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The Fintech Marketing Lab is a podcast where Araminta Robertson, Managing Director at Mint Studios, explores, experiments, and breaks down how fintech marketing actually works in practice.
Intro: 10 years ago, most FinTech
marketers did a bit of everything, right?
We were kind of generalists.
Then over time, the stack
got more technical and teams
filled up With specialists.
You'd have one person for SEO,
one for paid, one for CRM.
My guest today believes that that
model is breaking because with ai,
each specialist could work alone,
and that kind of, you end up in a
place where silos just get deeper and
nobody's working towards the same goal.
So it's just not a model that works.
So what does a FinTech marketing
team look like in 2026?
That's what I asked Joel Goodell,
VP marketing at Swan, because
he has built and rebuilt teams
more times than many people.
Currently, he runs a team of about 10
people across demand, gen, brand content,
product marketing, and field marketing.
And he has a lot of experience
in various senior roles.
So before Swan, he was a CMO at me.
He was also the CRO at a company
called Keepers, and he's also
worked as COO and VP of Rev Ops.
So he really knows how marketing is
seen, from different perspectives.
In a senior C-Suite, SWAN is a Paris
based embedded banking platform.
They let software companies like Penny
Lane and Luca offer their customers
business bank accounts by bans,
cards and payments, and they raised
about 42 million euros back in 2025.
In this episode, we talk about
who Joelle would hire first today
and why one product marketer
actually is, is not really enough.
Who the second hire would be and why.
It would be someone who kind of owns
AI for the whole team, what roles
he thinks are underrated and the
ones that he might not hire today,
and then how he tests a candidate's
AI skills with certain questions.
A really great episode on what it takes
to build a modern FinTech marketing team.
So let's get into it.
Generic intro: You are listening to
the FinTech Marketing Lab podcast.
I'm Arminta from Mint Studios, a
content marketing agency specialized
in the FinTech space, and this
podcast is where we experiment,
explore, and break down how FinTech
marketing actually works in practice.
Each episode I talk with top FinTech
marketers about what they're testing,
what they're learning, and how
they're pushing the boundaries of
brand strategy and team building.
With that, let's get into today's episode.
Araminta Robertson: Amazing.
So I'd like to start, the theme
for today's topic is building
a FinTech marketing team.
'cause I think this is a topic
that has changed over the past
few years, especially with AI and
everything, and a lot of people will
have a lot of different opinions.
You've worked across a lot
of different roles, right?
Rev ops, product marketing,
C-O-O-C-R-O, sales marketing.
And you've worn a lot of different hats.
So I'm really curious to hear kind of,
I guess my first question is, what would
you say is it that marketers don't really
understand, you think about other roles?
Joel Gaudeul: I think one of the
biggest challenges, understanding
the culture of the different teams
I would explain a bit when I was a
CMO and I became CRO, I was like, oh,
I'm going to work with sales team.
I'm used to it as market.
And I discovered a brand new
world, a world that is dictated
by targets, by closing.
So when I was working on marketing, I
was mostly focusing on months, weeks,
maybe when the sales team was focusing
on the day, what's happening tomorrow?
Where am I going to call what is
happening with this prospect and
do we have new leads coming in?
And so the culture of the way they
look at the business is very different.
And the timeframe is very different.
I think one of the specificity of
marketing is we tend to look at things
for the long term because we are building
system, we are scaling activity, and
typically your sales team is not scaling.
You want to do 10, you
need 10 times more people.
That's it.
They're not going to ex increase in
term of output because it takes time
to meet people and work accounts.
And it's not something you can really
squeeze in and improve and scale.
So that makes a big difference
in the way we look at things.
And I think the finding the right
balance for a marketer between the
short term wins, the support day-to-day
support compared to the big plan we are
building, and we know we need because
we need system, we need processes, we
need tooling, makes a huge difference.
And if you understand that I
think you have a first win.
I was lucky enough to work in different
positions, so I understand the job
of everyone, but I think spending
a lot of time with other people and
marketers tend to just talk to people
during for project related activities.
So a campaign one pager, you need
to have a insight from the product.
But I think day-to-day interaction with
other teams and just asking a simple
question, what are you working on?
What are your problems?
And caring about what the, the
answer to that is something that
is going to bring a lot of insight
and help you connect the dots.
And I think that's going to change
the way you look at your priorities
and the way you end up project and
you get your stakeholders buy-in
by having those conversations.
