[Interview] Nathan Rawlins, CMO, Lucid Software

Lucid Software offers a visual collaboration suite that helps teams see and build the future from idea to reality. With its products, Lucidchart, Lucidspark and Lucidscale, teams can align around a shared vision, clarify complexity, and collaborate visually, no matter.

Nathan Rawlins, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer spoke to Marketing Report about the business model, marketing strategies and future plans.

Briefly introduce Lucid Software

With over 70 million users across the globe, Lucid Software is a leader in visual collaboration software, helping teams see and build the future from idea to reality.

Through its products Lucidchart (intelligent diagramming), Lucidspark (virtual whiteboard), and Lucidscale (cloud visualization), teams can align around a shared vision, clarify complexity, and collaborate visually, no matter where they're located.

What are your duties at Lucid Software?

Simply put, I help showcase the value of visual collaboration to business leaders.

Over my seven years at Lucid, my job has undergone many iterations. However, one thing remains true in marketing at any level: you're the encourager, celebrator and collaborator of the business.

As Chief Marketing Officer, I encourage an entire team to get creative to showcase the benefits and value of our visual collaboration product suite.

Marketing is usually a potential customer's first interaction with a company, and you need to encourage their interest, whether that's through the wording in an advertisement, the design of a website, or the quirky social media video.

But for marketing to be successful, you need to collaborate. Collaborate with the developer teams, collaborate with business and executive teams and collaborate with customers in order to market and celebrate your products and brand.

How have you successfully built and maintained Lucid Software in a competitive industry like software?

At Lucid, a key part of our growth strategy relies on driving broad use of our products across millions of users. We employ a Product Led Growth strategy, where we get in front of millions of users every month and strive to help them see how our products can help them be successful. This motion blends seamlessly with our sales-led motion, where we work with companies to help them adopt our products broadly and become a critical part of driving key strategic initiatives, such as supporting hybrid work, or driving accelerated innovation.

What role does digital marketing play in your overall marketing strategy, and how has it evolved in recent years?

Digital marketing is at the heart of our marketing strategy, helping us connect with a wider audience more effectively. From SEO to social media to content marketing, over the years it has become a data-driven powerhouse, allowing us to personalize our messaging and reach new and specific groups with precision. Social media, SEO, and content marketing have transformed how we engage with our audience, making our interactions more meaningful.

To broaden Lucid's reach, several years ago, our team decided to try a new marketing approach and created a series of videos that explained animal memes in a lighthearted way. Adweek named "The only campaign that truly mattered in 2018." It started with breaking down common phrases like "What Is a Pupper? What Is a Doggo?" and expanded to become "Lucidchart Explains the Internet." It evolved to a deep dive into the world of animal name memes as well as other popular topics at the time. Our first post has been viewed over half a billion times, including tens of million views on TikTok.

It's a fun one to add here because it was such a non-traditional approach that our team proposed. The campaign is still so beloved that followers frequently ask us to create more advertisements, and it's something that continues to stay in our marketing strategy because of its success! I love that it connected us with Lucid users in a unique and ongoing way.

In your experience, how can brands and companies boost creativity in marketing teams and what is the role of AI in that process?

An important first step is to get clarity on what a creative approach to marketing entails. Creativity is often associated with artistic activities or seen as a talent that only the few possess. However, at its core, creativity simply comes down to creating things. In marketing, that means generating fresh ideas, gaining new perspectives and most importantly, stimulating change and action.

Creative campaigns will only thrive once marketers find the courage to explore new areas, collaborate and transform ideas into actions. It's not about delivering perfect concepts overnight. Rather, it's about embracing an iterative process or in other words: incremental improvements. True creativity requires a willingness to experiment, to adapt and to learn by doing. While coming up with 'cool' ideas is important, genuine creativity lies in understanding that the perfect idea is a continuous journey of refinement and growth.

Using AI in marketing is a powerful catalyst for driving creativity. By automating routine tasks, AI allows people to focus on timely initiatives. Generative AI can also kickstart brainstorming on a project by generating new ideas from entering prompts. This technology fosters a culture of experimentation within marketing teams, allowing them to quickly identify what works and what doesn't. By utilizing AI to gain new insights, refine messages and discover new ways of connecting with target audiences, marketing teams can effectively prepare and experiment with different strategies.

What metrics do you use to measure brand awareness and the effectiveness of your branding campaigns?

The metrics vary based on the intent of the campaign. For instance, for direct response campaigns, we focus on ensuring that we are being effective with the money we spend--from tracking the cost of acquisition, but also going deeper into the funnel to make sure we are targeting keywords and topics that attract users to our products that can most benefit from our solutions.

How do strategic partnerships contribute to your marketing and business development goals?

We take pride in partnering with a variety of solutions that help teams collaborate and communicate more efficiently. With over 120 integrations, our users are able to streamline their workflows by working seamlessly within tools they are already familiar with.

What are some of the successful collaborations that have benefited Lucid Software market presence?

We have long had strong relationships with many different partners. For instance, our products have been some of the most popular add-ons for Microsoft 365 and more recently, we have been working closely with Microsoft to integrate with Microsoft Copilot and help provide greater value to our joint customers.

What lessons have you learned from your career in the various software companies that you have worked for?

I think that one of the most important lessons is that there is no singular formula for success. Elements of marketing have looked different in every company I have worked for, because the unique strengths and needs of each of the companies have differed. Where I see things go wrong most often is when marketing leaders try to apply the exact same playbook that they ran in Company A when they join Company B. Of course, there is a lot we can apply from past experience, but it is vital to adapt to the needs of each particular business.

How is your marketing strategy evolving to adapt to future trends and changes in consumer behavior?

Too often marketing is thought of as solely advertising or user acquisition. Those elements of marketing are vital, but far from the complete picture. Marketing strategy continues to evolve to be significantly more holistic. It starts with a clear understanding of user and customer needs, which in turn drives deep cross-functional collaboration on building strategies, products, customer interactions, campaigns, etc. that help to meet those customers’ needs. In short: marketing strategy needs to influence virtually every part of the customer interaction.

Additional thoughts

At Lucid, we have over 70 million users of our products. They are from all over the world. Our strategy, therefore, is inherently international. It has been important for us to build for scale every step of the way. Often we start with unscalable experimentation, and then step back and ask ourselves "now how can we make that scalable across the globe."

www.lucid.co

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