How To Do Marketing - Simply! - With Roger Edwards

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Roger Edwards.

Roger helps companies nail their offer, set their goals and plan their marketing activity in a world where business BS and complexity threaten to stifle success.

An experienced marketing professional helping businesses with their marketing strategy, content, and social media, Roger clocked up many years in the ‘big corporate’ world as marketing director of several UK financial services brands before getting out of all that and starting his own consultancy.

He now uses his expertise to guide his clients in designing engaging marketing and is known as a prolific content creator and podcaster, and as a speaker. He’s the host of the popular and award-winning Marketing and Finance Podcast.

Why you've got to check out Roger's episode:

- Discover how Roger helps small and medium sized enterprises where they don't have a dedicated resource, or where there is a marketing resource how it's typically somebody that the task of marketing has fallen on them in absence of a marketing person.

- Why it's so difficult to get yourself out there and why you need to work on both your communications and your offer so that you can stand out from your competitors.

- Understand the impact of not standing out in your market and the typical issues that are associated with attracting the wrong types of customers.

- Learn why you need to strip marketing back to to the basics and gain some real clarity on who your idea clients are and how you can look at your business through their lens.

- Understand the one piece of advice that Roger gives to all his clients. And how you can get access to the first chapter of Roger's book for completely free.

Resources / Links

https://rogeredwards.co.uk/book

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Roger Edwards, who is an experienced marketing professional consultant speaker, and the host of the marketing and finance podcast. So, Roger, hello in a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Roger Edwards: Hi Tom. Thanks so much for having me on the show. Good to be here.

Tom Bailey: I really appreciate you being here. And whereabouts are you in the world right now?

Roger Edwards: Right? Up in Edinburgh in Scotland. And as you can probably tell, I don't have a Scottish accent, so I don't come from Edinburgh, but I've lived here for 27 years.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic, a beautiful part of the world. And just to share a little bit more about you before we get started. Roger helps companies to now that offer, set their goals and plan their marketing activity in a world where business BS and complexity threatened to stifle success. After working in the corporate world, he now uses his experience to guide his clients in designing, engaging marketing campaigns. The title for today's episode is How To Do Marketing Simply. And Roger is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. No pressure today, the question number one is who are your ideal clients?

Roger Edwards: Mainly work with small, medium sized businesses, probably to more towards the small end. And I'm looking for companies where they. Either have a dedicated marketing resource or if they do have a marketing resource it's perhaps somebody who's just doing it because somebody has to. So, it might be a marketing person who hasn't got a marketing qualification or is just learning as they're working. And I try to come in and give them some help to support those individuals.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. So, let's think of this individual or solo preneur, or whoever is running the marketing. What's typically the biggest challenge that they face?

Roger Edwards: Well, most businesses obviously need to stand out in order to attract customers. And we, we live in a world today with all this digital technology that we've got access to marketing platforms, social media. So, in some ways it feels quite easy to get yourself out there and be recognized. But the reality is everybody's doing it and you can get lost in a, in a sea of mediocre advertising and content. So, what I try to help people to do is to, is to really stand out. And that means that you've got to work not only on your communications, but you've got to work on your offer as well and make sure that the offer is something that stands out from your competitors.

Tom Bailey: Great, thanks. So, it may seem like an obvious question, but if they're not able to stand out in the market, what impact does this typically have on either them or their business?

Roger Edwards: It means that they'll obviously not hit their revenue targets, profitability targets, and they might attract the wrong customers. And it's a bit of a problem we have because marketing has become so accessible is that we've actually forgotten some of the traditional building blocks of marketing, and that is identifying your customer and building an offer that attracts that customer rather than just diving straight into all the glorious, digital marketing tools that we have at our disposal. If you spend time on the customer identification and you spend time on the offer, you're more likely to actually attract the right customer for your business.

Tom Bailey: That's a really good point. You made about attracting the wrong customer because marketing is ultimately a disqualification process as well as it is attraction. And so, I guess that's really key to make sure you do know who your customer is so that you're not attracting the wrong ones.

Roger Edwards:  Yeah. And you know, I often use the word strategy and sometimes I think maybe I shouldn't exist tends to put some people off, but a lot of what strategy is about is deciding who you don't want to be dealing with and what you don't want to do and what you exclude from your offer, as opposed to what you include within it. And if you get that right, then again, you become more appealing to the target customer you're going after.

