there are a couple things that I think are dead in marketing I think things like webinars are dick I kind of disagree with you there we've had some good success um with webinars it's it's like uh hey you know this is a problem don't pitch us how you're solving it but like let's talk about the problem and then it elevates the brand of your company itself but I don't call that a webinar what do you call that okay here we go we're back season two connected conversations uh this conversation I'm really happy to have as I'm lucky to have one of my former colleagues Lauren long with me today she is a marketing extraordinaire if you will in my opinion I mean Lauren work together a long time ago for a startup today Warren is the director of marketing operations for prescriptive data prescriptive data is the creative creator of nantum Warren did I get that right nailed it the kid I had to practice that multiple times before we we went live here so I'm pretty proud of myself getting all that right Lauren how are you today I'm doing good happy to be here I'm great I'm super excited for this um I'm really looking so for the theme and we'll get into this in a little bit for this season of connect the conversation is going back to the future so I want to talk about all things future looking but before we do that if you could Lauren can you give us your statement of qualification as to why you are qualified to talk about all things marketing and give us a little bit of history about yourself sure uh well as you put it I'm a market I'm marketing Phenom so I'll try to work up to that um but I guess it all started back when I was a kid uh my dad was a marketing executive he was super creative um he was actually one of the creative on the Creative Design Team of that Max L ad where the guy's getting like blown back in the chair from the speaker yes so that's the um Maxell um it's kind of Blown Away yeah their their music or yeah I used to make mixtapes for people go on sorry yeah so I grew up with that so I've always been of the mindset of how to relay messages to a group of people um so with that I took Communication in psychology classes in college and then jumped into um the real estate world uh more on the prop Tech side uh where I you know worked with you yes you know a company that is no longer around but we did things and um from there I spent a couple years doing solo work for the proptech world mostly writing and Consulting for marketing um including a couple years at prop Moto which is an awesome commercial real estate publication if you're unfamiliar with it um and and now I'm at prescriptive data so I've been here for almost five months and what does prescriptive data do we're a building operation system so we take all of your BMS Bas and third-party data including occupancy is a big one and use it to make your building run more efficiently so the building owner saves money the building uses less energy uh everyone's happier and healthier terrific so let me ask you this before we get into today's topic with that history and coming up in a marketing house if you will your dad was a Madman he was a legit man um coming up in that and then ending up in the prop Tech world what do you think of it is it something that that you've been drawn to um is it something that you you kind of fell into I fell into this I fell into the property Tech iwms facilities I fell into it so what's your thoughts on it is is it something that you're you're drawn to and really taking an interest to yeah I I am now I I didn't start like if you'd asked me you know 15 years ago what do you want to work in I would not have said buildings like yeah um but I've always been drawn to technology you know I like the Innovation I like being able to solve things with something cool um and there's so much opportunity in real estate and buildings and especially on the sustainability side um like trying to do something that makes a difference in the world is pretty important we just had a whole conversation our broke we had a conversation yesterday with a broker from CBRE and she was talking a lot about the environmental wow environmental and sustainability initiatives and how that factors into corporate real estate's Market selection and how she has to provide that data um to where you know when I think about when I was thinking about brokerage I was thinking more negotiating terms and conditions of a lease and less about things like environmental and sustainability considerations when you're looking for that property at least so you're spot on with that and would you would you say your first foray into all this is when we first met um at the company that we were I was really the reason why I asked that I was really happy to see you stick with it stay in this Lane stay in the corporate real estate property tech building Tech I was really happy to see that because what I talk about with a lot of the younger generation is pick a lane and you could be a sales guy for multiple you know you can move on but stay in your lane because you're throwing out all that institutional knowledge and all that all that great stuff that you learn along the way for lack of a better term that that provides a lot of value so I was really happy to see you stick with it no I learned a lot at that company and I acted like a sponge you know there are people there that knew a lot about the industry and building and if I listen to them enough some of it actually stuck so uh that gave me a heads up you know a foot ahead of other people that are trying to do what we're doing and what I'm doing