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Demand-Geniuses is the podcast for revenue-focused B2B Marketers. We bring you the latest insights and expert tips, interviewing geniuses of the B2B Marketing world to bring you actionable advice that you can implement to accelerate growth and progress you career. The role of Marketing in B2B go-to-market strategy has changed drastically. It's more important to revenue generation than ever as buyer engagement becomes more digital. We equip you with the information you need to thrive in this new, revenue-critical role.
Tom Rudnai (00:20)
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses and welcome also to our guest today who is Liam Bartholomew. So Liam is the VP of Brand and Customer Marketing at Cognizm, which I think is an interesting title actually. So we'll get into that in a little bit. But I guess first of all, Liam, do want to say hello and give a quick intro to yourself?
Liam (00:37)
Yeah,
so hi everyone. I'm Liam. I have been...
So yeah, I'm VP of Branded Customer Marketing at Cognizant. I've been here for just almost six years now and a couple of months off that. I arrived when we series A and just about to go into series B. We about 50 people and now we're around 500. So I've been on that long scaling journey. But yeah, very happy to be here and thanks for having me on Tom.
Tom Rudnai (01:04)
So 15 to 500 is a hell of a journey. I guess from a marketing perspective, what are the big changes that you've noticed along that time?
Liam (01:11)
Yeah I
mean it changes massively from
having a few channels and just being having to get stuff out and executing. You have to execute so fast and quickly. like, we always had like a phrase that Alice our CMO had, which was like done is better than perfect. And it was just a change and iterate at all times. So, and we are like very focused on like a few channels that we could double down on that we know that would work and then actually like cutting our time on other things. Now,
Tom Rudnai (01:31)
Nice.
Liam (01:40)
We're a large, team. You have to have all of the processes involved and it's actually really hard to keep sometimes as you scale the same productivity with a larger team that actually becomes a challenge in itself. It's funny how you can sometimes, if you're not careful, have more people and end up doing less and less as well. So you have to like set up all those processes that actually make sure that happens. You also have just more to accomplish with like a larger sales team as well that then all of that
communication becomes even more important. But also then where you've got where you can no longer just focus on maybe one or two channels that you know work, you've got to expand and do everything. It's like, it becomes not done as bad and perfect, but it's like done and it has to be perfect as well. So I think that's kind of where the main changes and like there's always going to be room and I think having that ability to be scrappy and get tests out and
Just get stuff live is really important. So there's always going to be room for that. But yeah, you have to start kind of like thinking differently as well and like how everything is potentially scalable how you can actually get the right results driven from the team and get like instilled like a mindset to do the work that you probably would have done or be more involved in yourself to get exactly the end product that you want and get everyone aligned to a goal. So yeah, it all comes around really, I suppose
of people and actually making sure that you scale what you had at a smaller size company, I think.
Tom Rudnai (03:12)
Yeah, it's interesting. Like what you're describing is kind of that as you scale and get more people put like perfectionism starts to creep in if you're not careful. I guess like do you have a sense of why that is? Like what creates that? And is it something that you're really consciously trying to push against then?
Liam (03:27)
So I think it's
like.
It's not necessarily that perfectionism creeps in, like, if you have like five people all doing the work, you can like align five people to what you want to achieve quite easily. If you have like 20 people all doing work and they all have like publishing rights on various different platforms and things, it just naturally deviates. Stuff starts to deviate away from what was intended. And I think the, you always see it largely.
companies, huge large companies have these big processes, these long laborious processes to then control for that so that they can ensure some consistency. But actually you can over process too often. we never want it to be a situation where it takes like a week to get a landing page approved or something, which you see happen as companies get bigger. So it's like finding that balance between processes that create guardrails and then also finding, but having enough
that you can actually guard for the quality of the work that you want to get out there. think, I do think when you get larger and you move up market as well and you've got a bigger brand and bigger like responsibility that you have that the market gives you less forgiveness in what you put out. So that's where some of that perfection comes from. Like that starts putting an expectation from you when you're a startup, you can be scrappy, expectation is low, people don't expect too much.
of like the scrappiness but after a while if you're trying to cement yourself as a bit like an important brand one that knows what they're doing then people are going to judge you for some of the stuff if it's not to their perceived standard that you should be achieving so i think that also has its impact and also you just have a brand to risk you don't always have that risk as a smaller company either
Tom Rudnai (05:16)
Yeah, I mean, that was what I was thinking as you were talking, actually, like one of the nicest, so to my genius, we're 12, 18 months old, right? And so, I mean, really, you have absolutely nothing to lose with anything that you put out, right? So you can just be like, fast, break things, and just get stuff out there. And there's almost a charm to the imperfection,
Liam (05:31)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (05:32)
I guess we've kind of jumped ahead. One thing I always like to understand just at the top of these conversations is a little bit more about the context of cognizim itself. So obviously I know cognizim very well. A lot of listeners might not. Do you want to give us a bit more context about what cognizim is and what are the unique challenges that you...
think you face in marketing cognizant in terms of the broader go to market structure and how that filters through to the tactics that are available to you.