So understanding the timing,
understanding the priorities might be
very different from one team to another.
and so you need a bit of flexibility
the way you look at things.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, no, that's such
a great observation and sales team are
thinking in days instead of weeks, and
we're thinking in like months, years even.
So , and that probably explains some
of the clashes sometimes, right?
Where the marketing's like, oh,
we need to think about, talking
to this person in six months.
And the sales team's like, no, we
have targets to meet right now.
Like, we don't have time for this.
So it can cause , some issues.
Joel Gaudeul: and some activities
you want to build are taking a
lot of time to come to fruition.
So you need to find other ways.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
No, this is great.
So if we're talking about the theme, of
how to build the ideal marketing team
nowadays, I'd love to start off with kind
of how you have it currently at Swan.
So tell me a little bit, walk me
through your setup, your marketing
setup at Swan, how many people are on
your team, kind of what other roles,
how do you have it currently set up?
Joel Gaudeul: Yeah, so we are a
team of about 10 people divided
into very classic small departments.
So growth dimension that
is focusing on campaigns.
It's a team that moved from a, a
very technical shift, like working
on the automation, on all the tooling
behind the, the marketing activity
and moving into more campaigns,
sequences and this rhythm of activity.
So I've got two people doing that.
And part of the engineering side
of this activity supported by Rev
Ops, I have brand and content,
which is mostly PR communications,
corporate communications events.
That is a big chunk of what we do.
So we have one person with an
intern supporting this person.
And I've got pure content where we
are talking about social media, we are
talking about opinion pieces, we are
talking about all the pieces of content
that are used for sales enablement.
I got product marketing with
two accounts, which is very
short for our type of business.
That's something I've been
fighting and rambling on.
You need a lot of product marketing.
And lastly, we've got field marketing,
which is a bit unique at Swan
because it's not just a matter of
doing marketing locally and adapting
to Spain, Germany, or Belgium.
It's also a matter of supporting
our customers that are based
on those countries with
their go-to market strategy.
So that's something that is a bit unique
in what Swan Marketing team does, is
the ability to support our customers.
So software providers into changing
their positioning, changing their
messaging, doing acquisition doing sales
enablement for them, et cetera, et cetera.
So, that's covered by fin Marketing.
Araminta Robertson: Nice.
Okay.
What would you say is the most
underrated role specifically in B2B?
FinTech?
Joel Gaudeul: I think problem marketing
is always the role that comes to relate.
you could be fighting in every direction.
If you don't have the messaging, you
don't know what you're going to say,
you are going to waste tonnes of energy.
I think a good for marketing is
going to be doing all the interviews,
talking to a lot of prospects and
customers, and get you what you need.
When it comes to, what do
I say to this personnel?
How do I handle my ICP?
What are my kissing points?
Those basic questions that are
what makes outreach very hard,
what makes content very complex?
What is going to impact every
single activity from marketing
to sales and even product?
So I think that is is very wide and
that's really an underrated role.
And the second one that I
think about is social media.
Social media management is often given to
the most junior people, usually an intern.
And when it comes to social media, the
way we have shaped it is we are looking
at it as also a source of folk leadership.
The social media is not just our
LinkedIn page, our company page.
It's also the post from our
leadership team from employees,
how we enable them to shine online.
And I think that requires a lot of skills
and experience to be able to navigate,
gain the trust, because sometimes, you
are going to write and be the ghost
writer for new CEO that requires a
certain charisma, leadership and and a
lot of confidence in what you're doing.
So.
Araminta Robertson: Yes.
Really interesting to hear this.
So when you say social media, are you
mainly talking about LinkedIn, I imagine,
Joel Gaudeul: For us, it's mostly
LinkedIn, but for others it'll be
Instagram.
It'll be.
Araminta Robertson: Twitter.
Yeah.
I have so many questions, but let's
start from, let's start from, someone's
listening to this and they're like, okay,
2026, building a FinTech marketing team.
What would you say is the first
role to hire, you think, considering
how things are nowadays and,
Joel Gaudeul: I would still focus
on product marketing because I do
think that product marketers with
AI can run their first campaigns,
can develop it, their first assets.
So , the barrier to being able
to support a team are lowering.
And product marketers are usually the,
the people with the most wide array
of skills, And they have something
that is what we need the most in
this era is mastering for basics.
Doing your own work, understanding
what matters as a marketer to be
able to reach out to your audience.
And that's something that We've seen a
shift 10 years ago, every marketer was
doing a bit of everything, and then we
went into specialisation because the stack
was becoming more and more technical.
