Prior to that, she held key leadership roles at Moneycorp, Domestic & General, and major fintech brands, delivering exceptional growth, acquisition, and transformation initiatives.

Today, we'll explore how marketing can be positioned as a growth engine, how Shakeela has driven significant revenue impact through marketing strategy, and how marketing leaders can gain influence in the C-suite.

Shakeela, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

Shakeela, your career spans fintech, global payments, banking, and insurance. Where did marketing come into it?

It's an interesting one because I never intended to do marketing. It just happened. If I take you back to when I studied at university, I did International Business with Portuguese. Right. So very different from marketing. But the international business element actually has marketing as part of that, although it was more theoretical and just part of the module.

But I really loved languages and business, so I combined them. At the time, I didn't know what I wanted to do. When I left university, I spent a few years doing temp jobs, but then I started working at a digital agency.

Right.

That's when I became really passionate about what you could do. It was when the dot-com boom was happening and there were a lot of websites needing to be developed. I was looking after their core clients and was exposed to all the web design and web development aspects—usability, accessibility, SEO, and digital strategies.

I loved it because it was really fast-moving as well, having to keep up to date for the clients.

From there, I moved to my role at Domestic & General.

Right.

That was an entry-level e-commerce assistant or coordinator role. I was doing similar things—still web development and looking after clients.

But in that role, I progressed more into leading digital marketing.

Right.

As we advanced, that was for their own website, so direct-to-consumer, but also for our clients. I had a real passion there because I started doing A/B testing. I set up A/B testing for them, and I was so passionate about what you could do and seeing the results—seeing how you could improve growth.

Yeah.

That’s where I became really passionate about it. Then I applied for a role at Moneycorp. They were on a huge transformation journey, and I started there as an e-commerce manager.

Right.

Again, I came in to help transform their digital marketing, and they were also on a big journey to digitise their onboarding process.

Okay.

So again, it was still very much digital, but I was having to demonstrate growth. It was more on the growth side there. Eventually, I headed up digital marketing following a promotion after some of the successes I achieved.

So still very much digital, and I worked closely with the rest of the marketing team, including brand. From there, I was headhunted for the role at Citi.

Right.

That’s where my role became broader, covering the whole marketing spectrum. At a CMO level, really—leading their marketing.

So purposefully, it started as digital marketing and then moved into more general marketing.

I'm interested because you've obviously worked agency-side and client-side. What are the differences between being a marketer in one versus the other?

I think with being at an agency, you get the chance to learn so much. You're exposed to all the different tools and platforms that you can work with. In my experience working at the agency I did, I felt like I learned a huge amount. I think that really set me up for working client-side and then dealing with agencies.

Because I was able to know how to handle that—I knew my stuff.

Yeah.

From a client perspective in marketing, I think you very much need to keep up to date.

The pace of marketing and the volume of knowledge you need to have, particularly in a senior role within marketing, is ever-increasing. How do you manage that?

I subscribe to so many newsletters, and I'm constantly reading articles—whether that’s on LinkedIn or elsewhere—and I have lots of subscriptions to things I'm interested in.

But I also think it's really important to upskill, especially now with AI in marketing. You need to know what's going on and how it can help you. I've been doing an AI course in marketing.

So yes, it's something I think is really important—staying up to date so you know how you can improve things and how you can improve your strategies.

Without that training and learning, you won’t know what you can do or what's possible.

We're going to talk more about some of the training later in the discussion. I know you're a big fan of continuous learning and you've had some great success with that. So let's park that for now and come back to it.

Something you mentioned earlier is that your role at Moneycorp was about driving growth. This podcast is all about marketing as a growth driver within business, and that’s something we're very passionate about here.

During your time at Citi, you doubled acquisition rates. Can you expand on how you achieved that?

The drivers behind that were really understanding what was possible. I did the research and looked at the data. When I came in, Citi was on a big transformation journey, and they wanted to accelerate acquisition.

So I looked at everything and really understood what they were doing and where they needed to go. From a strategic perspective, it was about doing the research—understanding what had worked in the past, what needed to change, and really understanding the ideal customer profile.