Liam (05:59)
Yeah, so
Cognizant is a B2B sales intelligence and B2B data provider.
specifically focus on European data and that's where our strength is and in that we're providing contact data, firmographic and also insights and intelligent signals. I think some of the challenges we face or previously had faced is like this is extremely competitive market we have lots of competitors out there all doing very similar things.
Some of that was like, it's then finding our niche, which I think we have done in like the strength of our European data and as a European data provider. And also in a lot of like, there's creep from a lot of, all of the competitors, lots of industries, there's creep from others coming in and sort of doing similar things. So everyone's merging and meeting in the middle. The category that we sit in becomes less less divided.
to find, sorry, and it's becoming more divided and there's like different ways you can go. So some companies are bringing in some of our competitors to bring in more sales engagement tools and they're sitting on the engagement, like sales engagement side. And then others are doubling down on insights and intelligence. And then then you've moving into some of like traditional like ABM platforms as well, which then crossing over to like Sixth Sense or Demandbase. So there's, it's like finding your angle and where you're going to go with
So we've obviously focused very heavily on the data. We see that as our core product and the most important part of the product so that we don't get distracted by other sorts of sales intelligence tools and like adding to the product in that way that you've got like engagement tools or like or like sales or like recorders like Gong or like those sort of things are adding those things into the stack because we're like we're doubled down and super focused on fake on the data and intelligence
around it so it's been like finding our sort of piece in the market and where we're going to compete.
Tom Rudnai (07:50)
Yeah, okay, I mean it's something I noticed just as a customer in that market, right? Is the messaging just all looks so similar from all of these platforms. Everyone wants to brand themselves as a one-stop shop. And when you have like a specific use case that you need within it, it's not until you're into the product that you start working out like what the actual strengths and weaknesses are. ⁓
Liam (08:06)
Yeah, and I think also
if you buy...
If you're like, think it's whether you kid yourself and say you're something more or not, but like you're buying a platform for data and then the data doesn't work or doesn't suit the needs that you bought it. Like ultimately those customers are going to be disappointed. So for us, like focusing on that side is the most important bit. Cause that's what we, I know from speaking to customers, doing the research, that's what customers want. They want the accurate data. So it's like picking your focus cause it's easy to get pulled
off in a million directions.
Tom Rudnai (08:41)
Yeah, but it also, guess, is a little bit of a product of the stage you're at, right? Because what you're describing is that for a lot of these companies, you're kind of buying churn. You're gonna get someone like me to be like, okay, I'll spend 80 quid for one month. Let's see how does. And then you get into it. like, this isn't actually what I needed. It's not strong in the area that I was focused on. You're now a little bit past that as a business where you're actually focused on the kind of economics and operating effectively as a business. So has that thinking evolved by product of the stage as much as anything else?
Liam (08:54)
Mm-hmm.
yeah, definitely.
And also just by, think, yeah, I think there's that whole era where was like, especially the market was like great for all costs. We were just growing crazy. It was go after every sort of direction we could. And now, yeah, we're cementing ourselves where we actually see ourselves fit best to actually like drive efficiency and, yeah, and like acquire, acquire customers that actually definitely need us, us and will be served best by us.
Tom Rudnai (09:37)
do you think you would benefit from having focused on that earlier? Like, do you think it's just a process you have to go through where you scatter garden, maybe not so focused on the fundamentals and then hone in or should you have done it sooner?
Liam (09:48)
⁓
So I would say yes, we should have done it sooner. I also would say that it was almost like a product of the time. like we always try to focus on where we thought we did best. Like we always defined some sort of ICP, like the level of depth we went into that. Like as a smaller company, you can only go so far in terms of time, resource and budget. But
it being that product at the time that there was, you know, investment was like easy to come by, by today's standards. And, and like, the directive was to spend and grow and revenue was the top line. That means you end up taking all of the opportunities you can do. So I think had we started now in this era, like I, I imagine it would have been very different. But I also
think it's also a product of what we sell. So, know, B2B data in general is like just on its own, but just a huge broad, everyone's looking for B2B contact data. So you can sell to everyone, whether that actually is best for you is like what you've got to work out. And like actually knowing your strengths to begin with is quite difficult, right? So when you're building a B2B data company,
Tom Rudnai (10:37)
It is.
Mm.
Liam (11:04)
I think the easy assumption could be from all the demand that comes of it, it's just going to take over the world. But then as competition arises and all of that sort of stuff, you still have to start working out what your strength is within that market still.
Tom Rudnai (11:15)
Yeah, okay, and it must be a difficult thing to communicate though because the devil's very much in the details, right?
