Breaking the Marketing Mold: JoAnn Martin Of Black Crow AI On 5 Innovative & Non Traditional Marketing Strategies That Can Engage Audiences Like Never Before
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Lean into generative AI to craft multiple, very personalized, variations around your paid media campaigns. Just relying on the old funnel approach doesn’t work in this world.
Traditional marketing methods are no longer sufficient in today’s dynamic and fast-evolving market. To truly engage and captivate audiences, businesses need to think outside the box and adopt innovative and non-traditional marketing strategies. What are these strategies, and how can they transform audience engagement? I had the pleasure of JoAnn Martin.
JoAnn isn’t your average marketing leader, so she’s not bringing average ideas. As Chief Revenue Officer at Black Crow, she speaks from 15 years of experience in building and scaling B2B SaaS companies through razor-sharp brand, communication, performance marketing and product marketing strategies. After stints leading marketing for names like Hanzo, Searchspring, and Electric, she’s now at the helm of Black Crow AI’s commercial organization where she’s focused on serving marketers in the Shopify ecosystem.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! To start, could you share when and how you got started in marketing?
My entrance into marketing wasn’t exactly textbook. I fell in love with marketing as the head of communications for an international non-profit. It taught me how to find the stories in your community and give those stories the light and respect they deserve. From there, I transitioned into agency work, running campaigns for companies like Microsoft and John Deere. That agency experience led me into in-house leadership as Head of Content Marketing for Provenir and it’s been B2B saas ever since.
What has been the biggest shift in the marketing industry and can you give us an example of how it impacted you?
We’re living it right now with the rate of innovation on generative AI. I had a front row seat to the rise and impact of predictive analytics and the application of machine learning on enterprise businesses with Provenir, where we delivered real-time decisioning models for online credit risk decisions. That kind of Artificial Intelligence has evolved powerfully over the course of my career. But, the speed of scale that we’re experiencing around generative AI — and its potential in the hands of every marketer out there — is almost unbelievable. That shift impacts me in two ways: first, the adoption around tools like ChatGPT opens up a different customer experience dynamic. At Black Crow, we’re able to deliver products to marketers that sit on the edge of that very fast, almost magical, experience. Second, it gives me and my team incredible tools to do our work better. I can prompt ChatGPT to channel some of the greatest copywriters or business strategists of our lifetimes to help with our work.
Can you explain why it’s essential for businesses to break away from traditional marketing and embrace new strategies?
We just talked about a massive shift in technology. Now, the fundamentals of marketing strategy have not changed. Get the right product to the right people at the right price, and deliver it through economically efficient processes. (Easier said than done, eh?!) As marketers, we know that getting the message right for our customers is key. But, most “traditional” approaches rest in the marketing channels that have always been available. Marketers have to break out of the traditional because their buyers’ lives have fundamentally changed within a generation. We have to work for them.
Could you share and briefly explain the first major change you made to break the trend of traditional marketing that was not so common?
I started building content marketing programs 3 years before the HubSpot IPO (for context). Delivering free value at scale through content is old hat now, but it was a major break from traditional marketing at the time. The principle behind that can drive a lot of experimental thinking today: that as marketers we should always be seeking to provide our customers with resonate value — whether it’s entertainment value or educational value.
What specific results did you see after implementing this change?
The performance results associated with content marketing were always boosts in inbound revenue, often through organic channels. But, the unexpected result was that you’re able to build a relationship with customers through your unique point of view.
How do you ensure that these new marketing strategies resonate with your target audience?
The best way to know what resonates with your audience is to know them. To do that, it’s all about accurate data collection, testing, and iterating. We help our customers do exactly that — know their audience and measure performance and approaches. This helps them calibrate to what their audience actually wants and needs, rather than just what they think will work.
Can you share an example of something you tried that didn’t deliver expected results or ended up becoming a financial burden, and what you learned from that experience?
I once tried a really convoluted multi-step engagement campaign. It was meant to be an interactive puzzle for our audience, but it ended up being really confusing. It was a great reminder that sometimes simpler is better.
Great. Now, let’s dive into the heart of our interview. Could you list “5 Innovative & Non Traditional Marketing Strategies That Can Engage Audiences Like Never Before”?
- Pair marketers with your product owners to think about ‘product’ and ‘marketing’ in one holistic customer experience lens.
- Lean into generative AI to craft multiple, very personalized, variations around your paid media campaigns. Just relying on the old funnel approach doesn’t work in this world.
- Celebrate the content your buyers create for you (UGC is still fairly new at this scale), but don’t sweat production quality. The social age celebrates authenticity.
- Get really tight on your owned data and processes. It’s not the exciting visible part of marketing, but it’s the foundation that will make or break your strategy.
- Proactively identify as many customers as you can and create your experiences for them.
What challenges might companies face when transitioning away from traditional marketing strategies, and how can they overcome them?
Oftentimes ‘traditional’ isn’t the inherent killer. It’s the auto-pilot on traditional tactics, without constantly challenging your team’s own thinking. Transitioning requires buy-in from leadership, and that can be tough if they’re accustomed to running a particular playbook just because it seems to work for someone else. The key is showing them the potential of incremental tweaks and the value of changing their approach. Building that trust with small wins can really build confidence in different strategies!
How do you measure the success and ROI of these new marketing strategies?
The success of a marketing strategy at Black Crow is measured in the success that customers experience when they use our platform. Black Crow’s north star metric for our customers is ‘incremental revenue the customer drives using Black Crow.’ For example, one major supplements brand found about us through an influencer we work with. On aggregate, the marketing spend to acquire that customer on that channel was about $1,000. That customer conducted a 30 day trial and was able to drive $75K in incremental revenue through the platform in one month. That ROI is obvious.
Looking forward, how do you see the role of innovative marketing evolving in the next 5–10 years?
I see more businesses fully embracing AI and machine learning to make their marketing smarter and more efficient. The future is about hyper-personalization and creating seamless customer experiences. That’s what I referred to earlier with the noise vs. the quiet places businesses can find their best customers. Companies that can implement the right tools to really harness the power of their own data will definitely become the winners of the next 5–10 years.
What advice would you give to business leaders who are hesitant to move away from traditional marketing methods?
Start small and experiment! You don’t need to overhaul your entire strategy overnight. In fact some of the best successes I’ve seen in my career are companies who take the time to learn, assess, start small and then build. When you’re operating from a place of assurance vs. reactivity, it really does wonders for success.
Can you share any upcoming initiatives or plans you have for further innovating your marketing strategies?
We’re always iterating at Black Crow, but one thing I can hint at is how much we’ll be able to help our customers in the next year. We have one of the best product teams I’ve worked with here, and let’s just say they have some great tools coming that will help brands customize and iterate in truly unique ways.
How can our readers follow your work and learn more about your approaches to modern marketing?
They can follow me on my LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/joannmmartin/. Thank you so much for having me!
This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur and Thought Leader with over 25 years of business experience. He has founded, operated, and exited multiple companies and now builds into a handful of high impact CEOs. Chad has launched multiple online communities, including a recent leadership development platform, and also serves as a strategic advisor for Authority Magazine’s thought-leader incubator program.
To learn more and connect with Chad visit: chadsilverstein.io
Breaking the Marketing Mold: JoAnn Martin Of Black Crow AI On 5 Innovative & Non Traditional… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.