Do you want to know how a Customer-Centric Approach Transform Your Go-to-Market Strategy?

Dive into the latest episode of the B2B Go to Market Leaders podcast, where Mike Maynard, CEO of Napier, a seasoned PR executive and expert in various go-to-market (GTM) strategies, including account-based marketing (ABM) emphasizes the importance of starting with the customer’s needs rather than the product. This customer-centric approach is crucial for developing effective marketing strategies that resonate with the target audience.

Actionable Tips:

• Identify Customer Pain Points: Conduct thorough market research to understand the specific problems your customers face.
• Craft Compelling Narratives: Develop marketing messages highlighting how your product solves these problems and improves the customer’s life.
• Choose Appropriate Channels: Select the most effective sales channels and marketing tactics based on your understanding of the customer.

Mike Maynard’s experiences and advice provide a comprehensive guide for professionals looking to navigate the complexities of the B2B landscape effectively. By focusing on the customer, staying agile, and continuously learning, businesses can develop successful go-to-market strategies that drive growth and success.

Listen to the podcast here

Top B2B Marketing Strategies: Expert Insights from PR Specialist Mike Maynard

Signature question: How do you view and define go to market?

Well, that’s an interesting question. So I’ve been around a bit. I’ve been, you know, in marketing for many, many years. And I actually think, you know, GTM really is what we used to call marketing. And it’s really about understanding, you know, what you’re doing. And you can talk about the five pieces of the seven pieces or whichever model you want. but I think what’s happened is marketing kind of got pigeonholed into marketing communications as a term. and it meant that people didn’t really understand that marketing was much more than that. So we then had the, the phrase that market introduced to try and, you know, recover that wider view of marketing. So understanding everything from the product to the sales channels all the way through to the messaging. so I don’t actually see it as being necessarily anything new, but I do see it as being super, super important because, you know, just thinking of marketing as purely marketing communications, I think misses the point.

You’ve got to take that broader view.

Yeah. I like the fact that you covered, the evolution, the previous understanding of good market, and the evolution. Also loved the aspect that you covered, that good marketers, not just 1 or 2 functions. It spans all the way from product to marketing to sales and even customer success and beyond. So all spot on over there. I’m also curious to hear your angles on how top go-to-market leaders approach the market. Go to market. So what I mean by that is yes, it covers all the different functions. But if you were to craft and build or advise on a go-to-market approach for a B2B company, what would you tell them?

Well, I think this is really interesting. And, you know, as you know, Vijay, we work with a lot of companies so well beyond just, SAS. and I think, you know, particularly in the, the hardware product sector, people quite often approach go to market from the product point of view.

So they look at what they’ve got, they’ve got a physical product, they look at its benefits. They’ve tried to, you know, build a GTM plan around that. And I think that’s really the wrong way to do it. The way you should do it is to really build it from the customer’s point of view. so ultimately, everything you’re, you know, you’re trying to sell in a B2B environment is trying to solve a particular problem or, enable a customer to do something. And I think starting at that point And really building out from, you know, what does it give the customer? How does it change the customer’s life? How does it make that customer’s world better? You know, and that might be saving money. It might be doing things more quickly. They might be doing things they couldn’t do before. And I think that’s really the way to build it, is to understand from the customer point of view what you’re giving them, and then you can build that entire GTM story around it, and then things like, you know, what channel you choose.

And it becomes much easier to determine because you understand from the customer’s point of view why they’re going to buy, you know, is this a high touch or a low touch sale? And so I think that’s really the way you got to do it is build it up, you know, really from the customer’s shoes backward rather than from your business forwards.

I love it. I mean, you’re literally ticking off all the right elements of a good go-to-market formula you started off with. It encompasses all the different functions. That’s spot on over there. I also love the fact that he emphasized this specific aspect. Mike, starts with the people and the problems start with that versus the product or the services. Most often I’ve seen founders or even other good market leaders in marketing, product, or sales. They started with the product and hey, we are cool. And this is why we should buy flip the script. It’s it’s about them, understand them, and quote-unquote pitch so that they get gravitate towards your product or service.

I completely agree. I think, you know, you’ve got to work out why people, you know, make mistakes when they’re building go-to-market strategies. and I think, you know, if you consider people developing products, whether, you know, that’s a SaaS product or whatever, and you’re really focused on this product, you spend, you know, potentially months or years of your life Building up this product. You’re very focused on how you perform relative to competitors, and what you offer. And so, you know, your life’s been that product, for, you know, quite a considerable time, certainly several quarters. And to be able to then step away and go now I’m going to start now from the customer, and I’m going to almost drop the product, my baby, that I’ve been building. It’s really hard. So I think when you talk about mistakes, they’re very understandable. decisions that people make, and they’re built from a point of view of strength, you know, they’ve got a lot of strength of knowledge about the product.

