WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT
Campaign Strategy That Accelerates Execution
February 2026
Speakers: Leigh Choate (SVP Marketing, Lytho) + Helen Baptist (Fractional CMO, Lytho)
Helen Baptist: Hi, my name is Helen Baptist. I am a fractional CMO working over here at Lytho, but I have the pleasure of hosting you today, and apologize for the delay. We had some technical glitches. Always, right? Not that you're sweating at the beginning of a webinar or anything like that, but let's just compound that. Okay, so let me introduce the star of the show today, that is Leigh Choate. Leigh and I actually got to work together in a prior life, so this is going to be a bit of a fun conversation for a change. This is a 30-minute webinar about campaign strategy. Leigh is probably one of the longest-standing customers of Velocity Engine. Worked with the product for two different companies. And so, without further ado, why don't you introduce yourself, and one more piece of housekeeping. This is being recorded, and we will share the link out afterwards, so you don't have to take crazy notes. If you have questions, drop them in the Q&A, or in the chat, and we'll take it from there, okay? Go ahead, Leigh, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Leigh Choate: No, you're great, and it's so great to see you today, Helen. Always a treat to get to chat with you. So, I am currently Senior Vice President of Marketing at Lytho, which is a software that helps marketing teams manage their creative work and keep it compliant. And I've used, as you mentioned, I've used Velocity Engine across two companies, and as you know, Helen, I won an award from Winning by Design for my use of Velocity Engine. So, super excited to talk about, kind of, all the things, you know, not just around Velocity Engine as a product, but how campaign execution and strategy has changed over the years.
Helen Baptist: Yeah, so Leigh, congratulations on the award. I think that that's outstanding. I think it's important to kind of set some context around the size of the team that you were working with there and at Lytho, and how that changes as well. So talk to me a bit about the history of where you've come from, from a campaign strategy perspective to where you are today, and how that has kind of evolved. And how it differs for different sizes teams as well.
Leigh Choate: Yeah, definitely. So, I've been in marketing for 3 decades now, since before I was born.
Helen Baptist: Really? You started at 6?
Leigh Choate: And so, you know, it started out, I started out as a content creator, and then went into campaign execution as, you know, as you go up in your career, it's more strategy, what's the bigger picture, positioning, et cetera. And, you know, I remember the days where you would create all the content from scratch, and then work with the design team to get it all together, and it took forever every single time. And I've worked on gigantic teams, and I've worked on a team of just me more than once. And so the, you know, the most recent example and where I got the award, I worked for a very small company, $3 million company, last year that did one tiny little thing, which was URL shortening. It's not dumb, but it's… who cares? But the big, billion-dollar opportunity was, well I won't go into it because I'll talk forever about it, but there was a huge billion-dollar opportunity, and we needed to get eyeballs from those audiences to think about us differently. So when I joined the company, it was a 15-year-old company, I was the first and only marketing hire. And I knew, first of all, I gotta reposition the website. Instead of being this one thing to a bunch of different people, I needed to change the whole story to this billion-dollar market opportunity that's happening. And then I realized that, and, you know, Matt Hyes has said this too, is when you don't have any budget, content. So, and that's when I heard about and started talking to the founders of Velocity Engine and begged them to let me use it. And what I was able to do was create a foundation in the product that mapped out this whole opportunity, how the company that I worked for played into it. And then it helped me understand who are the personas, what are the things that they're thinking about, what are the types of phrases that they're using to get their attention, and what are the things that are on their mind. So, and previously I had done that with ChatGPT, and just trying to research things on my own, which nobody wants to do, so…
Helen Baptist: Yeah, so those are the foundational elements of product marketing, particularly, really, right? So, Velocity Engine helped you create some of those, is that what I'm hearing from you?
Leigh Choate: Yeah, 100%. So, it's, you know, it was all about, kind of, here's the problem I'm trying to solve, and tell me who I need to talk to, what they care about, and then it creates a whole, you know, and the thing is, is that you go back and forth with it a little bit. I think one of the things we'll talk about is how to tune and enable AI. But what it enabled me to do at the end of the day was create about 50 blog posts that were highly relevant to this audience. And I worked with an offshore agency to help me with, you know, organic search, AI, findability, et cetera, and we started ranking really high for these high-intent phrases based on just the content that I created, and all I did was use Velocity Engine and the strategy and the inputs that I put into it.
