Room 301 Podcast 015 – The 4 Core Strategic Principles Behind Every Successful Marketing Campaign

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0:00:07 – Rob Twells
Okie dokie. We are back, Room 301. We have another guest this month. We have Clare. Clare Taylor from Apricus Marketing. A customer of mine from many years back; kept in touch and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to get Clare on. Her role has changed a little bit since we sort of last worked together, so to speak. But, yeah, hopefully some insight. We’re going to talk today about the four core strategic principles behind every successful marketing company. It’s something that I know Clare lives and works by, so I’m excited to get into the topic. Clare, how are you?

0:01:11 – Clare Taylor

I’m very good, thank you. Thank you for having me on.

0:01:13 – Rob Twells

No problem at all. Would you like you give yourself introduction and tell the listeners about Apricus?

0:01:18 – Clare Taylor

OK. Hi, everybody. My name’s Clare Taylor. Yep. My company is Apricus Marketing, which I set up about three years ago, primarily to offer strategic marketing services and outsourced marketing management services on a fully flexible outsourced basis.

0:01:39 – Rob Twells

And “Apricus”, I have to ask, because we talk about it off air, very briefly, before we pressed record. Where did the name come from?

0:01:47 – Clare Taylor

Okay, well, lots of people ask me that. So “apricus” is actually a Latin word that means “warmed by the sun” or “full of brightness and sunshine”. And it kind of reflects what I wanted to portray about my approach to marketing, really, and the kind of light that I enjoy shining on it for my clients and helping them to improve their marketing and do a better job. So that’s where “apricus” comes from.

0:02:13 – Rob Twells

It I like it. Well, look, before we jump into the questions, of course I’ve got some questions about these four core strategic principles and whatnot, but you’ve had a few different roles, haven’t you, Clare? So, obviously, when we first started working together a couple of years, but you’re working at a bed manufacturer, so you’ve had experience working in house and now working on the other side, helping in house marketing leaders. How’ve you found the transition?

0:02:38 – Clare Taylor

Um, so I found the transition really, really exciting, actually. So I spent my whole career, 20 plus years, working client side, running marketing departments for some larger scale SMEs. And then three years ago, like I said, I set up the business to offer the benefit of my expertise back into industry, so put myself on the other side of the fence. I have worked throughout my time in house, across a number of industries, from engineering manufacturing, to pharmaceuticals, to furniture and bed manufacturing, as you say. And I’m now working more diversely across construction, tech, professional services, and many, many other sectors. And that’s what I’m really enjoying about what I’m doing now. It’s that variety of business that I’m now able to work with and share my expertise with. It keeps it really interesting. And it kind of shows that the principles of what we’re going to talk about today are transferable across sector and across businesses of all sizes.

0:03:45 – Rob Twells

And you’re typically working with the marketing director or even the business owner in some cases?

0:03:50 – Clare Taylor

Yeah. So more often than not, it’s directly for the business owner. And I’ll go in and fill that gap where they don’t have that senior level marketing expertise. So I might take on the role of the outsourced head of marketing or the outsourced marketing manager, and, like I say, sort of work directly alongside the business owner to help them with their marketing at both a strategic and a tactical level.

0:04:13 – Rob Twells

Perfect. Thank you for that. So let’s jump in. So the four core strategic principles behind every successful marketing campaign, something I assume you’ve sort of implemented in lots of your roles over the years, but what are they?

0:04:28 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, very much so. So the four principles that I follow and that I have to say, preach to my clients about are “Evaluate”, “Plan”, “Implement”, and “Measure”.

0:04:40 – Rob Twells

We’re going to start with the first one then. So “evaluate”. So why why is evaluating your current marketing landscape, why is that important before jumping into any sort of marketing output, so to speak.

