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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 (00:00)
Yeah, I think what you're describing is that there's a translation job, right? As a marketer, you're an expert in marketing, you understand marketing metrics and the impact that they have. And so you can look at leading KPIs and it's kind of intuitive to understand, okay, we're seeing this at the top of the funnel that will filter through. It's kind of, need to understand that that isn't how everyone thinks and there's no reason why it should be. So there is a job to translate your expertise into their world. And if you want to bring them along and you need to bring them along, then,
Kelly Allen (00:08)
Mm-hmm.
Tom Rudnai (00:27)
then that's something, yeah, that's just something that you have to spend, devote time to and potentially get help with, right? Because I think that was, there were a couple of things in there that I really liked, but one of them was that you don't have to be the expert. There are tools out there to help you and there are people that can help you. Marketing is part art and part science. Actually, I don't necessarily want the person who does both because...
I want the person with extreme strengths. I want extreme strength in both camps, right? And that often is gonna come from a couple of people. So it's knowing what part is yours as well.
Kelly Allen (00:59)
Yeah, just know what's your zone of genius and what isn't. Understand that marketing...
cannot be separated. You can't have all the creative and none of the data. You got to have both. If you're like me and you want to sit in the mess of creative and be, you know, ideas and it comes to you in a shower and you know, you're playing with fabrics and stuff like that. I love a creative, please bring them over to our industry because that's so important. However, find someone that can help you. Like I befriended the FD, I probably found him he found me very annoying, but I was like, right, how do I show this in a spreadsheet? How do I show that? What is this data telling me? I really
friended the sales director, my old sales director who I'm still connected with.
what's the problem here? And it would be like, we've got a data drop rate, what's happening with the data? Why are our demos not converting? So I'd sit on a demo. Okay, well, it's not great, is it? It's not very seamless, how they log in is not fun, you know, all these sort of things, like, become sales best friends too, like, it's not you versus them. It's a baton and you're feeding each other. So like, definitely get friendly with your team. Get friendly with finance. Like, once someone becomes a customer, what does the invoice
always
look like that lands on their inbox. Does that look the same as the experience they had with you in a local event? If not, you probably need to consider that. And that goes back to brand. Brand doesn't just stop at the front, big, francy front end. It's got all the way of the through. How is that experience all the way through for B2B?
Tom Rudnai (02:30)
Okay, so that's really interesting because I think that was where I wanted to go next is it's all very well and good saying at a strategic level, we're going to make marketing fun and we've got some people in who are helping us to do that. I think the challenge often is getting that to trickle down into the day to day. And I think there's two things that are hard, right? It's getting it to trickle horizontally because as you say, the brand isn't just what you do in marketing, it needs to filter through to other things and also vertically because it's easy to have a strategy around.
It's a lot harder when you're into the mundane elements of day to day executing, putting out content to keep it fun. So I guess, because it's where you went, let's look horizontally first. Like how do you go about necessarily influencing the elements of the business that aren't directly under your domain and helping to entrench your brand into those?
Kelly Allen (03:23)
I that's where I always go back to this brand audit and getting the brand right in the North Star and it's not just about a logo, it's just about...
How do we articulate? How do we turn up as a team? How do we work as a team? How do we want to feel as a team? How does we execute as a team? What does that feel like look like from the way we dress, the way we talk, how we interact? Like every person that works for your company is an extension of your brand. And I'm obsessed with that. Like, you know, one bad phone call, one terrible email, anything like that can cock up. Doesn't matter how hard marketing's worked at the front. If you have a really poor experience further down the chain, there's not much
marketing
can do at that point, right? Like, unfortunately, a bad experience we all know is far worse than a great one. So, and how it's dealt with, right? Like, you people, you make mistakes, but how do you deal with it, right? Especially in cybersecurity. So I think for me, it comes back to getting that right.
people being proud of their brand, if they're proud of their brand and who they work for, and they want the business to do well, and they want it to succeed, I don't think people come and do a mundane job. I think when you're so bought into it, you want that business to do well, you're proud of that business to do well, you believe in the service that you're offering or the product. So I think that stems from CEO, Mission, Northstar, where's the brand, what's it going? It then stems into HR,
that and making sure, know, like even like you're onboarding, if you're onboarding a company's fricking boring, you've started off wrong already, haven't you? Like if it's great and it's engaging and you make that person feel fun and what's the welcome pack they get and how do they feel like that extension of the brand, you know, with personal branding, you know, when someone starts for your company, you really want them to put a great post about I'm working here. Look at what I got. This is the training that I offer. Like they offer. I love my job. Like that's great. I mean,
I mean, and also, you can see the success of those sort of things with like, going back to the Dario CFO, but things like Grace Andrews, you know, who's been there for like, for a while, grew it, grew her own personal brand. Now look where she's going. Like that's how people operate now.
