This episode we’re taking things back to basics as the marketers look at the fundamentals of your marketing strategy, and discuss how Covid-19 has impacted face-to-face interactions, four years on.

To kick things off, the team picks apart the fundamentals of digital marketing strategies to emphasise the importance of strong foundations – you don’t want to be building on a layer of sand! They give actionable advice to help you plan your first – or your one-hundredth – campaign, so definitely be ready with a pen!

Sticking with our focus on the fundamentals, our second topic looks at the benefits of face-to-face networking. With the pandemic came the opportunity to move more meetings online, but some of the best work is still done when you can look someone in the eye and feel the energy that only exists when people are together in-person. And, depending on what stats you believe, in-person events might bring better conversions too!

Timecodes

0:00 Introductions

1:22 Taking your marketing strategy back to basics

16:28 The Importance of face-to-face Networking

30:15 Outro

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Auto-generated transcript

Michele Raffaelli

Before I answer, I want officially to apologise to William Smith to have stolen this quote. I didn't know, will, if you are listening to this, please apologies.

Michele Raffaelli

Welcome to the latest episode of Marketers of the Universe. We are continuing to expand the time that our teams are allowed to discuss the topics so that you can get even more out of listening to the podcast. We are also introducing new hosts to help shape our topics and bring out more valuable insights. So, if you notice, these episodes are slightly different, that is why! Now in this episode, our senior social media manager, Debbie, will be hosting a panel discussion around face-to-face networking and I'll be chatting to the team about going back to basics and how that can transform how you build and implement your digital marketing strategy.

Michele Raffaelli

Lots of exciting stuff on this episode. It's April, the sun is shining here, just so let's get on with the podcast. For our first topic today, we are talking about digital marketing strategy and how going back to basics can help you refocus your marketing strategy. We are doing this in line with just launching our Discovery Workshops, which is a free hour to two hour long workshop where we will go and dig into your brands and what makes your brand special. So do go and check that out.

Michele Raffaelli

On our panel today, we have two of our experts. From within Brew Digital, we have Mark Bundle, who is a senior email marketing manager. Mark has worked for a long time in digital marketing and has had a lot of input into digital marketing strategy across a number of pretty large brands. And we also have Michele Raffaelli, who is a paid media manager here at Brew Digital but is also a lecturer in digital marketing at Université de Franche-Compte, which is pretty damn cool. Just to get started on our first topic here, mark, I'm going to kick off with you. If we're going back to basics, what is one thing that marketers need as part of their digital marketing strategy but often forget or skip or choose not to do?

Mark Bundle

I'm going to cop out a little bit on this one and rather than like a tool or a device I think anyone should use, I'm going to say patience. A lot of people will try to rush through and just get something together and get something out the door, and that's just not going to be a benefit for you longer term. Make sure that you are taking the time to properly plan things through.

Michele Raffaelli

And if you're looking at of the basis you can build the strategy from, give yourself enough time to actually properly do it. One of the most important point that I noted was the same. But instead of having the patience of creating and planning, all the strategy is the patience of running the campaign. I've seen many times running a campaign for three days and people saying, oh, this is not working, and just stopping it. If you did your homework, as Mark suggested, the campaign will work. Just give it time. Include this plan three months, six months, it's fine, but just give it time to learn and deliver that's.

Michele Raffaelli

That's an interesting point and I'm going to go off questions already. There's a lot of talk about being agile and trying to be reactive and giving yourself the freedom to be reactive. How can you do those things be patient and give things time, but also be reactive or agile at the same time, if you've got things planned properly, you've left yourself space to be reactive properly.

Mark Bundle

You've left yourself space to be reactive. Um see, if you've got your core strategy, which is going to be to build an email newsletter list and get that sent out quarterly, you've got your paid campaigns running, as michele says, over that extended period of time to help drive traffic to specific landing pages, and once you've got those fundamentals set up and you're the basis of your strategy running, you're starting to build the league generation. That gives you the time and space to be able to do the reactive bits. The bits are oh, there's a trend popped up, let's get a quick social post out, something's broken. We need to alert all of our users about a change to something. If you've got your strategy down properly and you're managing it properly, I think that gives you the freedom to be able to do these kind of really fun reactive bits that are maybe going to get the little splacks of interest, for you love that anything to add michelle.

