How not to phone interview for a marketing role

In the last two months I have phone-interviewed over 40 candidates for a handful of junior marketing roles and it is amazing the basic mistakes that people make. What I found is that you usually know within ten minutes of the call if someone is going to make the next stage.

One thing I did realise is that it is tough out there. Hundreds of graduates are desperate for entry level roles and many young people have been made redundant from struggling organisations. All the more reason to do everything you can to come across well in your first interaction (I am not going to cover CVs here although the errors here are worth a whole post).

I had some terrible phone interviews and in the end I classified the worst into the following categories. Do your best never to be classified as follows.

The Hunter

This person was out in the wild with the sound of the jungle seeping down the phone. Usually they were on their lunch break and standing next to a busy road or in the middle of a town centre. Every fifth word was punctuated with the sound of a car, a screaming baby or a dog barking. One guy bumped into a group of work colleagues and proceeded to have a 60 second conversation about where he was going for lunch while I was on the end of the phone (McDonalds in case you were wondering).

It sounds obvious but find somewhere quiet to do your call from or don't do it at all.

The Moron

Amazingly only around 60% of candidates had any idea what my company did. 60%! If you do not research what the company does and are not able to talk about it for a couple of minutes then you are a moron. Fact.

In some instances it was so bad that I had to end the call there and then. Why would you apply for a role that you have no idea what it entails? What kind of passion does it show? Spend at least the length of the scheduled interview time researching the company and the person who is interviewing you.

Desperate Dan

Desperate Dan doesn't always rear his ugly head during the interview, sometimes it is a spectacular encore. For example, one candidate who didn't get the role wrote two letters to me outlining how I had made a huge mistake and how it would have a large impact on the future direction of the Fortune 50 organisation I work for (bear in mind this was a graduate position). Unfortunately for the candidate this campaign moved to Twitter and the person in question implored me (and the world) on Twitter to reconsider.

The result? Blacklisted from graduate positions in the organisation and branded as a moron. Be gracious in defeat and don't burn any bridges. The person interviewing is taking a lot of things into account during the interview process and it is probably best for you both that you are not put into a role you are not right for.

The Theoretical CEO

This is the person who has a marketing or business degree, probably including a masters, and has read every book in the world. They quote the marketing greats extensively and are jam-packed full of jargon. They are seconds away from bursting onto the scene and making CEO in a matter of weeks.

There are positives here - the ambition and the knowledge - but generally this candidate has no idea how to practically deliver marketing day to day and is going to come down to earth with a bump. Theory is great, but if I am hiring a graduate I won't somebody who is going to roll their sleeves up and get dirty down the marketing mines. I also need someone who can take constructive criticism and continually evolve.

If you don't have any practical experience convince me that you are desperate to get down to some hard work and that you know you are not the finished article.

The Politician

This is the candidate who hears a hard question and just decides to answer an imaginary question that they would prefer to answer. Some are so good at it that you actually forget the question you asked in the first place.

While this can be a useful skill in life it is not good form in an interview. If you give me a random answer I am just going to keep asking you the same question until I get what I need. I definitely don't want to spend the next three years in meetings with you trying to search for the truth.

Happy hunting!

11 tips for aligning marketing and inside sales

Inside sales teams can unlock huge value for organisations. Unfortunately for most, this value tends to stay locked in the corporate safe alongside the finance directors compassion for marketing, the legal teams sense of humour and those naked pictures of the CEO's wife at the Christmas party.

There are a number of factors that make inside sales teams work but I am going to focus on the role of marketing and what marketers can do to ensure success - after all the vast majority of your qualified leads probably end up with these phone jockeys.

Get this relationship right and you are converting like you are on the road to Damascus, get it wrong and you are soon to be Chief Collateral Officer.

