Marketing Science Podcast

Will is the smarts behind the Marketing Science podcast and lends his vast technical AV knowledge to producing podcasts on a weekly basis.

We discuss what goes into making a podcast and how to achieve a high quality audio performance.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/podcasting-for-scientists?referrer=acast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As owner and president of Launch Team, Inc. in Rochester, NY, Michele Nichols leads a team that helps technology companies compete and grow.

We talk product launches, internal communications and operational efficiency when working from home. Michele and her team consults with science and engineering-driven companies in the US and internationally and guides in the implementation of those strategies.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/how-to-launch-a-product-online?referrer=acast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andy Henton is the Founder and Director of InsideScientific, an online environment built for life science researchers – Andy has a distinguished career working within life sciences specialising in webinars, virtual events and science communication.

Join us as we pick our way through collaborating from home, project management and delivering online experiences.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ricky Lowe is the CEO of Kumos Consulting having applied his 1st class MEng problem solving ability to an already distinguished Salesforce career. Join us as we discuss Health Cloud as well as Salesforce applications in the Life Science and Engineering industries.

"I always find that when we're talking about Salesforce, I would liken it to the movie "Inception" with Leonard DiCaprio, and I was actually just explaining to our CEO the other day about some work you were doing for us, and how you are on the maximum level, which is level four for "Inception" where it goes deep, deep into four people's subconscious.

Now my understanding is about level two I reckon. So I know my way around a dashboard and a few reports. Whenever it gets too complicated, I think you know the moment when my eyes glaze over and I think my brain's hurting, so you take over, and you explain in layman's terms."

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/salesforce-for-life-sciences-and-healthcare?referrer=acast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us as we talk podcasting, demand generation, social media, brand vs. performance and how Science can learn from the SaaS model.

A growth mindset leader and the CEO of Refine Labs. He’s originally from a science and engineering background and currently runs the demand generation podcast all the way from Boston Massachusetts – It’s Mr. Chris Walker

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/b2b-demand-generation-for-science-engineering-and-healthcare?referrer=acast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Debra Harrsch is CEO of Brandwidth Solutions, a B2B marketing firm specializing in Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics – Debra has a distinguished career working for many Multi-national instrumentation companies and joins us here today to talk about running a Life SCience Marketing Agency in a crisis.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/running-a-life-science-marketing-agency

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matt Rafferty is the Head of Paid Search at AZoNetwork with a keen eye for discovering trends in big data.

Matthew graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a first-class masters degree in chemistry in 2017 and moved into freelance medical writing before joining AZoNetwork.

During his time at AZoNetwork Matthew has been deeply involved with analytics, in particular Power BI. Both AZoNetwork and clients alike have benefitted from his unique analytical skills, gaining insights from big data sets where few dare to tread!

Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast. The podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science, engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever you normally listen to a podcast. My name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at AZoNetwork, where you can also subscribe.

I'm joined by my guest this week who is an expert in data analysis coupled with Organic and Paid Search - He is currently our head of paid search here at AZoNetwork, welcome Matt Raffert.

https://www.azonetwork.com/marketing-science/blog/b2b-google-ads-strategy

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Business is simple. Good product, cash in the bank, steady cash flow, growing sales and profit margins.

Dr. Ian Birkby and Alex Cairns discuss the simplicity of running a business well.

Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast the podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever he usually listen to podcasts my name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at eight zero network where you can also subscribe and I'm joined by not just one but two guests this week with Dr Ian Birkby, the CEO of AZoNetwork and Alex cans MD of Move Marketing, a full service B2B. marketing agency.

Thanks Gents for joining us doing today, so without further ado I'd like to jump straight into the first question and draw your experience of being in the notable position of pre dating the digital era but also having the experience of working right through the digital era to the present day and seeing how do you see the change in marketing strategy for SMEs?

Well, despite the fact the indicating that my working career services in the era of horses and carts Frankie I will give you my the best position on that

IAN: I think the key thing in terms of how it's changed since ninety five when Netscape came out and the internet era started, is the ability to measure what you achieve with your marketing efforts. So in the digital age it is relatively easy to measure the impact of the various campaigns and from that to calculate the return on your marketing investment - now I’d counter that by saying we are possibly getting to the stage where some people like to measure too many things and starting to get lost a little bit in the numbers but for me it's the ability to quantify the performance of the campaigns.

