This is the first episode of we don’t have time for this. It’s for marketers who are doing more with less, while buying decisions get messier and social, search, content, brand, comms, all of it, keeps getting judged like it’s a nice-to-have.Today’s pain is simple. You’re marketing to three generations inside one buying group and half the time you’re guessing what will land, what will be trusted, and what will get forwarded internally without you looking daft. Tejal Patel is joining me. Tejal is a customer-first marketing leader with previous senior roles across Cisco, Microsoft, and Nokia. She helps teams get clear, get aligned, and stop wasting time on work that doesn’t travel, fixing the fundamentals so innovation works Tejal’s brilliant at bringing clarity when teams are drowning in noise. We’re going to talk about trust cues, channel choices, content formats, and how you build an insight system that stops your team wasting time.

When buying groups collide

Katy Howell 00:10
Hello everyone. I’m Katy Howell, at immediate future and today, this is the first episode of a
little series I’m running called we don’t have time for this. It’s kind of for marketers who are,
like every marketer, trying to do more with less, while buying decisions are getting Messier.
Brands and content and social and search and all of this get keeps getting judged, almost like a
nice to have. So we want to, we want to address this pain, and today’s pain is really simple.
You’re marketing to three generations inside one buying group, and half the time you’re
guessing what will land and what will be trusted and what will get forwarded internally, without
you looking daft. So I’ve got a brilliant guest who’s been with me before Taj al Patel, and she’s
joining me as a customer first marketing leader, which is just with previous roles in Cisco, Microsoft, Nokia, Nokia. She helps teams get a really clear perspective and get aligned and stop
wasting time. And I love that. That’s the bit that really for me, gives us amazing insight and
making sure that we’re fixing some of those fundamentals so that we have, you know, better
innovation, better growth, better commercial. So, so let’s turn to shell and I’ve got a series of
questions that I would love you guys, and if I can get onto notes, I will make sure I’m keeping
an eye on it. Please, please, please, feel free to add in any questions that you have. And my
first question for the day is, we got talking about this because you came back from a consumer
event thinking B to B is behind, so go on. What did you hear today? What did you hear that
made you kind of wince? Hello.
Tejal Patel 02:21
First of all, for getting me involved in this conversation, I’m so glad when you and I were
chatting, I think it was back end of last year, right, that we wanted to do a new podcast and and
the Gen Z conversation came in, and I was telling you earlier, I’m obsessed suddenly with Gen
Z, because there’s a lot of complexity going on with that generation that I think we need to
really think about. But what really triggered it for me was an event. I was invited to actually buy
this organisation called the connected club. I did a video post on LinkedIn about it, and that’s
when my kind of brain started whirling around, well, what does all this mean for B to B? But it
was a B to C event, it was what I was really struck by, was the behavioural insights at the
event. What makes a generation tick? What are their fears? Who do they trust? Don’t trust?
What are their aspirations? And it really took me back to that excitement I used to have when I
worked in B to C, where there was that human Centricity which just permeates through BTC
brands. And unfortunately, I hate to say I’d love for people to disagree with me who are
listening to this or watching this now, I really don’t hear enough of this language in B to B
events, the you know, what’s making the generation tick? What’s making your buyer tick? What
are they afraid of, not just pain points around making a decision, but actually going much more
deeper than that. So that really awoken this kind of excitement for me around, okay, hang on,
there’s a lot going on with Gen Z, by the way, and it’s not just about Gen Z, because then the
other thing is, they’re now, and Gen Z’s are, I think the age range is around 15 to 29 right now.
So they’re well into the work. You know, the top end of Gen Z, the older Gen z’s, are well into
the workforce, well established, maybe second or third job in are getting into decision making
are potentially influencing and then they’re working with millennials, the previous generation to
them, and they’re working with Gen X, which I think Katy, you and I are kind of in the Gen X,
and I think you were saying they’re starting to kind of get squeezed out a little bit. But you
know, the seniority of decision makers is still the kind of Gen X. So you’ve got three
generations, and then you’ve got this massively disrupted aggrieved, we’ll talk about that later,
aggrieved generation who are really thinking and doing things in a different way. What does it
mean for B to B marketeer? So hence why we’re here today. I got excited about that.
Katy Howell 05:00
Yeah, exactly. And I think because it presents so many challenges, and you mentioned Gen Z,
and we know Millennials are the biggest cohort of B to B buyers, and that Gen Z is rising fast in
that decision making chain. We know that there’s a really nice bit of data, which is Forrester
says millennials and Gen Z now make up 71% of the B to B buyers, which is terrifying when you
think about it. It’s like particularly for us genics. But the other point I wanted to make was that
even Forrester says, you know the state of in their latest state of business buying report, they
say 13 people in the decision making process, and 89 are from different departments. And so
you kind of go, Well, you know, already my head is going, three generations of buyers, 13
people involved cross departments. So, you know, with all of that in mind, oh my God, and we
don’t have any time. So when you say, is there it what’s generally different about what’s going
on in with our customers right now, what’s genuinely, what are the decision behaviours and
what’s kind of staying the same?

