Why One Size Marketing Fails (Every Website Needs a Different Strategy) | Emma Blackmore

Maximizing Website Growth with Strategic Clarity and Human-Centric Marketing

 In this episode, Rana interviews Emma Blackmore, a fractional CMO, who shares insights on how small and medium-sized businesses can turn their websites into powerful growth engines by focusing on clarity, purpose, and personalized messaging. Emma emphasizes that success lies in understanding your North Star, creating targeted content, and leveraging the right tools, including AI, with good judgment.

Key Topics:

• The importance of defining and aligning with a North Star to drive business growth
• Why simply implementing tactics without understanding the “why” leads to resource waste
• How to identify and articulate your core value and messaging
• The critical role of clarity and focus in marketing efforts—do fewer things best
• Case studies including the transformation of Snowfox, a Finnish FinTech AI company
• Strategies for website optimization: case studies, gated content, videos, and targeted CTAs
• The limitations of AI tools in marketing; tools serve to augment, not replace expertise
• Practical tips for integrating team insights and expertise into website development
• How to choose between AI-driven tools versus custom builds based on your goals
• Recommended tools: Canva for visual content, Figma for web design, WordPress for content ownership
• The significance of marketing personality and authenticity in today’s AI-driven landscape
• Best practices for ongoing website testing, updating, and maintaining relevance

Timestamps: 

00:00 - Defining success in marketing through clarity and alignment
02:10 - Emma Blackmore’s approach to structured, predictable growth
03:46 - Creating clarity by understanding business value and internal operations
06:03 - How to measure marketing success with a tailored approach
08:14 - Focusing on non-vanity metrics and cross-sector learning
10:23 - The importance of clarity on the North Star for all teams
10:41 - Case study: Snowfox’s website overhaul and trust-based relationship
13:19 - Working closely with organizational teams to optimize website performance
17:33 - Website updates: gated content, forms, videos, and audience targeting

20:55 - The challenge of balancing complex AI product messaging for different audiences
22:09 - Building an integrated marketing team around shared insights
25:36 - Using case studies and white papers for targeted content and lead generation
27:24 - The role of AI in marketing—tools are aid, not replacements
30:46 - Favorite marketing tools: Canva and Figma for visual content
32:00 - Unusual habits for marketers: intuition, gut feeling, and brand clarity
34:52 - Starting from “why”: strategies for organizations unclear about their purpose
36:45 - Making your website your top growth tool through clear messaging
38:05 - Deciding between AI and custom website builds based on strategic goals
41:41 - The significance of owning your domain on WordPress for long-term control
43:03 - Connect with Emma: LinkedIn and website for marketing

#websitegrowth #growthshow #podcast

Transcript

Rana (00:00)
Marketing is very much for me about helping people or businesses communicating the value that they already have, but very often struggle to articulate or communicate. It's lot of work to get clarity. So, you know, it's not easy. How do you define the success of a marketing? The success of marketing? Well, being absolutely crystal clear on what the North Star is. Making sure that the whole business as a collective is moving towards that North Star. Because once you start to have

teams that are siloed or just are unclear on what the North Star is. It doesn't matter how much marketing you throw at it. You recently posted that AI won't make you a good marketer. So would you like to elaborate on that one? Why do you think? I think the analogy that I had used was... What are the common couple of mistakes, marketing mistakes you see?

in every business. would say like the biggest mistake that I see with businesses is businesses just sort of trying to implement marketing tactics and not really understanding the why behind it. What is the one action the businesses can take to make their website their number one business growth tool?

Rana (01:21)
Marketing is getting louder and more confusing every day and most small businesses are struggling to keep up. That is why today's guest is the perfect person to bring clarity to the chaos. Today I'm joined by Emma Blackmore, a fractional CMO who helps SMEs and startups across Europe build clear, scalable marketing engines. Emma is industry agnostic but firmly rooted in the B2B world known for simplifying complex marketing challenges and aligning brand messaging systems and growth strategies.

With 15 years of experience across global agencies, consulting and tech, she works closely with founders and leadership team to transform marketing into structured predictable growth. In this episode, we explore what's changing in marketing, how AI is shaping the landscape and the practical steps SMEs can take to turn their website into a real growth engine.

Rana (02:10)
Emma, welcome to the website growth show.

Emma (02:12)
Thank you for having me Rana, it's pleasure.

