Meet Our Team: Tracy St. Martin, Senior Vice President of Marketing

Welcome to our recurring column, Meet Our Team, where we will spotlight some of the integral members of the Casting Networks team who are dedicated to keeping our platform running smoothly and efficiently for our customers and clients. For our latest installment, we speak with Tracy St. Martin, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Talent Systems.

1. What is your role at Casting Networks/Talent Systems?

I am the Senior Vice President, Marketing for Talent Systems, where I have the opportunity to work across all of our lines of business, including Casting Networks, Spotlight, Cast It and Staff Me Up, among others. My team oversees every facet of marketing for our brands, including customer acquisition and retention, content, SEO, product marketing, social media, email marketing, branding, design, comms and PR.

2. What is your favorite part of your job?

I love being a team leader and manager. From early in my career when I was a first-time manager to today where I oversee a team of 20 employees, I have found people management incredibly rewarding. I enjoy working with my team to determine their strengths, what gets them excited about logging into work every day and what skills I can help them develop in order to get to the next step in their careers. Watching junior members of the team learn, evolve and rise through the ranks brings a really rewarding, human element to my role that motivates me to be an effective leader and positive example to my team.

3. What are you most excited about working on this year?

We recently announced the launch of Talent Systems’ three-year partnership with the Casting Society (CSA), and I’m so excited to work more closely with the CSA members and board to develop educational opportunities, networking events and panels, and programming curated to meet the unique needs of the casting community. We and the CSA share a love and respect for actors, and this partnership will help further support their craft.

4. What are some interesting areas you get to focus on at Casting Networks/Talent Systems that you didn’t in previous roles?

While I have worked for a number of tech companies as well as businesses in the e-commerce and live events space, when I joined Casting Networks it was my first foray into the world of casting and auditioning. As a non-actor, I wasn’t familiar with our products prior to joining the company, but as soon as I did, all of my actor friends in Los Angeles told me that they had profiles on Casting Networks! It’s exciting to be part of an organization that is so critical to the careers of the performer community.

5. What’s something interesting or unexpected about your role that people would be surprised to know?

While branding and creative often come to mind for many people when they think about marketing, my role is actually quite technical and requires me to not only have a deep understanding of our products and how they function but also a strong quantitative skill set. I spend a significant portion of my time reviewing metrics, pulling insights out of spreadsheets, and interpreting data in order to improve the performance of our marketing campaigns and our business.

6. What drove you to pursue a career in Marketing?

I completed my M.A. in English Literature in 2005 and intended to teach college lit courses, but a number of my acquaintances who taught at the college level discouraged me due to challenging schedules and difficulty securing tenure. Instead, I took an entry-level Account Manager role at an agency where I learned digital marketing from the ground up. I found that I could apply many of the skills I had honed during my undergrad years and in graduate school to my marketing career, including writing, storytelling, critical thinking, problem-solving and viewing marketing campaigns through an analytical lens; and I enjoyed the challenge of clearly articulating a brand’s value to customers and anticipating consumers’ needs and pain points.

7. Tell us about a mentor or person who inspired you to get to where you are today.

I was inspired early in my career by managers who were approachable coaches/mentors that were willing to sit down and work through challenges with me as opposed to taking on the role of an ominous, unapproachable figure sitting behind a closed office door. I still have friendships today with some of those previous managers, and they demonstrated to me how compassionate leadership goes much further in building an effective team than being dismissive or self-serving.