The Most Influential CMOs to Follow in 2022 July2022

TheMost

Shahzad

Editor’s Desk

Marketing as an Experimental Niche

What is the purpose of marketing?

The traditional definition of marketing says, “It is a way of endorsing products and services to customers or clients to achieve maximum sales in the stipulated time.”

However, the dynamism of marketing has changed quite a bit to make it an interdepartmental process involving all the factors of business to create a product market fit, thereby making sure that the brand reaches the optimal audience through organic or promotional means. Today, marketing isn't limited to the constraining factors of regions, cultures or people.

Marketing managers can pick a region anywhere in the world and devise a marketing strategy that suits the needs of the cultural, regional, and intellectual factors and tap into the market effortlessly. The internet has made the world a closer place than we believe. A marketer sitting in the United States can sell a product or service to a pan-Asian audience by simply formulating a growth strategy based on the data collected online.

When a product or a service is strong enough, the marketing process becomes easier to execute. While there are many organizations around the world that are tapping into the vast potential of new-age marketing, there are some exceptional marketing managers who have taken the marketing game to a whole new level.

When the playing field is helmed by CMOs who are fearless innovators, the competition automatically gets eliminated. A wise marketing officer is familiar with the changing wind of the marketing environment and is not afraid to take risks based on the company's appetite. Marketing isn't just limited to geographical boundaries but transcends the barriers of regions and people to reach the target customer.

Hyperlocal marketing is one of the sought-after strategies in the marketing space this year. When a marketer knows the customer or client, they intend to reach, creating customer-centric plans which target the core audience is simulated smoothly.

With the widespread adaptation of online marketing or digital marketing post the pandemic, companies and brands are exploring the vast areas of the web to generate favourable results through intensive market research and the implementation of apt tools. This drives sales, and the product or service is successfully made available to the consumer who desires it.

Focused marketing is the best way to generate a database including potential customers and converted clients so that the CMO has a well-stacked marketing database.

The golden rule of marketing is test, test and test. CMOs who are innovators are not afraid to challenge the norms coming out with refined marketing strategies each time. Creative CMO's gauge the depth of their marketing niche by throwing in their strategies into the vast set of potential customers bringing out a new learning each time. Either a new market-fit is created or a lesson for a better comeback is learnt!

This edition of, “The Most Influential CMOs to Follow in 2022,” is a collection of capable CMO's who have turned the tide in the marketing niche through their detailed vision, expertise and experimental nature.

Get a taste of their strategies and also don't forget to go through the articles dedicatedly drafted by our inhouse editorial team.

Happy Marketing!

Raunak Mhetre

TheMost

CMOsCMO s

Influential to

Follow in 2022

Featured Person

Abdul Sani Abdul Murad

Vice President Marketing Communications

Company Name

RHB Banking Group rhb.com

Amitabh Ramani Global Marketing Director Jade Global jadeglobal.com

Andrea Saravia Global Marketing Director Ufinet www.ufinet.com

Daniele Joubert Growth and Operations Lead

Ève Laurier Vice President of Communications, Public Affairs & Marketing

Itzik Yarkoni CMO

Uber Eats SSA uber.com

Bombardier bombardier.com

Trullion trullion.com

Mike Doyle Head of marketing

VERVE Fitness vervefitness.com

Radmila Blazheska CMO Securityhq securityhq.com

Sasha King Chief Marketing Officer

Sharon Shahzad Chief Marketing Officer

CareDx caredx.com

Beelivery beelivery.com

Description

RHB is the fourth largest, fully-integrated financial services group in Malaysia. We will help you to grow your wealth and become financially independent.

Jade Global is a strategic IT Services company helping clients achieve rapid digital transformation and long-term business growth.

ALTI designs, manufactures, sources, and supplies industryleading VTOL unmanned aircraft systems for demanding operations

At Uber, the pursuit of reimagination is never finished, never stops, and is always just the beginning.

Bombardier is a global leader in aviation, focused on designing, manufacturing and servicing the world's most exceptional business jets.

Trullion creates business trasnparency by using software to power real-time visibility into company financials and form a single source of truth.

VERVE is operated by athletes, designing premium equipment tested by athletes perform at their best.

SecurityHQ is a Global MSSP, that detects, and responds to threats, instantly.

CareDx, Inc. is dedicated to improving the lives of organ transplant patients through non-invasive diagnostics.

Beelivery is an on-demand, tech focused, short-chain logistics marketplace delivery company.

A Modern Marketing Genius Shahzad

Sharon Sharon Shahzad

Tap anytime for a grocery top-up or stock up your cupboards with staples at a click of a button, whenever the need strikes. from little emergencies to your weekly - mid-week food shop, everyday essentials, we've got you covered.

Sharon Shahzad, Chief Markeng Officer, Beelivery

The Most Influenal CMOs to Follow in 2022

The Role of a CMO has evolved over the years from being a unidimensional process to a multidimensional scalable area of business. Sharon Shahzad thinks that CMOs nowadays have to think like CEOs, as the modern CMO's scope has expanded to all corners of the business. Sharon Shahzad strongly believes, “To be a successful CMO, you need to have a vision, have the courage of a lion, to start something new in a new market, new product, service and sometimes in a new industry category, whilst leading the company and giving it direction through robust go-tomarket strategies and testing and learning along the way.” Often businesses look to CMOs, and marketing leads for answers; the modern CMO is meant to have all the answers; it's the one source for business problem-solving.

Today's CMO has to think about the here, now, and the future, pre-empt failures and de-risking the marketing initiatives, as well as taking well-calculated risks. CMOs have a hand in raising investment for start-ups and position businesses for long time growth. At the heart of any CMO is the customer experience, the user experience, the valueadded, brand credibility, and data; without these elements, the CMO can be lost. A CMO is solely held accountable for the budget, therefore needs to spend wisely and identify key areas where to spend the money. The role of the CMO touches all parts of the business, including UX, UI, operations, tech, finance, customer support, and sales, although in some start-ups, marketing departments are now the new sales departments as the shift in marketing from brand building, generating interest, warming up leads, has now moved to generating market interest, educating on product/service, converting and bringing in the sales. The tougher part is identifying the areas to spend the money on and doing it effectively by following the plans. Sharon has scaled her way to becoming a trusted and work-oriented marketer in a male-dominated field. She takes on challenges on the go, which make her resistant to roadblocks and failures. She believes that the sense of business acumen is unique to all, and most of the time, business is all about common sense and encourages creative work and gauges for new ways of doing things.

In her early days, she worked for various businesses where she felt she had very little to offer by sitting in a small department for a collectively large workforce. Sharon always knew she had a lot more to offer than what she was doing. Her quest for perfection ultimately led her to Beelivery, where she is the Chief Marketing Officer using her valuable 17 years of marketing experience. Her journey is inspiring and motivating, and the cherry on top is that she is not done yet. The major principles she lives by are curiosity and an incredible work ethic.

