Marketing is in the Middle: Elizabeth Quintanilla

The final person in the series is a person who tirelessly given back to the product marketing community and just the community in general – Elizabeth Quintanilla.  Within 30 seconds of meeting Elizabeth you’ll know that she brings passion and energy to ANY effort she applies herself to.  I first met her at a product camp and have been actively watching her tweets since then.

Elizabeth isn’t just a leader in the product management and marketing community, she devotes her time to improving Austin and works to advance efforts locally as the social media ambassador of the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (GAHCC).  The other cool thing about Elizabeth is she might be able to be technically called a rocket scientist with a long stint managing products for the Jet Propulsion Lab.

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

Surprisingly, I had a strange start to Marketing.  My first taste of product management was a systems re-engineering project at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  It was my job to solicit requirements on how over 200 engineers how and wanted to actually use a software system used to navigate all current robotic missions at JPL.  After graduating with my UT-MBA, I had another product manager role within a product group of IBM’s WebSphere.  In 2009, I decided to start a woman-minority owned marketing and community outreach firm.  Since then, I have worked with government, high tech, small family business, and restaurants.

When you look at your career in marketing, what activities have you found most interesting/challenging?

What I really enjoy is the creative part of marketing – ranging from storyboards to the full video creation.  Also, I enjoy finding all the analytics based on the customer metrics and presenting them in a digestible format for the small business owner so they can see the impact of their marketing activities.  Some have described me as a creative analyst.

With my background in technology, my first client engagement in the food and beverage market was a challenge because of the rapid ramp time to address their unique concerns.  I had to remember all my experiences of having that part-time high school job.

Based on your experience what activities do you think get the most return?

Speaking and teaching; volunteering my skills with non-profits; building relationships that generate referrals based on volunteer, presentation, and coaching activities.

What do you feel is the most important component of a successful marketing gig?

Executive Buy-In – there must be acceptance from exec team for bringing in an outsourced marketing resource and provide timely relevant information.

How have you seen organizations change in the last 3-5 years to better support the needs of product marketers, product managers and communications teams?

Better realignment between where product managers report to (Development, Sales, or Marketing) and the overlap in teams.  Move to an agile adoption where each of the teams have 30, 60, and 90 day plans.

If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?

One where the Execs buy in to the process and if I could get a little more dreamy, daily stand ups through the organization to improve communications.

How far is this from reality?

I see an increase of adoption within marketing teams and leadership teams, but it still requires work for most companies.

So what’s next?

More teaching small business, and working with interesting clients as a marketing gunslinger for me.  For the industry, a steadfast movement away from big ideas, tech and products and alignment with the needs of the markets.

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Web: EQ Consultants

Blog: elizabeth-quintanilla.com

Twitter: @equintanilla

Many thanks to Elizabeth for her participation.  What a positive note to end the series on!

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February 16, 2011 by
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Marketing is in the Middle: Lauren Carlson

The next person in the series, is Lauren Carlson.  I asked Lauren to participate since as the interviews started to unfold from a content perspective, no one was really talking about tools which provide marketers an edge.  Lauren writes about various topics related to CRM software, with particular interest in sales force automation, marketing automation, and customer service and this background clearly made her a great fit to help fill this gap which has emerged in the discussions around marketing being in the middle.

Like all marketers or people around tech – Lauren isn’t formally trained in technology or marketing.  She has a background in the music industry, and when she isn’t writing about software, you can find her running at  Town Lake and singing at local venues around Austin.  So maybe, just maybe I should have entitled the series Austin is in the Middle of Technology marketing with a couple of  other geographies added to the mix, just for fun.

Here is Lauren’s take:

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

I am relatively new to marketing but I continue to get exposure to many software marketers, companies and service providers as a journalist. The role I have at Software Advice provides great access to leaders in the community. As a practitioner, I am actively involved in doing search engine optimization.

When you look at your career in marketing, what activities have you found most interesting/challenging?

Targeting the right segments in the market.  Ultimately as marketers, we have to find our niche or audience.  So finding the right audience can often be difficult. Sometimes we have really great content, but if it doesn’t hit the right person, it is useless.

Based on your experience what activities do you think get the most return?

Doing the background research! Certainly it can take a good deal of effort and a bit of time, but it often brings back the most returns. I spend days researching keywords and search stats to better understand my audience. It can be tedious, but when we start to rank for those competitive terms, that’s really when you see the fruits of your labor.

What do you feel is the most important component of a successful marketing gig?

Content. Content. Content. Content drives everything. You can have the most talented people or the best business model, coolest tech, but if your content is bad, you’ve got nothing to keep your audience/buyers engaged.

If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?

It would be focused on collaboration and creativity. Sometimes I get my best ideas when talking with a co-worker or when I am simply away from my desk interacting with others. Don’t get me wrong –  some structure is great, but I think having the freedom to team up or step out of a structured environment can really free the mind to come up with some awesome stuff.

How far is this from reality?

I think that a lot of new start-ups are adopting this environment. Our company is working toward it and I have heard of others that are using this model. I think it is possible in organizations with a legacy in the traditional way of marketing. It is simply a matter of them accepting it and making the decision to adopt it.

So what’s next?

I have personally done a lot of research in the area of marketing automation – a piece of software that automates basic to complex marketing tasks. Companies are beginning to see the value of adding a marketing automation system to their enterprise software mix. However, the issue of adoption is what is holding it back. Software Advice just published a very interesting article from Jeff Pedowitz called, “Why the Marketing Automation Market is Floundering & 5 Fixes to Fuel It.” One of the stumbling blocks faced by the industry is education. We have this great new software, but we have not educated marketers on what it is or how to use it. I think we will see a new generation of marketers popping up in the next few years. These marketers will be true analytical thinkers more focused on process. We still need creative minds, as well. I think when you combine great technology and process with vibrant creativity and ideas, you have the perfect marketing mix.

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Twitter: @MASoftwareGuide or @CRMadvice

Blog: www.softwareadvice.com/articles/crm/

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February 14, 2011 by
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Mobile Trends for Marketers, Product Marketers and Product Managers

Market research isn’t easy – it’s always a bunch a work.  Gaining insight into trends and alike not only requires a keen eye on the data, but continuous interaction from folks in the market.  To that end, researching trends can definitely be more difficult than it should be and researching markets can be even harder if you don’t have an analyst budget.

For the past 2 or 3 years or so, I’ve been consistently tracking the mobile markets and trends for some time and here is some more stuff for y’all, with another one from Mary Meeker.  It also looks like Meeker apparently recently joined – KPCB.   OK maybe not recently, but at least since the last published Morgan Stanley pitch on internet mobile trends.

Mobile megatrends 2011 (VisionMobile)

View more presentations from andreasc.

Again a bunch of meeker slides:

Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends (Feb 2011)

View more presentations from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
February 11, 2011 by
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