The Strategic Marketing Skills: How to Build Technology-Driven Expertise that Delivers Business Value

"Drawing on an extraordinary career with some of America's biggest retail brands, Ana Mourão introduces eight practical Es, but guides the reader on a much more personal journey. She shows marketing leaders how to evolve, align stakeholders, influence peers, and treat organizational change as the transformation it really is. With concrete advice, excellent interviews, and genuinely useful pro tips throughout, this is a book that doesn't merely tell marketers what to do. It helps them become the leaders capable of doing it." ― Rasmus Houlind, Chief Experience Officer, Agillic

"Experimentation sits at the heart of modern Martech, and few people understand that better than Ana Mourão. Ana combines an economist's understanding of how value is created with deep practitioner experience. She has a rare ability to turn complex technology into practical, commercially relevant ideas. The Experimental Marketer framework gives Martech leaders a clear way to test, learn and make better decisions - cutting through the technology hype cycle to create real value and also build better careers in the space." ― Keanu Taylor, Global Head of Research, The Martech Weekly

"Every marketer will get handed a new technology decision this year. The ones who can frame it in business terms will run the function in five years. This book is how you become that marketer." ― Danilo Tauro, CEO, CartographAI and Senior Advisor, McKinsey & Co.

"Mourão nails what most miss: the costly problems live in the gaps between marketing, data, and IT, not inside any one team. Her Experimental Marketer Framework builds the eight capabilities that close them. These skills compound instead of expiring, growing more valuable as the tech accelerates." ― Gene De Libero, CMO Advisor for Martech and AI Strategy, Marketing Professor at NYU

"Ana Mourão delivers a practical, no-nonsense guide to building scalable, results-driven marketing technology architecture, making complex concepts genuinely usable. Whether you're new to martech or a seasoned professional, this easy read breaks down a notoriously complex topic, equipping you with the clarity and tools to optimize your marketing technology stack with confidence." ― Danielle Balestra, Fractional Marketing Technology Executive

"The channels change. The tools change. Now AI is changing everything. What lasts is your ability to turn marketing expertise into business value the organization can measure. In Strategic Marketing Skills, Ana Mourão maps the durable skills that move marketers from tactical execution to strategic influence: identifying growth opportunities, earning cross-team buy-in, building measurement systems that prove ROI, and translating marketing's contribution into organizational currency. She shows how to stay agile through constant change, and how to build a marketing career that grows stronger in the age of AI." ― Carson McKee, Marketing Professor and Media Theorist

"Strategic Marketing Skills offers a rare insider's view of what it truly takes to build and sustain successful marketing technology programs across complex global enterprises. Ana Mourão transforms the frameworks, practical know-how, and hard-earned wisdom she developed out of necessity into an invaluable guide for today's marketers. The result is a book that helps readers stop reacting to complexity and become more proactive, strategic, and commercially valuable leaders in the highly matrixed world of enterprise Martech." ― Juan Mendoza, CEO, The Martech Weekly & Martech World Forum

"Ana's book is a guided journey designed to turn "tactical executors" into "systems architects" and graduate from vanity metrics to speaking the language of causal impact and business outcomes. I'd recommend this to any serious marketing operator or leader who wants a better seat at the executive table. If anything though, it is a necessary meditative adventure for the AI era that replaces "hope" with "proof"." ― Phil Gamache, Founder, Humans of Martech Podcast

"Ana Mourão has transformed hard-earned practitioner insight into a roadmap others can put to work. The 8 Es give marketers a clear progression from managing the stack to influencing its direction, along with the judgment to keep that influence as technology continues to change." ― John Hardy, SVP of Marketing Technology, Association of National Advertisers (ANA)

"I underlined entire pages, not because the ideas were new, but because I finally had language for things I'd learned the hard way. Grounded in real frameworks - incrementality testing, systems thinking, ethical AI governance - and populated with the voices shaping marketing's future, this is a book for marketers ready to stop defending their work with vanity metrics and start building something that survives contact with a skeptical executive team." ― Kathleen Booth, VP Marketing, Sequel.io