Liam (11:20)
Yes, definitely.
Like even like picking the fact that we're going to be a European data provider whilst that being and Europe being our strength becomes an issue, right? So someone loses that and like we have a presence in the US and although we and we do well in the US if as like we defined in our ICP, it's like US companies with a mere operations. that breaking that down was really important for us. But then as soon as you position yourself as a European data provider, any
One, looking for US data, which we have, and we have great US data still. But looking for US data to US is like, we now all of a sudden look like we've pulled out of that race and saying that we don't have it. But you have to find that, you have to like make that choice and make that decision because it actually benefits you in the long run. So yeah, I think that has been hard. And then that also is like a hard thing to negotiate with an entire business as well.
Tom Rudnai (12:15)
Talk to me a bit about the decision making process of deciding to hold in on Europe, right? Because you're a very fast growing company, you're venture backed. I presume it's not always the easiest conversation to say our strategy is to move away a little bit from by far the biggest market.
Liam (12:29)
Well, I think
you can always find it.
in data. like when we ran the ICP project, which was, you know, something that we had full sign of encouragement to do. And when you look at your retention rates and when you're driving, I think that's the difference when the metric changes from revenue to retention, or like your gross dollar retention, that's when it changes because then that that information becomes super clear. You can see where you're retaining customers where you're not. So then
And if we know that we increase GDR by X amount, we get so much more like 30 times return for example or something. That becomes like an easier conversation, but it's just actually, and then backing that with qualitative information and speaking to customers of like our best customers who use this for the European data. And then you get more people on board to do it.
differences that you have to then change slowly and then when you're a larger organization you can't just make those decisions as quickly and enact them instantly. yeah actually think this top line steer was easy enough when we were able to back it with the data that we acquired by speaking to customers and looking at into our own CRM and actually seeing what works. And at the end of the day we weren't withdrawing from the US, we were just
honing who we speak to in the US and actually deciding who gets the best value from us in that market.
Tom Rudnai (13:57)
Yeah, which I think, I mean, it's something that anyone who understands go to market can resonate with. I think the challenge a lot of marketers will have is they'll be in a position where they know that they need to niche down, but they've got founders boards who are going to push back against that. Right. So it sounds like you were fortunate or like as a business, you had good leadership who were pushing you to do that, which put you in a good position. Is there any advice you have for people where that's flipped and they need to lead the change a bit more?
Liam (14:17)
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
So we obviously had buy-in from leadership to be able to do that. I still think though that it has to come back from, I mean, ultimately if your leadership is prioritizing revenue in this instance and it's not going to be like annual and like...
GDR or like your retention rates aren't gonna be like aren't the priority. Then I think sometimes you just have to align yourself with what the scene is the goal of the issue. If they're saying that's the priority, then I still think it is just about building that data for like for yourself and taking it back to them to explain that story. And without the data to back it, never be able to, you can't be able to like, ever be able to like push it through. But I think once stuff is clear,
clear on a piece of paper in front of people. And you can show that story and also show your plan forward, which is the other thing. You have to be able to demonstrate your plan. Like if I take budget from here and put it into this new defined ICP, this is what I'll be able to achieve. That's the full encompassing, not just pointing out the problem, but also the solution of how you're going to go about making that difference.
Tom Rudnai (15:31)
Yeah, the road map as well. It makes me think of my first kind of, big boy job in London, the CEO there is a metric I called Ivan. He used to have a saying which is like, you bring me a problem, I'll listen, bring me problem with data and I'll act, which I always thought was a really nice way to like sum up how to speak to leadership.
Liam (15:48)
Yeah, yeah. fact,
our founder and previous CEO used to have on his, sometimes on his Slack, just like a status which I used to love, which was just like solutions only. No problems when he was like like focus mode. I used to love that.
Tom Rudnai (16:00)
Yeah.
Yeah, although I've always had a bit of a, I've taken issue a little bit with that as like a leadership thing, because I think it creates a culture where people are afraid, like, no, if there's a problem, fucking tell me. I think it depends on the problem a little bit on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just bring that to me, that's fine. Cool, the other thing that I was quite interested,
Liam (16:13)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. This tree.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, if something's on fire, I think the problem is more important. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (16:28)
I guess for context, although we've ended up spending 20 minutes on context, I'm very bad at sticking to a structure, is like your role I found quite interesting. Because I think like traditional marketing hat on funnel approach, brand, customer marketing, opposite ends of the spectrum, you kind of combine them into one umbrella there. Like I guess I was just interested to understand like what is the scope of your role? And why did you decide those two things belonged under a single person?
