CMO Chats with Cate Mills, APJ Marketing Director for Trellix

Tell us about yourself, your journey, and what sparked your interest in marketing? 

Yes, my name is Cate Mills. I’m the marketing director for APJ at Trellix, a global cybersecurity company. My role covers field, channel, and demand generation. I don’t think that there was ever going to be any other path but marketing for me.

I knew from a very, very young age that I loved event management. When I was 10, I’d organise events. I did my school formals in year 10 and year 12. I’ve always had an inherent, built-in love of marketing and events for as long as I can remember. So, I was quite lucky to be able to actually get into it at uni and study for a couple of years, and then I’ve just been a lifelong career marketer.

As a marketing director, what is your current main marketing focus?

We’ve actually had quite a strategy shift in 2025, but it’s one that I’m actually quite excited about, and I’m really enjoying it so far. We are moving to a customer-first approach with an ABM strategy. One of the things I like about an ABM strategy is that it really enables us to focus on the accounts that generate the most value for the business. Also, when we’re looking at resources internally, anything to do with an ABM campaign is much more efficient and effective in our use of resources when we’re talking both headcount resources, budgetary resources, and those relationships between all the different departments that are needed in order to get these things off the ground.

I like that ABM, generally speaking, is more tangible and enables lots of touch points with our customers; the whole point of that is to develop better relationships and increase the stickiness of the customer. I like that it puts the customer first and addresses the needs of the customer, rather than us looking outward, telling people what we want them to know about us.

One of the other things that I think has been a really fun byproduct for me in the development of this new ABM strategy is that it really brings all functions of the business together in that same common goal. I would obviously work with sales and SES, and some of the peripheral ones doing this ABM strategy, but you’re also working with Dev Ops, the customer support team, the renewals team, education services, and professional services. It is all-encompassing, and it means that everyone’s in it to win it together so everyone in the business drives success together. I think that’s one of the really great things that a properly sought out and executed ABM strategy is capable of doing.

I’m seeing it a lot more at the moment that people are really driving this strategy, and I completely agree with the buy-in from multiple functions in the business that can only drive positive results. You also have that testing metric, and you can really make it data-driven.

It’s the same with anything. Everything revolves around having internal buy-in. For example, if the sales don’t believe in what marketing is doing, they’re not going to drive it. If the SES don’t believe in what marketing is doing, they’re not going to help deliver that content.

By building it all together, you’re essentially guaranteeing everyone’s buy-in for this approach, and then everybody has that inner incentive to make it work. So, yeah, I just think it’s such a good approach. It’s one that I have pushed in the past. I’m in my element and absolutely embracing it this year. So, it’s been really fun.

Is there any particular successful marketing campaign that your teams recently executed that maybe you could share a bit more insights into?

I’d say that we’re still in the initial stages of building out this ABM approach, and we’ve been executing it into 2025. Still, I’ve found that the C-level roundtables, while every business does that regardless of what strategy you’re going for, are particularly effective with this customer-first approach. When you’ve got a topic that really resonates with your customers, and you’ve got someone there who can actually address their needs and have the right people in the room. It generates much more positive results, especially in terms of cross-sell opportunities.

There’s nothing more enjoyable for me as a marketer than sitting in the corner of the room, making sure everything is fine and everyone is happy, seeing people actively engage in debate and conversation, and realising the real value out of these discussions. Knowing that your business has managed to drive this for them is very rewarding. I’ve been seeing positive results so far this year, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how that continues to grow over the course of the year.

What’s your biggest marketing challenge at the moment?

There are definitely a few challenges in the market at the moment, I would say. At the moment, budgets in general, not just talking specifically to Trellix, are a big concern for many organisations. When you look into the research, Gartner did an annual report on marketing spend last year, and from memory, I think budgets have dropped nearly 8% of overall company revenue. This is a 15% decrease from the previous year. We’re seeing across the board that there is a decrease in budget and consolidation of the functions within the marketing team as a whole. We’re being expected to do less and take on additional work because it’s marketing. 

But from where I’m sitting, to get the most out of the marketing department and the business unit as a whole, you need to have experts across all the facets—whether it’s field, it’s channel, it’s brand, it’s content, product, PR, or digital, everybody has a different role to play in this business, and they are all important individual purposes within the marketing team. To roll up multiple roles into one is cutting your nose off to spite your face. If you’re out there as a business and you want to build a brand and do that brand awareness, you have to look at marketing holistically. 

