Emily DeSimone, Director of Global Marketing at SLM Solutions, is an innovative and results-driven marketer with a passion for value-ad product innovation. Her trick for revenue growth includes working collaboratively with executives, product marketing and sales to create and execute innovative programs across the channel.
MEDIA 7: What encouraged you to pursue a career in marketing?
Emily DeSimone: Initially, I wanted to pursue event marketing in order to travel, but I fell in love with applying data to make informed decisions. Marrying the art and science of marketing, it’s all about using data and technology to reach the right people with the right message. It’s a perfect union. If any part of that is misaligned, you will see it in the reporting and analytics.
M7: SLM Solutions became the first manufacturer to offer overlapping multi-laser machines. How has the market evolved over the years?
ED: SLM Solutions’ commercial portfolio of solutions has evolved based on customer demands and market data. It is deliberate decisions on which primal programs within R&D get commercialized in order to better support our customers and their production.
I believe the most enticing thing about joining SLM Solutions is the pipeline of innovation and how that will better serve our customers and their production needs. It gives me quite a bit of confidence in our message because we aren’t just commercializing a product that we haven’t defined a fit for, everything that is coming to market is for a need.
Speak to the customer. The great thing about customers is they are always willing to speak their mind.
M7: What are the different industries for which SLM Solutions provides machines, materials, and services?
ED: SLM Solutions focuses on four key pillars on which our product portfolio is designed, they include: productivity, open architecture, reliability, and safety. As a holistic approach, these key considerations in the purchasing process enable us to support aerospace and defense, automotive, energy, healthcare, tooling, and academia and research.
M7: What strategies help you to research about regional and local market trends in particular demographics?
ED: Speak to the customer. The great thing about customers is they are always willing to speak their mind. I think the most genuine yet successful reaction, is to first, listen, and second, to act. Good or bad, if you don’t do anything with the information you have been provided, you aren’t helping any organization progress in its success.
Appreciate the foundation in which you have been taught, but always be willing to pivot.
M7: How do you see the role of Director of Marketing changing, and what advice do you have for new marketing enthusiasts?
ED: Appreciate the foundation in which you have been taught, but always be willing to pivot. The principal marketing tactics in which we’ve all learned, did not perform for this year’s test. Traditionally, I would say the Director is someone that has gotten to where they are based on, his or her individual performance. I would say today, my success has been because of team accomplishments. Surround yourself with people who are better than you in a particular skill set. I hire where my weaknesses are and I think that’s what makes our team so powerful.
M7: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your work - what day to day processes have you had to re-tool to be able to pull them off remotely?
ED: The most difficult challenge was navigating a virtual environment as a substitute for in-person trade shows. In a CapEx business, you rely heavily on trade shows as mainstream for lead gen. However, when faced with a challenge, we pivot. We elevated our presence digitally, re-did our website to encourage a better user interface mapping to a suggested customer journey, and launched a new product digitally. Also, it’s important for our team to feel connected so we made it a rule that when we have meetings, we are enabling video to simulate what an in-person collaborative environment would feel like.
Don’t be afraid to go outside of your industry to learn best practices, there might be something that surprises you or inspires you to try in your line of work.
M7: Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
ED: Do your best. If you did your best, that’s all you could give. When I was younger and still today, I need to remind myself that if a scope of a project looks incredibly daunting, just take it one step at a time, because you know you’re going to accomplish everything and you just need to start it. Don’t be afraid to go outside of your industry to learn best practices, there might be something that surprises you or inspires you to try in your line of work. There’s activity and achievement, make sure what you are doing is helping the betterment of the organization.
ABOUT SLM SOLUTIONS
As the pioneer of the Selective Laser Melting process, our company focuses on the development and distribution of the most innovative, production-oriented metal additive manufacturing systems. Our focus is to be a leader in product performance and innovation and for you, as our customer, to benefit from that approach.
As part of our commitment, the SLM® team utilizes our engineering facilities around the world to foster collaboration on metal AM projects and help scale our users to series production. SLM Solutions provides consultation, installation, maintenance, training, and other learning opportunities for customers to harness the capabilities and exercise best practices with selective laser melting.