About LeadMD

Before I had ever heard the term marketing automation, I ran a lean sales and marketing department. We had grand expectations. We sold integrated payment solutions and I was the VP of Sales and Marketing. You know the story behind that title… constantly battling to grow the business, yet maintain that precious bottom line.

I sought to do this via software, but found problems. The software was either singular, meaning they have only one purpose (think old batch and blast email days—which I’ve done my share of) or failed to provide feedback. In fact, much of the software I used created more work… the antithesis of my goal. My marketing crew spent most of their time parsing through information and trying to present it. “What’s the cost and what’s the return?” (Sound familiar? If not, your CFO must be dead—or in jail.)

We always knew what we spent. Calculating the return? That proved a bit more difficult. Why? Because our [sales and marketing] systems never spoke to each other. They weren’t integrated. But what’s more monumental is this: we rarely spoke with our own prospects! We were too busy managing the data. Who were our prospects? What did they need? Did our marketing efforts answer their questions, or confuse and annoy them?

Most companies are in business to sell a solution that can HELP buyers accomplish more, become more productive, or solve problems. We were no different in payment processing. Why, then, is it so hard to generate leads for a solution buyers want? Why are marketing departments under the forever pressure cooker of increasing lead flow? Why aren’t these buyers simply seeking us out?

The buyers were seeking us out. We just didn’t know it.

The all-too-overlooked fact is that buyer behavior has changed over the last 10 years, and dramatically in just the last 5 years alone. This seems to have eluded most marketers; even through they themselves [as consumers] adapted buying habits that mimicked the very prospects that were eluding them.

Our buyers wanted to speak to us. In fact they were finding us and often times even purchasing one of our solutions without learning about the rest. Crazy, right? Not really. It happens everyday. When you become familiar with a solution, or become influenced by how everyone else is marketing the solution we all develop a kind of singularity. A kind of “this is our marketing message, take it or leave it” approach. Well, it has little to do with actual buyer pains so… most prospects leave it.

Conversational Marketing is something that came to me while I was still searching for a solution that would allow us to keep our department small but produce big results. I wanted to start the conversation online. I wanted to trigger follow-ups and action items based on what my prospects were telling me, where they were navigating, and what they viewed. This is easier said than done.

Turns out an answer exists in software. It lives in a category called “Marketing Automation.” If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. Most people—including the multitude of marketing and advertising agencies I speak with—don’t know the term.

Let me break it down for you. Marketing Automation is simply a software platform that lets you build content (landing pages, emails, deliverables, etc) and then present it at the right time to prospects. The “right time” is based on their interaction with your website. Oh, and you can score those movements too, that’s pretty important.

I found Marketo—a brand of Marketing Automation software—and fell in love. I dreamed of sales flying out the door like turnips falling off a flatbed.

My dream became reality. Over the next five months we slashed our budget by 30 percent. We cut print, in-person, and event type marketing that wasn’t paying off. The replacement? Email and online activities that let our customers buy on their time frames.

Conversation was born. And it continued hundreds of times each month.

This was a light-bulb moment for me, and a game changer. I picked up my things and three months later formed the first true Marketing-as-a-Service organization. We resold the Marketo platform and provided services needed to make it perform. The space was young so we had to get the word out. More importantly, we had to assemble a robust collection of best practices. Done. This vision has evolved into LeadMD.

My passion? I want to pull back the curtain behind marketing technology, helping you focus on the digital conversation with your buyer. The outcome? Radical revenue results.

Justin Gray
CEO, LeadMD, Inc.