Interview With The Founder Of Marketing Eye, Mellissah Smith
Interview published on Botsify
To start with a job and indulge in it as your passion that consequently, becomes your ultimate profession. It feels great when your work becomes your pleasure. Here we are going to meet a charismatic industry expert, Mellissah Smith-an entrepreneur, Marketing specialist, a well-versed speaker.
Mellissah is the Founder of the Marketing Eye, an international marketing consulting firm established in 2004 that specializes in companies looking to fast-track business growth. They provide businesses with a complete outsourced marketing department.
Till now, Mellissah published a massive number of marketing solution strategies on well-known sites and magazines. She has 20k followers on LinkedIn, and 80k+ on Twitter. Marketing Eye is the top 100 Influencer in Entrepreneurship globally & has more than 10k people read her weekly blogs.
We are grateful for having an experienced and enthusiastic personality in marketing technology, having experience of 20 years in martech solution. She works tirelessly in their field and the epitome of many reasons. Her expertise are:
- Extensive experience as an outsourced marketing department
- Results-driven lead generation campaigns
- Content marketing / branding / PR / social media campaigns
- Public speaking & workshop facilitation
- Web dev & SEO
Let’s talk with her!
Botsify: Hi Mellissah, I hope you are doing great in this situation, Let’s start. Which thing motivated you to become such an exceptional marketer?
Mellissah: What has been the pinnacle of embracing marketing and all that it encompasses is seeing how people respond to advertising and marketing as a whole. When you are a child, your parents may buy particular brands because their parents did, or that is the brand that is considered cool, or price point.
Watching this evolution from a home front and then at school and as an adult has really inspired me to look behind the ‘why’ and use this knowledge to become better at marketing.
Botsify: How did you get started with Marketing? Where did that interest come from for martech solutions?
Mellissah: Like many people I started in marketing straight out of school. My first job was in an advertising agency. I fell in love with what goes into making great marketing campaigns and then proceeded to spend the next 25 years perfecting it. Of course, it’s impossible to do so, but it certainly has kept me motivated and challenged.
My interest in martech started early. An old client remembers me talking about how marketing automation would work long before there was ever a marketing automation solution in the market. My brain is attune to finding solutions to problems and one of the biggest problems marketers face is return on investment and achieving the desired results the client is looking for.
Botsify: Mellissah, I’ve seen that AI is taking over the world and so many inventions are coming out. Now how do you think AI will help small businesses in 2020 and onwards?
Mellissah: AI is still in its infancy. The big multinationals are all still perfecting their AI solutions and automation as a whole, and smaller businesses are a long way behind. Small business hasn’t fully embraced AI, not because they are afraid of it, but more so, they don’t understand it. The education process has not caught up to the availability of the technology in the market to help businesses work smarter, faster and more efficiently.
It’s here to stay and will evolve to the point whereby there will be newer, better technology applications that will take over. However, the reality is that it is here now and AI is powerful and for small business. It gives them the opportunity to compete with their larger counterparts in a way that has not been achievable before.
Botsify: How have you seen machine learning and big data helping companies in marketing and making data driven decisions?
Mellissah: When you look at the number of applications in the market today using AI and machine learning, you can see that the experiments and exploration of the technologies to create smarter marketing outcomes is front and center. Both technologies are still in early stages, so that is important for everyone to realize upfront.
It would be producing the potential right now, but you do need to be embracing it to realize the full benefits. AI and machine learning is used in marketing to develop content, execute marketing campaigns, write marketing strategies, keep brands on-brand, and to leverage data to automate processes across the entire marketing function.
Botsify: Does the NLP and chatbot industry help to make customer support improved and does customer satisfaction can be increased with chatbots?
Mellissah: Chatbots are interesting because there is a place for them, but how this technology is executed needs to consider factors such as customer experience, expectations and delivery. The fact that many chatbots still can’t answer basic questions is a problem for the customer experience – and who wants to turn their customers off?
The other issue is the fact that the chatbots used today often don’t use ‘machine learning’ to accommodate the customer on a one-to-one basis. Some people don’t mind a chatbot interrupting them within seconds on going to a website, yet others see this as a reason to go to another website. Understanding timing is important.
Botsify: As you know about the prediction that by the end of 2020 almost 80% of businesses will use chatbots, Do you agree with it? Do you think chatbot is currently a big thing in Digital Marketing?
Mellissah: Chatbots are on the rise and the adoption of this technology is powerful for customer experience is the strategy and technology is right. However, 80% is a ‘pie in the sky’ statistic and will not be reached in 2020. In fact, businesses’ adoption of chatbots will be significantly lower than expectations and more realistic figures are as low as 30-40%.
Botsify: With your vast experience, what will you recommend for SaaS startups for building the marketing strategy of their products?
Mellissah: Relying on the experience of one marketing manager to develop marketing strategies is something of the past. The reality is that AI and software robotics are a smarter, faster and more accurate way to identify target markets, key messaging, competitor advantages and tactics that will fit into your budget and resource allocation.
Robotic Marketer’s technology has had a fast adoption rate because companies realize that to be competitive in today’s marketplace they must have less ‘hit and miss’ marketing tactics and be more targeted. Using one marketer and a few tools doesn’t give companies a competitive advantage, nor does it allow them to stand out from the crowd. It gives them a narrow concept of tactics that may or may not work depending on so many different variables.
Botsify: How are you helping small to corporate size businesses with A.I in robotic marketer?
Mellissah: We are changing the strategy and consulting landscape, and cutting back the layers. By providing small to mid-sized businesses with marketing strategies, more comprehensive, detailed and targeted than what is on the market today for less than $5,000, it is allowing them to go to market faster and smarter.
We help businesses understand their competitors better, what their individual advantages are and how they can leverage those lessons to fine-tune their own marketing activations. Through Robotic Marketer, customers get in-depth analysis of their customers and this allows the technology to be more targeted. The tactics really are incredible in terms of details and specifics.
Companies can expect complete lists of media, events, awards and so on as part of the strategy that is delivered which would take a person many weeks to develop. Overall, it’s about intelligence and creating the right pathway forward and right now in the current market, small and mid-sized businesses are looking for this.
Botsify: Sadly the global pandemic has hit the world and so many people are dying on a daily basis what suggestion you will give to the marketers for their safety and continue running business.
Mellissah: Marketers are typically educated people and as such, know what they need to do to stay safe. From a professional basis, many are working from home and this is not something new for the industry. Using technology to power teams performance, bringing in external consultants that are experienced in employee engagement, and setting in place best practices helps people get through this unfortunate time without incident.
Botsify: I hope that this pandemic will end soon and after the current situation, which country or place you want to visit first? 🙂
Mellissah: For me it will be the US. I have offices there and like any entrepreneur I am really looking forward to going back to a normal work environment. Having said that, it will be the new norm. The US has so much to offer businesses and if you can conquer that market, you can do so in.
Botsify: Mellissah chatbot companies like botsify are providing ease & automation to customer support. What is your opinion about chatbot platforms? We would love to have your feedback.
Mellissah: Companies like Botsify are using their technology to accelerate customer experiences. Working with not just marketers but customers too is paramount to ensuring that chatbot platforms become the new norm. They are essential to digital engagement, but adoption of this technology platform is critical to realizing its full potential. We still need to work on both the adoption of chatbots and also the enhancement of customer experience.
We are very much obliged to have a conversation with you. Thank you for sparing your precious time for us!
