Q&A with John A. Steinert, Chief Marketing Officer at TechTarget

MEDIA 7 | October 17, 2019

John A. Steinert, Chief Marketing Officer at TechTarget helps bring the power of purchase intent-driven marketing and sales services to technology companies.

With a strong drive to help customers achieve their business objectives faster and bigger, John and his TechTarget team connects the information needs of enterprise tech buyers and the go-to-market efforts of solution providers, ensuring that everybody wins.

MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing?
JOHN STEINERT: 
That’s easy. Marketing inspired me to get into marketing. I’ve always loved great communicators and the formats used in communications. As a kid during some pretty tumultuous times in American history, I was surrounded by great political, guerilla, and yes even commercial communications. Speeches, hearings, demonstrations, TV, advertisements, even album covers and t-shirts made a strong impression on me. Obviously, with the rise of the internet, long-tail video channels and social media, things have blossomed to an even more amazing level.

M7: How does TechTarget's Priority Engine™ support tech vendors to achieve their marketing and sales objectives?
JS:
 By helping companies see and interpret real buyer needs and preferences, Priority Engine first provides a relevant, permissioned basis for a marketer to intercept a buyer’s journey and then it assists users in taking very specific influencing and engagement actions. Because Priority Engine provides the actual permissioned people doing buying research, it saves tons of resource that’s commonly wasted chasing prospects who don’t have a need and leads that are actually dead ends. And because Priority Engine shares the real needs and preferences of the actual buyers with both marketing and sales when they share the platform, it enables far better conversion at every step, from funnel, to pipeline, through to renewal.


"To truly enable sellers with content, the content needs to reflect what we know about this specific buyer’s needs and preferences."

M7: What according to you is content-enabled selling and how does it help drive a buyer’s journey?
JS: There are two key pieces to content-enabled selling. The first is the content itself – what it is and how it assists the buyers in fulfilling the necessary or required steps of their buying process. The second is how we adjust our own approach in response to buyer inputs and feedback.
To truly enable sellers with content, the content needs to reflect what we know about this specific buyer’s needs and preferences. To perform better, your content needs to be more buyer-centric. This can be achieved when product marketers and sales enablement folks are consuming real purchase intent insights from Priority Engine and leveraging them into evolved content outputs.

Then there’s what I’ll call the “personalization wrapper” – how the communications that accompany the assets present and create context for that use-case relevant material. These wrapper – be they email copy, call guides, etc. must be built with an eye to the nature and the stage of the relationship at hand. Marketers and sellers alike need guidance on the proper way to do this.

It’s not as simple as “you liked this so of course you should want to buy this”. Buyers need help with both their rational business needs and their more emotional needs around both their company, their department and themselves. The “personalization wrapper” is a useful metaphor for being holistically considerate of the person and the company you are interacting with. Obviously, this is substantially more nuanced than simply recognizing what company they are from. It’s about ingesting what you can see are their expressed concerns and preferences, learning from that, and shaping your own communication in that context.

M7: What features make TechTarget's 'Data-Driven Display' drive B2B demand and accelerate sales?
JS:
 Because it’s fueled by permissioned knowledge of exactly who is performing research at any given moment, TechTarget’s data-driven display advertising can deliver higher engagement rates and higher conversion.  When used in conjunction with demand generation techniques and intelligent sales outreach, independent studies with leading 3rd parties have achieved remarkable lift across the funnel as compared to what’s available when using more generalized “intent” data.


"The biggest mistake of all that’s commonly still made in marketing is to not use prospect behavior as a critical guide."

M7: What is the biggest mistake B2B marketers make while targeting specific prospects?
JS:
There are many actions that teams continue to take because they’ve simply been tasked to take them.  There are old-school KPIs, typically focused on process outputs rather than business outcomes that perpetuate chronic under-performance. Take, for instance, a narrow focus on cost-per-lead – too often this incentivizes continued purchases of higher and higher volumes of lower and lower quality. To wean themselves off of this Catch 22, teams should work to turn their attention to down-funnel metrics like conversion-to-opportunity – measuring cost per opportunity is a much more useful predictor of pipeline yield.

But the biggest mistake of all that’s commonly still made in marketing is to not use prospect behavior as a critical guide. When marketing (and sales) energies are spread evenly over active and inactive prospects alike, energy is wasted on those who are not in-market, and that investment of time and resource is not available to increase attention on those active buying teams that should be converted. By focusing more intently on those prospects that are actually demonstrating in-market buyer’s journey behaviors, teams get far more out of their investments.

