Home > Companies > C-Suite On Deck > Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

Randy Frisch, CMO and Co-Founder at Uberflip has led the content experience movement, prompting marketers to think beyond content creation and focus on the experience.

Randy also co-hosts the Conex Show, a weekly podcast featuring top marketers and their strategies and secrets to success. His talks empower marketers with the strategies they need to capture their audiences, prove their worth, and align their vision.

MEDIA 7: If I were to say to a bunch of people who know you, ‘Give me three adjectives that best describe you’, what would I hear?
RANDY FRISCH: Determined, passionate, caring.

M7: From Flipbooks to the world’s first content experience platform in just 6 years. What are some of the top reasons that helped drive Uberflip to where it is now?
RF: We started as a solution that would allow marketers to share content to readers whenever they wanted and on whichever devices. People still want to consume content whenever they want. Think of the way in which we consume video content on Netflix or music content on Spotify. We’ve been successful in large part because we’ve been able to create a product that marketers need, that make it easier for their buyers to become customers. But that hasn’t been enough.
The differentiator for us is culture—the values we strive for as an organization (not just the work environment). I’ll share my 3 favourites here:

● H.U.S.T.L.E.: this one stands for Heart, Unique, Skill, Tech, Lean, Entrepreneurial. My co-founder, Yoav Schwartz, and I actually screen new hires for these traits.
● Valuable, Relevant & Consistent: this one comes from the initial definition of Content Marketing (“creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content”) by Robert Rose and Joe Pullizzi at the Content Marketing Institute. It only makes sense that our teams and employees should expect to be valuable, relevant, and consistent.
● Give Back: It’s important for us to give back to our communities and while we do this in numerous ways led by people across our team, one of my favourites is an annual charity ping pong tournament we host called Startupong which brought together startups in Toronto to raise $50,000 for Sick Kids hospital this year.
We’ve been successful mostly because we’ve been able to create a brand around engaging our team, our customers, and even our partners around these values.

"As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods."

M7: How can modern marketers leverage the personalized content recommendations given by Uberflip AI?
RF: It all comes down to the journey we take our buyers through. We recently produced a report with Heinz Marketing in which we found that only “1 in 3 B2B marketing leaders [of 283 interviewed] believe their current website encourages people to engage with their content at a high volume”. Essentially, we are leading buyers to a piece of content and leaving them to fend for themselves among your content. A visual I like to use is that of walking someone into a dark forest with no pathway and leaving them there. Not a good experience at all. As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods.

Uberflip AI serves up recommendations on our platform personalized to our buyers after they’ve consumed a piece of content. This allows them to stay and engage with more content while they’re in a content experience. Uberflip AI gives marketers the ability to predict what topic or piece of content their buyer might be interested in based on their behavior on a website, benchmark them against other users, and deliver content that they might be interested in, in order to extend their journey.

"Buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience."

M7: How does user-generated content help in scaling ABM campaigns at Uberflip?
RF: I believe the best UGC for ABM (acronym overload!) is the reviews from customers. The best way to learn is from our peers. We often copy our competitors or look for best practices. There are many ways we can relate to a target account by showing them what their peers are saying. It could be finding a tweet from someone they respect speaking about the value of your platform. Think of it this way. If Roger Federer tweeted that a certain shoe was key to his play you'd likely win over other aspiring tennis players. In the world of B2B marketing, we can sometimes find more professional review sites like G2 or TrustRadius where highlighting a review from someone in a related industry can help win over the next target account.

M7: There is a lot of buzz around your book “F#ck Content Marketing”. What inspired you to preach this influential gospel?
RF: I was off to Dreamforce in 2017 and I came across a SiriusDecisions stat that 60-70% of all marketing content goes unused. It brought to light that even I contributed to this problem by driving my team to create more and more content. I had a revelation.

Thanks to Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing was supposed to be about creating and distributing content “with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” But somewhere along the line, it became too much about creation and not enough about distribution and driving customer action (converting). And when marketers were distributing content, we weren’t distributing it in ways that led to profitable customer action—think of all those generic emails we sent people, loaded with links to videos and blog posts spread across the internet. We were sending people into dark scary forests full of content (sometimes that of our competitors). And we never got them back.

