What would you ask Mark Ritson if you had the chance? How would you tap into his wealth of experience from teaching at top business schools, advising some of the world’s biggest brands, and marketing his own business, the miniMBA in Marketing?
In the summer we gave a bunch of marketers that chance. Here is what they wanted to know:
Watch the full session with Mark here
Q&A with Mark Ritson
I’m a marketing director for a high-performance ingredient brand that goes into making doors, decking, and windows. Should I be happy with very successful b2b marketing which has ensured everyone in the trade knows who we are? Or should we also be doing b2c marketing to raise brand awareness with the end consumer?
Mark Ritson: It’s a brilliant strategic question, and I’m certainly not going to answer it. I’m going to tell you that you should make that choice. So if you follow Michel Porter’s work, strategy is choice and sacrifice and focus. So it could be that by creating pull in the marketplace, your push efforts, which sound very successful, will become even more effective. I could see that scenario.
By the same token, it could be that by spreading your investment and focus onto the b2c market, you spread your money too thin, you distract your team, and you end up losing focus and losing money. Both scenarios are possible. So the challenge of marketing is doing a little bit of research, looking at the capabilities of your organization, your budget, your team, and then deciding. The only thing I’d say to you is, I encourage you to be selfish in this choice. And it sounds weird. But there’s a real paradox with marketing. When we do market orientation research, we really aren’t thinking about ourselves, we’re thinking only about the market. You’ve got to go and study that market, of doors and treatments and everything else. And you’ve got to shut up and you’ve got to learn, right, you’ve got to be humble. But once you’ve learned and you’ve understood, you then have to make this strategic choice, then you must be selfish. And no one can tell you what to do, except you choose the path that suits you. Because that’s what strategy is all about. Make a call.
I’ll give you a good example. I run this online miniMBA, we’re a £20 million quid business. We go nowhere near America. We have 61 countries that we recruit marketers for. We’ve avoided America for the last three or four years because it’s too expensive to build brand there. And there are too many competitors. And we made an explicit choice to stay out of there, not because we don’t like Americans, but because we’ve got other opportunities that are easier and more rewarding. And that’s an explicit selfish choice that we’ve made. So, great question, I’m sorry I can’t answer it. But I hope that helps you answer it.
I’m definitely on board with the “with more channels you reach more people”. However, if our customers are not on Instagram, for example, should we use that channel?
Mark Ritson: Absolutely f***ing not. No. So again, absolutely spot on. I’m saying to you, “the more channels, the better”. But we have a couple of caveats. First, only the channels that are where your customers are. And second, not to the point where you’re stretching your money so thin, that you’re not achieving an efficient impact on those channels, right? And this comes up a lot, “I can’t do seven or eight channels, I haven’t got the money.” So you haven’t got the money for TV, outdoor, and Facebook at the same time. But if you scale down the TV and the outdoor and start looking at it for different media that are more scalable, you can have more media in there.
So yeah, absolutely. The first thing is to choose the channels where you get your better impact and where your customers are. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t have favourite children when it comes to media, though, right? There’s a famous thing called the S curve. You can fall in love with Instagram, my favourite kid is LinkedIn. I love it. I’d spent every dollar of our mini MBA money on LinkedIn. But at some point, it doesn’t keep going. It’s not exponential. There’s a curvilinear effect. The trick is to then move across: “We’re going to spend money on outdoor next year because we believe that synergy will really help us.” So you’re trying to move your money into other channels and have lots of children, not a favourite child, but choose the kids that suit your business.
Do you think that the same [spread across channels strategically and don’t have favourites] applies to small family-run businesses?
Mark Ritson: It totally does. But the tier of media you’re going to integrate is different. But I would say to you always outdoor is a scalable media, right? It’s very targeted, it’s very scalable, works beautifully with digital media, which is of course imminently targetable. And scalable stuff like that doesn’t mean you have to have TV, you know what I mean? All that stuff and sponsorship, but the more channels at an accessible price and scale, it still works beautifully.
I work for a pension fund. So our customers don’t actually get to choose us, they’re simply placed with us. So how do you keep an audience that has no choice?
