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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#734: Focusing on the marketing that matters with Tara Corey, Optimizely
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Tara Corey
The agile brand.
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Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, E commerce, and whatever's next for the omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to
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Interviewer
make sure you always get the latest
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Greg Kilstrom
episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And now onto the show.
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Interviewer
With so much noise around AI, changing customer expectations, and the ever evolving martech landscape, how can marketing leaders avoid the noise? To focus on what truly drives long
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Greg Kilstrom
term value agility requires not only adapting
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Interviewer
to change, but also anticipating it. It demands a willingness to experiment, to learn and iterate quickly, especially when it comes to leveraging new technologies and understanding evolving customer behaviors. We're here today in New York City at Opticon 25 and seeing and hearing some amazing things about the future of MarTech and how AI will shape the role of marketing in the months and years to come. We're going to talk about the evolving role of the marketing leader in a world increasingly shaped by AI automation and the demand for personalized experiences. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Tara Corey, SVP of Marketing at Optimizely. Tara, welcome to the show.
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Tara Corey
Thank you. I'm honored to be here.
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Interviewer
Yeah, looking forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your relatively new role at Optimizely?
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Tara Corey
Awesome. Thank you. So I've had a bit of a probably more unconventional path to a marketing leadership role. I feel I've earned my stripes more as a marketing operations leader and putting leading marketing technology implementations and demand operations, marketing performance management, measurement planning, and after I had mastered that, or felt like I mastered that role, I decided to take on a transformation role of the SDR organization, right? Really being responsible for pipeline development and having carrying kind of that number which ultimately led me to kind of a full marketing leadership role. And when the role at Optimizely came up, it was a bit of a dream job type of scenario where I've spent a lot of time being that type of Persona in marketing ops and tech and then being able to market to marketing and leading a marketing organization for a martech organization. Like somebody pinch me, right? It's pretty amazing. So yeah, I've been here for about eight months.
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Interviewer
Nice. Nice. Well, yeah, let's dive in here and we're going to talk about a few things here but I want to talk about this evolving role of the marketing leader and certainly last couple days here we've been talking a lot about AI's impact and other impacts to marketing as you're relatively new to your role as SVP of marketing, but certainly again not a stranger to marketing itself. Your role at Optimizely. How do you look at the role of marketing as it relates to the future of this marketing technology company and how marketing should align with the overall business strategy?
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Tara Corey
Yeah, so I feel like optimizely has really changed over the last few years as we're like leaders in multiple categories from content management systems to content marketing platform experimentation, personalization and so much more. And I didn't know this coming in and I don't really believe our market and target audience really understand the full awareness of what Optimizely brings to the table and our breadth of our solutions and the market recognition we have from analysts and our leadership position there. So I absolutely believe like other marketing leaders that we've sort of over tilted on demand and haven't quite invested enough in brand over the years. And I don't think we're alone. I get to speak to a lot of other marketing leaders in this role which is like one of the key perks where marketing teams have like hyper focused on intent and in market signals coupled with like pressure of pipeline that I think we've forgotten how important it is to be top of mind before a project actually initiates or comes to play. So we need a better balance of brand and demand along with like continuing to diversify and test our current our content and our channels.
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Interviewer
Yeah. So in addition then to that relationship between marketing and business strategy, how's the role of the marketing leader evolved over the last few years? I mean certainly you know, there's a little been a little bit going on over the last few years. You know, what are the most critical skills and competencies required to succeed in today's environment?
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Tara Corey
Yeah, I mean unfortunately I think there's still a bit of a stigma of CMOs and like marketing leaders that they don't bring enough value to like the C suite. And we need to combat that and be able to prove the value effectively and communicate to that executive team in the boardroom the value that marketing brings tangibly. And I think there are three kind of three key skills and competencies that kind of come to mind, two of which I feel like have served me really well and I'm very confident in. And then one that I'd say is developing. The first is really, really understanding as a marketing leader, like the data and operations and the technology and systems and workflows that happens. And this is, I think, a benef or unique aspect of my journey to leadership from a marketing standpoint of having that background. And I think it's really served me well. Right. Like being able to be data driven as a CMO has, has really helped provide that value, be able to prove that value. The second is sort of the people side. We talked a lot about that at Opticon today. I'm really glad that it's coming to the forefront. So you always talk about technology and efficiency and all the different benefits you get from technology and AI and so forth. We can't lose sight of like the people of the house. And one of the things that I probably love the most about, you know, my role and, and my career is like the ability to kind of bridge teams and people and collaborate across the teams, whether that's marketing to sales or marketing in the product organization or the IT and operations teams. Like really being that bridge and helping build strong teams is sort of one of those key, key perks. The other kind of core competency, which is one having gone from like operations and some of the demand side and then now into full marketing responsibility, is like the critical importance of strong positioning and messaging and value based messaging and storytelling. It's not probably one of my core competencies that I've had in the past, but absolutely have a strong appreciation in ensuring that I build the best team to be able to do that.
