Amanda Nelson, Director of Marketing at RingLead Talks B2B Marketing Strategy - The B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast

The B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast

Amanda Nelson is the Director of Marketing at RingLead
At RingLead, Amanda oversees the strategy and execution for their content marketing. Previously she's worked at salesforce.com and Radian6, and has an extensive agency background. She's an avid blogger, thought leader and speaker.

Amanda's presented at conferences like the Online Marketing Institute, Direct Marketing Association, Content Marketing Institute. She's also an Adjunct Professor at Quinnipiac University, where she teaches graduate courses on Social Media, Community Management and Content Marketing.

Press play below and start listening to Amanda Nelson share her unique marketing insights on this week’s episode of the B2B marketing podcast. The show sheet for today’s podcast is available at: http://www.triblio.com/blog/ringlead/

Beginning of Transcript

Amanda Nelson: Right. Well, thank you Jeff for having me today. Yes, my name is Amanda Nelson. I’ve been in content marketing for about four years. Prior to my current role, I worked at Radian6 and then Salesforce.com doing content marketing for both brands and today, I am at

RingLead which is a Salesforce partner. We also work with Marketo and Eloqua and Pardot and other marketing automation CRM providers doing data quality. So my role is really leading marketing for RingLead and our major initiative is content marketing and really creating helpful thought leadership content for marketers and salespeople.

Jeff Zelaya: Now, Amanda, one of the things that I was very amazed by is that in the short amount of time that you’ve been at RingLead, you’ve made significant impact. You’re popping up all over my radar and I’m seeing the great work that you guys are doing and I’m very intrigued by that and want to know for other content marketing directors that are starting that, who are going to get into that role, to lead the growth of the marketing department. What are some important things that they should be doing? What have you done in your new role starting there that have made you guys get off to this great start and what advice would you have for others that are following in those same footsteps?

Amanda Nelson: Yeah, thank you. I mean you can’t do it right without a plan. You really need an action plan for what you’re going to be doing and so from day one, we sat down with other members of the team. I talked to and I interviewed almost everybody at the company to just get a sense of who the company is and who our customers are and where we want to go and just kind of really immersing myself in the people and the products and everything about the brand.

Then from there, once we were able to really use our data to understand our customers and what their challenges are and how they use our product or how – where our product can go, from there, I was really able to craft a vision and tie goals and metrics to that vision and focus because at a start-up, you really can go in so many different directions and be pulled in so many different ways and wear a lot of different hats.

It’s really important to have a focus and really dedicate all your time to that. So with everything that’s asked of me, I ask myself, “Does this align with the vision that I’ve set forth?” If it does, I do it and if it doesn’t, I don’t. That’s the only way I can really focus and get things done and when you focus and you know exactly who you’re targeting and how you can help them with your content, your expertise and ultimately your product, your services, at that point, you can really start to make a difference and see an uptick in your results.

Jeff Zelaya: Very true. I mean there are so many folks that are starting to do content marketing but the plan is not in place and if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you don’t have that vision, chances are you’re not going to hit it. You’re not going to hit the goals that you had in your mind and wr...