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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)
hello, welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses. Really cool episode for you today. So I've actually been trying to get Justina Tretjeska on for a little while. this episode kind of sits at the intersection of product marketing and positioning and content and Justina's really.
practical in how she helps give a framework for making sure that you define your brand and your positioning really clearly based on how you fit into your customer's story And I think that framework is really cool. But how do you create a consistent thread through from that to an actual content strategy where you're pushing out content week in and week out?
and making sure that that all feeds the broader narrative that you're trying to create with your brand. She takes a really scientific approach to brand marketing, which is what I love. think brand is often seen as something which is very fluffy. Justine is certainly is trying to bring a lot more science to it in terms of what she calls memory engineering, which I think is a really interesting approach to it. And she has this concept of like,
the internal search engine of your customers and how do you make sure that you are repeatedly featuring in searches that they internally go on. ⁓ So yeah, I'm gonna stop doing a really bad job of summarizing it and just let you get into the episode, because I think it's a really interesting conversation, one that I enjoyed a lot, and yeah, excited to bring it to you. So I'll shut up now, I'll get out of the way, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Tom Rudnai (01:37)
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses podcast. I'll introduce our guest. what you probably don't know is that we had a go at recording this yesterday. Why have I got in the way? And Justina was kind enough to tell me how to pronounce her surname yesterday. And in 24 hours, we're gonna find out whether I've forgotten it. It's Justina Ciecierska
Justi (01:57)
That's right, you did good.
Tom Rudnai (01:59)
Nailed it. First of all, hello, welcome to the podcast.
Justi (02:02)
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Tom Rudnai (02:04)
No, great to have you here. So, I mean, in that 24 hours and in the last week or so, I've done a lot of research actually into you and your marketing waiting room methodology and kind of concept that you've built. I'm really keen to hear lots about that today. I guess before we get into what you're doing now and that methodology, do you wanna just give us a bit of an introduction into you and your background and kind of how you got to this point?
Justi (02:29)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's actually a fun story. So, yeah, I'm the founder of the Marketing Waning Room brand, and this is where I help or I provide tools and services for founders and marketing leaders, specifically to help them claim the number one spot in the minds of their buyers. And I do this through something that I call memory engineering. Right. And why that name memory engineering marketing waning room? It's because, you know, when you do marketing, when you marketing, market your product,
or your brand, you're reaching people, but you don't know who's ready to buy today, right? Actually, in fact, just a tiny fraction of people that you're reaching with your marketing is ready to buy today. So what do you do with the rest? Like, how do you make sure that the rest of the buyers remember you, remember your value proposition when that buying trigger hits and when they're ready to buy? And that's where, you know, I say you should build your marketing waiting room in their minds and you do this through memory engineering.
And the story how I landed on this is basically, you know, before marketing waiting room, was a, I was really like a growth hacker, really hard performance, hard data. And, you know, I, I landed a job in sex tech at a sex tech startup where I was head of growth. one of the, that is really the, one of the toughest categories that you can actually market. Like there's a lot of taboo, a lot of restrictions. But so the founders, they, they had built early success.
with what we called sex nerds. So these were the early adopters and they were super engaged. They would convert like right away in the first session. They were super interested in the product. And so the founders thought, okay, let's just pump more money into this and scale this. So let's find more channels. Let's just scale this up. But when I stepped in, I realized that that niche
was quite small and had been already saturated. So any money we put into this, just, we hit diminishing returns. So to grow, we needed to reach a broader market. But these were the people who weren't that obsessed with sex tech and they were actually scared to talk about sex, right? So these were the people that had the problem, but they needed more convincing. They needed more trust. They needed more context. And so they weren't converting.
on the first touch. ⁓ So then I started asking like how do we reach them? How do we make sure that you know we put ourselves in front of them and make sure that they remember us when they're finally ready to do something about their intimate lives? And that's what led me to kind of finding out all about jobs to be done, branding, all that kind of stuff and then I realized that you know there is a
Tom Rudnai (04:43)
Hmm.
Justi (05:04)
a gap in the market or in marketing and nobody's talking about this. And that's what I call memory engineering. Some people call it branding, but you know, brand gets bad rap nowadays, especially in B2B where, you know, everybody is kind of scared to invest in this. It's, you know, labeled as fluffy as something that is like creative in a way that nobody really understands. So I put a label, different label, memory engineering. This sounds totally not fluffy. It's really basic.
Tom Rudnai (05:05)
you
Justi (05:33)
science, it's based on neuroscience, neuromarketing, and I put together a lot of frameworks and I really like rigorously structured system to really build content that helps your buyers remember you for exactly the reason you want them to remember you. So your value proposition, why they should care about you, so that when the trigger happens, your first result in their internal search engine.
