Bobby Patrick, the CMO of UiPath, a global business automation software company headquartered in New York, has come a long way since he joined the FBI at the young age of 16. With extensive experience as a CMO in both startups and Fortune 20 companies, Patrick has successfully applied his technical expertise to commandeering marketing organizations at several global technology companies.

For decades, Patrick has had a frontrow seat on how marketing has evolved from nice-to-have to a must-have element in building successful technology businesses. A key focal point of his journey has been the importance of putting the customer at the center of marketing.

“Marketing in tech is often far too fluffy. At one of the previous companies I worked for, I was shocked at how marketers there never met with customers – seriously, never. They really did not know how products worked beyond generic descriptions and buzzwords. I am not a fan of marketing as merely a supporting function.”

When he first met Daniel Dines – the founder and Co-CEO of UiPath – in the summer of 2017, it was clear that both shared a similar approach to marketing. Patrick’s vision for marketing is built through understanding the product customers are using. With a technical background, Patrick is able to put himself in the shoes of the customer and to simplify and optimize the user experience. 

“At UiPath, marketing has always been strategic, never a nice-to-have.”

Building a strategic marketing approach

UiPath has become synonymous with automation. For Patrick, this was an intentional component of the company’s marketing strategy.

“We absolutely wanted UiPath to be synonymous with automation. Of course, in 2017 the company was unknown. Our category, Robotic Process Automation, was relatively early in its evolution. Our top two competitors at the time were both 3-4 times larger than us. They should have won the category. But unlike our competitors, we built our brand around helping humans to be more successful, more creative, and more engaged.”

For Patrick, there were three categories of milestones that drove early momentum.

Building a thriving community.“We democratized our software and made it easily accessible. Small businesses could use UiPath for free. Our Academy, a system of educational courses through which we educated users, was rich in content and easy to use. Employees in a finance or HR department could download our software and use it. They would instantly fall in love with it.”

Gaining industry analyst recognition. “In enterprise software, the legitimacy of a category in the eyes of large customers is often defined by the creation of a Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave, or IDC Marketscape. By 2019, UiPath had gained the top spot in all of them.’

Continuous ‘earned’ momentum. UiPath made automation a popular topic in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, CNBC, Bloomberg and others. The company was selected to the coveted CNBC Disruptor 50.

For Patrick, the core function of marketing is to create new business opportunities, drive demand and deliver sales. 

“Too many tech companies often skip over brand building and jump straight to demand generation. In their mind, they want to spend $1 in campaigns this quarter and have $10 or $20 in new business appear next quarter. Unfortunately, it is not this easy. I believe marketing’s goal should be to make the “top of the funnel” as wide as possible. This comes from constantly elevating a category and then firmly establishing a company’s brand equity (momentum, familiarity, consideration and quality). At UiPath we moved from last place to first place in brand equity in less than 18 months.”

Elevating and rebooting a brand

In 2018, the company was looking to sharpen the brand as they were quickly moving towards maturity and name recognition. 

“We wanted a rebrand that could take us to the next level. Everything from our company name and logo design, to our slogan and core purpose was on the table. We wanted to elevate the distinction of the UiPath brand – the clarity of the identity.”

At the time, UiPath had significant challenges to solve. Traditional robots in a business setting were often depicted as mechanical and unfriendly. To change this perception of the word “robot” from something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, to the type of software “robots” that UiPath’s automation software deploys for its users, the company aimed to create a new narrative that brought warmth to the word by portraying robots as friendly, highly useful assistants – like a copilot. 

“We hired a third-party expert that really challenged us on our brand. We had options that radically leaned into some of our largest brand strengths. But, ultimately we chose an evolutionary approach that built off the strengths of our existing identity. We tightened our logo and launched a new tagline that showcased our position in the future of work: Reboot Work®.  It was the perfect move, and it drew widespread support.”

When it comes to branding, much like advertising, everyone has a point of view. 

“One of our biggest concerns was going too radical, alienating a portion of our employee base. We did not want to make our rebranding efforts a source of social drama. So, we went evolutionary versus revolutionary, and it was the absolute right move.” 

Rebranding can range from small tweaks to a logo or identity, to wholesale changes, such as unveiling a new company name or entirely new logo.

 “My advice to founders is to consider the risks and expenses associated with rebranding before making any significant changes. Instead of a complete overhaul, I prefer evolutionary changes. At UiPath, over the past six years, we crisped up our logo just once. We bolded it up some and shifted from the safety of ‘tech blue’ to the power of orange. But, we did this only once. We also created an identity with unique visual features, such as “macaronis” (small fragments of our logo) that sit in the background of images. We also introduced seven robot characters (in 2D and 3D variations) that have become loveable additions to showcase our friendly brand. In the spirit of open and transparency, companies should post as much as they can about their brand and how to use it, for everyone to see. Here is UiPath today.”  

Harnessing the power of storytelling

Storytelling should be central to every conversation. It’s important to wrap the company’s stories consistently around a common vision or message. Stories should revolve around how technology can benefit society, as employees and customers gravitate towards mission-driven organizations. 

“At UiPath we unveiled a vision for ‘A Robot for Every Person’ early in 2018. Our brand and customer stories aligned well… for example… “Our robots have your back.” So, the stories would be about robots taking on mundane, repetitive and boring tasks. Stories started to emerge across finance, HR and other back-office organizations that showcased happier employees who no longer had to work weekends to close the books, for example.”

