Revolutionising Markets: A Masterclass in Disruptive Innovation and B2B Growth Strategies with Mark Donnigan

In the conversation, Mark Donnigan and I discuss the challenges and opportunities of marketing campaigns in a rapidly changing business landscape. 

We emphasize the importance of understanding the intersection of marketing and sales, and how startups can optimize their marketing budget for remarkable results. Later, we discuss category design, active listening, and the evolving nature of sales and marketing strategies. 

We highlight the significance of simplicity, authenticity, and tailored approaches for breaking into new markets. Finally, Mark emphasizes the importance of a conductor-like figure to coordinate various marketing disciplines.

Look at these links to discover more about Mark and his work:

Website:       https://growthstage.marketing/
Facebook:    https://www.facebook.com/MarkDonniganEntrepreneur
YouTube:      https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkDonnigan
LinkedIn:       https://www.linkedin.com/in/markdonnigan/

ABOUT THE GUEST

Mark has been a virtual CMO and Start Up Marketing and Business Consultant for over 14 years. During his career he has sported such titles as VP of Marketing, VP in Sales, General Manager and Business Development Director, to name a few.

Mark seeks out all those that consider themselves as ambitious technical or product-focused founders in the video streaming or technology startup ecosystem and are ready to disrupt.

ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Dave Barr and I am the Founder and Owner of RLB Purchasing Consultancy Limited.

I have been working in Procurement for over 25 years and have had the joy of working in a number of global manufacturing and service industries throughout this time.

I am passionate about self development, business improvement, saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues, and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

CONTACT DETAILS

@The Real Life Buyer
Email: david@thereallifebuyer.co.uk
Website: https://linktr.ee/thereallifebuyer

For Purchasing Consultancy services:
https://rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk/
Email: contact@rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk

Find and Follow me @reallifebuyer on Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads and TikTok.

Click here for some Guest Courses - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-courses/

Click here for some Guest Publications - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-publications

Transcript

Intro  00:00

Welcome to The Real Life Buyer podcast. In this podcast, you will hear interviews with business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors and technical specialists in their field. These professionals will hasten your development accelerate your career and broaden your business know how, now introducing your host Dave Barr interviewing with a purchasing twist.

Dave Barr  00:21

Hello, and welcome to The Real Life Buyer. My guest today is Mark Donnigan. Mark has been a virtual CMO and startup marketing and business consultant for over 14 years. During his career is sported such titles as VP of Marketing, VP in Sales, General Manager, and Business Development Director just to name a few. Marks serks out all those that consider themselves as ambitious, technical or product focus founders in the video streaming technology startup ecosystem and are ready to disrupt. So in this episode, I want to delve into the dynamic world of disruptive innovation and transformative business to business marketing with Mark. So without further ado, I welcome Mark on to the podcast. Hi, Mark. 

Mark Donnigan  01:11

Hey, thank you, Dave, what a wonderful intro. It's great to be here talking with you and your audience. Brilliant.

Dave Barr  01:17

Thanks very much. And tonight, I like to focus, for the many small business owners that I meet on a regular basis. You know, just before the show we chatted about the SME market, its quite thriving in the UK. And marketing is always a subject that's raised in various Chamber meetings. So hopefully we'll be able to help those people out today.

Mark Donnigan  01:39

That's right. Well, that's the goal. Certainly.

Dave Barr  01:42

But before we get stuck into, shall we say your zone of expertise, it would be great if you could enlighten the listeners a little bit more about your background and the driving force that led you to this career path and success.

Mark Donnigan  01:55

Yeah, so 12 years old, I discovered my school's Apple 2 computer and taught myself basic programming language. My dad actually worked at Hewlett Packard, so he you know, I guess, and he's an electrical engineer by training. So I grew up in, you know, I guess you could say kind of an engineering household, it was obviously then a foregone conclusion that I would go and study computer science, which I did do at university until the end of my second year, I realized maybe I wanted to be more like a musician, like a rock star has dropped out of my computer science program, changed majors went to music school, that made my dad really happy. But I say all that because, you know, connecting the dots when when when I look back, and I say, you know, I've always had this very strong technical component. I'm very, I'm a technologist, I love technology, but at the same time, I'm very creative. So that was the intersection really, of marketing and sales. And long story short, going back to music school, I never became a rock star. But I did learn one thing that I really, you know, being a poor starving musician is not so glamorous. So along the way, I, you know, I was putting myself through through college, even in high school, I started working, selling, you know, computers and electronics, equipment, and, you know, so I started developing sales skills, and, and that really started the whole journey of, you know, learning how to use words how to use language, to, you know, to get somebody to, you know, listen to me, and therefore, make a buying decision. And over the years, you know, that progressed, and I guess you can say, kind of one opportunity led to the next. And, you know, along the way, I was really fortunate to be a part of, of a few companies that I've heard it said that, you know, oftentimes it's just one or two opportunities, or companies that kind of make or reach, you know, a shape or career. And that certainly was true for me. And so I feel very fortunate, you know, of where I sit today. But that's my journey. Brilliant.

Dave Barr  04:20

It's really quite interesting that, so let's get into the meat of our discussion. You know, I was trying to help some people out there today, and I've been obviously researching some things about you looking at your LinkedIn profile, your websites and such. And can see obviously, I can see all around me that there's a rapidly changing landscape, talking about disruption and innovation. And there's lots of that going on. At the moment. You refer to something specifically called a category design approach, though, I'd like to understand more about what that is, how you apply it, what its relevance is to SMEs. Can you talk us through this category design approach? 

