Sam Birkett 0:06
Hello everyone, welcome to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam and well, this is a red letter day, isn't it? I think this is our...

Sally Green 0:12
We are incredibly excited.

Sam Birkett 0:14
We are unbelievably, we can hardly contain ourselves. It's our 100th edition of the podcast and well, how did we get this far Sally? How did we get to 100?

Sally Green 0:23
Well, when you told me we got that far, I was absolutely staggered. I thought, good grief. We waffle on a lot don't we heavens. I hope we've been helpful. But I think it happened because when we started it, Sam and I used to work together, and we'd go out for coffee and start talking and we were actually doing the months in the meeting and one of us, I think it was you Sam, said "God, we could turn this into a podcast, couldn't we?" And we did. We just thought we were expecting to do maybe three.

Sam Birkett 0:51
Yes, I think well, that was the thing wasn't it, because I remember actually distinctly we were having a coffee. I had a very strong coffee for some reason. So maybe that was the caffeine that was talking. And I think we just sort of said, yeah, we've had a few conversations, haven't we? And we've done this one where I'm sure we go on for like an hour at least and then we thought, gosh, this is yeah, why don't we try and record some of this? So there were a few different ideas because we were talking about blogs and things at the time and content creation and then I think yeah, as you say, I sort of said, Hey, maybe a podcast because I've listened to these podcasts now. And it might be I think it was also a way for us to actually download and get the conversation going rather than having to have something that was too heavily edited into a blog, because I think we had both been doing quite a lot of that at the time and they're great, of course. But I think we sort of said that if we had something of a vehicle where we could discuss things and have more of a natural flow of conversation, hence meanders as well, I think because we knew it would be meandering, because that's how we communicate exactly. This is how we do it as people will who've been regular listeners will know this is how it goes. But it was that sort of idea, wasn't it? And I think the fact that all those little, hopefully, as you say the useful nuggets of information flow out of that don't they.

Sally Green 1:59
That's right and I think this was an absolutely perfect example of, you know, you've done all these courses and how to design a campaign and how to think about it properly, write it down, budgeted and shedule it and actually, what usually happens is you have a bit of an idea with a mate, and you chat about it, and you think let's have a go, which is not how you should do it, obviously. But it's there's a really valuable essence in doing it like that because if we'd sat down and written up a campaign strategy for starting this, and how are we going to market it, we would probably never have done it.

Sam Birkett 2:33
Yeah. Well, that's it, isn't it? As you say, it's funny how so much of what we talk about as well and by the way, everyone, that's what we're hoping to do today is a bit of a, I guess not a full recap, but a bit of a looking at the themes and things and the issues we've discussed, but that's the sort of the way in which it came about, wasn't it? I think the fact that it's an interesting thing in itself, the fact that sometimes you just get on to do things and give them a go, give them a try. When yes, of course, you want to be planned out and properly understanding what you should do budgets and all the rest of it, and we will come to, but looking at how you need to structure things and plan things. But sometimes, if it's something new, you want to try that whole thing of testing and trying something out and getting into something which is more on the creative end of the spectrum, you've got to sort of just go for having,

Sally Green 3:21
Sometimes you've just got to dive in the deep end and see what happens and to be honest, we might have only done one and if we thought else is gonna take too long, or actually, nobody's gonna listen to this, it was rubbish and then we tried other little things like we'd haven't done many for a long time. But we'd started doing mini-meanders, we want each one of us could say something we haven't done that. Sam used to do mini meanders by walking in the fields, it was kind of romantic was like a kind of you know, something like Wordsworth suddenly stomping through the fields having great marketing thoughts. It was very romantic.

Sam Birkett 3:50
Well, strangely I have done a few more of those actually. But I've kept them a secret at the moment. But as you say walking through the field, that's my lunchtime kind of thing when you know, I mean, particularly obviously the lockdown stuff going on and post lockdown as well as having a walk at lunchtime, sort of clear your head and then think of some ideas and it would typically be on the phone. So nothing like the incredible recording prowess of being in a Story Ninety Four studio right now, for example, which we'll probably come to, but just carrying something on my phone and having a bit of a download of some thoughts and ideas. I've got quite a catalogue of them, which I will have to share and get on board with. But it's interesting unless you sort of get those thoughts out and share them with somebody, perhaps you're best to talk about them, but also see what other people think, you know, you get some responses on LinkedIn and people saying, oh, yeah, that's, I think the same thing too, or I have that problem or actually had you thought about it in this way? It is really useful.