It all hit me. So I said “f#ck content marketing”, or rather, f#ck what it had become. My mission over the last two years has become to teach marketers how to create great personalized online experiences that we can send our buyers to, that actually take them on a journey leading to a conversion.

"Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action."

M7: What is the idea behind ‘The Conex’ (podcast show) hosted by you every week, which is already a big hit among the viewers?
RF: After 3 years and 227 episodes, we’ve decided to end the Content Experience Show and start fresh with a new show, The Marketer’s Journey, launching October. We had a great base of listeners and guests, but we wanted to spend more time focusing on the concept of the journey—both, the journey that our buyers go through, and the journey we go through as marketers. I’ll be speaking in-depth with marketing leaders about what their journey has looked like as marketers and what they strive for in creating great experiences for their buyers and customers.

M7: How do you see content marketing evolving over time?
RF: We’re not just seeing the evolution of content marketing, we’re seeing the evolution of marketing as a whole. Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action.
Let’s take a look for a moment at the way in which we consume video and music media. We went from syndicated TV shows and weekly programming on set channels (cable) to having bingeable content ready for us on demand (Netflix, Hulu, etc). We went from listening for our favourite song to be played on the radio, to downloading songs on iTunes, to now getting recommended curated playlists and artists based on my listening history on Spotify. We can search for content we want on demand and binge it for as long as we want. And we can do it whenever we want on multiple different devices around us.

Our buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience. Marketers are starting to catch on. We’re starting to spend time and money on analyzing the data, having great salespeople, and even on distribution. The difference-maker is that marketers are spending more time and money on personalized content experiences and using a content experience platform like Uberflip to accelerate the buyer journey.

ABOUT UBERFLIP

Uberflip is the world’s #1 Content Experience Platform (CEP). With tools to aggregate all your marketing content, they empower B2B marketing and sales teams to create personalized content experiences to engage accounts, nurture prospects, and convert leads, without the help of IT. It’s their mission to put control back in the hands of marketing teams to deliver high-converting experiences, that put the customer front and center.

More C-Suite on deck

Q&A with Cameron Worth, CEO & Founder, SharpEnd

Media 7 | April 22, 2020

Cameron Worth, CEO & Founder of SharpEnd leads the company’s mission to help brands move closer than ever to consumers by connecting packaging, retail and experiential activity. He is a regular speaker and writer on how to build brands in a connected world. He has spoken at Cannes, the Festival of Marketing, LuxePack Monaco and New York, Ad:Week Europe and New York, DMA, the Connected Consumer Conference, Mobile World Congress and the IoT World Forum. MEDIA 7: How did the idea of “the agency of things” come to your mind? CAMERON WORTH: SharpEnd was created in 2015 as the world’s first Internet of Things focused agency, so there is a slight play on words when we say we’re the Agency of Things. I think the idea of giving things their own agency is an interesting concept, and the strapline fits our capabilities on multiple levels. M7: In what way does technology drive the association of SharpEnd with global brands? What approaches are followed to enable sustainability? CW: Our simple proposition is to help build brands in a connected world, and to do that you must always start with identified consumer needs or pain points and look at technology as just an enabler to deliver an appropriate solution (when appropriate). Take the issue of sustainability, which is often a pain point for brands that grapple with issues such as how we can reward sustainable behaviour change. One of our approaches to this could be to look at communicating the recycling credentials of the different products. Whilst the consumer can engage with a product as part of a wider consumer experience, the same technology could also house content that could tell you whether the product is recyclable, which type of bin it goes in etc. SharpEnd’s work with Unilever is a case in point. We built a digital product that incentivised recycling through gamification but also served to educate through informing people how and where to recycle in a clear fashion. All users had to do was simply scan their packaging to have all this information at their disposal.

