Siouxsie Jennett, Founder and CEO of Mambo Media, was always fond of science and math in school, but the sometimes sterile and predictable nature of a career in the technical fields was not appealing to her. She wanted to incorporate the study of more human aspects of problem solving and what motivates people, but she found traditional advertising and marketing to be too subjective and lacking process and methodology. The unique nature of her business is that it involves both quantitative and technical problems as well as the more subjective and creative, and offers the opportunity to work both sides of her brain every day.
Company Thrives at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology
Mambo Media is a full-service integrated marketing agency helping companies with one of the biggest challenges in the marketplace, helping its clients to modernize and stay relevant in this digital and highly-dynamic business environment. By integrating marketing best practices coupled with appropriate technology, they promote awareness, leads and top-line revenue for their clients. Services include inbound marketing and marketing automation, website development, search and social marketing, as well as a full complement of custom training and education for their clients.
With 20 years of experience in the business, Siouxsie and her team have developed deep marketing expertise, and they bring an experienced and pragmatic approach to modern marketing practices.
Changing Scenarios
Because of the dramatic shifts happening on a regular basis in the digital marketing environment – from Google changing their search algorithm over 500 times this year alone to the emerging dominance of theme-based content management systems in website development – Siouxsie’s team needs to stay ahead of the curve. Professional development is an important focus for her employees and they allocate two hours a week for just that. They recently instituted a Knowledge Share Program where each staff member presents a new skill, trend or important development in his/her respective field of expertise to the rest of the team. It’s been very successful and gives individuals that holistic perspective which is so important in today’s integrated business environment. “Now, more than ever, the right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing!” says Siouxsie.
Delivering Best-in-Class Programs for the Clients
Siouxsie thinks the most perplexing challenge today is the lack of formal education in digital and integrated marketing. She surveyed the graduates coming out of college and business school and very few of them have any real or deep exposure to the realities of modern marketing, especially around the MarTech stack. They are still learning the old-school theories that don’t really apply today.
Gone are the days when you do an annual marketing plan, book your media, and just sit back to see how it performs, says Siouxsie. She explains that we now have an agile marketing environment that demands a test-and-learn approach, analytic measurement, real-time optimization and the savvy to manage over a dozen disparate disciplines from email marketing to search to social media. According to Siouxsie, finding and keeping these experts is the biggest challenge facing organizations. So even though training her staff in-house require a significant amount of time and resources, Siouxsie is making the investment because she thinks it’s the only way to ensure they deliver best-in-class programs for their clients.
Alternative Work-Life Balance
Many people fail to balance work and the rest of life; Siouxsie, on the other hand, has achieved the secret to attaining peace of mind. She shares that the goal should not be to perfectly balance things, but instead one should strive to create an environment where the pendulum doesn’t swing wildly or out of control. Siouxsie has two children, a husband and a dog; and also runs a marketing agency. She has come to acceptance that she cannot be 100% successful at everything and thus focuses on prioritizing the most importamt things and being successful in those. “But if I can’t pick up my daughter from play practice and have to ask a friend, I’m not going to sweat that.” Most important, in the midst of that constant cost/benefit analysis, you need to be present and recognize the moment when something special happens. Maybe your son tells you a funny joke or your client tells you how pleased they are with the work your team is doing. You HAVE to be present for those, take them in and enjoy them, or you will burn out.
Siouxsie’s Stand on the Need for Women in the Industry
“I believe women are a much-needed resource in the technology sector. We can help bridge the gap between IT and Marketing/Sales by leveraging our communication and people skills. While these two sectors come from often polar-opposite perspectives and traditionally approach problems in very different ways, we all have the same goal in front of us – to achieve success for the organization while optimizing investments and streamlining costs. It’s that simple in the end, and I think women are uniquely gifted to foster a collaborative environment where we can together achieve that goal.”