Across a lot of marketing teams, the same headache keeps turning up. People are being pushed towards follower counts, posting frequency, channel debates, and quick-win lead pressure when the bigger problem is weaker fundamentals, reduced senior experience, and too little confidence to push back.
It also builds on Immediate Future’s recent work on practical AI for marketers and social search readiness, where the same pattern keeps surfacing: more tools and more activity do not save time when decision-making is weak.
That matters because the market has got harder, not easier.
Katy Howell 00:00
Welcome.
Katy Howell 00:10
We’re here on Monday to start the week. Powerful we are because we’re going to talk about
better questions, better marketing, and this has come about. It’s quite an interesting one. It’s
just we’re all, I would think we’re all suffering at the moment under Legion pressures and it
seems to be driving the whole plan at the moment. So, I’m trying to get round some of those as
issues in how we can save ourselves a bit of time, and how we can think our way through this
so that we’re not lurching from one idea to the next. So, this session, I’m hoping you’ll get loads
out of I know you’ll get loads out. I don’t know why I’m saying that, so I’d like to introduce my
guest, but before I better tell you who I am. I’m Katy Howell. I’m I’ve been four years in
marketing, 20 years in social media. I’ve been around the block. Basically, my guest is who
you’ll see with matching hair sitting next to his Luanne.
Luan Wise 01:20
Lovely to be here. We talked so many times. It’s nice to bring others into the conversation.
Katy Howell 01:26
Absolutely and so, Luan is a really interesting person, because a B2B marketing consultant
and a magnificent trainer and an author of seven Socrates.
Luan Wise 01:45
Six out two more in production. So, it’ll be eight by November, and then I’m stopping
Katy Howell 01:53
the idea of it just oh no, no, I don’t like writing, if I can help it. So, I love one of your books is
relax. It’s only social media.
Luan 02:09
That was my first one. That was 2016 and you said you’ve worked in a social for a while. I’ve worked
in social for a while. That was, that was the vibe in 2016 wasn’t it like it was still a bit new. It
was a bit shiny and for those of us that have been in it maybe a little while, we were kind
of like, it’s okay, like it is, it’s just another channel. It’s not this big hype over the top
thing, take what you already know and apply it to this other channel. And 10 years later, I think
we’ve moved on a little bit, but not that much.
Katy Howell 02:43
No, no, you’ve got a little bit stuck, and that’s where I think you know your pragmatic and
grounded view of marketing and how to cut through that panic is going to give us better
thinking, and better thinking is going to make it feel less stressful, because we’re all under this
incredible amount of pressure. So, this is all about questions, because we’ve kind of
touched on this in other previous webinars, where it’s actually what you’re asking. It’s that
moment of stillness before you start something or go. Have I got what I need? Or am I just
jumping into the tactical side of things? But I think there’s also this other pressure, which is the
question I have for you, Luanne, which is because, particularly with all your training, I think all
the training that you run, you must hear them all, which is get asked the wrong question. So
what are the wrong questions marketers are still being asked?
Luan Wise 03:50
Yeah, I think, I think it’s important to caveat that there is, you know, we like to say there’s no
such thing as a daft question or a wrong question. I’d rather have the questions than people be
too afraid to ask, and I know we’re going to kind of talk about that in a bit as well, but I think
that the challenge is the questions that are asked whether it’s in a meeting or whether it’s in a
training session, are so you know, and I absolutely love devil in the detail, but they seem to
really focus on really granular things, like, what is the best time to post? Luckily, we’ve got rid
of what hashtag shall I use? Question Now, you know how many posts a week? You know
these kind of really like output related questions, which are key. And if you get to that stage,
and you know you’re doing this day in, day out, and you’re able to tweak and refine brilliant but
if you’re kind of early on in your journey, and you’re focusing on, how many posts do I do a
week? I’m sorry, what we end up with is happy Monday posts and Friday motivation, kind of,
you know posts for the sake of doing the posts, rather than the quality. And my answers to that
will always be, if your post isn’t great. Katy, and it isn’t aimed at the right audience, and all
those other things. Doesn’t matter when you’re going to post it or how many times you post it.
So actually, Katy, what I’ve started to do in my training sessions, because I’ve been doing this
for so long, is that I actually have a I get those FAQs out straight away. It’s almost like my
second or third slide now, like I know what you’re going to ask me, you’re going to ask me, How
many times a week do I post? What time of day? What about the algorithm? What about the
hashtag? Let’s do this. Park it, and then we can move on and dive re what I think the
question should be and what you really need to know, which is kind of the don’t know that I
need to know. But yeah, those questions about outputs, we need to lose them.
Katy Howell 05:42
Yeah, yeah, and yeah. I often get asked what channel. I don’t know, where’s your audience, but
I think the real fundamental line behind that is really interesting, because there’s a study that
shows, I think it’s niq, that shows that 74% of CMOs are under more scrutiny to prove ROI. And
the problem is with the questions that are, as you rightly say, which is, when should we post?
