Niroshan Rajadurai, Executive Vice President of EMEA and ANZ at Vector Software, is the second interviewee in our marketing expert series. From his 3 biggest marketing challenges to his favourite hobby, we wanted to learn everything about our latest marketing expert.
- What do you like to do in your spare time (hobbies)?
I enjoy playing cricket, reading business and technology literature and playing the Trumpet.
- What music do you like?
My favourite type of music is Jazz, this is influenced by my interest in brass instruments.
- What other career would you like to have chosen if you weren’t in marketing?
It is an interesting question. Marketing is something that became essential as part of my day to day role. My original background was in Electrical & Electronics Engineer and Computer Science. The industry I work in today uses these skill sets. What I discovered early on when I worked as an engineer is that selling and marketing are essential skills both externally to a business and internally to your management. I think irrespective of any career path, marketing is a critical skill, and with the innovation taking place in digital marketing right now, my back ground and modern marketing are merging together. As a child, aeroplanes and robotics/AI always interested me. If I wasn’t doing what I was doing today, I would be more involved in the technology in robotics/AI and it’s modern day applications.
We then asked for Niroshan ‘s insights, opinions and expertise into marketing, to help us understand how marketing has developed and changed over the years, especially with reference to Vector Software. We asked him:
- What do you think have been the biggest changes to B2B marketing in the past 3 years?
There has been an evolution in digital marketing and business intelligence services from that digital marketing data. Most CIOs no longer see “digital marketing” as a separate operation within the marketing team, it’s now an integral part and channel for pushing messaging. The use of marketing analytics tools also help identify in real time the ROI on campaigns. An upcoming challenge is the growing trend of AdBlocking which continues to challenge how digital marketing techniques will evolve over time.
- What do you think will be the biggest change in the way you approach your campaigns in the next 3 years?
Self enablement for the end customer. We continue to notice the speed at which decisions are made continues to get shorter and shorter in our industry. Our goal is to drive our value through thought leadership, and have our website be a way of disseminating that thought leadership into a focused solution that the customer can quickly and easily identify, evaluate and procure. Part of self enablement could also extend into areas of live chat (seen now on some websites), but could extend to the application of digital intelligence and automation, with further integration into intelligent assistants (e.g. Siri/Cortana/Alexis, etc). Imagine, “Alexis, can you tell me what the current trends in DevOps are for mobile application development.”
- What are your 3 biggest marketing challenges?
The first one is staying fresh and innovative. It is important to be on top of the research and new trends in the industry. There is a large volume of data that we consume as an organisation to stay on top of industry trends.
The second one is finding new and meaningful ways to engage with clients and customers.
The third one is to stand out from the crowd. Why are we different to our competitors, and the rest of the buzz around major topics.
- Describe the future of the trade media – will it thrive or do you think there are problems ahead?
To simplify society, there are two different generations in play at the moment, one is more comfortable with printed news and the other, is happy to get content through digital sources with succinct delivery.
The challenge with a periodically trade media, for instance, is that there is a lag between news occurring and it being published… This leads to a staleness in the news, which becomes old news (as it has been covered in others channels) once it reaches the reader. So, the challenge is to find a way to add value to printed news. The information needs to be solution-based, unique and perhaps driving thought leadership.
- What do you think is the most effective and least effective marketing activity you, or your company, undertakes (in terms of ROI)?
The most effective marketing activity is problem-solving based webinars.
The least effective marketing activity is trade show (except for a few countries). It is difficult to get people there, as they have no time to come.
- What is the most over-hyped marketing tactic?
Traditional paid advertising. When it comes to generating leads and filling the ales funnel, traditional outbound marketing tactics — where marketers push their message out far and wide in the hopes that it’ll resonate, it isn’t as effective as it used to be.
- What was the best campaign you’ve run?
Problem-solving based webinars. This resulted in a 20 time increase in the number of people participating and follow on engaging with us.
- What is the worst campaign you’ve run/tell us about a time when a campaign went wrong?
We found that ‘widget’ or ‘feature’ based webinars provided no context to our customers and prospects. They were poorly attended and very often attendees misunderstood what the goal of the technology that was to be presented was supposed to be.
- If there is one thing you could change about the electronics press, what would it be?
To go to the next level, more value needs to be added to the content. The electronics press should create communities to encourage idea and thought exchange. An interesting trend we have noticed is that PodCasts are growing in popularity.
- If there was one thing you could change about how agencies work with you, what would it be?
I have a good relationship with Napier. When I first asked Dave to create content for us, which can be challenging as we are an engineering company, he was patient and provided guidance. This resulted in an evolution for us. So, there is nothing that I don’t like. Agencies need to continue to add value, to challenge us in the way we approach marketing. I am very happy with Napier.
The only thing they could do in the future would be to act more enterprising. They could take control of broader industry challenges and problems and harmonise all of the key players in addressing the challenge, just like a project manager would.
- Can you explain how you define and measure success for your campaigns?
We define success through people’s attendance and engagement with our content. Ultimately we can trace revenue back to campaigns we do, so from a business perspective this is the ultimate ROI. We use tools like Act-On and Sales Force to measure these KPIs.
- How important will social media be for your campaigns in the next 3-5 years?
It’s hard to tell. Social media in the traditional sense is over saturated in content. However data contained in Social Media could enable better content delivery to be targeted at individuals. Trends change so quickly, 3-5 years is a very long time away. Decision Engines are growing in popularity and generation one technology in this area is showing promise. Social Media may help drive better decision engines for content delivery to the end prospect/user.
- If there was one wish you could make to improve your company’s marketing activities, what would it be?
To continue to be strategic by finding new ways and methods to improve strategic thinking within our customers and prospects.
- If you could get more budget, what activity would you spend it on?
I would spend it on intelligent social media. We would use it to understand what a person needs and find ways to engage with them.
Have you read our first marketing expert interview with David Wright from Microchip? Click here to read the full interview.