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And you know, to your points there, I mean the role of the marketer, you know, being data driven, you know, if that's something that someone has a background in already, they were very much set up for success in today's world because marketers are being asked to do a little bit of a lot of the, in addition to all of the other stuff that marketers have all have already been doing. And you know, that kind of brings to the next point of lots of talk about AI certainly at this conference, as well as just in general AI automation. You know, they're certainly transforming the way that marketing is delivered, marketing operations. What are some of the most significant benefits that you've seen from implementing these technologies? I know it's kind of optimizely, uses optimizely products and platforms and stuff like that. So it's great that you're able to do that. So what are some of the benefits that you've been able to see and what advice would you have for marketers that are looking to get started?
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Tara Corey
Yeah, it's interesting because I think we've seen the plethora of all the different marketing technologies that we have in our stack today and trying to piece them together and use them as effectively and efficiently as we can. It's expensive, right? It's a huge line item in the marketing budgets across the board. And one of the things that I've seen is I've been a big fan of leveraging intent data and intent signals, a big six sense fan. And there's other platforms out there. And I think one of the things that we've struggled with sometimes is that being able to truly do ABM at scale. Right. Has been a challenge. Right. And I think that's because we haven't always been able to get to all of the audiences or the personalization the audiences and at the different stages that they are in their journey and so forth, to be able to create that content, distribute and publish it and get it to the right places at the right time. And so I think with optimizely, we're really uniquely positioned, when you couple that with being able to, especially with our Opal and our AI capabilities now, to be able to actually have the capacity now across the teams using this technology, to actually do ABM at scale by being able to create the right content and get it into the right distribution channels at the right time.
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Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, I think that's. That there's also. There's always like the classic argument of sometimes been an artificial barrier, I think, between sales and marketing for that reason of, you know, to do ABM or even, you know, to have that sales relationship, you couldn't do it at scale. And so marketing would feel generic and kind of wooden or whatever. And so being able to do that, you know, is a phenomenal, like game changer when you're able to actually do sales and marketing kind of in parallel. That said, you know, are there, are there downsides? Like, is there, is there such a thing as like too much AI? Like where, you know, you've, you've already mentioned how important it is to have people in the loop. But what are your thoughts there?
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Tara Corey
Yeah, I mean I'm not saying anything that I think others aren't already saying in the market, but I'll say it, I'll go ahead and say it anyway. Right. I think there's an over reliance on a. The over reliance on AI can lead to like mediocre marketing. Right. And messaging. Right. For and like who wants this? Like nobody wants like mild or mediocre marketing. Right. So I still think we have to have that appreciation. I think we'll, we will have an even stronger appreciation for like great artistry, like creativity cleverness. And I think the organizations that can kind of tap the both of those things. Right. Will rise to the surface in my opinion. So like I'm really fortunate that I that I've inherited this marketing team at Optimizely because they are super creative and talented team that leverages our technology. It's like honestly like a dream comes, dream come true. And so I have a team that indexes high on the creativity side and we have leaders that are willing to take risks, which is great too on that side and have it giving us that freedom. And like the opening trailer today was a great example of that too. Right. That trailer was made completely by the internal team. They leveraged AI but it was their thought process, their like and they brought it to life. So I thought it was outstanding. So like teams that can bridge the creativity and leverage the tools and do that in the best like to life are going to succeed in my opinion.
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. And to your point about, you know, optimizely uses optimizely to market optimizely. What benefits does that have for your end customers?
