Digital Marketing Manager of Landis + Gyr: Malika Waller

* Important Note: In the time since this interview was filmed, Malika Waller married and has changed her name to Malika Givens. She has also been hired by Dematic as their Senior Digital Marketing Manager.

If you’re a marketer struggling to convince your company to try more digital tactics, you’re not alone, Malika of Landis + Gyr assures us…

Danny:

Organizational buy-in is one of those topics that I think a lot of marketers really beat their heads against the wall with, trying to figure out, “My gosh, how do we get this change? How do I get upper management to realize that we need to make a different direction, we need to do things differently? We need to bring in some more digital strategies.” Well, you are in luck today, because for today’s episode we have Malika Waller here from Landis+Gyr who’s going to walk us through some amazing tips on how to just do that. She’s done it, she’s lived it, and she’s going to share these golden nuggets of wisdom with you for today. So we are in the Optimum Productions Studio, and I’m Danny Gonzales, and this is IndustrialSage. All right, let’s go ahead and get started. Malika, thanks so much for joining us. Before we get going on this, can you please just tell me a little about yourself and about Landis+Gyr just so we can get ourselves familiarized with you and everything.

Malika:

Awesome, yes, my name is Malika Waller. And I’m originally from Buffalo, New York. And I graduated from the University of Maryland. I was studying marketing and logistics, of all things. And I started marketing about seven years ago, and I’ve been working at Landis+Gyr for about the last two years. Landis+Gyr, if you’re not familiar, is in the utility space. So we enable utilities to have knowledge at the edge of the grid. So that means the meters on your homes, working with that. So we’re enabling this smart grid of the future. So right now, utilities are in this interesting place where things like solar and energy is coming back on to the grid. The infrastructure was never set up for that. So we’re helping them manage the grid so there’s no brownouts and blackouts, hopefully not. And making sure that they have the technology, the meters themselves, and software and everything that would create a whole solution for them. So we’re very future forward, and future-proofing the grid for them.

Danny:

Awesome, that’s interesting. Yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned that the infrastructure wasn’t there necessarily originally to be able to, I guess having power generation being pushed back in. It’s more like we’re taking it in this way.

Malika:

Yeah, I thought that was really fascinating, too. It’s like, yeah, it was set up for one-way. Not two-way.

Danny:

Interesting, well, speaking of being maybe set up for maybe a specific different way, has Landis+Gyr in the past, have they typically had some sort of digital marketing strategy? How are they set up?

Malika:

So marketing team-wise it was, you could say siloed. It’s a very much set up by product and each product marketer was in charge of kind of the whole campaign flow and marketing of a product. So now the team has kind of shifted and changed based on the skill set, and need, and strategy. So a lot of that now focuses on skill set of PR, digital marketing like myself, events, stuff like that. So we’re kind of like a catch-all for all the products now. So merging different stylists together. And I’ll say, initially there really wasn’t a digital strategy. It was, “We need to be in the digital space, we need a website. We know that there are components that are out there in the digital world, but we’re not experts in it, and we don’t have the expertise on our team.” That was part of the reason I was brought in two years ago. And I started as the digital marketing and design specialist. So mainly they brought me in to kind of work with our agencies, kind of finesse some of the stuff that we’re doing. And just kind of understand what the agencies are saying. They’re giving feedback. They’re giving suggestions. Speaking a different language, that everyone is kind of like, “Okay, what does that mean?”

Danny:

It’s like translating a little bit.

Malika:

What does that actually do for us? And is it the right thing that we should be doing? So the next move was to bring in somebody to, I’m really focusing on them. So that’s where I came in. My role morphed a lot. I think because some of the skills that I brought to the table but also, showing the value of digital marketing and where that’s kind of going. The utility space is a very aging space. A lot of people have been there their whole careers, their whole life. It’s one of those, “If you’ve been there ten years, you’re still new,” kind of things, especially at the utility side. So our business kind of mirrors that as well. And we’re coming to a point where there’s aging workforce and a lot of people with all that knowledge that are leaving. And similar with digital, nobody had the skills. And now there’s people in the utilities that have those digital skills. They know how to use the Internet very well. Not that older people don’t, but the way they interact with digital is different than in the past, which would have been traditional media, prints, a heavy emphasis on events. And the shift from talking to who you know, versus kind of doing research on your own. A lot of that’s come to the utility side as well. So we need to be there.