0:04:53 – Clare Taylor

So I think often evaluation can be overlooked because businesses, marketing managers are pressurized to go into the tactical phase without being allowed the necessary time to evaluate the landscape correctly around any given task really. So if you’re tasked with growing the brand for your business or launching a new product or moving your business into a new market sector, you need to be informed about what’s happening in your wider marketplace at kind of a macro level before you go wading in to the sort of the lower level tactical output. So “evaluate” is really about taking the time to kind of look at the world around you, look at what’s happening in your marketplace. Is there any new investment coming in? What are the trends? What are the dynamics? Certain sectors may be up, certain sectors may be down. What are your competitors doing? Never live in fear of your competitors, but be informed and aware of what they’re doing so you can identify areas of competitive advantage and know where to then pitch your marketing at a tactical level. So it’s that real top down kind of market analysis led approach and I think that’s especially important for businesses that are looking to build really strong, sustainable, long term brands.

0:06:25 – Rob Twells

No I think that’s great. And I think the whole long term thing is the key thing here. You mentioned it when you first started talking then was there is a pressure from higher powers typically to get results quite quickly. And often the evaluation phase can be seen as something that’s just delaying getting the results, isn’t it?

0:06:44 – Clare Taylor

But the results are likely to be bigger if you take the time mind to undertake that part of the process.

0:06:51 – Rob Twells

Bigger last longer and also less change as well. I mean, if you’re really clear on what the landscape is from the outset. That can help inform a really solid strategy. And that means there’s less changes along the way because there’s nothing quite as frustrating as frequent changes. We all know changes happen. We all know they have to happen. But the frequency of them, if there are a lot because you didn’t quite take the time at the start of the process to understand how to approach this thing, it holds things up. It eventually takes longer to get those results that we all want for anyway.

0:07:23 – Clare Taylor

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s about having a really clear definition around what your objective is at that point because that will then dictate everything else that follows further down in the process.

0:07:34 – Rob Twells

Absolutely. So when a marketing leader, manager, director, whatever you want to call them, is about to undertake the sort of evaluation of their brand marketing, what are the key factors that you would recommend looking at?

0:07:47 – Clare Taylor

So I think, like I said, look at what is your objective? What are you trying to achieve with this marketing strategy? Clearly define that and then look at what is happening in the marketplace. So what areas are growing? Are there new technology developments that are driving your marketplace? Is that something that you need to embrace? Are there trends? Is there a change in consumer behavior? It’s those bigger picture things that then will lead into a more specific thought process around your tactical implementation.

0:08:28 – Rob Twells

And how do you approach the objective setting side of it? Do you start with really high level commercial objectives that maybe a CEO or an MD will be looking at and translate them into marketing objectives? Or do you start with marketing objectives first?

0:08:41 – Clare Taylor

No, I think you’ve always got to start with the overall business plan. The marketing objectives can’t sit in a silo. Marketing is there to deliver the business plan for the business. So it is about that cross functional connection with finance, with the CEO, with sales. If you’re a manufacturer with Ops, for example, it’s about those higher level objectives for the business and making sure that the marketing objectives are set to deliver that overall business plan.

0:09:15 – Rob Twells

100%. I mean, one of the things that I’ve had quite a few conversations about over the last it’s getting more and more important, especially in recent times, is connecting marketing results. Two overall business objectives. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, agency side if you’re pitching to a client, connecting it to the commercial objectives, gets much better buy in. But internally, again, if you’re a marketing director and you’ve got a CEO or a board to report to, getting buy in on your marketing strategy is really important. You can do that by connecting it to the marketing objectives and that’s definitely it’s always been super important, but it’s really crucial that you can do that, isn’t it?

0:09:54 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. Think especially over the last few years, marketing should be accountable and any marketing manager, head of marketing worth their salt would never be afraid of undertaking accountable marketing. I think specifically, after what we’ve been through the last few years, since the pandemic, etc, that accountability of marketing is even more important. And I think setting those objectives at that real top business level and underpinning them by a very clear budget and tactical plan that’s been well thought out is something that we should all be prepared to hang our hats on really.

0:10:35 – Rob Twells

No, I agree. It’s tough. We know marketing can be quite unpredictable, but I think you got to be bold, you got to be confident, you got to be brave and you’ve got to do it. The more you believe in it, the more you’ll get it done. So you mentioned it there, the tactical side of things. Presumably that’s the plan part of the four principles.

