In this episode, Steve interviews Christine Bailey, a B2B marketing expert who shares her experience creating a new market category for a regulatory technology (RegTech) software company. Christine discusses defining a purpose-driven value proposition, conducting research, using color psychology, building a scalable revenue marketing engine, optimizing websites and lead flow, and creating unique messaging strategies. They also talk about the value of facing challenges to create better opportunities and gain valuable insights into marketing efforts.
Don't forget to check out the episode and join in the conversation by using the hashtag #InterestingB2BMarketersPodcast.
Key points in the episode:
Connect with Christine Bailey and Steve Goldhaber on LinkedIn. Check out her book - Customer Insight Strategies: How to Understand Your Audience and Create Remarkable Marketing.
With 25+ years of marketing experience, Steve Goldhaber is a former head of global digital marketing for two Fortune 500 companies and the current CEO of 26 Characters, a content marketing agency in Chicago.
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
Steve Goldhaber: Hey everybody, it's Steve. Welcome back to Studio 26, and welcome back to The Interesting B2B Marketers. I'm excited today because we are gonna have a great conversation with Christine Bailey. So Christine, welcome to the show. All right. So cool. As we always do, we get started with cases.
Christine Bailey: Thank you, Steve.
Steve Goldhaber: All right. So cool. As we always do, we get started with cases. But before we jump into that first case, we just kinda hear a quick overview of your background and tell everyone what you've been up to.
Christine Bailey: Okay. So my whole career has been in B2B marketing in the technology world, and more recently in the FinTech financial technology world. And I've worked for some of the world's biggest companies as well as startups and scale. My passion is customer insights. So that's what I did my doctorate way back in 2008 and published a book in November 2020.
Steve Goldhaber: Nice.All right. And we'll get to the book in the second half of the show, but let's jump into that first case study. And this one is about how you helped scale a tech company specifically for like, what's that journey like, how do you compete in a very crowded space? And then ultimately how do you lead up to an exit? So I'm excited to have you share that story.
Christine Bailey: Thank you, Steve. Yeah, so when I joined this company was in the SAS software as a service RegTech Space regulatory technology. And there were about 50 people in the company. It was a privately owned company, and they were just one of many in the UK. So it started with coming in, you know, they'd done a little bit of marketing, they were active on social channels and they had some good technology, but they weren't differentiated. And this is something that I'm really passionate about I love Simon Sinek’s TED talk, which is starting with why, and he says that companies are good at saying what they do and how they do it, but they're not good at saying why they do it. And I'm going to add, companies are also very bad at saying who they are. What category are they in? And if we think about why is the why so important? and Simon says, when we know why we do what we do, everything falls into place. When we don't, we have to push things into place. And if you think, many businesses don't have a clear purpose-driven value proposition because it's actually a pretty hard thing to figure out. And your prospects, everybody's drowning in this sea of over-choice and sameness. And if you have a clear why, it can really humanize your marketing and any kind of misalignment, and this is a really interesting exercise to do, is if you go to your top team and say, everybody writes down your who, your why, your what, your how. I can guarantee you that people will come up with different answers. And words really matter. You know, you've got to be not just on the, the same words, the same meaning, and everybody has to you. You can't just be on the same page. You've got to be on the same words and the same meaning. So with that in mind, how do you go about creating this market category, which is what we wanted to do for this SaaS rate? So we conducted interviews with the senior stakeholders. We asked them to write down the who, what, why, and how, compare the answers, and ask the big message. You know, sort of like what's the, what problem are you trying to solve, and what was the thinking behind the formation of the company because the problem will either come from, or the idea for a company will either come from a market insight or a technology insight. So a market insight would. You've got a problem that everybody knows is a problem, but you've found a new way to solve it. So for example, the founders of Uber standing on a street corner in the pouring rain thinking, wouldn't it be great if we knew that a taxi was around the corner and we could just call it on an app and pay for it and everything. So that problem existed already, but they found a new technology to solve that. So that's one way of doing it. Another way is that you take a technology and you think, what could be a new use case for that technology? And that was the case with my case study. So we asked, what was the thinking behind it, what's the big vision and what was the big problem that we were trying to solve? So, We then created a draft of the who, what, why, and how as we thought. We then created the messaging house around that. And we went and tested that messaging on external experts as well as going to look at the marketing messages of all the top competitors and articulated what we thought were the marketing messages of all the competitors. So we pulled out what categories are people already owning? Where are examples of really good messaging, we think is differentiated? And my favorite thing is we created the sin bin. These are messages like, kill me if I ever use these messages in my marketing. So like those phrases are definitely out.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I wanna hear. All right. I have to stop you. What are some of the phrases, ‘cause I'm sure we've heard just the repeated generic probably has the word solution in it.
