My Best Marketing Tips #5: SAP / Timo Elliott / VP, Global Innovation Evangelist
If you think the job title of “evangelist” is quite novel, you’ll be surprised to find out that it’s been around for many years and it’s all about creating good news stories about brands, making customers understand how they can benefit from your products. In his position as Global Innovation Evangelist at SAP, Timo Elliott spends his days on the “leading edge of innovation” and looks for ways to engage customers with the SAP brand.
When we talked about Timo’s best marketing tips, we couldn’t get away from the importance of being interesting. SAP is, in Timo’s words, “one of the largest cloud technology company you may have never heard of,” with products that meet the needs of companies from the most mundane to the most complex. He illustrates to customers how SAP software can help them “spend less time on manual tasks so they can spend more time on strategic tasks” – but he does this by storytelling and subtly referencing software, not by “selling” it.
Here are some top tips from Timo.
What is the best marketing tip you’ve ever received and who was it from?
The first thing that comes to my mind isn’t the best, but the worst type of marketing. In my job, I’ve noticed that the worst thing in marketing is when companies put in place complex marketing systems and don’t adapt when circumstances change.
How have you put this marketing tip to good use?
Sometimes, systems get in the way of change. I am an evangelist not just externally with our customers, but also internally. So, I try to learn from everyone and take all the best learnings and adapt our teams as well. Sometimes, I need to be deliberately provocative to show people how they can do things differently… internally, people often listen politely and then go about their business as before!
What marketing tips does the industry need most right now?
First, companies need to adapt. They can’t keep doing the same things when there are always newer and better ways of working and streamlining processes. The key thing is to spend less time on manual tasks so you can spend more time on strategic tasks. Especially recently, because of the uncertainty created by the pandemic, Artificial Intelligence has proven so good at facilitating this process streamlining and forecasting trends.
Secondly, everyone needs to focus more on being interesting. It’s never been easier to produce content and shout about your brand, which means it’s never been harder to actually be heard. So, brands need to ask themselves what makes their product interesting and how they can convey this message to customers.
What is the marketing tip you give most often?
You have to engage in order to be engaging. In my role, I talk to lots of customers and I hear first-hand what they care about. I believe a lot of marketers unfortunately tend to sit in an ivory tower and never talk to actual customers. But, to find out what customers are looking for and to be able to be interesting to them, we need to first engage with them.
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