Introduction to Katie Clark

Hey everyone and welcome to today’s episode of the Digital Revolution Podcast. Today we are joined by Katie Clark. Katie is a marketing leader with B2B experience from launching go-to-market for growth stage companies to managing integrated campaigns for Fortune 100 companies. She is the senior director of marketing at U Science, an Education Technology SaaS Company. Katie is also on the board of the Silicon Slopes Salt Lake City chapter and has an MBA from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and a BS from the University of Utah. She is married and has two awesome kids. Join us today as we chat with Katie about lead gen through value-add thought leadership reports, case studies and more.

Table of Contents

• Who is Katie Clark?
• Current Projects That Excite Katie
• Tactical and Strategic Lead Generation Advice from Katie
• Where Katie Sees the Future Going in Lead Generation
• Women in Digital: Career and Family
• Advice to Her Younger Self
• Books, Podcasts, and Leaders That Inspire Katie
• How to Get in Contact with Katie
• Conclusion

Who is Katie Clark?

A Creative Background

Katie was always creative and loved storytelling which is where her natural fit with marketing began. She had a happy childhood and great parents with whom she remains great friends. Interesting fact, Katie is a twin, this had a big impact on her identity. Having someone who was with her through all life’s events and always in her corner was life changing and really formed her childhood.

Katie did well in the school system, she participated and engaged with her education. Not saying she never struggled, Katie learned how to navigate the system to get good grades.

From Competitive Dancing to Marketing

Growing up a competitive dancer was a big part of how Katie developed her love for creativity and storytelling which lead her into marketing – a space she feels is a natural fit for her skills.

After high school Katie graduated from the University of Utah, moved to LA and earned her MBA from USC. She’s been in the tech space in marketing and advertising for 13-14 years.

Katie has lived in multiple places including Utah (where she currently lives), LA, New York, England and France. Those diverse experiences have shaped her worldview and heavily influence how she approaches marketing and connecting with audiences.

International Experience

Katie and her husband made the big leap in their late 20s. They were unsure of adult life so they sold everything and moved abroad. Katie’s husband got into the Euro Pub Health program in England and Katie applied and got into USC’s online MBA program.

For 2 years before having kids they lived abroad and pursued their master’s degrees. Looking back Katie says they weren’t afraid at all – they just went for it. No jobs. No income. Now with kids and all the responsibilities that come with them she is impressed with how fearless they were back then.

From Acting to Marketing

Katie’s background goes beyond marketing. As you can see on IMDB under her maiden name (Katie Cockrell) she has appeared in several projects including Yellowstone, Christmas Wonderland (a Hallmark movie), Star Trek Into the Darkness, Jack and Jill, and High School Musical.

She got into acting through her background as a competitive dancer. Katie and her twin sister auditioned in high school for their first role on Disney Channel’s “Return to HalloweenTown Four.” They were exactly what the production was looking for: twin sisters of Asian descent from Utah who could dance. Although getting into acting was intimidating at first, the experience includes working with an acting coach and sparked Katie’s interest in the industry.

Later, when High School Musical came to Utah to film, Katie auditioned with about 3,000 other dancers. She was one of 12 chosen to be a principal dancer. While pursuing her college education, Katie continued to look for acting opportunities which eventually led her to Los Angeles.

Transition to Digital Marketing

In LA, Katie lived the actor’s life – attending auditions and working part-time at a PR agency to pay the bills. Despite landing some big roles, the constant rejections and uncertainty of acting made her reevaluate her path.

Katie realized she liked being on the other side of the camera. This epiphany led her into advertising first and then marketing where she has been ever since.

Current Projects That Excite Katie

Katie is in her third year at U Science, an edtech company. What continues to excite her about marketing and advertising is the creative and storytelling parts of the field. As leader of the brand team, Katie oversees everything from thought leadership pieces that drive demand and leads to campaigns and video production.

She loves the variety in her daily work and bigger projects that look at campaigns from start to finish – from lead gen pieces to awareness campaigns to PR. Katie likes looking at marketing as a whole, seeing how all the pieces come together to form a strategy.

A recent highlight was directing and producing a video where she got to hire actors. This was full circle for her, getting to use her understanding of being in front of the camera to direct others from behind it.

Tactical and Strategic Lead Generation Advice from Katie

What is Lead Generation and Why is it Important?

Lead generation is crucial for every business, no matter the size or industry. At the end of the day businesses exist to make money or create value for shareholders so lead generation is a universal need.

For small businesses just starting out with their lead generation strategy it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as finding content or data to offer to customers and creating a basic series around that. Katie says knowing your customer is the foundation of good lead generation:

“It all comes back to really knowing your customer and saying what value can you provide to them that they’re willing to trade for? So they’re willing to give you their information, enter into a relationship with you but you have to give them value.”