Who are they? Who is the target audience? What are their pain points? What motivates them?

That allowed us to ensure those things were reflected in the messaging and the value proposition. That was key from a strategic perspective—to start almost from scratch.

From an execution perspective, I looked at the channels and how we could reach the high-net-worth audience they were targeting. It was about optimising those and bringing in new channels where possible.

The biggest thing was measurement and tracking. I had to completely overhaul that because a lot was missing.

Without that, you don't know what's working or what needs to change. Once that was in place, I was able to track performance at an audience level from a targeting perspective. On LinkedIn, for example, you can target many different categories, and I was able to analyse performance at that level to see what was working.

So that was really fundamental.

Yeah.

Was it similar at Moneycorp?

At Moneycorp, the drivers were really about automation. I came in while they were on a huge transformation journey, and I was leading the change around automating their entire onboarding platform.

Okay.

That was a huge project across the whole business, and it delivered significant results—doubling conversions.

The focus there was automation, but I also had to review the marketing channels they were using and optimise those.

I also conducted an agency review.

There were some issues, and I needed to make sure things changed—whether that meant bringing in new agencies or working with the existing ones on improvements.

So those were some of the big things there as well.

How long were you at Moneycorp?

Nearly five or six years.

Right—and going through huge transitions.

Yes, absolutely. Moneycorp was private-equity-backed, high-growth, and had ambitious targets. We needed to make sure we were delivering.

So it was about constantly asking: where is the revenue? What should we focus on?

It's great fun if everything is moving in the right direction.

Enormous pressure, I imagine, if it's not.

Absolutely.

One of the things I had to manage was a negatively performing channel that I had to turn around.

Okay.

That was referrals, which was actually one of their biggest channels from a revenue generation perspective.

Right.

Turning that around was a really great achievement. It involved analysing how we were promoting it, identifying the areas that were underperforming in terms of promotion, and improving the tracking again.

Yeah.

Missing tracking means you don't know what's working or what's not, so it's such a fundamental area.

That's interesting. Obviously, I won't ask for sensitive information. I'm more interested in understanding the process.

Sure.

I'm sure this is something many organisations need to solve. If a channel is underperforming, the first step is diagnosing what's going wrong.

Of course.

If you don't have accurate measurement, that diagnosis becomes much harder. In your case, you didn't have the right measurement initially. So how do you start diagnosing?

There were still ways of identifying that revenue came from that channel. What I mean is that the deeper tracking wasn't perfect. For example, some activity might have been allocated to a different channel.

There were still codes we used at the time to identify revenue sources.

But the overall process was diagnosing everything—asking why it wasn’t working when it should have been performing better.

So it was about getting to the bottom of that.

In general terms, when diagnosing issues that need solving, the role of research seems central.

Absolutely.

Without research and data analysis, you don’t know where to go. It's so important to understand what has worked and what needs to be done.

Without that, you’ll struggle.

At Moneycorp and Citi, did that research already exist, or did you need to conduct it yourself?

At Moneycorp, there were large focus groups and initiatives like that.

Okay.

But I’m also talking about analysing the available data—looking at analytics and identifying what’s working. It also involved speaking to people across the business to understand what they were seeing and where issues might lie.

Exactly.

At Citi, I largely used the data that was already available. They had also conducted focus groups in the past.

But you can never do enough research. It’s always important to stay connected with what the customer actually wants and how you can delight them.

Let's return to the broader theme of this podcast: marketing acting as a growth driver within businesses.

We touched on it earlier, but let’s revisit it.

Marketing is often undervalued in its potential to drive growth within a business.

How can CMOs get a better seat at the table to actually have a voice in the direction of the business?

So one thing I'll say there is it's a bit of a hot topic at the moment. There's a lot of data out there about CMO tenure being the shortest in the C-suite.

Yeah.

About three or four years.

Yeah.

Which is really crazy compared to a CFO.

Yeah. CEO.

So it's a movement that needs to change. I'm part of this group that a colleague has set up called the Marketing Revolution.

Right.

And it is about the change that’s needed in marketing, because I think it's a lack of understanding. What does marketing actually do?

