No silver bullet for Marketing - A point of view from SMB Marketing Lead at Microsoft Australia

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Hi everyone

I am Isabel Boniface and I am the SMB Marketing Lead at Microsoft.  That means that I lead the Microsoft marketing effort to our small and medium sized customers, a role that I have in common with many of you.

I will be talking to you in coming weeks about the marketing transformation that Microsoft is going through right now.  Not because I think we have the silver bullet, but because I think that Microsoft and our partners can learn together.

But first, let me give you a perspective of who I am and how I came to be in this role.  I am, what could be considered, a Microsoft veteran. I joined Microsoft in 1998 originally, but left after four years, only to return six years later after running my own business for a while and also working in Distribution.

I love the art of marketing.  I love the science of business and I love the magic that happens when you do great marketing to deliver strong business outcomes.

But marketing is transforming.  My partner facing colleagues like Marnie, Phil and Luke talks about the transformation that is happening in the world of IT.  The transformation that is happening in the way our partners manage their businesses, the way they pay their staff, the way they think about and package their products.  That transformation is also occurring in marketing at a staggering pace – Because the way customers are learning, consuming and buying is changing at a staggering pace.

This is a daunting prospect – Especially for marketing dinosaurs like me.  Our bag of tricks that we’ve been using for the last twenty or thirty years, no longer work.  We have to be re-educated on this new way of marketing.

Good news is that we are all learning together – Bad news is that the time is now…There is no time to wait.

Please join me over the coming weeks as I will share my perspectives, learnings and observations. And please join in the conversation – On the Blog, but especially on Yammer.  We would love to learn from what you are doing as well.