Mark Donnigan  04:58

Yeah I can and it actually is fairly simple to understand. And the best example that I have, that I think everyone can understand or relate to is when Apple introduced the iPod. And for those of us that, you know, remember that Steve Jobs famously came out on stage. And I think and write his opening, you know, like the first 30 seconds first minute or so, when he walked out on stage, he held up this, you know, what we thought? Well, it is still a very beautiful box, you know, very unusual looking box with the round wheel and, you know, the original iPod, he held it up. And he did not say, announcing Apple's new MP3 player, announcing Apple's new music player, you know, or, you know, some variation of that, what did he say he held it up, and he said, 1000 songs in your pocket. Now, if you think about what that statement says, okay, 1000 songs, well, songs, that's music, right? So right away, I know, it's a music player, I don't have to say it's a music player. Okay, why do I really cares a user what the format is mp3, there happens to be other audio file formats, at some that are of much higher quality, the iPod supported those, but the user doesn't care. So saying, and this is Apple's new MP3 player, you know, and look how beautiful it is, you know, saying this is Apple's new music player, all that would have done is drawn a comparison to the many, many, many other brands and products that were in the market, because remember, Apple was not the first and yet just, you know, something like five or six years after the launch of the of the very first iPod, Apple owned, like 80% of the MP, you know, MP3 market, which is the category obviously that that product fit into, but they owned 80% of the market, 80%. And by the way, they enlarged the pie, enlarge the market by orders of magnitude, right. So it's not like the pie didn't get any bigger, they just stole market share, they grew it and then still owned 80% became an incredible cash cow. And obviously everyone knows that then led to the iPhone, and you know, the iPhone has, you know, made Apple into a $3 trillion companies. So absolutely amazing. But that is category design. Category design is when you step into a market that is not new. In fact, it might be quite crowded, there may be a lot of companies, there may be a lot of products, but You step in with a very unique take on on what you do and how you're different. That is category design. And so I think for most of the audience, they're probably looking at their own businesses. And they're saying, you know, I try and, and let my customers my potential customers know how I'm different. But at the end of the day, like, you know, there's 6 or 8, or 10, or 12, or 15 other businesses, maybe even just within a five kilometer radius around, you know, around me, depending on the business you're in, you know, so how can I really differentiate, and the amazing thing is, is that I firmly believe you can differentiate even when you are in the most commodity of businesses, there is an angle, sometimes it requires some creativity, sometimes it requires some boldness, because it requires saying, No, we don't sell to everybody, you know, and and all business owners are afraid of that. What do you mean? I mean, if I say no sell to everybody, I'm, I'm limiting my market, aren't I? No, actually, you're expanding your market. Because now you can be very specific as to who you're for who your product is for how you mark it, and you can own it. Yes, it's a much smaller pie, but you own the whole pie, rather than trying to compete in this huge see, where, you know, it's like, it's like, so, so small in in proportion.

Dave Barr  09:19

It's quite interesting. Funnily enough, I actually watched some of the presentations by Steve this weekend, ironically. And I didn't know you're gonna use that example. But there we go. The challenge is that we are conventionally within an industry quite often. And so everybody starts to talk the same language. And you're talking about something's sort of means of stepping out of that language and looking things from a very different perspective. Now, I'm just curious to see if you've got any particular tools or methods or ways of doing things which allow you to think in a different manner. And I was thinking, do you mind map things for example, how is one, when you were in immersed in a sea of sameness, shall we say, come out of that, and revisit it from a totally different perspective, if you've got any thoughts and ideas, how can somebody be people be very creative in a different way?