Let's learn more about her insightful areas of expertise, her origins, and the places she wishes to touch:

Versatile, highly adaptive, an all-rounder marketer – the beginnings

Sharon started just graduating in graphic communications, sending out invites to get a job. Because of her work experience in her final year, she had really strong skills in marketing, but her work experience was actually as a graphic designer because that's what she was hoping to do. She was also looking for a career of possibilities in marketing because she had a strong skill set in that area, and she naturally had an entrepreneurial mindset. She was quite pleasantly surprised with the kind of reference she had got from her boss when she did her work experience as a graphic designer in the final year of her degree. To her surprise, she was told that she had some very creative ideas and knew how to reach out to people with her creative ideas, including graphics and the suggestions she made for some campaigns; she once sat in a client meeting in which she was supposed to only listen and take notes on. Sharon took this feedback on board and started to apply for jobs in marketing whilst she was still working through her final year. Sharon landed a job in London months before she graduated and was one of the first students in her year to secure a job; she then led some inspirational talks at her university, guiding fellow students on how she did it. Sharon started her marketing career working as a marketing assistant for Nexus. She shares, “I was fresh out of Uni and

I'm a senior marketing professional with global scale-up experience, I have successfully built marketing strategies and functions from the ground level up.

had a lot to learn; in my first year, I was very successful in my role. I was promoted to Marketing Executive just six months into my role, I sold many magazine subscriptions through direct marketing campaigns and telemarketing campaigns, and I also helped revamp the style of the magazine from the front cover to the editorial layouts. Back in the day, Google was still a new kid on the block, and it had not become the norm for searching; businesses heavily relied on the good old Yellow Pages or Thomson Directory and buying databases to generate leads. I built vast databases on these methods. I helped train up another assistant, and I then took over the event marketing as the other arm of the business was arranging conferences and seminars for the private health investor community. With the same direct marketing campaigns, I targeted private health business owners and financiers. I got bookings via fax machine (yes, there were such machines called Fax). I helped build out marketing; at the time, I wouldn't say strategies because my role was not strategic, but I built successful campaigns, databases, and generated revenue for the business.”

Sharon then moved on to Polaris, based in Canary Wharf, which was an IT Software financial services business. Polaris was a tech giant in providing software solutions for front,mid and back-end offices to banks and financial institutions. The role was quite interesting for Sharon, where she landed as a marketing executive in the business and ended up being a PA to seven business development managers. Her role there was to build out lists of IT directors, CTOs, and CIOs from banks like Credit Suisse, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and other financial institutions. Sharon also built an MS Access database to manage several databases she was managing for the BDMs she was assisting. Her role was to target lists, send emails, generate leads, conduct discovery calls, and then book meetings with the BDM to go pitch the relevant solutions to the bank.

Sharon then jumped onto another subscription-based business, which was Informa PLC, a global media publication company based in Oxford Street, London, where she managed a portfolio of five legal publications. Her role was to send direct marketing campaigns to generate leads for the telemarketing team. Sharon was not engaged or felt challenged by this role as she knew she had a lot more to offer on the table.

Sharon Shahzad then landed her first Marketing Manager role with a tech start-up firm called FastMarkets based in Liverpool Street. FastMarkets was an online data vendor that provided live prices from exchanges around the world,

including LME, DGCX, COMEX, NYMEX, SHFE, etc. Fastmarkets had several sites that provided live prices and up-to-the-minute news for Non-ferrous and precious metals. Sharon was in charge of generating leads by getting people to sign up for 7-day free trials, which will then be passed on to the sales team to convert. Sharon had zero budget for marketing but had a mammoth task of growing the subscription base; she thought on her feet and came up with some strategies for expanding the brand's reach by conducting some contra-deals with metal specialist publications and event companies as she leveraged off the exclusive access her news team had to the LME trading floor. This worked for her zero- marketing budget but with maximum impact, as she struck free media partnership deals and advertorial deals in industry-leading publications and also got her news team on channels like CNBC, CNN and her MD on BBC News 24.

Ready to Explore More

Sharon was very curious about the subscription database and asked fellow colleagues and the business owners who are our subscribers? The default answer she got was 'brokers' and subscribers are LME brokers; with Sharon's inquisitive nature, she was not convinced with the answer as she wanted hard facts and evidence to back this piece of information. She initiated a data search project which meant she went through the entire subscriber database of 2000 or more subscribers on a spreadsheet one by one, as there were no fancy CRM tools at her disposal. After conducting her thorough search, it transpired the subscriber database predominantly consisted of scrap metal dealers; upon conducting further search, it was discovered the scrap metal market relied on the market news and live prices as they needed a guide price for pricing their scrap materials, so it was crucial for their business to know what market rate was for the raw material which was traded on the future exchanges. This led Sharon to briefing the news team to cover the scrap metal market with relevant new stories, and Sharon also managed to get a free advertorial deal in Recycling Magazine based in Germany.

Ready to Explore More

FastMarkets managed to secure a screen in the viewing gallery at the LME above the only physical trading floor in Europe; she here again used her initiative and went the extra mile by covering the entire screen of the TV with POS listing benefits for subscribing to the service with contact details. She states, “And I remember the director of digital at LME saw the POS on the tv screen, and he actually asked

my contact who was working at the LME, asking, “Who did this from FastMarkets as he was impressed because he has never seen any other sponsors of the screen do this before?” And that's when my name came up. I was headhunted to work for the LME.

Hard Work Reaps Results

Sharon was directly headhunted by the LME to work as a marketing executive for their Steel Billet's future contract. They had just launched their new futures contract in Steel Billets. They wanted me to market the billets contract. It was a very tricky product. It could have actually failed and really hit the ground, but she managed to actually get it off the ground. LME had a British heritage that spanned over 130 years; the multi-trillion-dollar organisation's bread and butter were the two future contacts which were Copper and Aluminium; these contracts took off from the exchange's inception and did not require marketing in those days, as it was all word of mouth from one broker to another. LME had envisaged the same success for the steel billets future contract; although it was a very risky and volatile market to enter, it was also the start of the great financial crisis. Sharon recalls her boss saying at the time if we crack this, ndthen this will be the 2 largest global contract to be ever launched since crude oil.

The steel billets market consisted of two groups, the producers, and consumers; in this case, it was manufacturers that produced steel billets out of raw materials such as Iron Ore and scrap iron which were rolled into billets and then manufactured into rebars and other construction materials, the consumers were construction companies using the rebars made out of the billets.

As the LME carried a 100-year heritage, its approach to marketing was very traditional and conventional. Sharon had the challenge of making the company break away from traditional methods and try a different strategy. Sharon recalls the challenge she was facing was that the LME brokers were not interested in a new futures contract, as they were only proactively trading contracts that had liquidity, but the LME was insistent on going this route to market and educating the brokers to leverage off their steel producer and consumer contracts. Sharon's inquisitive nature led her to dig deeper and understand the global steel production and consumption market; she quickly learnt that at the time, 47% of global steel production came from China, and these steel production companies were small family-run refineries where English was not the first language; therefore, the materials and the messaging LME

communicated with will only deter the market away, through the fear of complexity for using the exchange. At that time, China was building its Olympic Stadium and therefore needed the steel domestically. China imposed an exporting tax which some of the smaller refineries could not afford; this ensured the steel produced in China remained in China, and the government could use it for the construction of their Olympic stadiums. This then put the strain on the rest of the global market as there was a shortage, and a lot of construction projects were halted because of this new issue. That's when the markets turned their eye to Europe and the Middle East to fill in the gap in steel production.

