Behind the Curtain: Customer Centricity's Secrets for B2B Success

Speaker 2: 0:04

Welcome to socially unacceptable, from f**k ups to fame, the marketing podcast that celebrates the professional mishaps, mistakes and misjudgments, while delivering valuable marketing and life lessons in the time it takes you to eat your lunch.

Speaker 3: 0:22

You say that it does your book by its cover, but in this world of, you know, micro attention spans, it is important to make that first impact.

Speaker 4: 0:29

So, without wishing to give too much away from the book, if I am a small business without any real experience in doing customer insight or customer research, where you know, practically speaking, where can I start, what should I do first?

Speaker 3: 0:41

Yeah, well, I would recommend talking, setting up conversations with customers, market research. You know I resisted the term for a long time because it sounds so boring Like it's just like the image you have of, you know, people going around and you know the clipboard and hence why. You know, when I write about it I try, and, you know, engage people with. You know the deeper, the deeper reasons why it's so important to do it. You know do risk, do risking projects. You know copy landing.

Speaker 5: 1:12

Welcome to socially unacceptable the only podcast for marketers and comms professionals that celebrates the biggest fails and marketing mistakes and helps you learn practical lessons from other people's misfortune. Here you can grow your brand quicker. I'm your host, chris Norton, and I've worked in PR and marketing for more than 25 years in more than seven agencies and in a number of in-house roles. I've even taught PR at a university. However, 13 years ago, I founded Prohibition to do PR differently, using insights at its core. Today, prohibition is Yorkshire's finest PR and social media agency, turning over more than seven figures every year.

Speaker 5: 1:48

In this week's episode, we speak to Katie Tucker. Katie is an inspirational product leader with over 12 years experience leading teams and delivering standout products and services. In 2020, she founded Product Jungle, helping hundreds of businesses understand their customers better. Before setting that up, katie worked in the fast-paced world of commodity markets and for a successful FTSE 100 company. In 2018, she quit the corporate nine to five to travel the world for 10 months with her family a life-changing experience which led to the creation of Product Jungle. Katie is a best-selling author and regularly appears in the press in the Times Independent, the BBC and many, many more. This week is going to be useful because we delve into the world of understanding your customers and being a customer-centric brand or business. So sit back, relax and let's hear how you can understand your customers more to get a better result from your marketing efforts. So welcome to the show, katie. How are you doing?

Speaker 3: 2:44

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 5: 2:47

You're welcome. So can you tell us a bit about your company, a bit about your background and how you've got set up in the world of market research first, before we get on to other things?

Speaker 3: 3:00

Yeah, sure. So my background is actually initially in writing and journalism and I spend quite a bit of time doing that in big companies for niche markets, financial markets. Then I moved into product management, which I'm sure a lot of you or listeners will recognise as a function within big companies, and then basically I decided to go like quit my job and go on a big world tour with my family and when I came back I thought, okay, what can I? I don't want to go back to my job. So I thought, yeah, which part is really valuable? That's not being done? Necessarily one enough, and it was about that customer discovery, market research. So I set up Product Jungle probably the name inspired by my travels, no doubt and yeah, and just started there, especially with smaller businesses who don't necessarily always have the budget and the resource and the know-how, but there's a lot of big companies that aren't necessarily doing this right either to be honest.

Speaker 5: 4:01

What the market research? They're not understanding the customer right.

Speaker 3: 4:04

Yeah, they're not understanding the customer. Or when they do, it's kind of the ways that they go about it it's like, okay, we've done the survey, we've done the NPS, and that's kind of the research done. Or when they are accessing customers, the questions they ask aren't necessarily the right ones. So then when they're feeding that back into like comms and marketing, it doesn't quite land and it's like, oh, why is that? And often most of the problems come back to market. Research can answer a lot of those questions in a company when things aren't working.

Speaker 3: 4:37

And I don't necessarily think it's always like a default option to go for, because I think the word itself I mean market research. I resisted the term for a long time because it sounds so boring it's just like the image you have of people going around with a clipboard and. But I had to lean into it because it is what it's called, hence why, when I write about it, I try and engage people with the deeper reasons why it's so important to do it de-risking projects, copy landing and ultimately, sales money at the end. And I'm trying to kind of, like you know, renew the market researchers like dusty, boring image with penguins.

Speaker 4: 5:24

Yeah, well, let's talk about the title. So obviously you're in the corporate world and then you, you wrote your first book, which is a kind of a big step. It's called Do Penguins Eat Peaches. It's recently been released. Do you want to explain the name? First of all, people are probably wondering why it's called Do Penguins Eat Peaches.

Speaker 3: 5:41

Do Penguins Eat Peaches? Yeah, I'm really glad I went for that title in the end because I did hesitate. You know I could have called it the business guide to market research and I think that would not have landed as well. So I came up with that title because, first of all, you know it's a curious question, like it makes people think, oh what? You know, what's that book about? Which is?

Speaker 3: 6:02

You know, we say it does your book by its cover, but in this world of, you know, micro-attention spans, it is important to make that first impact. And then also it's about assumptions and you know the assumption would be no, well, penguin, doesn't. You know penguins don't eat peaches, what you're talking about. And then just thinking, you know, actually, if you really think about it, you know, maybe they do in a zoo, you know, has anyone ever asked them? And so it was just like it felt like it encompassed quite a lot of like the curiosity, the surprise, and, you know, assumption busting. And at the back I actually do ask a range of different people like what they think you know, do penguins eat peaches? From like kids to CEOs, and it's really interesting the type of answers that you get. And also I really like alliteration. So you know it could have been polar bears, but it was penguins. Penguins and peaches.

Speaker 4: 6:52

So what kind of struck me about the book and I think we'll dig into some of the specifics it's really really practical, isn't it? You know, there's sort of broken into chapters about the different areas when it comes to market research, and then you've put in kind of stretch tasks where people can actually implement some of the learnings you've recommended. So as a bit of a starting point then and you've touched on this what are the main misconceptions then when it comes to market research? You've already mentioned that it's often perceived as being boring or unnecessary, what you know. How else do people view it?

