We recently had the opportunity to speak with Lisa Sigler for our Pro Interview series. She provided us with great insight into content marketing at Clarabridge based in the metro-region of Washington, DC.
Pagezii — Lisa, please tell us a bit about yourself.
Lisa — I grew up in Ohio and graduated from Kent State University there, but I’ve lived in Virginia for about 16 years. I’m married with two elementary-age daughters. I love to read, write, run, and watch entirely too much TV.
My career has been all about technology marketing, including time at Ericsson, cloud-based business solutions provider Apptix, and now Clarabridge.
(Video courtesy of themuse.com)
Pagezii — What drove you into content marketing?
Lisa — I studied English Lit in college. I loved writing, but this didn’t translate into an actual career plan. I ended up moving to Virginia as the office manager of a tech startup. We were tiny, so I pitched in to help write marketing materials. That little startup failed without ever launching a product. But now I had a whole three or four months of technology marketing experience, and I decided that’s the career I wanted.
About three years ago, I was working in a product marketing role when our CMO asked me to move into content full-time. I wasn’t even sure what content marketing was, but it turns out that I’d been preparing for it all along. My background as a writer, combined with my marketing experience, makes content marketing the perfect fit.
Pagezii — And what does Clarabridge do?
Our customers report higher NPS scores
Lisa — Clarabridge provides solutions for managing the customer experience.
Every time a person interacts with a brand—through a website, on social media, in a brick-and-mortar store, whatever—that becomes part of their overall customer experience (CX).
The Clarabridge CX suite helps companies listen to customer feedback about these brand interactions, and analyzes it together with other customer data sources. The companies can then act on what they’ve learned to improve their business.
Our customers report higher NPS scores, decreased churn, improved customer satisfaction, and increased revenue because they understand and act on what customers really want.
Pagezii — What has been your most memorable campaign?
Lisa — At Clarabridge, we noticed that many customers and prospects were asking about Customer Journey Mapping. Clearly, this was an area where people needed help. So, we created an eBook about Customer Journey Mapping that would provide guidance on this crucial topic — even though it isn’t actually core to our business!
Used in our lead generation and nurture campaigns, our “Ultimate Guide to Customer Journey Mapping” has been an outstanding success. In every category, it’s been our top performing asset this year, with the most downloads and created opps. It was also the finalist for Content Marketing World’s “Best Company Book” award.
Pagezii — What are your content plans for Clarabridge in 2017?
Lisa — We plan to continue practicing what we preach by relying on customer feedback to tell us what kinds of content readers appreciate most. I anticipate that we’ll continue to have a mix of blog posts, short “cheat sheet” style assets, eBooks, whitepapers, and infographics. The topics and the numbers of each type will depend on what our customers tell us they find most useful.
Pagezii — What are the new trends in content marketing you see taking place?
Content marketing and social media are like siblings
Lisa — I see the tension between content marketing and social media as a trend that’ll continue. Content marketing and social media are like siblings—when they are getting along, they are best of friends. But when they aren’t…
Social relies on videos, images, and short text. Content marketing, with its reliance on storytelling, can bump up against the needs of social media, especially in an organization where the social and content teams are separate.
However, if the two teams work together, then social media becomes a great vehicle for distribution and promotion of great content. And the content team can learn to write for the social media team to provide really catchy, shareable social content.
Pagezii — Thank you, Lisa. Your experience and insight in content marketing is very helpful for our readers.