Rana (02:14)
Yeah, it's lovely to have you here. And before we get into the growth marketing tips and strategies, can we start? What is keeping you going as a marketer for the last 15 years?

Emma (02:30)
Gosh, that's quite a big question. It has been 15 years, a little over now, which is ⁓ hard to believe. I think marketing has seen such a huge shift and transformation from when I started and its early days and also in terms of how I approach and look at marketing now as a business owner, as a fractional CMO for the last six years. So for me, I think...

A lot of marketing is about creating as little noise as possible and creating more clarity. I think marketing is very much for me about helping people or businesses communicating the value that they already have, but very often struggle to articulate or communicate. I think it can often be with the businesses that I work with about taking something that is

quite complex or perhaps even messy in some instances and also emotional, of course, and turning it into something that people really understand and connect to and can, of course, take action on. So ultimately, I would say that marketing is, to me, about the discipline of meaning and it's less about, you know, manipulation or ego or theater. It's about helping

the right people or the right businesses find the right thing at the right time.

Rana (03:46)
Amazing. Clarity is so powerful. How do you find this value which you say is people, businesses are struggling to promote or showcase which you help businesses to identify and then clarify? How do you, first of all, identify this value piece?

Emma (04:03)
Yeah, absolutely. So most of the business I work with, Rana, are SMEs and early stage startups in the B2B space. And most of them have very little to no marketing infrastructure in place. So my role as a fractional CMO is a very important one, because I often come in at an early stage and work with founders or the C-suite to help them.

implement a marketing strategy that aligns with their commercial objectives and essentially drives the sort of the marketing output forward. And often what I find is that the role extends beyond the marketing piece because you're having to first and foremost really undertake quite an extensive what I call discovery session where you're getting to understand the business and the lay of the land and how it sits today. So

you know, what's working, what's working less well, where are the opportunities for success? But also, you know, looking at things like outside of the quote unquote marketing piece, operations. Well, what resources are we working with internally? How are the different teams speaking to each other? Are they siloed? Is that something that we need to look at? Is that something we need to fix? What external resource do we potentially need to bring in from the outside through my partners to

help us execute on the marketing activities, the tactics, or what can we do internally? And I think separately to this, it's also about truly understanding what is the product or service trying to do? Is that clear? Because there are also cases where I come in to help support a business and the founder or the C-suite are looking for sort of marketing answers and marketing tactics to get the engine going.

If you're not clear on sort of what that value proposition is, the USP and how we're going to get there, no amount of marketing tactics are going to actually help. So sometimes it's just about sort of stripping back a lot of some of the work that's already been done to just understand the foundational elements, I would say, getting clarity on that.

Rana (06:03)
It's lot of work to get clarity. So, you know, it's not easy. How do you define the success of a marketing?

Emma (06:10)
The success of marketing. Well, I would say, you know, every business that I work with is a snowflake. So what I mean by that is they are truly unique. They're going to have their own sets of challenges and opportunities. So it's about first and foremost, trying to unearth and understand what those opportunities are and what the challenges are. And then working to really put in place a solid plan or infrastructure, if you like, that

stands the test of time and is absolutely clear on what you're trying to achieve. I think, you know, a lot of the businesses that I work with are smaller businesses. And so we try and do a few things and do them really well than trying to tackle, you know, hundred things all at the same time. It just doesn't do anyone any good. I think it's also important to try and A-B test where possible. know, marketing is, it's living and breathing.

So I think you have to treat it with respect and you have to really be on the ball and look at the feedback. So if you're launching a new campaign, well, how's it behaving in the ecosystem? What's the customer response? What's the data telling you? And looking at how you can continue to iterate.

Rana (07:18)
Amazing. And I'm glad you mentioned this snowflake analogy. This is the whole reason we started this podcast, because we believe there are marketing frameworks like paid ads, social media, SEO, plenty of there. But I think every business is different. And not necessarily everything works for every business. Or maybe every business have resources for every channel. And also, ⁓ time and other skill sets are needed.

So there are, in our experience, there are many businesses who are just killing on email or just killing on maybe referral business. So there are many ways. So this is where we are doing our effort to find those niche success stories. So businesses don't have to go after hundreds of thousands of YouTube followers or Facebook followers or leads. There are many ways, I think, with test and try, many businesses find their own.

framework their own formula of marketing and build a great business.

Emma (08:14)
Exactly, and I will actually just jump in there and say, course, as you rightly say, what works for one business may or may not work for another. And when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of followers, you reference YouTube. You also have to make sure that a business isn't chasing vanity metrics. It actually has to deliver on a return, depending on what those KPIs are. But also, interestingly, in my role, I work cross-sector and cross-industry.