Christine Bailey: Oh, solution. Leading edge.
Steve Goldhaber: AI-powered,
Christine Bailey: yeah. Powered world first. You've caught me. Now I'm thinking of some specific examples, but I think we all know what's in the marketing sin bin. Then we've all got our personal favorites. But yes, stay away from the marketing sin bin. So we came up with four unique differentiators that we thought were completely different from everybody else. And we tested those messages on some external experts and from that, we then created what we called the story. So we went from setting the scene, the situation what is the kind of implication of that situation. what's the complication? What are the implications? And then we start to present our story. So we used a storytelling framework to develop the story of the company. We also did deep customer analytics because the best way to understand your future market potential is to really deeply understand your existing customers, cuz that also helps you find other customers or other prospects that look like those. We also did what we call an ICP or an ideal customer profile, so we wanted to know exactly, in an ideal who are we targeting. So what industry sectors what job roles, what job titles, and what size of the company? Some customer analytics blended in there. What were the key pain points? Description of the personas of the people that we're going after. And also identified who were the key influencers in these spaces and who was the water. So that was kind of like all of the groundwork to designing the market category and the differentiated point of view. Next task, how do we launch this category and this point of view into the marketplace? And it may surprise you to hear actually that one of the first places we started was with the employees. If you're not all on the same words and the same meaning, you are not going to take a consistent message. If your employees aren't aligned, you're not going to get alignment with your customers and with your prospects. So we went on a tour to make sure that all of the employees understood our unique point of view are who, what, why, how, why we were different, our mission, and our vision.
Steve Goldhaber: What was their reaction to that? Because sometimes I've been in that situation before where you're so excited, you're ready to roll it out, and they're like I don't know. So like, were they receptive to it, or did it present to them as like, share your feedback and help shape it?
Christine Bailey: I mean, given that we'd already. taken input from all a lot of internal, what the senior people. I actually think we got a lot of excitement when we rolled this out, particularly in the story that we were telling. And everyone's like oh my God, they felt excited to be part of a company that was so unique and differentiated. Which wasn't, hadn't been really obvious before. So yes, I would say overwhelmingly excitement still, of course, very difficult to get people to change their words and change their language, and that only comes over time. But we made sure that we told that story to all the existing employees and I had a personal session with every new employee cuz we were hiring a lot of people at the time cuz we were growing. And they had a session with me, so I would tell them that story and the messaging. Yeah. And we also wanted to create some content, and I think this was a really key piece for winning the hearts and minds, we went out and did some research in the market around this idea of how could they bring value ‘cause we were in the RegTech space and a lot of it was just about cost reduction and our messaging was you don't have to compromise. You can have a fantastic customer experience and improved customer experience, as well as get those efficiency gains and that messaging really resonated. Don't compromise, don't just go for Yep. Cost reduction and efficiencies. Technology efficiencies. Using this technology is such a great experience that the employees and the staff that is using the software will find it amazing. And so we did some primary research that, I mean, there's always a bit of a risk when you do primary research that it's not gonna come back to you, but it absolutely did in spades. So we used that CONT original content to launch our point of view into the marketplace. So we targeted some conferences. I did a keynote on digital identity at one of the big FinTech conferences, and we started generating media coverage in this area.
