What are the key priorities for a MarTech stack optimisation strategy to achieve?

– Increase marketing ROI.

What would your company use AI the most for?

– Develop data-led marketing campaigns.

What are the major roadblocks in trialling the new innovations in marketing technologies?

– Lack of use cases.

How important is data in making marketing decisions and engaging customers?

– Very important – I always leverage data 100% of the time.

What is the one marketing platform/app/solution you can’t live without? Why?

– The most crucial platform every business should have is a CRM. Before the consideration of any other platform, app, solution, it is important to have a database to collect information on your current customers and potential customers. This is one of the core necessities in helping a company build out a robust marketing plan to net a healthy ROI.

How do you see the skillsets needed for the marketing profession changing?

– Marketing has become less print but more digital focus over the past decade. Marketers with a strong understanding and skillset with digital marketing are in demand. This is especially important so as more and more brands start taking marketing in-house.

At your organisation what tasks in marketing are good to automate and what tasks still need a human touch?

– All marketing tasks still require a human touch. Automation and machine learning has not reached a degree to replace humans. Humans are still needed for the setup, governance, and troubleshooting work in the event of an error. With that said, automation greatly helps with reporting especially if you are communicating that information on a global scale.

If you had to build a marketing strategy at your organisation for 2021 from scratch, what type of partners would you look for to collaborate?

– Search and social partners have seen a high ROI across the globe. I would start with understanding the core consumers for the organization and then working with a search partner and at least one social partner to reach them.

What is the best use of technology you have seen during this time of crisis?

– Quick switch and adaptation to virtual have been the best use of technology during this time of crisis. This is especially the case for companies whose business is fully or partially in-person events or conferences in normal times.

Currently, what are you primarily looking for in your digital marketing efforts? Awareness or engagement? Why?

– Sales is always the primary focus. The secondary will be engagement as this type of action is easier to identify and measure. Awareness is a super upper funnel and more difficult to measure and tie back to marketing efforts.

How do you balance experimenting with new technologies vs investing in current technologies that you already utilise?

– It is always ideal to identify which current technologies work for the organisation and continue utilising them, yet set aside a budget every year to test new technologies to understand what could be a new addition to the MarTech stack.

What challenges do you see in processing data coming from different sources?

– The biggest challenges in processing data coming from different sources are completion, accuracy, recency, and frequency of the data and then connecting it all to one unique identifier. Standardisation is key to preventing these challenges.