Tejal Patel 06:20
Well, I think first of all, the logic they’ve got to apply to decision making doesn’t change, right?
Everyone’s going to go through the process of making a decision, reaching an agreement and
buying what they’ve got to buy for their organisation. So it’s still about verifying and gaining
confidence in that decision making. So that’s the kind of commonality. But I think what’s
changed is who and what they trust. Yeah, yeah, the proof and the evidence to support your
marketing claims, in your organisation, in your messaging that you’ve got to think a little bit
about. But you know, I think there’s it’s all about reducing risk and building confidence when it
comes to B to B decision making. The first is your personal risks. How am I going to look how if I
make a recommendation for this vendor, how is it going to reflect on me? It always starts with
me, and then you think about Gen Z. I think there’s a lot of me in there about about that
generation. The second is, you’ve got to reduce organisational risk. So is this decision going to
support what the company needs? Is it? Is there a fit there? And then I think the third area is,
how am I going to build internal they’re not necessarily using these words, but it’s that internal
confidence collectively in making that right decision. You’ve just said 13 potentially different
people involved in the decision making several different departments. So how are you arming
each of those individuals in the buying group with the right information that they are not only
convinced themselves, but they have something they can share. Forward ability is a thing to
think about, not shareability, forward ability of that information that is going to help the next
person in that buying committee to be convinced about the decision. So your job is not only to
influence the buyer, but help them influence the next person. If that makes sense,
Katy Howell 08:28
absolutely makes And funny enough, I wrote a newsletter that was published yesterday talking
a lot about lurkers and the fact that we have a little bit large amounts, something like 93% of
sharing actually happens on dark social so in other words, snapshotting it and sending it now
that, in itself is, you know, the bit we’re blind to. We use this. We’re marketeers. We’ve done
this before. We have dB, we had radio, we’ve done all of these things. So so we need to get less
fearful about what’s going on and make sure that our messages travel. And you mentioned
something else there that really struck me, so we’ve been doing some research on Reddit
about what buyers, tech buyers talking about. And by far the biggest conversation is fear of
failure. Is the risk element, which is, as you say, is both personal and company wide, which is, I
don’t want to make a decision that is going to come and bite me. And you know, in the current
economic climate, yes, there’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of fear, and you can see it in you
know, conversations about tech purchases have gone up something like 480% year on year, on
Reddit, just on Reddit, and what you’re seeing are people looking for that reassurance between
each other. And that is just phenomenal. It’s a complete market change.

Tejal Patel 09:58
I. Yeah, yeah. I mean Reddit. I think that’s the whole other I’d love more conversations on
Reddit. I think that’s still untapped potential, and an area marketers need to be thinking about
spending a bit more time in investing in hiring Redditors to work in those communities, because
it’s actually, by the way, double bang for your buck with things like communities, because it’s
also helping you get the optimization for AI and geo and, you know, showing up in in Gen AI for
research purposes, right? The more citations you have with sources like Reddit, then the more
likely your organisation and your brand is going to show up. So yeah, I think thinking about
that, and it happens to be where a lot of these buyers are going to get reassurance that they’re
on the right track with their decision making.
Katy Howell 10:55
Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the questions then that occurs to me that we’re talking about
time, and the fact that we as marketers don’t have very much of it. So how can we avoid
wasting time that you know, when we’re trying to personalise for this massive buying group of
multiple generations, multiple reasons to purchase, all that fear that will be different depending
on what you’re doing and what your role is. So how do we how do we streamline what’s a
smarter way to kind of create marketing that hits all the right buttons?

