot of times I will go over there. The other thing is that I do some international speaking. I just spoke in Warsaw, Poland a few months ago, and I have a few international gigs coming up in 2017.

Do you enjoy speaking?

Yeah, I do. It’s kind of grown on me. It’s a lot of work but, I do enjoy it. I’m running a company so it’s kind of tough to balance the two because it takes a lot of time from the business, but I love it. My passion is educating which is pretty much what I am doing when I am speaking.

After connecting with you on LinkedIn, I noted that you stated, “My goal each and every day is to add value to someone else’s day.” How do you go about accomplishing that daily goal?

In my role, I’m very fortunate to have a lot of people who want my time so one of the things that I try to be very aware of is giving away my time. It’s a little bit harder to do as I get more successful in business, but I try to give my time to the people that ask for it, amplify my message, or advocate for me personally or professionally. I try to give as many people my time to give back as I can. I get a lot of requests on LinkedIn of people that ask questions and so forth. My thing is just staying connected with the people who are the reason I get to live the lifestyle and generate the business that I do.

Could you tell me more about your experience working with the marketing automation company, Act-On?

When I started, Act-On had less than 100 employees. They had an excellent product but still today I think they kind of struggle with brand awareness. Some of the challenges were trying to sell a product that was, in my opinion, better than a lot of the competitors but you are trying to sell against brand recognition and trying to convince somebody that what they were seeing was actually real.

We do it on a daily basis. If you go out and try to buy macaroni, most people will pay more for the Kraft Macaroni because that’s what they know. It’s a branding thing. So, one of the toughest challenges in sales especially when you’re with a product that is new, a startup, is not a lot of people know about it. Not only do you have to sell the value of the product, but you also have to sell the value of the brand. That can be very tough when people don’t know who you are. There’s a correlation between trust and awareness, and it can be tough to convince people past that.

I’d also love to hear about your time with Creation Agency. What do you usually do on a daily basis?

I oversee seven employees, and we are managing four major clients and part-time three so we are trying to scale the business. I am pretty much doing every aspect of marketing, sales, content, management, client relations… you name it, I’m doing it. I have an amazing group of people that are around me that are part of this movement that we are trying to create but you know there is a lot of inner challenges. A lot of obstacles because what you think is right is typically never ever right. You always are kind of bobbing, moving, and trying to keep up with the change that happens on a daily basis. It’s sometimes like I say, ‘it’s minute by minute. You never know what is going to happen next.’

How do you usually go about keeping up with that change?

A lot of times it’s just about understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are and really evaluating what’s best. Not what you think is best, but what does the team as a whole think is best and understanding and educating yourself so you make the right decisions. Because a lot of times what happens is what we think is the right answer, because it is what all we know, is not always the case.

So it’s really just being adaptable to change and really listening to people that are around you. If you don’t do that, especially in a leadership role, you kind of stump yourself. You keep yourself from moving forward and sometimes you can be your own worst enemy by doing that.

Since you have a lot of experience using a marketing automation system, what is your opinion on the use of these systems?

That’s actually the main source of business for our agency. So what we do is run the marketing automation for companies. We are usually the team behind, for example, IBM we run their marketing automation in Europe.

We believe that marketing automation is not a “nice have” anymore it is a “must have.” If you’re not tying all of the different things you are doing in the digital world into one major source where all of the data flows, and you can’t market to your buyers or potential buyers on a one to one level based on their behaviors, then you are in big trouble in 2017.

Do you see that a lot of agencies are starting to implement that through their practices? Or do you see that a lot of agencies are still behind in that category?

Agencies are very far behind. Now, companies are starting to get it, but they don’t really understand all of the moving parts that are involved in order to be successful with marketing automation. Most people are sending an email or they are using one or two little components of marketing automation, but they don’t have the strategy, and they don’t have everything built around the strategy that they need to have a maximized true success through marketing automation.