Sally Green 4:44
Sam, you're absolutely right. It's incredibly valuable to share your ideas. We've been saying for ages that when you're writing content, share it with someone to check your spelling, but it's just as valuable to share your ideas and see whether anybody thinks this is of any value at all because you really probably shouldn't waste... if we'd done one and everyone had gone, well you know, probably maybe not, we wouldn't have done any more. We wouldn't have been embarrassed, we wouldn't have stopped, we wouldn't blush, we would have gone okay, well, we haven't quite got that, right and we just might have tweaked it or flexed it or made it 10 minutes as opposed to an hour or so. But it's really, really valuable just to throw things out there and see what sticks.

Sam Birkett 5:19
Exactly. The other thing I would say is when we first started doing this, I suppose we're looking and thinking well, it's a very crowded market, you know, if you Google marketing podcasts, things like that, there are so many out there, of course, which from all over the world, and people have different ideas about why they want to share ideas and think about things and I think one of the themes, I would say that has come up for me during the whole sharing of this is about the sort of the imposter syndrome a little bit and the kind of the freelancers, I don't know, demons on the shoulder really, of the freelancer in particular, because obviously we both are freelancers now having been in, you know, working in teams, and we are both working in teams as well. But that's been an interesting aspect for me and I think something that probably attacked me during the beginning of this, you think why is anybody interested in what I have to say?

Sally Green 6:08
Why should anyone listen to me? Yeah, what do I know?

Sam Birkett 6:10
Why would they? Why would there be anything that's, not revelatory, but in anything even useful, you might think, well, you know, I'm probably going to get this wrong. I mean, there's my typical sort of mantras in my head about almost everything I do. But I think that's something I remember, I think with Hillary Nightingale, we talked about a bit of imposter syndrome and that's kind of a recurring theme. So even though we've been talking, of course, about marketing and sales of BD issues, a lot of the self-exploration, a lot of the mini-meanders, I think I've done have been more about the kind of what is it that plays in your mind.

Sally Green 6:45
I think when you are working in a corporate, it's very scheduled and you've got deadlines and lead times and it's very important to get everything on the right time. But it's very important, just to take that little step back and have a think about what you're doing and you know, don't just say, Oh, well, it's Tuesday morning, I've got to do this. I mean, yes, you have probably got to do that. But at the same time, maybe you don't have to do it quite to the nth moment. Just have a little think and think, Okay, actually, do I really need to do this, and have the courage to say to your boss, look, every Tuesday morning, I write a report about what I've done last week. Who reads that? How valuable is this? He might say it's incredibly valuable, it goes all the way up to the board and we couldn't do without it and that's tremendous. But actually, he might go, what report? You know, and you've got to make sure that people are actually noticing what you're doing.

Sam Birkett 7:40
Yeah, exactly. And this is an interesting point, I think, in general, isn't it? Again, looking back at all the episodes we've done, it's this almost a little bit of deconstructing some of the receives or perceived knowledge that the existing knowledge about practices and what is good practice and obviously, it's our opinion on lots of these things, but I guess taken from our experiences, but I think one of the things I've learned as a freelancer, over the last four years has been looking back into businesses and organisations, and obviously, particularly marketing departments and sort of saying, Well, gosh, so why are these things done? Not to say necessarily, they're outright wrong, but you have a different perspective when you're looking at them. And particularly, you're talking about them as well. And I found that really interesting, you know, when we've done interviews with people who perhaps are in the same or similar position to us and have had a similar experience of being in a business, in a team, in a corporate coming out, or they're still in there and just seeing that kind of the differences of perspective, you gain from just stepping to one side for a minute and looking in and saying, as you say, what why don't you take more time to sort of reflect on is that report useful? Or is it just or is that newsletter useful? Or is it just what we've always done that kind of mentality and other things like that.

