Big vs small: the marketing difference

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript has been created using fireflies.ai – a transcription service. It has not been edited by a human and therefore may contain mistakes. 

00:03: Dom Hawes 

Welcome to Unicorny, the antidote to post rationalized business books. I'm your host, Dom Hawes. This is a podcast about the business of marketing, how to create value, who's doing it well, and how you can help your business win the future. Marketing is a career that seldom works in straight lines. The more people that join the Unicorny project, the more I realize that today hardly any marketing leaders got to the top by following a structured career path. Now that in itself isn't necessarily a problem. We've already talked about the issues caused by the lack of foundational and ongoing career development for marketers on this podcast. So we're not going to go there today, but we are going to speak to someone whose career maybe illustrates why such a structured path is almost impossible to create.  

00:53: Dom Hawes 

If you're in finance, the differences between a start-up and an enterprise are about scale. Well, I'm sure there are loads more differences than that. And if you're shouting at my ignorance right now, well, connect me on LinkedIn and educate me. But from my oversimplified viewpoint, there are generally accepted accounting principles that are applied to every set of accounts, large and small. This is called gap, and gap is the convention all accounts are produced to, and that's a good thing. It helps us read accounts and know that we're comparing apples with apples when we try to benchmark our performance against others. Similarly, if you're a lawyer, the law is the law. You can't make it up or experiment with new law, or you'll quickly be disbarred, jailed, or both.  

01:34: Dom Hawes 

But while there is a generally accepted method for marketing and an increasing body of work that talks to marketing effectiveness, the process of marketing is just not the same. From company to company, sector to sector, in a start-up or in enterprise. Maybe you say that is part of the problem. I don't think it is. And today we're going to explore why that is by telling Emma Kriskinans’ story. Now, before introducing Emma properly, the first line on her LinkedIn about is going to give you a flavour of what you're about to experience. It reads like this.  

02:08: Emma Kriskinans 

If I look back at my career, I realize what all my experiences have in common is that I've had the confidence to throw myself in deeper and deeper water and always figure out how to swim.  

02:16: Dom Hawes 

Emma is the VP Global Marketing for Tyk, which is a SaaS based application API management platform. Tyk is now, through its series B and its open source API gateway, has been installed by tens of thousands of businesses, including some of the world's largest enterprises. Its software is trusted with mission critical systems in highly regulated industries. But, you know, it wasn't always that way. Of course. Emma joined the business in its very first year. She was colleague number 17, so she dived headlong into the world of start-ups. And she did it from corporate via a short but highly valuable sergeant in agency. As our conversation today unfolds, I suspect big business marketers amongst you might feel I'm being a bit anticorporate, but I suspect smaller start-ups and scale up marketers might feel the other way. And for the record, I'm neither.  

03:10: Dom Hawes 

I have huge respect for anyone and everyone who chooses a career in marketing, whatever the size of your company. But my experience is that there are big differences between working big and working small. And we're going to explore those today. And I'm going to come back to it at the end because my thesis is all about that. But right now, let's go to the studio and meet Emma properly. Hey, Emma. While researching this show, it occurred to me you might be a marketing masochist. Because diving into deeper and deeper water, then working out how to swim, well, it's one approach, but not one that many have the appetite or the guts for.  

03:47: Emma Kriskinans 

Well, first of all, I absolutely love the term marketing masochist. And I think once we finish this conversation, I'm going to go outside and quickly figure out which domains I can take to secure this. This could be my new brand that we're building right here, right now, in real time.  

04:01: Dom Hawes 

Well, if you do decide to make it your brand, you're more than welcome to buy the trademark from me for a smallish price. And the domain names, obvs? Okay, I lied. I haven't registered any of them. But if you don't get there first, I might do. I've got form in this area. Anyway, Emma, let's talk about start-ups. Because the time pressure in start-ups is enormous. There's no guaranteed Runway. The budgets are probably small. You're probably having to do everything from scratch. That's not a move many people are prepared to make. What made you want to make that change? To go from the corporate career you had into the wild west of start-ups?  

04:37: Emma Kriskinans 

I wish I could give you a great philosophical answer as to why I did it, but I think I just have a really strong sense that growth is uncomfortable. But it's not only necessary, it's also really good for us.  

04:50: Dom Hawes 

Yeah, I agree. Look, personal growth is good, but I think it often comes with pain or sacrifice. Neither of which are that great. Looking back on the start-ups I've been involved with, they've all been good for me in the long run, but I still remember the short term pain. One of the things that struck me, and I'm hoping that you are going to be able to help me explain this, is there are a lot of differences working as a marketer when you're working in big companies and when you're working in start-ups. So maybe a good place to start today is just to explore what some of those differences are.  

05:18: Dom Hawes 

So in your career, you've seen three very different environments, working in large organizations, in agency, and now for the last seven years being at Tyk, what do you think made you the way you are? Tell us a little bit about your story.  

