Inspired Marketing Magazine - Issue 10

ISSUE10 | WINTER2023
| WINTER2023
UNLOCKING
PERSONALIZATION
WITH UNITY CDP
WITH 4 SUPERPOWERS
IS IT TIME FOR A
CDP? 5 DEFINITIVE SIGNS
YOU’RE READY
PATHFACTORY
AND ELOQUA,
THE PERFECT
MATCH
STEPHEN STREICH
OF ORACLE ON THE EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORMS
AND THE IMPACT OF GENERATIVE AI

INSPIRED MARKETING MAGAZINE - 1 - REL ATIONSHIP ONE
CONTACT US
RELATIONSHIP ONE
1.763.355.1025
getinspired@relationshipone.com
relationshipone.com
—
At Relationship One, we empower
organizations to modernize their
marketing through strategy,
technology and data. With a core
staff of experienced marketing
consultants, integration specialists,
data analysts, and development
gurus, combined with our library of
AppCloud apps, we help companies
deliver personalized and engaging
experiences that drive loyalty and
revenue. Our team of experts brings
together deep industry knowledge
and technical expertise to help
clients achieve their marketing
and customer experience goals by
leveraging Oracle CX Marketing,
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and
Adobe Experience Cloud product
portfolios.
OUR MISSION IS SIMPLE —
INSPIRE SUCCESS.
CREDITS
MEGAN GAUL
Brand & Marketing Manager
ANNIE WIEGERS PHOTOGRAPHY
Cover Story Photos
PAGE 4
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
STORIES OF MARKETING INSPIRATION
COVER STORY
PAGE 7
ORACLE ON EVOLUTION OF CUSTOMER DATA
PLATFORMS AND THE IMPACT OF GENERATIVE AI
PAGE 17
HIBU ON EXECUTING A SUCCESSFUL
DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY
PAGE 21
PATHFACTORY ON CRAFTING THE ULTIMATE
AI ROADMAP FOR MARKETERS
PAGE 29
IHEARTMEDIA ON INTERNALLY AMPLIFYING THE
IMPACT AND HELPFULNESS OF MARKETING
07
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

59
51
PAGE 33
UNLOCKING PERSONALIZATION WITH
UNITY CDP WITH 4 SUPERPOWERS
JEFF HARKNESS
PAGE 35
IS IT TIME FOR A CDP? 5 DEFINITIVE SIGNS YOU’RE READY
EMILY EUBANKS
PAGE 39
BREAKING DOWN DATA SILOS: ORACLE’S UNITY CDP AS
A CATALYST FOR SEAMLESS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES
SARAH SCOTT
PAGE 41
UNIFYING DATA WITH ORACLE UNITY CDP
MELISSA SANTOS
PAGE 45
CDP: DISCOVER WHAT YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WITH ONE
EMILY EUBANKS
PAGE 47
MULTI-CHANNEL DELIVERY OF PERSONALIZED CONTENT
JEN YURMAN
PAGE 49
PATHFACTORY AND ELOQUA, THE PERFECT MATCH
MELISSA SANTOS
PAGE 51
FIVE FAVORITE FEATURES OF MARKETO
JEN YURMAN
PAGE 57
WHY YOU SHOULD BE EXCITED ABOUT
PATHFACTORY FOR REVENUE INTELLIGENCE
MELISSA SANTOS
PAGE 59
FIVE FAVORITE SALESFORCE MARKETING CLOUD FEATURES
NIC DRIS
PAGE 61
UNLEASHING THE POWER OF CONTENT INTELLIGENCE:
WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
JEN YURMAN
PAGE 65
RELATIONSHIP ONE’S DATA CLOUD APP:
UNLOCK THE POWER OF DATA
SARAH SCOTT
41
33

INSPIRE
SUCCESS

LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
Ron Corbisier
FOUNDER AND CEO | RELATIONSHIP ONE
As we embark on the 10th edition of Relationship One’s Inspired
Marketing magazine, it’s a moment to pause and reflect on the
incredible journey we’ve shared together. When we started our
Inspired Marketing Podcast in the spring of 2016, and this
companion magazine in the spring of 2017, our goal from the
outset was to give voice to world-class marketers revolutionizing marketing in our time. It was also, in
our small way, meant to foster a dialogue on marketing transformation - how technology will continue to
transform both how and the speed at which we “do marketing.”
Just a mere 5 years ago, in our Fall/Winter 2018 edition, I made the following comment:
Organizations large and small are investing heavily in consolidating their customer data from internal and
external systems alike. They are connecting data points across systems to assemble universal customer profiles
enriched with third party data. Similar efforts are enriching segmentation efforts with real-time queries to
power their martech platforms. While we are just in the early stages of this next wave of transformation, I
think it’s plausible to say that it will fundamentally change how we “do marketing.” It will impact not only
the tools we use, but also how we plan, orchestrate and optimize our marketing efforts.
Since then, we have seen an explosion of customer data platform (CDP) vendors, from a few dozen in 2018
to upwards of 200 now. Clearly, not all of those platforms are created equally. Most organizations are just
beginning the journey for adopting a CDP, in fact, most CDP vendors are just beginning the journey of
delivering fully functional solutions. A catalyst for that is a new wave of transformation, generative AI. A
year ago, on November 20, 2022, OpenAI launched their large language model-based chatbot, ChatGPT, and
in doing so, gained one million users in the first five days of its launch. Since then, they have added over one
hundred million users in less than a year.
Both of these transformative technologies are changing the way we “do” marketing. So much so that for
this issue, we’re doing something different. We’ve selected stories specifically because they focus on the
transformative power of customer data platforms and the impact of data and generative AI on marketers.
To begin the discussion, we sat down with Stephen Streich of Oracle to learn more about Oracle’s Unity
Customer Data Platform and how artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and generative AI will
impact how we plan, orchestrate and optimize our marketing efforts. Antoinette Ward shares how Hibu
balances the science and art of marketing when creating a successful digital marketing strategy. Christine
Polewarczyk of PathFactory explains there is no turning back when it comes to generative AI and how every
organization needs to have an AI roadmap. Jake Dworkis shares how he markets marketing internally and
drives success at iHeartMedia.
Finally, since this is an issue focused on two technologies that will continue to transform marketing in a
big way, customer data platforms and generative AI, we’ve included contributions from Relationship One
consultants to get you started and inspire you, too.
- INSPIRED MARKETING -
WE’VE SELECTED STORIES SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE THEY FOCUS ON
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORMS
AND THE IMPACT OF DATA AND GENERATIVE AI ON MARKETERS.

STORIES OF
MARKETING
INSPIRATION
—
AUTHENTIC STORIES REALIZING SUCCESS
Sharing stories of inspiration is what we do. This magazine
is full of ideas, best practices and innovative marketing
techniques that will inspire you to do your work.
Throughout our Inspired Marketing podcast, weʼve spoken with
modern marketing leaders across all industries to learn more
about their modern marketing journeys. We share these stories to
help fuel your inspiration, drive you to excellence and teach you
more about the marketing automation platforms you love.
This is always our favorite part of the magazine. Prepare
yourself for fresh ideas and knowledge from industry experts.
In this edition of the Inspired Marketing magazine, we will
learn from Oracle, Hibu, PathFactory and iHeartMedia.
Ò

- Cover story -
EVOLUTION OF
CUSTOMER DATA
PLATFORMS AND
THE IMPACT OF
GENERATIVE AI
STEPHEN STREICH IS THE GROUP VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR
ORACLE MARKETING. HE BRINGS OVER TWO DECADES OF EXPERTISE IN MARTECH,
ADTECH, AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOFTWARE. KNOWN FOR HIS ROLE IN THE
SUCCESSFUL IPO OF ELOQUA AND ITS INTEGRATION INTO ORACLE MARKETING CLOUD,
STEPHEN TALKS ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF ORACLE, HIGHLIGHTS THE ADVANCEMENTS
IN ORACLE’S UNITY CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM (CDP), AND PROVIDES PRACTICAL
EXAMPLES OF ELOQUA’S IMPACT ON SIMPLIFYING CUSTOMERS’ EXPERIENCES.
RELATIONSHIP ONE HOST, SCOTT INGRAM:
Today on the Inspired Marketing podcast, my
guest is Stephen Streich. Stephen is the Group
Vice President of Product Management for Oracleʼs
Marketing Solutions, and a long, long-time friend of
Relationship One. Welcome to the show, Stephen.
STEPHEN STREICH: Thanks, Scott. Happy to be here.
Iʼve definitely been a long-time friend of Relationship
One. Iʼve known you guys for a long time, and Iʼm really
pleased whenever we get a chance to work together.
SI: Absolutely, such a great collaborative relationship.
Youʼve been at this for a few minutes. Why donʼt we
start with you giving us a quick rundown through
your background and then what your current role
consists of, because I know that has expanded
recently.
SS: Yes, indeed. Iʼve been doing software product
management for about 25 years, or something close to
that now. I started in the late '90s. I came to it in an
interesting fashion. I actually studied Economics and
Political Science in University. I also taught English in
Korea for a year. When I came back to Toronto, I fell into
a role where I ended up helping design and build a very
bespoke Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for
a rights organization. Thatʼs how I fell into technology
and discovered product management. It wasnʼt a very
well-known discipline at the time, but then I ended up in
the supply chain planning world.
We were acquired by JD Edwards, who was acquired
by PeopleSoft, who was acquired by Oracle. Then after
three years or so at Oracle, I decided to leave and
joined a startup called Eloqua. That was in 2007. At the
time, Eloqua was something like maybe a little over a
hundred people, had some decent revenue, but marketing
automation was still very novel. We were pretty new, and
Software as a Service (SaaS) was pretty new. Salesforce,
Cornerstone on Demand, and a few other companies
were pioneering the concept of multi-tenant SaaS.
We started to grow that market, caught a good wave,
and went public in 2012. Two quarters later, we were
acquired by Oracle.
Over the years, I’ve expanded from focusing on Eloqua
to picking up other products along the way. In 2017, I
took a brief hiatus. I had the startup itch again, and I
joined a partner of ours at the time, PathFactory. I led
Engineering and Product there for two years. It was a
great experience, but I was lured back into Oracle in
2019 and have been here since. I am now responsible
for the whole marketing suite. We offer a comprehensive

