Overview
In this episode, Sam Sayer is joined once again by Sophie Davies from Your Marketing Department, to discuss marketing out of fear, marketing out of love and how you can lean into this to get the most out of your marketing.
Highlights:
0:10- Marmite’s marketing strategy
1:54- The challenges of a Score App
5:38- Balancing marketing and sales in small businesses
8:06- Simplifying the Score App and testing different messaging
9:11- Final thoughts
Sam Sayer 0:03
Hi Sophie. How are you doing?
Sophie Davies 0:04
Alright, Sam, thank you. How are you?
Sam Sayer 0:07
Yeah, good, thanks. Good, good, good. It’s always interesting with these calls we always have a little pre chat before, and it’s actually completely changed the angle of the video because we were going to record today. So you met Sophie on the last one. If you didn’t see that video, do check it out. A bit more intro about who Sophie is, what she does, and what her team does at your marketing department. So the hot one today is love and fear in marketing. And yeah, this is, I’ll just give a bit of intro to this. I put something on LinkedIn the other day about Marmite. I absolutely love Marmite. You probably can’t see it from here. I’ve got stacks of jars and mugs and all sorts of things to do with it. And they play on love and hate Marmite, right? Yeah, you either love or hate it. No one kind of doesn’t mind Marmite, and I kind of love that they capitalise on it. And so, you know, that got some great interaction on LinkedIn, because people are, oh, my God, that’s disgusting. Or like, wow, I need to try this. The idea was, I drink Marmite bit like bovril, you know, when the the winter nights are drawing in, it’s that nice little toasty drink for me, at least anyway.
But yeah, we got talking about, we’ve both working on scorecards. If you haven’t looked at SCORE app, do check it out. It’s really, really good and interestingly enough. And I’m, you know, I’m happy talking about this that, looking back on ours now, it’s a little bit wishy washy, you know, it’s a little bit nicey poo, and I need to make it more driven on okay, I’m really on board with this. I love it or shit. We’re not doing that. I’ve got to do that. And I think you’ve you got to be bold in the messaging. So I’ve waffled a bit. Sophie?
Sophie Davies 1:54
It’s been an interesting one. So I will tell the story in that my team, I wanted to do a score app. It’s a great lead magnet, really, really strong for anyone who wants to do it for their marketing. And so I want to do one, you know, practice what you preach. And I put one together, and it was all lovely, and I was really proud of it, and showed my team, and they went, mm, and I kind of went oh. But my team, particularly Hannah, is very sales driven. So that’s her background, rather than marketing. It’s, it’s sales. And she just went, No, she’s gonna, everyone’s gonna feel rubbish about that. And we need to re look at it. And, you know, it’s all stuff you know about, but I don’t have a clue. I mean, I come from a less marketing background, and I don’t have a clue about half this. I’m just going to feel rubbish. So I think it’s been really interesting about, well, for me, about the difference between sales and marketing, really putting it in, and the fact that at marketing, we tend to, sort of, you know, particularly within our own businesses. I think when you are on the outside, it’s much easier.
So we’ve just got one signed off for a client, very excited. That’s how this conversation started. And it is all about driving the sale, driving the sale, driving the sale. And when you do it off your own marketing, you’re going, Oh, I haven’t driven the sale. Well, haven’t made people feel good about what it is. So it is really interesting one. And I do think with messaging, it’s like, where do you go? Um, is it the fear? Is it the Oh, or is it that? Oh, yeah, I feel like that because I have a lot of clients who will go, I can’t say that, because that’s making everyone feel rubbish. So I think it’s quite a brave move with with Marmite as to the fact that they do just openly go either people hate it. But what’s interesting about that is all from customer knowledge. So it’s all from understanding the customer. Yeah. Again, why we come around to why messaging is so important? Yeah. So it’s been, I’m having to redo all my score app.