Danny:

Exactly, yeah, so just a totally different shift in the buying cycle, in the buying process, and how people really consume information.

Malika:

And that has totally changed.

Danny:

So when you mentioned when you first came on, you were kind of that liaison maybe between the agencies and in turn maybe translating some of that information. What were some of the different maybe tactics that you guys were using then? And talk to me a little about what you were using then and then how you kind of made that transition. Was there an aha moment or what happened there?

Malika:

So a lot of the ‘aha’s for me that I kind of brought to the table was using our data differently. We had a website. We had emails going out, not a strong nurture presence. So we weren’t really segmenting or looking at the data we were getting from people who were engaging with us. What people were doing on the website, not really paying attention too much there. A lot of our focus has been brand awareness. And what I’m trying to bring to the table is looking at that data and saying, how can we make our messaging more impactful where it needs to be to the right people that are looking for it. Something that we’re doing, like I said, we’re kind of enabling that smart grid to new territory. We’re kind of looked at as just a metering manufacturing company, and we do way more than that. So getting that message out has been such a shift in what we are traditionally doing that we need a place to do that. And digital is that place to do it. So understanding kind of who’s already engaging with us, and what they’re engaging with, which at the time was a lot of metering stuff. Looking at our only metering products, and not our network solutions, and all the things that we bring to enable utilities to do the further technology that they need. So we needed to shift that messaging, and it’s really hard to do it if nobody’s picking up magazines.

Danny:

A little bit, yeah.

Malika:

Yeah, and if you’re only able to speak to them at events. Or we do a lot of sales presentations, but If somebody is already starting that journey of looking for something and we can actually be there as a source, not only is that brand awareness, but we’re actually engaging them and they’re looking at Landis+Gyr as, “Yeah, they do that too.”

Danny:

Right, at the right time.

Malika:

Yes, exactly.

Danny:

So right messaging at the right time, absolutely, and that’s great. So maybe talk to me a little bit about this challenge of that organizational buy in. So okay, you came in and you say, “All right, we need to be looking at things a little bit differently. We need to be looking at our data and let’s get in some feedback there and maybe we need to be transitioning a little bit more, a little more digital marketing.” How did you start to make that approach and start to build that case from that?

Malika:

From the beginning.

Danny:

From the beginning, yeah.

Malika:

When I started, when I walked in the door, I said, “We’re doing digital.”

Danny:

And then you snapped your fingers and then it all happened.

Malika:

Yes, it happens overnight. No, it doesn’t happen overnight at all, it takes a lot of education. A lot of people know what digital is, everybody has a smartphone. You’re in touch with the digital world pretty much all the time. And so people think that they know all that digital can do or provide, but they don’t. And you’ll fall back on what you know, which is definitely more traditional marketing tactics. And so, education of the landscape of what digital marketing is. There’s the, I’m sure you’ve seen it, the chief Martech marketing landscape that showed the exponential growth of marketing in technology. Showing that graphic to my CEO and to the upper management? That was something that they never even thought of. And it kind of mirrors what’s going on in our industry– I mean our industry is not as rapidly exponential of businesses coming onto the scene, but going from a couple of players to many smaller players doing different things. It resonated with them. So educating people on what digital is in the context of the business. And why that would resonate or why that would be important to them was really important, that was number one. The second thing I would do was, I was the evangelist. If I could talk about digital marketing, I would.

Danny:

You’re all about it.

Malika:

Yeah, if I could get on the agenda to even have five minutes to say, well this is what we should be doing in digital, I took the opportunity to do it. And I made sure that it was audience appropriate and not, I can get really into the weeds on what digital can provide. So making sure it’s audience appropriate, but any chance I could get to talk about it or maybe next things that are coming up or trends. Planting those seeds of, “Digital’s doing this and digital is doing that.” And the next things that we could do in the digital realm, was something I was very heavily looking at to do. So any opportunity I could see, fitting that in, I would do that.

