Bobby Jania, VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce understands how to look at a potential problem, reframe it, and utilize it as an asset. His ability to understand technical nuance, thanks to a degree in computer engineering, qualifies him as a leader in this space. Understanding the basics of how things are made, and then taking a step back to look at the way those little details are fitting together to fulfill the mission of the company is one of the big reasons why Bobby is where he is today as a marketer. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Bobby joined me and discussed where marketers might be going wrong as they implement customer-facing A.I. His can-do attitude, despite adverse circumstances, means more productivity around the clock as employees in different continents are able to keep work going when the sun sets over the US.

“We’re leveraging the fact that there are people in Japan and in Australia and in the UK on the team. It’s not a barrier anymore. For some stuff when I log off, I know they’re going to pick it up, and it continues on through.”  

Keep that train of progress moving forward, that’s the Bobby Jania way. We uncover some nuance from the annual Salesforce State of Marketing Report and see how marketers across the board are revamping the way they work in their craft. All this, up next on Marketing Trends.

Main Takeaways

• Keep Mission and Vision at the forefront of all your Work: Keeping company values at the forefront of your mind can give you clarity on tough decisions that come up. Revisiting your company’s mission and vision on a regular basis can help everyone make more mission-oriented decisions in their daily work. Everyone needs to feel the pull forward through that common company vision on what the work is that you’re doing
• Marketing Through Cookie Disruption: Brands that are not already keeping a first party database have suffered most with the end of cookies as we knew them. Companies are expediting new marketing solutions and strategies to fill in this unforeseen void. Marketers now need to rely more on first party data, getting consumers to willingly type in their name and email on a company website, while also acknowledging a website’s intent to track their information, instead of third party cookies.
• Leveraging Artificial intelligence for Marketers: Marketers have to be careful with the use of A.I.when it is customer facing, especially when consumers are interacting with that technology to solve problem. Consumers are more likely to forgive the use of a robot in a customer service funnel because they understand the need to streamline the influx of help tickets. However, if you try to pass this off as a “real” person, when it’s still easy to tell when you’re communicating with a chatbot, people will become frustrated. They need to know they can escalate their request to a real person at any point.

Key Quotes

“It’s really hard to make things simple. Mark Twain is credited with the whole idea of, ‘I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time.’ It’s that idea that to make something simple is really complicated.” 

“Salesforce recognizes the strategy and tactics that got us here today are not the ones that will get us to the next step. So there’s this constant push, not just with the products we launch externally, but even internally. How are we going to do it differently than before so that we can keep this growth and keep this scale going?”

“I really had to start trusting my direction, into what I could delegate. Now a lot of it comes down to the priorities. There are certain things I will dive really deep into. Certain products, certain features, certain review meetings I will get very, very deep in. Then there were other ones that I would have stayed at a very high level and get more of the readout of what’s going on, than be in the trenches, making the decisions.”

“There’s probably been more disruption this year than I’ve ever seen before, as far as what was important. What strategies changed? What are the metrics that you look at that changed? As you can probably imagine, video channel value dramatically went up this year because we’re all sitting at home, right? 

“We’re leveraging the fact that there are people in Japan and in Australia and in the UK on the team. It’s not a barrier anymore. For some stuff when I log off, I know they’re going to pick it up, and it continues on through.”  

“If you’re going to have an A.I. interface directly with the customer, and if it is trying to have dialogue, typing and chatting, you need to be transparent that you’re talking to an AI bot. I’ve seen backlash when they try to pretend it’s a human, and then, you can ask it certain questions, and very much tell right away it’s not right. I think people are okay with it as long as they know.”

“It is amazing to see the number of marketing vendors and solutions enter the space because it just shows how much innovation is still yet to come. I’ve been in this space for almost a decade and the amount of marketing solutions that are out there then versus today is orders of magnitude different. They’re all doing new and different things. We continue to find new ways to innovate in that space.”

BIO
Bobby Jania is the VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce. He looks back fondly on his early career days at Apple, still citing many of the principles he learned. He entered the job market with a degree in computer engineering and soon started crossing over into marketing. His first role in the space was as a Product Marketing Engineer at a semiconductor company. He now leads the teams that are responsible for marketing cloud experience cloud and digital 360. 

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