In this episode of the DMI podcast, host Will Francis talks to serial entrepreneur and digital marketing advisor Maeve Kneafsey about crafting a strategic marketing plan for new businesses. They dive deep on going to market strategies, conducting audience research through personas, mapping the customer journey, and testing tactics before scaling.
Maeve also shares tips for getting buy-in from stakeholders and the key skills marketers need to build and implement an effective strategy.
Check out Maeve's previous chat on the podcast, about scaling your business beyond borders.
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Will (00:00)
Welcome to Ahead of the Game, a podcast brought to you by the Digital Marketing Institute. I'm your host, Will Francis, and today we'll be talking to serial entrepreneur, mentor, and advisor to businesses, Maeve Kneafsey all about building a strategy for a new business, how to go to market, grow the business effectively, and everything that that entails strategically. Maeve, welcome back to the podcast. How you doing?
Maeve Kneafsey (00:23)
Thank you very much, I'm delighted to be back, I'm very well, thank you.
Will (00:27)
Good, yes, it's great to have you back. We did speak about a year ago, something like that, I think. And I think so. And since then, yeah, we've been thinking a lot about this topic and have been dying to talk to someone about it and you're the perfect person, no pressure. But yeah, people sometimes are kind of unclear about what a marketing strategy even is.
Maeve Kneafsey (00:35)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's at least a year, I think so. No pressure.
Will (00:57)
So, you know, particularly people who are new to starting a business or they're just new to business in general. So let's just start there before we get into the nitty gritty. What is a marketing strategy?
Maeve Kneafsey (01:09)
Well, marketing strategy is the... If you think of business goals, right, you set a goal for the overall business, whatever that goal is. It could be financial goal, it could be an audience goal. And the job of a marketing strategy is to really articulate how marketing is going to accelerate or speed up the business reaching those goals, utilizing marketing tactics. But the marketing strategy is a really high level. So you set out and you say, okay,
This is the business goes, how are we going to match it in terms of our strategy that's going to allow us to speed up the process of getting there using marketing. So I hope that explains it. It's not that complex, but people often get mixed up with planning instead of strategy. They think the two are the same, they're not.
Will (01:54)
How would you explain the difference then between planning and strategy?
Maeve Kneafsey (01:58)
So I suppose the strategy is why? Why are we doing this? What are we trying to achieve? Who's our audience? What's our product? How are we different? What's the competition? That kind of stuff. Understanding where you are within the marketplace, I suppose. And then the planning is, well, how are we going to do it? So it's much more about the tactics. But you can't do one without the other. Because if you don't have the overall, what are we strategically trying to do with marketing? Then you end up just kind of
popping straight into tactics and you don't have an overarching understanding of what you're trying to achieve. And that can be really frustrating for people because they think I'm doing lots but like why am I doing it and what's the goal and how can I measure it? So the overarching strategy is really important.
Will (02:44)
Yes, I often think of the sort of, I don't know why, but I think of the analogy of a boat and sailing and the tactics is every time you put an oar in the water and all that kind of stuff and every time you move the rudder. But if you haven't got this overall, you know, guiding waypoint of where you're actually going and someone actually coordinating all of that so the boat actually moves and it's not just a load of splashing about in the water, then you're not actually going to get anywhere.
And that's what we're trying to do, isn't it? We're trying to actually move a business somewhere, move into growth.
Maeve Kneafsey (03:15)
Exactly, it's a lovely analogy actually, it's exactly that. I mean if you don't know where you're going, you pop in a boat and go around in a circle, well you know, what's the point? So yeah, you're absolutely right, where are you going, why are you going there, and then how are you going to get there?
Will (03:22)
Yeah. You know what's interesting? The way you described that initially, the marketing strategy initially, you described it as an accelerant, kind of like, you know, the lighter fluid on the barbecue or something like gasoline on the barbecue or something. You know, and actually that's true. It's an accelerant of something that should already have its own momentum, right? So by which I mean, if you've got a really great product, you're just accelerating how many people will find out about its greatness and then love its greatness and then tell other people about its greatness, right? So it all has to start with a good product. You can't market your way out of having a bad product, right? Or can you?
Maeve Kneafsey (04:03)
No, you can't. But particularly if you haven't matched up your audience properly with it. So if you don't understand their pain points, if you don't understand their drivers and their sensitivity around pricing, you're never going to be able to kind of just force them into doing something. In older marketing, there was, I suppose, a style of marketing that was like just beat the message.
Maeve Kneafsey (04:32)
onto the consumer's head over and over again until you create a potential need. I think we've moved on from that. We've much, much closer. I think consumers are much more demanding and in control of the information that they want to look at. They can just flick through it now that's annoying them. You have to have some value. So I think it is the overarching. I suppose if you think about it this way, let's say you and I launch a business tomorrow, okay? And we had a really, really good sales team.
and we had a good product that matched a customer need. In that scenario, the job of a marketing strategy is to make the salespeople's job much easier by accelerating the number of people who are willing to speak to them, accelerating the credibility that the number of people are going to take them seriously. So it's all about enhancing what's there, but it can't deliver if the product and the market isn't there in the first place, the need.
Will (05:28)
Yes, indeed. And you know, you talk about marketing and sales, this is probably more relevant at point to B2B businesses, service businesses, something like that. But marketing isn't sales, is it? It's different. And it's kind of priming people to make the sales job easier, as you say. It's almost the way I make people feel comfortable with that is it's like pre -selling, right?
Maeve Kneafsey (05:57)
It is like pre -selling, but it's also, I always think of marketing as the door opener. I'm going to kick the door open for sales because I'm going to make, I'm going to start priming the need, you know, and so that when the salespeople start to do their job, there's an awareness there, there's a little bit of an appetite and it's definitely curiosity. So that's the role of marketing. Now the funny thing is, and I've talked about this with lots of people, is that the role of sales and marketing are becoming much closer.
