“The key thing in all of this really is understanding the value that you give and that you have, and then getting other people to help tell that story for you…”
Christina’s love of marketing started during her undergraduate days, when under the wise guidance of her grandmother she decided to do a marketing and management degree and hasn’t looked back.
Having held various roles in marketing in different sectors, managing teams of different sizes, she is now the head of marketing at Paid, a UK tech start-up that is changing the way procurement teams work with their smaller suppliers, making the process more efficient and cost-effective for both parties. In her words, she is “excited about the opportunity for marketing to shake things up, and deliver real value.”
Always in learning mode Christina also holds an MBA and she likes to keep up to date on what is going on in marketing and other things that interest her. She also runs Ara and Obi, which is a bedroom and bathroom linen brand for babies and toddlers with eczema.
Questions and topics we covered in this episode include:
Kenny Soto 0:02
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the people Digital Marketing podcast with your host, Kenny Soto, and today’s special guest, Christina Patrick. Hi, Christina. How are you?
Christina Patrick 0:15
Hi, Kenny. Thanks for having me on. First of all, I’m really well, thank you, and excited to have today’s chat.
Kenny Soto 0:22
Likewise. And for anyone who can pick it up from your accent, you are not based in America, correct?
Christina Patrick 0:29
I am not.
Kenny Soto 0:33
I live here in the UK, right?
Christina Patrick 0:34
I am in the UK, I live in a county just north of London called Hartford cheer. So still south, but not London.
Kenny Soto 0:43
Perfect. So now that we got that out of the way, I wanted to get a better sense not only for myself but also for the audience of who you are as a professional. So this is a digital marketing podcast. And my first question for you is how did you get into the world of digital marketing?
Christina Patrick 1:01
Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t know how far back you want to take you but essentially, at university or college, because in the States, I did a marketing and management degree. At the time, I wanted to run my own business, I knew I needed to do management. And there was a conversation with my grandma that said, Well, if you’re gonna run your own business, you need to do that to market yourself.
So you should do marketing as well. And that’s kind of how I fell into marketing. And then it just so happened when I was actually studying it. All the kinds of management slash business degrees, or courses weren’t so interesting. And I just fell in love with everything marketing. And so I decided that that was the route that I wanted to go down professionally.
So my first job was in sales, quickly moved into the head of international campaigns. That was for a sort of small tech company in the Northeast of England, that was then acquired by a massive US company called Turnitin. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, but it’s like a plagiarism-prevention tool. So most colleges and you know, even high schools, you know, use that platform, they run students work through it. So yes, I was the international campaigns manager for them, I kind of created the role or had the role paid for myself.
And that was my first foray into marketing, which solidified the fact that I absolutely loved it, I wanted to kind of go down that path. And then maybe more so in a generalist role, then specifically to digital, because I like to kind of get a bit of a feel for everything. And that’s kind of how, how my journey started. Really.
Kenny Soto 2:41
Can you give more context into what you’re doing today? Exactly.
Christina Patrick 2:45
Yeah. So fast forward many, many years. I, now the head of marketing for a UK tech startup called paid and paid essentially, is procurement automation or buying automation tool for small suppliers. So if you’re a large enterprise buying from small suppliers, you know, photography services, or for a team shoot or an event that you know, the marketing team wants to put on internally.
We help enterprises you know, work with those sorts of small suppliers, get them onto their systems. And paying them really, really quickly is typically a long, cumbersome process. But an area of procurement that we specialize in is called tail spend. But we’re making it really cool, and fast and easy for people to do any kind of thing like save them time and money and all that good stuff.
Kenny Soto 3:40
Now, you mentioned earlier that you like to take the generalist approach, and I’ve had guests both talk about how they prefer to be generous, while others prefer to specialize because that’s helped them become marketing leaders. Why can you give a little deeper as to why you decided to be a generalist?
Christina Patrick 4:00
Yeah, so I think I’ve always had my route or in my head, the path I wanted to go has always been a CMO sort of CEO route. And even when it came back to you know if you recall, I said I wanted to have more than my own business, I think, to be able to give more than just your area, you need to know more about just your area.
