{"id":15652,"date":"2019-01-17T18:50:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T18:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/?p=15652"},"modified":"2025-03-26T10:06:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T14:06:38","slug":"moment-with-a-marketing-maverick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/blog\/moment-with-a-marketing-maverick\/","title":{"rendered":"Moment with a Marketing Maverick &#8211; Derek Gerber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Derek Gerber is the global marketing director at ActivePDF, the leading global provider of automated, server-side PDF tools. Derek is responsible for the analysis of customer research, current market conditions, and sales enablement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/embed\/medias\/hoh60lql5a.jsonp\" async><\/script><script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/assets\/external\/E-v1.js\" async><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"wistia_responsive_padding\" style=\"padding: 56.25% 0 0 0; position: relative;\">\n<div class=\"wistia_responsive_wrapper\" style=\"height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%;\">\n<div class=\"wistia_embed wistia_async_hoh60lql5a videoFoam=true\" style=\"height: 100%; position: relative; width: 100%;\">\n<div class=\"wistia_swatch\" style=\"height: 100%; left: 0; opacity: 0; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 0; transition: opacity 200ms; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"filter: blur(5px); height: 100%; object-fit: contain; width: 100%;\" src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/embed\/medias\/hoh60lql5a\/swatch\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Additionally, he has created numerous revenue-generating websites, automated marketing systems, telemarketing, print, and online digital campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Learn more about him below!<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How did you get started in marketing?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A long time ago my father started a software company, and I was actually at CNN working with paid advertisements on television and digital media for online and mobile. At that point, I had a decision to make: continue that route or go build a business with my father. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I actually got started in software because of my father, and we went and sold his company. We were really successful with it. Over time, it got me into the career I&#8217;m in today, and I love doing what I do!<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What have been some of the biggest challenges you&#8217;ve faced as a marketer?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think one of the biggest challenges in B2B marketing, that any marketer is facing these days, is that we tend to forget the sales process at hand. A lot of marketers don&#8217;t have experience in the sales world, in terms of opening and closing deals all on their own, and that&#8217;s actually where I came from.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I started in sales! <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I made that transition into the marketing arena because I found out that during the lead generation process if I can generate higher quality leads and get those personas who are ready to buy right now to contact me, it\u2019s going to mean more in terms of customer loyalty and brand retention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-15655\" src=\"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/01\/IMG_6862-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Active PDF's Derek Gerber directs the company's B2B marketing department.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What does it take to succeed in the realm of B2B marketing?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">B2B is very challenging. It&#8217;s not about just having a product at the right time, it&#8217;s about brand awareness and brand legitimacy, along with other factors. You may have the best technology, but without quality employees, people will pick the other team, every time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What makes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.activepdf.com\/\">ActivePDF<\/a> special is we have a motto here,<\/span> \u2018peace of mind through great technology and people.\u2019 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s something I firmly believe in and bring to the table, as does the rest of our team. So, when it comes to B2B, it&#8217;s about building personal relationships with people to make sure that you have their backs. That&#8217;s what we strive and focus on. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What strategies would you say work best to convert leads into clients?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some of the best strategies I believe for converting leads into clients is providing the content that they want up front. Today, people want instant gratification from what they&#8217;re doing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When they have a challenge or a pain point in front of them, and they need to do something about it, it\u2019s crucial to provide genuine, organic, honest, and insightful types of content and understand where they&#8217;re at.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s the best way to form a relationship up front. Just coming through and saying \u201cbuy my stuff because it&#8217;s so great\u201d doesn&#8217;t work. It may have worked before; however, these are different times, and people are much more knowledgeable. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are so many options, and many things come to the table when it comes to terms of resources. People have a lot to choose from! So being that genuine and honest person is the best way to get through the door with clients looking for a reliable partner to help solve problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-15656\" src=\"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/01\/IMG_6866-1024x759.jpg\" alt=\"Active PDF B2B marketing colleagues in front of their personalized Anaheim Ducks jersey.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"759\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What do you see as the next big thing in B2B marketing?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think the next big thing in B2B marketing is even more personalization. I think the infusion of AI and machine learning, in terms of integrating this technology better into a buyer cycle, is really what we&#8217;re heading toward. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many people love the anonymous side of browsing and checking out things without being contacted by a sales person per se, especially in B2B. I think what we&#8217;re going to start to see is the transition toward personalized everything. This includes personalized storyboards, customized content creation that&#8217;s dynamically generated with very little human intervention and more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I believe AI and machine learning elements help marketers better understand clients as they&#8217;re coming in the door, as we can capture even more data from those artificial conversations up front and the way we analyze their data.