I'm much more tied because if you're, let's imagine you and I have an e -commerce business. Marketing is really in a way driving sales. It's moving into the sales because we're in charge of the whole end -to -end user experience. So we're making sure that the website actually converts people into a sale. So we are crossing over very tightly together in that scenario. There's a much bigger responsibility of marketing to be part of revenue generation.
Will (06:53)
True and also in B2B marketing and sales become more merged. They draw from the same, they probably use the same CRM system. Marketing are creating qualified leads that they're then passing on to sales. And there's probably a bit more, hopefully a little bit more integration between those two functions, right?
Maeve Kneafsey (07:12)
And that's when it really works, when you've got that integration, both in terms of technology but also culturally. You know, that sales are passing information back through the CRM or directly to marketing that allows them to enhance their messaging. Maybe they're getting it slightly wrong and then the salespeople say, actually we're hearing this back. So that's a really important two -way communication that happens. And good sales teams know that if they bring intelligence back to marketing, marketing will do a better job for them.
And whether that's on through automation or directly, it's just very, very important. It's a loop.
Will (07:42)
Yes, yeah, exactly. Okay, so going back to this idea of a new business, just what is the difference between a go -to -market, which often gets referred to as a GTM strategy, and just a marketing strategy?
Maeve Kneafsey (08:04)
So a go -to -market strategy is where you're breaking into a new market. It could be your brand new product or business, you know, you're just brand new. And then a marketing strategy is probably a longer term view of what you're going to do. And it's probably grander goals for the ultimate business dream that you have, your vision. So a go -to -market strategy is quite specific. It's how am I going to get into the market in the first place? And then after that, I will continue my bigger strategy. You know.
It's not just market entry with a new product or a new business. It's beyond that. So it's... I mean market entry can be done in lots of different ways. It can be done, for example, the company I worked with, they did their market entry strategy was to use content to, of value to the audience to start trying to raise awareness. And what they did was they did a big industry survey. Okay. So it could be, for example, let's pretend we're a recruitment agency, we're brand new and we're about to launch our business.
Will (08:36)
and what kind of things are in there.
Maeve Kneafsey (09:01)
So our market entry could be, let's do some really good deep dive salary surveys and find out what people are being paid in a very specific audience, in a particular job that we really want to attract as part of our agency. We want to represent, let's say, digital marketeers. So their go -to -market strategy was to use that research as a door opener to raise awareness for themselves and also to give sales something to talk about other than the agency.
So that's a go -to -market strategy, but then your overarching strategy might be far more tactics that are going to enhance your ability once you begin to raise awareness in the market of who you are.
Will (09:29)
Yes, no, I get that. So you've worked with a lot of companies on this kind of thing. What are the most common mistakes that people make both in the go to market strategy, but I'll also ask you after that in their marketing strategy.
Maeve Kneafsey (09:58)
I think, actually it's the same for both of them, I think anyway, is that people think they can skip the customer discovery. You know, that they don't actually have to do research about their personas. They don't have to necessarily, or they skip it, they get lazy with it. They think, look, there's a lot of pressure sometimes in marketing to prove their value. And what sometimes people do is they just start immediately jumping into tactics. Like, let's do a new marketing campaign. Let's just get things done, because then I feel like I'm achieving something. But that's the time.
to just try and pull back actually and say, okay, what's the customer we're focusing on? Are we right about what their needs are? Are we right about the pain points? Does our product match it? What messaging is gonna echo their pain so that therefore they're gonna want to listen to us? And people do skip that. They skip that piece or they do it very, very light. And I mean, actually there's a really good example, you guys won't remember, but I do. There was a Guinness launched a brand in the 1970s called Guinness Light.
And what they did was they went straight in with the product and marketed to their existing target audience, the existing consumers of Guinness. Major mistake. They are not the target audience for Guinness Lite. They love Guinness the way it is and they are usually, at the time, older men in a pub and they're going to put taste above calories. So if they had done their customer discovery properly and research, they would have realized this is not the audience they're going to convert to Lite Guinness. It's probably, it could be females who are more concerned about calories.
and therefore our strategy is going to have to be very different to so will our messaging. So that was a massive failure and a very expensive one. So that's exactly what happens when you don't do the early part of your... and also competition. There was a lot of competition for lower calorie drinks that they had to contend with. They were very different in where they positioned themselves and they didn't really... they underestimated it. So that's a very specific and typical example of what happens when people skip that early piece.
Will (11:53)
But you're right, it just doesn't feel like marketing, you know, unless you're sat there in meta ads or, you know, Google ads or something like that, or an SEO dashboard. You don't really feel like you're doing marketing and then, you know, researching the audience, you feel like I'm just going down rabbit holes here and I'm wandering, you know, I'm just wandering and it doesn't feel as productive. I don't know, how do we get over that?
Maeve Kneafsey (12:20)
It's a mindset and you know sometimes it's about unfortunately having to educate your stakeholders you know to say look this is what I'm doing. Now sometimes if I go into an organization where you're not starting from scratch right and the stakeholders are going deliver you know I'll do some tactical stuff just to keep things going and but I'm but win -wins quick wins but I'm staying to them and I'm selling them the concept of we need to find out more about our audience we need to find out about the pain.
Will (12:40)
Quick wins. Yeah, same.
Maeve Kneafsey (12:50)
and then come back with some real tangibles.
Will (12:54)
It's a good point. I actually, I know it's not, from a purist point of view might not be perfect, but when I ran my agency, I would actually always do that. When we went in and did a strategy piece, I'd identify quick wins and then identify the longer term things and they would go in a strategy that we'd build. But in the meantime, we'd fix, you know, we'd improve a conversion rate here. We'd make a campaign better here. We'd make a bit of social content better there. Quick obvious wins just to show that.
You know, just to reassure the client they're in good hands. They're in hands of, things are happening and they're in the hands of people who aren't just sort of stuck in PowerPoint all day every day and actually get things done. So yeah, there's a definitely, definitely helpful with that. Right, okay. So that's very interesting. So what kind, just to dig in, what kind of things am I trying to find out about my audience here?
