Don’t interrupt, be empathetic. There is nothing that I hate more than multiple unprompted cold calls or emails or LinkedIn messages that give me a basic pitch.
MEDIA 7: Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? How has your professional journey been like so far?
ERIC SLEETH: I have always had a fascination with marketing and its ability to combine storytelling and persuasion. I am very appreciative of my professional journey thus far. A wide range of experience with global brands and advertising agencies has rounded out my knowledge and experience.
Now I am leading marketing at Veriday. I joined them 3+ years ago and happy they saw potential in me, giving me the opportunity to expand, to take on more, and to put their faith in me to build a stronger marketing program. I know there are more things that I am excited about achieving with Veriday and in my career.
M7: How does Veriday work to help companies drive results? How does it ensure a better ROI to them?
ES: Veriday develops strategies, products, and solutions to transform your user experiences and engagement. From strategy and design to implementation and management, we help when it comes to making your next technology or digital marketing project a milestone success. When building custom solutions, we ensure ROI by maximizing adoption. User experience regardless of the solution is critical. When the user is at the center of the solution, this will increase adoption, improve productivity, and deliver strong business outcomes.
To stand out, show an understanding of others and give value to very niche and targeted groups to foster relationships.
M7: What is your approach to market research, both customer and competitor-focused?
ES: Marketers often enter a market research activity with pre-conceptions, and this will create bias and invalidate the findings. This is why broad benchmarks and anecdotes should be avoided. My approach to market research begins collecting data; from associations, governments, analyst firms, marketing analytics, etc. During the collection, there may be overlap and stand-out points. From there a hypothesis will begin to surface. This is enough rather than assuming. I will then attempt to disprove the hypothesis, through interviews, surveys, and focus groups.
M7: How do you work with your executive team to get the most out of their marketing strategies?
ES: Marketing departments and strategies should be focused on raising and contributing to the growth of the brand. That growth can take shape as generating new opportunities but also be expanding into new audiences and markets.
To work successfully with executive teams, I try to focus on two pieces: transparency and data. By being transparent on marketing initiative it allows others to understand what and why we are doing it. This creates buy-in and others contributing to the marketing efforts. The other is data. To be able to work effectively with executives, is to try to summarize all the marketing metrics down to the data that is driving business.
With the battles and changes around privacy legislation, advertising, and cookies, there will be a major change that all organizations need to go through to learn new technology and tactics to adapt to these changes.
M7: What do you believe are the top three marketing challenges in the post COVID-19 era?
ES: I believe the top 3 marketing challenges are: a changing marketing landscape, customer-centricity, and omnichannel experiences. With the battles and changes around privacy legislation, advertising, and cookies, there will be a major change that all organizations need to go through to learn new technology and tactics to adapt to these changes.
The data has always supported the importance of customer satisfaction and retention. However, it was not always a primary focus of the marketing team rather customer service teams. Marketing is now starting to pay attention. This is further amplified by COVID-19 as it has reduced the impact of brand loyalty on consumer behaviors.
Finally, COVID-19 has focused the switch to digital-first which has been slowly taking place before. However, this has also increased the digital noise. This is why marketers will need to create omnichannel experiences to be used to engage with target audiences where they are and where they want to engage. It is always better going to them rather than bringing them to you
M7: How has COVID-19 affected the FinTech industry? What was Veriday’s strategy to recover from that?
ES: The financial industry underwent a massive shift, both internally with employees and externally with clients. Internally, the workforce had to quickly be mobilized to be able to work remotely. This created a need to provide technology solutions for financial institutions to ensure productivity and easy access to the necessary tools and information through intranets. Externally, with the move to digital, financial advisors found it difficult to meet with requirements of the clients. Therefore, digital marketing and an online presence have become critical.
While Veriday provides solutions for these, economic uncertainty resulted in tighter budgets. During that time, we supported these organizations where possible and began planning longer-term solutions with them. Now as we start to recover, Veriday is able to provide those digital solutions for long-term success and is seeing a significant number of new clients looking to extend their digital capabilities.
M7: What is your marketing mantra to stand out in such a competitive space?
ES: Don’t interrupt, be empathetic. There is nothing that I hate more than multiple unprompted cold calls or emails or LinkedIn messages that give me a basic pitch. This tells me you have no empathy for my time and expect me to do the work to see if your offering fits me specifically.
To stand out, show an understanding of others and give value to very niche and targeted groups to foster relationships.