Danny:

I mean, you’re selling it well. So you had sort of that sales mentality. And then I guess one good word that comes to my mind is intentionality. You’re very intentional about it, and I think that’s fantastic. And then a note on the Martech stack, when you were talking about stuff. If any of our viewers aren’t familiar with that, it’s that there’s a great infographic, you can find it all over the place, where they talk about-

Malika:

Yeah, Google it.

Danny:

Yeah, there’s the thing called, “the Googles,” you can find it, but it basically talks about all the different marketing technology. The rapid growth from what, I don’t know, and I don’t know. Within five years, it’s gone from, “There are a couple different things,” to now, “There’s over different types of marketing technology.”

Malika:

Yes and the logos are way, way smaller.

Danny:

Yes, you need a magnifying glass to be able to see what they are. But just a great illustration just in terms of where things are going and how rapidly they are changing, it’s growing exponentially to your point, so.

Malika:

Yeah, and the skill set needed to manage all those emerging technologies and integrate them across your campaigns. That’s something that you have to take into account. So you can show that and you can let them know, hey, we’re at this little chunk and it’s going to keep growing. And that’s also part of the educational part, letting them know where we are today. And even if we make a little bit of strides, we won’t be so far behind when we turn around tomorrow. And our competitors are doing something in this new space and you have to catch up. So you definitely want to keep trying to move forward. And especially in BB, it’s all ready trailing consumer technology or consumer BC selling habits. So you have to take in account that everyone at the end of the day is a person at the end of it, even in the business. You’re going to have to develop your strategies to adapt to people’s interaction with things and their comfort level and how that keeps growing with digital. And if you’re not there, how you’ll look, right? You won’t look innovative, you won’t look on top of what’s going on or even if your business is still thriving. If you aren’t updating your website, if you aren’t showing up in Google searches, people may not know that you’re even open.

Danny:

Exactly, it’s very true. Very true. Those two points really, education and really just evangelizing, just, big time, right? So all right, you’re doing that, what’s next? I guess at a certain point, you say, hey, there’s something to this, let’s try XYZ or we’re going to give you a little budget. What happened there?

Malika:

So getting budget…

Danny:

That’s the easiest part, right?

Malika:

That’s my fourth thing: “Give me all the money.” Well marketing, it has a magnifying glass on it. We’re cost centers. We spend. And so getting the money, you really need advocates in the room. You need somebody, because I can’t be in every meeting. I can’t be there educating everybody all the time, I do have to show results. But if you have an advocate to kind of speak on your behalf, in those meetings, getting a budget is a little bit easier. Because they’ll start seeing the value and if ten people are saying, yeah, we should look into this digital thing. Let’s give some money towards investigating what we could do. Then it’s a little bit easier. But also celebrating and showing success. So a lot of times, even I get kind of like the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. If you don’t stop and celebrate little wins, and show that there’s improvement or we’re showing up on Google, or our traffic is up. And those little wins, if you don’t show them, nobody will know about them. You’ll keep moving forward and it’s really about showing those results because, again, back to the educational part. If you’re not really setting the expectations, a lot of people think, “Well, it’s digital. It’s fast. I should see results next week.” And that’s not the case. There is definitely a long life cycle of what digital can bring when those results start coming in. Six months out from when you start something, is typical, you can start benchmarking from there, definitely not overnight. Two months, a week, you might see some improvement, but really what you want to be working towards is longevity and building upon whatever you’re doing. And so you have to set those expectations, and educate people on to why it’s that way. But again, celebrating it. Again, when you have those opportunities, if you can go in meetings and talk to people, letting them know, “Yeah, our social media is up. Our website visits are up. Our conversions are up.” Whatever the success measure is there, you can maybe talk to one KPI at a time, but talking about it when it happens is really important. And then people will want to keep fostering that. And letting you still work in new things or try new things to see down the line where that gets us.