05:34: Emma Kriskinans 

I'm just going to say that I think the reason that I am such a marketing masochist is that I'm really motivated by impact and achievement. I think really it's the fact that I want to live a life that's full of experiences, and I believe that we're kind of here to learn as much as we can and have as many positive experiences we can. And also going back to the experiences that I had or the upbringing that I had with an entrepreneurial father, I think maybe on some level I just always knew that it was possible and it was in my hands. It's down to me to make the change. When I joined Savills, I thought, I am going to climb that ladder and I'm going to be CMO of a FTSE 100 company.  

06:13: Emma Kriskinans 

I mean, Savvy's on the Footsie 100 at that, but we don't think it still is. It's FTSE 250. Then I went to RBS. I got so much great experience there. I've had so many fantastic colleagues. But I was looking at the role of the CMO, who was a fantastic woman, and thinking, I'm not sure I do want her job because I could see how many layers there were in between people within the organization. And I remember actually one thing stood out where I took it upon myself to use a process or use an internal tooling that hadn't been used before. It had been used before, but not for the purpose. And people were quite shocked that I'd done it, and not in a positive way.  

06:49: Emma Kriskinans 

But my brain was thinking, but surely this is a good thing to do because I'm sort of saving time. We're all paid decent amount of money and I've saved time there. But from their perspective, it was much more like you need to go through the hierarchy, the proper hierarchical route.  

07:02: Dom Hawes 

And there, in a nutshell, maybe, is one of the differences between big corporate and start-up. Like in a start-up environment where everyone's an innovator and everyone's trying to push boundaries, you've got a Runway, but of course, Runway runs out at some stage, particularly if you've got venture funding. So everyone's thinking about, how can we move faster? How can we better? That kind of behaviour in a start-up, I think, is applauded. Whereas maybe in big companies, not so much so, because in big companies, you kind of have to have process, or it would be chaos, wouldn't it?  

07:31: Emma Kriskinans 

It's not to say that you can't have entrepreneurialism in big companies. Savills was a great entrepreneurial culture. We were given a lot of Leeway. The kind of emphasis really was you could try anything if it might make or save us money. And then if it does, then you will come back and report back and we'll figure out a way to kind of bake it into the productivity of the performance centres. But looking back, it wasn't like I made a conscious decision. It was more like, I suppose, mentally, what I think of it as is like you're in a video game, maybe you're like Super Mario, and you get to the end of the point and there's just walls. There's no way that you can make it through the wall. And in those moments, I've always chosen to find a way.  

08:10: Emma Kriskinans 

The next way for that was agency. So I decided, okay, I've been at corporates now for five years. I've learned a lot. I've really cut my teeth. I've got some great calibre of experience and names on my cv. And now I wanted to go and do something totally different. So I went into agency life, and at that point, I was absolutely terrified. Absolutely terrified. That's where I met James Hurst, who went on to hire me later on again at Tyk. But I remember him being my boss and saying to him, I'm just absolutely terrified that anything I say is going to have a commercial implication that I don't understand, because I've not come from a world where that happens, really. I mean, everything has a commercial implication, really, but it doesn't have a raw physical.  

08:47: Emma Kriskinans 

Am I promising something to the client that no one else can actually deliver? I'd never pitched before. I'd been internal client facing. I'd never been external client facing before. But again, I think that was another huge education for me. I feel like every kind of stage has been another education. That's what I've always kind of sought out. How can I learn more? How can I understand more? I don't think I know anything, really. There's still so much to know.  

09:08: Dom Hawes 

It might be no one good thinks they know everything. There are people who think they know everything, but they tend not to be that good. We all suffer from impostor syndrome, I think, because there's always so much to know. Okay, so you didn't jump straight from Big Corp into start-up. You went through agency. You really are a marketing master, kid.  

09:23: Emma Kriskinans 

I know. Not only was I introduced to pitches, I was introduced to the Friday afternoon, we have a pitch on Monday. I was introduced to that, too.  

09:32: Dom Hawes 

We've all been there. Or the, what are you doing? I'm going home. No, you're not. You've seen, actually, then, so you've seen corporate, you've seen agency now, you've seen start-up, like, across those three groupings. What do you think the attributes needed.  

09:47: Emma Kriskinans 

For a good marketer are talking about not knowing anything. I think for those people that are sitting there thinking, I've always wanted to make the move because I think there's a lot of people out there who do want to make the move from bigger corporates to agency life or start-up life. And they're quite, like you say, they're very different environments, but I believe truly that a lot of people can do them. And what tends to hold us back is that feeling, that fear, that impostor syndrome, that fear that we're not good enough. We don't really know anything. But to go back to your previous point, I think often those people that don't feel they know anything, they're always looking for what they can learn and how they can grow.  

10:18: Emma Kriskinans 

So I do think, though, there are a couple of things that are really important to move from one to the other. And I think the first one is you need to really have, if not a fascination with business, then you need to have a sense of commercial acumen. And I believe the first one is maybe something that you're born with or maybe something that's part of your upbringing. But the second one, I definitely believe you can hone that over the years. I mean, definitely that's what happened with me. I feel like when I was at reading room and Adelphi Digital, the agencies that I was at, I definitely had kind of a fast tracked in the deep end lesson around commercials.  

