Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Graham Forsyth director of marketing for EMEA and Australia/New Zealand for customer experience software Khoros:

Shaheen Samavati 0:12
Hi everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix and I’m excited to be here with Graham Forsyth, marketing director for EMEA and ANZ at Khoros, a leader in customer engagement software. Thanks so much for joining us, Graham.

Graham Forsyth 0:25
Thanks for having me.

Shaheen Samavati 0:26
So just to start off, can you tell us a bit about yourself, in your own words?

Graham Forsyth 0:30
Yeah, sure. So as you said, I’m currently the marketing director for EMEA, Australia and New Zealand at Khoros. So Khoros is a global leader in the digital consumer experience space. We have software and services which cover digital care, messaging, chat, social marketing, online community. So it’s a really exciting, vibrant space to be in. The brand actually came out of the merger of two other companies Spredfast, who were a social marketing platform where I worked previously, and Lithium, who were a leader in the social care space. So I’ve actually been with the business now for over five years. Prior to that, I was at SAP leading their UK marketing for their HR solutions, I also ran global campaigns for their learning platform. Prior to that I worked for telecommunication companies, CRM solutions, so a lot of marketing experience in the technology space.

Shaheen Samavati 1:29
So where are you joining us from today? And where’s the company based?

Graham Forsyth 1:33
The company is headquartered out of Austin in Texas, we’ve got offices in San Francisco, New York and Portland. I’m based in London. We’ve got offices in Paris, Hamburg, Bangalore, and Sydney as well.

Shaheen Samavati 1:47
Okay, great. So you’ve been at the company and its predecessor, Spredfast, for over five years now and it sounds like a lot of things have changed over that time. So what’s it been like adapting in terms of marketing with changes at the company?

Graham Forsyth 2:05
I think year on year the industry’s moved so fast, so obviously the business has moved with it. Obviously, as you said, we’ve gone through a merger, which was a really exciting time. But I think the industry, whether you look at it from a social marketing perspective, and how that industry has grown and scaled, and the technology has advanced so quickly. If we think about it from a digital care perspective and the emergence of messaging, chat and all of the digital touch points for consumers, they’ve all grown so fast, they’ve all moved so quickly, that as a business, we’ve had to just move at that speed as well. So regardless of the company changes, the industry has dictated the speed of our transition as well. So it’s been really exciting, no two years have been the same. There’s been a lot of changes, but we’ve seen a lot of successes. It’s been a really exciting time. I think this year has been probably the strangest one of all, I think we’ve all experienced that. But we’re still seeing a lot of success and a lot of development within the business as well, so it’s a good time to be there.

Shaheen Samavati 3:18
Do you mean, there’s been a lot of change in terms of adapting the product itself, or your marketing strategies, or both?

Graham Forsyth 3:25
I think both. I think the marketing strategies have definitely changed a lot over the years. Our customers have become more sophisticated in their use of this kind of technology. Our technology has obviously transitioned and grown, we brought platforms together, we’ve integrated those platforms and really developed the offering. So I think everything has really been moving at a rapid pace and that’s very much dictated by what the customer needs as well.

Shaheen Samavati 3:54
Could you tell us a bit more about your responsibilities and what’s a typical day at work like for you?

Graham Forsyth 4:00
Yeah, I mean, obviously, it varies. I think the one constant in my day is that each morning, I will definitely look at our Domo dashboard. So they’re our dashboards that give us the insight into how we as a business are performing from a marketing point of view. So I start off every morning looking at those dashboards to see how are we doing that week. How we are trending for the month or the quarter. We really use that insight on a daily basis to look back at our programs and campaigns and say, are we on track? Are there things we want to change or adapt, are there things that we want to accelerate because they’re working really well? The rest of the day is really working with my teams, whether that’s based in Europe, or whether that’s with the Australia and New Zealand teams to make sure that they’re comfortable in the programs that they’re running, do they need my support, where can we scale these programs, how can we do them better and really kickstart the other projects as well. So a lot of it’s dependent on where we are that quarter and what our priorities and what the demands are from the business at that time, but obviously working with the teams across the business as well. So it varies a lot.

