Kathy Leake has over 20 years experience in agency advertising. In 2007 she became an entrepreneur and started her first successful ad-tech company.

Kathy started her second company, Local Response, also in the ad-tech space in March 2011. LocalResponse has revenues of over $10 million and expects to double revenue this year. Kathy has a goal of starting multiple companies over the next 10+ years and maintaining a vested interest in each.

In this interview you will learn what the ad tech industry does, how Local Response is using commercial intent, how they collect data and how the brands they work with use it.  Kathy will also share how Local Response generates leads for themselves, and how they use email to open the door.

Listen now and you’ll hear Kathy and I talk about:

• (03:00) Introduction
• (05:20) Why did you start two ad-tech companies?
• (07:30) How did you cross over from the services to technology side?
• (12:00) How did you raise the funds to start your current company?
• (16:00) What does your product do?
• (20:00) How many people are on the team?
• (21:00) What are the profit margins like in ad-tech?
• (23:00) How do you generate leads?
• (34:00) What does one of your first sales calls look like?
• (39:00) What things need to be in place to have any type of a series A round for raising funds?

Resources Mentioned

• localresponse.com

More About This Episode

The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.

It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.

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About Kathy Leake

Kathy is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of LocalResponse, a company that helps marketers respond to real-time consumer intent. At LocalResponse she is responsible for positioning, go-to-market, revenue generation and general operations.

Prior to joining LocalResponse, Kathy was a Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Media6Degrees, a Social Targeting company.  At Media6, Kathy developed the positioning, strategy and go-to-market blueprint for the company.  She successfully took Media6 to market and drove the company from pre-revenue to $20 million in revenue and $100 million valuation in 2 years.

Kathy came to Media6 with 20 years of advertising experience having worked at multiple Omnicom and WPP agencies such as DDB Needham, Ogilvy & Mather, TBWA/Chiat Day, Agency.com and Red Sky Interactive. At these agencies Kathy held executive, business development and media positions.

Kathy is passionate about creating new methods of ad targeting and has been published in numerous articles for industry leading publications including Ad Age, Ad Week, eMarketer, CMO.com, MediaPost, Business Insider, Tech Crunch, GigaOM, Mobile Marketer, Venture Beat and Internet Retailer. Kathy was named Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Women to Watch in 2013 and 21 Most Powerful Women in Mobile by Business Insider 2012 and 28 Most Powerful Women in Mobile 2013 by Business Insider. Listed on Forbes as Top 11 Women Who Started Amazing Companies and both of her start-ups are listed in Forbes America’s Most Promising Companies 2013.