They’ve perhaps not got so much knowledge about the customer. The reality is, is you’ve got to be brave and you’ve got to, you know, take that jump and say, now I’ve got a product. Let’s look at what it does for the customer and build the strategy from there.

Fantastic. Let’s switch gears. going back picture and more to your personal story and career journey. So if you share with our listeners your professional career journey and what led you to what you’re doing today. That’d be great.

Yeah, I’d love to have this great career path I planned out, but it really didn’t work like that. you know, a university. I flirted with the idea of, actually being a roadie for a while. so, had lots of fun there. real tough career. so I moved into, electronics engineering. That was my first job, and took a couple of roles doing, design work in electronics companies. then I realized that, you know, maybe I wasn’t quite so good at engineering, but I was quite good at talking about technology.

So I moved into technical support roles, supporting, semiconductor vendors. and then it was kind of, well, where do I go next, you know, and, and working for an American semiconductor vendor at the time, you know, the obvious route in a technical role was to go to the States, because that’s where the main hub of the development, and the technology was, but didn’t really want to do that because I had young kids. you know, it wasn’t really the right time. So I thought, well, I’ll move into marketing. It’ll give me something different, something fresh to do. and then, of course, like all good marketers, I went to a conference and, had, one too many glasses of wine in the evening. and someone said to me, oh, you should run your own business. and, literally, about two, two months later, the agency I was using, my, main contact came to me and said, look, the owners are looking to sell the agency and they want to retire.

I think you should buy it. And I thought, how hard can it be? You know, running an agency. It’s got to be easy. I’ve done all this technology stuff. As it turns out, it was probably the hardest job. I’ve been there since 2001. free bit of advice for all your listeners. If you’re going to buy a technology agency, the wrong time to buy it is three weeks before the dotcom crash. That’s a really bad idea. Don’t do that. but I think, you know, after 22 years, I’m beginning to understand it. Now I’m beginning to get a bit better. But. But it’s been a fascinating journey because it really hasn’t been planned. and it’s very much been, you know, just taking opportunities that interested me.

Very cool. I love that you stated or started this, which is why I wish it was a perfect trajectory or perfect roadmap. It never is the case with the majority of the people. It’s for sharing the vulnerable side of your story, where you admitted and said, hey, it’s never a rosy path, which is almost always the case for many of the professionals.

And that’s an important piece of advice for young listeners out there. And similar to your career journey and career trajectory. I started off as an engineer, and then I gravitated more toward the business side of things and the go-to-market side of things. So I see a lot of parallels in that aspect as well. And good advice. I mean, really curious. I also noticed on your LinkedIn that you were a professor and adjunct professor. So talk to us about that.

Yeah. So I had the opportunity, for a while to lecture on a PR course. so I spent a few years teaching, just one of the modules in the course. I mean, that was great for a couple of reasons. So from the agency’s point of view, it was good because it was a great way to find new talent. because you got to meet these people and, build relationships over, the period of a couple of semesters. So you, you’re able to, you know, hopefully, hire the best people from the university.

But more than that, I think it was really helpful for me to learn from those students. so they’re coming out with some very good ideas. They’re also, generally speaking, very different from the kind of B2B marketing people you talk to. So when you’re at university, you’ve never encountered business-to-business. You’re purely focused on the consumer. And, you know, and you’re also, you know, treat things very differently. Things are quite new. You know, you’ve only just started really buying stuff. you know, you’re the first time you’re living away from home and, and all that. So I think that the students bring a really fresh approach. and we try and bring, you know, young people into the agency for exactly that reason. they’ve got loads of really interesting. They’re not always right. I mean, they get me wrong that sometimes they come up with crazy ideas that, that really are never going to work. but they’re never stupid ideas. They always spark something in you, and you always think, yeah, that’s not quite right, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, the course is no longer running at that university, so, I don’t have the opportunity to do that anymore, but, hopefully, it’s something I could go back to one day.

Yeah. No, it definitely aligns with a popular belief out there that I subscribed to, which is the best way to learn, is to teach someone. And that’s exactly what you did there. I mean, the best way to get better and more and wider perspectives in PR is to teach PR, and what better audience than young professionals and students out there?

