After having recently been named EVP and CMO of Walker & Dunlop, Susan Weber “sat down” with us to chat about her new role, the challenges of being a modern marketer, and her outlook for the year ahead.
What is your official new title? Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
What will the new role entail? I will continue to be responsible for the development and delivery of marketing plans and strategies designed to grow revenues.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities you have seen for modern marketing leaders? The fragmented and increasingly digital behavior of customers and prospects is driving marketing leaders to invest in new digital platforms and ecosystems that support interaction at every point in the customer journey.
What are 2 initiatives or new platforms you are deploying in response to these new behaviors? A new technology we invested in for 2020 is Folloze — a personalized B2B sales enablement platform that complements our account-based targeted advertising solution DemandBase. Folloze allows us to personalize our ad campaigns for both the sales person and prospects – they can choose the content that interests them.
I am also starting to research how AI can help optimize content performance across all channels (blog posts, emails, landing pages, ads). There is technology out there that can help companies improve their content performance by matching their audience’s reading and emotional tone preferences.
How has our community helped you tackle them? Having a safe place to raise issues and pressure test new ideas and strategies.
What advice do you have for a marketer who wants a seat AND a voice at the executive leadership table? If you feel you have earned it, speak up and ask. Often your actions have already proven you should be part of the team but your CEO may not be aware that you want to take that next step.
Any closing thoughts or comments about the year ahead? It is an exciting time at Walker & Dunlop as our leadership continues to see the importance of Marketing and invests in our team and technology. This year, we are focused on collaborating on the optimization of how technology is utilized, sales and marketing alignment, sales enablement, and customer experience management.
What are you reading right now? Selling with Noble Purpose by Lisa Earle McLeod
Congratulations to you, Susan, and thank you for taking the time to chat!