Tejal Patel 11:29
Yeah, personalization is an interesting one, isn’t it? Because I think now you’re hearing a lot
more that for the first time ever, it’s possible personalization is at scale. Is finally a reality,
because AI is giving you what you need, is speeding up your capabilities around personalising
content based on different buyers, based on different channels. But I think there is something
to be mindful of. There first is these Gen Z especially back to them, they can smell AI generated
content a mile away. There’s increasing distrust. They’re getting turned off by AI generated
content. And you see it, by the way, and it’s all sounding the same. Yeah, it’s looking the same.
All this kind of algorithmic sameness, which is that same tone coming across when you’re
hearing influences, even sometimes talking. Video content, it’s all starting to sound the same. Written content is starting to sound the same, and they can smell that a mile off. So I think it’s
being a little bit, yes, there’s a lot of positives there with AI. It’s being a little bit mindful of it,
but I think around personalization and what do we need to think about where you’re not
wasting your time? I think we need to shift to a proof based content strategy. Where’s the
evidence at every stage of what that buyer journey is, what evidence are you providing around
what your product can do that is going to validate your claim? So you know, that’s from
commercial proof. What’s the business impact your product’s going to have? What’s what’s the
problem it’s going to solve? I think we end up stopping there, by the way, most of the time with
content. But then I think the next layer is, as you go further into your research, it’s kind of the
operational proof. How does this product work? In reality? Where has it not worked? That’s the
authenticity coming in, right? It’s not always perfect. Have we developed the product where
we’ve learned where it’s not worked, to the reality of adoption or use, whatever it is that your
product does. And then the third area, I think, is the peer proof, which is okay, what our
customers, who’ve bought from us have said, it’s your case studies, it’s your influences, but it’s
all of those layers of proof and evidence being built into your messaging strategy that is going
to provide back to what we were saying earlier, confidence in the decision making to move
further along that journey with your brand still in mind, and you as a vendor still in mind. So I
think that’s important now, rather than some kind of big, lofty claims, big brand activity, that as
a brand, you’re not going to get trusted as much. I think that’s really important. If someone else
is saying it or there’s other evidence to back it up, there’s more credibility.
Katy Howell 14:34
Yeah, without a shadow of a doubt. It means we need to think about leaning into our clients,
customers, as well as, obviously, influencers. And I think one of the one of the really interesting
parts to this is that the world has changed so much, and AI has involved our buyers, in the in
the way they they judge things, there’s actually quite an easy way. To look at these pain points,
and that is to look at the questions that our customers are asking. So when they when they
want clarity, what are the answers they’re looking for? And if you turn your marketing on its
head a little bit and go, What does the customer need at this point, then exactly that. You can
then marry that to your proof points. You can then say this. This is what sits This is our true
statement. This is what we really fix. This is what we do. This. We’re not the cheapest, but
we’re the you know, that is really exactly as you said. We need to show proof, and then we
need to expand that proof and have other people talk about it.

Tejal Patel 15:41
And and I don’t know if this is relevant, but something else I want to make a point around is,
you know, mentioned about these different kind of proof points along the decision making
journey. But I think your role as a brand or a marketeer to educate your audience in your area,
your field to educational content throughout the buying process, which is continuously
reinforced to your ICP, I think, is useful because you’ve adding value. And the brand that comes
to mind that I think does that really well is HubSpot. I’ve been engaging more with HubSpot
over the last year, there’s so much amazing content they share for free that is educating me as
a marketeer, and now I’m talking about HubSpot on a call with so many other people. So what
does that say about their marketing working right? It’s a subtle way to do it. I’ve had value from
it, and now I’m prepared to talk about, I think hubspot’s bloody brilliant.
Katy Howell 16:44
So, and I think that’s a really, I think one of the really key things there is that you’ve got,
you’re, not only are you adding value, but you’re also adding thought leadership, because
HubSpot does both. It does the, here’s how you do this. 101, kind of style. Here’s but here’s
also this really interesting, different way of thinking about things, and I think that is the bit that
marketeers need to get to grips with, and kind of somewhat bully their bully, their colleagues
and stakeholders into doing a lot more thought leadership.
Tejal Patel 17:19
But, you know, you feel this association with the brand because it’s like, you know, HubSpot is
helping me look smart. Yeah, and so what are you doing, whether you targeting, we talked
about IT directors, didn’t we earlier. Everyone’s targeting the IT director or IT manager or
whatever. But what are you doing to make that person that ICP feel like they’re smart,
improving their education levels in their area of expertise. And so if you doing that as a brand,
that’s a type of loyalty, which is another thing to be thinking about. Are we thinking enough
about loyalty? They think about it all the time in B to C. I don’t know if we think enough about it
in B
Katy Howell 18:03
to B, no. Really interesting question from my colleague, CJ, which I read out because I think it’s
really poignant to where we are at the moment. If fear of failure is prevalent, who should be
stimulating a drive to be bold and create is that the marketing director or the wider board for
teams to create full funnel content that truly impacts the customer journey, won’t marketeers
need enablement to create fail and then ultimately succeed. I think that is just cracking
cracking question, because that bit of allowing us as marketeers to consistently test and learn,
because our audience is doing that is massive. What do you think?