customer data platform called Unity that includes valuable
components like behavioral intelligence and data science.
In addition, we have a Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
focused platform called Responsys, along with Eloqua
and other exciting innovations in the pipeline.
SI: Lots to talk about. Maybe weʼll get into some of the
product specific stuff. You and I could probably talk
for hours. We probably wonʼt go that long, so letʼs keep
this, for the most part, pretty future focused. I want to
talk about where you see the market. Where do you see
things going? I certainly want to touch on Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and maybe talk about some of the
ways that Oracle is drinking its own champagne and
using some of these marketing solutions itself. I know
thatʼs a lot. Where do you want to start?
SS: Oracle has been around for a long time, and the
ground has been moving under our feet, but we havenʼt
been standing still either. If you take Eloqua, as an
example, and you look at it today compared to where
it was—or what it was doing 10 years ago—there have
been some significant investments. There is also the
sense that if it isnʼt broke, donʼt fix it. We have numerous
customers who have been long-time users: people who
have been customers for 15 years, people who have
made their careers by going from place to place and
implementing and getting success using Eloqua.
We spent the last four years building from the ground
up an enterprise class Customer Data Platform (CDP)
that is very competitive, a leader in the industry.
Looking back at the past few years, marketing
automation has consistently been the core component
of any martech stack, whether it's Eloqua, Marketo,
Pardot, or any other platform. I think we were
realizing that your Marketing Automation Platform
(MAP) shouldnʼt be the center of all your customer
data. Back office data, front office data, third party
data, intent data: all of that stuff is very important.
Weʼve known this for years. For 10 years weʼve been
talking about the right content in the right place at
the right time. That story hasnʼt changed. What has
changed is the technology that we can use to help
enable that and help with the people and process
challenges. I think moving to more of a CDP-centric
kind of stack, whether itʼs a CDP or a data lake or a
data warehouse, or moving to more of a customer-
centric, profile-centric platform is key. You need that
data also to supercharge the AI pieces, which weʼll
talk about for sure. You need unified data to have a
consistent experience thatʼs relevant to a consumer, be
it a Business-to-Business (B2B) buyer or a B2C buyer.
So, the CDP has been a major initiative for us.
This might sound funny coming from a person whoʼs
responsible for a major marketing automation platform,
but the core capabilities of marketing automation, in
my opinion, have pretty much commoditized. Itʼs very
- ORACLE ON THE EVOLUTION OF CDPs AND IMPACT OF GENERATIVE AI -
Ò

hard for the average person to see a difference between
the platforms even though theyʼre there, and in specific
cases. My goal has been: how do we move beyond what
most people are doing? As product people, weʼre always
thinking at the top of the maturity curve when a lot of
the market is still maybe lower in the maturity curve.
So, how do we get those people up the maturity curve,
focus more on the people problems, and the process
problems, and the silos that theyʼre in? How do we break
them out of those silos and make them more capable,
making it easier for them to get more of the platform?
This is where weʼre investing a lot, so I can talk a bit
about how weʼre doing that. Thatʼs a big focus for me
right now. Itʼs moving beyond traditional marketing
automation and trying to converge sales and marketing
together. It really should be a unified process. It
shouldnʼt be thought of as separate silos. Marketing
Qualified Leads (MQLs) versus opportunities has
always created this rift between the two teams. If we
can break down those silos, I think weʼll give people a
lot more leverage.
SI: Lots of great stuff, lots to dig into. I think as
weʼve been on this journey together with many of
our clients, the importance of data has emerged.
When it was just marketing and it was so much more
email centric, it maybe wasnʼt as important, but now
weʼre trying to facilitate an entire journey, an entire
experience around these sets of tools. There aren't
just silos in businesses; there are silos in the data.
I think Unity is such a great word, because we are
trying to unify data and bring it all together so we
can make it that much more actionable. Where are
you with Unity today? Given this focus and emphasis
on data, I know youʼve been working for a few years
to build that solution. How is that going?
SS: Itʼs great. Weʼve got lots of live, very happy
referenceable customers across a number of verticals.
In particular, we have had some success in financial
services, automotive, and retail. A recent IDC report
specifically looking at CDPs from a financial services
perspective was just published about a month ago. If
you look at that report on their marketscape, we are the
bubble thatʼs far right on the top in front of everybody
else. So, weʼre getting the industry recognition, and
weʼre getting the customer logos as well.
If you go to the CDP Institute website that was founded
by David Raab, and you look at the definition of a CDP,
itʼs pretty comprehensive. If you take that definition
and you translate it to a lot of the other vendors in the
marketplace, youʼll see that a lot of people that are calling
themselves a Customer Data Platform are maybe more
focused on the activation, unification, or management of
the data itself. Very few cover the entire breadth from
ID resolution and unification to data management and
modeling, audience building, and then intelligence and
activation across all the channels. We cover all of that,
and we do it all on top of a platform at Oracle that weʼre
lucky enough to have, which is the autonomous database
and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). It has all these
built-in data science models, capabilities, and functions
that we can leverage. So, itʼs going well.
SI: Thatʼs great. I think thereʼs been a lot of
awareness over the last number of years about the
importance of data. Whatʼs really emerged as of late
is the importance or the opportunity that AI seems
to represent? How are you thinking about AI?
SS: Weʼve been infusing AI into the products for several
years. Weʼre maybe not as loud about it as some of the other
vendors, because we donʼt have a fancy name for it—like
some historical figure that is known to be intelligent or
smart. Whether itʼs Sensei or Einstein, weʼve never really
given it a brand. Marketing Cloud grew significantly
through acquisition, and Unity weʼve built in-house, but
Eloqua, Responsys, and other parts of the Marketing
Cloud were acquired. We have lifted and shifted all of
those products over to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and
part of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure includes all of these
AI, Machine Learning (ML), and data science services
that all the products now have access to.
For a number of years, weʼve had what you can call
predictive or declarative kind of data science models: your
traditional sort of statistical random forests, the kind of
a model to do next best action, predictive scoring, churn
propensity, things like that. Weʼve always tried to be
tactical about using artificial intelligence, or data science,
to solve a specific job or a specific problem, to accelerate
something, or to make something easier or better. Weʼll
continue to do that, but we cannot have a podcast right
now without talking about generative AI. What gets really
exciting is the partnerships that weʼve developed there and
the work weʼre doing now. We announced a partnership
with Cohere about six months ago. Cohere has world-
class Large Language Models (LLMs) in the same vein as
OpenAI, but with an enterprise focus. We have the Cohere
LLMs running in all of our Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
So now that becomes available to Eloqua, Unity or
Responsys as a capability that we can leverage. We have
some stuff coming out in our 24A release, which is early
next calendar year, in a couple areas that are around
summarization and generation of content. For example,
we're working on subject line generation whereby you can
give a prompt that says, "Write me a subject line about the
availability of flu shots in this area with an urgent tone."
You will get five results back, and you can choose the one
you want, or regenerate it, or personalize it, like add in
dynamic content and merge fields into it and so forth. I
think the summarization capabilities of AI are almost more
profound for marketers, especially for B2B marketers,
because B2B marketing is going to be very domain specific,
and itʼs going to be hard for a generic LLM to do a good
job of writing copy for that. But what you can do is take
a large data sheet and feed that into the model and say,
Ò

