Interview with Prayag Narula, CEO and Co-founder of LeadGenius
April 13, 2017
In this interview, Prayag discusses how being a marketer has never been both easy and difficult all at the same time. He explains the need to move away from generic messaging for true personalization and why it’s important to develop a data-scientist approach to overcome the data nightmare that has befallen marketers. This Forbes 30 under 30 (2012) UC Berkeley alum describes himself as, “a standup guy who loves history, poetry, startups and Scotch.”
Ginger Conlon:
Welcome to MarTech Advisor’s executive interview series. I’m Ginger Conlon, a Contributing Editor to MarTech Advisor, joining us today is Prayag Narula who is CEO and Co-founder of LeadGenius. Welcome Prayag.
Prayag Narula:
Thank you Ginger, so glad to be here.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
So glad you’re with us today. We are going to talk about trends and opportunities with LeadGen and marketing today. So, let’s talk briefly, let’s kick off talking briefly about LeadGenius, how would you describe it in a sentence? What is LeadGenius and what is its unique value proposition?
A: Prayag Narula:
So, LeadGenius is a top of the funnel marketing automation company which helps its customers identify the best markets and map out the best companies in those markets and identify the best decision makers in those companies and market to them, and our unique value proposition is we use combination of cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning and combine it with actual human intelligence to create the best quality insights and data available in the market so that our customers can target the best customers and know with confidence that the people that they are targeting, the company they’re targeting are the customer that are most likely to convert and are high value prospects.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
Excellent, I love the data and intuition combination. So, let’s talk about LeadGen and marketing. So, there is so much customer and prospect data available today, there’s an ever growing list of channels and touch points, but it really doesn’t seem to be any easier for marketers to build their sales funnel. What do you see as the challenge there?
A: Prayag Narula:
I think there are multiple challenges that are facing marketers and being a marketer has never been easier or never been harder, at the same time, so, we are living in some very interesting times. I think the number one issue facing a marketer today is that marketers are expected to be data scientists, they are expected to be able to consume a lot of data, there’s more and more data available today than ever before and marketers are expected to consume all of that data together and create a marketing strategy and execute on that strategy, and do it in a manner that looks at all the data that’s available to them, and at the same time the tools that are available to them to consume this data are very limited.
So, the primary tools that are available to marketers and marketing automation platforms, Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, all these platforms they are built for a different era in my opinion, they were built for 20th century but they are not built around, what I would call the modern principles of any kind of modern software, artificial intelligence, big data. So
there is this kind of disconnect between what’s expected of marketers and the resources that are available to them and that’s I think the number one challenge that I think marketers face today
But at the same time, it’s never been a better time to be a marketer. There is, as I said, so much data available to you as a marketer, you can really use that data to identify the best customer, to really hone in on the best strategy and use the best channels to target those customers, a lot of these channels didn’t exist five years ago and a lot of these, the data that is available to take advantage of these channels also didn’t exist five years ago. So, these are exciting times, I think there’s going to be a lot of change that’s going to happen in marketing automation in the next five to ten years and I’m really excited about the future and both being a part of the industry and as a CEO who has a decent sized marketing team in our organization.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
Excellent. So, we’re going to talk more about the future in a few minutes but first, I want to ask you, you talked about that gap between what is expected of marketers and what they are able to do, how can some marketers close that gap?
A: Prayag Narula:
The first thing to do is to really kind of look at a holistic picture and figure out what are the most important priorities for you as a marketer and try to build your marketing stack or try to build your solution that you’re going to rely on around your problems. Marketing automation has seen a lot of new players come in in the last five years, so, it’s easy today to get distracted by different tools that are available and there’s a lot of promise that’s being made. So, first thing is to
cut through the noise and talk about the value a particular solution can provide and how does that fit inside your marketing stack
I think that’s the number one key, first step that marketers can take.
So, get to the crux of the value that you’re getting from a solution rather than getting distracted by the bells and whistles. For example, for us, when I go and talk about our solution, we have a fairly complicated technology that we have built, one of the big outputs that we provide to you is measurable improvement, in the map of your target market, the information you have about your decision makers and the contact information that you have about decision makers, you can measure that with a fairly simple exercise. So, I encourage all our customers to go and do that measurement so they know in the end, at the very core what they are getting. So, I think that’s the approach that I recommend all marketers use. So, that will be the number one thing.
The second thing is, it is important for marketers to think like data scientists. I think marketers of tomorrow are going to have to know the basic principles of data science, what’s possible and what’s not, and I think to be able to develop that kind of thinking is going to help marketers in the future, and even right now that kind of thinking can help them hone in on how to use the stack that they have built to its best potential.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
So, one of the things that you mentioned was tools and I’d like talk a little bit about LeadGen technologies because they present a great opportunity, like you said, to help marketers get to the right prospects that are most likely to convert and most likely to be high value customers. So, in terms of the lead gen technologies, what is an opportunity that marketers you see overlooking that if they focused on a bit more would actually make a big positive impact for them?