Rana (08:30)
Exactly.

Emma (08:38)
And you'll have some marketeers who might just specialize sort of in one type of business or one or two sectors. But I find it is very interesting and useful to look at different businesses and the way in which they are doing things because there's so much to be learned, even from, you know, I'm not in the DTC space, but I have done work in the past and a particular business comes to mind.

in the health and wellness space, selling menopausal supplements. There are interestingly parallels that I can draw from some of the marketing strategies and tactics that we implemented there all the way through to one of the fintech AI businesses that I'm working with at the moment, believe it or not.

Rana (09:18)
Amazing. And while you work on this cross sector different businesses, did you see any pattern which is working for most businesses?

Emma (09:25)
Honestly, I would say it might sound like an obvious one, but it's ⁓ being absolutely crystal clear on what the North Star is. Making sure that the whole business as a collective is moving towards that North Star. Because once you start to have teams that are siloed or just are unclear on what the North Star is, it doesn't matter how much marketing you throw at it.

it's just simply not going to perform as well as it could or should.

Rana (09:55)
I could not agree more. The first book 15, 20 years ago, read, you know, E-Myth, Mike from Michael Gerber, and he researched probably 35,000 small businesses. And one of the lessons I never forget is the marketing is trying through things and what separates the successful business and the struggling one is when you find something working, you double down on those things. So as you mentioned, doing fewer things, you know, as best as possible than doing everything.

on a mediocre level is absolutely the key to find any sort of success. Is there any of your favorite recent case studies? Because this is what I love to run through this podcast through a story. So do you have any favorite case studies where you worked on or your inspiration, which we can unpack?

Emma (10:41)
Yeah, I mean, part of why I love what I do is the fact that I get to peek into so many different types of businesses. And again, going back to the snowflake analogy, it's not just that they are unique in necessarily what the marketing strategies are, but it's also that they are unique in their personalities. And marketing is so emotive. A lot of it comes down to, in the case of the businesses that I work with, you know, the personalities and the stories.

for a lot of the founders, the why. I have a lot of, I suppose, interesting and fun case studies that sort of come to mind, but one client that I have been working with for a little over a year now is a business in the FinTech AI space. They specialize in invoice processing. And, you know, on the surface, yes, sure.

There's all the exciting stuff that we brought forward to date from the strategy, the brand rollout, the website transformations, the multilingual content, paid acquisition work, you name it. I can reel through all of the marketing terminology. And that's created real commercial impact. But actually, what I will say is that what I've loved the most about this partnership is how personal it has felt.

Snowfox, the company I'm referring to, is a Finnish founded company. And as someone who is British, Swedish, and very connected to my Nordic roots, it immediately felt very familiar. And there's a real sort of humility and integrity generally in Nordic businesses that felt very aligned to how I like to work.

From day one, for example, they've treated me like one of their own and that's extremely important when you're coming in as a fractional, whether you're a CMO, a CFO, a COO, you name it. I am in their steering committee meetings every week. I'm fully embedded in their Slack channels and I've even flown out to Finland several times for the company off sites and believe it or not, we've even had a few meetings in a sauna, which I think ⁓ really brings true to the Finnish brand.

⁓ but I think that's what leads to real success, with fractional leaders, and also good marketing work. If you bring us into the organization, truly into the inner workings, then we can do our best work. you get faster insights, you get better alignment and more meaningful outcomes, all around. So I think Snowfox is a really, really good example of that. It's been a.

relationship that has been built on trust, transparency, and mutual respect. And I think that's why our work together has had such a big impact.

Rana (13:19)
fascinating story and I can say that the personality piece you mentioned and you are a true example on LinkedIn. So when you are truly living on that and showing how you should, in an AI world, how you can represent your personality in the world. So brilliant work. With this company, when you started working with, what was the problem, marketing problem they were facing?

Emma (13:41)
Well, the biggest challenge, and this is one that I faced with most of the businesses, Rana, that I work with is that they have very little to no marketing infrastructure in place to begin with. So it's very much about coming in and actually laying the foundations, the groundwork. So it's not necessarily that they have a problem per se, it's identifying the actual roadmap and where to go with the marketing from the onset.

Rana (14:04)
So you basically joined the company and decided the marketing strategy and their North Star where they need to be going on a marketing.

