Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
286: Why Marketing Teams Fail: Leadership Tips to Drive Business Results | Marketing ROI
Kendra talks imperfect marketing with Samuel Winderö, Marketing Director at a global software company based in Sweden. With experience spanning from banking to running his own agency for eight years, Samuel brings unique insights on aligning marketing strategies with business objectives.
Topics covered in today's conversation include:
- How to align marketing team goals with broader business objectives
- Understanding the fundamental importance of knowing your customers at multiple levels
- Identifying different buying centers within customer segments
- Measuring marketing's impact on the bottom line
- Building cross-departmental collaboration to prevent marketing from being the first to blame
- Creating a shared vision for how marketing teams should function
Connect with Samuel Windero
LInkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuwelii/
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science, and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, kendra Korman, and today we're going to be talking about leadership within marketing and, well, everything that there is to do about marketing. Right? Welcome, samuel. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, kendra. So fun to be on your pod. Finally, it's a great pod you have, so I'm looking forward to the chat.
Speaker 1:Tell me, how did you get into marketing.
Speaker 2:It's actually a really funny story because I was in banking and I was working with customer service and was deep into that and I loved my job and I had Twitter and back then it was called Twitter still the manager's manager to me. He called me up in his office one day and said like hey, I heard you have Twitter, I would like you to help us with some stuff online. And that was kind of the early beginnings of social media in Sweden. Definitely that was not a thing where banks or corporations were on social. So from that on and that stage I started working with social media in the bank. It led me starting to work at an agency. I ran my own agency for eight years and now I am a marketing director at a big software company here in Sweden that operates globally.
Speaker 1:Very cool. I love it when it's that's not really where you were headed and that's where you ended up and that's where your true talent lies. So very, very cool. Thank you for sharing that. So let's jump in to one of the questions that I get asked all the time by people is I'll say so, what are your goals? And they're like my marketing goals, and I'm like no, your business goals, like marketing should support your business, right, and I feel like I'm yelling all the time. So how do you align your marketing team's goals with the broader business objectives to make sure that marketing is driving results? Because I think people get them confused.
Speaker 2:I think this is a really good question and I think many marketeers and marketing leaders they miss this exact thing. And I think that's one of the strengths that I've had the privilege to have, thanks to me working in a financial institution. It's focused around the targets, right. So, coming from that angle, going into marketing, for me it was very natural and I was always digging into what is the business goals, what are the targets we have, what's the achievements we want to achieve, where is it that we're heading? And then, the day I became a leader for marketeers, my first job was not to tell them what the goals and targets were, and look at their own tactics and strategies and understand how do I tailor my strategies, my tactics, my work around to hit those targets, to meet those targets.
Speaker 2:And I think that's really where I always want to be Looking at KPIs, looking at metrics to help kind of support that kind of journey towards those targets. And that's how I have done it in the past, that's how I do it now. It's all about helping people understand where we're going always and not lose track of that. And then we go back into our crazy marketing ideas and this crazy campaign here and the hyper-targeting over here, and then we have to zoom back a little bit and say like, hey, okay, one step back. What is the target, what's our business goals, what's the agenda for the year or for the quarter? And then we try to build it back up from that.
Speaker 1:So it reminds me of a story. So when one of my previous clients, I called all the heads of all the different offices that they have around the country and I said what are your biggest goals? What are you trying to do? Because the marketing efforts should support that right. And everybody says I want more business from my existing clients. I want more business from my existing clients, more business from my existing clients. Not one person said new business from new clients and finding new people.
Speaker 1:And I look at the marketing budget and half of it was going to trade publications and I'm like why are we running an awareness campaign when we know every single person we want business from because we do business with them? Like why aren't we doing direct mail instead of and paying a tenth of this? And they were like, oh OK, so it was just very interesting. Because if you didn't take the time to step back, yeah, it's like trade publications are a great idea. No, not when there's much more effective and efficient ways to hit those goals of getting more business from existing customers. Right. When you're talking about measurement, Right, how do you approach measuring and demonstrating how marketing is affecting the bottom line?
Speaker 2:because marketing is always the first thing to get cut yeah, and it's also the first thing to blame when things doesn't go the way it should, right. So it's it's both both those areas that that is the marketing's fault. I think what I like to do is I like to kind of segment out the different type of roles that the team has to understand them first of all. So, okay, we have different functions within the marketing team that does different things, and they are triggering or supporting the business strategy in different ways. So that's the first part understanding what's the difference between growth marketing versus product marketing. They have different goals. What's the difference between growth marketing versus product marketing? They have different goals, they have different jobs to do and the kpis and metrics that follow are, of course, different.