A: Prayag Narula:
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I think one thing that is becoming immensely important in today’s world is moving away from generic messaging to a lot more personalization and personalization I’m not just talking about from an individual perspective but even from a segment perspective. So,
being able to personalize your pitch, your message, to the target audience that you are targeting is very, very important
I think it’s more important today than it has ever been before because there is so much noise out there and there’s so much competition out there, everyone is trying to get the eyeballs from their customers but customers are also distracted and have various places in which they can go and engage with various vendors.
So, personalization is really, really, really important, especially I think B2B has really lagged behind, personalization, and I think that’s a key thing that most B2B marketers are now starting to see the impact of. So, for example, what we recommend for our customers is hey, hone in, don’t just use form of (11:27) graphic as a way of segmentation but also use a personal, for example, stage of the company, stage of the decision makers, their state of mind, their problem, use that as a fundamental way in which you’re segmenting your customers and at the same time, try to collect information and data around your customer segment that helps you drive even more personalization.
So, for example, it’s not enough today to go and say, hey, we are selling into healthcare companies in California, it’s important to understand that a healthcare company or a hospital that has 30 beds, the decision makers there have very different problems than a conglomerate that might have dozens of hospitals under them totaling thousands of beds. So, being able to hone your message on what stage a decision maker is in, how long have they been in an organization, what are their top problems, what is the company’s top problem and what are the various decision makers because every decision maker will also have their own different priorities, understanding those priorities and driving personalization using that, it’s possible today because there’s so much data available and it’s very important to use that to make sure that you’re targeting the right people with the right message and I think that’s where the future of marketing is and I think that’s what marketers have started to understand the value of that.
Ginger Conlon:
Absolutely, I think that’s one of the reasons that account based marketing is becoming so large of a focus these days.
Prayag Narula:
Yeah, absolutely and I think account based marketing is a very good place to start but just a place to start. Account based marketing, the way customers are using it is only for enterprise, only for when they are selling into enterprises, there’s a lot more you can learn from account based marketing even when you’re selling into mid-market accounts, even SMB accounts, same principles apply. I think account based marketing is just the beginning, I look at account based marketing as a way of thinking almost, and I think there’s a lot to learn from these concepts and apply it to all aspects of a marketers processes.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
Exactly. So, one of the things that you were talking about just now is all these different types of data to focus on the personalization which I love, I wonder if some marketers feel a little overwhelmed by how do we get all that data and are there any challenges in terms of what you see with lead gen technologies where marketers might feel overwhelmed by that or any other challenges that you’re seeing and what advice would you have for them to overcome those challenges?
A: Prayag Narula:
That’s another great question. That’s a question that our customers have asked us most because as we are moving away from list buying as a way to collect data to actually looking at holistically at what my data tells me, that’s a big problem that the customers are facing, how do I collate all this data together. I think one of the biggest advice that I give to our customers and people who come to us for help is don’t overcomplicate things, even though you need a lot of data, you don’t need a lot of data vendors, you don’t need to buy data from 19 different or 20 different vendors which I’ve seen a lot of. We help our customers bring down the number of vendors that they’re buying from to a manageable number.
So, what we do, for example, is become the ground truth of what is the right data, what is the accurate data and then use that as the benchmark for any other data sources that they might be using, so, to bring down both the cost and the complication that occurs from working with too many different vendors. So, I think thinking simple in terms of just trying to get the most out of your existing stack and using what we provide or what you can build probably on your own if you’re a smaller organization as a benchmark, hey, here is the right data, here’s the most accurate data and calculating backwards from there, so you save the cost on the data vendors and complications, I think that would be a good step. There’s a lot that goes into it but my number one advice is: don’t complicate things and use a ground truth to benchmark everyone that comes to you, and we can help our customers do that and honestly, if our customers are not ready for us we can say, hey, at a small level, at a very small level, you can even do it yourself. So, that’s kind of how I recommend solving that problem of too much data and too many data vendors.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
That’s great. I think some marketers feel overwhelmed by data, so that’s a great piece of advice. So, let’s talk about customer experience because that is such a hot topic and one of the interesting things about lead gen technology is it seems by targeting the right people you’re probably actually giving prospective customers a better customer experience from right at the outset of the relationship. So, any recommendations for marketers in that regard in terms of improving the prospects experience by using a lead gen technology?