Also, one of the hardest things out there is that when they do reduce spending, it very rarely comes with a reduction in targets. It becomes much harder to do the job with less money and fewer people. But on the flip side, I do think that if you’ve got the right type of people in your team, they do look at that as an opportunity. There have been certain people in our wider team that have absolutely embraced AI, as if they are as good at executing activities with AI as our engineers and technical teams. It’s one of those things where it’s like, with every challenge, you look for the opportunity.

I also think it gives you that chance to think outside the square. When you’ve got an endless budget, you can just keep doing what you’re doing, but every time it drops down, it forces you to be more creative. And so, I actually think that every marketer should at least have one role where they’re really challenged, because it may be tough when you’re doing it at the time, but when you come out of it at the other end, and you actually look at what experience you got out of it, you realise that you learned so much more because you were forced to think outside the box. Like I said, there’s a positive for every negative. It just depends on which way you look at it.

How does your company stay ahead of its competitors in terms of marketing? 

In terms of marketing, look, I’ve got to give a shout-out to my VP of growth marketing here. He’s an operations guy at heart, and he is so focused. What he has managed to achieve in the two years he’s been here, in terms of being able to show the value and provide tangible reports and everything on what marketing does, has been amazing.

For example, when I started here, it was very hard to even know the general ROI of any activity we did. They brought in a marketing operations team, and the level of detail that we are actually able to go down into and drill down for every activity and every account is some of the best I’ve ever seen anywhere. That’s one of the biggest advantages for us as a marketing team because everything we do is grounded in data.

Everything is a data-driven decision, and it’s not just to stick a finger in the air and go, ‘I think we’re going to do that. ’ Or, you know, ‘We’ve always done it, so we’re going to do it like it is.’ Being data-driven forces us to look at our activities after we’ve run them and go, ‘Alright. The general sentiment was great, but did it actually deliver results?’ I love seeing the data side of things. I don’t necessarily have the skill set that he does. I’m okay with Excel, but I don’t go down that far. But the ability to actually see all of that is also really important for the marketing team as a whole to show their value and to really solidify our seat at the table in the executive suite. It’s been absolutely transformational for this business.

Personally, what do you believe is the biggest opportunity for marketing leaders today that might not have been available in the past?

Well, coming back to the previous point, there are so much better ways to report and analyse our spending now that we’re able to actually go to the business and show tangible results on what we generate—much more than we did 10 years or even five years ago.

Marketing was much more siloed and kind of seen as a support function for the business, as opposed to an actual unit that helps generate and works with the business as a whole. That’s one of the biggest advantages that we have now that we previously did not. I loathe bringing AI into every answer, and I’m going to make sure that I absolutely don’t. But with the ability to utilise tools, we’re able to be much more efficient with what we’re doing. Being efficient in what we’re doing gives us more time to do the things that we want. It’s not necessarily about plugging something into ChatGPT and getting them to create a whole campaign.

Even if it’s just reducing the amount of admin work that you can do, where you can automate any of those things, and you can take that workload down from five hours to one, then you’ve gained four hours in which you can actually do work that does generate value. AI is an absolutely brilliant opportunity for every marketer, regardless of what level they’re at today, that I certainly didn’t have. In the past, I know certain campaigns, and I look back, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I just had this 15 years ago, just think of what I could have done.’ That’s really one of the biggest opportunities out there: making those data-driven decisions and using AI for good.

Looking into the future, what does the future of marketing look like for you?

Look, it’s just a bit more of everything that I’ve talked about, just taking everything up to that next level. Once again, AI, with the ability to be more efficient on tasks, is going to enable us to do more things. There is going to be a much stronger focus on the dollar impact of activities from more than just field marketing. Because, as I said, there are so many different areas of marketing, and even though not everything can be measured, you need to take that data-driven approach and then also take a reasonable approach.

It is not as easy to define the success of a billboard over an email campaign—they are obviously two very different things, but in the same token, they’re trying to achieve two different things, one is branding and is about building brand awareness, and one is about getting customers to understand your product. They’re out there trying to achieve different things. Even though we do take that data-driven approach, we do need to understand that there are very important parts of marketing that are not always easy to quantify.

