Author: headstartAdmin

Ana is a marketing leader specializing in B2B tech industries, with 12 years of experience marketing software and hardware solutions globally and building and scaling performing teams that drive a pipeline. She has experience across all areas of marketing and brings a 360-degree view to her strategies.

Ana is the director of marketing acquisition at Amilia, where she leads the team responsible for demand-generation and driving qualified opportunities.

1. As a woman in tech, what are your top success principles?

As a woman in tech, I would say that we are often outnumbered in meetings, especially at the manager or director level. What I have found helps the most is displaying confidence using posture and tone of voice, backing statements with data, and communicating.

To elaborate on the confidence aspect, from speaking with other women in my network and from following successful women on LinkedIn, I know that imposter syndrome is definitely a thing. I am sure it affects some men too, but from a woman’s perspective in a field where we are often outnumbered, imposter syndrome can feel pretty powerful.

One trick that I have learned to build self-confidence is keeping track of my successes. It is easy to forget your accomplishments, especially in the rush of daily life. So keeping track of wins in something like an Excel or Google sheet and looking back at them helps.

This includes writing down in detail the projects that you worked on, the steps you took to complete them, and how they impacted a business or department. It is a reminder of how you have grown professionally and what got you where you are.

The other thing I would add is, speak up. Remember that you are opening doors for future women leaders in tech — this alone motivates me to succeed. And know that there is a space for you, and take up that space.

2. How do you get buy-in from senior stakeholders who don’t have the same appreciation of marketing as you do?

Ask a lot of questions and show visual representations of potential outcomes. Find out what is really important to them on a specific level — not just a high-level objective like getting more leads — and then show them how your strategy or ideas will get the company there.

I have sometimes discovered by asking a lot of questions that what I initially thought was a small detail was actually very important to senior stakeholders and helped me get buy-in. It also helps to show concepts visually, especially when others have not experienced all the steps that go into a project first-hand.

For example, I was trying to get buy-in from a senior executive in regards to a tech stack purchase. However, the executive team, who did not have a background in marketing, did not see the need to spend on it. Showing the advantages of the platform and listing its abilities did not help either.

But during one meeting, I shared a slide where I created a table that broke down our funnel by acquisition channel. The fact that most of the opportunities generated came from the “request a demo” form on our website piqued the interest of stakeholders. We were able to identify the page that converted the most qualified, high-intent leads, but we had no other insights on the user journey. There was no way to track previous actions, engagement or interactions with our brand.

At that point, the senior executive asked if the tool I wanted to purchase would tell us where these website leads were coming from. When I said that it would, they immediately saw the value in getting it. And that was enough to obtain buy-in.

Here is the thing though: Sometimes it is not possible to get buy-in when marketing is not a priority or is misunderstood at a company. It is best to try, but if things are not changing and it is affecting your job satisfaction, it could be time to start looking for a new job.

3. What do you wish all B2B marketers knew about demand-generation strategies?

Two things: The focus on lead quantity needs to shift, and the importance of content as part of demand-generation needs to be emphasized.

Generating “leads” is often defined as obtaining someone’s email address in exchange for content to be able to contact them so you can nurture them or book a meeting. But setting a high lead-volume objective is an outdated strategy. Instead, focusing on revenue contribution is key.

When someone gives you their email address because they want to read your whitepaper and becomes a “lead,” it does not mean they are ready to buy. They are usually just looking to learn more on a specific topic at that point.

For marketers, the focus should be on creating opportunities. This includes providing ungated, educational content that people actually want to read. That way, you can be top of mind when a potential customer is closer to making a purchase decision.

But, once they do, they are so much closer to actually buying from you. Chris Walker, the CEO of Refine Labs, talks about this a lot on his podcast and LinkedIn page.

Plus, so many companies ask for our email address in exchange for content that we are becoming less and less inclined to fill out forms. We want to avoid being messaged by a sales rep asking if we want a demo right away. The worst is, there is so much content out there and very little of it is actually interesting to buyers because it is not written with them in mind.

There needs to be a much better understanding of customer pain points in order to properly address them. This understanding comes from industry and market research, but, most importantly, it comes directly from customers (or lost opportunities!).

4. What is your MarTech stack?

I’ve used Salesforce, Hubspot, Pardot, Microsoft Dynamics, ClickDimensions, WordPress, Drupal, Zoominfo, Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads and SEMrush.

I love how detailed I can get with Salesforce reporting and how its dashboards are so versatile and dynamic. I also really like Hubspot as a marketing automation platform because it is easy to use and set up.

Sophie Babinski is the Marketing Specialist at naturSource, a Montreal-based manufacturer of premium snacks and salad toppers. 

In her work with the company, Sophie oversees all branding, packaging, public relations, media activity, and digital strategy. She is also a fervent reality TV fan and freelance culture writer.

1. How is the future of e-commerce impacting your retail marketing strategy?

The pandemic really accelerated the growth of e-commerce as a retail channel across all industries.

E-commerce had already picked up speed with fashion and beauty retailers, but grocery shopping was still something people preferred to do in person. The pandemic changed that. People started doing bigger shops with less frequency, and buying more non-perishables and snack foods online.

At naturSource, we still don’t sell direct-to-consumer, but we are excited about our partners’ e-commerce platforms, such as Sobey’s Voila and PCExpress. The future of e-commerce is limitless.

2. How do you leverage influencer marketing campaigns to meet your goals?

Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s toolbox, but it can be hard to manage.