Mark Donnigan  10:16

You know, I am a huge fan of taking everything back to the customer. You know, and I just have found, and I'm going to speak for myself, but you know, I see it in a lot of other marketers, and a lot of other business owners and you know, so I see it almost universally, is it we often don't listen carefully enough to our customer. And if you really listen carefully, and I mean, both actively listen, but then when you do ask a question, it's not with a bias towards, you know, you know, we're all guilty, or at least I am of asking questions where I'm trying to get them to say, to give me the answer that I want them to give me, you know, so you ask a question. They, you know, it's very carefully phrased, they give you the answer you expect, and then you say, see, that validates? That validates our assumption? Well, the reality is, is that if we were more open, and if we listen more carefully, oftentimes, our customer and the market will give us clues, they will give us clues. And so you know, I think rather than like, you know, you mentioned like, oh, you know, is there a mind mapping exercise, and there's, I think we all have our own, you know, methodologies of how we might, you know, document and the, the process or framework we might go through, but at the end of the day, we have to start with the customer, because the customer is always telling us, you know, giving us clues anyway, you know, the problem is the customer is not always completely aware of what their problems are, their challenges. But make no mistake, as much as the customer may, may legitimately, like us as a vendor, or as a company, they may like me as a business owner. And it's true, they may really legitimately, they're not just kind of being polite, you know, may say, Mark, I really like you, you know, as a person, I like doing business with you. Okay, that's great. But at the end of the day, they care about themselves a whole lot more, because we all do, right. And we should, probably, so they care about themselves. So they care about the problems that they need solved, they care about the things that are going to impact their business, you know, that's they care about. So when we can intersect, and designing a category is all about uncovering what is it that they really deeply care about, I often refer to the jobs to be done framework is would that be helpful Dave, if I literally the jobs to be done, okay. Jobs to be done is a really unique way to think about why somebody makes a decision why somebody makes a buying decision. And I think one of the easiest examples is, you know, if if I'm doing a home project, you know, around my house, and I need a, I need to put a hole in the wall, meaning I need to pass a wire through the wall, or maybe it's a pipe or something, right? Okay, well, I need a drill had to put a hole in the wall. So I go down to the, to the hardware store, I go to the store and I say, I'm looking for a drill, well, I'm not actually looking for a drill, and I need a hole in my wall. A drill is the tool to do that. Right? So what am I actually buying, I'm not actually buying a drill, I'm buying a hole in the wall. That's the job to be done. And that may seem super simplistic. And you know, if there's anyone listening who you know, who is a builder, and is in construction, you know, it may even be like so basic, so simple. You know, but but really think about this. And if we think about our customers, and we think why they buy our product, you know, why do they really buy our service? Oh, because, you know, they need their landscaping, you know, maybe it's a landscaping service, right? Oh, because you know, they don't want their grass to be high that would look ugly, the trees are overgrown, maybe the city or maybe the neighborhood says, you know, they have requirements, you have to keep the yard, you know, in certain condition, but maybe there's more to it. There probably is more to it. Yes, we all do things and to a certain extent because we have to right you know, we have to do that the neighbors are going to talk bad about me, you know, if my, if my front yard looks bad, maybe there's more to it, you know, maybe there's more to it. And if we can uncover what the real job to be done is what the real motivation you might say is and then we create our marketing messages. And we talk to our customers even in our sales presentation and we weave that in, we can connect to that, oh, your odds of winning the deal, winning the sale, keeping the customer, you know that customer feeling like, wow, you know that business really understands me, they go way up, the odds of success goes way up. And so jobs to be done as a framework, it's a way just to simply say, what is that person, that company that business really hiring me, my product, my technology, my service to do? And almost always it's deeper than what's on the surface? You know? So our first answer is not wrong. You know, when someone says, Well, why does somebody you know, buy your product? And all of us, right, we have a very quick answer. That's not an incorrect answer. But there's something deeper to it, there's something deeper, and if we can connect to that, then that is how you separate yourself out from the sea of sameness, as you said, because as humans, we're naturally lazy. And that's just the fact that the brain, in fact, is actually built, it's actually wired to consume less energy, not more energy. So the brain doesn't want to have to think harder. And so when we're hit, when our buyers are hit with all these marketing messages, and they all basically say that say the same thing, the pricing is all essentially the same plus or minus 5%. You know, the, the colors of the products are all the same, except for you know, one or two funny, you know, in other words, everything is the same the brain just, you know, we just sort of like it goes, you know, this is too hard. Maybe I'm not going to buy today, I'll think about it, and we leave, right? How many times have we done that our own dis personalized, you know, and, as I always say, there is no B to B, you know, B to B sales, it's all H to H it's human to human. It's not like we'd switch off our humanity, you know, just because, well, now I'm buying for my company, or I'm buying for a business, you know, or it's not my money, you know, because it's, you know, I'm buying this on behalf of the company I work for, no, it's still human to human, there's human interaction. I need to like Dave, you know, as much as I like the product, Dave's selling, you know, and Dave needs to like me, as much as you know, as he likes the the service or the product that I'm selling, it's human to human.

Dave Barr  17:35

So yeah, I guess one of the things you can say is that we're also buying the outcome. We talked about the drill analogy, you're interested in the outcome, you're interested in getting something that you perceive you need. Curious to know about the iPod example, did anybody think they needed to have access to 1000 songs? What's your thought about that?

Mark Donnigan  17:57

Is that you know, what, it's a great question, because, and I am dating myself, but I am old enough to remember when, you know, I got in my car, and I had my big nylon case with like, you know, maybe 10 or 12 or 15, CDs, you know, in it, you know, and I wouldn't leave the house without my you know, favorite CDs, right. And so when you think about what 1000 songs in your pocket, says at the time, although CDs could have more than 10 songs, but kind of on average, everyone kind of knew, like a CD has 10 songs, you know, some you know, if the songs are shorter, of course, you know, maybe had 12 songs, you know, if the songs are really long, maybe had eight songs nine, but 10. So you could do some quick math and say, Oh, that's 100 CDs. Well, me, you know, some people had much larger collections. Obviously, most people had smaller collections. So you know, so you say, Well, did you really need 1000 songs? Well, what it's saying without saying the words is you can fit your entire music library, personal music library, on this little device. That's what it said. But the beauty is in the simplicity, you know, it's 1000 songs in your pocket. So 1000 songs, we know it's a music player. I you know, I talked about that in the very beginning, as songs the word songs 1000 Is is quantifiable like, wow, that's 100 CDs, roughly, whoa, I probably only have 50. Wow, I can fit my entire This is amazing. And in your pocket, it's portable. And so now, you know, think how many sentences you would have had to have most marketers would have written you know, announcing Apple's new, you know, MP3 player that stores you know, 100 CDs that you can carry in your pocket. Of course, they would have used you know, better copywriting right but it would have been much less certainly probably a couple sentences. And again, The brain is lazy. So the more that we make our customers think the more we make that our customers have to reason, you know, or consider, like, well, but how is that different than what this company over here is saying, kinda seems the same, you know, the more that, you know, we tire out our potential, you know, buyers, you know, we're just decreasing the odds that they're gonna, they're gonna raise their hand and say, I want to buy what you're selling, you know, we're decreasing the probability.

