CMO Chats with Ben Lai, VP of Product and Lifecycle Marketing for Mural

Can you introduce yourself and what your company does?

My name is Ben, and I am currently the VP of Product and Lifecycle Marketing for Mural. Mural is a visual collaboration platform. We help enable teams and people to come together and move their work forward through a visual collaboration whiteboard, amongst other solutions that we have on offer.

As the VP of Product and Lifestyle Marketing in your company, what is your main marketing focus currently?

My main marketing focus is on really bringing people in—our top of the funnel, right? Bringing people in, getting them engaged with the product, and converting them into lifelong users of our product—how do we sort of inject ourselves into the existing workflows? Really getting our product out there, going to market, finding their “aha!” moment, and generating that product loyalty within our whole product suite.

Can you tell me about a particularly innovative or successful marketing campaign your team has recently executed?

Yeah, good question. A really successful one was an AI launch that we did with Mural about six months or so ago. What was very innovative about it was that we were one of the first to market in our specific category and industry to launch our own AI model, essentially, and we injected that into our platform. What was so unique about it is that yes, we have competitors who were trying out AI models as well on the platform, but they were all betas. We were the first ones to actually go GA within that industry. GA is a term we use for general availability, so everyone has access to it.

In terms of the success of that campaign, we were driving a lot of first-time users, bringing that awareness. How do we bring that as a value proposition and differentiator for us as a company—especially amidst a lot of momentum around AI, and obviously, that’s the chat of the market now? Bringing that on board, and how do we sort of level set that whilst also balancing that with security, data compliance, and keeping our customers first in adopting these types of features?

All right, thank you so much. What would you say are your biggest marketing challenges at the moment?

I would say the biggest marketing challenge right now is operating in the SaaS industry. There’s obviously a lot of cost consolidation that customers are looking to do. Because of that, it’s become more and more important for us to bring about that differentiation: why is our product and why is our service irreplaceable, and what type of savings would that generate for the customer? Bringing that sort of concrete proof points and concrete validations is that big challenge at the moment in trying to convince customers and trying to retain, or even bring new, customers into products.

How is your company staying ahead of its competitors in terms of marketing?

Where we’re staying ahead is really having our own brand voice and having our own distinct way of how we present ourselves amongst the sea of competitors. An example is Figma, amongst the sea of design, types of products, and tools; they have a little bit more of a fun sort of vibe to it, a little bit more simple but fun vibe to how they’ve established themselves. Similarly, for Mural, we have established ourselves and our brand as a little bit more towards the less serious, per se, as our competitors and more about how do we become that sort of change and differentiate within an organisation. How do we bring about transformation as opposed to just sticking with the status quo? So us being a little bit more, I guess, rebellious, let’s say, in terms of the SaaS ecosystem has generated that interest and made us different from the sea of normal.

Great. Now, Ben, in your opinion, what does the future of marketing look like?

I think the future of marketing is going to change, especially with generative AI being introduced. There’s going to be a lot more—not necessarily the replacement of the skill sets in marketing, but more so the complementary, and how do we supplement various different workflows within the market? A case in point is: how do we turn around more creative assets in a short amount of time, knowing that we don’t need to go through agencies as much and we don’t need to go through multiple different storyboards? A lot of that can be directly done by us, generating photos and images at a relatively quick rate. The same thing can be said for content and all these other areas. It’s not a matter of reducing the workforce; it’s more about how we can do more with what we have.

Now, if you could use one word to describe the role of a CMO, what would that word be and why?

I would say a big part of CMOs is the word persistence. The reason for that is that a lot of times there’s a lot of change that occurs in the market. There’s a lot of change that occurs within a company’s strategy. There’s all those sorts of things—changes. However, a marketing strategy and a marketing brand, and all that encompasses that, should not be changing significantly month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter. Because what marketing defines is what defines the company. It defines the products that you’re looking to sell. A lot of customers seek stability, and the reason why they bought your product, your services, or whatever it may be, is because of what they were sold at the time. So changing the things you market, changing the voice, changing all that really throws off why a customer signed on or why they joined you in the first place—persistence and consistency are keys.

Thank you. If you could give one piece of career advice to other marketing leaders, what would that be?

I’d say a piece of advice is not being afraid to try out new things, right? Marketing requires a very diverse set of skills. You have people who are a little bit more technical; for example, in product marketing, you have people who are a little bit more creative in brand marketing, and you have people who are probably a little bit more salesy in enterprise marketing. So, there’s a huge diversity of various different skill sets, and with any sort of career, there’s always the case of exploration.

So, when it comes to it, don’t be afraid to explore the diverse set that is at your disposal in marketing. Whether it’s something you know you want to be a little bit more quantitative and metrics-driven and you want to hone in on that, great, there’s a role for that. If you want to try to be a little bit more creative and be more focused on the content you really enjoy writing, cool. There’s also a different set for that as well. Definitely, do not be afraid to diversify yourself and really see what interests you. Maybe even, ultimately, marketing leaders don’t need to have the role or the goal to be a CMO, per se. Do what you love, and discovery is really the way to find that.