Michele Raffaelli

If you have your clear goals set down, if you had a proper look at all the competitors and you have a message that you want to deliver, those are the main points. That tells you if the campaign is delivering. I'd recommend not having a plan B. If you have a plan B, it means that your campaign may fail. Try not to have one. Make adjustments If you see that the audience doesn't have the engagement you planned at the beginning. Try to expand it. Try to target maybe a different location. You can always play with different messaging, but follow your main plan I like that.

Michele Raffaelli

I've actually not heard that before. So if if someone doesn't have a plan b, does that force them to stick with plan?

Michele Raffaelli

a from some of these articles that I've read, personal experience and work experience plan. Plan B is a measure of preparing you to fail. It means that you don't put all your effort and energies to do something properly. The first time In marketing, everything can happen. You can prepare this great campaign and then you realize actually I can't run it because something has happened. Those are very limited situations. Just thinking about something that happened recently I don't know how many marketing plan were ready to launch the new t-shirt for england football and a huge backlash on that logo. I'm thinking about big campaign that's been thoroughly planned and then your main influencer finish in the middle of a scandal. So you can just run that campaign. Those are very specific case when you may need a quick plan B. Otherwise, just stick to your main plan.

Mark Bundle

Michele, inadvertently quoting Will Smith in his song Wild Wild West. The film might not have been great, but in the song he says specifically no plan B distracts from plan A and I see it in McKaylee following that nicely.

Michele Raffaelli

I didn't know that. That is some really good knowledge, mark. I want to look at a digital marketing strategy. We've all done them as marketers. We've probably done them when we're too junior and kind of panic, googled what we need to put in them and you kind of learn as you go. But what do you think are the key elements of a really solid digital marketing strategy?

Mark Bundle

Yes, we've copped out of it so far. I've talked about the things around the strategy you need, rather than the actual proper things. Obviously, mechanical engineering goals that's a very different thing you need. That's probably the first thing you need. What you're aiming at. You're only tell what your budget you're planning to is. I think there's a real risk of overspending. There's certain things you can get a real rabbit hole and just end up spending more than you meant to, and then you need to know where your audience is as well. So you need to have probably done your market research. I think it's probably quite an overlooked part of strategy. If your audience is all on a particular social media platform, make sure you're not spending elsewhere. That's probably the things I'd highlight, I guess goal goals, budget and customer research.

Michele Raffaelli

Before I answer I want officially to apologize to william smith to have stolen his quote. I didn't know will. If you are listening to this, please, apologies. You need to align all the marketing channels. I've seen many times one channel taking the strategies, going along the road and not inform social team. The email showing images in some campaigns and then the landing page has a different complete message. So another key point of your strategy is to include everyone and make sure everyone is following that strategy.

Michele Raffaelli

I think that's really important. I know here at Brew we work with project managers who try to bring everyone together to make sure that we are talking to each other, which is super important, digging into focuses of strategies, and I'm going to talk a little bit about brand building and performance marketing. I don't know how relevant this necessarily is for email or how much of a controversial thing it is in email, but I know when we look at paid media, there is a big focus on generating leads at the lowest cost, at the highest volume compared to. You know what was maybe done 20 years ago. Where you're, you're kind of building your brand and working to to grow and get as many eyeballs on on on your brand as possible. Do you think they can work together within a strategy and how do you make the most of those two areas when you're planning?

