This episode features an interview with Kate Adams, SVP of Marketing at Validity. Organizations across the world have relied on Validity solutions to target, contact, engage, and keep customers, using trustworthy data as a key advantage. On this episode Kate Adams shares her insights into building consumer trust with education-based marketing, how to generate leads with webinars, and providing customer engagement tools to attract consumers.
This episode features an interview with Kate Adams, SVP of Marketing at Validity. Organizations across the world have relied on Validity solutions to target, contact, engage, and keep customers, using trustworthy data as a key advantage.
On this episode Kate Adams shares her insights into building consumer trust with education-based marketing, how to generate leads with webinars, and providing customer engagement tools to attract consumers.
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“I generate revenue by providing valuable education and making people better email marketers at the end of the day, and as a result, they trust and rely on our products.” - Kate Adams, SVP of Marketing, Validity
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:32) - Kate’s role at Validity
*(02:58) - Segment: Trust Tree
*(10:14) - Segment: The Playbook
*(14:04) - How to generate leads with webinars
*(17:35) - Generating revenue by providing valuable education
*(22:27) - Providing customer engagement tools to attract consumers
*(26:35) - Segment: The Dust Up
*(29:17) - Segment: Quick Hits
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Sponsor:
Demand Gen Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com, the #1 Conversational Marketing platform for companies that use Salesforce and the secret weapon for Demand Gen pros. The world's leading enterprise brands trust Qualified to instantly meet with buyers, right on their website, and maximize sales pipeline. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.
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Links
[00:01:28] Ian:. Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries. I'm Ian Faison CEO of Caspian Studios, and today we are joined by a special guest. Kate, how are you?
[00:01:42] Kate: I am great, Ian how are you? It's such a pleasure to be with you today.
[00:01:45] Ian: Yeah. Pleasure to have you on the show, excited to chat about marketing of validity, excited to chat about your career and some of the cool stuff that you have been doing.
[00:01:53] Ian: So let's get into it. How did you get into marketing and demand in the first place?
[00:01:59] Kate: Fascinating question. So in college, I found communications and I thought that was really interesting. Initially, I went to college as a Spanish teacher, quickly realized that, although I enjoyed speaking Spanish, I did not enjoy teaching it.
[00:02:12] Kate: And so I decided that I was going to not do the education piece. So I kept Spanish and picked up communications as a major, cuz I really always found kind of like influencing people. Getting people to do something really, really fascinating and have been with it ever since.
[00:02:28] Ian: And so flash forward to today, tell me a little bit about your role at validity.
[00:02:32] Kate: Yeah, sure. So I am fortunate enough to be the, the senior vice president of marketing. I lead the marketing discipline, working with a wildly talented team. Product marketers, content, marketers demand, gen marketers, customer marketers, channel marketers. All of the folks here really just fortunate to lead the team and lead marketing here at validity.
[00:02:52] Ian: All right, let's get to our first segment here. We're going to the trust tree
[00:03:09] Ian: This is where you can go and feel honest, honest, and trusted and share those deepest, darkest demand gen and marketing secrets.
[00:03:17] Ian: Tell us a little bit about what validity does.
[00:03:20] Kate: Yeah. Sure. So at validity, we believe that one of the core challenges that are facing businesses today is in their data. And we believe that with better quality data and better data analytics that today's businesses can acquire, retain and delight more customers.
[00:03:41] Kate: And so we have products that help you do exactly that no matter where you are. Working in your customer life cycle, we have a product that can help you. So whether it's when you first acquire somebody and you're trying to verify if their email address is valid or not, we have a product that can help you called bright verify whether, Hey, I'm trying to get a clean list so I can execute my next campaign and have as good or response rate as I possibly can.
[00:04:06] Kate: We have a tool called demand tools that sits on top of your CRM, or if you're trying to understand, Hey, my email. Outcomes are not improving over time. And I really, really need to generate more revenue for my email program. We have products called Everest and mail charts that can help you do exactly that and make sure that you get out of the spam folder and into the inbox.
[00:04:30] Kate: So that's what we do at validity.