Tom Rudnai (05:58)
I love that we're putting a Yandere Furry in their internal search engine. And I think there's a lot of crossover between, both of us, actually in what we're both trying to do in the market in terms of finding ways to put more science into brand. We're kind of going down the road of how do we quantify the impact of traditional brand activities. ⁓ But I love that term memory engineering. I want to come back to it. I have to ask you a few more questions about the origin story first, because I think it's really interesting. obviously, yeah.
Justi (06:14)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (06:24)
Super niche and probably really like unique conditions to learn about marketing. I think there's a lot of crossover with the, it makes me think of the journey that a SaaS company has to go on, right? You find your beach head or your kind of initial niche, you can get your first maybe million pounds worth of ARR from that niche. And then you have to continually go through this journey of expanding it.
So I think there's a lot of crossover there between what you have, but that next jump sounds like it's a lot more difficult because suddenly you have all of these taboos and all of these kind of, it's such a personal market that you're in, right? And so the way that you message it, you have to be really careful. I guess I'm trying to kind of hone in on what my actual question is. So the first one that interests me is you said you were a growth hacker. And to me, that's almost a contradiction of what you've then described because growth hacking, I think there's a presumption that you can.
induce someone to buy, right? And I think the whole, everything you've since said is, no, you can't, people have to, you have to wait a little bit and be front of mind until they're ready to buy.
Justi (07:22)
Yeah, exactly. And that's actually also the interesting part of my story because
I've been trying to, or I've been a big fan of growth hacking. I took great pride in calling myself that a couple of years ago. And because it's, you know, it's sexy. It's so cool. It's tech, it's attribution, it's data. It's amazing. But the more I did that, the more I realized that, yeah, all these things, like they just work for a bit, for a minute. And then you always hit this wall of, okay, what now? What do we do now? The diminishing returns hit, the returns hit, and you just don't know.
Tom Rudnai (07:36)
Sounds cool.
Justi (07:57)
anymore how to reach more buyers, how to get more out of your budget. so yeah, this is something that's been bugging me and I always kind of came back to the same point where I was like, okay, we're reaching more people, but they're not buying right now. There is a gap. There is this time lag. Everybody's scared of that time. Like we tried to bridge that with like NQLs or attribution models or whatever, but actually what bridges that is memory. And I found comfort in finding out that it's
scientific thing so my growth hacker sort of identity started to be like okay maybe there is something to it I'll go and fiddle around with this
And yeah, so then I looked into, I didn't want to, I even was proposed, I was almost like promoted to head of brand, but I refused. At that time I was like, I don't want, I don't, this, I don't want to do this. This is like too fluffy. don't want to be associated with it. But yeah.
Tom Rudnai (08:48)
could see you like, recoiling now,
like no.
Justi (08:51)
Yeah, I was almost offended, right? But yeah, the more I realized like, yeah, there is a need for building a brand, especially if your category is growing, there are more competitors entering the market. You have to have a deeper meaning and purpose for your business than just the features that you're selling, just the product that you're selling. And that is very much related to reaching people through their emotional...
needs, which is really related to how people remember things. We remember through our emotions. We remember how things make us feel. We don't remember words, the exact words, but we do remember feelings. That's how our brains work. That's how I got fascinated with this
Tom Rudnai (09:34)
I think of that phrase of like hard times breeds innovation, right? So when you're in a, innovation comes from people who are put in situations where they're kind of forced to, and in ways you're describing that market as being in perfect conditions for learning about this.
approach because it is a deeply emotional topic that is connected to kind of your base human needs. That's a lot harder when you're then applying it to an outside, to B2B sass for example, where it just is less emotional and less, it's a lot harder to draw that connection to a feeling. How have you found like the transition of trying to apply one to the other and with the big differences? ⁓
Justi (10:07)
Yeah, that's it. Yeah,
it's really in the end.
You know, we're all humans. So even in b2b we're selling to humans and humans are not so different from one another and no matter how hard we try to deny that we're In b2b we just put on a different mask and we're robots all of a sudden without emotions and we don't care about stories and whatever that's all not true, because it you people still Make decisions really really based on emotions in b2b even maybe more than in your day-to-day life
in your, you know, outside of your career.
Because in B2B, especially if you're a manager or a C-level executive, the stakes are super high. that brings in a lot of emotions. You're scared of being fired. You're scared of losing your face. You're scared of a lot of things. Or you are dreaming of becoming the biggest, the most powerful, the most interesting brand in the market. So there is also a lot of emotions going on. so, yeah, just don't try to make it too complicated and try to put people in buckets where all the
and we're all highly irrational most of the time.