Emma (14:11)
Yes, well, I I didn't decide it, know, wholly and solely alone. ⁓ I worked very closely with the whole team to unpack, you know, well, what is the, you know, the customer success team working on? What are some of the insights that we're hearing from our existing customers, speaking to the sales team to understand why potentially prospects aren't converting? What's that? What's the bottleneck there? Speaking to partnerships to understand, you know, what our value add is.

⁓ on some of these larger partnerships with the ERP integrations and platforms. So really kind of taking a whole holistic view and approach and then making sure that we could identify what are the most pressing marketing opportunities for the business. I mean, we knew right off the bat that the brand felt extremely outdated. It needed to be brought into a more modern and contemporary world, especially to kind of

mirror and mimic a lot of these sort of sassy companies out there. It wasn't feeling sass at all and we needed to really bring it into the forefront. So we knew very early on that that was one of the elements that we had to work on. And then of course, off the back of that, making sure that we had a website that was performing in the way that we needed it to. We needed it to be a product led and product focused and be converting across all the pages for the right opportunities to actually bring in the right types of clients and partners for the business.

Rana (15:33)
Fantastic. And when it comes to website, what part of the website you updated to achieve the goal?

Emma (15:38)
Well, we actually reworked the entire website. So it was everything from the look and feel, looking at the user experience, looking at how we were building it to do exactly what ⁓ I just mentioned now. So it was a full sort of 360 overhaul. We canned the former website, but we kept it on the same platform so as not to reinvent the wheel and for it still to kind of plug in nicely into their existing CRM system.

Rana (16:05)
Excellent. And has the website been launched and performed live

Emma (16:09)
Yeah, absolutely it has been. And it's an interesting question and a very timely one, Rana, because one of the things that I had mentioned to the C-suite was we are very happy to work on the rebrand. We're happy to launch a new website, but we'll do this in two stages. So stage one was making sure that we had a brand that looked and felt very reflective of Snowfox's product.

and then translating that across a website that could actually perform and deliver. However, we are now launching V2, version two tomorrow, we hope, representing it to the company. And now we've gone one step further, now that we've really got a grasp and understanding of what the business does and how it's evolved over the last 12 months, to again, go back to making it much more product focused and product led. So,

A lot of the kind of conversions have changed. The content across the website has changed and been updated. And we have a lot more sort of videos and imagery that also speaks to the SaaS platform.

Rana (17:12)
Amazing. And as we are on a website growth show, so that's why I would like to go a bit deeper and find out the nitty-gritty, what changed, what worked, and what didn't work. So can you share any more insights that any specific couple of things you changed on the new website and those things worked which helped for the growth, maybe conversions, or any other way?

Emma (17:34)
Yeah, absolutely. So some of the things that we have done, of course, which is not specific to the website alone, but we've really put a big focus on the last 12 months of growing out our case studies and making sure that we have some sort gated content, some ungated content as well that is really like driving the viewers or the users to the right types of content across the different website pages.

So that's been a really big one for us. I think it was something that we were lacking in previously We just didn't have sort of enough gusto to to back us and so the old website sort of had you know one contact us form but there wasn't anything really driving a the correct user group to the right CTAs, so we've updated those across the site we have we have

updated our lead generation forms as well. We've been A-B testing them to look at how much information do we actually expect the website user to be inputting? Are we losing them somewhere along the journey? How do we look to optimize this in the best way possible? And looking, of course, at what sorts of forms are we including on different

parts of the website. For example, what we have on the partners page will look very different to what we have on the product page, of course, to the home page. So that's been a big one for us. We've also seen that the introduction of some video footage has been really helpful and useful for us in particular because we are trying to explain quite a complex product in very simple terms. So you can have all the copy in the world.

But I think sometimes just having something that is like really visual and clear and that demonstrates and shows how the process works in this case in AI invoice automation really, really helps. But again, I think it's about making sure that you know where you're actually putting these videos and who is the intended audience.

making sure that we're speaking very differently to a CFO compared to an accounts payable individual.

Rana (19:31)
Yeah, can really second that. It sounds simple, but it's a lot of work. So there are a lot of puzzles we need to get it right to make the website work. So even saying inputting video is easier. It's difficult to create video, but inputting a video on a page is easy. But again, you have to look at the performance of the website. So including videos on a page, sometimes you can get challenges with the performance, with SEO and traffic, all sorts of things.

what was the biggest challenge?