So you started having people dedicated
to channels, people dedicated to
technologies someone to end the CIM,
someone to handle, pay someone to handle
SEO, someone to handle all those aspects.
And we built big things.
We created a monster.
We created a monster with many skills.
And if we are not shifting our way of
looking at marketing teams, we are going
to have many silos because those silos
are being strengthened by the user of ai.
Because more and more, these teams,
these silos become independent
They can
do more things.
They have less requirement for support
from other people within the market team.
So they tend to craft their own content.
They craft their own processes,
they craft their own tool stack
because they want to be autonomous.
And you end up having teams that are
not really working together, that have
a lot of experience and expertise, but
you don't have this working together
as one and towards a, a common goal.
And I think that's something
that is shifting in the way
we are looking at profiles.
We need to have profile that are more
experienced overall, that are more
generalist, that are confident with
using AI and willing to do the shift.
Because I'm 44, using AI is
not a natural thing for me.
Even if I am a geek, I've been coding when
I was younger I'm an expert in revs still.
It's a massive shift and I see it when I
advise some companies, I see the way they
look at ai, they use it for everything,
but nothing coordinates the effort.
So you end up having a lot of
people, doing a lot of things
very well, very fast, nothing
documented, no source of truth.
And so if you take a step back, you'll
realise that your LLMs are going to be
fed with data and information that is
mostly non-relevant because you don't
know which one is accurate, which one
is up date, which one is the truth.
And especially at the early stages of
company, this becomes highly massive.
So that's I, think, one of the big
challenge in the shift of motion,
shift of profiles we need in market.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
We'll talk about AI in alignment
in a second, but just to go
back to the product marketer.
So do you find that, so I think it makes
total sense to first hire as a product
marketer, especially, I would argue
nowadays where everyone's using ai,
standing out and having strong positioning
is more important than ever, and that's
what a product marketer helps with.
Right.
Do you find that there's pushback
from leadership where they're
like, well, product market are
gonna help with, something that
maybe ties more easily to revenue?
And if there is pushback, what are
arguments to help with that hire?
Joel Gaudeul: Funnily enough, I think
companies know the value of product
marketing, but they're not betting on it.
So product marketing is one of the
hardest job in marketing because
of all the skills you need to do.
And you go from very strategic
thinking to very day-to-day activities.
When it comes to enablement supporting
sales in some process and deal processes,
I mean, you need to be doing things
that are very tiny to massive things
that are impacting the world company.
And to do that, you can't
have just one person.
It's not happening.
and so you need to have someone that is
more strategic minded, someone that is
working on some features, someone that
is working mostly on sales enablement.
And especially in FinTech where
product are complex, they are
usually a lot of feature that tend
to be a world product in itself.
having someone that addresses those,
those markets, having people that are
specialised in different industries
or different target segment matters.
And usually companies will say,
okay, yes, we need a product
marketer and they will hire one.
But the one is not enough.
You can't do everything that the job needs
with just one person in a running company.
You can see the parallel with rev ops.
If you want to do rev ops you need someone
that is good at managing the systems.
You need someone that is able to
forecast and look at the data, do the
analytics, the business analytics, and
you need someone that looks at the sales
enablement, the technique of a sales team.
So it's three people.
If you have just one rev ops not
happening, you are missing something.
So you need to accept that you are going
to lose part of what the job is bringing.
So product marketing, does it mean
you won't be working on the strategy?
Maybe it says enablement that
will come a half a cliff.
It's a tough choice.
Araminta Robertson: It depends on
the strategy, I guess, and ultimately
what matters to the company.
I guess, if you think so,
product marketing is number one.
What would you say is the next like
sub department that you would hire
for, or how, How else would you
Joel Gaudeul: I, would tend to hire?
someone that is super advanced in AI that
is going to help us connect the dots.
I can think of all the
prompt in the world.
I can know what's the best process I want.
I can say exactly what I need.
Am I able all the time to deliver on it?
Maybe not.
And that's what I will be missing.
Having someone that is the go-to
person when it comes to ending ai.
It doesn't mean that I'm not going
to touch any prompt or I want do
things they include, for example.
But it means I know someone that is
going to support me in the process.
So it might be someone
within the marketing team.
It can be someone within the team.
It can be someone within
the organisation overall.
But you need this good person that
is going to help with adoption.
Help with automation.
Help challenge what you're doing because
if you want to work as a team, if
you want to avoid burning tokens, you
need someone to support you on that.
I think you need some
kind of owner for ai.
Araminta Robertson: so
let's talk about that then.