I agree so with that said uh for the topic of this season as I mentioned We're Going Back to the Future um I'm a big you know Marty McFly Doc Brown fan uh that joke is probably going to get well overused over the course of this season but it is what it is so as we sit here and everything we went through recently uh this these past couple years and now as we move into hopefully the future of work and the future of our industry the building to have prop Tech corporate real estate Tech whatever you want to call it where are things going Warren what do you think uh has changed needs to change what are some of the trends you're seeing I'm not asking you to give me an exact prediction of where things are going to go but from your perspective you know near term long term where are things going in marketing particularly in our field well I think that you know whether we wanted it or not the last few years we spent a lot we had a lot of time to think about what we wanted to be a part of and what we wanted to do how we wanted to live our lives right and so um because of that people want things to be real um and that importance of authenticity needs to be reflected in marketing too um you know in a lot of social um circles and in popular culture there's this like cancellation culture you know this cancel culture so if people don't like what something stands for or what someone did then they're cut and um I think marketing needs to be really sure that they're being authentic and what they're sharing um and not just product pitchy like this is the new technology we have and these are all the reasons why it's so great but like why it actually matters like what problems is it solving um I think that's really important so when you when you approach your day-to-day right and I agree with you 100 and that's why we're what we're trying to do with connected conversations in this podcast is a wide variety of guests from the corporate real estate facilities technology Industries coming together and talking about where are the future is going where they see things today to provide some authentic content for our viewer viewers and audience so that's what we're trying to do I'm not a marketer I don't have a marketing or communications degree I can hardly get through your title um in your introduction so it's like but what I really do is I've been in this industry for a long time and I stumbled into it and it became something that I gained a wealth of knowledge about and um you know became passionate about providing real solutions to people and I couldn't agree to more so as as the director of marketing for prescriptive data how do you bring that to your job every day give us some examples of where you're trying to drive authenticity with what you're doing I think one of the easy things to fall into as a marketer is to you know use buzzwords use oh we have a no buzzwords policy here on this podcast so go ahead I don't know if I should walk out now this is your hot take go ahead give us your hot take on board but um you know I think buzzwords are the easy way out to sound like you know what you're talking about and you can say you can talk for hours and say nothing at all like you're just using buzzwords and um It's Tricky though because in marketing you need to have certain words like SEO you know search engine optimization you need to use what words people are looking for in your marketing to show up to solve what they're looking to solve so there's a bit of a catch-22 there but chances are building Engineers aren't going to be searching for you know optimization they're going to be looking for energy Improvement or Energy Efficiency um you know and that's of course a blanket statement but you need to marketers especially in proptech need to kind of tone down the tech buzzwords and amplify what people are saying like in real estate so I love what you just said there it's a delicate balance right and you got to speak there I used to say this when I would go into sales meetings I would tell the team what to wear believe it or not and say this is more of a group where we wear our polo shirts and not our suits and then if we were going to talk to a director c-level real estate for a big technology firm maybe we put our suits on so it's like you have to be familiar to them so I love what you speak their language but in the SEO world you have to know what's being searched for so you have to have a little bit of buzzwords and then a little bit of nomenclature that is native to that person that you're you're Prospect so how do you get that how do you how do you figure out what say a facilities manager would want the words he would use is that engaging with them at conferences industry events re how do you do that uh you won the best ways I think is talking to your customers the ones who are using Solutions but um you know it's not just for an individual solution it's about the whole industry so going to you know I saw you a couple weeks ago or whatever time was at realcom you know like that was a great place to meet and actually see people in real life um and hearing conversations whether they were at breakout sessions or in the hallway or at you know 2 A.M you know the words that were being used in those different places probably changed but the themes were the same and so depending on who you were talking to and their titles go all over the place too like you know we talked about sustainability the person who's in charge of sustainability and needs prop Tech Solutions might have very different titles depending on the company they're at yeah