We often think of a brand as an external, customer-facing view, but it’s also crucial for employees and prospective hires which of course relates to company culture. “A brand should touch everyone deeply, and every employee should know at least a dozen great stories”, says Patrick. 

“We wanted early to be the employer of choice. It helped that our founder Daniel Dines cared deeply about building a company that people want to come into work every day; where they would be treated with kindness. We believed in “No Bosses” which helped us minimize the diminishing traits brought on by hierarchy.”

At one point Dines and Patrick had built up so much employer-brand magnetism that their efforts generated more than 30,000 applicants. 

“We actually hired 1,000 people in 100 days at one point. Automation was a huge part of this success. Everyone rallied around being a part of our mission. This ultimately defined our culture.”

Prioritizing consistency over constant change

One of the biggest mistakes – Patrick highlights – is to continuously change or float new slogans and propositions. 

“I see this over and over where employees at a company are promoting conflicting brand messaging. This is not just online but in customer meetings, at customer dinners, at an industry trade show or on stage.” 

It is better to be consistent with average branding than inconsistent with great branding, Patrick states. 

“It’s obvious that such a company is not confident in what it stands for or the employees are not confident in the marketing.”

Employees and the entire company should constantly reinforce key messages and call them out when they do not.

“At UiPath early on, every employee was well versed in our vision, our purpose. From New York to Singapore and Paris to Bucharest, our employees could recite the same words, the strategic pillars that guided the company’s strategy.”

To build awareness and trust in a brand, everyone should be a brand steward. 

“Of course, you can evolve your message as you adjust to market conditions and get feedback. But everyone needs to be rowing the ship in the same direction. When this happens, smaller, focused companies can easily outrun larger, poorly managed companies.”

Parting wisdom

Every startup wants to be associated with an idea or a verb that closely aligns with their core business offering. UiPath succeeded in creating an association between its brand and automation. Patrick has a few actionable steps companies can take to build a strong brand, particularly in B2B software.

“It is important to be tied to major categories that are tracked by Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others. Enterprise IT organizations generally build their spending plans around these large categories such as, ERP, iPaaS, CRM, and RPA. You have to spend time to become relevant to these analysts.”

Patrick noted that Gartner initially had a skeptical view of RPA in 2017 and 2018, but eventually released their first Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA, which gained popularity quickly and became one of their most downloaded research reports.

“Gartner is now on their 4th magic quadrant. It was a fight to become relevant in the years prior to their first Magic Quadrant,” Patrick says with some jubilance.

But how should startups with limited resources prioritize and think about marketing, especially in today’s market environment?

“As a baseline, marketing efforts should be focused on establishing a strong presence through organic and cost-effective strategies. This includes producing compelling content through blogs and stories, becoming an expert at search engine optimization, leveraging video and animations and encouraging online customer engagement, such as through a product forum. Beyond the baseline, building up the profile of your founder/CEO/CTO is critical. The founder is a champion for your culture and your purpose. People root for founders that care deeply. Lean into this big time!”

Many early stage startups operate in a nascent market category that’s only just started to gain awareness. In some of these cases, startups can have $1M, $3M, or $5M in ARR, but still be considered leaders in their category.

“This can be a precarious situation to be in for a founder, because on one hand, they feel good about being the leader and developing/creating the category. But on the other hand, a potential number two competitor could be very close behind, and as you know in startup land these companies grow quickly – so speed is super important.”

For early stage founders, it’s important not to underestimate the power of earned media. By earning a strong placement with a featured customer on a major business site, or having a profile piece written about the company and its vision, one can gain significant awareness and recognition at a relatively low cost. Always prioritize customer stories and their experiences with your product or service, as these can be powerful marketing tools.

To Patrick’s point on the opportunity for number two players seeking to overtake the leader in their category, this was a position that UiPath found itself in before leapfrogging its competitors to become the dominant RPA player. Many other companies have made this “come from behind” journey before establishing market leadership. Often there’s a path for companies to make themselves appear bigger than they really are, which can be useful in these types of scenarios. For Patrick, companies have tools at their disposal to appear bigger and better than their competition. 

“When I started at UiPath in 2017, one of my first moves was to create a Management Page that showcased not just the top handful of executives, but many of our leaders from around the world. We suddenly showed a strong bench versus our competition. Eventually as we grew, it became impossible to feature the entire second-line of management, and we had to revert to a traditional page, but it was a useful tactic at the time.”

“Our second move was to quickly establish a Customer Advisory Council with great name brands. These leaders became quick advocates for UiPath helping us place thought leadership articles in the New York Times and WSJ early on, but perhaps the biggest move was for us to change the market narrative raging at the time (led by our top two competitors) that automation was all about employee reduction.”

Instead, Patrick and his team focused on making employees happier, more engaged, and more productive. “Within a couple of months, the market narrative shifted our way led by raving customers speaking on stage everywhere.”

As a final piece of advice, Patrick suggests that companies bring their culture to the forefront. 

“Oftentimes your competitors may be larger, but they may not have the culture advantage you have. For example, our top competitors operated more commercially and proprietarily, while UiPath focused on openness and transparency – led by four key cultural elements that we lived every day: Be Humble, Be Bold, Be Fast, Be Immersed.”