Martech360 Interview With Maureen Plowman, Senior Vice President, Brand & Corporate Communications, SmartBear

I’m a strong believer that creating remarkable customer experiences starts with creating exceptional employee experiences

Could you tell us about your journey in working in high tech?

I like to say I’m a career marketer because it is all I have ever done and I love doing it. I’ve been lucky enough to have had really diverse experiences at both large and small, mature and start up organizations focused on tech or tech services. My sweet spot has always been helping fast-moving tech companies build their brand for some sort of strategic initiative – category creation, exit strategy, acquisition, or other. The brand conversation becomes so much more powerful in those types of situations. Building trusted brands from the inside out at the intersection of customer and employee strategies truly validates the authenticity of your brand. The genesis of this belief for me, and where it came from, is rooted in the experiences I’m grateful to have had throughout my career in tech.

I’ve always believed that you should tell your brand story through the eyes and voice of your customer and incorporate them in your marketing as much as possible. From running the customer marketing function at Constant Contact, I learned the importance of also incorporating customer feedback to validate messaging, programs, and brand authenticity through customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS), as well as bringing a more human B2C voice to better engage B2B customers.

I’ve worked for several HR technology companies where products and value prop centered on creating exceptional employee experiences. Those two worlds – customers and employees – came together for me when I was the VP of Marketing for a Workday services partner. We had an aggressive exit strategy and were building the company from the ground up at scale – basically putting the wheels on as we were driving 150 miles an hour. Exciting times! Because we were a technology services organization, it became even more important to create exceptional employee experiences so that our employees would then carry those brand values forward and create exceptional customer experiences. Doing this really put the company on the map with analysts, Workday, and customers. The thread that ties all of this together is using the right tools – a good CRM, social/sentiment listening tools, tools to measure PR impact, survey tools to capture feedback, CSAT and NPS, and having the right data to not only know your audience but to send them the right message at the right time and understand the entire customer experience.

What challenges did the Covid-19 pandemic pose for your team?

Anyone who knows me has heard me say this ad nauseum – and you’ve just heard it from me – but I’m a strong believer that creating remarkable customer experiences starts with creating exceptional employee experiences – building a strong and beloved brand from the inside out. To do this, you have to put both your employees and your customers at the center of your strategies – that has never been more important than during COVID.

COVID changed how all of us work. What was first and foremost for me was leading with empathy. It became even more important to find ways to make sure we were all working with empathy – for each other, for ourselves, and for our customers. A colleague in HR once shared with me that he always kicked off meetings by asking people what was in their cup – what had they dealt with right before the meeting that was filling up their cup with either joy, fear, or excitement. I adopted a version of this during COVID and still use it today with my team at SmartBear. We use funny memes to depict our current state – happy or excited, overwhelmed, Zen, whatever it may be.

At the start of our weekly department meeting, everyone says which meme best represents how they are feeling at that time. This gives them a light way to communicate to others on the team what they can handle, where they are coming from. Keeping your team connected and finding ways through technology to continue building relationships with each other became a major focus. This was especially true for new employees who joined during the pandemic and whose only experience with the brand, the company, and team was through their computer screen. Apps like Kahoot!, Poll Everywhere, and Donut were godsends for keeping a pulse and continuing engagement.

From a customer perspective, COVID really reinforced what great companies already knew – people want to do business with brands they know, like, and trust, and they want to know the faces behind the brand – the human and personal side of the brand. Being transparent and demonstrating your brand value was important. Building relationships and trust was critical. The customer experience was increasingly important – and as customers’ expectations grew, remembering that you were only as good as the last experience they had with you was key.

There was also an increased emphasis on making sure what you said to customers and how you spoke to them was relevant as well as being aligned to an individual’s values and situation, and making the technology that gives you the relevant data and targeting a must. Creating and building community via a platform that enables an environment for your customers, prospects, and industry peers to come together and share best practices and ideas also became paramount.

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What sets SmartBear apart from the competition?

Our overall goal has always been to help make our technology-driven world a better place. We provide the tools and solutions to help software development teams accelerate without compromising quality, and we live out our commitment to ethical corporate practices and integrity that promote good in all the communities we serve. It’s not just checking a box that we have an initiative.

We believe that you can’t improve what you can’t see, track, or measure. Software development teams need visibility across the entire software development lifecycle to do their best work. SmartBear puts customers at the center and meets them where they are – from wherever they are in the software development lifecycle – whether they are trying to solve one problem or take a holistic look at the larger picture, we help them get to where they are going – so they can get back to doing what they love. We use methods that include design thinking to truly understand the wants and needs of our customers.