What have you seen has been, because I
feel like in AI and marketing, there's a
lot of talk, a lot of people who are doing
demos and showing some cool system that
they've built, but then you're like, they
create some piece of content or some video
and you're like, is this really our brand?
Is this really gonna work?
So what are some systems, processes, AI
marketing processes that you have found
has had a real impact on your team?
Joel Gaudeul: In our context what's
a bit unique is I don't need to
produce a lot of assets and content.
Quantity is not important to
me.
Paid is not essential to what I do.
So overall, I don't have this productivity
mindset that comes often with ai.
The need of ai,
what I am interested in is all AI can help
my sales team be better at in their jobs.
So understanding what is the intelligence
around an account, what is happening
around an industry, educating their
approach to a prospect by having
the right level of intelligence,
the right level of methodology.
And this comes from having a
very tight product marketing
knowledge, data within our system.
So our second brain needs to be
fed with qualitative information
and then they can work their magic.
But that's where I think we add the most
value with ai, is being able to crunch
this information and improve this part.
AI is also going to support
me with gaining time on the
reporting, connecting the dots.
But mostly I will use it for
accelerating my experience process.
So, oh, can I multiply more experience
with building faster the list
building faster, the messaging,
building faster the outreach.
That's something that I see.
the value of ai a lot.
And I'm doing uh, it on a regular basis.
And also I like to use
AI also to change me.
I think the way I give guidance to
my cloud instance is with radical
can in mind, with challenge me, don't
try to sugar sugarcoat everything.
I spend a lot of time creating
the context for my AI to make sure
I'm getting challenged properly.
Because most of the time as leaders in
marketing, who is going to challenge us?
Is it our founders and CEO?
Not really.
I'm not expert in the job.
Is it our peers?
Yeah.
likely.
But we need to outreach
and have conversation.
But on a day-to-day basis, we is
going to look at what I'm doing and
also use AI to look at increasing the
envelope and making sure that we move
to towards something that is better.
That's something that I am focusing
more and more those days is how can AI
push us to getting better at what we
do and not doing more and not doing it
faster and not doing it just automated.
Just how can we be
challenged in our day-to-day?
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Yeah.
Are there any specific
examples that you can share?
I find it quite interesting that you're,
from what I'm saying, you're saying from
what I'm hearing, you're saying you're
not using AI actually for producing
more content, written video, whatever.
You're using it more for research
and for reporting and for challenge.
So for strategy,
challenging your thinking.
What about any workflows or anything
else, like any examples that you
have of anything else that you're,
any other
Joel Gaudeul: Typically
the way we review content.
So we are going to have agents to ensure
that first the content is on brand, then
that the content is compliant, then that
the content is have this little something
that we want in every piece of content.
I've been working in company where we
said every piece of content needs to
have an extra layer of intelligence
of smart people talking into it?
So whenever we were writing a
blog post, we needed an internal
expert to add little blurb
and add its little value that
goes beyond a generic content.
And I think that's something
that is interesting to say,
okay, here's my content.
Tick those boxes.
What is my checklist?
So it forces you to think about the
scorecard of how we are going to
evaluate your content and match the
scorecard to your agent to evaluate
and say, actually you are not very
customer centric in your post.
Hmm.
that's something that you
said was important to you.
So what are we doing there?
So this kind of things, that's the
kind of workflow with uh, cascading
series of check we do with ai.
That is typically what's
interesting, I think we can have
also interesting workflows when
it comes to, as I was saying, with
enrichment for the sales team.
So to go into the different layers.
So first layer is what do I know about
the company looking at the market, what
do we know internally about the company?
Looking at my CRM, what do we know about
the contact, looking at contact data?
Are they talk in podcast?
What matters to them?
Do we know anything about their patient?
Do we know anything about
what matters to them?
Did they post about those topics?
And then going into, okay,
what's the best approach?
What are we recommending?
What should we highlight based
on what the product does?
And then we can also extend and do I have
people that are similar to this person
and can we be the campaign out of it?
And then moving into a campaign and
the subsequent task like content
creation, ad posting, et cetera.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah, I like that.
So checking your brand.
It's almost like a, check
before you publish things.
It's like a reviewer in a way.
I was gonna ask also like, where,
or what's an activity where
you drew the line and you said,
actually a human needs to do this.
Especially, considering
compliance, brand trust, all that.
What's something that you're like com a
Joel Gaudeul: creation.
Araminta Robertson: Really?
Joel Gaudeul: are not creating
a piece of content with ai.
