MarTech Edge Interview with Kate Kenner Archibald, Chief Marketing Officer, Dash Hudson

In current times, what are CMOs focusing on to adapt/implement in the MarTech & Social-Tech landscape?

In current times, CMOs are embracing the power of data by leveraging MarTech and Social-Tech solutions. By embracing these tools, CMOs can empower their teams to uncover the data and insights needed to adapt and thrive in the ever-evolving business landscape. These technologies are critical to quickly capturing market opportunities, staying ahead of consumer trends, and creating impactful marketing campaigns.

Dash Hudson has just announced the launch of its AI-powered Social Listening solution. How does it plan to disrupt the visually-dominant social landscape?

In today’s dynamic social landscape, communication has evolved beyond traditional text-based interactions, with consumers increasingly leveraging photos and videos to connect and share online. Dash Hudson’s AI-Powered Social Listening solution has disrupted this visually-driven space by providing marketers with the ability to listen beyond text-based conversations while breaking through the noise and bringing the most pertinent data to the forefront.

With nearly a decade of continuous learning, Dash Hudson’s AI technology, Vision, stands among the more advanced tools in the social marketing landscape. By leveraging the power of Vision, our innovative Social Listening solution analyzes and interprets conversations occurring in photo and video formats across social media platforms.

This revolutionary capability empowers marketers to stay ahead of the social curve by identifying emerging visual trends, tracking brand mentions, and closely monitoring real-time customer feedback. As a result, brands can now gain a comprehensive understanding of their target audience’s preferences and behaviors, enabling them to craft highly personalized and impactful marketing campaigns.

How does Dash Hudson’s proprietary Vision AI technology help social listening tools to go beyond traditional features?

As mentioned above, Dash Hudson’s Vision AI technology takes its Social Listening tool to new heights by analyzing conversations happening through visual content, such as images and videos. This advanced technology empowers social media managers to uncover patterns, identify trends and obtain profound insights into consumer behavior and preferences. In addition, the tool also has visual filtering functionalities, which enable marketers to filter out non-relevant visual content to zero in on specific content styles to help analyze performance.

How do you collaborate with different teams to drive business growth?

In today’s business landscape, success is achieved by setting the right strategy and assigning clear goals that foster engagement among employees to help make employees as happy and productive as possible. I believe it is crucial to not only help them develop a deep understanding of their role and place within the organization but also the significant impact they can have.

When collaborating with teams beyond the marketing department, it is important to remember that marketing’s role goes beyond supporting its own function. Marketing must also equip the sales and customer success teams with the tools they need to excel and make a lasting impression on customers. This requires consistent communication and a shared commitment to delivering an impactful customer journey, regardless of whether the intended audience is made up of new or existing clients. By providing essential tools and resources that enable sales and customer service teams to function seamlessly, marketing plays an important role in the overall success of the organization.

How are Dash Hudson’s solutions, like influencer marketing software, social commerce, and creative intelligence, enabling marketers?

The modern social media manager is responsible for many different facets of digital marketing. For example, today’s social media managers are often tasked with developing, executing, and measuring creator strategies and driving e-commerce sales, all while ensuring the content they produce is authentic to their brand while also being entertaining, educational, and aspirational. Dash Hudson’s solutions were developed to seamlessly work together to address their many tasks and workflows while helping them save time and drive consistent business results.

How is Dash Hudson setting itself apart from its competitors in the Social-Tech/MarTech arena?

Dash Hudson is proud to have been rated by the global social media marketing community as the number one platform for ease of use. Dash Hudson was designed to be user-friendly and accessible, making it easier for marketers to create and implement effective marketing campaigns. Further, Dash Hudson is setting itself apart from its competitors by leveraging its proprietary Vision AI technology to analyze and interpret visual content on social media platforms. As mentioned, this technology allows social listening to enter the modern marketing age by providing marketers with a more comprehensive and visually-driven understanding of their customers’ preferences and behaviors.

What’s your approach to planning for marketing budgets and strategies? What makes it easier and more goal-oriented?

My approach to planning marketing budgets and strategies revolves around simplicity, clarity, and alignment with business goals. I believe budgeting should not be a complex exercise but a straightforward process that is rooted in a well-defined strategy and with clear building blocks in place. This approach enables our team to allocate resources effectively toward achieving our objectives.

When planning our marketing budgets, we ensure the process is streamlined and goal-oriented. We start by clearly defining what we need to accomplish for each team and aligning our funding decisions with those goals. We maintain a rigorous analysis of our budget to ensure that we are allocating funds to the right initiatives that support our objectives.

Throughout the budgeting process, we keep a close eye on our goals, such as the cost per SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) and cost per MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). It is essential to monitor these metrics and ensure they are in line with our forecasted expectations. This proactive approach helps us maintain control over our expenditures while staying committed to our targets.

In the ever-changing social influence domain, what’s your methodology for deciding what’s better for enhanced customer experience?

In today’s rapidly evolving digital world, it is imperative for businesses to prioritize user experience across multiple channels. In the social media landscape, creators play a crucial role in building communities and producing highly entertaining content. As such, these creators help brands promote their products and services to their target audiences in an authentic and engaging way.

When it comes to developing a strong creator strategy, it’s important for marketers to understand that larger audience sizes do not always equal larger results. According to data from Dash Hudson, nano-influencers (1,000-10,000 followers) demonstrate higher effectiveness in comparison to macro-influencers (10,000-100,000 followers) and mega-influencers (100,000-500,000 followers). Nano-influencers exhibit an impressive Effectiveness Rate of 16.5%, which is 143% higher than that of macro-influencers and a whopping 279% higher than mega-influencers. Beyond Effectiveness, nano-influencers also achieve a notable Engagement Rate of 5.28%, surpassing macro-influencers by 171% and mega-influencers by 319%.

Beyond perfecting creator strategy, it is also critically important for marketers to leverage the power of social listening to gain an intimate understanding of the preferences, needs, and desires of customers. Through these insights, brands are better equipped to meet and exceed customer expectations. In doing so, brands will not only enhance the customer experience but also foster stronger customer relationships and ultimately drive business growth.