Speaker 2:It also needs to connect back to the business strategy, like we talked about and you mentioned before, like if we are targeting existing customers to help them utilize our services better, to maybe buy new products that exist within the portfolio. Well then, that's one job, and maybe the product marketeer is more engaged in driving that kind of product adoption, usage of product, whilst a growth marketeer would probably focus more on account-based marketing or reaching as many of our audiences as possible to as low cost as possible. So it really depends on the function but also on what we want to achieve as a company, and I think my role as a leader is to help the team understand what is my role, what is my responsibilities, what's within my control, and give the tools and assets to help them achieve that. So the budget and also the tactics and strategies to help them kind of narrow that down to the areas that they really need to work on, and that also fits with the business strategy.
Speaker 1:One of the things I liked that you said earlier was that, yeah, marketing is also the first to get blamed. How do you work with other departments to keep them from blaming you? I mean, I remember that something didn't sell because they didn't have a flyer with a blue motorcycle, the flyer that they had had a red motorcycle. I mean, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean this is the case for any marketeer and any marketing manager or leader or CMO Like I think that happens Currently. I'm privileged to work in a company where the former person that had my role and our CMO is really understanding and driving that and has been building that up. In organizations there's a fundamental understanding of why marketing is important and what we do and how we contribute. So it's more proof casing that and showcasing continuous value. But I think in other companies I worked I've seen that a lot. It was like oh, the sales decks are wrong, so we can't sell. Okay, what is the sales tactics that you want to drive? How can we support that?
Speaker 2:I think it is all about understanding the conversation and helping kind of nudge that conversation and ask questions and showcase people that I'm listening, I'm here to understand what you need and let me help you. Let us do this together and what I've seen been a strong benefit across my last maybe five, six years is working a lot with collaboration. So as a leader, I need to work with my peer leaders and also help my team to find the right people, their peers, to also collaborate across teams, across different functions, because that's essentially how you start getting that kind of marketing machine working and where you get the confidence and trust in what you do because people start understanding and people start relating to you and not only the sales deck or the shiny marketing thing that, the holy grail of everything, that is the problem in the company.
Speaker 1:Everything yeah, everything was based on this one thing. It's like no, that's not the way this works, so all right. So when you're working with these other departments, when you're creating campaigns that are going to be driving bottom line results, where do you start? What questions do you ask? And then how do you look to see if those tactics are going to match up, to make a difference?
Speaker 2:I think, fundamentally, there is two things you always have to understand as a marketeer. Number one is your customers who are your customers, what are those segments and what is their problems that we want to serve? Number two is your positioning and messaging of your product, or the things you want to sell. If you don't understand those two, it's really hard regardless, because if the bottom line usually is financial, it's driving business, growing the business. Well, you have to understand those two and how you package your product and how it's relevant for your audience that you're selling it to. So those are the two things that you need to understand. And if you don't understand them in the marketing team, if your marketeer doesn't understand it, that's a huge problem. But sometimes also it's an even bigger problem if there is different views on what the customer is in the organization or if it's different ideas of what the product is we're selling.
Speaker 2:So getting that sorted from an organizational perspective, but also from a knowledge perspective within the marketing team, are two fundamental things to make that happen. And then from there you can start looking at okay, what are our targets? Okay, we have audience X in this country that we want to sell this product to. Their problem is A, so we sell them this great thing that solves problem A. Right, it sounds easy when I say it, but then it's all the actual details of making that happen and learning together as an organization and as a team, where there's a lot of work that needs to be put into that and it also has to be continuously worked on. It's not something you set one day and then it's forever the correct answer. You have to build and rebuild your positioning and messaging based on what happens with your competitors, what happens in the world around you and how is your product evolving and relating to those other products or to whatever happens in the world beginning Number one, you got to know your customers and who they are.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm a broken record all the time when I say that because I'll ask people OK, so why did they buy from you? And I would say most of my clients really, really, really struggle with that answer. They don't know that answer at all because it's time, or they felt like they needed to. No, because it's time, or they felt like they needed to no, it's never that right no-transcript because they felt it was time and they had an extra 10, 20, 30k laying around, right. I mean, you've got to really understand your customers. So, going into that, what tools are you using to understand the customers? Where is that information coming from? Is that coming from product development or the sales team? Are you guys in marketing doing your own research?
Speaker 2:Yes, on all of those three. It's the combination of all of those three. From how do the data? From the product, how are our customers using the product? If it's a software or if it's a physical product, you can still get data on that right. So that is a key ingredient to understanding your customers. It is also listening into your support team. What are they saying, what are customers asking, questions asked right. And then it's from our sales and commercial teams that are talking to customers every day. They have a lot of insights and knowledge on the customer. So it's not just marketing saying over here in the corner, we know and understand the customer. No, it's the combined data, all of those, that helps you understand the customer.
Speaker 2:And one thing, kendra, that I think is super interesting when it comes to customer segments that that I am very passionate about, because usually then, okay, we come to the point where we suddenly then know who is our customer segment. Here's the, here's the trick that many misses. The next layer of customer segments is your buying centers. Who are the people that buys your product versus who uses your product? So when you know who your customer segments are, okay, we sell to this category of people or companies, perfect. Now you need to understand who is the buyer and who's the one that needs to be convinced of the product, not only the segment as a whole.