A: Prayag Narula:
Absolutely and I think the end to end experience is becoming more important than ever. There are so many ways in which customers are communicating with each other, you have to be really cognizant of consistency in your messaging and your commitment to your customers, all the way when you make the first connection to all the way to when you’re delivering your product and all the way to when they are ready to move on even a different vendor, the whole experience needs to be tightly integrated and needs to be consistent and it needs to be tailored in a lot of ways to individual customers.
So,
marketers responsibility does not anymore go away as soon as they pass the lead on to a sales team, that’s kind of old school thinking and that’s not viable anymore. Marketing needs to be involved in the entire customer journey, all the way from first point of contact to service delivery
But there’s a flip side of that is because you have more responsibilities means you have more budget available and more resources available to you, you can go and ask your company and your CEO’s for more budget to integrate that entire experience and use that to craft and execute on a much more integrated strategy right from the start.
The number one complaint I used to get from people that we were working with is, hey, we really are bought into this idea of personalization and micro-segmentation but we don’t have budget to power that. But if you can integrate that into an entire customer journey you will have more budget available to you. So, it’s very important for marketers to think of customers entire buyer journey and use the segmentation approach and use a micro-segmentation personalization approach from the get go, even though it means that it might cost more to start an engagement, but, in the long term it’s going to yield lot better results in customer satisfaction, in retention, in upgrades, it’s all going to pay off in the end but it’s important to look at it holistically as much.
Ginger Conlon:
Right, that makes sense. If you’re kick off right you’re going to get more high value customers to begin with, higher revenue potential, low cost to serve.
Prayag Narula:
That’s exactly right.
Q: Ginger Conlon:
Excellent, I love that. So, you were talking before that you’re excited for the next five years or so, so, I wanted to wrap up with a look forward. What specifically, give us a specific example of what you’re excited about in two areas, one, in the market in general and one in the other, anything coming up with LeadGenius that we should know about that you’re planning?
A: Prayag Narula:
Absolutely. I think they are very interrelated questions. I look at where the market is going and we want to move with the market but at the same time influence the market in what we feel is the right direction to move the market into. So, those are very closely related questions. I think the market is moving away from this concept of just mass amount of email as a way to get engagement, just buying low quality lead lists, putting it into Marketo and hoping that someone buys, and sending unsophisticated and not very relevant emails, and honestly, I blame the whole concept of predictable revenue that came out in 2010-2011, I think that really, really changed the mindset of the market for the worst, prioritized short term gains over long term gains.
The fact that you and I are getting 50 emails every day from marketers for whom we are not even the right customer is an example of how that whole idea of predictable revenue has gone off the rail. It was a terrible idea to begin with, it was a terrible idea to do it at scale, even worse to do it across the market. So, I’m glad that trend is going away, I think that’s a terrible experience for anyone and I’m glad that’s getting killed now. So,
I think the future is around personalization, the future is around segmentation and micro-segmentation and speaking to a customer about their problems rather than pitching a product and hoping that someone is going to buy it
it’s more who are my right customers, how can I segment those into not just small, medium and large but other segments that make sense for them and then using that to drive personalization across marketing. I think that’s a very good development that has happened, we can extrapolate that and hopefully what my vision is in 10 years we’ll be pitched the most relevant things, the most relevant product to us in the most relevant manner that solves our problem and we will do away with this problem of random messages that have nothing to do with us or don’t add any value, that’s my vision for the future.
LeadGenius, we’ve always been very excited about personalization and something that’s coming out, that has actually recently come out is this new product that helps customers identify those segments and look at it from a strategic perspective. So, a tool that helps you understand where have you been successful in the past and the potential for the future and relationship to works, between those to help you understand what markets you had more success, what is the potential of that in the future and using that to help identify the best market and then map the best markets for you. I’m really excited about that, I think that drives a lot of what we talked about, the personalization, the micro-segmentation and so on, that helps marketers do it in a very automated manner and I’m very excited about that.
Ginger Conlon:
So, no more random acts of marketing, it will be personalized.
Prayag Narula:
Yes! No warning random emails and marketers no more sending emails to just three groups of customers. Have 25 different groups, that’s my challenge to every marketer watching this, create 25 different segments of your customers and identify different segments and personalize it to those segments, that’s my challenge to everyone that’s watching today.
Ginger Conlon:
Excellent, I love that. So, Prayag, thank you so much and I want to thank everyone who’s here joining us today. I’m so glad you’re here, it was awesome. I want to also tell everyone that Prayag and I are going to talk about what’s important for marketers skills, the skillsets that marketers need today and as someone who works with marketers and hires marketers, I know he’s got some great advice in store, so be sure to check out that video as well and again, thank you all for being here.
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