Kevin Tate
DEMAND GEN VISIONARIES
/
EPISODE
73
Discovering Your Ideal Customer Profile
Kevin discusses the importance of speed when it comes to capturing customer intent, marketing’s role in creating a compelling promise for a company’s product, and why websites need to look to mobile-first experiences as inspiration sooner rather than later.
Clearbit was founded in 2015 with the mission of building the data backbone for modern businesses. It’s a marketing data engine for customer interactions that helps businesses grow by providing tools that help them deeply understand their customers, identify future prospects, and highly personalize every single marketing and sales interaction. As of today, they have more than 500 million monthly enrichments, over 400 thousand users, and over 1,500 business customers.
INDUSTRY
Information Technology Services
FOUNDED
2015
WEBSITE
www.clearbit.com

Kevin Tate is a sales & strategic marketing executive with deep domain expertise in Enterprise SaaS, eCommerce, digital marketing, social media and IoT. Currently, he’s the Chief Marketing Officer at Clearbit, a startup that enables B2B companies to better understand their customers and optimize their digital funnel. Prior to Clearbit, Tate held a variety of leadership positions including CMO and CRO at Rigado, AVP of Sales at SurveyMonkey, CRO at Chirpify, CMO at Shopigniter, etc. Additionally, he has significant M&A experience as a key member of diligence, acquisition and post-integration teams for three successful transactions. Overall, he has more than 24 years of sales, marketing, and product leadership experience under his belt.

Episode Summary

This episode features an interview with Kevin Tate, Chief Marketing Officer at Clearbit, a marketing data engine for customer interactions that helps businesses grow. Kevin has more than 24 years of sales and marketing as a 2-time CRO and 3-time CMO, and has held many other senior leadership roles throughout his career. 

On this episode, Kevin discusses the importance of speed when it comes to capturing customer intent, marketing’s role in creating a compelling promise for a company’s product, and why websites need to look to mobile-first experiences as inspiration sooner rather than later.

Key Takeaways

  • You only have seconds to engage a customer before they go check out your competitor’s site. Speed matters and so do qualified leads. 
  • The role of marketing is to create a compelling promise around a product. It’s the product’s job to keep that promise. 
  • Websites need to feel and act more like the type of applications we've come to expect in other digital ecosystems. A struggle to adapt will leave them obsolete.

Quotes

"...the idea of the ideal customer profile is maybe a sort of 101-level content, right? It is really foundational to how companies think about, understand, and act on their ideal customers. But, as we look at sort of the 201 and 301 levels, it's about how to actually focus my funnel on my ICP and then, how do I do it in a way that's consistent through acquisition, conversion, and operations so that I can actually measure and optimize? ... So, again, thinking about how [the ICP] goes from foundational to the edge of where people are pushing the boundaries is what keeps it fun."

Episode Transcript

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Episode Timestamps:

*(2:00) - Kevin’s role at Clearbit

*(3:12) - Kevin’s first job in demand gen

*(5:00) - Segment: Trust Tree

*(9:18) - Clearbit’s buying committee and personas

*(15:46) - Segment: The Playbook 

*(25:10) - Clearbit’s event strategy

*(26:49) - How Kevin views Clearbit’s website

*(33:04) - Kevin’s favorite campaign

*(34:43) - Kevin’s most cuttable budget items  

*(36:30) - Segment: The Dust-Up

*(38:10) - 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

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn

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 www.caspianstudios.com