Tom Rudnai (11:16)
Yeah, agree, and yeah, it's a fair point. think you can often overlook the level of personal stakes that people will feel around these decisions. Yeah, I think it's something we often kind of tread around a little bit as well, because you don't like, no one likes to talk about the messaging being, you know, don't get fired, you're gonna get promoted, because we don't, as a customer, even in B2B, there's taboo in the same way as you have in sex tech around.
confessing to those emotions, right? Me confessing my ambition to build a huge company. I'd love to do that. It's particularly outside of America where I think they are a little bit more embracing of some of these things. You're not really meant to say that. So there is a lot of continuity actually between the two because we build up these taboos around our personal and professional ambitions.
Justi (11:42)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mmm. Mmm, no.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. you know, like it's not even about admitting because like you're saying, people are not so likely to admit these things, but they do respond to emotional messaging more than rational. And most of all, they remember emotional messaging more than rational. And that's where your that's where the business outcomes and the business value lies. And so this is not to be neglected.
Tom Rudnai (12:14)
Yeah.
is it better to tackle the emotional taboos head on and message directly at them or do you have to be a bit more subtle with how you handle that?
Justi (12:35)
Well, it all starts with the emotional trigger. there are...
moments in consumers or clients lives that sort of trigger them emotionally and that puts them on a path to go and find a solution to that problem that triggers that emotional kind of reaction, right? So for example, if I let's say I'm a creator and I am trying to build up, you know, passive income and every day I try to do something to build up this stream of passive income and every time
something comes in between that I feel emotionally like I'm not achieving my dream I feel stuck right that creates a lot of friction and that brings in a whole array of different emotions so if you understand what are these situations where when people are trying to achieve a bigger dream but something blocks them
What are the specific nuances? What are the specific things that they think? What do they, who do they talk to? Where are they at this moment? When they're feeling these emotions, this friction, then you understand how to create messaging, how to create content that really, really resonates and brings back these strong emotions. So you can really attach your position, brand, associate your brand with that friction and the relief from that friction. Right? So it's really marketing to moments. It's really marketing.
Tom Rudnai (13:43)
Hmm.
Justi (13:54)
to those situations when they feel the pain and if you and it's all really about knowing your customer inside out those moments.
inserting yourself in their world and seeing their problems from their perspective in this moment that allows you to create a lot of really relevant messaging without having to name the emotion directly. if you say something about that specific situation that already implies that they are feeling a certain way. They know that they're feeling that thing right and that's how you can really really grab their attention and make them care about what you sell.
Tom Rudnai (14:14)
Yeah, so it's
Justi (14:28)
your brand and yeah that way your brand is retrieved from their memory the moment they're looking for some solution to buy.
Tom Rudnai (14:37)
Okay, so it's much less about the content and the messaging yourself as how you understand where's the moment where this particular emotion is coming up and then how can you be helpful in that and that's where you create the slightly more subtle association between the kind of feeling and the people that can help you overcome it.
Justi (14:48)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And the best way to go about this is through looking at these moments and describing them in a storytelling framework. Because every brand is actually a story of a hero, so your customer, who wants to achieve a dream. But a villain comes in in a way, right? And your brand steps in as the guide who offers tools, advice,
to help them slay that dragon, slay that villain, so that they can achieve the bigger dream. And if you manage to put your brand narrative, your business narrative, strategic narrative in that framework, then it's easy to understand, it's easy to remember, it evokes a lot of emotions that people remember, and that's how you build preference, desire, and eventually sales.
Tom Rudnai (15:40)
Yeah, and it makes me think of a book I'm sure you've read as well, Story Brand by Donald Miller. Donald Miller? Have I that right?
Justi (15:44)
Story brand, yes, I find,
yeah, that's correct. That's, yeah, this is the most actionable framework I've used in a while, I think. It's super, super useful.
Tom Rudnai (15:54)
Yeah, I need to go back to one of the problems I have is I always read these things, I get obsessed with it for a week and I'm like, I've filled in all my story blocks or story books or something like that, that I've done for all the different people that want to do it for and then they're currently sitting on a website somewhere untouched in six months.
Justi (16:03)
Yeah.
Yeah. No,
I actually, I use it every day in my work. And I also kind of take bits and pieces of all the different frameworks from all the books, all the wise books. And that's how I build kind of like...
a kit for myself to work with my clients to walk them through this process, like in a very structured way. But I'm also now building a DIY kit. marketers can just take it and run it themselves in a very structured way. So how to go from your strategy or positioning to your strategic narrative and then how to translate that into content that is really optimized for those, what I call like brain level keywords. So that story, it has a couple of elements, right? So the hero, the guide, the
the tension, the villain. And these elements, actually perfectly align with the elements of positioning statement, right? So then this is a perfect way to translate that positioning into your narrative and then use that to create spin-offs of that story in your content. So that's a highly structured process that I follow there.
Tom Rudnai (17:08)
Yeah, okay, and it creates this kind of continuity between all of your content and all of your messaging. So help me understand, right? Let's say I'm kind of listening to this podcast and I'm thinking, okay, this all sounds fantastic. And I think it's something that we've kind of overlooked in the rush to kind of get to market, start pumping out content. We've not done this process. Like, how do I get started with this? How do I pinpoint, I guess, first, the moments and like who the villains are? What was the process to go through?