Shaheen Samavati 5:10
Could you tell us a bit more about how you got into marketing in the first place and what attracted you to the profession?

Graham Forsyth 5:17
Yeah, it was a little bit by luck to be honest. I actually came out of university and got a job as a web site designer with literally no experience. So I learned coding from scratch and I spent a couple of years doing that. By working within that website team, I actually then started to slowly transition across into the marketing organization. So I was doing a lot of design work for them, designing online brochures and working on the website, as well. Eventually they offered me the role as the marketing manager there. So to be honest, I kind of fell into it. I think my background is quite creative. I probably learned to be more analytic as I’ve got older, but my background is definitely creative. That’s what I love and now my passion is really around strategy and building out the plans for marketing. So yeah, I sort of fell into it slightly by luck, actually.

Shaheen Samavati 6:11
So you’ve moved into management over time, but would you say there’s still room for creativity in what you do now?

Graham Forsyth 6:19
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s vital. That’s the one advantage we have in marketing. I think marketing has a lot more impact on businesses, especially when you think about B2B, than perhaps I did when I first started in my roles. I think marketing was perhaps a little bit of a luxury in some respects at the time. I think now it’s a vital component of all organizations. The transparency around marketing can deliver and what marketing can be from a business perspective is a lot clearer, but I don’t think that takes away from the creativity. I’m not actually keen on the B2B and B2C labels, I think that those lines have blurred. In my world, which is inherently B2B, we can be more creative, we can have a lot more fun in terms of how we position ourselves in the market, how our brand portrays itself, tone of voice, language that we use. There’s still a lot of creativity there, but we have to be mindful of what the data is telling us and use that insight, because there is so much valuable insight now to make really informed decisions.

Shaheen Samavati 7:27
Before you joined Spredfast, you were at SAP, which is a really huge corporation, as most people know. I guess when you joined Spredfast, it was more at a startup stage. So what what made you decide to go to a startup at that point of your career?

Graham Forsyth 7:44
Really for the change. I was the first hire for Spredfast in Europe. So they had a really strong team, from a marketing, creative and brand point of view, based out of Austin in Texas but there was no one in Europe. So the European team was pretty new, they were super scrappy, really passionate and that came across when I first spoke to them. So I was excited to just build something from scratch. SAP was a really wonderful experience, as you said, they’re an enormous organization, and there’s some super talented people in there. But you are inherently a cog in a big machine, whereas with Spredfast I could really dive in and own the plan from day one, build that out from scratch and start a new marketing organization, which obviously we’ve built up over the years now. So it was a really fresh, new challenge and also the social marketing space was really interesting to me. I think it was really getting to the point in Europe, where it was beginning to tip over into being really fundamental to a lot of businesses. They really needed to invest in some really robust software. So I felt like it was a good time to be part of that journey.

Shaheen Samavati 8:52
So who’s Khoro’s target audience audience and what are your most important channels for reaching that audience?

Graham Forsyth 9:01
So we’re very much in enterprise level software. It’s interesting because digital customer engagement really should be owned across the organization now. Our audience can sit anywhere from within the marketing team, so the digital and social media teams, across to customer care or the more traditional call centres or contact centres. There’s a lot more new, holistic customer experience roles now, which we’re seeing, which are obviously a huge target for us. The people within the business who are really responsible for the experience that the customer should expect, along with the IT buyers and the C-suite. So there’s a huge number of people and players within organizations now who we can talk to and who we can try and engage with, because of that we’re really seeing that we have to be across many channels and we have to make sure that those are performing really well. Working specifically within Europe, we do see cultural and geographic nuances. Our paid performance from a paid media and a paid social point of view has been really strong but it’s been very different in Germany, compared to France, compared to the UK. We’ve always seen email as actually a really strong channel and it still continues to perform as a really strong channel. Events have been fantastic for us in the past and we’ve had to obviously adapt those this year but they’re still really important because we have rich content that we want to obviously get across to our audiences. So there is a real mix to how we engage with audiences and as I said, it’s quite a broad spectrum of people that we can talk to within these enterprise businesses as well.