Q&A with Sangram Vajre, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus

MEDIA 7 | January 9, 2020

Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus is also an author and host of the podcast FlipmyFunnel. He is one of the leading minds in B2B marketing. MEDIA 7: What are you passionate about? SANGRAM VAJRE: Three things: Lead professionally. Grow personally. Love family. M7: Terminus has been recognized as one of Georgia’s 40 fastest-growing companies by ACG Atlanta. What factors contribute to this pace? SV: One of our core values is #OneTeam – which means we think and act as one team and know that if we treat our team right, they will treat our customers amazing. There are no great companies, only great people that make those companies.

Q&A with Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD

MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Business Process, Marketo, Sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and IT Service Management, Andrea is also a strong business development professional and a storyteller. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? ANDREA LECHNER: Frankly, not having better options. I originally attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse thinking I’d major in Archaeology. I wanted to be Indiana Jones! But, after visiting the archaeology building – i.e. the cold, dark basement of the science building – where a girl sat to piece together pieces of an old Native American vase, I knew archaeology was not going to be the right path for me. And so, without being good at science and a major in art or art history was unlikely to pay my bills, I decided to go into “business”. I originally registered as a management major, but took my first marketing class and thought it was more interesting and switched my sophomore year. That was pretty much it. I’d never been involved in business classes or DECA in high school – I didn’t really know what to do or what jobs in marketing were even possible. I dumb lucked myself into it really. M7: As a storyteller, do you relate the brand to a story or story to the brand? AL: Both? Neither? I think there are stories in every brand, because there are people working on the brand and people engaging with the brand and people using what the brand creates. People, most often a single person, are at the heart of great stories. You can start with the “point” of the story you’re trying to tell. Say you have a software that help accountants better create reports for board meetings. It’s likely you’ll want to tell a success story about an accountant getting promoted to CFO in part because your software helped better communicate their work product to the board. You could have the idea for that and go looking for that story in your customers. OR, you could hear that story, and say, “That’s amazing!” and share it with customers, partners and internal people. Stories are all around us – the most important thing is to keep your ears and eyes open for finding them.

Q&A with Cameron Worth, CEO & Founder, SharpEnd

Media 7 | April 22, 2020

Q&A with Sangram Vajre, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus

MEDIA 7 | January 9, 2020

Q&A with Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD

MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Software and Tools

Swift Navigation Launches Partner Program to Accelerate Mass Market Deployment of Precise Positioning Technologies

