In this episode, Kris Mobayeni of Simon Data shares his insights on how to rebrand well and the ideal way of using data in marketing.
In today's fast-paced business world, companies must constantly adapt to stay relevant and competitive. One way they do this is through rebranding. Rebranding is the process of changing a company's image, name, logo, or other branding elements to create a new identity and communicate a new message to customers. It's a strategic decision that companies make when they feel their current brand is no longer resonating with their target audience, or they want to reach a new market.
Marketers are often involved in the branding and rebranding processes of the company. Should marketers always rely on data when making rebranding and branding decisions? Tune into this episode to get insights on how to rebrand well and the ideal way of using data in marketing.
Our guest today is Kris Mobayeni, a marketing guru who currently serves as the VP of Marketing at Simon Data. He has previously worked in different marketing capacities at Wunderkind, and before that, Kris was at Reebok where he Supported social media strategy and execution across all major channels, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, and Google+. With his vast experience in marketing and having led branding processes before, Kris is the best at what he is at.
Tune into this episode to get insights on how to rebrand well and the ideal way of using data in marketing.
Topics
Show Links
Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.
Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:
Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)
Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)
How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)
Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)
Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)
Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:
Should You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?
How Do Growth and Content Overlap?
Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:
Twitter: @beomniscient
Linkedin: Be Omniscient
Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here:
https://beomniscient.com/podcast/
[15:33] Creativity in B2B Marketing
Great thinkers make the best marketing creatives in B2B companies
“I think the best marketers in the world are in b2b, personally, high tech and not on a, I think you're right. And this is a huge philosophy of mine, like I think like, b2b marketing is so like, a majority of it is so sterile and cookie cutter, and everyone's doing the exact same thing. But operationally and on the demand gen side, like, especially for enterprise SaaS, the thought and planning that goes into the amount of nurturing that you need to do, yes, such long deal cycles, like, it's really it's like genuinely running people through like the, you know, business school, a Ida funnel, and like you have the time between each one of those steps in those conversions is so much longer than it is for like a $20 T shirt on a website, you know, you go through the you can go through that funnel really quick. And so it allows you to really think through like, what is the content? And what is the messaging that someone needs at each one of these stages? And like, do we have that? If not, let's create it. And then like, how can we think through all the different channels that we have based on where that person is? You know, how we can get that message in front of them? And so it's, I think, so from that, that side of it, I think it's creative from like, the actual creative side, and like the brand side and the messaging and like the actuals, right? Yeah, I, I've, I've always tried to say like, you know, I would rather we fail, if we were to fail, we fail by trying to do something that's a little different, and a little more exciting than trying to do the same thing and that's what leads to us not being successful.”
[19:19] The Use of Data in Marketing
Marketers should use the right data-generating tools to make their work simple and fast
“Simon data is really the first platform that's out there that makes it very easy and simple for marketers to create audiences based on all of the data that they have available to them. And that may sound very similar to you know, what a typical CDP says that it does. But we, I want to say like we're the only but just to cover my bases in case there's someone out there that for some reason, I don't know I don't know of the first, but we both we genuinely are the Only CTP that, and one of the only martec platforms, I think that's out there that built our architecture on snowflake, which is a cloud data warehouse… And why that's important is because a cloud data warehouse is very inaccessible to marketing teams. And most marketing teams actually don't even probably don't even know if they have won or what it is. And if they do like, they're not activating and in powering their marketing campaigns right now, because the legacy architecture that those tools were built on, don't integrate with, you know, these new CD W's. And so we're one of the only tools out there that allows that, because basically, a cloud data warehouse is just like a data dump. It's like messy, it's unorganized, but it has it just about everything. And you need a data engineer, data scientist to go in and write sequel and code to like get the marketing teams audiences that they want that they then want to target through their, you know, through their channels, we totally eliminate that, like we integrated with the directly, you can go in and create audiences using all of your data. And if there's data that isn't in your data warehouse, because we are a CDP, and not just a data warehouse tool, you know, we can go in and unify all of that to from the other sources, but like sitting on top of your data warehouse, and what that means, ultimately, is because you have all because you have all of your data immediately accessible to you in real time, you can create better custom audiences better segmentation, and then instantly sync that to all of your different marketing channels and get them form better.”
