Why Growth Is The Focus

Chris Norton 0:00

Today's episode we're talking all about growth. Growth with a growth fractional CMO called Lucy Woolfenden. Lucy was worked in London for numerous years. She used to work for Skype.

Lucy Woolfenden 0:12

Skype was really my first into the tech world.

Chris Norton 0:16

So she's got some fascinating insight into what it's like to grow a brand, both in FinTech and in tech in general.

Lucy Woolfenden 0:23

But really has to be about how are we going to get you from stage B to stage C.

Chris Norton 0:29

So if you want to experience how to do B2B marketing in an interesting way to grow a brand, this is a conversation for you. Lucy also shared some fascinating mistakes, one of which where she sent uh an invite to the wrong person.

Lucy Woolfenden 0:44

And my client just sends me a face say going, uh oh.

Chris Norton 0:48

And a typo that ended up on a 96-sheet advert.

Lucy Woolfenden 0:52

That we've put Nick's mouse into the um terms and conditions and see if he actually read it. But then obviously run around that headless chickens completely forgot and it actually went to print like that.

Skype Lessons From Hypergrowth

Chris Norton 1:04

So you can sit back, relax, and enjoy Lucy's pain and Lucy's expertise as she explains what it's like to be a growth marketer. Enjoy. Ah, Lucy Woolfenden, welcome to the show.

Lucy Woolfenden 1:24

Well, thank you. I'm super excited to be here.

Chris Norton 1:27

So you've had an interesting career. I was looking through all the various places that you've worked. Where would you say you've learned the most? Working for yourself or working in-house?

Lucy Woolfenden 1:38

Oh, I think probably. There's always different experiences in different places, right? But I think Skype was really sort of my baptism of fire, where really it was the first time I gone in-house. So it's very different than working. When you're working in advertising, you're working on a small part of that role to suddenly everything. And um, and we really went, I went in actually as an agency within Skype on a special project, which um is a whole nother story, but ended up running um campaigns and we launched Skype for mobile and we did everything. So we had in a really interesting position where we had 300 million users, but really wanted to get as many as possible onto the mobile app. So we did it all through experience and bringing them close, bringing what they loved closer to them. So we got to do it with so I'd never really done partnerships before, and suddenly I was partnering with like Disney and the White House and ESB and learning so much more about broadcasts than I ever had learned before. So it was just every project was sort of a very steep learning curve for me. Um, but just surrounded by a super smart team and that, you know, they'd already been bought for eight billion or something, but they already but they were still very much in that mindset of startup. Like, let's just go do it. And if it works, amazing. Let's not sit around and think too much. And I absolutely loved that and thrived in in that environment.

Will Ockenden 3:08

And that kind of um sort of tech scale up type company, is that something you've always been attracted to? Because I saw you also you've also done work with um Starling Bank and a few other of those kind of really you know challenger tech brands that are in that kind of period of steep growth.

Lucy Woolfenden 3:24

Yeah, so I started off in um advertising. So I started off working for Guinness when I was a student, which mainly was so that I could get free alcohol and get paid more than I did in my pub job. But that really introduced me to advertising. They showed us how to make. Do you remember the um um the horses galloping over the waves?

Chris Norton 3:47

In the waves, yeah.

Lucy Woolfenden 3:47

Did we did we did you yeah, they um as part of our training, they the ad agency at the time came and showed us how they made it, and it was the first time I'd ever um seen an ad being created. I was like, oh, I want to be part of this. This is exciting. So um rather than going travelling after uni, I went straight down to London, got myself into advertising and spent the first sort of eight years in advertising agencies. So Skype was really my first into the tech world, and I was there for uh sort of I think about four years. Um I went off on Mat Leave. At that point, Microsoft sucked Skype into the the bigger mothership, so everyone else got majored and somehow I didn't because I was on Mat Leave. Um and but I would end up doing a very different job, you know, going in at the time, going in and saying you're Skype and really showing people the world versus going in and talking about getting Word documents into um into Marvel films was just very different and also just much slower. So I then stepped out of that and into the into smaller startup tech. I really wanted to get back to finding that you know startup attitude of let's just try, let's just go for it.

Chris Norton 5:09

Yeah, because Skype was like a cool, like personal peer-to-peer platform. We we used to use it in the office before it was uh like widely used, and then it became widely used, and then there was Skype for Business that came out, and then Skype for Business got killed off, and Skype's now been killed off, hasn't it? Because it became essentially Teams, which is where it got amalgamated into Teams, didn't it? Which is which was interesting as well.