Liam (16:51)
Yeah,
so my teams are the... So we have like the website design video creative team and then I also have the content team and then customer marketing which is like split between sort of the advocacy side and the expansion side. Now...
when you like, the brand and content team work very closely to like, sort of like that creative team and the content team work very closely together. In fact, content team being like one of the biggest, some of the biggest users of their night, the video design and website resource. And then actually I think of advocacy and customer marketing as just an extension of content really.
Tom Rudnai (17:26)
Mm-hmm.
Liam (17:31)
I treat the person in that team very much like that because I just don't want advocacy just to be writing up case studies. It has to be customer content at scale and doing it in the same way to be able to spotlight customers through the content team. So those all align very closely to me. So it actually becomes more about content. then obviously there's other elements of the brand as well, but I think we can push a
of brand through the quality of the content we create. So it all becomes like, yeah, one big content engine and like driving community within our customer base for them to get involved in the content that we create as well.
And then there's obviously the reviews and that side of stuff, which all contributes to brands. So I think they all go really well together. and then the expansion side, like expansion is probably newer for, for Cognizant. Like we have had, we're building out the product base. So there's more opportunity to expand. Like it's been very much, we've been very much a business leaning on new business. And now we're looking at how we can expand into our customer base. And I think in that realm,
where that's kind of ended up same with me, like I used to run the DemandGen team. So I just have a good knowledge of that side of expansion and then it kind of working and getting to know the customers through the brand as well. like positioning myself as someone who gets the, has like close contact with the customers, is involved in the advocacy and things like that. So then we can actually start to build out and understand where we're going to expand from there. So that's kind of how it fell together.
Tom Rudnai (18:58)
I like it though, because it reflects, so one of our core beliefs at Demand Genius is that content, there's an opportunity in B2B to leverage content much more effectively throughout the customer life cycle, not just pre-sale and actually really typically, like historically, right at the top of the funnel. I think that's something that's often missed. It's harder and harder to get a sales rep in the room with a prospect, so you need to find more kind of remote ways to influence them. But so you've kind of set yourself up in a way that allows you to do that better.
Liam (19:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I suppose when we were probably looking at some of the content that we created as well, like obviously you create a lot of things with a new business mindset, but then, and even when you will run specific content for customers, right? But then when you run like content that you're really thinking about from a new business perspective, you get a huge amount of customers attend anyway, and like engage with the content. And they actually end up being still like actually become like more of the reliable attendees to like webinars.
or like the reliable visitors of your your blog. So it's I suppose yeah it's keeping that them in mind. I don't think we sort of built it out with the idea that it was like specifically to be able to remove or like reduce CS touch time. But what we did need to do is like arm that team with all of the content that we did have because the content we were creating like traditionally was getting pushed out to new videos.
business,
but it's like, was of immense, like importance to the customer success team and to customers as well. So it's like making sure it gets them into the hat, into their hands as well. And they're engaging with it, but also getting them involved in that engine, because getting customers involved in that engine supports them, the demand gen motion back as well.
Tom Rudnai (20:40)
From a content perspective then, have you noticed particular trends in terms of what people get engaged with and what people get interested in? And like, do you plan for that? Do you think this is?
this piece of content, this webinar, whatever it is that we're producing, is a kind of post conversion or pre conversion piece and are there big differences or do you find generally what interests people, interests people?
Liam (21:03)
yes. So we think about, think between post-conversion and pre-conversion, I don't think there's like a huge difference in the content that we engage people with. The only thing that maybe changes is people want more relevant product information on that post-conversion. it's like, yes, this is the problem. Yes, these are the things that we're talking about, but how can I do it with the product now?
solve that problem with you. I think that also obviously matters at the bottom of funnel stages when you're talking to ops as well that's exactly the same like when people are considering you. I think the content though that that relates to and gets people into your sphere of influence that bit that sits at the top is very much still the common thread that runs through you. for example we look at the content that we create it's interesting because there's
is desire and we've had this problem before to go with big other swings, new type of content, do all these sort of things that are interesting to us and then stop talking about something else. But actually that same topic, if we just hammer it home over and over again, is of immense interest to prospects and customers and it's what they associate with us. So that's when we try, we look at data to think about what we want to be known for. that's, and I create some crazy acronym about that for the team, but it's like always
about what we want to be known for. some of the big successes that we've seen from a cognitive perspective, which always has stuff that's dotted back to then the cognitive products. So then later when they move post conversion, we can talk about the product in that way. we do any cold calling content, we do really well on and customers love it. We can talk about cold calling to the end basically of time, like people love it. And that obviously has an immediate dotted line back to the product with the quality of
mobile numbers and making sure they can get in contact with the right person at the right time. Demand gen content specifically lead gen to demand gen journey, which also has a dotted line back to the product in the sense that you don't need to be acquiring gated contact information from gated contact, from gated content because you can get access to it in a data platform. People are super interested in that. That's the hot topic really for marketers that they, they want us, they love hearing us
Tom Rudnai (23:10)
Yep.