1. Map out the lead flow from generation to win/loss - What are the main stages in the sales motion? Who owns it at that stage and what do they need to do with it? What criteria needs to be met for the lead to move forward or back a stage? How long should you wait before you start getting worried that it hasn't moved?
2. Involve inside sales in the definition of a qualified lead and lead scoring - the key stage for you is the hand over point between marketing and inside sales. The only way to get lead scoring right, and have the right handover criteria, is to involve sales in the decision making. Also helps in blaming them later for not converting the leads.
3. Don't kid yourself that you are perfect or your leads are all hot - you can't win them all and you need to continually evolve your lead generation and scoring. The majority of your leads aren't ready to buy and therefore aren't ready for sales.
4. Get leads to inside sales quickly and with the right context - once your leads are deemed ready for sales get them there as quickly as possible. Leads and interaction recognition can change quickly and the sooner the sales contact the better. Of upmost importance is the context you give around the lead especially around the campaign and level of interaction.
5. Have and police SLAs - have an SLA for how fast you will get a lead to sales and have another one for how quickly sales will action it. Report on these SLAs to sales and marketing management.
6. Include marketing in inside sales team meetings - this ensures marketing can share what the promotion calendar looks like but also ensures open dialogue and a team spirit.
7. Report on contribution to target - talk in their language. For example what percentage of opportunities does marketing create?
8. Use complaints/moans/whining as an opportunity to create advocates - an unhappy inside sales rep, like an unhappy customer, is an opportunity to create a loyal advocate of your work. Take negative feedback head on and turn that frown upside down.
9. Use inside sales reps at industry events - good way to get the reps in the marketing trenches and understand what it takes to create a good lead. Also lets them own the discussion from start to finish.
10. Ensure your marketing teams listen into at least one phone conversation a week - often your sales team will have an initial qualification call and then schedule a further call or online presentation. Make sure your marketing team join a couple a month to ensure they gain customer insight and get a feel for the quality if leads.
11. Be positive - there is little room for emotional battles in business. Ensure you remain positive, professional and focused on the target.

Ok, this should get you started or help improve the status quo. Once you get into a rhythm reassess and constantly try to improve the relationship and process. Now all you have to do is help inside sales work on their relationship with sales and you are laughing...

From slumdog to millionaire: A guide for B2B marketing in India

Just coming to the end of a grueling but rewarding week working in India (is there any other kind?). As usual, it’s the characters that make doing business here so much fun.

One of my meetings was with an old industry don, head of a national association, who spoke non-stop for 30 minutes as if in a trance so I ended up just getting up and inching towards the door. Another meeting had 14 people sitting opposite me in a boardroom but only two of them spoke. Another, where I was dealing with different arms of a business, had three people that kept rotating, 15mins then swap, 15mins then swap, and so on for two hours. The other guys just waited at the door ready for their turn.

Funny thing is, there will be some great outcomes from all of these meetings. There’s an openness and a willingness to help that makes working in India a pleasure.

Pre-entry planning

Don’t get me wrong, from a corporate perspective India remains a shockingly difficult place to do business. Only last month it was ranked 132nd out of 185 economies in the International Finance Corporation’s Ease of Doing Business report. A real kick in the Gangulys for a country with such lofty growth goals.

If this hasn’t put you off – and the lure of a 1.2 billion, largely English-speaking market with 6% growth rate is too hard to ignore – then it shouldn’t be difficult to source the data you need to guide your strategy. There’s plenty out there, much of it online, that can help you identify where the opportunities lie, potential barriers and competitors. When you have this in place, your mind will naturally turn towards how best to invest your Rupees…

Going to market

Tactically speaking, B2B marketing in India can be a relatively straightforward. Due to being English-speaking and having some sound communication and technology infrastructures in place, you can often closely replicate the successful marketing programs from your domestic market (something you’re unlikely to be able to do in China, for instance, but we’ll talk about that some other time).

When it’s time to go to market, here are my experiences with some of the main B2B marketing channels:

Online
An estimated one in every 10 Indians are internet users, making the country the third-largest Internet market in the world after China and the United States. It will likely overtake the US within the next 2-3 years. Put any preconceptions aside, your buyers are online.

For SEO, there are local options but you may feel more comfortable starting with the usual suspects – about 84% of online Indians use Google and Yahoo. For PPC, I’ve seen consistently strong ROI from Adwords and LinkedIn investments. The conversion rates are around 20% higher than my firm’s global average.

