Lidia Lal, Head of Marketing for the Finance and Spend Management line of business at SAP APJ, shares her journey from her passion for storytelling to becoming a data-driven marketing leader delivering integrated marketing strategies for predominantly global tech brands. She discusses the evolution of marketing’s role, balancing long-term branding with lead generation, and leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences.
What inspired you to pursue a journey in marketing?
My marketing journey was inspired by a passion for storytelling and a fascination with how brands connect with audiences on a human level. Initially, I aspired to be a journalist, driven by my love for writing and storytelling. However, as I explored how advertising and marketing create emotional connections with people, I was drawn to the field of marketing.
After earning my first degree, I attended Technical College for three years, graduating with an advanced diploma in advertising, which led to my first role in the media department at DDB Needham. Over time, I realized my passion lay in client-side marketing rather than agency work. My first marketing role at a leading technology distribution company ignited my enthusiasm for campaign management, strategy, and brand building. More than 25 years later, I am still deeply committed and love working in the technology industry, having worked with some exceptional global brands. The marketing field has always felt like the bridge between businesses and people, allowing me to blend strategic thinking, creativity, and stakeholder management into a fulfilling career.
As a marketing leader, how do you effectively balance long-term branding initiatives with short-term lead-generation goals?
Balancing these objectives requires a strategic approach that integrates them into a cohesive plan. As marketers, we need to ensure long-term branding initiatives establish a strong foundation by emphasizing brand values, trust, and consistency of the brand. Simultaneously, by adopting agile methods for short-term lead-generation campaigns, focusing on measurable outcomes and real-time optimization – these are important. Aligning these goals through shared KPIs and leveraging insights from both creates a synergy that drives sustainable growth. At times, trade-offs may be necessary to meet immediate business objectives, but maintaining a strong brand presence remains critical for long-term success. Working within budgetary constraints and finding the right balance ensures both immediate results and enduring brand equity.
What do you see as the major changes in marketing’s role as revenue-facing GTM teams become more closely aligned?
The alignment of marketing with revenue-facing GTM teams has redefined marketing’s role from a supporting function to a critical revenue driver. This transformation demands a data-first mindset, an emphasis on customer-focused strategies, and seamless cross-functional collaboration across the organization.
Today, marketing’s ability to map the buyer’s journey, attribute its efforts to revenue outcomes, and engage customers at key touchpoints has elevated its strategic importance. By partnering closely with sales teams and other GTM teams, marketing ensures cohesive messaging to help maximize overall ROI.
This critical shift has positioned marketing as a catalyst for growth and a vital contributor to achieving the organization’s business objectives. Marketing’s role should also be to continually educate the business and showcase the value it brings to the table every step of the way.
“The alignment of marketing with revenue-facing GTM teams has redefined marketing’s role from a supporting function to a critical revenue driver.”
What is your advice on selecting and prioritizing which events to attend as part of a field marketing plan?
When selecting events, it’s essential to evaluate alignment with your target audience, objectives, and ROI potential. I prioritize events that offer opportunities for meaningful engagement, thought leadership, and networking with decision-makers. Analyzing historical performance data, audience demographics, and demand generation potential helps inform decisions. Balancing large-scale industry events with niche, high-impact gatherings ensures both visibility and relevance.
Ultimately, the selected events in the final plan should align with your business goals and what your sales teams are trying to achieve and provide tangible value to both participants and stakeholders.
How can marketers effectively balance the delivery of personalized customer experiences with the need to maintain scalability in their marketing efforts?
Personalization at scale is achievable by leveraging technology such as AI and automation to analyze customer data and tailor interactions. Segmentation can be complex and predictive analytics enables targeted messaging, while scalable platforms ensure consistent delivery across channels.
I also emphasize that by creating modular content that can be customized efficiently, ensuring personalization without excessive resource demands. This approach balances the need for individualized experiences with operational scalability.
How do you ensure that marketing campaigns are continuously optimized through the effective utilization of data insights to maximize impact across all initiatives?
Continuous optimization begins with establishing a robust framework for data collection, analysis, and feedback loops for any marketing campaign before you launch the campaign. I use real-time dashboards to monitor campaign performance against key metrics.
As marketers, we should be able to use regular A/B testing and sales feedback also to help refine strategies, while cross-functional reviews ensure insights are applied holistically across campaigns. This iterative process ensures campaigns remain impactful and aligned with business objectives.
Which key metrics do you closely monitor to assess the success of your marketing programs?
The metrics I focus on depend on the campaign I am running, its objectives especially as they align with the sales objectives, and what I am trying to achieve overall in terms of Return on Investment (ROI). Therefore, metrics may include pipeline created, lead acquisition cost, lifetime value of a customer (LTV), conversion rates, lead-to-revenue ratios, and there are brand awareness indicators such as share of voice and sentiment analysis. For digital initiatives, engagement metrics like click-through rates, website traffic, and bounce rates are critical. Together, these metrics provide a comprehensive view of performance, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
As a marketing leader, what is your biggest lesson learned from integrating AI-enabled tools into your marketing processes?
Integrating AI has taught me the importance of balancing technology with human creativity. AI enhances efficiency, scalability, and data analysis but cannot replace emotional intelligence, the intuition behind impactful storytelling, and, most importantly, creativity. One important lesson for marketers to embrace early on is the importance of using AI to enhance, NOT replace, human creativity.
While AI excels at processing vast datasets, identifying trends, and automating repetitive tasks, it cannot replicate the nuanced storytelling and emotional intelligence that resonate deeply with audiences. I believe the key to using AI across the field of marketing is to use it as a complementary tool that can help you automate routine tasks or uncover insights that empower marketers to focus on their strategic and creative work. This approach ensures the best of both worlds—I call it the 2 P’s: Precision and Personalization. That’s what it’s all about.
Integrating AI into marketing has underscored the need for upskilling teams. To fully capitalize on AI’s benefits, marketing professionals must understand its capabilities, from predictive analytics to personalization engines. Combining these technical skills with strategic thinking ensures marketers maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly automated landscape. Therefore, organizations need to be prepared to educate and upskill their teams so they are ready and willing to adapt to this change—as it’s coming fast!
What advice would you offer to aspiring marketers who are striving to build and lead high-performing marketing teams?
There are so many I can think of right now. My personal advice is to foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, and continuous learning wherever you are in your journey.
If you are building teams, build teams where individuals have unique perspectives and skills and empower them with the tools and autonomy to innovate. A stakeholder-first mentality is key to driving success within an organization, no matter how large or small. In addition, clear communication, shared goals, and accountability are vital for alignment and continued success.
If you aspire to be a leader, you need to lead by example—stay adaptable, invest in your team’s growth, and prioritize building strong relationships with stakeholders. In my 25-plus years in marketing, I can truly say that high-performing teams thrive on trust, a shared vision, and the drive to deliver exceptional results above and beyond—you must have each other’s back.
About Lidia Lal
Lidia Lal is the Head of Marketing for Finance and Spend Management at SAP APJ. With over 25 years of experience, she has held senior marketing roles at global tech brands including Blackbaud, Experian, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Oracle. Lidia began her career in the media department at DDB and has also run her own marketing consultancy. An award-winning leader, her expertise spans B2B, B2C2B, brand management, product launches, demand generation, and digital marketing, among other disciplines.