Lucy Woolfenden 5:35

Well, it got bought by Microsoft really for its 300 billion users to unramp them onto Microsoft Office. That didn't really work because they were a completely different set of users. So what they then did was take the technology and pull it into Microsoft Office. And yeah, I mean, we did the launch of video messaging, and people were the first time people ever tried to talk or record a video on their mobile and send it to people and trying to get people. We used to group chats with um up-and-coming bands and um athletes, and because people weren't used to doing group chats online. So it was really like it was so exciting. It's so sad to see a brand that was so loved. And, you know, you could have wherever I was, wherever I was traveling for, there would always be somebody that would come up to me and talk to me about an emotional reason. You know, it connected families at dinner time in different parts of the world. It was the only way you could really, if you lived in a different part of the world to your family, talk for free and still see them and still have those relationships. And so yeah, it really got sucked into um a quite boring corporate machine. And others, just from a technology point of view, like it had a different basically it was a different product for every platform. Whereas then things like Google Meet came and it was just one product, and it was so much easier to make everything work and make changes, and I just able to turn with Skype.

Chris Norton 7:02

I remember the which I thought would be would would have become massive, which was um which is still isn't a thing, right? This is still isn't a thing, and I can't believe this isn't a thing. So if it is, it isn't a thing, is Skype TVs. So like it it makes no sense to me that you've got like a Samsung TV, everyone's got one on the wall now, and still it doesn't have a little webcam in it, and you can't do peer-to-peer video because everybody does it through their laptops, and that's become more since the uh pandemic, everybody now uses video. I remember trying to use Teams at the beginning of the and we were all like, What is Teams? Because we use Skype, and I'm like, we're trying to figure out how to use um but but the yeah, I remember when Skype launched Skype with TV on Skype on TVs, and I thought that is gonna fly because everyone is gonna want to. That's the future, right? You watch sci-fi and they're talking to the TVs, the TVs are you know, like you say, so you can speak to someone in Australia. That makes 100% you know sense to me, but it's never happened, has it?

Lucy Woolfenden 7:58

It never no, and we had such a smart product and partnership team, so they did all the partnerships to get it across Samsung and all the other big TV producers. We did um so I will start banging on about Skype eventually, but we did a uh partnership with Back to the Future because Back to the Future actually in the original film did basically show Skype what it what became Skype. So when they had their anniversary, we did a whole partnership with them because it was so classic. Because 20 years ago they taught us about wouldn't it be crazy if you could do this? And actually, we that's what happened. Um, so yeah, a lot of nostalgia with that brand, I think.

Chris Norton 8:36

Yeah, cool.

Lucy Woolfenden 8:38

A cool, a really cool brand at the time, not anymore.

Chris Norton 8:42

Yeah, not so much now. Do you remember that?

Lucy Woolfenden 8:45

Do you remember COVID and um Saturday Night Live did that skit with the um Skype marketing team just going, I know we've got great ideas. Oh no, well, we could just let everybody else do it instead. Well we have to yeah.

Chris Norton 9:00

Crazy how crazy how like I was talking to someone yesterday. Um we were doing it, I was on a chat with somebody on the phone, and it was like, Do you remember conference calls? What happened to them? Conference calls where you were with this awkward silence, like you don't you don't get it, everyone's just binned off conference calls. The conference phone is dead, isn't it?

Will Ockenden 9:18

Yeah, there's one phone, there's like the big the the big unit in the middle of the boardroom table that and everyone shout into it because no one thought they could be heard.

Chris Norton 9:27

Trying you're like a spider thing. And and literally the pandemic killed killed that.

Building The Scale-Up Collective

Will Ockenden 9:31

I think we when we're clearing out killed conference phone, didn't it? I think I found one of them in our cupboard actually yesterday, Chris, when we're doing an office clear out. Yeah, or they weren't. You probably can get one from off eBay now. So um Lucy, you you you now um you then kind of went on to found the scale-up collective, didn't you? So you know, you're obviously working with you know massive tech companies, fast growth companies. Talk to us about the kind of the leak to then doing it on your own and and what you know, what I found quite interesting was that you you now sort of focus on and you you talk about turning messy growth into focused repeatable momentum. And I'd love to dive in in a minute into this kind of you know, is there a kind of a methodology for growth for you know, well, B2B companies, tech companies looking to kind of take the next step up?

Lucy Woolfenden 10:18

Yeah, definitely. So I went to a few, had some learnings from some places, then went to Stalin Bank, launched there and went to Yolt, and we got Yault was a money app and it was funded by ING. So we had the joy of only having one investor, but also being able to passport through their banking licence. It was all very wonderful. We got to um, I think we got to about a million users in three markets, and then we'd also packaged at the back end and started selling that as B2B tech back to financial institutions, and really got to that stage where I like sorting out the mess. I like coming in at the point that there is a product, but there's no really clear route of how they're going to grow. And that's a bit I find exciting. Not sitting there thinking about how to get that next sort of 10% growth or how to polish a few things and make it a little bit better. So really wanted to go back. Um and also I you know, I was having my second child, I wanted to also stop traveling and have a bit more control, which is a joke, really, isn't it? Because you don't have any control when you run your own business.

Will Ockenden 11:25

You just think you two or when you've got or when you've got children.

Lucy Woolfenden 11:29

Yeah.

Chris Norton 11:31

Yeah.

