Whitney Blackburn serves as the Director of Marketing for Optus Inc, a telecommunication and IT partnership firm. Dedicated to executing top-tier marketing strategies with her team, she excels in successfully implementing Optus brand awareness to drive strategy and sales. Whitney’s impressive leadership acts as a directive beacon to her content development team, the sales team, and all Optus employees who have had the delight of working with her.
What is your role, and what are your day-to-day responsibilities?
I serve as director of marketing. In the broadest sense, I am part analyst, part strategist, and part copywriter. I work on the commercial team with a talented group of leaders, business development professionals, and marketers to evolve the company and achieve our strategic goals. My day-to-day responsibilities vary but generally include a strong focus on digital marketing, brand positioning, campaign development, and lead nurturing activities. I am also involved in product marketing and management—assessing our GTM strategy and aligning partner resources to achieve strong customer outcomes.
What’s the most challenging part of the role?
The challenges we face at Optus are the same ones that most companies are up against right now—rapidly evolving shifts in technology, a tumultuous market, recruitment and retainment, and continuing to align our services to reflect a diverse set of customer needs. In marketing, these scenarios are always at the forefront of our minds. We’re fuel for the engine, so we’re continuously staying informed—looking for subtle shifts in our audiences that may indicate a change in market demand. As a technology advisory and IT service delivery partner, our top priority is simplifying what can often be a really technologically complicated process.
What’s the most rewarding part of the role?
That’s easy! We all know marketers love an opportunity to brag. I find the greatest reward in being able to say we helped to bring on a new customer. Whether it’s lead generation, account-based marketing, organic nurturing activities, content development, or simply supporting our internal teams, it’s always a big win when we can point to a new customer and say, “we helped make this happen.”
Working with the marketing team here at Optus is also hugely rewarding. This group oozes talent. I love watching them grow, and it’s really gratifying to play a small role in the team’s continued success.
What is CCaaS, and why is it beneficial for businesses?
Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is a cloud-based customer experience solution that allows companies to optimize their work environment. With CCaaS technology, companies can offer a truly integrated customer experience while reducing expenses, infrastructure, and downtime. CCaaS solutions also provide scalability and flexibility—giving companies the ability to only pay for what they need when they need it.
With a robust feature set, CCaaS solutions provide a wide range of communication capabilities, including automatic call distribution (ACD), the ability to have technology mimic human cognitive skills (AI), computer telephony integration (CTI), gamification, interactive voice response (IVR), workforce optimization (WFO) real-time reporting, and much more.
What is a cloud consultant or a cloud advisor?
You know how we all prefer to work with a financial advisor to secure wealth and stability for the future? It’s just like that, except our currency is cloud technology.
The cloud environment is rapidly evolving, and it can often be challenging to evaluate and adopt the latest technologies—especially in the midst of managing day-to-day responsibilities, juggling multiple strategic initiatives, and generally trying to stay ahead of your competition.
Optus’ technology advisory team works with CIOs, CTOs, and other IT, CX, marketing, or operations leaders to capture value, improve business operations, and elevate the customer experience. If you’re interested in accelerating your cloud journey, managing existing IT spend, or simply exploring your options, a cloud advisor can provide a clear evaluation and roadmap for adopting cloud capabilities that align with business outcomes—including cost savings, agility, scalability, innovation, and digital transformation.
Our technology advisory team provides an end-to-end, customer-first approach to technology—taking you from planning to migration, implementation, and managed services in a way that just feels easy. With expertise across cybersecurity, unified communications, and contact centers, our team works diligently to ensure you receive a customized and fully-integrated communications solution. As a partner to many well-known cloud providers, we work on your behalf to ensure you get the most out of your cloud environment.
What’s the benefit of working with a third-party IT partner?
Enterprise communications technology is ever-evolving; it can be a lot to keep up with, especially for smaller, internal IT departments. The cool thing about adopting an IT partnership is that customers can get back to what matters most—growing their businesses—without worrying about outdated technology, security breaches, downtime, or day-to-day network management. Working with a company like Optus allows an organization to adopt new, existing, or hybrid communications solutions without increasing overhead. Too often, IT departments are stretched thin with the daily management of the existing workload. With a technology partner, companies can maintain existing infrastructure while creating a blueprint for cutting costs and evolving their business communications and network capabilities to fit today’s workplace and customer experience demands.
Additionally, working with a technology partner means a company can tap into specialized expertise on an as-needed basis and adopt only what makes sense for their business. Because third-party providers like Optus are vendor-agnostic, they can provide a holistic evaluation of your current technology and IT spend, and recommend solutions tailored to your specific requirements. There’s no upselling or overselling, and customers always get a customized IT solution that’s scalable, flexible, secure, and built just for them.