Shaheen Samavati 10:43
So what kind of content do you think works best for your audience? Do you have an example of a campaign or a piece of content that worked really well for you?

Graham Forsyth 10:54
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think they’ve worked well for different reasons. The ones that spring to mind, in the past few years, we’ve run what we call the smart social report. We have an analytics component to our platform, which takes a lot of social platform data and analyses the trends, insights and consumer behaviour. These reports, we typically produce on a quarterly basis and we look at industry trends, or certain themes and topics coming out at that time, or new technology. You always know with these kind of reports and this insight that the audience loves this kind of stuff, because it’s rich, it’s new and it’s stuff that they can really apply to their strategies. But actually, for me, what’s really great about these kinds of reports is the fact that you can really slice and dice these and you can get so much mileage out of this kind of content. So we would produce short blog posts based around certain trends or themes, we would definitely take that content and run them as webinar sessions or as roundtables or as part of our conference plans. There’s always great soundbites in there that can be used for our sales teams emails and their outreach to prospects. I love that content, where we can really break it down and use it in a tonne of different ways, because we just get so much value out of it. But certainly in the B2B space, finding really great ways of telling the customer story, that’s still the bit that gets me really excited. Many years ago, I had a piece of advice from someone which has stuck with me, which was, technology is simply the enabler for change. That really stuck with me because you can have the most powerful piece of software in the world, but if you don’t have a customer who has a vision for what they want to achieve or a strategy that they want to drive, that software is probably going to fail because they’re not going to have a really robust way of using it. So for us, when we can tell those customer stories, it isn’t necessarily about Khoro’s platform, or what it does. It’s actually about what was the vision of that customer? What were they trying to do? How are they trying to create a greater experience for their audience, or their fans or their customers? Knowing that the technology was the enabler for that to happen, those customer stories are still really valuable.

Shaheen Samavati 13:17
So do you have an example of one in particular or something you’ve done recently?

Graham Forsyth 13:25
There’s quite a few. We have a community platform which I think is really exciting. We did a webinar actually only a few weeks ago, where we had Visma, Spotify, BT, all on the call. They were all talking about how they use their branded communities and it’s all in completely different ways. Brands don’t typically use communities in the same way, they have different reasons for doing it. I think Spotify is a fantastic example of a branded community because they get so much product insight out of it. What do their audience want? They have their rock stars in there who can really amplify messages. They’re able to take that insight and really drive it across the business to make the Spotify platform better. BT is completely different in terms of how they approach community. So I think there’s a tonne of different stories and the social marketing space is really interesting, because people really do use that insight to get closer to their audiences. So we are lucky in that we have some fantastic customers and they’re all using the software in different ways to drive really innovative strategies and initiatives within their business.

Shaheen Samavati 14:36
That’s really cool that you’re able to get customers to participate in your online events. Do you have any tips for that? How do you convince customers to take part?

Graham Forsyth 14:46
It’s not always easy. I think this year especially we’ve really tried to think differently about how we’ve approached events. In the past we’ve done a lot more face to face events. They work really well because we are lucky in that we have a customer base that actually wants to get together, they want to network, they want to meet each other. We do have some fantastic customers who tell great stories. So we are blessed in that we normally have enough people, enough customers, that will raise their hand and say, yeah, we’d like to do this. This year, we had to think differently. I think the big challenge was that everyone was just so busy, it was difficult to get people’s time. So we had to think of ways that worked. The ask was a lot easier on the speaker. So using the recent community webinar we said no slides, no preparation, here’s the questions, we’re going to do an interview style. We still did it over Zoom, but it came across more like a TV show, if you like and actually a panel discussion. The ask on the speaker then is just a little bit easier than going away and preparing a 20 slide PowerPoint presentation and working through your speech and stuff. It’s really thinking about the key points that you want to get across and then having a really nice conversation, much like we’re doing over these Zoom calls. So I think sometimes you just have to put the expectation of the speaker in mind as opposed to necessarily what you want out of the event.