How? How do we increase followers? Those are not questions that are actually answering the
ROI issue. They’re not showing growth. They’re not moving the needle on the business. And
that, for me, is where the big challenge for you, what do you think sits underneath those wrong
questions? Why is it that we get asked?
Luan Wise 06:33
Yeah, I think, I think there’s a couple of things. I think the ROI question, you know, is absolutely key
and fundamental. But you know you and I know Katy from agency, rather than consulting one
of the first things we’ll ask is, what do you think success looks like? What will success look like
to you? What do you expect? And we would plan that at the very beginning as part of our
objectives and our goals or manage those expectations, whereas I think ROI measurements
and feedback and reviews come two or three months, if not even years down the line, and then
you get the but that’s not what I expected, or that’s not what we thought, or this didn’t work. So
I think we’re actually having, we’re not having the solid strategic questions early enough, and
we’re trying to do things kind of behind, behind the curve, rather than in front of it. That’s
where it happens. And I think then what we get with those kind of measurement questions at
the end is, oh, our reach has dropped. How do we change the reach? You know, something
tactical again, versus leads have dropped or opportunities? It’s all it’s all about the data within
the social media platforms, rather than, have we got the opportunities we wanted? How’s our
pipeline looking? How’s that, you know, turnover and everything else, we come back very
tactical, a bit like we used to in the call centre days of how many calls are you doing? How
many appointments have you booked? How many meetings? It feels like we’re still doing that in
a social world, but maybe that’s because that’s what people understand and what they’re
comfortable with. So, the other piece is educating about what we can do and what we
should be asking. So, there’s quite a lot, lot to unpack there, I think.
Katy Howell 08:23
yeah, and I always feel it’s, it’s, I totally understand it. Why often our senior leadership team
asks those questions, social is not on their radar as a big thing, but they know it’s cornerstone.
Oh, if you’ve got lots of followers, if it goes viral, it’s good. So, I totally understand what we need
to course correct. And I think this is really important, because otherwise, what I find is you, you
yourself, are struggling to meet a goal that the leadership team is setting you because you’re
not asking the right questions back at them. And it is a bit of an art, a marketeer’s art to well,
what do you mean by that? What? What do you think that will deliver? How does that impact?
What? What value will the business get out of it? As you see it, you don’t have to be
confrontational, but we do need to dig deep, because then we spend a lot more time doing the
stuff that makes a difference. And you mentioned something there that really resonates with
me, which is that reach can go up, it can drop down. But actually, the thing matters that even if
your reach drops down, if your leads are still good quality and of the same number, then the
reach is irrelevant. It just means the targeting is better exactly.
Luan Wise 09:41
It doesn’t matter, does it? I think one of the challenges, and I’ve just scribbled this down, and
dare I say, comparing ourselves to chat GPT and AI tools, but when we’re asked questions,
we’re trying to please. We’re trying to give. The response, because we want to be helpful. You
know, it’s exactly what the Adi tools do. You know, you’ve asked me a question I need to
respond to. It. Is it time? Is it resources? You know, all those challenges around it, but we don’t,
you know, question things often, because we literally do want to please and move on and be
helpful and almost not put up barriers to things by opening up, what do we say? Opening up a
big can of worms? Because actually, that’s not the right question. Tell me what the problem is,
and then let me help diagnose the root. That’s the other kind of tactical response.
Katy Howell 10:39
yeah. And before I get into that, tell me this exactly the same. So, you I always get when I do
my mentoring, I was getting to rehearse a couple of those segways, so they’re set heads. And
then it becomes very natural to say, yes, we can look at reach but first, before we do can we
have a look at because then I will understand what that means, and you can do it in a very
polite way, like that, without it being conversational. Because sometimes people feel that
asking questions of senior people is, is can be difficult.
Luan Wise 11:16
Yeah, I think it’s not always. You don’t need the question mark on the end. It’s just saying, Can I
just confirm my understanding? Can we, I just clarify the context of this? What’s the bigger
picture is, has anything else happened, or is anything else impacting this right now, just so I
can understand how I can best respond to you? Yeah, yeah.
Katy Howell 11:36
So what? What does this sort of future ready marketing? What is it? What we know that marketing
teams are stretched already. So how will we make flip into the future state.
Luan Wise 11:55
Yeah. So, Katy, a huge thank you that my eighth book that will be out in November is called
The Future of B2B marketing. So, Katy has kindly helped guide my thinking sense. Check with
me, review, because we all need that. And I’ll share with you that when I started, you know,
when I picked the title and I started working on the book The Future of B2B marketing, I was
really excited. I was like, I’m going to do some future gazing. I’m going to think about what the
industry looks like in three years, five years time, like, where are we going to shift to? And
actually, when I started writing after I’d gathered research, because I’m a researcher, first I
download and I search, you know, all the Gartner stuff, all the McKinsey stuff, everything else.
