Editor’s Note: This post is a part of our Amazing Moments of B2B Marketing Inspiration series. Join us each week for new stories of marketing success, as well as Q&A with marketing leaders.
This week, we’re asking Nolin LeChasseur of Brainrider his Five Questions. Brainrider is a B2B marketing agency, and a Pardot Select Partner, and as such, they do a great job helping customers implement and onboard Pardot even quicker, get up to speed faster, and start closing deals quicker. Here’s a little bit more about Nolan:
“Nolin is the strategic lead in the firm, ensuring that every client marketing plan we create includes a sound strategic base that connects the client’s value proposition to the needs of their buyer. He also runs point on our longstanding relationship with Pardot. He thinks like our client’s customer, and advocates for that perspective in client planning discussions and decisions.
Nolin brings 15 years of client-side experience and perspective to the table, and has a valuable blend of marketing and technology expertise. His deep knowledge of marketing automation, prospect intelligence and sales acceleration has delivered results for companies selling to other companies across North America and Europe. When Nolin’s not at work, he is often trying desperately to keep up with his two young offspring and his saint of a wife. When he can spare a moment, he is either cooking comfort food without a recipe, or napping.”
What are you most excited about in the current B2B marketing scene?
I love that so many B2B marketers are developing the confidence and ambition to be change agents for their companies these days. It’s a scary thing to pledge to your company that you’ll do more than be busy, that you’ll make concrete and measurable contributions to its growth. You’re putting yourself out there as a corporate leader, putting your reputation and abilities on the line. There are so many growing companies that have fueled their early growth through a relentless product development or sales focus, and now need to shift to more market-focused growth if they want to continue to scale. That’s where we like to play, and those change agents are the people we love to work with.
What do you see as your biggest marketing challenges?
Setting priorities to focus on, and sticking to them. There are so many things to be done, so many opportunities to take advantage of, so many problems to solve, so many paths to follow. The most successful marketing teams today are those who can rally around a very small set of priorities and crush it, then move on to the next.
Measuring value/impact. We all recognize that B2B marketing is full of tools and technologies we need to use on a daily basis. Most of those tools have data and reporting baked in. But the data and reports they surface aren’t necessarily helpful to us when we’re trying to report back to the business on value metrics. So figuring out how to translate diagnostic metrics like impressions, clickthrough rates, visitor counts, and downloads into business value metrics takes a lot of thinking, synthesis, and analysis.
Being relatable. In this digital world, marketers try to leverage automation and scale to reach a larger audience at a lower cost. We use personalization, customization, and segmentation in our attempts to engage buyers in a relevant, useful, helpful way. But we often still think like and act like marketers more than people. Sending a “marketing” email or posting a “marketing” social post can sound like it’s from a real person the audience can relate to, or it can sound like a company that’s on blast mode. Being relatable at scale is a very difficult thing to do well.
What do you wish you had more of for your teams?
Time and money. Seriously, our Brainrider team has such creativity, joie de vivre, and an appetite to solve problems and understand why things work the way they do. I wish we could give them more resources to go further, deeper, and broader in their exploration and experimentation because that ability to learn, discover, and continuously improve is a big part of why our clients work with us.
What or who inspires you, and why?
My family inspires me. My two young children are so curious, so passionate, and so assertive. Watching them learn their way through the world reminds me how much I still don’t know, and how I need to keep an open mind and open heart even when it’s uncomfortable to do so. My wife’s seemingly bottomless patience and ability to encourage self-directed discovery and play for our children is what I strive to emulate as a leader.
What is your greatest marketing achievement so far?
The fact that my partner Scott Armstrong and I have been able to grow a business, a team, and an alumni of clients and teammates at Brainrider based on some core ideas and principles is pretty cool. Our mission to create more marketing change agents in more companies is an ambitious one, but I see it happening everyday as our team and our clients all lead companies through very exciting, challenging growth moments. I’m proud to be a part of that.
