Kate Adams, Drift – InnovaBuzz 225

Kate Adams, Drift

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Kate Adams, who is the VP of Marketing at Drift, a conversational marketing platform that connects your sales team with your future customers. Kate is dedicated to bringing businesses and brands to life in the hearts and minds of prospects and customers by creating and delivering valuable, compelling content for each stage of the customer’s journey.

In our discussion, Kate talked to me about:

• Starting relationships with real conversations, that is a start of the customer journey with you
• Why forms and funnels might not be enough to get more customers
• The importance of really understanding your customers’ pain, what they want to solve and what success looks like for them

Andrew Michael on episode 207 suggested we interview Kate.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

Listen to the Podcast

Show Notes from this episode with Kate Adams, VP of Marketing at Drift

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• As a business, so much of what you say matters. What you communicate and how you communicate it bring a company to life.
• B2B marketers should move as quickly as direct consumer marketers.
• There are a lot of long games in B2B marketing to get more traffic to your website – PPC advertising, social advertising, SEO, and a strong content marketing strategy. There are all these long games and very few short games. Conversational marketing is one of those short games that can deliver immediate results. 
• It is never an OR. It is never “do all these marketing strategies OR conversational marketing”. It is always “do those things AND conversational marketing”.
• The real reason why marketing exists is to start conversations and get people to understand the value of your product or service. It exists to build great experiences for customers.
• Look at the highest intent pages on your website and put a chatbot on those pages. Get the bot to start asking questions and start having conversations but make sure to put in some context into that conversation. The more context you can put it, the better off you would be.
• A bot can also be used to help qualify conversations. You could use it to qualify a person like you would use a form and route it accordingly.
• It is never a form OR a chatbot. It is always “AND”. 

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round

Here are Kate’s answers to the questions of our Innovation round. Listen to the interview to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Never stop learning. The minute you think you know everything is when you stop learning, and you will never innovate. You will never come up with a better idea and you will never get better at what you do.
2. Best thing for new ideas – Get up and go for a walk. 
3. Favourite tool for innovation –  Audible, podcasts
4. Keep project / client on track – Understand the pain that that person is looking to solve when they bought your product or service. Figure out the underlying reason.
5. Differentiate – Don’t be everything to everybody. Trying to be everything to everybody is the single biggest path to non-existence. Decide what you are to differentiate yourself. 

To Be a Leader

Pick out what you are going to be. Never stop learning. Talk to as many people as you can and find mentors. Find those people that you want to be like and emulate.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Kate through their website, LinkedIn and on Twitter.

Suggested Guest

Kate suggested I interview Sarah Blakely, Founder and CEO of Spanx. So Sarah, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz podcast, courtesy of Kate Adams.

Links

• Website -Drift
• Twitter – @KAdams24
• LinkedIn

Cool things about Kate

• She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish.
• She was among the nominees for the 2019 20 Women to Watch by the Women Business Leaders.
• She’s a volunteer of Boston Cares.

Listen to the Podcast