Danny:

Yeah, that’s awesome. So, then at what point did Landis+Gyr just kind of say, “You know what, let’s go all in on this,” or “Let’s just really dive in”? What was that? I’m assuming there’s a critical point that they hit, they said “Okay, yeah, Malika is definitely on to something and I think that we need to put some more resources to it.”

Malika:

Yeah, you know, it was kind of bubbling. There’s a need for it when you want to have traffic, when you’re talking to prospective clients and you want to send them to a nice web site and all of that. That works, or that people can find things, and there is definitely this frustration brewing, even internally,

Danny:

Sure, yeah.

Malika:

Of just finding things on our web site.

Danny:

Yeah.

Malika:

Finding things, finding us listed with press releases. All the good things that we’re doing as a business just wasn’t showing up in the places that we really wanted it to. And that’s where digital can get a lot of bang for your buck in bringing the attention where you want it to go. So, that was part of it, and I think I was talking about data before. Bringing in tools to look at that data, a lot of how we were writing things was very internal-speak. And so finding a tool that could help us say, “What are people actually searching for in our industry? And how are they searching for that? What language?” I mean, English language.

Danny:

Sure, right.

Malika:

But, “What kind of words are they using when they’re searching for distributed energy resources? Are they looking for the whole word, or are they looking for DER?” And a lot of things that we were writing, we’re very inside, technical, engineering-speak and not, I have a question and I’m searching for an answer.

Danny:

Right, that’s great. How did you guys find that information?

Malika:

So we definitely looked into a tool. BrightEdge is what we use right now.

Danny:

Okay.

Malika:

So it’s a big aggregate of search information out there and we can really dive in really granular to specific pages or specific websites that we want to see how they’re doing or how we’re competing against them, with recommendations on what we can do. So it kind of tripled, quadrupled, the amount of ME’s that were there.

Danny:

Which is great.

Malika:

Yeah, we say “We acquired more arms and legs without actually bringing a body in,” with tools like that. So investigating tools that will work for what you’re trying to do, and data is a big thing for me that we didn’t have access to. And so that– we use things like HubSpot. We use different emailing programs. We work with agencies. So there’s a lot of moving parts…

Danny:

Yeah, sounds like it.

Malika:

…to bring that all together and to have another tool that can do a lot of the administrative gathering of information for me to just look at.

Danny:

Right, yeah.

Malika:

And analyzing quickly was really important, so talking about tools like that: just, what do I need to actually be successful was a really important part of the conversation.

Danny:

Sure, yeah, absolutely. Excellent.

Malika:

Yeah.

Danny:

So, maybe we back up a second. I was curious, I meant to ask you this before, but what was that first toe-dipping exercise that you did to be able to get results. What did that look like?

Malika:

To get results in our campaigns? Or results in buy-ins?

Danny:

In terms of results in buy in, but what were those first initial marketing tactics? What did you do, to say, “We’ve got a little buy in, we’ve got a little bit of budget, all right, now we’re off to the races.”

Malika:

So some of the stuff was a lot around piggybacking off of traditional things that we’ve been doing. So introducing some landing pages for our events. So, “How do I incorporate digital into things that we’re already doing?”

Danny:

Perfect, that’s great.

Malika:

We were going to events but we were not giving follow-up places for them to go. So giving them actionable things after a show to come back to– which seems very simple, but gathering materials and making the messaging appropriate and desirable to come back to. Getting all of that together and showing, “Okay, you can do this in a digital world, you don’t have to send out another piece of collateral or meet them face to face. You can do that in addition, too.” But immediate, when somebody’s up thinking about something at o’clock at night, when they can’t call…

Danny:

Exactly.

Malika:

…or you can’t see them: having a place for them to go, that is really speaking to whatever they were looking for was part of that initial success in showing, okay, you could piggyback on something and see results. So upticks in traffic, and people knowing where different collateral was. Even the salespeople being able to say, “Hey, you can go to this page…”

Danny:

“This is awesome!”

