Brandi Eppolito

Franco Caporale:

Hello. And welcome to the new episode of the DemandGeneration Club podcast. I'm your host Franco Caporale. Our guest today isBrandi Eppolito, Vice President of Marketing at SchoolAdmin. SchoolAdmin is astrategic enrollment management system designed to help schools thrive, and istrusted by over 500 of the world's most successful institutions. Brandi excelsat building marketing organization and engines from scratch. She's constantlylearning and she enjoys being part of a fast-paced, driven team. She believesmarketing is as much about driving measurable performance as it is aboutcreativity and storytelling. So I'm really happy to welcome today BrandiEppolito, Vice President of Marketing at SchoolAdmin. Brandi, it's great tohave you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brandi Eppolito:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Franco Caporale:

Awesome. So I'd like to start right away. Tell us a littlebit about your background, your career, introduce yourself to our audience, andhow did you end up becoming the VP of Marketing at SchoolAdmin?

Brandi Eppolito:

Sure. I'm Brandi Eppolito, VP of Marketing at SchoolAdmin.We create enrollment management solutions to help private and independent K-12schools thrive, so attract and enroll and retain more students. I've been inmarketing for a little over a decade now. Really, it started with my days as anintern at LSU Sports Properties, helping to market LSU Athletics, and eversince then I fell in love with it and I can't get enough of it. So for the past10 years I've worked in marketing in B2B and BOC since grad school really,which I graduated from the University of Texas Evening MBA program in 2016, so whatis that? Five years now I've been working in marketing for tech, and it's beensuch a fun ride.

Franco Caporale:

How do you compare the B2B versus B2C marketing since youexperienced both?

Brandi Eppolito:

It's a great question. It's not really all that different.It's figuring out what do people want and how can we give that to them, and howcan we get them excited to talk to us. So it's really not all that different. Iwould say for the BOC companies I've worked for which were smaller, the biggestdifference is in B2B is working with the Sales team. So working with big salesforces and how do we enable them and give them more tools to sell, versus theBOC companies I worked for were more direct to consumer or on the website.

Franco Caporale:

And before SchoolAdmin you were a Clearhead [inaudible00:03:19] director of marketing. Can you tell us a little bit about that step?I think you also had a pretty good ride there.

Brandi Eppolito:

Yeah. So the past two companies have been a lot of fun. Istarted at Clearhead when we were about 50 people, and after two years we wereacquired by Accenture Interactive. So taking them from not much of a marketingteam to having one, to getting acquired was really fun to be part of that. Andthen I came in to SchoolAdmin, 50 people is my sweet spot apparently, so Ihired at SchoolAdmin when we had about 50 employees, and then as of this springwe were acquired by a company called Finalsite.

Franco Caporale:

Nice. Congratulations. Our two acquisition of the last twocompanies is remarkable.

Brandi Eppolito:

Thank you. It's been a lot of fun.

Franco Caporale:

And so as SchoolAdmin, tell us a little more, which typeof customer are you trying to engage? Who do you work with? You say K-12, arethese normally large institution, is it US only? Who are you guys serving andwhat's your value?

Brandi Eppolito:

So we serve mostly private and independent K-12 schools inthe United States. We do have some customers in Canada and abroad, but for themost part they are in the US. We make tools to help schools attract and recruitstudents and families, so that's tools to apply to these private schools. Partof it, it's outreach for schools if you think outreach at IO for schools tohelp them have those one-to-one but really personalized conversations at scaleto build deeper relationships with the families they serve or hope to serve. Sowe're mostly focused on the admissions and enrollment office, and we also havetools for tuition billing. So we work with the business office and also thehead of school because enrollment is a crucial piece of a school success.

Franco Caporale:

Awesome. And tell us about your team today as SchoolAdmin.Obviously, you joined I think pretty early, how's your team today?

