With so much noise around AI, changing customer expectations, and the ever-evolving martech landscape, how can marketing leaders avoid the noise to focus on what truly drives long-term value?
Agility requires not only adapting to change but also anticipating it. It demands a willingness to experiment, learn, and iterate quickly, especially when it comes to leveraging new technologies and understanding evolving customer behaviors.
We are here today in New York City at Opticon25 and seeing and hearing some amazing things about the future of martech and how AI will shape the role of marketing in the months and years to come.
We’re going to talk about the evolving role of the marketing leader in a world increasingly shaped by AI, automation, and the demand for personalized experiences. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Tara Corey, SVP of Marketing at Optimizely.
Tara Corey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taracorey/
Resources
Optimizely: https://www.optimizely.com
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Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom (00:00)
With so much noise around AI, changing customer expectations, and the ever-evolving MarTech landscape, how can marketing leaders avoid the noise to focus on what truly drives long-term value? Agility requires not only adapting to change, but also anticipating it. It demands a willingness to experiment, to learn, and iterate quickly, especially when it comes to leveraging new technologies and understanding evolving customer behaviors. We’re here today in New York City at Opticon 25 and
Seeing and hearing some amazing things about the future of MarTech and how AI will shape the role of marketing in the months and years to come. We’re going to talk about the evolving role of the marketing leader in a world increasingly shaped by AI, automation, and the demand for personalized experiences. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Tara Corey SVP of Marketing at Optimizely. Tara, welcome to the show.
Tara Corey (00:49)
Thank you. I’m honored to be here. Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom (00:51)
Looking
forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your relatively new role at Optimizely.
Tara Corey (01:01)
Awesome, thank you. So I’ve had a bit of a probably more unconventional path to a marketing leadership ⁓ role. I feel I’ve earned my stripes more as a marketing operations leader and leading marketing technology implementations and demand operations, marketing performance management, measurement, planning. And after I had mastered that or felt like I mastered that role, I decided to take on a transformation role of the SDR organization, right? Really being responsible for pipeline development and carrying kind of that number, which ultimately led me to kind of a full marketing leadership role. And when the role at Optimizely came up, it was a bit of a dream job type of scenario where I’ve spent a lot of time being that type of persona in marketing ops and tech.
And then being able to market to marketing and leading a marketing organization for Martech organization, like somebody pinched me, right? It’s pretty amazing. So yeah, I’ve been here for about eight months.
Greg Kihlstrom (01:59)
Nice, nice. Well, yeah, let’s let’s dive in here and we’re to talk about a few things here, but I want to talk about this evolving role of the marketing leader. certainly, you know, last couple of days here, we’ve been talking a lot about AIs impact and other impacts to marketing as you’re relatively new to your role as SVP of marketing, but certainly, again, not a stranger to marketing itself.
Your role at Optimize.ly, how do you look at the role of marketing as it relates to the future of this marketing technology company and how marketing should align with the overall business strategy?
Tara Corey (02:36)
So I feel like Optimizely has really changed over the last few years as we’re like leaders in multiple categories from content management systems to content marketing platform, experimentation, personalization, and so much more. And I didn’t know this coming in and I don’t really believe our market and target audience really understand the full awareness of what Optimizely brings to the table and our breadth of our solutions and the market recognition we have from analysts and our leadership position there.
So I absolutely believe like other marketing leaders that we’ve sort of over tilted on demand and haven’t quite invested enough in brand over the years. And I don’t think we’re alone. get to speak to a lot of other marketing leaders in this role, which is like one of the key perks. We’re marketing teams of like hyper focused on intent and in market signals coupled with like pressure of pipeline that I think we’ve forgotten how important it is to be top of mind before a project actually initiates or comes to play.
So we need a better balance of brand and demand along with continuing to diversify and test our content and our channels.
Greg Kihlstrom (03:41)
So in addition then to that relationship between marketing and business strategy, how has the role of the marketing leader evolved over the last few years? mean, certainly, you know, there’s been a little bit going on over the last few years. You know, what are the most critical skills and ⁓ competencies required to succeed in today’s environment?
Tara Corey (04:01)
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I think there’s still a bit of a stigma of CMOs and like marketing leaders that they don’t bring enough value to like the C-suite and we need to combat that and be able to prove the value effectively and communicate to that executive team in the boardroom the value that marketing brings tangibly. And I think there are three kind of three key skills and competencies that kind of come to mind. Two of which I feel like have served me really well and I’m very confident in and then one that I’d say is developing.
