The world hadn’t seen challenges equal to those we endured in 2020 for more than 100 years. Today we offer the first in an occasional series that focuses on how Indiana tech companies survived and/or thrived during the pandemic.

One Thursday in March 2020, everyone was in the Lumavate office as usual.

“By the next morning, the decision was made to send everyone home to work for what we all thought would only be a couple of weeks,” recalls Stephanie Cox, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at the app building company.

It was a scene that played out for businesses across Indiana as well as the rest of the country.

As we all experienced, the office didn’t reopen as leadership had thought. The team used the unexpected interlude to consider the company’s next steps.

“We pretty much blew up our entire roadmap,” Stephanie said “We rebuilt our platform, expanded our sales-strategy to include product led growth (PLG) and refined our ideal customer profile. We accelerated our plans to expand our go-to-market strategy to include product-led.”

Traditionally, Lumavate’s sales team racks up thousands of miles of air travel meeting face-to-face with enterprise clients and prospects. Pivoting to virtual sales calls was hard enough, but the team also had to figure out how to market and sell during a global crisis.

Small and medium-sized businesses were already accustomed to buying online. Lumavate saw this as an opportunity to expand its PLG strategy and seize on the trend of companies of all sizes buying online.

“There has been more digital transformation in the last 10 months than in the last 10 years. And that’s no hyperbole,” Stephanie said. “Deciding to expand to a product-led growth strategy is challenging when your product has been built around a traditional sales-led strategy. We had to rethink everything about our platform, website, and business operations. We like to think of PLG as our best SDR that just happens to work 24/7 for us.”

The team rebuilt its platform in a matter of months. One developer was tasked with redesigning the product’s entire frontend while the rest of the development team stayed focused on existing customer projects.

Stephanie Cox
Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Lumavate
“Change isn’t hard. Knowing what and when to change is hard.”

It wasn’t just the mechanics of the business that changed.  

Lumavate took on a more candid approach to its marketing in order to more authentically reflect the team’s tone and personality. And that inspired the rebranding of Lumavate’s podcast, Real Marketers. Branching from these efforts, the Lumavate team also launched its Real Marketers community of like-minded marketers who didn’t shy away from talking about the real truths of marketing.  

“The whole idea for Real Marketers started because I wanted to find a way to talk to other marketers like me. Originally, it was just going to be the name of the second season of our podcast, but then it grew into something much bigger and the idea for creating this community was born,” Stephanie said.

Lumavate’s platform is continually evolving with new functionality to give marketers what they need to make killer apps. The company is a key player in the no-code movement that enables marketers to build apps in a matter of hours.

“We don’t see this as taking away from the tech ecosystem, rather it propels the industry forward by driving demand for high-paying developer jobs as it requires these developers to continuously create no-code solutions,” Stephanie said. “The popularity in no-code platforms has skyrocketed in the past year as marketers have discovered they can accomplish more on their own.

Lumavate’s ability to quickly adapt to the shifting buying practices and needs of customers paid off.

“I’m extremely proud of the work our team has done, not despite COVID, but because of it,” said Cox. “We would not be where we are today if this change wasn’t thrust upon us. While the past year had its challenges, I’m thankful for the opportunities it’s presented, and the strength demonstrated by our team.”