Maria Virginia P.: Rediscovering Your Customers as Key to Business Relevance in 2021

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Businesses and buyers’ behaviours have changed. 

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With the disruptions brought about by the pandemic, it's tempting for Growth Leaders to ignore change and simply focus on what has worked for the business in the past. 

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However, these efforts no longer deliver results like they used to, and doing more of the same thing will not fix the problem. 

In today's post on Rediscover Marketing, we interview Maria Virginia P. as she reveals that continuous learning is the best marketing strategy for business success in 2021. 

Meet Our Guest - Maria Virginia P.

Maria is a highly experienced digital marketer with a Bachelor's degree in Marketing & International Business, and an MBA with a Marketing track. She is the Director of Digital Marketing at Teneo Hospitality Group, a relatively new representation firm for independent luxury hotels. The firm is led by President Mike Schugt, who is also Maria's mentor. 

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Maria has been at Teneo for over five years, and the startup-like environment allows her to wear many hats and try her hands out at unique tasks. Our guest is passionate about the blend between technology and marketing, known as Martech. 

At Teneo, she is in charge of all things Digital Marketing and Martech, such as database management, social media content, paid search, data handling, analytics, web design & frontend development, and many more. 

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We are impressed by Maria's love for digital marketing which she considers as not just a career, but a lifelong passion. 

The Adaptive Mentality

Innovation is a must in times of adversity. However, we are in unprecedented times with no historical data for reference. Thus, innovation lies in being extraordinarily adaptable and identifying better and efficient ways to achieve goals.

Maria revealed that she is proud of her team for practising what they preach and adapting successfully to the wind of change the pandemic brought on. She advises marketers and growth leaders to develop an adaptive mentality. This mindset is all about agility and the ability to face adversity head-on, embrace flexibility, looking at the positive and make the best of the situation to achieve success. 

Rediscovering Your Customers 

Maria recommends that growth leaders realize that everything they knew and thought they knew has changed in 2021. Businesses have adapted their models, and client bases have transitioned. She advises that the best strategy for marketing individuals is to adjust and learn about their customers continuously. 

Marketers easily fall into the trap of thinking they know who their customers are and what they want. However, the question is: 'What is this knowledge based on?' In most cases, it stems from past data or learnings that do not hold true in the post-pandemic era. 

Successful growth leaders understand that they cannot depend on yesterday's data to drive growth for tomorrow. They should also know that existing and prospective customers are the most valuable tools in understanding the market's changing, dynamic needs. 

Maria suggests that business owners should actively seek to relearn both their current and prospective customers. Get new data on what makes them tick, and adapt a strategy to suit this. She admonishes that failure to do so will leave businesses with a customer base that no longer exists and, consequently, a system that is no longer relevant.

Data Review 

Maria mentioned that marketing departments should remain in a state of constant vigilance―"perpetual review"―to ensure that they are always on top of changes in data and information. This will enable effective prioritization of ideas and quick implementation.

Last Remarks

In conclusion, Maria emphasized that adapting and rediscovering the audience should be the focus of marketing plans in 2021. 

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She mentioned that successful leaders make plans knowing that there is a high chance some projects won't go through. However, she has learned from her mentor that the act of planning, in itself, is valuable because it gives room for insights discovery. 

She also advises business owners to understand that adversity periods are the best time to invest in marketing because it yields significant ROIs.  

What do you plan doing differently in business this year? How do you plan approaching continuous learning? Let us know your thoughts below and stay tuned for our next post on Rediscovering Marketing.