The Fearless Marketeer: the transformative journey of digital marketing | Leila Mojtahedi

I think it's still good morning to everyone I am Lea muchi I am head of digital marketing at Billa and if there's anyone here who isn't familiar with the company we are a global manufacturer of engines for the marine and energy industry and provide services to them as well you'll notice that my slides are not on the Villa template um and I did get external Communications to approve that and um it's the things I'm going to be talking about are things that we are discussing in the company but they're not indicative of where we are at this moment so a little bit about who am I so first and foremost I love the digital world I absolutely love it it started when I was about six or seven I started playing video games with my little Spectrum ZX and I have loved it ever since and um my career has pretty much evolved with the development of the internet and the digital world I have worked in several different Industries but my job has always been on that Digital customer engagement and experience layer be it with digital strategies developing digital channels or with digital marketing and personally I love to travel around the world and experience everything that this beautiful planet has to offer um I love taking photos of the people I'm encounter and taking photos of the wildlife that is still out there to be experienced and people who have worked with me know that my goal to catchphrase is that you have to aim for the stars to land on the moon I tend to aim very very high I do aim for the stars I I want to embrace new things to continuously Drive growth and that's why I dare to call myself Fearless right so most of my career has been in B2B and um what I'll be talking about will be largely related to B B2B and in B2B generally speaking marketing has a perception problem still today so these are just a few of the um things that I have heard um in my career from various colleagues on when they're talking about or with marketing and to be honest I had to add there as well that marketing people some of them to do tend to add to this perception problem because they talk very much about in utilizing jargon and terminology that's his marketing specific nobody else really understands or maybe even cares about so in the B2B world to be honest companies didn't really understand the power of digital marketing until Co hit and even then they didn't really know what to do about it but suddenly the world changed and the markets shifted and operational cost started skyrocketing so of course companies started looking in inwards thinking that but you know what functions are actually performing and which ones are actually generating value and which ones do they actually understand so the perception problem started being a big problem for marketing at the same time in B2B marketing hasn't really changed that much in decades and digital marketing is still seen very much as a vehicle to push content and messages out so that to the world hoping that somebody will pick up on like what fabulous prods and services you have so given this perception problem the it is time for marketing and marketeers to start embracing the amazing amount of data and capabilities that the modern Digital World provide in order to embrace this transition and this Evolution that is inevitable and has to happen also in marketing so that nobody can come and say that we don't understand what you're doing and we don't know if you're relevant so I'm going to go through three areas that when when you put emphasis in these and energy into these and you get them right that's when you start making digital marketing into driver for growth so the first one um so you're starting a journey what's the first thing that you do you start looking at what equipment do you have do you have the right to equipment so in this case that means your people so getting back to the basics in that when people talk about about digital marketing it's always about the tools and Technologies what is the latest technology that you need to buy in order to succeed now the thing is that you're never going to get return on investment on those Technologies if you don't have the people who understand how to get the most out of those tools and Technologies then we have data data is crucial everybody knows it everybody talks about it data is essential for digital marketing to succeed and yet the next sentence is nearly always well we have bad data we have a data problem so you know what let's forget that and then my favorite pet peeve organizational silos that everybody is clinging on to my targets and my team versus your targets and your team and forgetting and losing that perspective that you're being hired by the same company to drive value together for that company so what distinguishes the best companies in digital marketing from all of the is their people those companies invest heavily in the data literacy of their people and ensure that their people understand and think on how to get the most out of the capabilities that the tools and Technologies provide and that they have a truly cor collaborative um effort in F having hyperfocus on providing value to the customers and to the company and to them first so to make this happen you have to foster a culture of collaboration and you have to have process efficiency to allow people to have the time and space to actually truly collaborate and focus on how to bring that value to the customer and the companies so for the first point I would say that be brave and start investing and demanding new and relevant skills for from your people and start fostering true collaboration across any kind of organizational silos second one so you have your people and you have the right confidences the skills and everything so what's the next one so for your journey you need rations so in this case data why data because data is crucial to becoming truly customer Centric so what is customer centricity well I have heard numerous companies present that we are so customer Centric then I'll go and see endless presentations on where there isn't even the mention of the word customer what customer centricity in an organization what it looks like what it is is being focused purely on finding solutions for the customers based on their needs and their challenges and their pain points above finding the right customers that fit your products and services it's about having processes and operations that Focus purely on Gathering insights on customer behavior and customer customer needs and executing to constantly improve the customer experience it's about measuring long-term benefits with customers such as customer satisfaction loyalty advocacy uh customer lifetime value above reporting on metrics such as Impressions and leads so it's it's about setting up the entire operations of but setting up the people's mindset round specifically about customer centricity what what is happening in the customers's mind when they start their buying Journey what's happening during the journey that makes them make the decisions that they do and to be able to do that you need to understand what you actually have to measure that instead of these vanity metrics which don't get me wrong they have their place if you want to follow Trends and how you're doing and on a daily basis but we need to start focusing on actionable kpis that actually prove value impact and can decipher the customer needs and behavior and for anybody out there from the B Tob world when you are mapping your customer journey I would ask you to actually think are you mapping the customer Journey with all of its complexity because it is not a straight line or act are you actually mapping the the Journey of your product and service and identifying what are the customer touch points related to that because there are two very very different things and it's a mindset shift from going from c internal thinking to actually being customer Centric and it's about understanding also that what it is what is it that you should actually be measuring how do you think about your customers what changes are you actually seeing in your customers behavior and why what changes are you seeing in your share of