M7: How does 'Data Cleanse' assist marketers in email verification and contact record accuracy?
JS: 
Some percentage of the data coming into your database from form fills, other manual entry and so on naturally contains incompleteness, mistakes and outright falsehoods. Furthermore, people move around, both inside of companies and between them. So even once-accurate data decays amazingly fast. To counter these realities, your data practice should put into place a variety of processes that together comprise a mature “data cleanse and append” approach. In this way, you can address data quality issues at both the point of entry and over time. At TechTarget, we offer our clients cleanse and append services both directly via our Oceanos offerings and indirectly via our Priority Engine platform wherein the data goes through rigorous checks and verifications before it qualifies to be shared.


"Even once-accurate data decays amazingly fast. To counter this reality, your data practice should put into place a variety of processes that together comprise a mature “data cleanse and append” approach."

M7: When did you start working, how old were you, and what was it?
JS:
 My first stable paid position, $1.40/hr, was at age 14 pumping gas at Greene’s Exxon. I was super excited because I got to wear the striped shirt with the logo patch! I loved washing windshields and checking the oil, especially when my superior CX delivery got me a few cents in tips!


ABOUT TECHTARGET

TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT) is the global leader in purchase intent-driven marketing and sales services that deliver business impact for enterprise technology companies. By creating abundant, high-quality editorial content across more than 140 highly targeted technology-specific websites, TechTarget attracts and nurtures communities of technology buyers researching their companies’ information technology needs. By understanding these buyers’ content consumption behaviors, TechTarget creates the purchase intent insights that fuel efficient and effective marketing and sales activities for clients around the world.
TechTarget has offices in Boston, London, Munich, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore and Sydney. For more information, visit techtarget.com and follow us on Twitter @TechTarget.

More C-Suite on deck

'Content is a crucial aspect of your online presence as it essentially represents your brand,' says Michael Cichon

Media 7 | June 15, 2023

Michael Cichon is a seasoned B2B marketer specializing in digital and content marketing for identity-based online fraud detection and advanced email security solutions. With an expertise in product and digital marketing, he excels in developing brand narratives, driving integrated demand generation campaigns, and connecting with customers on a personal level to inspire action. Read on to know his ideas on the importance of content syndication practices in information security industry.

Read More

‘Security solutions need to be consistent, regardless of geography or technical stack,’ emphasizes Nishant Kaushik

Media 7 | June 16, 2023

Nishant Kaushik is an excellent technologist with strategic foresight and tactical know-how to manage technology-driven businesses and security expansion plans. He has successfully led cross-functional and highly focused teams to achieve business objectives that align with customer needs. Read this interview to discover Nishant’s expertise and unique perspective on omnichannel security and risk management.

Read More

‘Data and analytics play a crucial role in shaping our advertising strategies,' asserts Aleksander Groshev

Media 7 | June 28, 2023

Aleksander Groshev is the CEO and Co-Founder of Autobahn Security. Previously he was Vice President of Product responsible for the product development of the SaaS platform. Before joining Autobahn Security he held the position of Head of Product at Fincite, a wealth management B2B platform.

Read More

'Content is a crucial aspect of your online presence as it essentially represents your brand,' says Michael Cichon

Media 7 | June 15, 2023

Michael Cichon is a seasoned B2B marketer specializing in digital and content marketing for identity-based online fraud detection and advanced email security solutions. With an expertise in product and digital marketing, he excels in developing brand narratives, driving integrated demand generation campaigns, and connecting with customers on a personal level to inspire action. Read on to know his ideas on the importance of content syndication practices in information security industry.

Read More

‘Security solutions need to be consistent, regardless of geography or technical stack,’ emphasizes Nishant Kaushik

Media 7 | June 16, 2023

Nishant Kaushik is an excellent technologist with strategic foresight and tactical know-how to manage technology-driven businesses and security expansion plans. He has successfully led cross-functional and highly focused teams to achieve business objectives that align with customer needs. Read this interview to discover Nishant’s expertise and unique perspective on omnichannel security and risk management.

Read More

‘Data and analytics play a crucial role in shaping our advertising strategies,' asserts Aleksander Groshev

Media 7 | June 28, 2023

Aleksander Groshev is the CEO and Co-Founder of Autobahn Security. Previously he was Vice President of Product responsible for the product development of the SaaS platform. Before joining Autobahn Security he held the position of Head of Product at Fincite, a wealth management B2B platform.

