For a company selling web applications, a strategy with anything but digital at it’s core would seem peculiar. But as Shallu Behar-Sheehan stepped into the position of director of EMEA marketing at F5 Networks, the budget for digital was a big fat zero. That was something she set out to change. “I have a very clear digital-first approach,” she explains.
Fast-forward three years, and Shallu has pretty much turned all eyes on digital. “Now more than 60% of my budget is farmed out on digital,” she says.
She’s been bold in the selection of her team too; quite often hiring on instinct and passion rather than selecting those who fit the role on paper. “Some of my best hires are people I’ve taken risks with,” she says. “Interns think digital all the time, they have a very different perception of the world in communications. That’s what you want.”
Shallu believes customer expectations are also shifting in a similar direction. According to Ofcom the average Briton spends eight hours and 41 minutes on media devices per day. As that’s where prospects’ time lies, marketing functions also need to focus to this trajectory.
This complete readjustment has been a challenge for F5. It means the brand and message it presents now needs to closely parallel what customers are thinking and doing in their everyday working lives. If it doesn’t, it won’t resonate. It will stagnate and be consumed by the vast volume of online content.
“We need to really look at migrating our brand, so we’re having the same conversations that our customers at the forefront of digital are having. We also need to ensure we’re reflective of what’s keeping them awake at night,” explains Shallu.
The problem with being relevant in a global company
Aligning your brand message to your customers’ sounds fairly straightforward. But F5 is a global company that operates in 36 countries. You can bet such a diverse customer base doesn’t share a homogenised outlook or encounter identical problems on a day-to-day basis. This means F5’s marketing team keeps a close eye on their customer’s activities to ensure they get it right.
For Shallu, data is vital in the approach to understanding how to deliver to an audience of this size. “We look at what our data is telling us, so really analysing the digital engagement and the footprints that we’re seeing from marketing, sales and services,” she explains.
The benefits of looking at the data means Shallu and her team can decipher what their audience are receptive to and how they differ in various regions. From this, they can sculpt marketing campaigns in line with customer preferences. “People consume content in so many different ways. The minute you start to look at your digital reach you can very quickly influence your target audience by what you’re putting out,” says Shallu.
The research uncovered some differences, particularly between the three areas F5 operates in – EMEA, APCJ, and the Americas. “One of the key things we’ve found is that the APCJ region tends to be digital-first, all of the time,” says Shallu. “They tend to be a lot more aggressive in their digital activity – and that was a really interesting [discovery].”
For Shallu’s marketing team, this newfound data became a catalyst for creativity and outlined what a global marketing campaign really looks like. “It forces the global function to start thinking differently about content and the optimal way content can be consumed.”
Using data for digital and vice versa
Shallu’s determination is clear; she wants her marketing team to get the most out of their activities. Having already seen the benefits of digital and data in action, she’s been keen to reap the full potential of this approach. Naturally, when she took her position at F5 she ensured a data scientist was on the team – something she has sworn by for the past six years. She argues that data scientists can see something different to marketing.
“That’s when the magic happens,” she explains. “I can take what they see and create something really quite different. I want to get to a point where we’re not just looking at who we target, why we target and what we say to them, but to where we’re influencing.”
Shallu hasn’t just looked at this aim through a macro lense. The marketing team selected leads that demonstrated different types of behaviour and followed them, noting their development over six, 12, and 18 months. “Interestingly, we soon realised how over abundant our content production was, how very little people need to become engaged, and what type of initiatives engage individuals.”
This approach suggested F5 should capitalise on webinars, which led to a spike of engagement. “We realised having followed some of our leads that where we’d sent out emails, we had no engagement. The minute we put webinars into the campaign, we could spark interest.” When customers started amplifying that spark through digital channels, Shallu knew she’d got it right.
Moving forward, Shallu is continuing to strengthen F5’s digital offering, and is realistic about the challenges this may involve. “We must look at various consumption models that we need to create,” she says. “We also need to make sure there’s a shift to a software focus and that’s a challenge for marketing teams.”
So far, F5’s digital transformation has been impressive. Shallu’s decision to increase digital’s budget by over 60% resulted in upheaval, but as a result its customers are closer and more engaged.
Shallu has been nominated for ‘B2B Marketer of the Year’ at The International B2B Marketing Awards. The F5 marketing team have also been nominated for ‘Best B2B Marketing Team of the Year’.
