This episode features an interview with Heidi Bullock, CMO of Tealium, a company that connects data from all different sources so brands can better connect to their customers. Prior to Tealium, Heidi was the CMO of Engagio and Global VP of Marketing at Marketo. 

On this episode, Heidi talks about what it means to be CMO of Tealium, why the rise of data driven marketers is so important, and her top do’s and don’t for customer event marketing during a pandemic.

Key Takeaways

• Before thinking about marketing channels or tactics, know exactly who you are trying to market to.
• Be prepared for your playbook to change. It’s great to have plans & strategies, but they’re useless if they don’t adapt with the changing times. 
• Your website is fundamentally who your company is. As with your marketing team and company overall, you want to limit the amount of errors, blank 404 pages, etc. on your site. 

“You have to be able to tell these stories just in time with the right medium and not taking up too much of that, person’s either time or ability to digest something. And so taking a story and starting to break it up into either multiple components or segments, putting it into multiple mediums, whether it’s a video or audio or through social or long form and helping these things actually build on each other is really important.”

“When we break the mold and we do something that’s radically different and this might not be necessarily a campaign that might be more of a tactic than anything else. And it really is a by-product. Probably one of the things that I, that is very near and dear to my heart and what I believe in more so than just about anything else. And that is to have great people, almost everything we do starts with great people. How do you get the absolute best people in the world, excited to come and work with you, partner with you and share as enthusiastically the mission. That you believe that you’re on.”

“Our job is to make sure that when our sales teams go out. That we have created tailwind for them. And then we can increase the wind velocity to help them drive those opportunities through the funnel faster. And then we can help them drive more cross sells and upsells through that. As long as we have clarity on that, we are able to express that to our sales partners and we have then clarity of who we’re going after, why we’re going after them. What are we trying to solve? What are we trying to sell and a joint sales or marketing plan on how we’re going to accomplish that. We tend to come out significantly better than when we don’t have those things in place.”

“...Know where your audience is. And I know that seems obvious, but I think even in social, you often see people saying, ‘oh, we've got to do LinkedIn, Facebook, Tiktok', you name it. But if your audience isn't there, maybe that doesn't make sense. So I think before you even think about channels and tactics, make sure you know who you're marketing to. Who you're trying to engage with and where they are and then how they prefer to be communicated to.” 

“Folks forget this. And it’s a simple thing in marketing, but people like to buy from people that they know, and they have some sort of relationship with. And I think it was a good way for folks that were evaluating us to see what we’re like as a company and also meet some of our customers. So that works really well. And I would say that just again, for everybody listening in marketing was hard. I see how everything goes as the time changes too. Right. So we’re getting out of the pandemic a bit, hopefully, and now I’m seeing where people want to do more. In-person cause everyone’s a little bit zoomed out. So it’s just, when you feel like you have your playbook, it changes.”

“A first time, CMO, trying to figure out their demand gen strategy. Definitely have a strategy start there. Sometimes, I’m amazed at how many people do not have one and understand what your bookings goals are, have a plan there, but I would say that also the simplest advice. Work closely with your CFO, very, very closely on the goals, your budget, and make sure that you’re speaking the same language because a lot of people make that mistake. So, Hey, if you are able to give me a dollar, I can give you back 10. And I think having those kinds of conversations, keeping your metrics, uh, you might have more for your team, but keep it very simple with them, but make sure you speak in their lane.”