MarTech Interview with Philip Kushmaro, VP Marketing at Usercentrics

Philip Kushmaro, VP Marketing at Usercentrics delves deeper into data privacy trends and shares a few thoughts on the importance of balancing the overall user experience when collecting marketing data:

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Can you tell us a little about yourself Philip? We’d love to hear about your role and a typical day at work.

I’m the VP Marketing at Usercentrics. I have 11+ years of marketing/digital marketing experience. I have been the boots on the ground executor, managed large marketing teams and ran a digital marketing agency. At Usercentrics my role is simple: understand the customer and make sure they understand how we can help with protecting their marketing data and revenue.

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Can you take us through some of Usercentrics’ marketing technologies and how they’re helping support and drive marketing initiatives?

We use the usual digital marketing tools for SEM, SEO. I’m personally not a big fan of content marketing software when you have resources to do it in-house. I also prefer fresh content as opposed to reworded content that already exists. Yes, it’s a luxury due to having achieved a nice Series A!

We’d love to hear about how Usercentrics refreshes its product and what may be in store in terms of new features / enhancements in the near future, especially as privacy laws continue to change?

Usercentrics as it stands today is one of the top tools when it comes to being data privacy compliant, but Usercentrics is also so much more than that. It’s about understanding the business side of the data privacy laws. Features like better dashboards and better banner editors are in the works and getting tweaked frequently. We want our customers’ customers to feel like the cookie banner they’re being shown (informing them about the processing of personal data) is a normal, natural part of the user experience.

What are some of the additional strategies that you feel marketers today need to be focusing on to help reduce churn and increase chance of upsells?

The best marketers understand that marketing is in everything – in sales, HR, customer service, and even tech and legal. You need to make sure that the whole company is on the same page. You can’t have different messaging. Heck, if you have a big enough building and you have a janitorial department, they should understand the values of the company just as much as the CMO. This is where companies can break free from just being another [place niche here] company.

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What are some top predictions / observations that you have for the marketing technology space and how do you feel this landscape will set out to look like in the next few years?

Due to privacy laws, there is going to be a huge hit in the budgets allocated towards ad spend. When you can’t measure how much you are making and the tools you are using aren’t doing what they could have prior to this adtech revolution, you think twice before you budget. Which means all other non-ad related budgets will go up. Everything from SEO to influencer marketing.

Take us through some of your biggest marketing lessons and marketing moments over the years?

I love this question. Here is my answer: the market decides what works and what doesn’t, not the CEO, CMO, or anybody else in the company for that matter. You can have a friendly betting pool in the office about what you think will bring you the result you want but you never really know until you know. Even when I assume that something will work due to experience, I still test it out. The landscape is changing all the time and to be a great marketer you have to accept that you can’t know everything all the time.

A few takeaways for marketing leaders in 2021: top factors they should keep in mind as they plan for the rest of the year?

The usual answer to this is “understand your audience” but since this phrase has been beaten to death and still isn’t happening always, it means that not everyone is doing it. So UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE. 

I also suggest talking in simple language. Buzzwords are great for VC pitches or bragging to your other marketing friends, but in the real world nobody wants to decipher your jargon. It actually reduces conversion rates. If you don’t believe me, tell me when the last time was you bought something you didn’t understand.

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