How Tech Startups Can Leverage Effective Marketing Strategies, with Darren Cairns

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some of those businesses. So we're going to discuss how you get the best from your marketing team in a start up or scale up the key lessons he's learned from high growth tech businesses, and delve into some of that how you move from b2c to b2b, as I know, that's really topical just now. So, first of all, Darren, for those who don't know, you, you've worked in like totally different sectors over

the years. Talk me through what's happened in your career. Thanks,

isn't forever. And so spurred me on to look at sectors that were in, in high growth or really, really wanted to work in and sort of got the tech bug by moving to BT and working, running a marketing team in the 80s. Internet and multimedia Division at the time. Sounds quite laughable to my kids. Whenever I say that my job at the time was to convince people to try the internet that was driving driving broadband in the

early days at that time. I moved to three as an employee number 45 in a rented office in Maidenhead to then move on to launch the the three brand below the line was something I was very proud of, that effectively got me headhunted into into Yahoo. That got me that digital bug and as a great time in the

internet boom. And then there was an opportunity came up at Sony PlayStation, to actually build the digital platform digital marketing digital capability, launched PlayStation Network, PlayStation store across EMEA, a lesser known venture called PlayStation Home, which is very dear to my heart, which is really a forerunner of today's Metaverse and also launched the first ever PlayStation app on iOS and Android.

different industries? Because it's a real bread, the things that you've been involved in?

audiences. It doesn't matter what sector or industry you're in, you've got to start with the fundamental building blocks of, of marketing And a couple of other like key things that are woven through all of those, all of those roles, you know, very much working in partnership with on international campaigns and initiatives, and be it with, with desperate dispersed teams, or fragmented teams and bringing those together, it requires a marketing leader to negotiate and drive consensus, in a way,

but also that consensus is I find is, you know, and it's helped me through my career is basically treating people treating country teams, treating agencies and, and suppliers, like partners, rather than just suppliers, and ensuring, by doing that 99% of the time, you find that that's reciprocated, and you you know, you can work in partnership, to deliver the goals for the for the business.

Another key thing is, in my view, is taking your stakeholders with you, you know, your key stakeholders are your own team, your wider staff, the rest of your executive committee, your board, and you know, your your shareholders, proactively involving them to ensure you've got consistent buy in. So for example, that for finance, we had a major shareholder who was very actively involved in supporting the business and wanting to

support the business. And I had a weekly call with a member of the executive committee of the shareholder so that I could keep them abreast of progress. And there'd be no surprises, there would be constant buy in, and there'd be a constant flow of information to ways.

together. Because there are nuances with every market and every customer segment within the different brands that we had, that you've absolutely got to understand and appreciate. And then take out some of the duplication, and then keep some of the good practice. So it wasn't a case of completely wiping the board clean it was by looking at what services were being duplicated across multiple

markets. I centralized as many sort of core services as possible, from media buying creative roster, advertising briefs and agencies, creative development, user experience testing, as well, right through to all of our all of our digital services and really building the central HQ, as a digital center of excellence. And also as part of that centralization, and building that digital expertise. I created a digital lab. Within the business. It's like a, an in house digital agency and center

of excellence. Looking at all of the markets that we were in, we scoured the talent pool, looking at areas of digital expertise. And Warsaw in Poland had probably one of the best sets of digital people in work in FinTech, but also coming out of uni. We set up a division there with nearly 20 people surfacing the requirements of the grip, and also then pitching for work from the shareholders, other subsidiary companies.

their objectives. Internally, we would manage it internally, if not, the person responsible in the team for that, for that function with them be accountable for taking that out to the market. You know, it's important to motto, first of all, the structure, you know, whenever I came into the business, one of the first things it did was look at skills and capabilities and mapped out the structure of, of the marketing team and the scaling

of that function over time. And by doing that, I was able to build a team by design, rather than pitching for individual hires is a win, once it got buy in. I remember spending one weekend writing 18 job descriptions for the most high priority, fastest rules that I that I needed to get in, in my

role light of that team. And that was so that we could bring the get the Centers of Expertise established as quickly as possible, and manage this set of agencies that we then began to rationalize and develop from a performance and efficiency point of view,

retain that talent. And you know, where you could really get the most value from your agencies is that it probably was a really meaningful, valuable exercise, I imagine

for it. Because, you know, the business often can't wait for rounds and rounds of delivery.