Liam (23:19)
talk about, have information about, want information about how they can use data once they've got their hands on it, which is like further down into post conversion as well that we can talk about. And then also international expansion. So obviously being a European data provider, a huge amount of people are interested in Cognizm when they're expanding into Europe and they want to know how to do it and what are the sort of trials and pitfalls that you can come across in doing so.
And those are like three topics that then we look at from engagement data and from influence pipeline and revenue that continue to sort of like deliver for us. So it's like trying to stay within the realms of those content. that content flies through the funnel. So like in attracting new prospects, but also in keeping our customers engaged and actually thinking about ways that they can use the product as well to achieve those goals.
Tom Rudnai (24:08)
Yeah, I guess you have permission to talk about the solution a lot more, right? Because the people for whom they actually have access to it. So that's what they want. They're wanting, educating on how to use the solution, not about the problem and the existence of a solution. Is it a challenge then if you're creating this content? Because that is quite a big shift. It makes me think of, we've done these, I think sent you one, right? We've done these content audits recently, which has been really interesting actually, because when you look at the data across all of the customers, you build up this trend of like the way that we approach content in SaaS.
Liam (24:19)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (24:34)
one of the things that comes out of it is we think, I most people would say we write too much top of funnel content, but when you get an AI to assess it and say, in the funnels does this sit, it's all bottom of funnel content. Because we just can't resist talking about ourselves and talking about our products. So it's like 16 % of content in SAS based on the ones that we've run is top of funnel. So it's, and I think that's something we need to train ourselves out of more and more. And everyone would say that, yet we still do it. I'm sure if you ran that on demand geniuses blog, you'd probably get the same outcome.
Liam (24:46)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (25:00)
but when it comes to customer content, it has to be a part of it. So that's where it makes it difficult to cater for everyone with a single webinar or a single white paper, right? Like, how do you think about that? And is it, you do much personalization of the content itself?
Liam (25:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean,
we obviously have the benefit of having a larger team now. So we run a top of final webinars. And we also think about all the content we do in relation to the paid distribution of it later or other distribution. So we run top of final webinars. have like one called marketing dilemmas, which is all about coming forward with any of your problems live on the show. That's the same as the podcast. Then there's a cold calling life where people can come and practice their
cold calling skills with a coach who will run through it with them. But then we have another one in the middle, which is around what we call our cheat code series, which is where cheat codes and like how you can take a problem and solve it in cognism That kind of sits in the intersection. We spotlight customers on there as well. And that's like really for that sort of in opportunity, more bottom of funnel webinar series. And then there's a customer webinar that is run specifically for customers where they can come. And it's like almost like a drop in session.
and they can post their problems and have them addressed on that. We'll lead with a theme but we can always go further and like explain some of that. So we have split that all out and then when we think about our blogs and things like that, they're like a lot of the blogs are building towards big rocks through the podcast and those top of funnel webinars and newsletters and stuff. So we create content on those which then build to like big rock pieces.
that then we launch and that's very much sort of top of funnel but then we've got a lot of like SEO content that is like targeted at like bottom of funnel keywords and how and then we can thread some of that top of funnel content through it and then do a lot of interlinking and linking back out. It's interesting that you say that you and maybe that is the way around but that most companies go that they always had more bottom of funnel content than top of funnel content. We actually had the reverse. We used to have an issue probably about two years ago
where
people would say to us, I love your content, I have no idea what you do. And I don't know where that came from. I think we just always lend in well to seeing how well top of funnel content performed in getting people into the funnel. We got very good at creating it and where maybe you could say that the tool is like simplistic and it's like value or it was at one point when maybe B2B, the sort of like B2B data market was less flooded.
Tom Rudnai (27:08)
Okay.
Liam (27:31)
access to it was previously harder when people had to buy this, that like, we didn't have to do so much product explanation. So we ended up focusing so much on top of funnel. And it's actually probably been within the last few years that we've really doubled down on our bottom of the funnel so that we can actually one, show how we differentiate, but also to have that sort of explainer in there. like those top line webinars and series and things that I talked about have existed for a long time and we've adapted them somewhat. But actually a lot of the bottom of funnel stuff that
Tom Rudnai (27:41)
Hmm.
Liam (27:59)
do now is kind of new and more focused on like okay we're good at talking about the problem but how does Cognizant actually help solve it?
Tom Rudnai (28:08)
Yeah, and I think it's slightly different to what the problem we see across the board because that is, it's top of funnel content, right? All the strategy behind it, the keywords that's going off, all of that is top of funnel. It's just bad because it's talking way too much about the product. It sounds like you've done a much better job of keeping it disciplined. One thing I've always felt when I've, so again, I think maybe more so in London, I've always known Cognizant very well, the brand. I think you do a very good job of.
