In this episode, Julie interviews Henrik Petersen, a fractional CMO who has over 20 years of experience in B2B marketing for software companies such as Zendesk and Microsoft. In a 3-steps process, Henrik shares his insights and best practices on how to use data and market orientation to create a winning strategy that sets you apart from the competition in the market segment you choose to play in. .

About our guest:

• Brand Management
• Demand Generation (Demand Capture)
• Digital Marketing
• Public Relations (Corporate Communication, Analyst Relations and Social Media)
• Product Marketing
• Inside Sales (SDR/BDR)
• Marketing Budgets
• Customer and Market Research
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Performance Marketing (Search Engine Marketing, PPC)
  Localization
• Campaign Planning and Development
• Field Marketing (Events)

In today’s episode, we discuss :

• Henrik's background - 20+ years of B2B marketing experience (Microsoft, Zendesk)
• What is a profit formula and why is it important
• Step 1 - Have a winning mindset and strategy (How to optimize your profit formula for different markets and segments)
• Step 2 - Be market oriented and understand your customers
  • How Zendesk leverage events to speak to customers
  • Best practices when doing customer interviews
  • How Zendesk ensure everyone in the company understand how they add value to the customer
  • How Zendesk improve website conversion rate from customer interviews
• Step 3 - Diagnose your brand and market situation (aka perform checkup for your brand)
• How to understand your brand DNA, distinct brand code, and brand equity
• Summary - How to use the 3 steps to create your business profit formula
• Lighting round - Advice for marketers
• Lighting round - Recommended book

Where to find Henrik Petersen:

LinkedIn

Where to find Julie Ng:

LinkedIn

References:

• Zendesk : https://www.zendesk.com/
• How brands grow : https://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/1511383933 

Transcript:

Introduction
0:00
welcome to winning with data driven marketing podcasts this podcast is
0:05
brought to you by was Vase.ai market research I'm Julie your host in this
0:10
podcast and in every single episode we talk to Industry leaders marketers and
0:16
growth experts in Asia about how to use data to enhance the ROI in their marketing activities we bring you real
0:23
case studies while giving you background on how these leaders build their career
0:28
to where they are today joining me today is Henrik Petersen he has over 20 years
0:35
of B2B marketing experience working with B2B SaaS software companies
0:40
to build distinctive Brands and field Revenue growth Henry welcome
0:47
thank you Julie thank you so much and thank you for inviting me it's a yeah really exciting to be on your podcast
0:53
today Henrik I know that uh recently you are
Henrik's background - 20+ years of B2B marketing experience (Microsoft, Zendesk)
0:58
now a fractional CMO and and when I look at your linking and and you have a
1:04
conversations with you you have so much so much experience across different companies can you walk us through in the
1:09
audience a short stories about you know your career and where you get to where you are today
1:15
yeah sure yeah I mean let me see how I can boil my 20 years down to uh story
1:21
but but basically uh I'm originally from Denmark uh so I grew up in Denmark um
1:27
but I came to Singapore in 1999 um a bit of a coincidence but basically
1:33
I started out my career actually not in marketing but in a small
1:39
family-owned Manufacturing Company um where I was looking after our supply
1:45
chain planning manufacturing planning um I'll say I quickly discovered an
1:52
interest for software when we implemented a a new business I was called an Erp software
1:59
um and that quickly took me to a a new job in in the software industry so first
2:05
as an Erp consultant but then joining the the software company itself in Copenhagen a company called ambition
2:11
software um and in in product marketing
2:16
um and then also then later in 99 took me again the opportunity to move to
2:22
Singapore and yeah that's where I've been since uh since 99 so since then
2:28
I've spent like you said pretty much 20 plus years in I would say technology
2:33
marketing uh helping um primarily technology companies software
2:38
companies and other technology companies build their business in the Asia Pacific and that includes companies like
2:44
Microsoft zendesk and a couple of startups here in Singapore and also starting my own
2:52
companies getting my experience as a you know as a startup so I feel like I've
2:57
you know been both in very big companies and also small startups
What is a profit formula and why is it important
3:03
and is there a common Point as you are in I can see that we are very focused in
3:08
B2B marketing and in software right is that like a common question or common theme and pattern that you see across
3:15
like the marketing challenges across all these companies yeah I mean I think it's and it's
3:22
probably also what we're going to be talking about today right it's growth uh how do B2B companies and let's say I'm
3:27
primarily in B2B how do they how do we grow the business um and although I think in terms of just
3:34
pure marketing I think it's marketing is not that different whether it's B to C or B2B but then when you look at the
3:40
Core Business there are definitely differences in in the way we we do business
3:45
um I think actually in B2B there's a lot we can learn from b2c where I think they do a lot better when it comes to market
3:53
research and and brand diagnosis which is what we also be talking about today yeah
3:59
um but I think the the fundamentals every time I meet a business owner I work with a new startup the question is
4:05
always the same how do we grow our business how do we become a big brand and how can we expand our business and
4:11
how can marketing help us do that and whenever uh and and I myself always
4:18
ask this question with my team as well so uh so as the sdcmo how do you usually
4:23
approach this yes I think the when I joined uh in any
4:29
company I think the first step for us is is actually to do diagnosis so and is to understand uh what we'll also be talking
4:36
about today here is what is the winning strategy of that company um right so um and there's a lot of
4:43
involved in that but it's it's really understanding the what we call the profit formula how does this make how
4:49
does a company and make make a revenue or how do they grow
4:54
um I think very often if you're too focused on products uh right we look at
5:00
our product I think we have the best product but actually there's a lot more things in terms of how we
5:05
how we you know how we use our resources how we create processes and and how we
5:11
we leverage those capabilities in relation to our profit formula and I think it's how you optimize that the
5:16