We are also deeply committed to open source, and through our communities, enabling our customers to build relationships with each other because we know it will result in the most diverse perspectives and outcomes.

From our mission and passion for helping development teams to the autonomy we give our employees to truly work on what matters most to them so they can have an impact every day, SmartBear is where people come to build their career at every level. From sales to marketing to engineering to the office of the CEO, we are fanatical about promoting from within. We are a passionate group that loves helping development teams get back to doing what they love – creating code that changes the world.

How has the role of Branding and Corporate Communications changed how do you see it evolving in the years to come?

I read a great quote: “Today’s brand is tomorrow’s demand.” Given the pace and change happening today, coupled with all of the noise in the market, the role of Brand and Corporate Comms is playing an increasingly pivotal role in forward looking organizations for both their employer and corporate strategies. Branding has gone from being about colors and logos to leading the conversation about company values and the trusted relationships companies desperately need to cultivate to make a difference.

With hiring and retention trends the way they are, getting prospective and current employees engaged with your brand can make all the difference. First, because it’s the best way to help employees make a powerful emotional connection to the products and services you sell. You want to make your employees proud to wear the shirt or carry the bag – and that’s how your brand shows up. And as we’ve discussed, employees are the very people who can make the brand come alive for your customers – in the experiences they create for your customers as well as how they advocate for your company.

Brand is the champion of purpose and meaning and is leading the conversation when it comes to living corporate values and promise, looking at the end-to-end experiences of your customers and prospects and building trusted relationships. When done right, living your brand strategy enables organizations to build trusted relationships with their audience, turn them into loyal customers or employees and advocates. Ultimately, you can create a beloved brand that all of your audiences care about and will give you the competitive advantage over those who aren’t taking it seriously. Having a good mix of a data-driven mindset to understand your audience make-up, coupled with the creativity and innovation to keep your audience engaged, will help keep your brand current and ahead of the curve. Leveraging technology to engage remote employees right at the start with videos and interactive experiences starts them off on the right path.

What are 3 things businesses can do to optimize their digital outreach as well as leverage digital to create advocacy?

I can think of four:

1. As with anything, know your audience and put them at the center of your approach. Use your data to understand what they care about and what problems they are trying to solve right now, and earn your way into the conversation.
2. Be authentic and remember whether you are talking to employees or customers, you are talking to people. Be human – with your voice, content, and ways of engaging.
3. Keep the entire experience in mind – from the first impression through every interaction. Are you being consistent and leveraging all the touchpoints and channels?
4. Bonus: Find ways to bring your audience together through online communities to create a pulse and purpose beyond your products or services to help each other and ultimately create stickier relationships.

As a marketing leader, what are your thoughts on Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) and its use as a metric to define success?

There is no question that marketing needs to understand what channels and tactics are most profitable and effective to ensure we are working on the right things. ROMI allows you to understand the success or shortfalls of your campaigns and justify further investments. It’s not always straight forward with brand, but there are other ways to measure brand success, such as brand awareness studies, inbound PR requests, social reach, sentiment and mentions, and customer metrics like NPS and CSAT. It’s also important to look at the long game – what’s the health and lifespan of the customers you are bringing in or influencing through different channels? Are they staying longer or attriting faster? Are they becoming advocates?

How do you see automation impacting the traditional branding and communications efforts?

No different from other areas of marketing like growth marketing, for example. Automation helps us have better conversations with customers and prospects, and that’s what we should be having – conversations, especially from a brand perspective.

Serve first versus talking about products and services. Automation can help us carry on the right conversations across the right channels – by connecting the channels we use and pulling in data from email, social media, and websites.

Leveraging automation to be more relevant and taking a human centric approach to your communications can help build more emotional connections. Emotions drive passion, loyalty, and advocacy. I recently read that 80% of buyers with high emotional engagement will promote a brand and 70% of emotionally engaged buyers spend up to two times more.

Could you name the Top 5 apps/platforms that you use for branding and/or communications?

Tools are very specific to a company and the problems you are trying to solve. From a brand perspective, it’s always going to be the tools that tell you the most about the full customer experience and provide the most insight about the customers. A good CRM, social/sentiment listening tools like Bambu/Sprout Social, and Bynder to create and leverage digital content, tools to measure PR impact, survey tools to capture feedback, CSAT and NPS as well as being involved in your online communities – those are a treasure trove of insight.

What advice would you give to someone who aspires to be a business leader?

Experiment, take risks, and fail – that’s how we learn the most. Try new things and don’t be afraid to stretch or re-invent yourself. Give back and share what you have learned by bringing others along with you. Find a good champion and mentor. Always work and lead with empathy – you never know what’s filling up someone’s cup.

Thanks Maureen!