Shaheen Samavati 16:10
Yeah. It sounds like you ended up with a dynamic conversation in the end as well, so it’s good for the viewer also. So I had a question about how you’ve adapted to online events this year. I don’t know if you wanted to say anything more about that, we kind of talked about it briefly. You alluded to how everyone in B2B had to change their event strategy, did you have any particularly creative ways that you’ve dealt with that this year?

Graham Forsyth 16:41
It was definitely a challenge for us. Like I said, in the past we’ve had a lot of success with our face to face events across Europe and in other regions in North America and into APAC as well. So it was a difficult time to look at the plan and go, how do we change and adapt all of this to meet what the market can realistically join? But actually once we got over the initial shock, what it boils down to is the fact that is the content strong enough? If we have a really great piece of content, people will still join. I genuinely think Zoom fatigue is a real thing. I think people are genuinely quite tired of sitting on their laptop, 22/7. Do you really want to join another session? Probably not. But actually if the content is still really valuable, then people will. We saw a lot of success running more traditional kinds of webinars, they still worked. But actually what we did was, we looked at the plan and went which are the ones which we really want to do? How can we make them better and which are the ones which we just don’t think are perhaps strong enough for this year? Or perhaps we need to rethink and just perhaps resolve and figure out how that message might work. Then it was really a case of how can we make this as interesting as possible for the people who are going to be on that session. We did a lot more where it was no slides, forget the slides, no one wants to see PowerPoint slides at the moment. It was more discussion based. We did shorter sessions, which were in the morning and more roundtable stuff where we made it a little bit more closed door where people felt like they could contribute and have conversations. So it’s just a case of experimenting a little bit. Not everything worked, some things weren’t as successful as we hoped. Other things surprised us. But like I said, once you got over the initial shock, that was kind of the fun thing of this year. You can try stuff and if it doesn’t work that’s okay, because it’s a crazy year, so it was fun to experiment a bit.

Shaheen Samavati 18:46
Then I wanted to ask you about tone of voice, how would you describe the tone of voice you use at Khoros?

Graham Forsyth 18:52
Yeah, we’re very focused on tone of voice actually. I think one of the things I would say, as a business we do try and be approachable. That’s one of the key words for us in terms of the tone. We strive to be knowledgeable. So we do have a lot of insight that we’re able to share with our audiences, whether that’s our customers or our prospects. But I think we’re very clear in that we don’t want to come across as know it alls and to know everything about the market. As I was saying earlier, the market just moves so quickly, technology moves so quickly, that sometimes we have to be honest and say we don’t know everything, but we’re going to go and find out stuff. So I think it’s really trying to be approachable, trying to be honest, trying to impart as much information as we can and be knowledgeable, but not pretend to be the experts in everything.

Shaheen Samavati 19:46
You’re responsible for EMEA, Australia and New Zealand like we talked about. So that means you’re working with a lot of different markets. Could you tell us about how do you maintain that tone of voice while at the same time speaking to all those different audiences that are quite diverse?

Graham Forsyth 20:02
Yeah, for me personally I can’t pretend to know it all, either. So the first thing is I’m very heavily reliant on the local teams. So whether we’re creating content for France or Germany or Australia and New Zealand, I work with local teams to say, Hey, is this interesting? Is this something which at this moment in time is relevant to the audience that we’re trying to get this across to? I think essentially it’s a case of just not being lazy and not rushing stuff. I know what our key messages are and I know what I want our content to do. I know what it should be designed to do but I’ve got to work with those local markets just to adapt it and tweak it and make sure it’s relevant. If we were marketing to hospitality industries in France, for example, and the only case study we had was Taco Bell, or Wendy’s, I think we know that it’s not going to work. The French market are not going to be receptive to those brands necessarily. But if we can unpick what the strategy was for Taco Bell, or Wendy’s, as an example, and what were they trying to do, what were they trying to achieve? How can we then create that piece of content to tell that story in a different way to that market, which then becomes relevant? So I think it’s a case of looking at these individual pieces of content, what is it that you want them to do? What are they trying to achieve for that region and then making it relevant? I think the local teams are hugely important then and it’s a case of just not being lazy and not rushing, making sure it’s right.

Shaheen Samavati 21:33
Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you about some of your advice and recommendations. So first of all, what skills do you think are most important for marketers today?