Lucy Woolfenden 11:32

The um so you so what I started with was as what I thought I wanted to do was be a company of one. I did the course, I read I read that book, all wonderful, and I got sort of four clients just as as fractionals, so really early stage, um, mainly fintech, and that was January 2020, and then obviously March 2020, we went into lockdown. So then I had a five-year-old and a one-year-old, um, and everybody's like money freezing, everything going on. So carried on working obviously through that period. Um, some clients obviously had to leave, and because of that, I set up what was really a marketing accelerator for founders, where they still needed, because they were in that quandary where they still needed the growth to, they still needed funding, but they needed growth to approve the funding, whereas before they were getting the funding to be able to do the growth. So really it was let's just make it as easy as possible, running small um accelerator programs for three months at a time. Um, and it started quite organically, and we went on for about two years doing it, and at the same time, really working on that insights and strategy piece for clients and working as more of a mentor to groups. And then it got to I think year two, and I realized that it's actually really hard to do it by yourself because everything has to be done by you and you can't go on holiday or have any time. So, um, and at that stage, thankfully, we were coming out of COVID and the business was growing. So managed to start building. And one of the points that and you touched on this before, is actually being asked to do insights when you're in a big company with you know, Skype, your Starling Bank, we all have good budgets, we all had BI teams and research budgets. And but when you're very early stage, you don't, you still need those insights. And a CMO can do it well, but a researcher does it just to a very different standard and can pull out those insights that mean the difference between doing quite well to hockey-stick growth, in my opinion. Um, so that's really where we started to grow was first of all, Rossange. Um Ness, who's another CMO, um, who was actually a client of mine previously, but I didn't steal her. It was just all serendipity.

Chris Norton 14:02

Legal reasons.

Lucy Woolfenden 14:03

Legal reasons, yeah. Um, and then Anna, who was our head of still our head of research and insights, and really grew that part of the business so that everything we do is based on insights and we're really embedding it into ongoing strategies as well as that initial, you know, let's probably define your ICP, let's define your market, let's find positioning and what those growth levers are. Um and on methodology, I can go into that if into more detail if you like, but it really is deeply understanding customer and market first, which a lot of people are looking at that through understanding what they already know, then qual and then refining it and prioritizing that through quant research, which uh now is a lot of was a lot of surveys and a lot of that. Now is a lot of scraping of conversations and reviews, forums and communities to really get that depth and prioritization of message. Then we can look at what the three to four growth levers are because what we find when we go into marketing teams at this stage was there's often a lot of messy notion. Let's just throw everything at the wall, you know, the entrepreneurial CEO is coming in with a different idea each week. The junior marketing team are going, isn't this great? Okay, God, we were only just doing that one from last week, but we'll try this one now. Um, they've got, you know, a plethora of different um ICPs of different audience groups are targeting, a plethora of different products they're supposed to be targeting, very little budget. And what we need to do is be able to come and just prioritize all of that and be really specific about what we believe within Site Base of being really objective can work and where they should focus and clearing that space so they can actually do things well. Um we then come in as that fractional team. So we work within that business. So as well as a fractional CMO, there'll be a team that supports that fitting around the skills and people that are already part of that business until the point that, you know, we've obviously got success with them and they've grown, and then we can say thank you very much. We can replace ourselves with a full-time team because they've got the revenue, but they also know who they need to hire, and we can step away. So that's really sort of the life cycle and the process that we follow at Scale App.

Will Ockenden 16:23

So um, I think people will will be listening to this. Some of our listeners will be thinking that we're in this kind of messy early stage, you know, huge potential for growth, but we don't really know where to start. So let's dive into some of these stages. By the way, is this the discover, define, design, deliver model? Um, because I I love a model and that that really caught my attention. So so go on on the kind of discover stage, and let's talk about kind of insights and things. So, yeah, you know, imagine you're a fintech company or or even a you know a general B2B company. You've got an abundance of data. Where where do we need to start with insights? I mean, that there's a danger in sort of looking everywhere and spreading yourself too thin and drowning in numbers, isn't there?

Customer Insights Before Tactics

Lucy Woolfenden 17:03

Yeah, definitely. We use um jobs to be done as a really clear framework to really help think about, you know, what are the customer needs, what are the triggers that are going to make it work, what's the push and pull factors? So externally, what's happening? Um what's happening, what is it about your product that's gonna answer those problems? What is it, what is it that's stopping people? So it's often inertia or confusion, how are you getting over those? Um, and part of those triggers are really, you know, what's gonna make it, what's gonna make them buy it now, which is definitely from a B2B tech problem at the moment of you can't be that, you know, you can't be that vitamin, you've got to be the painkiller because people aren't gonna just buy, people aren't spending money willy-nilly, are they? They're thinking about it, they've got to really prove to the business as an ROI for that other tool, that other service. And that's really what we're trying to define from that. We also use um, so going back to what they should do first is to start talking to their customers and asking them about their behaviour, what they did before they used that product, what they're doing now, how they found it, what's um, what were the problems they were looking at trying to solve, what's made the difference to their lives. Like even if it's B2B, it's you know, we also love our tools that make our lives better or make us look better, or you know, save us time each week, whatever that is, let's try and find it. And then we use um blue ocean strategies. So really what we're looking at is what is that core differentiator? And everybody looks at differentiators in different ways. But the way we like to use it is uh is um blue ocean, and that's really looking at what is it that your customer needs, and then how do other alternatives solve those those needs? And when you map all that, you can see okay, there is that blue ocean part. This is a part you can own because no one else is doing it well, and that's really where we can then start to pull apart from the crowd because a lot of start, you know, a lot of um B2Bs at the moment, they're either going against big tech or they're going against own um building in house. And actually both of them are really tough. And you're never gonna be if you're a startup, you're never gonna beat Microsoft or Apple in terms of toolkit toolkit, but you might beat them in the way that you're connecting with the that particular ICP, you might beat them in the way you speak to them and the way you can relate to them. Um, and the same with building in-house.