0:10:54 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, so, absolutely. So after the top level evaluation and you’ve clearly defined your objectives, you now need to start to think about what tactical activities you’re going to put in place to deliver the strategy that you’ve developed. Again, planning is something that is often seen as a time luxury and that shouldn’t be the case. A marketing plan doesn’t have to be anything that’s overly complicated. It can be something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet, a more sophisticated Gantt chart, or even your Outlook calendar, if you like. That really shows for each tactical element how you’re going to phase it in, when you’re going to phase it in, who’s executing it and having a number really against that, that’s been budgeted for. I think the beauty of having a plan is that it ensures your commitment. If you’ve created a plan, you’ve put your name to it, you’ve committed your departments efforts to it, you are going to execute it. And I think it’s a really good way of ensuring your commitment and allowing for a clear budget to be developed to support the marketing that you’re going to undertake.

0:12:18 – Rob Twells

100%, also make sure you got the resource in place ahead of time. A lot of plans that are in place. We might say it’s going to begin in June or whenever you might say it’s going to begin, but actually, probably the implementation of that needs to start in March or February or whenever it might be.

0:12:45– Clare Taylor

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, often you may have we’re just coming up to kind of event season in the autumn again. I mean, they’ve made a real comeback since the pandemic. People want to go out and see each other face to face again now, and okay, you may have the show in November, but what are you doing from September onwards, potentially, to get people there to visit you? And all of that activity should be included in your plan.

0:13:03 – Rob Twells

Absolutely. How do you approach the inevitable – not the changing of the plan – but changes that inevitably do happen along the way? How do you sort of manage around that?

0:13:15 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, I think it’s continually reviewing it on a monthly basis. I mean, we’ll talk about measure further on, and I think it’s monthly monitoring and measurement and evaluation is a really good thing to get into when it comes to looking at your marketing activity. And this is just part of it really reassessing your plan. Have we still got the resource in the right areas? Do we need to change it around a little bit? Have we phased the activities in the correct order? Or actually something’s happened that we hadn’t predicted? So now we need to move this element of the plan forwards and we need to move that back. So reviewing it on a regular basis is key.

0:13:53 – Rob Twells

100%. And I know I always link it back to getting buy in from whether it’s a client or a stakeholder or a board. But I think how frequently you review your plan means you can set much, much better expectations of whoever it is you’re reporting into, whether it is a client. Definitely. So I think, again, reviewing it there can often be quite monotonous, boring meetings, but I know I’m a big fan of those sorts of meetings, just. Just by way of keeping ourselves accountable, making sure things are running. If they’re not, make a plan B, inform the people that need to be informed and go from there. In the planning phase, is this where you start to talk pound dollars, euros, budgets?

0:14:33 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, absolutely. You would link that to budgeting as well. And so often you will hear businesses say, we’ve got “X” for marketing, we spend “X” on marketing, but that budget is more often than not then not necessarily broken down further. So it’s about for every line or subsection of your plan, whether that be maybe PR, whether it’s digital advertising, whether it’s social media management, whatever it may be. It’s about having, I think, numbers against those subsections of activities. So you can make sure that you have costed for everything that you need and that your plan is then more accountable. Because further on in the measurement phase, you can assess what you’ve spent on each activity or area of activity and take a judgment as to the return on that. And some times that return is more direct than others and more trackable than others. But overall, you can make a good assessment as to whether your investment has been worthwhile.

0:15:46 – Rob Twells

That makes sense… and implementation. So that’s “doing the do”.

0:15:50 – Clare Taylor

Yes, absolutely. So yeah, often an exciting time for marketers, especially marketers with underresourced marketing teams. This is where we often have to be, as I refer to marketing magicians and make everything happen very quickly. You but yeah, the implementation is really about choosing the mix in the planning phase, you choose the mix of activities that you’re going to follow to implement and deliver your core marketing objectives as outlined in your strategy. And this is really about the doing and making sure that you are going to deliver against those clearly defined objectives.

0:16:39 – Rob Twells

So how do you approach typically any form of marketing is all about getting in front of the right people at the right time, whether it’s for awareness or to part with that money, to make a sale, buy a product, whatever it might be. So what are you or what have you used in your, in your experience in terms of tactics for targeting and reach of the desired audience that you’re looking to get in front of?

