Unlike many marketers, Emma Kriskinans, VP Global Marketing for Tyk, has done it all: start-ups, large organisations, agencies, you name it. This makes her perfectly positioned to explain what one type of business can learn from the others — or, specifically in this case, what marketers in big businesses can take on board from those in start-ups and scale-ups. We sat down with Emma to explore her top three tips:
Follow the money
Any marketer worth their salt should be able to identify how revenue is derived from their marketing activity. But there’s more to it than efficiently allocating time and budget to the ‘right’ tasks — it’s about having a deep understanding of how your business makes money.
‘You always need to be thinking, whatever 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?’ says Emma. ‘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 work out who has got the mandate through the budget.’
In start-ups, all players tend to be acutely aware of the commercial details as there's more transparency around budgeting. But it’s easy for those in bigger businesses to feel divorced from the financial side of the game — which is when it’s particularly powerful to have that understanding of how the business works. This knowledge acts as a key to maximising marketing's contribution to profitable revenue for both business models, but in large organisations you gain a competitive edge by knowing how the sausage gets made.
Find the formula
There are endless KPRs and OKRs to worry about, but marketers need to narrow it down to the ones that matter most. In other words, you need to find which specific metrics correlate with success for your business. And the good news is you don’t have to be a business guru to do so.
‘If you’re not as strong or you’ve got some concerns about your level of commercial acumen, something that can really help is to find the formula; the formula that sits behind your business,’ says Emma.
She refers back to her time as senior digital marketing executive at Savills, where the marketing team was given invaluable P&L training. This gave team leaders an immediate steer on where to focus their attention for maximum business impact, ensuring the results of marketing department successes were felt all over the organisation.
‘So you don't have to be physically close to the CFO to determine what levers you can pull to make a positive impact on the business. And I can guarantee that anybody in a business won't necessarily be able to completely figure it out, but they can get a pretty good idea from talking to people [about] what it is that they're trying to move the needle on.’
Remember that marketing matters
In a business where you may be outnumbered by number-crunchers, it’s important to remember that your contribution is more than just a list of met KPIs.
‘When you’re in a huge organisation, you can be moving the needle on certain metrics that are important to you, but you have no idea how they’re actually helping at the bottom end of the funnel,’ says Emma.
‘Since I’ve been at Tyk, every single year that I’ve been there, inbound marketing has directly brought us between 75% to 95% of our revenue. You just can’t argue with that. [Marketing] is absolutely critical to our business success, short, medium, and long term.’
‘Without wanting to sound like I’m bragging, it’s more like a reminder that it does move the needle and have an impact. I don’t want people to get despondent and think “What am I doing? Is it really making a difference?” Marketing does make a difference. We see it every day, and I want to remind people of that.’
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LISTEN: Explore more advice from Emma Kriskinans in the full podcast, including the power of brand marketing, how to create, test, and refine playbooks for your business, and what it means to be a marketing masochist.