Speaker 3: 7:23

Yeah, so there's I do actually start off with that in the book, as you've probably seen like some of the common like excuses and barriers, like not to do it. So there is, you know, a big one is I already know, like I know my customer, so I don't need to do this and that's always a dangerous place for any business or business owner. And it's still very common and I'm sure you've seen, like if you're working with companies as well, where they're like, oh no, we don't really need to go and like ask anyone, like we know what our customers want. We've been in this business for 15 years, so there's a little bit of you know, that assumption that you just know, and I think that becomes a barrier and that's quite difficult to untangle. Something has to go wrong quite badly for them to then realize, oh, actually should have probably listened, listened a bit better. I think the know how as well. I think you know it's just an obvious statement to say you know, understand your customer, you need to understand your audience. Like you know, we're bombarded with that message, like on social media, from comms, people, marketing experts, but I don't think anyone really tells people like the how, how to do it. Well, you know, a survey in itself is you know, you can do that in five minutes and I think that's become like the default for a lot of companies but actually asking the right questions so you're getting the right insight. Figuring out what is it you're trying to find out with that survey. No one's really telling people how to do that, unless you're kind of like in that niche UX research world. So I really wanted to, you know, dig into like practical things. Somebody could take the book and say, oh yeah, I can change. You know, I've got a survey going out next week and actually I'm going to think about this a little bit more.

Speaker 3: 9:01

Another common misconception is that you need to speak to, like you know it's going to take loads of time. You're going to speak to hundreds of people and in fact, yeah, that's not really true either. Like there's a lot of things you can do with small, a small sample, or really good conversations with, like you know, seven to 12 customers. We don't, you don't always have to do like 100 people, surveys and huge focus groups. So I think and I think there's another another area I'd say is like that fear of that fear of failure, that fear of, oh, if we do go out and test it, or if we, what happens if it doesn't land?

Speaker 3: 9:37

Like what happens if people don't like it and actually people would prefer, you know, it's like that song fallacy cost. It's like, okay, I've gone so far down this road so I'm not going to check, I'll just keep going. You know, we've already invested so much time into this and we've nearly built half the thing, so, yeah, we'll just keep going. We'll just keep going and kind of like, you know, with blinkers. So there's a there's a few things going on when it comes to why people aren't aren't doing it.

Speaker 5: 10:02

So that's the, that's the overall concept of the book. That's why it really really interested us to get you on the show is that the first chapter is all about actually combines the two things that we like to talk about Public relations, because you got some PR and you had a small failure and obviously this, this shows all up. We call the shows all about mistakes in the world of marketing. So do you want to tell you a little bit of? I mean, I know it's in the book, so people will have to buy it, but do you want to give us a little bit of an insight into how that came about?

Speaker 3: 11:36

Yeah. So, as I said, I went on this big world tour with my family. We did a family gap year and during that time I did build up a following on social media and not quite knowing where it was going to go. But I thought, ok, this is something that's quite out of the ordinary to do as a family. So I was sharing it and I was getting quite good traction on Instagram. People were like, oh, my god, I'd love to do that with my family. How did you do it? There was lots of questions. So when I came back, I thought, wow, I know how to do this because I've just done it with two kids. I think I could maybe do a course.

Speaker 3: 12:11

At the time there was a lot of people doing everyone was doing a course. So I thought, ok, I'll do a course and teaching people how to prepare, not just from the practicalities but also mentally, because it's not all flying unicorns when you travel the world with two kids. So I really wanted to do something quite practical. So I started writing the course and different modules. I wrote in some people that I'd met along the way, other families for videos and testimonials, and, in the back of my mind, I was probably not listening to the voice that was saying have you checked, katie? And I'm in this field, and when it's so close to you, I think it's even harder sometimes to say. It becomes quite personal. And I was like, of course I know what I'm talking about. I managed to get some media coverage, as you said, in the front page of the money section of the Times about how we did it, how we financed it, with a link at the bottom to find out more about the course, which is great, that's great.

Speaker 5: 13:12

Which is fantastic.

Speaker 3: 13:14

But the one thing I didn't do is I asked the classic mistake like friends, family and friendly people whether they thought it was a good idea, and obviously I was desperate for this to work. I'd just quit my job, I'd just come back from this trip. I was thinking, what am I going to do next? And so it had to work and, as I say in the book, COVID saved me, because COVID put an end to all travel plans, let alone family travel plan, and so I had to stop. I had to OK, I have to do something else, because obviously I don't know when people are going to travel again.

Speaker 3: 13:52

But it was a really good. I like sharing it because I think people think that people like myself who work in the research industry, in product and help people around custom discovery, are immune to some of the things that go on in your head when you're trying to do something for yourself and you have to check in with yourself. And, as I said, covid put an end to everything and I always say COVID saved me on that one. It was a good learning and sometimes you have to make a big mistake like that to not make it again.

Speaker 5: 14:25

So is that when you decided to write the book, then when COVID happened, it gave you the two. You gave you that period to write the book.

Speaker 3: 14:30

It gave me a bit of breathing space. I mean, I entered like a business book challenge and I thought, yeah, I need to do something. I'm going crazy at home like homeschooling. I think everyone was in the same boat, yeah.

Speaker 3: 14:42

And it was just something to focus on for like a few weeks and I didn't actually win the challenge. The person who won got a publishing deal and I didn't realize how much I wanted it until I didn't win and I was like, oh shit, I really actually want this and I am a writer at heart. That's what I studied journalism and I really enjoy writing. But the publisher said listen, katie, I really like your idea, but if I Google you, there's nothing. You haven't got a business yet, you haven't got a website. You haven't really got a following on your product jungle thing. And she said listen, if you go away and you build something, then come back to me and we can talk again.

Speaker 3: 15:21

So that's what I did and I spent like two years building a following, figuring out what works, and the proposal that actually came out two years later was very different from the initial one that I submitted, which didn't even have the word market research in it, believe it or not. But I just so. It was actually a blessing in disguise, because I got the publishing deal eventually and my book is better because of what happened, I suppose during those two years.