And I was comparing that to what I know from experience of 20 plus years, I was like, nothing’s
changed, like there is, you know, some elements have changed and some tactics have
changed, but fundamentally, things haven’t changed. So, I sat here and went, Well, if it hasn’t
changed in 20 years, is the next three years really going to look that different? And then realise
that the challenge was, as marketers, we’re not future ready, because we have, we’re asking
some of the wrong questions. We haven’t got the basics in place. We’re constantly firefighting
and focusing on lead gen versus brand building. So, for me, my framework that came within the
book of being future ready was based on strong marketing fundamentals, supportive
technology, and then being future ready with the decision making frameworks to help you, in a
rational moment, make the right, smart decisions. So again, it’s a bit like being asked a
question. We want to make decisions quickly and move on, but sometimes we need some data
to back that up, or some context to back that up. So, for me, it’s more about take take steps
back to be able to move forward. And the bit that I love the most is, and probably when I waxed
the most lyrical with you about was marketing fundamentals. Because ultimately, many of us
have come to social media and marketing, even from all sorts of routes, all sorts of things. I
mean, I actually did genetics. Genetics is my degree. I mean, yeah, how I’ve ended up beyond
me.
Katy Howell 14:13
So, I think that one of the one of the principles, is that in in the process. We don’t need to
reinvent the wheel, and we keep the wheel, and people keep coming up with these. Oh, look, if
you do this, that’ll happen. But actually, if you have marketing qualifications, or at least the
fundamentals in place that you put in place, you find the answers are there. They’ve been
done. But again and again, the world has not changed quite as much as you said. You know
police, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s it is that challenge that what
we have to do as social media Folk is knowing our marketing, understand the marketing that sits
behind it. So, yeah. And your framework. This book is brilliant. I would make this compulsory
reading. Sorry, I would, because that’s exactly what it does. It says, here’s the basics, and
here’s how you can use these now, and this is how it’ll help you in the future. Genius, genius.
Thank you.
Luan Wise 15:18
But I will say, you know, yes, I’ve written a lot of books, and I do training, and I my degree was
business studies and marketing, so I have one of, maybe the rare paths where I followed,
followed that through. But there is also a difference between learning it and doing it and then
being able to explain it as well. And I say, you know, being a consultant, I have the privilege to
maybe have a bit of headspace and time to do that as well. Because even when I was writing
the book and when I approached you and some other peers, it was like, I know this stuff, but
now I’m trying to write it and explain it and make it current and apply to today’s channels. Have
I got this right? Have I not got this right? And actually, I was going backwards and forwards
quite a lot. And then it was like, you know, does this fit and which bit comes first? And, and
have I missed this bit out? So sometimes it’s also a challenge. When you’re in a role, do you get
the opportunities to use all of your learnings and all of your tools and stay up to date and look
at what everyone else around you is doing as well? And, and it’s, it’s tough out there, yeah, to
do that.
Katy Howell 16:23
And I think I love what you’re saying, because, actually, that’s the thing about this book and
these kind of training sessions that you do, which is, is taking people through that thought
process with you, like a guided process. And I do, I do think that, you know, if you just put for
much of what goes on marketing, no, we don’t need to know everything. But here are the
fundamentals that really, honestly, once you’ve got them in place, you think, is it really that
simple? People really need to do it like that? And you think, yes, the problem is, it is that
simple? We keep trying to over complicate it. But here’s the bottom line. This is what will make
the difference. So, I think, I think, but one of the other elements that we’ve touched on as well in
the past in our previous chats, is Okay, so you’ve got these fundamentals. Can AI help us?
Where is AI fingers and where is it making a mess?
Luan Wise 17:20
It can help us. But I think is, again, if you don’t know what you’re asking it and you’ve got the
context, you’re not going to get the you know, it’s then more about the outputs, rather than the
detail. And working in agency world, when I started working in agency world, we weren’t
allowed to write and submit a brief quickly. We had to wait at least 24 hours between a client
meeting and submitting our brief into the studio or third party suppliers, whatever it was,
because our account director was like, No, you need to sleep on this. You need to think about it.
You need to write the key takeaways. Like you are not doing this as a copy and paste of a
previous one or anything. Like you will spend your time on the brief because otherwise you
won’t get the right outputs later on. And I think we’ve got that same challenge with AI at the
moment of we think that we can ask quick prompts and questions, but actually, if we give it
context, if we tell it the role it’s playing and what you really want to know, which is where the
thinking comes in. It’s a great partner for doing that, but we can’t just be going give me 10
titles for a good blog, like who’s the blog for what’s your tone of voice and all those other
things. So it is a great tool, but I think we’re using it for the really quick wins, the lazy stuff,
rather than actually going, I’ve got a sparring partner here that’s I can really push and that can
push back on me as well to get some good thoughts and ideas going.