Sharon devised a go-to-market strategy, where LME will market directly to the producers and consumers and educate them on the benefits of using the exchange and how they could mitigate their risk. This meant LME would be going over the Broker's heads and doing something they have never done before. Sharon got the approval for her marketing budget after the CEO reviewed the proposal. LME sponsored steel global events, including locations in Hamburg, Athens, Turkey, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Malaysia, and used these events to inform and educate the market on the benefits of using the exchange. Sharon oversaw the whole strategy from beginning to end, as she had a point to prove that this would work for the LME and it's a new way for the exchange. Sharon also simplified the messaging, communication materials, and brochures with the view to educate the market in simple English and not

I have sound international marketing experience and have worked with markets in the Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the US.

use LME terminology that only LME or the brokers understood, such as 'backwardation' and 'contangos'. Sharon also created virtual simulations of the hedging process from day one trading to day 30 trading, walking the producers and consumers through the whole trading process in simple visual steps. Armed with the budget and simplified materials, Sharon embarked on a global campaign; with her first stop at Hamburg, Sharon recalls that in Hamburg, she was in a room full of metal producers; there must be 300/400 people, and she worked the room by engaging with the delegates and educated them about the LME and the benefits they can have by using the exchange, at the time the Financial crisis was looming and the reception the LME got, was a bit frosty, as people blamed organisations like the LME to have caused the crisis, Sharon broke through the ice and saw through the hostile conversations, at the end of the event she got people on side and generated interest in the room. From a side table, the CEO of LME was watching the way Sharon was working the room; Sharon recalls, “I was pulled to the side by the CEO, and he said in my 30 years of my career, I have never seen anyone work the room like the way you did, he was so impressed, and he said he wants me at every global event he attends going forward.” The events strategy proposed by Sharon proved to be a success as LME signed on many producers and consumers at the events; in year one of launching the contract, 1.2 billion tonnes of steel billet was traded on the exchange.

Digital transformation was taking place

A new era was born, and Sharon saw this change unfold in front of her eyes; her marketing strategies pivoted from traditional marketing to digital. Sharon says, “For any field to fast-track, digital adaptation is necessary." The same is the case with marketing. So traditional marketing was direct marketing via email, maybe posting out letters or posting out free publication copies, samples of products where necessary, telemarketing, and cold phone calls. Transitioning all that to the digital transformation in the form of Google ads, Facebook ads, automation, and the actual innovation of data, big data. Sharon has seen over the course of her career. She sees digital transformation as a crucial aspect of marketing, and she uses it to grow the business in multidimensional ways.

Sharon explains, “Today's marketing is heavily dependent on the digital acquisition channels. It's about mass reach and instant conversion or shortening the conversion funnel- and I think that's what allowed a lot of tech start-ups to rapidly scale up to show significant growth through having a very hybrid, integrated marketing strategy using the digital acquisition channels. But I think going forward; it's all to do with being data-led. I think those strategies will work the best; data should be used to evidence user behaviour, interaction, engagement, acquisition, conversion, and retention, as well as the drop-off; in

marketing, it is equally important to know what keeps your customers hooked to your product service as well what is putting them off, why did they stop using the product and service? This brings me right back to the beginning of what I said. Marketers these days have to think beyond acquiring customers; you have to think from a user experience perspective and disect the product and service you are offering to ensure it is aligned with the customers' needs, be it B2C or in a B2B environment, this means as a CMO you have influence over the product roadmap, tech, operations, and data. It's important for businesses to layout the infrastructure to enable their marketing department to track the whole customer journey from the moment somebody puts eyeballs on your ad to the moment they've actually clicked on all the CTAs and performed the actions you want them in your app, on your website, on your platform, on your software, and identify the gaps and weaknesses along the way and allow the marketers the room and authority to drive the changes needed to support the customer needs. Often there is misalignment between marketing and tech, as tech would be building the best tech platform they could think of, but it does not necessarily mean the product is aligned with the audience, this is where intervention from marketing is needed, and both departments should work together to build something truly valuable.”

What does the future look like?

I think we're heading towards more of an artificial intelligence route where we will be able to predict - as marketers; we will be able to predict what the trends are going to be in the market six months ahead or maybe even more; we will be able to build marketing strategies on near accurate future predictions, this will enable CMOs to de-risk marketing activities and plan budgets effectively avoiding wastage in spend. Marketers will be able to drive actions and conversions by pinpointing the exact customers who are going to buy and take away all the guesswork that is needed in today's marketing. This will become powerful combined with an immersive brand experience through AR/VR technology.”

Sharon's career has evolved with times, and she has become a stronger marketer with each challenge she took on board, making her more agile, versatile and highly adaptable. Fast forwarding through Sharon's career by another 10 years, Sharon has built marketing strategies and functions from the ground level up where she has been pivotal to the growth of the businesses which she scaled up globally. Sharon has held senior positions for various organisations, from Education, Tech, Recruitment, FinTech and

I'm a leader who truly believes in motivating teams to reach their potential and to lead them to great success, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, as leader its your job to bring the best out of people with their strengths and to help overcome their weaknesses with ' don't forget you once was there too, so feel the emotion, and put yourself in their shoes to understand their experience.

Blockchain with one of her recent experiences where she worked with a world renowned sports and make apostrophe curly, Sharon has worked with some sport brands, such as Liverpool Football Club, where she worked on a film with Ian St John she produced this movie with LFC film production team and came up with a concept of “Football Evolved” as the slogan of her then company who partnered with LFC was 'Trading Evolved', this video campaign gained 2.8m views globally with 332K engagements within the first week of it being published on social media, she was exclusively invited to speak as a keynote speaker at the LFC partner summit in 2019, Sharon also initiated an employability programme with the LFC Foundation and did some tremendous work with the 'Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET)' group and aspired the group to better their lives through a pep talk, she also held CV surgeries and consulted each member of the group on how they can enhance their CVs and experience to get their dream jobs. As part of the program, Sharon invited the disadvantaged NEET group to use up the member's rights of using the Anfield stadium to play a football match where she invited former LFC manager Roy Evan and John Aldridge to give some tips and make the experience more

memorable.

Heading Beelivery as Marketing Genius

In the next chapter of Sharon's life, she is the CMO of Beelivery. Beelivery is one of the UK's leading rapid grocery delivery services; Beelivery covers 90% of the UK grocery market, where customers can buy a wide range of groceries and everyday essentials and get them delivered straight to their door within 15-60 minutes from their local supermarket. The drivers, also known as personal shoppers, shop from the local supermarket, as they personally pick, pack, and deliver grocery orders directly to the customers. Beelivery operates 24 hours and seven days a week. Sharon shares, “We make sure that our personal shoppers, take a lot of care and pay attention to detail when fulfilling a customer order. They make sure that the order is fulfilled, achieving almost 100% satisfaction rate for each customer delivery, and we do that within 15 to 60 minutes.”

Beelivery has a network of over 100,000 driver-partners on the system that are delivering for 200,000 customers and counting across the UK. The USP of the company is offering a personalised shopping experience for the customer. The store has a wide range of products, over 5,000+, which Beelivery keeps adding to.