Franky: Okay excellent, Alex so you've you're in a full service B2B. marketing agency having worked with both client and agency side for lots of multi nationals, so you’ve got a real mix of experience Ho have you seen the transition.

Alex: I’ll echo a lot what Ian says, data on 2 aspects - because we use a lot of data for market analysis; market research in the planning phase as well so not just the campaign data which is invaluable but also the research phase for the data in terms of putting together marketing plans that give you a one to three to five years focus.

The other big change since 2000 is that we now have channels so it's not just a service, supply through digital channels which we can actually pick and choose from a makes amounts according to requirement so there's a lot more to you and almost test as they say something.

Franky: Okay and having worked with lots of different clients for your agency what's the biggest challenge, what’s the most common or the greatest challenges that you see that your clients having from a marketing perspective.

Alex: I think it is the data interpretation and insight because it is a fantastic thing having all of the data of but it's not a given to know how to use it and spin into an achievable set of objectives and actions so that's when we get involved.

That depth of our experience and expertise in how to use and interpret that data across multiple channels but a lot of the science industrial sectors don’t specialise in understanding data and certainly statistics is obviously not the course specialisms

Excellent so Ian using data and statistics as marketing challenges would you echo that?

Absolutely I think you know from our perspective as a as a business we've invested heavily in building an analytics platform over the last six or seven years and prior to that we would say to our clients we've driven several thousand visitors to your site - they'd say great thanks very much but they couldn't attribute those visitors to specific actions in terms of products sales and market sector activity so yes if you can use that data to genuinely prove R. O. I. it's a massive plus point.

Franky: All the way from campaign original source campaign all the way to revenue generating opportunity yes

Ian: I mean as you well know we quite often gets into this discussion about you know was it the last touch that really made the difference and if you're on the sales side of life you probably gonna say it was your involvement that all was actually not firsts %HESITATION campaign that first email campaign that was marked his responsibility so yeah always an interesting debate that will Frankie's you well know.

Franky: Let's not get stuck into aligning sales and marketing just yet the whole point just in itself.

Fantastic all right so in which ways does B2C vary to B2B in specifically reaching scientists and engineers how have you found that is different.

Alex: Today certainly there are a lot more the applications the market for a lot more nature a lot more difficult to pinpoint

Its really trying to appeal to the types of individuals and job titles that you've got within its scientific and industrial sectors so everything to enhance the credibility or proof that products or a service works as without the case studies white papers and anything this credibility building on that side is usually a better way to go and they stop and it’s much more much more different approach and be to say where you can really just pick up on a sounder craze that's going on around them I'm going to campaign on the box about us a little bit less considered in a little bit less than actually less scientific.

Ian: I think maybe just to add to that one from getting the other factories with the with database quite often the price points are significantly bigger on the sales side please significantly longer. So to a certain extent if you're in the business of content marketing you need to be writing content that satisfies all stages of the buyers journey. Whereas in B2C you know if you've got a ten pound product you can put a note out on Instagram and you could probably sell it the same day where is but a lot of our customers the sales cycle can be six to nine months more involved.

Okay so on that what is the longest sales cycle, the longest time you have seen a sale from initial point to close.

If I go back to most manufacturing days when I was involved in the business of manufacturing ceramics we could be talking to a client for nine months before you get specifications correct, you have done some testing - for a lot of our clients if you are selling a million dollars with the kit you know a year's worth of discussion is not unusual.

Franky: We ran a survey where fifty one percent of the managers said they had a sales cycle between three to twelve months and there's very few who have got less than three months and considerably more than that have got more than twelve months - you find the same Alex?

Franky: It definitely makes everything from forecasting, business planning, cash flow makes lots of stuff much more difficult with long sales cycles.

What are the key questions that SME science or engineering company should be asking when it comes to strategic planning, Alex?

We typically take a five step approach in terms of how we walk a client through the planning process. So always starting with what they're actually trying to achieve in the first place that's most fundamental thing involved. Then taking a look at a market analysis researching what's actually going on in the market, understanding competitors, what their position statements are and the marketing techniques they use and how tat stacks up openly in the marketplace and figuring out value proposition a message sounds like an obvious one. You’d be surprised how many twenty thirty forty million pound plus turnover companies that I walked into the really have not got that value proposition or a couple key phrases. Then the fifth one is a little bit more involved obviously so it's really pulling a lot together through the available channels and budget and timescales and also setting smart objectives to sit alongside all of that.

I know you've done some great work helping us with our own strategic planning as well so thank you So, next question: How has the internet levelled the playing field for David versus Goliath over the last twenty years?