Maeve Kneafsey (13:27)
And things are happening. Things are happening.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, firstly, do they care about your product? Does it solve a problem for them? Or your solution? I mean, that's fundamental. And in technology startups, which I know a lot of, there's a book called The Mom Test. And you can actually get videos online for The Mom Test. And The Mom Test is all about asking your customers, who your target customer are, about their pain.
Maeve Kneafsey (14:21)
and things that you could solve, but not selling your product while you're doing it, because they won't give you the honest answers. Because people always want to tell you what you want to hear. And there's a couple reasons why. One, human beings like to please each other, right? And two, they want to get you off the phone, or away from them, or finish whatever this dialogue is. So, you know, it's a way of asking and doing your research that you don't say, I've just invented a thing that holds a cucumber in the fridge, do you need it? Well, firstly, I'm thinking, no.
And secondly, I say, I might. And I take yes. Now, do you have a problem with perishable goods in your fridge is a different question. And then they will open up and talk about it. And out of that answer, you might find that there's no pain point there. So it's really about how you frame things. So at the beginning, you're really trying to find out, are we in the right track here? And then when you establish that, then it's OK. What's the most acute problem that we can solve for the audience and then that's what we're going to focus in on.
Will (15:23)
Yeah, so actually you're using the word pain point a lot there. You think that we should focus on, as the saying goes, selling painkillers, not vitamins.
Maeve Kneafsey (15:35)
Exactly, because people pay more for a painkiller than they will a vitamin. If it's something acute and it's a problem, people will pay for it. And that's what you're trying to get at. Now sometimes a pain point might be a little bit obtuse, but it doesn't matter. It can be... No.
Will (15:40)
Okay.
Yeah. It's not obvious. It's not always obvious, is it? Because you think, well, I'm selling something that just people just want. They don't need it. I'm just selling a faster car. There is a pain point behind that if you really dig, isn't there? The pain point is the person is a bit bummed out that they don't have the fastest car or they don't have the coolest car on their streets or, you know, that they feel like they're driving an old banger of a car or so you actually even if you dig into products that feel like they're led by desire.
Will (16:19)
There is some sort of pain point back there somewhere I often find.
Maeve Kneafsey (16:24)
You're absolutely right. I don't think it can be emotional drivers, not logical drivers. I mean, why on earth do women pay a fortune for handbags? Because they feel it's going to give them something. I know, it's the wrong one to bring up. Why do men pay as little money in golf clubs? I'm sure you don't, Will. I'm just giving you another stereotype to match the other stereotype.
Will (16:29)
true.
Still trying to work that out.
True, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's true, isn't it? And even in B2B, even in B2B, those emotional drivers are important, right? You know, the kind of SaaS software services that people pick, they're not all based on logical choices. They're based on brand decisions and emotional ones, right?
Maeve Kneafsey (17:04)
Well, wanting to belong, wanting to be seen to be smart can drive a lot of B2B decisions and safety can be another one. So, you know, they always say, you always buy IBM, it's safe, you know. And I feel Salesforce, you know, falls into that group a little bit as well that when I've gone into organizations and I've tried to persuade them that HubSpot's better as a total package for marketing automation, I'm not selling HubSpot, I'm just taking it as an example, there's a hesitation because they will, I want to be a Salesforce person.
Maeve Kneafsey (17:33)
I want to have that in my business, because that says something about me. So the drivers are not always logical. Now HubSpot has changed in terms of where it was when I first was using it. So it's far more in bigger enterprises. But at the beginning it wasn't, because their market entry strategy was small businesses.
Will (17:35)
Yeah.
And there is actually talk today of Google being interested in buying HubSpot because you know how they've grown into so many things. But yeah, it is interesting that and yes, those very B2B led things, they have their own brand and their own sort of tribe almost that says something about the person who chose those things.
Maeve Kneafsey (18:11)
Absolutely.
And then if you take another product which I use, I don't know if you've seen these, remarkable, they're, basically you write on them, it's electronic, but it feels like writing a paper. Yeah, remarkable, and I have terrible handwriting, it's brilliant, I love it, but hang on. The practical part of me, that's definitely a pain point, right? I hate having loads of notebooks, I've got them all over the place from meetings, I don't want to type at a meeting in front of people, I think it's rude, or they don't think you're engaged with them. There's lots of real pain points, it files everything really well, you don't have no...
Will (18:25)
remarkable, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it good? Mmm.
Maeve Kneafsey (18:45)
But a big part of me buying it was being part of a tribe because a company I was working with, everybody had them. So I have to be honest and say there's an element of, I want one now as well. So it's quite, it's nuanced. We're not black and white.
Will (19:01)
Unlike your remarkable, we're not black and white.
Maeve Kneafsey (19:03)
Exactly, I like my homework though.
Will (19:07)
Right, so let's bring this back to some of the kind of marketing theory stuff. The four P's or however many P's there are these days, product, price, place, promotion, that kind of thing. Are they still relevant in the digital age when we're thinking about marketing strategy?
Maeve Kneafsey (19:25)
I think that they're more relevant than they ever were. I do, I do, because it's just they're different, if you understand me. It's just different. So if you think about price, let's just talk about price. You've got to get your pricing right, because everybody can see everything online. Everything's available. So you're positioning for price with some hope that people won't see that there's another solution in China. Well, there is. They can see it. So it's so important to get the pricing right.
Maeve Kneafsey (19:53)
That's my view, because online it has opened up the world to the consumer and the buyer and they can see everything. So pricing is so important. And of course the way you price is not just what could you offer in terms of the way people pay you. That's so broad. So if you think about, do you know Veri? Veri is an online retailer that came out of Littlewoods. When they first came out, which I think is probably 10 years ago,
Maeve Kneafsey (20:22)
they had a huge differentiator in their pricing because what they did was they allowed people pay later and pay installment. So that's probably commonplace now. But at that time, that was a real game changer for them. And it gave them an acceleration in terms of their differentiator to really, really build the market. And of course, everybody's caught up now. But having a differentiator like that on pricing.
