What are your biggest opportunities & challenges for the next 12-24 months?
Connecting the dots between corporate growth requirements–revenue, profits and market share–and the sources where this growth can be found. Many senior executives have yet to connect those dots and put that into action. A prime example is the Hispanic and Asian market opportunity, accounting for a total of two-thirds of all population growth and in many categories, the majority of spending growth. Once that comes into focus, our clients realize the value of investing in these groups.
What keeps your clients up at night?
Most of our clients are publicly traded companies. They live and die by quarterly financial reports. They must meet growth expectations in order to nurture their enterprise value. They need to figure out how to create strategic advantages that lead to revenue and profit growth. To achieve this, they must align corporate resources. We help by providing data-driven insights on both strategic and tactical/executional levels using technology-infused data analytics.
What’s the hardest thing to educate a client about?
The single most difficult thing for most major clients is dealing with legacy; just because you’ve been doing something one way doesn’t mean you should continue doing this indefinitely. For example, most companies have relegated cultural marketing to a niche or experimental endeavor. They have under-resourced these initiatives yet expect miraculous results. I believe they need to completely re-evaluate the marketing spend in a way that focuses on future growth, as opposed to past legacy. This seems obvious and intuitive, but you would be surprised at how many companies have difficulty making that transition.
What are some of the unmet needs in the marketing technology landscape?
There is certainly a lot to do on the digital front. It’s all about accountability and efficiency. Digital is a channel, so theoretically it’s not that different than other traditional channels, with the exception that it demands a separate infrastructure in regards to messaging and tracking effectiveness. It’s still a mystery to many but more and more marketers are reallocating spend towards digital, we know that’s going to continue growing stronger.
What social network do you anticipate accelerating growth in the next year?
Mobile is increasingly important (relative to laptop/desktop), as devices become more capable and app’s become more feature rich. We see some of these networks maturing nicely. On the B2B front, LinkedIn has matured nicely. On the B2C side, Facebook keeps evolving in effective ways. For the Gen Y and Z groups, new networks continue to arise; Vine and Snapchat are now taken very seriously whereas only a couple of years ago they were fringe and experimental. It’s fascinating to see that whole picture evolve and will continue to be as more networks pop up.
–Cesar Melgoza is founder and CEO of Geoscape.