Justi (17:13)
Exactly, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so what I usually do with my clients is I ask them just to imagine their ideal buyer. so I work with clients who have already had some success, so they already have an idea about their clients and do have some insights, so we don't have to do too much research. basically I ask them to imagine their ideal buyer and...
or really give me the name, the specific name of a specific person that they can imagine so that it makes it easier for them to really get into the shoes of that buyer. And then I ask them, okay, so take me back to the day when you realized as that buyer, when you realized that you need...
you need a solution like yours, not specifically yours, but a solution to a problem that they were struggling with. And then they all start saying a lot of things, you know, and then I dig deeper to find out like what brought them to that moment, right? What are the different paths? Because it's not always a clear line, like, you know, what marketers like to show in a funnel, like, hey, first tofu, mofu, both or whatever, goes nice and neatly down the line. there are different personas, different people who have different kind of paths, but they always
land on the same problem. So for example, again, going back to that example of a creator who wants to ensure passive income.
There is a creator, but there could also be like an artist who is creating handmade jewelry and they are also dreaming of having passive income and along the way both of these different people, they will look into how do I collect payments, right? On their way to creating passive income, they will run into the problem of how do I create, how do I collect payments? This is when they might run into something that is called like those embedded checkouts, right?
Tom Rudnai (19:18)
Mm-hmm.
Justi (19:19)
So if you know these paths, these stories that bring them to how do I collect payments, you can create content about all these different moments on their journey so that you install yourself. This is especially relevant for people who are creating a category, creating a solution that people don't know yet exists, right? You meet them early in their journey. So if you think about creators who want to build passive income,
you might think about things that they are interested in. So for example, they will be interested in automation, they will be interested in launching their first course, you know? And these are the opportunities for you to show up as that brand and make your first impression and be early in their journey so that, you know, when they come to the moment of, I need a payment, they will think of you, right?
So then I really map this story or these different paths with my clients. What are these moments? And then I look at, so from all these different personas, all these different moments, what do they have in common? Where do they meet? What are they trying to achieve? Because your product is never really...
existing in vacuum and isolation. It's always on the way for somebody to achieve something bigger, right? And if you connect these dots, then you see really clearly what kind of content you should create and how to really make your narrative super relevant to people and speak to their dreams.
So it's not about a lot of people when they create content, they will talk about, know, if you sell, I don't know, Salesforce integration, people will talk only about Salesforce integrations and nobody will care about it. Right. So you need to attach yourself, your brand, associate your brand with this bigger outcome that they're trying to achieve with these integrations. Right. What are the biggest, the bigger business outcomes, the personal sort of desires that they have and then associate with.
that so people start caring, right? Otherwise, nobody cares. Yeah, and from there, we just built, you know, content themes and strategic narrative. And I have like templates of archetypes. So there are really like specific archetypes of narratives, like for example, challenger brands, missionary brands, all kinds of templates that really neatly fit in specific positioning strategies.
And from there, it's really easy to really create content. Like ideas start popping. This is where my job is basically done because my clients immediately see like, okay, so we should use these channels and we should talk about this and, you know, things are rolling.
Tom Rudnai (21:47)
Yeah, and I want to come
back next to that, like how do we connect the positioning work to through to the actual reality of the content that we create? I guess it's maybe useful to summarize my understanding, right? So because the image that I get when you talk, which I think is really useful is like this winding path and you've got monsters coming up at each point. And typically, while we all every product or brand likes to tell you like, tell the customers, we solve all of your problems, we don't we solve for a particular part of that journey.
Justi (22:03)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (22:14)
a particular
element of that and we can fight a few of the monsters for them. But there are monsters either side. So when we think about like how we pinpoint our moments, it's getting out of our myopia to our part of the journey, seeing it in its entirety is super helpful for building those memory triggers because we can actually go and see there are moments before where we can just be helpful. We don't need to have a product for it, but we can have content before it. And that's how we kind of stay front of mind and build a brand.
And I think probably what gets overlooked, and I'm curious if this comes up, is the moments after as well. I'm trying to evolve the way that I think about this sort of stuff, all the way from a funnel and a customer journey and towards like a customer life cycle. And I don't know if you know the kind of bow tie model, but a huge amount of the work is on the right side of the bow tie where you can really expand. But I think that probably is a hugely overlooked element of this, right?
Justi (22:57)
Mm-hmm.
yeah, so.
You know, like it is all connected. when you start with your buyer and you start with this understanding of what they're trying to achieve and how your particular product or brand is helping them on this way, then that becomes your North Star. And all the decisions like from tofu content to product decisions to any other communication is really tied back to that promise of this is how we help you achieve that
bigger dream. And so, you know, lot of companies they, they make,
Tom Rudnai (23:36)
Mm.