Mark Bundle

I think they absolutely have to work together. I mean, you're saying they're like kind of lead generation bots not relevant to email. It absolutely is. Okay, email's never going to generate a lead Well, maybe one or two from a four to a friend. But say, pay media generates the leads, sterling job gets them in Email's nothing without those leads having been brought in At the same time. Those leads are worth nothing until email's nurtured them. Both parts have to work together. We've had a whole long-standing thing within the team about trying to work together better and making sure that different channels are working more harmoniously, and I think it's exactly the same when you talk about the brand and the performance. I know Rich has got some quite strong views on brand building and brand being a really strong marketing thing, but I think unless you're actually delivering on that as well with some performance marketing, unless you're going to deliver on both, I think it's a real risk that you can build a great brand if you're not going to deliver on it, what's the point?

Michele Raffaelli

At the same point, you can be delivering all you like but if there's not a strong brand there to represent you, again, it's just not going to work. I see it in three different ways. If your brand is new, you launch your new website or your new product, they can't really work together because you need to make your product, your brand, known, and then, with performance marketing, you can improve it. If you are a well-established brand and you are going after only new customers, in that case performance marketing can help you, targeting only new people. If you want to rebrand and this marketing strategy is for you to change what you've been in the past years, then yes, again, they go well together. You can use both to fuel the audience with the branding and then retarget or bring them down the funnel with performance marketing.

Michele Raffaelli

I've seen it so many times where, like Michele said there, where new brands will put all of their effort into performance marketing and find that they have a brilliant couple of months tapping into that instant intent and instant demand through something like Google Search and then just fall off the wagon because they haven't been building their brand before that and kind of filling up that pipeline, if you will. Which brings us to actually thinking about the customer, and I've got one or two more questions before we wrap this up. But I want to think about customer centricity, and customer centric marketing right now is a kind of big talked about thing. There's a lot of conversations around every piece of your data being an individual, as opposed to in the past where it was just thought about as an amalgamation of mush probably not the best way of putting it. How can brands get closer to their customers and understand what they want during this strategy and planning phase?

Mark Bundle

yeah, I think it depends on the size you're looking at. So if you're a smaller brand or a smaller company, you're going to have less data to dive into you're looking at. So if you're a smaller brand or a smaller company, you're going to have less data to dive into. You're not going to be able to use all the clever Power BI tools and customer research, this, that and the other, but chances are, because you're smaller, you're going to have a smaller engaged group of customers. You might have a Facebook page where you release updates and stuff and you can talk to them on there. And do talk to them. That's the point. Get that, turn them straight from the horse's mouth. If you're a bigger company, you are collecting kind of more amounts of data. You are using, maybe, a crm system to kind of collate everything and you are starting to use some more analytics tools.

Mark Bundle

Then brilliant again, look at it. Look at that data, see what it's telling you. If you need to go out and talk to people, absolutely go out and talk to people. If you can't do it yourself, hire a research company to do it for you. Hire ux, um, not to go out and get user feedback for you. There are plenty of companies that do it. So, yeah, it's going out and talking to people, whether that is your small little community because you're in a small business, or if you've got the bigger kind of data. Data lakes, I think, are the latest fads. Go out, make use of it, pull out those different personas and different people to untalk to directly brilliant, thank you, mark, if you don't have competitors, ignore your clients.

Michele Raffaelli

Don't care what they say, you're the only one out there, so just ignore them. The first case I'm thinking is ryanair. They are the worst. They've got everyone complaining. They do nothing about it. They they don't need it. If you have competitors where people can say, okay, if you don't listen to me, you know what, I go somewhere else, then you have to do like Mark said listen to them. You have all these social media platforms where you can actually read what they say, what they think, and you can learn a lot just spending 10 minutes reading comments. Another thing is before listening to your clients, try your product. I've experienced with different clients forcing us to do all the magic in performance marketing, not realizing that the product that we're selling was really audible. So, yes, listen to your clients, clients but first try your product, see if you would use it, then go on and then expand it with reaching client forum comments.