Content marketing
The cliché is true: Indians like to learn. White papers, e-books, local case studies and blog posts are all well received. Whether email blasts, display ads, PPC or social media, there are plenty of channels available to reach prospects.

There’s also currently little resistance to providing contact details for gated content. When promoting whitepapers via email promos, I’ve seen up to 50% higher form completion rates in India compared to the US and UK.

PR
India has a large, free press, with established trade publications for every niche imaginable. It’s usually decent quality too, not just cash for coverage. Unlike in most Western countries, these publications are actually read (rather than sitting for weeks in their plastic wrapper). Find the right publication and you could be reaching tens-of-thousands of people with your articles.

Email & telemarketing
If you’re a fan of email prospecting campaigns, you’ll likely see good results. Compared to more mature markets, the BS detectors are generally low in India, giving higher response rates.

Ditto phone-based communications. Whether direct selling with Inside Sales or nurturing prospects with Sales Dev Reps, we’ve found this to also be a highly effective approach.

Events
Trade shows are big business in India, particularly in Mumbai. International B2B event organizers such as Marcus Evans and IQPC run a regular calendar of conferences usually aimed at higher level execs. A $10k investment can often secure you Gold sponsor status, with a speaking slot, booth, one-to-one meetings with 10+ target prospects, as well as the usual brand exposure.

We’ve also found self-run seminars to be effective, particularly if partnering with an established media or association brand. Webinars haven’t really taken off yet, which is surprising given the atrocious traffic in major cities.

These are just a few broad-based, mainly tactical observations to fuel some thought. If you do decide to dive in, good luck and hopefully these tips will help you go from slumdog to millionaire.

What Hollywood can teach you about writing client case studies

Whether it’s Batman, Spiderman, Bourne or Bond, you know how it goes. First, there’s the scene setting. You get some background about the characters – you understand them, like them, empathize with them. Then the baddy is introduced. The evil that must be overcome. The plot thickens, maybe a few complications thrown in. There’s a struggle, some explosions… And then victory, with everything working out in the end.

If a blockbuster deviates from this, I’m tearing up my ticket.

This tried & tested formula is also the perfect structure for your client case studies. Background > Challenges > Solution > Results. If I read a case study that doesn’t follow this plotline, it jars. It just isn’t taking me where I want to go.

Getting a star performance from your client

Now that you have your plot, the all-important next step is to ask your client the right questions to populate this storyboard. Here’s a generic client case study interview framework I stole from a journalist and have been using variations of for years:

1) Background
a) Thanks for your time. Can you tell me a bit about your company? (Actually this is just an ice-breaker, you’ll get most of this from the comms-approved website blurb)
b) Can you tell me about your role and key responsibilities?
c) What does a typical working day look like? (At this point, I guarantee they’ll say “There’s no such thing”. Smile and nod understandingly).
d) Can you tell me about the project/task at hand? Size, scope, key stakeholders, objectives.

2) Challenges
a) How were you previously doing things? What were the limitations/problems associated with this?
b) What were the main business drivers behind your company’s decision to use my firm’s product/service? What specific challenges did you face? e.g. time, cost, risk.
c) What were the implications of these challenges? What would be the potential outcome if these were left unaddressed?
d) Why did you select my company? What was the decision-making process? Who was involved?

3) Solution & Implementation
a) What product/service did you select? (You should know this)
b) What was the implementation process?

4) Results & Returns
a) In your role, how do you use my firm’s product/services day-to-day?
b) Who else in your firm derives the most benefit and how?
c) What are the benefits you’ve obtained from my firm’s product/services? How does it help you do your job? (At this point, you may want to have a few suggestions to hand in case they need prompting to say the right thing).
d) Compared to how you previously operated, what measurable returns have you seen? (What you’re looking for here is the moneyshot. A killer line about ROI like, “What used to take 5 days, now it takes 5 minutes. Thanks to your company, we increased our margins by 10%.”)
e) Think that covers everything. Anything else you’d like to add? (The Columbo. Never fails.)

Now you’ve captured the vital info, all you need is some Sorkin-esque prose, Spielberg-esque production and Warner-esque promotion. Voila. A Statue-worthy case study.