"Give me the top five bullet points that show the value
of this product." Or you can feed it the transcript from a
30-minute podcast and say, "Write a 400-word summary
of the main topics covered in the podcast" or "extract a few
quotes" or "give me five bullet points." You can then take
that 30-minute transcript and turn it into content for five
different channels in five different formats very rapidly,
with only a little bit of human editing. Itʼs really fun to
play with; its like having ChatGPT within the product.
I think it will really accelerate marketers' ability to get
stuff done.
SI: Awesome. This makes me curious just about
you and your day-to-day role. With the evolution of
these tools, has product management changed that
much? I have to imagine that a lot of what informs
your work is just the day-to-day conversations with
customers that you also have?
SS: Absolutely. Customers are a huge conduit of testing
ideas. One of the biggest jobs or characteristics of
successful product managers is having a good degree of
empathy, because you meet so many different types of
people who have different challenges or roles, and they
learn differently and may express themselves differently.
You can listen to a problem, but you have to be able
to then absorb it also. So, itʼs empathy plus critical
thinking; you have to be able to take that problem and
try to decompose it to what the problem really is. Itʼs not
that they need to move the piece of paper from pile A to
pile B, but why does the paper exist in the first place?
When you talk to lots of customers, you start to form a
sense of where the real issues are: in-process silos and
people being measured differently, people being incented
differently, and that itʼs not technology that has a hard
time solving some of those problems. However, you can
definitely build things that make it easier for people to
see eye to eye in processes. Generative AI, in particular,
becomes a bit of a research tool. You have to be aware
of its limited knowledge and hallucinations, but plugins
are making that better. I don’t do a lot of hands on
requirements writing these days, but I still do when I
have a particular idea I want to express to the team. Iʼve
experimented using ChatGPT with writing a lot of prose,
because itʼs easy for me to just write down my thoughts
and then asking it to summarize it, turn it into bullet
points, or turn it into user stories. It does a pretty decent
job. And then thereʼs the old Mark Twain quote: "If I had
more time, Iʼd write a shorter letter."
SI: Absolutely. Here ChatGPT, hereʼs a lot of content.
Please make me sound smarter.
SS: It allows you to write that shorter letter without
having to put in the effort to summarize it yourself.
SI: Thatʼs a great point. Going back to some of those
customer conversations, Iʼm curious about what
are the most interesting things youʼre hearing, or
have there been some particular themes that have
really got your attention?
SS: A lot of it, I think, has been validation of where
weʼre going in terms of trying to not just focus on
sales and marketing alignment, but try to really
get at the root of the problem, which is they speak
different languages—MQLs and Sales Qualified
Leads (SQLs) versus opportunities and so forth.
Itʼs really embracing the model that Forresterʼs been
talking about for a while. I donʼt want to call it
like an Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy,
because ABM is one strategy and itʼs a good one, but
itʼs not the end all and be all. Itʼs starting from the
perspective of when youʼre talking about selling into
a customer base, or cross-sell or upsell, start from the
perspective of target accounts with intent, need, and
what are the problems they have to solve. Itʼs almost
like everythingʼs an opportunity.
When youʼre doing a target account type campaign,
youʼre just starting with an unqualified opportunity,
nurturing it, and trying to see if there is engagement
or relevance. If youʼve got your data house in order,
youʼre not spraying and praying; youʼre targeting your
ideal customer profile and matching a solution with
a problem they have, which should result in better
engagement. Then you are monitoring that engagement,
identifying an emerging buying group, and passing
that information over to sales at that level. Hereʼs
an emergent opportunity for this product. Here are
the people that are matrixed in and have been active
in what theyʼve done. This makes it really easy for
sales to continue the conversation as another channel
of engagement versus hereʼs an MQL, and, okay, well
why is it qualified? Maybe the salesperson will try to
qualify it some more. Maybe they wonʼt; maybe theyʼll
just go and open up their own fresh opportunity based
on the fact they saw the MQL instead of converting
it, and like all those problems. So people are saying,
yes, this is still a challenge. At Oracle Cloud World in
Vegas, One of our customers was on stage explaining
how he could not get salespeople to engage with the
MQLs, so what he did was, instead of passing them a
lead, he created tasks and a next best action. So rather
than it being an MQL that they should follow up on,
hereʼs a task thatʼs been assigned to you with a next best
action of following up with this potential customer on
this topic. Just by framing it a little bit differently, the
follow-through became massively better.
SI: Fascinating. You always love hearing those
stories, and sometimes itʼs such little things. Itʼs the
little nuances; itʼs the unique ways that we use the
technology. Iʼm curious about that: whether inside
Oracle, or we can just talk about clients that youʼve
seen that are doing just really remarkable things,
Ò

what are some of the best ways youʼve seen this
solution set getting used?
SS: There are so many interesting things that people
have done over the years, and with generative AI, it will
only accelerate. There are some that stick in my mind.
This goes back probably five or six years ago. One of
our clients in the Nordics created a dynamic kind of
slot machine gambling game on a landing page. It used
dynamic content from Eloqua with some JavaScript, and
it was gamifying basically: collecting information by the
user based upon what theyʼre interested in. So, instead of
a form, you pulled this virtual jackpot lever, and things
spun around and asked you a different question. Every
time you answered a question, you got another pull of
the lever to potentially win a Starbucks gift card, or
something like that. It was all done using technology
native to Eloqua, but it enabled them to build up a
profile of these contacts, to know more about them in a
progressive profiling way that was engaging and fun, and
understand if they had a particular need. Basically, they
were doing Budget, Authority, Need, Timing (BANT)
discovery dynamically. That was an interesting use of
technology, in general and it tends to be where people
are using the technology creatively.
Then thereʼs examples like a joint customer of ours,
Paciolan. They have 120-odd instances of Eloqua—
one for every college sports franchise they manage
or venue. Whatʼs interesting is their scale. Theyʼve
templated and rolled out this process whereby they can
enable marketers at 120 of these different schools to
execute pretty sophisticated marketing campaigns and
capture information from their fan base and from the
student body and the surrounding region without a lot
of technical skill being necessary. Theyʼre centralizing
all the management of the operations, but over 120
instances, pushing templates out to all those instances. I
think thatʼs pretty cool, just because of the scale of the
problem that theyʼre solving there.
Ò
"MOVING TO MORE
OF A CDP CENTRIC
KIND OF STACK IS
KEY. You need that
data to supercharge
the AI pieces. You need
it to have a consistent
experience thatʼs
relevant to a consumer,
be it a B2B buyer or a
B2C buyer."

Our automotive customers always do interesting things
too. One of our automotive customers is integrating
telemetry from the vehicle. Internet of Things, (IOT),
information is being sent into the customer data
platform so you know how far the car is driven or
whether it needs an oil change. They have all the
information about the vehicles, including the warranty
and the lease cycle. They send all that information to
a service department. Also, if someone comes into a
dealership and theyʼre already a customer, they can
pull up all that information about the car directly so
the sales rep since the dealership has access to all that
information. So, itʼs kind of cool.
SI: Great, great stuff. The Paciolan story for me is
personal and fun. Theyʼre actually getting closer to
200 instances at this point. I actually went to their
user conference earlier this year. It reminds me of
those early days when we were together at Eloqua,
and this was kind of this new emerging thing. What
is so great about their marketplace is that everybody
is in exactly the same space. Itʼs like we are selling
tickets and season tickets to our fans and alumni.
Theyʼve created this space where theyʼre sharing
ideas back and forth, so the rate that they are
evolving and adopting best practices is magnified.
Itʼs absolutely such a fun thing to watch.
SS: Yes, thatʼs been a great success for us, obviously.
You think of Eloqua as a predominantly B2B marketing
automation platform, but the reality is that probably
about 30% of our customers sell through a channel or
have B2C considered purchases. Thatʼs very visible in
the sports vertical. I think weʼve got over 40 different
national sports franchises in North America alone
across the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Major League Soccer.
They all come together as a group and share ideas, too,
because they all know each other. And because they work
in different markets, they donʼt really compete against
each other. If you are the Chicago Bulls, youʼre not
worried that the Seattle Seahawks are going to take your
customer. Somebodyʼs not making a choice on seasons
tickets between those two markets. So, youʼre more than
happy to share best practices and share ideas. Some of
this stuff is starting to happen at the league level, too.
The really big markets tend to control their own stuff,
but then the smaller markets maybe get some technology
from the league level. Itʼs a great opportunity for a CDP
play there as well.
SI: Absolutely, and maybe Iʼll drop a little bit of a
tease here. Weʼre actually working with Paciolan on
doing a panel with some of their customers to talk
about some of these best practices. My favorite one
that I heard while at their conference is, itʼs best not
to do a survey of your fans after you lose a game. So,
they just donʼt do it. For what thatʼs worth, maybe
thatʼs helpful for folks out there.
Stephen, like I said at the top, thereʼs so much we
could talk about. Is there anything else thatʼs just
really top of mind for you right now that you think
is important for us to touch on?
SS: I think itʼs what I was saying around focusing on
the people and process challenges in technology. We
know the platforms are all quite capable. They have
positive and negative aspects to every one of them, but
the major platforms are pretty capable based upon what
people need them to do. Where I think the opportunity
to really benefit our customers is in making their lives
easier from an adoption and an education perspective.
We focus a lot on building functionality into the
platform that is more prescriptive and more guided
in terms of how to execute a common marketing
tactic. Weʼre using ourselves internally at Oracle as an
example, because weʼve been trialing this and using it
internally. Eighty percent of the marketing programs
that we execute out of Eloqua at Oracle across all of
our product lines, tech software, middleware, database
are one of three types. Itʼs either a multi-step nurture;
itʼs an event invitation of some sort; or itʼs a product
update type of thing, like a newsletter. Those three
tactics, alone I think, account for something like 80%
of the campaigns. Eloquaʼs very flexible with campaign
canvases, orchestration canvases, and drag and drop to
do whatever you want, or create very complex journeys.
The reality, though, is that most of the time people are
doing these very repeatable things. Rather than require
somebody to do that on a canvas, why not walk them
through the process?
This is a more guided prescriptive wizard approach
where you abstract the complexity. If itʼs a targeted
account campaign, you can start with: who do you want
to target? What product do you want to sell? Then based
upon the product, you can identify programmatically
(using artificial intelligence and Unity) you can say,
"Find me people that have a propensity for this product
in this industry, in this region." It will identify those
lookalike accounts for you so that you can say, well
thatʼs the audience that I can target and now maybe I
can refine that audience a little bit. The next step is:
what are you going to say to them? Thatʼs where you can
have your content repository, which has been not just
manually tagged by products, regions, success stories,
and so forth, but can also be read by natural language
processing (NLP) so it can be semantically tagged so
you know what the content is about and content gets
matched to the audience. Hereʼs an email template;
hereʼs a landing page template. Execute the campaign
and start tracking the behavior at an opportunity level,
not at a lead level. Weʼve turned all that into a single
process flow that anybody without any real marketing
automation knowledge or expertise can execute. So,
that means 200 field marketers around the world that
normally arenʼt in marketing automation can now run
Ò

these campaigns very easily, or a sales BD team. Weʼre
building other examples of these tactics, as we call
them — event invitation, webinar, multi-step nurture—
so the flexibility of the canvas will always be there,
but weʼre really just trying to make the adoption of
these tactics easier so that people have more time to be
strategic and try new things.
SI: Love it. Iʼve got some clients that are going to care
about those very things. Thatʼs really important,
really helpful. Itʼs a whole other level of ease of use
as one thing, almost done for you. This is going to
do all of the thinking: just give us the correct inputs
and weʼll make the rest happen, right?
SS: Yes, absolutely.
SI: Beautiful. Stephen, the last question I always ask:
we call the show Inspired Marketing, and I would
love to know what is it that inspires you?
SS: A lot of inspiration can come from a lot of different
corners, but I would say that what really inspires me is
being confronted with a difficult problem and having to
figure out a way to solve it. I enjoy applying those critical
thinking skills; itʼs a left brain, right brain kind of a job
where you need to be creative and you also need to be
technical. I work with a lot of developers and architects,
and they can be very inspiring because theyʼre incredibly
intelligent in what theyʼre building. Interestingly enough,
Iʼve been around them for 20 years so Iʼve picked up a
lot. Even though Iʼm not an architect, I think sometimes
coming maybe from more of the creative side I can see
a solution thatʼs not apparent to the architects. So, being
more on the product management side, and while Iʼm
technical Iʼm not an engineer, I really enjoy working
with the architects on tough problems because they can
bring a different kind of perspective and I often come up
with ideas that they perhaps havenʼt considered. So, those
days at work are good days. You feel very inspired at the
end of the day. And then, of course, in my private life itʼs
mostly family life. Iʼm a girl dad; I have three daughters.
One of them is just about to go off to university, so
theyʼre at different kinds of levels in their teenage years.
Just watching them grow up and mature, and starting to
have adult conversations with them is a pretty cool thing.
SI: Very cool. Iʼm in exactly the same spot: two girls
and one about to go to college. So, we need to keep
working, keep those tuition bills paid that are coming
up. Stephen, thank you so much for inspiring us and,
for all the great work you do. We appreciate it.
SS: Thank you very much. Ò
Ò