Best Practices for Lead Generation

Katie shares three key best practices for lead generation:

1. Know Your Audience Deeply

Many companies think they know their audience and have product-market fit and then stop building that relationship. Katie recommends asking “why” to customers:

“I really encourage, and even this is something I’m working on now, is to ask your customer. Why do they like that? Okay, they said this. Now go a step deeper. Why? And keep pushing till you feel like you really know them at a deep level.”

This deep understanding is key because you can create content and value pieces that actually answer your customer’s needs.

2. Move Fast and Iterate

Perfection shouldn’t be the goal, especially for smaller companies:

“Optimize for speed. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can almost move faster and create more leads by moving fast, iterating, testing, seeing how it goes.”

Big companies may go for perfection but smaller companies benefit more from rapid iteration and testing.

3. Target the Right Funnel Stage

Create content for where your customer is getting stuck in the funnel:

• Top of funnel issues: If leads aren’t moving down to the middle, create more involved pieces like infographics or case studies.
• New companies building the funnel: Focus on awareness content to get people into the funnel.
• Bottom of funnel conversion challenges: Create competitive comparison sheets or testimonials to get people to take the final step.

Analyzing the Competition

Knowing your competition is critical for lead generation. Katie recommends:

1. Start with your immediate competition, know them thoroughly
2. Do “Competitive Teardowns” on everything from branding to product features to customer service approach
3. Use AI tools like ChatGPT to get faster, smarter competitive analysis

Differentiate Your Business

When your products or services are similar to competition, differentiation is key. Katie says:

• Find your unique point of view on how you present and position your product
• Focus on storytelling and how you answer customer needs
• Look for areas where you excel, such as customer support
• Find incremental 1% differences that can move the needle

Thought Leadership ContentThought leadership can put your brand as a category leader in your space. At U Science, Katie’s team creates thought leadership reports using proprietary data from their software platform that provides value to their audience.

Components of High-Converting Thought Leadership Reports

The foundation is finding value for your customers. This could be:

• Proprietary data only your company has access to
• Survey results you’ve gathered yourself
• Information that solves specific customer problems

Once you have that value, Katie recommends “atomizing” your content—turning it into multiple formats:

“Maybe you take that same data and you make a report and then you make an email, then you make a social campaign, and then you make an infographic and then it ties into your email newsletter. And that kind of feeds your demand gen engine for months.”

To Gate or Not to Gate?

Gating content (requiring info in exchange for access) is a hot topic especially with AI making info more accessible than ever. Katie recommends a hybrid approach:

“Have ungated content to give value, get your customers in, and to fill content on your website. That helps build that organic traffic and build the SEO, build authority and ranking. And then gate your high value pieces like your thought leadership report.”

Even for gated content, consider having a summary or overview that’s free and the full resource behind a form.

Promoting Your Content

Once you have valuable content, Katie suggests multiple channels to promote:

• Email: Create a 3 series nurture journey for existing contacts
• Social media: Develop campaigns for different platforms and audiences
• Industry associations: Connect with professional organizations where your target customers gather
• Media outreach: Pitch to news desks and reporters for free coverage (a strategy Katie used at a non profit)

Optimizing Lead Forms

Worst case is getting potential customers to your page and then they abandon the form. Katie says:

“Make it as easy as possible to convert… We’ve tried longer forms and then we see people drop off and that’s just devastating for your marketing budget and efforts.”

Balance simplicity with collecting info that’s actually useful for your CRM and sales team. What’s essential for routing leads correctly without creating unnecessary barriers.

Lead Hygiene

Many leaders outside of marketing prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to leads. But Katie says:

“Actually we can’t maybe handle 5,000 leads and if they’re not good quality, that’s not even helping us.”

Regular data cleaning and proper CRM management ensures your funnel works. This isn’t just about organization – it also affects costs as most CRMs charge based on number of contacts stored.

Nurturing Leads

Capturing a lead is just the beginning. Katie compares lead nurturing to building a relationship:

“You have to really know your audience. If I send in the education space an email a day, they will get annoyed. They’re like, ‘I am busy. I can’t deal with you. Stop bugging me.’”

Find the cadence that works for your customers and focus on helping them on their journey rather than just selling your product:“Your customer doesn’t really care about your product doing X, Y, Z. They care about you positioning it as solving problems that they are encountering.”

This aligns with the storytelling framework where the customer is the hero of the story and your business is the guide helping them solve their problems.

