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Experience matters, especially in marketing. When change is the only constant, it takes a special set of skills to remain calm and spot the next big opportunity amid all the noise.
Take it from Omer Shai, who’s been CMO at Wix for the last 16 years. During his tenure, he’s seen a lot of things: Super Bowl ads leading to life-changing brand deals. AI flipping the table on everything we’ve ever known. And customers doing what they do best: being unpredictable.
In an episode of Marketing Against the Grain hosted by HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar, Omer talks through the lessons he’s learned over the years. Below are several nuggets of wisdom he shares, including his leadership advice and several marketing strategies that have kept Wix at the forefront.
01. Take the risk
Never fear failure. That’s been Omer’s mantra from day one. “I prefer to fail. I prefer to learn from my failure…A lot of the time I don't remember my success because I get bored by that.”
Great marketing thrives on experimentation, so if failure isn’t part of your process, you’re likely not taking enough creative risk. But as the saying goes, it’s best to fail fast.
As someone who lives in data, Omer notes that after he’s had a chance to mull over the results and spot the trends within them, “I like to go as fast as I can, or stop things as fast as I can.”
02. Play the long game
Marketing is about sustained effort, not instant results. Omer gives the example of an NFL team (“I’m a huge sports fan”): You’ve got an 18-week regular season period where you train, review game film and study your opponents ad nauseam. After those 18 weeks, you reach the championship games, which you either win or lose.
No matter how you end that season, you’re back at it again the following year. You’re competing for the same trophies against the same competitors—all without losing steam. Marketing is similar; you must push through the ups and downs of each season.
“If you would like to win, don't think about winning,” summarizes Omer. “Think about how you can be better in the position of the game.”
03. Define your own metric for success
In the early days of Wix, ROI was a nebulous concept. However, as the company got scrappy and experimented with many underpriced sources of traffic, a new thought began to take shape.
“When everyone back then [obsessed over] customer lifetime value, we introduced something else,” recalls Omer. “We called it ‘TROI.’”
Short for “time to return on investment,” TROI allowed the early team to predict how long it would take the average user to upgrade from a free account to a paid plan. This, in turn, shed light on when the company would start making their money back.
“It helped us to be much more aggressive in the way that we are managing our budgets,” says Omer, recalling how the team immediately 5x-ed their budget.
To this day, “we don’t call it ‘marketing spend.’ We call it ‘marketing investment,’” he notes.
As you think about your own business, it’s important to define what success means in your own terms. Whether you’re looking to build brand recognition or improve customer loyalty, define a primary metric that allows you to make shrewd decisions, plus take calculated risks.
Learn more about marketing ROI and how to maximize its impact.
04. Surround yourself with people who will give you (brutally honest) feedback
“I believe that one of our strengths [as a team] is that we are very good listeners, and being listeners [requires you] to be humble and to understand what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you need to improve and whatever,” says Omer.
He adds that there’s no substitute for a great colleague or confidante—someone with whom you can bounce ideas off without filtering yourself because you know they’re already on your side (and vice versa).
“Only in a good relationship do you know how to fight. I believe that when we are fighting, we are getting better and we are challenging each other…but a minute after, [we should be able to] drink beer or wine or talk about sports. This is the strength of relationships.”
05. Don’t run away from AI in your marketing—embrace it
When asked about AI, Omer has a clear philosophy: “I think that the way that currently we're running marketing and the way that we will run in two years is totally different.” While AI has already impacted almost every function of his marketing team, Omer admits, “We are not aware of everything.”
“It goes back to not being afraid; think about how difficult it used to be to create video. How difficult it was for celebrities [to seize multiple opportunities and be everywhere at once].” Everything from celebrity sponsorships to online search behaviors will change, he predicts.
“[The most important thing is to] be on alert all the time because the biggest change is ahead of us yet.”
Take Wix’s AI website builder for a spin or explore all of Wix’s AI tools.
06. Prepare for a fragmented future
Already, we see the likes of ChatGPT and Reddit challenging Google’s position as the uncontested king of search. People are consuming content from all corners of the internet, and Google itself is undergoing some major changes, thanks to AI.
About this, Omer predicts that “early adopters will move to other solutions [outside of Google, if they haven’t already]...you need to be in so many areas, and it’s not enough to be in one place.” Though SEO will still serve as an essential “free” channel, we’re confronted with a much more fragmented market.
Omer advises to experiment with new channels without falling victim to ‘shiny object’ syndrome. “It's funny for me because people will say, ‘Okay, we thought [this was] going to be a game changer,’ but eventually only [a small] percent of the market are using it.”
Stay alert for new opportunities, but avoid relying too heavily on—or getting too caught up in—just one marketing channel.
Explore new marketing trends worth keeping your eye on.
07. Invest in knowledge-sharing
We live in an age of transparency. The most successful brands aren’t the ones hoarding knowledge. Rather, they’re the ones putting it out there for others to learn from and inviting conversation.
“[In the past, the attitude used to be like] ‘it's my secret, I don't want others to copy,’” reflects Omer. “Today, we know that it's much more difficult to copy what we’re doing…[and we’re all incentivized to] keep the content real and honest.”
He suggests putting more energy into thought leadership, especially on channels like LinkedIn. Just like any real-life relationship, a relationship with your customers begins with open conversations. Engage with your audience as equals and show them the heart of your brand.
Explore more LinkedIn marketing ideas and learn how to market on LinkedIn.
08. Find the Super Bowl of marketing opportunities
“I believe in the Super Bowl,” says Omer, who has been involved in five Super Bowl campaigns while at Wix. “The reason for that is because the day after the Super Bowl, everyone is talking about the commercials…[it’s like how] the day after the Oscars, people are talking about the dresses and tuxedos.”
While there are far cheaper ways to drive traffic, the Super Bowl offers one stage to educate the masses on what Wix has to offer—something that decentralized ads can’t do. (For Wix, this strategy even led to a game-changing partnership with DreamWorks.)
Related reading: How to drive traffic to your website
The takeaway: find your own Super Bowl-like channels to prop up your brand. Invest in safe, reliable channels, but don’t shy away from the big stages that allow you to control the narrative around your brand.
09. Check your ego at the door
One main tip for success, according to Omer? Be flexible.
“When you create the mandate, challenge the metrics all the time,” he says. “Don't be afraid to say something different today, even though two days ago, you advocated for something else.”
In the same vein, “don’t listen to anyone who says [you’re] the number one at something.” Retain an underdog mentality and always look for ways to improve. The ‘losing’ mentality is one where your ego gets the best of you and gets in the way of making sober, well-rounded decisions.
Read more tips about small business marketing.