GlobeNewswire | October 20, 2023

Swift Navigation, a market leader in precise positioning technology for automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile applications, today announced the launch of the Swift Partner Program. By bringing together an ecosystem of industry-leading companies across the technology stack – mobile network operators (MNOs), chipset and module manufacturers, system integrators, and application platform providers – Swift is doubling down on its mission to build a safer and more efficient future by changing the way we understand and navigate every centimeter of our planet. Centimeter accurate, failsafe, and cost-effective precise positioning technologies are key to unlocking megatrends: vehicle autonomy, industrial automation, and the next generation location-based mobile applications, such as navigation, worker safety, and augmented reality, among others. But integrating precise location can add complexity and costs to an already challenging product design cycle, contributing to delayed product launches, cost overruns, and suboptimal consumer experiences. With the launch of its Partner Program, Swift is dramatically simplifying the process to enable precise location and deliver exceptional user experiences in any geography, at any scale, with unit economics that work. Swift is on a mission to democratize precise positioning technology to accelerate the deployment of location-based products that improve safety and efficiency for business and consumers, said Holger Ippach, Executive Vice President of Product at Swift Navigation. Swift’s technology already underpins some of the most complex deployments in the world, and we couldn’t be more excited to partner with the best companies in our industry to unlock the next wave of innovation. Swift’s cloud-modeled Skylark™ Precise Positioning Service delivers uniform, centimeter accurate positioning through carrier-grade networks deployed and operated in partnership with MNOs around the world. This enables Swift’s customers to seamlessly deploy products across multiple geographies and ensures failsafe, end-to-end system reliability backed by commercial-grade SLAs, a rarity in the industry. Commenting on the partnership with Swift Navigation, Andreas Reich, Chief Product & Innovation Officer Deutsche Telekom’s IoT division, said: “Through our long-term partnership with Swift, we expanded Skylark’s coverage across Europe and continue to help our customers deliver new cutting-edge IoT products and solutions enabled by precise location. In a recent cross-border drive test across Europe, we showcased Skylark’s failsafe performance by tracking a vehicle every centimeter of the way from Hanover to Barcelona — over rugged mountains, through tunnels, and across urban canyons.” Swift’s hardware agnostic precise positioning service is differentiated in a market historically dominated by vertically integrated solutions that lock customers into one vendor for both the GNSS receiver and corrections service. By allowing customers to select components that have been rigorously tested for their use case, Swift simplifies the product design cycle, maximizes the customer’s purchasing power, reduces the risk of downstream field support issues, and minimizes any effort required to incorporate precise location into existing solutions. Finally, by partnering with system integrators and industry-specific application providers, Swift is accelerating adoption of its precise positioning technology across industries. Today, Swift’s more than 7,000 customers – including more than 20 automotive OEMs and suppliers, multiple market-leading handset manufacturers, logistics companies, industrial equipment manufacturers, and more – are collectively deploying more than 5 million vehicles and devices enabled by Swift’s technology. Chipset manufacturer STMicroelectronics, module maker Septentrio, system integrator Taoglas, and GIS platform provider ITS Geo Solutions, are among other partners participating in Swift’s Partner Program. Commenting on their respective partnerships with Swift: Luca Celant, ADAS and Infotainment Division General Manager, STMicroelectronics, said: “STMicroelectronics is delighted to have partnered with Swift Navigation. We have worked closely together on several successful projects, delivering the powerful combination of Swift’s reliable centimeter accurate positioning service enabled by ST’s market-leading Teseo GNSS receivers, IMUs, and processors. We share Swift’s commitment to an open ecosystem, which offers our customers the utmost flexibility in designing their solutions.” Jan Van Hees, Business Development Director, Septentrio, added: “Septentrio is thrilled to be part of Swift’s partner program. We have collaborated closely with Swift to enable mosaic and AsterRx receivers to deliver Skylark’s uniform centimeter accuracy and fast convergence as part of Septentrio’s Agnostic Corrections Partner Program. This partnership has provided our customers with a great option offering the consistent performance needed to deliver reliable products with exceptional consumer experiences.” Dermot O'Shea, CEO and Co-Founder, Taoglas, added: “Swift’s partner program allows us to integrate precise positioning into our ever-growing variety of out-of-the-box solutions. By joining forces, we are reducing the cost and effort required to perform module-level validation, integration and engineering development.” Erik Schütz, Managing Director, ITS Geo Solutions, added: “Our collaboration with Swift enabled us to enhance our flagship solution, GeoAce, with ultra-precise GNSS corrections. Thanks to Swift’s open ecosystem, we were able to quickly source hardware that was already pre-integrated with Skylark and rapidly launch the new offering to our customers without a hitch.” About Swift Navigation Swift Navigation is changing the way we understand and navigate the planet. Swift’s precise positioning solutions enable centimeter-level mapping, tracking, and navigation to unlock vehicle autonomy, industrial automation, and digital innovation across industries globally. Some of the largest companies in the world are leveraging Swift’s technology to enable safer driving, deliver autonomous vehicles and equipment, optimize logistics, and unleash next-generation mobile applications for navigation, worker safety, and augmented reality, among others. Learn more about how Swift is building a safer and more connected future at www.swiftnav.com

Software and Tools

ATEL® Unveils the WB550 Apex by ATEL™: The Ultimate 5G Indoor Router with Unmatched Connectivity, Security, and Value