So in the marketing kind of context and sphere and have an understanding, not even necessarily like super in-depth for me I wanted to go as in-depth as I could add to all the different facets of marketing so digital brands CRM, you know, analytics, customer product, you know, social we may kind of sometimes fall into digital, like what the whole web world looks like to really understand like what the engineers to then be able to either work with the different areas or to create a comic a wholesome view of how marketing can help contribute to Do the business goals and the business objectives.
And I think even if you are, you know, anyone listening in on a specific, you know, kind of like marketing pathway. Where you add value to your leaders is by having an understanding of where you are kind of area of specialty sort of like sits within the broader marketing function, and how it can help. So I think it’s very important to kind of like have that general scope.
Kenny Soto 5:29
Now, tying into the world of b2b marketing, I have a couple of questions I want to ask you because I’m currently in b2c. And I used to work in b2b, but, you know, it doesn’t hurt to get some refresher refreshers, if you will. So my first question here in the world of b2b marketing would be how can b2b marketing team’s marketing departments really create demand for sales? Certain teams focus specifically on demand generation and paid others to focus on content, specifically, what levers do you pull in your team to generate demand?
Christina Patrick 6:06
It’s 100%, a mixture of both. And the amount of split it into two. So the paid sort of side is more than the distribution which is key. Personally, where I have a paid with, we’re focusing on LinkedIn, because it’s where all our audience is for sure and guaranteed. But the content element of it is, is so important, because that’s what is actually creating the demand, right? Like what you’re saying to people and how you’re messaging and how you’re resonating with them.
And in terms of how b2b Do it, I always sort of say, in my thinking, and when I’m working with the design team, etc, is, you know, be more b2c, in terms of the kind of stuff that we’re creating and the kind of approach that we’re taking to things. I think from a content perspective and b2b, we often are maybe a little bit stuffy and not necessarily so creative, which people kind of get used to, and you end up then getting lost in the sauce or lost in the feed as it is in LinkedIn, because everything kind of like looks the same, sounds the same, it’s the same kind of like 123 Punch setup in the content, but taking a really different approach to it, focusing on a specific area of content, and then also giving real value. I mean, one of the things that I’m really focused on and key on us doing is we do have the kind of traditional hip paid, here’s the platform, here’s what it does.
But even within that, we’re using our teams to talk about it. So like the product guy is doing videos about the product, and our customers are doing videos about, you know, their experience with it. And it’s not just a bog standard, you know, by this, this tool does this, that, and the other. But also, we have kind of spun off a completely separate branch under the umbrella of what’s in your long tail, which is also the name of the podcast that we run, which is specifically actionable insights that are given by a subject matter expert that we have in the house that people can kind of intake and then use and implement.
Find oftentimes, as well, in b2b, it’s a lot of click Beatty, Enos that goes on, you have a title and you want to grab the call that might be interesting, and you click it and read is that well, that was a whole load of nothing. Nothing that’s interesting to me. And if anything, what you often find is is other marketers downloading this kind of things, to see what other people are saying, as opposed to, you know, your maybe your ICP, so I think definitely, you know, being more creative with what it is that you would how you create your content, and also being really specific about what is that you’re wanting to say, and then giving the value.
And then further jack from the distribution as we were talking about earlier, making it easy for people to get the information that they want without putting all these barriers up without you putting all these barriers up. So what I mean by that is not getting your content. Essentially, the only thing you want to gate is a demo form or something like that in the demo form being an actual value demo and not just you know, a video sat behind something that then needs further qualification because you really want to tell people the story, sell people slowly sell people a lifestyle and a vision of your brand.
And then get them to come to you when they’re ready to come to you give them access to whatever it is that they want. Let them do their own kind of qualification without you putting barriers in place for them to make that happen. And then when they do come to you that they’re warmer as it were, and you don’t have to go through a whole funnel of getting like hundreds and 1000s of MQL isn’t because someone’s you know, downloading a webinar or whatever the metrics are, that you don’t get passed on to sales and sales can’t even close. So yeah.
Kenny Soto 9:54
You mentioned and I would agree a mistake Having something to define as a mistake here would be gating your content or getting a large majority of your content. There are also mistakes that I think you might be privy to and you might see out in the marketplace when it comes to go-to-market strategy. Could you elaborate on your specific approach? You’ve already touched on it a little when it comes to go-to-market strategy. And can you also comment on some potential mistakes b2b brands might be making right now when it comes to their own go-to-market strategies?