0:17:00 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, well, I think for me, it’s always about adopting a really healthy, balanced marketing mix, because I’m a firm believer that strong brands and really robust brands are built on very strong strategic foundations. They aren’t just reliant on one channel to communicate their message or deliver their goal. Sometimes that can work for certain businesses, but not all businesses. It very much depends. So for me, it’s about choosing the right mix of activity. So whether that be your social media, whether it be email marketing, whether it be PR, whether it be advertising, whether it be display ads and PPC, it’s about considering the goal where’s your audience hanging out, really, and then choosing the right channels and the right mix of channels to reach them effectively. And you will have different touch points across those at different times for your audience. And then within that, it’s about getting the right content and messaging together to really resonate with them.

0:18:10 – Rob Twells

I was just about to ask you about content. So how do you how do you approach your content again? Does it link back to what you just said there about being very different, per business, effectively per target audience as well?

0:18:24 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, I think there are elements that should always be consistent and there are elements that you will always need to tweak depending on your channel and where your audience is hanging out. For me, content really is king and I always encourage my clients and businesses I’ve worked for to really invest in producing good content because actually it’s a really economical thing to invest in. If you produce a good piece of content, let’s say for a news story or a piece of PR, you can very easily and efficiently convert that into a blog for a website or into a shorter news piece for your email marketing or break it down further into five or six snippets that you can represent graphically or through video form or whatever for your social media. So it’s really worthwhile investing in good content so you can slice and dice it for use right across your marketing channel.

0:19:21 – Rob Twells

I totally agree with that and that’s an approach that we’re taking internally as well. This podcast is certainly part of that as well. It’s creating good content. This may well become a long form YouTube video it will be then 15 or 20-30 second clip for LinkedIn and then we’ve got the yeah absolutely Spotify all for honestly, I said it’s very tongue in cheek all for a half an hour investment of recording. I know it doesn’t take half an hour because I know there’s questions and we’ve had a few conversations, Clare, me and you and stuff like that. So, overall, the time investment is much greater than half an hour. But just for the sake of my way of example yeah. You get a lot of bang for buck by doing something like this.

0:20:04 – Clare Taylor

Absolutely. Get so much more mileage from it. Yeah.

0:20:08 – Rob Twells

We’re in a world, I think, where we are lacking resource. And, as you said, most marketing leader directors, I imagine, if you ask them. Their key their key challenge, outside of getting results will be either budget or resource. So doing things like this, where you get more mileage out of it, as you say, is crucial, I think that’s where it’s going as well. And that’s where the world is going. B2B B2C. I think it’s going to be all about content going forward, definitely.

0:20:29 – Clare Taylor

Oh, I think it absolutely has to be. I mean, we’re content hungry now, aren’t we? With all the digital channels that are coming at us all the time, we need more and more content. But I think there are some things that need to be consistent across those channels that you use, from your visual identity to your core marketing messages to your tone of voice. They’re things that they’re building blocks, if you like, that should be consistent across all your channels. And then around that, you can have a little bit more, as I call “tweakage”, for different audiences in different places.

0:21:12 – Rob Twells

And those foundations, that consistency, the brand, the tone of voice, all things like that, the visual identity for these four principles to work, that’s assuming that those are all in place, isn’t it?

0:21:24 – Clare Taylor

Yes, absolutely. And if they’re not in place, then they’re some of the first things that we would look to get in place.

0:21:30 – Rob Twells

And what’s been your approach from rewinding a few years to when you were on the other side of the fence, so to speak, working in house? What are some of the things you were using internally to ensure we had that consistency? Because it’s very difficult when you’ve got maybe a team of ten and maybe an external agency and someone over here, a freelancer over here, creating stuff for all this one brand to keep that consistency. Is there anything you’ve implemented in the past that’s worked really well on that front?

0:21:55 – Clare Taylor

I think again, it’s really that you’ve got to be all over it. You’ve got to be monitoring. This is where people talk about: can marketers be replaced? And I’m very much absolutely not, because we need to be all over everything all the time, making sure all the ducks are in a row and aligned and it’s demanding, it’s full on. But if you want that level of consistency, of recognition and you want the results, you just have to be all over it. You have to be monitoring and tweaking and adjusting all the time. I always say marketing doesn’t really have a beginning and an endpoint. It’s the process of evolution and adjustment, and that never ends, really.