Dave Barr  20:32

So have some very simple sentences to say, can replace a lot of complexity, you know, all the talk about features and benefits, and everything else that one tends to think of can be wiped out by that simplicity, very clear picture.

Mark Donnigan  20:46

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, there's something very interesting that I do believe that the sophistication of the buyer, I think that buyers have just in general gotten way more sophisticated, in probably by the virtue of just the pace of technology, innovation. And, you know, you just think about all the devices that now, literally 18 month old child, the moment they can hold something, they're already using an iPhone, right? I mean, you see it, you know, it's just, it's just amazing. But even for those of us who didn't grow up with those devices, you know, now we've had enough time that I think buyers in general, are just far more sophisticated. And I do believe that maybe 10, 12, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, you actually did need to talk about features and benefits, because people didn't know as as universally, you know about what some of these things did, or how they worked and you had to educate them. Also, you think about it. And this is not 15 years ago, I mean, even 20 years ago, obviously, the Internet was very much a thing. And there were websites and everything, but 25 years ago, 30 years ago, how did you get information? While it was largely like magazine, ads, and TV, right, it was print, TV, radio, but you know, those, those mediums didn't give a lot of opportunity to you know, there wasn't YouTube videos, right? Go, you know, so you just think about how information flowed. So you had to go in the store, you had to stand in front of somebody who would go through a features, benefit presentation. I mean, you had to that's how you got the information. Now, you don't have to do that. And so I think that's why the simple messages now, and not only are they just far more effective, but why they work, you know, is is because in general, you know, buyers are just just far more sophisticated. And if they don't know something, there's a lot of avenues for them to go get the information and self educate. 

Dave Barr  22:59

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Mark Donnigan  23:01

And they will do that. And they're not. And they even want to do that, you know, because they want to feel like, Hey, I'm getting the information on my terms from sources I trust, you know, versus, you know, it being forced on me. And I'm saying, Well, you know, you're a salesperson, you have an agenda to sell me, you know, like, no, no, let me go do the research. And then when I need you, you know, I'll come talk to you, you meaning the salesperson.

Dave Barr  23:26

Yeah, that's right. And you say they got access to so much information, not only information, but people's impressions, their reviews, how they believe that it fitted with their requirements. Yeah, it's not just data, like you're racking up 10 cars with 10 specifications, and one goes bit quicker than the other and so forth. Now you get everybody's opinion, on, you know, the feel the aesthetics, how it works, did it suit my needs? It's a tremendous amount of data to be able to plow through in a short period of time.

Mark Donnigan  23:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, making this practical for like an SME is that, you know, this is why a lot of times social content works really well for small businesses, medium sized businesses, because it allows them in a very natural, very real way to kind of open up behind the scenes or, you know, behind the closed doors, so to speak, the inner workings of the business and more and more people that they want that, you know, it's like, they not just want to, they don't want to only know that I'm buying a good product from a company that's going to be there to support me and you know, but, but they want to know, like, like, who's the founders, you know, who are these people? Who are the employees? Do they look like they're having fun, do you do look like they care? And so there's actually some really, virtually free, incredible marketing tax. picks that you can execute it that sets will set yourself apart as a business as a company from your competitors, who might again be largely selling the same product, same service might have almost the same price. In other words, you know, that "sea of sameness" that you mentioned I am, I really liked that reference because it's so true. But you can set yourself apart just by saying, hey, you know, what, I'm gonna give you an inside view, you know, into how my company operates into how we design our products into how we deliver our service, you know, whatever is appropriate for you know, for what you do is a business and the consumer, you know, the consumers customers, again, human to human right age to age, everyone is interested in that and and they will pay attention, they will pay attention.

Dave Barr  25:52

Is that classic? You're seeing more than a product or service, you're seeing the story? Yes, as you said, you bet human to human, we all love stories, we've all sitting love to sit around the fire and share the ghost stories and you share the history of your family and where things came from. And it means far more and it's more memorable. relatable, isn't it?

Mark Donnigan  26:12

That's right, yeah, yeah, that's right. So you know, just coming full circle on category design, I hope that what the listeners, you know, have taken away from, you know, this last, you know, 20 minutes, 25 minutes or so, is that category design is where you, you with intent, you say, we are different, and this is how we're different. And this is why we're different in category design is called point of view, or POV. And point of view could be a point of view on the market, you know, so point of view could be, hey, you know, everybody thinks that cars should run on gasoline, you know, internal combustion, we think that electricity and electric motors are better. Now, obviously, that's, you know, okay, we're way down the path, right. But guess what, you know, even what, nearly 20 years ago when Toyota introduced the Prius, right? You know, I mean, the Prius, and of course, they were some of the other early electric very, very early electric cars, but somebody had to, you know, sort of put a stake in the ground and say, you know, what, we think that there is a different, you know, reality here that is better for the environment that, you know, has, you know, when you make the case for it, right, so, you're still selling a car in that example. But you're set, you're willing, and you're firmly staking, you know, putting a stake in the ground to say, you know, that we believe that the way that we're doing it today is wrong. Here's why. And here's why our way is better, you know, our method is better. And this can apply to a service, this could apply to, you know, to obviously, products, there's really no, this could apply to a restaurant, you know, we believe that, you know, dining that making people come and you have to sit down and you have to wait for your food. And instead, we're going to have no tables, you pull up to a drive thru the, you know, you have a very simple menu, the food's ready in 45 seconds, and you and your hand on a credit card and you leave, you know, like, again, you know, that all exists, right? But guess what, you know, that's, that's a way to say category design, how can you look at your product, you know, just think very carefully? And how can you deliver in a way that's going to give you a unique advantage?