Ian: I got into this game with AZoNetwork in early two thousand and it was very different then.

On the internet, you've got the same amount of screen space as a billion dollar market cap company. So one of the phrases adopted fairly early on was that it doesn't matter where you are found on the internet, it just matters that you are found - it became much easier as a small business to make a significant impact via the web than previously.

It has passed over from kind of publisher to client, that end user, the company the manufacture. It's really just the expanse of channels but also the time that it takes to execute campaigns in the market - so twenty years ago it could have taken three to six months writing, planning a campaign which could be done in a morning these days.

Franky: Do you have any benchmarks for how an SME science engineering company would define a marketing budget?

Alex: There are standard industry benchmarks out there in terms of percentage of turnover that kind of thing but we typically shy away from not more the fundamentals of individual revenue lines for the company, profit lines, profit margins for products and what the channels available with us we try to make it more small bespoke.

You can't really tell you when you call us at five or ten million pounds and over estimate engineering companies don't just tell you to nominal five or ten percent turnover inside dies the amount to spend %HESITATION marks in.

It doesn't really fit for every every sing

Randy Byrne is the CEO of Transformational Scientific Marketing, a highly focused, B2B marketing consultancy specialising in scientific products and services. Below is the adapted transcript from the Marketing Science Podcast recording.

Welcome to another edition of the marketing science podcast. The podcast for sales and marketing professionals working within science, engineering and health care don't forget to subscribe on Spotify iTunes or wherever you normally listen to a podcast. My name is Frank Barker the head of marketing at AZoNetwork, where you can also subscribe.

I'm joined by my guest this week who is a sales and marketing leader and an expert in a subject matter today having worked in analytical instrumentation and selling scientific equipment for over twenty-five years. He's currently the CEO of transformational scientific marketing, it’s Mr Randy Byrne.

FRANKY: Randy how are you doing today?

RANDY: I’m well Franky how are you?

FRANKY: I'm excellent thanks Randy - I'm currently held up in a makeshift recording studio in my basement, so I can't complain. How is the mood currently in the US? Is it business as usual, or are we still getting over the shock of social isolation?

RANDY: I think many people are still frankly, in the state of shock given the current circumstances. But I've always said we know when we're getting past some of the difficult times we start seeing more encouraging and uplifting stories and we're starting to see that now. I think people are you know they batten down the hatches and making the most of the circumstances that we're currently under show well and everybody believes are certainly much better days ahead hopefully sooner rather than later

FRANKY: Great to stay optimistic and keep a positive mindset. Now, you've been around sales and marketing for a long time and have years’ of experience, so how would you compare this current pandemic to any previous crises that you have worked through.

RANDY: Well unlike anything that I've seen, and I've been around a long time right when I joined the workforce although I didn't really realize it at the time was a it was last century and was in the middle of a rip recession, a rather bad one, I didn't really understand it - for me it was normal when I joined the work force.

But we got through that and then there was a boom time and then we have been through a couple of other ones change then of course the unanimous even there the difficult times of two thousand eight. I think 2008-2009 telling was very difficult for the scientific industry; this is much more different because it just came on much more sudden.

I think people were much more prepared a number the company I was in the timing two thousand eight was budgeting under the assumption that there would be hard times and nine and two thousand eight two thousand nine that was correct so this should be much more shocking dramatic and impactful and we're still frankly in the in the middle of it

So it remains to be seen how we will get through it, but it's been quite disruptive in many ways, everybody having to work from home to business and closing down which didn't happen in the last major recession so this one has been much more dramatic with workers being affected pressure boil dropping stock markets plummeting and then of course the desire to stay healthy so that this one has been circling the worst I've experienced

FRANKY: So I certainly think there's been a shock of people not knowing necessarily what to do but you are brought in to help companies so what advice would you give right now it's a company faced with the challenges that lie ahead

RANDY: It may take a while before industries and companies recover but there will be great days ahead and some companies take the tractor cutting the marketing as a first approach.

For me it's a matter of planning for the future having a little bit more about a long term horizon and the same is true on them the marketing side to continue planning for when we come out of this so that they're in more top of mind in in potential customers mind and they found a way to well no benefit the most early on coming out of the year the tough times

FRANKY: Yes, indeed the knee jerk reaction we see many companies make is an awful mistake - but we've also seen the flip side of that where companies are taking advantage of the downtime looking for opportunities within virtual events, webinars, podcasts and other online digital content. We've even seen our neighbours just down the road today in Manchester at the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre, the GEIC.