Justi (23:41)
promises, they create content, they attract buyers, but then they only sell the dream, but they don't deliver on the dream on the other side, right? And that is why this other side of the bow tie is kind of lacking. But this is not where I typically operate. really am more on this kind of, I don't like to call it this way, but top of funnel. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (23:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's how we get someone to the point of the sale. But I just
think it's interesting because I suspect on the right hand side of the bow tie, we hate admitting that there's anything our product doesn't do at that point, right? Once someone's into your funnel, but it's probably a massively missed opportunity to just remain helpful to people.
Justi (24:17)
Yeah,
yeah, exactly. And also, you know, the most important part is that that whole strategic process is a process of elimination. you know,
A lot of people, a lot of companies, they are really scared of picking their lane and sticking to it and being really helpful to a group of people with specific needs. And that is something that, you know, because they don't do this process of elimination, they are obviously everything to everybody. And if that is the case, not only the left side of the bow tie is messy, but the other side is also kind of, it's a little bit of everything.
so nothing really makes sense anymore. And that fog of where everything to everybody is the biggest killer of creativity. And if you don't have this creativity, then you will never stand out, you will never be remembered, you will never have a clear reason, like people never have a clear reason why to choose you over others. And that's basically how you kill your business.
Tom Rudnai (25:16)
Nice, there we go, so if you're not listening, you'll never stand out, you'll never be remembered. It's like talking to your mother. You will never amount to anything if you don't do what Justina was telling you to. No, I know what you're saying. So let's carry on. So I think what we started to touch on but haven't quite got to yet is like everything we've been talking about here is positioning, right? And what I'm really interested in is how you then build the thread through from that to your content in a way that is kind of consistent.
Justi (25:25)
Okay.
Tom Rudnai (25:43)
particularly when you're churning out across different freelancers and different content writers, content every week.
Justi (25:49)
Yeah,
that's the part that is very difficult for a lot of people. So, yeah, like I said, I always start with this...
storytelling framework because that helps us keep the narrative central. But then, you need to translate that narrative into different contexts. So your positioning or strategy is expressed in many different contexts and that context will change depending on what channel you're on. It will depend on what persona you're targeting. So like I said, know, people who are interested in
for example, collecting payments, these could be very many different people. Or let's take Calendly as example. It's a tool for scheduling meetings. And who schedules meetings? Well, there are a lot of different groups of people that schedule meetings and you need to adjust your narrative to all these different.
sort of stories, right? So that story has to be flexible enough to be reflected in the context of a salesperson that is trying to schedule meetings or in the context of, I don't know, a creator who's running a lot of trainings or, I don't know, somebody who is doing remote work or, I don't know.
Tom Rudnai (27:01)
And do I need one story
or can I have multiple stories for my brand?
Justi (27:06)
You need to have one story that binds everything. you know, that story will be like split or you will create a lot of spin-offs of it, but the core stays the same. So for example, if you think about, let's say, don't know, Apple, right? Apple is clearly the choice as a brand for creative people, right?
Let's think different, be creative. So every product that they create, every piece of content that they create is revolving around this type of narrative, right? So then you create mini stories that always tie back to this, hey, you are the creative person, you think different, you are the special one, right? So for example, I don't know, you're an influencer, you need an iPhone because you're a creative person. So you want to take beautiful pictures, right? Or you are
designer, you need a MacBook because you want to create beautiful creative stuff for your work. So it needs to be one core narrative but it needs to be flexible enough to express in these different contexts. I know that's a lot of abstract work but...
Tom Rudnai (28:10)
No,
it makes sense, right? I think the way it manifests in my brain is like there's a single story and that's the difficult part. But what differentiates this from just building up personas is that it needs, it's how you create that thread through, right? So you're have one story, you're gonna have lots of personas, they can go on side quests, ⁓ but it needs to all wrap up into a single story of how you help.
Justi (28:26)
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, so I like to think of it as, you know, like Star Wars also, like they keep creating movies.
But they are all kind of the storylines are pretty much the same, the same elements come back, right? So you need to, that's indeed the most difficult part, finding this one thing that really is something timeless, right? Because, and that's why people say like, you know, if you build your positioning around your features, that's a short shelf life, right? Because features can be copied and that just fizzles out really quickly. And that's why as you grow, have to add a little bit
more like a reason for people to choose your brand and it always ends at the level of identity you know so you we are the brand for people who who like quality for people who are creative for people who care about safety right so volvo is the safest scar so me as a person who cares about my family safety i will choose volvo right so through choices like this is how you how targeting really manifests itself in your target your strategic
narrative.