Brandi Eppolito:

Sure. I was the first dedicated marketing hire atSchoolAdmin, and we're still lean and mean. And I started when we were 50people and we're really not truly much bigger than that. I guess prior to theacquisition, now I'm part of a 15-person marketing team, but prior to theacquisition it was me and then I have someone on my team focused on events, andthen I have someone on my team focused on content, so we're still very lean.And then I work with an amazing roster of outsourced talent that helps us punchin over our weight.

Franco Caporale:

Nice. How did it change after the acquisition in terms ofyour daily routine or your processes, was it like a very drastic change or nottoo much?

Brandi Eppolito:

With any acquisition, there's always lots of drasticchange, I'd say. With Clearhead we were going from, I started when we were 50people, we were up to around a hundred, and then we got acquired by AccentureInteractive, which Accenture's over 450,000 employees. So that was a really bigshift in the way just about everything was done. With SchoolAdmin, we werearound 50 employees and got acquired by a company Finalsite that's 150employees. So going from 50 to 150 is much different than going from a hundredto 450,000. So less of a culture shock than the last acquisition, but certainlywe're still figuring out what are the best ways to integrate our brands and ourcompanies and our efforts, and how can we dedupe some of the things we're doingto allow us to use those resources to do bigger things, so it's definitely awork in progress. It's still very new, but it's been really wonderful beingpart of their team.

Franco Caporale:

Very nice. Perfect. So I would like to talk about yourexperience in particular because what strack me is how you join a company veryearly, like premature of the first marketing hire and then that company goesand gets acquired a couple of years later, three years later. So you haveobviously built some infrastructure there, and I think I'd like to learn somelessons from you on how do you join a pre real estate company and build amarketing engine where there is none basically. So what are some of the thingsthat you look at when you join the company as the first marketing hire?

Brandi Eppolito:

It's a great question. I would say that both SchoolAdmin andClearhead, I came into in a really lucky position in that the CEOs at bothcompanies really recognized the importance of marketing and the value ofmarketing. And as a marketer you realize how important that is to have an allyin the CEO that recognizes the importance. What they both lacked I think werethe time or the focus to really lean in heavily on marketing to scale as fastas they wanted to, so that's where I came in. I don't have a set playbook thatI roll out, it's more seeing what might fit each specific company. And I'llsay, I think as all of us we learn and hone in what might work, what might notwork for the next company. And so I think the playbook's gotten a little bitbetter each time, but there's no set in stone path that I take.

So much of it begins with research, talking to ourcustomers to see why they're customers in the first place, what attracted themto us, what they're looking for in a vendor or a partner. And then I also dotons of internal stakeholder interviews to see what they think is working, whatproblems stand on the way of the goals we're trying to achieve. And of course,get my hands underneath Salesforce data or data from the marketing automationplatforms to see what the data says about what's working, what's not, and thenmatch that up against what I heard from the internal stakeholder interviewsbecause they don't always necessarily align exactly.

Franco Caporale:

Do you have a particular tech stack that you like and youusually implementing in the companies that you go or you try to adapt dependingon the company?

Brandi Eppolito:

So I am a HubSpot girl. I love HubSpot for marketingautomation. We use that paired with Salesforce, and then we actually recentlytransitioned pre-acquisition, and we're using HubSpot for both our marketingautomation and CRM. For me, it makes a lot of sense because I'm coming in witha very lean, often green team as well. And I think HubSpot has really fastspeed to value, and you can do it without having in-house design or in-housedevelopers, which is something that I don't always have the luxury of having onthese smaller teams so for us, it works. I know it's not ideal for everyonethough.

Franco Caporale:

What about from a project management perspective becauseobviously, you have all these things that you're going to build. Is there aparticular tool that helps you executing on that because I know everyone hasits own?

Brandi Eppolito:

Definitely. I'm an Asana fan girl.

Franco Caporale:

[inaudible 00:10:36].

Brandi Eppolito:

I love Asana and I will give all the credit to Clearheadfor this. They have an amazing system and process that they used for Asana andI fully love it. I run my personal life on Asana and I run my professional lifeon Asana and all of our projects, so I love it.

Franco Caporale:

Interesting. Very cool. So basically, once you haveestablished the goals and what needs to be done, what is typically a commonproblem with companies at those stage that you saw in your last experiences?