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RELATIONSHIP ONE HOST, SCOTT
INGRAM: Today on the Inspired
Marketing podcast, my guest is
Antoinette Ward. Antoinette is the
Vice President of Marketing for Hibu.
Welcome to the show, Antoinette.
ANTOINETTE WARD: Hello.
SI: I am really looking forward to
digging into this, but why donʼt we
start with just a little bit of context.
Why donʼt you tell us about yourself,
your role, and about Hibu for those who
arenʼt familiar?
AW: Sure. My name is Antoinette Ward. I
work at a company called Hibu. I am based
out of the Greater Philadelphia area, and
Iʼve been at Hibu now for 11 years. I lead
our marketing organization, marketing
strategy, and corporate marketing team.
Prior to that, I spent time in financial
services in the capacity within marketing
teams, product marketing, and program
management. In total, I have over 20
years of marketing and marketing strategy
experience under my belt.
SI: You have a ton of experience as a
marketing leader and a strategist. Why
donʼt we start by talking about what
really any business, whether a small
business or a larger corporation, should
be considering when theyʼre thinking
about their digital marketing strategy?
AW: Let me first start by saying I failed
to mention a little bit about Hibu, which
I think dovetails nicely into the question
that you just asked me. As I said, Iʼm Vice
President of Marketing at Hibu, but for
those of the listeners who may not be aware
of who Hibu is, we are a leading provider
of digital marketing solutions for local
businesses, and we service those businesses
across the U.S. We provide our Hibu clients,
the business owner, with integrated digital
marketing solutions that ultimately help
them succeed in business: get them more
leads, help them convert, have a better
return on their investment, and ultimately
make digital marketing easy.
ANTOINETTE WARD
VICE PRESIDENT OF
MARKE TING
HIBU
HIBU
EXECUTING A
SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL
MARKETING STRATEGY
ANTOINETTE WARD, VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING AT HIBU, HAS OVER 20 YEARS OF MARKETING
EXPERIENCE AND WORKS WITH HER COLLECTIVE TEAM TO IMPROVE ORGANIC TRAFFIC, KEYWORD
RANKING, SEO LEAD TRAFFIC, AND MORE. IN THIS EPISODE, ANTOINETTE SHARES HOW TO BALANCE
BOTH THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF MARKETING, WHY EVERY MARKETER NEEDS TO EMBRACE
AUTOMATION, AND UPCOMING MARKETING TRENDS MARKETERS NEED TO BE AWARE OF.

And so, to your question, what should any business, small
or large, small business or corporate, be considering
when they think about their digital marketing strategy? I
would summarize it and simplify it down to three things.
I think marketers, and business owners today who are
running their marketing need to ensure three things.
They need to consider who their audience is, understand
the budget, and prepare for the content. So, audience,
budget, and content.
Itʼs funny, as I was preparing for this, I thought back
to the early 2000s when I was early in my marketing
career in financial services and direct mail was king. It
was all we did within a financial services perspective
and still today you get a lot of credit card offers via
direct mail. It was around lists, offer, and creative. For
a digital marketing audience, itʼs like that list. Your
consumer and target audience are going to ultimately
define your marketing channels. Once you understand
where your audiences are searching and surfing for your
products and services, and you know your budget, which
was number two, it really sets up anyone for success and
solidifies their goals. Understanding your audience will
also support the strategy around your content. Itʼs going
to be important to understand who your audience is,
your target audience, where people are searching, and
which channels theyʼre in to define your content. You
must know all those things first before you define your
content.
SI: Yes, thatʼs so good, though. There are so many
moving parts in marketing, and thatʼs a simple
framework to sort of think about and just go back
to the basics. I need to figure out these three things
and then we can get into all the complexities, right?
We do a lot of work together in the marketing
automation space. Letʼs talk about that. How is
marketing automation important to your business
today? Or important to business in general? Again,
kind of in that small to large context.
AW: The concept of marketing automation, and I may
sound redundant in answering the questions because Iʼll
constantly say whether you are small or large, whether
youʼre an enterprise marketer like me working in
corporate America, or youʼre trying to figure out your
digital marketing strategy as a small business owner,
marketing automation is really something that everyone
should consider because itʼs extremely important today.
It takes a lot to run a small business. Fortunately, there
are advancements in technology that have made it
possible for businesses of all sizes to automate many of
the necessary marketing tasks that we have. Essentially,
the term marketing automation could mean something
different depending on the size of your business and
your goals and objectives, but ultimately the one thing
that it does do is it increases efficiency within any
organization. It allows any business to create a better,
more personalized experience for their customers.
I pulled a 2021 State of Marketing Automation report,
which identified the top five reasons for exploring
marketing automation. In the report it says that
marketing automation streamlines sales and marketing
efforts and increases customer engagement, improves
the customer experience, reduces manual tasks, and
could increase lead capture and nearly 50% of marketers
agree that automation software saves time and improves
personalization capabilities. To put that into context,
marketing automation could be as simple as having an
automated tool that helps you engage with your clients
at the right time, to send out offers with a plan, and
to be able to ask for reviews more proactively without
having to think about it. Thatʼs just one small example
of how a small business owner could use automation in
their favor.
SI: You just mentioned reviews, and I think thatʼs
such an important element. Can you talk about just
why thatʼs important? Maybe even a little bit about
getting them and sharing them as a business.
AW: You donʼt have to be a marketing expert to understand
the importance of customer reviews for businesses of any
size, and the importance of getting them and sharing
them. I think we all know how important it is for
businesses to manage their reputation online, and that
the information and reviews that current and potential
customers come across about any business could make all
the difference when it comes to choosing that business
over their competition.
Iʼm a data girl, and thereʼs a stat that talks about 90%
of individuals researching a company online before
deciding to purchase that product or that service. A
strong online reputation, which customer reviews are a
huge component of, is almost required to do well and to
be successful. Itʼs extremely important, and itʼs important
that we as marketers and as business owners respond to
both positive and negative reviews and use reviews to
only get better and improve upon the things that may be
perceived as opportunities based on that feedback.
SI: I think that responding is such a good point
because it just shows you care, right? Youʼre engaged;
we like to thank our happy customers. If somebody
had a challenge, we want to show that we care that
maybe things didnʼt go the way they hoped they
would; now we want to fix it.
AW: Absolutely. My husbandʼs a small business owner
as well. I mention that often. Heʼs in the home services
vertical, and his name is his brand, literally. As a small
business owner, your brand is very important and
personal to business owners. There are times where
not every piece of feedback will be positive. I had to
coach him to say, thatʼs okay, too. That shows youʼre not
stacking the cards in your favor as a brand, and that
there is diversity of review scores. I think that makes
- STORIES OF MARKETING INSPIRATION -
Ò

a company also seem real and genuine as well, especially if
youʼre acknowledging that negative review and responding to
it accordingly. So, getting reviews and responding to reviews
is great, but also realizing that itʼs good to have the real, the
good, and the ugly so long as itʼs balanced and you know
youʼre being proactive with that feedback.
SI: I used to work for a company that sold a reviews
platform, so I know way too much about this, but itʼs the
negative reviews that sell. Here's an example I used to give
a lot: I might read a review about a watch, and somebody
might complain this watch is too heavy. It just weighs me
down. I really feel it on my arm. Thatʼs exactly what I
want. For some people, their negative is somebody elseʼs
positive, or they see that if thatʼs the worst thing about this
company, about this product, about this solution, thatʼs not
a problem for me. This is perfect; letʼs go.
AW: I like that. Shameless plug, but Hibu offers a similar
solution for the business owner to do just that: to be proactive
in managing their online reputation.
SI: Thatʼs fantastic. Iʼm curious, do you see marketing as more
of an art or more of a science?
AW: Itʼs both. Itʼs 50/50. I think itʼs an art and
a science. The reason that I say that is yes, there
is the design, the creative, the copy, the feel
good, the look good components to marketing.
But then thereʼs also the operational elements
to it: the data, the analytics, the tracking, the
reporting, the tools, the systems integration. I
mentioned Iʼm a data-driven marketer, so thatʼs
where the science comes into it. To maximize
and really be efficient with your marketing
dollars, there must be a science to it. There
must be numbers, there must be measurement,
and there must be an appropriate method to it
to make informed decisions. Thatʼs all part of
the science, right? Looking at your numbers,
doing A/B testing, and doing all those things is
important. Itʼs absolutely both.
SI: Letʼs lean into the data side just a little bit
more, because around here at Relationship
One, we think of ourselves as marketing
geeks. Not to discount the art side, but we
tend to focus more on the data side. How
do you think about the data? What is the
importance of data in marketing?
AW: Data is my fuel. Data is a marketerʼs fuel.
Data should be any marketing strategyʼs fuel.
At Hibu, we really reinforce the importance of
transparency with our clients. We have a client
dashboard that lays out performance with many different
angles to look at it. Data should fuel the marketing strategy. It
should drive budget; it should drive the marketing channels.
It really drives everything. I said to my team, when I came on
and started leading the marketing organization, that we donʼt
do anything without data; weʼre not making gut decisions.
Now, sometimes there might be days where thereʼs a time
and a place for a gut decision, or it feels good, or thatʼs just
what I like. But a lot of times, it must be backed with data.
Currently, itʼs too expensive to not rely on data to help inform
marketing strategies—and not just data of the campaign
success, but consumer behavior. Youʼve got to stay on top of
all those data points to fully understand how it will influence
your strategy and where your attention and focus should be.
SI: Well, these days, thereʼs more data for us to capture
and so many more ways that we can use it. I wonder,
what are some of the biggest trends or the changes to
digital marketing that youʼve seen in the past few years
that marketers and business owners should be aware of
and consider?
AW: I am not going to take credit for this answer, but Forbes
recently put out an article that summarizes the 10 Marketing
Trends and Predictions for 2023. I found three that I felt
would be most relevant for this discussion.
The first trend, and the biggest change in digital marketing
that I feel business owners and marketers alike should be made
aware of and consider, is just managing digital expectations.
Meaning the customer experience has progressed to
include all digital aspects. When companies think about
that experience, the digital component of your customerʼs
experience must be a key factor. Asking questions about how
are you managing digital expectations like response time to
customer inquiries, as an example. Make sure your internal
teams and everyone that works in the business is set up for
success. So, managing digital expectations is a trend and a
key thing to stay watchful of as we round out 2023 and go
Ò
“THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
HAS PROGRESSED TO INCLUDE
ALL DIGITAL ASPECTS. WHEN
COMPANIES THINK ABOUT THAT
EXPERIENCE, THE DIGITAL
COMPONENT OF YOUR
CUSTOMER'S EXPERIENCE
MUST BE A KEY FACTOR.”

