MarTech Advisor | Ginger Conlon Interview

I did an interveiwe with Ginger Conlon. It was about tech skills that marketers need to have.

Transcript

[Ginger C 00:07]: Hello and welcome to MarTech Advisor’s Executive interview series. I’m Ginger Conlin, a contributing editor to MarTech Advisor. And joining us today is Venket Nagaswamy, who is CEO of Mariana IQ.

[Ginger C 00:21]: And Venkat and I are going to talk about the skills that marketers need to succeed in marketing today, and he’s got a great perspective as a CEO. He hires marketers, but he also works with a company that runs the company that, you know, works very closely with marketers. So, welcome Venket. Thanks for being here today.

[Venkat 00:41]: Glad to be here.

[Ginger C 00:44]: So, before we dive in, I’d love to hear a little bit about your journey to becoming CEO of Mariana IQ.

[Venkat 00:53]: So, uh, before starting this company, I used to run enterprise marketing for Juniper Networks, uh, which meant that I was head of uh Legion Imagine Solutions marketing uh for uh uh enterprise business for Juniper Networks, which is a 1.8 billion dollar business. And as I always say, that’s where uh uh uh that gave me the background or I worn the shoe of a marketer and if you’re developing tools right now for marketers, it’s with the experience of being a marketer myself and and having uh led teams uh marketing teams. And uh prior to uh uh Juniper, I used to be at McKinsey. I was a consultant uh uh serving high-tech clients for the most part in sales and marketing, but in other strategy matters as well. Uh, prior to that, I started another company. I used to sell plastics uh back in the day uh uh uh in the automotive industry for GE in Detroit. Uh, and by background I’m an engineer. I was uh I did uh uh I went to IIT Madras in India and I was doing a a PhD in what we would today call us high performance computing at Georgia Tech when I bailed out at the masters when I realized that research was not for me. And uh uh uh and and I also did a business degree. So, in terms of my background, uh uh uh I’ve been a salesperson, I’ve been a consultant and I’ve been a marketer and I’m by background I’m an engineer. So, uh when I got brought into the marketing team at Juniper, it was uh I came in with a slightly different background than your typical marketer. And having been a marketer, now we’re developing tools that will help marketers.

[Ginger C 02:30]: That’s a great background for a broad perspective on what it takes to succeed in marketing today.

[Venkat 02:36]: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so.

[Ginger C 02:39]: So, first question, um, hiring marketers has been a part of your role, you were a marketer. Uh, what do you see as the key either skill or trait that it that that you need to succeed in marketing today, specifically as a marketing leader?

[Venkat 02:57]: Absolutely. So, I mean, uh for this, I have to again go back to my own experience in terms of when I got brought into marketing, uh my boss, uh then boss Lauren Flaty, uh who was a CMO of Juniper, she’s now the CMO of CA. Uh she brought me into into marketing to bring more of a structured uh process into marketing. This was about uh six, five, six years ago, far much before uh most people were thinking about uh analytics and and being far more rigorous, at least in the B2B world uh when it comes to marketing. She saw that uh uh uh that we need to bring in more of uh uh analysis and analytics into the picture even though uh she uh has a more traditional uh market’s background. She saw the need for bringing more of these things in. So, anything uh uh uh I say now is based on uh the the the vision that she she saw, so I got to give her most of the credit. Uh, so in terms of hiring marketers, one of the big things that’s happened in the past 10 years is as everybody knows, the the profession has become more and more uh uh uh analytical and more and more technology heavy, right? And and with it becoming more and more technology heavy, we uh there are a whole bunch of pitfalls that we could fall into uh that we need to be careful about. So, uh uh in terms of the skills that we look for uh when it comes to marketing, it’s uh and in fact one of the uh uh the first hires that we did was a marketing person. She comes in with a uh with with a with a communications background uh from NYU, but we’re adding more and more of uh analysis and and coding skills to her to develop a modern marketer. So, a modern marketer is has uh an ability to understand numbers, delve into numbers, understand what they mean uh within the context of the strategy that they’re establishing and of course still having uh the the the the creativity and the energy and passion that a normal marketer has. And one thing I should note on the side is that uh with the rise of AI, one hopes that a lot of uh routine numerical things that people are doing now with respect to data, hopefully those things will go away and marketers can come back to focusing on creativity and so on and so forth. But for the most part, today you need this combination of uh left brain and right brain, even though I personally don’t like the analogy of left brain and right brain, but anyway.