Dave Barr  28:45

You know, thanks for sharing those examples. It really does help to have a good picture in our mind now. Yeah. One of the things that, obviously, you hear, especially from SMEs is the challenge with budget, every pound counts, every dollar counts, depending on where you are on the world, even

Mark Donnigan  28:59

big companies, by the way, Dave, nowadays, there's nobody who just has excess money laying around. But anyway,

Dave Barr  29:09

so you're right. That's right. And it's very difficult to know, when there's so many different platforms, so many different channels, so much different media, everybody's able to film pretty good quality video, on the on their devices. So where do they spend their time? Where do they spend their money? You know, how do they get the best quality products that best message out to their customers? How would you go about optimizing a startups budget to make sure they get actually the kind of results the remarkable results that you managed to achieve and get that scalability for their products and services?

Mark Donnigan  29:47

Yeah, my entire career has been about getting as much as possible out of as little as possible. So that's kind of startup land, right. So some some days I long for the day, when you know, I have more of an unlimited budget, but you know what, I actually am now of a very firm believer that the best and the highest performing marketing actually comes from limitation. Because what, what often happens when there's a lot of money, I'm going to answer your question, but but I'm also going to give perspective because, you know, I do find that, you know, sometimes a founder, you know, will approach me and they're like, Okay, you know, Mark, you know, we're planning to raise a series B, and then I'm going to be able to spend money, but you know, help me in the interim, you know, but as soon as I get Series B, you know, I'm going to have a three and a half million dollar budget a year, you know, whatever the number is, and I, more often than not, I say, you know, look, I can, we can easily find a way to spend that three and a half million, that is no problem. But I'm gonna tell you, you don't need to, you know, in other words, like, we're gonna spend it, and we're gonna feel good, I mean, it's not just wasting the money, but at the end of the day, we can probably get the exact same result on 2 million, maybe even less, you know, so here's the key to maximizing budget, there's, there's two areas that you have to optimize marketing budget, that is for a startup, the first is where you're marketing. And, and too many companies don't actually know, where their buyers, I say, hang out, you know, and, and that could literally mean like, where they hang out physically, you know, like, you know, the, you know, the types of establishments, they frequent, etc. You know, so there could be a literal, physical component, but mostly, it's online. And, you know, if you're a technology company, it's online. So where do they hang out? Are there? Are there groups that they're a part of? Are there forums that they're members of? Are there you know, even like, on LinkedIn, you know, is there is there 3456, you know, 810 12, LinkedIn groups that, you know, if you're selling a product, a software product to accountants, for example, you know, you should know, what are the most, you know, popular, what are the, you know, highest respected LinkedIn groups that you're going to find accountants, you know, and there's, then there's other industry associations, etc. So, the first thing is you need to optimize, and you need to know, where does your target audience hang out, now, they don't only hang out in one place. So unfortunately, it's not, you know, that you can join those six accounting groups on LinkedIn, and you're done, you know, but But you better at least know three or four, and be in them and be participating. You know, you should know what industry associations, they're a part of, maybe you should join those, you know, if you're able to some, some industry associate associations, maybe you can't join as a vendor, but you know, you should go to their trade shows, you should go to their conferences, so you need to be there. And I find that some of the wasted money is just that people are not where the buyers are, you know, and I'm not a fisherman, but in my mind, that's like, trying to fish in a pond where there's no fish, not gonna catch anything, you know, so that, so that's kind of obvious, but yet I see many, many, many companies can improve in that area. The second area of optimization, again, talking about how you do more with less is in how you structure your marketing team. So there are this is kind of one of those things where if someone says, you know, okay, Mark, you know, how do I build my first marketing team? It's a little bit of, well, it depends, let's have a conversation. So it's not that it's as cut and dried as well, you need to hire this person, and then you hire this person, and then you you know, it's not quite that cut and dried, we need to have a conversation, but there are ways to maximize what you get. So one of the, let me just talk about the pitfalls. Some of the pitfalls I see startups fall into. One pitfall is, is that they assume that if I hire one senior, like, like a head of marketing, you know, so like, maybe a director level, oftentimes a VP is kind of too high level. So someone who's a VP of Marketing, very often is not going to go join a startup where they're the first and only marketer, occasionally, you'll find someone like that, but usually not. But, um, so they hire a senior person and the assumption is that this person is sort of Superwoman, you know, or Superman, you know, like, oh, but they're, they're senior and, and they came from this really big, famous company that maybe is in our space, so they're going to come in and and first of all, They're only one person. The marketing disciplines are vast, I've seen some very, very capable people working in marketing, but no one can do all of the tasks, you know, equally well. So right there, you have a constraint, you know, you have someone that comes in, maybe they're a great writer, but, you know, they're not a designer, and they really don't like doing the analytical stuff, you know, so digital marketing, so they produce great white papers, the content is amazing, but the graphics are not so much, you know, and, and they're not able to track, you know, like, like, like metrics of, you know, how is my content getting viewed? And, you know, and so there's