Paige O’Neill, CMO of SDL, talks through her plans for the software brand and how she intends on achieving the aim of it becoming as well known as Adobe
What does your role include?
My role includes all aspects of global marketing for SDL including messaging, product marketing, branding, demand generation, and communications. My team’s focus is to drive increased brand awareness for SDL and for our customer experience management (CXM) solutions, to differentiate SDL from competitors, and ultimately to drive sales.
How long have you worked in B2B marketing?
I’ve worked in B2B marketing for almost 20 years – I started out working in public relations for IBM’s PR agency in the mid 90’s when IBM was just launching ‘the internet division’ and first ecommerce payment products. It was an interesting time – one of my first challenges as a marketer was to convince the press that consumers would start to pay for things online. We’ve come a long way.
How long have you worked at SDL?
I joined SDL in October of 2013.
How do you go about convincing internal stakeholders of change when you’re new to the organisation?
I think you have to start with a quick win to build momentum and help employees see the positive power of change. There is usually at least one thing you can quickly identify when you join an organisation that would fit this category. In the case of SDL it was refreshing the branding. The team did this in about eight weeks after I joined, and it got people very excited and built up positive momentum people could get behind.
If this does not seem possible, the next thing I would do is gather data to help make my case – but do it quickly. Part of the key is to start to roll things out while you are new in the role and still have ‘outsider’ credibility.
We understand the aim is to get the SDL brand as well known as some of your competitors such as Adobe. How are you planning to achieve that?
Our goal is to be one of the top customer experience brands, and we’ve made great progress over the last year, but brand building is a journey and you don’t get there overnight. Our first steps were to tell a comprehensive CXM story, simplify our solution positioning, refresh our brand and amp up our PR and social buzz. Next, we are working to ignite our customer and partner base and solidify relationships with key influencers such as industry analysts so they can help us evangelise.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
A mentor once told me that when you are trying to get out in front and lead change in an organisation, you have to periodically stop, look behind you, and make sure the rest of the organisation is following behind. This is very important in that different people absorb and react to change in very different ways. It’s important for leaders to make sure they haven’t ‘lost’ their audience and that everyone understands the reasons for change.
I tend to gravitate towards organisations where I need to drive change – I find this challenge to be quite exciting. And, in order to see quick progress, I think you have to be very clear on your short- mid- and long-term priorities and not get distracted by all the things that come at you on a daily basis.