Will (20:28)
Yes, it's true that we certainly see that in e -commerce, haven't we, with the likes of PayPal and Klarna allowing any e -commerce website to plug finance into the way that they sell their products, you know, pay later installments and that kind of thing. And also we've seen the subscriptionization of so many things and then you get different packages and tiers and there's that whole thing about price anchoring where people will often pick, well, often pick the middle tier.
Maeve Kneafsey (20:59)
Yep. Yep.
Will (21:15)
They won't go for the cheapest or the most expensive, the middle one, you know, and you kind of do all that thing and so pretty, yes. But that again, I mean, and I'm saying this stuff because I find that very confusing as someone who's pricing the things that I do. Like, where do you start? What do people expect? How do we even find out how to price what I do and then how to charge for it? Because it seems like there's so many different dimensions to that potentially. It's confusing.
Maeve Kneafsey (21:20)
You know, we could have an entire podcast on pricing. You know, there's so many elements to it. And, you know, look, OK, think about this. When you go into a restaurant and you buy a bottle of wine, OK, you're looking at the list. And unless you're a real wine connoisseur, you probably go for the mid -range price. Because you don't want to be mean. You also think it's probably better than the cheaper one. Now, restaurateurs know that. So they pick the wine that they want to shift.
Maeve Kneafsey (22:11)
And price pointed that way. It's not the cheapest. And when you're trying to figure out pricing, there's all sorts of quadrants that you have to look at. And basically, competition is one. Differentiation that you believe is strong enough that's going to enable, push people to pay a little bit more. So for example, I'm just using Hubstop because I think everybody knows it. But when I was using it, it was the ease of onboarding.
Maeve Kneafsey (22:39)
because you could onboard yourself, you could use the product pretty much, and they have very good customer service. In contrast, at that time, if you bought Salesforce, you had to have somebody specialist to do it. So that was a big push on product, right? But also pricing, you know, it's just, in the end of the day, it was not as expensive because of the fact that you could manage it yourself. So there's lots of quadrants going on in terms of people's willingness to pay a certain amount. The product's delivering, it is a real pain point I care about.
Maeve Kneafsey (23:08)
it's relative to the others. There's elements in there that are allowing you to make choices about your pricing. But that's, well, the underpinning that is knowing your audience, understanding the market.
Will (23:15)
Yeah,
Yeah. Yes, understanding the other, trying to get a handle on what are the other things they are seeing and therefore what do they think is cheap, reasonable and expensive. That's essentially what you're trying to work out, isn't it? Because again, in my world, both in my agency days and now as someone who does kind of training and talks and stuff, you always wonder, should I just massively undercut everything out there?
Will (23:48)
And I never do that, and I've never done that because you always worry that you'll then get stuck to those low prices, right? Do you agree with that? Is that a big danger just undercutting everyone else out there?
Maeve Kneafsey (23:59)
Yes, I'll tell you a really personal example that will make it real. So when we started our agency, not to be talking about ourselves, but it is relevant, we had a digital agency, we started in 2003, at that time there wasn't very many, I think we were probably one of the first digital agencies in Ireland anyway. And we had a series of different digital tactics that we sold, but the biggest piece of work we did was analytics and strategy, that was our thing.
Maeve Kneafsey (24:25)
And we were reasonable, I mean, I think we were very reasonable, I would say that, wouldn't I? But we were, you know, in terms of the overall budget. But then we found that agencies who really wanted to sell not necessarily digital marketing, but the development of websites and technology, started to give away strategy for free. So dropping your prices is so nuanced because it's about, well, what are my competitors doing? Can I differentiate them?
Maeve Kneafsey (24:54)
And that changed our whole business when that happened, you know, because people were saying, well, I can get the strategy for free. You know, so what do you do in that situation? You have to differentiate that there's something you're doing that nobody else is doing.
Will (25:09)
Yeah, no, that is true. That is very true. I think...
Maeve Kneafsey (25:13)
Now you could lower your price, sorry to interrupt you, you could lower your price but add on other services once you get them in the door. And that could be your strategy. So you've other levers to pull. Let's say they start off with, okay, I'll do your digital strategy, top line level strategy, let's pretend for free, okay? And then implementation is where you make the money.
Will (25:27)
That's true. And that's again, kind of what HubSpot did, right? The barrier to entry seems very low, but in reality, you'll end up paying a lot of money over the course of a subscription with them. And I think that model, it's like the freemium model in general, isn't it? It's like, I think that model has pervaded in lots of ways that this feels very easy to start, very low cost, but actually over time, your lifetime value is huge.
Yeah, no, I mean, I had similar problems running an agency. I found that some of our competitors were starting to do a lot of the work in the pitch. So come up with ideas, even produce work that would normally be paid work as part of pitching to clients or, you know, that initial unpaid bit where they're just, and that really used to annoy me, I've got to say.
Maeve Kneafsey (26:20)
Yeah, I know, I know. But if you think about, you think about, differentiation is really important because it enables you to position yourself ahead of the competition. And if you think of somebody like everybody, I hope, knows budget airlines like Ryanair, okay? So Ryanair came into the market and looked around and said, everybody's paying premium prices to get anywhere and you can't get, the destinations are limited. So they then said, actually our competitors are so embedded in a different way of.
Maeve Kneafsey (26:49)
business model that's completely different to ours. So they disrupted the market. Now the great thing about being a disruptor is if you've got the right disruption and you know the market needs it, which they did, everybody wants cheaper flights right, is that it can give you, it's a terrible pun, it can give you a bit of a runway okay because it's very hard for the incumbents to turn their model around and try and match you.
Will (26:50)
It is, because the way their organisation is set up, they can't charge 25 euro for a flight.