Liam (28:19)
you
Tom Rudnai (28:32)
keeping your content quite fun, which is quite a nice contrast to like data provider, which is not inherently fun to the vast majority of the world. I guess that makes it even harder, right? Cause there's a transition in tone that we have to make a little bit as well from, we're having a lot of fun with our brand and kind of featuring our people as well, which I know you're the poster child for a lot of this stuff. To then like transitioning it over into a conversation about data.
Liam (28:36)
Yeah.
Exactly, yeah.
So I think that...
That bit is like, and as we move up market as well, it gets more and more challenging. like how we can not focus, like we can still focus on engaging and like, built, like getting people to aware of brand aware and solution aware. But then it was so like positioning ourselves as a serious data provider and exactly how we can help them as well and managing that transition. So I think sometimes by, we're finding ways to sort of thread the product in where we can to sort of introduce that a little bit earlier.
so that people kind of know why they're engaging as well and yeah can learn about Cognizant at the same time. There is a small part of me though that thinks people overthink this. So we run webinars, we do like release content on socials and people interact with that content and then they just simply ask can you tell me a little bit more about Cognizant and we can like address them there and then.
there is this gut urgency that you need to be like, say your name or where you come from instantly. And if you don't, then people won't ever find that out themselves. I think if your product messaging is clear enough on your website, you have really thought about that and just simply explaining what you do in your product messaging on your website, then people will engage with your brand, click through to your website and go read about you themselves. They're not gonna be super reliant on you.
them and if they really want to know they'll just ask. So if you and we do that as well where we position problems in content and then people come to us and be like can you tell me how you could potentially solve this. I think yeah we sometimes all over think that like people won't be able to do that research themselves that they 100 % do and they would prefer to do that research themselves in my in my opinion than often come forward and have like someone explain it to them.
Tom Rudnai (30:42)
Yeah, no, mean, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it comes down to patience, right? And can you be patient to let the leads trickle through over time when they're ready rather than need to capture them now, even if they're not gonna buy any sooner, because you know, if that's not how it works. It also, I mean, one thing you said, I was gonna say like, okay, they can go to the, if the homepage is clear, I mean, how many SaaS homepages are actually gonna make it clear at a single glance what you do? It's like, okay, oh, it saves me time and it makes me money. Great, it's every SaaS platform ever.
Liam (31:08)
Yeah, exactly.
And that's why we focus so heavily on that because for that exact reason. And I think that's the issue. I think people neglect that point so much. They'll talk about their product in such depth that it's confusing. And then at the end of the day, just say that value is, yeah, like you said, time saved or increased revenue, which is really the goal of every platform out there.
Tom Rudnai (31:30)
Yeah, it's something I find difficult as a founder, right? Because as a founder, you're really proud of your baby, right? You're proud of what you've built. You want to tell people about all the cool stuff it can do, not like hone in on the stuff that they actually give a shit about. That's a real challenge. That's why think founders tend to make good salespeople, make awful marketers. Because you're really bad at just stealing it down.
Liam (31:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
definitely. think, I mean, we've had this when we've done market research, you know, and we done the first iteration of a page or like a homepage and then shared it with prospects in surveys and they've been quite brutal in their, their tear down of it, you know, like, just tell us, you know, directly, or you're just, you're a data provider, just say it like, or they don't want to know what magic we could kind of fix. you know, they'll just
say what their problem is and what, well, you know, I don't have a problem with, I don't know, like, yeah, intelligence. I have a problem with getting the right mobile number and email address. It's like, and until you're speaking that language, you won't get through. you should like, try and explain your brand, like, how...
you would explain it to someone at a barbecue and just really like, really simply someone who doesn't know about your product, like what would you say that would make it make sense rather than digging into the exact back end of it, how it works, like everything you think or dream it could do. Yeah, just giving it that simple breakdown.
Tom Rudnai (32:55)
Yeah, mean, it's my least favourite question to be asked as a barbecue, because I'm like, I'm really about to bring the mood down. Do you really want to talk about content attribution and biojourney insights right now? How do I get out of this without boring everyone? Another thing I wanted to get into,
Liam (32:57)
Ha!
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (33:11)
everything that you've described requires patience. So how do you think about kind of measuring the impact that content is having? And I guess at each stage of the funnel as well, because the other thing I thought about is like, you were talking about, okay, we can drive a lot of engagement when we talk about cold calling.
Liam (33:12)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (33:24)
Well, I've always felt that way. I can go and put certain content on my LinkedIn and it's gonna get loads of likes. It's gonna make me feel great. It's gonna fill me with dopamine. Cause you've got an army of SDRs that are on LinkedIn and their job is to go out and engage with founders on LinkedIn. So that's shock horror. get loads of likes. it's like, and you're in a difficult sector, I guess, where it's easy to drive vanity metrics with your topic focus. So how do you think about measurement?
