Kate Pascucci is a marketing executive with six years of B2B experience specializing in digital marketing and brand management. She excels in overall marketing strategy, marketing automation design and implementation, content production, and overall brand maintenance. In her current role as Vice President of Marketing at Stratus Video, she is responsible for strategic planning, brand management, vendor management, website development, content creation, customer conversion, and corporate communication.
Kate joined Stratus Video as employee #21 in 2013 and has since been a member of the senior leadership team with sole responsibility for all marketing functions. Stratus Video has grown to more than 3,000 employees and has been recognized on the Inc. 500/5000 List of Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies six times.
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Your Journey as a Marketing Professional.
My journey as a marketing professional begin in college, but ironically, it did not begin with a marketing degree. I majored in Communications & Media at Cornell University and worked as a research assistant in a Social Media Laboratory. Studying the psychological effects of social media was cutting edge at the time, and it was very exciting to be at the forefront of the research. When I graduated and accepted a job in social media marketing, I joked that I had joined the dark side. I was using my knowledge of how web 2.0 affected people in order to sell them things. But of course, the personal information available online through social media meant that we could more strategically show them things they would genuinely want.
My first official marketing role was as a marketing coordinator in a boutique, entertainment-focused agency in Los Angeles. We specialized in engaging an online audience, and Fast Company Magazine recognized our innovative work in naming us one of the most innovative agencies in Hollywood.
After a year and a half at that agency drafting tweets (this was when we were still limited to 140 characters), I made a pretty dramatic career change and took over in-house marketing at a B2B medical technology company called Stratus Video. I grew the marketing department completely from scratch. I came on as employee #21 in 2013, and we have since grown to more than 3K employees. I am still responsible for everything the marketing department does, including strategic planning, brand management, vendor management, website development, content creation, customer conversion, and corporate communication.
Stratus Video is where I grew into my role as a marketing professional. I absolutely love my role here and I honestly believe that the products we provide are innovative and important.
What are the primary marketing channels you have worked on? What will be your advice to young marketers on each of these channels?
I have worked on so many different marketing channels! But if we’re asked to choose the 5 primary channels I have experience with, I would say Website, Email, Content, Social (specifically Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn), and Automation.
Here is my advice for working on each of those channels:
Website: Have you ever landed on a company’s website and wondered “But what do they DO?” Don’t be that website. No one cares about your vague vision or hard-to-comprehend mission. State up front what the company offers and does. Make the buyer’s journey clear and easy to follow, and don’t crowd your homepage.
Email: When it comes to sending marketing emails, remember that less is more. HTML emails may look pretty, but on average they have lower click-through rates. Whenever you are unsure on your email copy, take a moment to case study yourself and think, “if I received this email, would I care about it?”
Content: Content marketing is the way of the world at the moment. Customers are savvy, and they are expecting transparency, insight, and information. The days of coming up with a catchy jingle are long gone. You had better be prepared to be an authority on whatever product you are selling. Publishing high quality, valuable content is the way to build loyal customers.
Social: Social media is a lot of fun, but watch your conversion rates closely. For most B2B businesses, you aren’t converting leads from social media, and you are probably better off investing your time and resources elsewhere.
Automation: Marketing automation is incredibly powerful, but remember that you will need to customize your use of the software to your particular audience. You may not use all of the features they have available, and you may wind up building custom fields and workflows of your own. Remember that everything offered in a marketing automation platform is a tool, not an obligation.
What are some of the important marketing software that you have used and found to be really useful for your company?
In my current role, we use Salesforce as a CRM and Pardot for marketing automation, both of which are absolutely indispensable. Understanding how to work with database and automation software is crucial in any kind of marketing career.
Your 2 line advice to people entering in the marketing domain.
There is no silver bullet when it comes to marketing. Your entire career will be a cycle of conceptualizing, testing, measuring, and adjusting. Don’t expect to transform a company overnight, but a thoughtful marketing campaign can become incredibly influential over time.