Why you should create your own Content Marketing agency

Just been reading a post from content marketing daddy David Meerman Scott about how a professional services firm increased revenue by 50% in the past year by switching from an outbound to an inbound marketing approach. Good to see this example of cold, hard ROI and this post should be required reading for anyone still skeptical that content is king.

As well as the 50% growth figure, there was another line that caught my eye. And, if you’ve ever tried hiring a content marketing agency, I’m sure it will have caught yours too.

Towards the end of the post, the CEO of this professional services firm said that his company’s approach was to “create an internal content marketing agency”.

Even having worked with some award-winning content marketing agencies, my advice would be to consider doing the same. Here’s why…  

What skills do I need?

Top-notch content marketing requires a broad skill set. Part journalist; part publisher; part design guru; and part online marketing whizz… Underpinned by strategic nous, an analytical mind and the soundest understanding of your buyers and their journey.

Yeh, I know. Mad Men this aint. This is serious work for seriously smart people.

And your strengths and weaknesses in these areas should guide what external skills you bring in.

Given the scale of the task at hand, it’s natural that firms are starting the search for a full-service content marketing agency. Good luck guys… 

A rare beast

Content Marketing as we now define it is a relatively new and evolving discipline. This means that: a) It can be hard to find a genuine Content Marketing agency; b) When you do, there’s a good chance you’ll know as much about Content Marketing as they do; and c) They often have no idea how to price their services so you may be ripped off.

All too often, firms that bill themselves as Content Marketing agencies fall into one of these three categories:

1. Expanded services from creative/PR/social media firms. Problem: Know their traditional area but are often trying to squeeze their round-peg of expertise into the square hole of content marketing.
2. Boutique agencies or contractors that used to specialize in white papers or print publications. These are the guys who believe that, because they’re now producing materials in landscape with a picture on the front, they’re content marketing experts. Problem: Although fine for churning out words, lacking any other skills you require.
3. Firms that are genuinely trying to be content marketing agencies but are still learning as they go. Problem: Often a case of the blind leading the blind. Currently muddling along armed with the latest from the CMI and, because few clients are entirely sure how much a series of Infographics should cost, hitting you hard for the privilege.

Particularly in markets outside of mature tech hubs in the US, a genuine content marketing agency is a rare beast. So here's another option to consider...

Start your own agency

It's ok, I don’t mean quit your job, get a bean bag, a pair of thick-rimmed specs and actually start your own agency. Just hire the pieces you need to complete your content marketing puzzle. This may only be two or three contractors such as:

Brand journalist
Thanks to the digital media revolution, talented journos around the world are now spruiking their services for a corporate buck. So hire them up. They understand the publishing process; they can spot what your story should be; they have the interviewing skills to draw out quality info from your Brains Trust; they’re great operating to tight deadlines; and can bash out words by the thousand (without sounding like a seedy marketer).

Hot-shot creative
To get the cut-through required for great content marketing campaigns, you need a multi-skilled design maverick. They need to do video, infographics, ebook design, slide decks, graphics, the works. The person you’re looking for may sometimes miss the mark, but are capable of delivering something so astonishingly cool it will rock your space.

Online Marketing guru
There’s no point creating great content if the right people don’t see it. If you fall short in online marketing, particularly SEO, call in an expert. If you’re short of dosh, lock yourself away until you can at least deliver the distribution basics for your specific program.

The fact is, content marketing requires a deeper understanding of your company, its brand, its solutions and voice than any other form of marketing. Therefore the more ingrained your content marketers are in your business, the better your content (and results) will be.

Congratulations!

On reading this, you may be part of the way towards starting your own agency. And, until more specialist content marketing agencies are formed and the market matures, this could be a very smart move.

International marketing: We are all in this together

The first rule of international marketing is that if you don't work in head office you feel ignored, left out and intensely superior.

Head office just don't understand your needs and are too focused on the home market. You can't help but roll your eyes in frustration as you listen to them prattle on during conference calls.

In the meantime services are launched, campaigns created and budgets agreed without your input or knowledge. If only those damn Yanks/Brits/Aussies/Europeans/Indians (delete as appropriate) had travelled a bit and understood our culture and market!

