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Learning how to market - I.E. planning campaigns, creating strategies, understanding content management and even getting a professional role can be overwhelming for small business owners and creatives. Joe, one of my favorite creatives, agreed to interview with me to discuss his career, all things marketing and to allow us to learn more about him.

Within this interview, you will have a chance to learn more about how Joe became the VP of Marketing and Content at Scorpio, his work at Adobe, and a few more notable roles he’s held. We discuss creative projects he’s led and things he’s passionate about as a marketing professional and dad of 3 beautiful children.

So, let’s hop right in and introduce Joe Martin.

Who is Joe Martin?

“Well, to start I am currently happily married with three kids, and live in Utah. I love to ski and be outdoors in general. Outside of that, I love my career and what I have the opportunity to create daily.

Currently, I lead marketing for Scorpion. Scorpion is a tech platform company that helps small businesses with marketing and digital brand management. 

We offer  website management tools and provide the services for people that want a full service management experience. We also create technology for people who want to manage themselves and have access to enterprise grade quality technology. 

I’ve also been a professional in digital marketing for about 15 years. Aside from working with Scorpion, I was also most recently the CMO at a startup called Cloud App for a few years. And then before that I was with Adobe for a very, very long time - 7 years to be exact”

What is your educational background?

“Initially, I got an undergrad in finance & business. Then, I did an MBA, focused on marketing. Following that, I completed a degree in entrepreneurship and business. I've kind of just been a student of marketing as well, business in general for a very long time.”

So, I see that your bio says you're the VP of content and digital. Is that digital marketing for Scorpion? What does that position entail for you?

“Yeah, so I lead a couple of content teams. And they kind of manage a bunch of freelancers. Within this, I also manage the company's blog, ebooks, podcasts, video, all forms of content that's working to educate our current customers and obviously acquire new ones. 

And then also, I manage the company's website. So everything that happens on Scorpion Co. I  help influence that. And a lot of the demand motion as well. So generating new leads and SEO and traffic to the website.”

So, what does a day in your work life look like when you get to the office? What are some things that you have to do?

“Right now, we have a pretty aggressive content calendar. So I'm leading the strategy behind that and working with my strategist on themes to come up with the Calendar and creating the processes to keep teams updated on the plan. 

I also handle assigning articles to writers, the written QA, creating article topics, making sure it's SEO friendly and optimized, publishing on the site, producing the social copy for the socials and kind of the end for distribution, managing all that with the calendar. 

Most of our content, we put in kind of like, a quarter at a time. So we create quarterly but for the objectives and key results, goals and we kind of do a work back on planning from there so everyone knows what they should be working on what their goals are, and we all kind of work toward that.”

I'm actually so glad that you brought up quarterly planning because I tell people all the time to stop waiting until the last minute to plan their campaigns and their content and stuff, especially like startup companies.

“Totally. Yeah, it's really important to look back on accomplishments. Look forward to where you want to go and take, you know, small bites at a time like that. It shouldn’t be overwhelming, but it also must be a priority to see real results over time”.

I’d like to go back to your time at Adobe, are you a graphic designer too? Was that a part of your role while there?

“I am not a designer, but I know how to create a design process and how to own a design. So strategically in business design, yes, but actually implementing and drawing the designs, no.”

That's good to know. Because I know that sometimes people think that in order to work in these creative spaces that they have to actually know how to design and create vector and illustrator projects. 

So, fun question, what is the funnest piece of content that you have helped your team make? And what was your inspiration for that?

“Oh, I've done so many things. At Adobe, I got to do a lot of really fun stuff. At Scorpion, we're kind of creating a lot of guides to help people build businesses, we haven't really gotten to the fun stuff quite yet. 

But while at Adobe, one thing that was really fun was I got to follow the World Cup for the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. So I gave them updates on what was happening at the time since it was in Brazil during this time.

 Some of the updates included how the locals were feeling about the games, analyzing a bunch of data, like what sponsors were getting the most money out of advertising, lots of random stuff.

In a different project I also used Social Buzz, like social mentions to predict movie profitability. So I could determine if a movie was going to be profitable 90 days before it was released, based on the past year of social mentions of that movie, based on just this model I put together so that one was pretty funny. 

I created the formula and model for this process and the project was featured in CNBC and Hollywood reporter and a bunch of other kinds of outlets, which was pretty fun.”

Oh that’s pretty cool! I never envisioned a marketing professional having such a large variety of projects in their portfolio.

So, in comparison to when you first started marketing and now, what do you love most about it now?

“Oh, I've always been kind of like a math data guy, and marketing's evolution, anti data has gotten me most excited. So I like seeing results from work put in consistency of focus. 

And the last part is just being able to be creative, it's fun to be creative, and come up with new new ideas.”

That’s totally relatable, I know something that a lot of people, especially my followers might want to know, is how did you grow your Twitter following online?

“I wish there was a silver silver bullet to help you grow overnight, but that’s not how it was for me. 

But you know a lot of it was just time And I did have a lot of luck in that I was with Adobe for so long. I did a lot of press briefings and spoke at a lot of conferences. So truly, I was in a good position at Adobe to get some exposure that way. 

I’d also add that consistency overtime played a big role. I do enjoy my life offline, so I don’t consider myself a full time content creator on my page. But I do enjoy jumping in and putting out a random thought or talking with people about certain things.

Twitter has also been a great source of recruiting. I've recruited a lot of people from Twitter that I've had long term connections with. People I've had relationships with for a while over Twitter, eventually reached out and we connected and they usually turn into something pretty amazing”.

I figured that it was from the different positions you had and the results of media coverage from the cool things that you've created. 

So my last question is, what is something that you wish existed but doesn't?

“There's so many things. But I guess it would be something that would make it easier to do like housework chores.

Right now I have a lot of little kids. And so our house is always a train wreck. So anything to make that part of my life easier would be awesome.”

Do you remember the movie Smart House that came out on Disney a long time ago? 

“Yeah. Exactly. That would be perfect (lol)”.

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This interview with Joe Martin was very insightful and gave a wonderful overview of his professional life and background as a marketing powerhouse. 

If you want to learn more about marketing, creative processes and content strategy for small business join Joe and I live via Twitter spaces 02/16/2022 at 3 pm CST!.