[Ginger C 05:22]: So, if you are say mid-level um in your career and marketing and you need to, you know, get a better analytics background and what have you, so you can, you know, take a leadership position, what are some steps that you can take to achieve that? You know, spend more time with the data analysts, take some classes, get out there in the market, you know, get a mentor, what, what advice do you have?

[Venkat 05:48]: Yep, so I would say, so there are two or three things. Uh, tools have gotten much better today than what they were six years ago, let’s say. So now, uh um, so six years ago if somebody had asked me this question, I would have said, go, first step, go learn Python to go get the uh data from the source and do the analysis yourself. However, in the past six years or so with uh the rise of tools like Looker, Periscope, Domo, uh uh uh and Tableau and so on and so forth, uh uh ability to use these tools to bring things together has become more important. Of course, learning Python and knowing Python is an important thing, but I would say that’s the second step. The first step I would say is that uh uh uh is is to learn tools like Looker and and Periscope and all these things. Because one of the key things in terms of understanding analytics is being able to gather, get data from multiple sources, keeping it in one place to try and draw uh uh lessons in terms of what are the customers looking for, what is the journey that’s going to appeal to them the most? The questions have remained the same. It’s a question of pulling the data and figuring out the answers that’s changed. And so, uh uh uh in terms of first step, it’s being able to get all these data from different sources and then integrated in one place to analyze, right? So, that’s number one. And allied with that is understanding uh Google Analytics, which is right now main stay of a lot of websites, uh main Google Analytics or similar things like Adobe and Sitecore and so on and so forth. Uh uh secondly, uh uh uh I would also add other tools like uh uh uh uh like Marketo, Pardot, those two things uh uh website analytics and and marketing automation analytics, how do you knowing those tools is super important. And a new breed of tools that have come up now are people like us who are more in the ABM space. That will become more and more uh critical as the time goes by, but right now I’d say focus on Looker, focus on tools like uh site analytics and marketing analytics and once you master those, then you can start messing around with Python to get to get, you know, further detailed than what these tools can help you get to today.

[Ginger C 08:01]: Excellent, thank you. So, um, like you said, there’s so much data and there are all these new marketing technologies and it’s changing the the marketing landscape. And along with skills like having a better understanding of analytics, is there anything else that there are any new skills that you’re seeing coming up that marketers should be thinking about?

[Venkat 08:24]: So, uh uh of course, a couple of things that we see lesser of in uh um in B2B marketing than that we see more in B2C is more understanding about social and specifically around paid social as a tool. I mean if you look at the percentage of dollars that whole of marketers in B2B spend on digital as a whole, it’s much smaller, even as a percentage than what B2C spend and even in B2B spend on digital, most of it is spent on Google AdWords and banner ads. Uh one of the things that we believe is an important uh uh uh important channel is paid social and how do we become deeper and deeper into that. So that’s uh something that we don’t see as much as in B2B that we see in B2C. But one other so that’s one thing that is quasi new, I would say that people need to look at. And the other thing that I would want to emphasize is uh uh is not a new skill. I mean we human beings have known about it for 4,000 years, it’s just being able to write, right? I mean the one of the biggest constraints that we have today is in being is in finding someone who can understand the numbers and understand the math but can still describe it and and and write an article or a blog or what have you that brings it to life uh for people who might not be as numerically inclined, right? So, uh and at the end of the day it comes back to uh basics, I guess, the reading, writing, arithmetic. But uh uh uh but those are not new skills. But but those are things that I would emphasize, writing is something that I would highly emphasize when it comes to uh when it comes to our uh uh our our neck of the woods if you will.