Sharon aims to expand the delivery brand across the UK, acquire more customers to continue providing a seamless user experience for customers and driver business partners, offer better services through the app, through the platform, and change the way people shop. She thinks that the digital world is a small world, and it's possible to curate a beautiful experience for all. She shares, “Digital innovation has made the world smaller and more instant. We, as marketers have the power to drive the actions and growth we need for our businesses; we hold the power to change people's perceptions, behaviours, and attitudes to better their lives and enrich their digital experience and their life. As strong marketers, we need to be able to cut through the noise and align our messaging with our customer's needs; it's all about listening to your customers. It's all about what they want and then delivering or producing the product and service that's going to help solve their problem. Because at the end of the day, we are all in business to solve a problem. Whether it's a B2B or a B2C business, we are all solving a problem somewhere. So coming back to Beelivery, the problem that we are solving for our customers is we are giving them some time back in their life which is valuable for all, the time we give back can be for working parents to spend it with their children, or to care for an ill loved one, or for a couple to snuggle up on the sofa and spend quality

time, whatever customers need the time for they are free from going grocery shopping which is a very timeconsuming task in itself-- we are freeing up their time, every day without compromising on running their household efficiently.”

Sharon is pleased to announce a recent partnership between Beelivery and Universal Pictures to promote Minions - The Rise of Gru movie, which was released in cinemas across stthe UK on 1 July 2022 Minions: The Rise of Gru has generated over $600 million across the globe. Sharon has led the promotional campaign throughout the summer and has been working on producing the campaign strategy and the materials to support the promotion.

Sharon has also recently founded and launched her new e-Commerce business selling ethnic fashion online. LAAKHA celebrates the woman of today, bringing designs that are inspired by Indian and Pakistani heritage with a modern twist of elegance to suit women of every fit, style, and culture.

Valuable Bits of Advice

Sharon advises the younger generation to believe in themselves. She says, “So if you believe in yourself, then the world will believe in you. Don't give up. Always try to think out of the box. Never take what people tell you; always be ready to ask the questions that people are afraid to ask or have never asked. You could go into a new business. You might have the CEO - you might have the founders of the business with you- It's done this way.” But the whole reason why they've hired you is that they have a problem, and you are there to solve that problem. So never be afraid to actually think out of the box and go beyond what other people may be telling you and actually try and test it yourself, make data your friend, and be guided by the light of data, as that is your tool to help convince others within the business to drive the change you are expected to make.”

A thing that is essential to being a good marketer is testing. Sharon shares, “Test, test, test, test and then analyse the data whether it's digital campaigns, whether it's your email campaigns, whether it's your messaging, whether it's a TV ad - whatever you may be doing, test, test, test. Because without testing, you will never know what will work and what doesn't work. What may work for one industry may not work for the other. So, my main message will be to stay strong and confident. Believe in yourself, and don't forget to test.”

CMOs to Follow in 2022

Digital Marketing is marketing done on digital platforms such as search engines, websites, emails and mobile apps. It is an efficiently targeted, conversion oriented and interactive marketing of products and services by optimally utilizing digital platforms to acquire customers. The scope of digital marketing is not limited to advertising. It also includes Acquiring new customers and sustaining the current customers. The reason why digital marketing is a topic of discussion is the statistics behind the same:

81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchases. (Retailing Today, 2014)

65% of smartphone users agree that when conducting a search on their smartphones, they look for the most relevant information regardless of the company providing the information. (Google, 2015)

51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphone. (Google, 2015)

61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. (HubSpot, 2017)

Components of Digital marketing

Digital Marketing is known to be an umbrella under which all the aspects of online marketing activities are covered. Following are the most common types of marketing activities under digital marketing:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is a process of utilizing all the available resources in order to optimize the overall performance of a website. Through SEO, a company can improve the quality of the content on its website, increase the reachability, attain higher user engagement, etc. For example, Amazon generating content to be on top of the search engines is a type of SEO. According to statistics, 67% of the clicks come from the first five listings of a search page. This clearly states how important it is for companies to use SEO.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per Click is when a company bids for a certain keywords and optimizes its website accordingly to be on the top of the search results page. The companies pay the search engines every time someone clicks on the

websites link. In the process, the search engines look at three aspects before putting them on the top of the list in their search results page:

The amount of money the company is bidding

How relevant the keyword is with the website and its products

How optimized is the landing page of the website

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a process of creating relevant content to acquire new customers. The content must be

valuable to the customers and consistent in quality. It is a key tool for SEO and helps the website to get noticed on social platforms. Good Content should not be promotional but educational and inspirational so that the user can see the website as a source of information.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing refers to advertising/selling the products and services to potential or existing customers through text messages on their mobile phones. This is one of the most direct ways of marketing as the response time from customers via

smart phone is highest. 97% of all the text messages are read within 4 minutes of being sent. The companies acquire new customers every day by offering them discounts on its products through text messages.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing refers to the process of interacting with customers

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Marketing Automation

Marketing Director

Global

Amitabh Ramani

The

Amitabh Ramani

Spearheading with Strategic Marketing Initiatives

aving multichannel and connected experiences are

Hnot future trends; instead, these have already become the way people communicate. To create highly engaging user experiences for customers understanding behavioral insights is essential to influence a business. It is imperative to learn that customers with positive experiential outcomes are more inclined to stay longer with a brand, tell their friends about it, and advocate loyalty. This pattern led Amitabh Ramani to guide marketing efforts to transform customer experiences, creating a more desirable future and better engagement for companies he has worked with.

As the Global Marketing Director at Jade Global, Amitabh leads Strategic Marketing initiatives, driving change through a mix of innovative technology, storytelling, nuanced with an enriched understanding of B2B consumer behavior. He has raised the bar of the value delivered to clients through automation, handling several state-of-the-art projects from inception to completion, aiming to deliver his best.

The Initial Roots

Amitabh reminisced the exciting early days when he was deeply involved in building marketing roadmaps from scratch with his team, managing to get customers on board. Though it were cherishing moments for the organization, he had to overcome various challenges, making leaders understand that marketing is a core function and not only support. He thrived on explaining to them the importance of branding and how investment in built-in brand equity reduces costs, builds customer loyalty, and drives sales. However, Amitabh had an enthusiastic team working on multiple projects; they understood the more profound theories around building brands and actualizing marketing plans.

Budget allocation of resources was also another challenge that Amitabh had to overcome. He asserts, "I think that's a

challenge that exists with all businesses, new and old. You must prove your value before it will get funded. It's pretty much a trial-and-error process. However, through proper planning, we were able to overcome this hurdle on time." He is keen on blurring the siloed boundaries to gain more influence as different parts move closer toward real synergies. It can empower teams to deliver more value to better understand the roles of others. He adds, "It has been my endeavor albeit not without accompanying challenges, to break these siloes and through marketing involve and unite other functions and roles in a company."

Multi-Disciplinary Expertise

Amitabh has been working in the tech industry for more than a decade. He has helped companies across multiple sectors, improving the quality of their product and services, enhancing their marketing, branding, sales, and customer service. He has also collaborated for product development and business generation, resulting in continuous success.