your customers Wen and why and how are the customers actually engaging with your brand in a digital environment or actually in any environment based on their perception of your reputation and your Authority and your expertise in what you do so I would as the second point I would say that be brave and be truly customer Centric and don't just say that you are so you have your data driven customer centricity and you have your people who have the best mindsets and the best skills and such what's the third area then well you're on a journey and you want to expedite that Journey so everybody's favorite topic generative AI isn't that why we're here so there are plenty of people in this event and in your companies who can tell you what generative AI is and how to how it works and such but me from a digital marketing perspective how I approach generative AI is I try and think about how I can utilize it to actually drive true growth from digital marketing that how can I utilize it to actually change fundamentally the function in itself because it has changed so many other functions um if you come back later after launch in this check we'll have a very um interesting talk about how it's changed HR but it has changed other functions so why not marketing why is marketing lagging behind in this and when you think of everything that there is out there all the data everything that all the capabilities I would want us to think bigger and like further than we do I get why marketing looks at um these process improvements use when it comes to generative I so looking at content creation and looking at translations and looking at chat Bots because you need that productivity benefit you need the process um benefits to be able to focus on growth but what if what if we Outsource 90% of what your marketing does to generative AI what if we automated the marketing operations all the manual work automate that what if we augmented Channel strategies and uh campaign planning with generative AI what would marketing look like at that point what would be the role of a marketeer at that point which begs the question what is the purpose of marketing in your company so is it to drive growth or is it to plan campaigns and push out content that promotes your products and services everybody is creating content with generative AI at the moment to promote anything and everything that they can it content is being created at an unprecedented pace and content is being pushed out exponentially so if all of that is true how are you going to distinguish yourselves from all of that noise with your content and messages so if we were to then augment what we actually do with true generative AI if we were to replace big chunk of what marketing currently does then back to the question what does marketing do for me marketing represents basically the psychology of customers understanding how they behave and why they behave at the given point how how do you actually have a dialogue with the customers at the right time at the right touch points so that you can convince them that you understand their challenges and have the solutions to be able to help them with that how do you connect the current demand the constantly changing demand to find the right products and services that fit that need that's what marketing should be doing so what if a big what if what if we just replace a big chunk of the marketing that's done now with modern capabilities and everything and automated rely heavily on AI and gen Ai and start focusing purely on the customer understanding them and their needs and finding those critical conversion touch points where we can have the biggest impact I would say that the third area is to for marketing to be brave and really truly adopt on a very fundamental level the new capabilities that the modern Digital World Is providing because to be honest if we go back to the perception problem if marketing doesn't start doing this somebody will come and ask that are you actually providing value and are you relevant at the same time it is not for there weren't very that many marketing people here but it is not for everybody else to try and understand marketing or marketing's terms it is for marketing people to learn to have a dialogue with all of their internal stakeholders on with that with terminology and discussions and dialogue that leadership understands that business understands sales understands I feel very very strongly and people who have worked with me I feel very strongly that marketing should share business goals why wouldn't they why wouldn't they have the exact same goals as what sales has and what business has and I can tell you from personal experience that when you do actually achieve all of this when you get the right people with the right mindset and they understand data they understand how to get most out of the tools and Technology and they understand true collaboration across silos and they focus on the the same business goals as business and sales do it is a remarkable experience that's where magic happens it's absolutely unbelievable I worked for a company that's um where we managed to do this and within two years we nearly doubled the Euro income of generated from marketing initiated efforts and we started from the most waterfall based campaign planning that you can possibly think of data was like no we don't need data we can see how many visits there are to the website and in two years we managed to turn that around by investing substantial amount of time and effort into upskilling the people and having the commonalities with our business and salese so transformation is possible it is but it's a choice you have to actively choose to be on this journey and do not get me wrong this is a difficult Journey it is a painful journey and there will be massive amounts of push back but the benefits outweigh the pain that you will go through substantially and that is how you actually start creating digital marketing and marketing into a driver of growth rather than being just a cost center and with the markets still changing the world being you don't know what's going to happen anymore it seems to be going crazy every day companies can ill afford to not demand that Marketing participates in creating sustainable growth for the company I have worked now for vula for nine months nine whole month months um very exciting Journey starts off with we have over a thousand digital creators globally be they software developers or digital product development professionals and I have within this nine months spent a lot of time talking to anyone and everyone that I can because I need to find the right people to be on our journey in creating digital marketing marketing into a driver of growth and not just a cost center once you get all the pieces in place once you have all the mindsets the skills the date literacy even the tools and Technologies embracing gener AI once you're on that transformative Journey it's all about collaboration you have to get people to think beyond their own team silos and start coming together so I am very excited about the journey that we're on at verula I'm hoping that in uh maybe a year's time I can come back and then tell about how we've succeeded so far but um for now I'm more than happy to continue this discussion with anybody who wants to discuss this further so if you are thinking of this journey or you're on the journey and you just want to throw around ideas or if you have some pain points that you just want to discuss that um what should I do uh with this feel free to send me an email or connect on LinkedIn if you are super bored in your like Ultra busy days as we always are because we don't have the productivity benefits yet um but if you've noticed that you have nothing better to do and you're very curious to see that what people and animals I have encountered in my travels then feel free to check out my photos on my website but I will leave you with one parting thought the stars are there to be reached just be brave and focus on how to get there find a way to collaborate with all the capabilities all the generative AI all the data and all the right people and you know what together we might actually BL somewhere beyond the moon so thank you thank you [Music]