The Opportunity to Harness New Paradigm Technologies

People could rack up many years of experience in a marketing role and still not fully understand what it truly entails. And then there are those who quickly shed any initial perceptions they may have and work their role to the best of their ability while proactively seeking to learn more.

Mavis Liew, a marketing veteran turned CMO advisor at Forrester, fresh out of college, had started in a junior marketing role, thinking it was going to be all about glamor, glitz, and luxury brands.

“Instead, I was doing really simple stuff like writing collateral, some public relations, organizing events, and just really the basic things. There wasn’t even a marketing manager.”

The other part, influencer relations, involves working with governing bodies, be it regulators, or government, or industry lawmakers, to ensure that the new paradigm solution being released in the market does not negatively impact the public, for example raise privacy issues.

Despite this, something sparked inside Mavis that made her look for another marketing role, this time with a technology company, so that she could learn more. “Enterprise technology is a whole new ballgame that I had never been exposed to. But there wasn’t even a thought that I should be cautious.”

Enterprise marketing – not arcane magic

The person who hired her and eventually became her mentor, informed her later that she had been the least qualified among all the applicants. But, it was her can-do attitude and willingness to learn that made up his mind.

And when she started working the job and learning about B2B tech marketing from him, she fell in love with B2B tech marketing.

Several marketing positions later at different tech companies, she has settled into her latest role as an advisor to chief marketing officers (CMOs).

The path to a marketing career may not be so clear cut as it seems to be for Mavis. For example, Gina von Esmarch opined that cutting one’s teeth in a marketing agency early is one good way to start, because it provides an important customer-facing aspect that marketers have to learn.

A responsibility to be a force for growth

Speaking with Mavis and a few other marketing leaders and experts in my previous role, I realize that business-to-business tech providers have real opportunity, and maybe responsibility even, to increase efficiency, productivity and general scalability of businesses and their processes and workflows.

Having fought in the marketing trenches herself, Mavis has a strong message for her former fellow marketing heads – “Don’t pigeonhole your department anymore into being just the events producer, or the creator of golf balls, or think that your value is only in generating new logos.

“Understand that your value is in driving growth for your business. You are responsible for customer retention and engagement. And given how many business models today are about recurring revenue (typically 70%-80% out of the total revenue), look at how much impact you can have on growth!”

With new paradigm technologies like generative AI and others to add to the marketing arsenal, there is opportunity to increase that revenue contribution. So, marketing leaders and their teams will have to adopt that mantra for learning fast, to be able to leverage the technology optimally.