no analytics, well, that's a problem, you know, that's incomplete, right? So then what will happen is, somebody will then sometimes pivot the other way, and say, Okay, so we're going to just hire maybe two or three, because we don't have a lot of money. So rather than hire one senior person, we're going to hire two junior people, we know, they're kind of generalists. We know, they're not going to be great at, you know, really any one thing, but we'll at least have marketing. And so you know, then what ends up happening is, okay, it's true, you know, you get posts up on LinkedIn, you get, but nothing is, is synchronized, the messaging is all over the place, there's no focus, they don't, they don't necessarily, you know, have the experience to know how to talk to the market. So maybe they actually are producing reasonably good quality blog posts, and maybe the graphics actually are okay, but the content just doesn't connect, it's the wrong content. You know, the by, again, the fish analogy, you know, the fish aren't biting, so the fish are like, I would never buy it on that hook. That doesn't look appetizing. And, and so then they're doing all this marketing, but it's not having any impact on the business. And then there's another approach, and I'm going through the ones to just be careful of, and then we'll talk about what the solutions are. There's another approach where it's like, okay, I get all that that's why we're just going to hire an agency. Now, I believe agencies can be very, very useful. So I am not suggesting that agencies are bad or that you know, somebody I mean, to a certain extent, you know, there's an element of what I do that someone could say, well, Mark, aren't you sort of kind of like an agency, but the problem is, is that most marketing agencies, again, have focus on an area, and the entrepreneur, oftentimes, the founder doesn't have enough experience to know, like, where the focus needs to be. So for example, there's a lot of agencies that focus on paid advertising, oftentimes, Facebook ads, and so when they come in to talk, they will sometimes present that they do all, you know, sort of soup to nuts, you know, marketing, but the reality is, is that they're really a Facebook marketing agency. Now, if you know that Facebook is going to be a very critical channel for you, then great, maybe that's exactly the company you need to hire. But don't expect them to also build your email channel, don't expect them to manage the website don't mix, even though they, they might technically do those things, their real focus their expertise. Likewise, there can be somebody who's more about email marketing, there can be someone else who's more about the website at cetera. So again, you get into that issue with an agency as I just have never really found an agency that truly can span across the full marketing stack, you know, of what's required. And so here's the solution. What I have found is that you want to bring in as the as the entrepreneur, you want to find somebody who's like a conductor now, and literally when I say conductor, like an orchestra, you know, like, like a conductor standing on the podium directing all these world class musicians to make this, you know, incredible music, you need somebody and and, you know, maybe the person used to be a CMO, maybe they were a VP of marketing. And it's very hard to attract these people full time. Again, occasionally you can and you know, you know, depending on your state of Growth and funding and how hot the market is, you know, if you're a hot AI startup, well, you know, that maybe you probably could attract somebody, but for a lot of businesses, it's going to be very hard. And so what you can do is you can find somebody who will work on like a fractional basis, you know, now that doesn't have to mean that like, oh, but you know, I'm only getting them like 25 You know, I often say, you know, when you work with me, you get 100% of my brain, you get 100% of my experience everything and often In times, when you strip away a lot of the management duties and things that come with being a, you know, internal full time employee, like, oftentimes, the core job of leading marketing is only 30 or 40%, of what a CMO might actually do, sometimes even less, because they're doing team reviews, and they're having to handle personnel issues. And they're, you know, you think about, you know, how much is someone's day and you say, wow, you're right, actually, the true job of marketing is like, two hours a day, you know, and the other six or eight are doing other things that need to be done. I'm not saying you know, that that's, that's busy work, but it's like, so one advantage of bringing in somebody on a fractional basis is, then what they can do is they can work with either internal resources that the company may have. So maybe you have a writer who, you know, maybe you have a marketing generalist, who's actually a pretty good writer, great. Dedicate that person, you now have somebody who can direct them guide them, you know, make sure that they're writing about the right things, make sure that there's a messaging framework, you know, there's a lot of avenues to get design work. So you know, design can be upgraded. And that doesn't mean having to go hire an expensive creative director, maybe you want to do that. But that's not not required, there's a lot of ways to do that, there's a lot of ways to get, you know, web development, help and assistance. Again, you don't have to hired full time a web developer, but the key is, is it if you have somebody who can conduct the orchestra, then you get this incredible marketing impact for a much lower cost. Typically, again, depending how big the team is, because remember, you're hiring somebody on a fractional basis to lead you can use in some cases, contractors, or internal team members who might be a little more junior, not that you should, or I'm not suggesting you, you know, go higher. But you know, in other words, you don't need to go hire that real senior 15 year experience, you know, Director of Marketing, you know, you can hire someone who's three, four or five years out of university, has some experience and can come in and with the right guidance, really do a great job. And so this is the framework that I bring to really every company that I work with, and it's, it's, it's worked really well, so, so well, that typically, I find that the small teams are a lot more effective, and produce better quality, then the big in house teams, you know, that I've that I've worked with, or been exposed to or led? 

