Ready to Own Your Future in Marketing? – Cisco Blogs

What a year it’s been! A year of facemasks, social distancing, economic crises and home-schooling; a year without travel and without hugs. We’ve all had to be flexible and adapt to new realities — in our personal lives, and as marketers too.

That was one of the key themes of our EMEAR Marketing Velocity Virtual event, which I had the honour of hosting on 11^th May.

Here are some of my highlights from the event. If you missed it, don’t worry. You can watch the replay here.

Future ready & ready to go

We kicked the event off with our Cisco Global leaders.

Michelle Chiantera, Oliver Tuszik and our new Head of Global Partner Marketing, Luxy Thuraisingam, discussed what it means to be Future Ready. The last year has shown that we will always face challenges we didn’t anticipate. It’s where we see agility that we see success. Our key skill is our ability to pivot in the new hybrid world, and to embrace the opportunities it holds.

Perhaps the most visible demonstration of this agility has been in how we engage with each other and our customers – from the overnight shift to all-digital events, to the entire workforce interacting from home. This has pushed us all to be creative in how we cut through when digital fatigue kicks in.

The pandemic drove a decade of digital transformation in months, blessing us with deeper insights into the digital behaviours and interests of our customers. With this comes the opportunity for sales and marketing teams to leverage those insights to focus on the right customers, with the right message, at the right place, at the right time.

The way customers buy continues to change. And with this comes opportunities to find new ways to unlock profitability through the lifecycle. As levels of direct sales engagement shift, there are new areas emerging where marketing can add value, not least through delivering qualified demand in eCommerce.

Adapting our marketing strategies and priorities

Emma Roffey, our leader in Growth Marketing EMEAR & Global Advocacy, shared some of the inside story from Cisco’s marketing organisation. While she gave a whistlestop tour of everything from small business to advocacy, I’m particularly excited by the update she gave on analytics and account-based intelligence, as we optimise our marketing activities and support our partners and sellers alike.

Actionable insights are so critical as we identify behaviour trends and spot opportunities (or “early warnings”) that guide our targeting and drive more relevant marketing, and ultimately more satisfied customers.

Being brave

After a strange year, with so much change and so little certainty of what’s next, perhaps we all need to embrace the ambiguity of what’s to come. But as we face growing demands and opportunities, a critical component of our shared future success will be our courage.

In his thought-provoking session, Thomas provided some great tips on how to be brave, what bravery means and how being brave will result in – More impact – More success and more importantly – more fun!

Keep the conversation flowing

I’ve barely scratched the surface of our Marketing Velocity event. As well as the live conversations I’ve just talked about, you have access to a host of on-demand sessions, which include presentation from industry thought-leaders, updates on some of the new and exciting features of our Marketing Velocity (MV) platform, and news about our upcoming campaign priorities and developments in Account-Based Intelligence. So I urge you to take some time to explore.

Did any of these sessions spark an idea or question? Join me on Cisco’s Marketing Velocity Voice community and get involved in the conversation.

Watch the full Marketing Velocity Broadcast and
check out additional on-demand sessions!

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