Brandi Eppolito:

I think a lot of time they've found the fit, but they havetrouble making sure everyone knows about it. So a lot of it is how do they getthe awareness and get the word out there? One great phrase that I've adoptedfrom a former colleague is RTBIT, reasons to be in touch. A lot of times youjust need some really good reasons to be in touch with prospects, and what canwe give Sales especially, what are RTBIT can we give them to reach out to sothey're not, "Hey, buy from us, buy from us." But, "Hi. We've gotthis really great piece that I think will help you in your day-to-day life. Howabout you read it and tell us what you think?" And I think just thatalone, having a really useful reason to be in touch shifts the conversationfrom selling to, "Let's have a conversation, now we're on the samepage."

Franco Caporale:

And it also adds value to adding interaction versus likeyou said, "Let's just meet and hear a sales pitch."

Brandi Eppolito:

Totally. I think it's all about that.

Franco Caporale:

What's your hiring strategy when you join a company thatsmall because I assume your budget, you can't hire 10 people right away?

Brandi Eppolito:

No. It's usually a pretty small budget, that's exactlyright. I figure out what the budget is and see what can we do with what wehave, of course. For SchoolAdmin it was really important for us to have someonethat could focus on content, so I started there for it. And then design anddevelopment were really important because before I was willing to invest a lotof money and to anything to drive demand through the website, I wanted to makesure we first had a website that would convert when people landed there, and Iwasn't confident that the first iteration I inherited of the website would dothat. So I started there but outsource design and development so we could startwith our website redesign once we had had those conversations with customersand prospects and did the due diligence to find out what we needed the websiteto say and do.

Franco Caporale:

And is there a role in particular that you like always tohave internal that you think cannot be outsourced-

Brandi Eppolito:

That's a good question.

Franco Caporale:

... or maybe not?

Brandi Eppolito:

No. So I say I have someone focused on content, but reallyshe's a utility player that can pick it all up, she's amazing. And I thinkhaving someone that you can lean on for that, she's a rigid project manager andmakes sure execution is the name of the game. I think having someone that canexecute when you're such a lean team and make things happen is so importantbecause ideas are really exciting and great, but they have to actually get outthe door to make a difference.

Franco Caporale:

Yeah. I definitely can relate on that. I know talking to alot of EPO marketing, they think outsourcing content, especially mid-funnelcontent is really, really hard because you get all these generic pieces thatdon't have a lot of value. How is your experience in that?

Brandi Eppolito:

Yeah. That was actually going to be my first answer, it'scontent because it is hard to get it right, although we have one amazing writerthat we work with now that's outsourced and she gets it. I think the importantthing one, there are so many writers, you have to find the right one and that'seasier said than done if you're going to outsource or hire really. It's hardeither way to find great writing talent. I think the other thing is we don'tjust hand her a couple of sentences and say, "Go do this," it's morelike, "Let's have a conversation where I pitch it to you and tell you thepositioning and some data to back it up," and conversations need thecontext to make it. And we've worked with her for two years now, so she getsit. I think she feels like an extension of the team. I think I was luckybecause at Clearhead I struggled to find an outsourced writer that could dothat, we never really nailed it. At SchoolAdmin, I feel very lucky to havefound the writer that we work with.

Franco Caporale:

That's awesome. That's fantastic. And so I'd like to hearmore about your, let's call it campaign playbook or your demand generationplaybook once you join these companies. From our conversation, you have a veryinteresting framework. I would like to expand a little bit, so how do youapproach that?

Brandi Eppolito:

So when I came to SchoolAdmin, my marketing vision hadthree pieces, and I wanted to become the go-to resource for inspiration andbest practices for independent school professionals. I wanted to be the placethey turned to when they needed to learn to be better at their jobs or expandtheir skills. The second part was that I wanted that phrase, "No one getsfired for buying IBM." I wanted us to become the safest and most obviouschoice when it comes to purchasing software like ours. And then the third piecewas to be thought of as a trusted advisor within the industry, how do we becomethat trusted advisor for folks in the space? So it's a three-part approach forus.