10:51: Emma Kriskinans 

So that's one of the key ones, I think, that you need to know, because obviously when you're in a start-up or an agency, they're much more tangible commercial implications for everything. The second thing I would say is you have to have a high propensity for risk and risk taking. And that's not least because obviously in start-up and scale up land there is a Runway, it might run out. You have to do everything you can to try and stop that from happening. But I think also it's the fact that things change regularly and there is regular change. So, for instance, I remember the very early days of Tyk where I was the only marketing person, and every couple of weeks there would maybe be a little opportunity come up and you had to really assess, is this the opportunity that I should be pushing?  

11:33: Emma Kriskinans 

Right, like going for right now, because were completely, really unknown. We weren't the brand that we are today in our space. So you might go down this little rabbit hole for two weeks along with everything else that you're doing, and in two weeks time, either it completely disappears. Was never anything to begin with, or the strategies change, the tactics change. You're having to swerve again. You're having to pivot. Not pivot in terms of, I don't mean that in the kind of lean start-up sort of methodology type way. I mean more like you have to literally just pivot and move on to something else. And I think you can't get precious about your ideas generally. You have to give something a go. If it works, fantastic, double down on it. If it doesn't, you have to learn from it and move on.  

12:12: Emma Kriskinans 

And I think that's something that I think people from maybe bigger businesses need to be aware of.  

12:20: Dom Hawes 

In a couple of minutes, we are going to dig a little bit deeper into the things that big can learn from small and vice versa. Before that, let's just refresh what we've learned so far. Comparing marketing roles in start-ups and corporates, we've already identified a few differences and how those differences impact the work of marketers. Now, I'm deliberately going to generalize here. That is my job in summarizing. So please don't shout at your speaker. Apart from anything else, I won't hear it. If you do want to shout at me, join others from the Unicorny collective who've called me out online by replying to one of our posts on LinkedIn. Or if you want to be abusive, I think it's probably better you do that privately. So message me directly on the LinkedIn channel. Right here goes.  

13:02: Dom Hawes 

In start-ups, there is a greater acceptance of risk because you need quick decision making. It's where good is good enough comes from. Small, fast paced environments encourage innovation, autonomy and action, and it's often easier for marketers to see the direct impact of their efforts there. Well, I guess also the outputs are probably smaller and the environment is less complex, so it's probably easier to see. But on the side of bigger businesses, there's often more resource and more structure. Now while that can slow down decision making, it can also provide a much wider scope for projects. So bigger businesses don't generally believe that good is good enough. They pursue great. Jim Collins wrote a whole book about it, which I'm sure you have read as a curious marketer. So businesses at different stages of their evolution prize different things.  

13:58: Dom Hawes 

And if you're lucky enough to have the best of both worlds by being in the innovation or incubation unit of a big business, you'll prize speed, certainly, but you may also have the resource to seek greatness. Earlier, Emma talked about how constraints can actually spur creativity. And of course, we have seen that before in big business that are heavily regulated. On this very podcast. It was a key takeaway from our conversations with Duarte Garrido when he was at Standard Chartered and with Lion Trust's Simon Hildrey. And we're going to link those shows on today's show notes, which you'll find at Unicorny Co. UK in case you want a refresher. Now, whether you are working with the resources of a large company or in the fast paced but constrained environment of a start-up, I think there are lessons to be learned from each other.  

14:47: Dom Hawes 

And that is where we're going right after this short message. We've established that corporate and start-up land or scale up land are very different, and they probably pose very different challenges for marketers. Now, we're not saying one is better than the other, of course, but they are different. And I think they could probably learn lots from each other. If you had to identify three things that you think marketers in big business can learn from marketers who spent time in start-up and scale up, what are those?  

15:20: Emma Kriskinans 

The first one I thought about really is follow the money. You always need to be thinking when, whatever kind of size of business you're at, where is the money coming from, and how do I get myself into a position where we can make more of it? How can we determine where that money comes from, where we're making money, where we're saving money? When you're working in a big business and there tends to be lots of teams sprawling across different regions, it can be really helpful to determine who has got the mandate through the budget. And so that's another reason I think it's an important one to keep in mind.  

15:49: Dom Hawes 

I love the concept of follow the money. Follow the money is the first point a big grin came on my face. It's such an important point that, and I think in start-up land and scale up land, where you're so acutely aware of the commercials, and I'd imagine it's probably a lot more transparent. I think everyone feels closer to money, but it's easily possible to be divorced from that in that larger environment. I think a lot of the stuff we've been talking about on this podcast is about getting more commercial, understanding marketing's contribution to profitable revenue. So I love follow the money. Thank you for that. That's gone down into Unicorny project annals. What do you got next for us?  