into 2024. Ensure youʼre set up for success as a business
for managing expectations, which dovetails into the fact
that there are different behaviors that consumers have
in 2023 than they had before, and different expectations
they have for a business. Do you have a chat? Can I chat
with you? This is versus having to pick up the phone, as
a simple example.
The second trend, I would say, is there has been a shift
in spending for consumers and our customers, whomever
your customer is. We saw that a lot of purchasing patterns
have pivoted, and the way people were spending during
Covid changed. I think that change is a trend that we are
starting to see with different purchase patterns, again, as
we round out 2023 and into 2024. The report says, “In
response to this shift in spend, marketing leaders will
need to adjust accordingly to meet consumers where they
are with even more pressure to deliver practical value
when buyers are being more selective.” Weʼre just more
selective these days. You must ensure youʼre delivering
value and showing that value, which also blends in with
the expectation that thereʼs a kind of a trend there.
The third trend is prioritizing and not forgetting about
retention over new lead acquisition. Keeping clients
much longer, keeping your customers longer, retaining
them, and referring more business really help a business
currently—not just with that new lead acquisition, which
is hard because everythingʼs shifting and pivoting, but
keeping those clients happy and engaging them, which
also is part of marketing automation and using it to
your advantage. Using offers and data points to help
you understand whatʼs important would all support that.
I would encourage marketers like myself and those in
corporate America as well as the business owner listening
to this podcast: think about both of those strategies. Are
you set up with the tools and the solutions to do that?
Most likely, as a business owner, you may not be, because
it takes a lot of time. Itʼs very confusing, and who wants
to deal with that when you have your business to run.
I would encourage everyone to look for partners that
can help you manage through and navigate through
this entire complex world that I live in every day called
digital marketing.
SI: Oh, such great callouts. I especially like the idea
of managing expectations. I think we can tie a couple
of things together here. When it comes to retention
and when it comes to reviews, Iʼll go back to another
review story: satisfaction is really a function of
expectation. You and I could have the exact same
experience, but if my expectation was high and the
actual experience was below that, I might be upset;
I might be dissatisfied. You had the exact same
experience that I did, but your expectations were
lower. Youʼre like, that was great. When you think
about things like the chatbot that you called out:
maybe somebodyʼs not going to get a live response, so
you include a note on there that says, "Hey, typically
weʼre able to get back to you within X period," and
you just make sure you get back to them sooner than
that.
AW: Thatʼs right.
SI: I want to get into just a couple of little personal
things as we wrap up. I would love to know, what
are the tools and the apps that you canʼt live without
both personally and professionally?
AW: This is such a hard question because I might just be
an anomaly. Professionally, I think that our marketing
organization is as successful as we are because we have
a project management tool. It is something that I pride
myself on introducing to our team. Before that, we were
literally living in email land. As a marketer, find a project
management tool that supports your teamʼs objectives. On
the personal side, I live by my calendar. Iʼm an Android
girl, Iʼm not an iPhone girl, and I have the Note 20. It
comes with a stylus, and I take things out and I write
notes. I live and die by my calendar for both my life and
my husbandʼs life as a business owner. Then I would say
a sound integrated customer relationship management
(CRM) tool. CRM, plus your MAP, your marketing
automation platform. If those two things were integrated
and singing, the world would just be a beautiful place. Iʼd
like to wake up and thereʼd be no issues to deal with, but
data is tough. A project management tool, my calendar,
and just a really nice integrated CRM with my MAP for
those corporate marketer: these are the tools that I could
not live without in my day to day.
SI: Love it. And something tells me that you are a
very productive person given that those were your
examples. Well, Antoinette, we call the show Inspired
Marketing, and I always like to ask as our closing
question, what is it that inspires you?
AW: Opportunity inspires me. Thereʼs so much more that
we could do individually as people, professionally within
our careers, and as a citizen within the community.
I am inspired that if I see something, Iʼm going after
it. And I feel as though I can do that professionally
and personally. Iʼm inspired by just the shift in a lot
of marketing trends, trends out in the world, and the
opportunity to connect with people through marketing.
I am inspired by diversity, inclusion, and belonging. So,
those are the things that inspire me that I hope translate
into who I am as a marketer and a professional.
SI: Antoinette, thank you for inspiring us today.
AW: Youʼre welcome. Thank you for having me. Ò
Ò

RELATIONSHIP ONE HOST,
SCOTT INGRAM: Today on the
Inspired Marketing podcast, my
guest is Christine Polewarczyk,
who is the Senior Vice President of
Product Marketing and Research at
PathFactory. Welcome to the show,
Christine.
CHRISTINE POLEWARCZYK:
Thank you, Scott.
SI: Christine, you have a super
interesting background. Why donʼt
you share a little bit of your history
and then talk about your role at
PathFactory?
CP: Sure, Iʼd love to. I consider myself
sort of a native digital marketer and
content strategist. Iʼll talk about that in
a minute, but Iʼm currently Senior Vice
President of Product Marketing and
Research, as you said, at PathFactory. Iʼve
been here a little over a year now and
lead everything from messaging and
positioning to thought leadership, analyst
relations, and competitive intelligence—
really anything that you would typically
see in an Associate Product Marketing Manager (APMM)
type of function. And then prior, I was at Forrester via the
SiriusDecisions acquisition. For over seven years, I launched
and led what was called the B2B Content Strategy and
Operations Research practice there and advised Business-
to-Business (B2B) Chief Marketing Officers and their teams
for a long time on how to implement best practices and
modernize their content engines for the world that weʼre in
today with modern buying behaviors.
Prior to that, I got started very early in my career. If
you go way back, stuff thatʼs not even on my LinkedIn
profile, I was a Public Relations assistant and in investor
relations for a while, which is not my thing, and did
some marketing copywriting. I eventually landed at
TechTarget, which a lot of people and anyone in B2B tech
have probably heard of. I started there as an assistant
editor and worked my way up over seven and a half years
to executive editor and ran a variety of specific B2B
tech websites for Information Technology professionals
CHRISTINE
POLEWARCZYK
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUC T
MARKE TING AND RESE ARCH
PATHFAC TORY
PATHFACTORY
CRAFTING THE
ULTIMATE AI ROADMAP
FOR MARKETERS
CHRISTINE POLEWARCZYK IS THE SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT MARKETING AND RESEARCH
AT PATHFACTORY. CHRISTINE HAS OVER 20 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN B2B MARKETING, CONTENT,
AND OPERATIONS. BEFORE JOINING PATHFACTORY, CHRISTINE HELD VARIOUS MARKETING AND
CONSULTING POSITIONS ACROSS START-UPS AND LARGE ENTERPRISES, INCLUDING SDL LANGUAGE,
CISCO, IRON MOUNTAIN, PTC, SALESFORCE, SAP, AND TECHTARGET.

