Nicole Lontzek is a leading Digital Marketing Expert with international experience & brings several years of detailed knowledge of currently used online marketing strategies and practices including Performance Marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing and various analytics platforms. She is currently supporting CELUS’ growth efforts as Head of Marketing.
She has combined the latest in marketing education with hands-on work experience spanning various marketing initiatives at renowned companies.
You can find her on LinkedIn here.
Why did you choose a career in marketing, how did you start?
The opportunity to analyze data and make smart and well-informed decisions out of your analysis intrigued me from day one. Marketing nowadays has very little to do with the image of only creating colorful images and sounding claims.
Marketing offers endless possibilities to gather data, big data and small data and draw conclusions out of it. If you learn how to interpret the gathered data correctly, you can personalize your advertisement to a great extend.
There are many Mar-Tech solutions on the market, which help you have a real impact within your industry by creating powerful marketing campaigns at scale. Marketing became quite technical and requires analytical skills and logical thinking combined with empathy and understanding of human psychology.
Tell us a bit about your professional path until now.
My professional path was everything but straightforward. I took a lot of side paths and these paths formed me in a special way and also opened up opportunities every time.
I studied twice, first I did some dual studies in banking and then I studied Marketing in Munich and New York. My professional career started when I did an internship at an e-commerce company and got to learn the very essence of SEO and SEM back then. Afterwards I got a job at a consultancy for major clients in retail, software and tourism, where I took over some digital projects.
At some point, Google asked me to join their Marketing team in Dublin, so I moved to Ireland and learned all the specialties in Search Engine Marketing. After a while, I figured going back to New York would be a great idea, so I moved again and made my first B2B marketing experiences at a Turbomachinery software company.
The next station in my career brought me to Switzerland, where I worked in-house for a big tourism company and managed their digital transformation projects. Finally, though I came back to Munich, where I started and became Head of Digital Marketing at a job board, where I learned how to manage large teams in a fast-paced environment.
And now I am working at CELUS as a Head of Marketing, where we market the most innovative electronics engineering automation solution worldwide with an amazing and intelligent team.
What advice do you wish you got when you started your career in marketing?
Have the courage to ask for the things you want and get yourself a mentor.
Top 3 learnings in your marketing career that brought the most value?
- Stay always up to date by reading the professional journals, training etc.;
- Make yourself familiar with the latest Mar/Ad-Tech trends and learn how to use them to gain efficiency in your marketing routine;
- Make sure your team has everything they need in order to drive and flourish.
One result you are really proud of as a marketeer
I once had a german airline as a client and created an outstanding campaign for them.
What’s one important B2B marketing trend that will gain popularity in 2021, in your opinion?
There are several ones out there, but the major trends are Account-based Marketing, Podcast formats and Ai-based marketing automation.
Which is the strongest social media channel in 2021, and why?
Linkedin – it´s by far the most valuable social B2B network due to it´s size and data.
What would you recommend to businesses that want to grow in 2021? What about the tactics they should avoid?
Try to find a way to really connect with your clients – like you would do in the B2C world and please refrain from automated contact requests for cold E-Mail outreach. They never work and are really annoying.
Can you name one digital marketing tactic that you find overrated?
High funnel lead generation, the hunt for marketing qualified leads for the sake of lead quantity. I see it all the time and I’ve done my share of it throughout my career. I’ve yet to stop focusing too much on paid ads – I know Google and Linkedin will hate me for that – but putting too much focus on solely one channel is a waste of money and a waste of time. Rather generate unique and useful content for your clients.