best that determines whether you are successful or not I I love it when you say the profit
5:23
formula and it's not just about the product it's the product the process and a lot more things than that
5:28
um could you could you walk us through a little bit deeper about this and maybe if you can throw in like a an example of
5:34
a case study that would be very great for us to visualize how to build a profit formula
5:40
yes a profit formula is um you can say and it a profit formula will change as
5:46
the the company also grow um right so you could say when you start up so when I joined for example the
5:52
company send desk which is a software company a CRM software company we were
5:57
initially very focused on uh smaller or say mid-sized companies and it was
6:03
really focused on uh you say a self-service or a product-led growth where it's about getting customers to
6:10
come to a website sign up and basically get them started on their own um so you can say the profit formula for
6:17
that you can start formula saying that means you know it's all about optimizing that self-service experience and but
6:24
also it means that you know you're basically making a choice here right so we're not focusing on on big companies
6:30
uh you're focusing focusing on smaller companies which also typically means a lower uh uh you know order size or a
6:38
customer lifetime value and that also means that when you look at that profit formula then you need to start thinking
6:44
about what does it mean from from a marketing perspective then maybe we cannot we cannot for example use an
6:49
Enterprise sales model to support that because it's the two expensive in terms of their cost I'm acquiring the customer
6:57
um all right so that's that's you could say one way of looking at is that let's say the profit formula for based on
7:02
where we are as a business today is is based on the type of customers we target the market we play in and also
7:11
um yeah base it back to the the strategy of the company and then you will probably see that we saw that also at
7:17
Center that will it bold over time as we grow as we started to move off market then we became of a lot more focused on
7:24
winning bigger deals uh yeah then you can start your profit more formula
7:30
starts to change uh so now you can afford to maybe adjust also your go to market model and your marketing uh
7:37
um strategies around that so that it aligns both the resources and processes
7:43
[Music] sometimes when they are just starting
7:48
out right it's often hard to choose whether or not it's top to bottom or Bottoms Up whether or not I should go
7:54
with product LED uh you know a lower cap a lower cost of Acquisitions uh versus
7:59
should I go with Enterprise sales um how how would you approach this uh in
8:06
terms of which strategy to go with or is there like a default mode that you should always try first
8:13
no I don't think that's necessarily a default mode and I think that's I think actually sometimes that's the risk when
8:18
we you know as marketers or as business owners as we there's a tendency also to
8:23
look outwards to look at other companies and see what are they doing and trying to apply their model to our our business
8:29
and it doesn't necessarily work right that we might have a very different might have a different strategy we might
8:34
have a different profit formula that doesn't fit their model of doing this
8:40
um I I but I think it's back to like the question again is what is the winning
8:45
strategy uh because it's really back to who are you targeting uh and you know
8:50
what is it what are we going to do that's gonna make it our solution a better offer for those customers in this
8:57
in the segment we have chosen to Target um so I think that's why it's back to
9:03
that strategic uh those strategic decisions that's really important for the success of the company
9:10
um so it's again I think maybe also for the audience here is like really go maybe go back to think about what is
9:16
your winning strategy and maybe just to uh explain that I think very often
9:21
there's a tendency to kind of confuse planning with strategy right so the way
9:30
um the way I think to look at is to say planning typically is where you're planning your
9:36
um you're working your country the things you control so your resources your people right we can make a plan
9:41
about how many people we want to hire we can plan what to do with our inventory we can plan what to do with our
9:47
processes uh like these are all things we control
9:52
strategy on the other hand is about the market it's about things we don't control
9:57
right so and your strategy very often is influenced by the market the customers
10:03
the competition right so that's why it can be a bit it can feel a bit uh what do you call
10:09
that uh nerve-wracking to to kind of make strategy because you are actually not in control of this
10:14
um so um first part I just really understand it would be important to understand the market you are playing in right because
10:20
otherwise we can't really make good decisions around it um so I think very important to kind of
10:25
differentiate a strategy is not planning planning is about your resources how you use that strategy is about looking out
10:32
at the market and decide um like I said first where do we want to play right so marketing we typically talk
10:39
about our who's our target audience um right the second step is how you know
10:45
playing in that field how are we gonna provide or how we're going to offer a better solution than anybody else in
10:52
that market so if I have to bring that back to our to marketing specifically to marketing
10:58
right so usually you're going to say it's a marketing strategy really is it's really quite simple it's just who's our target audience
11:05
um how are we going to win you go we call that positioning right and the third is what is our objectives
11:14
so if we go back to like what is the winning strategy so winning strategy of course is that when we say winning yeah that means I guess it kind of applies
11:21
somebody is losing right so although business is not always a zero song game uh right sometimes you can coexist with
11:28
competitors but if you want to take increase your Market penetration win
11:33
more customers you're basically stealing those or taking those away from somebody else uh so that's the definition we'll
11:39
say my definition of winning is that we are winning Market winning customers from the market right
11:47
and our strategy is is where are we going to do that and how we're going to do that
11:53
so I'm gonna turn the table and ask you so in this case uh now that we know you know not to confuse strategy and
11:59
planning and strategies about re-choosing um choosing and understanding whether we
12:05
really want to play in terms of target audience positionings and what's our objective right so how do we know