So I think as marketing leaders, it's really important to bring marketing back to where it should be. It should be the core of a business.

Yeah.

Because we speak to the customers. We then bring that information back into the organisation and actually develop strategies from that.

Mm-hmm.

So without that — without marketing actually doing that and being that central role — I don’t know how companies are growing. How are they doing it?

So it's really important to make sure the education is there about what marketing actually is, and to gain that influence.

Do you think that some of this is a fault of our own making?

I'm referring here to the disparaging term “the colouring-in department”, shall we say.

You've obviously heard that phrase.

I have heard that.

And that, to me, was like, well, that's a disparaging term. You wouldn’t ever hear that if you're working with CEOs talking about a CFO. With strategy and growth in a business, why is it that marketing isn't thought of in that same way?

Yeah.

And that was my question. Have we brought it on ourselves as an industry? What needs to change in order to have that seat?

So I think it's about influence. You need to gain that influence, and that influence comes from building relationships with your peers, with the C-suite, and with your team.

One of the things that I heard more recently was about decisions being made before the boardroom. So again, that's another thing. How are you going to get that investment if you haven't actually built influence in the company?

I see.

Yeah. So I would 100% say that to build influence there are many ways that you can do that, and I'm doing some training on that as well to actually enhance those skills.

So the first thing would be communication. You would have heard about the different colours — red, yellow, green, and blue. It's a DISC profile. So depending on that, you adjust your communication style and behaviour based on that.

So that's one thing about becoming aligned with that person so you know how to communicate with them. The CEO might be really driven by data, and you need to then be on the same page there.

So improving your empathetic skills.

Is that the right—

Yeah.

But also understanding how they behave. What do they want to receive when they're hearing about what you're doing? Do they want it in bullet points? Do they want explanations?

Yeah.

So that's one thing.

And then there's also building credibility. We need to really get to grips with what is happening in the market.

Mm-hmm.

What are customers wanting? What's driving them?

So then bringing that knowledge back into the company and actually saying—

Becoming the expert voice of the customer.

Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely key.

So then you need to bring that into the company and show that you're that person. Credibility there — credibility in understanding the product.

How many people really understand the real details of the product, like the margin and the P&L?

So you become that person who can actually talk the same language as them and explain how marketing can influence that.

And then the other thing is training and ensuring that you're developing yourself so that you know everything that's happening in the market.

Mm-hmm.

So all of that will build influence, which is really important. And then hopefully you will get that seat at the table from that.

Interesting. Again, this is a repetition of something that we've said, but because the space is changing so quickly—

Yeah.

—the volume of new technology coming in, well, in all areas of life. But when I see the diagram of MarTech, different types of brand—

I mean, it's just—

Yeah.

Where on earth do you start? And I think if you're not one of these individuals who is naturally curious, you're probably going to struggle rising through the ranks.

I think absolutely. In marketing and digital, you need to keep up to date with what's going on. And that's why I go to webinars, networking events, and really try to understand what people are using and what the big use cases are.

So it's good to see what other people are doing and how they're using those tools.

Yeah. Let's talk about one of the courses that you're currently doing, or recently finished — the Influential Marketer course?

I'm still doing that at the moment.

So that's where, to sum it up, it's what I was saying about building credibility with your peers.

But there's so much to cover in that.

Mm-hmm.

But summing it up, you need to build that influence to be able to get that seat at the table. I think it's fundamental to actually be that revolution and be that pivot to get marketing more recognised.

Yeah. Where is that? Is that an online course?

It's online through someone I met through networking who is running it.

And she's also doing the Marketing Revolution. It's a community of marketers who are having the same problem, or recognise the challenge and actually want to change things.

Yeah.

So it's about taking that movement to actually make marketing what it should be.

So it's almost a place where other marketers can come and talk to other marketers and share problems — war stories.

But actually make change rather than just talking about it. So coming with your problem, like the CFO won't approve my brand budget, for example.

Yeah.

Or—you know, this has only just started recently, but I'm a big advocate of that as well. This is a problem that needs to be fixed.

And I think the more marketers become aware of that, that's how it can change and create that movement.