With all of your experience, do you have any advice for marketing professionals such as myself?

Get around really smart people and have mentorship, especially for your age group in college. Get around the smartest people that you possibly can and give away your time. Trade value for value. A lot of time what I see… exactly what you are doing right now. You’re doing some internships and working with a really smart guy who has learned the ropes.

Get to know the right people, work in the weaves with brands and companies that are using marketing automation, and learn every aspect. Just eat up every single piece of information and apply it while you can. There’s nothing more valuable than learning and applying at the highest level at your age. So, you’re going to go really far for learning what you know right now because of your mentorship.

On the other spectrum, what advice do you have for someone who has been in the industry for a while?

You never stop innovating. I think if you want to get the competitive advantage, and you want to stay around long term, you have to understand that you never know everything. What you are doing always is going to change, and you need to change before everyone else figures out that they need to change.

Use innovation as your competitive advantage.

Without giving away too much of what you plan to present at the TMC event, what is the most important thing that you hope the TMC audience will learn from your presentation?

One of the things that I really want to get across and educate on is the power of digitally surrounding your buyers. So, being valuable everywhere that they live and encompassing that as a strategy. I think where a lot of marketers struggle is that they think they are going to do social or they’re going to do email, and what they do is they pigeonhole themselves into a strategy that is siloed. So understanding how to be everywhere at all times and stay in front of your buyers six months before they even know that they are ready to buy and do it in a way that organically brings the buyer to you over time when they are ready.

After the close of my interview questions with Jack, he mentioned to me that he enjoys knowing who will be in attendance at his presentations beforehand so he can tailor his message to the audience. He likes to research what companies the members are with, what are they doing now, and what should they be doing. Jack uses the audience’s own personal data to personalize the way that he presents.

I was given this amazing opportunity to pick Jack’s brain with multiple questions to learn about him and his fascinating career. Now, it’s your turn. Go ahead and connect with him on social to let him know you will be attending the TMC event on July 25th.

You can find Jack on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Also, check out his awesome Youtube channel!

This blog was written for Triangle Marketing Club.

You may wonder how Triangle Marketing Club pulls off such great events every month. To start, we have a spectacular team who devotes a lot of time and energy into making each event a success. Although, these individuals aren’t the only ones who are dedicated to our cause. Triangle Marketing Club has a great list of sponsors who contribute to the success of our organization.

Specifically, we would like to recognize Adapt Partners for their sponsorship with TMC and introduce this awesome group to our members. We can always count on seeing part of the Adapt Partners’ team show up at our monthly networking events. So if you haven’t gotten a chance to meet some of them, be sure to introduce yourself at the next event on November 29th!  

Adapt Partners

Adapt Partners is a technical SEO agency located in Cary, North Carolina. You may have heard of them before or have noticed their name on Moz’s Recommended List. They are among this elite list because of the hard-work and talent that they have demonstrated over the years. Of these 50 companies known for their SEO and Web Marketing, four are located in North Carolina, which includes Adapt Partners. Being placed on this list definitely sets this company apart from the rest and acknowledges them for their superb SEO talents.

Services

Although they are a full-service agency, their primary focus is on SEO. Adapt Partners has 3 full-time people on their team with a background in technical SEO, one being the CEO and the other two at the director level. Adapt Partners assures that each account team has a full-time dedicated technical SEO member with more than 10 years of experience. When a client chooses Adapt Partners, they are guaranteed to have a talented team to help them along their journey to success.

Services Offered:

• Technical SEO
• On-page SEO
  
• Local SEO
• Quality Link Building
• PPC
• CRO
• Online Reputation Management
• Marketing Automation
• UX Recommendations
• Content Strategy and Development

Adapt Partners creates customized packages for each of their clients. Each package is based on the specific needs of their client. For example, if a client is interested in a particular service, then they would incorporate it into their client’s retainer. Once the services are chosen, the client then would purchase a certain number of hours per month.