Speaker 5: 15:50

Everything happens for a reason, Katie. That's what they say, don't they?

Speaker 3: 15:53

I know they do, but when you're in the thick of it you're like why?

Speaker 4: 15:57

Why do you?

Speaker 3: 15:58

have to come out the other side and you think, yeah, actually this wouldn't have been the same book and I'm confident with the book. I put it out there, knowing which bits people are struggling with when it comes to surveys and questions to ask and desk research, and I thought so I'm pretty happy with the response as well, where people are like, oh wow, this is practical, but it's also I don't want to dumb down research People are busy, business people are busy, they haven't got time. You talked about the stretch tasks. I didn't want to litter it with like have them everywhere, because I think that's overwhelming in a book as well. You can't move on to the next chapter unless you fill in this big quadrant and people are busy. So I really was mindful of how people read books and whether they could dip in and out but also try and make it quite personal and tight back to some of my experiences as well.

Speaker 5: 16:54

So if you're a marketing person, how often would you? What's your recommendation? Because in public relations with our clients here we do surveys regularly, but we'll do public relations surveys. So if it's a consumer brand that we're working with, we'll survey the consumer, and we have to do. You mentioned earlier there doesn't need to be a big audience group, but for us it needs to be statistically viable. So it's 1,000 to 2,000 people in the UK. Then we'll do a survey to create some three or four headlines from 20 questions and from that we'll craft a story right and then send that out to the national media and secure the national media coverage that you're talking about. This is something different. This is about the brand tracking type stuff where you're asking your customers how they feel about you, isn't it? So what are the biggest sort of mistakes that you see and how often should you survey your customers?

Speaker 4: 17:40

And how as well.

Speaker 3: 17:41

Yeah, so.

Speaker 4: 17:42

I think we always think about surveys, but presumably there's lots of other ways we can do that as well.

Speaker 3: 17:48

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think surveys, as we said, really easy for teams to set up and send out and with support from agencies, I guess, like yourselves, you can have that broader reach in terms of getting that statistically viable audience. I think the surveys that I'm talking about, as you said, are about understanding behavior, essentially not just high level opinions and using surveys to make a decision in your business in somehow or like move the dial for your business. Because so many surveys and now I do tend to always open a survey if it comes just to see often how bad it is, and I'm always thinking what are you gonna get out of this? And I think when you're crafting those questions you need to think about what an answer could be. So let's say, if you're doing something for a wine company and you ask your respondents, how often do you buy a bottle of wine over a month or something, and somebody says one, somebody says two. It's like, okay, how relevant is that gonna be for what you need to do later?

Speaker 3: 18:56

Because a lot of the time the questions you're asking aren't necessarily the right ones. So the longest part of a survey is the beginning, before you even write a question, figuring out okay, not a survey for survey's sake. What am I trying to find out? And sometimes narrowing it down to one or two main themes, not trying to go everywhere and then just regurgitating the responses afterwards. I've seen so many businesses they do a survey but they come back, they look at responses and it's like more questions come. They haven't actually gained any insight and they're great springboards for doing a bit more research and maybe then speaking directly to a bunch of customers to dig a little bit deeper into the behaviors. But I think, yes, surveys they're so easy to do that they become quite dangerous because people also they make decisions, sometimes on data that is not necessarily the full representation of people's behavior.

Speaker 5: 19:55

It's got bias in it. You're talking about bias, aren't you?

Speaker 3: 19:58

Yeah, absolutely, and the way you craft the questions and also just some simple things around open-ended questions versus closed questions. Sometimes you go ahead to survey and the first question is like an open-ended question, like something really deep to what extent do you agree with Brexit? And you're like, oh, the mindset someone's in when they're doing a survey is quick, get this over with ASAP. I think we all have to be honest with ourselves when it comes to that brands. But also when you're responding to a survey, you're not sitting there going, oh yeah, I can't wait for the next question. We have to be mindful, whereas if you're doing an interview with someone, the context they're more likely to open up and talk because it is kind of an organized conversation. So I think all that surveys can be a useful tool for marketers, but they have to be well thought through and also a springboard potentially for another type of research down the line.

Speaker 4: 20:53

What's a shitty question then? So that made me smile. In the book you talk about there is actually there is such a thing as a stupid question, and you list.

Speaker 5: 20:59

There is such a thing. It's that right it was that one.

Speaker 4: 21:01

Yeah, it was that shit question.

Speaker 3: 21:05

No, I mean, I think the question ones are around like, around, like do you like? We're thinking of launching this thing in 2024. What do you, do you like this idea? And there's so many businesses that make decisions based on like, and there's a great research lady called Erica Hall. In her book Just Enough Research, she says, like I like horses, but I'm not gonna buy one on the internet. Do you know what I mean Like? Like is dangerous, it's subjective and it's not the best way.

Speaker 3: 21:36

And so you know, and especially like the smaller business space, there's a lot of people that are just putting polls out and surveys and people are saying, yeah, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, and then they're launching to crickets, literally. And it happens in big companies as well. You know product managers are and UX people tend to be the ones like trying to test this stuff with customers, and then they pass over those insights to marketing and then you know it doesn't actually sell as well as expected and then marketing get a little bit. You know they get it in the neck and it's like actually it all starts with did you validate that this was actually a good idea, not just yeah, we're thinking of doing this. Would it be useful? People want to be helpful and they don't want. Most people don't want to have an awkward conversation, so they're likely to just nod along. You know they've got no skin in the game.

Speaker 3: 22:22

Whether they say, yeah, you know, so you have to be really careful. So that kind of question, do you like my idea, is one of the dangerous ones. You know, what you need to be focusing on is you know present behavior and past behavior, and I always give the example of, like you know a subscription box business or somebody who wants to start launching a subscription box. You'll be much more. What's much more useful is to ask people whether they currently subscribe to any type of subscription box. Have they in the past? If so, which ones? And it doesn't matter if it's not in your particular area. It could be a beer box, could be, you know, a food box, and maybe you're launching some kind of wellness box.

