This Is How Small Brands With Small Budgets Achieve Colossal Results With Andie Coupland From Totara Learning [AMP 146]
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- Game Plan: Strategies for marketing goals, product fit, and brand messaging
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) vs. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): Different approaches for deliverables to measure results of goals and objectives
- Stop Fighting Fires: Stay agile to remain focused on your quarterly priorities
- Keep on Track: Processes in place to stay organized and meet deadlines
- Productivity Pressure: Marketing is getting more done with fewer resources
- Shift in Mindset: Always ask why you’re doing something as a leader/manager
- Andie’s Advice: Find the right tool(s) and learn how to use them to meet your company’s marketing needs right now
Links:
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Quotes by Andie Coupland:
- “You need to have the key bits of information that you can refer back to when you’re making all your decisions for all the smaller things that come up.”
- “If you’re going to be successful, you need to have that shared overview of what’s going on, so everyone knows what they’re doing.”
- “You can have all the tools in the world, but if you’re not talking and communicating across the team regularly, it doesn’t mean anything.”
- “We kind of like that challenge of being creative and pragmatic and coming up with novel ways to do more with less.”
This Is How Small Brands With Small Budgets Achieve Colossal Results With @andiecoupland From @totaralearning
Click To TweetTranscript:
Eric: Hollywood just love to sensationalize a story, people, a place, or even a stereotype. I’m from Fargo, North Dakota. If you’ve seen the Coen brother’s movie, Fargo, it’s not quite like that. We don’t all have wood chippers and we don’t all say, “You betcha,” although some of us do. In the same way, marketing can sometimes get sensationalized based on the media publications we might read. I love Adweek, but talk about huge brands with huge budgets. The reality is, no, we don’t live in that world. Most marketers have small budgets. We are coming from small brands and we have to be scrappy. But we still face the same challenges. We’re still trying to get noticed but with less resources. So, how do we do it? That’s what I want to focus on in this episode of the Actionable Marketing Podcast. Today’s guest is Andie Coupland. She’s the Product Marketing Manager at Totara Learning. She just provides some real solid advice from an everyday marketer who is just grinding and finding success and also finding some [...] in certain ways. She shares what works from her, coming from these small brands and her experience to really get traction, like how does she fight some of this makeshift marketing narrative that we’ve been talking about, where marketers can become disorganized leveraging a couple of technologies together, the copying and pasting, how do you fight that and be productive? How do you actually get results with the limited resources you have, and just really fascinating ideas and tips for measurables and goals, who doesn’t use the traditional KPIs we’re all typically used to using? It’s a really good conversation. I can’t wait for you to meet Andie. My name is Eric Piela. I’m the host of the Actionable Marketing Podcast and the Brand and Buzz Manager here at CoSchedule. All right, buckle up folks because it is time to get AMPed. Hey, everyone and welcome to another action-packed episode of the Actionable Marketing Podcast. I’m excited for today’s episode. We have a really great guest. Her name is Andie Coupland. She is the Product Marketing Manager at Totara Learning. Andie, welcome to AMP. Andie: Hey Eric, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. Eric: Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited to get the chance to talk to you as we continue our Makeshift Marketing series here. You bring tons of experience in the learning technology field but as well just a lot of experience working with smaller budgets and how to be scrappy in smaller brands. You bring some wonderful perspective to the show. I appreciate you coming on. This is going to be a great time. Andie: Let’s do it Eric: You’re hailing from England, that’s correct. I love when we have international guests on the show. Andie: I’m here. It’s not very sunny. I am drinking tea. Eric: Way to live up to the stereotype. I love that. Thank you. This will be a lot of fun. I know you’ve been a listener of the show, and I’ve actually followed you on social media. I love your posts, I [...] in the social world, and just what a small world it is―you’re over in England, me here in North Dakota―that you’re able to come on the show. This will be great. Let’s hop in. Andie, you’ve got a good career and history in the marketing field as well in the learning technology. I love to start my shows with people just getting to know you as an individual and as a marketer. If you could just share with us a bit about your history in the marketing world and how you ended up there in Totara. Andie: I’ve been in marketing for around 10 years now. The majority of that time has been working in the learning technologies field. I joined a startup back in 2011 as a sales and marketing exec. I had a real attitude for the marketing side of things, really enjoyed the fact that it’s creative, and technical, and it’s all about problem-solving, and all the fun stuff. The learning tech industry is a wonderful industry. It’s doing some great things. I am a millennial, so I do have a desire, a want, and a need to feel like I’m making a difference, and industry-wise, it’s always been a really good one for me to be in, therefore. I’ve worked my way up from early days to being a Marketing Manager. I’m currently a Product Marketing Manager which is a new role to me. I’m still trying to get used to it and getting used to a lot of product terms with my teams. It’s really great. I’ve worked in offices in the UK with global teams, franchises. I’ve gone through acquisitions. These days, I’m working from home as part of a remote team, but lots of challenges and experiences along the way. It’s been a great ride. Eric: No kidding. I feel like based on your background, we could have taken this conversation a million different ways, just with your experience, your acquisitions, working remotely, and you’re learning a new role, the Product Marketing Manager. Obviously, as marketers we’re all growing and learning in our careers, and we take different positions. I think of myself as the Brand and Buzz Manager here which is a brand new role that I had not experienced, and you learn so much and you gleam so much. We’re all finding our way through this crazy marketing world, aren’t we? Andie: Indeed. Eric: I can’t wait to jump into our conversation. We’re really talking about, again as we continued on this Makeshift Marketing journey hearing from what I’m calling everyday, wicked smart marketers, who are in the trenches. We’re doing these things, coming from a variety of different industries. Last week, we just talked to an individual who was in the agricultural and construction industry. Now, you’re coming from the online learning industry. One of the things that we talked about before the show, Andie, was not everyone has the same set of resources. Whether that be financial resources, technologies, or they’re not working for a really large brand with tons of global recognition, and sometimes we have to be scrappy with what we’ve got. I’m really looking forward to talking to you about, on small budgets and smaller brands, how do processes change? How do you focus on different strategies and different tactics to try, get some of that market share, and trying to get some of that traction with your efforts? This would be a great one to dive into. Every marketer, we can really get lost in tactics, but stepping back and thinking through about how do we start to figure out our goals? What’s our game plan for this? We talk about the importance of documenting strategy. Again, there’s tons of stats to support. The more often you document your strategy, the better off you’re going to have in being successful. I’d love to hear, Andie, as your role as Product Marketing Manager and with your ecosystem, how do you game plan creating a marketing strategy? Is it something that you build out for the year? For the quarter? Are you guys practicing any agile marketing methodologies there at Totara? Love to hear what your process looks like today. Andie: It’s actually a really exciting time for us at the minute because we are doing some great new product work. We’ve got some new things coming out next year. It’s actually why I’ve been brought on board and why I’m now Product Marketing Manager. It’s just to manage those processes and get the strategy in place in terms of going to markets and how we adjust product fit and our brand message for, what is a bit of a new audience for us in some respects. I’ve joined the team that’s been together for quite a few years. We have a director of marketing who heads up everything that we do. There is a marketing strategy there that we will work together on. Here and in places where I’ve been previously, there is a way to strategy because you need that. You need to have the north stars and get the key bits of information that you can refer back to when you’re making all your decisions for all of the smaller things that come up. We have quite a robust strategy that we have for the year.
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