Marketing Science Podcast (AZoNetwork)

Paul McCabe is the CEO of the McCabe Group, specializing in strategic marketing and program execution that goes well beyond traditional channels. We caught up with him to discuss current technical business to business marketing matters in 2020.

What is your greatest marketing challenge?

Figuring out how to realign past marketing strategies, even those as current as 2019, to effectively work within this current environment.

Also, getting clients to dedicate resources for collateral materials, interviews, website and other digital media content. For example, with digital media many clients believe that SEO is simply putting up "stuff" and changing words, heading and phrases every now and then.

True SEO requires strategic thinking on content and how best to present this content in an easily searchable format (i.e. indexed videos, images, curation articles etc..). Understanding how content is viewed and measured to gain higher exposure and digital marketing rankings is key to a successful digital program.

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Randy Byrne is the CEO of Transformational Scientific Marketing, a highly focused, B2B marketing consultancy specialising in scientific products and services. Below is the adapted transcript from the Marketing Science Podcast recording.

Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast. The podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science, engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever you normally listen to a podcast. My name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at AZoNetwork, where you can also subscribe.

I'm joined by my guest this week who is a sales and marketing leader and an expert in a subject matter today having worked in analytical instrumentation and selling scientific equipment for over twenty-five years. He's currently the CEO of transformational scientific marketing, it’s Mr Randy Byrne.

FRANKY: Randy how are you doing today?

RANDY: I’m well Franky how are you?

FRANKY: I'm excellent thanks Randy - I'm currently held up in a makeshift recording studio in my basement, so I can't complain. How is the mood currently in the US? Is it business as usual, or are we still getting over the shock of social isolation?

RANDY: I think many people are still frankly, in the state of shock given the current circumstances. But I've always said we know when we're getting past some of the difficult times we start seeing more encouraging and uplifting stories and we're starting to see that now. I think people are you know they batten down the hatches and making the most of the circumstances that we're currently under show well and everybody believes are certainly much better days ahead hopefully sooner rather than later

FRANKY: Great to stay optimistic and keep a positive mindset. Now, you've been around sales and marketing for a long time and have years’ of experience, so how would you compare this current pandemic to any previous crises that you have worked through.

RANDY: Well unlike anything that I've seen, and I've been around a long time right when I joined the workforce although I didn't really realize it at the time was a it was last century and was in the middle of a rip recession, a rather bad one, I didn't really understand it - for me it was normal when I joined the work force.

But we got through that and then there was a boom time and then we have been through a couple of other ones change then of course the unanimous even there the difficult times of two thousand eight. I think 2008-2009 telling was very difficult for the scientific industry; this is much more different because it just came on much more sudden.

I think people were much more prepared a number the company I was in the timing two thousand eight was budgeting under the assumption that there would be hard times and nine and two thousand eight two thousand nine that was correct so this should be much more shocking dramatic and impactful and we're still frankly in the in the middle of it

So it remains to be seen how we will get through it, but it's been quite disruptive in many ways, everybody having to work from home to business and closing down which didn't happen in the last major recession so this one has been much more dramatic with workers being affected pressure boil dropping stock markets plummeting and then of course the desire to stay healthy so that this one has been circling the worst I've experienced

FRANKY: So I certainly think there's been a shock of people not knowing necessarily what to do but you are brought in to help companies so what advice would you give right now it's a company faced with the challenges that lie ahead

RANDY: It may take a while before industries and companies recover but there will be great days ahead and some companies take the tractor cutting the marketing as a first approach.

For me it's a matter of planning for the future having a little bit more about a long term horizon and the same is true on them the marketing side to continue planning for when we come out of this so that they're in more top of mind in in potential customers mind and they found a way to well no benefit the most early on coming out of the year the tough times

FRANKY: Yes, indeed the knee jerk reaction we see many companies make is an awful mistake - but we've also seen the flip side of that where companies are taking advantage of the downtime looking for opportunities within virtual events, webinars, podcasts and other online digital content. We've even seen our neighbours just down the road today in Manchester at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre, the GEIC.

They have academics working from home but now they're actually able to say right well let's create some content and let us run a series of webinars and run a program that people from all over the world can take advantage of and learn about this wonderful material. So, this is something that would have been a nice to do just two or three months ago, but now people are being forced to put more eggs in this online digital basket.

Now Randy, you mentioned before that you consume a lot of content online with us webinars virtual events, podcasts etc. but where do you see the future or the importance of online content especially during such testing times?

RANDY: Back when the last recession happened the company was with at the time had a number of well we have we had a marketing budget cuts as well and some of the activities were kept they do weren't going to be done with the one thing we were left with.

We were fortunate enough to really have a weapon our program in place we can a doubled and tripled down on webinars and it we just did something like I think was about ninety one of ninety webinars in the English language let alone non English language ones that where eight and it had a very important unintended benefit.

We were into them at the time with the scientific staff and the scientific staff had more time on their hands to jump into them became a little bit of a friendly competition. So they started volunteering more. I'm subjective to it but the so that was great on the one hand but on the other hand our company the appearance of being much more active in the market place because we were promoting these primarily by email marketing as you mentioned they were directed towards a country they were in the English language, they were essentially global and we came out of that year after doing it was almost a crushing workload from a weapon are standpoint what will all of this information was good valuable scientific information it was all recorded for use for years to come party time ledge and but again the unintended consequence was we came through it with many companies you know potential customers looking at us as an instrument wishing well, these guys are even more active during an incredibly tough time, the truth was we have our own pain but we did get through it. So, it’s the next area where it's just becoming so convenient to take in new information that I see it exploding in in popularity in many different industries.