Michele Raffaelli

But if you're the first one that wouldn't use it, maybe start from there before going out and looking what client thinks that's such a good point, and actually this this should be a marketing therapy session at some point, because I can guarantee every single person in this room has had the experience of trying and trying and trying to market a product or a service that just will not sell. And you're looking at yourself and going what am I doing wrong? Sometimes it is just a product. There's no way you can market it and market it well, and there's one thing that we can do as marketers is actually, if the product or service is the issue, then you need to go work with your product team to dig it out. Otherwise, you're just standing on the side of the road selling rotten apples and it doesn't matter how much toffee you pour over it, it's still a rotten apple in the middle. Anyway, just to tie things up, what is the one thing that someone can do to improve their brand strategy? Today? And I'm going to start with you, michele.

Michele Raffaelli

Stop listening to this podcast and contact us immediately. I watched the Ghostbusters recently and I'm thinking who are you going to call You're digital?

Michele Raffaelli

That's easy, thank you. What more can we add? Other digital marketing agencies are available. Do remember that we are Brew Digital, but we're only right for you if you are right for us and we are right for you. Mark, can you answer that? I don't know if you can.

Mark Bundle

How am we're gonna add to that? That was amazing. One thing to prove your brand strategy straight off the bat make sure your brand is something you identify with similar than michael said to testing your product. And absolutely, because if you're founding a company, it's probably because you found a niche that's not being filled that you would have used in the first place. Make sure your brand is something that you would have an affinity with as well, because chances are your customers are like you because you're filling that same need. So make sure if it's going to resonate with you, it might resonate with them.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

Hi everyone. It's an exciting day today because we're doing something new and something fresh, as we're jumping in into a different topic with me as a host. The name is quite long, but my name is Debbie Gakuten-Jardine de Levera and I am the Senior Social Media Manager here at Brew. We have an exciting panel and I would not want to introduce them because I think that they would do a better job introducing themselves. So, rich, can you go first?

Rich Harper

I'm Rich I'm the Head of Digital Marketing at Brewing Digital that they would do a better job introducing themselves. So, rich, can you go first? I'm Rich I'm the head of digital marketing at Rune Digital. Been in marketing now for coming up to nearly 20 years, which is a little bit frightening. Seen lots of changes in that time, with lots more changes afoot. Looking forward to this debate.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

It's a debate, is it Okay? The other side to the coin we have Kieran on the panel.

Ciaran O'Neill

My name is Kieran. I am the account manager for Brew Digital. I work mainly with the sales team and I dip my toes into marketing. I've got decades of experience working in marketing and sales and so on and strategy as well. Just excited to be here, as always.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

In our panel. I think we have very different perspectives, so this makes up for a really good conversation today. What are we talking about? We're basically going to look into the importance of face-to-face networking in the digital marketing strategy. Okay, we're going to go and open it up to our panel right now. We all know it's been four years since the pandemic. We all remember those times. We're all locked in. We can't really do much about it. It's not our choice. How do we all feel? Going back to normal? Or do we feel like this is a new normal or nothing has really changed?

Ciaran O'Neill 

I think there's a good amount of anxiety still in the background with many of us. For me, it feels like a subconscious desire to feel like it's 2019 again. In my head, it's always sunny before the cloud of COVID. The reality is that COVID was one giant rug pull. It pulled back the curtain on quite a bit of nastiness that was going on around the world with rampant economic inequality, for the vast majority of us were facing but weren't potentially feeling, and now we are.

Ciaran O'Neill 

It's going to be a bit negative, but I'll finish positive. How about that? You know we've seen, like technical change, it's eroded a bit of trust. Here and there it's some jobs have gone as a result. Um, privacy, autonomy, product service and quality that's's all I think in some cases taken a negative dive. There's also been a severe loss of mingling, along with what appears to be, if you look at social media, an apparent loneliness epidemic amongst nearly all the age demographics. But there has been benefits. We've had a lot of support, uh, throughout various different countries around to fuel social refuel. There's been big wins with flexible working times and working from home. Improving quality of life and virtual meeting platforms have dramatically improved, allowing further flexible working but better productivity and also wider opportunities to be able to network and also, you know, invert comms attend events.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

I second did that. It definitely is a dark cloud time, but I don't think there has ever been a time where in mental health has been discussed a lot after the pandemic. What about you, rich? I know you've attended the CMO Summit lately. What about you, rich? I know you've attended the CMO Summit lately. Do you feel like it was nothing, has ever happened, or do you feel like something is different? What are your thoughts?