Completing the Lead Generation Process

Two final components Katie highlights to complete the lead generation process:

1. Do Post Campaign Analysis

“So many times we move so fast and we’re like, okay, got the project done, the campaign’s out, it’s performing, move on to the next one.”

Take time to analyze what worked, what didn’t and how you can improve. This gives you data points for future campaigns and professional growth.

2. Focus on Retention and Renewal

“As marketers we often focus on sort of the beginning funnel and getting people in but we also have to work on retention and lifetime value to the customer.”

Make sure existing customers continue to find value in your product or service. Apply the same attention to current customers as you do to acquiring new ones.

Where Katie Sees the Future Going in Lead Generation

The future of lead generation is being shaped by AI and technology. Katie identifies two key trends:

1. AI is Mandatory

“If you’re not using AI right now, you’re falling behind and you may not even realize it, but people are getting so much more efficient and moving so much quicker with these tools.”

Katie recommends spending time exploring AI tools outside of work hours, to experiment and understand how they can help your marketing.

2. Human Relationships Will Always Reign

Despite all the technology, the human element will never go away:

“Even if we move to this faster, more technology driven state, we will never lose that humanity and the need for relationships. So it will always be about knowing your customer.”

Understanding and connecting with your customer on a human level will always be the foundation of marketing no matter what.

Women in Digital: Career and Family

As a woman in digital Katie shares her insights on balancing multiple roles:

Setting Your Values and Boundaries

Katie recommends setting your personal values and non-negotiables:

“I sat down and wrote out my values as a human and as a mom and was like, what is important to me and how do I want to try to balance everything?”

For Katie being present for her kids’ big moments is top priority:

“I won’t miss my kids’ things. And that is like, I will quit. I will quit a job if that value is compromised.”

She makes up the work time elsewhere, works late if needed and found that employers respect and support these boundaries.

Being Flexible

The shift to remote work has been a game changer for working parents:

“The work from home environment… it was a game changer. Having the flexibility to be like, listen, my daughter is home from school. I’m still working, I’m still getting stuff done, but I can be there and be present in her life as well.”

Create Your Own Path

Katie says there’s no one right way to balance career and family:

“The idea that there’s one right way to do anything is so limiting… You can pave your own path and that’s okay. People can say whatever they want about it, you know, you don’t have to please this unknown crowd who’s telling you what you should do.”

Partnership and Support

Having a supportive partner has been key for Katie:

“My partner, my husband, is such a big help with this. We choose jobs where we have flexibility as a family unit to be there for our kids. And if one day I have to be in the office or I have this event, he picks up the slack too.”

Katie says the digital space is flexible for people with many different needs and circumstances, including those with mental health challenges. The wider view on work means more people can bring their individual skills and perspectives.

Advice to Her Younger Self

When asked what advice she would give to her younger self, Katie emphasizes embracing a growth mindset:

“It goes back to this growth mindset. You can grow, you can continue changing. You are not a limited person with just a set number of skills. You have infinite possibilities of what you can do. So know that, and then use these tools to see where you can go.”

Katie’s journey from competitive dancer to actor to marketing leader demonstrates how embracing change and remaining open to new opportunities can lead to a fulfilling career path that leverages your unique talents and experiences.

Books, Podcasts, and Leaders That Inspire Katie

Katie mentions that she and her team recently read “Building a StoryBrand” by Donald Miller, which has been influential in shaping their approach to marketing:

“As a team, we recently read, I think it’s called The Brand Story Script by Donald Miller, and it kind of follows that exactly. And it’s such a good reminder. Because I think you get so much pressure from different departments to push this feature, but I have to position it to how it actually helps my customer.”

This storytelling framework has helped Katie and her team focus on positioning customers as the heroes of their stories, with their products serving as tools to

How to Get in Contact with Katie

Katie can be found on professional networks under Katie Clark. She is active in the Silicon Slopes Salt Lake City chapter and currently works as Senior Director of Marketing at U Science.

For those interested in her acting background, you can find her credits on IMDB under her maiden name, Katie Cockrell, where you’ll see her appearances in productions like Yellowstone, Christmas Wonderland, Star Trek Into the Darkness, Jack and Jill, and High School Musical.

Conclusion

Katie Clark brings a unique perspective to marketing and lead generation, informed by her diverse background in competitive dancing, acting, and international living experiences. Her insights on creating value-driven content, understanding customers deeply, and balancing professional ambitions with personal priorities offer valuable guidance for marketers and business owners alike.

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Katie’s emphasis on both embracing technological advancements and maintaining human connections provides a balanced approach to modern marketing. By focusing on customer needs, moving quickly, and creating genuinely valuable content, businesses of any size can develop effective lead generation strategies that drive sustainable growth.