[00:04:32] Ian: Gosh, we do not want to be in the spam folder. Truly. My, one of my biggest pet peeves of all things. Yeah.
[00:04:40] Kate: It kills me to think through all the time that my team spent on copy and creative and creating, crafting these amazing emails only for them to not ever get in front of anybody.
[00:04:52] Ian: Indeed. Not seeing the light today. And so who are you sending these two emails to? Who are your customers? What does that customer base look like size and. Yeah,
[00:05:00] Kate: we have a large customer base of thousands of different customers. We, that customer base really looks like kind of the who's who of the fortune 1000, we are fortunate enough to work with some of today's biggest customers.
[00:05:14] Kate: For example, meta is a customer of ours. If you pick anybody on their list, then they're more than likely a customer of ours. And the beauty of that is not only can we help those huge enterprise companies, but we can also help very small startups as well of which we are. Fortunate enough to be able to call them customers of ours as well.
[00:05:33] Kate: So our customer list is incredibly vast. And so I'm always delighted whenever I get a chance to be in the room of one of our customers
[00:05:41] Ian: and who within that organization buys validity. What does that persona look like? That you're going after?
[00:05:46] Kate: Couple different folks. The folks that buy from us on for our email solutions or in, from a marketing perspective are heads of digital CMO, VP of marketing, digital marketer, any anybody in email marketing, anybody in SMS marketing, because all those folks can use our email solutions.
[00:06:07] Kate: And then the, on the other side, we have a lot of. CRM admins who buy our data quality products. We also have a lot of rev op folks. So sales ops, or marketing ops, or rev op a lot of different folks, folks in the it space. So it's really fascinating to see the breadth of folks that. Find value on our solutions.
[00:06:27] Ian: How do you think about structuring your marketing to pursue those different personas?
[00:06:33] Kate: How we think about structuring is we operate what Topo called the double funnel, which is target and volume. And so how I think about that is if everybody's familiar with that ABM or account based marketing pyramid of one to one, one to few, one to many, I think that one to many bucket is more about just good high quality marketing, right?
[00:06:57] Kate: So being able to market. To the types of businesses and anybody of those personas and making sure that I can reach them with a compelling message. And then I think about that one to few bucket as like that's where we define our target account. We've looked at things like what industries are our customers in.
[00:07:15] Kate: I can tell you the top five industries that 70% of our ARR is in today. What other attributes they have such as. Email service provider. They're using what CRM they're using, how many marketing people on their team, how many sales people on their team, what countries they're in, all of those things, we put all of those together and we define here's all our target list.
[00:07:37] Kate: And then we work with the sales team to them say, Hey, here's that target universe? That's not saying, Hey, we can't sell to anybody outside of those industries. Or we can't sell to anybody outside of those ESP or those CRMs that. Definitely not the case. It's just that we're prioritizing those accounts best because we know that those accounts are more valuable to us from an ASP perspective and more valuable to us from a conversion rate perspective and more Val valuable to us from a retention perspective as well.
[00:08:11] Kate: Then we go to sales and say, here's the universe. Select X number of accounts for each of your book of business. They make that selection that becomes our target account strategy. And then we are full focused. I would say 85% of our paid budget or are paid media, paid advertising programs, budget goes into those target accounts and acquiring those target accounts.
[00:08:37] Kate: And so we're doggedly kind of pursuing those accounts and making sure that we can generate interest and awareness and, and all of the above into those target account. Uh, and generating leads for the sales team to go work in those target accounts. Then at the same time, we also have volume accounts coming in.
[00:08:53] Kate: So folks that are outside of that universe, and then on that one to one part of the period pyramid, that's where we're aligning with our strategic account executives to make sure that we can generate demand and the biggest enterprises that those folks are working in. So that we can get them a foot in the door.
[00:09:11] Kate: And so
[00:09:11] Ian: I'm curious, you know, like, are you creating campaigns then by vertical, by persona, by size? Like how much segmentation are you doing in the crafting of that stuff? Right
[00:09:21] Kate: now, we create a lot of campaigns that are all focused on those target accounts. But we are about to start creating a number of different campaigns that are vertically aligned as well to those key industries.