Rich Harper

So I'll come at this from a data perspective and also the fact I spent 10 years in the events industry so as a marketing director at an events agency and then after that I co-founded a marketing agency that sat alongside an events business and worked primarily in the event space. Covid destroyed events like, literally within weeks, absolutely destroyed corporate events, entertainment, music, small venues, big venues, hotels. At the time, you know, we pivoted to virtual. The positives out of the back of that is actually what happened was businesses companies suddenly realized that actually remote, hybrid working was an option. We didn't need big, expensive offices all the time, and I think there's certain companies that have gone back to that old way and are driving people back to the office. But there's certainly a lot more modern companies and we work for one of them. We're a complete remote workforce that embrace working from home, more hybrid options, which I think is really beneficial for the kind of work-life balance. The positives out of that readjustment of hybrid, remote working is that we spend a lot of our time on Zoom meetings and a little bit isolated in those environments. So live events is a fantastic opportunity to get back out. Talk to people face to face, read people's emotions face to face, read people's emotions, really understand their challenges they're facing and stuff like that, and get a real read on. You know if you can strike up a relationship or if there's something there. One of the difficulties being remote and that adds a lot of positives is that we do spend our life on Zoom now, and Zoom fatigue is a massive issue.

Rich Harper

I did some work beforehand. I went to look at some data to make sure that we had some evidence behind it, but events are back and they are booming again. Some of the stats here are really positive and, from someone that, like I said, worked in the events industry for a long time, still got a lot of friends and colleagues that work in that space. 70% of events and 87% of meetings are now being conducted in person, which is fantastic. There is a notable rise in corporate spending on meetings and events. So in 2023, an average of 65% of companies reported an increase in meeting and event spend and 52% of business leaders agree that event marketing drives more ROI than any other marketing channel.

Rich Harper

I'm going to caveat that stat slightly because actually trying to associate fully, depending on your attribution model, trying to attribute a sale directly from an event is easy if you're just going to say, met that person there. Therefore, six months, 12 months down the line, that person's converted. So therefore that's a direct ROI to that event. One thing I would say is you might meet someone and establish an initial connection at that event, but from my experience, especially in industry, it's about that kind of nurture process afterwards and how you follow up and there's lots more touch points that will drive that conversion further down the funnel rather than just the event itself being the kind of the first touch. So therefore the revenue is attributed to that.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

It's great that you guys brought up key things here in our conversation, which are events, clients, and we're talking about digital marketing strategy here. Interestingly, the Adaptivist Group, our parent company, has recently published a report that basically says that, out of the respondents that they have surveyed, 37% of them are anxious about face-to-face interactions. Do you feel, do you agree to this? Where are you on that scale? How does this influence you, kieran, for instance, when talking to a client? Or Rich, when you are trying to pitch for a project with a big client?

Ciaran O'Neill

I'm not really surprised by that 37%. I know we've been out of lockdown for a few years now, but I would probably say the kind of uneasiness many feel due to being without social contact for such a prolonged period of time has stayed around like a hangover in your 30s. It's just like, oh, just come on really into the second day. It's something that I do feel a little bit of social anxiety myself. I do struggle with imposter syndrome. So the thing for me is to accept who I am in that moment, like this is me. I can't change it.

Ciaran O'Neill 

There's no point in overthinking at that very moment in time. Just be proud of the fact that you're standing there, whether it's at the event or you're on the phone to a client and you're going to say what you're going to say, because you've got to believe in it. You've got to stay present and don't start being in your head and just understand that you can only really control the controllables in that moment. They're kind of the tips that I would give, just because they're the things that I have to say to myself still, even though it's been a couple of years since, since covid happened rich.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

Adding on to that like do you have any tips on how you battle that, if ever? You do have an anxiety, especially when pitching with clients difficult question, debbie.

