Q&A
What makes Strategic Marketing USA the must-attend virtual forum? Why is this meeting a priority for you?
Gatherings like Strategic Marketing USA are important to attend because they provide customer-centric marketers with a holistic, cross-industry platform with which we can learn from, share with, and inspire each other. These gatherings eliminate the “industry vs. industry” barrier and allow leaders who share a core passion for creating authentic brand stories and customer connections to connect and exchange ideas. This enables us to examine marketing with a different lens and stay up to speed on what is happening in other industries.
What are your top three priorities for 2020? Detail each priority by explaining why it is important now more than ever.
- Build an understanding of, and trust with, Alibaba.com amongst U.S. small and medium-sized business audiences, media, and influencers. We are focused on making Alibaba.com a critical ally of U.S. SMBs as they seek to grow on their own terms, and during this pandemic, we’ve become more essential than ever. By building a greater understanding of, and trust with, Alibaba.com, we are accelerating our mission -- to be an essential ally to small businesses.
- Drive platform adoption among U.S. SMB sellers and buyers. com is committed to helping U.S. small-and medium-sized businesses access the $23.9 trillion global B2B ecommerce opportunity - which is six times greater than the B2C ecommerce market - enabling them to unlock new growth opportunities and stay competitive in the digital age. Driving platform adoption will help more businesses access this large global opportunity and more quickly recover from the economic disruption.
- Drive customer success. Supporting small-and-medium-sized businesses is in the DNA of Alibaba.com. Nearly 20 years ago, Jack Ma and his friends had a vision for helping small-and-medium-sized businesses to do business anywhere and that vision is still at the core of work we do to this day.
How has Covid-19 impacted your 2020 marketing plans and priorities? Outline any changes to budgeting, investment, branding, content, overall strategy, etc.
A number of plans shifted due to the impact of Covid-19 - our team went remote, we prioritized supporting our medical professionals but most importantly we saw a huge shift to digital. U.S. SMBs were rapidly going digital and going global amid the pandemic: there was a 70% increase in U.S. buyers joining the Alibaba.com platform early this year over the same time the previous year and overall transactions by U.S. businesses on Alibaba.com were up 120%. Digital became not just a good-to-have, but a must-have for survival so we pivoted our plans to best support U.S. SMBs through this rapid digitization.
We implemented new efforts and launched new products and services to help support SMBs and their growth and recovery. We are committed to providing small businesses with the knowledge, resources, and tips they need to navigate the challenges as a result of COVID-19.
- Alibaba.com has created a daily resource series that we call “B2B Today” to help our customers and all small businesses navigate the disruption to the economy, their businesses, and their families.
- B2B Today was launched in January as B2B Tuesday, an awareness and educational initiative to spotlight, celebrate, and support B2B-focused U.S. small businesses, highlight their contributions to the U.S. economy, and help them grow, thrive, and capture the $23.9 Trillion global B2B ecommerce opportunity.
- We quickly evolved B2B Tuesday to B2B Today once we realized SMBs needed resources and support more than ever.
In response to the crisis, we’ve also accelerated the transformation of the Alibaba.com platform with new products and services that help overcome some of the biggest challenges of B2B cross-border trade, including cash flow, cross-border logistics, and finding supply & demand.
- In June, we announced three new solutions to support SMBs as they digitize their business to manage through this global crisis, including:
- Alibaba.com Freight to enable American SMBs to secure ocean and air shipping for their orders,
- Alibaba.com Payment Terms to provide cash flow control, and
- Alibaba.com Online Trade Shows USA to connect US manufacturers and wholesalers with business buyers in an engaging online format.
Overall, our vision hasn’t changed. We are dedicated to being the essential ally to SMBs as they navigate entrepreneurship, and the crisis has not changed that direction.
This meeting is a call to end inauthentic, impersonal marketing. How are you ensuring your team are delivering the most authentic, personalized content to your customers?
One of our key priorities is to build more awareness and trust for our brand so we realized early on to do so meant we needed to deliver authentic touchpoints to our business. As Head of Marketing, I spend a few hours a week on the phone with customers listening to their feedback, hearing their stories and working through ways we can better support and showcase them. The NY based team has implemented a corporate “Customer Hour” initiative where every employee, no matter the role or responsibility within our organization, must spend a number of hours each month with customers. Giving our customers a line of communication with key members of the Alibaba.com leadership team has been essential to our authenticity.
Additionally, since May, John Caplan, President, North America & Europe and Global CMO, Alibaba.com has been going live weekly for a half hour virtual series called Transformer Talks. Each week he interviews business leaders and luminaries about lessons they’ve learned along the way and the transformation in their lives and companies so that small business owners can gain inspiration and ideas for navigating and overcoming the current crisis. Guests have ranged from Tom Colicchio, celebrity chef and founder of Crafted Hospitality, to powerful female leaders like Soraya Darabi, founder of Trail Mix Ventures, and allow us to share industry-specific advice for our customers. The talks have given business advice as well as personal insights from guests about building resiliency, promoting teamwork (even virtually), and the importance of pivoting and developing scenarios for various situations. Overwhelmingly, our customers have received these livestreams positively.
What does purpose-driven marketing mean to you? Detail how you are living and breathing your brand mission.
Purpose-driven marketing means getting in front of customers, driving meaningful interactions with them, and being an ally. At Alibaba.com, we recognize that small-and-medium-sized B2B businesses are the unsung heroes of the U.S. economy. On the marketing and brand end, we make sure that we champion and spotlight them. Rather than promoting how great Alibaba.com is, we promote how great the small businesses are and the success they are able to achieve with the help of Alibaba.com through initiatives like B2B Today.
As a brand with a relatively new presence in the U.S., Alibaba.com uses purpose-driven marketing to bring our mission to life. We do this by featuring real customer stories in our advertisements, social media and owned content, doing research to get into the mindset of our customers, and hosting virtual trade shows and chats to allow customers the opportunity to meet Alibaba.com experts and our partners to better access the demand, supply, tools, and services available on the platform. For Alibaba.com, the goal of marketing is not just to promote our brand, but it is to actively work to help small-and-medium sized businesses to fully understand the magnitude of the opportunity for global B2B ecommerce, how they can tap into it, and how they can succeed.