Emma (19:57)
I think the biggest challenge is probably the market language fit in many respects. Because again, it's going back to trying to make something that is fairly complex and translating it into very simple and human terminology. But, and this is the caveat, not oversimplifying it because we are speaking to a target audience that does

you know, to some degree understand the nuances of, you know, invoice automation for accounts payable, but you will have different levels of understanding. You know, how does the AI actually work? How does it plug in and integrate with your existing ERP solutions? So, you know, the marketeers job becomes quite complex in that you're having to take something that inherently

you know, could be quite straightforward for one cohort, but less straightforward for another and creating that balance.

Rana (20:55)
I think it's an ongoing work. You have to continuously create, test, monitor, update. So it's an ongoing process here.

Emma (20:59)
Yes.

Yes, and I think that's a really good point, Rana. think something that I say to a lot of my clients, especially in the startup space, is that your website is living and breathing. Now, I'm not suggesting by any means that you're doing a big overhaul every year, but there are tweakments and adjustments that can be made, and you can test and see what's performing. Look at what pages are performing better than others. A really good way to do that, of course, is with landing pages. When we're running campaigns on

different social platforms, LinkedIn has been a big one for Snowfox. We're testing and looking at how some of the copy there that we're perhaps a little bit more playful with is resonating and if it's something that we can then bring into the main sort static page.

Rana (21:44)
what is the lesson or a breakthrough you have which you can share with other people who are looking to improve and optimize their websites?

Emma (21:52)
I would say, make sure that you are in touch with all of the different teams across the business because there are going to be a lot of crucial bits of information that you will unearth. I am not an expert in invoice automation, but

It is my responsibility and my role as the marketeer looking at, course, One Element, which is the website, to be able to understand what we do as best as is humanly possible. Now, our CTO will have his knowledge, which is going to be very different to potentially the knowledge that our chief product officer has and our head of customer success. And they're all going to come with their own

nuggets of wisdom that are going to be really important in how you actually articulate and develop the website. It's going to be, you know, their understanding of, you know, what the product is and how it works, but also what is important to them and their specific remits. And that also can become a bit of a juggling act as well, right? So kind of stripping back and using your sort of marketing judgment.

to also put forward a user journey and a flow that makes sense.

Rana (23:05)
I could not agree more. putting your own domain expertise on the content was always important. But now it's even more important in an AI world when everybody can produce a content on one prompt. It's your own perspective, your own takes, which will make that content differentiate and get you eyeballs and results. We produce content for mainly a website agency. We develop and maintain websites for.

for businesses, but for some clients we produce content. But our partnership with them is that we know the technical parts. We know the SEO, we know the on-page SEO, and we know the keyword research. These sort of skills are technical skills. We have the skills. But we don't have, if you're an accountant, you're an solicitor or an attorney in the US, we don't have your expertise. So we can do the keyword research and we can even draft a content for you.

Emma (23:38)
Mm.

Rana (23:57)
But it's you need to finalize, put your take or your experience in that content. That normally works the great.

Emma (24:05)
Yes, and I think that's such, again, a very, very timely point to be made because we have decided actually now going forward with our SEO that we are taking a different strategy because previously it was very much about sort of focusing in and homing in on those, the keywords for high intent traffic. But we found that it just isn't performing the way that we had hoped. And actually what probably will serve us much better is ⁓

high quality content in smaller doses. So what we have done because we are trying to make the most of the resources that we have internally is really ⁓ sort of divvy some of this content between the industry experts, most of whom sit on the C-suite and getting them to produce a blog post on a bi-weekly basis, potentially a monthly basis. And then having marketing optimize those, of course, for the right sort of language and fit, but really distilling then the information

and the wealth of knowledge that they have and putting that into content that people actually want to read as well. That doesn't just rank because of course that's important. But I think if you are, you know, just pushing out content for content sake, it can also do more harm than good.

Rana (25:15)
I agree. totally agree. And you also mentioned the case studies. It's not just putting a content out. It's helpful content, what the world needs. That's more important now. And you mentioned case studies. In my experience, I case studies can be very helpful because people want to see how other people got results, and they want to replicate it. How did case studies work in your project?