Katy Howell 18:52
And I think, yeah, I’m so with you, because I think it’s part of the reason why I think us all these
have been around ask the right questions of AI, because we do it, we’d do it. If it was sitting
next to a colleague, we’d go and so I got to give it to our listeners, some quick ones, which are
really easy, which is the wise love the five. Just keep asking, why five times? So why is this
important? What the other one is, so what? So, you’re telling me 56 people have 56% of blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. So, what I use that a lot with my data analysis from social listening. And
the final one is, what if? What if this happened? So those are the so it’s really, really nice, easy
ones, but if you play them in your head, I always find that they particularly, they allow you to
fall. They force you in a way, as you said, with the with a proper brief, but they force you to
interrogate, AI, you know, particularly if you’re asking it to do something like a SWOT analysis.
Because they really force it to actually think a little bit more, at least do the research and allow
you to do the thinking.
Luan Wise 20:08
And I think the other thing with those prompts is also, as I said, like context, like, if it was to
do a swap, have you told it that your market is based in the UK, and is, you know this, this
profile, because otherwise it’s going to be really generic and not relevant as well. One of the
best tips I had, and forgive me, I can’t remember who said who said this, because we read all
this stuff as we scroll in all the time. But I always say, how confident are you in the answers
that you’re giving me. And if, if not, what’s the gap? So, I’ll wait for the response and say, how
confident are you That’s correct? And if it comes back at, oh, I’m 75% well, what could we do to
improve this? Or what’s I also, I use it to say, this is the scenario. What? What do you need to
know from me to help me do this? So, ask the ask the questions that the AI tool needs to know
the same as we would. And then, you know, what are the gaps? What am I missing? As well as,
you know, taking, taking the response as it is. So just keep, keep prodding it, yeah, yeah, until
you run out, if you’re using a free one, and it says you’ve run out of questions, which is, I
purposely do this, because then I’m like, I now need to walk away, think about this and then
come back to it later. So, I intentionally use a free version for that reason, to give me more
thinking space.
Katy Howell 21:30
Yeah, exactly, and it’s a fab tool in the right place. But I do think this is also, you know, it’s not
the questions that we get asked, it’s the questions we ask our teams, colleagues and seniors,
but it’s also the questions we ask. Ai, so we’ve got a little comment here from CJ, sorry to put
the glasses on, because I’ll put it up. I wonder how many businesses watching this know they’re
seeing know that they’re seeing posts for the sake of posts in their company feed, but are
avoiding doing anything about it because they don’t have the right content engine built to
deliver the meaningful and business impacting content required. Do you know, I mean, it’s
more a statement than question, but, but it’s actually taking a pause here because a I want to
remind everybody, please ask questions. We love questions.
Luan Wise 22:30
I actually think this is a really good point, because fundamentally, what tends to happen is we set
off this engine, which is now a Wheezy old thing that grinds its way. Wheezy old engine
guy, going forward, pumping out content, because that’s the scorecard at the end of the day.
And ultimately, the beauty of the questions, it revamps your engine, it puts you on the right
tracks so that you can be, you know, speedy train, and actually getting to the point where
you’re actually delivering things at the right time in the right place. So, I think there’s, you
know, I might take that analogy, sorry, but I think if you it feels like a while since we, you know,
we started to unpack this together, and then, oh, we do this as a live one of the big things was
about not being afraid to ask questions. So, if you’re watching this, you can see that Katy and I
quite happy to ask questions and probe, but maybe early career wasn’t so confident in doing
that, or prepared to do that, or I didn’t. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t really know
how to phrase that and turn that so there was this whole kind of confidence piece as well
around it’s okay to ask questions, and you should ask questions to put things into context,
because Dare I say otherwise, as marketers, we may be seen as, you know, the old colouring in
department, the doers, and the output is, rather than that, we can add strategic value and that
we do have a voice, and We do have something to say. So don’t fear asking the questions.
Think about your questions are actually adding value to the conversation and the eventual
solution, rather than being a hindrance or something like that.
Katy Howell 24:15
So what? So, it’s a good point, but what should where are the areas that marketeers should be
asking questions. What are the things, even if they’re not asking them out loud, what the
questions they should be asking themselves?
Luan Wise 24:29
Yeah, I think it’s about just understanding the context of the situation as well. Because we know
I’ve sat in offices, I’ve sat in meetings like, can you do this? Or can we create this? Or can we,
can we make, make this happen? And you’ll quickly kind of go, yeah, how many do you need?
Or when do you need them by? And what’s the deadline? We, we go down that tactical route
rather than kind of going, Okay, we Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question, can you just give
me a bit more understanding? What’s the context I’ve had? One. Really recently that I was
asked for an output and I kind of went, I’m not sure that that’s actually available, and that’s an
option. What are you trying to achieve? Like, what are we trying to do? And why, and what’s
the context to that? And sometimes it’s an internal change management related issue.