Steve Goldhaber: Oh, I was gonna say what I was really interested in is the content.
Tell me more about the types of content, the channels you mentioned you were at an event and you get some media coverage, but was that it, or did you have other surrounding pieces of content?
Christine Bailey: So we had what we called created this hero piece of content which was based on primary research. So we created a lovely report and from that hero content, we also created lots of logos and social materials. We also launched a completely new website. And something I'm very passionate about is color psychology. So we worked with a color psychologist and made sure that the color palette aligned with the messages that we needed to be congruent with the messages we were bringing to market. And this is where you said, if I'm going to get any resistance, this is where I had the most resistance because I wanted to change the colors of the logo. A quick share on color psychology is, there are four different color families, and the most important thing is that all of the colors that you pick in your brand palette have to be from the same family because otherwise, the brain gets confused. So, for example, if you've got the color red and it's not from the same color family, then you will pick the negative associations with reds like danger, anger, and aggression. Whereas if you are from the same color family and you see red, you see it. There's this brain psychology, if you see red in the context of other colors that are from the same color family, you will perceive red in a different light. You will see it in harmony. You'll see it as vibrant, excitement, passion. So that's why it's so important to have your colors from the same color family. Now, particularly important in your logo and in our logo, we had two different color families, big and so the color that we had a green and another color, sort of darker color, which I then, well, we started referring it to as the puke green. It worked very well digitally, but it didn't work well in the real world. So actually when we went to print out this color on an exhibition stand, it just doesn't work. So I went through this exercise to select colors that were from the same color family and the logo. Most sensitive subject. Now little tricks. We eventually picked a color that we called light saber green, and suddenly everyone got very excited about it, I would go like, do we want puke? Do we want puke green? Or do we want light saber green? That's a good, easy choice. Yep. And once we'd rolled out the new website in these new colors and new PowerPoint templates, new branding, everyone was like, oh my God, we love this. But that was the hardest bit of the journey.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I gotta say, I've worked with a ton of creative directors, art directors, talking color theory palettes, hues, shades. I have never had the privilege of working with a color psychologist and did that person like, that is all they do. They literally are blending the worlds of art in psychology.
Christine Bailey: Yep. They've got like a methodology and they go to really deeply understand what you stand for as a company, and what are you bringing that's different. What if they do an analysis of what you've already got in your palette? Because it's too many changes are difficult. So it's good to see what already is in your palette. You will always find that companies don't have the same color family in their palette and often in the logo. I've done that in two or three companies, actually used a color psychologist, and I think it's a really important part of brand work that people often overlook.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Nice. All right. I'm distracting us from the case study cuz I've just been so interested in the sin bin and the color psychologist. But keep on going.
Christine Bailey: Well, if I sort of carry on the story, so we launched this center, the marketplace really clear value proposition, really clear branding with new colors, new website, new social channels, everything, new conference presence, new content. That got us noticed. We got series A funding. So bearing in mind we started this journey at sort of the end of March. By August we got series A funding, and then it was like, go, go, go. The next stage of the journey is to build a scalable revenue marketing engine and to go and hire more people. So what did we do as part of that? That journey was we set targets. We were already using Salesforce, but we wanted to make sure we had good dashboards in our Salesforce. And in order to set the targets, we needed to understand what were the sales targets, and then we did what we call a reverse waterfall which is a methodology used by someone called Serious Decisions, which is now part of Gartner Group. It's a methodology to help you calculate back from, okay, if you want to end up with that amount of marketing contributed pipeline, how much are you going to put need to put in the top? And you're going to have to look at what already is in your pipeline to understand how much is converting, what's the average deal size, and how long it take in the pipeline so that you get some idea of what percentages to use to calculate your reverse waterfall. It's not ever going to be a hundred percent accurate, in fact, probably not even 80% accurate, but it gives you some and enables you to set some targets. Are we trying to create a hundred leads or a thousand leads? We've gotta have some idea at the scope. Then we started doing a lot of work on our website to optimize the website and the lead flow. So we hired a specialist in SEO, search engine optimization, and PPC and we wanted