Speaker 3: 23:02

But you know, look for clues in actual behavior, because humans and the touristy bad are projecting themselves in the future treesfully. You know we're all more, you know greener and you know we're going to go to the gym in the future, we're going to get better sleep, we're going to drink less, but actually, you know we don't always. We don't always do that. So it's really important to actually ask questions around the now and yesterday, because people will. Then you can see oh okay, this person's saying yes, they're interested in my box idea, but actually they've never subscribed to any box ever. Mm, that might not fly. Just see what I mean.

Speaker 4: 23:39

Yeah, so once you've we do a lot of this at prohibition you know, when we've got the data, the trick is then pulling the insight from that data, isn't it? So you know, let's say you've done your surveys, you've got lots and lots of responses. Is there any kind of tips or techniques to actually pulling meaningful insight from that data?

Speaker 3: 24:00

Yeah, I think there's a chapter in the book around sense-making, because I think that is another big area where businesses tend to struggle how to get that insight and it does take a bit of time.

Speaker 3: 24:11

I think I suggest like at least a full day or a day and a half where you're kind of just immersed in the data and you're looking for patterns and themes, like if you've got any open-ended responses, you're trying to look for repetitive patterns, basically to kind of strengthen the insight. A lot of online tools now can help with that, things like chatGBT. While I wouldn't recommend using that for understanding your customers, it's great at pulling out themes from text that you kind of you know or data that you feed into it. So I definitely recommend you know leveraging some of those tools because it can be quite, you know, a manual process. Otherwise, to kind of you know if you've got a thousand responses, to pick out some of the themes around the open-ended questions, the data itself. That's a bit more straightforward. You know X% said this, x% said that. But if you've got some meteor questions, I definitely recommend using some of the tools and just like theme sorting basically and clustering similar ideas together. That tends to work quite well.

Speaker 5: 25:22

So you've got quite a big section in there on Ego and I'm halfway. You like this. My wife bought me a book for a joke called Ego is the Enemy. I don't know if you've seen it read it.

Speaker 3: 25:31

Oh yeah, yeah, by Ryan Holiday. Yeah, that's right, I mentioned it in the book.

Speaker 5: 25:35

Actually, he's written a few books, hasn't he as well, and I liked his other. I've read a couple of his other ones. Anyway, ego is the Enemy. You'd be amused to hear that I've only got halfway through it, because I just put it there. That's how I tend to work with business books. I sort of get halfway through and then I'll pick them up later on holiday and things like that. So you've got Ego in here as a big site and we just talked about bias with questions. So Ego, when you talk about it in this book, you talk more about the fact that businesses, or, you know, senior C-suite teams, can be a little bit egotistical and not want to find out, like you just said that when we started the questioning. That's holding them back from asking questions. Do you want to talk a little bit about how Ego can hold you back?

Speaker 3: 26:20

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's one where you know you have to be quite self-aware and honest with yourself and some people aren't there yet. Do you know what I mean? Like some people don't even realize that they're actually, you know, fallen head over heels with their own idea, or that they're quite self-absorbed, or you know they have a power status so they don't want to show potentially that you know this might not be a good idea or we might need to check it. So I think Ego plays a huge part in business and we see it show up.

Speaker 3: 26:48

You know, often I don't know about you guys, but I mean it's not that it's you're going to make it go away, because I think it's just part of human nature, but you do need to spot it when it comes and says you don't need to check. You know you'll be fine. Like you know, you've been in this business for 20 years. You've done well so far. You know this is a good idea. We're doing it. You know, and there's a lot of C-suite execs, unfortunately, that still operate like that, like top down. You know we promised an app for our subscribers. You know a couple of people he's had a conversation with said they wanted an app. We're doing an app. We're doing an app. You know, I've been in different situations like that where you're like well, do we really know that they need an app? You've had three conversations. And so Ego, yeah, shows up a lot in general in humans. I'm quite good at spotting it now, but also myself, for sure, and I think I've got some tips in the book around how to kind of manage it. And yeah, I've actually got a stretch task on Ego and it's about you know, you feel like you're being attacked and it's your. You know you're getting defensive because actually, maybe you're idea didn't work or and so, yeah, there's a lot of psychology involved.

Speaker 3: 28:05

But I think it's always good to check and I think it's also important for agencies like yourselves or, you know, people like me with like smaller consultancies, to bring that to the table. I think that could be quite you know, that's a difficult conversation sometimes, like I'm sure you've had clients where they're like no, we're doing it this way, and you're like, well, actually, you know, based on our experience and like how we perceive your market and your audience, I think we should do it this way. No, we do it this way, we do it and it's like it's a real, like. It depends on what kind of business you want to do. But it can bring some quite you know hard conversations because you could do it their way. You know it's their business at the end of the day they're going to sign the check, absolutely fine. But, like you think, hmm, actually I want to do business differently. So I tend to be drawn more towards clients that have that kind of self-awareness to be able to, like, keep that in check.

Speaker 5: 28:54

Yeah, we do have that. Sometimes You'll have a client that suggests they want to do a campaign around something. We'll come up with a load of ideas and then they'll have one idea themselves and you'll look at it and we'll think, oh my God, that's just not going to land in the press, it's just not newsworthy. And then you push like edited versions back to them and then they say, actually we prefer our idea, can we do this? And we keep trying to push back and eventually we do their idea and we still get results. But we know for damn well sure that the first three ideas that we suggested would have done much better. So I do know what you mean there and you should listen to your partners as well. So like, if someone's working with you, for instance, right, so why don't you explain to us how you work with clients at Product Jungle? How does that come about?

Speaker 3: 29:39

Yeah, so my routine is mainly around like the customer discovery piece and helping product managers and product marketers to create like relevant personas, ask the right questions, do value proposition statements, to end up like creating the comms and the go to market type materials that are going to land. So I do a lot of work like some mentoring, I do like training around customer discovery, what questions to ask, programs of research, like how often to do it, and things like that. So it just seems to be like it's really hit a sweet spot where product management is a role like lots of people coming from different areas. I mean, now it's becoming more professional and there's always a module on understanding your customers. But I think it's, you know, where you've got big money on the line and you're creating like digital products that you know with AI and you know millions of dollars, you need to have that robust insight that this is going to work, because otherwise there's a lot of money to lose. So that's where I tend to do quite a bit of work Increasingly, also on like the actual campaigns itself, like I've got.