The first is really, really understanding as a marketing leader, like the data and operations and the technology and systems and workflows that happens. And this is, think, a benefit or a unique aspect of my journey to leadership from a marketing standpoint of having that background. And I think it’s really served me well, right? Like being able to be data-driven as a CMO has really helped provide that value, be able to prove that value.
The second is sort of the people side. We talked a lot about that at Opticon today. I’m really glad that it’s coming to the forefront. So we always talk about technology and efficiency and all the different benefits you get from technology and AI and so forth. We can’t lose sight of like the people side of the house. And one of the things that I probably love the most about my role and my career is like the ability to kind of bridge teams and people and collaborate across the teams, whether that’s marketing to sales or marketing in the product organization or the IT and operations teams, like really being that bridge and helping build strong teams is sort of one of those key perks. The other kind of core competency, which is one having gone from like operations and some of the demand side and then now into full marketing responsibility is like the critical importance of strong positioning and messaging and value-based messaging and storytelling, it’s not probably one of my core competencies that I’ve had in the past, but absolutely have a strong appreciation and ensuring that I build the best team to be able to do that.
Greg Kihlstrom (06:04)
Yeah, yeah. to your points there, mean, the role of the marketer being data-driven, if that’s something that someone has a background in already, they were very much set up for success in today’s world because marketers are being asked to do a little bit of a lot of the in addition to all of the other stuff that marketers have already been doing. that kind of brings to the next point of
Lots of talk about AI, certainly at this conference as well as just in general. AI automation, you know, they’re certainly transforming the way that marketing is delivered, marketing operations. What are some of the most significant benefits that you’ve seen from implementing these technologies? I know it’s kind of optimisely uses optimisely products and platforms and stuff like that. So it’s great that you’re able to do that. So you know, what are some of the benefits that you’ve been able to see and what advice would you have for marketers that are looking to get started?
Tara Corey (07:02)
Yeah, it’s interesting because I think we’ve seen the plethora of all the different marketing technologies that we have in our stack today and trying to piece them together and use them as effectively and efficiently as we can. It’s expensive, right? It’s a huge line item in the marketing budgets across the board. And one of the things that I’ve seen is I’ve been a big fan of leveraging intent data and intent signals, a big Sixth Sense fan and there’s other platforms out there. And I think one of the things that we’ve struggled with sometimes is that being able to truly do ABM at scale, right, has been a challenge, right? And I think that’s because we haven’t always been able to get to all of the audiences or the personalization, the audiences, and at the different stages that they are in their journey and so forth, to be able to create that content, distribute it and publish it and get it to the right places at the right time.
And so think with Optimize.ly, we’re really uniquely positioned when you couple that with being able to, especially with our Opal and our AI capabilities now, to be able to actually have the capacity now across the teams using this technology to actually do ABM at scale by being able to create the right content and get it into the right distribution channels at the right time.
Greg Kihlstrom (08:17)
Yeah,
I mean, think that’s that there’s also there’s always like the classic argument of sometimes been an artificial barrier, I think, between sales and marketing for that reason of, you know, to do AVM or even, you know, to have that sales relationship. You couldn’t do it at scale. so marketing would feel generic and kind of wooden or whatever. so being able to do that you know, is a phenomenal game changer when you’re able to actually do sales and marketing kind of in parallel. That said, you know, are there are there downside? Like is there is there such a thing as like too much AI? Like we’re you know, you’ve already mentioned how important it is to have people in the loop. But what are your thoughts there?
Tara Corey (09:01)
I mean, I’m not saying anything that I think others aren’t already saying in the market, but I’ll say it. I’ll go ahead and say it anyway, right? I think there’s an overreliance on, the overreliance on AI can lead to like mediocre marketing, right? And messaging, right? For, and like, who wants this? Like nobody wants like mild or mediocre marketing, right? So I still think we have to have that appreciation. I think we will have an even stronger appreciation for like great artistry, like creativity, cleverness.
And I think the organizations that can kind of tap both of those things, right, will rise to the surface in my opinion. like, I’m really fortunate that I’ve inherited this marketing team at Optimizely because they are super creative and talented team that leverages our technology. It’s like, honestly, like a dream come true. And so I have a team that indexes high on the creativity side and we have leaders that are willing to take risks, which is great too on that side and have it giving us that freedom.