Absolutely. They ask good questions, that’s for sure. So you have to be prepared.

Yeah. And then you also mentioned about transitioning from an employee to a business owner. What were the challenges like? I mean, clearly it’s not rosy. I mean, it’s going to be a rough start, at least in the first couple of years. So talk to us about that and share your experiences.

So in many ways the the business owner-employee thing, it wasn’t as big a change as you might think.

And maybe it’s me, but, you know, I put a lot of money into the business as an example. and also had debt mainly in the form of, deferred payments to the owner. So not necessarily bank debt, but, still some debt there to deal with. I kind of didn’t think about it. And that sounds crazy. because, you know, the amount of money involved was huge. but at the same time, you make that decision, once you’ve made that decision, I kind of believe you’re committed to it. So, you know, there are certainly times where I’d sit down and think, somehow got to pay back all this money. You know, somehow I’ve got to make this business make enough money so that I can, fund these payments. And that absolutely was scary. but most of the time, the day-to-day stuff, it’s not that much different, you know, leading a team. you’re still leading a team. You still want to do the best. You still have very clear goals.

You perhaps got a slightly broader, outlook on things, being a business owner versus being inside of a larger organization. But apart from that, you know, I’ve never found it very difficult. Different. I know that other people find it enormously different. you know, and the classic comment is, you know, now I’ve worked for myself. I’ve never worked for someone else. Well, believe me, I would work for someone else again, and I would appreciate their pain. So. Yeah. you know, for me, I think you if you believe in the mission, if you’re, you know, focused on, achieving what the organization wants to achieve, I don’t have to run it, you know, I’ve done that. I’ve enjoyed it. It’s worked. But I can go back to being part of the team as well.

Right. Cool. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, transitioning from employee to being a solopreneur and running my own good market, consulting company, I mean, as a solo consultant, employee, founder, name what you will, but it is what it is.

Some of the challenges and learning curves that I had to go through personally, Mike included. Yes. I mean absolutely. Getting better at what I do is key and that’s constant. It doesn’t matter if you’re an employee or an owner, but something else that I had to learn along the way is sales. Selling is one thing. The other is the operations, the cash flow, the financial aspect, how we’re doing versus how we’re not doing against the trajectory, and so on. And, and something else that I enjoyed as a part of the learning process is relationship building. I mean, just meeting new people, and getting to know them versus code and code networking. Hey, I got one more connection bragging rights. That’s not the right way to go about it, for sure. But yeah, I mean, these are some of the cool things that I enjoyed. But to your point, it depends on the mindset. Because if you are a committed and top-tier employee, it doesn’t matter if you’re an employee or an owner, you still have to do your craft and do what’s right for your clients.

Absolutely. And, you know, I was lucky I’d been in a sales role before, so, you know, I’d done the sales side of things. I was really brought into that and wasn’t necessarily brilliant at it when I started. I mean, it took some time to adapt. I’d also done an MBA as well, so I’d been fortunate enough to be able to do that in my previous employer. what for me was the big difference was I went from a company that makes products to a semiconductor company. and they’re everything is focused on what is the value of the product you can shift and how much can you sell. and time is almost irrelevant because the amount you’re selling, and the value of the components is so large, that, you know, one person can almost spend a whole year focused on their biggest opportunity. If they increase that sale a little bit, they’ve paid for their time. Right? You then move to a consulting business. so an agency You’re then actually selling hours and the jump between selling products to selling hours.

I found, it very difficult, and that for me swamped. Any difference between being part of the team and leading the team?

Yeah. Fantastic. And so tell us about Napier. What do you guys do? Who do you serve and what are the typical projects like?

So we talk about basically helping people sell products to engineers in a B2B space. So, we help, clients, sell, to technical decision-makers, and typically they’re selling technical products. so we have business in a range of areas. we work with some business SaaS companies. we work with, some, software development tool companies, and have got some good experience there in the past. We also work a lot with, physical product companies as well. So, engineering companies, so semiconductor companies as well as, communications infrastructure and automation and what people call an integrated agency. So we’re not purely focused on one area. but we offer a range of different services. So we build campaigns that integrate. The reality though is that the majority of our business is centered around, sort of PR and content generation.

and that’s really where everything flows from. we have a, you know, a strong digital side as you wouldn’t be surprised. We have a studio, but really, it’s all about building that great content and then getting it in front of people. And one of the main ways we do that is media relations.

Understood. So it’s I mean, clearly our services are around PR billing campaigns, content digital, and so on. So pretty diverse. And, how big is your team, and what is your team like? Composition. Like the split like.