And actually just being upskilled in what you need to say to the CFO and what you need to say to the CEO.

Part of it, I guess, is knowing exactly what the conversation should be in order to be able to have an opinion on them.

Exactly.

And with the upskilling that you mentioned as well, being more confident in what you're saying and what you've seen and heard.

There are a lot of studies out there, and using that information to validate why marketing is so important, why spending money on brand is so important, and that it's not just a cost.

And the other thing about marketing being the colouring department is the fact that it's seen as a cost centre rather than a growth driver.

Yeah.

That needs to change. Marketing is growth, and it should be seen as that.

That particular point around marketing being seen not as a cost centre—

Yes.

Is there stuff that you do, whether at Moneycorp or Citi, when you're presenting budgets that you're requesting in order to achieve your objectives for the year? Are there tools or measurements that you use to start showing that?

What I would say is that brand tracking is really important. What is the sentiment out there for your brand?

You can do surveys, which is what we did at Citi. But it's really important to understand unaided awareness.

How do people know you?

So that's the most simple form of brand tracking.

Right.

But there will also be search impressions.

Yeah.

What are they?

From a Moneycorp perspective, that would be what we were looking at. Who knows about us, and how can we improve that?

So there are various metrics to measure that.

What are the biggest challenges when you've come into a large organisation like Citi, for example, when your task is to start transforming the way they're doing their existing marketing? How do you go about that?

Well, I obviously had to do that myself, but when it's a larger corporation there's going to be less agility.

So you're going to have to work with the tools that are there, unless they're on a big mission to change.

When I was there, there was that big mission to change — bringing in lots of new MarTech.

So it has to be something that has buy-in. If you want to do something they're not doing, you have to make that business case.

So again, it's learning those influential skills. How can I influence people that this is a really good idea?

So I think that's really important. It can happen, but it might take a bit longer in terms of transformation.

But in fintech it's very agile. You can bring in pretty much what you want.

When I was there, I actually brought in some tools for A/B testing, for example, and that was done overnight.

Yeah.

In a few days.

So it's really easy to implement.

That sort of speed of getting buy-in versus having to fill out multiple rounds for security teams to pass the software.

Absolutely. They're different beasts, aren't they?

Yeah, absolutely.

And because I've had fintech and large corporations, I know it's different.

But it's worth pushing forward to make sure you can still achieve that growth.

Yes.

It's just different processes.

We're hopping back and forth here between Citi and Moneycorp, but one of the things I'm interested in is you mentioned that during your time at Moneycorp you put in place a big SEO and digital transformation project. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Yeah, sure.

When I joined, they were already on a transformation journey to digitise everything. This was their onboarding platform for new accounts and then for them to trade.

So imagine everything being manual and then suddenly having to automate all of that. It was really big, leading all of that.

But it was absolutely amazing once it went live and the impact it had in terms of doubling conversions.

I got recognised for outstanding achievement from the CEO as well — an award that you get at the annual ceremony for all staff.

Fabulous.

And it was out of maybe five hundred or six hundred people at the time.

Wow.

So I was quite impressed with that award.

But I think the biggest thing is really understanding the friction points in the customer journey, and using data and analytics is absolutely key.

Where are the drop-offs? What do we need to improve?

This was quite a big transformation, so it was always going to get better because we were going from manual processes and a designed form that wasn't working, to completely redesigning everything.

Then the other thing was around the channels we were using — optimising those.

Really looking at what's working, what's not, the agencies that were involved, and changing a lot of that.

One of the other things that I thought was really important was the conversion side as well — optimisation.

You’ve got the onboarding journey, but before that you have the landing pages.

They weren’t converting either, so it was a complete redesign of those.

I designed a best-practice landing page that included trust signals and other elements, which are really important.

That helped as well, and I saw a massive increase there.

So you almost created a template for the business to follow.

Yeah.

And then we rolled it out across the different channels as well, because there were partnerships and direct channels.

So making sure that was used as the touchpoint really helped improve things.

So we had that conversion improvement and then a better platform.

You're winning, really. So I think that was really important — conversion optimisation at that time.

