Data as Marketing Fertilizer: You can have piles and piles of data, but unless you know how to use the data correctly, it won’t get you very far

How I Made it in Marketing

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I use one word all smooshed together to describe the time I spend on the job – worklife.

I’m not talking about balance. I’m simply saying, ‘Yes we have a homelife. But we have a worklife, too.’ Every hour, every minute you spend working rolls up into that grand big, mysterious number of time you have on this planet.

Which means what we do at work matters. The decisions we make are part of who we are. And it’s why I love a lesson in the guest application for my this episode’s guest, “Find ways to live your company's values in everything you do.”

Rah Mahtani, Head of Buyer Marketing for North America, Alibaba.com, joined me to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories.

Alibaba.com serves buyers and suppliers from 190 countries and regions around the world.

Mahtani has managed marketing budgets ranging from ~ $8m to as high as $110m. He currently manages a team of six.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Some lessons from Mahtani that emerged in our discussion:

• It's OK to flip the script sometimes
• Let data inform, don't let it dictate
• Find ways to live your company's values in everything you do
• Dig into human behavior to create people-first messaging
• Respect the power of the rabbit
• You can have piles and piles of data, but unless you know how to use the data correctly, it won’t get you very far

Related content discussed in this episode

Customer Theory: How to leverage empathy in your marketing (with free tool) (https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/customer-theory-leverage-empathy-free-tool)

About this podcast

This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

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