the head of sustainability it could be the chief engineer's job it could be under you know the chief Revenue officer or maybe an asset manager or it could be some made-up name you know that no one's used before um yeah so it's it's important to get feedback from the people you're trying to reach via that direct connection instead of um you know just guessing what they want to hear um but you know it's all marketing there's a little bit of trial and error a b testing seeing what works seeing what doesn't so it's important to have data on how what you're doing is actually performing I could not and I'm smiling because of this is what I explain to sales reps because I work in a role where I kind of help younger sales reps I I sit on some of the larger opportunities to provide industry insight to provide a little bit of clerk commentary about the functional use of our technology because I've been there and have done that um but what I always say is if you don't know your industry and you don't know if you don't speak their language you're going to have a very hard time connecting with your prospects and your customers and I've been saying that for years now and it's like if somebody really wants to invest in this industry and come in and learn and go to the associations the ifmas the balmas the coronets and really learn you know about the industry then hey come on board but if you're going to come in from some other software company and think well this is just enterprise software um this is an Enterprise platform I could sell it and you don't speak their language and you don't know the difference between reactive maintenance predictive maintenance um then you're gonna you're gonna really struggle because you don't know their world and you don't know how to connect with them and I just think what you said was brilliant because at the end of the day how are you going to connect with prospects if you're if you're using optimization instead of Energy Efficiency right and it's it's just uh it's a really important aspect of marking now let's go to now I'm gonna now I'm gonna hit you and try to um throw a little bit of a curveball at you ready there are a couple things that I think are dead in marketing and I'm gonna throw them at you and you don't have to agree with me um you're more than welcome to disagree with me I think things like webinars are dead I think they're dead webinars approached from a sense of let's tell you a case study about our software solve somebody's problem and then at the end of it there's a slide with a contact number for sales I think those webinars are dead the other thing I've been struggling with post pandemic after we've come back and started going to conferences I've been really struggling with conferences in the vendor Halls I've had a really hard time with this and me and Fred were talking before the podcast kicked off and he goes we just went back we created a new model at work where we left cubes we're seeing no more cubes we're doing hybrid work and there needs to be all this kind of um you know Cafe type seating and open seating Concepts we went we're moving away from cubes there but then when you go to a conference you sit in a queue you go back to a cube and it like it needs to evolve a little bit so I think I think webinars and I think the vendor Halls at conference I think people have been beat over the head with um sales pitches over the last two years due to the pandemic and and some of the messaging people were putting out there but the conference Halls to me that the sessions are packed but the conference Hall is kind of empty so those are my two hot takes on some marketing things that I've noticed over the last uh over the last couple months in the last year if you will so I think it should be I think one of the issues that you're hitting on is um like widespread marketing targeting um if you're just sprinkling it everywhere the odds of you actually hitting something that is of significance is pretty low so if you're targeted if marketers know you know have a like account based marketing so if you have a list of companies that you're going after titles that they might include and then you do your research to see what their challenges are and then you approach those people directly then you're going to have solid conversations and they're actually going to want to talk to you because you're aware of a challenge they have and you have a way to help them with it um so like at conferences it's kind of sprinkling it you know like the trade show floor but if you have targeted meetings you know set up ahead of time or um something really cool to see in person you know not like a dry demo but something that's really Dynamic something different like you said you know people have been pitched out a lot you know and um it's important to differentiate yourselves uh as for the webinars I kind of disagree with you there um I think that we've had some good success um with webinars being like one of three or one of four solution providers so it's an open conversation it's not something I've done that I've done that go ahead okay so it's it's like uh hey you know this is a problem don't pitch us how you're solving it but like let's talk about the problem and then it elevates the brand of your company itself but I don't call that a webinar what do you call that that's more like a virtual Round Table or a virtual panel okay not to get into semantics but I think me using the blanket phrase of webinar and saying if you're dead um more of like a general product pitch offered up to an audience if you