Emma (25:37)
Yeah, case studies have been very successful, in particular the last case study that we produced for our partnership with IFS. This was, I perhaps kind of backtrack and say less of a case study per se and more of a white paper.

that was solidifying a lot of the work that we are doing with some of the IFS customers who we have been working with as well. We've developed a full landing page that is just catered to the IFS partnership rather than just kind of plugging it into a page that we already have on the website. And that's been amazing. So we're able to target our email newsletters or content campaigns.

and direct them to one landing page that is dedicated solely to the IFS ecosystem. It's living, breathing, we're able to add more testimonials as we have more clients, we're keeping it continuously updated. We have a user guide that can be distilled into a one-pager, we have a full report.

We have FAQs on there. So it's all really specifically targeted to these individuals who are in the IFS ecosystem and perhaps looking at using a solution like Snowfox

Rana (26:49)
Amazing. You recently posted that AI won't make you a ⁓ good marketer. So would you like to elaborate on that one? Why do you think?

Emma (26:57)
Well, let's rephrase that because I think the analogy that I had used was ⁓ one of the Michelin kitchen and it's not necessarily turning you into a Michelin chef. And I think I was just drawing the parallels there between AI and marketeers. I don't think it's necessarily going to make you the best marketeer. Sure, it can help, but ultimately you have to know how to use

the tools. So if you're in the kitchen and you're in a Michelin kitchen, that's wonderful. You've got all the shiny, nice, you know, objects, but you have to understand how to make a basic sauce.

and respect. I think, you know, prompting sure is, is, is, a big one that people are.

forever talking about these days, but also just using your good judgment to understand, know, well, hang on a minute. Does that even make any sense? You know, it's like a tale as old as time. Don't just believe what you read. You have to use your good judgment and you still have to do a lot of the rolling up of the sleeves, you know, whether that's, you know, the internal research sitting with the teams and extracting information. Sure, you can use AI to help you distill.

what you find or doing your customer research, which is super, super important. AI is not going to do it for you. It can help you draft the questions, absolutely. But at the end of the day, it's down to you to make sure that the questions make sense, that you're happy with them, that you're able to actually articulate and communicate these interviews and then distill the information in the best way possible and use your good judgment to know what is and isn't useful.

Rana (28:33)
Yeah, absolutely. Your common sense and personal judgment will differentiate while you're using AI. Many years ago, I read somewhere that someone wanted to become a good writer. And they went to the best writer and asked him, which typewriter do you use? So the tools won't make you a better writer. It's just your creativity. You can write with hand. You can write with typewriter or a computer.

or make a difference. So a similar AI is the tool you should use to improve your maybe speed or other skill sets. But I think it won't replace you. What is your best use case of AI? What is your best day to day where AI is helping you the most?

Emma (29:12)
Probably the challenge with AI is that it's saving people a lot of time for different reasons, right? So it might be helping you with your project management. It might be helping you as a plugin EA. It might be helping you build campaigns faster. It might be helping you generate images faster and at better quality.

But ultimately, think part of the challenge that comes with that is that everybody's now doing everything faster. So the question becomes, have we actually sped things up or have the goalposts the milestones moved? And does the question then become, well, isn't there more validity and value in actually producing something that is really, really good rather than just good?

because you can deliver it quicker. Now, of course, in some instances, you'll have businesses who don't need exceptional. They just need to get stuff done. But there are other instances where quality really, really matters. And so I think, again, it comes down to, you know, the good judgment call on what the requirements are for the task at hand.

Rana (30:18)
I agree, it's important. So because when you use AI, you get lots of perspective and detailed information. So it takes time to process and get what you need if you're after quality. If you are looking for a standard work, absolutely there are many ways AI can improve your day-to-day task and ⁓ action steps. As a marketer, what is your, do you have any favorite tool which people can?

You can share with people anything in marketing, helping you the most, any favorite marketing tool.

Emma (30:46)
Marketing tool.

I would say there are two tools that I love using across the teams. think Canva is fantastic. I think it's re-imagined what people can do across different skill sets. know, whether that's creating perhaps, you know, a simple deck, which used to not feel so simple for certain people or...

creating any number of assets really that perhaps one used to rely, have to rely very heavily on a designer for. But I would also say Figma.

is awesome. We do a lot of our work in Figma when we are working on our websites, for example, laying out all of the visuals for all of the different website pages. It's a really, really useful tool, I think, for cross-collaboration. It's easy to add your comments. It's a very just intuitive tool overall, I would say. So yeah, Canva and Figma, think, are great. Both visual tools.

Rana (31:45)
Yeah, absolutely. If you are looking to improve websites, as a business owner, can use maybe mind mapping. For mind mapping, those tools are brilliant as well. So ⁓ fantastic. Any other unusual habit or hack which really helped you becoming a better marketer?

