After Varun Kohli, Head of Strategic Marketing, PMO, & Global Demand at Symantec, launched one particular campaign early in his career, it nearly crashed the entire IT infrastructure of the company he was working for at the time, because of the huge amount of traffic it generated. How did he manage to create such a groundswell of interest? By combining story and data.

On this episode of Marketing Trends, Varun talks about how to tell data-driven stories, how to surface great customer stories, his best tips for marketing at startups and at scale, and much more.

Links:

Full Notes & Quotes: http://bit.ly/33P5Ryi 

Varun’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kohlivarun/

Varun’s Twitter: twitter.com/vk_is

Symantec: symantec.com/

5 Key Takeaways:

– “My belief is very simple. Don’t have data without a story and don’t have story without data.” – Varun Kohli

– When there is an acquisition, stick around. There will be voids that you can step into. There are always opportunities after acquisitions and mergers.

– “Keep on raising your hand, don’t run away from the fire, keep on running towards the fire and good things will happen to you.” – Varun Kohli 

– As a brand becomes larger, third-party validation becomes more and more important. You can say whatever you want about yourself, but if others aren’t saying it, it doesn’t matter.

– Customers will find novel ways to use your product, so it’s important to talk to them and hear what those stories are so those stories can be told.

Bio:

Varun Kohli is the Head of Global Demand Generation, PMO and Strategic Marketing at Symantec Corporation. He joined Symantec via the Skycure acquisition, a leader in Mobile Threat Defense. At Skycure, he was employee #1 in the U.S., and as their CMO led all aspects of marketing, operations and account development. Varun has held leadership positions in marketing, product management, and product development at both startups and large companies, and is on the advisory board of many startups. Varun earned his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India, a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, Riverside and studied marketing at University of California, Berkeley.

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