will I feel at least yeah so but carry on with what you're saying talk about how that worked well I I really like how that works because it's it's not only a good way for companies to create new Partnerships with the other speakers you know the relationships with people who are addressing similar challenges um but we found that to be pretty useful um and I still don't think webinars are dead like okay for people who don't want to have a conversation with someone yet it's a really good way for them to get it done or have you know a a conversation if they throw in a question in the chat but they don't get bombarded with questions it's kind of a way to sit back and be a fly on the wall to learn about something okay so that now that leads to something that I think is a huge frustration in our industry and particularly my Lane of property Tech iws if you go to find a Reese so it goes back to what you're saying about the webinar it's a good chance to kind of dip your toe in the water great a good take on that everything's behind a paywall in my space it's like if you want to report on you know the different Technologies their strengths and weaknesses um first of all the companies that participate in that we have to pay and then if an end user wants to get to it they have to pay and a lot of times how these are done is somebody used a technology somewhere somebody knows somebody and says oh that's a pretty good technology or consultant makes a recommendation but to get a lot of that information Fred sent me an article today about how prop Tech is growing and I'm scrolling through it I'm like oh eventually there's going to be a link and it's going to be behind a payroll and sure enough is behind a paywall yeah so what's your take on that because I do think there's there's foreign you struggled to get access to some of the data in some of these instances tough um and it's a discussion that I've had with many people like both internally and at other companies um finding that right balance because from a company Viewpoint if you're creating really good content that's well researched and not product pitchy and helps someone solve their challenges then you kind of want something for it you know like you want to know who's interested in it too so it's not just an exchange of um of contact information it's like well this message is resonating with people who are vice presidents of something or no one that we thought this would be attractive to is downloading this like it's a good uh it's a good check yeah what you're what you're talking about is also providing something maybe a best practice around something what I'm talking about is basically an analysis of this software does this this one does all these things as well this one has its weaknesses here all that stuff's going to pay I think that's one of the biggest challenges in proptech in general there's so much out there and comparing and contrasting them is practically impossible yeah yeah because there's so many different Lanes of prop Tech right you know at the end of the day you could be an iwms company you could be a data analytics platform you could be a sensor or you could be a ring Cam that goes on the outside of somebody's doorway it's all considered prop Tech if you will and proptech is more of a European term I would think um I think that's where it was born out of um and it was only started to be used in the last three to four years five years maybe um so at the at the end of the day there is a lot out there in getting to it sometimes can be a bit of a challenge so with all those things and and points well made so what I like to do is when I hear you know the points that somebody brings to me I I kind of recap them a little bit so what you're saying is um when you go to these conferences it's better I'll even take it a step further than what you said maybe narrow your focus on the types of conferences you go to knowing that your buyers of your product are going to be there to where it's focused and then you have a list of those potential buyers prospects customers that may be in there you focus in on some tailored messaging to engage with them and then you know give a compelling reason for them to come visit you at the conference floor correct correct and then when you get to webinars what I heard and what I took away from that is you really like the approach and I've participated in these and I really even though our competitors were all on there um a round table type webinar where it's multiple vendors talking about problems within the industry in ways of which they could solve those so you think those two those two things are potentially very successful means of marketing today correct I do and going back to the conferences real quick um I think organizers are getting better at evolving you know like the traditional model beforehand probably isn't working as much like uh trade show floors aren't the same as they were like five years ago right um and so a lot of them are utilizing technology like their apps you know so you can reach out to people ahead of time see who has Mutual interests so there's a connection before the event too um so I think overall the conferences are helping marketers and attendees you know with the conferences yeah and I'll agree with you because they also they had a streaming section set up where they were streaming um live the the presentations or the conversations that were happening where in there's some conferences that get dinged saying there's no virtual this is not inclusive because you you have no virtual option here I can't