Maeve Kneafsey (27:17)
No, they'd be out of business. So it took them a long, so all that time Ryanair had the runway to themselves and then they could add value by going to a lot more different destinations that the others would never go to. They really had a lot of time to work hard. Now, when the market shifts and the other airlines start competing with you on price, then you've got to add value elsewhere. And it's, you know, so that's why understanding the market dynamics is so important for marketing strategies because you can't sell the wrong thing the wrong way. If...
if you're not aware of what people's thinking is and what they have as an alternative to you.
Will (27:52)
One last question on price. It's a very blunt answer. I'm looking for it. Is it a better mistake to be accidentally too cheap or accidentally make yourself too expensive? If I had to make that mistake, which way? Yeah, same, same. That's good. Yeah. Because you can go down. You can always go down. Okay, good. So, right. Let's get into putting the strategy together.
Maeve Kneafsey (28:06)
I'd go too expensive. That's my instinct. I'd go too expensive. You can always work your way down from there.
Will (28:21)
together our marketing strategy this is for a new business. What's the first step? We've talked about our go to market understanding the audience, the landscape, the competition, thinking about pricing. What then are we going to work out in our long term marketing strategy do you think?
Maeve Kneafsey (28:39)
I suppose the first step is to find the objectives. I know this is really obvious, but it's the one, you know, sometimes I go in and I'll talk to a really talented marketing team. I'll say, they'll say, we're doing this and we're doing this. And I say, okay, well, what's the overall goal of marketing this year? What are we trying to do? well, we want more sales. I say, well, that's not enough. You know, that's a little bit too broad. Yes, we do. That's the purpose of business, but you know, what exactly by how much?
And in what period? Are we trying to increase it by 20 % this year? Yes. Okay, grand. So how much time do we have? We've got 12 months. Right. Let's break it down. So starting very clearly with what's the overall business goal this year, and then now what are our core activities going to be that's going to deliver that. So that's where people skip. They sometimes get a bit vague about the objective. And it's almost like...
people get a bit afraid of clarity. It's really important to have that clarity because everybody can work that together and everything comes back to the objective. So to me that's where you start.
Will (29:38)
Yeah, look, I agree. I mean, I train hundreds of people every month and in most of my courses, I talk about smart objectives, right? And I actually feel kind of patronizing and I always approach it a bit apologetically. I'm like, look, sorry, I know you've heard this if you've been on other courses, but I do have to cover this. And it turns out a lot of the surprising amount of people who, like you say, are fully fledged marketers, sometimes quite senior,
Will (30:12)
working in companies that you would think would have this stuff worked out, they don't have a very clear specific list of objectives. It is just stuff like, well, we want to drive more sales and as part of that, we just want to grow on TikTok or something like, okay. And it doesn't work. It's just not the right foundation at all, is it?
Maeve Kneafsey (30:33)
No, and that's also very depressing for you because you need to know you're getting somewhere. Right? And the only way you can do that is if you've got something specific you're aiming for. So, you know, and it's not demotivating. You say, OK, well, and also I think it helps you make choices more quickly. Because if you say, is that somebody says, look, this is a really good idea. There's a new thing called TikTok. Let's go on it. OK, what's involved? And that's the wrong question. It's not what's involved. Will it actually help us reach our goal?
Maeve Kneafsey (31:02)
the main overarching goal, is it going to help us towards that 20 % increase in revenues? okay it is. Okay, well explain to me how. Because then we'll either say yes or no.
Will (31:02)
Absolutely, every decision can be guided by that really simply, can't it? You know, and you don't have to have big meetings about a decision. It's like, does it help us get to our goals? No, we're not doing it.
Maeve Kneafsey (31:16)
And also resources are relevant because if you say, okay, look, TikTok's brilliant, it could deliver uptake or increase in revenues, but do we have time to do it if we're doing this thing over here that we're doing, which is our email marketing campaigns, do we have time to do both? I'm not saying that it's that simple a choice, but sometimes it is. And you say, well, we can't actually do both this year. We're resource limited and we'll do TikTok next year.
Will (31:27)
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Well, you know what, we're getting into this sort of, I suppose, the slightly getting into the politics of it and the kind of human side of this. I mean, I'm thinking about soft skills here, all these more human skills. Yes, okay, we need to know about strategy, we need to be experienced marketers, but to get people to buy into objectives or even...
Will (32:15)
talk about them, think about them and agree to the need for that clarity. Yeah, there's people skills involved there. And obviously then as you build and implement a strategy, again, you'll get him buy in from other people. You're trying to keep people cooperating with you. So what do you think are the most important soft skills or I like to call them human skills that are good to possess and develop as a marketer who wants to build and implement a strategy?
Maeve Kneafsey (32:41)
I love that question because it's never asked actually, very rarely asked. I think empathy is really important from a person in marketing because your job is to get into the shoes of other people and the quicker and better you are doing that, the more effective you're going to be in terms of knowing what they need. And also if you're going to be doing customer journey mapping, empathy is a really underrated.
Maeve Kneafsey (33:09)
tool in your toolkit because you have to think about them and be them. So I do think empathy is really important. The other one is if you're selling your ideas to stakeholders, you have to also be in their shoes because everybody has their priorities and things that they want to achieve and it's not going to be the same as yours. But if you can talk back to them in articulating how you'll help them get to where they need to go, that's going to make it much easier for you. And then that leads to communication. And communication is such a woolly word. What does that mean?
Simple, plain English, not using buzzwords. If you're going to use terminology, use the language of the person you're trying to persuade, not the marketing buzzwords, which just firstly put people off and secondly, they don't often understand them. So it's really using proper communications to reflect the person you're talking to, either actually talking to or communicating with online. So that would be one. And then of course, creativity. Being able to...