When it comes to influencer marketing, we’ve found that the most impactful strategy is two-fold. First, it’s important to foster real connections with influencers in order to create the most authentic brand partnerships and persuasive, high-quality content. We want the creators who work with us to genuinely love our products and use them in everyday life. Some of our best partnerships have come from people who were already customers, so the alignment is natural.

The second most important thing is timing and volume. We like to work with micro-influencers who have less than 10k followers. During campaigns, we try to work with between 45 and 75 creators over the span of a couple of weeks. We leverage online communities and create momentum to get our product out to our target demographic.

3. Why is social media marketing important even when you don’t sell direct-to-consumer goods?

At the end of the day, having a strong social media presence is akin to having legitimacy. Your social profiles and website not only give potential consumers an idea of who you are, what products you sell, and your company’s values, but they also help attract retailers and potential talent.

Retailers prefer to carry products or work with manufacturers who invest in their brand and build their own communities. In 2021 and beyond, social media is how brands are built. In the early part of the decade, brands were built on Facebook and Instagram, and as we move into the next decade, cutting-edge social media platforms like TikTok will become the place to be.

4. What is your MarTech stack?

I’m sorry I don’t have a more exciting answer than this: I am a classic Google Docs girl. My Google Docs and Drive are where I keep everything.

Content creators can use Drive to share their content directly with me, and I use Docs to keep track of my content calendar, copy, giveaway progress, influencer mailing lists, and tracking numbers.

On the automation and scheduling side, I like to work with Planoly to plan and cross-post my content and keep track of analytics. In terms of MarTech, my motto is, keep it simple.

Lovedeep Puri is a digital marketer with a decade of experience running SEO and online marketing campaigns within agencies and large companies. For the past several years, he has focused on driving results in the home services sector and currently leads digital marketing efforts at Enercare Home Services.

As the Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at Enercare, he manages a team of digital experts and agency partners to maximize online market share, acquire net new customers, and improve full funnel conversion rates.

When he’s putting his time towards digital marketing, Lovedeep works on enhancing his programming skills, physical fitness, and enjoying the outdoors.

1. What is your biggest career win to date and how did it impact the trajectory of your career?

One of the most fulfilling wins was working to grow an ecommerce store for a health and wellness start-up. The owners reached out when they were planning their idea and wanted to understand how they could go about selling online. At that stage, I helped conceptualize the design, selected an ecommerce platform, managed their store design, and launched a selection of over 1000 SKUs of products.

After the launch, I continued working with the team to build the digital marketing strategy and grow online traffic to the store. Throughout this period, I ran everything from SEO to deploying the ad budget across Google and Bing, set up retargeting campaigns and marketing automation, and managed online store operations.

I eventually helped them redesign their website, create a product-labelling process, and set up their shipping and inventory management systems.

We took the store from an idea to $40,000/month in revenue in less than six months, a game-changer for the business, which continues to grow at a high pace.

Putting my digital strategies into play and seeing the direct financial impact was a fulfilling experience that fueled my growth as a digital marketer.

2. How have your programming and web design skills enhanced your career in digital marketing?

The short answer here is “speed-to-market” and communication.

My experience with web design allows me to communicate my design ideas verbally, but also visually. I can put together wireframes or high-fidelity designs in Figma quickly and share them with my team as a starting point. This saves time and gets things into the market a lot faster.

It has also allowed me to deliver better feedback and direction. There are few things more frustrating to designers than being given feedback such as “make this pop more.” It often results in unclear directions, guessing what the client is looking for and an increased number of revisions. Instead, I try to make my feedback specific in terms of margins, padding, use of white space, opacity, and aim to keep it as actionable as possible. Basically, I put myself in the designer’s shoes and think about what inputs I would need to get a revision done.

On the programming side, being able to understand programming logic, where and how data is stored, as well as how to fetch data from an API and write custom scripts, has helped me become more self-sufficient and have more productive conversations with my developers. This is a continued area of focus and I continue to improve my skills in both Python and JavaScript. Also, learning to think computationally has allowed me to shape my approach to problem-solving not only when writing code, but also in digital marketing and everyday life.

3. What challenges have you faced as a marketer in an industry where customers can be more reactive than proactive i.e., looking for help at their home when a specific issue arises?

Competition is fierce in the home services industry. Not only are you competing with other large national players, but you are also competing with local companies and lead-generation services.

Given the reality of finite budgets, an ongoing challenge is the increasing cost per click. As competition increases and cost per click rises, the amount of impressions, clicks, and, in turn, leads that you can acquire with the same budget and tactics drops. This ends up driving up the cost per lead from digital advertising.

The way to counteract this trend is continuing to invest in things like SEO, email marketing, SMS marketing, conversion rate optimization, and marketing automation. You also have to stay ready to test and adopt new and emerging ways to reach out to and communicate with your customers, such as areas that are sources of leads that aren’t priced per click, but that require an ongoing investment.

Companies that get their multi-channel marketing right can increase the effectiveness of their online ad dollars and lower their costs per lead in a market where advertising costs will only continue to go up.

4. What is your MarTech stack?

I enjoy testing new tools and am always on the lookout for ways to improve time spent gathering actionable insights. Some tools that I’ve grown fond of over the years:

• Google Analytics & Data Studio for data visualization and reporting
• Unbounce for landing page management and testing
• Screaming Frog for monitoring and identifying SEO issues
• SurferSEO for SEO content optimization
• Ahrefs for competitive SEO research and digital PR
• Figma for design
• Visual Studio Code as my code editor