16:26: Emma Kriskinans 

So the second one is actually following on from that, especially something that I think is really important and you can do in any size business. And if you're not as strong or if you've got some concerns about your level of commercial acumen, it's something that can really help hone it is really find the formula. So find the formula that sits behind your business. And this is actually something that I learned originally at Saville's. So even though they're a big business, they did a fantastic initiative where they would give the marketing team P L training. And it was absolutely fascinating. And I think that kind of developed, again at reading room with Margaret Manning, who was an accountant by profession, and she set up an agency. And really were learned how to like, what was the data, what were the numbers on the P L?  

17:10: Emma Kriskinans 

Every team lead owned the P L. So when I got promoted into a lead of a division of the agency, I had to be showing the number of proposals, the number of pitches, and in Savills, it was the number. I mean, talking about the residential side of the business here it was how many viewings get arranged from those viewings, how many offers get made, how many offers go through to completion. At Tyk, it's things like the number of free trials that we have, the number of qualified trials, the number of sqls, the number of deals created, the deals that are closed, one pipeline revenue. So in every business, and you don't have to be physically close to the CFO to try and determine, figure out what are those levers that you can pull to make a positive impact on the business.  

17:51: Emma Kriskinans 

And I can guarantee that anybody in a business they won't necessarily be able to completely figure it out, but they can get a pretty good idea from talking to people or from their own mandate or remit what it is that they're trying to sort of move the needle on.  

18:05: Dom Hawes 

Again, we talk about analytics and statistics and KPRs and OKRs and that kind of stuff quite a lot. Finding the formula implies a little bit more than that, though. In my mind, you've got to find those metrics that correlate with business success. Because I think a lot of the time we're told, and I think we may have been mentioned it on several podcasts in the past, we've said, oh, yes, you should keep your marketing metrics to yourselves and only talk to the board about business metrics.  

18:35: Dom Hawes 

I think what's missing from that, actually, is if you have, in your words, found the formula, if you found the formula, you understand which of your metrics correlate directly to business success, then it's your responsibility to make that clear to the CFO and share them with the board, I think, because that may be a leading indicator, and those are the hardest kind of indicators to get. So, number two, bang. What have you got for us? Number three?  

18:58: Emma Kriskinans 

Well, number three was really a reminder that marketing matters. And I think, again, when you're in a huge organization, like going back to the previous point, you can be moving the needle on certain metrics that are important to you, but you have no idea necessarily how they're actually helping at the bottom end of the funnel. Since I've been at Tyk the last seven years, in that seven year period, every single year that I've been there, inbound marketing has directly brought us between 75% to 95% of our revenue. So you just can't argue with that. It's absolutely critical to our business success, and it's critical to the strategy of the business, short term, medium term, long term. Without wanting to sound like I'm bragging about it's more like, really as a reminder, like, it does move the needle, it does have an impact.  

19:43: Emma Kriskinans 

And I think, I don't want people to get despondent, really, about when maybe they're, you know, what am I doing? Is it really making a difference? Marketing does make a difference, and we see it every day, and I want to remind people of that.  

19:55: Dom Hawes 

Bingo. Absolutely. Exactly. God, I could not agree more with you, Emma. Look, dear listener, if you are listening now and you're in a role where you are feeling a little bit despondent, listen to Emma. We have all been there I will say this to you. Nil carborundum illegitimi. Google it. Anyway, Emma, let's flip that now and look at what scale ups can learn from bigger businesses.  

20:18: Emma Kriskinans 

Absolutely loads. Heaps. In fact, I think cutting my teeth in corporate has really been sort of the making of me and my effectiveness as a marketer. And as somebody who's been told I am so persistent I will go through walls, maybe through some of the hierarchy. But again, got another three things for you. The first one is the awareness of just how important brand is. And I think that a lot of start-ups and scale ups don't really understand the impact. Whereas if you're working at a massive company, often the reason you're working for them in the first place is because you're attracted to them from the brand and what they stand for. That's most of the case. I mean, think about Savile's again. They've got an absolutely fantastic brand.  

20:56: Emma Kriskinans 

You're really sort of given that education from the inside about the importance of having consistency in the communications that you're sending out, having some sense of brand tone and voice, brand personality. And I think that creating the Tyk brand the way that we have and purposely making Tyk very different to others in the space has meant that we have stood out. And that has been a huge part of what's helped get us great attraction in the market and take up more mind share and market share over the years.  

21:23: Dom Hawes 

Awareness of the brand. It's really easy in start-ups to forget actually, because you're so busy trying to deliver short term goals. You have to take a step back and think about brand development too.  

21:33: Emma Kriskinans 

There was a thinking in the past that start-ups weren't really caring about marketing. I don't think that's the case, but I still think brand gets overlooked.  

21:41: Dom Hawes 

Yeah, I know engineer led start-ups, often they don't give a damn about marketing. They think that good products sell themselves. We all know that's not the case. Okay, so what's the second lesson that you think start-ups can learn from Big Corp?  