PR Newswire | October 25, 2023

ATEL®, a leader in telecommunications technology, is excited to announce the launch of its latest innovation, the WB550 Apex by ATEL™ 5G Indoor Router. Designed to meet the most demanding Internet connectivity needs, the WB550 Apex by ATEL™ offers unparalleled data speeds, robust security features, and the power to connect up to 32 users. As more of our lives shift to the cloud, having a real-time connection to the Internet is no longer an option, explains Terence "TC" Caston VP of Product Marketing: "Our businesses and homes rely on low-latency applications that perform best with networks that have the power to support them. ATEL® has ensured the network's edge devices have the power to deliver!" The WB-550 FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) device gives your business or home the reliability and power to connect to the things that move you. Key highlights of the WB-550 include: Support for NSA or SA 5G networks C-Band 5G and LTE Cat-19 fallback for lightning-fast speeds in areas without 5G Connections for up to 32 devices on its powerful Wi-Fi 6 network For managing your deployment of devices, ATEL® has also included its premiere device remote management solution called ATRACS™. Our remote management portal has been designed to bring the best-of-breed features to every ATEL® device we launch with two years of free service! About ATEL Asiatelco Technologies Co. (ATEL®) was established in 2003. Since its inception, ATEL® has been growing steadily with its sales covering more than 50 countries. ATEL's business model is JDM/ODM for serving wireless operators and branded customers. With 20 years of accumulated experience, ATEL® has built a strong, effective, and efficient team in R&D and manufacturing. Customers can always rely on the ATEL® team's performance. Quality, flexibility, on-time delivery and lower cost, are just some of the key factors of success at ATEL® and the key to customer satisfaction. ATEL-USA was established in 2017, with its headquarters in Newport Beach, California. We have invested in the industry's top talent for hardware, software, marketing, quality, and operations. This has allowed us to continue the transition from a 3rd Party ODM to a full-service OEM supplier of quality wireless products. Our products include FWA (Fixed Wireless Access), POTs replacement devices, mobile broadband routers, hot spots, home phone connect, OBD, CPE, IoT, safety devices, and smart devices for the US market. A strong, effective, and efficient R&D team, along with the manufacturing team, has positioned ATEL-USA to enter into the OEM space.

Enterprise Iot

Tavant Unveils Data Beats™: A Data-Driven Ecosystem Built for Fintechs and Financial Institutions to Harness Data Insights

Business Wire | October 20, 2023

Tavant, Silicon Valley’s leading digital lending solutions provider, today announced at the MBA's Annual Convention & Expo in Philadelphia, the launch of Data Beats™, a groundbreaking data platform that promises to redefine the financial services landscape. Built to inform, provide insights, act, recommend, and predict, Data Beats ushers in a new era of data-driven intelligence for the industry. This versatile platform empowers businesses to harness the power of their data and maximize its value, effectively taking the stress out of data management. Key benefits of Data Beats include: Provides actionable data insights that work for your business; Analyzes data from various aspects of your operations; Adapts and learns from your data to provide real-time recommendations; and Looks into the future, learns and predicts trends. Data Beats is a platform offering within Tavant's banking and financial services suite of technology products. Data Beats is set to serve as the analytics and IoT engine for the financial services industry, initially focusing on mortgage and home equity products. Tavant plans to extend this robust data ecosystem to all consumer loans and banking products, making it a comprehensive solution for financial institutions. With Data Beats, Tavant empowers financial institutions towards proactive rather than reactive operations by incorporating generative AI to prompt users on the best course of action. This revolutionary approach allows the platform to offer precise recommendations for loan officers, consumers, processors, and underwriters, enhancing the overall efficiency of the lending process. Abhinav Asthana, Fintech Product Business and Growth Leader at Tavant said, Tavant's mission is to stay at the forefront of innovation and to be the engineering partner of choice in the financial services industry. Data Beats exemplifies our commitment to providing our customers with an advanced platform that accelerates their vision to transform into a data-first organization. We are proud to launch this platform, which brings insights, intelligence, and efficiency to the heart of the lending process. Data Beats has already started demonstrating its value within Tavant's existing customer base by enhancing and automating the home buying experience. By consolidating data from various stages of the customer journey, from acquisition to servicing and beyond, Data Beats provides invaluable insights that can be used to predict future behavior, optimize operations, and improve overall business performance. The system's foundation, the data lake, can ingest a wide range of data inputs, limited only by the specific business problem it aims to solve. This flexibility positions Data Beats to become a game-changing tool for a wide range of industries beyond mortgage and lending.