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Tara Corey
Yeah, well I think this is where, you know, we get to really sit in the shoes of our customers day in and day out, which I think is awesome. We are customer zero overall and we sort of operate that way but we don't limit just to our own experiences. Like we really try to seek out and talk to customers and so forth as well.
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Interviewer
And so you know, we've talked quite a bit about, you know, AI and really the, the role of marketers, you know, marketers roles. Let's talk a little bit about the, the end customer engagement. So certainly it's not only AI is not only impacting how brands are connecting with customers, but also how customers are connecting with brands and you know, from, from a variety of different angles. How can market. Sure. That that delivery, you know, you said the quality of content is at risk, you know if you're, if you're not using these things right. You know, how do you deliver authentic and valuable experiences rather than just like more stuff?
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Tara Corey
Yeah. So I think it's a bit of taking the opportunity to measure. Right. I think we should continuously measure so like see what the trends are in the, in the data. We use CaliberMind from a marketing attribution standpoint, but we're constantly looking at the data. It's definitely a practice we have and a culture within the marketing organization. Every other week we kind of rotate different things that we're looking at and inspecting and so forth. So like one looking at the data to see what we're seeing and then we are going a bit old school and we've done focus groups to hear from our customers directly when I first came on board and it'll be something that I continue to do. I ask friends to do some mystery shopping for me, right. In the industry to say, hey, can you fill out a form on our website, ask to do a contact request chat with our chatbot. I want to know from a customer's perspective how they're experiencing us. Right. And get the firsthand feedback. And I think that's so critically important to remember to do. At the end of the day, you learn so much from that.
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Interviewer
And so, you know, you talked a little bit about personalization with, you know, things like ABM and other things like that. Certainly personalization just across the board is a wealth of statistics supporting it and all that. So it's kind of a, it's kind of a given. And yet a lot of organizations still struggle. You know, it could be siloed teams, it could be siloed data, siloed platforms, you name it. Lots of, lots of silos, probably some other things as well. What strategies can marketers use to break down some of these barriers, whatever they may be, and really create that, you know, cross channel personalized one to one. All of those, those buzzwords that are buzzwords, but they're also real things, right?
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Tara Corey
Yeah. So one of the things I started doing and I've been here now at Optimizely again eight months, so still fairly early. And I flipped it because I really do believe in like in personalization. There's the word Persona. Right. And so we reoriented some of the integrated marketing teams on Personas to really understand what are the pain points, who are we talking to? At the end of the day, it's still people buying software. Right. So like we have to connect down to the individuals, the Personas, their pain points. Et cetera. So we flipped it and we had a good marketing leadership team one day and we came up with a name and a framework and it's, it has stuck and we call it the marketing Operating Board. And there's four of them by our key Personas and they're mobs. So Marketing operating board, we love a good acronym. So we've got the mobs, right. And there's a bit of like. Exactly. So we've got, they're like branded now we've got the mobs. We got four mobs and we've got like a mob mentality a bit. So we've made, we've had some fun with it. Of course, marketers always want to have some fun. And in that mob we've got a key squad of four people, right. So there's a go to market solution leader. So ensuring that we're aligned to the revenue goals and the sales organization. So go to market solution leader. We've got a product marketing manager, a campaign manager and a content manager. Those are, I'd say the four people in the, in that are in the squad. And in addition to that we're, we're integrating in some of the other marketing team members, right that like the paid team, the field team from an event standpoint, we've got the social media team, competitive intelligence, we've got all the other folks that really need to come together as an integrated marketing team and bring the personalization and the data and the insights and so forth to light to really create a single plan. And so I'd say we're in the, still in the, you know, in, in the phases of nor forming, storming, norming, et cetera. I would say that we're probably in the norming stage at this point. So I'm really excited to see where we go from in terms of really aligning on the Persona based mobs and integrating across the teams that we don't have this silo effect and that we are working all towards common goals aligned with the go to market revenue organization.
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Interviewer
Yeah. And I mean that's, it's really, it's great to be able to hear that articulated because I think you know what you're talking about. There's obviously heavy AI use and you know, martech platform usage, but there's also a lot of collaboration and communication and just, you know, kind of sharing goals and all those things that I think we sometimes forget right when we get focused on the shiny object or whatever and we kind of forget the purpose of why we're doing it and so to hear that, you know, it's also, I just think it's good when people can work more closely together when they're all trying to achieve the same end. So.