As a believer in this new age of data and technology, Amitabh states that the Pandemic pushed organizations to achieve the impossible. As the old saying goes- necessity is the mother of invention- the world witnessed the most significant surge of martech tools in the industry. It accelerated reach to the customers, gave a better understanding of prospects, and defined its ideal customer base.

Amitabh brought his expertise to Jade Global, transforming it from traditional to data-driven. With tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Zoom Info, SEMRush, and many more, the company can track each activity carried out on its website and social media and keep a close eye on its competition plus get a detailed view of the customer. It constantly evaluates what works most effectively at driving users to their modules.

Leveraging Technology

Amitabh is a technology evangelist who aims to create frameworks and trajectories that allow conceptualizing paths that include innovative technologies right from the onset. He expresses, "I began my journey in the IT ecosystem as a developer. This is my workhorse as every path we take in this in the current marketing technology of today is conceptualized as having certain ingredients that are tied together as concept/technology."

Jade Global leverages technology to:

Deliver highly personalized customer experiences.

Gain customer insights for better decision-making.

Automation of all our tasks to improve TAT.

It helps the company stay focused on its core marketing objectives and deliver best-in-class experiences.

The Goals Ahead

Amitabh feels fortunate to be part of Jade Global in the long run. He looks forward to reaching the zenith with Jade Global as one of the world's top consulting companies. He also wants to grow and mentor the next generation of techno marketers.

Bequeathing Excellence

Amitabh advises budding entrepreneurs aspiring to venture into the marketing sector to learn. He says, "Marketing like any other field is evolving daily, and at a faster pace than many, you need to evolve yourself to be a technical marketer now - rather than just a marketer." He believes that the journey of thousand miles begins with the first step.

A marketer's goal is to create valuable communication with the help of different marketing strategies and engage every consumer target on each stage of the life cycle to meet the objectives set forth. Amitabh notes, "Focus your efforts on the latest trends and get yourself updated with everything new that comes up. You need to drive engagement of your target demographic at each stage of the funnel with relevant messages or offers. The golden rule for marketers is Know Your Consumer."

Committed to Customer Success

Jade Global is powering investments to help its client succeed. It stands firm on its four core values with a shared commitment to enliven these values daily: Client Focus, Innovation, Integrity, and Communication.

The company is committed to pursuing excellence without losing sight of what is most important – its clients and people. Its collaborative approach with a diverse team of brightest and innovative talent enables it to exceed client expectations. It thrives on challenges and constantly thinks of new ways to offer everything the best possible solution. As a technology leader, Jade Global effectively identifies, hires, and retains industry leaders who drive organizationwide change for businesses in various industries through strategic thinking and invaluable expertise.

Marketing like any other field is evolving daily, and at a faster pace than many, you need to evolve yourself to be a technical marketer now - rather than just a marketer.

The Most Influential CMOs to Follow in 2022

Marketing has come so far with the new advancements in technologies such as AI and automation. The job of marketing has become more convenient as well as cumbersome at the same time, as marketing leaders have to perform several tasks to reach out to their potential customers. Despite these differences of modern and traditional marketing practices, many leaders have smoothly carried out all the marketing functions and achieved the desirable results. With intent to recognize their significant contributions, Insights Success has compiled its list of The 10 Influential Marketing Leaders, 2019.

This list is incomplete without the inspiring work of Andrea Saravia, the Global Marketing Director of Ufinet . Andrea has been a marketing and branding specialist for 24 years now and possess an MBA specialized in business leading and marketing from ESIC, Madrid, Spain. She has been Ufinet’s Marketing Director for 5 years now, and has tackled many challenges ever since, such as positioning Ufinet’s brand in a difficult and ever-changing market as is the telecommunications sector.

Started Young

Andrea started her career in 1995 as an Executive Key Account Manager in an advertising agency. Since that moment she knew she was made for marketing. Being able to get to know many company’s profiles and businesses at their core and to embrace the knowledge that every sector had to offer, allowed her to grow in a very integral way, opening her path to achieve results no matter what the segment she worked with. She has operated in many sectors

including advertising, PR, law, interior design, magazines, nutrition, and telecommunications, which she has loved most.

Andrea started working very young, at the age of 18. She did not have any experience before. The job in the advertising agency was very stressful and she had an important overload of work. She did not know at the time how to manage her emotions, the pressure and her time. It took her many years to know herself and find the best way to get things done without losing control. Later, she learned not only to get through every single obstacle that came her way, but even crave them as they make her life much more interesting and challenging.

Source of Inspiration

There are various factors that inspire Andrea the most. She firmly believes in a phrase which states, “do what you love, love what you do”. Being able to do this has given her the opportunity to tackle all the challenges that come her way and grow as a professional leader.

Another subject for Andrea has always been learning new things every day. In her opinion, people would be surprised knowing all the hidden treasures they can find by just opening their mind. Having a work-life balance is a key matter, enjoying both professional and personal life with family and friends. Few other additional moves that have inspired her to raise includes giving the extra mile -always; working smart, not hard; taking risks even though you may fail; and finally challenging yourself to dream.

Repositioning as a Big Player

In 2014 a private investor bought Ufinet from Gas Natural Fenosa Telecom. The most challenging task was to reposition the company as Ufinet, a big player in the telecommunication’s market, participating in various trade shows in several countries, creating the firm’s online image from scratch, such as the company’s website, a Linked-In profile and other social channels (inexistent at the time), and moreover interiorizing the business’s great assets, vision, mission and values within the company’s personnel.

That was key to create awareness about the company’s ethics, its top-notch services as well as creating an excellent post-sales package to get the firm’s clients not only to choose Ufinet for its strengths and advantages, but also for falling in love with a strategy of taking care of their own business growth.

Being Authentic with Customers

According to Andrea, Ufinet has one of the best strategies in the telecommunications market, being a neutral carrier of carriers. This means that the company does not reach the end customer and therefore, it does not compete with its clients, which is one of the main issues it uses to tackle competition. Nevertheless, its competitors are also its clients, which make the task much trickier and more difficult. So, the best way to market its company remains to be honest and authentic with its consumers.

Another key factor is the closeness Ufinet has with its customers. Every client has its own Key Account Manager, who is available almost 24/7 for them. This provides the

company with an additional hands-on approach, as it gets to know and fully understand their most important needs and obstacles.

When asked about the future goals Andrea states, “I love my job. And I can say that Ufinet is one of the best companies I have ever worked in. The values under which this company breathes are amazing. So, I aim to keep working here as a CMO. I believe that my expertise, my passion and my creativity will keep this company growing and “rock-n-rolling” for many years to come.”

An Essential Advice to be Incorporated Andrea advises emerging entrepreneurs to strive for success and quality every time. She says, “You will fail sometimes, of course, but the key here is to learn about each error and fiasco to make a better job next time. If you don’t push yourself after every failure, you will never acquire the wisdom to succeed in the future. Just do it, make things happen and never ever stop until you achieve what you desire most.”

“ Be resilient and embrace change with passion – it’s the only way you will be able to grow as a person and a professional. “

Andrea Saravia Global Marketing Director Ufinet

The

Daniele Joubert

An Avid Listener Expanding Horizons by Connecting Eaters

Digitalization has bridged the gap between consumers and companies, presenting neverbefore-seen challenges. The client experience drastically changed, increasing expectations from consumers at every step. Understanding these changes by gaining insights to focus on all digital touchpoints, enhancing and improving overall client experience is Daniele Joubert. As the Growth and Operations Lead at Uber Eats SSA , Daniele oversees the company's growth by generating demand for the marketplace.

