Home > Companies > C-Suite On Deck > Q&A with John A. Steinert, Chief Marketing Officer at TechTarget

Q&A with John A. Steinert, Chief Marketing Officer at TechTarget

MEDIA 7 | October 17, 2019

John A. Steinert, Chief Marketing Officer at TechTarget helps bring the power of purchase intent-driven marketing and sales services to technology companies.

With a strong drive to help customers achieve their business objectives faster and bigger, John and his TechTarget team connects the information needs of enterprise tech buyers and the go-to-market efforts of solution providers, ensuring that everybody wins.

MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing?
JOHN STEINERT: That’s easy. Marketing inspired me to get into marketing. I’ve always loved great communicators and the formats used in communications. As a kid during some pretty tumultuous times in American history, I was surrounded by great political, guerilla, and yes even commercial communications. Speeches, hearings, demonstrations, TV, advertisements, even album covers and t-shirts made a strong impression on me. Obviously, with the rise of the internet, long-tail video channels and social media, things have blossomed to an even more amazing level.

M7: How does TechTarget's Priority Engine™ support tech vendors to achieve their marketing and sales objectives?
JS: By helping companies see and interpret real buyer needs and preferences, Priority Engine first provides a relevant, permissioned basis for a marketer to intercept a buyer’s journey and then it assists users in taking very specific influencing and engagement actions. Because Priority Engine provides the actual permissioned people doing buying research, it saves tons of resource that’s commonly wasted chasing prospects who don’t have a need and leads that are actually dead ends. And because Priority Engine shares the real needs and preferences of the actual buyers with both marketing and sales when they share the platform, it enables far better conversion at every step, from funnel, to pipeline, through to renewal.


"To truly enable sellers with content, the content needs to reflect what we know about this specific buyer’s needs and preferences."

M7: What according to you is content-enabled selling and how does it help drive a buyer’s journey?
JS: There are two key pieces to content-enabled selling. The first is the content itself – what it is and how it assists the buyers in fulfilling the necessary or required steps of their buying process. The second is how we adjust our own approach in response to buyer inputs and feedback.
To truly enable sellers with content, the content needs to reflect what we know about this specific buyer’s needs and preferences. To perform better, your content needs to be more buyer-centric. This can be achieved when product marketers and sales enablement folks are consuming real purchase intent insights from Priority Engine and leveraging them into evolved content outputs.

Then there’s what I’ll call the “personalization wrapper” – how the communications that accompany the assets present and create context for that use-case relevant material. These wrapper – be they email copy, call guides, etc. must be built with an eye to the nature and the stage of the relationship at hand. Marketers and sellers alike need guidance on the proper way to do this.

It’s not as simple as “you liked this so of course you should want to buy this”. Buyers need help with both their rational business needs and their more emotional needs around both their company, their department and themselves. The “personalization wrapper” is a useful metaphor for being holistically considerate of the person and the company you are interacting with. Obviously, this is substantially more nuanced than simply recognizing what company they are from. It’s about ingesting what you can see are their expressed concerns and preferences, learning from that, and shaping your own communication in that context.

M7: What features make TechTarget's 'Data-Driven Display' drive B2B demand and accelerate sales?
JS: Because it’s fueled by permissioned knowledge of exactly who is performing research at any given moment, TechTarget’s data-driven display advertising can deliver higher engagement rates and higher conversion.  When used in conjunction with demand generation techniques and intelligent sales outreach, independent studies with leading 3rd parties have achieved remarkable lift across the funnel as compared to what’s available when using more generalized “intent” data.


"The biggest mistake of all that’s commonly still made in marketing is to not use prospect behavior as a critical guide."

M7: What is the biggest mistake B2B marketers make while targeting specific prospects?
JS: There are many actions that teams continue to take because they’ve simply been tasked to take them.  There are old-school KPIs, typically focused on process outputs rather than business outcomes that perpetuate chronic under-performance. Take, for instance, a narrow focus on cost-per-lead – too often this incentivizes continued purchases of higher and higher volumes of lower and lower quality. To wean themselves off of this Catch 22, teams should work to turn their attention to down-funnel metrics like conversion-to-opportunity – measuring cost per opportunity is a much more useful predictor of pipeline yield.

But the biggest mistake of all that’s commonly still made in marketing is to not use prospect behavior as a critical guide. When marketing (and sales) energies are spread evenly over active and inactive prospects alike, energy is wasted on those who are not in-market, and that investment of time and resource is not available to increase attention on those active buying teams that should be converted. By focusing more intently on those prospects that are actually demonstrating in-market buyer’s journey behaviors, teams get far more out of their investments.