FRANKY: Yes, for me it’s the same on the train every day just like yourself in the car on the daily commute it's so easy to access content on your chosen topic without sports or finance so news entertainment or marketing even. With services like Spotify and aCast on iTunes, it's never been easier to download and listen to your favorite shows on the go. As a podcast producer right now we are seeing the flip side of that and how easy it is for people to create audio content for podcasts.

I think it’s something like a million podcasts out there now so it's never been easier to get your content out in audio format.

So the next question is about resistance to change; now bearing in mind that people don't usually change unless they're forced to - a case in point working from home and collaborating online following covid nineteen but how resistant to change our sales and marketing leaders within Science companies.

RANDY: Long-tenured leaders in Science companies especially smaller companies tend to have come from either the scientific or engineering or product development upbringing - just in these types of companies which often based on product innovation but these days it's much harder of a you know there's a lot more competition the same products are more often in the minds of customers they're separated by inches not miles anymore.

I've run into a number of people that have MBAs but the troubling thing with an MBA from twenty thirty years ago is it hardly prepares one for the market in marketing realities of today.

Sure it's certainly not a question of intelligence in our industry it's more a matter of relevance. I've heard people say frankly that marketing is change more in the last five years under previous fifty and I would say I think it's perhaps even more than that and it's even accelerating.

You know for many hard-working people in this industry, they often focus on their core strengths are always mentioning the product is in line in the next great product feature. Scientific Instruments and applications and to a large degree the modern marketing world has just progressed too fast for them to keep up with. So resistance to change for those reasons is certainly it holds back some companies in terms of the what's available to them in in terms of marketing.

FRANKY: Excellent so I've got a quote from your good self when we were both at the INBOUND 2016 Hubspot conference over in Boston Massachusetts a quote in which you said: The customer is in charge of the buying process.

A quote that has aged very well over the last four years you also mention that companies are now separated by inches which moves me on to my next question – In 2020 just how do companies differentiate themselves and how have scientific manufacturers evolved over time given such a competitive landscape

It’s moved through the customer satisfaction, customer support phase and then focus on applications but it is moving in the direction of customer experience and you know how is the customer using this equipment?

Plus one of the most important things that influence your skills in marketing is being able to communicate the problems are solved by using apparatus in the laboratory in the science field focusing on the customer needs as opposed to I mean when I grew up in this industry was all about features and benefits and talking about our product midway we show good and but these days Frank the if customers if companies are surviving product rule pretty good quality.

It's the companies that are orienting themselves to what the problems are that the customer is looking to solve and talking to those issues that they are getting. I hate mentioning to be well placed for the for the future, because clearly it's not just about the product it's much more about the customer and what is going to help the customers are working life in investing in these kinds of products

FRANKY: Absolutely so I couldn't agree more that the customer experience is paramount is absolutely everything which is going to change tack now. We’re gonna discuss sales and marketing so what when recruiting your new marketing department what skills do now recruit for in 2020.

RANDY: first before looking for candidates what are the company challenges and how they best solved. I use a pressure shifting through kind of a myriad of digital marketing channels and capabilities and then agree on one of their ideal skill sets is it we need more competence in terms of email marketing is it or is it content marketing research social media and I think you

If a company selling an established relatively mature technology that's a market leader in that space and if they have an external field sales team that model lends itself. You mentioned earlier HubSpot the inbound marketing approach is ideal for companies like that so I would look for somebody strong with everything surrounding the inbound marketing concept: search engine optimization, website optimization and lead generation is going to be important for them - so somebody with a background in those areas would be more preferable.

I've heard the phrase used by I didn't quite get but they refer to as a transient market and that is that the shape of the team consists of all the the digital marketing disciplines I was mentioning before kind of across the top of the T - but then it's the depth of knowledge she really kind of like what's been wrestled with in sales in this industry for years basically what are you looking for mission when companies say they want to recruit a digital marketing person.

It's understanding the balance between looking for a generalist, a Jack of all trades but a master of none versus do we want to specialise towards a narrower set of capabilities. I'm knowledgeable in those areas and I think that people are not terribly familiar with what's happening in digital marketing these days. I see too many companies make the mistake of just hiring somebody but not really understanding the need to match the skill set to the needs of the business.

FRANKY: Interesting what you mention about generalists v specialists, certainly how I see it working within an agency where we have a huge range of specialists – I draw on our in-house experience of our SEO Team, the Video team, Google Ads, Content Team etc. I sit in the middle as a central midfielder or a quarter back for you guys across the pond, just coordinating things and project managing.

OK so now moving on, applying that theme but in a sales context what do you look for when hiring a modern-day sales professional

RANDY: I read a quote recently from the CEO of Microsoft I think it put things in perspective he said in much more eloquent words than I could but it really hit home in terms of what I look for I think it's someone that has a recorded a growth mindset for versus fixed mindset and the simplest way to explain it would be people that are learn-it-alls versus know-it-alls meaning no matter what stage of your career these days the people that are intellectually curious are striving to learn and certainly in sales that's critical as well…

Because it's no longer just about the product. Those lifetime learners certainly if its good enough for the CEO of Microsoft, I think it's just as applicable in in our industry as well there's so much to learn to be super successful these days, so much about the customer there's no way somebody can not be in this industry and just walk into it and be great at it they have to work at it over a long period of time and continue working at it so that those would be what I would look for in a modern sales professional.