[00:09:33] Kate: And so like finance and insurance is a key industry for us in one of our products. So we'll start creating some of that data, some of the content for those folks and executing those campaigns. For the most part though, we are hyper focused on those target accounts. And how can we make sure that we have events where those target accounts will be in attendance?
[00:09:54] Kate: How do we create a webinar program that those types of that those types of accounts would wanna attend? How do we do direct mail campaigns to those, to those accounts that, uh, and to the right buyers within those accounts, in order to grab their attention and
[00:10:09] stuff
[00:10:09] Ian: like. Okay, let's get to our next segment.
[00:10:13] Ian: The playbook.
[00:10:23] Ian: This is where you open up that playbook and talk about the tactics that help you win. So what are your uncuttable budget items?
[00:10:31] Kate: Uncuttable. So we're deep into event season right now at the time that we're speaking.
[00:10:37] Kate: So virtual events were huge for us over the last two years in person events, as, as the world has opened back up, have been really important to us as well. So we really doubled down on virtual and in in-person events. A lot. Those have been huge. And for our audience and specifically in different regions where like in LATAM or in am.
[00:10:59] Kate: those regions are very like in person based culture. That's been incredibly important for those regions, but globally, overall. So I think events have been really important to us, but I think other areas, uh, of things that I would not cut from our budget, we also execute our own monthly, uh, webinar campaigns.
[00:11:19] Kate: Mm-hmm uh, or webinar programs, uh, of which we went from. To two to three that we run on a monthly basis. Yeah. And we've been able to, uh, rely on those. Those are what I think like is the constant drumbeat for lead generation, for us that we're able to get and a really important component in our customer life cycle where it's like acquisition.
[00:11:44] Kate: I think about that as like, after acquisition. The next best action. So if I acquire you through an ebook campaign, like that's a next best action for you is to get you into one of those programs. And the response has been incredible when we went from one to two webinar programs that they were gonna cannibalize each other, but we've actually just been able to generate twice the amount of demand out of those programs, which has been incredible.
[00:12:08] Ian: I want to dig into that. Pretty fascinating. That's what I think the common thought is. If we increase the number, then you know, maybe we're gonna have a decreased amount of participation or something like that. Did you vary the time that you were doing them? The length? Is it the same sort of thing? Is consistency key?
[00:12:25] Ian: Like, what's the best way to go about that?
[00:12:26] Kate: What. We were really specific about, was making sure that there was a purpose and a tone for the program we were currently doing and that we were gonna have a different purpose and tone for the program we were gonna add. So what I mean by that is. For state of email, which is a wildly successful campaign that the team had been executing actually long before I joined the organization, guy, Hansen starts every one of our programs out by going over the most recent email benchmarks.
[00:12:57] Kate: And then he has a special guest and they're talking about like high level theoretical concepts. Right. Like how to drive more personalization. What's the latest stats with male privacy protection, et cetera. When we went and created inbox, insider, the team went and created inbox insiders. They were really purposeful to say, this is for the doers.
[00:13:18] Kate: This is for. The, this is a more practical program. So now you wanna know how to navigate, how to do something as it relates to navigating male privacy protection. Like this is the show that you wanna get to. And so making sure that they had a very separate purpose, it wasn't that we were just going to go do state of email twice every month.
[00:13:39] Kate: It was, the purpose was gonna be very.
[00:13:42] Ian: Yeah, I love that. I think that so much of what makes webinars successful is that expectation that you know exactly what you're gonna get out of it and having those sort of consistent, repeatable quality, there's a clear function for why they would attend. I'm curious, do you have a freestanding demo and that sort of thing as well, or is it whatever comes out of that and fills the funnel is great.
[00:14:04] Kate: I think a lot more about our webinar programming or some listeners that this will be. Contrary to everything that they believe. And some people have a religion about this, my religion about this. I worked for David cancel at drift. And he had a saying that was like, give, give, give, give, give, and the get will come to you.