M7: How does 'Data Cleanse' assist marketers in email verification and contact record accuracy?
JS: Some percentage of the data coming into your database from form fills, other manual entry and so on naturally contains incompleteness, mistakes and outright falsehoods. Furthermore, people move around, both inside of companies and between them. So even once-accurate data decays amazingly fast. To counter these realities, your data practice should put into place a variety of processes that together comprise a mature “data cleanse and append” approach. In this way, you can address data quality issues at both the point of entry and over time. At TechTarget, we offer our clients cleanse and append services both directly via our Oceanos offerings and indirectly via our Priority Engine platform wherein the data goes through rigorous checks and verifications before it qualifies to be shared.


"Even once-accurate data decays amazingly fast. To counter this reality, your data practice should put into place a variety of processes that together comprise a mature “data cleanse and append” approach."

M7: When did you start working, how old were you, and what was it?
JS: My first stable paid position, $1.40/hr, was at age 14 pumping gas at Greene’s Exxon. I was super excited because I got to wear the striped shirt with the logo patch! I loved washing windshields and checking the oil, especially when my superior CX delivery got me a few cents in tips!


ABOUT TECHTARGET

TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT) is the global leader in purchase intent-driven marketing and sales services that deliver business impact for enterprise technology companies. By creating abundant, high-quality editorial content across more than 140 highly targeted technology-specific websites, TechTarget attracts and nurtures communities of technology buyers researching their companies’ information technology needs. By understanding these buyers’ content consumption behaviors, TechTarget creates the purchase intent insights that fuel efficient and effective marketing and sales activities for clients around the world.
TechTarget has offices in Boston, London, Munich, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore and Sydney. For more information, visit techtarget.com and follow us on Twitter @TechTarget.

More C-Suite on deck

Q&A with Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD

MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Business Process, Marketo, Sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and IT Service Management, Andrea is also a strong business development professional and a storyteller. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? ANDREA LECHNER: Frankly, not having better options. I originally attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse thinking I’d major in Archaeology. I wanted to be Indiana Jones! But, after visiting the archaeology building – i.e. the cold, dark basement of the science building – where a girl sat to piece together pieces of an old Native American vase, I knew archaeology was not going to be the right path for me. And so, without being good at science and a major in art or art history was unlikely to pay my bills, I decided to go into “business”. I originally registered as a management major, but took my first marketing class and thought it was more interesting and switched my sophomore year. That was pretty much it. I’d never been involved in business classes or DECA in high school – I didn’t really know what to do or what jobs in marketing were even possible. I dumb lucked myself into it really. M7: As a storyteller, do you relate the brand to a story or story to the brand? AL: Both? Neither? I think there are stories in every brand, because there are people working on the brand and people engaging with the brand and people using what the brand creates. People, most often a single person, are at the heart of great stories. You can start with the “point” of the story you’re trying to tell. Say you have a software that help accountants better create reports for board meetings. It’s likely you’ll want to tell a success story about an accountant getting promoted to CFO in part because your software helped better communicate their work product to the board. You could have the idea for that and go looking for that story in your customers. OR, you could hear that story, and say, “That’s amazing!” and share it with customers, partners and internal people. Stories are all around us – the most important thing is to keep your ears and eyes open for finding them.

Read More

Q&A with Romi Mahajan, Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Revenue Officer at Quantarium

Media 7 | July 2, 2021

Romi Mahajan, Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Revenue Officer at Quantarium possesse skills in building deep relationships, seeing markets before they burgeon, and in applying socio-political concepts to business. I have 3 pillars on which I pursue opportunities: People, Impact, and Autonomy.

Read More

Q&A with Sangram Vajre, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus

MEDIA 7 | January 9, 2020

Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus is also an author and host of the podcast FlipmyFunnel. He is one of the leading minds in B2B marketing. MEDIA 7: What are you passionate about? SANGRAM VAJRE: Three things: Lead professionally. Grow personally. Love family. M7: Terminus has been recognized as one of Georgia’s 40 fastest-growing companies by ACG Atlanta. What factors contribute to this pace? SV: One of our core values is #OneTeam – which means we think and act as one team and know that if we treat our team right, they will treat our customers amazing. There are no great companies, only great people that make those companies.