Insights Success caught up with Daniele to know how her determined efforts enable valuable experience for the clients and Uber Eats.

Below are the highlights of the interview:

Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Uber. What challenges have you overcome to reach where you are today?

My journey has been an unconventional one. I have worked in diverse industries wearing multiple hats, which by its nature presents various challenges. Having acquired an Industrial Engineering degree, I started in consulting and later moved to one of SA's big banks. I was responsible for designing concepts that helped clients manage their money. That's when my love for behavioral economics started, the roots of which were based on the desire to improve people's lives. I am proud to have been part of a team that conceptualized and built a mobile game that teaches people financial concepts in a fun and engaging way.

I then joined Uber Eats in 2020 as the Eater Growth Lead. I am responsible for helping grow the brand by generating demand for the platform. One enduring and certainly exciting challenge has been getting into the hearts and minds of 'eaters' of the platform while also navigating the uniqueness of working in a technology company.

I am extremely excited and passionate about the Uber Eats business and our journey in South Africa, which dates back to 2016. By combining great technology with great people, we are transforming how people eat and acquire goods - at the push of a button for all occasions, in many locations.

Tell us something more about Uber, its mission and vision.

Our mission is to turn Uber Eats into the biggest and best delivery network. We've already built an efficient platform globally, and now we're focused on transforming it into a vibrant delivery ecosystem to connect people to more than just-food. We connect people to a range of convenience goods, including pharmaceuticals, beauty, alcohol, and gift essentials.

I am exceptionally proud of how far we have come as a business, having increased our footprint by 33 cities in South Africa in 2021, despite the continued uncertainty brought on by the pandemic. We understand that each country and their subsequent economy work differently, and thus certain practices are tailored to suit the uniquely South African flavor better. We pride ourselves in thinking locally, building globally.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the logistics niche through your expertise in the market.

One way we have done this is ensuring selection is king. We believe in the power of choice, and we are always hard at work to widen the spectrum so that people find products to suit their immediate needs. This improves demand on the app, giving way to growing the more than 7000 merchant base on the app.

Another way is personalization. A big part of my role is to understand the behaviors of 'eaters' on the app and an individualistic basis, so we can personalize their experience. Listening and understanding are also vital to improving the platform for 'eaters' and merchants and couriers alike.

Daniele Joubert Growth and Operations Lead Uber Eats SSA

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Data science and machine learning are built into our DNA. It helps us become better at moving millions of people around the world with a push a button as well as transforming the way they get goods.

For example, in South Africa, we use data to perfect everything we do scientifically. Whether using traffic and weather patterns to update the ETA's to customers or working with restaurants to optimize food preparation time to ensure an order arrives hot and fresh.

We believe the key to success lies in our ability to utilize our technology to continuously improve the experience of both eaters and partners on the app. This is why we emphasize effective search functionality.

Another great example is how we're using data to help restaurants and merchants identify new business opportunities and receive real-time feedback from their customers. Our partners have access to a Restaurant Manager portal which provides them with access to information about the performance of their business, their customer satisfaction, and key operational metrics. Moreover, we use data to partner with merchants for new locations based on our understanding of behavioral patterns we see on the app.

What, according to you, could be the next big change in the marketing industry? How is Uber preparing to be a part of that change?

One big change is that the talent pool within the creative disciplines will evolve, given that technological advances

and data are driving decision-making in today's world. I believe that we will see a shift in companies eyeing analysts, data scientists, and engineers to integrate into the marketing ecosystem.

This is prevalent in how Uber is organized, with Consumer Growth teams owning traditional marketing tools such as CRM, offline marketing, promotions etc., to drive growth while plugging in data analysts into these teams.

Secondly, I would say there is a big shift from acquisition being king to retention being king. The transition can be challenging to adapt to; however, the most important part is the 'HOW' for your business to thrive.

One way is creating experiences with heart. Bridging the gap between the brand promise and the brand experience is imperative, one that can be filled by simply being a human brand. At Uber, we pride ourselves on being a listening and engaging brand; and this has set the path for us to think of future-fit models that adapt to the ever-changing needs of all users on the app. We are a brand about people, after all.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals for Uber?

Our overall vision continues to be to build locally using global experience and technology to become a one-stop shop for delivery needs.

Looking ahead, we are committed to leading the category by investing in product and access while leveraging the power of the Uber platform.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the marketing sector?

Focus on your solution first, build something people want or solve a problem for them, and your marketing will become a lot easier.

Use data in a smart way to understand your clients better and then experiment as much as you can. Don't just make assumptions; test them. Test different strategies as quickly as possible and remember it's important to put measures in place to assess impact. The faster you learn and the more accurately you can measure the results, the faster you will get to build better marketing strategies that have a significant impact on your business.

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Looking ahead, we are committed to leading the category by investing in product and access while leveraging the power of the Uber platform.

The Most Influential CMOs to Follow

Instilling Pride in Bombardier

Ève Laurier, Vice President of Communications , Marketing and Public Affairs at Bombardier, is leading the company’s community and government engagement, its employee and customer outreach, and stewarding the brand journey internally and externally, around the world. Insights Success caught up with Ève to learn more about her journey and what makes her such an influential leader.

Below are the highlights of the interview:

Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Bombardier. What challenges did you have to overcome to reach where you are today?

Working as a marketing and communications professional enables me to shape the development and evolution of products and services, while supporting audience interpretation and understanding of benefits. Creating, and protecting reputations and instilling pride is essential for continued business success. Stewarding brands externally to global audiences and internally to colleagues is incredibly stimulating. It is also critical for audience acceptance, which makes it one of the more challenging areas of marketing any brand, and one of the more challenging elements of my career journey.

Overcoming these challenges both at agency level and client side has helped me develop a 360- business perspective, which combined with more than two decades of experience is supporting my stewardship of the Bombardier brand well.

Tell us something more about Bombardier, its mission and vision.

Headquartered in Montréal, Canada, Bombardier is a global leader in business aviation, with a worldwide reputation for

creating innovative and game-changing executive aircraft for a demanding international audience. The mission of our exceptionally talented workforce is to deliver superior, world-class experiences that set new standards in passenger comfort, reliability, safety, product innovation, while respecting the environment through a commitment to a sustainable future. Our vision does not stop once an aircraft transaction completes. Bombardier stays with the customer along their ownership journey providing superior customer support through dedicated service centres, mobile teams and a singular ambition to ensure that the Bombardier ownership experience is exceptional.

On an environmental and social front, Bombardier is a signatory to the United Nations’ Global Compact, promoting its key principles on human rights, labour, anticorruption and the environment. Our ESG plan is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), focusing on those where we can have the greatest impact. I am particularly passionate about our role in helping propel the widespread use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF, at Bombardier and throughout the facilities. It is an important pillar toward our industry to significantly lower CO2 emissions and SAF is a powerful solution as it can be used by existing aircraft.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the Aerospace niche through your expertise in the market.