Mark Ritson: Well, because they’re not the customer. So the first job when you’re doing your market research and your targeting is to identify who the customer actually is right? And in this case, the decision-making is much further up. And I would suggest it’s going up to the fund managers or whoever makes the decision in the first place and focus marking activity there. If you think it makes sense to reassure them they’re with a good fund, etc., you can do that. I think it might be wasted money. But the end user is not often the customer. So you’ve got to be aware of where you want to target your efforts and make the choice accordingly.
I’ve been in marketing for five years. How do I go back to scratch though? Are there any books, case studies that you would recommend for somebody that wants to reset their mindset, if you like?
Mark Ritson: Look, I’m sorry to plug myself, but we run a very successful miniMBA in marketing, which runs twice a year. 100% online, which is basically my MBA course in marketing from London Business School and MIT. I think it costs £1400 quid, and we have a net promoter score of plus 81. So look up miniMBA marketing, we would love to have you! I don’t think books do the job now if you really want to proper training in marketing, Look, I’m sorry to blow my own trumpet, but we have the best training course in the world in marketing, come and do it.
We’re a b2b IT provider. When you have a limited budget, where do you believe we’ll get the best bang for our buck?
Mark Ritson: No idea. But I want you to find out and make a choice, right? So the bang for your buck question comes back to those really those two big questions, right? Once you’ve done a b2b segmentation, and that’s essential, you can’t do b2b marketing without decent segmentation. It’s not hard to do in b2b, but it’s essential. Once you’ve done the segmentation, the bang for the buck question is answered with targeting. Choosing only the segments where you’re going to put your fundamental resources of time and sales reps and everything. If you devote those to the juicy segments they will always give you a better bang for your buck. And then even within those segments, you’ve got a funnel. Is the best bang for buck driving awareness at the top or repeat purchase at the bottom or preference in the middle? You have to do your analysis to work this out. This is why I have a problem with these Gary Vee, Neil Patel people, they make these generic statements that are just plainly not true. You have to work it out right by using marketing, to identify strategically where to play and then where to get your best bang for your buck. And I would do a disservice in trying to give you an answer. Choose the right target segments and the right objectives in each funnel to give you the best returns.
You talked about “targeting and segmentation” over “mass marketing”. If you do have a lot of different target audiences, do you go for the first good one? And then another? Or do you launch to all segments at once? I guess it all depends on your resource and your budget would be to some degree.
Mark Ritson: Yes, it does. You’re right. I mean, ideally, let’s say we have enough money, I do believe there’s a nice mix. So you want to launch your brand, like a nuclear bomb, okay? So you want to drop it on the whole market, forget about segments, you want everyone to know you exist. You want everyone to know you do this, this and this, you want everyone to recognize you. That’s job number one, and that never stops, keeping [your name] out there. Then, however, there are 1, 2 or 3 target segments that are the biggest, juiciest, easiest, where you want to go in with a very specific product activation on the back of the brand building and go “And we can offer you this, this and this.” So I’m using my example because it’s the easiest one. For the miniMBA, we just position ourselves as MBA-level, convenient, 100% online, to every marketer, but we have very specific targeted messages to digital marketers, to creative directors, to brand managers, to C-suite that are all about why they should sign up. And there’s no reason you can’t do both, especially with the targeting ability of digital tools now to do the activation quite precisely. But do the nuclear bomb of the long of it quite broad.
You went over your top things that matter. I’ve seen you do a number of talks on the things that you really hate; you did a session on “The S*** That Doesn’t Count” if I remember rightly. What are your what are the top three things that you would say “just don’t worry about”?
Mark Ritson: Hard to restrict me to three! But yeah, off the top of my head it would probably be NFTs. They are an idiot magnet. So their only value is in demonstrating marketers that have no idea what they’re doing. A total waste of time.
“Digital marketing” is for me, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand what it is. Everything is digital in the UK, radio is more digital than analogue. Outdoor is digital. I don’t understand why we keep using the D word, you know, mean? So I dropped the D word. I believe working with digital marketing tools is important, but I just don’t understand why we use D anymore. They’re just tools. Right?
And probably the other one that I find interesting at the moment is trust. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that trust is that important. People don’t really trust brands. So I think when we go on about earning trust, I think it’s more about reliability. And it doesn’t have to be such a big you know, “I trust them with my life” blah blah blah. It’s not like human beings. You don’t need that level of trust. You just need familiarity. That’s enough to do business. There are probably the three at the moment that don’t matter.