to make sure that technically our website was performing to its best ability. We made sure we didn't have broken backlinks. We made sure that the referrals were all working properly. We wanted to make sure we had a clear call to action. Obviously, we've already looked at you know, what colors you're more likely to click on a button in that color than this color, we made sure that the forms are really simple, so we are really encouraging people to fill them out. I'm sure we all hate it, don't we? When we have to fill out like 10 things on a form, it's like, no, just make it as simple as possible. We just want their name, their email address, and their company. In fact, you probably don't even need the company. It's evident from the email address. So that was optimizing the website and the lead flow to make sure we understood how lows were going, leads were going to flow through the channel made sure we agreed on all those different definitions and the handoff point with sales, cuz it's no good as saying we believe a qualified lead fulfills these criteria. If the salespeople go, with us, not qualified leads. So we made sure we had a handshake on all of our definitions and agreed on how we were gonna track that through the pipeline. Then we go to another really important piece which is our data. So if we go back to the work we did with the ICP, the ideal customer profile, it's okay, do we have those people in our database? And of course, the answer was no. So then we're like, well, where can we go out and source that data? And in our case, We're working in you know, financial crime space. So we were looking at where could we like the financial conduct authority that could be a good place to go and see if we can source data. So we went to the best possible sources for our data and got that, into our systems. And then we started to create and execute integrated marketing campaigns. Now, as I said, I love to create some hero content, which was like the centerpiece of our campaign, but it was all-encompassing. We made sure we started, we talked at events, we had email campaigns we had social signing initiatives. We also implemented intent monitoring. So we were working with a company that gives you intent signals, and picks up digital signals because as we all know, only 3% of our target audience is buying at any one time. So what about the other 97% they're leaving a digital trail.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Question for you on that intent data, that's always been such a mystery to me, and I have skepticism around it. I don't know if it's good or bad to have that skepticism, but I'd love your take on the intent data that you got. How was it sourced and did you feel like this is quality data?
Christine Bailey: So I've had a bit of a journey with intent data because kind of right back at the beginning because I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to data and insights. Start intent data was at the company IP address level, which works if you are doing a global account-based marketing program and there are vendors that will give you that intent signaling within an account. But when I was focusing just on the UK market, that didn't really help me because I didn't care about what intent or signals a company was putting out in California if I only wanted to sell in the UK. So then intent data evolved and you were able to pick up a local IP address so at least you could define it and say I only want signals from these companies in the UK. But it was still at the company level, not at the individual level. And then we were working, doing a pilot with Leif, which was now part of IDG. They were the first company I saw that was able to do it at an individual level and they could pick up an intense signal that somebody had put out in the digital world. So you could see that somebody has expressed that they liked a piece of content in a certain area. Have they attended a conference or said they're going to a conference? Are there companies that are hiring in a certain discipline where I'm selling into that job role and they are suddenly hiring a whole load of people in that job role?
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. That's fascinating that you got down to the individual level. Was that declared information? So someone to one of your properties declared via like a form? Is that how you were getting to it or was it, could you get it a different way?
Christine Bailey: Yeah, so we were getting right down to this individual, and here is their LinkedIn profile address. And these are the signals that they have displayed.So you pick which signals are interesting to you. Then you have to figure out what you're going to do with those signals. Are you going to put them into a nurturing program? And we actually categorize the signals because some of the signals, if you went to a salesperson and said, oh, this person has attended this event. They go like, that's not lead, which is not, we had different levels of signaling that were more or less important. So for example, if you had a list of strategic accounts, if somebody was signaling from one of those strategic accounts, then a salesperson would want to know that. But otherwise, it was more generalist and we would put it into a nurture track. So we had what we would call sort of the next best action with each intent signal. So we mapped out a path of the signal. This is what we're going to do with it. So when we started this off, only barely 10% of the pipeline was marketing was coming from marketing sourced pipeline. By the end of that year, 50% of the pipeline was coming from marketing. That’s the difference that journey made in nine months.