Helen Baptist: So, click of a button, basically, really, right? You define your campaign, and then it outputs the content for you, the blogs that you needed, right? Let's talk a little bit about how things have changed in terms of, you know, why Velocity Engine when you've got all these other LLMs that you can access? Why Velocity Engine?
Leigh Choate: So that is a really great question, and I'm a huge, like, people can't shut me up about Velocity Engine, and whenever I mention it, and people start using it, I always get this call, which is, it takes time and effort to put in all this information to Velocity Engine to get it to work. Because what I think we're used to is, let's barf in a prompt, you know, using the crit method that we've learned about, and here's all, magically, here's everything that I need. But my point of view is, think about if you're trying to enable an agency to create a whole content or marketing strategy. And, you know, first of all, for your company, and then for individual verticals or stories that you're telling. It takes months and weeks, and all the meetings, and all the, you know? And so, enabling Velocity Engine to kind of do all that is a very light lift compared to that.
Helen Baptist: There are a couple of other things that are really good points about using a tool like Velocity Engine.
Leigh Choate: You know, we all started out with ChatGPT and creating content, and then we moved and got more sophisticated and used Claude and other tools. But one point of view is that there are 3 whole people on my team, and if we're all starting with different prompts, even if we create a GPT that says, here's our brand voice, or here's our positioning, we're all kind of starting from different places. Velocity Engine gives us kind of one source of truth, and then even if we decide, well, we really need to use a different tool for something, we can grab that information, that source of truth from Velocity Engine, and use it in another tool. The third thing I want to point out is that, and I got this a lot from you, Helen, in your guidance, is it's really important for your team to learn how to use different tools. So, what do they like? What do they dislike? Understand what is this tool really great for, and how it can help you in just the use case, and then other things that it could do for you. And what's been cool about the evolution of Velocity Engine is I got my fingerprints in it when it was really nascent. And, you know, been able to make suggestions about other things that we could do, and now you can go in and, like, create a whole e-book, and it's designed, and you just download it, and you can add it to your website, so…
Helen Baptist: Yeah, so you and I, you exited that company, and I came and chased you and brought you over to Lytho when I was there. I've since left there, obviously. Tell me about the story of what we went through. You don't have to tell me that story, but I think starting from the strategy side is really important, right? Talk to me about that from the campaign strategy and design perspective.
Leigh Choate: Yeah, so when we joined, there was kind of a lot of stuff that Lytho was talking about. And what we did was, you did some really great work around positioning, and how we could narrow in on what were our strengths, what are the things that we could do better than other types of tools. And since then, you've also helped us evolve to what are the industries that we really can shine in. And we have, we have a right to be in those industries, because we have customers and case studies. And so being able to kind of narrow that down has really improved our use of, so now whenever we're creating content, we're always thinking about how does it support one of these pillars, for lack of a better word, or a vertical, or a sales motion that's very specific. So we're not kind of just, like, throwing content around. We're saying what is critical to our pipeline for revenue at this moment, and creating content, and not just content, but then how do we activate it? So we're running ads, we're adding, as we add new content to our site, it goes into PathFactory, so it's discoverable on our website. You know, and all those kinds of things, and really activating that content so that it gets found, and then also working with our offshore agency to, okay, every time we create a blog, we make sure to use the best practices, the meta tag description, the FAQs, the structure that'll help, you know, get that content just amplify how it gets to market, and helps us reach our goal.
Helen Baptist: Talk to me a little bit about the verticalization, because I think that that's one use case. How did you do that in Velocity Engine? Because that really is a campaign strategy, right, at the end of the day. Talk to me about that a little bit.