Step 1 - Have a winning mindset and strategy (How to optimize your profit formula for different markets and segments)
12:11
which are the right strategy from us for us yes I think the the first step is
12:18
actually it's gonna get into terms with having a winning strategy so I think very often and if I look back at the
12:25
some of the companies I worked with very often we actually don't have a winning strategy uh we cannot just play to
12:31
participate and what I mean by this it's it's uh very often when you look at
12:36
companies uh and you you listen to what our goals are they're typically very internally focused right so our goal
12:44
might be we want to double our Revenue next year and although that might be like a very challenging or aggressive
12:49
goal that not necessary doesn't mean we are winning right we could double our Revenue but compensation might you know
12:56
do more than that and still win more Market here than us right so for me having that winning
13:03
mindset is the first step in this one here is it's really clear about we're not just trying to
13:10
grow and look at things internally but be really trying to say how do we how do we grow our business in the context of
13:16
what's happening in in the space we are playing right so winning mindset means looking out the competition and and
13:22
seeing like I said is how do we yeah how do we win uh and also how do we
13:27
get better at serving customers in that space we choose so I think that's is having that waning
13:33
mindset I think is the first step where I find at least in my experience a lot of companies
13:39
um don't really have a winning uh strategy they just have a goal to to get better than last year
13:45
right so I think if I look back at some of the companies even big companies I've been with it's always just we did this
13:51
last year so we're gonna do this next year right where we don't actually look at in the context of competition
13:58
and I think that's that's super important and the reason I think especially for small Brands
14:04
um we have to look at some of the some of the marketing principles um and more than um which is called the
14:11
law of Double Jeopardy uh I know it sounds like maybe like a TV show but it's actually you know an Empirical
14:17
research that shows um that small brands has fewer customers
14:24
than big brands so that's the first challenge we have right and then the challenge there is if you have more
14:31
customers you typically also have more resources you have more more resource to invest in advertising marketing and go
14:37
to market um right so that's that's already a challenge as a new business so you're starting out is we have very few
14:43
customers so if you're just starting out of course we don't have any customers but right so first of is how do we get more customers
14:50
the the double or the second Jeopardy is that small brands have slightly less loyal
14:57
customers right and my thing we often talk about brand loyalty and what we can do but reality actually is and that's
15:03
what Empirical research has shown is that brand loyalty is primarily a function of the brand size so the more
15:10
customers you have the more loyal they are right and it's really back to the
15:16
fact that as as consumers but also as customers in B2B we tend to buy Brands
15:22
we know more about and we know more about Brands we buy right so um so it's it's so you say
15:30
to overcome that as a new smaller brand we really need to grow but it it's
15:36
looking at how we grow it's it's important here because it really comes down to increasing our Market
15:43
penetration and Market penetration different than market shares and Market
15:48
penetration means if there's a hundred customers out there we can win how do we get as many as those 100 customers
15:55
right whereas market share typically is made up of dollar value right so when you look at you normally when we talk
16:01
about growth um we take a look at things like new customer acquisition but we could also
16:07
look at how to grow our existing customers so if I go back to again when I was at uh send desk uh right we were focused
16:15
very much on acquiring new customers we also focus a lot on how do we keep expanding the existing customers and get
16:21
them to buy more products more users right so you increase that monthly
16:27
subscription uh from this customer um but we're also looking at maybe introducing completely new products
16:33
right so you can also grow through product development you can also grow
16:38
your business through uh what you call that vertical integration uh you could
16:43
grow through merges and acquisition which we also did and that's why we would acquire other companies
16:50
um but going back to that the double jeopardy rights as a small brand it's
16:55
super important for us if we want to grow and become a Big Brand we must have a constant focus on acquiring new
17:02
customers doesn't mean we don't want to do existing customers but it's
17:07
um and I've in my experience it's very easy sometimes as you grow to suddenly
17:13
lose track of acquiring new customers and you'll see sometimes sales getting very busy on just to keep expanding
17:19
their existing customers so we had that actually they had send us where we could see the we kind of had a strategy of
17:27
what we call land and expand that means when instead of trying to go out and
17:33
win a big customer and try and sell them everything in one go we were just trying to get them on board and then we would
17:39
borrow the customer right so it's quickly Landing them as a customer and then we will expand over time and what
17:44
we saw a lot of these startups that were joining us at that time were very small startups but they were growing very fast
17:50
which means they're you know we could um basically in some cases you as an AE
17:57
or as a sales rep you could hit your quota by just basically working with your existing clients
18:02
but if you don't don't keep acquiring new customers at the same time you're not it's not growing as a brand
18:12
I can uh I can see how love Double Jeopardy uh sends some uh like some
18:18
other companies who are listening to the to the podcast is like oh no uh but then I'm very glad that you know you give us
18:25
the solutions that they are afterwards can you talk us a little bit about um how do we design a
18:31
a successful land and expense strategy yeah I mean so that's
18:36
um I think it's back to you again your both your profit formula to say where are you focusing right so are you
18:42
focusing on just acquiring small businesses are you going after bigger bigger accounts for example a bigger
18:47
Brands um but of course A lot of it has to do with uh getting alignment between for
18:54
example marketing and sales in terms of who we are targeting uh and second also a lot of it has to do with enablement uh
19:00
or especially after the sales team to make sure that we don't because it can
19:06