Sometimes it’s kind of internal organisational structures, or, dare we say, an ego campaign
versus, you know, a lead gen campaign. We’ve all done some of those as well. So actually, just,
I think, pausing before you go, yeah, we can do that when you need it by going, Okay, I’ll take
I’ll take that. But can I just, can you give me some more background to this one? So, I think it’s
always asking for the background, and even if you’ve done this a million times over, maybe
then it’s saying, Is there anything different now that I should be aware of too when we lasted this
campaign, because the world is changing so fast that the context that we’re doing something in
tomorrow is different to when we did it six months ago and 12 months ago. So, I think it’s, I
think context is, is the key.
Katy Howell 26:11
It’s interesting. I totally agree, because I’ve just done some analysis this last week looking at
what, what’s changing in terms about audience behaviours. And it’s really interesting, because
although we’re seeing the reflection of that in our algorithms, by the way, which is, you know,
all the algorithms are beginning to care more about boil time, saving whether or not people are
actually following the next story in that, in the story and all of these things.
Katy Howell 26:41
I mean, particularly LinkedIn. It’s very obvious, but you can actually see on Instagram too these
days. But actually what you’re really seeing is the algorithm reflecting audience behaviours. So
they what you’ll see is your endless content, your wisdom, Wednesdays and motivation
Mondays are being swept up very quickly. The more meaningful resonating content is the stuff
that’s getting saved and held on to, and that is the signal where we should be looking at and I
think the reason why I say that is the question for us as marketers, to ask ourselves, is, is this,
is this useful or helpful to our audiences? Yeah, and how have their what? What are we trying to
change in their belief or their behaviour? You know, are we coming to get them to go off and
ask their colleagues to take part in a buying group? Are they trying to encourage a bigger
budget, or, you know, all of these things. So you have to understand what you’re trying to get
your audience to do, rather than taking it from your perspective, going, we’ve got a webinar
next week, out the door, and that thing, isn’t it? Sorry.
Luan Wise 28:10
yeah, what? But those call, you know what we would say, the calls to action and the
engagement has changed from comment below and like this, if you agree to be the shares and
the saves. So, we know this, the platforms are telling us this, so we need to shift towards that.
And whenever I’m reviewing content, whether it’s my own or or working with others, I’m going
through, is there a no think, feel or do to this? And it’s okay, if it’s just people will know
something when they’ve done this. They’ll know something more about our business, about
me, what I’m working on, what I value like, that’s okay. But then think about how, how can I
make this post something that people would share with a colleague or save for later? And
sometimes you do have to go. If it hasn’t got that, do you know what? I’ll just move on and
create something else tomorrow, because otherwise it’s just an output and its noise and it’s
not it’s not going to be helpful. And isn’t there that quote attributed to Porter, I think you like
strategy is choosing what not to do is just as important as s what you do as well. So, it sounds
harsh, but we’re talking about this in business terms. So, if our posts aren’t going to achieve
something, why are we why are we doing it? Why are we putting the effort into it? So, if
someone can learn something, but yeah, absolutely, I’m always like, now, would someone
share this? And that could be, share it privately. It could be screenshot it. You know, I I share a
lot of stuff in DMS, like, have you seen this? Have you if you spotted this? This is a great
podcast you should listen to. Not everything needs to be public, and we need to shift away from
thinking, you know, we need some public content so we’re still visible. But. That the
relationship building the know, like and trust, those conversations happen behind the scenes,
Katy Howell 30:09
yes, dark, social kind of questions. And I love your you know, is this useful, is this
knowledgeable? Is this that kind of stuff. So, I love those kind of things, but if you can see the
little QR code in the corner, and I’ll pop it in the transcript, this is a little diagnostic tool, but it
asks the right questions you should be asking yourselves about your LinkedIn company profile.
So, you might be quite surprised at what it’s asking, but what it will do is give you a score as to
whether or not it’s likely that your LinkedIn company page is actually delivering business
benefit. I want to go on to something that’s really important in this, because you’re really
talking really talking about quality and deep content, and one of the things that I feel that we
need to do more of, and I’m sure lots of people feel this way, is thought leadership. So where
does thought leadership earn its key? Because it is fundamentally a question based kind of
content, isn’t it? So, so talk to me. Where does just thought leadership earn its
Luan Wise 31:29
isn’t this? You know, as marketers, we like some buzz words, don’t we? And you know, latest,
latest things that we’re all doing. And Chief execs, the C suite, like, I want to be seen as a
thought leader. I think it comes back to a get if I ask a question like, why and what do you want
to be? What do you want to be known for? Who do we need you? Who needs to know you for
that topic, that opinion, that stance, that voice, and then work backwards from it. And I would
say thought leadership content doesn’t need to be you said the word deep. It doesn’t need to
be big stuff, because that takes a long time for us to create. Whether it’s written or it’s video, it
doesn’t need to be big stuff. It’s more like the consistent storytelling narrative of this is, this is
who I am. This is what we do. This is what we stand for. Here’s the evidence and the social
proof of it. It’s more about positioning where you are in the marketplace than the output of a of
a big article or a white paper or something. But you’ve got to kind of think about, are they
really a thought leader? Have they got the evidence to back this up, and what do you want
this thought leadership positioning to create? Is it because you want speaker opportunities? Is it
because you want to be on the tender list work backwards, rather than everyone’s talking
about thought leadership content? And this is what I need to do now, because the same as you
know, I need to do video content. We’re just so all shiny without actually, kind of, dare I say,
even actually questioning the term and what it means.
