Paolo - Paolo Provinciali

Thinking About Onboarding a Customer Data Platform? Make This Hire First

By Paolo - Tuesday 5th June, 2018

You already know that you need to break down organizational silos to change the way teams work together. Knowing this, you may be thinking about investing in the hot new technology of a Customer Data Platform (CDP).

These marketer-managed data repositories allow you to create a single customer profile that can then be used by other systems. This gives you the power to enhance your (re)engagement activities across media. CDPs can be a smart way to collect data once and make it work for you, again and again, breaking through silos to create a more cohesive process for your team. Instead of having different team members each independently working on a piece of the puzzle, you can use this technology to bring them together.

You’ve probably already started hearing vendor pitches for a CDP (and if not, just wait. They’re going to be all the rage for 2019). Before you make a decision about a purchase, though, my advice is to take a step back and make sure that you have the talent in place to take full advantage of what a CDP has to offer. Continue reading

Flashier Isn’t Better: Choosing The Marketing Tech You’ll Actually Use

By Paolo - Monday 28th May, 2018

Let’s say you’ve got a loose stair that’s been driving you crazy because it springs up every time you step on it. You’ve decided to take care of it but don’t have a hammer. When you get to the store to pick one up, you see that your options are a standard hammer or one that promises to be industrial grade that’s made of the finest materials known to man. Everything about the second hammer screams superiority. It’s in a shinier package. It’s, in short, a better hammer. It also costs ten times more than the first hammer.

At that point, you may try to justify the “investment” by thinking you could use it to take on all those home improvement projects you’ve been putting off for a very long time. But once you take out the weekends you are going to be away, and the ones you have already blocked off for previous engagements, do you really have the time they would require to tackle them?

If all you’re going to use the hammer for is to repair your loose stair, is it really worth the investment?

Companies large and small make the mistake of being lured in by the promises of advanced technology platforms. To be sure, these platforms are truly innovative, and many can deliver on the promises they’ve made. However, when it comes to marketing technology, the value is determined by the features you actually use rather than the features that are available. You have to remember that your technology is a tool. Like any other tool, the way you use it is going to determine its worth. Continue reading

How to Manage Your Creative Agency for Great Digital Campaigns

By Paolo - Sunday 22nd April, 2018

Thanks to my job and my employees’ deep pockets, I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best creative shops in the world (by the measure of the number of Cannes Lions awards won or the fee that they get paid). The best-known agencies employ great talent, and I’m often amazed by the clever and creative ideas they bring to the table. But the truth is that creative agencies are best at telling stories, while a key factor in digital creative performance is the ability to effectively get a message across to drive a behavior change. For this reason, the best work of these highly-awarded and highly-paid creative agencies comes across a 60″ TV spot, or through an execution that requires a summary showreel to make it all come together, while the digital creatives of an integrated plan are often less than impressive. Continue reading

We should treat marketers like doctors

By Paolo - Thursday 7th September, 2017

In spite of what your boss wants you to believe – keeping you in the office at 8 pm on a Friday before of a long weekend – marketers don’t save lives. In spite of that, they could probably benefit from a similar rigor to the one put in place when pursuing the medical career.

Having worked in marketing for many years, I’ve always been fascinated by the variety of people that call themselves marketers. Marketing – like medicine – is an inclusive profession and the are many fields. But in the same way that there is a big difference between an ophthalmologist and a podologist (and you wouldn’t ask the latter to treat a cataract), there is a huge difference between a brand manager and an email marketing expert.

The more worrying part about it is that anyone can call himself a marketer with no specific training, skills, or experience. Having organized a brand event, managed a mailing list, or run a couple of AdWords campaigns, doesn’t make someone a marketing expert, more than putting together the yearly budget for your department makes you a finance expert.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if every single day the ads you saw on TV were as good as the ones during the Super Bowl? It would be a win for the advertisers, the network, and the consumers. I believe that with the right education, mentorship, and career opportunities it could be possible.

Late-stage startups should part ways with their growth hacker

By Paolo - Sunday 6th August, 2017

Before I even get into the details of what I want to write about, let me set the record straight: growth hackers can often be instrumental in the success of an early-stage startup, and their skill set is undeniably valuable. Finding a great growth hacker for your new business could be the key to make it to Round A.

Also, marketing is not advertising. Advertising is placing a paid message on a media channel, marketing is the discipline of making your product, service, or company something that your target audience cannot live without. Marketing nowadays lives in the center of the Venn-diagram intersection between art and science, data and creativity.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can focus on what I want to talk about: although “growth hacker” is the hottest title in the startup world nowadays, it’s important to understand why this role is only relevant during the early life of a business, and late-stage startups need a Growth Team made of subject matter experts, that include a seasoned Marketing professional.