Iris Meijer is accustomed to the chief advertising gig at giant cellular telecoms. She held senior and CMO roles at Nokia and Vodafone earlier than becoming a member of Verizon Enterprise, Verizon’s B2B companies unit, in late 2021.
However this 12 months, Verizon Enterprise added a brand new letter to her title, selling Meijer to chief product and advertising officer.
The chief marketer position is usually relegated, or thought of a supply of solely expenditure, fairly than a gross sales driver or one thing worthy of strategic funding.
However the job has advanced over time, Meijer mentioned, largely “pushed by the client perception and buyer information we’ve got as entrepreneurs.”
Verizon’s resolution to consolidate product and advertising with one chief is “one more instance how the CMO position is turning into extra vital,” she mentioned.
AdExchanger spoke with Meijer about her new position and priorities as companies work out their strategy to in-office, hybrid and distant work.
AdExchanger: Why did Verizon create the brand new “chief advertising and product officer” position?
IRIS MEIJER: Advertising and marketing has a wealth of information, and entrepreneurs perceive lots concerning the buyer expertise and buyer wants. By having product and advertising collectively, we’re in a position to speed up our give attention to the true buyer expertise lifecycle from finish to finish.
We built-in capabilities which are solely about making certain we stay targeted on our prospects.
What do you imply once you say you’re targeted on the “true buyer expertise lifecycle”?
We’re targeted on making certain that it’s simple for our prospects to order and use our merchandise. My workforce is answerable for ecommerce and in addition for our digital service.
From the advertising standpoint, a precedence is making certain that each time we contact our prospects, we’ve got the precise understanding of their wants. We are able to’t serve our small enterprise prospects with the identical message as a big international enterprise.
We take a personalised strategy after we speak to our prospects and ensure we’ve got the precise affords and the precise expertise on the level of contact with the client. As an illustration, what’s the buyer’s present sort of expertise or service [as in, type of internet service] and the way digitally savvy are they?
How has Verizon’s B2B advertising modified prior to now 5 years as companies shifted from fully office-based wi-fi to work-from-home service?
COVID actually accelerated digital.
You talked about working from dwelling, however there’s additionally been an acceleration of enterprise prospects being extra open to customer support and reserving merchandise on-line. That’s one thing we’ve seen all our prospects be extra open to, however particularly the most important ones.
We’re additionally trying into how we offer safe connectivity to prospects whereas they’re working from dwelling. They want the precise instruments to work at home securely, and that has modified the way in which we market our merchandise and in addition the type of merchandise we give attention to with our prospects.
What kinds of merchandise do you give attention to?
We’re desirous about find out how to incorporate generative AI into our service. In gross sales, for instance, we’re searching for methods to make it simpler for our salespeople to interact with prospects.
We’re piloting a service the place we’ve got a transcript of gross sales calls, and sure follow-up actions could be automated after the decision. We are able to additionally be certain that the salesperson has the proper of supplies to speak about that product.
On the advertising aspect, the main target is on personalization. However as we speak, that’s fairly troublesome.
Now we have quite a lot of very wealthy information on our prospects – even real-time habits and web information. However to make use of that at a scale and with velocity for campaigns throughout a number of native markets that includes customized content material – it’s nearly inconceivable with out AI expertise.
We consider it’s going to really speed up the way in which we work together with our prospects, and permit us to do it in a extra customized method.
Are you consolidating or increasing the variety of advert tech and SaaS advertising companies in your org?
Basically, I’d say that we’re consolidating. I feel that’s a pattern general as effectively.
I’ll offer you an instance – a few years again, we had over 60 information and martech distributors, which was thoughts blowing. And in case you assume again even simply a few years in the past, we in all probability solely used round 50% – possibly even lower than 50% – of the info we bought.
In the present day, we’ve halved the variety of distributors and we use north of 80% of all the info we buy. So, sure, we’re targeted on consolidating, and in addition making certain that the return on funding for us is extra impactful.
This interview has been frivolously edited and condensed.
