2021 Marketing Trends & the Rise of No-Code: A Marketing Chat With Mathieu Maure ☕️

We recently got the chance to have a marketing-fueled chat with Mathieu Maure, former Head of Marketing Western Europe at Uber Eats. He’s sharing with us his thoughts on offline marketing, flyering and the upcoming marketing trends for 2021, among many other things.

Hi Mathieu, thank you for making the time to chat with us! Can you introduce yourself and explain a bit what you do?

My name is Mathieu Maure and I started my consulting agency to help start-ups grow their business and scale. I either act as a part-time CMO and/or COO for early-stage start-ups, or as an advisor on topics like growth, operations and strategy for companies at various stages.

Prior to that, I spent 3 years in strategy consulting and 6 years at Uber where I was initially in charge of operations for Uber in France. I then became Head of Marketing for Uber Eats in Western Europe.
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Where will your focus be in 2021 when it comes to marketing strategy? Any trends you’re closely looking into?

I see a few trends emerging, most of them directly linked to the massive increase in content creation and usage (or abuse?!) of growth marketing tactics and automation:

1. Qualitative content will be key to emerge.

There has never been this much free content created and available online. Standing out as a brand will be directly linked to the ability to craft amazing content which will in turn increase SEO, paid spend effectiveness, user retention and brand love.

Quite interestingly, and despite this massive availability of free content, people are now ready to pay for quality content – think paid newsletters, online training, access to certain communities.

2. Increase in online CPA/CPM and other tracking challenges (iOS 14, cookies…), etc.

This will challenge the way to spend your acquisition budget and marketing teams will need to be creative on allocation and testing new channels and messages.

3. No-Code tools

They will put creativity on steroids allowing for tech innovation to strive without developers. Think landing pages generation, process automation, mobile and web apps, etc. Speaking of, I have just launched Quel Outil No-Code (Which No Code Tool in French), where I share my favourite marketing No-code tools, insights and I offer bespoke coaching as well to those looking to kick start their No-Code project.

Interesting! And looking back to the last 12 months, was there a marketing tactic or channel that was unexpectedly successful or challenging?

1. An unexpected success: flyer distribution

One of the channels that surprised me the most at Uber Eats was flyering. In the world of digital paid, it seems crazy to invest in offline and what we quite frankly look at as old school acquisition.

We noticed we were able to target a different user segment than with online ads. Despite significant promotions, for tracking purposes, we observed higher than average user retention.

2. An unexpected challenge: marketing channel attribution

One of the things I struggled with the most in 2020 was digital channel attribution. Especially on Social, with Facebook and Instagram for us. As your brand and organic business grows, it becomes really complex to measure your true cost per incremental new user which is frustrating for a data-driven CMO.

There were major discrepancies between the CAC we got from channels (including A/B tests) and the CAC we observed when we cut budgets, meaning we had a strong “cannibalization” over our organic acquisition (and we had higher CAC than we expected).

Stepping away from the digital channels then, here is a question about offline marketing: in favour or against in a marketing mix?

At Uber Eats, we always included offline marketing within our marketing mix, given the significant amount we invested. It was also a way to avoid over-investing and saturating any other channel. However, it also made sense earlier as a more tactical acquisition channel.

You touched upon flyering earlier: where do you think flyer can drive the most impact?

I think flyer distribution can be powerful in 2 ways:

1. As part of a large brand campaign, focused on bottom of the funnel activation.

2. As a stand-alone acquisition channel, since we were able to achieve good ROI. Our CAC was higher than digital ads but overall the ROI was better thanks to higher retention.

Before we let you go, care to share with us your favourite sources of marketing inspo?

I’m into French podcasts at the moment: mostly Marketing Mania, Growth Makers and Contournement, which is dedicated to No-Code.

Many thanks for the recommendations and this insightful chat Mathieu (here is his Linkedin if you want to get in touch), definitely giving us some food for thought for the months to come!

Whose brain should we pick next? Let us know in the comments on Linkedin or ping us on Twitter @OppiziHQ.