An Interview With Kieran Powell
Knowing your limits. When you’re thinking about spending more money on marketing, it’s crucial to understand, whether there is still room for growth, or have you already reached the limit? Think about how much of the available traffic you’re already getting. Also, remember that as you spend more, the cost of each click usually goes up.
In an age where marketing landscapes are rapidly evolving and consumer behaviors are constantly shifting, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) play a pivotal role in steering their organizations’ marketing strategies towards success. With a plethora of channels, platforms, and techniques at their disposal, the decision on where to allocate the marketing budget is more critical than ever. We’re seeking to explore questions like: What factors influence their decisions? How do they balance between digital and traditional marketing channels? What role does data play in their decision-making process? And importantly, why they choose to invest in certain areas over others? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Oleg Egorov.
Oleg is a CMO at Flowwow, a global gifting marketplace for local brands. He has over 19 years of experience in digital marketing, nearly 6 of which he has spent as a CMO of Flowwow. He now manages nearly 100 marketing specialists within Flowwow’s team of 400+ employees. Before joining the team, Oleg was a leading analyst at Yandex, a top-1 technology company in the CIS region, and a product manager at E-lama, a Dublin-based company offering all-in-one solutions for paid advertising.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
It’s a pleasure. I was a fresh-faced 20-year-old, when a world of marketing had called me over. I landed a job at a small digital agency, starting with sales and soon delving into launches and optimisation of online campaigns. I can still remember those goosebumps when I saw my first Google AdWords campaign.
The next step was my own advertising agency. Balancing a young family and building a business was tough, but it taught me the importance of perseverance and adaptability. That’s when I got in a whirlwind of different jobs, heading back to digital marketing, and honing my skills, particularly in data analysis. Working at Yandex was a real game-changer. I got to work on campaigns for huge brands like ASOS, IKEA, and Aeroflot, and it taught me a lot about the power of data-driven marketing.
Currently, I serve as the Chief Marketing Officer at Flowwow, a global gifting marketplace connecting local shops with customers. With over 19 years of experience in digital marketing, six of those at Flowwow, I now oversee a team of about 100 marketing specialists within a company of more than 400 employees.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Well, one of my earliest experiences in mobile marketing involved a rather costly mistake. When we first started diving into CPA campaigns, I was absolutely excited by the rapid growth in app installs. So I thought: the more the merrier, right? You better check, I would say now. As I scaled, I didn’t pay close attention to the quality of our traffic sources. As a result, we saw a significant drop in organic installs and a corresponding increase in less valuable, attributed installs.
It was a lesson learnt about the importance of having a solid understanding of attribution. Measure twice, cut once, isn’t it? I realised that while rapid growth is tempting, it’s essential to balance it with a focus on quality and fraud prevention. This experience has shaped my approach to marketing ever since.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We’re constantly growing and redefining the way people gift. We’ve transformed from a flower marketplace into a comprehensive gifting platform, offering a wide range of products from local businesses. This year, we rebranded to better reflect our mission.
Our goal is to make gifting easy, personal, and joyful. We’re constantly offering new features to provide a seamless experience for both our sellers and customers. We’re breaking down geographical barriers, allowing users to send gifts to loved ones anywhere in the world. We’re also committed to supporting local businesses. By partnering with thousands of small shops around the world, we’re helping them reach a wider audience and grow their businesses.
Can you share an experience where a unique or unconventional budget allocation led to unexpected success in your marketing campaign?
We spent a long time deliberating over the idea of collaborating with a prominent blogger. The majority of our budget had been allocated to contextual advertising, and shifting to a more media-driven channel felt like a risky move. Nevertheless, we decided to go for it and launched a campaign with one of the most popular bloggers in the region.
Even though the integration took place during the “off-season” in May, the results exceeded all expectations. We witnessed a significant surge in downloads and sales, and the video continues to attract new users to this day. In my opinion, it was one of the best investments we’ve ever made, proving that sometimes, taking a risk really does pay off.
How do you balance investing in emerging marketing trends versus traditional, proven strategies in your budget decisions? Can you give us an example?
