On every episode of the Rebel Instinct, our team sits down with rebels from across the marketing landscape to share stories about bold moves they’ve taken as marketers. Subscribe for more.
Galen Ettlin:
Hey everybody. Thank you so much for being part of the Rebel Instinct Podcast. I’m Galen Ettlin with Act-On Software here with my co-host and VP of marketing, Casey Munck. Our guest today is Roshni Wijayasinha, CEO of Rosh Marketing. She’s also a fractional CMO, helping companies get into shape with their marketing. She has tons of experience across the board in MarTech, including at Microsoft, Sony and more. Thank you so much for joining us, Roshni.
Roshni Wijayasinha:
Thank you so much for having me.
Casey Munck:
Yeah, Roshni, it’s great to have a fellow Forbes Communication Council member with us today. Let’s just go ahead and get into the nitty gritty. As a fractional CMO, you’re called in when teams really need help. And it’s a rollercoaster these days in marketing as you know. What are some of the standard challenges that you’re helping people get through?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
So in the fractional CMO space, we really look at helping companies that can’t afford a full-time head of marketing or don’t necessarily need a full-time head of marketing to get where they’re going because they’ve got limited resources to spend. So some of the challenges we’re looking at – is how do we get further with less? So how do we stretch our dollars to make more out of limited budget? We’re also looking at how do we aggressively grow and grab attention from venture capitalists and investors? And so it’s a marketing plan towards end users, but it’s also a marketing plan towards investors as well, which is a challenge for marketing teams that have maybe one person on a team.
Galen Ettlin:
Now looking through your LinkedIn, it really feels like there is not a marketing space that you’ve left untouched. You’ve really done a lot. You now help other companies in these niche areas of marketing communications. What brought you to the point of deciding to run your own agency to maximize other companies and leaders’ potentials?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
Yeah, great question. I was working as a full-time head of marketing and a number of different startups, and so my experience there was you got to make an impact and it was really great to see these companies grow, but I wanted to be able to help more companies. And so I wanted to take the lessons I’d learned from helping two big companies exit and then take them to everyday companies, people who didn’t have huge budgets but could afford a little bit and who could really benefit from some of these learnings. And so I also wanted to have the opportunity to pick my own portfolio, have a mix of different clients that I was working on so that I could learn from different industries and then pull in best practices and also find ways for these companies to work together and have synergies.
Casey Munck:
You’re a woman in MarTech, which can be a very tech bro centric environment. How do you go about making sure that diverse opinions are. Was there a defining moment like that for you that you’ve had?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
I think it’s important that we look at teams holistically from a gender perspective as well as from an age perspective, as well as from a number of different ways that we can bring in diverse thought. And I think in our startup world, there’s a huge opportunity to bring in people with creative ideas, especially cause we’re limited budget. So I haven’t necessarily faced immediate challenges being a female within the tech environment. However, I have been oftentimes the only female in the room. And so being the only female in the room sometimes might feel a little intimidating. For me, I’m just am who I am, so if you like me or you don’t like me, it doesn’t totally affect me. But I do feel that confidence enough that I know my stuff and I care about what I’m doing, that I can speak my mind and see what I need to.
But coming into a room with a whole bunch of people who are different than you can also be intimidating too. And so things that I do to kind of gear up for that is just kind of research everyone in the room, learn about what they’re saying and what they’re doing and what their platforms are. And if I’m able to connect with them on a personal level first and then understand where they’re coming from, I feel that I’m better able to communicate with them. But I really see it changing in the technology space, especially in Canada. They’re more and more females coming up in the space and more and more technology female leaders, which is awesome to see as well.
Casey Munck:
That’s great to hear. Go Canada. So what advice would do you give your clients to be more rebellious in their marketing careers and their leadership? A lot of brands, they tend to stay sort of buttoned up, but how do you help people get out of their shell and do rebellious things?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
Especially in the startup world, if there’s no risks, there’s no rewards. So it’s pretty easy to convince these startup founders to take these risks because they firstly don’t have a ton of budget to spend on normal traditional marketing. So they have to do things that are out of the box and some of these things won’t work, some of these things will fail. And that’s part of startup marketing – testing and learning and kind of growing and leveraging your data set and kind of figuring out what’s working and what’s not and optimizing. So a lot of the times we don’t know if it’s going to work and it is a big risk. And so you have to take that risk without hesitation because if you don’t take a risk, you’re never going to have that reward and that growth in the upside. And so businesses can either grow steadily and grow incrementally, or they can grow on a huge exponential growth trajectory. And so taking those risks allow those opportunities as well. So I think it’s just talking about that risk reward balance.
Galen Ettlin:
I imagine if companies are hiring you to help them through that process, that they’re probably on board to take some of those risks and hear your thoughts and direction. Are there any times that you encounter people that are like, no, I don’t want to do that, but you just know you got to take a plunge?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
A hundred percent. Actually, in the startup world specifically, everyone really wants to focus on the bottom of the marketing funnel. So the bottom of the funnel is easier to track because you’ve got more tracking capabilities on things like digital ads versus, for example, the top of the funnel like public relations. So it’s harder to track. There’s no direct ROI. And so I get a lot of clients who push back and don’t want to do any top of the funnel marketing at all, zero brand marketing. They only want to focus on Google ads or the bottom end of the funnel. And so this is a challenge for me to educate them on the importance of diversifying their funnel, bringing people in on the top end, and so they can nurture that pool and eventually convert them, and the long-term benefits of doing brand and top of the funnel marketing, because ultimately it drives your cost down over time. But a lot of these founders are very shortsighted and they only see the immediate return. So that can be a challenge convincing them to invest in things like brand, but especially as a startup, no one’s heard a you because you’re brand new to the market, so if no one’s heard of you, why would they even want you or purchase from you? So you’ve got to start with that awareness level, and it’s harder to track. There’s less direct ROI, so it makes it less attractive for them. But it is so important.