Maeve Kneafsey (34:09)
come up with novel ways of doing something within a budget. That's really important, you know, clever ways. I mean, that company who did the research as their market entry, that's creative, you know, really understands where people are, that everybody's obsessed with how much they're getting paid compared to everybody else, you know, and it's a clever and innovative way to enter a market. Or think of Airbnb, you know, the way they were, they brought in Airbnb, live it. So,
Maeve Kneafsey (34:36)
They got people in the local areas to be the insider tour to what it's like to live in Madrid. Find out the places where real, I'm not going to say this right, people from Madrid, is it Madridians? Anyway, where are the people from Madrid? That's the one. See, that's why I didn't say it. Like we follow people more on holidays to see where they're getting their coffee, that are locals. So Airbnb understood that. And then, so you get the insider tips on the locality from locals, you know, that's.
Madre llenos.
Maeve Kneafsey (35:04)
That's innovative and creative and thinking outside the box, which is an overused word but it's actually true. Don't just do the same thing everybody else does.
Will (35:12)
Yes, that creativity, doing a lot with a little is where you're getting creative, isn't it? You're not just going out there splurging money. You're trying to always do a lot with a little. Whether that's a little money, a little time, a little resource. Yeah, interesting. So those are some... And is there a, you know, for every marketer, is there an element of what we might call leadership? Because you're essentially...
saying this is the strategy and I need everyone to get behind this and you sort of get that call to arms to get behind it.
Maeve Kneafsey (35:48)
Yeah, I mean, I think leadership.
It is about communication, isn't it? And everybody understanding what we're trying to do at a higher level and then the important role each person plays in getting there. And then being able to feedback how it's going and where it's going and how you're going to help them do better and facilitate them. So that's one area where you're leading your team, right? But then the other area is that you have to make sure you represent marketing in the organization. Marketing has got to be seen to be an important element within the business.
and your job is to convince other stakeholders that that is the case. So leadership in understanding how you can help the business reach the goals, how you make sure everybody else understands the responsibility you're taking on and that you're willing to do that and then get their help when you need it. So if sales understand what you're trying to do, that's really important and they will help you because they say, well, they're going to help us get our sales. So, you know, that good communication and showing leadership across the organization as well.
Will (36:37)
Yes, it's true that. Yeah, very true. Things about getting people to trust you. I do think you're right about that clear communication. I think if you come across as like a sort of a bit of a jargony person, then people don't quite trust you. Whereas if you come across as very open, very transparent, and yeah, I suppose likable, there's a lot of ways that people, you can build that trust and then people will, they're bought into pretty much anything you'll,
You do, really, because they assume that it must be good because they trust you.
Maeve Kneafsey (37:24)
Yeah, I suppose that when I was younger, I always thought I had to have all the answers. That's what a good leader is, have all the answers. And that's a terrible place to put yourself because you don't and nobody does. So I think you can get trust from people by being honest with them about when you're struggling as well. You say, look, I don't know how to, I don't understand this audience. I don't really, you know, or I've tried this and it's not working. Why do you think it's not working? You know, and that you can get, once you get that dialogue going, they'll come to you.
Will (37:29)
Yes, absolutely.
Maeve Kneafsey (37:51)
you know, and then you suddenly change the dynamic.
Will (37:55)
Well, that's, that's brings me on to my next question really about getting help because ultimately you can't, a lot of marketers feeling the pressure to go away, craft the perfect marketing strategy and come back and present it. And that's a horrible feeling. I would hate to have to do that now. Cause I've been in that position and actually it was never a position that I or anyone should be in.
Maeve Kneafsey (38:11)
Hehehe.
Will (38:18)
it should be something you start out by just, yeah, like you say, being open about, I don't currently know how I'm going to put this together. I'm gonna find out and I'm gonna sort of research my way through it. But if anybody would like to help me with that, I would really appreciate it. And I wanna learn from everybody around me, you know, and having that kind of, like you say, not trying to be the know it all. So if I'm struggling with a marketing strategy, what kind of people might I reach out to around me?
Maeve Kneafsey (38:47)
I reach out to people all the time. I'm a terrible reach -er -outer in the sense that people really do help. So I suppose I might know somebody else who's a colleague somewhere else in another business. They might have a similar role to me. I might bring them. I definitely use online a lot to find free information because it's some really good stuff out there. The Digital Marketing Institute, I believe, is a very good organisation as well. I'd probably look at them. In fact, I'd find out some information from them. I always talk to product people as well.
Will (38:52)
Now they do have some really good resources, yeah, yeah.
Maeve Kneafsey (39:16)
I find they're interesting because they see things in a different way. And often the product people get to go to a lot of the trade fairs, a lot of stuff that's happening, and they're kind of cutting edge sometimes about what's going on. And they might see stuff. And I'd say to them before they go to anything, by the way, when you're over there, I know you're looking at product, but would you have a look and see what other people are doing in terms of marketing? If there's anything tricky or clever, you take a photograph of it or video it or whatever. They're fantastic. And then I've always had a mentor, somebody I can bounce off.
Will (39:27)
Mmm.
Maeve Kneafsey (39:46)
And I don't always say, you're a fish in my mentor, but it becomes somebody who I will trust and go to with problems or ideas.
Will (39:49)
Yes, that's good that. Yeah, I suppose you do have these unofficial mentors, don't you, that you don't really call your mentor. That's good, actually. That's in itself is good advice. We've had people on the podcast before saying you need a mentor. It is quite hard to go and ask someone, will you be my mentor? Like, can I call you my mentor? Totally, yeah. Can I call you my girlfriend now? Anyway.
Maeve Kneafsey (40:16)
It's a bit like, will you be my boyfriend?
Will (40:24)
Right, very interesting. I should mention that you did an earlier webinar with us about how the marketing team can get buying. And we're going to put a link to that in the show notes of this episode. Because that was very good with the stuff you talked about there. Right, okay. So yeah, the product team, absolutely. They're going to be the people that understand product more than anyone. Sales team, I suppose, going to talk to them as we've talked about.
Maeve Kneafsey (40:38)
I hope it's useful.
you're so right, yep.