Sally Green 8:49
And there's so much we've always done there. And I think we talked to Amanda Claesens about market research, it's really important that you ask your market, whether they care whether you've got a newsletter every week. I mean, I know now we can do analytics and see oh, well, you know, X number of people open it, read it, engage with it, something that's very valuable. But at the same time, are those people that are actually opening it? Are they just opening it and just leaving it open and not reading it? Do they read it and become hugely enraged with your brand, because everything is wrong, but they can't be bothered to reply and so it's actually really important not to just sit and go, Oh, yeah, it's all working terrifically, you do need to dig into things and quite regularly because just because it's working this month, doesn't mean it's going to work forever on a day until Christmas.

Sam Birkett 9:35
Yeah, exactly. So it's really that, I don't know why the word deconstruction comes into my mind, but as you say, deconstructing and looking at that and saying, again, why is there always this idea of we should always do it this way because that's the way the old boss used to do it, and therefore they've moved on and moved up and they've handed it over to you. And perhaps, you know, particularly in teams, you're sort of there's a culture of this is how what goes and what normal looks like. And you're perhaps a little more afraid to push things and say no, why don't we do them differently? Or why don't we think about it in a more pragmatic sense, even, you know, looking to our analytics, for example, looking to understand, what else could we do as well, because I think the whole thing of I've mentioned it probably a number of times this whole kind of opportunity cost because I used to work for an economics consultancy. So there's always these things like counterfactuals, and opportunity costs and things like this. But you think well, yeah, as a team, if I've got my three or four people, 10 people, 50 people working on these items because we just always do it. We can't prove their worth. Yep, we can and we've not even tried to what else could they be doing if they weren't doing this thing that may not have as much work? So I think things like that as well, again, it's that stepping back, isn't it? Yeah, reappreciating the situation.

Sally Green 10:45
You've got to work out what worth means to you. Is it just financial, because Sam and I, you may be surprised to hear don't make a lot of money out of this podcast, we haven't monetised it. We aren't going to the Bahamas. We're not filming this with servants all around us. So we don't monetise this terribly at all. But at the same time, I get extremely good value out of it because it helps me think about things and it helps me go to exactly what Sam's just described, which is, why do I do it like that? Why do I always do a budget like that's just daft? And it's just incredibly valuable like that. So it's really important to step back and go, actually, value might be me being happier at doing my job.

Sam Birkett 11:25
No, absolutely. I think it's this real, it's a space, it's almost cathartic to get things out and think about them and the people we've met as well doing it, you know, in our respective networks, I think that's a really important part of it and just understanding from them, what they do. I mean, I think one of the things you had mentioned previously that we need to look into talking to people who do things that we can't do, that was one of your main points that that's what the podcast has enabled us to do as well and that's so revealing and interesting, but I think drawing the connections together. So there's a certain amount of you being able to understand more about you know, you've got all this stuff, clearly, we had lots of stuff going in our heads and we want to talk about it. So we have a medium to do that, which is good and bore everyone rigid perhaps but get into those things of actually discussing ideas and then discussing them with other people and then drawing some those connections together, I think so you start to think well, like when we've done the ones about, you know, sales and marketing teams working together, or events and market research and copywriting and things that we do, perhaps, you know, we've done a little bit of we've commissioned work in, but we're not specialists at certain areas, but then you can understand more about well, I now know more about where this person is coming from. So then next time, I'm personally working on something like this or advising someone else, I'm going to have a better insight about the right questions to ask and things like that. So hopefully, that's where you can find some value if people are listening back to this, you know, that's right.