Read More

Q&A with Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD

MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Business Process, Marketo, Sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and IT Service Management, Andrea is also a strong business development professional and a storyteller. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? ANDREA LECHNER: Frankly, not having better options. I originally attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse thinking I’d major in Archaeology. I wanted to be Indiana Jones! But, after visiting the archaeology building – i.e. the cold, dark basement of the science building – where a girl sat to piece together pieces of an old Native American vase, I knew archaeology was not going to be the right path for me. And so, without being good at science and a major in art or art history was unlikely to pay my bills, I decided to go into “business”. I originally registered as a management major, but took my first marketing class and thought it was more interesting and switched my sophomore year. That was pretty much it. I’d never been involved in business classes or DECA in high school – I didn’t really know what to do or what jobs in marketing were even possible. I dumb lucked myself into it really. M7: As a storyteller, do you relate the brand to a story or story to the brand? AL: Both? Neither? I think there are stories in every brand, because there are people working on the brand and people engaging with the brand and people using what the brand creates. People, most often a single person, are at the heart of great stories. You can start with the “point” of the story you’re trying to tell. Say you have a software that help accountants better create reports for board meetings. It’s likely you’ll want to tell a success story about an accountant getting promoted to CFO in part because your software helped better communicate their work product to the board. You could have the idea for that and go looking for that story in your customers. OR, you could hear that story, and say, “That’s amazing!” and share it with customers, partners and internal people. Stories are all around us – the most important thing is to keep your ears and eyes open for finding them.

Read More

Q&A with Romi Mahajan, Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Revenue Officer at Quantarium

Media 7 | July 2, 2021

Romi Mahajan, Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Revenue Officer at Quantarium possesse skills in building deep relationships, seeing markets before they burgeon, and in applying socio-political concepts to business. I have 3 pillars on which I pursue opportunities: People, Impact, and Autonomy.

Read More

Q&A with Sangram Vajre, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus

MEDIA 7 | January 9, 2020

Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus is also an author and host of the podcast FlipmyFunnel. He is one of the leading minds in B2B marketing. MEDIA 7: What are you passionate about? SANGRAM VAJRE: Three things: Lead professionally. Grow personally. Love family. M7: Terminus has been recognized as one of Georgia’s 40 fastest-growing companies by ACG Atlanta. What factors contribute to this pace? SV: One of our core values is #OneTeam – which means we think and act as one team and know that if we treat our team right, they will treat our customers amazing. There are no great companies, only great people that make those companies.

Read More

Related News

MARKET OUTLOOK, REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY

Addressable’s New SmartCopy Automates Real Estate Marketing by Using GPT-3

Addressable | March 15, 2023

On March 14, 2023, an end-to-end marketing solution provider Addressable, announced SmartCopy, that helps generate copy as a part of the company's card-writing platform. The new tool, SmartCopy, is powered by Open AI's GPT-3 to generate real estate marketing copy. SmartCopy is designed to assist real estate agents in attaining listings through outreach with personalized handwritten mail by creating AI-generated letter copy. The feature generates highly customized and compelling marketing messages using Addressable's real estate performance data and GPT-3's powerful natural language processing capabilities. SmartCopy offers benefits and features, including the ability to generate personalized messages at scale, highly customized content for real estate marketing and improved efficiency and effectiveness in acquiring listing appointments. The tool is now available for new and existing customers on the company's website. Co-Founder and CEO at Addressable, Christopher Tosswill, said, "Addressable has always been committed to providing innovative solutions to help our customers grow their businesses. SmartCopy is a perfect example of this commitment." He added, "This feature will enable real estate agents to generate highly personalized marketing messages at scale, helping them acquire more listing appointments and grow their businesses." (Source – Business Wire) About Addressable Addressable is a cutting-edge technology company offering a unique real estate marketing solution. Established in 2019, the Los Angeles, California-based company has provided innovative tools to assist real estate agents in their sales efforts. The company's patented robotic technology generates personalized handwritten letters, enhancing the customer experience and driving engagement. Its management team comprises experienced professionals, including former product manager at Facebook Christopher Tosswill and former Task Rabbit and SnowFlake Director of Engineer Mark Weaver, who bring a wealth of expertise. In addition, its innovative platform has proved to be a game-changer in the real estate industry, assisting agents in 44 states in generating over $1.5 billion in home sales since 2020.

Read More

REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY, REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT

Tribe Deploys VendorPM for Canadian Tribe-managed Communities

Tribe Property Technologies | March 10, 2023

On March 09, 2023, Tribe Property Technologies Inc. announced a deployment of VendorPM nationwide to support Canada's Tribe-managed communities. Property managers at Tribe-managed communities will benefit from a streamlined request for proposal (RFQ) process because of the Tribe's partnership with VendorPM, allowing them to connect easily with more than 30,000 service providers. A proprietary platform integration was also launched by Tribe recently that streamlines the mandatory Tarion new home warranty process that is specific to the Province of Ontario. The new partnership, available for real estate developers through the Company's Tribe Home Pro digital solutions, brings the ability and automation for developers to track issues from any stage of development, from a single dashboard to generate custom reports, and simply review all in-unit warranty issues and their resolution status. It further results in faster and more efficient turnarounds for homeowners. The Tribe Home Pro solution enables real estate developers to track pre-delivery inspection deficiencies, digitize building data and owners' manuals, and facilitate the handover of a completed community to owners and condo boards. About Tribe Property Technologies Founded in 2012, Tribe Property Technologies is a tech-savvy property management firm that supports residents, councils, real estate developers and vendors to complete pre-constructed occupancies. As a rapidly expanding company, its integrated service-technology delivery model serves a broader range of stakeholders than traditional service providers. It seeks to acquire highly accretive businesses in the fragmented North American property management industry and transform them by streamlining and digitizing their operations.

Read More

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

Roc360 Announces Completion of Finance of America Commercial Assets Acquisition

Roc360 | March 16, 2023

Roc Capital Holdings LLC (Roc360), a financial services platform for residential real estate investors, recently announced its completion of the previously announced acquisition of Finance of America Commercial (FACo) assets. Under the transaction terms, Roc360 acquired the operational assets of FACo, a Finance of America Companies Inc. division specializing in residential real estate investment loans. Roc360 will give the brand a unique logo and execute it under a new subsidiary using its current name, Finance of America Commercial. It will join Roc360's growing collection of leading real estate’s brands, such as Haus Lending, Roc Capital, Elmsure Insurance, Wimba Title, and Tamarisk Appraisals. The FACo acquisition enhances Roc360's existing origination footprint in its retail and wholesale channels, and the acquired data will contribute to Roc360's data science initiatives. In 2022, the two companies collectively financed over $4.6 billion in loans for business purposes. FACo traces its origins back over a decade to its forerunners, B2R Finance, Dwell Finance, and Jordan Capital Finance, innovators in the national private lending sector that provided fix-and-flip and landlord DSCR loans to real estate investors. It has funded over $6 billion to 9,000+ individual guarantors across 25,000+ closed loans via its broker channels and borrower-direct. Arvind Raghunathan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Roc360, said, "Roc360 is committed to delivering innovative products and services that help rejuvenate and deliver new and like-new energy efficient homes to America's undersupplied housing stock." He also said, "The acquisition further broadens our reach and ability to make a difference. We will continue to pursue growth opportunities, including acquisitions, that expand our ability to provide solutions to real estate investors." (Source – Cision PR Newswire) About Roc360 Roc360 is a vertically integrated platform for residential real estate investors and one of the leading creators of business-purpose loans nationally. The company was established in 2014, employs more than 300 people and funded more than $14 billion in loans through its lending subsidiaries. It is based in New York City with offices across three continents. In addition, Roc360 joined the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 North American companies with the fastest-growing media, technology, telecommunications, fintech, life sciences, and energy tech industries in 2022.

Read More

MARKET OUTLOOK, REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY

Addressable’s New SmartCopy Automates Real Estate Marketing by Using GPT-3

Addressable | March 15, 2023

On March 14, 2023, an end-to-end marketing solution provider Addressable, announced SmartCopy, that helps generate copy as a part of the company's card-writing platform. The new tool, SmartCopy, is powered by Open AI's GPT-3 to generate real estate marketing copy. SmartCopy is designed to assist real estate agents in attaining listings through outreach with personalized handwritten mail by creating AI-generated letter copy. The feature generates highly customized and compelling marketing messages using Addressable's real estate performance data and GPT-3's powerful natural language processing capabilities. SmartCopy offers benefits and features, including the ability to generate personalized messages at scale, highly customized content for real estate marketing and improved efficiency and effectiveness in acquiring listing appointments. The tool is now available for new and existing customers on the company's website. Co-Founder and CEO at Addressable, Christopher Tosswill, said, "Addressable has always been committed to providing innovative solutions to help our customers grow their businesses. SmartCopy is a perfect example of this commitment." He added, "This feature will enable real estate agents to generate highly personalized marketing messages at scale, helping them acquire more listing appointments and grow their businesses." (Source – Business Wire) About Addressable Addressable is a cutting-edge technology company offering a unique real estate marketing solution. Established in 2019, the Los Angeles, California-based company has provided innovative tools to assist real estate agents in their sales efforts. The company's patented robotic technology generates personalized handwritten letters, enhancing the customer experience and driving engagement. Its management team comprises experienced professionals, including former product manager at Facebook Christopher Tosswill and former Task Rabbit and SnowFlake Director of Engineer Mark Weaver, who bring a wealth of expertise. In addition, its innovative platform has proved to be a game-changer in the real estate industry, assisting agents in 44 states in generating over $1.5 billion in home sales since 2020.