Casey Munck:
That struggle is so real in the marketing arena, especially when you’re the only marketer in the room that understands how these things work, right?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
Yeah. Even McKinsey put out an article, so I have facts and figures to prove it, but gut feels from CEOs and from entrepreneurs can be very hard to adjust because they’ve got these gut feels and they feel like they’ve gotten so far because of these gut feels. So ultimately you’ve got to go back to research. And even this research, it’s current research that shows the benefits or case studies and that kind of stuff really helps convince them.
Galen Ettlin:
Looking at some examples, say from your background and maybe working with some of your clients, what’s one of the most rebellious things or out of the box things that you’ve tried and how would you say it performed?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
Yeah, so I was working at an InsureTech company as the head of marketing, and we were looking to launch in the US and we had a really, really limited budget limited. When I say limited, it’s like less than 10 grand. So launching in a whole country with less than 10 grand was a feat in itself. One of the most rebellious things that we suggested was hiring some street artists to go take over spaces. And instead of paying for billboards, we would pay for these artists to go up and make murals. And these murals would involve some of our potential customers. So we got to do some lead gen, and it’s a B2B company, B2B InsureTech. So they would create these murals and they would tag all of these local businesses who are prospects. And then they would, the businesses now had great advertising for themselves. We showed that we were a great supporter of the small business community, and we were able to attract their attention within a cost effective way. And I garnered a ton of PR, but it was a little bit different.
Casey Munck:
That sounds so cool. I’d love to see some of those illustrations. So how are you rebel in your non-work life?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
So to that note, I’m actually a street artist, so that’s where that idea came from. And so you can check out my art on Instagram @RoshnisArt, but I’m also a traditional artist. But I got into the street art game around five to seven years ago. I really fell in love with the ability to cross my marketing expertise with street Art. I found a lot of the theories similar. You’re looking for a space where people are going to see same way that you scope out your channels of distribution, and then you want to check out the audience who’s walking by, what kind of people are you targeting, and what kind of content would really resonate with them in the same way that you do for marketing. And then I’ve always loved art, so I love to create something that grabs attention. And so being a street artist has been quite an interesting journey, and it’s also kind of fun.
Casey Munck:
What a renaissance woman, and this is amazing.
Galen Ettlin:
That’s a skill too that I don’t feel like you just pick up.
I love this next question because we get so many diverse answers, from funny and entertaining to very serious and meaningful – poignant. What rebel do you feel needs to be celebrated and why?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
When you say what rebel, what do you mean?
Galen Ettlin:
We’ve had someone give Ferris Bueller as an example saying he just lives his best life and he shows everyone how to throw a party and live that life to the fullest. And then there’s other people who say, “here’s this religious leader who knows how to reach people across all beliefs.” There’s all sorts of different answers. So whatever your take is, we are open to it.
Roshni Wijayasinha:
The biggest rebel that I think needs to be celebrated is I think the rebel inside all of the little children who are taught that they have to do a traditional career path. And I think we need to celebrate the rebels inside of people and inside children to allow them to take their own career path. I know that for myself, everyone said that my parents were very focused on a business career, and I really loved art, and I found a way to marry both of them. But if people just kind of do what they’re told or what society tells them to do, I feel like it’s tough for them to really enjoy their lives and fully experience it to the maximum. And so I would say for especially at the start, if children can be celebrated and celebrate their rebel sense to do things that are different or things that appeal to them as opposed to things that their parents maybe want them to do or things that society wants them to do, I think that would be amazing.
Casey Munck:
Spoken like a true rebel herself. That’s beautiful. Okay, so now it’s time for our “honey, I don’t think so” segment, where you’re going to tell us what’s annoying you in marketing or MarTech, you’ve got 60 seconds to state your case. Are you ready, Roshni?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
I am.
Casey Munck:
Go for it, girl.
Roshni Wijayasinha:
All right, honey, I don’t think so. My pitch is for brand marketing, and so as we mentioned earlier, I see so many businesses really focusing on the bottom end of the funnel because they can track results and they know that’s where the money is, but they’re ignoring the top end of the marketing funnel and they’re ignoring brand awareness. And it’s so important to build that audience pool that you can eventually market to, because eventually you’ll run out of people within your funnel. And so marketing to them will just get more and more expensive. So it’s really, really so important and I’m so passionate about the fact that people need to invest in top of the funnel marketing initiatives, even if you find it difficult to track and even if it doesn’t provide immediate ROI.
Casey Munck:
Preach, Roshni , can I bring you into a couple of meetings?
Roshni Wijayasinha:
I have a ton of documentation about this too, so if you need backup.
Casey Munck:
Let’s go. Let’s go. Listen, it’s been so great having a conversation with you. Thank you so much for chatting with us today.
Roshni Wijayasinha:
Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.
Galen Ettlin:
Thanks everyone for listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast. Be sure to follow act on software for updates and upcoming episodes, and remember to always act on your rebel instinct. Until next time.
Check out the next episode with Gessica Tortolano, a director of Slalom and UX/UI guru, focused on helping big brands reshape user design and experience.