Do you routinely look for ways to drive innovation with your demand generation approach? Or do you feel behind the curve?

According to Circle Research, marketers are split. Half say they’re “old school,” while the other half believe their approach is innovative.

Circle Research found that most marketers (93%) who describe themselves as innovative say that it has made their marketing more effective. However, 83% of lagging marketers plan to bring innovation into their approach this year.

I interviewed Jeanne Hopkins (@jeannehopkins), CMO at Lola.com, on how marketers can bring more innovation to demand generation.

Share a little bit about your background.

Jeanne:  Thanks, Brian. My undergraduate degree is in Accounting.

Believe it or not, the accounting office where I started told me in my annual review that I probably didn’t have a future in accounting because I was too loud. Everything was balanced andhing was good, but I was too noisy for a nice, cut-and-dry accounting office.

That’s when I moved into toys. I worked for Milton Bradley Company’s in-house advertising agency. Then, I moved to LEGO and then to other consulting companies.

I got into the software, an internally funded company called Datum E-business Solutions, which delivered a trusted time application.

A long time ago, way back in the year 2000, it used to be that you’d send an email. Maybe somebody would send it again, but it would be like three hours later or three hours before, and that’s because networks were not on the same timing device.

So, the whole concept of having timing and having to be secure became something that became critically important to all networks. From there, selling into IT, B2B technology companies, that sort of thing. So that’s my gig.

What does Lola do?

Jeanne: Lola.com is a corporate travel management solution that allows finance people, office managers, and business travelers themselves to be able to see their full travel details and integrate with an expense platform. I know, Brian, you’ve probably done some expenses before-

Brian: Yeah.

Jeanne: You take a picture of the expense, you watch it go into the cloud, you fill out the form, and it takes half an hour or hour and, I bet you avoid it, right? It’s like one of those things-

Brian: You wait until the last minute to do it, and if the reports are due on Monday, you’re doing it Sunday night.

Jeanne: Of course, taking away from family time.

Brian: Right.

Jeanne: We integrate with Expensify, Concur, a whole bunch of different finance applications, as well as travel. You can book all your travel with us.

We have a complete support network that helps you get checked in and makes sure that when disruptions come up (reroute people, get people back sooner or back later) and any other hiccups that business travelers endure. We’re trying to mitigate that for them.

Brian: I wanted to highlight you because you’ve done so much, you know, since you and I met, and we could date ourselves a bit here but-

Jeanne: That’s okay.

Brian: Way back, as we spoke, I think, at a MarketingSherpa Conference.

Jeanne: 2006, yeah.

Brian: Yeah! I was impressed by you and just how you were bringing innovation and creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking. Also, you’ve continued to do that throughout your career.

Driving more innovation with demand generation

How did you start thinking differently to drive innovation with demand generation?

Jeanne: Well, I can’t claim the credit myself, so I’d say that there would be a couple of different influences. I would say both of my parents are artists of a kind. My dad paints, he plays music, he writes. My mom sings, plays music, and paints.

So, when I was in high school, I majored in Art. We had to submit a portfolio, and I enjoy thinking from an artistic view of the world. That’s the left-handed component of me.

However, then, when I graduated from high school, I went to college for Accounting because I’m ultimately practical, right? I said I could always get a job adding things up.

I read constantly. I’m trying to always look for something a little bit different, a little bit ahead of the curve.

I don’t want to be an early adopter, but I want to be at the forefront before the competition catches up with us. So, I’m lucky to have a kind of a creative outlook, and I think.

Start seeing stories

My dad was a newspaperman. He was a managing editor of the newspaper in western Massachusetts, in Springfield, and I can look at things and look at story ideas. This a story, like just us having a conversation right here, Brian.

Jeanne: So, we each have a story, we have a back story that goes back some 13 years now-

We know each other. We worked together, you know, you have a family, you know my family, and that’s a story.

So, I sent a note to my internal content team, and I said, “Hey, I’m doing this podcast. When it gets published, I think we should do a press release and post it on the blog and backlink to Brian’s blog because that’s where he’s going to be posting it,” but, that’s not creative.

Don’t you think that’s where people kind of drop the ball?

Getting it done

Brian: I do. I think it’s like bringing the two pieces together and what I’ve respected about you is that you were always willing to try something new, you know? And you would see it through and wouldn’t let it drop.

Jeanne: Are you saying I’m a nag?!

Brian: Well, I think a little bit. You want things done well, and you own it. Being creative is great, but being creative or innovative isn’t going to matter much unless you can get it done.

Generating revenue

Jeanne: A place that I worked at a few companies ago, one of the salespeople contacted me and said, “Oh, they’re completely rebranding. They’re doing all this kind of stuff.”

I feel like marketers who go the rebranding route, the new logo route, they’re arts and crafts marketers because while that’s important and a brand is essential, it’s not as important as generating revenue.

Brian: Yeah.

Jeanne: But almost a thousand of them were untouched by sales because we don’t have enough salespeople, so working with an organization to make sure if people are downloading content, you want them to get touched.

They may not be ready to buy, but you want to be able to make sure they’re touched. So, I’m trying to come up with a solution to that internally. To go figure out what I can do to help the sales organization achieve the revenue targets that we have as an organization?

Seeing the whole business

Jeanne: I think that one of the challenges that many marketers have is that they don’t look at the whole business.

Because our job is not just as marketers, and this concept of arts and crafts marketer and saying, “Okay, I’m going to change this logo from orange to pink,” and therefore all these people are going to come to us and say, “Oh, I love your new logo and can I buy from you?” That’s not going to happen.

Generating revenue and building a great relationship with sales

You haven’t given anybody anything of value. I feel and have always felt that my job is to generate revenue.

And that becomes challenging for many marketers. If I looked at what this brand person is doing, you’re going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars with an agency, and you’re going to go through this whole process.

I understand this individual has been there for eight months, and the sales team hasn’t seen a single lead. I would stick a fork in my eye if that were the case. My job is to generate leads.

I want to have an excellent relationship with sales.

I want to make sure that the sales leader that I’m working with is somebody that I like, and respect and we’re joined at the hip to grow the business together.

Brian: I want to call attention to something you’ve said that it’s so important that you go beyond the lead. You’re looking at the whole business and focused on revenue. I think it’s just part of being a good marketer is looking at execution.

Getting and keeping customers

How do we take this person we built a relationship with or start a conversation with and carry it through to helping them become a customer?

Jeanne: Yes. Also, stay a customer.

The four circles

Jeanne: Because when you think about it, I feel like there’s like four circles, if you will.

1. Employees

The center ring is employees, and if employees don’t have a sense of what’s going on and they’re not being communicated with, like here are the events that are coming up, here are the PR things that are coming up.

What’s the full transparency so that the employees know what’s going on with the product, marketing, sales, team, and everything?

2. Customers

The next one is customers; unfortunately, customer marketing as a concept is not something marketers dig. But they don’t think about them until they’re gone.

3. Prospects

Then the next level is prospects. Many marketers focus just on prospects.  Then, what’s the conversion rate, visit-to-lead, visits-to-CTA, CTA-to-opportunity, the opportunity-to-customer?

4.Community

Oh, that’s all great, but you also have a c