Presumably within SEO, what you're tracking there is the volume of organic traffic, as well as time spent on site.

Those are the key ones. Anything else?

Referrals. They’re being referred as well, so referral traffic.

Yeah.

So yeah, I mean there was a huge transformation there in terms of ensuring that we were doing it properly.

Mm-hmm.

You know? And actually creating content as well.

Yeah.

That was quite big as well.

Yeah. Presumably the right type of inbound traffic — because the content is almost the fishing hooks to catch the right type of fish, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. So there was a lot that we did there, making sure that we were tracking the right keywords as well and actually doing analysis of what that should be.

And yeah, bringing in the right agency for that as well.

So was it at Moneycorp that you had a refresh of the agency roster?

Yes.

How does that happen? Obviously we are an agency, so I've never understood it from that side.

But presumably there's either a reason to instigate that — maybe too many legacy agencies on the books — or things move on and you haven't got the right types of agency.

How does that happen from a—

My job, as soon as I joined, was that I had to redesign the website, and nobody knew anything about it.

So I had to do a lot of investigation — who was doing what, who was actually making changes to the website.

Where I came from at Domestic & General, I knew everything, and all the teams were internal, so it was much easier.

But here it was all really fragmented.

And I also needed to make things happen very quickly. The website people were just too slow.

So I changed that. I got the right team that had the right experience.

That was just putting that out to tender.

Yeah.

And I got the best agency. They turned things around really quickly.

And then there was also, from the paid side — in terms of digital marketing — I just didn’t, because I’d come from an environment where I knew what was working and what wasn’t, I didn’t really see the work they were doing as valuable.

Have the confidence.

I didn’t have the confidence.

Yeah.

And I brought in an agency that I had used before.

Yeah.

And I had that confidence.

So I think when you have to move really quickly, you need to trust.

You’ve got to have trusted partners.

Yeah.

But I also think that you have to build that trust with the agencies you're working with.

But I couldn’t. I just didn’t feel like they knew what they were doing.

And because I knew what I was doing, I knew that they didn’t know.

And ultimately it’s resting on you, isn’t it?

The performance.

I'm in charge of it.

Yeah.

So for me, I knew that things had to change quickly. I had to make those decisions and get a new agency.

And we saw huge improvements from having a new agency.

Yeah.

I do think it’s important for that relationship to make sure you're building trust between both sides as well.

Because agencies — and I'm not saying this is all of them — can sometimes rest on their laurels.

You know?

Yeah.

They don’t try as hard.

So when they’re new, they really try.

So it might be a case of that.

Yeah.

They didn’t need to impress as much in the relationship because they had been there for quite a few years already.

So—

Got taken their foot off the gas.

Yeah.

But maybe smaller agencies don’t do that.

Mm-hmm.

And this was a smaller one that I moved to.

So—

Yeah.

I actually do favour those sometimes because you get that better client experience than with the really big ones.

And I have to say, I worked with so many agencies at Domestic & General too, and we went through lots of different digital agencies that just weren’t performing because they were so big.

Let’s jump back to a broader subject in marketing and talk about the importance of the customer.

Mm-hmm.

So customer-centric marketing, shall we say.

Within financial services, fintech, and wealth management — all areas that you’ve worked in — customer expectations vary quite a bit.

Yeah, of course.

What have you learned from navigating through different subsectors within the FS space?

You never definitely know what they’re thinking, so you have to make sure you're doing ongoing research to understand what they want.

And it will always vary depending on the product and the company.

So for example, Moneycorp — fintech, very digital — you have to have a really good digital platform.

And it was payments.

So really understanding what their pain points are and making sure you're keeping in touch with that.

But yeah, it really depends on the product and what your company is offering, and their expectations.

So if we think about Citi, it was much more focused on high-net-worth customers.

Yeah, absolutely.

And wealth management as well.

When it’s wealth management, Citi was very much relationship-manager-based.

Right.

So you have those discussions.

But there might also be products where you might want to change your card details or do a quick FX transaction or payment.

You would do that digitally or on the app.

Yeah.

So it's about making sure that you understand what the customer wants and you provide that.

So there was both there.