21:52: Emma Kriskinans 

This is probably a bit more of an obvious one, but process start-ups obviously hire generally people that will get things done quickly. And what tends to happen is that a few years in you look around and realize, okay, lots of great things are happening, but occasional bad things are happening. And it's probably because we don't have much process. I mean, that's a real benefit of hiring someone from a bigger business because they do tend to think about that and they tend to also think about the reputational risk, things that can go wrong with process. So I think a lot of that can also be intertwined into the brand piece. I think there's a lot of investment that happens into brand and crisis communications when things are going wrong.  

22:32: Emma Kriskinans 

And again, that tends to be something that start-ups don't think about till a few years in. And the first big crisis has already happened. We've seen that a lot of start-ups lately, scale ups.  

22:41: Dom Hawes 

Yeah, process is a hard one though, isn't it? Because especially if you hate bureaucracy as much as I do, I think certainly people that haven't worked in start-up or scale up before come in from Big Corp and think, oh, look at this place, it's the wild west. We're going to teach you how to behave like a big company. And actually one of the strategic advantages you have as a small company is you can be nimble. So if too much process comes in too early, that can be a real issue, and I've seen that. But the flip side, which is what I think you're saying, is if you don't address your lack of process early, you end up with a complete cacophony of noise and chaos and things just start grinding to a halt.  

23:18: Emma Kriskinans 

I mean, Dom, I was that person, I joined the start-up thinking, oh, there needs to be a process here, there needs to be a process there. And I learnt quite quickly. Well, I think I started doing it and then I realized that this was a complete waste of time because it was taking up too much time for me when I could be executing on something more impactful. So I definitely learned that the hard way. At the same time, I do think the importance of it is having the awareness of it. It's having that awareness of what is the point. Okay, if I've had to explain this three times, then maybe I don't need a process, but I need to document it.  

23:50: Emma Kriskinans 

I need to make sure someone else can learn from this so that I don't have to keep repeating myself, especially as the business gets bigger, especially for a remote first business like we are.  

23:58: Dom Hawes 

I think it's a really good point actually, that, look, I don't like process, but I know it's important. Maybe there's a tie back here to the second point you made. Find a formula. Like once you find a formula, document it, and maybe that's what you need. A lot of start-up people aren't the kind of people that will then document that formula, and maybe that's what the start-ups can learn from corporate is that be relentless about documenting what works.  

24:21: Emma Kriskinans 

I'll hold my hands up and say I've become almost something from one extreme to the other. I'm now like I have to really force myself to document things, which is so important, like I say, because we're remote first, a lot of async working going on. Also, the other part that's important to remember is it doesn't have to be set in stone. Just having some sort of a process doesn't mean that it's that way forever. Same with the formula. I mean, for a long time, just going back to that briefly wasn't necessarily the right formula, but we knew that these were things that were having an impact. We couldn't necessarily say how or what the relationship was, but we knew we had to keep an eye on them.  

24:52: Dom Hawes 

Yeah, okay, fair enough. You got me on process. What's next?  

24:55: Emma Kriskinans 

So the third one is a proper corporate jargon term that I think is so important and so overlooked. And I bang on about it quite a lot, which is change management. And when I was working at the agency, and obviously having experienced it when I worked at a big company myself, I think when I worked for RBS, it was when they still had more than 120,000 people working for them. You're working on multiple transformational projects and a lot of the time people are trying to push these forward without thinking about the fact that people generally don't like change. And I think that's something that you really learn much more about at a big company. You're much more primed for it. You understand the context. You are speaking from being one of those people that's having to go through change.  

25:38: Emma Kriskinans 

And that's a lesson that I think can be applied to practically anything in life, especially as someone who loves to repeatedly experience great change. And I think it's really underestimated as a skill. And actually, I use it a lot in terms even now for thinking about trying to connect better with our ideal customer profile. Because often APIs are directly linked to transformational change or big business change. And so you really have to think about how you take people on a journey and make it easier for them to buy into the change. How do you have to make it something that they lean into? And finally, I think it connects to something else that is generally potentially quite unfashionable, but I think is really vital is internal marketing. It's something that is seen as not necessary.  

26:23: Emma Kriskinans 

It's only needed in a time of crisis in big companies. But the amount of people I see even at Tyk today who bring about, they have a fantastic idea. Our company is full of passionate, intelligent, talented people, and they will launch an idea, launch an initiative, maybe even just on slack, maybe on our company blog. And they are surprised that people are not overnight completely going for it, completely embracing it. And it's because there's been no thought as to how to communicate. What is that change, essentially. And so I think internal marketing gets a bit of a bad sort of reputation, and often it's often the first thing to go unless you are in a time of crisis. But I think it's a really important skill that everybody in an organization, not just marketing, should be thinking of.  

27:07: Emma Kriskinans 

And I think it's something that marketers from big businesses do have a head start on.  

