Field Notes with Daren Soh, Marketing Lead at Telesign

Could you please give a quick introduction and tell us a little about what Telesign does?

Hi everyone. My name is Darren. I have over 15 years of marketing experience. I’m currently working with Telesign, part of the Proximus Global group, leading on the APAC and EMENA markets, managing a lean team of three for a global company. We focus on operating with efficiency, and our focus is on outsizing impact, designing dual-targeted campaigns that drive pipeline, localising global brand messaging, and empowering the sales team with region-specific enablement. My role involves hands-on leadership, coaching my team to innovate within our market. I should mention that Proximus Global is a global company that focuses on communication and fraud protection, a key area where we help enterprises with a seamless customer experience.

In your role as the Marketing Manager, what’s your main focus at the moment, for 2025?

Definitely, with the new change we are currently going through within the group, a key focus is to build the brand for the respective regions I manage, both APAC and EMEA, so that people are aware of the Proximus Global group via different marketing channels. On top of that, as a field marketer, we work closely with the sales team. One thing I always say is that we can’t work in silos, especially for field marketers, so we need to work in lockstep with our sales team to ensure we understand the business direction and what the sales team is looking for. This allows us to develop marketing campaigns or strategies that resonate with the team’s needs through multi-touch marketing channels. That’s a key area I’m looking at: brand building and pipeline building.

Just to dig a little deeper into these campaigns, could you expand on something very successful and innovative in terms of a marketing campaign you’ve executed?

From my perspective, with all the noise in the market, a one-touch approach will never work. Typically, a customer needs to go through seven to ten touchpoints before they understand your brand. They start being curious, understanding, and trying to find out more. A full-fledged marketing strategy and approach, from digital to traditional marketing, is one where I’ve seen general success. We start with paid advertising to gain context and then invite prospects to webinars and events, allowing the sales team to connect with relevant individuals interested in our product, solution, or business. This is where we start building our brand and our product in particular. From a marketer’s standpoint, a campaign needs to be multi-touch to engage better with our customers. A one-size-fits-all or one-touch campaign can’t effectively reach our customers.

When we’re looking at challenges, within that or separately, what are your main marketing challenges?

Generally, not just focusing on Telesign, proving ROI as a marketing team is a challenge. Typically, many enterprises, as we know, have viewed us as an expense-spending department. So, how do field marketers prove that our spending provides value and ROI to the business? That’s a key challenge, along with the evolving market.

Marketing teams are facing tighter budgets. How do we ensure that the few activities we undertake directly impact revenue? And how do we demonstrate this through measurement and tracking? This is a challenge many marketers face because marketing sometimes takes longer to build brand awareness before conversion. It’s not immediate. How do we ensure we track the whole customer journey, from initial awareness to becoming a loyal customer with lifetime value and potential for upsells? This is one challenge.

Also, as I mentioned, reaching real customers through multiple channels is difficult. This is something all marketers are working towards: how best to reach our target customers. As mentioned, Account-Based Marketing can be one touchpoint.

But ultimately, from my perspective, the brand needs to be known to the customers we’re targeting before we can start sharing our products and solutions and how we can help and support them.

Having those data points to show senior leadership, to secure budgets and provide clarity around speedy ROI campaigns versus longer-term, deeper engagement campaigns, and managing to track all of that, is crucial. Budget scrutiny is a high priority in current conversations.

One thing to add is that there has been a long conversation about how marketing should be measured: MQLs, SQLs, and opportunities. The way I see it, it is the opportunities that the marketing team can bring in, specifically through marketing efforts. It shouldn’t be defined by just one metric. Some might disagree because there are things outside our control, especially when a deal is passed to the sales team, who then work their magic to understand customer pain points. However, marketing can still play a role in supporting the sales team in that process.

As they say, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Now, in terms of company focus, is there anything specific you do to stay ahead of your competitors in your marketing campaigns?

The way I approach it is by working closely with the sales team to understand the pain points they hear from customers. We use this as a tool to create content and reach out to our customers, highlighting that we understand their challenges. We also leverage insights from our existing customers to build on our strategies. I’m quite sure that a problem faced by one company in a particular industry is likely the same for others in that sector. So, we use this as a key talking point to show we understand their pain points. Additionally, we are members of vertical-specific associations, which puts us in front of relevant groups and establishes us as thought leaders who truly understand their problems and challenges.