Tom Bailey: Absolutely so lots of great advice already, but what is one other piece of advice that you might offer to somebody to really help them get started on this?

Roger Edwards: I think that it's, it's really just building upon what I've just said that now I think we've, we've got this misconception in the digital world today. That marketing is just about communications. It's about selling. It's about getting people to tick boxes. It's getting likes, it's getting subscriptions. It's getting in that repeat names on email lists. But what hasn't changed in the digital world is the basics. And if you haven't identified your ideal customer and you haven't worked on an offer, which is better and preferably different to those of your competitors, then it's going to be very hard to communicate in such a way that it will attract the right customer. So, start with your offer first, before you even pick up any social media or content platform.

Tom Bailey: Yeah and benefits and you know, all roads should lead to that offer. I'd imagine. And, okay, so next question for me then is what is one valuable resource that you might share with people to help them solve this?

Roger Edwards: I think that you, you actually asked for an app and it's, it's quite difficult to identify in that that will allow people to focus in on their particular target market. So, I would, I would actually just encourage people to go and read a marketing book, maybe buy something that sounds like a little bit boring by an established marketing person, maybe an older guy like me or an academic. Now it could, it can get a little bit complicated, but quite a lot of what we read now today, especially from some very well-established American marketers and I'm not disputing their expertise, but they do what I said before and focus entirely on the communications element. Yeah. Go out there and read something or find a course that helps you to focus in, on identifying the customer and nailing your role.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. Thanks. And is there anything on your website that we can point people to so that they can get hold of a book or some resources.

Roger Edwards: Yeah, on, on my website, Rogeredwards.co.uk/book, you can download the first chapter from my book, which is called Cats, Mats and Marketing Plans. And hopefully the title is intriguing enough to get you to have a look.

Tom Bailey: Excellent. So that's Rogeredwards.co.uk/book. I'll put that link in the show notes as well, so people can just click on that and download that first chapter. So, another question for you specifically is what would you say is one of your greatest either mistakes or failures that you've made either in life or business? And what did you learn from it?

Roger Edwards: Again, it's a marketing thing and this is going way back to when I started. So, a young person just joined the, a company to be a marketing person. And I don't know, you know, if there's even a name for this, I've heard some people. The wrong marketing orientation, but it's when you as an individual working in a marketing role, thinks of yourself as the customer. It's almost like you look in the mirror and see yourself. And most of the time, depending upon what industry or what company you're working for, you are not your ideal customer, but it's just the way that our brains are wired. We tend to see ourselves in the mirror and think that our customers like and want the same things as we do. Effectively try to put our own personality and our own desires and wants into our offer. And that often has the opposite effect. We tend to put people off because they aren't us. So. what we really need to do is to talk to real people and it took me a while to, to get that and to actually get out and start doing research and talk. The real customers, rather than just listening to what was in my own head.

Tom Bailey: Guessing, I guess. And I guess you mentioned earlier, start with your offer and I guess once you have that offer, speak to customers about the offer and just see how, if it validates, see what the feedback or questions they have. Yeah. Completely makes sense.

Roger Edwards: That's absolutely right. You know, and you know, I might like red cars, but my customers might not. And if I think, well, I'm just going to create a red car and hope people buy it. You know, that might be the reason they don't buy it.

Tom Bailey: Exactly yeah. And the last question for me today is what is the one question that I should have asked you that will also give some great value to our audience today?

Roger Edwards: I think to take us through this subject of simple marketing, I think the question would be How do we make things simple? Yeah. And there's so much complexity in the world. So much complexity in the world. The reason that there's so much complexity is that trying to keep things simple is actually really hard. And for that reason, a lot of people just say, oh, well, we'll just match our competitors offer, which is probably very complicated. So, you really do need to strip everything away and get it, you know, get the words you use simple. Make the product simple, make the process simple. And I actually look at the language that companies use.

And quite often you can tell if the language they use is, is bloated and full of passive language and, and stupid acronyms and jargon and management speak. Then it's likely the products are complicated and the process is complicated. If they talk in simple chatty language, then it's likely that everything else will be simple as well. My advice would be start with the words, keep them simple. And hopefully that will flow through to the rest of what you do.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. Great piece of advice to end on. Thank you so much again for your time today, Roger. I really appreciate you coming along and sharing your expertise.

Roger Edwards: Thanks very much. Good to see you. Thanks.