27:11: Dom Hawes 

I think you've absolutely so nailed something on the head, particularly as if you're an entrepreneur, a leader. You tend to just do stuff and expect everyone's going to be there with you and they're not. Then you get frustrated that you find yourself isolated and that no one's with you. But you've only got yourself to blame. And especially if you've got one of those leadership everywhere models where you encourage people to innovate. Internal marketing, the concept of using change management style tactics to get people on board with your idea or your initiative, or how you're trying to improve the business, I don't see it a lot. I think that's a fabulous observation.  

27:45: Emma Kriskinans 

The other thing is that people tend to think that internal marketing is, like I said, writing a slack message, writing a blog, maybe even doing like a little lunch and learn which start-ups that's happening more and more. But I think people underestimate the power of, first of all, getting people involved early and often it takes time. That's why people don't want to do it. And it is difficult having to bring people on a change on a journey, but getting people involved early one to one, getting their feedback, baking it in so that you start to develop more advocates around the company. And another big one that I find really useful, probably from my agency days, is workshops.  

28:22: Emma Kriskinans 

Because I think people tend as well to forget that the actual workshop is not just a way to get feedback from people, but it's also a way to communicate your idea and get people on board, literally by doing an activity or by sharing some feedback or some insight from their area of the business. You want people really to think they came up with the idea themselves, which can sometimes be quite galling because you might want to be taking the credit.  

28:45: Dom Hawes 

But when they repeat it back to you and say, hey, how clever am I? Yeah, bastards. So marketing leaders from big businesses and marketing leaders from start-ups or scale ups, well, they both face distinct challenges and opportunities, and we've just heard three things that marketers in each can learn from each other. I think if you distill everything we've talked about today and you start to explore why the differences in approach might exist, you come to a defining observation. I'm not sure I'd go as far to say it's an insight, but it does create a lens through which you can view people, process platforms and activity. And the observation is this how you market in your business depends on where you sit in the balance between agility and stability. Let me explain.  

29:36: Dom Hawes 

If you're working in a start-up, you probably don't have a great deal to work with. Your budgets are small, you don't have any track record, you don't have much awareness. So you have to be agile because you need to experiment to work out how you are going to get traction for your business. So you index right to the extreme in the balance between agility and stability, and that is going to inform how you do things and actually, frankly, what you do. Whereas on the flip side, if you're working in a corporate, you probably do have a lot to work with. So stability is going to be much more important. And that probably explains why you're going to have a great deal more structure and process in place. Now, as I've said before, one thing is no better than the other, they're just different.  

30:21: Dom Hawes 

But I thought it was really interesting that Emma's lessons really striked the heart of that observation, that what you do and how you do it is dictated by where you are on the agility versus stability spectrum. Emma advised markets in larger organizations to follow the money, find the formula and remind yourself that marketing matters. Follow the money is an interesting starting point. Several episodes of this podcast have talked about the importance of marketing as a function and how it needs to get a lot more commercial. We've talked about being able to identify both revenue and profit that is derived directly from your marketing activity. But following the money in this instance just isn't just about allocating revenue against marketing. It's about having a deep understanding of how the business you are in makes money the business model.  

31:12: Dom Hawes 

Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of why we do things and how they make a difference. And this is one of my problems when I hear people talking about marketing as a profit center. Unless you're an agency marketing cannot be a profit center any more than sales can be a profit center or accounting can be a profit center. If you're a bank, your profit center is related to banking. If you're a printer, you create value by printing. If you're a CRM B two b SaaS, you create value by giving your customers insight into their customers profit and revenues derive from delivering value to your customers, not delivering value to your colleagues. So when I hear people talking about marketing as a profit center, my teeth start to itch a little bit.  

31:57: Dom Hawes 

Again, sure, you might be able to track revenue back to marketing effort, and I sincerely hope that there's more revenue coming in than you are spending to get it, but that doesn't make you a profit center. And calling it that confuses the role of marketing. Again, for a future episode, I've been conducting some research. It's a very small experiment where through LinkedIn, I've asked marketers to define marketing. I've also gone and sourced five or six definitions from highly credible institutions. So far I've got around 30 contributions to my small test, and you won't be surprised to know I've got 30 different definitions like no one can agree on what marketing is. The best simple definition that I've seen recently comes from Phil Barden, author of the seminal book on decision science, decode, and he describes marketing. Thus, marketing is essentially about behavior change.  

32:49: Dom Hawes 

Our ultimate goal is to influence purchase decisions. Now, I know there's probably a lot more to it than that. We all know that. But of all the definitions that I've been working with, I think they all can point back to this one. We create value, influencing decisions and creating behavior change in favor of our products or services. That's why follow the money resonates so well with me. Emma didn't say be the money like the profit center false prophets would have you believe. Follow the money. Understand how our actions ladder up to business success, measured in pounds and pence, dollars and cents, without feeling so insecure that you need to claim any of it.  

