This week I was featured on Marketing Monday on CXOtv News. Here are the key highlights of the discussion. You can watch the full session here!
As an APAC marketing leader, I’ve learned that strategic engagement – the combination of sharp strategic thinking and engaging customers and internal stakeholders – is crucial for success in this region. APAC marketing teams are often lean, requiring a highly strategic approach that doesn’t try to do everything everywhere all at once. But equally important is the “engagement” piece – directly connecting with customers to truly grasp their pain points and the value our solutions can provide, and internal stakeholders to collaborate and grow the business together.
Engaging Customers
Marketers shouldn’t just be behind the scenes, relying on sales to be the front-facing team. I think it’s really important for marketing leaders and marketers at all stages of their career to be engaging directly with customers and not leaving that solely to sales or other teams.
It obviously helps you understand the customers better, but it also allows you to build relationships with champions in customer organizations. That enables you to do more, provide more value, and grow your customer advocacy program. Over the past couple years, I’ve been working a lot on building up that customer advocacy – starting with basic customer stories, but then building to bringing people into roundtables, having them speak at webinars or conferences.
That provides social proof and credibility to your prospects, because it’s not just you talking about your company and solution – it’s your customers speaking in their own voice about the challenges they faced and how your product helped. When we do presentations like that, the focus isn’t just on Kyriba or our solution – it’s on the customer’s whole journey. We really put a focus on the pain points and solutions around areas like financial transformation, treasury transformation, and liquidity planning.
It doesn’t matter what your specific solution is – your C-level and director-level customers are going through similar challenges across different organizations. So it’s a great way to speak their language, show you understand what they’re going through, and make sure your message really resonates.
From the customer’s perspective, these opportunities also help them build their personal brand, get internal and external visibility, and showcase their achievements. When I create a customer story, I try to make it focused on the individual’s personal journey – how they came into the organization, the problems they faced, and what they did to overcome those challenges and become successful.
We’ve done that a lot, starting with simple customer case studies and then building up the relationships to the point where they can come speak at our events. That allows us to repurpose a lot of the content we create with them and get it back out in front of our prospects and customers to drive interest and awareness.
Strategies for Building a Successful APAC Marketing Team
For marketers at organizations based in the US or Europe, APAC can sometimes feel like the forgotten or overlooked region. It’s often the most siloed part of the global team, with less face time and visibility within the overall organization. That has both benefits and challenges.
One of the key things I’ve found critical for building a successful APAC marketing team is increasing the internal visibility and recognition of the team’s work and accomplishments. Basic things like global all-hands calls being scheduled for US/Europe time zones mean APAC marketers can often feel left out of those important meetings and conversations.
So it’s really important to be proactive about building up that internal visibility with senior leadership and other key stakeholders. Showcase your team’s work, highlight their wins, and make sure your voices are being heard. That’s going to be crucial for getting the resources and support you need to grow the team and execute successfully.
The other dynamic I’ve noticed is that APAC teams often have more autonomy and independence compared to other regions. While it can sometimes feel isolating, that flexibility and agility can actually be a huge advantage. You have the ability to move quicker, try new things, and execute programs agiley.
My philosophy is often to “do something first, then ask for permission later” – within reason, of course. I like to create pilot programs and test new ideas, then bring that to leadership as a tangible example of what we can achieve. It’s much easier to get buy-in when you have something visual and concrete to show, rather than just theoretical proposals.
That willingness to be bold, innovative, and a bit of a trailblazer is key for APAC marketing teams. Don’t just wait to be handed down global campaigns to localize – take the initiative to come up with high-impact, engaging programs that can then be scaled and shared with the broader organization. That’s how you really elevate the profile and influence of the APAC marketing function.
Aligning Marketing and Sales for Mutual Success
It really comes down to the shared goals and objectives between marketing and sales. As a growth marketer or revenue marketer, our goals are fundamentally the same as sales – driving revenue and pipeline growth for the business.
There used to be more of a stereotype or cliche around marketing and sales not getting along, with each side complaining about the other. Sales would say marketing isn’t providing enough quality leads, while marketing would say sales doesn’t follow up properly. But I’ve seen that dynamic shift significantly in recent years.
I think it’s critical to recognize that we’re all on the same team, working towards the same overarching goals. When marketing and sales are truly aligned and collaborating effectively, we can be much more successful in achieving those objectives.
A big part of that is speaking the language of sales. As a marketer, you need to be able to articulate the data and metrics that matter to sales – things like meeting and opportunity generation, source of pipeline, and return on marketing investment. Being able to tie your marketing programs and strategies directly to those sales KPIs is crucial for getting buy-in and alignment.
Beyond just sales, I’ve also found it incredibly valuable to collaborate closely with other functions like BDRs/SDRs and the pre-sales/solutions engineering teams. The BDR team is the next step after marketing creates demand to turn that into opportunities, so having a symbiotic relationship there is vital. And the subject matter experts in pre-sales can be incredible assets for creating compelling, valuable content that resonates with your target audience.
Ultimately, I think the key is to not let marketing become a reactive, order-taking function. We need to be proactive in setting the strategy, having the data to back it up, and clearly communicating that vision across the organization. Over-communicating the “why” behind marketing’s initiatives, and consistently showcasing our wins and impact, helps break down those old silos.
It’s also important for marketing leaders to maintain a “yes” mentality as much as possible. Of course, there are times when we have to say no, but I try to flip that default to a yes, and then provide a clear rationale when something doesn’t fit. That helps build up trust and goodwill with our cross-functional partners.
At the end of the day, marketing isn’t just a supportive function – we’re equals working towards the same goals. By taking a proactive, collaborative, data-driven approach, we can elevate the strategic importance of marketing and ensure tight alignment with sales and other key teams.
Conclusion
In summary, strategic engagement has been the key to my success as an APAC marketing leader. It’s about combining sharp strategic thinking to navigate lean resources, with deeply engaging customers and internal stakeholders to truly understand their needs and collaborate effectively. By using data to guide our approach, providing value-driven thought leadership, and directly engaging with customers, we can position marketing as a strategic partner, not just a support function. And for APAC teams often isolated from global initiatives, taking a proactive, innovative approach to increase visibility and autonomy is crucial. Ultimately, strategic engagement is about marketing leaders stepping up to drive real, measurable impact on the business – and that’s the key to successful marketing in the APAC region.