The Modern Marketing Landscape, from a Seasoned Expert | Katherine Hunter-Blyden, Ep 12
Episode Summary
Katherine Hunter-Blyden, a fractional CMO, discusses her career journey from Fortune 500 companies like Ford and Progressive to serving small businesses. She covers the evolution of marketing measurement, the importance of email marketing and content strategy, brand versus direct response tactics, and how AI tools are transforming marketing efficiency while many professionals remain hesitant to adopt them.
Pull Quotes
On why holding P&L responsibility at senior levels slows innovation
“I literally remember when I was at Ford Motor Credit I had an idea and I would take my idea to my boss and I would take it to her boss and the three of us would take it to his boss and that's how we got things done. Months later. Inefficient.”
“I can remember a time in some of the larger companies I've worked for where I need to go to business intelligence group, I put in a request for the data, I want it, it might take a week to come back to me. Whereas today some of that is in a dashboard that I can with a couple of clicks I can find the information that I'm looking for to help make a decision. So in theory we should be doing things faster because we have more immediate access to data.”
On transitioning from Fortune 500 to entrepreneurship
“Going on your own is whiplash. I always tell folks that I really learned to be very scrappy when I got on my own. I was so used to having a resource for everything I needed—even my expense reports, like can you handle these for me? And then all of a sudden, to your point, I had to take out the garbage and I had to do everything else.”
“Clients routinely don't like to invest in brand, particularly smaller clients. They want sales today. How do we get more sales today? How do we get more leads today? Not really thinking about the brand. But there's some fundamental brand work that you have to start with.”
“What really surprises me is the number of people that are not willing to use AI at this point. We've had ChatGPT for I think 18 months now that it's been available to us, and I think that one of the biggest concerns people have is about the accuracy, whether or not it's going to hallucinate and give them facts that aren't actually correct. But I don't think that we should let those risks and concerns really stop us from taking advantage of the tools that are available.”
Transcript
Hi, welcome to Tales From The Sky Lounge. It's a podcast about business consulting and venture investing. We get out there in the world and talk to people who are making it happen and get their stories. So if you could like and subscribe, it really helps us get our message out.
Today in the Sky Lounge, Katherine Hunter Bleden. Hi Katherine. Welcome to the Sky Lounge.
Hi Todd, thank you for having me. It's good to have you.
Katherine, want you to give us a little background. Who are you?
Absolutely. So I am today a fractional Chief Marketing Officer to my clients, and the journey here has been quite varied. I started out in a pricing role. I wasn't an actuary, but I did some pricing work in an insurance company. From there, went off to business school, and post business school went to Ford Motor and worked in marketing in different areas of marketing. Left there, went back to the insurance industry in a product management role, and spent the first half of my career in different Fortune 500 companies, and then spent the latter half of my career working with small businesses and middle market businesses. And I ran a startup for a short time.
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