Rich Harper

The reality is I mean events in general. We're talking corporate events, we're talking business events, talking commercial gigs, concerts they're all rising. Taylor Swift sold out eight dates at the O2 without any issues. The ghost has shown how much demand is there for people to be interacting. Music festivals are selling out. We have to take surveys and stuff like that with a pinch of salt in terms of the pool that were surveyed or questioned.

Rich Harper

If you go into an event, especially let's bring it back to kind of a business sense if you're going to an event, that you're going there for a reason, so make sure beforehand and this is the same as a lot of the stuff we talk about have a plan, have an objective. What are you looking to gain out of the back of that that event? Do you have an exhibition stand? Therefore, if you're on that exhibition stand, have the best people there. Don't just stand on the stand all day chatting to the guy that's working with you. Don't stand there looking at your laptop or your phone all day. Be there and be present. Be out and mingle with people. Stop people as they walk past the numbers are there and when people are at events and shows and exhibitions. We've all done it. You walk around, you pick up your free merch, you get your little bag.

Rich Harper

There's not too many people that actively approach out and talk to people. Be the one that approaches them. Bring them in, be friendly, be interested in what they're there for. What. What reason are they attending the show? What challenges do they face? Are they looking for specific suppliers? You know, don't just jump out and give them a sales speech like, hey, look, here we are, we do this, this isn't this. Do you want our business card and a brochure? Be actively interested in them. Ask them questions, then listen, make them feel comfortable that they're there. So, yeah, that would be my advice. Like, be confident, have a plan, have an objective and listen. Listen to the people that are there that you're talking to.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

I want to use that side of thinking as well and take a step back as well. You know, outside of events we have a lot of clients as well who are remote. We ourselves are a bit remote. We also have an office. It's quite a hybrid system, outside of events, potentially on your calls with clients, in a meeting, just mingling with your colleagues, and so on. What are our advice to all of these physicists who operate mainly online, so that they don't miss out on the benefits of human interactions?

Rich Harper

There's a couple of things. You've got your customers and your clients. Try to get out and meet with your clients regularly, face to face. If you have an office, invite them to the office as a team, as employees, as staff, to the office as a team, as employees, as staff, regular social meetups, if you can. We are, you know, the digital marketing team within Brew are based from Guadalupe, portugal, the west coast of Britain, london, manchester, the south coast. We are all over the place and you know most of our interaction is done digitally. But we do take those opportunities when we can to meet. We have quarterly meetups at various offices that we have in London and Norwich.

Rich Harper

That face-to-face time with your team and hopefully my team will attest to the fact that last year, you know the end of year conference we all managed to get together is just valuable time to build relationships with each other and do the same with your customers. You know your customers are valued. They're spending money with you. Meet with them by all means business related, but it works. You take your client out for dinner. You wine and dine them. It's a bit old school but it works. It's those occasions where you actually get more out of it when you're sitting there talking about dinner, you get to know that person a little bit more. All of a sudden, you find out that there's other challenges or there's other things that potentially are now opportunities for you to come back to amazing, amazing way to wrap that up and I cannot agree.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira

One thing that, time and time again, has stayed true. You know, before the pandemic, after the pandemic, whatever it is, virtual worlds if you ever are in an office, it's that human connection, and not just any connection, but a genuine connection that really works and transcends barriers, transcends culture, whatever it is, if it's with a client or just your, you know all you get work.

Michele Raffaelli

Wonderful. Thank you so much, debbie. That is all we have time for today, so thank you so much for listening. We hope you found some useful snippets from our sessions and you're able to go and put those into your own marketing strategy. We love that you've made it this far through the lesson. If it is not too much of a challenge, please could you go and recommend this show to one friend or colleague that you think would enjoy listening. Thank you to the Brew Digital team for their research and input into today's sessions. To Debbie for hosting her first session I think she smashed it and make sure to go and check out our past episodes as well. Subscribe on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts and we will see you on the next one. I've been Hayden and these are the marketers of the universe.