Liam (33:38)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (33:49)
and therefore making sure that you are measuring what matters within that.
Liam (33:52)
Yeah, so.
It's actually interesting that I can talk to the cold calling content point because that has been a pushback that we always got and were able to sort of like dispel the myth that it was just SDRs that were engaging with us and that it has therefore no revenue impact. Although it is mainly SDRs that engage with us, it's actually a surprising number of senior leaders that engage with that content as well. So, and that's why I think good content will just always like prevail. So we look
I get the team to measure it on like what I say to them is one plus one equals two on it which is that you look at engagement with the content as a leading metric we look at the audience of the content that we're attracting in as part of that and making sure it fits and we're inviting the right people to that content so we want to look at like mid-market plus companies and like within our defined regions as well and then if I
we're seeing that our audience is improving in size and also quality and that the content is engaging that we will inevitably see that later in pipeline, influence, pipeline and revenue from that content. And if those metrics don't align in any way, then we know that we're like, yeah, you're maybe bringing up a storm, but you're not actually like delivering something that actually leads to pipeline or like to people converting. I think the key things that we find that like would
that we now know that would make us see that they're gonna convert later is that it has to have that dotted line back to the product. you could talk about any content, right? And then drive engagement metrics, but it has to be like something that you could potentially solve at the end of the day so that people can make that connection themselves, but you don't need to talk about it. It just becomes an obvious connection. And then some, and actually influencing what it would be the user base for us, like SDRs, it's like,
immensely valuable because they go on to then influence in the deal and that's what so they might take up some of that cold calling content and like get involved with it but then they talk about communism internally something you can't track but that's definitely happening but also what we also found is that it's not always the SDRs that surface the content first even if they're the ones who are coming to read the blog they're the ones coming on the webinar
we've found many times where it's a sales leader that finds the content and tells his SDRs to attend the webinar or...
they find the blog and they send it around their team. We have a big rock piece of content on the website called SDR Zone. 60 % of all of the traffic to that website, or to that page, is of those with senior titles. So they come and they find all the content on the SDR Zone and then send it back around their team. And we have customers who actually have now included it in their onboarding of their SDRs so that they have that as a resource
Tom Rudnai (36:41)
Hmm.
Liam (36:47)
that they can use. sometimes actually like the user content or like the individual contributor content is then actually is exactly what the leaders are looking for. Because it maybe it has enables them to action their strategy internally anyway. Like, I didn't think people always obviously, if you've got an amazing strategy, or you have someone new starting out, they might want to learn a strategy from you. But I think a lot of leaders don't actually want to come and be told a whole strategy from a
blog, they want to know how to action one that probably lots of people are doing and really great ways to inspire their team to do it. So I think it's like a common thing we can fall into that then we're going to have to write about go to market strategies the whole time rather than actually like, well, okay, great. I know that I need to run an outbound strategy, but how do I actually make my team high performing and get them to do a good job of it? That's the bit that everyone's actually struggling with.
Tom Rudnai (37:40)
It's like the practicalities of it, which actually also is probably the content gap that exists in the market. I've not heard someone call, like it probably happens all the time, right? But call that out as a deliberate strategy of like content that enables leaders for their team. Cause you kind of in one fell swoop, you stand above and below the line, right? If you think about what that is within an organization, you're such an integral part of their internal operation at that point.
Liam (37:52)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I think if you
think about, I think about it from my perspective, if I attend a webinar and someone just tells me what ABM is again, I'm like, I just couldn't give a shit. Like, I'm really sorry. It's so, I obviously know what it is. It's really boring. If I attend a webinar and someone says, this is how I run an ABM program. And then they give me some nugget of like information about something they do with their team, a tactic they haven't thought about. That's the stuff that comes straight back in the channel. And I'm like, I've just heard this.
we need to test it. And that's the content I'll keep going back to. And that's like exactly the same, I think, with everything. So if everyone, if someone like, attends a webinar and probably talks about, I don't know, SDR to A ratios, I don't think any sales leader is having their mind blown. But if someone says, has your, team has been running this cadence and trialing, and I've been trialing this
opener and I've seen these results that's the first thing they're going to go back and tell their team and be like this is something we should try.
Tom Rudnai (39:06)
Yeah, I like that. think it's something I'll take on board for myself actually. I think there's a little bit of hubris in that. We all want to solve our customers' biggest problems and present ourselves as the kind of solution to the big meaty problems. And that obviously is a good thing, but you don't have to do it in every interaction. Sometimes just helping and adding value is what's needed and it's the practicalities that they need help with day in and day out. ⁓
Liam (39:29)
⁓ Absolutely. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (39:32)
Cool, look, I'm conscious of time. So what I like to do at the end is very quickly run through a few kind of quickfire questions if you're able to do that. So I'm gonna skip one because increasingly I think it's a boring question. First of all, what's an AI use case that you really love or a tool or something like that that you recommend users get on board with, listeners?