Tom Rudnai (29:33)
Yeah, well, and it's also interesting because I think one of the things that I inherently find difficult about keeping a consistent story is I feel, and this is partly just narcissism, right? Because I see everything that we write, not everyone else does, but I feel like I'm just hounding on about the same thing. I'm like, God, that's boring me. It's got to be boring everyone else as well. But I think what you're describing is when you understand that simple top level story, you can create all the side quests, right? You can have all of these sub stories. to take the Volvo example.
Justi (29:52)
Mm.
Tom Rudnai (30:02)
You can create adverts and content about all different scenarios in which you need to remain safe while driving.
Justi (30:06)
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. that is so the thing is that if you have the dream, the hero, the tension, the villain clearly defined, then you can you will see that, you know, this villain or the dragon or the demon, whatever you call it, it takes many different faces depending on like. So when you have those different personas that you're targeting, then you can think of like, OK, so how does the dream manifest for them and how which face of the demon are they?
really facing on their way. So then you can imagine already like, okay, so these faces of these demons, like how do they look like? We have this core, like an end boss, but that demon has different faces. And yeah, if you think about it this way, then you start thinking differently and things start popping in your brain, ideas start popping in your brain and you start making these connections, you know, and you can create stories in your content.
Tom Rudnai (31:01)
Yeah, nice. I feel like this is one of the most abstract episodes I've ever made. I feel like people are either gonna listen to this and be like, this is fantastic. It's the best episode we've ever done. Or they're gonna be like, I have no idea what these two are talking about. They're talking about demons and villains.
Justi (31:13)
Yeah.
That is actually the reason why I developed exercises and this DIY kit and AI assistance to help get people in this way of thinking because it's so abstract, so different from what we do as performance marketers that you really need a little bit of massaging to to click your brain into. Yeah, so yeah, I get it that it sounds abstract, but
Tom Rudnai (31:33)
get into.
Justi (31:39)
I spent a fair amount of time developing all kinds of exercises and AI assistance to help.
Tom Rudnai (31:45)
Makes sense. I have, think two big questions that come to mind as well. So first of all, to what extent can you change the story that someone has in mind about your brand? And I guess I'm thinking of a lot of people listening to this, like we're three years down the line. cause people are going to invent a story, right? If you don't control the story that you give them, they're going to build their own, I guess. How easy, is it particularly difficult to change it?
Justi (32:06)
Yeah.
It is very difficult to change it. It is very difficult. especially if you, I mean, if you have been messy and all of a sudden you become clear, people start noticing and it's cool. But if you have been one thing and then you change to another thing, then it is difficult. there was some, what was it? I think it was Honda or one of those brands that was...
Which brand was producing motorcycles first? I don't remember. Anyway, there was a brand that produced motorcycles. They were selling motorcycles and they were really known for that. And then when they entered, when they created a new product, which was a car, and they tried to bring it to market, people were like, but I'm not gonna buy a car from a brand that is known for building good motorcycles. can't be good, right? So changing that.
that's going to be quite difficult. So you really need to think about like, does this work? How far can you stretch that? know, and that is something that there is no other way to go around it, but just do market research, just talk to people, for, you know, ask questions about like their preferences, their perceived...
a value of your brand and how they would consider buying a car from a brand like that. So I'm not going to get into the research part, but basically, it's something that you really have to think about and research very well before you make that decision.
Tom Rudnai (33:31)
Yeah, and it's something to take seriously early. mean, the thing, the example that I think of in like the B2B SaaS world is like sales tech. So I don't know how well you know that space, but you have like Gong started out as cool recording, conversational intelligence. You have outreach, you have Clary. These all started out as very different things. They've all kind of consolidated to broaden the same platform. They all have the cool intelligence. I might be using bad examples there, but it's certainly been a trend, right? They all have the cool intelligence. You can all do the outreach off the back of it. ⁓ But
Justi (33:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (34:01)
my impression of what each of those things are. I'm going to outreach if I need outreach. I'm going to Gong if I want conversational intelligence. And the idea that this thing that Gong might have a perfectly just as good, even better product as one of the competitors for, that story is in my mind and it's really hard to shift. ⁓
Justi (34:16)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (34:16)
The other thing that I want to get into while we have a bit of time still is kind of measurement, right?
how do I know if this positioning work that I'm doing is working?
Justi (34:24)
Hmm, yeah. That will depend on how, what stage, growth stage you're in. Do you wanna go into the proper full-fledged measurement for bigger brands or the smaller scrappy part?
Tom Rudnai (34:37)
think
let's look at larger brands because that's what most of the listeners... I'll ask you about what I should do afterwards.
Justi (34:41)
Okay.
Okay,
well, yeah, then there is a lot of research done into this, and I really like the work of Professor Byron Sharp, Jenny Romanuk, System One, they all talk about mental availability, right? And mental availability is something that is basically, like, to measure that, you would have to open people's brains and look into this and, you know, analyze stuff there. But...