Chris Norton 19:43

Do you think that a lot of um B2B because B2B marketing, a lot of the communication, why do people speak in such corporate clinic just because you work in a business, they don't talk person to person. So I'm assuming that you do, right?

Lucy Woolfenden 20:00

Yeah, I mean, obviously we do it in a geeky way, but we create a voice of the customer database, and that really is so that everything you're doing, you're speaking in the language that they're gonna use when they taunt you, when when they're talking about it, because that's one of the ways that you can relate. But I totally agree. It's like let's entertain people and make people laugh. Like you we all need to laugh at work. Um it's but it's really understanding, and you can't do that if you're trying to be. The problem I see a lot is when somebody's trying to be something to everyone. You can't add you can't add humour or a bit of a um any depth to that because you're trying to please everybody, and no humour, but unless it's really, really dull dad jokes, doesn't please everybody. It's got to be like, let's really deeply understand who I'm targeting and therefore how can we connect with them and how can we relate to them, and then we can understand that if it is sense of humour, what their sense of humour is or what they what they will connect with. But yeah, I it's also I say I was talking about this earlier, but like really boring colours, it's either monochrome, black and white, very simple and peeled back, or it's navy. I think financial services.

Will Ockenden 21:18

Is that the cliches? Is that the sector cliches that everyone's yeah, yeah. Who's nailing it then? Who who do you see kind of in in the broader market in in B2B, in fintech or tech that's just you know, and I love that idea of kind of creativity and personality within within your niche? And Chris is absolutely right, and you're absolutely right on that. You know, that's that's what's going to connect with people. Why should you default to boring, you know? And so so anyway, my point was who um who's nailing it as far as you know, you see in the market at the moment.

Lucy Woolfenden 21:49

That's such a good question, and I'm trying to think of an answer of who's made me laugh lately. Um I think the people that aren't using blue. Um just

Will Ockenden 22:00

By not using blue, you're immediately uh not using blue. Head and shoulders about record else.

Lucy Woolfenden 22:05

Yeah, by being I think what's what we're seeing is there's such a blanket of content out there. You know, nobody's got a problem with creating stuff anymore. It's just the quality of stuff and the relevancy of things. So the people that are doing well aren't just going, yeah, let's just make it all uh people are going, right, okay. What specifically does that person need to make their life better? And that's who I think's nailing it.

Will Ockenden 22:30

Um I'm gonna think of some good brand answers so I can come back to you on the we'll include them in the show notes when we when we go live. I think it's tough.

Brand Personality And Real Community

Chris Norton 24:15

I think it's tough to name uh a corporate brand that is um, you know, like because I think in the consumer world, I think the Rick of your face is Dutch Barn down in the underground, obviously, because if he's that one-liners and what I mean, he's even been criticized, but here's a funny, you know, like um you're about to get on a tri you're about to get on a tube to a job that you hate, stuff like that. You know, all little cute, and then there's lots of consumer brands that do highly entertaining, funny content. I think York should see. Um there's you know, there's tons, there's absolutely tons, but um some would argue that there's not as many as there used to be, which they're all nostalgic about it. But B2B, I often look at the B2B world and I'm like, there's some brilliant marketeers working in you know, marketeers everywhere in B2B, but I do think that we all get pulled into let's go blue, let's go let's go corporate spiel, let's talk about our benefits and features, which we yeah, and it's like trying to not talk back to the individual who's experiencing that. Um, and maybe we should all have a comedian at the end of our content, you know, that looking at the the problem that you're solving and making it funny to people, you know what I mean? Well, what do you do with the hype, for instance?

Lucy Woolfenden 25:28

Yeah, that was all about entertainment. The um I yeah, it's difficult, isn't it? Because I think people are so worried about offending somebody, and I'm not saying you should go out and offend anyone, but you need to stand for something, you need to be funny for that audience, and then that audience gives you those guardrails for how you can how you can do that. So it's but it is definitely it's harder and harder, I think, to prove why you should do it. I think what we're gonna see this year, so I think brands are just coming on to the fact that they need a strong brand, they need to stand out. We've seen that um the uptake and understanding the value of brand has gone up. And I think that's because they're just not cutting through. You used to be able to spend your way out of it, didn't you? Just throw loads of money at something and it'll be better. And that just isn't working anymore. Um, so they need to work out how to do. So I hope this is part of that of right, you need an opinion, you need to have a place that you can stand up in, be and be recognized, to stand out from this sort of melee of boring wallpaper that's out there. Um and that is that next, the next stage. So I'm hoping that we start to see more I like it.

