Customer-First Marketing: To truly be customer-obsessed, respect the customer’s time (episode #149)

I know the pinch when budgets tighten, customers shift, and deadlines close in. Yet, marketers have a superpower: like Superman’s X-ray vision, we see through constraints to the core idea. That is the essence of our craft – not waiting for perfect conditions but delivering breakthrough concepts right here, right now. So I loved this lesson in a recent podcast guest application – ‘every challenge is a creative opportunity.’ To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Dana Bodine, US VP of marketing, Trustpilot [https://www.trustpilot.com/]. Trustpilot is a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange. In 2024, it reported $211 million in revenue. Bodine looks after the entire US market, the US portion of an international audience of 64 million monthly active users. Lessons from the things she madeEvery challenge is a creative opportunityBuilding a relationship with commercial partners is key Stay calm under fire (+ on tight deadlines) Get a seat at the table by creating sales materialsTo truly be customer-obsessed, respect the customer’s timeIdeas are only powerful when they come with context Discussed in this episode Strategic Advertising and Marketing: It’s not what you make, it’s what you make possible (podcast episode #117) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/strategic-advertising] Team Building: Loyalty, relationships, pre-selling, and other keys to marketing management success (Podcast Episode #16) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/team-building] Marketing & Communications: It’s important to ‘take a beat’ (podcast episode #140) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/marketing-and-communications] Five Tips From a Personal Care Industry CEO for Setting (and Getting Approval for) Your Marketing Budget [https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/tips-marketing-budget-approval/] Marketing: It’s not about you, and when you make it about you, you are never going to succeed (podcast episode #53) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/marketing-not-about-you] The Radical Idea: Customer-first marketing prioritizes customer experience over upsells [https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/consumer-marketing/the-radical-idea-customer-experience-over-upsells/] AI engineering voucher MarketingSherpa has teamed up with parent company MeclabsAI to produce a research study. We are granting 10 AI engineering vouchers worth $5,000 each to eligible companies. Learn more at https://meclabs.com/research/5k-engineering-voucher Next event Join us for AI Hackathon: Build a powerful lead gen agent in just 90 minutes [https://join.meclabsai.com/mec050] on Wednesday, August 20th at 2 pm EDT. Apply to be a guest If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application