When Vonage made the pivot from B2B to B2C, chief marketing officer Joy Corso was faced with what she calls "the brand marketer challenge"—getting the company's potential users up to speed on its new mission.

Communicators "have the power of the legacy brand that folks know and have a positive affiliation with," but they also have to shift that and get users to think about the brand "in a whole different way."

As a business-focused brand, Vonage now needs to focus on features that allow "folks to stay connected to their customer through their journey." That includes things like video calling, moving communications to the cloud, and communications APIs (the building blocks for things such as telemedicine).

In addition to the new audience, there is also the question of the competitors a company that has made a market pivot needs to face.

"We are not a digital native," she says, and Vonage has "digital native competitors" for each new area they are aiming for.

To meet the challenge of those competitors the company had to "make it super clear, this is exactly what we do, a telemedicine solution, an SMS solution, a contact center. So, that is how we're really trying to break through the noise in the market and go head-to-head with the competition."

Corso stresses the importance of data and analytics. "Not only do we look at, are we getting pickup for your standard advertising, sort of display ad, that sort of thing, but is it changing the perception of your brand?," she says.

She also talks about how communicators can get measureable results in the midst of the "tsunami of digital ads" that are flooding the market. By being "very direct, humorous, and still interesting," Corso says, "we saw a big uptick in understanding of what we do."

The importance of CSR and ESG initiatives is addressed as well. "I think this notion of doing good and being a good corporate responsible citizen, it's table stakes now."

As a part of that, the company "re-established our Vonage foundation, our non-profit arm, to really connect to accelerating the world's ability to connect. Yes, you're for profitability and shareholders and all that good stuff, but at the end of the day, you should find that way to connect it to your vision, to do good. "

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