Speaker 3: 30:55

You know, I really think like B2B brands, like you know, saas companies need to up their game when it comes to marketing and the copy. I'm a firm believer that it's not because you are a customer of a B2B company, like you're a financial analyst or you know that those type of roles that you're not also a human being, like with a sense of humor, with, like you know that watches Netflix in the evening, that you know has jokes with his or her mates, and we tend to have this. You know, as soon as it's B2B, it's a professional service. The copy is just, you know, boring vanilla and it's like I'm just waiting for a brand in the B2B space, but not like you know, a small startup but you know a quite well-established, meaty company to change the tune when it comes to how they talk to their customers and I think the people who do that, they will win going forward.

Speaker 4: 31:53

That's such an interesting point. Yeah, I mean, that's a conversation we have so often. You know, probably 40, 50% of our clients here are B2B, and our view is, just because it's B2B, it doesn't mean we can't be creative and it doesn't mean we can't be engaging, because you're absolutely right, you know it's still people, isn't it? And I was going to say actually, yeah, yeah, brands like, I mean, I guess, hubspot, possibly MailChimp you know MailChimp is in the B2B sector they really kind of have quite an engaging tone of voice the way they position themselves, but it's not many, is it? You know, it's not many brands.

Speaker 3: 32:24

No, it's not many. No, I come across one recently because I've got. I send out a newsletter every Monday called Jungle Juice and it's all about understanding customers with tips, and I think it was last week. So I put in an example, and it's not B2B, but it's in a boring sector which is contents insurance. I don't know if you guys have heard of Lemonade. Right, yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:45

They're a new contents insurance provider, but they are different. You know, like if you look at their wording, they're even the way that the contracts are. You've got like an easy to read one where they'll just talk to you like, listen, if you drop your phone, you're covered for this. This, this, not like all the legal jargon Obviously there's something like that behind it. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 33:04

But there is an opportunity for brands in less sexier, you know, creative or you know, obviously creative industries like to be brave and bolder and more human. And you know, in the big, like kind of big SaaS companies, when you're doing, like you know, digital platforms for news, analytics and stuff like that, I'm just not seeing that come through. And I think you know B2B is a busy place. You need to stand out, not just, oh, you know, check out our latest platform with, like all these features. You know you need to understand your customer better than that. Like, who are they as people, what do they care about? And just try and be a bit more, yeah, just human.

Speaker 3: 33:45

Like it really kind of it really frustrates me and I can understand the fear on the brand's, you know, on the business side, because they're probably like, oh, you know how can we reconcile being professional and, you know, selling this 20-gram products that you know can make their lives easier or void them fines, and also be a bit more creative in the market. They're like you know, they think they're mutually exclusive, that you can't be professional and human. And you know I don't believe that. I think you can, I think you absolutely can and I can't wait to see you know a big B2B SaaS company, because things like Mailchimp, they're still you know people in the consumer world. They still know them.

Speaker 4: 34:26

That's right.

Speaker 3: 34:26

yeah, I think they you know, do you know what I mean? But like a real, like hardcore B2B brand doing something a little bit different with their marketing. Yeah, I think there's lots to be gained from doing that.

Speaker 4: 34:40

That's a challenge for any of our B2B listeners, then. So you know.

Speaker 5: 34:44

Making B2B sexy? Yeah, and you should, you know.

Speaker 4: 34:47

And human, like you're saying, it's completely.

Speaker 5: 34:49

I completely agree with you and a lot of brands struggle with it because it just goes into everybody, just copycats everybody else.

Speaker 4: 34:55

This is the way we've always done it. This is what our audience want, because it's B2B.

Speaker 5: 34:59

There's a whole argument as well that B2B marketing has become performance marketing and not really brand marketing. So, like, brand marketing has got more longevity, whereas performance marketing you'll get more clicks today, but actually you'll do better overall. We've also got an episode that we did with Tom Baskill about six or seven episodes ago. That was all about B2B marketing and thought leadership. So if you're into your B2B, check that episode out.

Speaker 4: 35:27

So just circling back to the book again, then A couple of additional points from me. I guess, coming to the book and coming to the kind of the market research sector, I probably wrongly assumed that you need to be a massive company to do this, you need huge budgets. But reading the book, there's a lot of kind of focus on the small SMEs and smaller businesses and their ability to actually deliver market research. Is that right then? You don't need huge budgets. You can get a better understanding of your customer regardless of how big you are.

Speaker 3: 36:01

Yeah, no, I think definitely. That's why I wrote this book, because I felt there wasn't a book that fitted in that space of. Actually there's loads of books about you know, drier books than mine about how to do this well, market research. But they're aimed at the people who are already in corporates or have a good understanding of customer research. They're in the UX teams or the data teams and there was nothing really for the ones who have never worked in a corporate so don't really know their way around the jargon and the lingo, the different roles.

Speaker 3: 36:39

But I'm a firm believer that there is such a thing as good enough. Like don't make the budget and the teams and the expertise a barrier. There are some simple things that you can do. It's all about moving the dial, reducing that risk a little bit more. So you can definitely do a lot by yourself.

Speaker 3: 37:00

If you're a smaller company and I think smaller businesses actually have an advantage over bigger brands who are dying to be more authentic and get closer to the customer feel like you know. As a smaller business you often are by default, so you have got that relationship. So it'll be easier to set up customer interviews. You're more likely to get good survey response rate because you're just by default closer. So I think there's a lot of things going for smaller businesses in terms of how to do this well, and at the back of the book, I have got three different ways of doing it. Like, if you want to start small, because I don't want to overwhelm people Small business owners are already quite overwhelmed like this because you're everything You're the marketer, you're the product person, you're the finance person, you're doing everything. So I really wanted to have a bit of a blueprint at the end to say, listen, if you haven't got loads of time, this is kind of the minimum that you can do. If you've got a bit more budget and more time, you've got a few people to help you. Here's another way. Or you've got the one in the middle. It's kind of the three ways. So, yeah, I do believe and it can really move the data.