Will (40:54)
and online resources. Yeah. Anyone else you'd sort of reach out to?
Maeve Kneafsey (40:58)
I actually go out with the sales team. I mean, look, I know this may be really obvious, maybe it's not, but sales team are brilliant. If you go out with them and you hear what the customers are saying back to them, particularly if it's a relatively new customer rather than a catch up with somebody you love, because you really begin to see what... And also you're going to read the feedback from the customer differently than they are. When I was in sales, your objective is to get as close to the end as quick as possible.
Will (41:05)
No it's not.
Maeve Kneafsey (41:28)
But when a marketing person comes in and sits with you, they're going to think and ask different questions and that can be really insightful.
Will (41:37)
True that, yeah, God, I wish more marketing people would do that, go along to some of those other meetings and get out of their marketing box a little bit. I think that would help everyone. I think we'd all be more effective, to be honest. I wish I had done more of that in my time, for sure. Okay, and...
Just, I mean, like I say, we will link to the webinar, but just give us a few of the things that you talked about, maybe a couple of the tips that you mentioned when you're trying to get that buy -in from maybe skeptical stakeholders around a strategy.
Maeve Kneafsey (42:13)
I think that one thing is language. Don't be selling things like hits or we get really good traffic on the website. That doesn't mean anything. It's not tangible enough to somebody. So you reflect their goals. You're trying to raise, let's say we go back to the revenue one, you're trying to increase revenue by 20 % this year. Okay, these are the ways we can help you get there. But it has to be, again, very plain English, simple. And these are where we think we have challenges. The other one is...
to, I suppose, understand that what marketing is doing in all the detail of what we do is not interesting. It is to us. But all the different tactics that we're doing. Often other stakeholders just don't get it. And it's not your job, and they're not their job to understand all the nuances. So just be aware of that. And then the other thing is that it's often really useful to use data, particularly if that person is a data person, as a way to get buy -in. You know, so.
Maeve Kneafsey (43:12)
I'm making something up, which you could say millennials, you know, 40 ,000 million photographs a day. And if you think of Coke, remember Coca -Cola did those branded bottles with the name, personalized name on them. And the Coke, the more senior people in Coke were not really convinced. So they didn't understand that the whole millennial, let's take a photograph with my bottle and the name. So they did a small skirmish campaign. It worked really well. So prototyping or skirmish campaigns where you go in and you try something and you get results and bring them back.
Maeve Kneafsey (43:42)
That can really help you win over people.
Will (43:43)
interesting. So they just did a small scale perhaps in one few shops or one city or something with just names on the bottles and cans. interesting. Yeah. And then I do think that's a really, really good tip. You know, prove it to a small scale. You know, just try it with like, you know, a couple of social posts if you want to prove the campaign idea or yeah, how small can you test it?
Maeve Kneafsey (44:09)
Yeah, and you know the thing is that digital is our best friend, isn't it? Because you can test things in a really small number, you can really segment the market. I had an idea at one stage for a business and I just used landing pages to test the market. Google AdWords and landing pages and it worked. The idea was, I thought, a brilliant idea. It was for designer post boxes. Because all the post boxes that you put outside your house now look exactly the same. But anyway, the price point was very sensitive.
Maeve Kneafsey (44:39)
in the tests we did. So that was a way to kind of really test something quickly, understand the limit people are willing to go in terms of how much they'd spend and then the number that we got interested in the first place.
Will (44:41)
Yeah.
That's good. Yeah, you're right. Paid ads and landing pages are a very good way to test that, right? You know, if you want to know how a few hundred people would respond to this price or that price, it doesn't cost a lot to run that campaign, does it? You know, just to try and then no one else is going to see that other than the people targeted by the ads. So you can show stuff that you never want people to see in future, right?
Maeve Kneafsey (45:02)
No. No.
Yes. Another thing, just because I'm thinking about it, I've forgotten this Will, one of the things that works really well with other stakeholders in a business is competitor analysis. Really understanding the competitor and bringing some intelligence back because people will listen. You know, if you come back and say, look, our competitors have, they're adding a whole lot of extras onto the product and it's free. Our competitors are accessing the market through schools. The competitors have dropped their prices. That...
Maeve Kneafsey (45:42)
And of course you can't just say the fact, you think this is what I think is happening, this is how we could respond. And I think that always gets people's, they're always listening ears start to come into play. So keep a good tight eye on the competitor as well.
Will (45:51)
That's real.
it's true that it's not quite FOMO, but it's something very similar, isn't it? That it's a trigger for people. If their competitors are doing it, it must be worth paying attention to. So yeah, that's right. You can use that definitely. So you're working with lots of different clients in your time. You've seen any particularly creative approaches to developing strategy that you've not mentioned already?
Maeve Kneafsey (46:19)
Yeah, I mean look a lot of them are around the value that they bring in addition to the marketing if you like. So, for example there's a company called The Sill, which is a plant shop. Sill as in the sill for your plant. And they will do free online workshops about how to fix my houseplants. How do you deal with rubber plant sickness? I'm making it up, I have no idea if rubber plants get sick, I'm sure they do. If I want to make my ferns grow longer.
Will (46:32)
nice windowsill.
Maeve Kneafsey (46:49)
And they do all that for free. And that's really novel and clever because there isn't somebody doing that. So I think those kind of tactics. And then I think the Airbnb example is very clever where they have a lot of people who are local giving free information about the locality where somebody's staying, giving them tips and insight into where's the best place for coffee. Is there a tapas place that nobody else knows about behind the cathedral? That kind of thing.
Hackathons are an interesting way. I mean, you can do them, non -tech companies can do them where you bring a bunch of people who could be influencers into a room to try and break something or kind of pull something apart. And that can be really great because A, you get more, you get product information, but also they begin to have a care, they care enough about your product now because they're part of the team. You've brought them in.