They have academics working from home but now they're actually able to say right well let's create some content and let us run a series of webinars and run a program that people from all over the world can take advantage of and learn about this wonderful material. So, this is something that would have been a nice to do just two or three months ago, but now people are being forced to put more eggs in this online digital basket.

Now Randy, you mentioned before that you consume a lot of content online with us webinars virtual events, podcasts etc. but where do you see the future or the importance of online content especially during such testing times?

RANDY: Back when the last recession happened the company was with at the time had a number of well we have we had a marketing budget cuts as well and some of the activities were kept they do weren't going to be done with the one thing we were left with.

We were fortunate enough to really have a weapon our program in place we can a doubled and tripled down on webinars and it we just did something like I think was about ninety one of ninety webinars in the English language let alone non English language ones that where eight and it had a very important unintended benefit.

We were into them at the time with the scientific staff and the scientific staff had more time on their hands to jump into them became a little bit of a friendly competition. So they started volunteering more. I'm subjective to it but the so that was great on the one hand but on the other hand our company the appearance of being much more active in the market place because we were promoting these primarily by email marketing as you mentioned they were directed towards a country they were in the English language, they were essentially global and we came out of that year after doing it was almost a crushing workload from a weapon are standpoint what will all of this information was good valuable scientific information it was all recorded for use for years to come party time ledge and but again the unintended consequence was we came through it with many companies you know potential customers looking at us as an instrument wishing well, these guys are even more active during an incredibly tough time, the truth was we have our own pain but we did get through it. So, it’s the next area where it's just becoming so convenient to take in new information that I see it exploding in in popularity in many different industries.

FRANKY: Yes, for me it’s the same on the train every day just like yourself in the car on the daily commute it's so easy to access content on your chosen topic without sports or finance so news entertainment or marketing even. With services like Spotify and aCast on iTunes, it's never been easier to download and listen to your favorite shows on the go. As a podcast producer right now we are seeing the flip side of that and how easy it is for people to create audio content for podcasts.

I think it’s something like a million podcasts out there now so it's never been easier to get your content out in audio format.

So the next question is about resistance to change; now bearing in mind that people don't usually change unless they're forced to - a case in point working from home and collaborating online following covid nineteen but how resistant to change our sales and marketing leaders within Science companies.

RANDY: Long-tenured leaders in Science companies especially smaller companies tend to have come from either the scientific or engineering or product development upbringing - just in these types of companies which often based on product innovation but these days it's much harder of a you know there's a lot more competition the same products are more often in the minds of customers they're separated by inches not miles anymore.

I've run into a number of people that have MBAs but the troubling thing with an MBA from twenty thirty years ago is it hardly prepares one for the market in marketing realities of today.

Sure it's certainly not a question of intelligence in our industry it's more a matter of relevance. I've heard people say frankly that marketing is change more in the last five years under previous fifty and I would say I think it's perhaps even more than that and it's even accelerating.

You know for many hard-working people in this industry, they often focus on their core strengths are always mentioning the product is in line in the next great product feature. Scientific Instruments and applications and to a large degree the modern marketing world has just progressed too fast for them to keep up with. So resistance to change for those reasons is certainly it holds back some companies in terms of the what's available to them in in terms of marketing.

FRANKY: Excellent so I've got a quote from your good self when we were both at the INBOUND 2016 Hubspot conference over in Boston Massachusetts a quote in which you said: The customer is in charge of the buying process.

A quote that has aged very well over the last four years you also mention that companies are now separated by inches which moves me on to my next question – In 2020 just how

Paul McCabe is the CEO of the McCabe Group, specializing in strategic marketing and program execution that goes well beyond traditional channels. We caught up with him to discuss current technical business to business marketing matters in 2020.

What is your greatest marketing challenge?

Figuring out how to realign past marketing strategies, even those as current as 2019, to effectively work within this current environment.

Also, getting clients to dedicate resources for collateral materials, interviews, website and other digital media content. For example, with digital media many clients believe that SEO is simply putting up "stuff" and changing words, heading and phrases every now and then.

True SEO requires strategic thinking on content and how best to present this content in an easily searchable format (i.e. indexed videos, images, curation articles etc..). Understanding how content is viewed and measured to gain higher exposure and digital marketing rankings is key to a successful digital program.

Hit play to listen to the rest of the podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.