Sally Green 12:53
I mean, we do go out of our way to interview people that we think might be useful to our hero ship, so that they know that we can't, I'm very proud that I can't do everything it would be... marketing grows organically and when you first start, you do think I'm gonna have to learn how to do everything, I'm going to have to be able to do the whole shebang. Now I'm extremely old and at the very beginning, it was much easier for me to do everything, because there was no digital stuff and I think Sam can probably do this as well, we spent hours and hours and hours writing copy and making catalogues. That's really what we did, we possibly did the old advert. But really, it was all about paper. Making catalogues that were sometimes printed correctly, and sometimes arrived on time. And that was it and there was much less to do all of it. But now, all of it is a genuine challenge and you're possibly wrong to try and do all of it, are you going to do all of it not very well? Or are you just going to focus on a bit of it, that you do very well, and outsource the rest?

Sam Birkett 13:51
Yeah, that's a really interesting point that I think we've touched on a little bit and I'd like to do a bit more on I think this sort of the skills that are required, you know, in the modern, in quotation marks marketing team, you know, the contemporary marketing team, you know, what are the skills you need, because I think I referred several times this lady who she spoke to me when I first went freelance, and she was doing some research into, you know, skills that are needed within modern marketing teams, you know, that youngsters coming into marketing, you know, graduates, what are the skills that they need, you know, and so there's two things. One is, as you say, you're leading to the skills that, you know, we're not all going to be generalists, and great at everything so you do need the people with the right skills in your teams and you need to know the skills that you actually need in the first place to then recruit for those people to then fill those gaps. Yeah. But then secondly, I suppose, as well, it's also this understanding of, you know, there are some what I would refer to the marketing varieties almost all the sort of the human aspect in particular, which I always bang on about, but I mean, I've just found it interesting when you look at you know, there's different modes and different channels have evolved in the last 20-30 years, last five years, which do move on. But there are certain things which always remain the same and it's that trying to put the two together, isn't it almost it's sort of trying to give people who are coming in with some great new skills, perhaps in digital, a better understanding of some of the longer term marketing practice, I suppose of communication.

Sally Green 15:23
That's true. But some of those aren't very complicated. Some of them are really basic, like put the customer first, always sit in your customer's shoes and see what they're going to be experiencing from it, and budgeting it correctly. I know I go on about this constantly. But whatever type of marketing you are doing, be that creating catalogues or doing the end-to-end of digital marketing, then you've got to budget it properly. And as you say, using the right form of communication, so don't shout at people that are a bit frightened by that. Don't whisper if people are going deaf, so just make sure you're getting your language correctly.

Sam Birkett 15:56
Yeah, absolutely and I think it's that, as you say, the appreciation of the audience and understanding that the best form of communication with them, because that I suppose, is one of the things we've talked about quite a lot is this, again, this profusion of perhaps people who, as you say, have come from the sort of catalogue generation, shall we say, and I too, was putting together catalogues and mail campaigns, you know, fulfilment centres, trying to get everything to the Royal Mail and work out if you could pay a certain amount of pence for each delivery of thrilling 20,000 catalogues or whatever, and then rushing to the printers to try and get it to over the line and do you remember marking up catalogues with like tonnes and tonnes of those little sticky notes...

Sally Green 16:38
Completely, absolutely!

Sam Birkett 16:39
... and then going through and then saying that doesn't work there, that doesn't work there and then you have to change the front cover and blah, blah, blah. But I mean, you know, obviously, I know some people still do catalogues, of course, but nowadays, lots have moved on and there are all these other channels people should be focusing on. But I think one of the themes we've come back to many times has been, perhaps, as I say, people who are not native to the digital world, they haven't grown up and come through their education, and their jobs in the native digital world, as it were, they are thinking, well, am I doing enough of all these things? Well, we need to make sure we're covering all the channels, we're doing everything we can on all digital channels because I've heard of them all. I don't necessarily know much about all of them. But I know that we should be there. You know, I mean, I suppose nowadays, perhaps we see less of that potentially because people are getting in and obviously the people with the right skills, understanding of how to use their channels. But there's still a reasonable amount of it, I suppose. Perhaps more for people who are maybe smaller business owners, perhaps.

Sally Green 17:39
I mean, we talked about this definitely, when we said that it's always absolutely fatal when the MD comes in and says all my daughter says that TikTok's marvellous, I think we should do that and that still I've got various clients where I get that from thinking, Oh, no, I didn't think so. And having to explain that not everything is right for everybody.