Leigh Choate: Yeah, so the way Velocity Engine is set up, you can, it's really set up to support campaigns. So, at the, kind of, the top level, you put in, here's who we are as an entity, and then for each vertical, you create a different foundation. So, and, you know, it's really straightforward around, you know, it helps you discover who are the personas. And then, what are the terms that they use? We are really speaking their language. We're not just trying to, like, here's our message, and let's, you know, make it smell like financial services, or something. And then, you know, no one tool is perfect, and so it's a constant, you know, we're testing messaging, we're looking at what are people responding to and not, which is not necessarily AI, but we can then go back and feed that into the foundation to say, hey, this is what is working, and so let's do more of this or less of that. And what's really interesting is that every day, like today, we had a webinar about higher education. And so we heard directly from our customers the things that they're dealing with, so we're going to take that content, feed it into Velocity Engine, what we've learned, so it's going to help inform future content from there as well. So that's also the thing, is that we have this kind of one source of truth where we can add in, you know, things that we've learned.
Helen Baptist: Or what the voice of the customer is, or those kinds of things as well. That's a great use case. Because to me, I feel like, you know, if you're not using a system like this, it's like, grab whenever you can and start from scratch every single time, as opposed to you're walking in and saying, I'm starting with a campaign brief. I know that the foundation is good for now, because I've updated it or I've kept it current, but that all flows down in the way that you think from a campaign strategy perspective, whether you verticalize, or whether you industry or whatever you want to say. Or enterprise versus SMB messaging kind of thing as well, right?
Leigh Choate: Yeah, and you mentioned something in the campaign brief. Because Velocity Engine creates that. And so, it also creates things like persona maps, and persona, like, here's details on everything, every persona in that vertical, or, you know, and that's really great information to use to enable sales. Then you've got, here's what we're doing, if you're interested. And then, here's a strategy, and then here are the personas, and so my next action is we're doing a lot of account-based advertising and outreach, and so I'm looking for what are the all the logic, verbs and things that I need to use to get those correct contacts and titles, because they're completely different for each vertical. So, Velocity Engine can help me find that, and also, once I get other inputs, I can add them in there as well.
Helen Baptist: Yeah, so your targeting gets tighter, too, then, right? In terms of who you're going after, and you're being more efficient with the campaign spend in the long run, as well.
Leigh Choate: Yeah, yeah.
Helen Baptist: Awesome. What would you give as advice from a campaign strategy perspective that may or may not be Velocity Engine? I want people to walk away with thinking about campaign strategy, because it really is a closed-loop cycle. What's the big aha that you've had in your, in the last couple of years working on campaigns at the pace that you're working on? I'm throwing you a zinger question, sorry.
Leigh Choate: Yeah, no problem, I'll try to be the zinger. I mean, I just think about how, you know, marketing at this, especially in the execution side of things, it's just busy, busy, busy work all the time. And to your point, it used to be you start with a blank page, and then you kind of wing it from there.
Helen Baptist: And you went looking in your Google Drive, or your Dropbox, or your folders, and what you have is different than somebody else's reference point.
Leigh Choate: Or, God forbid, you go and talk to sales, or CX, or something to get their input, right? Which is anecdotal, but also helpful, but, you know. And so, when I look at what my role and my team's role looks like now versus, you know, 5 years ago, it's a lot less what I would call kind of busy work. It's more really thinking about, before we create another thing, why are we doing it? Where does it fit into our overall strategy? And then, what is that strategy? Like, that's always been a challenge, is that campaign brief. Nobody ever wants to create a campaign brief. It's never gonna be too detailed, or not enough, or whatever. And so, to me, that's just a great thing to have that can be kind of auto-generated. And so what it does now is, having this kind of content backbone that gets better over time, the content, as you add in more foundational things, no matter what AI tool you're gonna use, the better you train it, the more information you give it, the better output you're gonna get. So it means that we can be more thoughtful and strategic. No matter what level you're at, you're like, oh, well, if I'm gonna do this, it's in support of this other thing, which is pipeline, or awareness, or, you know…
Helen Baptist: Yeah, I think the thing for me was that there was a comfort level that, this, you know, time is the biggest pain point, according to the poll that we've just run. But I think the other part for me was that I had the confidence, as the CMO, working with you, that the most junior marketer who had no campaign strategy experience or campaign experience, right, could run campaigns, and there was a confidence level in myself, or you now, right, that the true messaging and positioning and the targeting and the language of the reader written to them is grounded and strategic first. And I think that that's a big differentiator versus running ChatGPT or Gems or, you know, whatever you're using today. So always having that foundation is always important.