And at Moneycorp, actually, one of our target customers was high net worth too.

Oh right, okay.

So if you're buying a property abroad, that was one of our biggest use cases that we wanted more of.

And they are doing a huge transaction there, so they want to talk to someone rather than doing that online.

So you—

From a security point of view.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think it really depends on the company and the product.

There is no one-size-fits-all.

There’s just no one-size-fits-all.

You need to know what they want, adjust to the target audience, and make sure you’ve got the tools they want to work with you.

If it's a chatbot, an app, or an online platform—

Mm-hmm.

Provide that and make sure it's actually what they want.

Very early in our days, one of our first clients was actually Jaguar Land Rover.

Oh really?

And we worked for someone who headed up their market research team.

He was a huge advocate of ethnographic research and doing ethnographic documentary films.

Yeah.

That was my first real understanding of how important market research is in the development of products.

They were doing research for car products that were coming out eight, nine, or ten years later.

But the voice of the customer — going out, meeting these individuals, and bringing their voice back into the business — was fundamental to their strategy.

Absolutely.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned more recently on one of the courses I did was an example with Amazon.

Jeff Bezos apparently had a spare seat in the boardroom — an empty seat — and that represented the voice of the customer.

Oh really? Amazing.

So it was basically asking, whatever we’re deciding to do, what would the customer say about that?

Yeah.

And I found that a really powerful example of customer centricity at its best.

Yes.

Every decision that you make — what does the customer think about that?

And I think we often think we know what's best.

You might have a hunch.

You might say, “Oh, this is going to work.”

But you really don’t know until you’ve put it out there.

Yeah.

You're making assumptions, aren’t you, which can get you into a lot of trouble.

Dangerous, because everyone feels differently about things.

And also, what you think is your competitor, the customer might not think that.

They might just see it as an alternative.

Yeah.

And it might not be what you're thinking.

You think you have a specific competitor, but actually what they see as the alternative might be completely different.

That’s funny you mentioned Amazon, because the client I worked for at Jaguar Land Rover actually moved to Amazon later.

Oh wow.

He’d been in automotive for years, and when he finally moved jobs, he ended up at Amazon doing market research.

Good joining of stories there.

So other than putting the customer front and centre, how else can FS brands start to improve the overall customer experience and the advocacy that subsequently brings?

We talked a lot about referrals.

So it's critical to growth, isn’t it?

Absolutely.

What experience have you had in that area?

So it's definitely about data and understanding it — and doing that regularly, not just as a one-off.

What is regularly?

You definitely need to do it when you're doing your annual strategy.

Yeah.

Because you need to know how the market has changed.

But if you're launching something new, or something’s gone wrong and your data is showing that people aren't buying now, then you need to do research.

What's happening?

So don’t be slow on that.

Definitely research.

The other thing is a smooth onboarding journey.

You need to know where the pain points are.

Are people dropping out?

You know, I read something recently about people not optimising the checkout process on direct-to-consumer sites.

Right.

But those customers are already there — they’re hot customers — and you're not optimising that.

So really staying on top of analytics is important.

And then I would say a loyalty programme.

If you want to build retention and advocacy, you need to have a good loyalty programme.

So those are the things that I think are really fundamental to make sure you have a good customer experience.

And of course the final one is personalisation.

How can you communicate better with the customer?

I went to an event recently with Adobe, and some of their tools now are really impressive.

Depending on when the customer wants to receive emails, it can adjust automatically.

So there are some really good tools out there now.

So—

When you say it can adjust, it adjusts what?

Sorry.

When they receive emails.

Oh, I see.

So if you don’t want them at night but you want them in the morning—

Yeah.

And also adjusting send times based on behaviour.

Mm-hmm.

When they want to receive things, but also the frequency.

Yeah.

So I'm just talking more about personalising the experience and making it relevant for them.

Make sure you're listening to what they need.

I can’t remember where I heard this term, but “reading customers’ digital body language.”

I think it’s a really nice way of explaining it.

Yeah.

So when do they respond to you?

Do they—

I saw an example recently of a campaign sending an SMS at two in the morning.

I was like, “Oh my God.”

