Marketing is, ultimately, an arduously earned skill. On the surface, it seems easy to do, but mastering it is a whole other story. We look at those who have mastered it with some wonder, both amazed and perplexed by how they do it, to the point where it seems like an unrealistic superpower. But is it really a superpower? What’s the secret?
Today we’ve got Patrick Ward, Vice President of Marketing at Formula. Monks (the tech pillar of Media.Monks) give us some insight into the life of a marketer.
Q. Give us a quick snippet of who you are and your origins. What was your spider-bite moment into becoming such a great marketer?
Patrick: I started from an academic perspective – initially trying my hand at Economics and Finance majors and barely scraping by. It was truly the third time’s a charm when I shifted to a Marketing major and earned 2nd in my Consumer Behavior class of 500. Needless to say, I found a space that suited my natural strengths of curiosity and a fascination with human behavior.
Beyond that, I attribute the majority of my success to calculated risks – the most notable being my departure from my home country of Australia and its smaller advertising field for a shot at the big league in America.
Q. Speaking of ‘spider-bite’ moments, what would you say a marketer’s biggest superpower is?
Patrick: At its core, Marketing aims to understand how and why humans think the way that they do – which inevitably leads to answering the core question “Why do people buy?” This at first glance may seem self-evident, but so many departments in organizations are focused from their own point of view which leads to ego-driven messaging. This compounds across the whole organization and while it can create unity, culture, and a shared experience for all employees, inevitably a vision is created that is separate from the outside world – an outside world where the customer resides.
This here is Marketing’s superpower – it’s the one department that can be obsessed with the customer’s voice and bringing that market intelligence into the wider organization to inform how products and services are created, how processes are formed to serve needs better, and how messaging will communicate the maximum amount of value to a customer. Before someone says “Sales does that too”, I’d argue it doesn’t impartially. Sales views all interactions with a customer through a lens of a financial decision making process (whether to buy a company’s specific product or service). A truly great Marketing Team is able to bring a complete picture of a customer and internalize that knowledge for all departments.
Q. What’s your approach to creating a marketing campaign? Where do you begin?
Patrick: There is no such thing as good or bad marketing, only marketing that works. With that philosophy in mind, it’s critical to start from the outcome in mind and ultimately that leads to one metric: revenue. Focusing on the revenue helps avoid the biggest cardinal sin: sales and marketing misalignment that costs companies an estimated trillion dollars a year.
The next decision point is the time horizon of the initiative – do you require the results in a short, medium or long-term time frame? My rule of thumb here is the shorter the time horizon, the more upfront investment is required for the initiative to be successful (e.g. paid media) while the longer the time horizon, the less costly the initiative will be over its lifetime and the more inclined it is towards building a genuine moat (e.g. thought leadership).
Ultimately both frames of reference are complementary and a skilful marketer is able to deploy a short, medium and long-term initiative simultaneously – balancing the needs of the company to earn revenue in the immediate future with the efforts that will cement a company’s brand and differentiation in their respective industry and market for the long term.
Finally, before the campaign is launched, you must define what success looks like. All marketing is an experiment because what worked yesterday will not necessarily work today (even using the exact same channel). An astute marketer will let experiments play out to achieve the required data and learnings but not let them last too long to unnecessarily burn budget.
Compile all those campaigns together and you have a strong foundational pillar of the business – a marketing function that drives the results that matter and accelerates the growth of the business and brand it represents.
Q. What would you say the biggest difference between B2B & B2C marketing is? How does the content differ?
Patrick: At its core, marketing is fundamentally trying to understand human behavior and in this respect, B2C marketing is light years ahead. B2C Marketing implicitly understands the power of brand, the role that emotions, personalities, and identities play in how a person makes purchasing decisions. As a more mature form of marketing, B2C has to stay ahead of the curve which is why you see marketers in those fields embrace new strategies, methodologies, and technology quickly.
B2B Marketing by contrast has remained stuck in the cerebral, logic-driven thinking, believing that businesses make decisions agnostic of the humans who compose their buying committees. In the last few years, B2B Marketing has finally started to grasp the concepts of their B2C counterparts, but structural challenges still persist where the distinction between Marketing and Sales in a B2B context is limited, and budgets don’t always reflect the investment required.
Personally, this is why I thoroughly enjoy the B2B space because you are able to take the best lessons from B2C marketers and apply them to your industry. While content has been divided between emotion-driven storytelling on the B2C side and rational, logic-driven on the B2B side, I imagine we are going to see a convergence where soon there will be very little distinction in how B2C and B2B marketers operate – rather the difference will solely be on who they sell to.
Q. What should entrepreneurs make an effort to do more of?
Patrick: Hire A-players, regardless of cost. It’s a terrifying prospect especially at the early stages of a business and the temptation is strong to be scrappy and hire folks who can ‘grow into roles’. While this perspective of mentorship should be embraced, they should not be your first team members as a founder. Early hires can make or break your company and being able to bring smart, capable adults early onto your venture will see it achieve unprecedented growth because A) A-players have the experience to know what to do when they face a problem (in fact they’ve probably already seen the problem 10 times before) and B) A-players have the connections and skillset to drive a result without wasting time on the wrong things.
When starting your venture, it can be challenging to put your ego aside and as an entrepreneur, you may feel the pressure to know all the answers. From personal experience building teams I can assure you, bringing smarter folks than you into an organization only makes you more successful – you learn more and go further.
Q. And on the other side of the coin, what should entrepreneurs do less of?
Patrick: If you’ve taken the above advice of hiring A-players, don’t dictate what they do. Give them clear targets and outcomes to achieve, articulate appropriate rewards for hitting said targets, and leave them to organize how to achieve said outcomes.
Relinquishing control is the toughest thing every entrepreneur faces when it comes to scaling their venture but it is essential or else failure is inevitable. Micro-management creates two problems: A) low morale and B) a single point of failure (i.e. the entrepreneur). When you trust people to do what is necessary, they will reward you with better quality work and outperform the scores of competitors who have employees who are not as motivated or inspired.
So what’s your role in this world of relinquished control – a coach and an unblocker. The latter is fairly simple – seek to unblock all the challenges that face your team members. The first is more challenging but far more rewarding – take a strong personal interest in your team members (beyond what they solely do for your company) and see how you can help them achieve their own goals. When those goals align with your company goals, that’s where the magic happens but you only achieve that by being a thoughtful and attentive coach.
Q. Last question: AI. How do you feel about its potential role in marketing? Is it overhyped or is everyone right to be so obsessive over it?
Patrick: As a tech professional services marketer, I’ve seen my fair share of tech hype cycles. VR, IoT, AI, Blockchain, AR, Crypto, and AI again – needless to say as someone who works hand-in-hand with the developers who are working on these emerging technologies I’m skeptical when I see the usual talking heads espousing the future of X.
Indeed, I’ve built an online and stage presence with that mindset specifically in mind: namely offering a no-nonsense, practical view on emerging technologies (maybe it’s my Aussie candor and sensibilities…or could just be the accent).
But something feels different about AI. This time there is still the usual parade of gurus and think pieces so that’s not new. But what is new is the practicality – we hear and see stories of everyday people applying AI technology to improve their own productivity, achieve more, and advance humanity forward.
Sam Hollis is a Writer for Fame, SaaS Marketer, as well as his own fictional short stories. He lives and works in Birmingham with his three cats and his dog (way too many pets, if you ask us)