[29:57] Company Rebranding
Build your brand on the basis of the product instead of specific colors and fonts
“I like the brands strategy, you know, it was already, I think, very unique and innovative in that, you know, we didn't build the brand around a specific like color or a specific font or specific type of imagery, like there wasn't, we didn't want the brand to be one thing that we wanted to convey the one to one aspect of our product, like it enables one to one marketing at scale. And so we wanted the brand to feel like it could shift and evolve. And, you know, and but but then still be part of one cohesive system, which was like, I remember when I taught, I spoke with the agency that we worked with, on the creative side, multi-adapter, like the best agency experience besides you guys, I think, that I've ever had in my life, like, they're sorry about that...We had this bold ambition for the creative side of the brand. And we were at this weird inflection point where like, if you knew bounced checks, you knew that, like, our brand awareness was not at the place it needed to be for, like the, like the caliber of clients that we've worked with, and like the, you know, performance that we drove, like, we're still kind of under the radar. And so we wanted to do something just very loud and different.”
[38:57] Running Brand Campaigns
The measurable metrics have to be clear before you run the brand campaigns
“Well, yeah, you need both right, like, you know, you need both, I would say, the most important thing to do first is make sure your demand gen program is solid, like, because if you go and do something like this, and like, expect it to just generate demand when like you're not already doing it. If that program isn't already optimized, then you're just wasting money. Because that's the thing like if you if you think about it as like a literal funnel. And to even put an E-commerce perspective, like the way I think about driving revenue for an E-commerce company is you have acquisition campaigns that fill the funnel for very high converting well optimized like retargeting remarketing and nurture campaigns, like it's those convert at a very high rate, then like, all you really need to do is just find ways to just fill that funnel, and then the machine takes care of the rest. And I think like on the b2b side, you really need to think about it the same way. Like, if your demand gen program is solid, what some, then this, that's when you can kind of be like, Hey, I don't necessarily know how we're going to measure the ROI of this, we kind of just have to, like, trust it. And that you know, at like, 70 to 80% of your budget should be more on the things that you can measure and then take that 20% and like just do things that like, you're like, I feel like this will work. And the whole idea for those is just like, same as same thing, like just funnel in like like fill that top of the funnel, it feels very that highly optimized demand gen program that you have.”
[52:45] Is B2C ecommerce is a sustainable business model?
B2C Business model is a challenging and risky business model
“I mean, okay, I'll settle in the middle with you. And this is a very hot take, given my background and what I do now. But I'm actually I and we talked about this when you were in New York, kind of, but I think there are starting to be some serious questions raised, especially with like, what's happening around, you know, the updates that Apple has been making with like iOS 14, and everything since with pixel tracking and like third party cookies, and I mean, but especially the former around like, whether b2c e-commerce is a sustainable business model, like the there, you know, companies that were more established, I think, when when that happened, it's been like an increase. I mean, it's like, it's more than an inconvenience, but it's like, they just have to like, rejigger their strategy and figure out like, how they can cope with it. If you were a, like, very early stage, e-commerce company that was relying primarily on Facebook for customer acquisition, you'd like 90% of them went out of business, and it's like, kind of a shame. And then even like, you know, bigger brands, like, I can't I can't remember the last DTC IPO that was like, has not, you know, completely tanked. You're seeing a lot of brands that are kind of, you know, going under right now. And I think it's a legitimate question, you know, but I do think one of the common threads, it are like, the ones that I think struggle the most are the ones that have serious questions around like retention and customer LTV. And so I think that that is an I noticing that as like a trend where, again, especially in the down market, every company is, you know, focusing on like cash is king, right. But I think like, for VC-backed companies, top-line growth, which has always been you know, the the North Star is starting to take a bit of a backseat towards more like profitability. But I think that's kind of something similar that's happening in E commerce too, like whether you're VC backed or not like, like retention is really, I think, the common thread and what a lot of those big flameouts have been. But I think it's something worth looking at. Like, I'm not saying that DTC e-commerce is not going to be a thing and all those companies are going to fail. Like I'm not saying that but like, I don't think it's a you know, I think it's a more challenging business model than people once thought.”