Christina Patrick 10:34
Yeah, so I think the key thing in all of this really is understanding the value that you give and that you have, and then getting other people to kind of help tell that story for you. I think with large companies and with small companies, we’re often going at it from a, what do we do? What can we give, what can we bring approach and perspective, and we’re kind of pushing our voice and pushing on iTunes, and like hundreds of companies doing it, that’s kind of like the bread and butter of how things have been.
But I think now we’re in a world where people do get so much more access to their own information, and they can make their own informed decisions. And from that within their peer network, it’s really important to sort of spend time with your customers or with your prospects, you know, go to events, go to meetings, attend webinars, and listen to what people are saying, and get their input as well as like, what their challenges are to help form your go to market strategy.
That’s one of the things that we do really well, I think at paid, is we spend so much time with our customers, so much time with our prospects, from the sales team to the customer success teams in me and marketing, to really, really, really understand what it is that the needs are. And the business case, because it may differ from person to person, you know, they make you aware of things that you didn’t know about beforehand, as well. So a lot of the messaging that we kind of create our you know, campaigns or content around is exactly what we’ve heard from people, and it’s not lofty, you know, do this and you know, spend money and you know, save time and do things that matter.
Most you know, whenever I see it, you know, focus on the things that matter most, and then there’s no like further qualification as to what matters most means, or what matters most actually, is, it’s an indicator that, you know, the person creating that doesn’t necessarily know and you know, it’s just marketing speak, to go ahead and do something. So I think that’s really, really key is a real in-depth understanding of the pain point that the customer has. And like I said, if you can’t actually access your customers, that’s fine.
But there’s a lot of places where you can go to you know, whether it’s Slack channels or forums you can attend or conferences, you know, the last couple of years there have been lots of virtual conferences. So you can get access to and get a pass through and listen, listen to what people are saying. And then when you speak to prospects as well, really listen to what it is that they’re saying. And then you can select Form your UTM around that and get it maybe different by territory, maybe different by vertical as well. But that’s definitely the best way I think that we should go about doing that. And some of the areas where I guess marketers could hone in a little bit better, especially in b2b.
Kenny Soto 13:18
Speaking of pain points, before I ask my next question, I definitely want to plug into this tool called spark Toro if anyone who hasn’t used it already that’s listening to this podcast. Definitely check them out. The former CEO and founder of Moz ran fix, Fishkin has teamed up with Amanda, not Natividad, who’s the VP of Marketing for Spark Toro, and it’s an amazing market research tool that you can use.
I’ve been using it recently, for the car insurance company I’m working for right now to do customer discovery because for valid reasons, I can’t just go and survey 1000 People take too much manpower and resources to do that. But now there are tools like Spark Toro, and I’m sure there are a bunch of other alternatives out there that you can leverage to do that initial customer discovery, and a technique not necessarily a tool, but a technique that you can do to identify pain points, as well as creating podcasts and using a podcast to interview your ICP. And literally, ask them on the call.
Describe your business, describe how it differentiates, differentiates itself within the market, talk about pain points within the interview itself, and weave it into the content. And not only are you creating content to then get more brand awareness at the same time you’re doing customer discovery, and customer research, and then you can leverage that to further enhance your messaging I thought of those two things when you were giving your answer. So I definitely wanted to just plug those two there. Now winning.
Christina Patrick 14:50
So just to add I would definitely echo that on the podcast as well. We’re doing exactly the same thing. Again, though we are very clear in the positioning of it. We’re not trying to sell pay, we’re literally actually just trying to push the conversation on tail and tailspin. It’s an area of procurement that is, you know, like that family member that you don’t like to speak about like you will know they’re there, or the thing you want us to sweep under the rug.
And, you know, we conducted a survey not too long ago, just like a general survey, and I forget the name of the tool that we used, and it was, you know, how important is tail spend for you, we went to procurement pros, very important, you know, do you want to fix it within you know, what kind of timeframe and like 80% of our things like, I think there are about 1000 people, so not massive, but, you know, it was still a UK study of senior procurement pros 80%, that they wanted to get it sorted within the next six months.