Malika:

“…for something specific related to what I am talking about,” was really helpful.

Danny:

Excellent. So I love that example. That’s great because you’re talking… It wasn’t like, “We’re going to completely go on this whole direction over here. We’re just going to shift and trail blaze this thing.” And everyone’s like, “Ugh.”

Malika:

It’s hard.

Danny:

Yeah, but really working with what you have, so let’s halfway make this better. And then definitely from a digital perspective. And then what were some of the results? I imagine you said celebrate, look at the results. What were some of the celebrations that you had? What do they look like?

Malika:

Yeah, celebration came in the form of putting on a monthly meeting of saying “Here’s where our traffic is, here’s how our followers are going.” I put that on the calendar. I said, “Hey we need to talk about digital regularly.” And so bringing that in to– we live and die by PowerPoint. So making sure you have a Powerpoint ready to go to highlight those things. And let them know what those impacts are to them. That’s a form of celebration. I didn’t throw a party with balloons or anything .

Danny:

Sure, no, but that’s great. There’s actually a great key thing that just popped in my head what you just said. Is that you said earlier on that it’s really important to be able to really speak in the language of your customer. So making sure that it’s not too internally-focused on whatever they’re searching for. That we want to make sure that we’re speaking in that language. But in that same sense though too, by doing these reports, you mentioned, your organization is very PowerPoint heavy. Same thing there, internally making sure that you are speaking in the language.

Malika:

Yeah. Yes.

Danny:

I love that, that’s great.

Malika:

That’s really important. Especially to get that buy in. If you are talking apples and they want oranges, you’re never going to be getting the same thing you want out of each other. And it’s definitely mutually beneficial, one for the business to invest in digital, but it’s also beneficial for me because then I get to do the fun things in digital that I want to do.

Danny:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s awesome, absolutely. No, that’s fantastic. Let’s talk about, initially you were making some of those changes to maybe what are some of the things now from a digital standpoint, obviously you guys are probably doing a little bit more than just landing pages for events…

Malika:

Yeah, yes.

Danny:

And things like that.

Malika:

We’ve definitely grown our social media, search engine, marketing, so focusing on that.

Danny:

Okay, yeah.

Malika:

So now we’re trying to do more of that outreach part of it and getting our brands out there for things that typically aren’t associated with our business. Again, we are not just metering, so we have to be where software people are. Which is in Google. The world of Google. And not on that second page of Google, which is where we-

Danny:

Which is no man’s land.

Malika:

Live. Yeah. It’s just crazy out there past page one. But that’s where we sit. There’s a lot of things ahead of our content and changing what we’re doing on the website and increasing some of our paid advertisement positioning and ads there has really helped kind of slowly move us up. And like I said, changing the language is huge. I mean, Google is crawling sites and it’s going to pull in what seems relevant. And it’s not really a human behind there, so it’s just going to look for those same words contextually. But, being there, and having those words on our page, and paying attention to that, has really garnered success in moving up. So not just focus on brand terms, because, if we type in “Landis+Gyr,” we’re going to come up first, hopefully, most of the time. But when you type in things like “smart meter,” or “smart meter technology,” or “grid analytics.” We want to be there.

Danny:

Right, yeah.

Malika:

And some of those words are kind of huge umbrellas of, it could be different types, especially when you’re talking about analytics, that could be medical. It could be any industry that has analytics, but how do we start showing up there? And what content do we need to provide for that? So it’s a content play which marries so well with digital. And the fact that you can change it, we can refine it. We can continuously improve everything that we’re doing and see those impacts along the way.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So one other question I wanted to ask. And this is about Landis+Gyr, maybe we should have asked this earlier on. But it totally slipped my mind. They primarily deal with distributors or they sell directly to end users? Is there a mixture? What does that look like?

Malika:

So, our customers are the utilities themselves, and then we do have distribution partners. But yeah, we are not the end consumer, so I would never sell you a meter directly.

Danny:

Sure.

Malika:

But we would sell to people like Georgia Power. So that’s kind of where we play.