Sam Birkett 17:58
Yeah, yeah, I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's sort of that, again, it's when you know, when you go through the freelance journey, you start to see people more often in a different situation to the one that you've been if you're taking a larger corporate, and you're working with teams who are specialists, you know, the social media team, for example, you know, there's certain things you can rely upon, for them to deliver for you, and you're utilising their expertise. When you suddenly go into this more generalist field because I think when we started, actually, we said, you know, this is for marketers, it's also for small business owners and people out there who are, you know, they're trying to do marketing, but they're not trained or experienced in this area. So there's bound to be a lot of that thing where again, the opportunity costs thing comes in, doesn't it? You say I'm going to produce enough across all five of these different channels? I'll be on Facebook, I'll be on Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, whatever, Snapchat, I'm gonna be the whole lot. But actually, I'm not actually focusing on where my business is coming from and what my audience actually needs and the watering holes.

Sally Green 19:00
Do they hang out there?

Sam Birkett 19:01
Yeah, yeah. you know, lots of the stuff we've done in the past has maybe been quite useful for people in that boat in particular, certain themes of ones, podcast episodes we've done. But then also, I'll come back to this, again, the whole kind of the mentality of the marketer, I think and the communication and the politics is an interesting piece of just saying that so I remember to talk about,

Sally Green 19:26
Because I think although we both come from quite big corporate backgrounds, some of those lessons you learn in corporate are valuable in the SME marketplace as well. There are some things that it just is very valuable to do, which is you know, proper scheduling, proper marketing plans, proper marketing strategies to make sure that you're going in the right direction at the right speed. That's incredibly valuable and corporates will make that happen because they will have you know, quarterly returns they've got to hit so you will be forced to do budgets and say how much you need next turn, next quarter, da, da, da and what will always happen, obviously in a corporate is the marketing budget gets cut, which is always very, very good practice for any marketeers to once every four months have your budget cut, because it makes you think, although it's very irritating and all marketeers will go gosh, it's not fair they never cut anybody else's budget. And yes, it's not fair. But at the same time, it does hone your skills. If all of a sudden you're expecting to do eight campaigns, and you've now only got enough money to do three. It's really, really good practice to do that, to find out exactly what fluff have I actually packed in here for these eight campaigns. Did I need to do that? Was it just a load of waffley fluff that just made me look impressive? And could I have done it with three? And it's probably something we ought to do as SMEs as well. Yes, you want to be able to do everything everywhere. Yes, you want to dominate the marketplace, that's all very valuable. But maybe you don't need to waste as much time and energy as you are wasting on the volume that you're doing.

Sam Birkett 20:59
Yeah. Oh, definitely. Definitely and I think that's an interesting point. Because if we remember back, we had an episode where we talked about the time when perhaps we had a budget, which was completely cut, you know, just literally disappeared. And I've had that a couple of times in my career, and you sort of then think. Well, the first thing yeah, the shock of oh, great, well, what else do we do now? And then the second thing of okay, well, we have to do something. So let's be really savvy, let's be really clear about how we can make this work for us and, as you say, I think taking the extremes of a situation and saying, Well, how could we go? Where could we actually flex here? What's really important, I suppose, is the question it asks, isn't it? Because otherwise, there's all this other stuff, as you say that you can do and I suppose more than the small business angle, you're thinking more? Well, I don't have much if hardly any budget to spend on this marketing lark. So I need to build upwards rather than starting at a high point and being cut, you're sort of thinking, where do I start and where do I go to? But you need that understanding.

Sally Green 22:00
Yeah, and we've definitely talked about this and make sure that you talk to other team members. So if your whole budget is cut, probably the first people should go and talk to is sales and say to them, what leads are you looking for what's most important to you, so it ought to force you to go and talk to the other members of your team and even if your team is tiny, even if it's just you and a sales manager, sit down with the sales manager and find out what their targets are, what they need to achieve, to make sure that you're doing the right thing, because it can happen even in the smallest teams, that the marketing team is over here doing something very, very valuable, important, never spoken to sales about it and sales is doing something completely different. Talking to a different persona, even in a small team. So in fact, having a mock budget cut is really valuable for making you talk to other people.