33:31: Dom Hawes 

Incidentally, if you want to get hold of that list of definitions that I've been working with, I'm going to send it out to our mailing list so you can join that at Unicorny Co. UK and fill out the form on the right hand side of the homepage. Right we're now going to go back to the studio to meet Emma Gen, who's going to tell us about her latest challenge, which is mentoring a new start-up. Emma has joined a regulatory technology also known as Regtech it's a start-up called Trustworks and she's joined as a non exec advisor. Now, trustworks is a Valencia based data privacy management platform that helps businesses build privacy programs and they're doing well. Recent logos they've added include Typeform, Flywire and Glovo. Think Uber.  

34:12: Dom Hawes 

But in Spain and off microphone, Emma told me how amazingly tight their product marketing fit is already. So let's hop back to the studio for the final few minutes of my chat with Emma to catch up on her new gig. So you're back in the deep end, you're helping. I mean, I love Regtech, actually, bizarrely, because I hate bureaucracy. So any technology that means that I don't have to think about it. And GDPR is one hell of a lot of bureaucracy I reckon is good. So you're advising a start-up on their marketing. Where have you started with them? How are you trying to get them to think about their go to market?  

34:48: Emma Kriskinans 

So when I joined trustworks, I was really impressed by how mature their marketing thinking was when they hadn't got a marketing hire at that point. That was why they'd approached me, to kind of help them sort of flesh out what that might look like. So they already have a really clear idea of who their ideal customer profile is. Like I said, it's scale ups who have just gone to hire that first privacy hire that person that is going to kind of make the impact, make that positive change. So this is a tool that's going to be able to, that they can be equipped with to go run and operationalize the program internally and not be seen as a gatekeeper.  

35:22: Emma Kriskinans 

So I was really impressed because again, like I say, when I joined tight, were doing everything from first principle, so we didn't have any of that. So really I've joined them to help them hit their next milestone, which will be a series, a fundraise. The big part of that really is, it's funny because obviously they're all about operationalizing your privity program, but really what they need help with is beginning to operationalize marketing within the company. So they've just made their first marketing hire, which is fantastic, and then they'll start building out the business. But really it's been about product messaging. How can they start message testing, for instance, and also identifying within even their icps? What's an even tighter version that maybe they can double down on in terms of segmentation and targeting?  

36:06: Dom Hawes 

Yeah, the tighter you define your market, the easier it is to dominate it. There's an opinion sometimes of marketers I think when they look at joining start-ups, because everyone reads about disruptive technology, they want it to be massively disruptive. And they feel like we all know the more disruptive things are, the higher the risk, potentially the higher the reward. And I think many marketers think that if it's not worth joining a technology company that isn't massively disruptive because they're not going to become a billionaire unicorn, but there aren't many of them, which is why they're called unicorns. And I know that's not your view, or indeed your dad's, and he was a tech entrepreneur. What was his advice?  

36:42: Emma Kriskinans 

So my dad has given me lots of advice over the years, but the one that really stuck with me specifically when I was joining Tyk, was that he said, if you want to go far in business, then the best bets are on things that are potentially mystifying to people, quite boring even, but that actually everyone depends on. So I think API management is a great example of that. And so actually is trustworks privacy management tool, because it's speaking to something that affects most people, even if they don't realize it. Even if people on the street don't realize that their data is subject to GDPR requirements, even if people who are, I don't know, using their online banking, they don't realize how many APIs are being managed in that transaction in one simple transaction.  

37:26: Emma Kriskinans 

Both those things are at the beating heart of the digital experiences that we use today.  

37:30: Dom Hawes 

It's great advice. Speaking of advice, we're out of time today, I'm afraid. But I don't want to go without asking you to give some advice. If you were going to give one piece of advice, what would it be?  

37:40: Emma Kriskinans 

The piece of advice I would give to any corporate marketer thinking about joining a start-up is to go in with your eyes open, ask lots of questions of the founders. They'll expect it, and honestly, they'll probably love it because it shows an interest in their business that you'll be joining and being a huge part of. Listen to your gut as well, because I think most of the time we have so much focus on data in terms of quantitative data, that sometimes I think it's easy to forget that in the early days of a start-up that just simply doesn't usually exist. So you really have to listen to yourself and the wisdom that you have inside of yourself, the feeling that you get from talking to those founders. How much do you trust them? Do you get a sense of trust the other way, too?  

38:23: Emma Kriskinans 

And then I think if you're someone that is looking to learn a lot, be challenged a lot, be thrown into the deep end. If you're looking to sort of learn how to swim, I guess, then that's the advice I would give.  

38:37: Dom Hawes 

Well, there we go. Have to say, time really flew in the studio today. We talked about so much more, but we had to be pretty brutal in the edit to bring you our usual length of show. Now, it's been really nice today to record a show where I haven't really had to have to rant for once. So thank you, Emma, for your positivity. Now, just before we go, I do want to talk about today's subject and why we chose it. I mean, why we chose to explore the differences between big and small and the different demands of the roles. Well, firstly, the most important thing for any content creator like unicorny is we choose interesting subjects and we tell good stories. And Emma, thank you so much. You have given us that.  