So that’s a great question. So we’re 38 people. and we have a mix of, you know, people who drive accounts, people who are more specialist, and then people supporting the team as well as, you know, like our business development functions as well. so around about a third of our business is, people running accounts, so they’re managing the accounts. They usually do some of the delivery as well. particularly around media relations. we have a content team, so we have a couple of, you know, really good writers, and then we have a roster of, freelancers.

So, you know, I think writing is a great career because you can make, you know, a really good living working as a freelancer, working the hours you want. and some of the best writers do that and the the job, but they just won’t take it. So, we have to keep working on a freelance basis. We have three people in the studios. About 10% of the business doing, design. we have, five people in, digital teams. So again, quite a focused team. They’re doing a lot around getting content in front of people through things like paid social and also marketing automation. and then we have a few people in the background and, a small team of biz dev led by, you know, one person who’s full-time and then a few part-time people, helping out. So they’re doing a mix of client work and, business development and prospecting.

Very cool. So a good mix of full-time versus part-time and freelancers. That’s one takeaway that I and I, but I absorbed the other one is a mix of obviously creative because it has to be creative content heavy and production design heavy team.

So I see that. And then you layer on sales and business on top for account management as well.

That’s actually a much better summary than the way I put it. So so I really like that. I mean, I think, you know, you talk about, you know, full-time, part-time and freelance. We just want good people and we’re not, you know, bigoted about. They have to be employed and they have to be full-time. So so that that’s a really important thing, I think get good people, you know, wherever they are.

Fantastic. And then what is your customer profile mix like you mentioned B2B, SaaS, but then also hardware and even physical products? What is your mix like?

I’m so the majority of the mix is hardware. so the SAS software side is smaller, but it’s growing very fast at the moment for us. it’s an area, we haven’t gone through. And so when the agency was founded, the agency was actually founded 40 years ago.

So as I say, I bought it in 2001. it was founded around providing marketing services for electronic components. and that was a real focus. And since then we’ve grown into other areas, partly organically, partly through acquisition. and now, you know, I mean, I think one of our big growth areas is around, SaaS, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, hardware is becoming more commoditized, becoming more commoditized. And as you know, in the semiconductor sector, there’s been a huge consolidation into far fewer vendors. so, you know, the world has changed. We need to change the world. And also, I think because with the way, you know, SAS now lets people develop tools very quickly, keep, iterating on them. The subscription model, you know, is really flexible, both for the customer and also very beneficial for the developer. I think that’s going to grow and grow as a sector. so we’re really excited about that. And that’s an area we’re very much focused on.

Cool. And then from a geo perspective, what’s the mix between, like Europe, the Americas, and then maybe Asia?

Great question. So, the majority of our work is UK and Europe. a number of UK-only clients, we have, quite a lot of business that that’s really, across Europe, either for clients that I can just major countries or clients going further in Europe. And that’s probably, somewhere around about 75% of our business is the UK and Europe side. and then we have, already, you know, presence in America. so North America is the key market for us. And we’re actively running campaigns for several clients, in North America and, media relations. And then we have a few other clients, you know, scattered around doing things around the globe. So, you know, often English speaking clearly, because that’s, that’s an easy way to, for us to grow. So Australia, for example, is an area where we’ve got clients, doing well as well. So that’s kind of the mix, predominantly our home market.

But the American side is, growing faster at the moment. So we’d expect that to grow up. Probably not necessary to match the European business, but. But to come close to it.

Very cool. Let’s switch gears here. Let’s talk about GTM’s success story and failure story. And I’ll let you choose which one you want to start off with, but it’ll be good if you can cover both a success story. Mike.

Yes. So, let’s start with success because I think it’s always good to be positive at the start. we’ve got one client who, interestingly, actually, prior to my career in marketing, I worked as a technical support engineer for, And I won’t mention the client. People who know the industry will probably work out who they are. but I’ve known them a very, very long time. I’ve loved them. They’ve they’ve they’ve been a great, company. And one of the reasons is they’ve been super focused on the engineers they sell to. so they initially began their business, as a microcontroller business. That’s when they started really growing and they’ve really focused on the engineer. They’re one of the first people to bring really low cost, boards to allow people to develop, without having a high cost of entry. so they kind of position themselves as the engineer’s friend. very crude position, not the messaging they’re using at the moment, but literally they built their business around doing things that help engineers. 