Since it's obviously not possible, you have to find proxy metrics. when you think about like, okay, if you're top of mind, that means that people actively are reaching out to find your specific brand. That's why branded search is a very good metric to look at. If there are positive like trends in branded search, that means that you're really doing good job building awareness and making people care about your brand.
There is also, well, in terms of checking if your positioning is hitting, that is one thing. In terms of looking into efficiency, that is a different thing. So there are two parts of that measurement.
area. So I'm focusing here like on really like are you building the right associations and is that really resulting in sales, right? So another thing is you could also do surveys and you're looking for measuring aided and unaided brand recalls. So for example, things like you ask a specific audience
What are the top three or five brands that come to mind when you think category? And that is the kind of logic behind it. Yeah, and that's basically it. Search and surveying, market research really going out to people and asking them.
Tom Rudnai (36:15)
And there's differences,
I guess, in the time that it takes to filter through, right? So you can quite quickly, hopefully, see upticks in search volume. Surveys is going to be a longer process that you can measure at the next level, but it gives you a little bit more depth. then ultimately, I'm guessing, like ultimately, is it translating through to revenue or not is the third one. But it's always useful to have the leading indicators that allow you to course correct a bit earlier,
Justi (36:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Also, sometimes what I like to use is like social listening tools. So you can measure mentions online. And what I like to do particularly is to look at in what context is our brand mentioned because context is like, you know,
people make connections and associations through context. even if you insert your brand assets, so for example, a logo or a Sonic cue somewhere in a piece of content without even mentioning your brand or your product anywhere else, people can already make that connection. Like, this brand shows up here. So that means that they're probably about that category, about solving that kind of problem, right? So really making sure that your
brand is showing up, your brand name or your founder's name or your brand assets are showing up in the right context that make that association is really important to do. Because if you're putting yourself in the wrong context, then people are making like the wrong associations and then your brand becomes like really blurry, right? So for example, for example, I did something interesting. I asked my followers, you know,
what kind of ideas come to mind when you think about me.
I noticed that they were like, there are many different, that's terrifying because like, you know, I was a little bit messy at the beginning of my journey with my messaging and my content. So I still have this baggage of my brand being put in the context of the things that I didn't want to be associated with anymore. know, so I was really like, this was a really a moment for like a mirror, you know, in front of my face. Okay, you really need to do a better job optimizing your content for these
Tom Rudnai (37:53)
That's terrifying. ⁓
Yeah.
Justi (38:18)
keywords sort of that make your value the most obvious as opposed to what you've been doing before. So I was talking a lot about like funnels, content, performance, all those things that I don't believe in or I don't really want to preach right now. And right now, like I'm switching more to like brand, strategic clarity, strategic content positioning. And so yeah, this is how you can also see where you
Tom Rudnai (38:34)
Mm.
Justi (38:44)
optimize what you should change.
Tom Rudnai (38:46)
Yeah, I mean, it's a normal process, right, that when you're in the scrap, you could
you test things, right? And it's a normal process. I think one thing I I assume the right the right thing to come out of this with isn't this sense that everything needs to be perfect. I need to nail all of this down before I can put anything out there. It's just be thinking about it and be hypothesising around it, I guess, right? Like build those and test them in a structured way rather than kind of throwing shit at the wall.
Justi (38:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and one important thing to note here is that while you're hypothesizing, it's very easy to hypothesize in isolation in your own head. And that is something that's just the easiest trap.
to fall into. But the more you talk to your audience, the more you notice how they describe the problem. It's very different from how you see it how you describe it. And that's not the right way to go about it. You really need to look at how people describe their problems, how people describe their dreams and talk in their language, not your own. And then make hypothesis based off of that rather than making up your own stories.
Tom Rudnai (39:48)
No, absolutely, it makes me think of, think it's an interesting, like, I'm quite an interesting case study of this in ways because, we have content marketers, right? So I'm doing a lot of work to try and better understand them and just have as many as possible. This podcast is fantastic for me, right? I get to speak to people who have far more expertise in B2B content writing than I probably ever will. But what I do bring is quite an interesting unique perspective from that because I used to work a lot with B2C publishers. I understand monetization of digital content very well. I understand.
Justi (40:13)
Hmm.
Tom Rudnai (40:14)
go to market more broadly. So I have a unique perspective that can add value to their story. But it's very easy to conflate that and forget that you still need to understand their story and speak in their language and translate your perspective into their language, not ask them to do that work for you.
Justi (40:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Tom Rudnai (40:33)
So we've got a couple of minutes left. I always like to do a few quick fire questions at the end. So if you're happy, I'm going to go into those. guess, first of all, so this is always interesting at the moment, an AI use case or tool that you just absolutely love.
Justi (40:46)
Sorry, but it's just going to be chat GPT. I create my own AI assistance, very specialized and I cannot live without it.
Tom Rudnai (40:49)
I heard a bit.
Nice, have you got a favourite custom GPT you've made or?