Speaker 3: 38:08

All the small businesses I've worked with, you know sometimes I've created discussion guides for them, for interviews. You know they've always come back to me and said, oh my God, like how much I've learned with this conversation with customers. Because you know it's not just about the product, is it? It's not just about trying to understand a 3D, like I always say, you know, people don't buy a Rolex watch to tell the time. You know, otherwise they'd buy a five pounds one on Amazon, like they buy it for, you know, social reasons, for psychological reasons, for status, for emotional stuff, and so the more you understand that bit, the more product you can make sticky, yeah, and people will, you know, want to go to you. So, yeah, definitely, it's definitely doable for small business and it doesn't have to be overwhelming either.

Speaker 4: 38:56

So, without wishing to give too much away from the book, if we are, if I am a small business without any real experience in doing customer insight or customer research, where you know, practically speaking, where can I start, what should I do first? Is it a survey? Is it informal conversations with customers? You know what should I be doing.

Speaker 3: 39:15

Yeah Well, I would recommend talking, setting up conversations with customers. I think small businesses have dabbled, no doubt, in all the other kind of methods that I talk about in the book to various degrees of success. So they've probably done a survey or they've done a bit of research online. The one thing that they're probably not doing is actually setting up you know anything between you know five to seven or 12 30 minute conversations with you know a loose discussion guide, you know. So actually, you know you have a point in the focus Quite informal, I think that's that is, you'll get the biggest kind of bang for your, for your money, by doing that and the insights that you get and the excitement as well, to actually you know, understand and get that clarity on customers. So I would always and that's the scary bit and people are get quite nervous about that they're, you know, oh, what if they say no, who am I going to ask? But just do it like, just do it. Actually customers, they feel quite valued and those conversations tend to be quite not therapeutic. But a lot of customers come out and say, well, like they feel listened to, you know, they feel heard, they've had a longer conversation, they're just a survey question asking them. You know X, y, z and I think you know it's part of our responsibility and our role as businesses to ensure that we're creating stuff that our customers actually want and need.

Speaker 3: 40:45

So you know you could always spin it as this is. You know you're not being a burden. This is part of how I do business. Like in our business we really care deeply about the customer. So, you know, a couple of times a year we do some exploratory one-to-one conversations and you can have an incentive if you want.

Speaker 3: 41:03

And you know it's just part of how you do business. It's not, you know. Don't position it as if, like you know, you're asking for a favor. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. It's like. You know we really care. We'd love to talk to you 30 minutes. We've got a couple of questions to go through and you know, literally 99% of the time it's an enjoyable experience for, like, both parties and you come away with so much more. You know you don't know what you don't know and the only way to get that is actually with a conversation. Like surveys can get you so far, research reports can get you so far, but nothing beats that. You know. Live conversation with you know, as you guys know, loving podcasts to get all the rest, all the juicy stuff.

Speaker 4: 41:44

Something we haven't talked about, which feels like the obvious question actually and I think through this conversation you've really made a compelling case that we should all be doing more customer understanding, we should all be doing market research, but why? What's the benefit of it and, ultimately, what are we going to get out of it?

Speaker 3: 42:00

Yeah. So I think you know, I think I can think of loads of use cases. I think, like especially around risk and reducing the risk of something working or not, like there's nothing more soul destroying than putting a lot of time and a lot of effort and you can have passion and you can work hard and you can be all these things, but it doesn't guarantee the success of your product and service. So you know it's really about reducing the financial risk. It's about you know speeding up things, you know making smaller decisions incrementally instead of like sitting on something, launching it and then it doesn't quite work and then you're back to the drawing board. And I think you know if you're looking for also just new ideas, like if you're going into 2024, thinking about strategy or you know what kind of products and services like, having these kind of conversations with customers, these kind of research conversations, can help like shape what to do next. Like I always say, if you're stuck, if you're feeling in a bit of a slump, if the ideas aren't coming, set up some calls because you know guaranteed you know the ideas will come back. So I think it's good for you know high level horizon stuff. I think it's good for reducing risk of your thing, like you know, completely falling flat on its face. It's good for copy, you know, like, just get to having a conversation and getting someone read your website for message testing and saying have a quick look, what do you think I do? Describe to me back. You know what my business is about and the gaps, because I think you know, the closer you are to your business like, the more you lose the language that's actually being used to describe your own business. And I think it's really important that the language lands with people. And I think, you know, to my point, earlier on in the podcast, when I wasn't using the word market research, I was saying customer discovery. You know understanding customers, and someone said to me all you mean market research. That's what they understood. That's what they described what I do.

Speaker 3: 43:57

So, whether I like the term or not, you know I have to run with that because that's how I'm going to get people to engage with my content and ultimately, I care about them. You know building businesses that survive and thrive and this is a way. This is a way to do that because you could have, like you know, all the PR. You can have great design skills. You know everyone's throwing everything at the smaller businesses in terms of how to do this, how to do that by yourself, but I just think this is missing, because you could have all of that and it could still fail, like if it's not something that people are going to buy. So this helps you with that bit, that foundational piece for your marketing, for your product strategy, for your branding, even like how do you position ourselves? I think it's it's kind of like the foundation piece that kind of got lost along the way that I'm trying to bring back.

Speaker 5: 44:42

Have you got any examples of when companies have launched products without customer insight, like what you've seen?

Speaker 3: 44:49

Yeah, I mean I've got a couple of examples in the book, like of big businesses. I think there was the Google Glass, which is a good example. I can't remember exactly the date, but they went big on, like you know the wearables and you know it. I think they're now discontinued. I mean they had, like I think they're in all the New York times. They had like a huge launch, they spent a lot of money on this and, yeah, it, it is a work and it and it failed.