Sound familiar?

Well I come bearing bad news, you and only you can change the status quo. And the status quo needs to change as you probably depend heavily on the central marketing team for core services.

While you make faces on conference calls and bitch with your local team you are losing valuable buy in and momentum.

Here is my guide on how to make international friends and influence people

• Lobby hard to get international objectives into goal plans - all objectives should state that that the target is an international one and include all markets. If possible get a specific target for your local territory.
• Avoid conference calls - use video conferencing or webcam as much as possible. If you have no choice talk more than you would normally and if someone is too far from the phone to hear, tell them.
• Set up regular 1:1s with key stakeholders - work hard to build personal relationships with the various marketing leaders.
• Constructive criticism only - it is too easy to provide negative feedback to the central team. Even if it won't work in your market ensure you are constructive in your feedback. Talk them through the detail on your market need and what changes would increase effectiveness. The more negative you are the less you get included.
• Reward good behaviours - jump quickly if someone does something positive focused on your region without asking. Make them feel good about themselves and good in front of the team. Talk about it in your meetings with other marketing leaders.
• Understand where you are different and complimentary - differences can be frustrating but also very positive for the development of teams. What makes your team different from the central team? What service can you provide globally that makes you stand out and provides benefit to all? Make yourself invaluable.
• Behind enemy lines - if you get a chance to get a central team leader into your territory then jump on it. There is no better way to get someone engaged than for them to experience it and feel a part of its success.
• Join non-core team calls - you are going to have to work much hard to stay up to date with the company and its strategy. Join relevant global team calls especially sales, product marketing and product management - you will undoubtedly pick up invaluable information that otherwise you would find out too late.
• Build central team resource requirements into annual planning - It is generally good practice never to provide a promotion/marketing plan without resource needs, but it is too easy to forget about outlining the man hours needed from the central team. Ensure you arm the central team for the resource discussion by providing realistic estimates of your demands.

You are going to have to work hard to get this right, but once you do it will pay huge dividends. Remember when you make CMO that the international teams need a bit of love now and then.

Marketing metrics: How to measure promotion activity

When having a conversation about marketing metrics with a fellow director he said to me, "Metrics are great, but you don't fatten a pig by weighing it."

I agree...kind of. There are a number of factors you have to get right to get good ROI on promotion spend, but, if you don't measure, how do you know what works and what doesn't? The answer is you don't.

It is too easy for business leaders to see marketing as a cost centre and the marketing community has to work hard to talk the language of the business - money.

So how do you feed the marketing promotion pig as it were? You feed it lots of different types of food and see what makes it the fattest.

Getting started with marketing metrics

Use your CRM or Excel to track each activity through the life cycle of its leads. If Excel, first column should be the name of activity, second a category type for activity (such as email, trade show with presentation, webinar etc) so you understand what type of activity works best, third the financial year it falls into and then one for each of the bullets below. Use the same format and you can easily compare year after year and there is nothing better than fact when trying to show value or justify budget.

For every activity you run you should track the following

• Expense to revenue ratio - for every pound you spend how many pounds of revenue are you getting back? Great for communicating to sales and finance.
• Expense to opportunity ratio - for every pound you spend how many pounds in opportunity are you creating? Great for communicating to sales.
• Number of leads created - the Hollywood stat; all sex and no substance! Sales teams in particular love hearing about high volume. Number of leads by lead rating is better if you are lead scoring.
• Number and value of opportunities created - good sign of quality leads is the creation of opportunity.
• Number and value of wins - the name of the game. If the activity isn't creating revenue then in the immortal words of Snoop Dogg "drop it like it's hot".
• Cost per lead, opportunity and win - you need to help finance understand the cost of sale and you need to try and drive these down year on year.
• Conversion of lead to opportunity, opp to win, lead to win etc - this will help you understand where you are having problems moving leads through the pipeline.
• Lead age - how long does it take for leads to move through the sales cycle? Useful for understanding what you want to run early in the year and what works better when you are trying to pull some quick deals in with Q4 looming.