Clientele

This company is very passionate about their clients and will do what it takes to lead their customers to success. Prior to working together, Adapt Partners wants to fully understand their potential client’s business and goals. They firmly believe that if they aren’t helping their customers succeed in business, then they aren’t succeeding as an agency.

“Our philosophy is simple, we succeed when you succeed.” -Adapt Partners

Adapt Partners does not limit itself to only working with a specific target industry. In fact, they work with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small mom and pop stores. The clientele of Adapt Partners is very committed and must understand that it takes time to see true results such as ROI from SEO strategy. Before a business can see any improvement, it might take months of sustained effort and dedicated strategy to boost an online presence for that company and maximize ROI with SEO.

Do You Want to Work at Adapt Partners?

Adapt Partners is searching for a project manager to join their team. Check out the position here.

We love having you as a sponsor, Adapt Partners. Your dedication to our group does not go unnoticed, and we are thankful for your constant support.

This blog was written for Triangle Marketing Club.

Once every month, typically on a Tuesday, our outstanding group of marketers meets at an awesome workspace to network, listen to a great presentation, snack on some delicious appetizers, and drink yummy beverages. However, Triangle Marketing Club can’t take all of the credit for such great monthly events. We owe a lot of thanks to our wonderful sponsors!

One sponsor in particular that has been a tremendous supporter of our events is KnowledgeTree. We are so grateful for them and the great space they provide for us all to relax and network every month. If you haven’t gotten a chance to check out a Triangle Marketing Club event and see their company’s space, come out to their facility on November 29th and see for yourself!

So what is there to know about KnowledgeTree? Well, I got to find out first-hand from Senior Marketing Manager, Shelley Cernel.

 

KnowledgeTree

KnowledgeTree helps sales teams know what to say next to advance any prospect. The solution uses predictive analytics to analyze which content works best for any sales situation and automatically pushes winning content to where reps work — in their CRM and email. 

Also, KnowledgeTree helps marketing teams identify gaps in their content library and gain insight into what content is advancing deals and how. As a result, they are able to optimize their content creation efforts.

They work by their mission statement, “We help every sales team know what to say to advance any prospect,” which allows them to provide the best content and guidance for their clients.

 

The Story of the Beginning  

KnowledgeTree was founded as a content management solution. According to Shelley, the company identified one of their customers doing something “particularly interesting” with their solution. Meaning, they were assessing the Return on Investment, ROI, and tracking the content performance.

As a result, they realized that this analytics-driven approach to sales content was a massive market opportunity that their company could easily embrace.

 

Services

The two primary software products offered are KnowledgeTree Launchpad and KnowledgeTree Fusion.  

• KnowledgeTree Launchpad provides a web-based, enterprise-grade application for storing, managing, and sharing sales enablement and marketing content.
• KnowledgeTree Fusion assesses which sales enablement content is most effective for any sales situation. It pushes those recommendations to reps where they work.

Specifically, they created KnowledgeTree Fusion as a software to address the market opportunity for incorporating the use of analytics and sales content.

 

Customers

Like other companies, KnowledgeTree loves their customers. Their clients tend to have growing or large inside and field sales organizations.

Specifically, hyper-growth companies such as Zuora, RingCentral, and RealPage all depend on KnowledgeTree. As customers of KnowledgeTree, they are guaranteed to receive constant support with their sales processes and relevant content for their sales reps.  

 

Competitive Advantage

As a salesperson, it is essential to make sure you use the right content that engages your prospects. So why not get assistance from a company that can help you do just that? KnowledgeTree uses a dual focus on “predictive analytics for sales” and “embedding in a rep’s workflow” to help their clients accomplish their goals. As Shelley stated, “We see content use triple and prospect engagement double when sales teams use KnowledgeTree.”

We really appreciate all you do for us, KnowledgeTree. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you and your fantastic team! 

This blog was written for Triangle Marketing Club.