AI can support at different
stages, and that's rule.
We worked on with my head of content,
we said as part of the guiding
principle we have for content
is AI can be only used at this.
And that stages of research helping
with the outline, that's it.
And then reviewing challenging
scoring, that's fine.
In between
this is, pure experience.
because you also, by doing the
job, you are learning, you are
improving, you are assessing.
There is a lot of benefit
into doing things.
If I ask AI to, Okay.
draught my one pager called
product marketer, you will
collect a lot of information.
Most of the time you will review it.
You will maybe see a little mistake
here, there, but you will assume
that what they say it is best.
So you won't challenge the overall result.
You will challenge tiny details.
It's it risky to do though, and I do
think that if we start using AI more
and more for things that are content
related, whether it's content for the
public or content for product marketing,
you end up missing the point of, Okay.
are we comfortable with
what is being selected?
Decided by ai, AI is making
decision ultimately by doing so.
So that's something we need to
be very careful about and maybe
we can go further with that.
But we need to have some kind of committee
to review and not adjust you yourself
and your ai, but someone external, maybe
the head of sales, maybe one of the
funder, maybe a product manager that
is going to look at your content, say,
I
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Nice.
We've talked about what the first
person that you would hire, the
roles that you think are underrated.
Are there any roles that
you wouldn't hire today?
Like maybe five years ago they were
super important, or maybe 10 years ago
they're super I important, but now you're
like, this can be mixed into another
role, or maybe it's not as important.
Joel Gaudeul: I would question
people for working on paid and
SEO.
SEO also, because I think today
the, the common recipes are known.
I'm not saying , it doesn't add value
for all SEO marketers looking at us.
I don't blame them.
I think the game is changing with
ai, with LLMs generating content,
and no one really knows what it is.
I think the recipes
are changing every day.
There are people buying tools
to understand what are the
prompts user input to get to me.
There is no magic to it today.
Those models are not fully master.
No one really knows how it works.
And once it would be stable enough, we
will be in area where LNS will be fully
driven by revenue of ads running on them.
And so we won't need it anyway.
I mean, whether you start with an
imperfect picture that no one knows
how it works, and you are going spend
money on it or you wait for the more,
the system to be more stable and
anyway, payment will happen there.
So I wouldn't rush into it.
So, SEO for me is not a big topic.
I think we need to
create creative content.
And creative content
will always find its way.
Of course, you will learn
from some people, oh, yes, we
comparison are working pretty well.
Reddit article are working well,
Wiki pages, good luck with creating
your Wiki page are working well.
But we like create content for Reddi, if
my audience is not already just to reach
the lms.
It's a lot of effort for a small effect.
And let's not forget that Reddit is
first and foremost a community website
and a community requires that you
spend time with it, that you gain
authority, that you interact with
people, that you get to know people,
that your network, it's a lot of energy.
compared to having a strong positioning,
a strong messaging, quality content
great narrative to share on the market.
So I would be
Araminta Robertson: Yeah,
Joel Gaudeul: that.
Araminta Robertson: I think
it also depends so much on
kind of what works for you.
So for like a, B2B complex
FinTech company Reddit obviously
doesn't make as much sense.
Maybe, you could argue even SEO or
paid really like people don't click
on one ad and then convert, right?
It's a very complicated buyer journey.
But if you're targeting SMBs or if
you're targeting SaaS mid-market,
that kind of thing, and if you know
that you get a lot of business through
paid, through Google Ads, for example
maybe then it's worth having someone.
But it sounds like, it's good to
have it mixed or it's good to have
like a demand person that can do a
little bit of these things, maybe
rather than a specialist in that.
Joel Gaudeul: I think I have
faith in the fact that SEO will
be sorted by the, the way certain
engine are going to read content.
And when it comes to paid
I still believe in paid.
I don't I think we are
putting a lot of energy in it.
It's very complex when you look at
the tiny details, but maybe we need
to have a simpler approach to it,
whether it's using external support
and working with an agency, whether
it's AI can support us with that.
I haven't tried it.
Maybe it's an efficient way to do it, I,
if I have one account, I might not put it.
Yeah, It's not because I, don't need
it, it's because I need
to set up priorities and
uh,
Araminta Robertson: Course.
Yeah, Yeah, that makes total
sense, especially in complex B2B.
Let's talk about hiring.
'cause that is also tough.
I feel like it's just getting harder
and harder, even though, the job market
isn't great, it's still hard to hire.