So it’s the kind of thing that is big, and it’s huge, but it’s also so big and so huge, that no one kind of like knows where to start with it, and just why it gets swept under the rug. And so again, just to know, echo your point, you know, we’ve interviewed lots of people on series, one of our podcasts, which is TOS about has launched recently, as well. And it’s about getting involved in the conversation and hearing and learning and being an extension of the community.
So not everyone can participate, although we are fighting to change that now with some live sessions. But people you have that as an opportunity to hear. And again, whether you host your own podcast, or you listen to other podcasts as well, where people are talking about the challenges in your area, I think it’s really key.
Kenny Soto 16:22
Yeah, that’s another thing to highlight, like, you don’t need to set up the podcast yourself. If your competitor has already done it, you can literally leverage their content to get those initial pain points. And then if you want to do your own podcast, you can do it as well. But just know that there are other people like this isn’t an original thought, like it probably was back in like 2017. But now everyone’s doing this in the b2b space. So you can leverage other people’s content to do that initial customer discovery to.
Christina Patrick 16:49
The key thing is just to make sure you’re delivering actual value, whatever it is, you do it or whatever approach you take, just deliver real value.
Kenny Soto 16:59
Yeah, because people remember interactions, and that can either help your reputation or tarnish it over time if you’re not too careful. Now, you mentioned something earlier in this conversation that I think is important to highlight, because you probably aren’t the only person who thinks this way now. But there are still a lot of people who are in the camp of we need more MQLs. We need to justify marketing spending using MQLs. All marketing tactics have to tie back to MQLs. And lead scoring is the way that we’re going to justify our success, rather than actual tangible metrics, like an increase in pipeline or increase in revenue and profit. So my next question for you is, what are your thoughts on lead scoring? And does the lead scoring model scale successfully over time?
Christina Patrick 17:53
Oh, that’s a very good question. And I love it because that’s, it’s kind of like a wheel account, do all that you kind of get on and you get off, and it doesn’t take you anywhere, really. I think it doesn’t mean anything if I’m perfectly honest with you, and we can be frank. Still, in this session, I’m yet to see a lead scoring model. That has been because people take hours and you know, weeks and months and then coming up with the initial you know, framework and then tweaking it as you go along.
That actually leads to conversion, conversion being a sale at the end or like a discovery or like a sales-qualified opportunity, however you want to kind of qualify it. And I think that is the goal of marketing, the goal of marketing is to help increase the revenue of the business, not sales, but to help do whatever it can to raise awareness of the brand, to create demand for the brand to create an affinity with the brand that people want to be involved and engaged with them. That when sales kind of come in and do their bit, it’s easier and easier to sell to, to make. And I think it’s really, really hard to understand or get into the head of the customer when it comes to creating a lead scoring model that makes sense and is scalable.
Every time I’ve created one or worked in one or worked with one. The parameters always have to shift and have to change, you know, is a pageview really important or is a webinar download really important? The fact that this white paper has been read three times what does that actually mean? And you know, they still don’t get in contact with us. Because at the end of the day, you know, you’re doing all of this lead scoring, ideally, to get to the point where you pass it on to sales. And what you really, really want is someone to finally second actually I want to speak to someone and learn more about your product.
Let me please book a demo. And so I mean, people will definitely say that they’ve seen that work and I’m sure it does work. But I think in the grand scheme of things if you’re doing it to get a certain score for them. Often on to sales, how many sales reps or STRS? Do you have to be chasing 1000s and 1000s of leads, that’s where it doesn’t become scalable. And that’s where you can then run into problems.
And that’s where you’re hitting your marketing metrics. And therefore, you can kind of justify, you know, spend, because you’ve now got all of these leads, but how many of these leads are any good, how many of them actually convert to actual sales? And if they are converting to sales, how long is it taking and how much of your team’s time, and how much sales time is it taking for them to convert? Because what we really want to be doing is doing things in a way that’s quick, in a way that’s easy, and in a way that can scale in a way that doesn’t require lots more manpower and effort and, and time. So that’s what I would, that’s what I would say about the scoring.