[00:14:23] Kate: And what I learned in my career, actually, when I was at drift and I was working there was that I love marketing to marketers. Like I love it with such a passion because I learned so much. In doing that. Yeah. Like I just learned so much and it's amazing to be able to think of through what would make me interested in this, what would I want?
[00:14:45] Kate: And I was fortunate enough to be able to do that here at validity as well, getting to market to a whole different set of marketers as digital marketers that are focused on, on B to C, uh, and D to C motion. No, it's all good.
[00:14:58] Ian: We're talking about webinars leading to demos and it seems like you're, you're not thinking about that.
[00:15:03] Ian: Cool.
[00:15:03] Kate: So here's my religion. It's a give give, get, and the get will come to you. So I will give you what I believe is the next best action. I will give you that free e-book with a QR code that you can go grab that at the end of that webinar program. But I am not there to give you a demo. I am not there to push a product at you.
[00:15:22] Kate: I don't believe that. With you giving me your most precious gift, which is your time that I should then make that a sales pitch. I think that I should make you better. And I think if I can make you a better marketer in that 60 minutes that you provide to us, that you will remember that, and you will believe in our solutions more.
[00:15:42] Ian: I think that part of the utility of events and webinars and why they're such a mainstay is because sales gets a list. And so if what you're saying is that, like you believe that it shouldn't just be a list that can be called upon. Like, how do you kind of rectify those two things? It
[00:16:00] Kate: is about sales getting lists.
[00:16:02] Kate: Let me, I don't wanna mince words, sales get to list from our webinars, all the attendees they follow up with. But what I do is I coach that sales team to follow up with it in a meaningful way, which is like, here's the program. Here's what was covered in that program. Follow up with those folks and say, Hey, how did you like guy session?
[00:16:21] Kate: Look, our webinar program relates to what our product does. It relates to the value that our products deliver so they can follow up with, Hey, I loved when guy talked about the fact that. Apple represents 67% of the smartphone market. And now you're blind on open rates for that. Were you aware of that and how are you guys navigating this new challenge of not being able to see who's opening your emails on an iOS device?
[00:16:49] Kate: Like how are you guys navigating? That's a great conversation starter for them, right? So. I think you can do both. I think
[00:16:57] Ian: that seems like you set a pretty clear expectation with sales on that stuff. Is that kind of how your relationship goes? You say we're here to help you as much as humanly possible, but there's also an expectation that the people who are consuming our stuff, that they don't need to be beat over the head, or what's your sort of strategy with building that relationship
[00:17:15] Kate: with.
[00:17:15] Kate: With sales development. There's a principal in the marketing team, which like the first team principal that we have is we all carry the revenue number. So I make it really clear to every marketer here. Like I understand that some of what I just said could be taken as, oh, I'm just painting pretty pictures in the corner.
[00:17:32] Kate: And other people are worried about revenue. I generate revenue by providing valuable education and making people better email marketers at the end of the day. As a result of that, they trust and rely on our products. And I think that when the time is right, we go and we meet them with a demo request.
[00:17:52] Kate: Like I follow up with all of our webinar attendees as, Hey, let me know if you want a demo request. We follow up from a marketing perspective and an SDR perspective. But look, I, at the end of the day, how we think about it or how I know my SDR team thinks about is they know they're following. With humans that it's not just like another lead within the database.
[00:18:12] Kate: And my expectation is that they go do the research on that company and how we could help and how we could help solve their pain, not beat them over the head. Like, I don't think anybody is out there right now. Maliciously calling anybody with in the, in the hopes that make somebody have a bad day.
[00:18:30] Ian: I think there are people out there doing that.
[00:18:32] Ian: Definitely not from validity. Yes, that's for darn sure. Not from validity. Yeah. I wanna go back real quick to, to events, which you touched on the world is opening up. I'm curious. What was your event strategy going into like this sort of thing opening up and what kind of response are you getting from people coming in person perhaps for the first time in six months, a year or years?
[00:18:55] Kate: So our throughout the pandemic, we saw that virtual events were wildly successful for us. Like we, we were really able to connect with people in a meaningful way and drive business as we went into. To this trade show season when things are opened back up virtual events, weren't really an option anymore.