Liam (39:39)
Yeah?
Hahaha
⁓ So
I suppose AI at the moment as we have been
like as we've sort of adopted we're trying loads of different things at the moment. I think a really simple one, it's really boring, I'm sorry, but it's been really effective, but is like translation. We have been using DeepL, it's basically removed any freelancer costs that we use for translation. If you've got natural language people in the company they can proofread it enough that you can find small errors that are made or things that don't sound
quite right. So that one's been like a super effective one for us. But then other things that we've done are just making use of custom GPTs. So I think there's a lot that you can do there. So we have
got our brand voice into a custom GPT so that SDRs can write emails based off the brand voice so they can put it in there and get it to adapt it to sound like Cognizant wants we want it to so that we have some like brand consistency. We've actually built a custom GPT as well with all of our case studies feeding in so that Sales Team can ask about
the case studies and it will shoot them back the case study they want and give them other information and segments from it which is something that we just very recently built. We also have
custom GPT for our SEO technical rules so that we can put the blogs through that and then it will come back and correct it with any issues that we can see from an SEO point of view or some of the rules that we want to have it across all the pages. So I actually think these are kind of simple ones and there's lots of tools offering like amazing AI.
that like, or like what they would call transformational AI that we're still kind of waiting to see how it would work. But actually some of the smaller things that you can like instantly implement, I think, are just building those custom GPTs basically that can actually be like small things that you can do internally that can help scale production.
Tom Rudnai (41:50)
Yeah, no, think if you're running a team, I think it's always tempting to go and look and wait for tools to solve problems for you. But actually, if you just get really good at building custom GPTs and kind of training them, you can solve a lot of problems yourself or get 80 % of the way there, which is good enough in a lot of cases, at least. And then in terms of you personally, what skill or trait do you think has moved the needle most for you in your own career?
Liam (42:14)
Um, oh that's good question. It's always the personal ones, the harder ones.
I think maybe, maybe like, suppose the ability to, interestingly, I've, I always saw myself as an executor, someone who could get down and execute. And that definitely helped me in the early stages of cognitive, I'm very much a get stuff done type of person. And I just sit and execute. Then obviously I moved more and more into management.
And actually, interestingly, I found that I really kind of enjoyed that and found that kind of came very naturally to me. So now sometimes I don't know exactly where I sit, but I think those two things have definitely helped me balance on either side, that actually I didn't find management. like, there's lots of parts of it that came really naturally to me that I thought was actually that, and it was like, yeah, like I found that more comfortable switch than I thought, but I think I still always have
that executed drive in me. it's, don't, I'll pick stuff up from the team. I'm still trying to get, I'm still very like task and checklist focused and getting things done. And I don't, I think that can keep, and it enables me to still have breadth of thinking about what needs to get done because that's sort of within me. And I think it enables me to stay close to stuff, which means that you stay relevant as well within your team. You don't want the last thing you want to do is say remove that you don't really have the input that you used to have.
And then I think
In where I've moved, think maybe a final thing is like, I've just always had a bit of a, a little bit of like a out there, out of the box of creativity kind of thinking that I kind of like to try and push the boundaries. And I think that's just really helped with content. I kind of always see the next sort of like extreme or thing that I think we should try. And I've not, and I've become actually increasingly less afraid to do it. I think I used to be.
maybe more reserved with it, but I actually think leaning into that has been really helpful.
Tom Rudnai (44:06)
Yeah, nice, I like that. Here's those in there that resonates with me. I like what you said about it's very easy to get out of date. I think the speed at which everything is changing at the moment, if you don't do stuff anymore, within five years, you don't really understand the realities of marketing, within two years probably at this point. So all of those people who are kind of like, I just do strategy now. I don't know why I did an American accent there, sorry everyone. But that's not a very good place to be.
Liam (44:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (44:29)
Anyway, I know we've got hard thoughts, so guess just before I let you go, anything that you'd like to plug, anything you're doing at the moment, where can people find you?
Liam (44:35)
Yeah, so you can
find me, connect with me on LinkedIn. Yeah, I'd love to chat to other marketers as well. So we'd be happy to chat. Yeah, nothing big to bug. mean, there's actually, there's some exciting content campaigns coming next week actually. So just make sure you follow Cognizant.
unsocial or myself or any of other Cognizant team. I won't spoil any of that but yeah keep your keep your eyes out but yeah thank you so much for having me on Tom.
Tom Rudnai (45:01)
Well, everyone's seen Under the Hood now, so we'll see if it's like, they say like, don't see how your food is made. We'll see if it applies to content as well. But no, great to have you. Thank you, it's been a great chat. And thank you for listening, everyone.
Liam (45:05)
Yeah.