And we’re not doing it now currently, because again, it’s literally based on what I’m trying to do is, if tell the story tell the life of a person who uses our tool and uses our platform, showing that we understand the challenges and the pain points, providing an opportunity for people to kind of get together and to converse, and has that be what then makes them say, Okay, actually, I want to learn more about you specifically, and how you work and how you can help us.
Kenny Soto 21:17
So MQL and lead scoring in and of itself can potentially create the wrong incentives if you’re not too careful. Absolutely.
Christina Patrick 21:25
And I think I think that’s the thing. And you know, every organization is different, I think it’s very easy to get MQL, it’s super easy to give him because every marketing tech platform that sort of specializes in any automation platform is set up, you know, paid platform, paid ads platform, so it’s set up to be able to get you MQ ELLs in the flick of a button. But what are they? And are they qualifiable? And do they do things and people as I started to kind of get savvier with the types of things they know that they’re being sold to, on their feet, download a free white paper on x, y Zed.
And so you know, people leave, people aren’t even downloading them as much, because they know what they’re getting with it. And they’d rather go elsewhere. So on the one hand, it’s easy to get the leads, because it’s like, if you’re buying a list, you can get lists. You can get the names of people, but are they any good? Do they really bring value? If they convert more than 15-20%, they’re not converting it to more than 15-20%.
Kenny Soto 22:22
It’s not worth the time. I had a client a long time ago, and they’ve since pivoted. Thankfully, after listening to me, when I first worked with them, they had a list of 50,000 people worldwide. And they were so happy because they were like we have this list. And we didn’t have to pay for it. And we were just building it over time. And now we’re really ready to send out campaigns that can convert them. And then within two months, they realized that less than 1% of people were even opening up the emails that were sent to them.
And then they were wondering, why is that the case? And it’s not unique to just them. A lot of businesses in the b2b space are just focused on list growth and qualifying list over time, but not necessarily thinking about things like, how are we taking up? If we can, how are we taking a high-touch approach to each member of that list to actually see if a sales opportunity is going to be made here? How are we building that demand over time, truly building that demand and measuring it in different ways than just Oh, our list is growing?
Christina Patrick 23:26
Absolutely. And b2c does this really well. They have like mail well, not everyone but you know, a lot of people fashion in particular I’ll take the fashion and you know, maybe like some beverages but fashion have done so well at tapping, being able to like tap into the almost like you put on a new cloak of or you enhance yourself they put on a new cloak when you take this, you know, product or whatever it is this dress or these, these shoes, or these, whatever. And they do a really good job of like honing in on the uniqueness of their product, which makes it resonate with you.
And we don’t do that in b2b And you know, you won’t see fashion brands like buying spam lists, you know, buying lists of names. And that’s just the thing because I get you’ll be amazed maybe not depending on who’s listening to this or how many LinkedIn messages and emails I get. And even when I’m opening them it’s to either is to unsubscribe or, you know, I’ve seen like the snippet at the top and like, Oh, this is so bad. Let me see what more is in here. It’s not a real like marker or anything so so yeah, definitely buying a list is not it’s not the way to go. Rather like build organically if you can slowly but you know, you’ll have a level much more engaged audience if you do it that way.
Kenny Soto 24:41
What’s been your general approach for building out your marketing team?
Christina Patrick 24:46
Hmm, good question. Starting with demand, I think that’s the key. In our current role, we haven’t had an in-house designer. So it’s fine but designers are having a Design team as well to kind of like create stuff to kind of like piece stuff together and make it look good. If you don’t have a design team, we also use Fiverr a lot, because our design team, you know, currently consists of one.
So spending time on finding out where you can outsource to and then knowing what’s a, what’s a good company or good person to outsource to is, is really key. So pulling the demand to someone who knows how to kind of like get your content out there, somebody who knows how to package the content nicely, so that then resonates or helps the least catch people’s eyes so that they then look to what you have to share. Having someone who can also focus on creating the content, or like writing the content, I think that’s like a really kind of key person to have.
And then sort of more secondary to that would then be someone who can set up the protocols and the processes in place like an ops person to start to monitor and to measure. Just uptake not again, from like a form fills perspective, but like how it’s being consumed, like how it’s translating. So whether it’s, you know, not so anonymous person to look at to being consumed or videos viewed on the site.