Speaker 2:Right, and especially in B2B, that's what a lot of companies fail. They don't understand who are the buying centers, who are the different people in an organization that you need to convince, and their problem is usually different. The finance team has one view on your product, whilst the sales team or the product team or the customer, whoever it is, has different views of your product, and you need to position and message your product differently to these different buying centers to, in the end, get them to buy the same product. So that's a big challenge that many miss as well, I think, and I missed for many, many years. I know you usually talk about big failures and I think that's one of my big learnings in the past Like, okay, there is so many layers to customers, if I don't know what I'm, what I think I know, then it's going to be a problem for me as a marketeer and me as a leader, leading marketing teams, because the customers and understanding of it is the fundament to be successful.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's so important. I love that point. So just because someone's buying your product, it doesn't mean that they're the end user.
Speaker 1:I think a lot about this in terms of when people are selling to children, or if you're selling training or you know different services like that A lot of times. You know the services like that a lot of times you're. You know the parents buying for the child. Is the child driving the sale through the parent or is the parent driving you know? And again, those motivations where it goes back and forth between the buyer and the user, right, who's driving it the user or the buyer? And understanding that changes everything. Right, because you got to talk to who you each part of your customer journey needs to talk to, whoever it is that's going through that, right. You want to make it easy. If the user is driving it up the chain. Right, got to make it easy for them to do that, whereas if the buyer's pushing it down to the users, got to figure out a way to get buy-in along the way. Right. And so it's different collateral and different pieces that go, because if someone buys it and then nobody's using it, you're not going to keep buying it.
Speaker 2:And an interesting thing is also speaking about journeys. When you're upselling or, if you want to, you know, increase the usage and there is a premium or whatever, Well then that's the users that usually to sell to, to want to ask like, hey, we love this product and we want these extra features, and then it's suddenly a different message than when you sold from the get. Go right. So it is also differing depending on in the journey, where you're at and what you're trying to achieve. And I think that's another mistake that is so easy to make. I've done it myself and my team has done it, but I think that's really a fundamental also to in the journey and having the journey of the customer always top of mind. And that's back to what we talked about before knowing the customer, understanding the customer.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think a lot of people forget, you get caught so much up in the daily runnings of your business, your organization, you forget what that journey looks like for that person. Right, we have so many messages we want to share, but none of that matters. It only matters what the customer wants to hear or is looking for answers to, right, and if you go that way, you'll be a lot more successful.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:This has been an awesome conversation and I know you talked a little bit so far about one of your lessons learned on the layers of customers, but do you have? This show is called Imperfect Marketing because marketing is anything but a perfect science, so I ask every one of my guests what has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way?
Speaker 2:I was actually thinking about this and I knew the question was coming, so I was kind of thinking what should I do? What should I twist? And we've been talking a little bit about leadership, right, and I think, from a leader's perspective being a leader within marketing, marketing director, cmo, whatever you name it I think one of my biggest learnings or mistakes in the past has been to not calibrate the way I want, or the company wants, the marketing team to function. So the vision and the mission of how the marketing team operates. If you don't have that, if you don't have a formulation for that, if you haven't worked with your team about this, is who we want to be as a marketing team. This is how we want to support our peers, our colleagues and our customers.
Speaker 2:If you haven't connected those two with the business strategy and the promise of the brand, well then it's going to be super hard to be successful. And I think for many years I was struggling a lot with that because I didn't understand how important it is to set that as a team. It's not something that I come up with and then it just happens. It needs to be built together with a team and we need to be aligned. Okay, this is how we approach problems, this is how we approach the challenges that we are met and this is how we meet the organization and our customers in our everyday.
Speaker 1:That's a really good lesson learned. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for spending time with me today, samuel. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I think we talked a lot about a lot of different things, right? We talked a little bit about, you know, tying your marketing to the bottom line, leading your team, leading other teams right In the organization, who are going to blame marketing first when everything doesn't go right and or doesn't go the way they want it to. And I think it really comes down to that teamwork that buy in and getting all of that information. But ultimately, it's understanding your customer that, I think, drives and builds all of those campaigns from there. Because why are you going to send direct mail to someone's office if they work remote, three states away, right? So you gotta think you gotta know your customer. You gotta know not more than just how to talk to them, but also what they're doing. And you get that from all different places in the organization. And if you're just by yourself, this all holds true. You gotta understand your customer, you gotta understand your customer journey. You gotta get that information from every part of the business that you have and go from there.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much again for your time. I really appreciate it For all of you listening and watching. Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of Imperfect Marketing. You learned something today and I hope that you did. I wish that you would rate and subscribe wherever you are. See you on another episode of Imperfect Marketing. Have a.
