Importance of Data in Marketing Strategies for Growth | Valerie Bartlett from Tracer

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us out on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Valerie from Tracer, Senior Vice President of Growth with them. How are you doing today, Valerie?

Valerie Bartlett: I’m doing great. How are you?

Ernesto: I’m doing great. Great. Awesome to have you on here with us today. I appreciate you being on today’s episode here at Pathmonk Presents.

Valerie: Awesome. Glad to be here.

Ernesto: Great, great. Well, let’s kick it off, right? I’m sure our listeners are tuning in, wondering what Tracer is all about. So in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Valerie: Yeah, absolutely. Tracer helps businesses move from data to answers really quickly. The way to think about it is that a lot of businesses are data-rich but insight-poor. The process to get answers and insights is really arduous, technically intensive, and potentially really human-hours intensive as well. So Tracer, in the world of AI, automates a lot of those processes so that people can do better marketing, measurement, and application of those datasets to make them more valuable.

Ernesto: Definitely important.

Valerie: Right.

Ernesto: And in today’s world, the more we go, the more data that we have, the better calculations and marketing that we do. Right? So, awesome.

Valerie: Yeah, well, and that’s what we’re learning. Right. It’s a lot about not just the data that you’re getting in—there’s plenty of data for businesses and marketers like myself—but the ability to actually make that data meaningful and actionable is pretty tough. And so Tracer helps solve for that in big ways.

Ernesto: Definitely. All right, so then, so that way our listeners could get a good understanding of Tracer, what would you say is that key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

Valerie: I’d say it’s really—I mean, we can. The hardest part and best part is that we’re really an end-to-end solution that makes it easy to get data in, centralized into a single place, and then more importantly, transform it, standardize it, and normalize it so that you can do things like measurement. It’s the foundation for a lot of AI applications for our partners. It’s the foundation of holistic dashboards to get a good understanding of marketing investments and where to spend your next dollar.

Ernesto: Okay, great to hear that. Is there a certain vertical segment or an ideal ICP that Tracer likes to go for?

Valerie: You know, really, it’s anybody with data that’s living in different places and having a hard time answering basic or advanced business questions. We have clients that are all over in different verticals, whether that’s healthcare, pharma, finance, CPG, retail, QSR. So I don’t really think there’s any limitation for ICP, which again, is like a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay, great. Awesome to hear that from you. So how would somebody usually find out about Tracer? Is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Valerie: Right now, actually, we have word of mouth. Most of our customers actually come from our existing clients sharing the glory and goodness about what Tracer is doing for them internally, which is fantastic. In terms of our acquisition strategy, it’s paid ads, paid testimonials, I would say. Our website obviously does a lot for itself, and then we have a pretty robust events marketing strategy as well.

Ernesto: Okay, great to hear that. And that way, our listeners who are tuned in could go ahead and visit you. They could always check you out at Tracer Tech. What role does the website then play for client acquisition, Valerie?

Valerie: It plays a marginal role today, but it should play a much more significant role in the coming few weeks and months. We’re making significant investments to really up-level the website because it’s pretty basic, right? High-level understanding and some verbiage, but we really need to focus on by role, by industry, and then explainer videos, pricing—all the key components of meeting the buyers where they’re at in their journey and exploring what Tracer can do for them.

Ernesto: Okay, great to hear that. Is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend for listeners as far as some website lead generation?

Valerie: Yeah, I would say put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and consistently think about that experience, whether it’s B2B, two B2B, or B2B two C. It’s really important to think about what you are considering as you evaluate this decision, whether it’s a car, new skincare, or software solutions for your business. Think about you as a marketer, you as a salesperson, you driving growth and demand for your product in the market. What are the key value propositions, and how do you really simplify that for the end user or end buyer to make sure that the conversion rates and the stickiness of what you’re trying to bring to market are really there?