The most important of these are the first two. Sort the spreadsheet by opp:revenue and then opp:opportunity ratio - you now have a stack rank of your best performing marketing activity. Over years this will be your guide to what you should spend your money on and what you should avoid like the plague.

Make sure you only count opportunity and revenue that you can confidently say is as a result of marketing activity. If you lose credibility once in front of sales or finance all of your metrics lose credibility. As an aside, it is worth tracking what percentage of the pipeline you have helped influence e.g. 50% of all deals closer or in the pipe engaged in a marketing campaign.

Communicating marketing performance

My advice is to pull together high level stats at the end of each month and send to sales and business leaders. You should also get a slot at regular sales meetings to chat through results as well as future activity. On a one to one basis it is important that you ensure individual sales person understands what you have contributed to their pipeline and wage slip.

Show the value you are creating and show where you failed, but learned some valuable lessons. Whenever talking about activity talk about the metrics as well as some qualitative information. Talking about what percentage of total pipeline and closed business marketing accounts for is strong. Make sure that marketing's contribution is recognised in deal win emails to staff as well as sales.

Don't get obsessive about working out the stats every week, after all you don't fatten the pig by weighing it, once a month is fine. A bigger quarterly report might be a good idea to dig into what is working in more detail.

How not to manage leads.. and the importance of picking your partners carefully

I’m a big fan of the marketing automation provider Marketo. Aside from being a frequent user of their product, there are few marketing firms that walk-the-walk as well as them. Whether it’s their eternally-useful content, their innovative website or their Revenue Rockstar events, they lead the way in showing us how it should be done.

Which makes it all the more strange that they allowed one of their marketing partners to break their golden rules (and irritate their clients in the process).

The other day I received an email promo from Marketo promoting a webinar they’re running with a telemarketing firm. Like it, count me in.

So, what happened next? Within a minute of clicking ‘Register’, my phone rang.

“Hello Mr. Turbo, are you interested in finding out more about our services? Would you like to speak to one of our consultants about your telemarketing requirements?”

Woah! Hold it right there sailor! Where’s the romance? You can’t rush these things. Buy me a drink first, a little chit-chat, maybe some dancing. Wait for me to look you up online, ask around, do my own research.

If you think I’m flashing you some thigh then give me a call. But don’t just introduce yourself and try to bundle me into a cab (especially when I was only listening to you because I know your mate).

Unsurprisingly, since I knew nothing about them or their services, the call didn’t last long.

So imagine my surprise when the next business day they called me again to say:

“We notice you’ve been on our website and downloading white papers about our services (wrong and wrong). Would you like to speak to one of our consultants?”

No again. And I’ll be thinking twice before registering for my next co-delivered webinar, regardless of who’s top of the bill.

Here are a few takeaways from this exchange…

1) Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot and other marketing automation solutions are powerful tools that provide all kinds of sophisticated lead management intelligence. But these smarts mean nothing without good judgment and a sensible lead management process. Otherwise it’s like giving keys to a Ferrari to a L-Plater.

2) As Rozzer has previously discussed, this was not a Lead or anyone worth calling yet. Be strong and stand up for better quality leads. This may reduce your lead numbers, but the real test is the conversion rates and results further down the line. You’ll find it nearly always pays to put lead quality over quantity.

3) With lead nurturing, it’s important to read the signals and strike when the iron’s hot. But patience often reaps the greatest rewards.

4) Be careful who you hop into bed with. Particularly if you’re the senior partner in the relationship, make sure the other firm’s standards – whether its lead management, design or communication – matches your own.

To learn more on about how to build a high-performing lead nurturing program, I recommend you check out… Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing.

You and your marketing leads are weak

Sound like fighting talk? Well, before we settle this outside the old fashioned way let me tell you why.

The majority of your leads go nowhere and it is your fault for putting weak leads through to sales and not arming them with the right information to succeed. “Sales is the problem” you say? Hmm…in my experience we marketers should shoulder most of the blame.

My guess is your leads include people at events who entered the prize draw or asked where the toilet was. “Woo hoo, 500 people visited our stand. We have 500 leads!”

Or maybe people who downloaded a white paper once and never came back. Not good enough. You need to segment your leads to separate those that are ready for sales and those that need nurtured by marketing.

