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Sarah McIntyre, Customer Insights and Marketing Plans – InnovaBuzz 310
Sarah McIntyre, Bright Inbound
In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Sarah McIntyre of Bright Inbound Marketing. Sarah creates marketing campaigns that work for her clients with her philosophy of “always on” and “always helping”. She has a unique blend of marketing strategy and campaign execution skills and 20 years experience with both big corporate marketing teams and start-ups. She’s also a Chief Marketing Officer for hire, a new model she is testing now.
In our discussion, Sarah and I talked about:
- Why you should always be listening to and learning from your customers
- How to systematise your customer insights gathering
- Productising your service offerings
Listen to the podcast to find out more.
Listen to the Podcast
Customer insight is the first piece of work that you do. It's the foundational piece of every marketing strategy. – Sarah McIntyre @BrightInbound on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To TweetShow Notes from this episode with Sarah McIntyre of Bright Inbound
Key points and takeaways from this episode include:
- People can work from home effectively.
- Organisations that are more flexible become more productive.
- Marketing agencies should consider productising their service offerings.
- Don’t try to be all things to all people. It doesn’t work. When you try to be all things to all people, you become a commodity.
- Customer insight is the first piece of work that you do. It’s the foundational piece of every marketing strategy.
- Come back to your customer insight gathering regularly, and really get into the heart of understanding your customers’ aspirations, their problems, and the whole transformation piece of where they were before they joined your company or used your service to where they want to be.
- Be very intentional in gathering your customers’ insights. Create a well-thought-through customer insights program and keep learning from it.
- Customer insight is an integral part of your business.
- Systematise your customer insights data. Customer insights are more than just surveys. Gather qualitative data using actual interviews, analyse it, and deploy it. Rinse and repeat.
- Get an experienced hand to analyse your customer insights independently and make it non-subjective. Being impartial when analysing customer insights data is important.
- Net promoter score is a good baseline for measuring customer success.
- Document your processes. Create a central repository for all your processes and systems.
- Remote working opens up a whole world of possibilities. It gives you a huge talent pool of people who want to work flexibly because you’re not restricted to just one geographical area.
- People can successfully work remotely. Remote work requires a level of understanding and empathy for your co-workers.
The Buzz – Our Innovation Round
Here are Sarah’s answers to the questions of our Innovation round. Listen to the interview to get the full scoop.
- #1 thing to be more innovative – Be curious. Ask curious questions and keep asking WHY.
- Best thing for new ideas – Work with a coach. Be confident in your ideas. Validate your ideas with the marketplace.
- Favourite tool for innovation – Hubspot, reading.
- Keep project/client on track – Set goals at the beginning that everyone agrees to. Use an agile framework. Prioritise things that are important.
- Differentiate – Focus on what you are good at. Don’t be a “ME TOO”. Think about your own goals and what you really love to do.
To Be a Leader
Keep learning. Be curious and flexible. You’ll never know where your next opportunity is going to come from.
Reach Out
You can reach out and thank Sarah through her website and on LinkedIn.
Suggested Guest
Sarah suggested I interview Max Traylor, who helps agencies productize consulting services and hosts the Beers with Max podcast. So Max, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz podcast, courtesy of Sarah McIntyre.
Links
Understand who your ideal customer is and learn how to engage with them in a more targeted way. Download your FREE copy of Bright Inbound’s Buyer Persona eBook.
Cool Things About Sarah
- She’s a Hubspot Gold Partner.
- She has spoken at numerous Hubspot user group events and is regularly featured in Databox blog articles.
- She’s a Surf Club Patrol Member of Surf Life Saving Australia.