And then I always also think, sort of the fourth person is to have another like marketing generalist around who can kind of do a little bit of everything, a few social events to be done. Because again, that kind of thing helps tie together. And it’s also a good, almost deputy to the head of any team. So yeah, those kinds of three or four roles, I think, are quite key for starting out.
Kenny Soto 26:35
Yeah, and I think that the last role is very important. I, I kind of like to analogize, the deputy generalist to the plumber, if you will, that just basically plugs in any of the holes that need to be fixed. Now, I am mindful of your time. So I only have two more questions for you. When it comes to the C suite level, and your head of marketing, you have a big responsibility, and you have that seat at the table. What does the CEO care about when it comes to marketing? And how do you manage to manage?
Christina Patrick 27:08
Revenue? Revenue generated? Honestly, that is the key thing that at that level, when you’re going to what people care about is money, and how much is the business making. And everybody that’s at that table, whether it’s HR, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s a product, whether it’s finance, whether it’s tech, whatever? How is your area, helping our business, make money, not like, you know, influence making money, so not like MQL is and stuff they want to know, okay? How much of the pipeline has been driven by marketing, like, what’s the actual number metric? And this kind of goes back a little bit to what I was saying before as to why I wanted to be like a marketing generalist.
Because I think it’s really key and important to know and understand every area of the business that you work in, you sit in, I also work really closely with the team that handles recruitment at pay, because again, the whole life act and how we do things and how we’re approaching it is an extension of our brand, and thereby an extension of our customer success team and thereby an extension of how we do business.
So everything is kind of synched and linked up exactly the same thing with products, you know, this is what we’re building, but how is it actually aligning to what the market needs, what the market wants, or what the market should have? And that they don’t know yet. And then the same with finance as well, you know, you know, this is my budget, this is what I think that we need to be able to achieve these goals and then to drive the pipeline and ultimately to drive the sales. So definitely numbers, it’s all about the numbers, and how marketing has contributed to the p&l at the end of the day is really key.
Kenny Soto 28:52
My last question for you, Christina, is hypothetical because time machines don’t exist, but if they did, and you can go back in time, about 10 years into the past, knowing everything you know, today, how would you specifically accelerate the speed of your career?
Christina Patrick 29:08
I would spend less time doubting myself and showing that I can do I think I think that’s the key for many people I am I probably think I feel super old saying this but I feel like Gen Z has got a bit of a better handle on the knowledge of being able to execute their knowledge and their contribution to whatever team they’re in and they fit in. But I’ve definitely done that more. My kind of approach and mindset that I like walking in now is kind of always one I’ve had but it wasn’t until maybe like five or six years ago that I started walking in this and I think I’d definitely love to exercise that a lot more.
I mean, as I said when we started this conversation, my first role and my first company after university were insane And then I kind of created this role for myself as international campaigns Manager, which was great. And then after that, I kind of got a bit loose. You know you lost you lose your way, a little bit in the vein, I continued my marketing career, and I’ve obviously, you know, continued to progress as well. But that fire in that hunger that I had then and then I have even more now. Just just keep going with it all the way through.
Kenny Soto 30:23
Perfect. Now, Christina, if anyone wants to say hello to you online, where can they find you?
Christina Patrick 30:30
I’m on LinkedIn. So yeah, Christina Patrick on LinkedIn is the best way to get in touch. Any questions anyone has heard about anything marketing-related life in the UK, b2b in the UK, which is the same as b2b everywhere, actually? And my thoughts on it, then yeah, just reach out. And I’d be happy to have the conversation.
Kenny Soto 30:49
Perfect. And we’ll put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes for anyone who’s interested. And again, thank you for your time today. And thank you for just answering all these amazing questions that we had planned for you. Now. Also, for the listeners who are listening, please rate us on Apple and Spotify.
We’re trying to get more discovery on both of those channels. And if you have been listening to any of these episodes, hopefully, you’d like them and we want to hear from you. So give us a four or five-star review if possible. Five Star. Yeah, that would be ideal. And thank you again, Christina. And thank you to the listener for listening to another episode of the people Digital Marketing podcast. And as always, I hope you have a great week.
Christina Patrick 31:31
Bye. Thank you so much for having me.