Katy Howell 33:02
Yes, and I have a it’s one of my bug bears, because it has a thought in it, and you need to give
it some thought. One of the way, one of the things that I feel is really what I do a little mini
training course, which I did for the marketing society on thought leadership. One of the things
that you know, beyond the obvious, is that you know, often you will have a big thought
leadership thing you want to talk about. It could be, I don’t know, I’m making this up, say, the
use of AI in marketing. The key here is to go around all your subject matter experts and ask
them the right questions. So internally, you’ll have your expertise or your leadership or
whatever it is. You go, Look, we’re we’ve done this big report on AI and marketing, what do you
think? And you probe them with carefully, with a number of questions, where what you’re trying
to do is and I just record those. When I do them, I record them. When I speak to my colleagues
at immediate future I record them. I tell them I’m recording them. I ask them questions, and
then I take that recording, and I get I write through AI to get the points out of it, and then I go
away and think about what, what does that mean, and what does that mean to the audience
now, because one of the biggest challenges is maybe all of the companies that we, I’ve ever
worked for, have the big bit of thought leadership. What they don’t have is all the different
story tells within that. And that’s the missing, because they don’t go and ask what all the
different story tells. I mean, go and sit in your engineering department and go ask them, yeah,
who have we worked with, who’s sitting alongside you know, I mean, it’s just,
Luan Wise 34:42
I think the other challenge with Thought Leadership is it’s also got grouped in with the term
personal brand, which people find a bit ick, and also with the I need to have a big audience and
actually to be seen as a thought leader. It doesn’t need to be about big audiences or, you know,
you know. It the topics do seg in segue into each other, but you only need to, particularly in B2B. You don’t need to be a thought leader amongst hundreds of 1000s of millions of people.
It’s more in your niche, in your topic, and that’s kind of where the magic happens. And as we
said, like the relationship building and everything else. So, I think we also need to pull the
thought leadership away from going back to it being about I can only be a thought leader if I
have this many followers, or I’ve got this many followers, I’m now a thought leader. They’re two
different things.
Katy Howell 35:34
Yes,
Luan Wise 35:34
that’s a whole different webinar, isn’t it? We touched briefly on your book, but one of the things
that I really like about what you’re right, what you’ve written for this, is the fact that it has lots
of frameworks in it, and one of them, one of the things is, is, could you maybe explain what,
what’s useful around a decision framework and what, what, what would that include? I’m
smiling because I had to double check. I was like, Katy is going to ask me about the framework.
So, I double checked. Because the thing about writing is it’s, you know, there’s such a time lag
as well between you’ve been so intense in writing, and then, you know, it goes off into
production. You’re like, I don’t need to think about this. And I think again, what I’ll say to you is
like, I’ve done the training, I’ve done the qualifications over the years, and sometimes I think, is
it still relevant? Is it not Being I kind of going back to old school? And then you start writing and
thinking about how you’re going to explain this to others. And, you know, do you know what
those these traditional frameworks, like you mentioned SWOT pestle, they just, they just work.
You know, they were developed for a reason. They can be applied in so many different ways. So
the two that I checked before this session were, it’s called Eisenhower, but it’s very simple. You
know, two by two, urgent, not urgent. Important, not important. Where do you need to focus?
What do you need to delegate? And actually, wouldn’t we all, just like, we don’t need to do this.
You know, it’s not going to change the world. It doesn’t matter. We’ll scrap that off our list. We
don’t need to do it. So, love lists. Put them in a box. What can you focus on and having that
priority as well? And I think that then is similar to the other framework that I like is, like,
weighted decisions. So, it’s like, I’m looking for a new social media management tool. I’ve got
my criteria down, down the left-hand side, I’ve got my tools along the top, and I’m going to
score them all out of five. We don’t just want to score everything out of five, because actually,
price, like one factor might be more important than the user interface. So we then need to
weight each of those criteria and multiply them out so we get a weighted decision, rather than
just raw one out of five, because otherwise you could end up buying a tool because it looks
nice, versus it being cost effective and practical with number of user logins, etc. So use the
traditional frameworks. They work. Yes, we’re always creating new ones, but they’re usually
just a tweak on something that already exists. They’re not broken.