Will Ockenden 26:45

A hot take, a hot take for 2026. We like a hot take on this show.

Lucy Woolfenden 26:50

Yeah, we need we need less of it. Yeah, no one's buying it. The I well I think what people what we're seeing is that there is just a complete overwhelm of everything. And so, in the way that people used to go to the internet to escape real life, we're now going back to real life to escape our online world and our phones. And so we're seeing more and more events happening and meetups in real life, and community is back to community. Do you remember a couple of years ago, community was a buzzword, and everybody had wanted to build a community, so we'd got lots of phone calls like we need to build a community. Who for? We're not sure yet, but we've been told we need one by our investors. And now I think we're looking back and when we are they are needing to build that community because it is that relationship building that's going to get people to keep you top of mind, and when they're ready, they will buy.

When Mistakes Go To Print

Will Ockenden 27:45

I think you're so right. I've just I've just been with a client in the ed tech sector, and um they historically have attended a big um ed tech trade show every year, and they were saying this year was by far their best. They the the way they connected with people, they they um they made more revenue than ever before, they had more of a buzz on this, and it's an old school stand where they meet people, they speak, they they network. And I think you're absolutely right, you know, people there is a return to real life almost, you know, and then you know, in social networks are becoming increasingly toxic. Um, people are more aware than ever of of the limitations of the online world, and they're returning to IRL, aren't they?

Lucy Woolfenden 28:24

Yeah, I think so, in just smaller spaces, I think that's why we're seeing social more as an open door. You need that, you need to connect with them somewhere on open social and then direct them or get into those smaller niche um conversations where they're really going to value somebody's opinion because it won't be written by AI or it won't be, you know, paid for, which I think we're just seeing too too much.

Chris Norton 28:53

I was just saying I got an email today through we've got an email from Adweek, one of the one of the country's top uh marketing titles, and it started. In fact, I've said that it ran my team, and it started in this fast-paced digital landscape. I was like, seriously, you can't do the email without using AI. Everybody and then it had a you know, it had an M-dash in it. I was like, This is this is shocking.

Will Ockenden 29:18

Digital landscape, we all had that when when it when ChatGPT first came out, and now I think when we used to talk about social media, I think that was in this fast-paced social media landscape in 2006.

Lucy Woolfenden 29:30

Um, so this I might enough to have had social ninjas on our um team back in the early two thousand and um social media rock stars, social ninjas.

Will Ockenden 29:39

Yeah, social media rock stars was the worst. I hated that.

Chris Norton 29:41

Social rock stars was awful, yeah.

Lucy Woolfenden 29:45

But they'd sit like in a different room and be like the cool geeks that we'd understand.

Will Ockenden 29:50

Totally. Yeah. So this um this show is all about um mistakes and fuck-ups, and you've you've shared a few in the in the briefing notes, and one particularly, and we'll we'll dive into a few of these, but one grabbed our attention um regarding somebody called Nick. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Lucy Woolfenden 30:05

Oh gosh, yeah. This is this was my first agency, and I hope he doesn't mind me saying I won't say a surname, so we don't know. Um, but we used to work on a whiskey brand, and it was a really great, you know, um small creative agency where everybody's friends were all there's a lot of laughs, a lot of ribbing. We thought it'd be really funny one day because he used to always get at me for attention to detail, ATD. Um, that we'd put Nick Smiles into the um terms and conditions and see if he actually read it. But then obviously when he ran at Headless Chickens, completely forgot and it actually went to print like that.

Chris Norton 30:42

Right. Nick Smells, but where where where did that go? Well, it didn't go on the billboard, did it?

Lucy Woolfenden 30:47

No, the billboard was a different, a different mistake. No, it just went in um oh, just you know, across all major press.

Will Ockenden 30:53

Yeah, just national, just the national press. And I won't say what brand it is, but it's one of the big single mortal whiskey brands, isn't it, that you would absolutely recognise. You've heard of it. Did the client notice or flag it?

Lucy Woolfenden 31:07

No.

Will Ockenden 31:07

So maybe the client doesn't have a good attention to detail either.

Chris Norton 31:10

No one's got attention to detail, haven't they?

Lucy Woolfenden 31:13

Well, that was our big um the the Land Rover one, which was was a big, it was a 96 sheet, and it went across other big um posters as well. But twelve we had we just um it was economy, but it was spelled economy, and it's such a small thing, and 12 people signed it off. So it was six people from the agency and six people from the client, and no one noticed, but it wasn't until it's in a 96 sheet, and then I swear it's taller than me.

Will Ockenden 31:41

Oh god.

