Home > Companies > C-Suite On Deck > Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

MEDIA 7 | September 26, 2019

Q&A with Randy Frisch
Randy Frisch, CMO and Co-Founder at Uberflip has led the content experience movement, prompting marketers to think beyond content creation and focus on the experience. 

Randy also co-hosts the Conex Show, a weekly podcast featuring top marketers and their strategies and secrets to success. His talks empower marketers with the strategies they need to capture their audiences, prove their worth, and align their vision.

MEDIA 7: If I were to say to a bunch of people who know you, ‘Give me three adjectives that best describe you’, what would I hear?
RANDY FRISCH: Determined, passionate, caring.

M7: From Flipbooks to the world’s first content experience platform in just 6 years. What are some of the top reasons that helped drive Uberflip to where it is now?
RF:  We started as a solution that would allow marketers to share content to readers whenever they wanted and on whichever devices. People still want to consume content whenever they want. Think of the way in which we consume video content on Netflix or music content on Spotify. We’ve been successful in large part because we’ve been able to create a product that marketers need, that make it easier for their buyers to become customers. But that hasn’t been enough.
The differentiator for us is culture—the values we strive for as an organization (not just the work environment). I’ll share my 3 favourites here:

● H.U.S.T.L.E.: this one stands for Heart, Unique, Skill, Tech, Lean, Entrepreneurial. My co-founder, Yoav Schwartz, and I actually screen new hires for these traits.
● Valuable, Relevant & Consistent: this one comes from the initial definition of Content Marketing (“creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content”) by Robert Rose and Joe Pullizzi at the Content Marketing Institute. It only makes sense that our teams and employees should expect to be valuable, relevant, and consistent.
● Give Back: It’s important for us to give back to our communities and while we do this in numerous ways led by people across our team, one of my favourites is an annual charity ping pong tournament we host called Startupong which brought together startups in Toronto to raise $50,000 for Sick Kids hospital this year.
We’ve been successful mostly because we’ve been able to create a brand around engaging our team, our customers, and even our partners around these values.


"As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods."

M7: How can modern marketers leverage the personalized content recommendations given by Uberflip AI?
RF: It all comes down to the journey we take our buyers through. We recently produced a report with Heinz Marketing in which we found that only “1 in 3 B2B marketing leaders [of 283 interviewed] believe their current website encourages people to engage with their content at a high volume”. Essentially, we are leading buyers to a piece of content and leaving them to fend for themselves among your content. A visual I like to use is that of walking someone into a dark forest with no pathway and leaving them there. Not a good experience at all. As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods.

Uberflip AI serves up recommendations on our platform personalized to our buyers after they’ve consumed a piece of content. This allows them to stay and engage with more content while they’re in a content experience. Uberflip AI gives marketers the ability to predict what topic or piece of content their buyer might be interested in based on their behavior on a website, benchmark them against other users, and deliver content that they might be interested in, in order to extend their journey.


"Buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience."

M7: How does user-generated content help in scaling ABM campaigns at Uberflip?
RF: I believe the best UGC for ABM (acronym overload!) is the reviews from customers. The best way to learn is from our peers. We often copy our competitors or look for best practices. There are many ways we can relate to a target account by showing them what their peers are saying. It could be finding a tweet from someone they respect speaking about the value of your platform. Think of it this way. If Roger Federer tweeted that a certain shoe was key to his play you'd likely win over other aspiring tennis players. In the world of B2B marketing, we can sometimes find more professional review sites like G2 or TrustRadius where highlighting a review from someone in a related industry can help win over the next target account.

M7: There is a lot of buzz around your book “F#ck Content Marketing”. What inspired you to preach this influential gospel?
RF: I was off to Dreamforce in 2017 and I came across a SiriusDecisions stat that 60-70% of all marketing content goes unused. It brought to light that even I contributed to this problem by driving my team to create more and more content. I had a revelation.

Thanks to Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing was supposed to be about creating and distributing content “with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” But somewhere along the line, it became too much about creation and not enough about distribution and driving customer action (converting). And when marketers were distributing content, we weren’t distributing it in ways that led to profitable customer action—think of all those generic emails we sent people, loaded with links to videos and blog posts spread across the internet. We were sending people into dark scary forests full of content (sometimes that of our competitors). And we never got them back.

It all hit me. So I said “f#ck content marketing”, or rather, f#ck what it had become. My mission over the last two years has become to teach marketers how to create great personalized online experiences that we can send our buyers to, that actually take them on a journey leading to a conversion.


"Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action."

M7: What is the idea behind ‘The Conex’ (podcast show) hosted by you every week, which is already a big hit among the viewers?
RF: After 3 years and 227 episodes, we’ve decided to end the Content Experience Show and start fresh with a new show, The Marketer’s Journey, launching October. We had a great base of listeners and guests, but we wanted to spend more time focusing on the concept of the journey—both, the journey that our buyers go through, and the journey we go through as marketers. I’ll be speaking in-depth with marketing leaders about what their journey has looked like as marketers and what they strive for in creating great experiences for their buyers and customers.

M7: How do you see content marketing evolving over time?
RF: We’re not just seeing the evolution of content marketing, we’re seeing the evolution of marketing as a whole. Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action.
Let’s take a look for a moment at the way in which we consume video and music media. We went from syndicated TV shows and weekly programming on set channels (cable) to having bingeable content ready for us on demand (Netflix, Hulu, etc). We went from listening for our favourite song to be played on the radio, to downloading songs on iTunes, to now getting recommended curated playlists and artists based on my listening history on Spotify. We can search for content we want on demand and binge it for as long as we want. And we can do it whenever we want on multiple different devices around us.

Our buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience. Marketers are starting to catch on. We’re starting to spend time and money on analyzing the data, having great salespeople, and even on distribution. The difference-maker is that marketers are spending more time and money on personalized content experiences and using a content experience platform like Uberflip to accelerate the buyer journey.

ABOUT UBERFLIP

Uberflip is the world’s #1 Content Experience Platform (CEP). With tools to aggregate all your marketing content, they empower B2B marketing and sales teams to create personalized content experiences to engage accounts, nurture prospects, and convert leads, without the help of IT. It’s their mission to put control back in the hands of marketing teams to deliver high-converting experiences, that put the customer front and center.

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LIBRA Insurance Partners Announces Partnership with Highland Capital Brokerage

PR Newswire | August 29, 2023

LIBRA Insurance Partners (LIBRA), the largest independently-owned life insurance marketing organization (IMO) in the United States, announces a partnership with Highland Capital Brokerage (HCB), a national life insurance and annuity distribution company and a subsidiary of Osaic. "Highland Capital Brokerage is a formidable organization and we are excited they have selected LIBRA as their strategic partner to help facilitate its growth and expansion initiatives," said William (Bill) Shelow, CLU®, ChFC®, CPCU®, LLIF, president and CEO of LIBRA. HCB provides risk management strategies and solutions to help financial professionals protect and grow their clients' assets. As a national life insurance, annuity, disability, and longevity planning firm, HCB distributes these solutions across the wealth spectrum to both institutional and independent partners. "The partnership with LIBRA is an important step in Highland's evolution. Our diversified sales organization will rely on the vast array of carriers and their products to provide risk management solutions to our clients," said Teague Wright, president of Highland Capital Brokerage. "We look forward to taking advantage of the breadth of tools and resources this affiliation makes available." HCB is comprised of more than 300 employees nationwide with an exceptionally talented and tenured team. "I have enjoyed having an association in various capacities with Highland Capital Brokerage since its inception. They embody everything that LIBRA and our partners symbolize," said J. Craig Collins, executive vice president and chief relationship officer of LIBRA. "Teague and her senior leadership team have built a first-class organization and will greatly complement the markets we serve and the carriers we represent. Their interest in LIBRA further demonstrates the great value that we bring to our partner firms with our focus on delivering industry-leading tools and resources that support their efforts." Shelow added, "I believe this affiliation elevates the stature of both organizations." LIBRA Insurance Partners takes a true partnership approach with each of its valued relationships with the core belief in "the strength of many and power of one." With unique reinsurance ownership opportunities, agent retention programs, business development consulting, live training events and robust sales and marketing resources, the firm provides an unparalleled community of comradery and commitment to the success of each of its shareholders. By way of partnership, HCB further expands upon its expansive resources and capabilities with direct access to several additional proprietary advanced planning tools and benefits, including: exclusive facultative underwriting program with RGA Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (RGA) established relationships with an expanded lineup of affiliated carriers and reinsurers a dedicated medical director product white papers and benchmarking tools a proprietary quick quoting and informal processing platform About Highland Capital Brokerage (HCB) Highland Capital Brokerage is a national life insurance, annuity, disability, and long-term care distribution company providing point-of-sale support, advanced marketing, and creative estate- and business-planning techniques to financial advisors and insurance professionals. We deliver these services in an efficient, client-focused environment that extends to carrier and product expertise, underwriting negotiation, and complete back-office processing. Highland offers objective access to major insurance carriers, advanced planning support, expertise in risk underwriting, and back-office processing to insurance brokers, financial planners, and various institutions such as banks, wirehouses, and certified public accountant firms. To learn more about Highland Capital Brokerage, visit www.highlandbrokerage.com. About LIBRA Insurance Partners (LIBRA) LIBRA Insurance Partners is an insurance marketing organization dedicated to serving independent insurance producers, brokers, and financial institutions. Formerly known as LifeMark Partners and BRAMCO Financial Resources, and through the merger with Insurance Designers of America (IDA) in 2022, the firm exists to leverage strategic relationships, expertise, and innovation to expand life insurance distribution for the benefit of all stakeholders. LIBRA Insurance Partners is dedicated to the ongoing development and enhancement of resources to differentiate partner agencies from the competition. Its firms benefit from robust proprietary service offerings, unparalleled partnership, product expertise, and access to industry-leading technologies and tools, including expansive underwriting support resources. To learn more about becoming a LIBRA partner firm, visit  www.LIBRAInsurancePartners.com or call (410) 837-3022.

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