[00:19:16] Kate: Like everything was like, yeah, cool. We're doing it in person. Some of them have been hit or miss quite frankly, where it's, I feel bad for event organizers these days. Cuz I think it's harder than ever. We used to do 5,000. When you got 10,000 to our virtual event, what's gonna happen when I go back to in person, am I gonna get the 5,000?
[00:19:34] Kate: Am I. 10,000. Am I gonna have less than I have no idea. Some events that we've been to have been way more successful and way more well attended. And people are like, oh my God, finally, back in person, this is amazing. I'm so excited to be here. That is a resounding message that I hear from everybody who is at the event, but some of those events have been not as well attended.
[00:19:55] Kate: And I think quite frankly, people are making a decision. Like if I'm gonna travel again, I'm gonna travel personally first over professionally potentially. And I think the travel industry has had its own set of challenges. The summer that have had made travel less enticing.
[00:20:11] Ian: It's so tough. I mean, it's just such a fluid situation.
[00:20:14] Ian: You just don't know what events people are gonna go to. You don't know any of that sort of stuff. That's with everything. Marketing it's experimentation and it's trial and error. And like, yeah, just because it's all these things are like one of one, right? You can't really make any judgements for any of this stuff.
[00:20:29] Ian: It's like, well, nobody went to, you know, this conference this year, I guess that's just a bad conference now. Now, actually that was just the weekend that also competed with. This other thing, or that was a bad travel weekend, or maybe that's just like, everybody is trying to get this first summer where they can go back and spread their wings again or whatever it is.
[00:20:48] Ian: That's what it seems like to
[00:20:49] me,
[00:20:49] Kate: at least. I agree. I talk to my team a lot about like, we're gonna fail. That is one thing that is for sure. But failure is how we learn. And so as long as we can learn, but I don't know that necessarily next year, I'm gonna. Think of through the shows that weren't as well populated this year and say, there's no way we're not doing that one again.
[00:21:08] Kate: I think it's like, let's go have a conversation with the vendor and see what did they learn last year and how are they doing it differently this
[00:21:14] Ian: year? any other final thoughts on events or stuff that you are thinking about for the future? It's like every single demand gen person is thinking about events and like, we're all just trying to learn as much as we can, as quick as we can about this stuff.
[00:21:26] Ian: It seems like these like small batch events that we are doing digitally mm-hmm that those could still be a best practice moving forward.
[00:21:32] Kate: Yeah, totally. I think those smaller scale events, we've seen a lot of success with them and like bringing people together. I think people are still hungry for connection, still hungry for connection, especially like all different works have all different scenarios.
[00:21:44] Kate: We're in a hybrid scenario where it's three and two out and, and, but like, Lots of people work from home all the time. So there's lots more people that are looking for an opportunity in network that they really haven't had in the last two and a half years. So I think those smaller scale events are definitely here to stay.
[00:22:00] Kate: We are really also doubling down on like, Tools or like a product led growth type motion here. And that's something that we're exploring a ton from our perspective. Like, and we have some really powerful ones in the portfolio already in our product portfolio already. One of them being sender score, but we're gonna double and triple down there as well.
[00:22:23] Kate: Like how many. Valuable kind of product led tools. Can we provide to people so that they can get like a taste of value and they can get like real value for free. They also know that they could go get more value out of that tool later, too. So getting those product led growth gears going is something that we're looking at, making a big investment in here as well.
[00:22:49] Ian: You know, it's funny. I just signed up for a tool this afternoon. That my team had been hounding me on, we create over 40 podcasts at CASP. So yeah, we have two different use cases for it on like the business side that we work with, literally like hundreds and hundreds of guests for our podcast. So anywho, it's a tool that kind of touches both sides of our business and both different sides of a business have been kind of like asking me for this tool.
[00:23:11] Ian: And it was just like really expensive and I'd used it a previous company's great tool, but it was just really expensive. I just didn't know that they sort of launched a freemium version of this. And it's like one of those classic things like. I don't know if this was something that they had just not marketed or maybe I'd missed it or whatever.
