Episode Description

On this episode of The Marketer’s Journey, I interview Blake Adams, VP of Marketing at Florence Healthcare. Florence is solving workflow issues in clinical trial execution, allowing companies like Pfizer more efficient operations to run trials through tech. Blake joined the company years ago as a marketing manager and has been a part of their growth from 8 to 100 employees. He is now VP of Marketing at the company, a position that he loves because it allows him to advocate for marketing as a tool to drive business. As a marketer, Blake understands the importance of metrics, especially because data allows you to take risks and still instill your board with confidence, even in a high growth company like Florence.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• The hardest challenge moving into a higher level marketing role can be moving from a place of subject matter expertise to a place of connecting the dots and facilitating the experts. Blake had to learn how to move away from leading with technical skills and focus on setting his team up for success.
• Marketing is a tool to drive business value. As marketers we need to bring marketing into the conversation at the executive table and talk about how it can drive business strategy. How does it fit into the overall business structure? How does it drive revenue growth?
• Measure everything-- even if you don’t report on it outside your team you may eventually be able to put that data to use somehow-- a culture of measurement and metrics also evokes trust in your board to allow you to take risks as you grow.