If your Marketing engine fires from all cylinders, your organization can traverse soon to the goal and multiplies the ROI.
Behind any successful organization there is a need of strong marketing backbone. Of course, product and services matter a lot. Event if the organization has strong product and service strength, if it is not reached out to the target customers, the strength of the organization is of no use. Therefore, marketing strategy matters a lot – specially in the era of digital disruption where data deluge is in every sector. Irrespective of region, country and industry sector effective marketing can push the company on a progressive path. We have a marketeer as case study who is trying to push her company on a progressive path in UAE. Her name is Sonali Basu Roy, Marketing Manager at Bulwark Technologies. She is very progressive on her thoughts and deploys all necessary digital tools to help organization – Bulwark Technologies digitally transform.
“I want to stay agile & up to date on industry trends with a constant thirst and focus on knowledge enhancement.”
Sonali Basu Roy, Marketing Manager at Bulwark Technologies.
Sonali says, “As a marketer, I am trying to embrace & execute digital marketing techniques like Webinars, E-mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Video Marketing, Introduction of digital version of our yearly cybersecurity magazine: The Shield, etc.”
The Shield is a Security Bulletin Guide amongst other marketing techniques for continued lead generation & to enable digital transformation and track the activities on a frequent basis.
As we understand, marketing is a business enabler that it makes customers aware of the overall products or services, engages them, and helps them make the buying decision. Furthermore, a marketing plan, a part of the business plan, helps in creating and maintaining demand, relevance, reputation, competition, etc. Therefore, Sonali not only concentrates on the marketing transformation but also contributes positively by dealing with the management and Business Units to create a marketing plan in line with the business goals and objectives. It involves dealing with multiple vendors in Bulwark’s current portfolio for the creation of a sound marketing strategy & planning, execution of marketing activities & follow-up with Business/Sales for the leads generated from the activities and track results from the activities & derive ROI generated from each activity.
Bulwark serves the entire region of MEA and represents more than 30+ technology vendors and works with more than 750+ partners. The objective of the company is to bring the best in technology to the region.
Marketing Tools Used
- Email Marketing: Mailchimp
- Social Media Marketing: FB/LinkedIn/Twitter
- Google Analytics: Analytics & Optimization
- SemRush: Search Engine Optimization
- Cisco Webex: Webinar Requirement
- Centra CRM: Customer Engagement
- Canva – Graphics/Digital Marketing
The role of any marketeer is to deploy effective marketing strategy to generate sales pipeline. Sonali added, “Over the last 12 years, I faced with unique opportunities in the form of either creating Brand awareness for new Technology players in the regional market or help create a brand equity for the organization as a Thought Leader in the Cyber Security domain.”
She has successfully devised marketing programs having a measurable mix of Direct channels (such as events/webinars/tradeshows/3rd party conferences/roundtables etc.), Indirect Channels (such as website/blogs/Magazines/Interviews etc.) and Digital medium (such as Social Media/Email Marketing etc.), on a frequent basis & collaborating at any given point of time with various partners like marketing agency/media houses/PR agencies/3rd party agencies etc. amidst an aggressive timeline to have the maximum impact.
She added, “A planned approach towards the key objectives of the program, optimum utilization of resources and budget, I had at my disposal, the marketing mix and the target market and audience which we wanted to address, helped me achieve the desired results of the Marketing campaigns for the organization and channel community.”
She is well informed decision maker when it comes deploying automation platforms like Centra CRM/Google Analytics to track and monitor customers’ behaviour.
The other critical point for a marketeer these days is to data driven. They need to know the target user’s behaviour, goals, pain points, and challenges. It comes from the data and one can develop marketing campaigns that cater to their specific needs. Data such as a user’s browsing patterns, social media activity, online purchase behaviour, and other metrics can help the marketeer focus on their marketing efforts on what works. So, the primary goal of the marketeer is to collect as much information about their target market as much as possible. Therefore, data is at the core of any successful marketing strategy.
Apart from marketing to the external world / customers, marketing to the internal resources is very critical. A good marketeer needs to understand the internal challenges before executing any campaign. Sonali says, “As a marketer, I am engaging inhouse teams on a regular basis to capture their challenges and opinions from any marketing activity undertaken recently.”
Targeting the right audience is key to the success of all marketing campaigns. However, with so much data available, it can be difficult to know which segments to focus on. “To overcome this challenge, I conduct thorough market research to identify our target audience and create buyer personas for the creation & execution of a sound marketing strategy in line with the organization & vendor goals & objectives,” she added. “A good challenge which I constantly try to overcome in all my marketing initiatives is to develop accurate metrics to measure the outcome of the marketing activities in relation to the direct sales/revenue generated from such Marcom activities.”
The outcome of a successful marketing campaign may not be immediate and may take a while to derive the actual ROI from each activity. Also limited budgets, timeframes and marketing perception in the industry, add to the list of challenges.
Having ticked all the pointers Sonali is at the top of the pyramid. Having said that she does not forget the fundamentals. The most fundamental aspect is to keep on learning about the dynamics of the market. She says, “My continued endeavour would be to keep myself updated to all changes and continue always delivering my best in my current role. I want to stay agile & up to date on industry trends with a constant thirst and focus on knowledge enhancement.”
Finally, she maintained, “I see myself continuing to grow in my career and taking on more responsibility within the company by leveraging the vast expertise I have gained working in the technology industry over the years. I wish to effectively balance my personal and professional lives to achieve success in all spheres in the wonderful journey of life.”