be tempting to try and say like let me just sell them to everything that they won't go right and then you might instead of Landing this account next
19:11
week you might spend three months trying to to to get the whole deal but then the risk is that you know sometimes you make
19:18
the deal too big and the customer maybe decides ah maybe this is too risky right um so part of that I think the lender
19:24
expand is that you make it very easy for the customer to kind of say Let me let me try this let me let me get going at
19:30
it and also give them uh some quick wins so they kind of get hungry for let me let me do some more so
19:37
I think a lot of it has to do with enabling your your field to the field team so your marketing your sales team
19:46
gotcha I also wanted to come back to you you
19:52
mentioned uh before we start the call there are actually the three ideas around the questions around what is your
Step 2 - Be market oriented and understand your customers
19:59
reading strategy so we have coward idea number one I'm curious if you can walk us through your idea number two
20:05
yeah so the second one is uh and that's where as I mentioned earlier I find very often in b2c they they tend to do this
20:12
maybe a little bit better sometimes than in B2B but it's really will be what I call Market oriented uh which is and
20:21
again it's as my marketing Professor told me it's it's around understanding that you are not the customer right
20:28
otherwise we're looking interest and say I'm not the customer so I think very often when we sit in marketing we have a tendency to think
20:35
that customers Think Like Us right or we have a lot of biases about
20:40
our own brand we think our own brand is fantastic and we we have our own idea about why customers actually buy our
20:47
products um right so I think being Market oriented is that you you recognize that we don't
20:54
really understand the market we don't understand the customer so we need to have a process uh you need to use our
21:00
resources and create some processes and for understanding the market understand
21:05
the customer and also understand the competition um
21:12
so I think and I think also it was Peter Drucker who said that the the customer
21:17
rarely buys what the company thinks they are selling right and I think that's back to like do
21:23
we really understand why people buy this this product and I remember like this was very early in my career uh selling
21:30
Erp software um we would go to meet with prospects and then we would have a team out there
21:37
demonstrating the software and we sometimes we would demonstrate the software for half a day sometimes a
21:42
whole day right and it's and if when I think back at this now it kind of tells me that we didn't really have a clue
21:48
what the customer wanted or what they were trying to do um so we would just show them everything
21:53
hoping that at some point somebody would say that looks great can you please show more there right
21:58
um so I think Market oriented being Market oriented really means we we have
22:03
a organizational ride effort to to keep gathering information about the
22:10
customers the market and the competition right so to to be Market oriented I think it's a three-step process so the
22:18
first one is of course we need to gather information and there's a lot of ways you can do that so in in the past I've used
22:26
customer interviews and I think that's especially for small for startups and small Brands right we need to be mindful
22:32
about the cost and the time of this so if the customer interviews one-on-one meetings uh probably the easiest to get
22:38
started with and also it can be very cost effective um and it's actually
22:43
uh can be super effective in terms of re-understanding what is it that the customer why do customers buy up these
How Zendesk leverage events to speak to customers
22:49
our products our services um but yeah so as a company you depending on your size so if you're a
22:56
small startup a small business you can maybe start with just customer interviews if you have more budgets you
23:01
can use panel surveys sometimes to validate some of the findings you have
23:06
found in your customer interviews um right so and if I look back at how
23:12
I've used this in the past so again if I look at centers we we will basically have an episode every time we had
23:17
Customer Events we would use that as an opportunity to speak with the customers
23:22
ask them questions right and here I think a good place to start when you are
23:27
looking at it if you have customers is to ask your most loyal customers and
23:33
you're like why do you love our products why do you keep buying all our services
23:38
um what else did you look at when you you know you were considering our products why did you choose us and then
23:45
just keep going deep on debugging to like to find out and basically What's
23:50
called the jobs Theory like what was that what is the job that they are trying to get done right
23:56
um and but also understand the motivations and the triggers behind why they decided to to look for a product or
24:04
service to do this job and I also didn't understand what's the outcome they're trying to achieve by
24:09
doing this so I think customer interviews is definitely and I'll say relatively easy
Best practices when doing customer interviews
24:15
place to start I'll say there are still some things you need to be aware of when you do custom interviews we there's a
24:21
tendency to introduce a lot of bias so you know when we meet people
24:26
um the way we ask the questions can sometimes influence the way people answer the questions and also sometimes
24:33
um you have to be mindful that people can sometimes they will answer questions in a way they think you want to hear right
24:40
so so these are things you need to be aware of course when you do custom interviews but it's still a super
24:45
effective way to get started I think once uh typically I'll say
24:52
if you do 15 20 interviews you start seeing a pattern you start seeing the
24:58
same kind of feedback coming back and again again so you start get a good view on on like what is it actually you're
25:04
trying to do and what is the job to be done and what's the motivation behind that
25:09
um you can of course do more but but I think 15 20 usually you use that's usually enough to get a good picture of
25:15
this one of the common changes I hear some of the companies
25:21
that just don't do this is because um they feel like uh but I have
25:27
immediate things that is sitting on my plate that perhaps give me a much more direct Roi than doing all these customer
25:35
interviews that that I'm not even sure if the insights will get me anywhere I'm
25:41
curious if you would hear challenges like this in your past and how would you approach this
25:46
yeah I I think you're right I mean I think it's like I said very often we there is a tendency to think that we we