and leaders. As I said, thatʼs where I learned how to do
content marketing and digital marketing before they had
names. TechTarget at that time was really on the leading
edge of moving from a print publisher model to a digital
publishing model within the tech world.
Next I used that experience to transition into global
marketing roles, doing content strategy work at companies
like Cisco and a supply chain software company called
Manhattan Associates, gaining my Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) chops, as well, across those different
roles. Eventually I landed in a role running marketing for
a division of SDL Language where I really got to apply
everything I had learned in all those various, even a social
strategy role. I came back to TechTarget for awhile running
social and online communities and used that to feed into
being a marketing leader who truly was trying to take an
audience-centric integrated marketing approach through
more of an emphasis on digital channels than a lot of
people were using back at that time, which was around
2012-13. I feel like I have a well-rounded background and
have touched virtually every aspect of marketing.
Throughout my career, I had to backfill skills around
in-person events, print, direct mail, and similar skills
that are typically part of a more traditional marketing
approach because I started out more natively in the
digital world. All of thatʼs led me here to PathFactory
where Iʼm really excited to now be influencing product
innovation and helping tell our story to the market so
people really understand what content intelligence is,
which I can talk about more if you like, and why itʼs so
important in the current environment weʼre in, where
weʼre trying to grow enterprise value (EV) revenue for
our businesses.
SI: Well, I suggested that your background was super,
and it is, but Iʼm curious about, given your journey
and especially the seven years that you spent as an
analyst at Sirius and then at Forrester, what was it
that brought you to PathFactory?
CP: Last year I was on the main stage at Forrester B2B
Summit talking. I had a session called Time Travel and
Transformation: The Future of B2B Content. And I
was saying, to the attendees, look, this is where weʼre
going to be by the end of this decade. Weʼre going to
have to have B2B content engines that can deliver
highly contextualized, hyper-relevant experiences and
personalization for our key audiences. And weʼre also
going to have to think about content as data and learn
how to better leverage that data and the engagement data
thatʼs generated as people interact with that content itself.
And then weʼre also going to have to contend with, what I
called at the time, merging of human and machine, which
was really speaking to the rise of artificial intelligence
(AI) within our ecosystems.
And then, of course, ChatGPT exploded this past year
and just did a good job of solidifying my predictions
of where weʼll probably be within the next decade
in terms of the ubiquitous presence of AI and its
autonomous decision making within our ecosystems
over the next five to 10 years. Coming back to your
original question, I wanted to be able to help bring
that promise of the right audience, right content, right
place, right time to life through an offering. And in
my analyst roles, I was often influencing product
innovation. I wasn't saying to clients that they must
do this, but rather, have you thought about offering
SEO capabilities within this workflow or in the screen.
As youʼre building out these analytics dashboards, Iʼm
hearing from clients that they really need to be able to
see this, that, and the other. I really enjoy that aspect of
seeing my advice coming to life and being productized.
As leading product marketing manager (PMM) here at
PathFactory, Iʼm enjoying the opportunity to influence
product innovation and bring to life things marketers
really need for the kind of emerging world weʼre in—
to be able to tell that story to them and continue to
evangelize and educate on why we need to make these
changes within our organizations and tech ecosystems.
Ò

SI: Well, speaking of education, you mentioned content
intelligence earlier. What is that?
CP: I donʼt feel like there are a lot of different ways that people
talk about it, but for me, content intelligence is the combined
use of content, AI, automation, and analytics to optimize
buyer journeys and customer experiences. B2B buyers are self-
servicing their purchasing research more and more, and that by
the time theyʼre engaging with a vendor, theyʼve already done
a lot of sorts of what we call dark funnel. Theyʼre out there
doing their own research in their own way, talking to people
in communities, consuming content on your website, etc. And
theyʼre doing it anonymously for longer and longer in those
self-service journeys.
When a champion is
leading the charge on
finding a new solution
for their organization,
they have a larger and
larger buying group or
committee within their
organization that they
must convince to move
forward with this vendor
investment or solution
investment. So, when you
look at all those dynamics
and you know that content
is the lifeblood of fueling
self-service journeys, it
means we must have more
modernized content tech
within our overall martech
rev tech ecosystems.
And I know for a fact,
because Iʼve done market
research surveys for years
at SiriusDecisions in
Forrester and even know
from my own practitioner
days and personal
observations in different
consulting projects, that
most B2B marketing
teams still today have not
succeeded at transforming
their content engines
as a part of digital
transformation. They lack
certain competencies and
tech maturity that they
need to be able to deliver optimized experiences, measure
the effectiveness of those experiences, and personalize those
experiences at scale.
Weʼre really at this inflection point, I believe, in the market,
especially in the last year with everything blowing up with AI,
where finally organizations and c-suite leaders are getting on
board and saying, I need to pay more close attention to this.
This is something that is a gap for us. And so, Iʼm passionate
about it; I donʼt care if we call it content intelligence. Iʼve
honestly been debating, you know, whether we should just be
saying content AI and then explain it further in our messaging,
because I donʼt want people to be confused by semantics. What
I want them to understand is content engine transformation is
not optional if you want to be competitive in a digital-first,
self-service, anonymous buyer world.
SI: We will come back to the AI components because Iʼm
super interested in that. Obviously, itʼs a hugely hot topic,
but as you talk about the content engine transformation,
you mentioned the gap tends to be competencies and tech
maturity. What are the core components of that? What do
folks need to be thinking about as theyʼre embarking on
these transformations?
CP: When I think about
content transformation,
I built a content
engine transformation
framework when I was at
Sirius and Forrester, but
I put it in five different
dimensions. So, we need
to look at our strengths
and weaknesses across
strategy, people, process,
tech, and data. And for
me, itʼs, do we even have
a strategy around how
we think about having
a competitive content
engine? Some of this
is your traditional best
practice, go-to market
architecture stuff. Like,
do we understand who
our ideal customer profile
(ICP) is? Do we have an
aligned product strategy
across sales, marketing,
and product success
support—basically the
revenue engine? Do we
have the messaging,
positioning, pricing, and
all those things you need
to go to market and then
a backbone of a strong
messaging and content
strategy to support that?
That's more a people-
oriented thing, not
specific to the tech. When I think about those dimensions,
the people part is: do we have the right org design? Do we
have the right people and do those people have the right
skills, and do we have alignment across all the cross-
functional teams that are inevitably going to contribute to a
strong content engine? Is all of that at play from the people
perspective? From the process perspective? I see, in most
organizations, there are challenges around defined roles and
responsibilities, defined workflows using automation, and
the right tech in that aspect to move things through your
systems and supply chain more efficiently and at scale. Then
Ò
"CONTENT INTELLIGENCE
IS THE COMBINED
USE OF CONTENT AI,
AUTOMATION, AND
ANALYTICS TO OPTIMIZE
BUYER JOURNEYS
AND CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCES."

there are issues around using best practices like content
brief, messaging docs, and some of your classic content
strategy and marketing practices that are foundational.
They often get left behind in the mix because people
are moving so fast; theyʼre so focused on just getting as
much done as possible.
Youʼre focused on building this great cathedral, right?
But there are cracks in the foundation and youʼre
worried about building stained glass windows. You need
to make sure your foundation is strong first. Iʼve seen
for years that as organizations have focused on digital
transformation, the money has always gone to other
teams and other tech, right? The marketing automation
platforms were big at first and making sure you have
analytical customer relationship management (ACRM)
and other foundational systems. But then I would see
lean funding and headcount for content roles and for
content tech that helps people who touch content do
that more effectively at scale, more personalized, more
strategic, and more measurably. There are only a few
companies I worked with over the seven years as an
analyst that I felt were properly resourced to execute
effectively on the remit that they were given from a
content perspective.
SI: Well, Iʼm curious about that, those examples. Who
is doing this best, and what does it look like when
youʼre fully executing on this content engine vision?
CP: I think I will have to come back, and we could do
a whole podcast just on that. But it comes down to, like
I said, org design, competencies and process design.
It comes down to having a lot of strategic alignment,
clarity and go-to market plans across teams. It comes
down to having the right tech to execute across a content
lifecycle internally. I would say it comes down to the four
Ps: planning, production, promotion, and performance
management, which is really a bucket of all the things
I call content operations. Your metadata and taxonomy,
your content audit, inventory, content management,
content tech, and content data all fit in that content ops
bucket. That bucket is one of the biggest competency
gaps I see in a lot of organizations. Even if it's not a gap
for every organization, it's still not a dedicated function
or role. And without that, you canʼt really drive content
engine transformation because it becomes everybodyʼs
job and then nobodyʼs job and it doesnʼt get done.
SI: That makes a ton of sense.
CP: Yeah. I could go on and on about it, but thatʼll be
my short answer for now. This is such a deep topic in
general. I think the most important thing is for people
to first acknowledge and realize is that you cannot be
successful in a digital buyer-led world without upgrading
your content engine and the competencies of the team
that are one aspect of that content engine.
SI: It makes so much sense. You must have the proper
resources, and there must be somebody whoʼs leading the
effort. It must be enough of a priority to make at least
that investment, right?
CP: Iʼve told people for awhile, you literally canʼt do
anything in sales, marketing, product support, or success
without some content dependency. At PathFactory, weʼre
using our own technology, but a lot of people donʼt have
the technology or the processes in place to allow them to
do things efficiently and at scale and with quality. Right?
To me, delivering high-quality content experiences that
accelerate demand and buyer journeys is not a volume play.
Itʼs really about relevance and being helpful, and making
sure you're following that mandate of right audience, right
content, right place, right time. Thatʼs not even just for a
buyer or customer; thatʼs for a partner or a sales rep even.
Weʼre not very good at that today because most people
have their content everywhere. Itʼs in a bazillion
libraries with different tagging. Tagging often drives
personalization and rules-based automation. If you donʼt
have someone keeping your content cleaned up, curated,
and tagged properly with summaries—all that stuff that
things like AI and automation engines use and analytics
and data analysis uses to make sense of whatʼs what and
Ò