[00:23:28] Ian: And I went to the thing today and I was like, oh, okay, here we go. We're buying it. And it was like, just like that, you know, two seconds. And I'm sure that company in that system, they're like, This dude has been, you know, like for years, but I think that that's the sort of thing when you're thinking about, you know, PLG for so long, like how many fence sitters do you think you have in your prospect base?
[00:23:49] Ian: If they did get a taste, would just be like, okay, like, I'll do it. You
[00:23:53] Kate: know? Yeah. I think the days of like the software being behind the curtain are over how many times have we talked about it as demand gen marketers have like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Like we qualify people before we get to the demo. How many of the calls do you listen to?
[00:24:06] Kate: And it's the, person's just like, can you show me the demo? Can you just show me the demo now? Yeah. Cause they just wanna see the software. Like that's the biggest thing. Like I just wanna see if this thing can do it. It's like give people what they want. You know what I mean? I think it's really interest.
[00:24:18] Kate: Yeah, we
[00:24:18] Ian: have that all the time of the vast majority of people who come to us are like already like dead set. I want a podcast or video series, that sort of stuff. So like why podcasts? Or like why video or like whatever is literally, we don't even like have that part in our deck 90% of the time. Cause it's like, you skip over it.
[00:24:34] Ian: But it's a great point that we, what we talk about all the time with like the dark funnel and all this stuff is like, They've already done all the research on that stuff, right. By the time they hit, you know, your website, they literally want to just talk to someone, get through the demo and then start sort of brainstorming next steps.
[00:24:49] Ian: It's just a different sort of world. And if you have the opportunity and you're fortunate enough to have a product where PLG can work, it seems like there's some companies out there that are just flying, using that. Yeah, totally. How do you measure.
[00:25:03] Kate: Pipeline. So for us, it's sales accepted opportunities and sales qualified opportunities.
[00:25:07] Kate: That's the
[00:25:08] Ian: primary one. You mentioned PLG as something that you're investing in, but any other big trends that you're thinking for B2B marketers, that we should be
[00:25:14] Kate: aware of getting people into a product and getting people's hands on it. And if you won't do that, I think at some point buyers are gonna think, what are you hiding?
[00:25:25] Kate: Why won't you just show it to me or make it available so I can show myself I do. You know, we've got a cookie list world coming up, thanks to Google soon. So I think there's gonna be a lot of change headed toward, towards many marketers about zero party data, and first party data being super, super important and no longer being reliant on other people's data to inform what's going on within your.
[00:25:52] Kate: That will actually be a really big trend. And I think we'll continue to be a big one from a demand John perspective. How do you really show people that you know them as opposed to have this whole diatribe on tokenization versus personalization, just because, you know, the taxonomy, your marketing automation platform uses does insert first name does not therefore mean you are doing personal.
[00:26:16] Kate: I think relevance is king relevance always wins and you can see it in your own data, right? When you get to that right segment with the right offer at the right time, man, there's nothing better than that. I think that's really what personalization is like. How do you think about that in a meaningful way and drive as much as that is possible.
[00:26:34] Ian: Let's get to our next segment. The dust-up
[00:26:50] Ian:. This is where we talk about healthy tension.
[00:26:53] Ian: Whether that's with your board, your sales team or your competitors or anyone else, have you had a memorable dust up in your career? Look,
[00:26:59] Kate: I'm in marketing. So, uh, undoubtedly, uh, most of my desktops have been with sales because we all know it's like that healthy tension between marketing and sales. And most of the time we are like holding hands and singing kumbaya, but.
[00:27:15] Kate: There are a bunch of other times we've all lived it, right? It's like sales is like, where is the pipeline? Or where are the leads? And Margaret's like, well, you don't follow up with the leads that I give you, or you don't actually do anything with the pipeline or you can't win the pipeline that are giving you.
[00:27:29] Kate: It's just that constant tension, always back and forth. So it's always there, by the way, any marketer who tells you that doesn't exist is probably lying. There's always that tension, right? Like there's always that thing between sales and marketing. I think the thing that I've done to try to. A lot of that is like one, be very clear with them that like, the reason that we exist is to generate revenue, right?