Dave Barr  42:49

Yeah, that's a really interesting point you made there. And, and it's certainly the turn fractional was become far more common in the last year, I've already really noticed that's coming out.

Mark Donnigan  42:58

Across a lot of executive roles. I think that's absolutely true. And, and yeah, sorry to interrupt, but just to make a point is that, you know, obviously, my domain is marketing, but I have a feeling, you know, my my senses tell me that engineering, you know, there's some functions yeah, like I can imagine, like in accounting, you know, especially when a company gets kind of certain size, like, you know, you need full time, people who are sitting there every day, just looking at your set of books and your numbers and, you know, whatever. So there's, you know, there's, there's some functions where, you know, I don't think you can always be virtualizing them, but more and more, you know, there's just as companies are so dynamic, and their needs are flexing, up and down. And I and I think with all the recent tech layoffs, you know, I know, it's, you know, it's been a lot of talk and, you know, and I feel terrible for, you know, the 1000s and 1000s of people who've been impacted by it, because certainly for the most part, it was absolutely no fault of their of their own, you know, the company's just simply, oh, they over hired, but what really happened was they, they didn't over hire at the time they made the hire, it's just that the needs of the business changed, you know, and the way that I see it is the odds are that at some point, hopefully in the not too distant future, the needs are going to swing back a little bit. So then what happens? Do they rehire Pete, you know, does this become this boom, bust, you know, cycle like hire, you know, layoff, you know, hire, layoff, hire layoff? And that's a terrible thing. You know, I hope that's not the case.

Dave Barr  44:40

So yeah, absolutely. We've, we've answered a hell of a lot of things in those few, in those few minutes, and I've seen that a time is flown by value added there. I think that's excellent. You've created a lot of perspective. So thank you for sharing all of that. That was really good. Now, there's one question I still want They'll ask you because it's a little bit unusual. Perhaps I'd love to talk to you about networking. Everything else. No, because you you've formed so many questions in my mind about, you know, go into fish in the right places. And there's an awful lot of SMEs that are out there networking every day. But where do they go to get best value, but that practice is for another day. Now, before I ask the last question, I'm sure people are fascinated to find out where they can find out more about what you do. And the things that you instruct people on what's the best locations to tease out more information about yourself?

Mark Donnigan  45:30

Yeah, well, I am very accessible on LinkedIn. So you know, just type in MarkDonnigan again, yeah, you will find me, I published quite frequently, I also have a website, and my website is growth stage. So that's just growth stage dot marketing, it's dot marketing domain, I was really lucky to get that. So yeah, growth stage dot marketing, and publish a lot of free materials up there. You know, if someone wants to learn more about jobs to be done, category design and a whole lot more.

Dave Barr  46:05

Brilliant. So the last question, and it's something that I've been approached by and I'm trying to help company with, and it's something I'm hearing a little bit more, certainly people are developing things we talked about earlier on markets, you talked about big ponds, where there could be some very big fish. And you've developed perhaps a product or a service, you want to break into that market, you want to be disruptive, you want to bring something new and innovative there. But you've got these big behemoths roaming around eating all the little fish up through, say.

Mark Donnigan  46:37

That's right.

Dave Barr  46:38

 Now, this particular company I'm talking to where they want to bring in their brand in their in their world, it's quite well known, it's from a different country, but they want to bring that product that brand into a new market, where there's these big fish. Now, how do they go about breaking into a market like that? How do they make sure they don't just get overwhelmed and, and ignored and swallowed up by these other big players? What kind of things can you recommend they could do to really compete with these big boys and make a difference?

Mark Donnigan  47:10

So let me ask, Are they selling B2B? Or is this a consumer

Dave Barr  47:14

versus predominantly B2B? 

Mark Donnigan  47:16

Okay. Okay, and what sector of the market? Are they selling to, you know, small, mid size?

Dave Barr  47:25

 this particular company wants to sell into the distribution and wholesale, and they in turn, go to the consumer. Okay,