how itʼs working and all of that—youʼre not going to be
very effective. When you say words like content audit
and inventory tagging, peopleʼs eyes glaze over. It sounds
boring and tedious, and sometimes it is, but thereʼs better
technology on the market than there has ever been before
to be able to do things like that faster and at scale. It
doesnʼt have to be “Iʼm in spreadsheet hell for the rest of
my life” if I want to look at my content inventory.
SI: Well, letʼs talk about the AI piece. Like I said, this
is such a hot topic. Weʼre talking generative AI and
ChatGPT. Letʼs start at a high level. Whatʼs your take,
and what do you think this means for marketers?
CP: I think weʼve reached an inflection point in the
market where thereʼs no turning back when it comes
to generative AI. I literally believe that the promise of
generative AI is going to impact every business role and
industry, and the way we work over the next five years
or so. I think everyone has probably a one- to two-year
window to get their heads around this and follow the
innovation and understand what their own AI roadmap is
going to look like for their organization. But it really isnʼt
optional anymore to just say, “oh yeah, maybe someday
weʼll get to that.” What I also find fascinating about
the whole AI arena is that with ChatGPT, everybodyʼs
talking about generative AI, but generative AI is going to
change a lot of things for everyone.
Thereʼs been AI on the market for years from trusted
vendors. I think itʼs important that anyone thinking about
AI be thinking about generative AI in the context of AI
overall and different use cases where it could be applied. At
PathFactory, weʼve interviewed our own customer advisory
board and a variety of customers, and Iʼve talked to analysts
and others to conduct our own market research, as we do
our own product innovation. People are saying that they
know that their organization must do something with
generative AI and that the ship has sailed. Their priorities
are finding ways to use AI to drive efficiency and pipeline
growth and create scale. To do that, they want to focus on
AI experimentation and investments.
I think thereʼs a lot of worry at the CMO level right now
that thereʼs going to be sort of this greenfield mandate on
AI investment without really thinking through the value,
the use cases, and what the return on investment (ROI)
will be, as well as the potential change management
implications for their organizations. I also think thereʼs
concerns about how we govern this and ensure that
weʼre in industry compliance and not exposing our own
intellectual property or customer data—that weʼre not
eroding brand trust and integrity. We absolutely need
to be making investments. I think everyone should be
focusing on what their two-year AI roadmap looks like,
and generative AI is a huge piece of that. But I do think
it needs to be grounded in thoughtfulness and working
with trusted vendors who have experience in AI to guide
them and not just getting into shiny objects mode about
it. Does that make sense?
SI: It does. And you know, whatʼs interesting is, the
first time you mentioned this idea of an AI roadmap,
the way I heard it was almost more from an individual
perspective. How are you thinking about your own
development and your own journey, and how you are
going to take advantage of the opportunity that all of
this presents? What does that look like in practice?
How can we as marketers, regardless of role, be
thinking about our own kind of personal AI journey,
and how we can make sure that this is something
that keeps us in a great position and doesnʼt threaten
us?
CP: I did a webinar with Forrester on this thatʼll be
on demand. And weʼre talking about, how do you use
generative AI to scale personalization content and
insights? Thatʼs the name of the webinar. I set that up
to say, look, Forrester Research right now is reporting
that 61% of marketers are saying that theyʼre still just
learning how AI works, and they need more education
and guidance to move forward confidently and in their
own decision making about what its place is in their
individual roles, in their teams, in their organizations, in
their products, etc. I think, for now, the most important
thing for anyone reading this is to get educated. They
need to understand the lay of the land right now and the
expectations of where this is going.
Ò
"I THINK WE'VE REACHED
AN INFLECTION POINT
IN THE MARKET WHERE
THERE'S NO TURNING
BACK WHEN IT COMES
TO GENERATIVE AI."

You need to be willing to experiment and play around
with some of this stuff, like ChatGPT. Go play with mid
journey for visuals, etc., and donʼt be scared to get in
there and fool around a little bit. But to me, Iʼm more
focused on what the team level, functional level, or
organizational AI roadmaps look like, and then how that
cascades down into individual roles. I think that this
change management piece and the education of internal
teams are going to be critical going forward, because I
worry that for some, AI will become more of a distraction
than a helper if itʼs not brought in in the right way with
the right guardrails around it.
For example, I certainly wouldnʼt want a sales rep right
now going into ChatGPT OpenAI Public Large Language
Model and dumping in a bunch of customer data to ask
it to create an email that summarizes X. Now there's
all this private information in there. So, there must be
some top-down governance and guidance on the path
forward. I think itʼs the job of business leaders within
organizations to set the ground rules and the North
Star for individual professionals on how to use AI in
their roles and the benefits of doing that, as well as the
limitations and risks.
SI: So, so much to get into there; obviously, we
could probably do an additional podcast about that.
Christina, as we wrap this up, I want to make a little
bit of a personal pivot. I would love to know, what
are the tools and apps that you canʼt live without in
your day-to-day and the way that you function and
operate?
CP: Well, to be completely self-serving, PathFactory,
of course, because we use that to run all our content
experiences, and because we can capture anonymous
and known engagement data and visitor profiles and
personalize and have reporting against that. It's helpful
for me as average price per minute (APPM) to understand
where I create a lot of content. We create a lot of product
marketing and create a lot of content to understand where
thatʼs driving the most engagement and business impact.
I spend a lot, a lot of time in basic Office suite apps still,
I do a lot of PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Excel, Google
Sheets, Google Docs, and that sort of thing.
There is Confluence in terms of my interactions and
alignment with the product management and engineering
side of the business and being the liaison between them
and the go-to-market teams. I like Gong a lot as well on
the sales and intelligence side and being able to listen to
customer calls and prospect calls and demos and things
like that; that really helps me keep the pulse from a voice
of the customer perspective. Iʼm sure there are others,
but thatʼs a good start.
SI: Absolutely. Well, we call the show Inspired
Marketing, and we canʼt finish until you tell us: what
is it that inspires you?
CP: Iʼm a very passionate person, which is great since
I do a lot of evangelizing. But what inspires me is
helping people. Regardless of any role, whether itʼs been
a marketing leader role or an analyst role practitioner,
etc., I call myself a career professional problem solver. I
get a lot of motivation and energy from helping others,
whether itʼs mentoring them, teaching them how to do
something better, or helping them build something—
that is what gets me up in the morning from a career
perspective.
Being in B2B marketing, B2B Tech, and B2B revenue
with all the tech layoffs weʼve seen, itʼs been a slog for
a lot of people. Weʼre lean teams. Itʼs harder to make
sales because of the market weʼre in and the economic
conditions. Iʼve seen so much resilience, positivity,
comradery, and community happening, especially in the
B2B marketing scene and sales support, etc. Itʼs been
very inspiring to see how, when times get tough, and
people come together; that is very inspiring. And the
willingness for people to do things for others in the B2B
industry with really no return on investment for them is
very inspiring. Itʼs a completely magnanimous gesture on
their part to help someone find a job, to give someone
an encouraging word, to create a connection or join
someone, connect someone to a new network, etc. So, I
think Iʼll leave it at that.
SI: Love it. Well, thanks for doing this for us and
taking the time and sharing your perspective. Itʼs
been a blast. Thanks, Christine.
CP: Oh, itʼs been a pleasure. Iʼd love to do it again some
time. Thank you for inviting me, Scott. I appreciate it. Ò
Ò

INTERVIEWS WITH MARKETING LEADERS WHO
ARE TRANSFORMING THEIR ORGANIZATION
USING THE ORACLE MARKETING CLOUD
RELATIONSHIPONE.COM/INSPIRED-MARKETING-PODCAST

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RELATIONSHIP ONE HOST, SCOTT
INGRAM: Today on the Inspired
Marketing podcast, my guest is Jake
Dworkis. Jake is the
Vice President of
B2B Marketing at
iHeartMedia in New
York City. Welcome
to the show, Jake.
JAKE DWORKIS:
Scott, itʼs a pleasure to
be here.
SI: So, why donʼt
we start with just a
little bit of context. I
think a lot of people
are probably familiar
to some degree with
iHeartMedia, but tell
us about yourself.
Talk about what
exactly your role is
and just a little bit
of an overview of
iHeart for those who
may not be familiar.
JD: Sure. Iʼm the VP
of B2B Marketing
here at iHeartMedia, as you said. I work
on the team that both develops the strategy
JAKE DWORKIS
VICE PRESIDENT OF
B2B MARKE TING
IHE ARTMEDIA
IHEARTMEDIA
INTERNALLY
AMPLIFYING THE
IMPACT AND
HELPFULNESS OF
MARKETING
JAKE DWORKIS IS A SEASONED MARKETING PROFESSIONAL CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE VICE
PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS TO BUSINESS (B2B) MARKETING AT IHEARTMEDIA, A LEADING GLOBAL MEDIA
AND ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY. BASED IN NEW YORK, JAKE IS INSTRUMENTAL IN SHAPING AND
EXECUTING INNOVATIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT DRIVE BUSINESS GROWTH AND ENHANCE
BRAND VISIBILITY. IN THIS EPISODE, JAKE SHARES HIS STRATEGIC APPROACH TO ENHANCING SALES
VERTICALS WITHIN THE BUSINESS, SHOWCASING THE INTRINSIC VALUE HIS DEPARTMENT OFFERS TO
OTHER INTERNAL DEPARTMENTS, AND SO MUCH MORE.