Positioning yourself as a thought leader is very important. But it is also cutting through the noise, as everyone wants to be a thought leader. Perhaps listening and being responsive to customers is now more important. In terms of opportunities, what do you believe are the biggest opportunities for field marketers today that might not have been available in the past?

From my perspective, with the rise of AI, there are many ways we can leverage it for efficiency and speed in getting things done. Some marketers might be against AI, especially regarding how quickly it can generate blog posts or white papers, and whether that content aligns with the tone of voice or branding is a separate discussion. However, AI is something all marketers need to leverage to understand the best touchpoints for each lead. Also, a key challenge for visual marketing is the blurring of brand and demand. Thought leadership is directly tied to revenue activities, and there’s a rise in physical and digital integration. While there’s always been discussion about focusing more on SEO and SEM versus traditional events, webinars, and face-to-face interactions, I believe it needs to be a combination of both, a multi-touch approach, as we discussed earlier, to effectively reach our audience. This is what I see as the future of marketing.

That leads to the next question: What does the future of marketing look like? Of course, AI is probably a massive focus. But is there anything else you’re looking forward to?

As you said, probably AI. We will see how AI can help us from a lead generation standpoint. It makes certain aspects of marketing easier. But the approach to marketing still needs to be multi-touch. I strongly believe in that.

As a field marketer, how would you define your role in one word? And why?

In one word, I would consider us strategists, because we need to take input from both the business and the sales team and put it into action to generate that pipeline for the team. Rather than working in a silo, I would say field marketers are strategists, compiling all the information and putting it into action.

Obviously, the changes that are going to happen in the next five years, like incredible developments in the amount of data coming in and AI helping at the moment, do you think the effects in five years’ time, especially on the marketing function, strategies are going to be drastically improved because of the increase in all those touchpoints where you can then push it out to the various teams within the company?

I would say yes and no. AI will be a great help for marketers, but it also depends on the growth of AI itself. From my perspective, humans still need to be involved. As much as we’d like AI to take charge of certain things that help us, especially from a data standpoint, strategising the best way to reach customers is something AI isn’t fully capable of. I can’t speak for the next five years, but as of now, human interaction is key. We know that emails typically have a low open rate, especially from unknown senders. While AI might change in the next five years and potentially replace marketers, which I don’t think will happen, there are areas where AI can help and support marketers, such as data analysis and identifying the best touchpoints or ways to reach intended customers. These are the ways I see AI being helpful and supportive of what marketers are doing.

What’s the piece of traditional leadership advice that you don’t think applies to modern marketers? 

This might make me sound old regarding traditional leadership advice, but a key important aspect is that multi-touch marketing requires constant optimisation based on real-time signals, depending on channel drop-off or engagement. Also, the old thinking of spending 80% of the budget purely on events or one particular touchpoint is extremely risky. From a marketing standpoint, you wouldn’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. Diversifying across different channels is non-negotiable now, given the different touchpoints we are all encountering. You need to diversify and then analyse the data you have to assess which channel best helps you interact and engage with your target persona, your business, or, as a marketer, with whom you are engaging.

In terms of career advice, what career advice would you share with other marketing leaders?

The thing about marketing is that there are various pillars or funnels, such as paid, search, email, social, and so forth. As a field marketer myself, I know there are always areas where we need to improve and work on. Firstly, understanding market trends is crucial. Secondly, even if as a field marketer, you’re not an expert in paid advertising, it’s important to understand how all these elements work. This will help you grow from a career standpoint. 

Most importantly, get comfortable with data. The reality is that everything we do now needs to demonstrate ROI and show conversion. Only a marketer who is equipped with the relevant data can prove their case and earn a seat at the table with senior leadership to show that our efforts bring results to the business. This also helps you build better relationships with your sales team. Whenever you talk to them, it builds your credibility when you launch a marketing campaign, so they can fully support your campaigns or strategies.