25:52
understand the market we understand the customers maybe even because when we initially Maybe started the business we
25:58
were kind of in the customer situation so and there are tendency to think like say I'll come from that industry I know
26:04
what they what they need um but I think it still it is risky and especially later when you have to work
26:10
on your winning strategy uh you know if you look at don't get this right you
26:16
might go down the wrong path right so but like I said it doesn't have to be super complicated you you can kind of
26:22
build it into like I said when you have to be a Customer Events and you're meeting the customers anyway it's more
26:29
or less kind of like just have questions ready have them all what you call that a more proactive effort around how do you
26:35
gather this information right so I think number one is is how do you gather information or actually start Gathering
26:41
until the second part of being Market oriented it also makes sure that you actually
26:47
disseminate you you you share the information the intelligence you learned with the rest of the organization right
26:52
if this is just something that the marketing team gathers and then they don't share with anybody uh yeah then
26:58
it's not really helpful for the the organization right and we want this to be a company-wide effort
27:05
um right so that in that information needs to be shared kept it in a way that
27:11
can be shared with the rest of the organization and then I think thirdly also important part is like that you actually act on it
27:17
right so if you just have all that Intel sitting and you're not actually doing anything with it yeah then also not very
27:22
helpful um but I think it's super um and actually there's there's studies
27:27
uh I'll try if I can find a link we can maybe share it in in the recording but there's actually a study that shows that
27:35
companies who are uh Market oriented uh are actually have a better profitability
27:41
and are more successful uh so there are studies done on this so
27:47
um it's not just a fun idea I've come up with and it's actually really research behind this and I think also if you look
27:53
and I said b2c companies I tend to do this and much better I'll say it typically
27:59
than B2B so I think that's on the B2B side this is something where we need to step up our game a little bit and really
28:05
understand our Market a little bit better and I think the key thing here is like I said is for me it's really it's
How Zendesk ensure everyone in the company understand how they add value to the customer
28:11
understanding the jobs that we've done um or the job to be done and I think
28:17
um I can if I look back at some of the companies I've been with where
28:22
the team in marketing sometimes we actually don't even know what it is we are selling uh and even less we don't
28:28
really understand why do customers actually buy our products right and I think again if I go back to send this
28:34
one thing we did really well there was to make sure that any new employee who joins the company
28:41
um goes through an onboarding where everybody learns how to demonstrate the product uh so you
28:48
actually have to go up in front of your you know anybody else to joined that the company in that that month for that quarter and and do a demonstration of
28:55
the software and I think that's super powerful because it kind of ensures that
29:00
everybody who is in the company doesn't matter if you're in finance in HR and marketing you can actually explain to
29:07
People You Meet what it is you're doing and how we add value to the customer right but to do that also again it comes
29:13
back to like it's a company you really need to understand you know what is the job that the customer is trying to do
29:19
and how is our product you know helping them do that and I think once we have understood that
29:26
also it helps us in marketing create better uh better messaging
29:31
um right we can explain instead of just listing 20 features we can actually explain exactly what it is how we add
29:37
value to the customer it also helps your whether it's your inside sales team your account Executives and also make sure
29:44
that when they are talking to customers they really focus on what we know the customer are trying to do so you get a
29:50
much better response from from the from the customer is there like a case studies or uh
How Zendesk improve website conversion rate from customer interviews
29:58
application in the past that you can help us to visualize um the successful case of uh after doing
30:04
customer interviews or or the likes of actually collecting such information and disseminating and actually applied it
30:11
and see RI um I'm gonna talk about it also later but I
30:18
keep one project I worked on uh was when we were basically building out our
30:24
centers business in Japan um right so we and like I said I'll come back to it and
30:30
then the last parallel around diagnosis but also it's we really looked at saying like how come the website conversion
30:36
rate was a lot lower than what we saw in other markets um right so there we can talking to the
30:43
both the resellers or Partners but also over the customers it helps us kind of
30:49
uncover what was the what was the friction in that process um right so basically it came back to
30:54
that the the messaging on our website was
30:59
didn't resonate with with the target audience and they basically didn't understand what we are talking about um
31:05
so they would come to the website not really be clear about what we are trying to tell them and then basically leave again right so by doing research you
31:12
you've got a better understanding on what is it really they're trying to do and how do we showcase them that this is
31:18
actually something we can help them with so we saw a dramatic Improvement in in
31:25
basically in people signing up for our free trials right which improved our conversion rate on website but also
31:31
improved our Google advertising campaigns uh so they
31:37
had a dramatic impact on on inbound leads and the quality of those leads
Step 3 - Diagnose your brand and market situation (aka perform checkup for your brand)
31:42
awesome uh in in that in that sense uh I can't wait to actually let's jump into
31:47
our the third idea that you would like to share with us today around um around building your winning strategy
31:54
yes I think um is what I call the diagnosis right
31:59
but it's also said we want to create a winning strategy we really need to understand the field that we are playing
32:05
in right so um and I think there's you can say there's kind of two parts of this so if you are a new marketing
32:12
manager joining a company or a new brand manager joining a company um I think it's always a good idea to
32:18
kind of sit down and really get a good understanding of the brand of the company you work for and before you go