Tejal Patel 18:46
I think? Yeah, I think that’s at a board level or across teams. You know, I don’t know if you have
to go up to the board necessarily for that. But internal alignment, I know we said we’re going to
talk a bit about that later as well. But getting internal and not alignment based on data points
you’ve seen that you want to test out that data point and that insight you’ve gathered, it’s
always it’s got to be based on some sort of evidence you’ve seen, whether it’s insight from a
customer or win loss reports that are showing you look we’re consistently losing because of
whatever it might be, we’re not communicating or people are not understanding something
about our product. What can we do innovatively, creatively, that is going to address that
current failure in our organisation? Can we work with sales? Can we work with the product
team? Here’s what marketing is going to do, and we’re going to work together to build out the
strategy, and it’s in effect, tweaks to your go to market, which is always more than marketing
that’s got to be involved in it. So I think it’s a don’t try and do things alone, is what my message
would be to marketing teams, please don’t do it alone, because your job is not in isolation. It’s
with some really super smart teams and departments in your organisation who are also very
close to the customer, who also have their own perspective on insights, bring that together and
build a test plan of sorts that you can and you may not work, by the way, but if you’ve based it
on research based it on, you know, there’s enough logic here to suggest why we need to go and
give this a go, but if you’ve got people behind you and buying into trying it, if it does fail, no
one’s going to point the finger, because you haven’t suddenly come out the woodwork and say,
hey, you know, marketing director has decided we’re going to just go and do this, and do this,
and you’ve not involved other people. That’s when finger pointing happens. Yeah, it’s very easy
to blame other people when, well, I wasn’t part of it, but if you were part of it, well, you don’t
want to say I failed, you’ll probably be like, Yeah, okay, look, we learned something from it.
Let’s tweak it and try it. So there is a human psychology there. I think about collective decision
to do something absolutely I hope that answers the question
Katy Howell 21:04
totally better than I did anyway. Actually, that kind of brings me on to how do you stop you
know, there’s multiple customer bases or decision makers, so how do you stop it turning into
lazy stereotypes? What? What are the guardrails that you put in place to keep it kind of
grounded in context and jobs to be done and the reality. Because otherwise, you know, when I
look at the this Gartner step, which talks about the fact that, you know, so many of our buyers
are actually, yeah, avoiding talking to us, so they’re doing the rep free buying, which means
there’s even more kind of for us as marketeers to focus in on. So how do you avoid
stereotyping it all and just turning it into AI? What we’re talking AI slop that we were talking
about earlier?

Tejal Patel 21:53
Yeah, it’s becoming lazy, isn’t it? By the way, I think that’s the thing with AI. I’m a big fan, but if
your default is always you’re going to go to AI, you’re not flexing your own brain muscles. And
by the way, there is another separate piece of research I was reading about, back to the Gen Z
bit. They really have also got increasing scepticism about AI around they’re not getting the
opportunity to learn and make mistakes and learn through experience, they’re just defaulting.
And they don’t like the idea of just defaulting to AI, but I think that lazy stereotypes. We’re
talking a lot about generations here, but I don’t think you can target by age in what we’re
doing. That’s a really weak proxy. I think it’s got to be back to that decision context. So what
decisions are they accountable for, and what happens if they get it wrong? I think it’s that risk
factor. Again, there’s so much fear. So what are you doing to build confidence, reduce risk and
and understanding who do they need to convince internally for this decision to go through, so
you can’t have an individual that you are targeting in your ICP. It’s not just one person that’s
such a load of crap. There are, how many was it? You said 13 people on average involved.
You’re not, you’re not going to have the budget to target all 13. I’m not saying that, but there is
a there is a combination of paid, organic, a messaging strategy that is going to target high
percentage of that buying group. But you’ve got to understand who that buying group is. And I
think that’s where you’ve got to get your brains on a little bit, is, how are you going to reduce
that risk anxiety? Because that looks the same everyone, like we said that earlier doesn’t
matter on the generation they’re all afraid of failing and how they’re going to look and are they
helping to drive that decision, and do they look good in all of this as well that, hey, they played
a really good role, positive role, in making the right decision. So there are commonalities there.
So that’s where you can become more cost effective, more efficient, because you’re going for
the common things that each of these generations are caring about, target on that basis, or
build your messaging on that basis.
Katy Howell 24:24
And it can be so much simpler. I mean, the amount of times I get told in B to B Tech,
particularly, we’re after CIOs, CS, ci sorry, teeth in CT, yeah. So those will be the three, the little
group of three. And actually, when you, like I said, when you go to Reddit, when you go and
look at what’s going on in social and I’ll be really interested to know what you think is what
you’re actually seeing are the questions being asked, the problems that that they’re trying to
address, and that can cross the generation. So, I mean, I’d be interested to know what you
think. In terms of, you know, what you’re seeing on social or elsewhere in these behaviours,
how are they showing up? What do you see changing in how each say, generation? Is it
generation or each problem is being addressed?