[Ginger C 10:01]: Right. How about um traits? So, you know, skills are learned but there’s there’s kind of traits that I think as a marketer you’re, you know, maybe more inclined to succeed than others. What are you seeing, um, what do you look for also when you hire any specific traits along with you mentioned creativity, but anything else?

[Venkat 10:22]: So, uh, with marketing, uh especially in B2B marketing, the the with the tools being as shall we say as separate as they are, as siloed as they are, bringing all data together is important and so on and so forth like what we’re talking about. Along with that is uh is just persistence, right? The tools even ours included, don’t perform the way they’re supposed to and having uh a lateral thinking in terms of being able to figure out uh how to properly leverage the tool, it’s not a question of using the tool, it’s more a question of persistence and grit and and and uh and having lateral thinking. These are skills again that that that educators have been talking about for a long time, but those are the kinds of things that are more important today in marketing because it’s not as if unlike let’s say I’m going to pick some example, unlike let’s say tracking your expenses using Mint which is relatively easy, in marketing tools, the tools are not that haven’t come to the place where it performs the way you need it to and which requires the user and I’m sorry to say this as a guy who’s developing tools, but it takes the user to think in terms of how the developer might be thinking, though it should be the the other way. But nevertheless, those are some of the skills that people need to be able to leverage the tools appropriately and to make sure that stuff works the way we want it to. So it’s perseverance, grit and and and and lateral thinking and things of that kind that we need uh in terms of in terms of uh uh in terms of your inherent uh uh uh inherent qualities than than the specific skill sets.

[Ginger C 12:04]: Right. So, um, you know, along with creativity and speaking, you know, speaking data so to speak, and um, this kind of lateral creative thinking, anything that you see that over the long term will just continue to be an essential marketing skill or trait. It’s something that’s, you know, always been important like writing, but will continue on no matter how many other crazy changes there are.

[Venkat 12:31]: Yep. So, the way we break up any process is three into three buckets, right? So it’s sense, decide and act. And this, by the way, is what people used to talk about automation and robotic process automation and so on and so forth. So, this framework or SIDA, sense, interpret, decide and act, uh frameworks have been around for quite some time. But when you think about it in this way, and let’s fast forward to a future where the existing uh uh uh types of uh AI tools have reached their maturity. Let’s say in five, 10 years time. So the ability to gather data and understand people is far better. Uh so, even in that world, what what I would see is there would still be uh certain amount of restrictions in how AI can draw lessons out of this. Uh but when it comes to deciding and acting, or at least in terms of being able to create the assets and so on, the creativity uh and and ability to tell a story still remains, right? And and with my wife being a writer, I I I have a vested interest in hoping that AI will not take over the the the take over, you know, telling stories and having more imaginative writing. Basic kinds of writing have already been automated, but that kind of telling a story that grabs the people, that, I think is going to remain a human endeavor, at least for another five to 10 years. But there is nothing by the way, maybe over time, that’ll get automated as well, but at least so far as I know today. So, that kind of creative skills is still going to remain. Ability to tell a story will still going to remain, but you can tell a story that grabs the people only if you understand people, only if you understand who they are, who the people you’re trying to appeal to, what are they, what do they want, what is the journey that they themselves are going through so that you can tie what you’re doing to that, right? So, this understanding people and telling a story, understanding people while a lot of this will be done by AI, is but AI is going to augment human being in in being able to understand them and then of course using that to tell a story. Those were the two pieces of puzzle that we believe is always going to a certain element of it is always going to remain human and and and we need to keep looking at it as we as the time goes by.

[Ginger C 14:40]: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for all the great insight today. And I want to thank everyone who’s joined us watching the video. And also, um, Benken and I had a great conversation about account-based marketing in another video. So, I hope you’ll check that out as well. So, thanks again for being here today.

[Venkat 14:59]: Thanks all.