32:23
into actually building your plan and also in my work as working with with
32:30
other companies in terms of marketing and that's the first step I think in in the moroccole it's kind of a linear
32:35
process right is to do diagnosis before we do strategy and we do our strategy before we come up with all our marketing
32:42
tactics I think what I see a lot today is there's a tendency to jump straight into marketing tactics and just decide that
32:48
we need to have some Tick Tock videos and some Google advertising but actually before we really understand the
32:54
Strategic plan and have done real diagnosis um so that's that's the purpose of the first the first step is is diagnosing
33:01
the business it's a little bit like sending your brand for a checkup at the doctor
33:06
um right so there's um you know there's a lot of things we can look at of course and it depends maybe also on the size of
33:12
your business so if you're a small startup you can keep this it's a relatively simple process and as you grow it people probably become a more
33:18
complicated uh we'll call that a comprehensive process but I think
How to understand your brand DNA, distinct brand code, and brand equity
33:23
there's a couple of key things that maybe we can run through I think that's important to look at um so I think the first step is
33:30
um is basically understanding your college your brand DNA
33:36
um what is your brand right and again I know maybe if you're just a new startup there isn't a lot of brand stories or
33:42
Heritage to work on right but in imagine it as a marketer you're joining a company that's been around for a while I
33:48
think it's super important to understand you know the story behind the brand um so it very often here it's a good
33:54
idea to speak with the founder to understand like why did they start the company what was the values around the
34:00
business what were they really trying to do um right if you don't have the founder around anymore you can do maybe some
34:06
some Google search you can talk to colleagues in the company but really understand like what's what's behind the
34:11
brain here it doesn't mean you have to have a 20 20 slide PowerPoint around all
34:17
kind of brain purpose and brain DNA and all this but it's just a simple understanding of who we are as a brand our core values
34:25
um and I think more important also is to um figure out what is the what we call the
34:33
distinct brand codes or brain assets that we need to use for the for the in
34:38
branding and what I mean by that is um distinct brain coach basically as you
34:43
said your visual cubes your it could be your logo it can be your colors it can
34:49
be a sound could even be a smell I guess depending on your business right but but what is it that if you don't for example
34:55
mention the brand name what is that visually you might tell people Ah that's the brand right so I think I think a
35:03
good example that was talked about a little while back was if
35:08
you know the the chocolate the Toblerone chocolate that's in this yellow packaging as this triangle shape right
35:15
that's a good example of of uh distinct brand assets so when you see that in the shop one oh I in advertising you you
35:23
kind of recognize that straight away when you see that shape on that yellow color right um so that's good way of saying these
35:30
are distinct brightness that you you need to apply I think it's the same level for
35:35
even if you're a new startup it's important to configure like what is your brand distinct brand assets that you
35:41
need to apply uh and then I think the other rule is you need to be consistently uh codifying
35:49
or using those um on everything you do and again here I see there's a tendency to
35:55
especially in my attention because I'll be a little bit tired I'm using that yellow colors a little today make it
36:00
blue right but then that's actually the some of the worst you can do because you might get tired of looking at a specific
36:07
color or something but the market you know they don't look at your brand every day so just because you are tired of it
36:13
doesn't mean the market is tired of it right and it takes a really long time to build the brand so having consistency
36:19
and keep applying those distinct brand as it is super critical to building your brand
36:26
um so those are some of the things that you could look at around your brain the second part I think it comes back to the what we talked
36:32
about really about doing customer interviews is to kind of figure out what the what are the brand attributes or
36:40
characteristics of your brand not that what we think about the brain but what the customer thinks about the brand
36:46
right so here you should kind of try and figure out like um what are some of the attributes if
36:51
you ask customers you know it might be easy to implement or expensive or
36:57
whatever it could be right so these should be both positive and also negative attributes
37:02
um so they kind of start giving you a picture of who we are as a brand
37:08
um so like I said when you interview customers you start seeing like I said once you've done 15 20 interviews you
37:14
start seeing that is this there's a few words that keep popping up and those are your typically what will be you you will
37:20
kind of convert into your brand attributes that you can then use to figure out like who we are as a brand
37:31
because I can see in b2c uh generally a lot of them uh do actually do research
37:38
around you know what do people think about the brand but for B2B uh things like brand attributes and what do people
37:44
think about the brand are actually really not an often topic that people talk about
37:52
no yeah I think you're right I think also I think there's I think in the last decade or something there's been a
37:58
tendency especially in B2B to be very focused on Performance Marketing uh it's
38:04
a very short-term Roi focused and it's been the same in most of the companies I've been with us and I've tended to
38:10
kind of look at saying how do we get the quickest Roi right so we keep optimizing around
38:16
um I'll say that the last part of the funnel you know what I'll call the bottom of the funnel and and not really
38:21
spend a lot on uh building you know increasing brand awareness I think
38:27
that's changing I think a lot of companies are starting to realize that actually it doesn't work uh right so you
38:33
you kind of need to have both um right I think it was recently was it Airbnb the the realized when they turned
38:40
off all their Performance Marketing actually things were still growing um right and I think that's back to like
38:46
you actually want to start building the your brand uh and you reach a bigger audience the rest I mean as long as you
38:53
have probably called good physical availability but then you know your brain will continue to grow so I think
38:59
