Ep 59: From Social Media to Marketing with Melanie Babcock
Welcome to another exciting and informative episode of Clicks 2 Bricks, a podcast about marketing strategies for multi-location businesses and organizations. The marketing landscape has changed dramatically since the advent of social media and has forced businesses to think differently about marketing strategies. In today’s episode, we discuss multi-location marketing strategies with Melanie Babcock. Melanie is responsible for The Home Depot personalization strategy, including various other strategies such as The Home Depot Retail Media Network and The Home Depot app. Melanie was originally in social media but transitioned to the marketing space where she brings a unique skillset and perspective. In today’s show, we learn about the status of the workforce post-pandemic, challenges associated with The Home Depot, her transition from social media to marketing, the transferrable skills she brought with her, details about The Home Depot's marketing strategy, how social media and marketing has evolved in recent years, and so much more! Tune in to hear some more from expert and marketing mogul Melanie Babcock!
Key Points From This Episode:
Introduction about the guest and the special location of today’s episode.
We find out the status of Melanie’s workforce, post-pandemic.
Melanie explains the flexible, three-day hybrid work model.
A fun fact about Melanie: she is Junior Goat Showman Champion.
Learn about Melanie’s professional career journey at Home Depot.
Details about how she transitioned to her current role.
Initial challenges Melanie experienced setting up a new marketing strategy.
What skills and knowledge that she brought with her from her previous role in social media.
Outline of the current marketing functions that Melanie is busy with.
A brief rundown of the workflow of marketing strategies at The Home Depot.
Some insider details about a new team that Melanie is putting together.
How social strategy as a channel has evolved since she started at The Home Depot.
We learn about the organic strategy which Melanie uses and how effective it is.
Melanie gives us a breakdown of what personalized marketing is.
Why personalized marketing is not based on persona data at The Home Depot.
A description of Melanie’s future marketing strategy plans.
How businesses and organizations can set a standard in the marketplace.
Why The Home Depot customers should download and use the app.
The different ways that The Home Depot sources first-party data.
Melanie walks us through her experience starting The Home Depot Retail Media Network.
Recent growth and changes that the marketing team has gone through.
What the different technological tools Melanie’s team uses for marketing.
Why operations is an essential party of the process.
The advantages that the current marketplace offers the marketing sector.
Melanie’s advice for people interested in marketing as a career.
We learn about the mentoring program that has been established at The Home Depot.
Melanie tells us about career opportunities available at The Home Depot.
Who she admires and would like to see interviewed on this show.
Tweetables:
“Our organization has grown a lot, so tons of growth opportunity for people, which I'm very passionate about.” — Melanie Babcock [0:12:38]
“If you peel back the onion on Home Depot, at the end of the day, we are all about service, whether it's service to the store or service in our community.” — Melanie Babcock [0:13:38]
“You got to really keep your eye closed on what the competition's doing because they're setting a standard in the marketplace or training a customer around expectations.” — Melanie Babcock [0:24:11]
“How do I help my leadership look at marketing as not an expense to be managed, but just a lever to pull, a strategic lever.” — Melanie Babcock [0:38:24]
“We have so much innovation going on, whether it's in tech, or our approach, the speed to market, all of these things require us to kind of get out of our comfort zones and really think differently, you're just going to have to kind of bite the bullet and do it.” — Melanie Babcock [0:40:08]