Speaker 3: 45:19

And I think the segue I think it's another example that I have in my book around something that, yes, and you know, you do need businesses to push the diet. It doesn't mean these are for nothing, but they can, google can afford to fail in in, in, you know, in a kind of innovative area. I suppose Not everyone can afford to have those type of failures and, you know, no doubt in the future wearables will be a thing. They got the wrong time but they didn't do. You know, they didn't really figure out whether it's something that people are ready to walk around with glasses on, where you could, like you know, check your messages, or how impractical a segue actually is in terms of what are you supposed to do with it.

Speaker 3: 45:59

Like you know you can't go, you can't bring your kids to school on it, you can't go shopping on it, I mean. I mean what that's why they use now in like warehouses and for tourists, because but the idea was it was going to take off big time and everyone would be going around on a segue. So, and then in big businesses there's failures all the time, like you know. You guys must know working with B2B, like they're always things that don't, you know, meet the financial targets in terms of sales. You know smaller things, I think there's less people don't really do the the retrospective sometimes to see why they just move on kind of to the next thing or kind of brush it under the carpet.

Speaker 3: 46:37

But, there's a yeah. There's lots of examples, I try and save them as well. Cb Insights has got a brilliant. You know, you guys know CB Insights. It's just like this big yeah, the Insight company. They're really good actually with their branding and messaging, but they also publish once a year like loads of failures. That might be some of you guys.

Speaker 5: 46:57

I was going to say I love that. I just had a vision of Will going to the local Tesco's, riding a segue with a pair of Google Glass on.

Speaker 4: 47:07

Glasses. Yeah, One for you, Chris. Do you think the metaverse is an example of a lack of customer understanding? Because that has great question.

Speaker 5: 47:16

I don't know what well. Facebook changed its name to meta because they felt that the metaverse was a thing and the computer game, the currency in computer games, being transcendible across multiple games. So if you've got FIFA points and you've got money in what do they call it in Fortnite, you could have money in Fortnite. You could have money in different games. The concepts are sound one, but the second life thing was the. You know, have a second life in second life. That's been out for years and years and years and years, and then Meta have just tried to own that and I don't.

Speaker 4: 47:47

I think, yeah, I think, this might be one for because people don't want it and they're not ready for it, are they I?

Speaker 5: 47:52

still don't think it's really taking off. No, what do you think, katie, about the metaverse?

Speaker 3: 47:57

Yeah, I think it's, um, I it feels a bit ego driven, that one as well. Like you know, someone's come up with this crazy idea and, like you know, they can probably afford to to fail or to like change along the way. But you've got to be quite wary of brands who I suppose are trying to, like you know, tell people what to do Like this is, yeah, this is on.

Speaker 3: 48:21

This is the new way. Um, I think, yeah, it's probably the timing wasn't right. You know, out of COVID, I think a lot of brands got it wrong in terms of like reading, the mood of how people were feeling coming out of it. It's like, oh, just because we've been at home for for two years, you know we're all, we're all going to just want to stay in this like digital universe. Um, and I think actually the contrary is, is is happening. I think people are craving emotion, connection, uh, human and more and more post COVID.

Speaker 5: 48:51

I'll tell you who did get it right. To take it right back to your travel idea, airbnb got it completely right. So what happened with them was exactly the same as you have heard um, their head of marketing and product development and they, they had to look at what they were doing. And, um, she looked at it and just said, right, um, you know, we have to pause all marketing. And then they started doing brand marketing rather than performance marketing and listening to what their customers emotions and and Airbnb actually prospered and came out the other side as a better brand, a stronger brand.

Speaker 5: 49:23

So people now Google Airbnb there's two brand names together Google Airbnb um to as as a trip, somewhere to go, rather than just going through you know the uh hotel sites or bookingcom or whatever it is. And that's because they looked at the emotion. So, all down to your market research, rather than just sending out, you know more and more of the same. They realized that, you know, people can't go on holiday, they can't go abroad, they can't drive, so they focused on localized um trips and in the UK and and they said, you know, even someone, a stranger, staying in your house was completely alien at one point, and you know. So I just thought that that was all driven by insight, so really fascinating.

Speaker 3: 50:02

Yeah, I really liked that. I really liked sorry to the point about um, airbnb and you can see the brands that are doing that well, that you know there's someone in that company who knows how to. You know, always kind of keep tabs because things changed. I think COVID, like that, was the biggest surprise um for everyone, although you know experts would argue that that was on the cards for a long time to have this type of thing. But you know we need to be ready, I suppose, for these things and we're not going to have, hopefully, another one soon. But you know the brands that did it.

Speaker 3: 50:33

Well, it is about listening. You know listening. Don't set. You know co-create, like try and figure out what people need, like, and at that point it was about the emotions and not panicking and saying, oh my God, we're like a hotel. You know, like a Airbnb is all about travel. How do we reframe this? And like, hold on tight while we ride this wave and come out the other side stronger, brilliant, and they've always done that Either. They started out Airbnb um slightly differently and I think they had like this photo thing going on and I remember reading a case study about them of how they pivoted. They've always been quite close to what they're.

Speaker 3: 51:06

you know what the people need, and that means that they've remained successful.

Speaker 5: 51:10

Yeah, um, so you've done this, this show. Now we asked all I guess this. So, um, obviously we. This show is all, all is all about failure and it's uh well, marketing, uh failure, and it's targeted, uh, marketing people. If, if you were us, who was the next person that you'd invite on to be a guest on this show?

Speaker 3: 51:29

Oh, if I was you, I'd invite um a guy named Pip and he, he, uh, pete his name is, I think, he's Dutch and he's. He runs an agency called winter W Y N T R and he is B to B marketing and all about testing messages with audiences, and I think he'd be right up your street.

Speaker 5: 51:48

I'm fascinated.

Speaker 4: 51:49

And your listeners. That's a good tip. Yeah, Um, Katie, thank you very much for that Fascinating chat. Do you want to let our listeners know where they can find out more about you and where they can, um, where they can buy the book which we'd love them to do?

