Carlos Doughty is CEO and founder of MarTech Alliance. Here he answers our questions about the future of marketing as part of a series presented in association with Lead Monitor, New Statesman Media Group’s marketing solution.
What’s been your proudest achievement in your career?
Launching MarTech Alliance from my sofa in my spare time. That said we haven’t even got warmed up on where we are headed with the business, so plenty more to achieve.
What media channels do you see as most important and best value when it comes to marketing spend and activity?
It will depend heavily on your industry and audience. I would add that the importance of the underlying copy, creatives and content will have the greatest impact on success. For us, email marketing is still incredibly powerful for engagement and conversion. From an audience acquisition perspective, LinkedIn organic and paid is our sweet spot.
[To find out more about the future of marketing, download the Lead Monitor white paper: B2B marketing after a pandemic: 8 key lessons for senior marketers]
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How important to your brand is the news media (both B2B and B2C)?
News media relating to tech and marketing is very important or at least we hope it is for our audience as we cover it in our weekly martech news feature.
What for you is the key to any successful marketing campaign – what actually makes a ‘good lead’?
Relevance, intent and timing. A good name is only good when there is intent. So for us to be an actual lead we think a lot about intent.
How important is technology in modern marketing?
Being the MarTech Alliance it won’t surprise you I find it pretty critical.
What are the biggest pain points you see in a marketing campaign?
Measurability tends to be the biggest challenge, especially if you’re going to be more sophisticated than just last-touch attribution.
If you had to choose one, which marketing tech would you say is the most useful during these unusual times?
I’ll cheat here and say a marketing cloud. That way I get a suite of tools from email marketing to social media management.
But in these unusual times I’d say for many, social media listening will prove very powerful to better understand changing consumer behaviours. Equally for those in retail without a strong digital presence e-commerce is going to be critical.
How would you sell the concept of martech to senior marketers or business leaders who have never used it before?
Explain things in plain English. Set the scene of the transformational change we have all seen play out in technology on a personal level to highlight the need to adapt. And explain the connection of tech to marketing to help and how this helps us move quicker and adapt more easily to the digitised world we now live in.
For a shameless plug I would probably just suggest they take my fundamentals of martech course.
What marketing campaign has particularly impressed you recently and why?
Not so much a campaign but rather the GymShark influencer and social media marketing strategy to build a $1.3b brand is mad impressive.
What’s been the most important martech innovation of recent years?
Customer data platforms (CDPs). They have democratised tech and data management in a way that was previously not possible. From pre-packing data connectors, matching and decisioning they enable companies to really embrace data-driven marketing. To better personalise, contextualise and execute in ways that deliver a better customer experience and optimise channel management.
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