Interview with Rohan Patel, Senior Marketing Manager | Huawei, UAE

Seamless Xtra’s Paula Hallentuch interviews Rohan Patel, Senior Marketing Manager, Huawei, UAE.

 

Marketing in the digital age: insights on personalisation, AI and authentic user experiences from Rohan Patel, Senior Regional Manager at Huawei Consumer Business Group 

 Rohan is a seasoned digital marketing strategist and certified Digital Marketer from the Indian Institute of Management, with over 15 years of experience in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and China. Currently, he leads multi-market digital initiatives, leveraging his expertise in performance marketing, brand building and strategic consulting. He has shaped digital strategies for global brands like Amazon, HSBC and Huawei, as well as regional leaders such as Souq and Landmark Group.

 

1. What recent digital marketing trends have you observed that are significantly impacting your industry, and how are you adapting to them?

I am observing two major trends that are quite significant to our industry right now. First is performance marketing taking priority, and second is how user generated content (UGC) is transforming Social and Affiliate marketing.

 

Let’s talk about performance marketing first. 2020 was a landmark year for digital, online traffic reached unprecedented heights, and many companies achieved record-breaking online sales. The situation has evolved. More brands are coming online, while customers are choosing both online and offline shopping options. This creates an interesting opportunity!

It is very clear that increased competition, combined with shifting online spending patterns, creates new challenges for marketing teams. Most marketers are now laser focused on performance campaigns and adjusting brand spends to maintain positive ROAS. However, I believe there’s a better approach.

Maintaining brand spends is essential for growth. It is a strong foundation to establish and maintain a solid brand image and recall – you need this to support everything else. In a competitive market, brands must stay relevant and visible. It makes more sense to focus on building your user base. When you increase your audience, you increase your chances of converting them into customers. It’s like planting a garden – as you nurture your active users day by day, everything else flourishes too.

 

Regarding user generated content (UGC), everyone is talking about UGC in social media marketing. Many brands work with agencies to create UGC or start affiliate programs with rewards. While this works as paid promotion, I believe there is a better way to achieve genuine engagement.

The real magic happens with your creative team. The creative team’s potential is so much more, beyond designing and following brand guidelines. They should be your powerhouse of ideas, creating marketing concepts that truly connect with people.

Some great examples are IKEA’s Pregnancy Test campaign or KFC’s collaboration with PUBG. These were experiences people wanted to talk about. “Create an experience so good that users will naturally want to share it.” When people have a wonderful time, they can’t help but tell others about it.

 

2. Personalization continues to be a major focus in digital marketing. Can you share how your team is implementing personalized marketing strategies to enhance customer engagement?

Personalization is very interesting! while every brand wants to do it, the key lies in proper implementation and optimization. The best results come from a well-executed personalization strategy.

Let me explain it simply – personalization means showing people what they want to see and telling them what they want to hear. Sounds straightforward, right? However, it is not as straight forward as the explanation.

Here is a simplified three step process. Data aggregation is the first step, using what is called a CDP (Customer Data Platform) will help you unify all the relevant user data. The next step here is to create segmentations of the users based on your preferred attributes like behavior, preferences, interests, platform where the user interacted and more. The third step is where the personalization magic happens, when you implement the audience segmentations to your marketing, website, app, recommendations, and throughout the user’s journey.

Let me give you a simple example. Say you’re running a fashion website, and someone regularly buys medium-size shirts. This simple information reveals so much about their journey – from how they browse to what they buy. It’s like having an attentive shopping assistant who remembers your preferences and shows you exactly what you’ll like.

 

3. Are there any emerging digital platforms or technologies that you believe will become critical for marketing in the near future? Why?

This is such a huge topic in itself! Technology is evolving so fast that we’re seeing new tools and platforms almost every day.

What’s attractive is how technology evolves. It’s like connecting dots through time. First, we saw Digital Transformation, then Big Data came along, followed by Machine Learning, and now we’re at Artificial Intelligence. Interesting outline, right?

Many of us might feel AI is the end goal of these developments. But you know what? While the past two decades of technological advancement did lead us to AI, I believe we’re still at the beginning of something even bigger.

Let me explain this from a marketeer’s perspective. We already use CDP for personalized marketing strategies. Now imagine taking this up a notch with hyper personalization. Currently, brands can customize user journeys, but when we combine this with machine learning and generative AI, we can create content that matches exactly what users want to see in real time.

Let me give you an example. Let’s consider the customer buys a medium-size shirt again. With future technology, when we retarget this user, we won’t just show them medium-size shirts – we’ll show them fashion modelled by people with similar body types. It’s like displaying the user their imagination, showing them how the piece of fashion would look on them!

There is more! Let’s talk about search technology. More and more people are starting to use AI for searches instead of traditional search engines. AI has already mastered voice interaction. As this trend grows, voice search optimization could become bigger than traditional SEO. Think about it – just your accent and dialect could create enough data points to personalize content delivery completely.

The possibilities are truly endless. You know what makes us unique as humans? Our creativity, imagination, and ability to dream. Technology is simply the tool that helps us turn these dreams into reality.

The future of marketing technology is not just about automation or efficiency – it’s about creating experiences that feel completely personal and natural to each user.

 

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