[00:27:51] Kate: Like the team wakes up each and every day, thinking about how they can start and continue conversations for our sales team, whether that's our account management team or our new business team or our sales development team, whenever that is what the team wakes up thinking about every day. And that's what they're gold on.
[00:28:07] Kate: But. There's been some of that. And I think I find myself often forgetting what it's like to not know about all the intricacies of our sales and marketing funnel and all the intricacies about how we generate leads and what happens to a lead after and what we do from, in terms of how we use six senses for predictive lead scoring and all of that, how that works.
[00:28:30] Kate: And so sometimes when people come at me with like questions does that, that seem to me like they are. Not understanding like what we're doing or not listening to what we're doing. I can tend to get defensive about that. What I've come to understand is I just actually need to do more education. Like I need to pause and be like, oh, he's asking this question cuz he doesn't get how that works.
[00:28:53] Kate: So let me take a step back and, and lock
[00:28:55] Ian: it through that. I love that's a great answer. Yeah. It's a great reminder. There's so many things with marketing that are like ridiculously complex in their own. Right. Mm-hmm , it's a great point to just take a step back and be like, perhaps I'm not as educated or we're just not speaking the same language.
[00:29:13] Ian: Exactly. Okay. Let's get to our final segment. Quick hits. These are quick questions and quick answers. Just like how qualified helps companies generate pipeline faster. Tap into your greatest asset, your website to identify your most valuable visitors and instantly start sales conversations. It's quick and easy.
[00:29:32] Ian: Just like these questions. Go to qualified.com to learn more quick hits. Kate are you ready?
[00:29:39] Kate: I'm ready. And let's do it.
[00:29:41] Ian: Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill. That's not on your resume.
[00:29:44] Kate: I don't put my running on my resume. I'm not sure that I should count that as a skill, but it . I run quite a bit.
[00:29:50] Ian: Favorite book, podcast, TV show that you've recently been checking out that you like?
[00:29:54] Kate: Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, I would be. Inept if I didn't say demand gen visionaries uh, but, uh, love, that's definitely one, one of my, one of my favorite podcasts, but outside of that, I listen to pivot a lot with Kara SWER and Scott Galway.
[00:30:12] Kate: And I just finished the book and ugly truth on audible of all about meta and Facebook and how that came to be, which was really eye-opening for me. So that was really interesting. That's just almost recent and favorite stuff, but yeah, that's my answer on.
[00:30:27] Ian: If you weren't in marketing at all, what do you think you'd be doing?
[00:30:31] Kate: I have a couple things like my dream would be, I would love to like own some sort of like cafe or surf shop, although I don't surf, but I would love really love to learn how to surf in some Beachside community. I have a big place in my heart for Wells main here on the east coast. And so. I would love to own like a juice shop or surf shop or something else and do kind of project property management for people on the side.
[00:30:57] Kate: Love come and go. As I please. Good answer. Not think about MQL S .
[00:31:04] Ian: What advice would you give to a first time head of marketing or CMO? That's trying to figure out their demand gen strategy?
[00:31:10] Kate: What I would say is like follow a lead, understand secret shop, either secret shop, or just follow it from a, from an operational perspective on what happens in your process today.
[00:31:24] Kate: Like what happens so that you can get current state what is happening today, and then you can step back and say, what are the opportunities for improve?
[00:31:34] Ian: I love it. That's all we got for today. What did we miss?
[00:31:36] Kate: I am hiring. I've got roles in field marketing and brand marketing and channel marketing. Just about every marketing discipline.
[00:31:44] Kate: We're gonna go from 18 to 30 people here. And by years end, I would love to speak with any interested marketer in the Boston area who could, who would love to join us.
[00:31:53] Ian: Yeah. And as you just heard from the last 40 minutes, that Kate is awesome. So we'll link that up in the show notes for all of our listeners, go to validity.com.
[00:32:02] Ian: If you're a marketer, check it out, hit the, learn more button, head to a webinar. Obviously, they got a lot of great stuff for you. Thanks again so much for joining the show and we'll talk soon.
[00:32:14] Kate: Thanks for having me.