0:22:30 – Rob Twells

No, I totally agree. I totally agree. And the final principle, and I think probably my favourite, as I’m a very data driven person, there’s not really a decision I make on a daily basis that I’m not looking at a piece of data to try and justify that decision, no matter what it is, or we’re going on holiday to a business decision. I think that one’s “measure” obvious question, I assume to most of why are they crucial for us to measure out our campaigns and our marketing?

0:23:13 – Clare Taylor

I think if you don’t measure what you’re doing, if you don’t have any idea other than anecdotally about how successful things have been to you, then your marketing is potentially going to be completely misguided. I think measuring allows you to take a view of where your money is being well spent and it gives you the opportunity to adjust and realign spend and resource and effort into those areas that give you a bigger return from a marketing point of view.

0:23:47 – Rob Twells

Absolutely. What metrics would you recommend looking at? Obviously depending on the channel and the campaign.

0:23:54 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, depends on the channel. And each channel will have its own set of metrics. I mean, if we take social media, for example. Everyone loves social media these days. There are some great metrics you can take when looking at your social media channels so you don’t really get blinded by flattery. How many times do we hear businesses say we’ve got 1000 followers? Well, that’s amazing, but you’ve got no engagement and your impressions are actually really low. So it’s looking at things like that rather than the vanity metrics to make you have a better understanding of how your marketing is performing for you.

0:24:36 – Rob Twells

No, absolutely. I think the vanity metrics have always got their place in some way, shape or form. Nice to see some of the positive bits and pieces. But how do you make that differentiation if you’re at a board meeting, if you’re appointed to a client? Do you specifically point that out? Because I know a lot of people or agencies or individuals use them as a way to cover up the meaningful metrics.

0:24:58 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, no, absolutely. I would report on all metrics, and what I do is report monthly. And you build up a picture over time, and then you can see, for example, how are impressions? Are they growing? Hopefully, engagements are really important. Are your follower numbers increasing? Likewise with email marketing. It’s also important to look at things like unsubscribes. Are you losing your audience? You might have really good open rates, you might have really good click through rates, but actually, you’re losing a large part of your audience here. There’s somewhere where your messages aren’t resonating. So we look at all those things, and I think, again, we should never be afraid to hide behind statistics, whether they’re positive or negative. Those statistics that aren’t as optimal as you may like help you hone your efforts and your focus into transforming those into something more positive. So it’s important that we don’t cover those things up.

0:26:06 – Rob Twells

I see it. And it’s all about optimizations and it’s all about how can we get this at a cheaper rate, how can we do it for less money, how can we get more customers for less and all that kind of stuff. So what comes next? So gone through the four principles, what happens after that?

0:26:18 – Clare Taylor

Start again, start right at the beginning. So we keep going in this happy cycle of the marketing world. So, yeah, absolutely. Although your top level strategy at that point may not change, obviously, depending on the lifecycle of this process. And for some businesses, it could be very short and it could be very campaign specific, but for other businesses, we could be talking a two or three year plan here to deliver a specific business objective. So you would start the process again coming in at the relevant level. Really,

0:26:55 – Rob Twells

That’s a cycle. That’s a cycle we all go through for years and years and years and we hope it improves year after year, of course. Are there any sectors you mentioned since going into your own thing running Apricus? Clare, you mentioned that one of the things you really enjoy about it is working across different sectors and industries. Are there any sectors that you’ve applied this to and it’s worked really well, or is it really a one size fits all approach?

0:27:22 – Clare Taylor

I think it is very adaptable. I mean, I’ve used this across multiple and very diverse sectors like I mentioned at the beginning, really from pharmaceutical to bed manufacturing, you can’t get much difference. And I’ve taken this into other companies like professional services and tech and it really is because it starts at that top level. That top level then defines the rest and it is transferable and it’s scalable. So I’ve used this in some multimillion pound businesses, £65 million plus. And I’ve used this in sort of younger smaller businesses that are not long into sort of being a startup. So from kind of £3 million turnover mark and I think for smaller businesses you can use this in the sense that probably define one or two really clear objectives and choose one or two really clear channels to deliver those and put your budget what you can afford to invest against those. Don’t spread it too thinly, but pick one or two areas and execute them really well and monitor that really closely. And I think that’s where it has its place for smaller businesses as well.