Graham Forsyth 21:44
I think you still have to be fairly inquisitive in marketing. I think you have to have to ask a lot of questions. I think curiosity is probably the key word there. In the technology space, in the B2B space, everything moves so quickly, really earning the customer as much as possible is absolutely vital. So the more curious you can be and the more questions you can ask, that’s hugely important. I think this year has taught us that it’s okay to be brave as well and to try stuff. We recently ran a four week yoga programme with our customer base and we so happened to time it when a lot of Europe went back into lockdown. People couldn’t get to gyms, they couldn’t do their regular stuff, so we hired a yoga teacher who’s based out of London. She did four sessions each Friday for a month and our customers absolutely loved it. I think if we’d have done that a year ago, probably it wouldn’t have made any sense. So I think sometimes there’s a lot of bravery in marketing and sometimes just trying stuff. Sometimes it’s okay to fail as long as you don’t do it too often. That curiosity to understand, what does our customer really want? What are they interested in? What are their goals? What are their challenges? Then how does the technology or how does the solution or service that we have as a business underpin that journey that they’re trying to go on? I think the more questions you can ask the better.

Shaheen Samavati 23:13
Absolutely. That’s great advice. So how do you stay up to date on marketing trends?

Graham Forsyth 23:20
I’m probably not as up to date anymore as I used to be. I think podcasts like this are my go to now, this is a great one, Geekout by Matt Navarra is another one. I don’t think he’s doing it at the moment but that was another one which was great for just hearing about trends and certain things. A friend of mine, Tom Ollerton, does another one called Shiny New Object podcast which is great. I probably listen to more podcasts than I have time to. I don’t read as much as I used to, but we’re also hitting that time of year where there’s going to be 101 trends reports and some of those are interesting. I think Ogilvy always do a good trends report at the end of the year and a look to the future as to what the trends might be. I think We Are Social is another one that I always look at just to see what’s happening in that market as well. So yeah, perhaps I’m not as up to date as I should be. Podcasts would be my go to.

Shaheen Samavati 24:13
It sounds like you are, it sounds like you’re very up to date. So of the few books you read, any favourite marketing or business book?

Graham Forsyth 24:28
Yeah, I went through a spell of reading quite a few marketing books and business books. I think I could count on one hand the amount I actually finished. I think the one I would probably recommend and the one I’ve mentioned the most is a book called Webs of Influence by Nathalie Nahai. She’s a web psychologist and the book really looks at digital engagement and how consumers interact with websites, social content and digital content. It’s really looking at the psychology behind what triggers them into taking certain actions, I found that a really refreshing way to think about the customer a little bit more. I’ve been lucky to work with Natalie quite a bit over the last few years as well. She’s spoken at our events, we’ve done different bits and pieces with her and she’s a super person to work with. I think that psychology and understanding that kind of behaviour from a marketing point of view is fascinating. I think they would be the books I would lean towards more now.

Shaheen Samavati 25:29
Yeah which makes sense working in the customer experience side of things. So what’s your favourite software tool or app at the moment?

Graham Forsyth 25:41
It’s probably not the most interesting, but the one I use every single day on my phone is Todoist. So I’ve used so many different productivity apps over the last few years. Apps like Evernote are fantastic, but I actually find there’s probably too much functionality in them for what I need. I discovered Todist just over two and a half years ago I think. I just use it as my to do list from a personal and professional point of view. I use it every morning to plan my day out. I keep all my notes and stuff in there as well to a point and it does keep me on track. So not necessarily the most exciting app that’s out there at the moment, but I use it every single day. I think it’s really important when you find a productivity app that works for you to stick with it and luckily, I do with that one.

Shaheen Samavati 26:34
Yeah, I’m a big fan of Todist too and it’s great how easy it is to add things to the list. Ease of use is super important now. So speaking of productivity, do you have any productivity hacks you could share?