Emma (31:51)
Yeah.

fit. So when I am...

working with clients or even speaking to prospect clients, I think a lot of it comes down to just the gut feeling that they may have rather than experience per se. Of course, experience matters. But a lot of it comes down to actually feeling like you have belief in this individual that you're speaking to and that they are going to show up and deliver.

And of course that there's just a rapport really. So for me, if I'm kind of taking a step back and looking at the question from a personal branding perspective, I've found LinkedIn to be a very useful tool. I audit my business every year. I work with a business coach to really be able to take that helicopter view and look at refining my

my ICP, the clients I'm working with, who am I saying yes to, who should I potentially be saying no to. I'm developing a new framework at the moment, which has just been trademarked. So I'm unfortunately not at liberty to share any more details about this right now, but it will be live in January. And looking at sort of how I make the marketing journey as clear and transparent to a lot of the early stage businesses that I am working with.

because for many of them marketing will feel slightly unfamiliar and like uncharted territory. So a big part of it comes down to I think speaking in a way that just feels relatable.

Rana (33:31)
Excellent. You mentioned earlier that you work with many businesses across sector. ⁓ What are the common couple of mistakes, marketing mistakes you see in every business?

Emma (33:37)
Mm.

I would say like the biggest mistake that I see with businesses is businesses just sort of trying to implement marketing tactics and not really understanding the why behind it. So what I mean by that is having businesses that perhaps have thrown some money into some campaigns, let's use LinkedIn as an example, but they haven't really solidified the audience.

who's the campaign actually geared towards in the first place. They haven't solidified the market language fit. And it's just a waste and drain of resources. Also businesses that are trying to do too many things at once. It's just too many spinning plates. I think again, it goes back to having that clarity, doing a few things and doing them really well, but also having an understanding before you're just

jumping straight into tactics because you have a budget. Getting really, really clear on the strategy and what you're hoping to achieve is absolutely key.

Rana (34:46)
That's a very important point.

So as you mentioned, we'll start from the why part. So you said why is a very important part of making the marketing, whether it will work or it will fail. So assume there is a business not clear about their why. What is your favorite way to suggest them? What action they should take to get the better results of their marketing efforts?

Emma (34:52)
Yes.

Well, if they're not clear on the why, then it's up to us to make sure that we get clear on the why. So very often that just comes down to, you know, sitting with various stakeholders in the business and understanding again, like going back to the North Star. Is everybody rowing in the same direction? What is the direction? Is everybody crystal clear on this? And then I think working, working from there, really. So making sure that you have the foundations in place.

first and foremost. that could be, you know, for every business, might look a little bit different. For some businesses that we're working with, it's coming in at the really early stages and building a messaging house, getting really clear on the value proposition, you know, their purpose, their mission, their vision. Again, that North Star, and then working from there.

Because within that you'll have your ICPs, so you're crystal clear on who you're targeting, how you're speaking to each of these different user groups or customers, and then building out campaigns, if indeed they are campaigns, ⁓ might be just a website, but making sure that you're housing all the information in a way that actually speaks to...

Rana (36:13)
Yeah, amazing. In my experience running an agency, think your why is not important for marketing. It's important for all communications. we have an internal team. So we call it internal customers and external customers. So when you speak with your team, your customers, because when you're coming from your why, it's always easier. And it normally connects with all your customers as well. So OK, to wrap up our conversation.

What is the one action the businesses can take to make their website their number one business growth tool?

you.

Emma (36:46)
Well, I would say market language fit is absolutely key because you can have a website that looks the part that does everything you need it to do. can have all the UX in place. can be, you know, beautifully mobile optimized. can have all the animations and everything that you needed to do. could have spent a hundred thousand pounds on it or whatever currency, but if it isn't clear what the product or service does, then

It's a complete missed opportunity across the board.

Rana (37:15)
I agree, it's very important. And Emma, thank you very much for your time and you shared such valuable insights. I hope the listeners or watchers will have some value from this conversation. Last question normally which I ask around this topic, we are discussing how businesses can make their website their number one business growth tool. Is there any question I should have asked you on this topic, which I haven't?

Emma (37:39)
I think an interesting one, of course, comes down to how people are or businesses are using AI web tools like lovable, for example, versus custom builds and what the what the reasoning behind choosing a specific way of doing or building a website comes down to.

