CMO Interview with Yossi Elchanan

Career People in Marketing

This is an interview with Adcore’s CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), Yossi Elchanan. In this interview, Yossi answers questions regarding his background, experiences, and important elements of being a marketing manager. Keep reading to see what Yossi had to say!

Before we start, a little background information on Yossi Elchanan. Yossi is 39 years old; he’s married with 2 kids and resides in Ramat Gan, Israel. He loves photography and especially loves street photography and photographing people. He’s worked at Adcore for a dedicated 10 years!

Yossi’s journey at the company began with him as an Account Manager; he progressed to managing a team and then managing the managed clients department. For the last three years, he has held the position of CMO.

Yossi’s Interview:

Which social network do you spend the most time on for professional purposes, and why?

Yossi: I spend most of my time on Facebook. Because of the responsiveness, the number of people, and the variety of opinions. My ability to be exposed to many types of information quickly and efficiently is an advantage on Facebook today.

If you weren’t in marketing, what would you be doing instead?

Yossi: I would deal with investments and the capital market.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned about marketing in the last year?

Yossi: In the last year, I’ve learned that if you are consistent and do things well, then over time, this is what will differentiate you and set you apart from the crowd. You can do “tricks” or moves that will get you quick success in the short term, but in the long run, you need to be able to bring significant value.

Sometimes you have to approach something and relearn it differently multiple times to understand how it affects the company and the product. This helps develop new solutions and, thus, increases the value proposition to remain relevant.

From which blog/website/book did you learn the most about marketing? Give one example of such a thing you’ve learned.

Yossi: Eliav Alaluf. He has a website with a blog with insightful content and uses the right formats to reveal that content. More than anything, I learned from Eliav Alaluf’s blog about the importance of the way the content is presented, the importance of persistence over time, and the understanding of your readership/followers.

What are three things/tasks you do in the morning when you arrive at the office at the start of the day?

Yossi: First, I have a conversation with my entire team about existing projects. Second, I make reorder my list of priorities for the working day. Because our company operates in 4 different time zones, new things always happen at night, and in the morning, it’s important for me to sort everything out and reevaluate what’s important versus what can take a “back seat”. Third, I make a note at the end of the day for the following morning with “three things for tomorrow” and start with that.

What is the most important automation you have at work?

Yossi: For me, anything that saves me time on things that are wasted on nonsense is a blessing. To manage campaigns, I use Adcore tools. My most effective automation is my email filters, or rules, to automatically move/delete excess emails on a daily basis.

Tell us about the most successful campaign you were a part of in the last year.

Yossi: One of the campaigns I remember very well is one we did here at Adcore, with the intent to reach new audiences. In a period of two months, we interviewed customers and salespeople to learn precisely what the leading characteristic of the target audience for the campaign is.

When we reached the same common denominator, we decided to emphasize our audience in the creative aspect rather than the value proposition of the product and came up with a campaign on LinkedIn and Facebook to recruit leads. Thanks to the interviews and the decision to emphasize the same common denominator in the ads, it worked better than ever and was overall very successful!

What character trait or skill should every marketing manager have?

Yossi: Curiosity, creativity, and perseverance. In marketing, the results don’t always come immediately, so persistence is very important. Also, this world is constantly changing – I discover and test at least 2 new platforms every week. The leading topics come from worlds of automation and personalization, and huge technology companies are developing new solutions in these worlds all the time.

To understand these new technologies, you must be curious and invest time in them. Sometimes you have to approach something and relearn it differently multiple times to understand how it affects the company and the product. This helps develop new solutions and, thus, increases the value proposition to remain relevant.

Regarding creativity, good marketing surprises you and touches you. If, as a marketer, you constantly do the same thing, you probably won’t get good results. People react better to the surprise element and appreciate what’s different and unusual. To succeed in doing this, one must be creative.

And finally, what free tool, or tools, do you use professionally today, and if they were to cost money, would you pay for them?

Yossi: Assuming the tools were fairly priced, sure. I really like a program called ScreenToGif, it can generate gifs from screen recordings, and it is also free. I use it when I want to explain or illustrate a certain topic. Also, I like Microsoft’s Clarity and prefer it over Hotjar.

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