Sam Birkett 22:48
Yeah, absolutely and you've touched on there, I think one of the recurring themes we always come back to which is about is between sales and marketing, in particular, and we have had several actual episodes where we specifically addressed this, haven't we, but I think when you mentioned about the budgets, and almost you know, the tools there for the budget being a tool being a mechanism, by which we all need to work to in all of our daily lives and working in a business, working on our own, working for anybody, that it's one of those points where you can sort of a point of truth almost or you can come back to that kind of get you back on track. I mean, almost as analogies and metaphors, all the rest of it getting you back on track, you know, and saying, well, let's all stick to this, we can agree that this is the budget we have, and therefore whoever's in the team or on another team, let's all follow the same direction.

Sally Green 23:36
And that will never disappear. That's always, always, always going to be there, making sure that you and the whole team is going in the same direction. Actually, at the same speed. There's no point of marketing saying, Oh, look, we found a great TikTok Plus, whatever that may or may not be, and then find that actually, the sales departments don't know what TikTok Plus is. They don't know how to make the most of that marvellous, marvellous TikTok Plus campaign you've got going, because they don't know who hangs out there. They've never met anybody that does it and actually, it's a complete waste of money. But you really need to make sure that you're going at the right speed sales might want to do TikTok Plus soon, but not now.

Sam Birkett 24:15
Yeah, exactly. I think that really speaks to this whole area. We have gone into the same sales and marketing but also communication with teams and in between teams, and more recently about alignment, I suppose. I mean, I know there's a lot more to alignment than just communication, but communication being so so critical, and I think that's what I've really enjoyed exploring really, this whole kind of interface between the teams and, and also, you know, manage marketing leadership, you know, talking to the rest of their team and understanding how best to make people aware of what it is you're doing, you to be aware of what they're doing, and then to actually try and get on board with the, as you say, the same direction at the same pace. It's so critical and you see that so often going wrong, and people are going well, we don't understand why, you know, so and so doesn't understand me and they overspent on their budget, and they're not giving me the leads I want. And so often, it's just this communication breakdown that you've witnessed and funny that we're, you know, we're obviously here talking a lot about, you know, communicating with each other and everything and that's for me, again, it's just reinforced the importance of that in anything you're doing really.

Sally Green 25:25
Absolutely. It's not just talking, it's listening, it's making sure that you're hearing, not just looking and nodding a lot and just thinking or to assume that they're agreeing with me, without listening and as a marketing manager, we have talked about what the skills of being a manager is all about and, you know, one of them is to actually quite regularly go and talk to your team, you don't necessarily, it's very tempting to think, Oh, I've got to learn how to do everything they do. If they do it, I must learn how to do it. Well, actually, probably not. Because actually, are you going to waste a lot of time learning how to do every single thing that your team is doing? That's why you've got a team! Trust them. And if you've recruited them correctly, you should trust them to do it nicely and they should feel confident come back to you and saying, I know you didn't quite get this, and you want to say no, I don't. But I think we ought to do X, Y, Z, and that's exciting, and actually be able to say to a team member, brilliant, I would never have thought of that. How can we build that into the strategy, that makes work exciting and thrilling. So leadership is not just downwards, you can lead from the bottom and it's very important to recognise that you sometimes do need to go and talk to your boss and say, I think we're missing a trick.

Sam Birkett 26:41
Yes. Oh, absolutely. Is that? Oh, gosh, what's that term? Well, you have everyone says yes to everything and so you all... groupthink is that the one I think so the whole thing of actually challenging and being okay to challenge ideas and even I say even the most, the most junior people coming in and changing things and how much you learn from each other in a marketing team is so important. And I think, really, that sense of, you know, the culture again, you know, the culture that you as a leader are helping to, you're not creating it or you're trying to set a bit of a tone and get people to follow that and to feel comfortable within it to let a culture flourish, but a culture of open communication, where people can understand who does what well. So that's all we have time for in part one of our centenary edition, and we'll catch up with more interesting insights and reflections over the last 100 episodes in part two.