Danny:

Okay, excellent, and does that alter some of the, obviously depending on if you’re going through, you get channel partners working through distributors, versus selling directly to the utilities, or the Georgia Powers, are the selling companies of the world. From a digital marketing standpoint, maybe briefly touch on that. What does that look like for you guys?

Malika:

Yeah so, let’s see how I phrase this. Definitely I want to be thought leaders. So again, at the end of the day there’s a person there. And the things that we talk about, there is a lot of engineering, high level thinking going on.

Danny:

A little bit.

Malika:

And so some consumers are just not aware of the language. So there’s that part, but speaking to our customers, definitely talking about the benefits and what that does for their business, that’s usually where the focus is. And really sharing our vision of how we see that going. A lot of utilities right now, especially different energy climates right now, I won’t get into all that, but they don’t know what to do next. And they want to make the right investment and Landis+Gyr is very interoperable and very future-proof. So we make it so that you really can’t make a bad decision and you’re not wed to us forever. Although we want you to be our customer for life. You aren’t, and so as technology changes and grows, we’re growing along with that. But we understand, maybe down the line, there’s something that you want to add onto your system, we can pair with that, we make our technology in that way, with open standards. So we talk a lot in those terms for utilities and our end customer of what that would mean for you, and the benefit of working with a partner like Landis+Gry.

Danny:

Great, well this has been great, it’s been really fantastic. So I’m going to ask you one last question and I’m pretty sure I know what the answer is. But… Don’t be too worried. Maybe a little, just a little. I’m just playing. It’s very simple. What do you tell that person who’s watching or listening right now who’s saying, “Gosh, my company, we need to make this transition but I’m really struggling with how to do that?” You touched on it.

Malika:

Yeah.

Danny:

We talked about it a lot. What advice do you have?

Malika:

So, again, those four main things. Education, educate yourself, educate your company on what digital is, be the evangelist, definitely anytime, anywhere you can talk about it, talk about it. Gain some advocates, so there’s going to be some people shaking their heads, “Yes, I understand, I like that.” Get them onboard. Hopefully they are higher than you as well, depending on where you are in an organization. But get you, your level and above shaking their heads that, “Yes digital is something that we need to do.” And get them talking about it on your behalf as well. And celebrate, celebrate whatever little success, big success, but take time to celebrate it and show results. That’s going to be a main driver of getting more people engaged and excited about digital marketing.

Danny:

That’s awesome, wow, it’s perfect. Thank you so much, thanks for coming on. It’s been fantastic. Definitely learned a lot. And so if anybody has any questions for you, where might they be able to reach you?

Malika:

Yeah, I’m on Twitter at @malikadidit.

Danny:

We’ll put that up there.

Malika:

M-A-L-I-K-A-D-I-D-I-T. So you can ask me questions there. Find me on LinkedIn.

Danny:

Awesome, great. Well, thank you so much. So again another really great episode here. Really, getting that organizational buy in is definitely a big challenge. Like Malika was talking about: take those four steps, those pieces of advice. If you’re sitting there say, “Gosh we really need to figure this out. How do we do this? What do we do?” Education, really talk about it. Really educate yourself, help to educate your company and then evangelize, keep talking about it, get really excited about it. Talk about all the different amazing things that you can do with it. And then start getting those internal champions, other people that will be able to sort of sponsor or be able to talk it up and work with you. And then once you’re able to start making some inroads and start doing a few things, really celebrate with those results. I love that, celebrating. And then showing those results, showing back that value. Doing those things is really going to help you. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it will help to really course correct and really start moving that boat just a little bit so you can really get those results you are after. So thanks again so much for watching our episode. Malika, again, thank you so much for coming on IndustrialSage.

Malika:

Thank you.

Danny:

And as always, please be sure to share, like, subscribe, all the good things. If you are on iTunes we’d love a review. If you are watching these on the website, please subscribe, get those emails, share it with your friends, colleagues, and assorted relatives. And until next time, thanks so much. I’m Danny Gonzales and this is IndustrialSage.

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