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#126 Growth and Flexibility in Modern Marketing with Rob Young and Yam Regev

Rob Young is a seasoned Marketing Executive and Consultant with over 24 years of experience specializing in B2B Cyber Security, ITOps, and DevOps SaaS GTM. With a strong foundation in IT Operations and Market Research, he delivers impactful outcomes for CISOs and CIOs. Rob has held leadership roles at top firms like IDC and IBM, successfully driving marketing strategies for startups and Fortune 50 companies, fueling growth, securing funding, and facilitating acquisitions. Yam is a multi-disciplinary marketing leader with over 17 years of experience guiding startups from Pre-Seed to Scale-up. He specializes in crafting Go-to-Market strategies, driving profitable growth, and optimizing marketing efficiency to impact core KPIs. With a track record that includes serving as VP of Marketing at Elementor, co-founding a startup acquired by WalkMe, and advising international companies, Yam blends strategic insight with hands-on leadership to build sustainable, high-growth businesses. In this episode, we explore growth marketing strategies, AI impacts, and interdepartmental collaboration with Rob and Yam. Discover how empathy drives marketing success.
“We’ve got to really understand those businesses well so that we can message more directly.” -Rob Young
“Try to be vulnerable, authentic, and transparent, and you will rise above the noise.” -Yam Regev

About the Episode

Welcome to an illuminating conversation from the NTM Growth Marketing Podcast, where Rob, VP of Marketing at Cypago, and Yam, an experienced marketing advisor, share deep insights into the dynamic world of marketing. This blog post captures valuable takeaways from their discussion, highlighting strategies, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry today.

Introduction to Cypago and the Role of a VP of Marketing

Rob starts by introducing his role at Cypago, a cyber GRC automation platform. Cypago’s mission is to help organizations align their security and compliance controls with industry standards like CMMC, NIST, SOC 2, and ISO. This alignment ensures all settings and tools remain compliant, exposing gaps and facilitating remediation.

A Day in the Life of Rob, VP of Marketing

Being a VP of Marketing at an early-stage tech company like Cypago involves juggling multiple roles. Rob describes his busy schedule, elucidating how a lean marketing team functions in tandem with sales to generate qualified opportunities and convert them into pipeline successes. Daily activities include:

  • Running and Evaluating Campaigns: Continuous assessment of marketing campaigns’ effectiveness in driving qualified leads.
  • Collaboration with Sales and Product Teams: Working closely with sales and product executives to align on quarterly goals and strategies.
  • Adjusting Tactics: Analyzing faltering campaigns and making data-driven course corrections swiftly.

“We’re small, so we’re pretty lean and can move quickly,” shares Rob, emphasizing flexibility as a crucial asset in early-stage companies.

The Journey from Corporate to Start-up Marketing

Rob reflects on his career path, detailing a rich history of experience in both corporate giants like IBM and early-stage startups. Each environment offers distinct advantages and challenges. Startups, Rob notes, allow for tighter interdepartmental collaboration and quicker decision-making, contrary to the slower, committee-driven processes in large corporations.

“I prefer this size and shape personally,” Rob reveals, valuing the agile approach and direct engagement with sales teams that startups offer.

Effective Marketing Strategies for Warm Audiences

Focusing on Q4 strategies, Rob highlights the importance of tailoring marketing efforts toward warm audiences. Over the year, Cypago had invested in building brand awareness among cold audiences through events and digital campaigns. By Q4, the goal shifted to foster relationships with these warm leads, leveraging both first-party data from company interactions and third-party tools that signal industry keyword engagement. This approach involves:

  • Personalization: Crafting specific messages and ads to resonate with warm prospects by incorporating their brand and contextual elements.
  • Intent Data: Identifying when a company shows interest in industry keywords, indicating readiness for further engagement.

Rob stresses the importance of carrying out due diligence to understand prospects deeply, ensuring that messaging aligns with their business goals and strategies.

The Significance of Personalization in Marketing

The podcast explores the role of personalization in cutting through the noise in today’s competitive market. As Rob articulates, it’s not simply about placing a company’s logo within ads; it’s about delivering value by aligning marketing messages with potential clients’ business objectives.

“We’ve got to really understand those businesses well so that we can message more directly,” underscores Rob.

Integrating AI into the Marketing Ecosystem

AI’s potential to transform marketing is undeniable. Rob acknowledges its influence but shares his cautious approach, incorporating AI through existing tools like Role Works for ABM (Account-Based Marketing) activities and Factors AI for customer journey mapping and multi-touch attribution. These tools leverage AI to enhance understanding of customer behavior, refine campaign strategies, and maximize ROI.

Despite AI’s prowess, Rob acknowledges a gap between AI-generated insights and human expertise in executing and optimizing these insights into actionable growth strategies.

Building Cross-Departmental Relationships as a Marketing Executive

Discussing cross-department collaboration, Rob introduces the concept of the “first team” – a commitment to fellow executives rather than one’s own department. This philosophy fosters transparency, admitting failures, and collaboratively solving problems that impact the company’s broader goals, such as pipeline growth.

“You really don’t want to start to become somebody that’s defensive about your individual department,” advises Rob.

Yam’s Perspective on Growth Marketing

Yam complements the discussion by sharing his extensive marketing experience across different roles and stages of company growth. From founding a marketing agency to navigating the intense dynamics of being a CMO, Yam brings a wealth of practical wisdom. He emphasizes:

The Business-Driven Approach to Marketing

Marketing should significantly contribute to business operations and KPIs, transcending beyond traditional brand-building or sales support tasks. Yam stresses the importance of viewing marketing through a business lens, focusing on:

  • Product-Market Fit: Constantly reassessing the alignment of the company’s offerings with market needs.
  • Model-Market Fit: Understanding customer reactions to pricing, packaging, and overall business models.
  • Brand-Market Fit: Ensuring messages and positioning resonate with the target audience.
  • Marketing-Market Fit: Identifying channels and tactics that effectively scale business growth.

Empathy in Marketing

Yam underscores empathy as a crucial, yet often missing, component in technology-driven marketing. Marketing leaders can achieve resonance by embracing vulnerability, authenticity, and transparency (VAT methodology).

“Try to be vulnerable, authentic, and transparent, and you will rise above the noise,” asserts Yam.

Empathy extends into mutual support within the industry, cultivating networks where marketers help and learn from each other, creating a thriving ecosystem of shared growth.

AI’s Impact on Modern Marketing

The rise of AI, particularly LLMs (Large Language Models), offers immense potential for evolution in marketing practices. While some are quick to adopt, Yam advises a careful integration:

  • Content Creation: Leveraging AI for basic tasks like article writing.
  • Strategic Planning: Utilizing AI tools for structured marketing plans, albeit with human oversight for final execution.

Despite AI advancements, critical thinking and personal engagement remain irreplaceable in achieving marketing success.

Conclusion: Uniting Marketing Tactics and Team Collaboration

The podcast closes with a valuable exchange on fostering effective executive relationships across departments. Rob shares practical advice, embracing a shared mission among executive teams and viewing organizational success as a collective achievement, not limited by departmental boundaries. Yam echoes this sentiment, emphasizing continuous learning and collaborative growth.

As marketing evolves with technology and strategic thinking, staying adaptable, empathetic, and business-focused is paramount. This conversation illuminates the path for marketers aiming to navigate today’s multifaceted landscape effectively.

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