building and managing internationally or globally distributed teams,

key. And you know, the role I was doing up for finance, I was taking some responsibilities back to HQ. But it's about which which has the potential to cause

a lot of friction. And it did have the potential to cause friction at the time, but my approach was to always be open and transparent and and just selling in the fact that I would be taking some of the surfaces back that would do the heavy lifting and many surfaces that I was centralizing the local markets didn't really want to do anyway but wanted to hold on to it because there was a budget attached to it will ever be taken taking those back to give them the ability and freedom and

budget to then do other activity that's much more in tune with their local market. So really, for me, it's all about just taking people with you selling in and being communicative.

key learnings that you've had?

consumer consumer goods. In larger businesses and an enterprise know, you're looking to identify key decision makers and companies getting to the right place where those key decision makers are getting a foot in the door, and a positive 13 trying to establish a relationship that you can grow and nurture with them through data targeting, communication, and appropriate communication and things that help and support them with their decision making process. And then their role

really adds value. And it's about adding value, rather than just hitting them with a with a sales lead marketing approach. And that really readies them for a lead, then being nurtured, being qualified, being then turned into a potential sales

lead. So the lead times decision making process will be longer and require what I would call as just requires more more patience, as well, you know, in front of safe patients, you know, a joke a little bit, but I have also seen this and other businesses, where you've got an eager sales team that are maybe targeted on calls, they're making our appointments, they're generating, trying to really get those leads to our lay, you know, they might not even be

qualified yet. They might not be nurtured, they might not understand fully the the approach, and going too early and effectively you ruin your plans. So it's a you know, there's a longer plan and a longer burn. But again, some of those principles can be applied back into BTC, as well.

more effectively. But remembering that actually they're potentially still like consumers, not just businesses, those personas? Yes, absolutely. It's easy to forget, when you're told go and do one thing, you forget about the overlap.

among staff. We wanted everyone to understand our customers, we got some of these blown up and framed and put on the wall. So that, you know, it's a reminder that if you're working on a campaign, if you're working on a new function for the platform, you look up and you say, Would

would you invite us? You know, and that that goes back to the fundamentals, which is important to in place that persona development that understanding your audience that what will fly with this audience five will apply and then let's let's test it and test it and test it and get out to market

startups and scale ups?

way. As a marketer, I have just a pure marketing objectives and look at what's best for the business, what's best for us to grow, what's best for us to acquire more, retain more register, those are the priorities that the wider, wider business and startup is juggling with them that comes to where they prioritize, spanned. Speed is absolutely key is about speed of delivery, speed of testing, speed of getting things out

there. And, you know, if you failing is okay, you know, everyone's familiar with the term fail fast. And it's about knowing what's not going to work correctly. So you can start doing it and start doing the stuff that will get in keeping the right there and retaining

the right staff. You know, once you have good marketing, people that you can develop, you give them accountability, you help them step up, you help them learn and take on more experience, just retaining that talent becomes increasingly difficult in startups because in in startups, people tend to jump around a lot more ensuring that you have that team motivated as absolutely key and motivated, dedicated team that knows their objectives that you're transparent with, that you're

open with to understand their objectives and understand the direction of travel of the business and also the direction of travel of marketing, what

you're trying to achieve. And what you're trying to build means that you've got everyone all and I guess a final point on some tips, just in a b2b context, you're never building a lead generation program, and you're nurturing leads and developing leads, qualifying them for a sales approach, just, you know, ensure you don't fall foul of overeager sales or business development people wanting to complete their near their call or appointment less.