Steve Goldhaber: I'm curious, you did a lot in a short amount of time. Was this an in-house team? Did you bring in outside partners? What was the mix of talent that you used to do all this work?
Christine Bailey: So it really was a mix. So when I joined the company or when I actually joined them, they were my client to start with. And there were two people in the company already. So one was a kind of general marketer who was exceptionally talented at creating content and publishing that content. So they were sort of a bit of an all-rounder when it came to creating and publishing the content. And then we had somebody who’s in marketing operations. So they were using the marketing technology and creating the dashboards and sourcing the data and things like that, and doing all of the operational processes. And then when I joined, I brought a couple of people with me that I've worked with for many years. One who's a specialist in setting up revenue marketing engines, and somebody else who is just a really talented graphic designer and website person. Brought those people in and then when we got the series of funding, we then had to hire, so I hired an events person. I hired an international marketing person who had language capabilities and could help us in markets outside of the UK. And then we also hired a campaign person, a dedicated campaign person. Just to get to the end of the story in the November of that year, we got bought and that journey happened a lot faster than we all anticipated.
Steve Goldhaber: All right. Take us to the day. How do they make the announcement that the company's been acquired? What was that like?
Christine Bailey: Well, I guess if you're asking me, obviously I knew because I was on the leadership team. So it wasn't like I wasn't told when everybody else was told I was part of the process. And we explained our marketing journey along with everything else that we are doing to the company that acquired us for everybody else. I think it was a mixture of excitement and sadness, which I think is just natural. It's like it was always the goal, but everyone was like, oh no, that happened too fast. We were really enjoying this journey.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it is tough. I can relate to that there are moments in my career where I felt like I've had six or nine-month or a-year stretches. Even when I've worked for some companies for a long time, there are those moments in time where for a short window, everything is just working well, you're having a great time, the people are great, the work is great, and then something happens. I can relate to that. Bit of a letdown even though there's still excitement because you did achieve a goal.
Christine Bailey: Yes. I think what carried us through was the team loved working together so much that we've all stayed together.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. That's great. I do think that reminds me of the old saying that you join a company but you leave a boss who's not working out. Right. So it is the people that keep you there. This is great. It's a great case study. And now I wanna transition over to get to know more about you as a marketer. So take us back, to your first job in B2B marketing. Tell me about what that was.
Christine Bailey: So I studied German and business studies at university and I spent my third year of university in Germany. So I made some contacts there and as soon as I graduated, I went back to Germany and I started in press relations actually as a PR assistant for Hewlett Packard. And I remember my boss at the time before I knew him and he sort of opened the door for me to interview there. And he said to me, they'll ask you if you are afraid of computers. The correct answer is no. That's right.
Steve Goldhaber: Are you afraid of computers? I've asked some people today who have who might be afraid of computers, but yeah, that's a great question.