FRANKY: Excellent so interesting that you mention characteristics and we echo that when we hire for salespeople. We actively seek for coachability and empathy so they can just put themselves in people's shoes and understand their feelings and their emotions - also of course recruiting for learning and hunger and having that sort of fight of the dog inside of them.

So, moving on to our next question how important is outsourcing for the modern marketing department?

RANDY: Actually, critical in in a world changing this fast there's just no way that the typically resourced marketing department can stay up to date with taking care of the short term needs of the business as well as keeping up with all of the changes going on. We talk search engine optimization or marketing automation and social media it's just changing too fast for the small staff to be experts in all these different areas. The really successful marketers have very good networks to tap into to supplement their own resources which usually are never enough to take care of all the expectations that people have for them for the business so they need to work with companies that are strong and have depth of knowledge in many of these different areas is absolutely critical to a marketing team success

FRANKY: I couldn't agree more it's the skilled generalist versus specialist all over again except this time they're outsourcing to an external company or agency.

So moving swiftly on we're gonna talk shop - bit of a key question but I won't apologize for that because we are talking about marketing and specifically what is your favorite martech piece of software

RANDY: For me it's Webex, Brain Shark and Survey Monkey and these are three tech tools that I was lucky enough to be involved with in the early days to these organizations so they have the staying power and they've grown into people that get involved with the right technologies if they do stand the test of time in a long somebody's cloud technologies. They just keep getting better and better features and become much more powerful and so that's one way to work on this job involves being able in to intervene in marketing not necessarily from our own great ideas but just the start the good technology tools cheaper vomiting and suddenly you have capabilities that you didn't even know about when you invest in the technology.

In the time we're going through now with web conferencing there's a lot of suppliers out there Webex just happens to be one that I will use, but there's plenty of other choices out there for you you know whether it's even remote demos of equipment to companies that have the root of the field resources in place. That technology is just getting better and better and I think will become even more popular in a lasting way after current circumstances. Brain Shark is a sales enablement tool but it can be used for so much more than that it.

I can say Frank you have never been in an organization where anybody said yeah communication is great there but I I've been able to use brain shark as a tool to drastically help communication around the world. When the CEO wants to send out a message, a tool like brain shark can help do that but it can be used in many functions within the company.

And finally, Survey Monkey went from a free sample survey tools through which not necessarily free now there might still be a free version but the ability to find out what customers are thinking as opposed to guessing and it is incredibly important as we move more and more into a customer experience with the world show those are the three of my favorite tools.

FRANKY: Great stuff! so I'm gonna move on now to talk about alignment specifically between sales and marketing so allow me to paint a brief picture - Marketing puts on a webinar or a trade show or an eBook which generates lots and lots of downloads, engagement, marketing qualified leads and then passes them all over to sales. Sales then turns around and says yeah these leads are a load of crap. When in reality well I think we know that marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads are completely different. I think anyone passing more than 10-20% tops of the leads across and calling them sales qualified needs to re-examine the sort lead scoring strategy. But what does it mean to you the alignment between sales and marketing.

RANDY: For me as well the word alignment means an awful lot,I think it's marketing organizations moving away from and I think most have that I've seen in B2B the danger well it's all about you know kind of subjective aesthetics its market is being much better with being data driven but a lot of the KPI metrics have to be in line with driving the success of sales.

That's not their only responsibility but when marketing people can talk about the sales process and quality of leads and actually measure these things in an agreed way with sales and this is what I find missing in a lot of organizations: they haven't done the basic groundwork or planning for what sales and marketing really means.

It’s a shame we still have two groups blaming each other that - fortunately the companies I work with in recent years have just haven't been like that and are evolving as I said the consulting part of me more often than not in in the small to midsize companies will still operate in that way.

I'm a bit shocked frankly in this day and age that companies are still sending all their leads to field salespeople as qualified because the cost of sales in this business is quite high. I don't know who any generation social scientific companies that are still throwing everything on your responsibility often already overloaded field sales team.

It is a subject for another podcast about how to go about lead qualifying - it takes four telephone calls actually to reach somebody. What's really happening is that I actually listened some companies it can't be easily generate leads strange quantities but if there are no so called passive leads like into wells when you throw them to a field sales organization the reality is from full sales organizations are calling people once at most and not changing after the rest - You'll never get will never solve that by not having measurements in place and they're still work for me a surprising amount of companies that are still doing it what I would change is in a very out of date way.

FRANKY: We're always advising clients to put the necessary tracking software on the website so they can see where the initial touchpoint was from the initial referral campaign all the way through to marketing and sales qualified leads all the way as it becomes a more and more qualified opportunity eventually to becoming… the end game is a closed won piece of business, a revenue generating opportunity that all gets tracked within the CRM.

It is a thing of beauty when you get things set up - you're able to automate the small processes which enables you to scale and grow but you know equally as important in fact is to put the lead scoring in place. Just think if you pass 100% of your leads through to the sales team as opposed to maybe only the top ten or twenty percent of really qualified sales leads then you’re going to get a lot of friction between the two sales and marketing camps.

Okay so just before we wrap up last question - how is the role of the trade show evolved over the last five years how does that compare against virtual events the virtual webinars and things which are becoming more prominent. There's a lot of talk around how they're going to replace them but surely there's no substitute for meeting somebody and shaking their hand seeing the whites of their eyes and developing that relationship that you can only get in person.

RANDY: absolutely sure I think it's a good it's going to be a rebalancing and and you mentioned Wednesday night I I think in in some respects sales will be I'm home as affected or perhaps you were affected by exactly what you said that watching the sales process depending on what the sales process is will be conducted remotely and you know whether it's presentations or perhaps more companies will give a shot to trying product demos if their products lend themselves to that kind of thing.