0:28:49 – Rob Twells

Well, you’ve answered my next question because obviously with your varied experience of working at the higher end, £65 million plus, where I imagine I mean, I may be wrong about this, but budget resource less of an issue than the customers you’ve worked with on the smaller end. So when working with a smaller budget, less resources, less money and stuff, is that your advice? Really hone in on a small amount of…

0:29:11 – Clare Taylor

Absolutely, don’t try and do too much. Really hone in, really clearly define the main objective for your business that the marketing strategy has to support. Clearly define one or two channels, put a number against them, put a plan against them, a resourced plan and execute them really well before you consider doing anything else.

0:29:31 – Rob Twells

Is that a pitfall you’ve seen a lot?

0:29:34 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, it can happen. Businesses try to do everything, they try to do too much and then they’re not sure what is working for them.

0:29:42 – Rob Twells

Again, seen it myself, in fact, I think I’ve done it myself as well. I’m guilty of that. We all are, aren’t we? You try a little bit too much, you maybe over commit to certain things and I think being realistic is half a battle, isn’t it?

0:29:54 – Clare Taylor

Absolutely. I always talk about it being building blocks, really. It’s building those strong foundations and then keep adding the layers as you grow.

0:30:06 – Rob Twells

And finally, Clare, marketing is changing a lot and I think with the dirty word, but the pandemic and COVID and whatnot has only sped that up, to be honest, it’s very different. What do you see coming and how do you think these principles adapt to any changes that you foresee?

0:30:27 – Clare Taylor

Well, I think in terms of adaption, I think these principles will adapt. I mean, obviously, in my time, over the last 20 odd years in marketing, the world’s changed dramatically in terms of the digital landscape. But I think the thing is, what we have now are more tools in the bag. So this, the digital world we’re living in is empowering us as marketers with more tools to help us execute and implement the strategy that we’ve put in place. And I think they are. Just another channel, they’re just another tool in the bag for us to use to help to deliver our overall marketing strategies for our business. And we should embrace them and evaluate their place in the same way we would any other tool in our bag and look at putting the right mix together. So I only see that continuing to grow. I mean, obviously, AI is the main debate at the moment. How is this enhancing? I think it’s quite exciting, I think. You’re an advocate as well, aren’t you?

0:31:37 – Rob Twells

Yeah, I am. Like you just said there, it’s a tool. Maybe I’m naive to saying this, but I don’t think, especially in the short term, I don’t think it’s coming anywhere near anybody’s job that I know. I don’t think it’s maybe I might be saying something different in 5-10 years, but certainly for now, it’s got more advantages than disadvantages, I would say.

0:32:00 – Clare Taylor

Yeah, I think so. And I think it’s quite exciting in terms of what it can do, especially, like, the same for smaller businesses, where it can help absolutely plug a resource gap and give them a little bit of a start with what they’re doing, potentially, marketing wise. But, yeah, absolutely. It’s just another part of this exciting toolkit that we now have as marketers. But I’m still very much an advocate for the old school as well, for the old style elements that we’ve always used to build strong brands. And I think the two, the digital and the more traditional side of marketing very much have a hybrid place, actually, where they sit in harmony and work well.

0:32:46 – Rob Twells

I agree. Well, look, Clare, I really appreciate you jumping on. Thank you for your time. Do you want to tell the listeners where to find out more? Your website address, everything in between?

0:32:57 – Clare Taylor

Thank you for having me. So, yeah, you can find out more at apricusmarketing.co.uk. You can also find us on LinkedIn or please do connect with myself, Clare Taylor. Thank you. You fab.

0:33:09 – Rob Twells

Thank you, Clare. And I can advocate that. I’ve worked with Clare on a few projects, great to work with and hopefully many more projects in the future, but I appreciate everyone listening. I appreciate you, Clare, for jumping on and we will see you again soon.

0:33:21 – Clare Taylor

Thanks, Rob. Nice to talk to you.