Guest Post from Watson Vermont
“Well, it’s event season and the official start to this year’s series was marked by the Marketo Summit in San Francisco two weeks ago. Not only was it the first event of the season, but it was also the first event of my career and as such took a bit longer to make sense of it all. Like for many young folks, the spring marks some variable change in life as we matriculate from our past lives of fun and parties to the more daunting “working world”. AND in fact, I had no idea what to expect on my first day of work a few months ago.
Arriving at the office, I tried to take in my new surroundings, the fresh faces, and the new smells, and the space where I would be spending many of my days moving forward. In fact, the past months have marked a series of significant “firsts” in my life, such as: my first day at the office, my first work conference, my first Marketo Summit and now my first blog post!!! And like all of the other millennials out there who are entering the working world, I couldn’t be more excited for what the future holds.
So speaking of that excitement you can imagine how I felt, when my mentor picked me up at my house one morning a few weeks ago and told me that I would be attending the Marketo Summit! I was floored… (literally)… and had to lie down for a moment to compose myself. I had heard my mentor and others in the office talking about the event and I could sense the excitement in their voices as they made final preparations, but that could have never prepared for what I was about to experience. As we made our way downtown and to the Moscone building, being new to the city there was quite a lot to take in. Unlike where I grew up, the city is noisy and smells, and has lots of different types of people and traffic…and is exciting! It’s got an undeniable energy that I guess everyone feels when they move to a big city for work, but what was really impressive was the same type of energy that Marketo managed to bring into this event. Again, it’s my first Marketo Summit and generally first work conference of my career, but overhearing many others talk about the show I could tell that Marketo did this better than others.
As I walked into the Moscone Center for the first time I had a feeling of momentary panic that I wouldn’t have a pass or be allowed in. After all I had been tapped last minute to attend and represent my company, but to my satisfaction we were able to walk right in. (I do have some special paperwork and a fancy vest!) As we made our way across the expo floor to our booth, I finally got a true sense of what these events are all about- just tons of different people all trying to talk to you with the promise of some small toy that you’ll get to take home after. In fact, this wasn’t so foreign to me believe it or not, so I felt comfortable when I was given my first assignment: booth staff! My job, like many others, was to stand at the booth and engage people, get them excited about our product and introduce them to the more seasoned account executives (I’m still learning about our products functionality and capabilities).
Despite this being my first Marketo Summit, I did get great perspective on the event as I engaged with people over the next few days and my manager has asked that I share my unique perspective on the summit with you guys:
1) The new Marketo functionality:
While I’m new to the platform, it was easy enough to tell that there were many significant product advancements and releases that were announced at the summit. Specifically, I heard the term ABM thrown around quite a bit, and while I’ve heard this acronym in my office before I could tell in this context that it meant something important to Marketo. In speaking to many others about the new announcements around ABM, it sounds like they are just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of the really meaningful functionality to let marketers execute and measure ABM campaigns. That said, my first assignment when I returned to the office was to set a Google Alert for anything referencing “Marketo ABM”. It will be exciting to track these developments in the coming months.
2) Analytics are finally a bigger deal:
Again, limited experience with Marketo, but in conversations in the office I continue to hear about the many limitations of Marketo’s analytics platform to deliver actionable insight for it’s users. Well, it seems that CEO Steve Lucas has finally recognized the importance of data as something we must finally embrace as marketers in order to do our job and do it well. It’s significant because as a analytics company it represents a bit of a paradigm shift to see these large marketing platforms in our space finally take a more concerted focus in the area of analytics.
(Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing did a great session on the subject of “Aligning and Measuring Teams Around Business Impact” and if you missed it you can find his slides here: https://www.slideshare.net/heinzmarketing/profit-center-marketing-how-to-focus-your-objectives-actions-culture-around-revenueproducing-activity-results)
3) We’ve got some happy customers!
As a new hire, there’s nothing more reassuring than hearing real customers come over to the booth and offer such great feedback on their experience with our application. To hear how it’s driven real positive impact for their company, the way the application has transformed their individual contributions as marketers, and finally the enjoyment they have gotten out of working with our experts on the Customer Success team is something that struck me as really special and unique. And boy did our customers come out to say hello to me! To all those that stopped by the booth, thank you so much for doing so and for the kind words! We look forward to continuing to work with you and make you wildly successful marketers!
4) And last but not least, how could I not mention my experience at the booth.
In the modern expo world of electronic giveaways, tchotchkes that bounce and chirp, or just old fashion drawings for cold hard cash, we at Full Circle Insights seemed to take a different approach. While I had worked diligently on my elevator pitch, I found that all I had to do was really stand there and people would approach me! They would come over to say hello and introduce themselves and pet my head. They would ask for pics with me and guess my age and talk about their friends I should meet. I’m not sure if I’m a natural at this sort of thing or if it was just beginners luck, but I’m told by my colleagues that it’s most likely because of my French accent. And that I’m a puppy.
My name is Watson and I’m the newest member of the Full Circle Insights sales team.
In order to prep for the show, one of my reading requirements was Four Dashboards to Make Marketing Measurement Easy– it was great in spinning me up. Check it out!
And if you are attending the Martech Summit in San Francisco this week be sure to come over to our booth #607 grab a pair of socks, take a pic with me, and let me tell you a bit about Full Circle Insights!”