Tejal Patel 25:16
Yeah, I think we talked a bit about the proof bit earlier, didn’t we, and building evidence into
every stage of that bar journey. But that evidence looks different for each generation. Gen Z
don’t trust institutions. Don’t trust big brands, governments. They are much more likely to look
across for validation and for confirmation of the decision they want to make. When I say look
across, I mean proximity to them, in their peers, people who look like them, part of their
community. So how are you taking that into account if you are just saying as a brand, and
you’re a big, established brand, and of course, you like trusted in the in the kind of B to B tech
world, for example, that’s not enough that just because you’ve said it, that you deliver some
such and such thing, or you are the number one in cyber security, that’s not enough, because
Gen Z is not going to trust what you say. So how are you building in other sources of evidence
and proof as part of your strategy that is going to help? So I think it’s social media is thinking
about it’s back to the simplicity of you’ve got one case study or one messaging Cornerstone
narrative, but how you’re going to split it up into many different kind of elements that
addresses the needs of different generations, but also where, what role they’re playing within
the buying group. But that’s a very effective way to do it. It’s one overarching story, but you’ve
shown it from different lenses, and you’ve layered in evidence from commercial impact this
product is going to have to how do you implement it to What’s the proof of how what other
customers have done? And I know that sounds easy saying it, but investing that time and effort
upfront, you can get such legs out of that for months and months and months in terms of your
content strategy, because you’ve done all of that thinking upfront, and thought of all the
angles, and thought about your different generational challenges and And I think you’re not
having to repeatedly create net new content. I don’t know if that that makes sense.
Katy Howell 27:46
Again, I’m going to clip this and quote it everywhere, because it is spot on. We spend so much
time trying to create new content, and we need to cover this, and we need to when actually all
we need are two or three really good pieces of content that we then shatter on the different
lenses exactly what you’re saying. I absolutely, categorically believe that is a better way
forward that we and, you know, we have a terrible habit, and I’m just as bad as everybody else. We have a terrible habit in marketing, which is, we get bored
Tejal Patel 28:17
with our own messaging, don’t we do? Yes, well, the assumption isn’t that data that shows
marketing people have got bored of the content way earlier than you’re buying. Ever noticed
that? Oh, they’ve got content fatigue. There’s a big disparity there. So it’s like, yeah, we’re kind
of doing this to entertain ourselves.

Katy Howell 28:36
Yeah, exactly. And so I think we just have to keep going. We have to be disciplined. And, you
know, one of the ways I do it, for instance, is, you know, I’ll rotate things, and that means I get
a little bit of, you know, because we’re staring at the damn things the whole time, aren’t we, it
gets really boring.
Tejal Patel 28:54
It doesn’t have to be polished, by the way. That’s the other thing is, I think we get a little bit
obsessed about high quality, high production value content for social media especially, I
actually think the more authentic it is and kind of rough and ready, in some ways, the more
traction it’s going to gain. And I know we see more of that with Thought Leadership. We’re
seeing a lot more senior executives and CEOs, kind of, you know, two camera pieces to their
phone, walking whatever they’re doing. I think that’s good, yeah, I think that’s good to be just a
little bit, yeah. It doesn’t have to be super polished. Doesn’t have to be some really well
thought out script. Are you adding value with what you’re saying, and is it delivered in an
authentic way is going to resonate more?
Katy Howell 29:46
Yes, and we’ve gotten, I’ll tell you who I’ve always loved, by the way they do this, which is
they’re not quite as raw as you know, the CEO walking, walking in the forest or whatever, and
chatting, but bring. Their persona needs a consumer brand. That’s the first direct I, you know, I,
if you receive a letter or an email from first direct, I feel like they’re human beings.
Tejal Patel 30:10
You know, I’ve heard a lot about how good they are with their personalization and humanness.
Katy Howell 30:16
Yeah, we, we need to get back into that. And I do think, you know we’ve talked about is just
knowing our customers a bit better, that kind of silliness, or the edginess of being a little bit
more raw. Brings me on to the next question for you. So tick tock in B to B. I mean, is it useful?
When is it a distraction? Should we be in the Tick Tock debate. Should B to B be there?