I think we will see more of that to me it's it's clear that they will be more of a transition to digital types of activities but it's not going to go in off from zero percent to a hundred percent you know there's just gonna push more people in that direction but as you said you still need the people interaction is everybody should people buy from people and they're still important roles for sales and down so I to me we’re going to have to see how it all plays out.

FRANKY: Excellent, a great note on which to end the show. Randy thank you very much for your time, your expertise and your insights

RANDY: My pleasure Frank, a pleasure to speak with you as always - have a great day.

OUTRO: Thank you Randy for sharing your insights and a big thank you to you the listener for tuning in and don't forget to subscribe in iTunes Spotify or Deezer and AZoNetwork dot com, or where you usually listen to podcasts.

Join us next week where we will be joined by Alex Cairns the M.D. of Move Marketing and Dr Ian book who is the CEO of AZoNetwork. We'll see you then - thanks for listening.

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Business is simple. Good product, cash in the bank, steady cash flow, growing sales and profit margins.

Dr. Ian Birkby and Alex Cairns discuss the simplicity of running a business well.

Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast the podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever he usually listen to podcasts my name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at eight zero network where you can also subscribe and I'm joined by not just one but two guests this week with Dr Ian Birkby, the CEO of AZoNetwork and Alex cans MD of Move Marketing, a full service B2B. marketing agency.

Thanks Gents for joining us doing today, so without further ado I'd like to jump straight into the first question and draw your experience of being in the notable position of pre dating the digital era but also having the experience of working right through the digital era to the present day and seeing how do you see the change in marketing strategy for SMEs?

Well, despite the fact the indicating that my working career services in the era of horses and carts Frankie I will give you my the best position on that

IAN: I think the key thing in terms of how it's changed since ninety five when Netscape came out and the internet era started, is the ability to measure what you achieve with your marketing efforts. So in the digital age it is relatively easy to measure the impact of the various campaigns and from that to calculate the return on your marketing investment - now I’d counter that by saying we are possibly getting to the stage where some people like to measure too many things and starting to get lost a little bit in the numbers but for me it's the ability to quantify the performance of the campaigns.

Franky: Okay excellent, Alex so you've you're in a full service B2B. marketing agency having worked with both client and agency side for lots of multi nationals, so you’ve got a real mix of experience Ho have you seen the transition.

Alex: I’ll echo a lot what Ian says, data on 2 aspects - because we use a lot of data for market analysis; market research in the planning phase as well so not just the campaign data which is invaluable but also the research phase for the data in terms of putting together marketing plans that give you a one to three to five years focus.

The other big change since 2000 is that we now have channels so it's not just a service, supply through digital channels which we can actually pick and choose from a makes amounts according to requirement so there's a lot more to you and almost test as they say something.

Franky: Okay and having worked with lots of different clients for your agency what's the biggest challenge, what’s the most common or the greatest challenges that you see that your clients having from a marketing perspective.

Alex: I think it is the data interpretation and insight because it is a fantastic thing having all of the data of but it's not a given to know how to use it and spin into an achievable set of objectives and actions so that's when we get involved.

That depth of our experience and expertise in how to use and interpret that data across multiple channels but a lot of the science industrial sectors don’t specialise in understanding data and certainly statistics is obviously not the course specialisms

Excellent so Ian using data and statistics as marketing challenges would you echo that?

Absolutely I think you know from our perspective as a as a business we've invested heavily in building an analytics platform over the last six or seven years and prior to that we would say to our clients we've driven several thousand visitors to your site - they'd say great thanks very much but they couldn't attribute those visitors to specific actions in terms of products sales and market sector activity so yes if you can use that data to genuinely prove R. O. I. it's a massive plus point.

Franky: All the way from campaign original source campaign all the way to revenue generating opportunity yes

Ian: I mean as you well know we quite often gets into this discussion about you know was it the last touch that really made the difference and if you're on the sales side of life you probably gonna say it was your involvement that all was actually not firsts %HESITATION campaign that first email campaign that was marked his responsibility so yeah always an interesting debate that will Frankie's you well know.

Franky: Let's not get stuck into aligning sales and marketing just yet the whole point just in itself.

Fantastic all right so in which ways does B2C vary to B2B in specifically reaching scientists and engineers how have you found that is different.

Alex: Today certainly there are a lot more the applications the market for a lot more nature a lot more difficult to pinpoint

Its really trying to appeal to the types of individuals and job titles that you've got within its scientific and industrial sectors so everything to enhance the credibility or proof that products or a service works as without the case studies white papers and anything this credibility building on that side is usually a better way to go and they stop and it’s much more much more different approach and be to say where you can really just pick up on a sounder craze that's going on around them I'm going to campaign on the box about us a little bit less considered in a little bit less than actually less scientific.

Ian: I think maybe just to add to that one from getting the other factories with the with database quite often the price points are significantly bigger on the sales side please significantly longer. So to a certain extent if you're in the business of content marketing you need to be writing content that satisfies all stages of the buyers journey. Whereas in B2C you know if you've got a ten pound product you can put a note out on Instagram and you could probably sell it the same day where is but a lot of our customers the sales cycle can be six to nine months more involved.

Okay so on that what is the longest sales cycle, the longest time you have seen a sale from initial point to close.

