On August 17th in Singapore, Econsultancy is trying something a bit different. We will be holding our first event which will not only feature the top talent of our industry but one in which all of the speakers at the event are women. Entitled ‘Digital Divas‘, we encourage all client-side marketers in the region to attend and you can request your seat here.

To give attendees some background on the speakers, we have asked each of the presenters to give us an overview of the current state of marketing and a few tips on how marketers can advance their careers.

Today, we’re going to hear from Rosemary Lising, a digital leader and solutions creator with over 20 years experience who has held senior leadership positions at Columbus, iProspect, GroupM, Blue Interactive (acquired by WPP) and DoubleClick.

Econsultancy: What does it mean for marketers to provide ‘brand leadership’?

Rosemary Lising: Brands that have attained ‘brand leadership’ are those with a strong identity and purpose whose values permeate throughout the organization to drive their vision forward. Achieving ‘brand leadership’ takes time and an obsessive focus on your customers, externally and people, internally.

Customers drive your business. Understanding who your customers are, showing them why they should care about your product/service, targeting them with messaging that resonates, being their whenever and wherever they are ready to engage and buy are key tenets of building effective marketing programs.

Remember, marketing programs do not operate in a silo. Working in collaboration with people from different internal teams (e.g. product, CRM, sales) will help form integrated strategies and integrated business outcomes. Teams working toward a common goal is essential in attaining brand leadership.

rosemary lising

Econsultancy: How does this translate into marketing strategy?

Rosemary Lising: To attain ‘brand leadership’ you have to put your customers at the centre of your strategic approach. This means your marketing strategy will be focused on delivering the right message at the right time to the right person through the right channel on the right device.

It’s an increasingly customer-centric, digital, omnichannel world. The key is to know your customer, use the data that you collected to inform where and how to reach them and work to build an omnichannel marketing ecosystem and experience. This means connecting the dots between customer data, insights, media, content and technology. Starting with clear objectives and goals, and how to measure them, will form the successful foundation of your strategic approach.

This omnichannel approach also means internal collaboration with your product, CRM, sales, digital teams. Integration will help deliver more well-rounded strategies and more effective outcomes.

Econsultancy: What do you feel are the current trends in agency/media relationships?

Rosemary Lising: The agency and media industries are rapidly evolving toward a digitally-dominated approach of reaching audiences with messages that resonate. Keeping up with the speed of change means that marketers, agencies, media, platforms, and technologies collaborating ever more closely, will be the future. There is no one company that can do it all and execute well.

Econsultancy: What should marketing leaders be doing to ‘prove’ marketing ROI?

Rosemary Lising: As a performance marketer, I believe all marketing programs should be measured, tracked and optimised toward specific KPIs and business objectives.  Only by measuring, can we work toward improving results. Only by measuring and continually iterating can we identify what works and what doesn’t.

Creating a measurement matrix is a good first step. The purpose of the measurement matrix is to help categorize your campaigns into broad areas of focus (i.e. brand and performance) and identify a few key measurement indicators.

Econsultancy: What should senior marketers be doing to progress in their careers?

Rosemary Lising: Be a lifelong learner. The marketing landscape is ever changing so embrace the new. When you stop learning you stop advancing and moving forward.

Join us in Singapore, August 17th, for ‘Digital Divas‘ with Rosemary Lising and others. Request your seat here.

Read the other interviews in this series.