Mark Donnigan  47:32

Okay, okay. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the comments that I made previously, would be the starting starting places, but I will make this observation because I've seen this with companies wanting to break into new markets, or new geographies is that regretfully, rarely does the success or, you know, even the brand, to some extent, although, you know, sometimes a brand carries over, but rarely can you just sort of say, Hey, we're successful. And you know, I don't know, Australia, and therefore, and I have no idea if they happen to be Australia, and I have no idea. So I just guessed, but you know, we're successful in Australia, you know, Germany, or, you know, wherever, and now we're going to come to the UK, and surely everybody's going to, you know, react really well. Because look how successful we are. It's a new market, right? It's new and, and that geography that marketplace has, has its own players. So the first comment that I would make is, is that sort of, you almost want to go back to Day Zero, I would design a plan that is predicated on none of that goodwill, or that brand, prestige, and, you know, and just the knowledge in the market carrying over now, as some does, that's a bonus, you know, in other words, that's great. But I would build a plan that's almost like we're a startup and no one knows who we are, you know, we're, we're a year old. And, you know, and so we've got to start so that that's my first comment of what I would do. The second thing is, budgets always come into play. So if, you know if, if they have some money to spend, depending what that means, you know, that doesn't necessarily have to mean you know, millions and millions and millions of pounds, you know, but maybe it does, you know, it depends again on but if they have money, then I really am a fan and in category design is called 'lightning strikes', you know, and, and really, it's nothing more complicated than designing very intently, for example, a some sort of a press announcement that lines up with some sort of a very large public event, you know, now, this could be an event that the company holds, you know, that the company hosts this could be maybe a major trade show that they're going to be at, it could be a lot of things. But there's, there's like an in person, like a, like a public a physical event, and then you wrap around that, you know, digital support. So, you know, everything from knowing where the potential buyers are or where the customers are, and making sure that you have content in those channels, making sure that on the social networks that those buyers are on, you know, that you're pushing ads, but all this lines up for this kind of lightning strike, so that it all hits within a very predefined period of time, you know, often over say, one week, sometimes over just maybe one or two days, but it's, it's all concentrated, because what happens if you kind of peanut butter it, you know, and so you put a press release out, and then two months later, you go to a trade show, and then there's something, it the it just gets diffused. And rarely can you spend enough money in each one of those individual areas for it to really be that meaningful. But if you concentrate everything in that one week period of time, or the three day period of time, and if you do a really good job of, you know, if each one of those coordinated events, it can be really, really impactful. And, you know, so again, without more information, I could ask a dozen more questions. But you know, my, my number one piece of guidance, just to start is, is to assume you're at day zero, I just would design all the plans that way, I would just say, you know, look, because if it turns out you're not, and some of that brand prestige carries over, that's great. That's purely a bonus that only helps you but if you go in assuming or relying on some of that, it could really leave you a flat and then design a lightning strike.

Dave Barr  52:05

That's pretty I love the term 'lightning strike' that really does form a picture in your mind. You see lightning hit a river, the impact it has on the river, or you think about throwing a great big rock into some water can

Mark Donnigan  52:18

split a rock, you know, I'm Yeah.

Dave Barr  52:22

Yeah, I love that. Those analogies there make the big splash basically, impactful. Get everybody wet by the splash, shall we say, rather than throw in 100? As many, many pebbles to will have the same impact?

Mark Donnigan  52:35

Yeah, that's, that's, that's Yep. Yep, you got it. That would be my recommendation

Dave Barr  52:40

That's brilliant. I think even that I think applies in principle to the smaller companies where there are, let's just take a very simple thing. Like you're, you've just formed your own, say, electrician or plumber service. There's lots of plumbers, there's lots of electricians out there. And if you just keep putting out your little bit of social media content, and the reviews and so forth, people start to notice you over a period of time, you can be as consistent, consistent as you like, but it's a small splash each day. But if you put all that marketing effort into a great big monthly campaign, and you really hit it hard, lots of people will notice the wake in a much bigger, but yeah, in a much bigger form. 

Mark Donnigan  53:20

Yeah, it's, it's super interesting. Just put a put a point on what you're talking about here is that a lot of business owners, it really scares them this this line of thinking, because, you know, they think, okay, of course, I wish I had the budget to do a lightning strike every day, or every month or even just every quarter, but I don't, you know, and so, but you're telling me to put like 60 or 70% of my budget, you know, you don't put 100%, but into any event that's only gonna last like one week out of the whole year. Like, that's really scary to me, you know, like, like, what if it doesn't work, you know, well, but here's the thing, by narrowing the pool of, of customers that we're going to sell to, that actually allows us to get a much higher probability of winning, a much, much greater share of that pool. So yes, you're going to, in theory, be reducing your total addressable market, you know, because, for example, in the case of this lightning strike, okay, you're only going to really be reaching, you know, someone who's in market or someone who's paying attention during that one week, or whatever that defined period of time is and there's always some follow on it's not that, you know, that's the beautiful thing, especially about digital marketing, as some of it sort of goes away, but most of it's out there, right. You know, the LinkedIn posts, they're out there the, you know, the blog posts on your website, they're on Google their indexed, they're, you know, they're out there. So it's not like it just all goes away. But the point is, is that is that, okay? It's true. If someone's not in market during that period of time where you're really focusing, all right, your chances are, they're not gonna see you. I mean, I can see your advertising. They're not, they're not gonna learn about you. But for everyone who is in market during that time, maybe nearly 80 90% of those individuals will see you. Now, you know, now it's incumbent on us to say the right things and have the right offer. And, you know, because I still have to have the right product, you know, that meets a need. But if I do, odds are really good that I'm going to attract a very, very sizable portion of the market during that, you know, during that lightning strike period. And that's why it works. And it's, there's just a lot of examples of where companies that have executed and it's been very effective.

Dave Barr  55:58

That's brilliant, thanks for sharing that it would love to be able to dive into all the examples as well. But obviously, we're at a time now. But yeah, we've we've got it's been fascinating to talk to you, though, Mark. So I'd say is, thank you very much for sharing all that wisdom, superb, I mean, amount of information in such a short period period of time. So appreciate that. Thanks for coming on the show and take care. 

Mark Donnigan  56:22

Yeah, well, thank you, Dave. Thanks for having me.

Dave Barr  56:24

So there's another Real Life Buyer podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it. And it has given you some ideas and inspiration for greater action and achievement. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes, and a five star review will be most appreciated. If you would like to discover more about me what I do. Take a look at www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk. Bye.