Lucy Woolfenden 31:41

And my client just sends me a photo going, uh-oh. And I was like what what it's interesting you say that as a mistake because that you know, if you look at people talking about distinctiveness, there's ad campaigns now where they're saying that we we've spoken to numerous behavioral scientists where if you change a letter, you make a that people are actually making spelling mistakes in their ads because it makes them more memorable. So you should have had that in your back pocket, uh Lucy, because you could have said it's made it more distinctive and more memorable. My campaign's, you know, there's actual behavioral science pattern now, it's done on purpose.

Will Ockenden 32:18

Back rationalization, very good.

Lucy Woolfenden 32:21

I would say for that audience, the Land Rover fan base is not in for the um I've heard of people doing that though on their social posts now so that it doesn't look so it looks more personally written.

Will Ockenden 32:32

And they outperform in terms of engagement. Um if you do just just to check, where did economy or econom, however you spelt it, was that in the bot was that in the in the main in the main header or the body copy of the it was it was the terms and conditions, but when it's a 96 sheet, it literally is about six foot tall. Yeah, yeah, you can't really hide when it's a 96 sheet.

Chris Norton 32:53

Yeah, we we had we've had one of our clients actually on the pod. We've had we've probably had three clients on the pod in the three years we've been doing it. And um, she did a um she had an event down in um the ExCeL and they produced a 65,000 pound um uh event exhibition stand, and it had the word and they were a software manufacturer, uh producer, and it was massive, and they'd got the word soft, what what was it soft software instead of software? All and it was on every single side of it, all four sides, and they would they had the central main one, and she said she spotted it on as soon as as soon as she got there, and she'd signed it off. And I said, Well, Will and I were like, Well, did you did you tell anyone? Do you your boss was there, everyone was there? She was like, No, I did the honest thing and I buried my head in the sand and just spluttered for a five year old. I got away with it, I got away with it until now.

Lucy Woolfenden 33:49

Oh my gosh. It's just you just feel so much happier and less stress when you're working in digital because if it is wrong, you can just take it down and change it. When it's printed on a stand or in a newspaper, you just can't, can you?

Will Ockenden 34:01

Yeah, it's there for the next six weeks, isn't it?

Lucy Woolfenden 34:03

Yeah.

What Growth Marketing Really Means

Chris Norton 34:05

Yeah, well we work we work in PR, so we have had things where, and that's the thing, like a Claude sometimes, you know, obviously PRs get um there's a spelling mistake or something, or um, but we've had things like we had one where somebody had sent a we sent a press release, it wasn't us, we sent a press well, it was us, we sent the press release. The journalist used the wrong it was an Asian name, and they'd use another pic I mean this is bad, they use another picture of an a another successful Asian person, but it wasn't him in business, and put it along the sides as if he was quoted, and it was the journalist or the editor's fault who hadn't done it, and so we had to ring them up. But obviously that was in print and they changed it online, but they couldn't change it in in print, which is a national newspaper, it's pretty awkward. Um, because obviously, like they didn't do it on purpose, but it's like it's a little bit on the edge that because you just thought, oh, he's Asian business successful Asian business person. So yeah, you get you get everybody everywhere makes that's why we started a podcast about mistakes, right? Everyone makes them everywhere. So you know that's what makes us human, even I alone.

Lucy Woolfenden 35:09

It's just learning, isn't it? It's just how you learn.

Will Ockenden 35:13

Good theory.

Lucy Woolfenden 35:17

Yeah, I think the um I do think the where the roles where they haven't been right or we've had we've been trying to be forced to do things that we don't think is right, are the ones where you learn the might the most and the fastest. Um so those bad situations are the I mean they're funny ones, mostly. Yeah. Um 20 years later they're really funny.

Chris Norton 35:41

But the not the time. They blow me off all the time. You know. So you're like you you do growth sort of marketing, right? So now the difference from how do you be completely laser-sighted on growth? Because every everybody everybody wants to grow a brand. You don't get you don't work in marketing if you don't want to grow, right? So how how does that differ?

Lucy Woolfenden 36:05

I say it's mainly focused. It's such a funny word, isn't it? Because it can be used for so many people can say they work in growth from sales to um, I don't know, even coaching or something. It really is. It's that stage of business that we work with where they've got product market fit or they're getting close to you, but they really need that product market fit. They need to, their focus and all their business goals is getting to the next stage of growth so they get the next funding or they get the next um level. And that is why everything we do has to be commercially led. Um, and it's not necessarily short term. We don't really do quick wins. We're not, you know, if you want, if you need, you know, to fill up your pipe by in 30 days, you don't go to us, you go to a media agency or a um a lead agency or something like that. But really has to be about how are we going to get you from stage B to stage C, or you know, so that is why we focus on growth because it has and we often because we m the majority of our clients are B2B tech, it's also really working in partnership with the sales, with the sales team, much more now, sales and marketing in in B2B becoming one team, especially at this stage, or all reporting into one CRO. And we need to work in partnership because it's that, you know, marketing doesn't stop as soon as the leads come in and then it takes sales and then it goes customer team, marketing's all the way through.