Katy Howell 38:11
no. And I love them. I still, I still use the Eisenhower one, for instance, first thing in the morning
Friday, always do that so I know what’s coming up in my task list and what is accurate, because
I also have the sort of brain that wants to do the fun stuff, and I have to, as they say, that’s
another book, eat the frog. I have to do the horrible thing first, otherwise I won’t get to it. But I
think this is really good, the fundamentals these. The thing is, you can say, Oh, it’s just a SWOT
analysis, but actually, when you when you go through it, these are the basics of planning. And
one of the elements that I have always liked about them is that in doing these frameworks,
you’re thinking about things in different ways. It’s a bit like kind of talking your way through
your problems, isn’t it? It’s kind of, you’re looking at it in different shapes. And quite
often, what happens is you step away and you come back and you look at what you’ve done,
and you go, Oh my God, that’s there it is, staring at me. So, it’s like the the basics of planning.
And the thing is, if you use those in every day, it’s amazing how much get out of it.
Luan Wise 39:23
But I think the key is to see them as a framework. And there is many people, academics,
practitioners, that say SWOT doesn’t work anymore. It’s irrelevant. And that’s probably because
many of us have been in the meeting where we’ll do, oh, let’s do a quick SWAT exercise. And
you put the four headings up and you want three bullet points under each one, and you go,
that’s it. That’s filling in boxes. That’s not using a framework. That’s when you then need to go
there. So, what does this mean? What can we what’s important? What’s not important? What
can we control? What can’t we control? And often, you know, the first bit is done, and we go,
Oh, we’ve used a tool. Do? You haven’t used at all. You’ve written some points down. We’ve
got, we’ve got to have the thinking time. I think that’s, that’s what we’re really missing, isn’t it?
Is having that time to think, but it will reap the rewards.
Katy Howell 40:14
absolutely and I it’s, I mean, that was the purpose of this, which is we haven’t got time to think,
is really what I was kind of getting. It’s really just in the in the melee that we’re living at the
moment, it it’s tough to find a bit space. And let’s face it, when we finish work, we’re
completely if you’re like me, a complete vegetable. So, if you were dropped, if you were
dropped into a very stretch, B to B marketing team tomorrow, what would you fix?
Luan Wise 40:56
Yeah, I think I would ask questions first, but I would be asking what’s working and what’s
not working. And actually, I’ve been putting a presentation deck together this morning around,
what would you start, what would you stop, and what would you scale? So, I would have a
conversation. And again, I’d have those headings of like, if this isn’t working, or you can’t
explain this to me, we’re going to stop doing it. What can we start doing? Because I know
what’s happening in the environment or the competitors and everything else, and then what do
we we keep doing and try and scale? So, I think it’s just sometimes just having an hour to
explain something to someone else and then digest it and take away, that’s a huge amount of
value in that. So, I’d say, you know what’s not working, and why can we fix it? Do we not need
to worry about it? And then the big question like, but what were you expecting? And if you can
understand what someone’s expectations are or what their goals are, then actually, I’d
probably ignore the rest and just really home in and go, Well, if that’s what you want to happen,
this is how we’re going to make it happen.
Katy Howell 42:02
And in your experience, having spoken to so many teams, what do you think that you hear
commonly, that you go, this is what marketing stop doing now.
Luan Wise 42:12
And I think again, I’ll use the word privilege, because maybe that sounded a bit easier and
flippant. I hope it didn’t, but internally, someone will say, but they won’t like that. Or we can’t
do that before because, or we’ve tried this before. And as an outsider with fresh eyes, you’re
kind of, you’ve not got that, not got that in your head, really, it’s almost like again, tell me the
problem. Tell me what you’re trying to do, and I’ll help get there. Other eleme nts will
always come into play within organisations that you then need to manage. But then you kind of
like do, how can we manage that barrier, that challenge that’s getting in the way of doing what
we really should be doing? So maybe there’s a now, a risks, risks and barriers understanding as
well?
Katy Howell 43:04
Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, quite often it’s that element which we kind of bundle up as the
politics, sometimes more problems than anything else.
Luan Wise 43:20
And yeah, it is definitely it’ll be something like because someone’s told me I need to post four times a day. That would it will
usually be someone told me that, or we’ve always done it this way. So, it comes back to us
challenge, I guess, just challenging things, but in the right way that you’re seen to be adding
value to something, rather than, Oh, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking, because no one wants
to be the I don’t know kind of response.
Katy Howell 43:47
And when do you think you know? Because, because that’s actually a really good segue into
when, when does marketing lose credibility in the business, and how do we win it back?
Because, to a certain extent, you know, coming out, asking a lot of questions, if already the
marketing is seen as the colouring in department, how do we win that credibility back?