If I go back to most manufacturing days when I was involved in the business of manufacturing ceramics we could be talking to a client for nine months before you get specifications correct, you have done some testing - for a lot of our clients if you are selling a million dollars with the kit you know a year's worth of discussion is not unusual.

Franky: We ran a survey where fifty one percent of the managers said they had a sales cycle between three to twelve months and there's very few who have got less than three months and considerably more than that have got more than twelve months - you find the same Alex?

Franky: It definitely makes everything from forecasting, business planning, cash flow makes lots of stuff much more difficult with long sales cycles.

What are the key questions that SME science or engineering company should be asking when it comes to strategic planning, Alex?

We typically take a five step approach in terms of how we walk a client through the planning process. So always starting with what they're actually trying to achieve in the first place that's most fundamental thing involved. Then taking a look at a market analysis researching what's actually going on in the market, understanding competitors, what their position statements are and the marketing techniques they use and how tat stacks up openly in the marketplace and figuring out value proposition a message sounds like an obvious one. You’d be surprised how many twenty thirty forty million pound plus turnover companies that I walked into the really have not got that value proposition or a couple key phrases. Then the fifth one is a little bit more involved obviously so it's really pulling a lot together through the available channels and budget and timescales and also setting smart objectives to sit alongside all of that.

I know you've done some great work helping us with our own strategic planning as well so thank you So, next question: How has the internet levelled the playing field for David versus Goliath over the last twenty years?

Ian: I got into this game with AZoNetwork in early two thousand and it was very different then.

On the internet, you've got the same amount of screen space as a billion dollar market cap company. So one of the phrases adopted fairly early on was that it doesn't matter where you are found on the internet, it just matters that you are found - it became much easier as a small business to make a significant impact via the web than previously.

It has passed over from kind of publisher to client, that end user, the company the manufacture. It's really just the expanse of channels but also the time that it takes to execute campaigns in the market - so twenty years ago it could have taken three to six months writing, planning a campaign which could be done in a morning these days.

Franky: Do you have any benchmarks for how an SME science engineering company would define a marketing budget?

Alex: There are standard industry benchmarks out there in terms of percentage of turnover that kind of thing but we typically shy away from not more the fundamentals of individual revenue lines for the company, profit lines, profit margins for products and what the channels available with us we try to make it more small bespoke.

You can't really tell you when you call us at five or ten million pounds and over estimate engineering companies don't just tell you to nominal five or ten percent turnover inside dies the amount to spend %HESITATION marks in.

It doesn't really fit for every every single every single kind so we tend to look at the big picture okay the competitive so they're up again so for example we go offline and we're just tossing starts with recently that they chose to compete against and two major multinational blue chips now it's not gonna be feasible to put in the same kind of purchases they will so looking on the much more Avenue case by case basis across four to five channels now we can actually get towards a level playing field among the big stuff in a level playing field against close it's become really be small about the white invest stocked up with Joe's wells announcing.

Atlassian, when they started, I think for the first of six to eight years and they didn't really have a marketing budget for their product which was a collaboration tool for software developers.

Predominately it was a low price point thirty dollars which sold by word of mouth in the in the development community so they had a very low sales and marketing budget.

On the other hand, you've got outfits like uber for example with very big marketing budgets who are effectively buying business - how long can they continue to do that? It’s an interesting business case study - So I think it really comes down to what is your products and what are you trying to achieve?

What do you find is the appetite for risk in in marketing specifically from the sort of C. suite and how have people get being given license to try things?

It’s low to be brutally honest, when I was client side running very big blue chip budgets for some big international companies it was still quite low even ten fifteen years ago as well

That’s why strategic planning is so important from my perspective it gives some validation that the C Suite board of directors can actually sign off on. When you cn see the analysis and the data

 for will give us an investment for the opposite ways process without any kind of analysis or just kind of an off the cuff approach they're not going to really stop those kind of budgets – overall a low outside for absolute risk in these sectors

Franky: Do you see lots of companies using the data to justify the marketing spend or is it still a bit more gut feeling?

I think it's becoming increasingly data focused - you still see some dumb comments that come out like a why are you going to this particular exhibition, well because our competitors are there. It doesn’t really justify that activity. We're in an age where at least the Google Adwords has worked as part of the marketing spending on Google. I'd be a fool to sit here and say it doesn't work, it obviously does.

However one of the things that we see with people setting up Adwords campaigns is that we did it eighteen months ago and it was Jack who's in the I. T. department… they just set and forget. They don't even realize that they're actually now wasting fifty percent of the budget on keywords which aren’t delivering for them. So I think there's a there's a lot of slack in the marketing activity but businesses really need to recognize that the marketing is a value creator not a cost center and that's the sort of the old fashioned thinking that we need to move away from.

Franky: Which specific KPIs would you use in a business context what's important to you for a marketing standpoint?

I'm gonna focus on the business KPIs and say well you know what other business KPIs and then how does marketing fit into that so again I think when you're running a lot of business need a building a business and keep it as simple as possible you know when businesses start to go wrong is when people start to over complicate things so:

Make sure you got a product that people want to buy. Make sure you've got enough cash in the bank to facilitate the activity and we are big fans of using a balanced scorecard approach so you can actually see you know the financial performance is going; everybody in the business has visibility on how much cash we have in the bank now, how much do we think we gonna have in six months.

What is it costing us to acquire a customer etc. that sort of data. So you get everybody involved and obviously marketing feeds into this in terms of how many customers do we currently have? How are we growing those customers. What's the churn rate on those customers so for me it starts with the top down approach of business first and how does marketing fit into the economics.

Any marketing specific KPIs that you'd be encouraging your clients to measure?