Rana (38:01)
So you ask the question yourself now. So what would be the answer to this one?

Emma (38:05)
I thought you were going to answer it, Rana. I think again, it's... Yeah, now I'm asking you this question.

Rana (38:07)
No, no, you are asking me this question.

Okay, all right. I can answer this one, but I think that my question was on the marketing topic, what I should have asked you, which I missed asking you, but let me answer this question. think a lovable and other ⁓ apps, all those things again, for me, those are tools. So as you say, if businesses are clear about their why their messaging, that is important. This is what the business owner needs to figure it out. This is where the business is. What problem you are solving as a doctor.

what medicine you are giving, you know the problem, and what medicine you are giving. After that, any tool you create in a custom website you build with Lovable, that doesn't matter. Because if you're not clear with the why, you're not communicating the why clearly, then no tool can help you.

Emma (38:56)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I would just add to that Rana that I think, of course, there are a lot of wonderful AI tools that help you build your website today. But I think you also have to be a little bit careful on and again, it depends on what the business is hoping to achieve in the first place. You know, like is the website just meant to be a shop window to build brand equity? Is it a website that is there to drive conversions and more leads? But I think

You know, what I do see is with a lot of the AI tools, many websites are starting to look and feel the same. And so that point of distinction becomes much, much harder if you're just relying on the AI tools. Now, again, for some businesses that may be absolutely fine. That's all they need. But I think it goes back to again, like the why. I had a prospect client actually yesterday.

Rana (39:28)
Exactly.

That's fine here, exactly. ⁓

Emma (39:45)
who I jumped on a call with and he had enlisted an agency to help him build his website. And he said, well, what do you think? What do you think of it? And I said, well, it's a it's a big question given I haven't been privy to the discussions and your discovery sessions with the agency. But ultimately, I need to understand the why behind the behind the website. What is it there to do?

⁓ are you driving leads? Is it a brand equity piece? because that will ultimately help me give a better opinion on what I think of the website. I feel like it's very easy for, different teams in businesses to have an opinion on marketing because it's what you can quote unquote, see, but it's getting to a lot of the underlying fundamentals of understanding.

why copy has been written in the way that it has or why a form has been placed there or why you know the footer section has a certain place. So again getting to the bottom of that it's not just sort of well it looks okay or it looks really nice.

Rana (40:47)
Yeah, absolutely. And going back to your question regarding choosing a tool, I'm not a coder. So 20 years ago, I struggled to build up a website. I struggled to get results from SEO. I ended up creating my own team and I loved WordPress. I knew a bit of a code, but I could not create a website because of the challenges. But when I stumbled upon WordPress, that really solved my problem. We have a marketing team, and we love so much that we are building a...

websites and marketing stuff for other businesses. So for the last 20 years, another foundational stuff which kept us going with WordPress is WordPress.org. Basically, own that. It's a free software, but you own your content. So what I learned 20 years ago, the two most important assets any business have online, their own hosted website, which gives you full control. WordPress gives you that.

and you can expand on top of that. It doesn't mean WordPress doesn't have problems. Every tool will have different challenges, but these are the fundamental things that you own your content and you can expand your business with plugins as you go along. But on the other side tools, you don't own your content, the platforms, different platforms, they own their content. That's a big differentiation when choosing businesses should consider.

Emma (41:41)
Yes.

Sure. Sure.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. And again, I think a really interesting point because almost all the businesses that we work with, are developing the websites in WordPress. And I work very closely alongside our, you one of our web developers and our design director to make sure that it's a really integrated and seamless process. So we're always building something where the brand and the website structure is flowing in harmony.

And I think there are times where you can very easily see when you're looking at a website that the two have been completely siloed, or perhaps the brand design element hasn't even been considered, or it's an afterthought. So it's really beautiful and wonderful when you can merge those two from the onset. So that's very much how I work with my clients when we're looking at developing a new website.

Rana (42:43)
Yep.

Fantastic. I hope I really enjoyed the conversation. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as well. And where people can find and connect with you, Emma, and how do you help businesses?

Emma (43:03)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I am active on LinkedIn, Emma Blackmore, and also on my website, www.emma-blackmore.com. You can find out more information about the businesses that I work with on there. As I mentioned at the start of the call, I work with SMEs and startups in the B2B stages who are looking for ⁓ marketing support.

Rana (43:25)
Amazing. Once again, Emma, thank you very much.

Emma (43:28)
Great, thank you, Rana.