for the leader that I develop has been really important to me. And, you know, I've seen it done very badly. At one point where, you know, there were, for example, in the early days, three, there were pillars to each point in the office with six values, and a value statement. And that was almost like a box of this is what you

should be looking at. And it was it just didn't feel right to me, because it felt that that was let's put these I communicate it, put it all around the office, put posters up, and that's the job done. culture and

values. Fast forward to work, and then, you know, smaller startups and scale ups and, and, you know, I fundamentally believe it's, it's marketing as, as the communication experts and the experts and understanding and researching audiences have got to be in step with and leading and fundamental to the development of culture, values, ethics, how those will be communicated and woven through the fabric of, of the business.

Because once you get that, right, it comes through in the way that the way that everyone behaves and interacts with each other, that becomes part of your employee attraction becomes your employer, employer branding, it goes all the way through your you know, how you run performance reviews and ensuring that that you're staying aligned to, you know, a set of values that you hold dear, and that those values then actually set you apart from from some of your

competition. And again, one value that I've that I've instilled in a couple of businesses is is being human and sounds a bit blase. But it's actually about, about actually treating people as you want to be treated. And this idea of, it's a partnership, it's not a supplier client relationship, we're all trying to benefit and ultimately benefit the customer or client at the end of this. And that's sort of woven through

everything I do. And it really does then pay off in the outward projection of the, of the brand and, and the resulting reputation that that you develop over time.

larger business, then you've got many more processes to go through. And you've got a real active and proactive involvement from talent managers or talent partners. I think, for me, anyway, in the startup scale up, I've mapped out the strategy for the team, I've mapped out the skills and both the hard skills and soft skills that I that I'm looking for, and a way of working that I'm looking for.

And, you know, personally, I think, in startups and scale ups, it should be down to, you know, the marketing leader or the markets are responsible to them, source and bring in that talent know, what they may need as some support with, like various other channels that can be used and leveraged and network recruitment networks and so on. But actually, the job description, you know, I've written my own job descriptions, I've got my own interview style,

I know what I'm looking for. I know that skills and experience. And I also know, I get to think about where would I want this

employee to come from? What sort of business would what I want them to come from, for example, some performance marketing resource that I've been recruiting for in the past, I've specifically targeted telcos and gambling companies as well, because they've got talent there who specifically understand the nuances of the data, reading the data, they're looking at the return on investment, or cost of acquisition and measuring that and understand performance marketing, because of the

background and the sector that you've come from. And you would get that from marketing, experience and knowledge. So, you know, for me, fundamentally, I think, in a startup and scale up, it belongs to the function. That's like saying, the CTO should be the person hiring the software engineer. Absolutely. And have final say on that,

ever changing personas. And, you know, if you're going through like a rapid period of growth, like there's, you know, like one, one company, I personally hired 100 people in a year, you need to be quite strategic in how you do that, because there, there's only one of you, that has to do an awful lot of work that, you know, where deadlines

are dictated by other people. So being able to create events, for example, can be really valuable, or thinking about, like, what content is going to add the most value across the board, you know, and then where you need that, like niche tailored approach from a content perspective, is really valuable in those roles, though, for like

niche skills. You know, if I wanted to get like some really good like targeted digital marketing campaigns, you know, across multiple channels, you would want to work with a marketeer that can save you so much time. But I think the end result is something that talent acquisition are often targeted on. While they can leverage people across the business.