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Tara Corey
Yeah, exactly. So we've got this team now and we're still in the early days, like I said, but you know, we just launched the, one of the, like the competitive intelligence agents into the mix. So that compared competitive intelligence agent will actually be part of the mob team going forward. So like now we're trying to figure. We talked about, I talked about earlier too, about the. How do we practice and put AI into practice and into the teams and into the workflows. So we're actually going to like integrate. We've got the GEO and SEO type of agents too. So like they will actually be part of the extended mob team. Right. And so how they take that information on a monthly, weekly, whatever the right cadence is, and actually use that to then inform what should be our, maybe our, some of our ABM or competitive plays or what should be some of our. How does that inform our content strategy and our, our competitive pages. So it's really, I think it's such an exciting time to be in marketing. Scary and exciting all at the same, at the same time.
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Interviewer
Totally, totally agree. And you know, as, as we kind of wrap up here, a few things. You know, how has marketing a platform, I know you're relatively, relatively new to the role, but, you know, not, not a stranger to the space. How has marketing a platform like optimizely changed over the years? You know, what are, what are B2B is looking for in today's market? And you know, how, how is that evolving?
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Tara Corey
Yeah, again, one of the benefits is I get to speak to a variety of different marketing leaders and I think sort of the tech stack has sort of gotten a little bit out of control on the tech spend and I don't think they're feeling the value out of all of the spend that they have. Right. Being able to integrate it across or leverage it to the fullest extent. So I think that is where I think optimizely really has an advantage and can really step it into the marketplace because we do have a variety of, you know, customers can consolidate and simplify with the optimizely stack in a lot of ways. And I think that's really helping us win some deals because they really see where we're going and innovating and our leadership in so many different spaces where, you know, they don't have to then, you know, basically have, you know seven different contracts and, and CSM engagements and everything else. So I do think that there's going to be a bit of that consolidation and simplification and people are going to look for the next generation of marketing platforms that they want to place a bet on. Right. And potentially slightly fewer than they may have in their stack today.
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Interviewer
Yeah. Yeah. Well, one last. Or a couple last things here as we wrap up. So we're here at Opticon 25 in New York. What's been a highlight for you so far?
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Tara Corey
Yeah. So, I mean, and of course, getting to be on Main Stage this morning was awesome and you did great. Thank you, thank you. Talking about our AI use cases and adoption with Kion, and I loved that we were bringing the human element to it and the change management, because this is a huge change for everybody. I think we're only at the very beginning stages, so it's really exciting. So I'm really excited to speak to customers firsthand. That's definitely important to me, too. That's been a highlight of today and I'm excited for seeing the MOB framework through and how we leverage Opti on Opti and AI and to be able to showcase that next year at Opticon.
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Interviewer
Love it. Yeah, we'll have to talk at Opticon 26. Awesome. Well, one last thing before we wrap up. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Tara Corey
Yeah. So it's not so much about me being agile in the role as it is the team. Right. And I think the one, one lesson that I've learned was to do skip levels with the team and I do that pretty. I try to do it as much as I possibly can because knowing what's working and not working, like on the ground and in the team is so critically important to be able to ensure that I have an agile organization going forward. Right. So it's more of like, how can I understand what is getting in their way and how can they. Can I help them work through or remove barriers so that they can be able to be agile and the team can actually be more agile going forward? And I feel pretty fortunate that, you know, we had. There was the news of statsig over the. Over the past week and the team was able to turn around like a campaign and so forth and offer hard offer and campaign within 24 hours. And like, to me there's nothing like. And we used our own technology and everything else. All things coming together, like, super impressed with the team.
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Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, I saw that on LinkedIn. I think for the first time I was like, wow, that was quick because I had barely heard of it and
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Tara Corey
the week before Opticon. So you throw in Opticon like prep and so forth and then that. It was of course like hard on the team, but like amazing team. They leveraged technology. They were agile. It was very impressive.
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Interviewer
Love it, love it. That's great. Well again, I'd like to thank Tara Corey, SVP of Marketing at Optimizely for joining the show. You can learn more about Terra and Optimizely by following the links in the show notes.
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Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkilstrom.com that's G-R E G K-I H L S T R O M.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content.
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Interviewer
Content.
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Greg Kilstrom
Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Tara Corey
The agile brand.