And like the opening trailer today was a great example of that too, right? That trailer was made completely by the internal team. They leveraged AI, but it was their thought process, and they brought it to life. So I thought it was outstanding. like teams that can bridge the creativity and leverage the tools and do that in the best to life are going to succeed in my opinion.
Greg Kihlstrom (10:21)
Yeah, yeah. And to your point about, you know, optimisely uses, optimisely to market, optimisely. What benefits does that have for your end customers?
Tara Corey (10:32)
Yeah, well, I think this is where we get to really sit in the shoes of our customers day in and day out, which I think is awesome. We are customer zero overall, and we sort of operate that way. But we don’t limit just to our own experiences. We really try to seek out and talk to customers and so forth as well.
Greg Kihlstrom (10:51)
And so, we’ve talked quite a bit about, you know, AI and really the role of marketers, you know, marketers roles. Let’s talk a little bit about the end customer engagement. So certainly it’s not only AI is not only impacting how brands are connecting with customers, but also how customers are connecting with brands and, know, from a variety of different angles. How can marketers ensure that tha delivery, you you said the quality of content is at risk, you know, if you’re not using these things right, you how do you deliver authentic and valuable experiences rather than just like more stuff?
Tara Corey (11:29)
Yeah, so I think it’s a bit of taking the opportunity to measure, right? I think we should continuously measure, so like see what the trends are in the data. We use CalibreMind from a marketing attribution standpoint, but we’re constantly looking at the data. It’s definitely a practice that we have and a culture within the marketing organization. Every other week, we kind of rotate different things that we’re looking at and inspecting and so forth. So like one, looking at the data to see what we’re seeing.
And then we are going a bit old school and we’ve done focus groups to hear from our customers directly. When I first came on board and it’ll be something that I continue to do, I ask friends to do some mystery shopping for me, right? In the industry to say, hey, can you fill out a form on our website, ask to do a contact request, chat with our chat bot? I wanna know from a customer’s perspective, how they’re experiencing us, right?
and get the first-hand feedback. think that’s so critically important to remember to do at the end of the day and get you learn so much from that.
Greg Kihlstrom (12:32)
And so you talked a little bit about personalization with things like ABM and other things like that. Certainly personalization just across the board is a wealth of statistics supporting it and all that. So it’s kind of a given and yet a lot of organizations still struggle. It could be siloed teams, could be siloed data, siloed platforms, you name it. Lots of silos, probably some other things as well. What strategies can marketers use to break down some of these barriers, whatever they may be, and really create that cross-channel, personalized, one-to-one, all of those buzzwords that are buzzwords, but they’re also real things, right? Yeah.
Tara Corey (13:09)
So one of the things I started doing, and I’ve been here now at Optimize.ly again eight months, so still fairly early. And I flipped it because I really do believe in like in personalization, there’s the word persona, right? And so we reoriented some of the integrated marketing teams on personas to really understand what are the pain points, who are we talking to? At the end of the day, it’s still people buying software, right? So like we have to connect down to the individuals, the personas, their pain points, et cetera.
So we’ve flipped it and we had a good marketing leadership team one day and we came up with a name and a framework and it has stuck and we call it the marketing operating board. And there’s four of them by our key personas and they’re mobs. So marketing operating board, we love a good acronym. So we’ve got the mobs, right? And there’s a bit of like, exactly. we’ve got, they’re like branded now. We’ve got the mobs, we got four mobs and we’ve got like a mob mentality a bit. So we’ve had some fun with it. Of course marketers always want to have some fun.
And in that mob, we’ve got a key squad of four people, right? So there’s a go-to-market solution leader, so ensuring that we’re aligned to the revenue goals and the sales organization. So go-to-market solution leader. We’ve got a product marketing manager, a campaign manager, and a content manager. Those are, say, the four people that are in the squad. And in addition to that, we’re integrating in some of the other marketing team members, right? Like the paid team, the field team, from an event standpoint, we’ve got the social media team, competitive intelligence. We’ve got all the other folks that really need to come together as an integrated marketing team and bring the personalization and the data and the insights and so forth to light to really create a single plan. And so I’d say we’re still in the phases of forming, storming, norming, et cetera. I would say that we’re probably in the norming stage at this point. So I’m really excited to see where we go from here in terms of really aligning on the persona-based mobs and integrating across the teams that we don’t have this silo effect and that we are working all towards common goals aligned with the go-to-market revenue organization. ⁓
Greg Kihlstrom (15:17)
And I mean, it’s great to be able to hear that articulated because I think what you’re talking about, there’s obviously heavy AI use and MarTech platform usage, but there’s also a lot of collaboration and communication and just sharing goals and all those things that I think we sometimes forget when we get focused on the shiny object or whatever and we forget the purpose of why we’re doing it. And so to hear that.