We always start by looking at our business goals and making some predictions. There are 3 of us — our CEO, CFO, and I as a CMO — to agree on a budget and set a minimum GMV target.
A substantial portion of our budget — approximately 65% — goes to performance channels. The rest is for various reach-based initiatives like influencer partnerships, large-scale social media campaigns, offline activities, and new format testing. For example, one of our latest experiments was a new type of ad. It did really well, which shows that it’s worth taking risks
In what ways has data-driven decision-making influenced your approach to allocating marketing budgets, and can you provide an example of this in action?
With my background in PPC, I always use data to make decisions. The other question is when you don’t have all the data you need. Take influencer marketing, for instance. At first, it was hard to track exactly what they were bringing in. But we came up with some attribution models to measure their impact, like using promo codes. We even found a connection between influencer campaigns and organic growth.
So, when it comes to spending our marketing money, we focus on the channels that give us the most reliable results. The other part of the budget we have, we put towards the more experimental campaigns.
How do you evaluate the ROI of different marketing channels and decide where to invest more or cut back?
To evaluate the ROI of our marketing channels, we’ve developed a dedicated dashboard that enables us to conduct multi-dimensional budget planning. We can drill down into metrics like traffic source, product category, and even the geographic locations of both the buyer and recipient. This is crucial for us as a gift marketplace, where the sender and receiver are often located in different regions.
By analyzing historical data, we’re able to model the potential outcomes of different budget allocations with a high degree of accuracy. Additionally, we carefully track the performance of both new customer acquisition and retention campaigns. This helps us avoid the common pitfall of overspending on retargeting, especially in app traffic where we might inadvertently be driving our own branded traffic.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget, and Why?”
- Aligning with your strategic goals. Clearly define your primary objectives. If immediate sales are the priority, focus on channels that deliver targeted traffic. However, if brand awareness and long-term growth are the goal, a balanced approach is essential. We prioritize our marketing budget by focusing on maximizing returns from existing demand first, and then investing in brand awareness and reach.
- Incremental traffic attribution. In certain scenarios, such as when using SkanNetwork or considering post-view attribution, some traffic sources may be overvalued or undervalued. Therefore, I always recommend incorporating expert analysis alongside raw data when planning budgets.
- Setting aside the budget for experiments. It’s important to try out new marketing ideas. We used to rely a lot on SEO, but now we’re using social media and working with influencers, which has really helped us reach more people and reduce the share of search traffic to 50%.
- Thinking about long-term value. We don’t just look at how much it costs to get a new customer; we also think about how much they’re going to spend with us in the future. For example, people who use iPhones tend to spend more.
- Knowing your limits. When you’re thinking about spending more money on marketing, it’s crucial to understand, whether there is still room for growth, or have you already reached the limit? Think about how much of the available traffic you’re already getting. Also, remember that as you spend more, the cost of each click usually goes up.
Could you discuss a challenging budget decision you faced, how you navigated it, and the impact it had on your overall marketing strategy?
One of the toughest calls I had to make was deciding how much to invest in brand awareness campaigns. It’s hard to measure the direct impact of these whole brand experiments, but we saw a real boost in searches and organic downloads.
This was a big step for us. It helped us see that we needed a more balanced approach to marketing. Instead of just chasing quick sales, we decided to invest in building our brand. This brandformance approach helps us not only get new customers but also build a loyal customer base for the future.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I could start a global movement, it would be one focused on fostering understanding and empathy between cultures. I believe that connecting with people from different backgrounds can break down barriers and encourage people to be more compassionate.
At Flowwow, we’re already doing our part by enabling people to send gifts across borders.It’s a simple act, but it can have a profound impact. I’d like to encourage everyone to embrace diversity, practice kindness, and strive for a more harmonious world. I believe that by working together, we can create a more harmonious and inclusive world for future generations.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
To stay up-to-date with the latest from Flowwow and my insights on marketing, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
CMO Perspectives: Oleg Egorov Of Flowwow On Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget and Why was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.