Only those that show good buying signals and meet your target customer profile should be allowed to start their, probably rocky, journey with sales. Have some self-respect, your leads reflect on your ability as a marketer.

When was the last time you snatched a lead off a sales rep and took back control? Never? You need to buck up your ideas. Leads need immediate attention or they go cold. While the rep is responding to that RFP your golden leads are sniffing around the competition. Make sure someone proactively has control and it is probably going to have to be you.

When you pass over a lead to sales what does it say? ‘Attended trade show x’? ‘White paper download’? If you don’t arm sales with contextual information about the lead then it is still a cold call. How did they interact at the event? What was the message on the stand/presentation? Who talked to him? What other interaction have you had in the past three months?

Are your leads converting? Are you transparent in your results and showing sales why the leads are good? If not, spending time on following up leads isn’t a good investment.

Leads are expensive and therefore precious, they are the lifeblood of many sales organisations. If you are going to spend money getting them make sure you are ready to work with them throughout their lifecycle in your organisation.

The worst blog launch in history

Rozzer and I are excited to be launching this blog and, over the weeks and months ahead, look forward to sharing our B2B marketing tips, help guides and views.

We’re also safe in the knowledge that, whatever happens, it will be better than the first blog I launched several years ago.

Back in the mid noughties, there came a point where every CEO had to have a blog. It didn’t matter if they had anything to say (usually not) or any time to write it (definitely not), they just had to have one.

The company where I was head of comms at the time was no exception and, since we had a  joint CEO structure, with the two co-founders of the business, it was decided that they’d be co-stars of this blog.

Over the coming weeks, they both got heavily involved and excited about the launch. This was no bad thing for me – a nice, high-profile project with the top brass. Editorial meetings to brainstorm ideas, frequent discussions about messaging and branding.

The highlight for them was the photo shoot, where they spent an afternoon being snapped in various poses – smiley, serious, side-by-side, back-to-back. Since one of them was a foot taller (and wider) than the other, we settled on relaxed smiles with one standing behind the other.

As launch day drew close, we had everything in place. Funky design, cool photo and a solid first post – a gentle intro but enough edge to provoke a comment or two.

We’d also set up alerts so that the two CEOs, the VP Marketing and the exec team around the world would receive notifications of new posts and comments.

So, with great fanfare at our Friday after-work drinks party, we put the blog up on a big screen in the middle of the office, so that everyone could raise a glass as we pressed the button to go live.

To much excitement, within a few minutes, we had our first comment. It said:

“The plump one is chuffed because he has been getting his oats off pumping the weedy one in the dirt box!”

So, as we launch Marketing Wingman, Rozzer and I can only hope that a) You enjoy what you read and b) Your comments are as thoughtful and insightful as the first I received.

You can be my wingman anytime

About this blog

University or college is great. Parties, cheap booze, late nights, new “special friends”. And studying Marketing is even better. It’s a better looking crowd than the Finance majors, no question. Plus it’s cool stuff – who wants to get brain-bleed crunching numbers when you could be debating the strategic plays of Coke, Apple, Microsoft and the like?

Then you graduate. You sober up, swap your jeans for a suit, start interviewing and get a job. Turns out it’s a B2B company. That’s cool, you did a few modules on that. So, armed with some slick models and theories, it’s time to take over the world!

And then they ask you to hold an executive seminar… Deliver some leads… Deliver better leads… Take care of their PR… Heck, if they’re a small firm, maybe they ask you to create and deliver them a whole marketing plan.

You start to sweat. It occurs that 90% of your course was spent learning how to be the CMO of a massive consumer goods brand. And you need some help. Big time.

That’s where Marketing Wingman comes in.

Marketing Wingman is where knowledge is shared between those with battle scars and those fresh out of military academy. It aims to provide up and coming B2B marketers with the practical advice to help them rise up the ranks.

About us

Your Wingmen, Rozzer and Turbo have been in the marketing game – mainly with tech firms – for over a decade. Whether it’s turning a scrappy start-up into a global brand, or fine-tuning the finest, we enjoy few things more than building businesses with killer marketing.