Tejal Patel 30:45
I I’m not sure yet whether where I sit on that, but I was blown away at this back to this B to C
event I went to back end of last year. I was blown away by social commerce and what is
happening on Tiktok. The Tiktok shops, the live it’s QVC for a new generation, and maybe not
everyone who’s watching today is going to even know what I’m talking about with QVC, but
that live shopping, live prices, discounting, flash sales within a particular hour or a window
you’ve seen the product get demonstrated. There’s all sorts of intent, incentives and offers to
purchase within a certain window. I mean, some of the businesses that are super successful in
Tiktok, it really blew my mind when I saw some of that. I do wonder whether there’s the low
friction, easy to buy B to B products, yeah. Why shouldn’t you be on Tiktok? Yeah? If it’s if it’s
very low friction, requires very little thought process to purchase and you’ll know what that
average buying cycle looks like. I mean, if it is literally quite a commodity style product, maybe
you should be on Tiktok and you’ve got an ability to demonstrate it with the product expert,
and that person can buy it. Unfortunately, I think with most BTB products, they are still very
long winded buying processes. And by the way, isn’t the buying cycle going up as well the time
to purchase. I don’t know what the data that’s going up.
Katy Howell 32:28
Well, well done. So this, I dug this out, and sorry, the glasses on really small b to b international
found, then you’ll spend 13 weeks in the initial research phase, versus 12 weeks for Gen X,
versus eight weeks for boomers. So, yeah, they’re taking it, and that’s just the research phase,
let alone the else. Yeah.
Tejal Patel 32:49
So, I mean, I’d almost say Tiktok is still, I’d love to know, by the way, any brands out there, BTB
brands, who are successfully investing or or creating content for Tiktok, and I think that would
be great to see what’s happening on there. But my my tendency would be to lean towards
something like YouTube, great for for product demos, and great for all of that that is going to
be you can build a great, strong library. They’re very referenceable back into AI communities
like Reddit is where I would say, but you should, don’t. I think the message here for me would
be, don’t try and be everywhere. Do well with the channels you are already investing in. If you
kind of half assed where you are already and now you want to go and add Tiktok, and you want
to add YouTube. You’ve just created another channel that needs managing, that needs
maintaining, that needs continuous content. Do you have the bandwidth for that, the resource
for that, the budget for that? So ask yourself those questions before you decide right tick tocks,
like the raging new you know, channel in B to be I need to go wrong there. So you’ve got to be
a little bit pragmatic there in the decisions you make.

Katy Howell 34:06
So bringing us back to time, that the hidden cost, quite often for us marketeers is actually
internal. You know, the committees, the creating more work because another you to do
something and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, so how, how do we win back time?
Because it’s a real challenge, isn’t it, particularly because we need the time to think,
34:34
do you mean kind of internally? How do you get aligned? Or,
Katy Howell 34:37
yeah, yeah, because I feel like sometimes internally. It’s you’ve talked a little bit in the past
with me about how teams need to brief themselves, you know, and to write proper briefs
internally. And it does make me think, you know, how do we? How do we, you know, given this
sort of slightly mess. Purchase thing, what’s the kind of smallest bit of insight we need? You
know, how, how can we? We can move fast, but, but not spend day after day in committee
meetings with our internal teams. Yeah.
Tejal Patel 35:16
So, by the way, speaking about briefing, I think that is
Katy Howell 35:20
a lost art.
Tejal Patel 35:25
I remember growing not growing up, but earlier in my career, that was really drilled into me,
the art of briefing, a really clear, documented brief for agencies, whoever you know, the agency
partners that I worked with at the time, and I learned, the better the brief, the better the
outcome, the clarity, because you’ve sat down and you really thought about what you’re trying
to achieve. And I would actually ask that question, you know, people listening, watching this. I
How often are you briefing? What does your brief look like? Is it just a quick email or a Slack
message or something? Hey, I need this. We need to do this. This is the deadline. Get it done.
Yeah, whether that’s internal, right, I know a lot of creative development happens in house or
media buying is happening in house. How are you actually doing the briefing here? Because
what you’re putting in, if it’s crap, you’re going to get crap out. So I do like the idea of internally
briefing and getting aligned internally. I don’t think marketing’s got an execution problem. I
think we are all good at execution. We are all working our socks off. There is no doubt about it,
every person, I’m sure, will resonate if I say you’re probably doing the job of two people, at
least one and a half to two people, and now the expectation with AI is, well, then you should be
able to do work for three people, right? So we’re all working really hard, but is it smart? Have
we aligned with people internally? Have we got people on board? Are we clear about who we
targeting? I was talking to someone yesterday who in the private equity world, who’s got a
whole portfolio of companies, they manage large enterprise companies, and I was asking the
question, what is the what are the challenges you’re finding with marketing and the marketing
teams you’re working with in your portfolio companies? And one of the first things she said to
me is they seem to struggle to define their ICP. And these are big companies already making
billion, billions of dollars of revenue, but they are not clear about their ICP. So I know we’re
shaking our heads, but I mean, it’s like, it’s really common. I’ve only got one ICP. It’s like, the IT
director, is it really so I think being clear about the buying group your ICP, that I think is really
important to think about, what’s a commercial outcome, whatever piece of activity you’re
doing, or a programme you’re launching, or a campaign you’re launching. What is the
commercial imperative there? What proof assets exist? Do you have? And I saw this all the
time, by the way, at my previous employer, who I won’t name, but there’d be all sorts of Yep,
we’re going to do this. We want this campaign out, and we want to talk about this, and we want
to be in these channels, and it needs to be live in the next four weeks. Do we have the content?
Do we have the right assets that support what you’re saying? Most of the time we don’t. So I
think it’s getting all of those things aligned. And then I think one of those questions that came
in earlier about that enablement part, how are you then also getting that content or that plan
communicated internally so sales are aware of it, that we’re doing this, and what’s the impact
on them, and how are they going to have consistent messaging on their side when they are
speaking with customers as well. So what’s the sales enablement process look like? What about
customer service? What about post purchase? You’ve got to think again, through the entirety of
that journey, are all the different departments synced up? And I think that’s where the internal
briefing comes in, and being clear that marketing is not working in isolation.