Will Ockenden 37:37

Something you talk about as well is is um, and I think you know, marketers, PR people, whoever's listening to this will will recognise this, um, how to talk so the rest of the business listens. So that's presumably about you know getting getting a seat, getting a seat at the top table, um, have having the ear of the C-suite. You know, how how do you do that? Is it about demonstrating a you know a great ROI from from from and and impact from what you're doing? Or is there another way?

Lucy Woolfenden 38:07

So I do think this is one of the biggest jumps any marketer makes. A junior marketer in a mid midweight marketer are very comfortable talking around marketing metrics, you know, website visits, conversion rates, um, ad spend, CTRs, you know, and what they need to to get to that next stage, to get into that sort of management team position, they really need to be able to understand one, what how does that ladder up for business growth? And then also what do other teams care about and what are their OKRs, what's their objectives, and how can they talk about what they're doing so they understand a lot of a lot of what marketing is doing, unless it's clearly explained in other in more common language, people just don't care.

Will Ockenden 38:54

Okay, um, so you know, there'll be again, there'll be mid-way marketing managers listening to this thinking, okay, yeah, I'm great at the metrics piece, but I need to start demonstrating growth. Is it as simple as that? I mean, it's it's it's it it it can be it can feel quite daunting, can't it? Trying to completely change your mindset and then try to have those big strategic conversations with the board.

How Fractional CMO Work Works

Lucy Woolfenden 39:13

Yeah, and I don't think you necessarily want to do that jump from being very insular within a marketing team straight to talking to the board. But what we often in some companies you'll have cross-functional teams, so you're naturally working with the product team and the sales team and the customer team. But in others, what I would suggest is just going and talking to them and asking to have a cup of tea, whether that's online or in in the office, but really just understanding what their what their focus is and what's worrying them and how that's going, and just thinking about and really understanding what you're doing, even if that's quite a junior stage that you know you're you're very much on the delivery at the end of the campaign planning, really understanding how what's how that is laddering back up to the business objectives and starting to be able to talk about that. And then when you have that opportunity, whether it that's in like Friday Show and Tell or whatever that is, really trying to talk about it in those terms, but it'll make it easier once you have, you know, not necessarily friends, but colleagues and people that you talk to, and a clearer understanding and a clear dialogue with those other teams. The um somebody once talked about it as the one team, and the one team is that senior management team. And once you get to that senior level, you're you are in your marketing commercial team, but you're also within that one team. So you need to be able to have both levels of conversations, and in that same way, you need to be able to communicate your see as CMO, you should be able to communicate what is happening on a business level down to your team so that they understand what why they're doing things and the importance of the tasks that they are they are carrying out.

Chris Norton 41:04

How many hours a week does a fractional CMO work then for a do you is it like a day a week or something?

Lucy Woolfenden 41:11

Completely depends from a couple of hours to you know, some people will talk about fractional CMO with someone that's coming in for a short period of time. So it might be that they're full-time for three months. And for the where our model is around half a day to a day a week. But that is because we'll have you'll never just work with one person, you'll work with sort of four to five people because it's all the different skill sets.

Will Ockenden 41:39

One hour a week. I'd like to do that. That sounds like quite a good gig. What a thousand. Yeah, exactly. Open my laptop and that's it.

Chris Norton 41:50

So you also mentioned that you forwarded a client invite with a message that wasn't meant for them. I think a few of us have done that while we sent emails to people that we shouldn't have done via accident. What happened there then?

Fintech And SaaS In The AI Era

Lucy Woolfenden 42:02

So I didn't realise that if you send forward on a calendar invite, it the response goes back to the initial sender. Um so we were having, it was a different creative agency, still making mistakes. Um and one of them, one of our clients just felt like they weren't really getting much creative love. It was all very much, they weren't, they weren't the most important brand in the agency. And so I wrote to forwarded on this invite to the creative director and just said, Oh, they need a bit of creative director loving. Can you uh they're not they're a bit grumpy at the moment. And thankfully he replied, going with, oh, if I have to, you can buy me a pint or something to that effect. And then the client forwarded it on to me and went, Oh, is that how I'm feeling?

Chris Norton 42:55

But at least I mean, there's there's probably hundreds of people thinking, hang on a minute, if they forward that on, does that get seen by people doing that right now, going, Oh my god.

Will Ockenden 43:06

And your message is tame compared to so it depends on what the person you that could have actually worked in your favour, because you know it it you know, you're you're but yeah, that's a bad thing, isn't it?

Lucy Woolfenden 43:17

The poor accounting set trying hard to get the senior people involved. Yeah. No, don't you think it went down very well?

Chris Norton 43:25

It did go down very well. I mean Grumpy, I'd be like, well, yeah, probably. Yeah. Daily. Work harder. My agency needs to work harder. That's what everyone says, isn't it? Um my god. Yeah, so um what sort of where do you think the future of fintech

Will Ockenden 43:41

is then at the moment? Where's it going for the for the 2026? Where do where do you reckon we are with it?