travel for XYZ reason um so they they do need I think they can still evolve a little more I don't have the answers for that I've never reported I've never organized an event but I think there is more they can do um to support the vendors who in turn support you know their conferences year after year so with all this said um you know when you look at this I think I think right now social is really important I think podcasts are really important I think this what we're doing connecting with one another is really important that's why we branded the the podcast connected conversations because we were so disconnected for the last couple years and now it's time to connect it was so good to see you at that conference and reconnect after all this time in person I mean we've talked over the phone we've talked over social but we haven't seen each other in four or five years something like that and it's it's so great to get back with one another I think connection is more important to your point which you let off with often authent I can't even say authenticity is more important so with all that considered what do you think the future is is it the metaverse tell me about the metaverse what is it what is it I'm not asking you to tell me about the metaverse I hardly understand it okay what do you think the future is is what do you what do you think the future director of marketing the Lauren you know 10 years from now yeah what's that going to look like uh I think it's going to be more about quality than quantity um and you know that's not a new phrase It's not a new thought but you know we've talked a lot about focus and about targeting and about being specific and relatable even um so even that you know authenticity is an umbrella for all of that if you're actually being real with what you're sending out to people um talking to people about Etc um so on the other hand like the buzzwords and anything that just sounds like you're trying to check a box isn't going to hit with people so marketing needs to evolve just as how people are evolving um B2B marketing used to be a lot more cut and dry than it is now because you know brand new idea the people who are buying from companies are also people and consumers in the normal life and so businesses are now on Instagram and some of them are on Tick Tock and they're bringing in business and they're bringing in revenue from these avenues that are like unheard of two years ago do I need to start a tick tock account and start dancing or I haven't seen you dance so I don't know but you're right because Fred talks to me you know Fred's Fred's you know the Next Generation younger than me and he's like we got to start looking at Tick Tock now um and putting putting some of this content out on Tick Tock because it's where things are going so I think what what I've noticed and again I agree um it's become more you know Facebook Instagram the social aspects of things and what I emphasize to sales reps is build connections within your industry um however you have to do it stay very present on LinkedIn when you go to conferences go Shake people's hands talk to them don't give them a sales pitch just find out what's going on in their world yeah build that rapport with them um and who knows maybe a couple years from now there'll be a an opportunity for you you all to collaborate yeah maybe not today but I do see social being a big driver of that meaning the social platforms and then in person more so than ever building those connections with your industry and your community is very important yeah well you know people have said for years that real estate is more of a traditional industry you know like you said suits you know instead of polo shirts and uh convert but um you know the pandemic kind of increase the speed at which everyone had to get used to doing things on a digital plane instead of in person and now we're like trying to figure out where that balance is like did we do we want to go all the way back to tally in person and dinners and all that or do we kind of like the Bebop of liking things on LinkedIn and tagging people like I think it has to be meaningful right so if you're if you haven't connected like add a customer I texted him the other in the past when I first started texting a customer was taboo yeah it really was it was tablet you did not text a customer so I texted him he's like I was just I was just gonna call you let's connect we talked and we talked for an hour and then it was like you know we gotta we gotta get together in person it's been so long and yeah let's work on setting that up for later this summer I think and this is you know I I don't want to get too much into the back to the office thing and return to work but what you just said is everything I think things now have to be more meaningful the old the idea of let's go have lunch for the sake of having lunch um you know maybe not and it's that balance right let's we could do a virtual let's have this phone call virtue we don't need to fly down there for this meeting but I have some prospects that we are gonna hop on a plane in a couple weeks here and go sit down with them because we have a purposeful meeting that we set up where we're going to do a workshop with them we're going to bring people in we're going to have trainers there to help them along the way but I think we've driven to a place where things have to have meaning foreign yeah I completely agree and as great as this is like it's not the same energy as in person and some people are very different in person than they are online you know internet issues