behind our marketing efforts and also the execution and
reporting of those efforts. The way I like to describe it is
my job is to help create ways to showcase iHeartʼs value
to direct advertisers, both large and small, and also to
ad agencies who have a roster of clients trying to target
their ideal customers through audio advertising.
SI: Perfect. Well, we like the audio here.
JD: Absolutely.
SI: Letʼs frame this up a little bit, because you have
an interesting topic for us to talk about and one that
I think is really universal and ubiquitous if you are
doing marketing, especially in a B2B capacity where
youʼre supporting sales.
JD: Absolutely. We have a lot of different levers that
we can pull on the marketing front, whether that be
our marketing automation platform (we use Eloqua),
whether that is paid or organic social campaigns, or if
itʼs in partnership with our go-to market or sales teams.
Organizationally, this year, one of the key areas we leaned
into is focusing on specific key verticals for the business.
That could be industries like health, automotive, tech,
or finance. These are all areas where we have sales leads
that are focused on a particular industry and they need
marketing support. So, weʼre trying to get our message
to their clients about how iHeart is a leader in the space
and is a must-buy audio partner. Although we knew that
we needed to focus on supporting these verticals, we
also needed a way to intake and organize this process to
actually support them.
SI: Awesome. So, really connecting with different
areas within the business and then operationalizing
that approach.
JD: Absolutely. Even though it sounds simple to get
everything out of email, itʼs actually quite difficult
because, and we could talk about this more down the
road, itʼs a real cultural shift. You need to be able to
solve for what your partners are actually trying to
accomplish. What are they measuring? Who are their
key stakeholders? What does success actually look like?
Getting all of this information upfront has been a big
hurdle for us this year that weʼve definitely tackled
headfirst. After weʼve developed this process of having
buy-in from our partners, weʼre now able to get the ball
rolling with each vertical lead in a more organized and
streamlined way.
SI: Say more about what you and your team were
trying to solve for. I think you talked a little bit
about helping your partners solve for what theyʼre
trying to solve for as part of the process. But whatʼs
the outcome youʼre trying to get to? What does
success look like?
JD: It all depends on what theyʼre trying to accomplish.
That could mean driving more leads. It could mean
getting people to download more case studies, visiting
particular websites, or reading particular content.
We really want to partner with our vertical leads to
understand what their goal is and make sure that weʼre
meeting them there.
SI: Perfect. Walk us through what the process is.
What have you landed on? What are you finding
works?
JD: I think the first thing that you need is a project
management tool. We use Wrike internally, and thatʼs
been a primary pillar in this whole thing. What weʼve
done is weʼve created an intake process where we are
gathering all of the information on what it is that is
going to help us actually get to where we need to be—
whether that is understanding who our key stakeholders
are, who are the approvers, whatʼs the content, or what
is the ultimate end result that theyʼre trying to tackle?
What is the timeframe? Do they have any budget? All
of these different things usually come out of various
meetings and emails. Weʼre trying to consolidate all of
that, like a typical requirements gathering.
SI: This is really fun for me because this is my
world. I live with one foot in marketing and one
foot in sales, and this is the dance that youʼre
doing. One of the things we talked about before we
started, that Iʼm hoping you can shine a light on, is
you are doing what I always think of as marketing
marketing, right? Itʼs this idea of, hey, we actually
have to market ourselves internally and educate our
stakeholders on our capabilities and what we can
do. What are you doing there? How are you thinking
about that?
JD: Itʼs actually funny because with a company as big
as iHeart, itʼs very easy to not understand all of the
different departments that are working on their various
projects and whatnot. One of the things that weʼve done
is we have created this type of, what I like to call, a
roadshow, where we meet with all of these different folks
within the company who we havenʼt met with before, and
we showcase the various ways that our B2B marketing
department can support their specific sales goals.
SI: I love that. You know thisʼll be the title of
the show, maybe not, but Iʼm thinking of this as
marketing marketing and selling to sales.
JD: I love it.
SI: Iʼm curious about what youʼre seeing from an
output or outcome perspective. What kind of results
are you seeing? I know this is a pretty early initiative
for you, but I know itʼs already working.
Ò

JD: Iʼll take this in two ways. First, on the operational side,
weʼre able to get these campaign requirements upfront, which
is a huge benefit to the teamʼs productivity. And not to mention,
itʼs eliminated a ton of back and forth where weʼve otherwise
had that. So, it saved everybody from excessive email and
excessive meetings. More importantly, on the campaign side
and the results that itʼs driving, weʼre seeing campaigns drive
higher than average open rates and content downloads when
you compare those to the database as a whole year to date.
Weʼre also seeing our sales teams know who they need to
follow up with, which are their most engaged prospects.
SI: Awesome. As you think about how this is played out,
whatʼs been the hardest part?
JD: I think the hardest part, in my opinion, is just getting
started. Now that weʼre working on supporting so many
different verticals within the business, itʼs our job to
understand whatʼs working and what isnʼt for each of these
campaigns, and not just tick a box that we have completed
a campaign. So, although weʼre meeting with these key
stakeholders and weʼre sharing results, we need to go back to
the original intent behind all these campaigns and find out
what went really well, where things could have improved,
and understand their perspectives of did we really meet the
key performance indicators (KPI) that we were originally
intending to hit.
SI: Awesome. Letʼs get really granular. Beyond the super
obvious elements from an intake perspective, what are
you finding to be the most helpful, or are there any not
as obvious things that you are asking for as part of that
collection process?
JD: One of the toughest challenges that I find on a day-to-day
basis is truly finding who the decision makers need to be so
there arenʼt too many cooks in the kitchen. Going back to us
being such a large company, we want to eliminate approval
by committee. That is an ongoing theme that we have tried
to steer away from, so that we are identifying one decision
maker and have clearly defined roles and responsibilities at
the beginning of the project.
SI: Wow. That is such a great insight and an epiphany. I
think too often we get into committee decision making.
Youʼve heard the joke that a camel is a horse designed by
a committee.
JD: That is a funny one.
SI: The other thing that is just a great learning that
Iʼve had from being here and working with some really
amazing clients is that I think of this as my executive
sponsor story. I had the best executive sponsor Iʼd ever
worked with in a very large global project, and he
explained, look, my job is just to call balls and strikes. He
recognized that somebody at some point is going to have
to decide. Even though weʼre not always going to have
perfect information, we just have to make a decision and
keep moving forward. So, I think to your point, finding
that decision maker, finding that sponsor is important,
who at the end of the day is going to break us free and
decide, are we doing this or are we doing that?
JD: It's also important to understand when itʼs time to
execute, because things can go into approvals for forever if
you let them, so you really want to understand what are your
timelines and how do we actually get things from start to
finish.
SI: Love that. So, letʼs talk about the fun stuff. We talked
about the hard part. What are you seeing in terms of
other wins and successes through this process?
JD: Well, because weʼve executed so many campaigns with a
few different verticals now, those results are starting to make
their way around to different leaders within the business. Itʼs
forced us to start to market ourselves within the company,
which has been a lot of fun because we get to work with a ton
of different people who we hadnʼt worked with before on a
lot of different things. People have such good ideas, so itʼs fun
to actually collaborate with them and bring something to life.
SI: Now youʼve got testimonials and your own kind of
case studies and examples that you can point to, right?
JD: Exactly.
SI: Thatʼs awesome. So, I think we may have touched on
this a little bit just with the project management tool that
you talked about. How else does technology play a role
in all of this?
JD: It plays a monumental role. With each vertical that we
meet with, although weʼre figuring out their end goals and
what theyʼre trying to accomplish and all of the metrics, itʼs
only as good as the strategy behind it. And thatʼs what I like
to emphasize with them. We have Eloqua, paid campaigns,
and ways to capture leads, but we need to understand what
it is that theyʼre trying to accomplish first and foremost, and
then back into the technology.
SI: Nice, nice. And then what happens next? I know this
is ongoing, but whatʼs on the horizon for you?
JD: I think itʼs twofold. For us, itʼs continuing to expand
our footprint, both internally with these different marketing
partnerships and also externally with these clients and
prospects. Also, weʼre figuring out more ways to generate
high-quality leads for our sellers and help us help our sellers
align with revenue ultimately at the end of the day. Our goal
is to work with each key vertical (we have eight of them),
multiple times throughout the quarter and the year, and weʼre
on our way to making that happen.
SI: Thatʼs fantastic. Is there anything else that I didnʼt
ask you about? It feels like youʼve got a good number
of nuggets just having worked through this process.
Anything that you would add that I didnʼt ask you about
directly?
JD: I think one of the things thatʼs most important to identify
with this, and I may have mentioned it earlier, but weʼve
gotten to this point through more of a cultural shift, and thatʼs
where it really is a shift in how you approach day-to-day and
getting buy-in from your team. So, what I mean by that is we
go to all these particular partners within the company, and
Ò

although they have communicated to us what it is theyʼre
trying to accomplish for a particular campaign, itʼs been
so scattered through various meetings, emails, and back-
and-forth conversations. So, shifting the mindset and
the culture with how we approach this has been very
foundational in our ability to get here. Once we have
all that information from them, weʼre able to help them
understand that we can create thought leadership pieces
for them, we can create paid LinkedIn campaigns, and
we can focus on generating those qualified leads—things
that are going to ultimately move the needle for them.
Without first getting all this information and having
them actually think about it upfront, it takes a lot longer.
SI: Yeah, what a great element. Iʼm going to keep
asking the questions because you keep rolling out
nuggets. Is there anything else?
JD: I think thatʼs it.
SI: So Jake, I really appreciate all of that perspective.
I want to ask a couple of questions just for you. In
your day-to-day, what are the tools and apps that you
canʼt live without?
JD: I think, organizationally, based on our conversation
today, Iʼm going to say our project management tool. Iʼm
still doing my best to make sure that Iʼm using it as
our North Star and that weʼre out of random meeting
notes and email. From a personal standpoint, I am very
simple. I like to rely on my calendar and a handy dandy
notebook.
SI: Awesome. Well, part of building that culture is
demonstrating it, right? I imagine thereʼs a huge
effort to get everything into that tool, not just for
yourself, but everybody on your team and across the
organization.
JD: Absolutely.
SI: We call the show Inspired Marketing. So,
the final question is always what is it that
inspires you?
JD: I mentioned it before, Scott, and you know,
I sit in this very unique position at iHeart
where I get to touch many different areas of
the business, whereas some roles only focus on
podcasts or digital. I get to branch out into all
of these different elements of the company and
have the opportunity to work with so many
different people. It makes for a ton of interesting
conversations with people who have a lot of
good perspectives and a lot of good ideas. Even
more so, I would say that itʼs inspiring to get to
hear all of those ideas and actually work with
them to bring things to fruition.
SI: Love that. I resemble that. Jake, I
appreciate you and your time. Itʼs always
great to talk with you.
JD: Absolutely. Itʼs been a pleasure. Ò
"BEFORE, IT’S BEEN SO
SCATTERED WITH VARIOUS
MEETINGS, EMAILS,
AND BACK-AND-FORTH
CONVERSATIONS. SHIFTING
THE MINDSET AND
CULTURE TO HOW WE
APPROACH THIS HAS BEEN
FOUNDATIONAL IN OUR
ABILITY TO GET HERE."
Ò

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Inspired Marketing Magazine - Issue 10

Inspired Marketing Magazine - Issue 10

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Inspired Marketing Magazine - Issue 10