On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to conceive an Audience Development Platform?
As founder of Viafoura, I developed the concept for an audience development platform that embraces engagement as a means of building, growing and discovering your audience, and I also set the strategic direction of our company. I founded Viafoura to help media brands build and monetize a direct relationship with their audiences in the ever-changing landscape of social media and content commoditization.

The concept for Viafoura was born out of another venture, a website I created called WhoTheMan.com to engage and interact with other sports fans. After building a fair amount of success, I thought perhaps media companies would be interested in achieving the same level of engagement as my site, and the seed for Viafoura was planted.

MTS: How should a business build an audience development strategy with a lean tech management team?
The first step to build an audience development strategy, no matter how big or small your tech management team might be, is to understand who you are as a brand and what you stand for. Next, you need to understand who your audience is and what they look to you for. It’s only after these questions are answered that you can formulate a strategy designed to speak to your audience about the value you bring to their lives.

The core of Viafoura is offering the opportunity for media brands to engage in real-time with their audiences. Engaged users are more likely to return, register and subscribe as they spend more time on the site, view more pages and interact in comments. When it comes to audience development, prioritizing engagement opportunities is critical to any strategy, but efforts should be focused on the value brought to your audience.

MTS: What are the major challenges for brands in leveraging audience analytics to drive their digital marketing programs?
When consumers engage with brands, especially media brands, they are no longer as receptive to brands that use a generic message to communicate to a broad audience, and it’s challenging for brands to deliver personalized messages at scale. Actionable insights delivered in real time enables brands to better understand their audience and establish a personalized 1-to-1 communication channel that is scalable. Audience analytics can help identify segments of audiences that are receptive to certain messages and enable brands to have a personalized message for different segments.

MTS: How should brands determine the baseline to implement engagement tools across their web properties?
Brands can determine the baseline to implement engagement tools by asking themselves the question, “Does this tool enable me to build a better, stronger direct relationship with my audience or not?”

Strong relationships are built out of engagement, and engaged users drive sales. Thus, in the case of media brands, advertising sales through the increased metrics most advertisers make decisions based off of.

MTS: How do you distinguish between “Customer Engagement” and “User Experience”? What analytics should marketers focus on to define these terms clearly?
Customer engagement and user experience work hand-in-hand. Customer engagement is both the investment made to make initial contact with customers and the continued efforts to re-engage with them, building brand loyalty. User experience is where investment should be made to ensure that the now engaged customer has a positive, memorable experience, and is key to keeping customers engaged and returning. Without the investment in experience, the return on investment for engagement will not yield the best possible results

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
I’m a fan of Toronto-based Ecobee and what they are doing. (@ecobee)

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
Our marketing stack consists of marketing automation, CRM, and analytics.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
It presents an exciting opportunity to create massive efficiencies and increase throughput, which presents a very exciting opportunity for our company and our customers. As the technology continues to develop, incorporating engagement, moderation and audience development will be a natural step for our industry.

This is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Conviction

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
I look for apps to help me organize and be more efficient. Gmail, Waze, and LinkedIn are my go-to apps. On the personal side, I’m really liking Spotify as well.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
I’m most productive when I can eliminate distractions, so a noise-canceling headset is the best “hack” product I’ve found.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
Right now, I’m reading “The Hard Thing about Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers” by Ben Horowitz. It gives practical wisdom for managing the problems business schools don’t cover.

I tend to read business-related books, and work to absorb all of the information and wisdom they offer with lots of note-taking.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
My passion outside of business is high-altitude mountaineering, and climbing mountains has been a great metaphor for accomplishing my goals in business and beyond. This passion made me emphasize my health, and the best advice I’ve received throughout everything has been, “Take care of your health, and it will take care of you.”

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Ted Livingston (@ted_livingston), founder and CEO of Kik (@kik).

MTS: Thank you Jesse! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.