Christine Bailey: So that's how it all began. And I always knew I wanted to be in marketing. I've always had a passion for marketing. I didn't know it was gonna be in tech but having worked in that international environment, in a PR capacity, and then I became the PR manager, and then I looked after industry analyst relations as well. And then I'd had enough of living in Germany and I wanted to come back to London it was difficult at that time to work remotely. And I had a very forward-thinking boss at the time and he said, well, just relocate, you can do the same job that you're doing, but you can be based in London. And I did that for a year, but it was hard. I had a black and white laptop computer with a pop-out mouse at the side and I had to literally dial-up via the telephone. It took forever to log in with scrambling things and entering a code, and then it scrambled a code back and my telephone bills were just horrendous. They were like 800,000 pounds a month. Because I was dialing into Germany. I did that for a year and then it was like, do you know what? This is really too hard. And at the time, you're kind of young and adventurous and every one said to me at the time, why would you leave Hewlett Packard? Nobody leaves a big company like that. I'm like, well, because it's just not really working. We're not quite ready for homeworking. So then I joined a PR agency, high-tech PR agency, and set up their analyst relations practice, and got to know some other clients. And one of the clients was Cambridge Technology Partners. And I met somebody there who I instantly gelled with, who's been just the most amazing sponsor for me throughout my career. There's a pattern where he's behind all my significant roles in my career. And he set up this back in 1995, the first online community for chief information officers CIO. Completely new, amazing thing. And we took this to market from a PR perspective. We got so much PR coverage. Eventually, he said to me, we need to expand into Europe and would you come and work for me and build out the European community? I'm like, yes, I would love to. So that's when I joined this online community, and that was just such fun. It was a strategic marketing initiative and we grew the community, we had over a thousand members in Europe. We had about three and a half, 4,000 members globally. And then it was at the end of the nineties, that.com bust. Where the company was sold and initially the community was sold to somebody. It was a big publishing house, and they thought that they would kind of get the community if they just bought it, and they didn't take any of the staff that were managing the community. And what they bought was a very expensive database because it just tanked. As soon as people weren't managing that and people understand that now, they didn't back then.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I think it's fascinating because those communities that were in the late nineties, even like 2000, or 2003, meant so much to people because it was so unique. And today, you think about it, for every subject or niche, there are probably 30 different ways for you to connect with people. So community today is never as strong as it used to be when it all just started. That's too bad. There are great communities today, but I just think before the internet you had to go to a conference to speak to like-minded people and it was like the one or two times a year and those were amazing times cuz it was like, oh my God, this is the only way for me to connect with people. So the role of the community has certainly changed.
Christine Bailey: Yeah. And I was lucky enough to be working with one of the world's experts in online communities at the time, I learned so much from her. But from there I went on to working for a CRM consulting firm. Again, a bit of a pattern here. It was a smaller company that had made various acquisitions, and that's been a pattern I love to go in and figure out how we make three completely different companies become one company. How do we create that unique value proposition and that brand, and how do you create the infrastructure in the systems to make that work? I've ended up doing that for several companies.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. All right. So you and I have something in common, and it is that we have both written a book, which ironically you were talking about problem-solving before, which is what my book is focused on. So it was an interesting connective point there. Tell us about the book and why you decided to write it.
Christine Bailey: So, back in 2008? I published my doctorate, which was in Customer insights. So it was how large UK companies use customer insights to acquire, develop, and retain customers. And my goal in doing the doctorate was always I'm gonna write a book publish a book, I'm gonna get material for that book. And then life got in the way. Life had other plans. So when I was handed in my thesis, I was nine months pregnant and I got off at this amazing job at Cisco. So the time to write a book was definitely not then. And I also can't recommend handing in your thesis and your Viva when you Well, I was nine months pregnant when I handed it in.
I had my Viva when I wish she was six weeks old. It's not something I can recommend, but that sometimes life has other plans for you, I just plunged straight into the role and I was with Cisco for eight years and never got to write the book. And then it was only when I kind of had a bit more breathing space, should we say when I started thinking about, do you know what I really would like to write that book. And it was actually a scout from Kogan page. My publisher came to a conference that I was speaking at and they came up to me afterward and said, we're looking for female authors. Have you ever thought about writing a book? And I was like, funny you should say that.
Steve Goldhaber: I've done more than thought. I've already started.
Christine Bailey: I guess, what was really important to me is that I wanted it to be a book that practitioners would read and find useful. So I wanted it to be written by a practitioner, me, but also I interviewed 33 people altogether. So they are other practitioners, other academics. It's full of expert opinions and case studies. I really wanted it to be for practitioners by practitioners.
Steve Goldhaber: Nice. It's interesting. I had been doing a lot of content creation for my business, and it was in the form of blog posts. And while that was good for me to articulate kind of my opinion, I found it tiring to write because in a blog post, you are like boxing for attention, right? Like the headlines gotta do this. And it's gotta have all these hooks inside. And if someone gets tired, 10 seconds into it, like they're done with it. And after doing all those, I said, you know what, a book feels really interesting because once you've bought it, you've committed to reading. The book or at least half of the book if it's not good. But I really enjoyed that media because it just felt like I didn't have to fight for attention. It was like, all right, I have your interest now I can tell more stories and bring in more anecdotes.
