Justin Gray is the CEO and Chief Marketing Evangelist of LeadMD. He founded the company in 2009, with the vision of transforming traditional grassroots marketing efforts through the use of cloud based marketing solutions. He sees grassroots marketing dollars shrinking and traditional branding efforts being strewn aside in favor of a true conversational marketing approach.
Realizing the potential for growth in this space, and the willingness other corporations had to join the SaaS revolution, Justin began to strategize the formation of a true marketing-as-a-service corporation, which specialized in outsourcing the core functions of a marketing department either through on-demand solutions, consulting or both. Since that time he has emerged as a strong voice for marketing automation and conversation marketing through both industry publications and his blog, The Marketing Evangelist.
Before launching LeadMD, Justin spent the last 12 years helping companies of varying sizes overhaul and optimize their marketing and sales departments. Most recently he was named the CEO for MaaS Impact, a marketing automation start-up. In less than one year he grew the company to become a respected player in the space, and he increased revenues by more than 400 percent. Before this, as the vice president of sales and marketing at BillingTree he grew another small start-up on-demand payments company from $400 thousand in annual revenue to a $64 million entity and the No. 1 solution provider in its space. He founded RootOne Marketing while in college at the age of 17. Justin is a graduate of the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and business administration.
What are you working on right now?
A whiteboard style video that illustrates the principals behind marketing automation and demand generation, except it’s more exciting than that sounds.
3 Trends that excite you?
Marketing automation
On demand
Free delivery model
How do you bring ideas to life?
As quickly as possible. I hate open items, and every time I pour over an idea I end up making it worse. Ideas live and die very quickly. Get them in the right hands right away.
What is one mistake you’ve made that our readers can learn from?
Choose your business partners wisely. Every decision counts. Make them quickly, but don’t forget how long they will last.
What is one book and one tool that helps you bring ideas to life?
Rework and Basecamp — both by 37signals. If you haven’t looked at their company, it’s inspirational.
What is one idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I’d like to see someone take the concept of biometric payments and couple it with on-demand software for billing. I hate signing checks.
How can organizations shift gears more quickly when it comes to their content marketing strategy?
It all starts with a plan. Make a simple outline, and determine where you can leverage existing content or partner with industry experts to license their thought leadership. The biggest mistakes we see are:
1. Not leveraging content once it’s produced – How often do organizations create a whitepaper, use it once and put it on the shelf ? Very often.
2. Trying to take on the world by themselves – Use the experts, and the partnerships you form in the process will drive your success.
How did you land in an industry that no one knows anything about?
We were a victim of our own ambition. We started using marketing automation in 2006, and really we had been trying to automate marketing using salesforce.com workflows for two years before that. We thought a software purchase was going to change our world, and I guess it did. It made us realize how little of a support system was available around marketing automation. There was plenty of technical support, but where could we turn to see the types of content that were succeeding, the best practices for lead recycling and the successful flows for profile-based lead nurturing? Nowhere. Today we are trying to educate the marketplace — not only about marketing automation, but also about the problems that come with it. We want to be the stop loss that allows organizations to rapidly achieve success. We’re putting it on the line with pretty aggressive guarantees.
How can organizations shift gears more quickly when it comes to content marketing strategy?
It all starts with a plan. Make a simple outline and determine where you can leverage existing content or partner with industry experts to license their thought leadership. The biggest mistakes we see are:
1. Not leveraging content once it’s produced (how often do organizations create a whitepaper, use it once and put it on the shelf– very often) and
2. Trying to take on the world by themselves. Use the experts – the partnerships you form in the process will drive your success.
How did you land in an industry that no one knows anything about?
We were a victim of our own ambition. We started using marketing automation in 2006, and really we had been trying to automate marketing using salesforce.com workflows for two years prior to that. We thought a software purchase was going to change our world – and I guess it did. It made us realize how little of a support system was available around marketing automation (MA). There was plenty of technical support, but where could we turn to see the types of content that were succeeding, the best practices for lead recycling, the successful flows for profile based lead nurturing? Nowhere. Today we are trying to educate the marketplace – not only about MA, but also about the problems that come with it. We want to be the stop loss that allows organizations to rapidly achieve success. We’re putting it on the line with pretty aggressive guarantees.
Connect:
Justin Gray on Twitter
Justin Gray on LinkedIn
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.