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is one of the most important lessons that you&#8217;ve learned in your marketing career?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of different things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I could not be more thankful or more grateful for all of the opportunities and wonderful people I&#8217;ve worked with. My advice to any marketer is \u201cyou don&#8217;t know it all.\u201d I think that&#8217;s honestly where our partnership [with Directive] comes into play.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think I&#8217;m really good at what I do. I think they\u2019re really good at what they do. Sometimes there&#8217;s overlap in our common knowledge, and sometimes there are gaps we can fill together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What I learned a long time ago was, to do these big, amazing things, you need a team of people in your corner to get it done and get it done right. Some people can put things together and try to willy nilly it and force it into play.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, when you sit down with a partner who&#8217;s knowledgeable, who can get these things done with me, set those KPI&#8217;s, hit those goals and knock them off the list, that&#8217;s a part of a partnership and a relationship that a lot of people don&#8217;t teach you about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regarding lessons and advice, you don&#8217;t know everything and you never will know everything. When you think you do, please check yourself. That&#8217;s something we try and keep in mind here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of ego and confidence is good. You need that. But on the flip side, egotism and arrogance are not. There&#8217;s no room for that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s really about establishing relationships and partnerships with people that you trust and help you get your work done. That&#8217;s the best lesson I\u2019ve learned and the advice I can give you is to go build your network.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-15657 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/01\/IMG_6878-1024x649.jpg\" alt=\"Image of Active PDF's sign inside of their office. \" width=\"1024\" height=\"649\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What role does Directive play for ActivePDF? Who is Directive for ActivePDF?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/\">Directive<\/a> and ActivePDF have a phenomenal partnership and come together to solve problems many companies face. We address these challenges in a way that is unique for us. When we came to the table, we had to learn a lot about each other and what we need to accomplish. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We had certain limitations here. I needed more hands on deck, but I also needed a partner in my corner that could strategize with me on how to get these things done. We wanted to grow volume, work on <a href=\"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/services\/seo\/\">SEO<\/a>, work on lead quality, and work on visitor quality on our site in terms of the number of pages explored.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have all that data up front so for us getting started, it was really about finding a partner we trust to set the footprint. Now that we&#8217;re growing into our relationship, even more, we&#8217;re ready to take the next steps and pick new KPI&#8217;s we can focus on because we accomplished a lot of our goals. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Directive to ActivePDF is a fundamental cornerstone of a partnership that we rely on to communicate to our market that we are their digital transformation automation partner. And, we are right here for you. Directive helps us tell that story across the board to millions and millions of people.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What would be your advice to marketers? <\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you&#8217;re new to marketing, remember <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">why<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> you&#8217;re marketing. A lot of people think marketers are just there to pick colors and logos and have fun with these little things. But this is not within 100 miles of what real marketing is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">B2B marketing is different than it was five years ago and certainly different than it was 10 or 20 years ago. People today are looking for instant gratification and satisfaction. When I go to Google and want to find what I need, it better be in those top three search results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how do you get to that? Well again, you&#8217;re not creating just colors and shapes. You&#8217;re creating content that drives people down the sales funnel on their own. If marketers want to get better, pick up some sales books.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start to understand your buyer persona. Start to understand that buying journey. Start to understand what it actually takes to go from generating a lead<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">through a trial all the way to a closed deal at the end of the buying cycle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There&#8217;s so much more to learn about it. It&#8217;s not just about making Facebook updates, but understanding that you&#8217;re going to generate revenue from that form of content. Find that purpose, build a plan, commit yourself to it, and set the target.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, don&#8217;t just come up and say, \u201cHey, we&#8217;re going to have 10 Facebook updates today.\u201d That&#8217;s not marketing, that&#8217;s not what we do, in B2B especially. So, get out there, find who your target is, stick to that, pick up some books, and learn everything you can about sales before you try B2B marketing on a big scale. I think it&#8217;ll entirely change your perspective.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-15654 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/directiveconsulting.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/01\/IMG_6835-1024x606.jpg\" alt=\"Global Marketing Director of Active PDF. \" width=\"1024\" height=\"606\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Derek Gerber is the global marketing director at ActivePDF, the leading global provider of automated, server-side PDF tools. Derek is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,44],"tags":[74,119,127],"class_list":["post-15652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b2b","category-marketing-mavericks","tag-b2b","tag-leadership","tag-marketing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Moment with a Marketing Maverick - Derek Gerber - Directive CA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"B2B marketing can be challenging. 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