Ernesto: Okay, great. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Valerie. Some tips. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit then, Valerie, and let’s talk about you as a leader, you being the SVP of Growth there for Tracer. What are some key tasks you like to focus on in your day-to-day work?

Valerie: Well, it’s funny because I read this book. It’s called “Do the Hard Things First.” You think that, like, get the easy things that you do within a couple of minutes and get them out of the way, but really focus and prioritize your day. There’s only so many hours in a day that you can do the key and critical tasks. And so, as a leader, what I like to do is think of mission-critical tasks and the amount of effort to get that and execute that task. So I always like to start with the highest priority, lowest lift, and then kind of use those two vectors to determine how to best optimize my time.

Ernesto: Okay, great to hear that. So how do you stay up to date? Is there a channel that you like to go with to stay up to date with all the marketing news, trends, and strategies out there in the world today?

Valerie: I mean, there’s a bevy of insights, whether that’s, you know, there’s Ad Age, I think Digiday is really interesting. There are a lot of digital marketing channels that I follow and that I’m a part of. I think LinkedIn has really been a crazy repository because the more interested I am, I think their algorithms are actually pretty good, making me pretty relevant content, honestly. And I think that the recency of the information on LinkedIn is relatively immediate. Those are my core sources. I would also say that networking—I’m consistently investing in making the most of all the conferences I go to, soaking up all that content, and making sure that I’m continuing to network with the best and the brightest in order to bring the best solutions to the market.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. Great to hear that. Well, let’s jump into our next section then here, Valerie, which is our rapid-fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Valerie: Sure.

Ernesto: All right, perfect. First off then, Valerie, what is the last book that you read?

Valerie: The last book that I read was “Your Next Five Moves.”

Ernesto: Great read there for our listeners. Next up, if there were no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Valerie: Oh man, the laundry list is pretty heavy. I would probably say the ability to truly democratize data. And by that, I mean there is a plethora of information available to us as marketers that I feel gets leveraged at 50% capacity. So no matter how much automation and AI and all these twinkling lights and flashing stars come, everybody’s still mining lead lists manually through Excel for the most part. And so I think that there’s a huge opportunity there, as a marketer, to continuously fix that cycle of data to action.

Ernesto: Okay, great. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Next up, if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Valerie: I literally just talked about that. I would say the repetitive task I could automate is probably just keeping me out of Excel. There are so many times I’m in Excel docs and sheets, and I just—again, it’s actually so funny because the reason that I love representing Tracer in the market is that we automate a lot of that work. Humans in Excel, it’s low-value work. It’s important. You have to do that in order to analyze the data and make decisions from it. But if I could automate anything in my day-to-day, it would be getting out of those spreadsheets.

Ernesto: Definitely, right? There’s a lot of tasks, I’m sure, with Tracer, all that data and information. So it’s important to focus on that and less on Excel. That would be some great tools there. Awesome. Well, lastly, Valerie, you have tons of experience already in the marketing world, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Valerie: I would say that there have been plenty of times I’ve been a little bit more conservative in my approach with testing and learning. The moment that I really started to see success for my partners and my clients and the work we were doing was when we got a little bit more fearless with the work that we were doing. So my remit before I came over to Tracer was growing a team at TikTok, and I would see that the brands and the businesses that were willing to take the leap of faith and be early adopters of emerging technology—I would say, whatever reservations you have, don’t let that hold you back from being able to truly scale and grow.

Ernesto: Some great advice there, not just for yourself, Valerie, but for all our listeners. Well, we are coming to the end of the show here, Valerie, but before we do end, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview, what should be that one thing they should remember about Tracer?

Valerie: Get yourself out of Excel! No, I would actually say that the one thing they should remember about Tracer is that data is critical to your strategy and invest in a solution that helps you make that data actionable for growth.

Ernesto: There, you guys heard it. Valerie, thank you so much for sharing that with us. You can always check them out at Tracer Tech. And to our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Valerie.

Valerie: Thanks, Ernesto.