Christine Bailey: Funnily enough, actually I have quite a detailed prologue in my book, which is called Break Free of Your Comfort Zone, and it's all the reasons why or technique that you need to kind of open your mind to thinking differently about how you do things. Cuz I thought I don't wanna plunge straight into what I needed to do, which is explaining what I mean by customer insight. So more of the slightly more academic side of things is what are our different data sources and how do we turn that into insight? I thought I can't just start with that first. I need to get people into that frame of mind that they're open to learning something and doing things a bit differently and breaking out of their comfort zone.
Steve Goldhaber: So once you had agreed to do that with the publisher, how long did it take for you to finish the book?
Christine Bailey: Well, I was working full-time while I was doing it, it took me about 12 months with a sort of a chapter every month, researching, interviewing, people, writing it. It took about a year to write.
Steve Goldhaber: You know, as hard as it is to write a book, what I really enjoyed is the book is a passport and it takes you to many places. For example, interviewing people. I've done some cold outreach and got interviews with senior CMOs at big companies, and it was like, You can't get those just on cold outreach usually. So it was very fascinating that people really respected that process and they were usually open to having conversations. Do you have a similar experience or what are some places the book took you that you might not have gone on your own?
Christine Bailey: I think just what you've said, it gets you to speak at conferences. It's hard to differentiate between the doctor title obviously helps as well with the sort of credibility and the thought leadership. So I think it's hard to sort of separate one from the other. The book gives me really good content to talk about, speak at conferences, or things like this about it. And it evolves. It was a much better book being written 12 years after I published my doctorate because the world had evolved. And back in 2008 when I had a prediction section in my doctorate and I said, inbound marketing is gonna overtake outbound marketing. You know, we're going to have much more digital data insights and personalization is going to be of a level that we can't imagine now. And everyone's like, yeah, right. And of course, after 12 years, those things come true. And I wish I'd said it with a louder voice at the time.
Steve Goldhaber: Tell me, I'm gonna ask a couple of questions on; you've spent so much time in your career around insights, what are some of those things that you could share with the listeners to say here are some techniques that are like quick wins, right? There are things you can spend weeks and months researching or looking at data, what are some fast things that they could do where if they're like, I've got like a week and not a huge budget, what would you recommend for them?
Christine Bailey: So I think the most valuable insights are ones that help you understand your audience or help you understand the success of your marketing efforts. So if nothing else, think about a natural fact. In the book we've got at the end of each chapter, we've got some ideas. It's a little section called Feed Your Brain and it gives you some ideas of things that you could do right away. I'm just literally the page I've opened here. Start with the basics. Write down what data and data sources you have and where are your data stored. How do you analyze, are your customers clear about the value they'll get if they share their data? That's just one thing but it’s full of ideas. So I think if people want to start about which area of marketing, and I will say literally every area of marketing you can use data and insights. Whether do we have a unique and differentiated mission statement and value proposition? Maybe you need some market research to do that customer analytics is always a great place to start do you understand the customers that you have today? How many customers do you have? You wouldn't believe how many people can't answer that question. What do they look like? What's the profile of those customers? Do you have good prospect data? Are you targeting the right people? Do you have an ideal customer profile? And then if we think, if you are in the content space, are you producing content that enhances SEO, for example. Is it driving people to your website or to your landing pages? How is your content performing? Are you just producing content and then throwing it out there into the world and you don't really understand how it's performing? One thing I talk about is dusting off the digital shelves. People are very good at putting stuff on the shelves, but not dusting the shelves, like not taking it down when it's served its purpose.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, that's such a great point. There's that mindset of just like, oh, we've hit the publish button, now we're good. We'll just let it sit there. And the need to refresh or as you're saying, dust off it, it's so powerful, especially from an SEO perspective. It's just sending signals to Google that good things is good, things are being updated here. So yeah, it's a great mindset. Looking back over your career, what are some things that you've learned where you were like, you know what? If I had to go back, and tell my younger self something, what would you share with yourself?