And the more you look at it the more you think, yeah genuinely they’re not just saying this. This is actually what they do. and so, you know, the more they talk about it, the more they do it and it kind of, you know, builds. And so now they, they, they have a, an approach where they talk about total system solutions. and this company has grown, you know, I first worked for them. They were perhaps a couple of hundred million dollars. and now they’re, you know, approaching $10 billion globally, a huge company, I’ve grown through organic growth and acquisition, but everything’s around helping the engineer just develop their solution.

And they’ve they’ve got, you know, incredible support. You know, I would say probably the best support resources. and actually, from a marketing point of view, it’s fantastic because I’m talking to engineers about this company and the engineers love them already. The engineers know that this company is out there to support. The engineers know that you know, they understand how to upset engineers, have problems, and they try really hard to avoid it. And I think it’s a really interesting approach because, in most situations, semiconductors are primarily chosen by the design engineer. 

They’re not chosen by purchasing. Yeah. and they’ve really doubled down on, you know, let’s be the, the company that engineers want to work with. it’s given them some issues. So they’ve been linked with hobbyists, and they, you know, have a lot of hobbyists using their product because it’s easy to use because of the support. So that maybe hasn’t actually necessarily helped their brand with some big enterprise products. The reality is, is that, you know, they’re also huge and enterprise, you know, so it’s kind of I think competitors throw out, but it’s not really a valid criticism.

So for me, it’s great because you’re simply telling the story. You’re simply taking a story. That is absolutely the case. It’s what the company has built its strategy on, and you just have to tell it. And and it makes it easy. It makes it fun. you know, and you meet, you know, engineers at shows and they’ll talk about the brand and they love the brand. So to me, that’s super positive. It’s a brand that’s totally aligned its marketing messages with its strategy.

Yeah. I mean, what I love about this is a couple of things. One is it’s super hard to do quote-unquote marketing to any technical team or engineers for that matter. But at the same time, on the other side, engineers are human beings like all of us. They have the emotional aspect. And as anyone who does marketing and sales very well knows, you have to tell the end picture not about the technical aspects of the product or the services, but more on the end picture of where they land at if they were to use your product or services and your success story.

As I said, that point, Mike, which is at the end of the day, no matter what, even if it’s like a super, highly technical product, and if you’re selling to technical audiences like developers, you still have to focus on the brand and the messaging.

Absolutely. And I think that that high-level brand, the messaging, the strategy, they are super important is not just the product. And more and more I think, you know, customers are buying suppliers. They’re not buying products. Yeah. so they want to buy a supplier they can work with for a long time, they believe is going to support them. They believe it’s got the right product roadmaps. and I think that’s that’s something that, you know, in, in the industry has really changed. It used to be that customers would switch from product to product depending on what was best. You know, now that there’s much less of that happening, it’s much more about which is the supplier that I can rely on.

Fair enough. And I didn’t quite get it. Maybe you miss, you mentioned I missed that part, which is what were your engagements like. Was it around the brand? Was it messaging a PR, was it digital, or maybe all of these things? What were your specific engagement details?

So historically I’ve done everything from literally face to face, selling all the way through, with my different roles. but our main role with the client, and certainly, as an agency, in the first couple of decades, we’ve worked and we’ve worked with them for over 30 years as an agency. So, there’s been this incredibly strong relationship. but primarily through PR and media relations. And it’s around telling that story and it’s around, explaining, you know, why our client, you know, does what they do, and PR is great for that. I mean, PR is great for storytelling. you know, and going back to my, my lecturing, you know, you talk about endorsement.

Yeah. and having a journalist write a story about a brand that’s so much more credible than the brand. Just saying, you know, trust me, we’re really good. and so I think, you know, being able to get someone else to, to buy into that story and tell that story, you know, that’s great. And, and it’s not been smooth sailing that there’s been, you know, clearly issues with products, you know, problems with, delays, all the rest of everything that any technology company has. But I think what they’ve done is they’ve consistently been honest and they’ve consistently been focused on doing the thing that’s going to help the engineer. And so it’s really interesting when a company like that does have a problem. They’re forgiven more quickly because they’ve been consistent, you know, following, you know, their brand values. and everyone believes in it and they know that, that they can trust that company to put everything in to fix it.

Very cool. And is there like a specific PR campaign that you can share the details about?

I mean there’s been lots of PR campaigns that we’ve run.