Katy Howell 39:21
And in fact, this brings me quite CJ has asked another rather cute question, because that fits
really, should a member of the team be tasked with the customer, to own the customer lens, to
ensure content really resonates? And I think this is really important, is that in you will avoid the
brief that just talks about the IT director, or the CTO, whatever it is, if you know your customer,
I just feel like somebody should own that. Or maybe that’s just me.
Tejal Patel 39:52
Well, I think this is where AI can help, right? You can build your personas out, whether it’s a
gem you create with Gemini or customs you. PTS with chat GPT that are internally shareable
across teams. But you know, you build out, this is the typical This is the ICP or in the buying
group. These are the different personas within it. What they care about. Use all of your internal
data. There’s so much internal data available. Are you listening to conversation? Social
listening? What does your win loss report say? What are the chats people are having? Do you
use chat bots? What kind of conversations are happening that you’ve got all of that to feed into.
The personas you build out. You can have them within your you’re using your agents, you
know, AI agents, and feeding your messaging into them, like, hey, you know this messaging for
procurement persona, whatever you know for Jill in procurement. Is it going to by the way, we
should name personas, B to C, brands, persona. Why don’t we do that in B to B?
Katy Howell 41:03
It all we call Dave or Bob
Tejal Patel 41:08
Jill Smith in in procurement, is she is this messaging in a resonate based on what we know
about that persona. And then you’ve got your validation of yes or no, or you need to build this
in, or it’s missing this. You don’t need to do expensive research anymore. No.