The unsubscribes would be really bad.

Yeah. Because it was about — it was Ikea or something. Like, they couldn’t — “Are you still awake?” you know? And it was trying to sell their mattresses.

Wow.

I was like, oh, I’d like to see the unsubscribe rates after that.

Yeah. Because it’s me.

You know? That’s a weird time to send something.

So I think it’s about—

That’s a ballsy campaign.

Yeah. But also personalising offers if you can as well. It’s not just about personalising, you know, “Hi, Shakeela.” It’ll be more about what offers they would be more receptive to.

Right, okay.

I think if you can do that, you're onto a winner with customer experience.

And Adobe have got that, presumably. They were talking about the products and services they give you as a marketer to help you deliver that kind of service.

Yeah. The tech stack is really good. It’s the Adobe Experience Platform, so it’s got lots of different tools in there.

So this also creates another challenge because when you—

Mm-hmm.

I’ve often seen companies come in — they have a CMO that, if it’s a large organisation, sometimes bringing in a tech stack could be three years’ worth of work.

Exactly.

Obviously not in fintechs. We’ve talked about that different speed. But then, especially with the rate of CMO tenure, they could be gone and someone else comes in. They’ve inherited the tech stack, which may not be their preferred choice. And then the organisation starts using a tenth of its capabilities.

So there’s always a rush then to bring in new stuff. When you’ve come into an organisation — you must have experienced some of these problems — how do you start making sure you’re maximising the capabilities of the technology you’ve got in place?

It brings it back to the pain points. What are you addressing? What are you trying to achieve?

Is it something that you need to change in the tech stack? It’s not just something you should do.

Yeah.

You know, it’s not like jumping on the bandwagon.

“I want to make a change.” It’s like, is there a problem with the customer experience?

Yeah. Have I got it right? Problem first.

Yeah. Diagnose the problem. Do the research. And what is your strategy first? Don’t jump to tactics.

You know, the strategy might be, okay, I need to communicate with my customers and link this into the website somehow. That will be a new platform, won’t it? You’d need to make sure you’ve got the right CRM that links into, say, HubSpot linking to your website.

If you need to improve that, then you change the tech stack. If you’ve got the tools there, don’t just jump in and change it.

There’s no point because it’s such a big project. It has to be because you’re addressing something in your strategy.

Yeah.

So I think it’s always important to do that first.

Mm. Diagnose first.

Congratulations are in order.

I’ve done this course. I know it’s a fantastic course, but it also has a very challenging exam.

So you ranked number two globally in the Mini MBA in Marketing. Huge congratulations.

Thank you. Honestly, I was so overwhelmed with that. I was really, really happy to get that result.

It’s a phenomenal achievement.

And did you get a handshake with Mark Ritson or a thumbs-up?

Online, yes. He did call it out. He basically does a top ten.

Right.

And he did say, “You smashed it” the day before, and said, “See where you can—”

That’s got to be top ten.

That’s got to be up there in proud moments in your career.

Absolutely. From Mark Ritson — when I first started the course, I was like, oh my God, I’m so nervous about doing a course after so long.

Yeah.

And I just loved the course. I thought it was amazing, and I learned so much from it.

Even though I’ve got so much experience in marketing, I still feel like you can always learn. You might think you know everything, but there are still moments when you think, actually, that’s a really good way of doing it.

You know? Like, I’ll do it like that.

So the course was fantastic.

And coming second in that class was — yeah — ninety-four percent, I think.

Brilliant.

And it was a tough exam. I was second-guessing myself the whole time. But I obviously made the right choices.

Do you find yourself still referring back to that work?

All the time.

Yeah.

I think it’s because of the way the course is designed. It’s so simple.

Yeah.

It’s simplicity, and it’s easier to digest something simple.

Can you imagine going through hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents? It wasn’t done like that.

It was an online course, but it was done in your own time, and you had extra material that you could read if you wanted.

But the crux of it was a presentation he does — an online presentation — and he simplifies everything.

Yeah.

So it’s easy to apply.

Yes.

And that’s one of their positioning elements — easy to apply.

Yeah.