39:18: Dom Hawes 

But also the things that Emma's talking about, I think illustrate something that I want to get onto. Now, Emma's got amazing experience in three different environments, so she was an ideal person to talk to us about the difference between them. Why did I want to explore them? Well, I hear people talking about marketing all the time as though it's one thing. And these days, marketing isn't one thing, it is many things. And if you've listened to any of my output to date, you will have heard me say this before. But I'm going to say it again because I think it needs repeating. Marketing is many different things. Marketing is a business. It's the way people like me add value through the delivery of marketing services.  

39:57: Dom Hawes 

And it's the way people like you add value to your businesses by employing practitioners, whether they're in house, in agency, or blended. Which of course, brings us to marketing is a practice. It's a body of knowledge, systems, processes, technique, and playbooks that are applied by practitioners to change behaviors, identify need, win markets, and so on. It's the four P's, the matrices, the models and the frameworks. Marketing is also a department. It's where people with marketing in their job title sit in an.org chart. Now, there are plenty of people in your organization, by the way, who do not have the word marketing in their job titles and who are not in the marketing department. But they will be tasked to do things that are technically from the practice of marketing. And those are the people that we call untitled marketers on this show.  

40:46: Dom Hawes 

They're different from shadow marketers. I will define the difference on the show notes for you. Finally. Sadly, marketing to many is also a verb.  

40:57: Emma Kriskinans 

Hi, is that Dom?  

40:58: Dom Hawes 

Yep. Oh, hi.  

40:59: Emma Kriskinans 

Hi.  

40:59: Dom Hawes 

It's Liara here. We need to do some marketing on this product. Oh, God help me, I don't like marketing as a verb. People who say things like, we need to do some marketing on this are usually looking for better PowerPoint templates or some rudimentary communication, both of which are outside my area of expertise as a marketer. So why does this matter? Because marketing isn't one thing, and I think that as marketers, we need to be very clear about that. I started today's show talking about how accountants have generally accepted accounting principles, gap, as it's known, and it ensures that all the output from accounting endeavor is the same so it can be compared A-P-L-A balance sheet, and a cash flow. In the business of marketing, our aim is to create outputs that are different.  

41:45: Dom Hawes 

So, sure, there is a body of knowledge, all the things that practitioners know. And while there should be a generally accepted method, the skill, the art, the magic of marketing is to apply that body of knowledge differently depending on the needs of our business. Your business needs a very different approach to mine. If we all took the same approach and did the same thing, we'd all look the same and we'd all sound the same. But our customers, too, have different needs. They have different compelling reasons to buy, and that's what our output is designed to influence. So today, by contrasting two very different experiences, both experiences, by the way that Emma has lived, I hope in a small way we've been able to illustrate this. So what's the takeaway? Well, only you know what matters to your business.  

42:38: Dom Hawes 

But there are six solid thoughts in the body of today's work that you can apply from today. Am I following the money? Is my team, my effort, and our output following the money to create value for my business? Or you might ask yourself, how am I finding a formula, test and refine to create repeatable playbooks that work for you, drive effectiveness and efficiency at the same time, and maximize your bang for buck. How am I making sure that marketing matters? How you matter and how you make it felt that your work matters depends on what your business prizes. If it's agility and market making, make sure your C suite colleagues know how you're delivering that. If it's stability, market growth, or margin growth, communicate that internally. You might want to think about your brand. Am I growing belief in my brand now?  

43:28: Dom Hawes 

We're often told not to use the word brand when speaking to other executives because they think it's a fluffy concept. I don't think it is, but you have a choice. You can either call it reputation or some other euphemism to win easier acceptance, or you might choose to start the gentle process of education. Personally, I favor the latter route, but you know your team best. You might also wonder, am I documenting process? Can your team deliver success and create value without you? It's one thing to find a formula, but if you want to be consistent, you have to document what works, how you do things. That needs to be second nature, it needs to be written down, and you need to train others in the winning formula. You might ask yourself, am I making enough effort to get buy in?  

44:11: Dom Hawes 

Taking a considered change management approach to winning internal hearts and minds can smooth your path. You know, people don't find it easy to follow, especially if they don't understand. So there you go. Six solid takeaways. I want to say a huge thank you to Emma for her time to bring you such an excellent perspective. Now, as always, if you want to join our debate, you can do so online by following unicorny on LinkedIn. You can subscribe at Unicorny Co. UK and all the usual stuff. Right, I am now off to a bunker to apply those six thoughts to my own efforts, and I already know there's room for improvement. That's all folks. See ya. You've been listening to Unicorny, the antidote to post rationalized business books. I'm your host, Dom Hawes.  

44:56: Dom Hawes 

Nicola Fairley is the series producer, Laura Taylor McAllister is the production assistant, Pete Allen is the editor, and Ornella Weston and me, Dom Hawes, are your writers. Unicorny is a Selby Anderson production.