What’s a piece of traditional leadership advice that you believe doesn’t apply to modern marketing leaders?

Alright, it might sound a bit controversial initially, but hear me out. Traditionally, marketing’s role is to make sales’ job easier. Now, I’m not saying that that is not important; It is very important for us to do that, but sometimes, along the way, we focus on our internal stakeholders so much that the buyers’ journey actually gets lost in the process. 

We really need to take that customer-first approach and build out marketing campaigns with the customer in mind, not internal stakeholders and not our own products that we’re trying to push. Our job is to communicate their needs, their pain points, and how we as a business address their concerns, not the other way around.

The tactics can be driven by the strategy, but at the heart of it, if you’re not addressing the customer needs, nine times out of 10, you’re not going to be successful. Again, I’m not saying that sales aren’t important. They are absolutely fundamental to every single business. But without customers, businesses don’t exist.

In general, you can spend a lot of energy on something thinking that it’s the right area. But when you just really recalibrate and think of that end user or person, then I think you can get to that success point far quicker.

Exactly, do that customer research. Speak to the customer, find out what it is that they want to know, and tell them what they want to know. Don’t tell them what you think they want to know.

What career advice would you share with other marketing leaders, or just generally, anyone coming into marketing on their way up?

Yep, I’d say, and I throw this around quite a bit, but a lot of people don’t know that full quote about the jack of all trades, and it’s a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. 

Now, the whole concept of that is, it’s great to be an expert in something, but it can, in many instances, be better to be good at a number of things. Especially when it comes to marketing, this is actually really important. As I mentioned before, marketing is so broad and covers so many different functions across the business, from, like I said, field, PR, corporate affairs and communications, design, product, and content marketing. I’d say, in the early part of everyone’s career, have a go at everything, and develop at least a basic skillset across a few of them, and then you can kind of hone into what it is that you’re most interested in. 

I personally think there’s a lot to say about staying a generalist. I don’t like to be pigeonholed; that’s personally me. However, I also think that keeping a really broad view of marketing gives you more opportunities for growth in your career. I’m never bored; there are always different aspects in which you can learn. That’s a really, really important one. 

Once again, the flip side doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be everything to everyone, and I think that is the most important thing that you can learn in your career as an individual. I have a broad skill set across many of those different areas, but I’m not trying to be all of those things. If you spread yourself too thin constantly, you’re not going to get the results that you want for yourself. 

One other piece of advice that is also important when it comes to marketing, and it’s across the board, is that whether you’re starting or whether you’re being there ages, you have to have thick skin. Marketing is just one of those functions that everybody has an opinion on. Everyone thinks that they can do something better; they know the customers better, that they know this. You need to be confident in your decision-making process. You are the marketer; you are the expert. So, take their feedback on board and say thank you.

There have been plenty of times we’ve gone, ‘actually, I haven’t thought of that angle.’ I appreciate that different view, but trust yourself as the expert, and learn not to take any of that constructive feedback as criticism because most people are not doing it to be critical; it is just inherently built into so many people that they want to help. And it can come across negatively, but it doesn’t need to be negative.

Do you think that is because marketing is one of the functions that is a key aspect of everyone’s lives?

Yes, everybody experiences it. Everyone is a customer for something. It is inherent in everything that we do. I also think that in some aspects, it’s a bit more fun than other areas. Some people are in one of those traditionally conservative-type roles that spend more time in Excel, for example, but I know lots of people who are secretly creative under that, and you’d never know. You get some of the coolest answers out of people that you wouldn’t traditionally think of.

This is a completely random example: my brother is a police officer, and he comes up with some of the greatest ideas I’ve ever heard when it comes to marketing. It is not just specific; it has nothing to do with my job, but when he sees things out there in the world, He’s like, ‘Oh, it would have been cool if they did this.’ And you’d never expect that from that traditional type of role. It’s something that people resonate with, that people relate to, and to be honest, if they’re giving you opinions, it means that they care, and it means that they’re interested.

Once again, it’s all about how you view it; it doesn’t have to be negative. It can absolutely be a positive, and you never know what golden little nuggets could come out of people. Like I said, I’ve had some really interesting ones in my time from people you wouldn’t expect.