there's a lot of power in building that brand but I think historically a lot of B2B companies haven't put a lot of
39:04
effort into this I think that's
39:11
just to say likes but I think that's definitely a big part of your diagnosis is to understand both who you are as a
39:18
brand of what your brand is and I say you don't have to overdo it I think there's a tendency sometimes especially if you bring in an agent brain in this
39:26
agency to help you with this that they they will produce a 20 30 40 page
39:32
guide around this that's probably overdoing it I think especially for smaller Brands I think here's just
39:38
understanding your core attributes and figuring out what your distinct brand assets are and then just consistently
39:46
apply that in all your advertising your events anywhere you go right you on your packaging and then all that so that it's
39:52
yeah yeah you start building uh slowly start building your brand the second
39:58
part of that is to um if you have the budget is to do uh
40:03
some um brain tracking to understand the the where you are in terms of brand
40:09
awareness um right I know that brand tracking can cost quite a bit of
40:15
money uh I've done that before also right I think today it's there's new tools out there that actually makes it a
40:21
lot easier and more cost effective I think historicated has been quite expensive
40:26
I've done rent or panel surveys where you do brain tracking you basically ask
40:31
a series of questions uh which is bringing a real lot of insights around
40:36
your brand and where you are but like they did induced to cartilage cost a lot but it's I think price is coming down
40:42
which is also another reason why it's it's easier probably to do today so I think those are the first part of
40:48
understanding your the business um a few other things that are things good as if you're coming in as a
40:54
business owner or a marketing manager I think if you can I know it it can also be a challenge but it's understanding
40:59
your um your Market size how big is the market you are going after so trying to
41:05
size up your the market I know for some cases it can be tricky
41:10
to understand like how many customers do you think they're out there and what's the value of those but it's uh can be
41:17
super helpful later on when you want to do what's called excess share voice analysis because it requires you to
41:24
understand the total market and how much of that is your Market penetration and your market share how much of that
41:31
do you have today um so it's possible try and get an estimate on on how to do Market sizing
41:38
um then the other thing is I will jump into is um especially when you talk to startups
41:44
they always talk about product Market fit right which is I don't know I think I
41:50
feel like that's probably people out there who know more about this but like it can be really difficult to figure out
41:56
like when do you have product Market fit right usually if you have customers signing up and they stay with you as a customer that's a good signup you're
42:03
offering some value right but I think if you go back to what we did at the on the market orientation
42:09
which was to do custom interviews to understand what's the job to be done I think it's super helpful also to kind of
42:15
go back and say so once we really understand what is what's the job they're trying to do why do they hire our product to do this job
42:22
what's the motivation and what's the outcome they have try and Link that back with the product and just so if you say
42:28
instead of product Market fit it's Market product fit to say like do we actually have a really good fit here
42:34
right does the product really do what the customers want to do right it doesn't do the job that they are looking
42:39
for um but that again requires that you have a good understanding of what the customers
42:45
why the customers actually buy your product and then I'll say another I think super
42:52
helpful is back to what we talked about earlier is that profit formula um
42:57
and also com you know once you understand the product uh sort of the profit formula of your company
43:04
um what is especially for marketing is important is to look at how do we apply that to our
43:11
marketing approach like I said if you are offering for example a freemium products like we don't charge for the
43:17
product it's all about getting to sign up for free maybe we make profit another way but or maybe we hope they will eventually
43:23
convert into a pay product it probably also means that you cannot afford to spend a lot on acquiring customers right
43:30
so if you have a or like when you had attendance wherever you're offering a free trial
43:35
um to smaller businesses and right having an Enterprise sales model where you have expensive marketing activities
43:42
like Round Table events expensive ads and you have a PDR I have
43:47
to call them and that model just doesn't apply to to your profit profit formula
43:52
right so it's also good to kind of think through that to say you know on your life we're targeting Enterprise
43:59
customers and our average deal size is a million dollars yeah then of course we can afford to spend more right but I
44:06
think sometimes again marketing we have a tendency to jump straight into tactics and forget to analyze these things right
44:12
and then the marketing tactics may not align with our profit formula so thinking through that is I think also
44:18
it's good exercise that's relatively easy to do and you can kind of on a scale kind of say like on
44:25
one end you have to have really maybe even if you can't afford to spend anything on marketing it's all about creating content
44:31
viral marketing activities uh and then as we grow up we can start investing more in different channels different
44:37
types of of marketing
44:43
sounds good that is like a lot of things for us to diagnose here from Brand
44:48
tracking Supermarket sizing to pmf to profit formula now before uh this is uh
44:54
very interesting to to hear all the ideas you have around how to design a winning strategy before we wrap up
45:01
um Henrik is there anything that uh we haven't touched on that that is on your mind around winning strategy
Summary - How to use the 3 steps to create your business profit formula
45:10
no I think there's a kind of like summarize right so I think it's like I said it's the reason I brought up these three ideas I think is it's it's first
45:16
of all a you say it's a company mindset of having whether you have a winning strategy or you just have a
45:22
you know a strategy right so and because the winning mindset also it's not just about winning
45:29
it's always about figure out like how do we win actually by serving the customers better and that kind of leads you into
45:35
it like that's really your mindset that also leads you into being Market oriented because then you naturally kind
45:40
of need to understand what do the customer think what are they trying to do so right it makes you much more