I am delighted to leverage my skills to communicate the strength and depth of the Bombardier products, philosophy, and brand to our global customers. As we adhere to our pledge for a sustainable future, we are proud of the level of employee engagement that is making the commitment to this goal possible. We have invested significantly in making our operations and facilities more environmentally friendly, and we continue to invest in sustainability through our R&D. It’s also very important to me that we continue to lead industry engagement in the education and adoption of

sustainable aviation fuel. From this solid foundation we are glad to be influencing our own community, government, industry colleagues and customers’ thoughts about environmental responsibility. Through messaging, communications, and marketing I am pleased to be making an impact by changing the environmental narrative from what the aviation sector is negatively contributing, to what we are positively achieving – it is a monumental transformation for me, Bombardier, and the industry as a whole.

As the aerospace industry continues its evolution, the need to attract a more diverse workforce is essential. We are a multinational organization present in 14 countries, and we are proud of the number of nationalities that are represented amongst our colleagues. We also recognize that it is our responsibility to create a more inclusive workforce and increase the number of under-represented groups in our teams, which through solid communications about the working environment, attracts a broad set of applicants. As a female senior executive, I am already playing my part in achieving this goal!

“

Don’t wait for the opportunities, make them, and be sure to take them.

Ève Laurier | Vice President of Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs | Bombardier

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Bombardier’s technological advancements have a sustainable impact and thanks to visionary design and development our flagship aircraft, the Global 7500 aircraft, is the first business jet to have an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). This third-party audit provides detailed information about the aircraft’s life cycle environmental footprint. As the first business jet conceived with this approach it clearly highlights Bombardier’s commitment to its overarching environmental sustainability strategy.

Exemplifying our industry-leading stance is the creation of the global sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) initiative. Bombardier is a key member of the Business Aviation Coalition for Sustainable Aviation Fuel, and we’re proud to be significantly contributing to encouraging the increased uptake of, and demand for, the carbon emissions reducing fuel. We recognise our responsibility to the planet and remain committed to delivering exceptional products for our customers and the environment.

If given a chance, what change would you like to bring in the marketing industry?

Bombardier is already instigating change in the marketing sector by breaking down silos that have traditionally existed along the business jet ownership supply chain. Formerly explicit product details were the focus of marketing activity however we are evolving our strategy to enhance the customer experience through the forging of an innovative suite of relationships with a diverse set of aviation companies.

By facilitating simplified access to leading providers of essential aviation services through the Bombardier brand we can deliver a seamless operational experience that saves time, money and reduces workload.

In Singapore we have enriched our maintenance, repair and overhaul offering by forming a strategic relationship with award winning fixed base operator Jetex. Through their private terminal at Seletar Airport, Jetex offers state-of-theart flight planning, concierge, fuel, and other ground support services. We have a similar relationship with Signature Flight Support in the U.S. and Europe, providing our customers with a suite of multi-faceted initiatives that transform and enhance the service experience at our

facilities. From arrival to departure customers have access to all the elements necessary for a seamless operational experience.

This breaking down of silos changes the marketing landscape as we move away from marketing aircraft and add value by defining a holistic customer lifestyle approach.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals for Bombardier?

As a senior executive at Bombardier, I’m in the privileged position of being able to support company growth, evolve its reputation, deliver the sustainability message effectively, and influence industry changes and attitudes in terms of attracting women and under-represented groups to the sector. This will not only enhance the Bombardier business, but it will effect positive change within the industry as we lead by example.

I also want to demonstrate the human side of Bombardier through creative storytelling – building a strong narrative that resonates with authenticity and inspiration. I’m passionate about telling Bombardier’s story through the eyes of its people. Our dedicated and highly skilled workforce give the best of themselves each day and it reflects in the quality of our products and services. It’s important to convey the story from their perspective to reveal the human spirit behind our world-class organization.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the marketing sector?

There is no single piece of advice that will make an entrepreneur successful as there are so many factors in play, but you must believe in yourself and your goals. Don’t wait for the opportunities, make them, and be sure to take them. Surround yourself with positive people who have similar goals and aspirations. Don’t think too hard about all the things that you can’t achieve, focus on those you can, and the rest will follow.

Reforming Benchmarks

The Significance anof Effective

Marketing Strategy Marketing Strategy

arketing has been the real essence in the

Muplifting of any Organization in the long run.

While there are a number of other parameters that foster a business, marketing certifies to be the base of it, upholding the awareness and reach it requires, printing its mark worldwide.

For all firms, whether any poor start-up or an MNC giant, an effective marketing strategy can serve as a pivotal roadmap for the entire business. By developing a coherent and well considered marketing strategy, organizations can promote their business, target the right types of client and allocate their resources correctly, all while safeguarding the reputation of the firm.

Because one parameter of a marketing plan affects all of the others, synchronizing activities is critical to eliminate obstacles and maximize profits. A marketing strategy looks at all the areas of the sales activities and helps each one support the next.

One of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy relates to recognizing growth opportunities. This can be efficiently done by using the SWOT analysis. Once an organization identifies its strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of any marketing scheme, it becomes easier to en-cash those opportunities and reconsider what course or action should be taken to eliminate prevalent threats.

The underlying focus of the organization’s marketing strategy should be based on the concept of developing and increasing awareness of the company’s brand, and also on developing trust assurance in that brand. A company’s credibility or service is its most important asset. Hence, attempts should be made to enhance and protect it during the course of the marketing process

.

Understanding how to create an integrated marketing strategy is the key help to make better individual decisions with respect to specific marketing tactics. In order to achieve this, organizations must implement robust and efficient marketing strategies as quickly as possible. All the key components of a marketing strategy, if catered and applied in the best manner, helps to design and manufacture successful business.

Here are some of the crucial parameters that play a pivotal role in successfully implementing and nourishing effective marketing strategies.

Goals and Objectives

As with all the plans, goals and objectives are the origin of any target-oriented organization. Without a proper mix of these objectives according to the prevalent resources, a company proves to be inefficient in the long run.

It can begin by thinking through goal-specific accomplishments, identifying basic marketing objectives,

which may include some of the following aspects:

Increased brand recognition

Growth in the market share

Market to New Customer Segments

Digitization

Investment, Budget and Revenue

Once the objectives for the business are fully determined, the concept of On-margin investments, Budget and End revenue come into play. However, there is never enough budget to cover all the marketing ‘wish-lists’ adequately. The process of Investment is iterative and operates continually. It may be a function of:

Coming up with budget to shelter all the marketing needs

Identifying the objectives that are more critical and inclined towards the success factor and reallocating budget meet top-priority objectives on a ‘first-serve’ preference.

Searching for innovating ways to stretch the marketing budget. For example, content development, low-cost crowd outsourcing etc.

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Constructing a big picture view and reviewing the key marketing thrust areas. Others parameters such as spend comparison, consumption of utilization channels, website optimization etc. should be fetched under consideration.

As far as revenue is considered, a marketing strategy is used to determine the revenue that the campaign will deliver. All of the parts that go into determining revenue, including the budget allotted to the campaign, product cost, selling price and the life span of the product, should all be considered while developing the marketing strategy. The estimated End-Revenue can be measured against the actual revenue, and that information can be used to create future marketing strategies that are more successful.