Franco Caporale:

This is very interesting. So can you expand on the firstone? So how do you become the thought leader? Because this is another thingthat is easier said than done since everyone is trying to be a thought leader,but it's not enough to just publish a couple of blog posts. So how is yourapproach on that first part?

Brandi Eppolito:

I agree, it's totally easier said than then. I think a bigpiece of it is figuring out what problems do the people that we serve have andhow can we help them solve those problems. I think that's a big piece of it.Where are they struggling in their careers? Where are they failing to connectthe dots? Where do they not have enough information, or where do resources notexist to serve them on something they're concerned about? So I think that'swhere a lot of those customer conversations come in play is how do I figure outwhat they need help with to excel in their jobs and to become the hero? And ifyou can answer that, then I think actually, you have more ideas than you canrun with in a set amount of time. So for us, it was how can we create eBooksand webinars and white papers that don't just get put out there, but thatpeople really care about when they come out. And I think that really hinges onhelping them solve real problems that make their jobs easier.

Franco Caporale:

Do you have a content indication strategy, or how do youput that content in front of them because even if it's very valuable, untilthey know about it, they won't be able to consume it?

Brandi Eppolito:

Right. If you build it, will they come? Not always. So forus, it's about getting a lot of mileage out of the content and repurposing asmuch as we can. As far as getting more eyes on it, we try to feature peoplefrom the space, colleagues that they might know, other people in their network.The more you feature other companies and brands, the more those companies andbrands will share it. So we try to do that because then you expand your reachalready because you have ambassadors for your content essentially becausethey're featured and want to kind of trumpet it just like you're doing thispodcast. I'm sure I'll share the podcast, it expands the reach, right?

Franco Caporale:

Exactly.

Brandi Eppolito:

Exactly. Don't neglect asking your employees to share onsocial and their email signature. We'll do organic social, we'll do paidsocial. We just really think of all of the different areas we can reuse it. Alot of it also, if we create a white paper, we turn it into maybe eight blogposts from one white paper. We also turn it into maybe two conferencepresentations that we keep pointing back to. I turn it into a sales outreachsequence that the Sales team can use, so it's repurposing this into a fewdifferent flavors from the same one piece of content to get lots of eyespointing back to it.

Franco Caporale:

That's fantastic. And I'm even more interested in thesecond part, which I really like about the, nobody gets fired for buying IBM orOracle, so nobody gets fired for buying SchoolAdmin. How do you achieve that?

Brandi Eppolito:

So I wanted to think, how do we become obvious and safe?One of my former, someone I worked with at Clearhead that I still just reallylean on as a professional who would always say, "When someone makes adecision to buy a new piece of software, it's putting your badge on the linemoment," they're advocating for your software. Depending on the budgetsize, they could be risking, to a certain extent, their reputation for yourcompany. So we de-risk that for this person that's advocating for us? For me atSchoolAdmin, we have a ton of raving fans. We're really lucky to have customersthat truly love us. Getting case studies here has been the easiest job of mylife.

Franco Caporale:

Wow.

Brandi Eppolito:

Case studies are not always easy as every marketer knows.They have been really easy because people are so excited to share it. Soleveraging the voice of the customer, how can we get case studies? How can weget them talking about us on social? A big part of it was also, we did some G2review campaigns. We never asked anyone to say anything good. We ask them toshare their honest opinion and luckily again, they really love us. So we havetons of great G2 reviews, we've become leaders on the grid, high performers,and then again, we leverage those. We get more mileage out of those by havingSales use those quotes, we'll use them on our marketing content. We'll leanback on that and point to G2, so it keeps going.

Franco Caporale:

That's awesome. Where do you see more value on the G2reviews or your own internal case studies?