You know, it’s it’s an interesting thing. I mean, one of the things, that, they always positioned themselves on was their microcontrollers were the easiest to use. Now, now, from a a purely technical point of view, if I was going to look at that I’d have to say actually no they’re not. Yeah. You know there are inconsistencies between families. There’s, there’s, you know different families doing different things in the same band. And certainly in the early days that was very true. less so now, to be fair, but in the early days it was not necessarily the easiest, but it was the most accessible product to use. So the absence, of course, that, the tools were free, the fact that tools ran on, you know, a low NPC. I remember one, one campaign I was involved in, it was to find the oldest PC that was being used to develop software for this microcontroller family. And literally the winner was this, this old IBM PC.

I think one of the original IBM pieces there was rusting. I mean, the case was rusting and that and they were still using it to develop. So, you know, I think that kind of thing, they’ve always had a bit of fun as well, which is, is nice, you know, that the oldest, the oldest PC. So I think that was really good. And they pushed this ease of use. And the reality was not technically these issues, but the most accessible, the easiest one to actually try and learn. And if you put the effort in, you could learn because there was lots of support. So lots of people learnt how to program these, these devices. And it meant that ultimately it didn’t really matter whether it was easier to use or not, because engineers, more engineers knew how to program these devices than anything else. so it was widely known, and widely understood. And so if you had a problem, you could ask someone, if you needed someone to do some work, you could find someone.

And I think that kind of very simplistic ease of use, whilst it wasn’t, you know, directly what they’re offering, it really encapsulated that. And it was it was almost like this was the easiest choice to make, because you were so unlikely to hit any problems because there were so many resources, people knew the entry cost was low, etc., etc.

Yeah, no, I can imagine that vision where it’s like an old rusting IBM PC and it still works and makes the engineer’s life easy. I’m hoping for our eye. I’m visually visualizing like a PR pickup art PR articles that was published, the visuals of the IBM PC.

Absolutely. So, you know, I mean, there was there was a serious message behind it, which was basically, you know, you don’t need high-performance, hardware. And, you know, there’s obviously that subconscious link between if you need a high performance PC to run the tools, then the development board you’re going to be using as expensive. So if you need a low-performance one, the development board is cheap, which is absolutely true at the time, and it created that link, but it also had a fun element to it as well, that that’s always important to try and find some of the more fun things that you can do.

You know, B2B is inherently overcautious. and, you know, we worked for a while with, with a company that made, fasteners that literally held wings on aircraft. Those guys can be cautious, right? I don’t want those guys to be having too much fun. but in the vast majority of cases, I think B2B is overly cautious and overly formal. and I think, you know, having a bit of fun, making people smile, you know, it works. You’ve got to pick the right time. You’ve got to pick the right campaign and the right products or the right markets. but for sure, I think there are opportunities to do that. And we’re seeing that start to happen more and more, which is, you know, I think that’s great. Brands that do it tend to win. And also, you know, I think that that agencies that work with those brands, you know, enjoy it. I mean, I’d love to work with Salesforce just for the fun cartoons, right?

You look at a SaaS company that has embraced, you know, those fun, cuddly cartoons. I think that’s great. And I think more and more brands should be doing that for sure.

And going to the GTM failure story. Which story would you like to share, Mike?

Yes, there’s been some hoping it is going to not be a failure story. but we work with clients that we love that have great technology that doesn’t always succeed. and it’s it’s a brutal truth of technology that sometimes the best products don’t succeed. and there are all sorts of reasons behind that. you know, anything from timing through to funding through to luck? All of those things can impact. and, we worked recently with a company that was developing, AI accelerators, you know, massive market. the reality is, is that there’s a huge number of AI accelerator companies, and they’re all fighting for a limited amount of funding and a very limited amount of revenue. Right. and you’ve got Nvidia at the top that is really creaming off the high performance, high margin, business.

So our client had focused on, you know, edge-based I so I out you know where your senses are. They’ve done things like, cashierless retail. So, they had customers that had shops where you just literally pick the stuff off the shelf and walk out. you know, that was a very big opportunity or perceived to be a very big opportunity, that they were very low power, very environmentally friendly, all the great things. So Nvidia, those cards are running, roasting hot. They’ve got hands-on to, you know, stop them. overheating. You know, you could literally just pick up and hold these AI accelerators and they were barely warm. so a different market, but amazing technology. The Cashierless retail thing has kind of died, you know, and Amazon has lost some enthusiasm for it. They were probably the standard bearers for that. and basically the funding at the moment we’re looking for another round of funding. so if anybody’s looking to fund an amazing startup? Just email me can put you in contact.