sound issues whatever the conversation can be totally tilted um so it it does change well that's what these sessions are talking about inclusion and Equitable work that everybody needs to have what they need to do their job and for some people and I sat through this session it was focused on the metaverse like somebody took a meeting in the metaverse and it was weird the way the avatars worked in the way like yeah the camera kind of turned and they said for some people it just didn't work and then other people were like if I'm wearing like maybe you have to wear VR goggles for it then they don't know what's going around them in the space that they're in in the real world and it does it to your point somebody might get stepped on and not be able to get their point across in the metaverse as they would be able to with a one-to-one interaction 100 and I'm I get motion sickness from VR I think it's mostly because of my first experience was at a conference okay years ago and they put it on me and it was just spiders that were like crawling on you and anyway so that was bad no no tell me more about this I want to hear about did you started to like did you started to like brush your skin or what happened yeah like it just felt like they were crawling towards you and you could feel them it was really disgusting so the idea of having meetings in a meta versus unappealing to me um but I'm also a very like outdoorsy person and grounded yeah yeah it's like I feel the same way I I said I said in in that round table I said in a lot of ways I like the idea of a metaverse in a lot of ways I really don't like the idea of the metaverse and I think it's a bad direction to go in especially you know with our smartphones and texting people as opposed to calling people and and doing things over teams or slack as opposed to just sometimes I have to instruct people well did you pick up the phone yeah like no I was like pick up the phone go call the person hear the tone of their voice get to the root of their issue instead of going back and forth on these messaging platforms so that's where I think the metaver it's like I want to go sit and look and read somebody's body language and and you know if they're kind of making a facial expression like it's their turn to talk and they've they've heard it's you know you're sucking the oxygen out of the room um you know I I want to have that interaction and that you know that that kind of and uh the metaverse and Technology that's that's one of the bad sides right so yeah for for personal interactions I totally agree I think the potential for marketing and like digital buildings you know it's a little different but we don't need to jump into all that so if I can recap just kind of what what we went through um I think what we took away from this podcast is there there needs to be regardless if it's today or 10 years from now there needs to be an authentic approach to marketing um buzzwords get lost in the sauce um when everybody's saying the same thing it just gets its noise as you called it um you know if we're looking at things like conferences and webinars I think what I'm going to take away from it is we have to be a little more thoughtful about what how we're structuring our approach to a conference and how we're structuring the content provided in a webinar so that it resonates with with our prospects and clients and then another thing that I took away from um what you really said is you know speak their language and I really think a lot of these things aren't things that you know I contemplated uh before this podcast and this is why I want to do this podcast yeah so that people can hear the Lauren Long's gonna talk about their approach to marketing and prop tech and and all those things um in the future and then I think the last piece of it what we covered here towards the end is there's no replacing that human in-person interaction you can't replace it with the metaverse you can't replace it with a zoom we can we can augment it it can be an addition to but I think there'll never be a replacement for standing across from somebody and having that conversation to them with them face to face in their conference room or at a conference or in a cafeteria is that fair I totally agree so so with that said Lauren long um I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day um to speak with us and share a little bit of your insights in terms of marketing the future of marketing property Tech um and I really appreciate I always did and I'm really happy to see that you kind of stayed in this industry and I encourage you to connect continue to be a strong voice in this industry um because I do think you have a lot to offer the other thing is um if I can inspire you to um support the younger generation so that they can look to you as a thought leader and say someday just like your dad you know you looked up to your dad as being the madman that that the younger generation you know um of all genders um look up to you and say someday I want to be the Warren long of marketing at my company if anyone's watching this and wants to talk proptech marketing please reach out I'd love to and you have a lot of great content that you can share that you've written in the past and there's a lot of stuff more and long out there so I just again want to thank you Lauren this is Bob masichetti with connected conversations this is Lauren long uh Jedi marketing master and uh we want to thank you for your time today and we look forward to seeing you again on connected conversations I'll see everyone on the interwebs [Music]