There's maybe like a degree of responsibility that could sit there or you're going to end up with like to the pitfalls I've seen over the years when it sits with marketing. It's not the most important thing for that

marketeer. The most important thing for them that they're going to get measured against is kind of growth of sales and product or number of customers are is, they don't feel like they can, it's rare that they would have an OKR, for example, that specifically to do with recruitment, marketing, even if that is something they're meant to be supporting. So there is that kind of, like ownership piece that maybe that's in

there. And I think that it can just get a bit convoluted, or you can end up with duplication of work, if there's a lack of clarity, and like, nobody really can afford to have that in a

startup. Yeah, you know, funds, funds are often tight, you can actually have multiple people doing things, but definitely having their support working out where there's crossover, you know, there's, there is definite crossover, you know, conferences, for example, you know, whoever is like hiring, your sales or leadership talent, if you're doing that internally, they, they might benefit from going to like the big industry conferences, and being on the stand just as much as a salesperson,

And again, it goes back to the employer branding being right as well, and the teams working together.

different things. And I would totally agree with you everybody needs to be able to hire and a high growth company, it can be can't leave it to talent acquisition, I think the role model in making that successful is quite often underestimated, and people people don't see the full value that they could achieve from a strong ta department.

scale up, and you're not from that background, I would love for you to share your insights about what kind of targets and metrics, they should be setting their cmo and the marketing team,

need to then click conversion rates do you need along the way that then dictate how much you will need to drive and at the top of the funnel at the top of your pipeline, then that dictates how much you know what's the addressable market? And how are you going to target them? How are you going to get to them? How much do you need to spend to do that? So cost of acquisition then becomes another

key metric. So and you get deeper than that, and look at cost of acquisition by channel, you know, and the key pitfall is this area that I talked about previously on attribution. It's not about just we've done a number of activities, the cost of acquisition through this channel is lowest so therefore it will stop all this will do

this. It's actually about looking at the best Max because they all need to work together to provide your your total acquisition costs, then deeper than that your return on investment and lifetime value. Understanding the value of each segment of your customer base can help you prioritize where your marketing is best served.

So looking at who will from a lifetime value What segments of customers, you're likely to get repeat business from how long they're likely to stay with you helps again drive and prioritize and target marketing, but no CEOs will will look at that. At the top level, it's important to understand conversion rates all the way through. Because yeah, because what you don't want is a marketing team to have one number at the top for budget and one number at the bottom for

revenue, or profit. Yeah, because they will make the link between them, you've got to build that, like back to say, this is the size of the marketing tasks that we've got, and then cost a high then on that basis, and then you measure the cost of acquisition, return on investment and lifetime value with your conversion rate. So as you go

Do you have that prominence and that presence in the right audiences, because it's okay to be invisible to audiences that are nowhere near your, your core audience. But the audiences that are important your customers, your partners, your clients, the industry and Tres, as well are have your presence in the right place. And that that's key to be able to take temperature depths of every so often and, and you get that by talking to them by building relationships by proactively managing those

audiences. The other thing is, your partners are your eyes and ears, you can learn so much from them, you've got to, you've got to gather that you've got to feed that back into the business, you've got to use it to highlight successes, because everyone loves success stories and people deserve from the work they're doing to be to be recognized for the relationships

that they're building. Every employee is a brand advocate, you know, an every partner is a brand advocate, every shareholder is on should be a brand advocate, you know, when you add all that together, you know, in some cases, you could have like hundreds, you could have 1000s, a couple of 1000 advocates of your business without realizing it.

because being challenged, helps you find solutions that make you learn that make you a better marketer, but also challenging back because no one has, you know, all of the answers. And at the end of the day, it's about getting the best outcome for the customer, for all the staff because they're all invested in the business. Communication is absolutely key, full transparency and openness, you know, as much as possible is as important because that engenders trust between the two roles.

When you can see the pressures and challenges that a CEO might be under and might be faced with. It helps you understand their drivers, their priorities, and some of the decisions they make. Delivering, delivering, doing what you you said you do is is important. But remember, a free as a VC once said, that really resonates with me better

done than perfect. Often, at the start of my career, it was like maybe things were delayed on campaigns and so on, because it was trying to get the perfect brief trying to get the perfect creative. Ultimately, if you haven't got that mentality, it's stopping you from delivering and delivering quickly. So showing that you can that you can just get things done as important. And it should really be seen as a as a learning opportunity for

both parties. You know, I haven't seen a CMO that felt they've stopped learning and haven't seen a CEO that the felt they've stopped learning.

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