Mark Lorion is the CMO of Apperian – a mobile application management company that helps organizations get mobile apps and content in the hands of their employees. Working out of the Boston headquarters, he manages all of the company’s marketing operations and sits on the executive team.
Question 1: In fewer than 50 words, how do you define ‘digital strategy’?
“Digital strategy is how the mix of web and digitally-enabled inbound and outbound tactics are used to support an organization’s overall business strategy and objectives. With innovative digital tools and platforms being introduced every day, new business strategies become possible. This can move digital strategy from primarily supporting business strategy to fundamentally driving it.”
Question 2: As the CMO at a fast-moving company in the digital sector, what keeps you up at night?
“Revenue and customer/user expansion. In a rapidly evolving industry, we must quickly attract new users to our platform, as that brings revenue which fuels our future growth. And with a 100% hosted/digital product, increased usage also brings invaluable data about how people use our product. Those insights help us to evolve our product capabilities in increasingly valuable ways which further helps us retain and attract customers.”
Question 3: What kind of mobile device(s) do you have, and what are your three favorite apps?
Device: iPhone and iPad
Apps: Waze, Voxer, and Evernote
“My favorite apps are Waze (GPS and crowd-sourced traffic… I just became a ‘Knight’ 😉 ), Voxer (voice message sharing between family and groups of friends), and Evernote (note taking auto-synced with my iPad and MacBook… haven’t carried a paper notebook in months!)”
Question 4: Why should people care about Apperian?
“My three favorite apps have changed my life –getting around, staying in touch with distributed friends, and having notes always available. It’s the apps that run on mobile devices that can be transformative. My company, Apperian, helps companies get custom and curated public apps into the hands of their employees easily and securely. Users interact with our platform through a consumer-like ‘app store’ to find apps their company wants them to use. The IT teams that support them leverage our backend to make security and administration a breeze. We’re helping organizations to transform they way employees get work done.”
Question 5: Let’s say you have a son or daughter who is graduating college this year — what part of the digital industry would you direct him to?
“I’d say work focused on design and customer engagement. As they say, the nearest competitor is just a click away, and with consumer companies setting user expectations on usability and access, B2B companies need to think critically about how they project themselves and attract new customers. B2B buyers want the ease of doing business from their suppliers that they now get from their B2C experiences.”
For more information about Mark and his company, follow him on Twitter (@mark_lorion) and read his CMO Blog.