Leigh Choate: Yeah, and I think that, you know, the other thing is, is that when you have a really good go-to-market team, and we're building that here at Lytho, and we're all aligned on, we're all singing off the same song sheet. And so that's when it gets really exciting, because you're being more efficient. And so you're not spending a bunch of time on things that may or may not matter. You're not reacting to somebody's idea. And then the other thing, when you talk about time, so when I was at my former company, it was about 10 months between the time I started and the time that we got into serious acquisition conversations. The company got bought for 4 times its valuation by a $100 million company, 10 months. I was a team of one, and I did a whole bunch of stuff, right? I didn't just redo the website, but I also set up the ops, and all the, you know, build the database, all of those things. And created just a cadre of content that was hyper-relevant and helped us be known for this thing that the $100 million company that bought them didn't give too, challenges about what the product was before they bought them.
Helen Baptist: Yeah, so you repositioned the company first and foremost by foundational work, right? Working inside Velocity Engine, which is campaign strategy first and foremost, right?
Leigh Choate: And the way that it fell, pulled it out was Velocity Engine came into play a bit after I started. I was able to create all that content, you know, 50 blogs, et cetera, in just a few months as a team of one. And it was quality content, like, not all perfect, like, I did review it, like, we would all do our thing. But that was the real lever that I was able to pull as a team of one, so that I wasn't working 24-7.
Helen Baptist: Yeah, I think, you know, I'm working here fractionally right now, and I think the product itself, Velocity Engine, the product, has a rigor as a content operating system, right, in terms of campaign and content ops. If you will. How do you keep track of what campaigns you've created and are in market? Like, Velocity Engine stops at, here's your content, right? You have to put it into production. How do you keep those two tied together at some stage?
Leigh Choate: Well, so we use HubSpot, and if it's not in HubSpot, it doesn't happen, right? Blog post, if it's, you know, email nurture that promotes an e-book or some asset like that, it's all in HubSpot, and we track the engagement with each of those campaigns. And then the other thing we do is we put all of our content into PathFactory, which is, and we've orchestrated it on our website so that it's easy to find things in these verticals and figure out, you know, what are the problems that we're solving? What would people be searching for? So, and then we go back and look at all this kind of data. We look at 6sense for our accounts that we're targeting, how many of them have engaged with our campaigns overall. What types of content are getting the most engagement, and then the kind of the key metric is HubSpot. So what are the campaigns that are actually driving meetings, deals, and pipeline?
Helen Baptist: So, I'm gonna wrap up, because we said 30 minutes, and I know we were 5 minutes late, but, last question for marketers that may be watching this, or if we want to do a sound bite later. What's the, for people who are still building campaigns in a traditional way, where would you ask them to start? What's the first thing to get right? Give me the prescription.
Leigh Choate: I think the first thing to get right is, it's really around prioritization. Even if you're a huge team, you gotta figure out where are you gonna place your bets. And so, where do you have, you know, I've always looked at it, where do we have the best stories that we can tell already, the proof points from our customers? Where are we going to make the most money? Who are the accounts that are more likely to buy from us? And then, are there any kind of market activities that make it urgent now. So, timing, fit, all of these kind of things. And so I think, aligning the go-to-market team with where can we win, and getting sales and marketing aligned in that way is, like, if you can do that, which it's not easy, as we all know. But if you can do that, or at least from a marketing perspective, figure out what's my priority, where can I win the most fastest, and then really double down on that. Before you try to go wide with 10 different campaigns, focus on one at a time, build that process and that system and your foundation, whether it's in AI, whatever kind of tool, so that you can stay true to, this is who we are as a company or as a product, and then here's how everything kind of ladders up to that. And keep it all connected, because if you change this a little bit, then this can all follow after. And that's really the magic of what AI can bring, is if you can set up and have a system where you can have kind of this layer that will inform the other campaigns, or whatever it is you're building. That's when you can really create a bunch of content that's super meaningful and relevant, and is going to help you get results.
Helen Baptist: Leigh, as always, full of wisdom, and loved talking to you today. So, thanks again for joining us. For those of you, again, who's still online, we will be posting this out later this week. But thank you again for joining us, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.
Leigh Choate: Great, thanks so much. Bye.