Justi (40:58)
Yeah, so I actually created an AI assistant for my cohort training. So I created cohort training around turning positioning into content or translating positioning into content. And because I noticed that this is a massive effort to go through in a two-hour session, I created exercises ⁓ in AI assistants that help participants create their strategic content brief within this two-hour session. And they were actually mind blown by this.
Tom Rudnai (41:16)
Hmm.
Justi (41:26)
and now I'm turning this into another product. So that's a success story.
Tom Rudnai (41:30)
Nice, super cool. I've been waiting for when the custom GPTs develop more into like an app store kind of thing that more people leverage.
Justi (41:38)
That's the dream, that's the dream. I am looking into vibe coding now, we'll see how that's gonna go.
Tom Rudnai (41:43)
Nice, cool, then so next question, what skill or trait would you say, and this is kind of for you personally, has been the biggest needle mover in your career.
Justi (41:52)
Skill what skill? Right. I think
Tom Rudnai (41:53)
Yeah, skill or trait, like personal trait.
Justi (41:57)
curiosity, like unstoppable curiosity. When I see that, like I've always had this problem that people, things don't connect. When things don't connect and by things don't connect, I mean in a business sense, like I don't understand why your product exists, why don't understand why, who you're targeting. I don't understand any of that. I will not move before this is clear. And that curiosity of like, can I figure this out? Yeah, will bring me to places that I would have never, you
discovered and that is how I came up with Memro Engineering, that's how I came up with Marketing Waiting Room. So that curiosity and perseverance I think are the things that brought me to where I am.
Tom Rudnai (42:39)
I like that unstoppable curiosity is a great great phrase. It's a common thread actually amongst a lot of marketers is like Curiosity about both things and people makes great marketers, right? You'd be curious to understand the stuff, but the people side is is what some people don't have cool and then next one so What for you was your the like the flip side of that? What was the biggest fuck-up that you made in your career?
Justi (42:47)
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
I worked with a client who...
Basically, he hired me to help him with his marketing and he had already had a marketing team. And I came in a little bit too strong. started questioning everything. Like I always question a lot of things. I asked a lot of questions and that might come off as, you know, threatening. And I didn't really figure out like that I might come across as that kind of person. And they...
They didn't really like that. And then the fuckup that I committed was that the next day when I realized that, I posted about this on LinkedIn.
without mentioning them or anything, but one of the employees saw it and she was... yeah, they were not happy about this and I understand that completely. But yeah, I just wanted to be cool, know, show my honest side. We're like, hey, I made a mistake, but yeah, they didn't appreciate it. So I... I hope that if they are listening to it, they forgive me by now. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (44:02)
I'm sure they have. think this stuff always is bigger than yours. I think it's a really,
there's two things that are interesting, right? It's very difficult when you come in somewhere to get the balance right between like coming, especially when you're coming in as a consultant, you've come in to solve a problem, right? So if you're not willing to come in and ask difficult questions and point out problems, and there's no point you being there and you're not adding value. The other difficult thing is we're all, everyone increasingly tries to kind of thinks in public a lot more in terms of what you put on LinkedIn.
Justi (44:21)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (44:32)
But the challenge
with that is that's influenced by emotions and you're going to make mistakes.
Justi (44:35)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, you live and you learn. I have learned my lesson. I am sorry.
Tom Rudnai (44:40)
Nice. And then I guess before I let you go, question. So one recommendation that you'd make for everyone listening, whether it's a book, a podcast, a thought leader to go and check out.
Justi (44:53)
oof. Yeah, I've read a lot of books lately. I don't know which one was it. Yeah, think Storybrand is definitely worth read. And there was one last book that I read recently, but I really don't remember the title anymore. I don't know, I cannot tell. Storybrand it is for now.
Tom Rudnai (45:08)
I think Story Brands
is a good tip. I read it, I think it was over Christmas I read it and it was awesome and then I guess finally anything you'd like to plug in terms of things that you're doing at the moment, where can people find you?
Justi (45:15)
Yeah,
You can find me on LinkedIn, Justyna Czerjewska. I don't expect you to know how to type it out, so just look for Marketing Waiting Room. That's how you find me on LinkedIn. That's how you find me online, marketingwaitingroom.com. And yeah, I'm building the Positioning to Content DIY kit, so you can head to my LinkedIn page and sign up to the waitlist because it's coming out very soon.
Tom Rudnai (45:44)
Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us. This has been fantastic. I'm actually quite annoyed because I had a busy afternoon and I now have loads more homework to do and this is all going to be rattling around my brain all afternoon. Yeah, not cool. But no, it's been really interesting. Thank you for joining us and for sharing your wisdoms.
Justi (45:53)
Sorry, I'm not sorry.
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Tom Rudnai (46:03)
Awesome. Bye everyone.
Justi (46:05)
Bye!