21 - Marketing Challenges and Wins with Mark Kilens, VP of Content & Community at Drift

Mark Kilens, VP of Content and Community at Drift, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast.

Drift was founded in 2015, has ~400 people, and is based out of Boston, MA. They've raised Series C ($107M total). Drift helps companies (specifically, marketing and sales) engage in real-time, personalized conversations so they can build trust and accelerate revenue. Drift combines chat, email, video, and automation to remove the friction from business buying and make it more enjoyable and human. They came up with the categories “conversational marketing” and “revenue acceleration” and just announced a year of record-breaking growth.

Here's what we hit on:

3 different eras and the evolution of brand, demand gen, and now a revenue focus across marketing and sales;

What are the pain points that sales/marketing teams have where Drift comes in;

Sales/marketing team alignment vs. actioning;

How the marketing team is structured inside Drift - the hub of the customer experience AND employee experience;

What makes Drift unique (from other martech SaaS companies);

What marketing channels are working really well for Drift (e.g. LinkedIn, virtual events);

How to think about SEO in an effective way - narrow targeting and entertaining media formats;

LinkedIn marketing means using the power of real people within your business;

Drift on gating content (HINT: they don't);

Just because someone reads your content does not mean they're qualified - what else matters;

Drift's marketing challenges (e.g. expansion, focus, etc.);

You can't just buy martech and expect revenue to follow - need the strategy;

Some of Mark's best marketing ideas (micro-content, reposition your content to different audiences);

The vast majority of websites suck because they serve the marketer vs. customer;

How Mark stays creative.

You can find Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkilens/

Find out more about Drift: www.drift.com

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You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com

Thanks for listening!