Will (47:40)
So to test your product to its limits in some way. Yeah, that's interesting for sure, yeah. I think it's funny actually, there's a lot of examples of that. I think influence has been brought in as part of product development, not always in tech companies, as you say, seeing that in fashion and beauty. Glossier are a company we've done a case study of in the past.
Maeve Kneafsey (47:43)
Can they break it?
Will (48:08)
an American beauty brand and a lot of their products are based on basically feedback from customers having these kind of influencer focus groups and what have you and you're right people people actually love to be invested in better products because people want better products they want to be part of their tribe getting their hands on better products you know it's amazing actually how willing they are i think people would be surprised
Maeve Kneafsey (48:27)
Exactly, exactly.
I mean sometimes the tactics you've seen it done by companies where they give a preview to a product to a very small select bunch of people. That is incredible in the impact because then they all feel they have to talk about it because they've been given access. So you can build up, cleverly build up a sense of mystery and exclusivity and that can really work in terms of helping you market, particularly with influencers.
Will (48:37)
Indeed, indeed. Well, look, it's come time to ask me the question, it's come time to ask you the question. I ask all of our guests, what are your top tips? And specifically, I would love to ask you what your top five tips are when crafting a marketing strategy.
Maeve Kneafsey (49:21)
Do you know, I thought about this because I knew you were gonna ask me, so I have them here ready to go, okay? I look, I'm gonna repeat stuff we've all talked about anyway, so forgive me. Yeah.
Will (49:25)
Good.
That's alright, a lot of the time when guests do their top five tips, it's recapping and crystallising some of the stuff we've talked about. That's absolutely normal, so yeah, go for it.
Maeve Kneafsey (49:43)
Okay, well, goals. Have the goals really, really clear, okay? And don't be afraid of them, you know? So goals, clarity, what are we doing? Then figure out your audience and get deep with the audience. Really profile the audience. Make sure that even if it's bad news you're bringing back to the company, let's say you do an audience deep dive into the target audience and you find, I don't think we're matching the audience. Well, you know what? The alternative is to keep going and spend lots of money and get nowhere.
So if you come back and say, look, I don't think it's the right pain point, you have a few choices there, right? You can find another audience who do have the pain point or you adjust the product. But either way, it's really important work to do at the early stages. And do your personas really as early as you can, because you can always update them. Once you've got any set of data, you can update them. But in the beginning, do the personas, get them right. And because it'll help you then know exactly what the messaging should be. And it'll also help you know what the tactics are going to be, because the persona will tell you.
how they behave and where they are anyway. So it's so important. And if you're doing an online offering, I think the customer journey map early on is really important because you need to find out where they might be getting tripped up. The ooches, you know? you can't use a credit card here. Or, you know, it's very hard to see what I bought last time. You know, things like that. But the journey mapping can really, really help with that.
Will (51:03)
What we talking about there, finding people's objections? Are we finding people's point they sort of drop out of the journey to purchase? What do you mean exactly?
Maeve Kneafsey (51:14)
Yeah, I mean in a customer journey map you're doing everything from kind of the you're mapping out all the touch points where the customer is engaging with you in some way. Even if not in person, on their way to a purchase and post purchase as well. So it could be, you know, they get onto your website and it's too slow downloading or it's not clear where you buy or it's not clear where there's information that that can help them inform.
Will (51:23)
on their way to actually converting. Of course, yeah.
You try to find out where's the leak? Where am I leaking customers along that pipeline?
Maeve Kneafsey (51:42)
Exactly, yeah exactly or it could be you don't include pricing on your site and that really bugs people, people really hate that. You know so it's kind of walking all the way through the journey of our customer till purchase and then actually post purchase. How do we take care of them? Did it get delivered on time? Did they give us feedback? Will they buy from us again? So it's you know mapping out that whole journey and seeing if there's any pain points along the way. So for example you know you can have a really good online
Maeve Kneafsey (52:10)
or let's say you're brilliant at selling, okay, in a shop, whatever it is, but then when it comes to the till, you can't open the till. You know, that's the problem, that's the pain point, and it could be on a site that it's very difficult to actually enter your information and pay.
Will (52:26)
Okay, cool. So, goals, personas, customer journey mapping, what else?
Maeve Kneafsey (52:34)
tactics don't be afraid to adapt them you know you can do what I call them skirmishes you can try things and see if they worked you know that's it's much more agile it's not like that's what we're going to do for the end of story it isn't you're going to do maybe five core things and you're going to adapt as based on the feet on the results you get and and also setting KPIs key performance indicators for the tactics themselves so even overall our overarching goal but then you have different tactics that you're doing and you want to say okay look let's say where email marketing is our is one of our
Maeve Kneafsey (53:03)
important campaign tactics. Last year we got our average open rate was this and our conversion rate was this. This year we're going to go for that much better. So you always have to have context except when you're starting in the green field. You know, what did we do before and what are we going to do better? Otherwise you just feel like you're just a hamster in a wheel, just keep doing stuff. And there's no sense of satisfaction.
Will (53:20)
Yes, always benchmark against your previous performance.
Maeve Kneafsey (53:28)
Yeah, and if you don't have a previous performance, try and find out what the industry benchmarks are.
Will (53:32)
Yes, yep, yep, which are usually available through a bit of Googling.
Maeve Kneafsey (53:37)
Yeah, or a chatty BT.
Will (53:39)
great, and that there, they are five great tips. We did cover the five, right? Yeah. Yes, five very good tips there, Maeve. Thank you so much for your time. I feel like I've learnt a lot. I feel much more ready to create my go -to -market strategy and my long -term marketing strategy. One final question before I let you go, of course. Where can listeners connect with you online?
Maeve Kneafsey (53:48)
I think we did, yeah.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn. That would be probably the easiest way for you to connect with me. Or you can, that's probably the easiest way. That's where I am online is LinkedIn.
Will (54:14)
Good stuff.
Yes, good. Well, we will connect with you there. And look, thanks again for your time. It's been great. Cheers, Maeve.
Maeve Kneafsey (54:26)
Thank you very much.