Read More

REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY, REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT

Tribe Deploys VendorPM for Canadian Tribe-managed Communities

Tribe Property Technologies | March 10, 2023

On March 09, 2023, Tribe Property Technologies Inc. announced a deployment of VendorPM nationwide to support Canada's Tribe-managed communities. Property managers at Tribe-managed communities will benefit from a streamlined request for proposal (RFQ) process because of the Tribe's partnership with VendorPM, allowing them to connect easily with more than 30,000 service providers. A proprietary platform integration was also launched by Tribe recently that streamlines the mandatory Tarion new home warranty process that is specific to the Province of Ontario. The new partnership, available for real estate developers through the Company's Tribe Home Pro digital solutions, brings the ability and automation for developers to track issues from any stage of development, from a single dashboard to generate custom reports, and simply review all in-unit warranty issues and their resolution status. It further results in faster and more efficient turnarounds for homeowners. The Tribe Home Pro solution enables real estate developers to track pre-delivery inspection deficiencies, digitize building data and owners' manuals, and facilitate the handover of a completed community to owners and condo boards. About Tribe Property Technologies Founded in 2012, Tribe Property Technologies is a tech-savvy property management firm that supports residents, councils, real estate developers and vendors to complete pre-constructed occupancies. As a rapidly expanding company, its integrated service-technology delivery model serves a broader range of stakeholders than traditional service providers. It seeks to acquire highly accretive businesses in the fragmented North American property management industry and transform them by streamlining and digitizing their operations.

Read More

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

Roc360 Announces Completion of Finance of America Commercial Assets Acquisition

Roc360 | March 16, 2023

Roc Capital Holdings LLC (Roc360), a financial services platform for residential real estate investors, recently announced its completion of the previously announced acquisition of Finance of America Commercial (FACo) assets. Under the transaction terms, Roc360 acquired the operational assets of FACo, a Finance of America Companies Inc. division specializing in residential real estate investment loans. Roc360 will give the brand a unique logo and execute it under a new subsidiary using its current name, Finance of America Commercial. It will join Roc360's growing collection of leading real estate’s brands, such as Haus Lending, Roc Capital, Elmsure Insurance, Wimba Title, and Tamarisk Appraisals. The FACo acquisition enhances Roc360's existing origination footprint in its retail and wholesale channels, and the acquired data will contribute to Roc360's data science initiatives. In 2022, the two companies collectively financed over $4.6 billion in loans for business purposes. FACo traces its origins back over a decade to its forerunners, B2R Finance, Dwell Finance, and Jordan Capital Finance, innovators in the national private lending sector that provided fix-and-flip and landlord DSCR loans to real estate investors. It has funded over $6 billion to 9,000+ individual guarantors across 25,000+ closed loans via its broker channels and borrower-direct. Arvind Raghunathan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Roc360, said, "Roc360 is committed to delivering innovative products and services that help rejuvenate and deliver new and like-new energy efficient homes to America's undersupplied housing stock." He also said, "The acquisition further broadens our reach and ability to make a difference. We will continue to pursue growth opportunities, including acquisitions, that expand our ability to provide solutions to real estate investors." (Source – Cision PR Newswire) About Roc360 Roc360 is a vertically integrated platform for residential real estate investors and one of the leading creators of business-purpose loans nationally. The company was established in 2014, employs more than 300 people and funded more than $14 billion in loans through its lending subsidiaries. It is based in New York City with offices across three continents. In addition, Roc360 joined the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 North American companies with the fastest-growing media, technology, telecommunications, fintech, life sciences, and energy tech industries in 2022.

Read More

Spotlight

TechTarget

TechTarget

TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT) is the global leader in purchase intent-driven marketing and sales services that deliver business impact for enterprise technology companies. By creating abundant, high-quality editorial content across more than 140 highly targeted technology-specific websites, TechTarget a...

Events

Current Trends in Leisure Property

Webinar

Property Webinar | How to read Real Estate Market reports

Webinar

LeadingRE Agent Summit

Conference

Resources

resource image

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

AI-Endgame: Practical Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Lending

Whitepaper

resource image

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

Digital wealth management solution: Beyond Asset

Video

resource image

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

How to achieve Touchless Lending for mortgage industry

Whitepaper

resource image

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

AI-Endgame: Practical Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Lending

Whitepaper

resource image

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

Digital wealth management solution: Beyond Asset

Video

resource image

REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT, MORTGAGE AND LENDING

How to achieve Touchless Lending for mortgage industry

Whitepaper

Events