Katy Howell 41:25
And I’ll tell you, social is such a of course, I’d say that, but I just having just done that Reddit
research, and also, you know, using tools like brand watch or global web index, you know, and
not we have the work platform for global web index, which is just phenomenal. It is being able
to go, Well, what are the attitudes, what are the values of this by job title, what are their
values? And then using what’s happening in social media to really steer you. So if you don’t
have customer insight, there is customer insight all over there, you know. So that, I think we
sometimes so much insight. We, yeah, and it can, oh, seriously, we could. I can pull out data
and have an ICP listing in 48 hours. That’s how fast I can move to to help people surface the
questions that their buyers are asking. Where do they want answers? Where do they need
help? And then you can line those up to your
Tejal Patel 42:23
proof and the customers who have bought from you. Do you ever talk to them? Yes, I mean
marketing. Get involved in talking to your customers. Why did that customer, that account, that
company, buy from you? What tipped them over in the end, after that three month buyer
journey, 12 weeks of research. What was it? And how do we do more of it? How do we get more
customers like that one? Yeah, I think we need to be getting out of our marketing bubbles a
little bit and doing
Katy Howell 42:55
some of this, yeah, yeah, in the nicest possible way. I think we’ll have fun with it as well, and
Tejal Patel 43:00
it will, it’s going to make our work more impactful. So you’re doing it, so your team looks
brilliant, because you’ve got all the data to back it up,
Katy Howell 43:11
and that you’re not a factory churning out content, spewing out generated content, or even
other I mean, the amount of webinars I say just come to our webinar. Come stand 235, even I
wouldn’t you know, you must be bored. I always think you must be bored with yourself, you
know? Because surely there’s more exciting things to say. Yeah. Back to this. Time for this. We
don’t have time for these what? What do you think we should stop doing this quarter to make
time for this insights and planning? What do you think should be we should actually stand
down.
Tejal Patel 43:53
I know what it means for each individual, team or organisation, but I think we keep adding lots
of priorities to our list, and then there’s last minute things that are constantly coming in, and
the fear factor, again, means we never say no to it. So I would say based on my experience,
and you know, having worked with quite a few different diverse clients in my new sort of
consulting world, over the last year, I think we are getting pulled into more and more meetings.
It got a cut back on some of them. Why is it that you have more than one person in your team
in the same meeting when it’s with other stakeholders? Sometimes it’s like, does any two of
you that’s two man hours double the man hours that you’ve wasted being in that one hour call,
when actually one of you can do it, especially with all the you know, transcribing tools we have
now, and you’ve already got a representative. So I would say. We just meeting, fatigue is
getting really bad, and I It’s so refreshing the world that I live in now. And I think it’s similar for
you. Katy, you don’t get dragged into every single meeting that is for the sake of it, and you’ve
got time to think and do the work. So I think the question, I would say, and it sounds like a very
sort of basic, it’s not even about marketing. It’s about do you need that meeting? Is there
another way this conversation can happen or this decision can get made? If it has to be a
meeting, who needs to be there is one person enough you. It’s amazing, if you look at your
calendar, how much of your time you can free up by just looking at that. But I think also knee
jerk things is another thing. Are we saying yes to knee jerk that isn’t based on any data or any
facts? Go and do this go and we need to whatever it might be. There’s a new thing launching
next week. I want a campaign out next week. I’ve got 50,000 pounds here for you to just add to
do a new campaign. Can you get it done next week? No, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen just
in a week. So I think planning is so important. If you have a strategic plan or an annual plan, a
North Star for your team, it becomes much easier to make your decisions defensible. No and
say no, because it’s like, no, we’re not doing that, because it’s not laddering up to the north
star we have all collectively agreed on. These are my top three priorities. And honestly, and I’m
not just saying that as Oh, well, that’s easy for me to sit here. I’m saying that from having lived
this in corporate world, where I’ve been very methodical and very obsessive about planning
with my team, and therefore that’s given them the permission to say no, because we’re clear
about why this team exists and what our priorities are. So you’ve got to create that time to
plan, to bring in those insights, and then that gives you the headspace to build out a strategy
and content and things that is usable multiple times. I mean, the time is going to save you later
is, I think, phenomenal. It’s ROI in itself,
Katy Howell 47:14
yeah, and it is about, as I think you’ve said before and when we’ve chatted, is this slowing
down to move faster? And it has been absolutely, you know, the last couple of years have been
chaos and busy. World keeps changing. Yeah, absolutely. But now we need to be focused and
have an investment of time and clarity setting those priorities and going, right, okay, if we are
going to actually move the needle commercially in the business, how are we really going to do
it? And I think that’s probably the most important thing for us to do. So one way I carve out
time for myself is I block, book it in advance, because it stops the meetings, sliding in there,
going, then suddenly I’m very distracted. And, you know, and I’m easily distracted anyway, so I
really don’t need any help on that one. So I block book the time and then go do it.

Tejal Patel 48:13
Yes, that’s exactly my strategy. I block out bits of time, whether it’s Oh, a reminder of, I’ve got
to email someone, I’ve got to follow up with someone to time to write this piece of document or
work on this strategy or whatever it is, having blocks of time really holds you accountable.
Sometimes you have to move that block because something has come up, but the fact that it’s
in your calendar means, I think you’re going to be held more accountable to yourself to get it
done, but it’s that discipline, right? You’ve got to have the self discipline, otherwise, we’re all
going to run around in this kind of chaotic way doing a lot of work. The impact is there, yeah,
and it’s got to be the other way around. You know, as
Katy Howell 48:57
you write, you said, we’re talking to multi generations. We’re talking to people who have it’s not
one buying decision, it’s 13 buying decisions. It’s not one week, it’s 13 weeks. It’s all of these
things, and we’re in danger of just as you rightly said, our marketeers are doing the job with
two people. What are we going to do when we have to do the job of three?
Tejal Patel 49:20
So, yeah, it’s coming, right? So that’s where you’ve got to get super clear about your priorities
and what is your North Star.
Katy Howell 49:28
Indeed, just as always. And I could absolutely talk to you for about another hour, and I know we
could just it’s been
49:38
Thank you for having me. Oh,
Katy Howell 49:40
it’s absolute pleasure. And it’s, you’ve really made me think, which is always the sign of what
works and what doesn’t work. When you’re talking to somebody, and you think, yeah, those
proof points. And I can think of where we need to do ours as well

Tejal Patel 49:57
in my business, yeah, but I hope. Been useful for your viewers today, and hopefully we get
questions right and feedback, whatever.
Katy Howell 50:06
Yep, always here for the for anyone who has questions, both me and tajal are really happy with
this idea of sharing information, helping people upskill, or if you’ve got a particular challenge,
no matter what it is, we’ve been in marketing long enough that usually we’ve seen it before.
Usually, yeah, so approaches. We’re very approachable, sort of people really totally. Thank you
everyone, and thank you for spending time with us.