Sam Sayer 4:04
This is really interesting. The thing is marketing sales have obviously huge overlap, but are two very different things in my eyes, and you’ll probably tell me otherwise, Sophie marketing is the, you know, attract, you’re, you’re the flower, attracting the bees to come to its thing. The sales are then taking that and winning the business. But actually they got to work in harmony. They’ve got to be in sync. Otherwise it just doesn’t work. I think with our score app, you know, we when we first launched it, we’ve got some good interaction. Maybe it’s a bit complicated, maybe it’s a bit too, bit too jargony, you know, I think this is one thing we were talking about, is I know it so I’m trying to, I’m trying to find the answers. But to a lot of people, I don’t know what value proposition is, or whatever. What is this stuff? You know? So not that we gotta dumb it down. We just gotta talk to people in there own language, yeah, and give them that, that give them the opportunity to connect with it, right?
Sophie Davies 5:06
Absolutely. And the sales and marketing, I think it’s so difficult that juxtaposition, if you’re in a big organisation, then they are very separate, and they tend not to talk, which I think is a bit of a shame, but certainly within smaller business of what I’m starting I’m meeting people who are like sales people over marketing now, sales people very focused on the numbers. And for me, that’s not quite right, but at the same time, some marketing people are far too fluffy and not actually getting down to the grip. So it’s trying to find that balance within everything that we do. Because, you know, we’re not helping corporates. We’re helping those small to medium sized businesses who actually, you know, need the sales. You know, I’m a big reader of all marketing theory, and you know, the fact that brand should be 60% of what you do, and 40% should be what we call activation. So the sales driver, and that’s great if you’ve got million pound budgets, but what I’m reading now is much more about the fact that actually, when you’re in a small business, it’s got to be activation. So us as marketers, you know, we need to just remember, this is about sales. Not everything’s about sales. Because if you do everything on sales, to be honest, you’re just getting false from us. You know, you switch that off and nothing happens, as in, you start to lose sales. So there is still that balance we’ve got to do.
Sam Sayer 6:38
It’s the visibility, I guess is, you know, just I kind of feel at the minute, you gotta be everywhere, doing everything in some shape or form.
Sophie Davies 6:47
I mean, I think social media, when people go, I mean, we all hate social media, but we will have to do it to keep visibility. Yeah, and it is without it is not the driver. However, I watched tonic. I watched a LinkedIn video on tonic, and their pitch is that they are social media driven business. Everything is social media. Video, anything about social media, and they got 20 million views, that’s great, and that is how they’ve done their business. But that is not how we build business through marketing.
Sam Sayer 6:59
I think you know, everything I see on social media at the minute is, you know, I’m an agency owner. Is a lot of the fear stuff like, Are you stuck at 10k, 20k, 50k, months, you know, do you want to do this? Are you driving this? And I do click on these things like, yeah, how do you, how do you double your your revenue, and that kind of thing. That’s the fear aspect, right? Yeah, is and, and, I think, yeah, I guess it’s typically more the consumer brands I see that are on the love aspect of, you know, desirable products, or we love how they did this. And for me. I mean, look, I’ve got a foot in both camps. And I think, I think I love what you’re about, I love what you’re doing. I want to work with you. But also, like, yeah, like, I’m worried about this. I need to solve this.
Sophie Davies 8:14
If don’t have a problem to solve, then you’ll never get it.
Sam Sayer 8:17
And who doesn’t have a problem to solve?
Sophie Davies 8:19
Yeah, everyone has a problem to solve, and they all solve it in their own way. And that’s why we as marketing companies. It’s why marketing is so hard for anyone who’s outsider, because there’s so many people doing different things. It’s like, how do I work it out? Which is, yeah, so it’s kind of so important and, you know, and to understand that it’s a long-term thing. It is you cannot do 10k you know, increase your revenue by 10k Well, you probably can, if you increase your prices, but you still got to find people who pay that. Nothing is overnight.
Sam Sayer 8:54
Exactly, yeah, I’d say at least three to six months, at least if anything longer.
Sophie Davies 9:01
I know, at least you know. And yeah, the problem is you can cost a lot, but yeah, get the right suppliers.
Sam Sayer 9:11
Absolutely. So I think, yeah, really. My takeaway from this particular conversation is simplify our score app, yeah, and have a clear driver. We may even do some AB testing, one with the fear angle, one with the love angle, you know. So just Yeah, you gotta try these things out, right?
Sophie Davies 9:32
Yes definitely!
Sam Sayer 9:34
All right Nice one. Thanks Sophie!
Sophie Davies 9:36
An absolute pleasure.
Sam Sayer 9:36
Look forward to catching up next time. Bye for now!