So how do you hire today for all these
different marketing roles, and how do
you, maybe, because you're probably gonna
say, I want someone who's strong with ai.
How do you assess their AI skills?
How do, what are you looking
for when you're hiring a
marketer for your team nowadays?
Joel Gaudeul: I think when I look at my
team I look for soft and hard skills.
I will try to.
I used to try to bridge the gap
in terms of skills, in terms of
our skills, but in fact, it's
soft skills that I need the most.
I like a team where you have someone
that is the creative person, someone
that is the caring person, someone that
is the get your fit together person.
Those kind of profile that makes the
team really work as a unit because
it's not a, a matter of individuality.
It's okay for this topic.
I know you need my skillset.
Because when it comes to technical
knowledge, I think what is going
to talk is experience more than
learnings technical learning.
Because now it's easy to learn
but you need to build your
learning curve and try things.
And that's what matters
the most is it easy to try?
Can I experience with it?
But will mostly looking be looking
at soft skills when it comes to ai.
one thing that I do is when I I make
sure that in the process we say, you
can use ai, but you need to show us.
So I want to see the prompt you've
been using for this business
case no limits, because the reality of
the day to day people are going to use
AI, hopefully, and then they should.
But I want to understand if they're
going to craft their prompt, because
that tells a lot in the thinking process.
What matters today are skills that
we, us marketer, we don't always have.
The winners of the AI era are engineers,
product managers, because they have
this way of thinking that is unique.
If you look at people working at the
big companies like VCG McKinsey, you
are not buying someone that is good.
You are buying someone
that has methodology.
And when it comes to crafting prompt
Archite the work for marketing,
you need those kind of, thinkers
because those are the ones that
are going to see the pitfalls.
They're the ones that are going to
anticipate, they're the ones that
are going to ensure that you are
not over engineering everything.
and I think that's the skills we
might not always have as marketers.
And I think that's one of the trick is we
need to build this mindset and changing
the mindset of an individual is CPR.
But that's a way we
need to look at things.
We need to also push ourselves a bit
more and being a bit more pushy when
it comes to excellence standards.
We want for ourselves before our teams.
So, ai, show me what you
have been doing with it.
Tell me a bit about your stack.
Or do you work with AI
on your day-to-day basis?
Because if it's just a matter of using
prompts on T pt, I think we are all
doing it poorly, but we are doing it.
When it comes to thinking about, oh,
you are going to make sure that your
data is consistent, that you are going
to limit destination, ensure that
you have consistent team results,
et cetera, this becomes interesting.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
No, these are great great questions.
In one of your, I think it was like
a feature that you did or a blog post
that you wrote where you said that you
like to run your marketing in two week
sprints, like an engineering team.
So I, that was really interesting.
Do you still do this and maybe tell
me a little bit more how you do this
and maybe also how AI has changed that
Joel Gaudeul: So
I've done it for some time at Swan.
Today we are shifting a bit.
the way we are working
for different reasons.
But I'm a big believer of
sprints because it forces so.
90% of the time I join the company
there is a marketing team running
and they are literally running, they
are just doing things day to day.
so they are delivering a lot,
supporting everyone, everyone is
happy what they do, but if they
look back, they have built nothing.
Nothing is scalable.
And I think that's the damnation of
marketers is to stay in the run and
shifting from, I'm going to create a
campaign support sales do a deck update
my ads, et cetera, is not the way to go.
Because what we do is complex
It requires to be very focused.
I will give you a very simple example.
Work on HubSpot or your CIM
try, try to build a workflow
and just spend 20 minutes in it.
Do something else.
Come back to it and you
will see what happens.
You will get lost because you need to
put your mind to a specific mindset.
You need to have context.
And what is going to happen if
you interrupt the work is you
won't remember exactly what
you've done, why you have done it.
And so if you build those systems
little by small touches, you will
have something that might work,
but will be super inconsistent.
Try to name folders and not name
all the folders that want, but do
one without looking at the others.
And another, you will end up
having different way of naming your
folders just because your brain
needs to be set to be consistent.
So working in sprints give you the ability
to not only work on longer project.
So it's easier to say, I'm
going to deliver that in two
weeks because I have a time.
dedicated to it.
It avoids just having to work on things
that are 13, two days, three days maximum.
So it allows you to go
into bigger projects.
The second thing, it's a reason
that he's short enough to be
able to say, guy, I'm sorry.
I want to support you,
but my sprint is cool.