Read More

Related News

API Security

Salt Security, CrowdStrike Expands Partnership with New Integration

Salt Security | September 20, 2023

Salt Security, a prominent API security company, has announced the expansion of its partnership with CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity technology company providing cloud workload and endpoint security, cyberattack response, and threat intelligence services. This expansion involves the integration of the Salt Security API Protection Platform with the widely recognized CrowdStrike Falcon Platform. Roey Eliyahu, Co-founder and CEO of Salt Security, stated, Protecting against API threats requires deep visibility and robust runtime protection. We’re excited to bring our unique strengths in API security to the CrowdStrike customer base with this new integration. Together with CrowdStrike, Salt can provide organizations with extended runtime protections and posture management across the cloud and application landscapes. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Through this integration, customers gain access to a comprehensive 360-degree view of API security risks, particularly focusing on the application-layer attack surface. This integration is accessible via the CrowdStrike Marketplace and provides valuable API threat intelligence. It also enhances cross-organization API security capabilities by streamlining and enhancing the workflows related to API auditing, monitoring, and enforcement. The partnership between Salt Security, offering top-notch API runtime monitoring and AI-driven insights, and CrowdStrike, renowned for its award-winning AI-powered protection, provides organizations with complete visibility into their API attack surface. This integration also offers valuable context regarding the severity of threats in relation to business-critical aspects. With this partnership, customers benefit from: API vulnerability and threat context API threat mitigation API threat management automation The patented Salt API security platform stands out for its utilization of cloud-scale big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). These technologies work in tandem to automate the process of discovering and cataloging an organization's entire set of APIs. Salt plays a crucial role in pinpointing areas where APIs might expose sensitive data. This proactive approach aids enterprises in recognizing and mitigating potential API threats while also reinforcing their overall API security. Gur Talpaz, Head of Falcon Fund and Vice President of Corporate Development at CrowdStrike, said, With APIs now a prime target for malicious actors, securing them requires a comprehensive and diligent approach. Through this joint integration, we can harness the mature AI-driven intelligence of the Salt API security platform with our widely deployed Falcon platform, giving organizations complete visibility into their application-layer attack surface and a detailed understanding of their application threat landscape. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] About Salt Security Salt Security is a leading API security company that safeguards the APIs at the core of all modern applications. Its API Protection Platform is the sole API security solution that integrates the power of cloud-scale big data with time-tested machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect and prevent API attacks. Salt provides extensive context, real-time analysis, and continuous insights for API discovery, hardening APIs, and attack prevention by correlating the activities of millions of APIs and users over time.

Read More

Enterprise Security

Skybox Security Launches New Continuous Exposure Management Platform

Skybox Security | September 14, 2023

Skybox Security, a leading Exposure Management solutions provider, has unveiled the next generation of its prestigious Continuous Exposure Management Platform. This 13.0 release introduces significant enhancements to its solution for Attack Surface and Vulnerability Management, which revolutionizes the manner businesses manage and mitigate cyber exposure risk. Attack Surface Management Delivers Complete Visibility Skybox's Surface Management solution provides an extensive inventory and map of users' assets and applications. It evaluates and simulates attack paths. The result is a dynamic security model for the hybrid attack surface. Version 13.0 introduces significant new features, including: New Attack Surface Map Enhanced Attack Path Analysis LDAP Integration Cloud Infrastructure Integration Vulnerability Management Deepens Exposure Insights Skybox's Vulnerability Management solution combines more than 25 third-party threat intelligence feeds with its own Skybox Threat Intelligence feed in order to prioritize threats based on exposure risk and remediate vulnerabilities with prescriptive guidance. With Version 13.0, businesses are able to: Import Vulnerability Data New Business-Focused' Solutions View' Celebrity Vulnerabilities SOAR Integration Mordecai Rosen, CEO of Skybox Security, said, In today's complex threat landscape, organizations need to continuously manage their threat exposure based on the prioritized risks to their business. [Source – Business Wire] Rosen stated that the Skybox platform now supports every stage of an enterprise's continuous exposure management (CEM) program, from mapping the attack surface through contextualization and risk-based prioritization to final remediation. It was also mentioned that the latest enhancements enable organizations to further improve their security posture and substantially reduce the risk of a successful attack. About Skybox Skybox is trusted by over 500 of the world's largest and most security-conscious enterprises for providing insights and assurance to stay ahead of dynamically changing attack surfaces. Its Exposure Management Platform provides complete analytics, visibility, and automation to quickly prioritize, map, and remediate vulnerabilities across organizations. The vendor-agnostic solution optimizes security policies, actions, and change processes across all cloud environments and corporate networks. With Skybox, security teams can emphasize the most strategic business initiatives while ensuring enterprises remain protected.