Really it’s fifty-fifty half is related to sales or profit, or sales of a certain product line. And then the other fifty percent is the raw marketing KPIs - so we'll typically have a list of say six to ten channels that we will work on for clients and so be different for every one of those.

For something like a trade show for example it would simply be quite a high cost in terms of conversion of that lead into a sale compared to an email or webinar or even social media - so they're definitely very different ends of the spectrum and affects how we how we pitch those KPIs for them

Franky: We use lots of different software in our martech stack what piece of software could you not live without

for me it would be the AZoIntel analytics platform that we built and developed over the last six or seven years. We also have built our content management system, email distribution and the whole platform that we now exist upon which is our own IP these are pieces of software that we couldn't really do without and within that, I think the ability to see who was engaging with our content, that content journey and how they're engaging with that content – that has been the bedrock of the growth of our business.

so over that period of time I think all of the other aspects you know sequel server and you know the the adobe suite that you may use you can pretty much replace those with all the solutions so it's a very personal answer and I apologize for the immediate commercial plug on that

I think you're excused, for me personally it’s about how the software interacts with each other. Because we are with small marketing departments as soon as you can automate certain tasks: your lead scoring for instance and lead distribution out to the sales team, it just frees up your morning.

Rather than to get in and then this bottleneck of admin that needs doing. Having grown up using Salesforce and we've managed to get AZoIntel talking directly to Salesforce, we can just forget about it. I know that it happens on a fifteen minute sync, so it can happen when I'm asleep it can happen at a trade show, it’s happening right now which is huge!

Ian: One of the key points right here right now is going to be the use of AI in marketing. The ability to have automated transcription of meetings. The ability to work out you know which key words and phrases you should be using in content and how they're going to have the greatest impact.

I was recently at the inbound show over in Boston and marketing technology and A. I. is starting to have a serious impact - It’s going to have the most impact where it can automate fairly mundane, routine tasks. It has taken us several years to get to the stage where we start to get reasonable value out of Salesforce but it's because we managed to automate a lot of those manual activities.

Franky: Absolutely, so what's your biggest challenge as a leader and what's are the biggest issues that you come up against in running a business?

Ian: So to start on that one I think for me it's always been about getting the culture right getting the team working right - you could have one of the world's greatest products but if you've got a toxic culture within the business it’s going to blow up at some stage.

So you have to have a goal in life, you have to have the vision, you have to know where you going how are you going to get there and then your job is to explain that to people in simple terms. Illustrate what success is gonna look like, how they play a part in the team that's going to enable you to get that and just keep it simple. Trust is a big factor you know which plays into that team working…

Staying true to your vision

True to the vision - you know that's Simon Sinek analogy of leaders eat last, the days of the Victorian mill owners are well gone. I think the role of a leader in businesses is more of a facilitator. As I come to work, I want people to tell me what I can do to make them more productive at their jobs.

Alex?

Alex: It’s a fast changing industry right now I mentioned that chart with the 7 thousand tech stack businesses on.

You’ve got a very fast paced sector in terms of the different channels within it and the different approaches that you can take.

It's really about the pace of change in the data that's available and not getting completely bombarded and washed over by that data but actually finding techniques and methodologies to do that as a team of marketers. It is about building a culture where you’ve got thinkers who can come up with the answers for both yourselves and the clients really.

Franky: If you could give yourself one piece of marketing advice about me way back when in in twenty years ago when you're just starting out with a song when you're starting out with with my marketing or debate

Alex: Don't believe the hype. Build the hype.

Ian: If I could go back… I came out of the manufacturing industry background and on the back of that, I saw the internet could be really good for educating engineers, designers and scientists.

So I thought to myself, I'll go into a totally new career which is a building websites. At the time I knew nothing about building websites and I was led by the nose by a team of developers and spent six figures on building a website that looked really pretty and was really interesting, but search engines were never going to find it so I wish I'd known about search engines back then and how significant they were so I would have definitely saved a few hundred grand by knowing that!

all right fascinating.

Well that ties in superbly with next week’s subject matter where we’ll be finding out how companies are adapting their paid search strategy in the current climate.

Thank you both gentlemen for contributing today.

Don't forget to subscribe in the usual places or at AZoNetwork.com we'll see you next week for a brand new edition of the marketing science podcast with Matt Rafferty the head of Paid Search here at AZoNetwork – We’ll see you then

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Matt Rafferty is the Head of Paid Search at AZoNetwork with a keen eye for discovering trends in big data.

Matthew graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a first-class masters degree in chemistry in 2017 and moved into freelance medical writing before joining AZoNetwork.

During his time at AZoNetwork Matthew has been deeply involved with analytics, in particular Power BI. Both AZoNetwork and clients alike have benefitted from his unique analytical skills, gaining insights from big data sets where few dare to tread!

Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast. The podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science, engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever you normally listen to a podcast. My name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at AZoNetwork, where you can also subscribe.

I'm joined by my guest this week who is an expert in data analysis coupled with Organic and Paid Search - He is currently our head of paid search here at AZoNetwork, welcome Matt Raffert.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/b2b-google-ads-strategy

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Debra Harrsch is CEO of Brandwidth Solutions, a B2B marketing firm specializing in Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics – Debra has a distinguished career working for many Multi-national instrumentation companies and joins us here today to talk about running a Life SCience Marketing Agency in a crisis.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/running-a-life-science-marketing-agency

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Join us as we talk podcasting, demand generation, social media, brand vs. performance and how Science can learn from the SaaS model.