Brandi Eppolito:

That's a good question. I would say G2, even thoughcompanies are reaching out to customers to run review campaigns, I do thinkit's seen more as an independent source of reviews. It's not on our website,it's not sent by our Sales team, so I think that brings some credibility to it.I will say, and I think we were talking about this before, some people want tomeasure, how many leads did you get from G2? And that's not how I see it. Wedon't see it as tons of leads coming through to us from G2, although I thinksome companies do. For us, it's really about having that independent sourcewith credibility, with reviews that we can point to and leverage, especiallyonce they're in the pipeline, use those to keep pushing them through. So forus, it's not about leads coming directly from G2, it's more like using G2 tofuel our conversations and our ops through the funnel.

Franco Caporale:

It makes sense. And the last part about the trustedadvisor thing that you mentioned, that requires another shift on top of yourmarketing efforts.

Brandi Eppolito:

A lot of becoming the trusted advisor centers on helpingthe Sales team have conversations that aren't necessarily about selling fromthe beginning. So one example, and again this goes back to getting more mileageout of your content. Our schools just like tech companies are focused oncustomer retention, but for them, it's retaining students. So we did a whitepaper on student retention, and to help our Sales team become trusted advisors,we developed this white paper on retention, we included some stats from thesurvey I should have said, so to help the Sales team leverage the content andbecome seen as trusted advisors.

We gave them a little, basically 15 minute assessment thatthey could do on a call with prospects where they take them through a set ofquestions and help advise them on their retention strategy for students, andgive them some nuggets that they can take away and immediately apply in theirschool to keep their students enrolled. So how do we give the Sales team the toolsthey need to not just sell, but to strategize with clients and to have thoseconversations earlier on that aren't necessarily about selling, but when itcomes to time to buy, they already have that relationship established withcustomers, and it's a much easier sell when the time comes.

Franco Caporale:

I think at the beginning you mentioned how you had a greatrelationship with the CEOs who really believe in marketing. How is yourrelationship, I mean, in your even past experience with the Sales team andSales leaders, since you're coming from the point of view of marketing?

Brandi Eppolito:

I've been really, really lucky to be, essentially we feellike one and the same at both Clearhead and SchoolAdmin. The Sales team andmarketing teams are super, super close. Sales is incredibly thankful for thework we do. We're incredibly thankful for the work Sales does. One doesn'thappen without the other, so I feel thankful for that. We've been very, verytight, and I think a lot of that is because we are such small companies, thatsilos haven't been built up over years and the bigger the team gets, I thinkthe harder it is to maintain that closeness because you operate a bitindependently, but for us being such small teams, it's been really easy.

Franco Caporale:

That's fantastic. I have one last question for you,Brandi. This was very helpful by the way, I think for anyone who either justgot hired as a first marketing person is more startup or is planning to dothat. What is one thing that is top of mind for you for the next six months?This was an interesting year. What is the thing that is top of mind, maybe aproblem that you're trying to solve or an opportunity that you see that hasvery great potential that you want to tackle the next six months?

Brandi Eppolito:

So coming from being the VP of Marketing at a company witha team of three to being now VP of Marketing in a company with a team of about15, I get the opportunity to specialize at this new company, which I wore allthe hats at SchoolAdmin, and now I'm specializing a bit because we're a muchbigger team at Finalsite. So for me personally... Well, first of all, I go onmaternity leave in just a few weeks, so I'll be focused on the baby.

Franco Caporale:

Oh, congratulations. That's definitely the biggest one.

Brandi Eppolito:

That will be part of it for sure. So for me, I'm actuallygoing on maternity leave soon, so part of what I'm focusing over the next fewmonths will be safely getting a baby here and keeping that baby healthy. Butbeyond that, what I'm very excited to focus on at Finalsite is leaning moreinto product marketing and client marketing, which I think they're soinextricably linked that you really can't separate the two. They've neverreally had anyone to focus on either of those areas specifically. So right now,I'm working with both teams, with Product, with Sales, with Client Success,with Marketing, and how do we bridge the gap between all of those to help usbuild an engine for those two areas. So I'm really excited to bring that tolife.

Franco Caporale:

That's super exciting. Fantastic. That's awesome. Brandi,this was really great. I truly enjoyed the conversation, so thanks again forjoining us today.

Brandi Eppolito:

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.