You know, it’s also I just think it’s good when people can work more closely together when they’re all trying to achieve the same end. So yeah
Tara Corey (15:52)
Exactly. So we’ve got this team now and we’re still in the early days, like I said, but we just launched one of the competitive intelligence agents into the mix. So that competitive intelligence agent will actually be part of the mob team going forward. So now we’re trying to figure, we talked about, I talked about earlier too, about how do we practice and put AI into practice and into the teams and into the workflows.
So we’re actually gonna integrate, we’ve got the GEO and SEO type of agents too. So they will actually be part of the extended mob team, right? And so how they take that information on a monthly, weekly, whatever the right cadence is, and actually use that to then inform what should be maybe some of our ABM or competitive plays, or how does that inform our content strategy and our competitive pages.
It’s really, I think it’s such an exciting time to be in marketing. Scary and exciting all at the same time.
Greg Kihlstrom (16:46)
Totally agree. And as we kind of wrap up here a few things, how has marketing a platform, I know you’re relatively new to the role, but not a stranger to the space, how has marketing a platform optimistically changed over the years? What are B2B buyers looking for in today’s market? how is that evolving?
Tara Corey (17:08)
Again, one of the benefits is I get to speak to a variety of different marketing leaders. And I think sort of the tech stack has sort of gotten a little bit out of control in the tech spend. And I don’t think they’re feeling the value out of all of the spend that they have, right? Being able to integrate it across or leverage it to the fullest extent. So I think that is where I think Optimisly really has an advantage and can really step into the marketplace because we do have a variety of, you we can customers can consolidate and simplify with the optimizely stack in a lot of ways. And I think that’s really helping us win some deals because they really see where we’re going and innovating and our leadership in so many different spaces where they don’t have to then basically have seven different contracts and CSM engagements and everything else. So I do think that there’s going to be a bit of that consolidation and simplification and people are going to look for the next generation of
Marketing platforms that they want to place a bet on right and a potentially slightly fewer than they may have in there in their stack today
Greg Kihlstrom (18:11)
Yeah, one or a couple couple last things here as we wrap up. So, you we’re here at Opticon 25 in New York. What’s been a highlight for you so far?
Tara Corey (18:21)
Yeah, so I mean, of course getting to be on main stage this morning was awesome. And you did great. Thank you, thank you. Talking about our AI use cases and adoption with Kion and I loved that we were bringing the human element to it and the change management, because this is a huge change for everybody. I think we’re only at the very beginning stages. so it’s really exciting.
So I’m really excited to speak to customers firsthand. That’s definitely important to me too. That’s been a highlight of today. And I’m excited for seeing the mob framework through and how we leverage Opti on Opti and AI and to be able to showcase that next year at OptiCom.
Greg Kihlstrom (19:01)
Yeah, we’ll have to talk at Opticon 26. Awesome. Well, one last thing before we wrap up. What do do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Tara Corey (19:11)
Yeah, so it’s not so much about me being agile in the role as it is the team, right? And I think the one lesson that I’ve learned was to do skip levels with the team, and I do that pretty, I try to do it as much as I possibly can because knowing what’s working and not working on the ground and in the team is so critically important to be able to ensure that I have an agile organization going forward, right?
It’s more of like, how can I understand what is getting in their way and how can I help them work through or remove barriers so that they can be able to be agile and the team can actually be more agile going forward. And I feel pretty fortunate that there was the news of StatSig over the past week.
The team was able to turn around like a campaign and so forth and offer a hard offer and campaign within 24 hours. like to me, there’s nothing like, and we use our own technology and everything else, all things coming together, like super impressed with the team.
Greg Kihlstrom (20:15)
I I saw that on LinkedIn, I think for the first time, was like, wow, that was quick, because I had barely heard of it.
Tara Corey (20:21)
End the week before Opticon. So you throw in Opticon prep and so forth. And then that, it was, of course, hard on the team, but amazing team. They leveraged technology. They were agile. It was very impressive.