Worst case scenario, the person
has on the day, one of your sprint,
it mean that you're going to be
able to support him in 15 days.
that's a big learning I had in my life
is most people don't have any emergency.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah,
Joel Gaudeul: is, they want an
ETA, when am I going to get it?
If you give them a date, whether it's
in five days or 30 days, it's the same.
And I'm talking just about starters,
but if you look at other companies,
they work in a very different timeframe.
I've been working with scale ups
that have been running for 10 years.
And when you say you need something, they
say, oh yeah, four months, deliver it
in four months, and I'm happy with that.
And when you look at it four months,
but at the end of the world, it's
like in 20 years for a startup.
And I think that's something that
is very important to have in mind
is people just want you to commit.
Update them and give them a day.
Araminta Robertson: Communication Really.
They
Joel Gaudeul: It's,
Araminta Robertson: I guess.
Joel Gaudeul: Yeah.
it's a matter of communicating
and delivering on your promises.
And that can only be done with
strong project management.
And the sprint system also
allow you to understand your
capacity and help individuals
understand how they assess work.
The way we implement uh, sprints in
general in the teams is we start with
just putting the sprint in place.
Then we start to estimate the time.
And when you, we do the sprint planning.
So we sit and we discuss what I
want to do in the next two weeks.
We put hours in front of each
task and you do the maths.
I'm going to work 40 hours or 40
hours, or 50 hours in two weeks.
How many hours do I have booked
for the work I'm supposed to do?
Oh, I booked 80 hours.
So it's not going to happen.
It's not the end of the
world we are going to speak.
It also forces you this rhythm to
create project that are built with
a minimum viable product in mind.
So you learn how to cut project into
small slices and be able to have a first
version that you're happy with so you
can run faster with a first version.
Then you have an improvement and you
iterate if you want, but you don't
need to iterate one after the other.
You can do a few months with one
version and improve it later.
And it forces you also to reprioritize
get some thinking about what you've
done, get the numbers back to be
able to evaluate the performance.
So I see only merits to it.
Honestly.
I've
never complained about it.
I always add team saying that it changed
the way they were looking at the job.
So I'm Very bold and confident on what
we are doing with sprints and engineering
team are starting to question the use of
sprints now, but also because the, the way
in many companies, because the way they
deliver code has, has been changing a lot.
It's more on the rhythm is more on
the continuous development cycle,
which is made possible because
of all the AI assisting you have
when coding, when reviewing the
code, when testing, et cetera.
So their job has changed a lot.
So the complexity of the
dev job is moving away.
I still think that developers
who are creating architecture
of systems need this pacing, but
for the rest it's less necessary.
Marketers, we might go into a state
where we have continuous marketing,
but I doubt it will come very soon.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
it's really interesting
the two weeks sprint.
Maybe one day in the future we can do
a podcast that goes into more detail
how you do that, because I'd be so
curious about the tools that you use and
this, the actual logistics behind it.
But I think that's a very interesting
way to think about marketing
and maybe that's the way it is.
Like a lot of things, I think a lot
of activities are moving towards
a more engineering kind of type
of work because of AI as well.
Like a lot of it is building
systems now, so, yeah.
That's very interesting.
My last question to you is, say, a FinTech
marketing leader is listening to this
and they feel like there's pressure from
leadership to just use ai, maybe make
the team leaner, that kind of thing.
What is your kind of advice to them?
How do you think, should they try and
cut someone on their team and try and
implement more ai or should they really
push back against leadership on this?
Like, what is your, if someone's getting
this feedback from leadership what is your
advice on how they should approach that?
Joel Gaudeul: I think the variety
of marketing, we've always been very
challenged on account forever and ever.
so I mean, when we hire someone,
we always need to be confident.
And that's the way I look at it is
it a role I will need in three years,
Araminta Robertson: Hmm.
Joel Gaudeul: time, but because
that's the, the cycle of a human
being in a company is three years.
Okay.
And then you move to another role
or you move to another company,
but it's normally three years.
Am I able to say this role is,
will still live in three years?
So when I was looking at product
marketing as well, yes, two
product marketers is not enough.
product won't become less complex, the
audience won't become less complex.
We will still have many personnel,
we will increase markets.
I'm confident we can.
Yeah.
When it comes to some roles I maybe
I will ask myself twice the question,
but am I being pushed to reduce and are
people being pushed to reduce their teams?
I think it's an overall move.
I think we tend mostly to freeze
recruitment and reduce the account.
And also because we have all always
emotion of growing normally especially
in the startup side of fintechs.
I think if you have too much
pressure, we need to be clear on
what's be expected from the team.