Christine Bailey: So I don't think you realize how bold you are when you were younger. It doesn't feel like you are taking bold risks at the time. It's almost like I'd go back and congratulate my younger self for doing things that I just wouldn't do now. Because the older you get, the more obstacles you put in your own way. I'm so glad that I had the courage just to move to Germany and go and live in Germany and work in an international environment for five years. I'm glad I had the courage to leave a huge global company and go and work for a tiny one to get that experience of being an agency side. I'm glad I had the courage to go and work with startup. I think I would go back and congratulate my younger self for taking those risks.
Steve Goldhaber: I do like that. I can relate to that. I think there are things that you do when you're new in your career. You're very convicted, right? Cuz you believe in it so strongly and you just kind of say, all right, well, let's do it. And then later in life,, you get a little bit more comfortable, maybe a little more risk adverse. That journey is an interesting one and a good reminder to tap into our 20-year-old selves, to ask how they might think about a certain decision or situation.
Christine Bailey: I think one decision that was really hard for me that actually turned out really well was when I started doing my doctorate because it was funded by the company I was working for, and I went down to working four days a week and started doing the doctorate, which was a part-time doctorate. Took four years and then six months into that journey, the company was acquired and I was made redundant which was devastating at the time, but actually turned out to be a real blessing in disguise because I took the decision not to go and get another full-time job and to really focus on enjoying the doctorate journey and to accelerating it doing it in three years instead of four, and working, doing some consulting work with smaller companies to pay the bills. But I've been in a redundancy situation three times in my career. A lot of people don't recover from that. And each time it's taken me to a better place. So I don't fear it. And that's probably the advice I would give to my younger self is what seemed like terrible at the time has always ended up in an opportunity.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. I agree. It is such a difficult thing to go through, but you realize that the health of the company is usually not there to treat its employees the way they want when they're laying off people.
Christine Bailey: I mean they were all for different reasons. A couple of them were due to sales, the companies being sold and the other one was a big restructuring. But I think that kind of stuff, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. That's something I would go back to my younger self and say, don't sweat it, you'll end up in a better place.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, and I think too, like once you've been through it, you start seeing the signs of it. When things don't sound right or you're hearing different discussions happening, usually it's around m and a activity. You're kind of like, something's weird. Like, I don't know what it is, but something's going on. You know, I had a project where I was trying to redo an entire global site and I had to work with a couple of different business units some of them just wouldn't engage and they couldn't because they were trying to sell their division. And I didn't have that context. So my lesson to people is if something is not happening and you're really frustrated and you don't know what's going on, usually there's something bigger going on that you can't talk about, and don't get frustrated. Just know that like, okay, something's happening. I don't know what it is. But it is hard. It's a strange environment cuz as companies do position themselves to be sold, some things are wound up, and then others are wound down because it's like, we don't need to invest in this right now. Something else is happening.
Christine Bailey: I think another piece of advice, which I've actually said to somebody in the last 24 hours is if something doesn't scare you, if an opportunity doesn't scare you, then you're not pushing yourself enough, you're not going to grow if you're not scared a little bit of of what's ahead.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. That's great advice. Christine, thank you for joining the podcast today. If someone would like to purchase your book, where can they go find it?
Christine Bailey: Amazon. You can find it on Amazon or you can go to Kogan page's website.
Steve Goldhaber: All right. Well, Christine, this has been a really good conversation. Thanks for coming to the show. It was wonderful to get your experience and insights. Your insights are such a rich territory and I loved listening to your stories about people who dedicated their careers to that. Thank you, listeners, for paying attention and make sure to like and subscribe I look forward to catching you on the next episode. Take care.