Carlota Pico recently spoke with global marketer Sarah Evans about her experience working in a variety of industries across Europe and the U.S. Sarah talked about her most recent role at HERE, a location data and technology platform, and how they struck marketing gold by tapping into social listening and engaging with audiences in real time. Listen to the full interview to learn about Sarah’s professional journey in sectors ranging from wine to insurance to technology, and the valuable advice she’s gathered along the way.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on our YouTube channel, listen to the podcast on Apple and Spotify, and read our recap below.

Key takeaways

• The heart of marketing is your audience. At the end of the day, no matter what specific niche you’re in, it all comes down to the people you’re engaging with.

• Marketers need to ensure that they’re creating timely, relevant content that resonates with their audience. A great way to do this is by engaging in conversations that are already happening instead of trying to create new ones.

• A huge marketing budget isn’t everything—what really counts is how creative you can get with the budget you have.

• Although recent shifts in social marketing have made companies more focused on lead generation and website clicks, focusing on engagement can still be highly effective for certain campaigns. One example is HERE’s successful B2C campaign at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

• Making your brand’s content stand out is always a top priority, but remember that your competition isn’t just other brands. You’re competing for attention against everything and everyone else in someone’s feed—friends, family, celebrities, etc.

• Having a diverse range of experiences across industries can be incredibly powerful.

We can’t forget that a vital factor of the purchase decision is emotion. Marketing needs to appeal to both the heart and the mind.

Rapid-fire recs

An influencer or brand that you follow?

I love Born Social, a unique London-based social media agency that creates valuable and insightful content including white papers, round-ups and interesting tidbits on social media, especially Twitter. They’re more down-to-earth than other agencies and less self-serving, and that really appeals to me.

Another social media account I enjoy is Dong Draper (alluding to “Mad Men”), which is more for a good laugh than anything. However, at the start of the pandemic they also did a cool remote networking session where they paired people with other like-minded professionals around the world to share stories. I like to follow them on Twitter and Instagram.

Also check out: 8 inspiring content and marketing influencers to follow

A valuable resource, event or group?

I love How I Built This with Guy Raz, a great podcast from NPR that interviews successful founders about how they built their companies. I listen to it when I’m walking, commuting or driving, and I find it really inspiring.

An event that I really enjoyed attending was Web Summit in Lisbon, which is a great global tech industry summit. I got to hear from the CMOs of a lot of well-known companies.

Lastly, I’d recommend Adweek Chats, which is a social media conversation put on by Adweek each Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET. You can participate on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #AdweekChat. I love it because they ask very engaging questions, and it can be really fun to learn from your peers in a conversational way.

Also check out: 7 online networking groups for content marketers on Facebook & LinkedIn

Connect with Sarah and Carlota on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Mary Kresge, a freelance content creator based in Madrid.

For more insights into the latest trends in social marketing, check out:

Social media is for everyone – Gareth Crew, EMEA social media manager

Social media for tech lovers – Andréa Catel de Prates Soares

Make the most of video content – Amanda Lundin, global video and social media manager

To see the full transcript, click on page number 2 below.