And I mean, something we can
automate, something are going
to be less quantitative.
Some power scopes will
be lost in the process.
Should we fight against it?
I'm not sure it's worth fighting.
I think you need to have
other team fighting for you.
And I think that's the the biggest thing
is something that my product marketing
manager has done was attending every
product meetings and all the, time I spent
planning, et cetera, and asking everyone,
okay, where do you need product marketing?
And when you have 20 strategic project,
and on the 20 strategic project,
everyone says, we need product marketing.
Yeah.
let's be realistic.
If everyone thinks it adds value slightly,
you don't need a return on investment.
It's, it adds value.
So I think that's one thing.
But I think you need to
question yourself every day.
Do I still need this?
Is this where I need
to put the, the report?
I'm lucky enough, I work in a business
where we are mostly account based
marketing led, we work on big accounts,
which mean that everything that happens
in real world has a lot of value.
So even gifting dinners
is something that is
essential to our playbook.
So this require time, and ask your event
manager to travel from Germany to Spain
to the Netherlands, and do that in a week.
Somewhere there will be an issue.
and that people understand, and I think
that's something that we can defend.
So it's understanding where
we want to put the effort.
And yes, maybe some of the the part
of marketing some channels might
be neglected or less supported,
we shouldn't fight against it.
I think it's a matter also of
asking ourselves the question,
where do I put the effort?
And be more and more involved
in revenue is the way to go.
We all know that that's why you see
more and more marketers becoming Chief
Revenue Officer or Chief Growth Officer.
And it's because we have a way of
looking at the world that is a bit more
detailed, a bit more process centric,
which add a lot of value and which
makes a lot of sense for the companies.
Even if we might not be expert in
sales techniques, we might not be
the best at delivering med pick.
We might not be the best at
picking our phone and making calls.
That's fine.
We are bringing a different
flavour to the job we do.
So I still believe marketing has
a big job to do in companies.
I think for a lot of organisation that are
focused on enterprise account, there is a
need to have one, maybe one team that is
revenue and not speed marketing between
marketing and sales or maybe create pods.
That's something I'm very excited about
is those kind of organisation where
you've got a marketer dedicated to a pod.
So you can directly tie the effort
of marketing to the target segment.
so field marketing for me so
one of the shifts I was starting
to implement that Swan was.
Moving to a field marketing role.
More heavy more based on product, on
field marketing because it's where I see
the connection, it's easier for, to see
East Spain delivering on their target.
Yes.
So it's pain performing and
this includes the market within
Spain, and I think that's where,
Araminta Robertson: country
Joel Gaudeul: yeah, by country or segment.
So it could be a country,
it could be a segment.
an industry.
But that's the way I would look at it is
maybe shift the way we look at marketing.
Maybe accept that your team is not
anymore one block, but a group of people
working in a metrics organisation,
which might feel bizarre for a manager.
Someone who lo loves management
like myself, but which I think
might be the way to go if we want
marketing to have the most impact.
I think that's the question I ask
myself every day is how do I make sure
that marketing has the most impact?
And if it means that product marketing
needs to be moved to product,
if it means that my marketers
needs to be more in the country,
so be it,
we working remotely is
not the challenge anymore.
We've got tooling to organise
the work communication.
And I have a saying is when, if
one person is working remote,
the reward team is remote.
So when you look at it, you
always make sure that we are all
working the same constraints.
And so we change a bit the way we
work on day to day, we avoid having
those small t at the coffee machine.
We find ways to make those
happen as a team, as a group.
So more rituals, more get together.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
Joel Gaudeul: are solutions.
Araminta Robertson: Yeah.
You've raised some very interesting
questions and points, which we
don't have time to go in today, but
maybe on another episode we can.
'cause I think that's some really
interesting things like pods.
I also have always wanted to experiment
with that, and I think I know a couple
people who have, but it's risky in the
sense that not many people have done it.
So you need really buy-in from
leadership and all these things.
But it's a very interesting
topic 'cause I think that, yeah,
there's a lot to unlock there.
But yeah.
Thank you so much Joel
for jumping on today.
I think we covered a lot of really
interesting topics or really
interesting angles on the whole
topic of FinTech marketing teams.
So yeah, thank you so much for coming.
Joel Gaudeul: Thank you.
outro: Thanks for listening.
You can find show notes and
information about guests@www.mint
copywriting studios.com/podcast.
And finally, huge thanks to orama
TV for producing this podcast.
Thanks for listening, and
see you at the next episode.