Lucy Woolfenden 43:47

I think it'll be really interesting to see how people are coming back to from a fintech point of view, how people have gone from being so excited about all these tools and then the talk about super tools, and then actually going back to really understanding what is right for them. So what we're seeing now is not about one app for everything, we're seeing it's one app for parents with a child between one and two. You know, it's something very specific, and I think that is how it's going to go. It's so with you know, back in 2018, it took a lot of money and a lot of effort and a big team to be able to build anything. Now we're seeing it being so easy to create an MVP, prove a bit of growth, then show some activity and start. So I think what we'll see is these multiple apps of uh for specific audiences that are really starting to grow.

Chris Norton 44:54

Do you think because there's a big thing with AI vibe coding, all that sort of stuff, which is the probably the businesses that you're seeing? Is there not and is also the big SaaS apocalypse that they're talking about? The fact that if you're a big bona fide, safe in the market SaaS product, you've been going for 20 years, 15 years, whatever, now there's all these guys that just whip up the pop from nowhere, and within two months there's something that's on the market that's better than you, cheaper than you, and more agile than you. Do you think that's a threat, or do you think you do you think they'll just all evolve and it'll be fine?

Lucy Woolfenden 45:27

I think from a fintech point of view, because of the regulatory nature, nothing's ever going to get pre approved by the FCA that is by

Chris Norton 45:35

It is good old regulatory all the fun away that.

Lucy Woolfenden 45:38

So I think we're pretty safe there. Um from I mean, I think the market we the mass market always moves slower than we think it does. I think there are the early adopters that are all using Claude Coworks who already run a lot of the OS of their businesses. And so some of those tools will miss out. And I think in the longer term that is a problem. But I don't see, you know, a mass exodus in the next six months because we're still, you know, everyone's still testing and learning, aren't they? I think there will be, there'll be that small percentage that are really learning and building and wanting to and testing, but really that mass market, especially when you get to enterprise, trying to change uh trying to change that juggernaut and to really change software that's being used by thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of employees or customers, isn't a quick fix. Is it going to be, you know, they're not going to take on that new app that nobody's quite sure about, and there's some security risks. They're going to keep with the sales forces and everybody else of this world for now. Maybe not in three in a couple of years, time about now.

Chris Norton 46:47

Interesting, you mentioned Claude Cowork. Um, do you see that the CEO of NVIDIA said that um OpenClaw is the biggest app and fastest, the fastest downloaded app and biggest app since ChatGPT, and they're saying it's the new ChatGPT in Vidres. So and that is essentially a Claude cowork with no guardrails, which is just you can use it, but you're not sure what it's gonna do and whether it's just gonna go off on the internet and share all your details and share all your file. So you need to be really careful. It's fast, it's a fascinating time for for tech and software right now, isn't it?

Who To Invite Next And Where To Find Lucy

Lucy Woolfenden 47:21

And the risk is huge. So we use it across everything and it's really changed the way in which we work. Co-work. But um, well, co-work actually in the last couple, even then just in the last couple of weeks has changed how we're we're operating as an agency or as a company.

Chris Norton 47:36

How do you think using it then? In what what respect?

Lucy Woolfenden 47:40

My um my virtual CFO that tells me what I need to know about my time and my and my um hourly rate and my everything else. Um the um as my content calendar and my my reminder of everything, my organizer of yeah, my organizing, it's organized all my files and all my folders to name them and to um so many cool things that I'm only just scratching the surface.

Chris Norton 48:12

Actually, a hot tip then you get claude everyone needs to get Claudeed co-work. Well I'm sorry, I'm sorry already when you said virtual CFO. Well, you I was just thinking for you and your bloody calendar, well that would be handy as well. Yeah. Yeah. And today today's been no exception, Chris.

Lucy Woolfenden 48:29

Yeah, but I do think like everything's changing, isn't it? Like now Claude's just coming up with that, and then you know, OpenAI will come back with something and it will all be a jostle to the top. But I do think there's an there's a really big issue that we're talking to a lot of our clients about, is everybody can vibe code, and that's fine if it's just an MVP and it's just a cute, a cool tool or something. But as soon as you've got client data in it or personal data in it, you need to be putting that risk around. You need to be really testing and making sure that you're not about to get sued for millions because I don't have that um insurance level.

Chris Norton 49:06

Yeah, true, true. Um we ask this everybody that comes on the show. You've been on the show now. If you were us, who would you invite next to be on the show and why?

Lucy Woolfenden 49:18

Oh so um maybe Kylie Osman Home. She's a CMO that works across lots of D2C brands. She's really awesome as a person and very she makes me laugh a lot. Um, but she also just works across some really cool brands and has had so many experiences.

Chris Norton 49:40

And so, Lucy, how can people get hold of you if they want to get hold of you and and use your CF, you know, CMO services?

Lucy Woolfenden 49:46

Um, I'm on LinkedIn, I hang around on LinkedIn quite a lot. So if you just look at look me at Lucy Woolfenden or our website's is GayLUp Collective, so you can also go on there.