Speaker 3: 52:00

Yes, so, um, my website is product junglecouk. I have a brilliant useful newsletter uh, weekly on a Monday called jungle juice, and you can sign up um just by going to my website and slash newsletter Uh, and you can read. Actually, if you sign up, you get a sample of the book so you can have a bit of a you know tribe before you buy. And then otherwise the book is available like um, just Google it everywhere, kind of online, um, amazon, um, obvious place, but it's also on, like uh, bookshoporg and waterstones. If you want to boycott Amazon, some people do Um, also in um e-edition, um for Kindle or other devices. There's a non Amazon one beginning with a K, but I can't remember what it's called, but um, yeah, you can get it everywhere. But you know it's a, it's a great book, it's, yeah, it's really practical. You know, read it a little bit over the new year. Just buy it now, read it in January when you're raring to go, and I think um, it will help.

Speaker 4: 52:58

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

Speaker 5: 52:59

Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Okay. So that's. That was Katie. Then Katie Tucker and her. She came in to talk about do penguins eat peaches, which is a latest book that's an Amazon bestseller already. Um, what did you make about that interview? Um, well, because I felt she was a very much an expert in product development and marketing research around that area. It was great to have a real expert in that field, because working in PR, we're not experts in product development and market research in that particular field.

Speaker 4: 53:31

If we're honest, are we no, I mean, what was great about that and what's great about the book actually is how practical it was. And I think this you know, the larger corporates might be quite familiar with um, customer understanding, market research, that sort of things but certainly they're kind of the medium to smaller end of that. They're probably not really doing it, and and what I got from that was some really good, useful, practical steps in terms of how people can do it. And often it's a conversation, isn't it? As she said, it might be speaking to 10 customers, and just I'm putting ego aside, which I think we can all do um at uh from time to time, and actually listening to customers in an unbiased way and acting on that insight, and I think they they will tell you some really fascinating things.

Speaker 5: 54:11

Ego definitely gets involved in a lot of decisions. No, it doesn't, it's just. It's just a bunch of different campaigns. I just make sure my name goes ahead of his and the introduction sack. Yeah, um, yeah, I know, yeah, but E, all jokes aside, like you talked about, bias in questions and in in campaigns, it feels like ego does become a bit of an arrogant way of and so market research what I'm trying to say is key. You need to understand your customer. You need to stop being arrogant and egotistical and think right. Let's listen to you know, we've got this product. Let's test the, let's test three products with a core customer base and see what they think. That's essentially what she's talking about. The book is mainly about being a customer centric business, which is sound for any brand or business, whether it be to be or B to C, isn't it?

Speaker 5: 54:56

And she had some good points on B to B as well, which I know. Tom Basgill in his episode talks a lot about your marketing to people humans, not- yeah, that's the big takeaway for me.

Speaker 4: 55:06

You know, b to B it's not boring to boring, is it? And that's such a ridiculous old fashioned attitude. You're still marketing to people and it's an absolute cop out If you think your B to B brand can't be engaging, can't be entertaining and can't be interesting. And I think every B to B brand should strive to do that, definitely. What was good for me actually was the parallels of what Katie was talking about with a lot of our other episodes. Actually, you already mentioned Tom Basgill's episode, but Paul Sutton, who launched I'm not going to be able to pronounce this, am I the pet extraordinarium? And a lot of what he talked about actually in his episode, which will link up, is the fact that he hadn't necessarily done that deep market insight. He had an idea, he thought it would work and he potentially made the mistake of thinking he was the customer, and if you listen to that episode, you'll actually hear about the struggles he had along the way.

Speaker 5: 55:54

His story is fascinating, though, and he did really well and bless him. Paul's got a massive podcast of his own and he took the whole interview and he said it was one of the best interviews he's done. We say can I share the whole thing on my own podcast feed? I was like absolutely what a great guy. But his story in that is well worth listening to.

Speaker 4: 56:11

The Paul Sutton episode, definitely. So, I think, massive thank you to Katie and I think actually, looking forward, we'll strive to get more deep subject matter experts on the show, because I think there's real value to our audience.

Speaker 5: 56:22

Yeah definitely, and market research is interesting. It can be interesting. It's the insights that are interesting, not how to build a survey, which is all in there. You know how to build a survey, but I think, working in public relations, often we see marketers that will get the junior members to start the questionnaires we are in actual fact. Is that the right way? That's not the right way to do it On a customer-centric bit of research. It should be one of the more senior people because that insight is going to be key to where the business is going to invest its thousands and thousands of pounds of dollars, isn't it?

Speaker 4: 56:55

And it is about those insights. I mean, one of our clients actually is called Verve, which is a much larger market insights agency, and they describe them as holy shit insights. You know, their work delivers holy shit insights, and that's such a good term for it, isn't it? It's those moments that make you think, my God, that's something we've never spotted before and we can act on that and we can build a brand on that.

Speaker 5: 57:19

So thanks for listening to Social Unacceptable and this episode. Make sure that you click on subscribe. We need every subscriber we can get and, as I keep saying, we're looking for our furthest subscriber. So, wherever you are around the world if it's not in the UK, let us know where you are, because we're interested and we'll share it on the show.

Speaker 4: 57:37

Where are they at the moment? Then? Where's the furthest subscriber? Wakefield.

Speaker 5: 57:40

I think we've got. I think we've got click, click click eating. Well, we're number 41 in marketing in Pakistan at the moment.

Speaker 4: 57:46

So we must have some down. We've got Australian listeners, haven't we? We've got listeners in New Zealand. We've got several American listeners. There was one in.

Speaker 5: 57:52

Norway as well. So, but it's always interesting to hear where people are listening to it. So, yeah, please subscribe and you can find all the information on socialuneacceptablecouk. We will see you in two weeks. Just keep on fucking up and we'll see you soon.

Speaker 2: 58:09

Thank you for listening to socially unacceptable. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a five star review. Don't forget to follow us on social media on Twitter and Instagram at ProhibitionPR, we would love to hear some of your career fuck up so we can share them on the show. For more information on the show, search ProhibitionPR in your search engine and click on podcasts. Until next time, please keep pushing the boundaries and embracing the socially unacceptable.