And I do believe that’s true from me being able to take away what I could do from that.

Yeah. You’re currently doing another course at the moment — the Influential Marketer.

Marketer. Have you got other things in mind that you're gearing up to?

I think I’m just going to continue with AI because it’s evolving so much.

So I’m currently doing a course on it, and I can dip in whenever I want. They do webinars and lectures all the time.

Other than that, it would just be whatever new thing is out there that I want to learn more about.

Yeah. Marketing folks that are just coming into that leadership position—

Yeah.

—beyond Ritson and other courses, what advice would you give them about being able to fast-track their career or improve their knowledge?

I think there’s a lot of networking needed.

If you want to progress in a company — absolutely networking.

Within the company?

Yeah.

Within the company, but also within the industry.

Because I’m finding that since I’ve been doing a lot more networking now and meeting some fantastic people, there really is a great community out there.

So I do think that’s a really good way to improve your confidence as well.

Yeah.

Because you can get stuck when you’re in a role for so long.

But if you can get out there and network externally, it will help you network internally as well.

Yeah.

And I think that’s one of the biggest ways to progress your career — networking.

For some people, they embrace that and think it sounds great fun. For others, it sounds like the worst thing.

Because some people can find that quite intimidating.

It’s out of your comfort zone.

Yeah.

So when you’re out of your comfort zone, it naturally feels like that. But when you start doing it, your comfort zone gets larger.

Yeah.

So just bite the bullet and get on with it.

Exactly.

So I think that’s one really important thing.

And in terms of coming into a company where you need to transform things as well, it’s about really understanding the business.

Do your research to improve your understanding of what the business does.

Yeah.

What they need to do to get to the next level.

So I think that’s really important as well.

And ongoing research — as we said — that’s the biggest thing.

Those skills that you’ve just described — your career is phenomenal and you’ve achieved incredible results within the businesses you’ve worked for.

Do you think those skills come naturally to you, or have you had to develop them?

I’ve had to develop them, one hundred percent.

Especially the confidence — believing in yourself.

Everyone has that inner voice saying you can’t do this. It’s your imposter syndrome.

But I think you can. You just have to put yourself out there.

And it is all possible.

And I think the biggest thing is don’t be afraid to speak up.

There’s no wrong question.

People will appreciate you speaking up in a meeting and showing your voice.

But I also think, from an inclusive and diverse leadership approach, you should try to engage people in different ways as well.

As I was talking to you about the different colours—

Yes.

Yeah.

You might want to address someone on your team who is more introverted and doesn’t like speaking up. You can bring them into the conversation instead.

So I think there are certain leadership skills that are important — developing them and understanding your teams and your peers, and how you can better communicate with them.

That’s a slightly different area, isn’t it?

Because in order to become a good marketer, you equally have to develop yourself as a leader and a manager.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And treat both of those requirements equally.

Yeah.

I started in a very entry-level role at Domestic & General, and now I’m essentially operating at a CMO level.

So I’ve had that progression.

But it’s been through my own achievements. I’ve had good successes, I’ve been promoted, and then I’ve been headhunted.

And you should also shout about your successes.

Don’t hide behind them. Put it out there how well you’re doing, and make sure you have conversations with your line manager about getting to the next stage and how to do that.

Fabulous.

So last question.

What is one marketing myth?

That marketing is the colouring-in department.

Of course it’s not the colouring-in department.

Everything we’ve been talking about today shows it’s not.

Yeah.

But there is another one as well: with a good product, you don’t need marketing.

Right.

I think we all know that you need marketing.

I’ve heard that one before as well.

But that’s something you can’t avoid — you do need marketing.

Absolutely. One hundred percent.

There’s that famous story of Elon Musk saying that with Tesla he never did marketing.

I was about to use that one.

But it’s interesting because they suddenly had to cut their prices.

Yeah.

Which is one of the fundamental components of marketing strategy.

Exactly.

But if you do brand building, you can maintain premium pricing.

Yeah.

So if you let that go, that becomes quite an interesting case study.

Yeah.

Super.

Shakeela, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Great conversation. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening today to The Growth Engine. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates or at hubagency.co.uk.

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