45:45
focused on what the customer's doing rather than just internally focused on on our products
45:52
um so I think so those things kind of go nicely together right and then I think the diagnosis is really kind of putting
45:58
it all together it turned to figure out both um where we are right now like you know
46:05
what's the brand Health where we had in terms of you can do things also like funnel analysis of course you look at
46:11
your Revenue performance and all this but um but also looking at how do you better
46:16
align your profit formula with resources and processes in the company
46:22
right so that when you are ready to make those decisions around your strategy
46:27
it's based on a a solid foundation with good understanding of the market and
46:33
also your competition and then I think maybe the last point I'll just say is
46:39
I think when it comes to strategy we have to this is something we have to kind of continually kind of monitoring because like I said we don't actually
46:45
control the components of our strategy the customers might change Behavior the competition might do
46:52
something else right so you kind of have to keep monitoring this and then adjust your strategy as the market plays out so
46:59
um super important to to keep looking at this great thank you for the summary
47:05
um so we always have our lightning round of four questions uh before we wrap up
47:11
City episode so Henry are you ready for that I'm ready and I think
47:17
yes uh question number one what are the key data or metrics that you monitored in marketing or in this case brand
47:24
building yeah that's a good question yeah
47:30
um I mean of course we have a lot of metrics but I think
47:35
um I think definitely I'll say
47:41
um I mean in the end of Revenue always comes back as one of the key things to
47:46
look at right I think um uh some Revenue performance uh the health of the I'll
47:52
say the what are called The Funnel um so I think those are probably um key metrics to look at
47:59
um I think also your brand reach so
48:05
um you know and if you say you're what you call it a market penetration
48:11
right so I'll be reaching are we are we increasing our brand reach and our Market penetration I think those would
Lighting round - Advice for marketers
48:17
be the other key metrics second question what advice would you
48:22
give to someone who is interested in pursuing a career in marketing
48:27
uh well first of all go ahead uh it's a lot of fun it's super interesting but uh
48:34
secondly I'll say is get a good marketing education
48:40
um I think there's I said in marketing there's a you know the tendency to be we like new
48:48
shiny things I think in marketing right so whether that's new software tools new or anything but we also have a tend to
48:53
keep renaming things and coming all the new ideas a lot of that I think and even sometimes when you read articles even
48:59
from very famous consulting firms and and famous Publishers it's actually not based on
49:06
empirical facts right so I think that's why I go back to actually have a good solid foundation that gives you an
49:13
understanding of how marketing actually works so evidence-based marketing
49:18
um so if you and you it's never too late to do this right so um so get a good marketing education
49:27
um it doesn't have to be a you know a full battle again if you've already done that but like just keep yourself up to
49:32
date on on what is uh what are the the evidence-based marketing principles that
49:38
we operate because there are more and more research coming out around this uh and I think it's
49:44
um today a lot of us operate with based on marketing myths and and thinking they're just not based on facts
49:52
talking about education um is the third question what is the one marketing book that you would recommend
49:59
yeah so I I have an activity right next to me here uh I don't know if you can see on camera here but how Brands grow
Lighting round - Recommended book
50:07
um right there's a number of books you can you can get from here you don't have to have to get them as a real books I
50:13
like to get real books but um but that's a Superbook again like I said it's from uh Ehrenberg bass
50:19
Institute uh who's actually doing a lot of research around evidence base the
50:24
marketing and I think that for me has been super helpful resources I keep going back to it uh anyway I said all
50:32
the principles also what I mentioned earlier around the double jeopardy but there's a lot more in there you can you
50:38
can learn from but also around distinctive brand codes there's a ton of research that I would
50:44
recommend to people uh you know you know get familiar with and that's also you
50:50
can just go Google there's a ton of things you can also I say recommend also searching for Roger Martin Around
50:56
strategy he's a fantastic guy around actually around playing to win and defining what is a marketing strategy or
51:03
strategy in general um but yeah how Brands grow or I think the
51:12
second one is better brand health is another great book I think every marketer should should
51:18
read thank you for giving us even a bonus
51:24
education here on booktube weekend resources to look at uh last question what's your favorite AI power tool also
51:30
software hmm uh yeah good question yeah so I mean the
51:36
one I probably used the most is uh grammarly um but I kind of both like it and also
51:43
sometimes I don't like it so much because I feel like it's constantly you want to keep
51:48
editing and keep making changes so it's like you never finish but I find that super helpful uh it's just having it
51:54
running in a background um I have been playing around with a lot of AI tools lately to figure out what
52:00
works I'll say a lot of interesting stuff out there I think there's still a lot of a lot of work to be done they're not always
52:06
perfect so I think grammarly is probably the one I kind of use everything when I write
52:11
emails so yeah articles whatever it is on that note
52:17
um for our listeners who want to follow and connect with you what's the best way to do so uh yeah a lot to uh connect with
52:24
listeners who have questions or anything so feel free to go to LinkedIn uh and click other follow are you also welcome
52:31
to connect um happy to connect with the people yeah um yeah a lot to get questions I also
52:37
learning from other people so yeah please connect on LinkedIn
52:43
amazing uh Henry thank you so much again for being here
52:48
thank you so much for listening if you find this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or
52:55
Google podcasts also please consider giving us a rating on leaving us a review because this really can help
53:02
other listeners to find the podcast you can find all the episodes or learn more about this podcast at wasp.ei see you in
53:11
the next episode
53:32
thank you