So think yeah, brand has to extend all the way through. And again, I'll go back to it. It's a team sport. Everyone's got to be part of it. That, if HR is not aligned to how we onboard people and how it feels, if finance don't want to send an invoice in a way that you would say is how it would be received by your company, you're a bit broken. So that's why I'm so big on getting this foundational bit so right. Because I think if that's right, you ornately hire the right people too. I don't imagine Gymshark has anyone working for them that's not.
into the gym. I might be completely wrong, but the perk is they have a gym in the office, isn't it? Like the perks are they get merchandise and stuff for that and gym gear.
I'm not saying that they're like bodybuilders, but I'm imagining everyone in there enjoys exercise, enjoys community, enjoys doing something as a team. And that's an extension of their brand. Whether they meant to do that on purpose or not, it's just happened, hasn't it? So, you know, I just think if your brand's right, you hire the right people and then it's a rollout impact. Is that answering your question?
Tom Rudnai (06:38)
Yeah, it's interesting because I
guess you have I guess what I'm imagining there's a lot of kind of marketing leaders listening to this who are sat there thinking, okay, this is all sounds great. But what you like the prerequisite is executive button, right? You have to have it because it starts at the top and you're saying it needs to feed through every element of what you do. It kind of reflects something I think a lot. I think in the context of content marketing specifically, just because it's more relevant to what we do, but
I think it's very relevant here as well. What marketers, marketers core skillset is building a narrative, right? Around the brand, around a particular message that all is directed externally typically.
And I think what you're saying is there's a lot of opportunity and it's a much bigger requirement than a lot of people recognise to start directing that to how you craft a narrative and a story and a feeling internally as well, because that will project outwards. guess, there practical things that you've seen work really well to go and start achieving that from day one that maybe if you've kind of gone down the wrong path a little bit can bring you back? And like, what's the first step?
Kelly Allen (07:49)
So what if you were in a content role about how you'd want to bring it back and make it more exciting or is that what you're
Tom Rudnai (07:55)
I guess
marketing more broadly, but maybe you're someone who's not coming in as a consultant working directly with the CEO, you're in-house and you want to start taking steps towards this, but you maybe don't have to buy in immediately to go and change everything across the whole organization. How do you start?
Kelly Allen (08:03)
Yes.
listen, sit in every meeting like you don't know anything and just listen. would ask, I would like said, start befriending someone in each department and just learn how they're doing it, what they do and how marketing might be able to ease some of that pain. you know, sales, they have to do a lot of outreach, they have to send things, you could sit there and befriend, I don't know.
an SDR, a BDM and they'd be like, oh God, you know, I'm really struggling to get engagement. And you could go, why don't we work out a LinkedIn campaign for you? Why don't we build your personal brand? Let's record some videos on my lunch break. Let's start putting video into your outreach. Let's la la la la la la la, how you'd wanna do it and test roll it.
And you could speak to the sales director and go back and just make sure that they're happy that obviously don't upset anyone. And then you can just use one person as a case study. If you couldn't see that that BDM's outreach improved by X, the number of demos they put by X and it was because you did X, Y and Z, then you can make the argument of like, could you imagine if we did that on every salesperson profile? And then you just have to move the needle a little bit.
And I would always say move the needle in sales is the quickest way to get people to be like, yes. Or if finance is struggling to, I don't know, get people to fill their details in to be invoiced, I don't know, something like that. If there's some sort of friction, is there a way that marketing can make it cooler? Could it be a 30 second explainer video of, hi, this is why we need your details. If you just feel it, feel it, otherwise, finance are gonna email you quite a few times. So we recommend you just do it now. Do you know just a little bit more playful.
feel a little bit more human. Here's a few easy, easy steps. Also a downloadable PDF if anything doesn't make sense. If not, Jane in Finance is always ready to jump on a call if you've got any problems. It's just warmer, isn't it? just, anywhere that you can remove friction to get money into the business quicker, free marketing, I would do that. I would pick a pain and try and fix it because then you can see a result and you can go to someone.
look, I've done this, how could I roll it out on a bigger scale? Because it's hard to move a whole shift like a ship, right? But if you can plug one hole or improve one thing from your content, or a marketing idea, then great, I would do that. And just be like, be really hungry, put your hands up, go, so and so has dropped out of being at an event. can I be there? and can I video some content? I would really like to interview some of the attendees. Would you mind me doing that? No, yeah, actually, great. Like, don't wait for it to happen.
saying like you want something to happen like make it happen for you because yeah everyone's busy everyone's doing their own jobs it's not that they don't care about marketing but sometimes you just go put yourself out there