Luan Wise 44:11
Yeah, I think this is the major issue. And I think this is one of the things that I DM you. Like,
have you seen this video? Marketing has lost credibility? You know, marketing is not great at
marketing, its own profession and value what we can do. So, we do have an issue there, and a
little bit of is self-perpetuating as well. But I think it’s about again, it’s showing that you can add
value. It is showing that you’re strategic and that you’re not just saying, okay, so you want
some flyers by next week? How many do you want? And what size do they need to be like? We
don’t need to ask our colleagues those questions. We’re the experts on that. Let’s dive into the
challenge and show our value rather than being seen as like the producers. I think that’s the
challenge. Much and that because everyone does think that they know know about marketing
and can do marketing, and sometimes that is through their own previous experience with their
own marketing teams as well. So, we’ve got to go back and educate them and go, I don’t need
you to tell me how many we need to print. You know, that’s my job. Tell me what you’re trying
to achieve and what message you want to get across. And and everything else. So we have to,
we have to work really hard at this. You know, we’re in an unregulated industry. We don’t have
a great perception. So, we have to work harder if we want to be seen, to be adding value, and
that’s often because we’re not the ones closing the sales or or doing the deals. Even though we
are doing the thinking and understanding the customers, we are representing our customers
within the business.
Katy Howell 45:50
That’s spot on. And it’s so much worse, I think, in social because, not because people don’t
think that social is important to the business, which is, you know, 20 years ago, they didn’t
really understand what it meant, but predominantly because social, everybody can access
social in a way that everybody can access, you know, out of home advertising or TV
advertising. So, wounds is, everybody can access it. Everybody sees it. Everybody thinks they
can do it. And that almost is frustrating to have your CFO or CEO. Oh, but my son does that.
Luan Wise 46:33
Katy, I’m smiling because didn’t we have this 15 years ago when it was the first websites that
we were building, and we would do the strategic planning, and this is what we were going to
do. We were taking brochures, and then you would, oh, my nephew knows how to do that. I
think that challenge has always existed in marketing. It’s just changing channel. It’s more
about, I think often in business, perceptions of social media are related primarily to how people
are using it personally. So, it’s how they see Facebook and their likes and dislikes, how
they see their children, tick, using tick tock. And people find it quite difficult to go, Oh, I’ve got
my work hat on now. How am I going to use this for my business role? So again, we’ve got a bit
of a challenge. It’s free, it’s easy to access. It’s on our phone. There’s connotations. But I think
the other challenge organisations, large and small, is where does social media sit? Because it
doesn’t always, you know, within some larger organisations, sometimes it sits within comms,
sometimes it sits within marketing. They can be two different things. Sometimes marketing sits
within sales, within B2B. So actually social, because it can achieve so many different things,
sometimes it’s quite hard to give it a home in the same way that web or SEO and other
things can be within a team, that it just becomes a bit diluted in terms of what it really could do
if someone had a focus on what they’re trying to do with social.
Katy Howell 48:09
because I’m sitting here thinking, oh my god, we’re running out of time. It’s really annoying.
Well before we go then one piece, I mean, just one thing that always starts out having had this
conversation of us needing to ask more questions, what are the one what the one or two things
that you could say to our listeners.
Luan Wise 48:33
It maybe it’s a habit to get into. Maybe you say them in your headfirst before you do have the
confidence to say them out loud, if you do ask a question, like, what’s the worst that could
happen? I don’t think there’s a huge amount that can happen, but if you take a step back,
maybe one of the easiest things to do is explain, explain your thinking, or explain your
approach. To kind of start with explanations of why you do what you do and how you do it,
which will move into the bigger picture questions later on. So, take it steps. But just, I think,
Katy, you know, just ask why. Like, why? And what’s the point?
Katy Howell 49:10
The Annoying two year old, why?
Luan Wise 49:13
yes, and not yourself. It doesn’t need to be out loud. It can be that you sit in that meeting and
you just take it in, and then you go back and you sit down and go, Why did that question
happen? Why? Why didn’t I say this? You can go back afterwards, so you’re always learning.
And Katy and I’ve been doing this a long time, but I didn’t do it 20 years ago. I wish I had, but it
will come over time. And how do I summarise this? This is the topic that we were talking about.
Wasn’t it like better questions? Honestly, will make for better marketing, because we’re not
focused on outputs, we’re focused on impacts.
Katy Howell 49:53
Oh, thank you so much. It has been. Been, we have to, it has been an absolute delight. I hope
we’ve been useful the audience. We haven’t had many questions for a show about questions.
Nobody’s asked any. But anyway, would you think of a question afterwards? We do keep an eye
on our comment section, so we’ll, we’ll jump in. So if you think there are certain areas I’ve tried,
we’ve tried to cover everything, I think, from the questions we ask, our leadership team, our
colleagues, our audiences, ourselves, AI, we’ve covered everything in terms of what we
question. So I feel really strongly that we’ve probably given you a little bit of food for thought.
And, yeah, keep asking questions. Thanks. Luan.
Luan Wise 50:42
thanks. Katy, see you soon. You.