Read More

Software Security

Keeper Security’s Latest Update Improves Android and User Interface

Keeper Security, Inc. | September 25, 2023

Keeper Security, a prominent cybersecurity software provider specializing in zero-trust and zero-knowledge solutions safeguarding credentials, privileged access, secrets, and remote connections, has announced the unveiling of a new, contemporary User Interface (UI) for the Keeper Password Manager application on Android. This awaited release introduces enhanced usability, intelligent search capabilities, and quicker synchronization times. With a focus on a polished appearance and user-friendly interactions, these enhancements are designed to simplify the utilization of Keeper's robust password and passkey management features, offering improved clarity and search functionality. Keeper has adopted an incremental approach to enhancing the user experience, consistently refining the appearance, usability, and overall feel of its applications while staying mindful of the importance of consistency, familiarity and the world-class security and functionality that Keeper users have come to expect. With this update, Keeper's new user experience has been effectively implemented across all platforms, encompassing desktop, web browsers, and iOS. Android users can also anticipate an upcoming dark mode experience soon. Android users of Keeper will encounter refreshed themes, including a default Light Mode and improved user-selectable themes. Additionally, new features include: Streamlined Usability Friendlier Interface Accessibility and Inclusion Advanced Search Craig Lurey, CTO and Co-Founder of Keeper Security, said, We are excited to introduce these enhancements to our Android app, completing the rollout of our stunning new user interface (UI) to every Keeper user. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Lurey stated that the update represented their ongoing commitment to delivering the best possible user experience while maintaining the highest security standards. He mentioned that with the improved usability, modernized interface, and lightning-fast sync times, Keeper Password Manager for Android continued to be a go-to solution for organizations and individuals looking to secure their digital identities. About Keeper Security Keeper Security is revolutionizing the way to secure passwords, confidential data, and secrets for individuals and organizations worldwide. The company's user-friendly cybersecurity platform is built on the foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security, providing protection for users on all devices. Its solution is quick to deploy and seamlessly integrates with any technology stack, effectively preventing breaches, lowering help desk expenses, and ensuring compliance. Trusted by millions of individuals and numerous global organizations, Keeper leads in top-tier password management, privileged access, secrets management, secure remote access, and encrypted messaging solutions.

Read More

API Security

Salt Security, CrowdStrike Expands Partnership with New Integration

Salt Security | September 20, 2023

Salt Security, a prominent API security company, has announced the expansion of its partnership with CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity technology company providing cloud workload and endpoint security, cyberattack response, and threat intelligence services. This expansion involves the integration of the Salt Security API Protection Platform with the widely recognized CrowdStrike Falcon Platform. Roey Eliyahu, Co-founder and CEO of Salt Security, stated, Protecting against API threats requires deep visibility and robust runtime protection. We’re excited to bring our unique strengths in API security to the CrowdStrike customer base with this new integration. Together with CrowdStrike, Salt can provide organizations with extended runtime protections and posture management across the cloud and application landscapes. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Through this integration, customers gain access to a comprehensive 360-degree view of API security risks, particularly focusing on the application-layer attack surface. This integration is accessible via the CrowdStrike Marketplace and provides valuable API threat intelligence. It also enhances cross-organization API security capabilities by streamlining and enhancing the workflows related to API auditing, monitoring, and enforcement. The partnership between Salt Security, offering top-notch API runtime monitoring and AI-driven insights, and CrowdStrike, renowned for its award-winning AI-powered protection, provides organizations with complete visibility into their API attack surface. This integration also offers valuable context regarding the severity of threats in relation to business-critical aspects. With this partnership, customers benefit from: API vulnerability and threat context API threat mitigation API threat management automation The patented Salt API security platform stands out for its utilization of cloud-scale big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). These technologies work in tandem to automate the process of discovering and cataloging an organization's entire set of APIs. Salt plays a crucial role in pinpointing areas where APIs might expose sensitive data. This proactive approach aids enterprises in recognizing and mitigating potential API threats while also reinforcing their overall API security. Gur Talpaz, Head of Falcon Fund and Vice President of Corporate Development at CrowdStrike, said, With APIs now a prime target for malicious actors, securing them requires a comprehensive and diligent approach. Through this joint integration, we can harness the mature AI-driven intelligence of the Salt API security platform with our widely deployed Falcon platform, giving organizations complete visibility into their application-layer attack surface and a detailed understanding of their application threat landscape. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] About Salt Security Salt Security is a leading API security company that safeguards the APIs at the core of all modern applications. Its API Protection Platform is the sole API security solution that integrates the power of cloud-scale big data with time-tested machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect and prevent API attacks. Salt provides extensive context, real-time analysis, and continuous insights for API discovery, hardening APIs, and attack prevention by correlating the activities of millions of APIs and users over time.

