Lisa-Marie Ashbury is the Digital Delivery Manager at security firm, ADT. We caught up with Lisa-Marie to find out what life is like working in her role.
Hi Lisa-Marie. Please describe your job: What do you do?
As a Digital Delivery Manager, my job is an all-encompassing digital role across ADT Fire & Security. Predominantly, I manage the PPC (pay per click) activity, as well as reporting, forecasting, analysing trends and reviewing how results ultimately affect the different workstreams within the business.
I also look after the inbound sales team in the Manchester division who are responsible for managing the customer queries and forms from the website. My role also requires me to support the marketing team with their paid social and marketing campaign activities.
Whereabouts do you sit within the organisation? Who do you report to?
I sit within the ADT Fire & Security UK&I division of Johnson Controls. ADT UK&I is predominantly focussed on the residential and small commercial market within the UK and Ireland. My role reports into the Head of Marketing and Product Solutions Group, Lee Jasper.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?
A knowledge of maths and statistics is necessary for my role. You need to be inquisitive in nature and superbly comfortable with software such as Microsoft Excel and CRM systems such as Salesforce.
Aside from technical skills, effective communication and project management is essential as I work with a variety of teams to execute my responsibilities and achieve our business ambition.
Tell us about a typical working day…
My day tends to begin with reporting; for instance, if our acquisition lead flow appears below forecast, I would then investigate and manage the business expectations based on the findings or make adjustments to our PPC activity. I tend to have a range of conference calls and meetings with various departments for around four hours of the day.
At the moment, I am separately working on three major wave initiatives (wave projects are new initiatives that we believe will bring significant commercial benefits to the business), so I tend to reserve my afternoons to ensure that everything is progressing efficiently. With my range of priorities, it is very important for my role to balance my responsibilities to ensure that everything is running smoothly.
What do you love about your job? What sucks?
I am really passionate about digging into data and analytics – this is an area I really enjoy because, based on your findings, you can create a strategy to drive the business forwards. I’m really proud of some of the pioneering initiatives we’ve undertaken.
For example, to help track leads, monitor their quality and be able to attribute leads back to PPC, we have identified that we could use the AI in our software to utilise lead tracking and sales data from our CRM, to improve the accuracy and efficiency of keywords.
By connecting our CRM to our PPC management software – Decision (by Jaywing Intelligence), we have been able to change the PPC optimisation model, so it doesn’t simply focus on generating web leads but finds leads that are optimised around the CRM sales funnel.
Whilst Decision looks at a variety of touchpoints, from live search data to market data, we’ve created an API that connects the ADT CRM database to Decision to ensure that we attribute appointments and closed sales back to PPC.
By being able to accurately track leads along the sales journey, we have helped reduce the cost per lead by creating an aggregated view of performance over time for every postcode in the UK which is fed into the model with pin-point accuracy; at the right geographical location, day of week and time of day to maximise their efficiency.
In terms of what ‘sucks’, working within a big organisation means that there are a large number of stakeholders which can make decision-making a slow process. It would be great to be nimbler when needed.
What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
My main goal is to hit the lead generation that I forecast to the business. In addition to this, ensuring that my wave initiatives are being executed, I use Salesforce metrics to track KPIs to measure success such as number of leads and conversion rate to opportunity and sale.
We can use this data to measure the success of our PPC campaigns and also other marketing campaigns in the social and digital arena.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
Tools that I use every day include Salesforce, Microsoft Excel, and on a more interactive level, leadership and project management.
How did you land in this role, and where might you go from here?
I joined the company out of University as a temporary receptionist 22 years ago, then retrained to become a draughtsman which I did for two years. I moved south from Scotland in 1999 to become a Desktop Publisher, a job I taught myself and did for a year. I then became Intruder Product Manager looking after the complete UK product range for a further two years. When the position opened to join the web team, I learned web development skills and ran several company websites in that role for 16 years.
I recognised an opportunity within the digital team and after successfully pitching it to the business, I secured a position heading up ADT UK&I’s digital strategy for the last year and a half.
I’d like to expand the digital team at ADT in the future, particularly to upskill and help to develop the marketing executives in order to enable them to understand the business at a strategic level and identify potential opportunities.
Which company cultures do you admire?
What I really admire about the company is its ability and dedication to solving any personal grievances. For example, there is a confidential helpline that staff can use, and an independent team will take any issues with the aim to find a solution or offer support. I’ve seen this work before and it’s a very effective method that I’m personally proud of within our business.
Do you have advice for anybody who wants to work in your field?
In the past, the digital arena has been a very male-dominated function, but more recently there has been an increase in women taking on these roles, which is great to see.
Whoever you are, the ability and willingness to embrace new technology is key. Don’t be afraid to adopt new technology if it can help your cause. Know your data and understand how you can best leverage it to maximise the success of your digital campaigns.
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