A growth mindset leader and the CEO of Refine Labs. He’s originally from a science and engineering background and currently runs the demand generation podcast all the way from Boston Massachusetts – It’s Mr. Chris Walker

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/b2b-demand-generation-for-science-engineering-and-healthcare?referrer=acast

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Ricky Lowe is the CEO of Kumos Consulting having applied his 1st class MEng problem solving ability to an already distinguished Salesforce career. Join us as we discuss Health Cloud as well as Salesforce applications in the Life Science and Engineering industries.

"I always find that when we're talking about Salesforce, I would liken it to the movie "Inception" with Leonard DiCaprio, and I was actually just explaining to our CEO the other day about some work you were doing for us, and how you are on the maximum level, which is level four for "Inception" where it goes deep, deep into four people's subconscious.

Now my understanding is about level two I reckon. So I know my way around a dashboard and a few reports. Whenever it gets too complicated, I think you know the moment when my eyes glaze over and I think my brain's hurting, so you take over, and you explain in layman's terms."

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/salesforce-for-life-sciences-and-healthcare?referrer=acast

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Andy Henton is the Founder and Director of InsideScientific, an online environment built for life science researchers – Andy has a distinguished career working within life sciences specialising in webinars, virtual events and science communication.

Join us as we pick our way through collaborating from home, project management and delivering online experiences.

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As owner and president of Launch Team, Inc. in Rochester, NY, Michele Nichols leads a team that helps technology companies compete and grow.

We talk product launches, internal communications and operational efficiency when working from home. Michele and her team consults with science and engineering-driven companies in the US and internationally and guides in the implementation of those strategies.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/how-to-launch-a-product-online?referrer=acast

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Will is the smarts behind the Marketing Science podcast and lends his vast technical AV knowledge to producing podcasts on a weekly basis.

We discuss what goes into making a podcast and how to achieve a high quality audio performance.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/podcasting-for-scientists?referrer=acast

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Oyin Bamgbose is Head of Sales at ResponseTap, an intelligent call-tracking platform designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing suite of MarTech tools.

In the first part of this interview, we talk about the challenges of navigating the increasingly crowded and complex MarTech marketplace, and discuss ways to inspire and enable your sales team to perform at the top of their game.

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Oyin Bamgbose is Head of Sales at ResponseTap, an intelligent call-tracking platform designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing suite of MarTech tools.

This is the second part of this interview, in which we go in-depth on the customer journey, sales and marketing metrics, and the value call tracking can add to your marketing stack.

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Our guest today is Tony Jones, the CEO of One Nucleus.

Tony runs one of the largest life Science and healthcare networks in the world from their Cambridge base.

He is currently planning the implementation of Genesis Digital 2020 - A fully online networking event for life science and healthcare professionals around the world.

For more information about Genesis please visit: https://onenucleus.com/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=1382

Find out more information about AZoNetwork at www.AZoNetwork.com/Podcasts

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We're joined by our guest, Daniel Brazier, a Solutions Engineer for WP Engine. Will Soutter, from our Podcast about Podcast episode, also joins us to talk about Cybersecurity.

In this episode, we talk about the world of cybersecurity, particularly in the healthcare and science fields. Daniel also gives us some valuable tips about how businesses and employees can mitigate the risks of a cybersecurity attack, and about the newest trends in cybersecurity.

A corresponding blog can be found here.

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Our latest episode of the Marketing Science Podcast is the adapted audio of our recent webinar: "Using Webinars to Market Science".

Frank Barker is joined by the AZoNetwork marketing team, Elizabeth Rudy and Danny Layzell, as well as Andy Henton from InsideScientific.

The discussion includes all areas of your webinar marketing including:

1. Planning a science webinar
2. Webinar software
3. Marketing a science webinar
4. Running your event
5. Engaging your audience
6. Post webinar production

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In this episode of the Marketing Science Podcast, we are joined by Geoff Davison, CEO of Bionow, a leading biomedical and life science membership organization based in the North of England.

Listen to the episode to learn about:

• The life sciences sector and contributions made by Bionow member organizations through the COVID-19 pandemic
• The importance of collaboration in life sciences throughout 2020 and into 2021
• Insights into life science investment trends for 2021
• Life sciences events and the move to virtual formats

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We're joined by Dr. Neal Dando, President of Pittcon 2021. Pittcon is one of the largest laboratory science conferences in the U.S. We discuss:

• How to strategize your marketing efforts and plan a virtual event vs. a face-to-face event
• Pre-recorded vs. on-demand content for virtual events
• How Pittcon facilitates collaboration between scientists
• The importance of science outreach programs

Read the adapted transcript here.

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Michele Nichols is the President of Launch Team Inc and specializes in providing sales and marketing expertise for science and engineering-driven companies.

She rejoins the podcast to give insights into current engineering & science marketing trends and challenges, as well as how companies can continue to make the all-important pivot to digital marketing and virtual event marketing.

Check out adapted transcript 👉👉 https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/engineering-marketing-insights-in-2021

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Laura Haldane is the Head of Sales and Marketing at SciLeads. She is also a board member at SAMPS, an organization specializing in connecting and empowering sales and marketing professionals in life science and applied research.

Laura joins the podcast to talk about best practices when it comes to selling and marketing to scientists. She gives tips based on psychological and marketing research on email marketing, scientific sales and science marketing.

Check out the adapted transcript 👉👉 here.

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We are starting season 3 on Women in Engineering Day.

