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,