Martech Interview With Jeanne Hopkins, CRO at Onescreen.Ai

Jeanne Hopkins, CRO at Onescreen.Ai chats about the importance of OOH and outdoor campaigns in this catch-up with MarTech Series:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat Jeanne, tell us more about your journey and your role as CRO at OneScreen.ai?

I’ve been in marketing and sales for a long time, bridging the gap between these two organizations for 30+ years. I’ve been known as a powerhouse lead generator..!

During the early days of HubSpot, I helped generate 50,000 net new leads per month. I’ve been CMO at various companies, including Lola.com, recently acquired by Capital One, Ipswitch (now Progress), SmartBear, and Continuum (now ConnectWise), and held other executive marketing positions at Symmetricom (now Microsemi) and MarketingSherpa. I was previously CRO at SquadLocker and HappyNest.

Today, I’m CRO at OneScreen.ai, building the world’s first offline marketplace for out-of-home (OOH) advertising. From billboards, blimps, and buses to wrapped cars and connected TV in bars and restaurants, OOH advertising is a $30 billion industry and growing, but 50% of inventory goes unsold. There’s not one, centralized space where marketers can locate, buy, deploy, and measure OOH advertising campaigns. You think you may want to buy a billboard in Denver? Or some street signs in Boston? Where do you start? It’s actually not that easy because real estate in OOH is highly fragmented. OneScreen.ai is changing that, and I’m working with numerous partners and customers to help them increase brand awareness, website visits, inquires, and leads through effective OOH advertising, generally in tandem with digital campaigns – whether they are out-of-home specialists or first-time OOH purchasers.

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As a business/revenue leader: what are some of the top best practices you feel C-level executives leading marketing-sales-revenue functions need to align on more?

First of all, it is critical to agree even if you disagree on the goals of the organization you are leading. And, at no time can you use your disagreement to be disagreeable in front of your specific team. Many times, I’ve heard negative comments made or a general lack of organizational ownership during meetings. This is simply not the way to run a company or a team. It is difficult to be positive all of time, yet your team is depending upon you to lead. A leader is not a challenger to the culture, but a supporter of the norms that make your company unique 

What are some of the top technologies (revtech/martech/salestech) that CROs need to be more adept with themselves or inculcate into processes to help their teams drive better output?

There are a ton (8,000 or more according to Scott Brinker) of these different tools that can be best utilized for your organization. The challenge is onboarding and integrating into your specific tech stack. First and foremost, I would go through every single software item that you spend budget on and find all of the users, all of the passwords, and all of the contracts. When you do that, you’ll find a great deal of leakage and lack of use. Next, compile a list of all of the software used and when you want to renew/or not renew (check all contracts to see if M2M, auto-renew, or auto-renew at 60 days). There are a lot of contracts and subscriptions that no one is using that find the light of day. After you’ve performed this tech stack forensics work, sit down as a team with Success, Product, Sales, and Marketing to go through every single bit of software. I’ve learned over the years that oftentimes different departments will use the same software. Use a company like Vendr to help with the negotiation of the big-ticket items like SFDC or Gainsight.

When it comes to OOH today, how are you seeing OOH advertising trends change in today’s marketplace?

Marketers need new channels to reach their prospects. And, what better way to reach them and stand out from the digital masses than leveraging outdoor campaigns? We’ve seen time and time again, website visits jump 1-200%, demo requests increase four-fold, and general interest in a product or service that created all-important demand from an OOH campaign.

A few ways in which you feel today’s digital marketers need to create a balance between their digital and offline ad experience and what tools you feel can help?

When we ran a campaign for Reprise in November 2021, they bought the NASDAQ tower in Times Square. As a result, their entire product and customer service teams went to NYC and took their team picture in front of that tower. It brought the team together at a time when they have not seen each other in person for close to two years, and they shared those pictures socially on their business and personal accounts. Tell me if you’ve ever shared a great Facebook or Google Adwords ad with your social network? Probably unlikely. And, your mom most likely never saw it either.

Like anything – digital or otherwise – metrics are critical to the success of a marketing campaign. With the 40+ data providers we have at OneScreen.ai, we are able to determine foot traffic, personal clusters, stores, etc. that are visited after seeing a bit of outdoor advertising. And, we can correlate that info with their Google Analytics account to show velocity and growth. Pretty cool, huh?

Tell us about OneScreen.ai’s core capabilities and what the near future holds for enhances within the core product offering?

The core product is starting with a free directory of all out-of-home advertising providers. Right now, we have over 2,000 listings and we are continuing to aggregate more partners and suppliers so that marketers can see availability in their city, state, venue, by type of vendor, and by date. This makes designing a rockstar marketing campaign easy and cost-effective.  

A few thoughts you’d share with marketing and sales teams given today’s current challenges and typical work structures?

Be open to new ideas and be willing to learn. Working remotely is tough and recognize that aspect of building a culture and a team that is a well-oiled machine.  Try working with your CFO on new ideas, be part of the Sales team structure, invite teams to your marketing meetings. Be open. Be transparent.

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A few martech and tech predictions that you’d like to highlight that according to you will dominate the market in the near future?

Take advantage of new technology. Don’t wait for it to become expensive and difficult to implement. There are so many good ideas and so many ways to learn.  But, first figure out what you have before you buy anything else and INVOLVE YOUR TEAM in the purchase. Don’t buy something on your own – ever.