Speaker interview with Natalya Ratner

Can you tell us a little about what your day to day looks like as Marketing Director at Robotical?

I know it's cliché but no two days are the same. We start every day with a company-wide standup where we discuss potential blockers and projects' progress. Then it's likely I'll have a catch up with some members of the commercial team to see where we are with our various marketing projects and some of the bigger sales deals in the pipeline. It's my job to support the team and remove barriers so they can do the best job they can. 

Late morning is a great time for strategy, planning and bigger picture thinking (for me!). I try to schedule brainstorms and strategic sessions at this time - unless it requires input from our Head of North America, who is 6 hours behind in Austin, Texas. As we're a startup, everyone has to get their hands dirty so I'll often be found drafting a case study, optimising email nurture flows or booking logistics for one of our many trade shows. Late afternoons are reserved for calls with our various partners in North America. 

I'd say my job is split evenly between building brand awareness for Robotical, doing lead and demand generation, and product marketing to educate existing and future customers of the many benefits of physical computing, coding and robotics. 

You’re arguing for the motion ‘AI is the best marketing tool ever’ during the Amplify Debate. Can you share some innovative ways Robotical is using technology to engage with their customers?

As with most companies, we could definitely be doing more to use AI to automate and speed up repetitive and manual tasks, so we can free our time for strategic and creative thinking. 

At the moment, we use ChatGPT in marketing for research mainly. It's our first port of call when looking at our audience's perception of our competitors and analysing their marketing activities. We use HubSpot's AI Content Assistant to help generate emails that are optimised for high open and click rates. What I'd love for us to do more of is use AI to repurpose content (for example, taking long-form pieces of content like a webinar and repackaging for blog/email/social) and some of the more manual SEO jobs like sifting through keyword research to find ideas for new content. 

In your own experience, how has AI changed the marketing landscape?

I know there's been a lot of skepticism and fear about AI taking marketers' jobs, but it doesn't take long to realise there's no replacement for humans when it comes to creativity and nuance. AI does an amazing job in curing 'writer's block' and giving us a starting point when we're faced with a blank page. It does an amazing job speeding up manual tasks that would otherwise take hours. It can even create convincing, accurate videos out of thin air. What it can't do, is take the pulse of a nation or a sector at any given time and pivot marketing initiatives to ensure a brand or a product remains relevant. 

Our central theme of Amplify this year is ‘marketing for good’. What does this mean to you?

Marketing can be a real force for good and bring on positive change. I've spent 6 years at Scottish Government helping colleagues reduce alcohol consumption and smoking, road accidents and racism via digital channels. It was hugely rewarding. 

I now promote educational products that show kids that STEM is not ‘just for boys’ or ‘just for the clever kids’; technology can be fun, creative and anyone can get into it. I’m very lucky to be doing the marketing for such a fun brand with a real purpose at its core. Makes my job very easy! 

Can you tell us about any purpose-driven initiatives Robotical is involved in?

With pleasure. Our mission of making STEM accessible to kids is at the core of everything we do so it’s important we go out to the community often via outreach programmes around Scotland, such as SmartSTEMs, DressCode, CodeBase girls coding clubs and others.

We’re also acutely aware that we create premium products (with a premium price tag) that not all schools can afford. Because of that we have various grant programmes by which we gift robots to schools and initiatives around the world in Malawi, Rwanda, Peru, Dominican Republic, USA and UK to date. 

From a sustainability stance, we’re working hard to ensure Robotical is carbon positive by the end of 2025 through improving our production and logistics processes, investing in gold standard environmental programmes for carbon offsetting, promoting greener commutes and business travel and applying the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. 

On a personal level, where do you draw inspiration from?

Great question. We're so lucky in Scotland, and as part of the Marketing Society community specifically, to be surrounded by inspirational female leaders. There's too many to name but events like the recent WACL Talent Sessions really highlighted just how generous these industry leaders are with their time, advice and access to their networks. 

I'm also an avid podcast listener, I'll plug in any chance I get - the gym, Asda, the school run. Right now firm favourites are The Ezra Klein Show (current affairs), The Lazarus Heist (North Korean hackers) and Sentimental Garbage (all the popular shows, films, books you are made to feel guilty about loving!). 

Natalya will be joining us at Amplify 2024 to take part in the Amplify Debate, where the notion is 'AI is the best marketing tool ever'. Tickets available here.

Published 15 July 2024