Target Audience and Buyer Journey

Tracking and analyzing the dynamic and changing needs of the audience under radar is pivotal in effective marketing. Identifying the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the target audience aids to re localize the radius under consideration. Based on the available data,

segmentation should be done to provide qualified and needbased resources.

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on statistical market research and the prevalent data about your existing customers. After developing buyer personas, developing the Buyer Journey for each single persona and its interaction with the brand is considered to be the key to implement trust and satisfaction among the target audiences.

M edia and Messaging

Messaging is a process which signifies the firm’s intentions, and informs the actual purpose of your business to the external world.

Based on a detailed evaluation of how target is reacting with the various components of the brand, establish an apt messaging media, tone, selling propositions and key terms that are likely to resonate the most.

Determining the Channel Mix

Analyze and decide where the business would get the most Return on Investment (ROI). This can be done by echoing the channels around three road categories:

Traditional marketing channels (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Direct Mail etc.)

Digital Marketing Channels (Website, Mobile applications, Social platforms, online advertisements etc.)

Content Marketing (Blogs, Newsletters, e-books, Infographics etc.)

Competition

Though the role of competition in devising an optimal marketing strategy is limited, it helps to draw comparisons among identical products and groups, providing scope for ‘brand-improvements’. In order to symbolize a powerful campaign, marketing strategy needs to offer a detailed description of the competition, according to the small business experts at the Center for Business planning.

The objective of the marketing strategy is to provide historical information on how the competition has advertised products in the past, the target market the competition goes after and the product features that the competition offers. Some other factors include competition pricing, the competition’s distribution network and the sales strategies, which are also a part of the comprehensive marketing strategy.

Changing the Face of Organ Transplantation

Difference makers can drive meaningful changes that touch people's lives at different levels.

Leveraging her MIT background and passion for making a difference in the lives of others, Sasha King has led a remarkable patient-centric approach to scientific innovation and commercial growth since she joined CareDx as the Chief Marketing Officer

Sasha's passion for impacting patients' lives has helped CareDx deliver a new standard of care for patients who've traded end-stage organ failure for a second chance at life with an organ transplant. She has also helped simplify patients' day-to-day lives by rolling out at-home blood testing for immunosuppressed transplant recipients during a global pandemic.

Together with her colleagues, Sasha launched new diagnostic products that enhance care for patients living with a donated heart, kidney, liver or lung and patientcentric digital applications that help improve complex medication adherence regimens.

Leading with Innovation

Sasha states CareDx is fully and exclusively dedicated to transplant patient care, focused on solid organ transplants with an acute medical need. She notes, “We help people who are experiencing end-stage organ disease where a vital organ – their heart, their kidneys, their liver, or their lung(s) – are failing, and they need to receive a new one to survive. It's a patient population where transplantation makes miracles happen, taking recipients from their very worst medical state to a new lease on life.”

When CareDx was founded 20 years ago, it focused on new emerging technology and identifying the best market fit based on the technology itself. The company looked at

every place where its proprietary gene expression diagnostics could be impactful. Early on, the company decided to focus on heart transplants, where there was a significant unmet medical need, and available products were invasive and lagging indicators of heart rejection. CareDx was the first to introduce a non-invasive blood test to assess transplanted organ health.

Sasha mentions that eight years ago, around the time the company went public, the company's former CEO, Peter Maag, put a firm stake in the ground and decided to focus exclusively on transplant patients. It wasn't enough to offer a test to identify rejection. He wanted to expand its mission to help transplant recipients at every stage of their journey, pre- and post-transplant – from organ matching to waitlist support to post-transplant surveillance to medication adherence.

The company name was changed to CareDx, revitalizing the course for the company. After launching AlloMap Heart, the world's first non-invasive test to monitor immune quiescence, it realized it needed to evaluate multiple dimensions of organ health. Sasha shares, “We acquired the initial intellectual property behind AlloSure ,a tool that can measure donor DNA levels in a recipient's body – a key measurement to inform post-transplant care. Since then, CareDx has spent years in research and development to clinically validate AlloSure for heart, kidney, and lung transplantation.”

®

CareDx is now plowing new frontiers in multimodality diagnostics, combining gene expression tests with donorderived cell-free DNA (dd-cfDNA) to give transplant physicians the earliest and most comprehensive picture of post-transplant organ health, enabling timelier, tailored medical interventions if problems arise.

The Most Influential CMOs to Follow in 2022

Sasha King

Chief Marketing Officer CareDx

Denting the Universe

As the company grew and new products were introduced, Sasha worked with her team to build out sales, marketing, and customer care teams, and supporting reimbursement to ensure AlloSure was readily available for all transplant patients. In contrast, previous solutions for transplant patients were either lagging indicators of organ damage or invasive biopsies. Sasha mentions, “We were able to introduce a completely new, advanced molecular tool that has provided early detection for patients and clinicians. If it wasn't for our solutions, you'd hear about patients who would be on a very different trajectory and may have lost their organs. It's incredibly compelling when you think about the impact we're having on transplantation.”

Embracing Technology

Sasha realized early on that CareDx's success depended on a very high touch personalized service to support the logistics of blood draws and test-report generation. She understood that logistics should never be a barrier to physicians' ability to deploy next-generation, non-invasive, post-transplant tools. Thus, CareDx has patient care managers who call patients and schedule their blood draws, simplifying the process for transplant recipients, their patient care team, and providers.

RemoTraC , a mobile phlebotomy service, allows patients to draw their blood from their homes. It became an essential service when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Sasha notes, “Transplant patients are immunosuppressed and at higher risk of severe disease, so going into healthcare settings

during a global pandemic is incredibly dangerous for them. They need to be able to do their blood draws from home, safely. Luckily, we already had that service in place, but we expanded it to support all patients during the height of the pandemic. The service has helped keep people safe, so only those who need to be in the physician's office with a serious issue go in.”

Since CareDx's inception, it has helped more than 80,000 transplant patients with its testing services. Twice a month, the company hosts patient webinars and thousands subscribe to their newsletter to stay on top of the science and the latest research. As a transplant company, CareDx plays an exciting role with its digital platform to bring transplant patients together, so they can talk to each other, learn from each other, and support each other.

The Next Big Step

CareDx is moving into monitoring the health of cancer patients after receiving allogeneic cellular therapies and stem-cell transplantation. Sasha asserts, “When you transplant someone else's stem cells or bioengineer somebody's cells, that is a form of blood-based or cellbased transplantation. You now have a cell with DNA that is not your own. This is an area where we specialize, so we're excited to apply our organ transplant experience and move into these new areas to provide our expertise to support our patients and expand that definition of transplant .”

Bequeathing Brilliance

Sasha advises aspiring entrepreneurs venturing into the marketing sector to take feedback effectively and be comfortable with pivoting and making changes that can be a significant enabler of success. Sasha says, “I've seen people be successful in marketing who come from a wide variety of backgrounds. What they have in common is a growth mindset. That's something I always look for on my teams. In marketing, you need to be comfortable and thrive in change.”

“I also think it's incredibly important to follow your passions. At CareDx, we love taking care of transplant patients. If you have a passion for your mission and a vision for change, you're going to be well-situated to shift into the kinds of strategies that will make you successful," Sasha concludes.