Graham Forsyth 26:51
Yeah, it’s an old one but I think this year has taught us to perhaps rethink it. That is the good old calendar. I’ve gone back to Google Calendar and just begun, certainly in the last six months, using it in a very different way than I perhaps did six months ago. I block a lot more of my time out. Whether that’s time where I just don’t want people to book meetings or time where I want to go for a walk and get some fresh air. We’ve been struggling during lockdown, I don’t have a commute at the moment so I use that time differently. So using that calendar is not just planning for your meetings and your schedule for the day, but really using it as a lifestyle plan has been a slightly crazy revelation this year. I think I’m still adapting that as well. So I think that to me, certainly this year, has been my productivity hack. The more I can structure my day a bit better, the more effectively I work. Certainly I found when I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be as productive, I would then just get frustrated and that’s obviously not a healthy spiral to be in. So yeah, it’s an old one, but I think everyone should perhaps rethink how they’re using their calendar.

Shaheen Samavati 28:07
Yeah, absolutely. Then I wanted to ask about any professional role model or source of inspiration you could share with us?

Graham Forsyth 28:14
Yes, that’s a great question. I’ve been really lucky that I’ve had through the majority of my jobs, some fantastic bosses and people that I reported into. So today, Katherine Calvert, our CMO at Khoros, Sarah Moore, who was my boss at Spredfast, Sarah Lloyd Parry at SAP, interestingly all females. They all really lead their organizations from a personality point of view, very different ways, but created really human teams underneath and teams that really harnessed a really strong team spirit. Everyone really enjoyed what they were doing and we do spend so many hours working, it’s really important to enjoy it. If we can be led in a way that enables that, I think that’s fantastic. I think it’s difficult to pick one professional role model, but people who have really fostered vibrant cultures within their teams, they’re the people I look up to now and hopefully I’m doing something similar with the teams around me. I’m probably still learning.

Shaheen Samavati 29:24
Very cool. Do you recommend any other resources for marketers, online communities, publications, any other resources?

Graham Forsyth 29:31
There’s so many, two immediately spring to mind. Hopefully, we’ll get back to the more traditional conference season pretty soon. One Question is without a doubt, the best conference I’ve been to in the last few years. I think it’s onequestion.live is the website. You can check them out there. They tackle one question at this conference. They’re really in depth questions around the industry or the world at large. It’s fascinating the perspectives that you get from different people speaking and answering this one question. I think they’re doing a podcast at the moment as well, which could be worth checking out, although I’ve not listened to it yet. The other one would be the team at Contagious, they write some fantastic long form articles typically looking at different brand campaigns, from a B2C perspective and a B2B perspective. Their “Most Contagious” event is coming up soon and again, a fantastic event, which really shines a light on the industry and all the great stuff that’s happened that year. They do it with a really good sense of humour. So yeah, One Question and the Contagious team are the two I would recommend to check out.

Shaheen Samavati 30:07
Awesome, I’m definitely going to check those out. So we’re reaching the end of the interview. So I just wanted to give you a chance to give us any parting advice or final takeaways for other marketers in Europe.

Graham Forsyth 31:00
I don’t know if it’s European specific but going back to this year, the key thing I’ve taken away is to be adaptable, to really build plans and programmes, where you know that you may have to pivot quickly and change and adapt quickly. Don’t be scared of that, embrace it and have a bit of fun with it. I think we are lucky to be in an industry which is really creative, so we can have a lot more fun in terms of the programmes and campaigns that we’re running. I think that’s something that B2B brands can really embrace. I think that B2B and B2C lines blurred a few years ago and I don’t know whether those silos exist quite in the way that they used to. I think B2B is way more innovative in terms of how they approach their marketing and I think we can do more. I think this year has really highlighted the fact that B2B should be exciting, it should be vibrant, it should be interesting. It should be entertaining, it can be fun, it can be wacky and a bit different. Embrace that, enjoy it and like I said, marketing has a much bigger impact on businesses than it did when I began. So I think people are open to ideas and innovation so really embrace that.

Shaheen Samavati 32:22
A great note to end on. Thank you so much, Graham, for sharing your insights with us today.

Graham Forsyth 32:27
You’re welcome. Thanks for letting me join you.

Shaheen Samavati 32:30
Thank you. Thanks, everybody for listening in, for more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out veracontent.com/mix and keep tuning into the podcast for interviews with content experts. See you next time. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai