The Rise of PathFactory: LookBookHQ’s Branding Evolution

Rebranding to PathFactory Reflects The Vision to Power Data-Driven Content Delivery and Provide Marketers with a Path to Greater Relevance, Insight, and Revenue

Today, a MarTech 150 RADAR company, LookBookHQ, announced the launch of PathFactory Content Insight and Activation Engine, subsequently rebranding themselves to PathFactory. Elle Woulfe, VP of Marketing at PathFactory, chatted with us at the time of this announcement, providing significant details on how they planned for their recent milestone and what it means to their B2B customers and partners.

The Inception of PathFactory

Rebranding to PathFactory Synonymous with Delivering Contextual Content to Smart Customers

Elle revealed, “Buyers are living in a world of  Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon – an “active content” world. They expect to be fed the information they need on-demand and want to consume it ‘In-the-Moment’.”

Elle added, “B2B marketing doesn’t work for them anymore. The experience is too passive – it’s slow and difficult and leaves them hunting for the information they need. It’s like looking through an encyclopedia to find your answer versus asking Alexa.”

During the chat, the VP of Marketing at PathFactory stated that the company had been working to solve these B2B problems for marketers for many years. She said, “With the launch of the PathFactory Content Insight and Activation Engine, we just made it a whole lot smarter, benefiting both buyers and marketers, and providing a clearer path to revenue – so we changed our name to reflect this.”

Rebranding to PathFactory: A Strategic Growth Mover for LookBookHQ

The Process to Educate PathFactory Customers and Prospects About the New Identity Was Planned with Precision Based on Clear Objectives

Elle said, “The launch of the PathFactory Engine and our new brand go hand in hand. The tremendous leap forward in helping marketers use content strategically to achieve critical marketing outcomes is what will power our growth. Content Insight and Activation is the most transformative new marketing technology since marketing automation, and the launch of the PathFactory Engine was a milestone for us.”

We clearly knew that the goal of PathFactory rebranding was to create well-educated and enthusiastic brand ambassadors.

She stated, “We wanted our name to reflect our vision to power data-driven content delivery and provide marketers with a path to greater relevance, insight, and revenue. It is that vision that will further our growth.”

The VP of Marketing at PathFactory added, “We began the communication process around the launch and re-brand about six weeks ago when we let our employees in on the new name. It was very important that they be a part of the process, and be excited and informed about what it means. We ran a short info session each week where we shared more information about the launch.”

The Role of Key Analysts and Customer Advocates in PathFactory Rebranding

Elle said, “Our key analysts had been informed a few weeks ago, and we shared the details with about a hundred customer advocates, partners, and friends of the company over the last two weeks. That group all received a carefully-curated direct mail package with branded items and a top-secret announcement.”

We clearly knew that the goal of PathFactory rebranding was to create well-educated and enthusiastic brand ambassadors.

We now have an integrated, omnichannel campaign to inform the market, consisting of email, display, and social components, along with the very visible launch at the SiriusDecisions Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.

The Definition of PathFactory’s Ideal Customer

Elle informed us about their ideal customer profile. She said, “Our ideal customer is now and has always been high-performing marketing organizations that pride themselves on driving revenue for their companies.”

Elle added, “Our best customers have a mature approach to demand generation, digital marketing, and marketing operations, and want to transform passive content delivery to provide always-on customer experiences at scale. They are also unsatisfied with the data available to them today about how their content is performing and the impact it has on revenue. They are seeking deeper insight to understand the role of content in the buyer’s journey.”

How Would Sales Teams Benefit from PathFactory?

PathFactory Now Empower a B2B Marketing and Sales Team with Content Insight and Activation Platform

Elle mentioned, “Our customers have proven that if you change the way you deliver your content, you can educate buyers faster, accelerate them through the funnel, and provide higher-quality leads to sales, delivering great results for their businesses.”

She added, “The PathFactory Content Insight and Activation Platform helps B2B marketers connect audiences at all lifecycle stages with the information they need, wherever they engage, and provides the insight to analyze what is and isn’t working to generate pipeline and revenue. By optimizing the delivery of content, companies are able to create more deeply educated and qualified buyers and ultimately accelerate the path to purchase.”

Intelligent Content Benefit Both Sales and Marketing

The Insight provided by the PathFactory Engine gives both sales and marketing the most powerful buying signals available in B2B, including Engaged Intent.

Elle said, “Content is at the heart of B2B marketing and every interaction with content should generate a ton of insight. But the metrics marketers rely on today – clicks, form fills, downloads – only tell part of the story. By tracking exactly how much time an audience spends consuming content, marketing and sales teams get an objective insight into buyer interest and intent.”

The Power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in Content Marketing

B2B Content Recommendations to PathFactory: We Saw it Coming!

Elle said, “In 2016, we launched the first B2B content recommendations powered by artificial intelligence. We’ve made our platform smarter today by dramatically expanding the breadth and quality of the dataset that’s powering it.”

She informed, “The PathFactory Engine gathers hundreds of signals from visitors, accounts and third-party sources, analyzes content using AI, and combines that with deep engagement data to automate and optimize content activation at scale and prove content’s influence on revenue.” 

Pathfactory Product Roadmap for B2B Content Marketing

New Technologies in Automation/ Content Development, and  Content Delivery for 2018-2020

We believe that in order to get as close as possible to true, always-on content activation, it requires a deep knowledge of your content and your audience. Sounds simple, but to date, there have been many missing pieces. Some of the places we’re continuing to invest include —

• The continued use of AI and machine learning to understand our customers’ content better automatically, so that content engagement can drive true insight around what topics are resonating and why the content is working.
• Breaking down the walls between marketing and sales by providing truly actionable insight and next-best actions to sales, in the systems where they work, with context around why the account/lead is qualified.

Elle stated, “The use of conversational UI (chatbots) is becoming commonplace; the B2B application we are interested in is to ask the visitor what type of content or topics they are looking for, and use their reply to provide them with the most appropriate content. Just as important, we would like to tell the marketer what terms people are “searching” for to prevent people bouncing back to Google and relying on the marketer’s SEO/SEM to direct them to the information they need.”

Thank you, Elle, for your insights on PathFactory.