I’m split down the middle on purpose, I think purpose is prevalent and so trendy and so full of s***. Korn Ferry are a good example. Korn Ferry are the world’s biggest headhunting firm. They did a seminar last week on “purposeful businesses” and all of that. Korn Ferry are one of the few businesses that haven’t pulled out of Russia [in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine]. That’s how “purposeful” those organizations are right now. There’s so much hypocrisy in this world. I just think it’s overstated.
Do you have any tips on how to get a 180 view of your company in b2b? How would you start?
Mark Ritson: Yeah, good, practical question. The great gift of b2b is to get your a** into the market for a site visit. We can call it “ethnography” if you want. But it’s too fancy a term, right? If you could pick the four or five main variables in your customer base, you know, some are north, some are south, some are big, some are small. And just try and find yourself three or four clients that kind of are across that spectrum. And go and visit those three or four clients in the space of a week. You’re not selling anything, you just want to go. If you’re a warehouse business, go hang out in the warehouse and just chat with people. It’s kind of embarrassing. But once you have a meal or a cigarette or a beer with them, people start going “Listen, listen, the thing with your product that’s s*** is this, right?”
So you start to see how your product is used, you start to see how people really think and in b2b, the great gift is visiting customers that buy and use your product and just watching. And it sounds so useless and passive. I’ve done this with managers my whole life, we’ve gone out and done it and it blows their minds that they can see this. So yeah, go and do three or four visits. The sales force will s*** themselves, they won’t want you to go there, just go anyway. It’s a great way to learn and see what’s really going on. It’s ultimate market orientation.
The Long and The Short of it; Is there a particular order that you would take them in? Or is it about implementing both at the same time? Would you focus on one to start with over the other?
Mark Ritson: The Short’s more important, because if there’s no Short, then there will be no Long, right? So let’s not underestimate Short, you’ve got to make your numbers. I think the lesson here is once you’ve stabilized and delivered your number, try and get as much money as you can each year across into long-term brand building so that that wheel starts to turn. The danger is you go “More and more short-term activation will make us more and more money.” It really won’t in the long term. You don’t have to be 60-40, but get as much money into Long as you can while still delivering your short-term numbers. If you give it a couple of years, that Long starts to build Short, and this beautiful wheel starts to turn, which I see very infrequently. Where the long-term brand building makes the Short work much better. The Short makes more money which funds more long-term brand building, this wheel starts to really turn. That’s the trick. So yeah, Short must be the priority, but then get it into long-term brand building, don’t neglect Long.
What do you think about regularly posting on LinkedIn? Should we leave regular posting for likes of Instagram or Twitter? Or would you normally see LinkedIn as a place to kind of one-off posts or continual posting?
Mark Ritson: If you’re b2b, I have to tell you I’ve seen nothing as good as LinkedIn. I am quite close with them in New York so I may be a little biased. But two things with LinkedIn; organic opinion leadership, from people in the business, not brands is an amazing thing to do for the Long of it in b2b. Sure, you know, the short of it in b2b Is your sales force, but I’ve never seen anything as good as top of funnel, LinkedIn activation. Organic stuff is great if you have a point of view, but talk to the LinkedIn teams in your country, the targeting they can do for b2b is mind-bogglingly good if you ask. They know who’s in the buying committee, you can reach out to them.
It’s not an activation tool. For me, LinkedIn is, for b2b, laying a seed, building awareness and salience and a point of view. So that when the sales force come in, everyone’s like, “Yeah, I know you guys, I’ve seen your things on LinkedIn.” That’s the great joy of LinkedIn. I would encourage you to continue with it. I think it’s a great tool.
Any tips for making a case for brand building when the organization focused on a 12-month view only?
Mark Ritson: Yeah, this is what I call The Question. So it’s brilliant we finish on it. You won’t believe this, but I’ve written a column which says, “Every time I do a talk, this question gets asked”, right? And rather than answer it all, I went out and spoke to seven CMOs of very big companies who I believe have built big brands long term. And I said to them, “Someone always asks me this f***ing question. Rather than me give them a b***s*** answer, what’s the answer?” And so I wrote a column called “The Question: Here is The Answer”. Which is basically what my big CMOs told me about how do you get more money across to long? So thank you for stereotypically ticking the box. I was ready for you with a 2000-word answer.
