A 20 Year Tech Veteran's Take on Global Expansion

In this week’s episode of the Demand Gen Visionaries podcast, we’re joined by Dave Dabbah, CMO at CleverTap.

Crystal Reitmeir
Crystal Reitmeir
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March 24, 2021
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X
min read
Apple Podcast LinkGoogle Podcast LinkSpotify Podcast Link
Apple Podcast LinkGoogle Podcast LinkSpotify Podcast Link

This episode features an interview with Dave Dabbah, CMO at CleverTap.

Dave heads marketing at CleverTap and is responsible for driving revenue across channels and geographies. Before joining CleverTap, Dave led marketing at Agora. Prior to Agora, Dave was vice president of marketing at Ephox, the in-application editing software company, where he oversaw global marketing for several Ephox brands. Before that, Dave was in marketing leadership roles at EmailLabs and Lyris. Dave also serves as an advisor and board member for several Silicon Valley startups.

On this episode, Dave details his strategy for building a growth brand in the B2B space, the unique challenges of being a global company and evaluating international markets, and why it’s your job as a marketer to always make things memorable.

Tune in to the episode to hear Dave reveal his secret marketing strategies, including:

  • It all starts with the most basic principle: know who you’re trying to sell to. What is the exact problem you are solving for them?
  • You probably need to be doing 10X as much ABM as you’re currently doing if you’re trying to grow at scale 
  • Whether it’s in product naming, branding, re-designing, re-branding, coming up with taglines, etc. it’s your job to make it memorable

Episode Quotes

“Targeting lighthouse and strategic accounts is different than targeting the mid-market. [I’m a] big fan of ABM, but my take on ABM is there are different levels of ABM…If you're trying to build your business rapidly, and you're also trying to grab some portion of market share in a specific market, you need to do 10 times as much ABM as you're currently doing in order to really grow at scale.”
“In a B2B business, it becomes important that every potential brand, whether or not they're a potential customer today–they could be a potential customer tomorrow or a potential customer 36 months from now–is aware of [your] brand. And the only way to really do that is to make sure that the brand is getting in front of as many people as often as possible without annoying them along the way.”
“One of our biggest challenges globally is how do we keep the brand fresh? I’m a big fan of having large PR teams that are able to help a company expand pretty rapidly in a specific market…My experience has always been that the best way to grow a global brand is to grow it with leaders on the ground in those spaces and in those markets.”
“My take on PPC is different than a lot of other marketers in the B2B space. A lot of other marketers in the B2B space would simply say to you, ‘what's the return on investment for the amount of money we spend on our pay per click ads?’ The truth is if you just look at stuff like that, then you would probably stop spending money on PPC ads. What it really comes down to is brand recognition. You want people to see your brand and think about your brand…a large portion of our PPC budget is really just billboarding. It's providing us a significant amount of brand recognition, which you need to do time and time and time again in order to really build a growth brand in the B2B space in a lot of the markets that we're in.”
“My personal thing is to always try to make things memorable. If you don't try to make things memorable, then you’re not doing your job as a marketer. And when you look at a bunch of the B2B brands in the marketplace, how many of those would you consider to be memorable?”

Ready to hear from more Demand Gen Visionaries? You can subscribe and find all episodes here.

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