Dr Susan Scurlock MBE, Chief Executive & Founder of Primary Engineer is joining us to discuss how her organisation, and the engineers that she partners with, are inspiring the next generation of young engineers.

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Sam Kuehnle from Refine Labs joined Danny on the latest episode of the Marketing Science Podcast.

They discussed lead generation v demand generation, knowing your audience, effective B2B social media strategy and tips for taking new marketing initiatives to the C-Suite.

Notes

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samkuehnle/

Buyer Persona book referenced: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buyer-Personas-Customers-Expectations-Strategies/dp/1118961501

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Hal Collier from International Gas Detectors (IGD) joined Franky on the latest episode of the Marketing Science Podcast.

They discussed how Hal has grown the marketing department from the ground up and also the challenges of being a one person marketing band.

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This episode is an adaptation from our recent webinar Q&A: Social Media for Science - How to create an effective B2B social media strategy. 

We discuss:

• Social Media Content Creation
• Developing a personal brand on social media
• LinkedIn advertising

Full webinar can be viewed here.

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Katie Harte joined Danny to discuss neuromarketing in the latest episode of the Marketing Science Podcast. Katie is an acclaimed international speaker, trainer and researcher in the exciting new field of Neuromarketing.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aboutkatiehart/
• Website: http://katiehart.co.uk/

Books mentioned in the podcast:

• Brainfluence
• Influence
• Buyology

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Damian Corbet joined Danny to discuss how social media can make you a stronger leader in the latest episode of the Marketing Science Podcast. Damian is the author of the book, 'The Social CEO' and shared a number of great anecdotes from his experience of putting the book together.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damiancorbet/
• Blog: https://thesocialcsuite.net/
• C-Suite Twitter lists: https://twitter.com/TheSocialCsuite/lists

Books/articles mentioned in the podcast:

• Forbes Article: 15 Ways CEOs can Effectively Support their Marketing Teams
• Connected Leadership
• Trust Barometer
• Get Social: Social Media Strategy and Tactics for Leaders
• The Social CEO

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Lina is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Dassault Systèmes and a content creator and personal branding expert on LinkedIn. In this episode, she shares advice on how to create a positive first impression online and how to navigate your personal accounts.

Shoutouts:

• The Marketing Meetup
• Graphic Designer Dave Officer
• Videographer Kevin Parry
• Content Creator John Espirian
• Marketer Sarah Stella Lattanzio

Relevant Resources​:

• More episodes from 'The Marketing Science Podcast'
• Webinar: Social Media for Science
• Blogs - How To Build a LinkedIn Profile

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We welcome our special guest, Michele Nichols from Launch. Inc. Michele shares insights into culture, brand building and the importance of creating an authentic competitive advantage in a changing market.

Your organizational culture may be your most valuable asset; and the key to your growth. As leaders, we read, think and talk about the importance of culture, a lot. But are we missing the opportunity to tell that story in a way that builds authenticity internally and externally?

This episode is the recorded Q&A from our recent Webinar with Michele, aimed at sales and marketing professionals in science, engineering and healthcare.

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Our new market research looks at the latest buying habits of Science, Engineering, and Healthcare professionals.

The report presents the current state of scientific purchasing and examines the trends that will have an impact on your marketing strategy.

In this Q&A taken from our live webinar, our team answers audience questions related to the research presented in our latest ebook.

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This episode of the Marketing Science podcast is an audio format of our most recent webinar looking at the state of scientific marketing survey 2023.

Host Danny is joined by the rest of the AZoNetwork marketing team, Frank, Sara and Rebecca to present and discuss the research undertaken over the last few months.

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The first episode of season 5 sees the AZoNetwork team discussing the strategies behind how we took AZoLifeSciences from 0 to 1 Million website views in just under three years.

Joining our host, Danny, is Ben Stibbs-Eaton, our Content Marketing Manager, to look at the SEO strategies used on the website. Alongside Emily Henderson, Senior Editor of AZoLifeSciences, to discuss the content strategy for the platform, and Sara Lopez-Segura, Graphic Design & Social Media Co-ordinator, with the inside knowledge on creating engaging life science content.

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Listeners will learn about the latest trends and best practices for creating video, podcast and webinar content that will keep their audience engaged and informed.

We cover topics such as storytelling, visual design, and audience engagement strategies, focusing on the unique challenges of communicating science to a diverse audience.

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The podcast will cover the top 10 problems that are commonly encountered when auditing a website, and will provide actionable advice for fixing these issues.

Whether you're an experienced website developer or a business owner looking to improve your online presence, this podcast will give you the knowledge and tools you need to audit your website effectively and make meaningful improvements to your online presence.

Topics covered:

• How to run a technical website audit 
• Common problems encountered when auditing
• Practical solutions for addressing these issues

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The podcast will draw on data and experiences from over 250 million email sends to share best practices for crafting effective subject lines, email content, and call-to-action buttons.

Additionally, listeners will learn about common mistakes to avoid and strategies for achieving better results from their email marketing.

Topics covered:

• What We Have Learned From Over 250 Million Email Sends
• Insights and strategies for effective email marketing
• Tips for keeping up to date with email marketing trends 

Guest: Torsten Christenson

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In 2023, AZoNetwork launched our first eBook dedicated to email marketing, diving deep into over a decade's worth of campaigns. Since then, our subscriber base has thrived, ballooning from 900,000 a year ago to now over 1 million active users.

Recently, Danny caught up with Torsten, our Head of Email Marketing, to explore his top strategies and tips, aiming to empower fellow marketers in their quest to captivate audiences through email campaigns.

Download the eBook here

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