Those guys are great. I don’t think they did anything wrong. I think their technology was great. I think they probably have met. They had some product delays. I don’t think there’s many startups that don’t. So, you know, I don’t think there were any differences from anyone else. but it just feels like in a way, you can you can run these campaigns. And if you don’t get, you know, 1 or 2 big customers when you need them, which to some extent is luck, you know, that can be really disappointing. so we’re hoping they’re going to come back. They’re still, going, and they’re still working through on things. And, and I’m sure that, you know, either someone’s going to acquire the technology or they’ll, they’ll find some funding because it’s such powerful technology. It would be nice for me if they found funding. and they came back, so I think I think they were fun. they’re enjoyable. They had some amazing demos. And of course, that’s a great thing about AI.

You can have some really fabulous demos. but yeah, it’s it’s kind of frustrating that you feel you’ve done everything and it still wasn’t quite enough.

Yeah. I mean, PR matching with AI, which is the hottest thing right now in the you would imagine it’s a quote-unquote success. but to your point, I mean, there’s nothing like a failure. And, it’s the outcome. Maybe it’s not the right time yet for that outcome, for your client and what you’re hoping for. And, who knows, things might change. But that brings me to another question that I’ve been seeing of late. I mean, I’ve been hearing, about this lately with my console clients as well as the startup community over here, which is when and what is the right criteria? When is the right to a PR campaign for an early-stage startup?

So that’s a great question. and I think, you know, let’s talk about what we mean by PR, because again, you know, you mentioned my academic, but, you know, we talk about, you know, PR being managing the relations with your publics, which is the most awful expression I think I’ve ever heard but effectively, PR means basically, you know, building a relationship with your audience. so, the answer very simple is you should pretty much start PR as early as you’ve got something to talk about. I think a lot of people look at PR as being more media and, relations and social media. 

So actually, you know, the actual marketing communication side of PR. and even then, I think it’s important to start that when you’ve got something to talk about. we see more and more founders building personal brands. Right? and quite often that’s the first step in PR for a startup. The founder will start building a brand. They’ll start talking about, you know, what they’re doing. It might just be, you know, something that they’re doing on social media, and it might not necessarily be something that they’re doing through UN publications. Right. But I think that’s important to start. and people can start that without, you know, hiring agencies and spending loads of money and things like that.

They’ll probably make mistakes. but that’s fine. you know, I think one of the great things about social media is it’s this flow that just keeps going. and if you make a small mistake and these mistakes are realistically going to be small, it just flows by, and it might be painful for a day or two, but it’s gone, and, nobody’s worried. So I think startups should think about, you know, starting to have, some sort of PR presence as soon as they can. You know, I know some startups work in stealth mode. they don’t want to talk about, you know, what they’re doing until they’ve got something that’s at least an MVP. and that makes sense, you know, don’t don’t feel you’ve got to do PR when you’re in stealth mode. That’s crazy. But once you’ve got that MVP, you’ve got something to talk about. You know, start talking about it. The worst that can happen is someone can talk back and give you some information that’s going to tell you what your potential customers think.

Yeah. Very cool. And it’s so timely. It’s funny, that you mentioned this exact example of a stealth startup. And right as we speak, I’m working with founders of a stealth startup, and I’m helping them build, the founder, Russell Brand, on social media, exactly what he has shared right now. Mike. Yeah. So it’s a good validation of what you are saying and what you’re sharing, because PR for many people who are not in the good market or in the know, they think PR is press and nothing else, but then PR can mean so many other things. And a low-hanging fruit, especially for founders, is to start with the social media channel.

Absolutely is the easiest place for families to start, particularly if they’re they’re talking about something that’s technical that, you know, is going to need discussion. And the other thing to say is that, yes, at some point you want to get into the press, you want to, you know, get that broader coverage. It’s so much easier if you’ve built this personal brand.

Yeah. because, you know, the media are smart. You know, they know people who’ve actually tried putting their opinions out there, you know, maybe got burnt once or twice but learned from it and then much, much better. Spokespeople with the press., make fewer mistakes, which is great for the business, but they say more interesting things. and so to build that brand, for sure.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. That’s a great piece of advice right there. I think, just for people listening out there if you can just take this snippet like the last 2 or 5 minutes, that’s good advice in PR. Simple. coming to the final section of the show, which is like, which communities are resources or people do you lean on for really going up to speed, or bringing yourself up to speed, or staying on top of things in the go-to market space?

So this is a great question. I mean, the first place is there’s a couple of groups of agency owners, diverse agencies.