Read More

Enterprise Security

Skybox Security Launches New Continuous Exposure Management Platform

Skybox Security | September 14, 2023

Skybox Security, a leading Exposure Management solutions provider, has unveiled the next generation of its prestigious Continuous Exposure Management Platform. This 13.0 release introduces significant enhancements to its solution for Attack Surface and Vulnerability Management, which revolutionizes the manner businesses manage and mitigate cyber exposure risk. Attack Surface Management Delivers Complete Visibility Skybox's Surface Management solution provides an extensive inventory and map of users' assets and applications. It evaluates and simulates attack paths. The result is a dynamic security model for the hybrid attack surface. Version 13.0 introduces significant new features, including: New Attack Surface Map Enhanced Attack Path Analysis LDAP Integration Cloud Infrastructure Integration Vulnerability Management Deepens Exposure Insights Skybox's Vulnerability Management solution combines more than 25 third-party threat intelligence feeds with its own Skybox Threat Intelligence feed in order to prioritize threats based on exposure risk and remediate vulnerabilities with prescriptive guidance. With Version 13.0, businesses are able to: Import Vulnerability Data New Business-Focused' Solutions View' Celebrity Vulnerabilities SOAR Integration Mordecai Rosen, CEO of Skybox Security, said, In today's complex threat landscape, organizations need to continuously manage their threat exposure based on the prioritized risks to their business. [Source – Business Wire] Rosen stated that the Skybox platform now supports every stage of an enterprise's continuous exposure management (CEM) program, from mapping the attack surface through contextualization and risk-based prioritization to final remediation. It was also mentioned that the latest enhancements enable organizations to further improve their security posture and substantially reduce the risk of a successful attack. About Skybox Skybox is trusted by over 500 of the world's largest and most security-conscious enterprises for providing insights and assurance to stay ahead of dynamically changing attack surfaces. Its Exposure Management Platform provides complete analytics, visibility, and automation to quickly prioritize, map, and remediate vulnerabilities across organizations. The vendor-agnostic solution optimizes security policies, actions, and change processes across all cloud environments and corporate networks. With Skybox, security teams can emphasize the most strategic business initiatives while ensuring enterprises remain protected.

Read More

Software Security

Keeper Security’s Latest Update Improves Android and User Interface

Keeper Security, Inc. | September 25, 2023

Keeper Security, a prominent cybersecurity software provider specializing in zero-trust and zero-knowledge solutions safeguarding credentials, privileged access, secrets, and remote connections, has announced the unveiling of a new, contemporary User Interface (UI) for the Keeper Password Manager application on Android. This awaited release introduces enhanced usability, intelligent search capabilities, and quicker synchronization times. With a focus on a polished appearance and user-friendly interactions, these enhancements are designed to simplify the utilization of Keeper's robust password and passkey management features, offering improved clarity and search functionality. Keeper has adopted an incremental approach to enhancing the user experience, consistently refining the appearance, usability, and overall feel of its applications while staying mindful of the importance of consistency, familiarity and the world-class security and functionality that Keeper users have come to expect. With this update, Keeper's new user experience has been effectively implemented across all platforms, encompassing desktop, web browsers, and iOS. Android users can also anticipate an upcoming dark mode experience soon. Android users of Keeper will encounter refreshed themes, including a default Light Mode and improved user-selectable themes. Additionally, new features include: Streamlined Usability Friendlier Interface Accessibility and Inclusion Advanced Search Craig Lurey, CTO and Co-Founder of Keeper Security, said, We are excited to introduce these enhancements to our Android app, completing the rollout of our stunning new user interface (UI) to every Keeper user. [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Lurey stated that the update represented their ongoing commitment to delivering the best possible user experience while maintaining the highest security standards. He mentioned that with the improved usability, modernized interface, and lightning-fast sync times, Keeper Password Manager for Android continued to be a go-to solution for organizations and individuals looking to secure their digital identities. About Keeper Security Keeper Security is revolutionizing the way to secure passwords, confidential data, and secrets for individuals and organizations worldwide. The company's user-friendly cybersecurity platform is built on the foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security, providing protection for users on all devices. Its solution is quick to deploy and seamlessly integrates with any technology stack, effectively preventing breaches, lowering help desk expenses, and ensuring compliance. Trusted by millions of individuals and numerous global organizations, Keeper leads in top-tier password management, privileged access, secrets management, secure remote access, and encrypted messaging solutions.

Read More

Spotlight

TechTarget

TechTarget

TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT) is the global leader in purchase intent-driven marketing and sales services that deliver business impact for enterprise technology companies. By creating abundant, high-quality editorial content across more than 140 highly targeted technology-specific websites, TechTarget a...

Events

Resources