So, you know, nobody else in our space, nobody doing what we’re doing or in the same market. You know, we’ve got people doing consumer pay-per-click. you know, I know people running agencies that help brands get into China. Getting together with other agency owners for me is great because I’m talking to some of the smartest people in marketing. and I’m getting very different views. You know, the view from someone running, you know, a consumer Google search business is very different from the view I have. Yeah. and quite often they’re right and I’m wrong. So, you know, it’s really good to do that. That’s a great place. I read quite a bit, you know, which sounds like a real cop-out. but, around about six months ago, we actually started a book club within the agency. so a group of us actually going out and picking books and and, reading books. specifically to learn about different areas. And that’s great as well because it’s not me dictating it.

It’s actually people in the book group who are going, we want to learn about this. We want to learn about this. So, you know, somebody said, I really feel a bit weak on crisis communications. You know, let’s go find the book, and learn about crisis communications. you know, more recently, we’ve been talking about creativity. and we read Creativity Inc. That was the last book we read. so a very well-known book. You know, it’s not like we’re reading niche books nobody’s ever heard of. but we’ve read creativity. We had a great discussion about how we can improve creativity in the agency. Yeah. so I think that’s another great way to learn. And then, I mean, there’s so many websites, so many different places and to pick up information, you know, I, I do a lot of scanning of that. you know, I actually write for Martech. so that’s one of my favorite websites, because, you know, I feel I’ve got a relationship with them and, that works well.

So, it’s really, a mix of, of those sites and, frankly, a lot of it is search-driven, you know, that you want to find out about a particular topic, you know, search and, and, and sometimes generative, is the way to go to, to really educate yourself. I mean, one thing I would say, and I’m sure most people in this podcast do it anyway, generative AI has got a lot of downsides. There’s a lot of things where it actually doesn’t do that well, but explaining things it’s really good at. so if there are technical concepts or, you know, you want an explanation of what go-to-market is, I’m sure. ChatGPT is going to give a better explanation probably than I would.

Yeah. For sure.

I mean, all great resources. I mean, a combination of books, a combination of website AI resources, as well as community. You mentioned about the community of agencies. Is that like a formal community where you have meetups and events or it’s your people, you just dial and or email for advice?

It’s a great question.

So, one is actually a paid, community. So they run, weekly sessions. They bring in speakers. So it’s it’s a very formalized, organization. It’s great because, you know, in a way you’re paying. and so therefore, you know, you know, you can demand certain things. It’s, it’s a really effective thing. It’s an organization called Poly Mensa works very well for us. The other is a group of us that know each other that have a WhatsApp group.

Nice.

And we meet up, you know, maybe every quarter or so. but being able to ask questions and more importantly, to be able to see the questions other people are asking and learn from them. that that’s so valuable. and, you know, we recently met up, and we had a problem. We brought a problem in terms of trying to grow our sales and particularly trying to grow our sales within our existing clients. I’ve just got some fantastic ideas from other agencies. So I think, you know if I were to look back on my career and say, what was the biggest mistake I made in engineering when actually, it turned out, wasn’t a very good engineer?

It wasn’t jumping around based on the latest opportunity. Yeah. It was not building a network early enough. And I think, you know, younger people, and I’m sure there’s some people who are relatively new in that career listening to the podcast. You know, don’t be afraid to build a network. Don’t be afraid to build a network amongst a wide range of people, not just people in the organisation you work for outside. as well, because that will really serve you as you go forward.

Yeah. I mean, great piece of it. It’s almost like you’re leading into my final question, which is exactly what we just answered is what advice would you give to your younger self? And I doubly, doubly and endorse that view, Mike, I mean, this is an advice I would give myself to others is build relationships, build networks, don’t build anything for the sake of bragging rights. Or hey, I got hundreds or thousands of connections. Even ten sincere connections are very valuable.

Absolutely. And I think be aware that there’s different sorts of connections.

So, you know, if you build hundreds of connections, that’s great. I mean, that’s not well, but you don’t have strong relationships with those people. You know, you need an inner circle of people who can help you. and I think, you know, the other bit of advice I’d give myself is, is is try not to worry so much. and all through my career, you know, you’ve made decisions, whether it’s part of the role or whether it’s making career decisions and you think they’re going to be, you know, really major, impactful decisions that are going to, you know, impact what you do in ten years time. And the answer is probably they don’t. so I think actually, if I could have worried less about consequences of decisions, I think that have made more decisions, maybe not better decisions, but made more choices and hopefully that would have given me more opportunities.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Mike. Great conversation, great piece of advice, and a lot of insights.

And, yeah, good luck to you and the team at Napier.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast.