Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Carlota Pico and Kayleigh Thomas, EMEA marketing manager at KORE Wireless, on how (and why) to learn from your mistakes:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi, everyone and welcome back to The Content Mix. I’m Carlota Pico, your host for today’s show, and I’m excited to be here today with Kayleigh Thomas, who is EMEA regional marketing manager at KORE Wireless and has over 10 years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome, Kayleigh. And thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Kayleigh Thomas 0:36
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Carlota Pico 0:38
All the pleasures ours. Okay, so I actually have a joke for you to break the ice. Are you ready? Why did the Cookie Monster apply for a marketing job?

Kayleigh Thomas 0:53
Oh, it’s gonna be something about a cookie cutter exercise. Okay, tell me.

Carlota Pico 1:01
He heard they were tracking cookies. It’s an awful joke but you know what, I’m actually a big fan of awful jokes. I find them quite funny.

Kayleigh Thomas 1:13
It was a good one.

Carlota Pico 1:17
Okay, Kayleigh. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get into marketing and what’s your day to day like at KORE Wireless?

Kayleigh Thomas 1:23
Sure, funnily enough, I actually started in university, doing business studies and economics as a degree. So, I ended up having a very small module that was part of marketing and my foundation used to try a lot of things as part, you know, studying business. And I just enjoyed it so much, and I got so bored of break analysis sheets and economics. I changed completely to marketing, and I just enjoyed it a lot. And in fact, I ended a master’s at St. Andrews straight afterwards. So yeah, I just really enjoyed it and then being able to go straight into work into a marketing executive role for a financial tech company just made me enjoy it more and I realized that tech marketing was definitely where my strengths were. My day to day at KORE is extremely varied. I’ve got a jack of all trades is sort of my magical Swiss Army Knife of marketing. So whether it’s writing content, it’s working with product teams and launching, I own a couple of products. Or it’s working with Australian team and campaigns and event management, webinar planning and social media, all sorts. I’m extremely lucky I get to get my fingers in a lot of pies, a lot of marketing pies.

Carlota Pico 2:53
Sounds like a very exciting so what is KORE wireless?

Kayleigh Thomas 2:57
So KORE is an Internet of Things company, commonly seen as IoT. They’re independent telecommunications company that advises businesses in their IoT deployments. And the goal is to deliver transformational business performance from their IoT solutions. So they come to us rather than, for example, a Vodafone or a O2, or Orange because we are independent. And we help them identify, evaluate and contract manage multiple network connectivity providers, equipment manufacturers and professional services. So a lot of this is a bit like when I first started IoT. So a really good example if you’ve got a comfortable setting, they’re a utilities company. They have hundreds of thousands of smart meters in the field. And those smart meters are a bit like what we have at home, they do automatic reading. And those devices are kept in the field like 10 to 15 years, so they need connectivity that’s future proof, that can pin that information off, make their devices connected. And so we provide the global advanced connectivity services and a carrier independent application so they can see all their services without the need to change the physical sim. So that’s what we do.

Carlota Pico 4:20
Wow. Okay. Very interesting. So I think you’re doing a social media outreach campaign right now on LinkedIn. Could you tell me more about that?

Kayleigh Thomas 4:28
Yeah, absolutely. We found, probably you have as well, with face to face events cancelling, and a lot of your leadership as well as. How are you going to generate those marketing qualified leads? How are you going to talk to that target or targeted audience without being able to have those industry specific events to go to? So we sort of digitized it and we started an outreach campaign via LinkedIn and we utilize it to navigate it to provide that targeted segmentation method and we use very specific messaging and dynamic text to basically approach people that ordinarily would have attended those events and discuss how we’re helping people like them get the business transformation from IoT. And I do equate it with being an event, right? It’s a grassroots campaign. Some people will walk by and ignore your stand. Some people go, Hey, what do you do? But we’ve had some people have said, Hey, what’s cost for this? Yes, we actually got project ongoing, we’d love to have you on board. We’ve had some RFPs because of it. So I think that due to COVID, especially now, and the big strides in digital technology, we’ve been able to capitalize on that. So I think there’s also a growing acceptance on that sort of outreach as well. I think people are more open. Because they ultimately want to learn something in their industry and that is face to face events. I think there’s only so many webinars, you really want to join so it’s sort of a new and cool way of trying to get to those people. So we’ve been really impressed. And we’ve now launched it globally. So I’m super proud. And yeah, we’re doing really, really well.

Carlota Pico 6:14
Congratulations on that, Kayleigh. So what does the average campaign actually look like? Is a paid advertisement? Is it messaging? Is it talking on different groups? What’s the format?

Kayleigh Thomas 6:26
Yeah. Yeah, no, great question. So the idea is that we pull together some specific segments. And then we use targeted messaging, so inmails and programmatic messaging on a drip series. So three messages. So the first one will be, you know, hey, we utilize a senior member of our team. And so I won’t say his name because I’m not concerned. Hey, for example, James, I work with KORE wireless and we’re working with companies x, y and z that are Achieving x, y and z by utilizing some of our solutions. We’d love to talk to you about how we can help you. And then as you sort of go down this drip series, if you do engage with us, and you come out and we can have that conversation, and they’d have to sort of actually raise their hand and say, Hey, do we want to talk to you? Or obviously, if they say, No, we don’t, and we don’t communicate to them either. Moving through to the end, which is like we don’t want to clutter up your inbox. You know, here’s some information we’d love to share with you. Here’s a free starter kit, you know where we are. If your situation changes you want to grab hold of us, do. So it’s a really non confrontational way of talking to people but not like door stepping people in the telemarketing sense. I know all telemarketing is not like that, I’m not going to tar them with the same brush. But that’s kind of why I equated to events because if people want to engage, they’ll respond but if they don’t, they just ignore you. So it’s been surprisingly good. I thought we’d get more people ignoring us. But people have been really upfront and saying, hey, here’s my email address me some information. Yeah, it’s been really positive.

Carlota Pico 8:11
Okay. Excellent. Very interesting. So since it’s a global campaign now, are you also like localizing those messages for different audience target groups?

Kayleigh Thomas 8:20
Yeah, absolutely. That’s extremely important. So putting your plan together of who are you talking to? What the job titles? What are the personas? What are the key words, then making sure that when you reference the companies that you’re working with, just like them, make sure that they are just like them? For example, if you’re talking to utilities, you’re talking about smart meters that, you know, I mentioned earlier, you’re talking about devices in the field, you’re talking about connected water and digit, you know, and that kind of stuff. Don’t start mentioning, tech companies that have got nothing to do with them. Yeah. So that’s really, really important to make sure that the content is specific to them. Because if it’s generalized, I mean, I don’t answer LinkedIn stuff so why should they?

Carlota Pico 9:06
That’s a really good point. That’s a very good point. Okay Kayleigh, since you have a fair amount of experience in product launches, could you walk me through great examples of product launch content that either you created or have seen elsewhere?

Kayleigh Thomas 9:23
Yeah, for sure. So product launches have been and continue to be a key part of what what I do. And there are various things for product launch. A lot of people just jump to the brand new product, but it can be migrations, end of life, cross sell, upsell opportunities, there’s so much that’s actually involved as part of a new version or a new product. And so when I look at the sort of key things that I think about great examples of product launch content, they’re sort of built around three key elements, know your product, right, and the value of the product is so key for that, know your audience and who you’re talking to. And finally, which kind of leads on to more of what you’re talking about is finding what is the right type of content to attract them. So if I run through those three points as a marketer, you need to have a basic understanding what a product does, what is its unique selling points, what is it that makes a customer want to buy it or upgrade to it? Knowing your audience, I mean, we kind of touched on that anyway. But to be able to target your message succesfully, you need to know who you should be talking to, job titles, existing products. This helps curate the content to help you find the right events. And you will have different content types with different audience segments as well. And you won’t always use the same content for a customer as you would a prospect I mean, quite obvious to me. People try it, use the same thing and then wonder why they don’t get the same results. I’ve actually found in this that when I worked at a previous company, my first one in financial technology, when we used to curate columns, I used to actually go up to the financial controller upstairs and go, Hey, this email or this asset, would you open the email? And, you know, does this matter to you. And as that person who is actually I’m selling to, I would actually ask them if that was the right thing to do. Although I wouldn’t say that we’d actually tweak it or actually, that’s more important or you’re missing this, you’ve actually got great resources in your own company that you should really bounce off of, and I don’t see a lot of people do that. And marketing end up sort of being siloed in the content creation machine. And you’ve got a lot of resources in your company that you can utilize. So that’s one of my biggest tips, and then the right content. So the third column, if a persona prefers podcasts ovr guides or ebooks overr videos and infographics over white papers, now, it’s really key to understand if you’re talking to C level, they will completely interact with different types of content and different types of events and publications as you know, someone who’s just starting out in their career that’s, you know, that’s at a manager level. So that’s really key to understand. Now, nine times out of 10, you probably need a blended mix of all of those. When you’re looking at launching products, it’s key to understand the consideration, awareness and purchase stages. So when you’re getting somebody on that journey, you need to get their interest. So infographics, high level little videos like what we’re doing to get their interest and then we go, Okay, I kind of want to know more than you move through to the white papers, and even something more chunky, the webinars, and then we want to pay more notice, then you get more product orientation, you move through to the purchase stage where you go through case studies, and starter kits, consultations, hopefully going, Hey, let’s really talk about how this product will support you. So those are where I really see product launches and content being used in the right way.

Carlota Pico 13:05
Okay, so you’ve already touched upon this a little bit, but why did you think product launches sometimes fail?

Kayleigh Thomas 13:15
Before I really answer, there’s one main thing. Always ask yourself so what? It’s also known as a features into benefits. If you’re writing something and you don’t ask yourself so what? Okay this is a nice cool dongle, yeah so what? Does it save me half an hour of my time does it save me X amount of pounds a month? What is that actually delivering to me that I care about? And so I think that’s one really key element. And now when you’re looking at product launches, and if you’re using social media, now this can widely vary from consumer or b2b. So from the application use to the type of content types of trade for Facebook, you’d use more for consumer, LinkedIn, maybe more for b2b. So when you’re looking at these things, social media should be part of your strategy, which I think is really key. Now, when product launches fail, they could fail for loads and loads of reasons. They never hit a deadline. There could be product management resources, executive leadership, budget, you name it, loads of things can go wrong. But if you stick to the marketing element, it’s probably because the content or the creative hasn’t hit the mark. And it will be one of those three pillars that we spoke about. And you know, we’ve seen a lot of US companies think that the same thing will work there that it will do in Europe. Doesn’t work that way. Regionalization is really key, but it is easily rectifiable. You’re not always going to hit it out of the park 100% of the time. You’ve probably heard this marketing is a social science. It’s a lot of common sense. You try something you asked why it worked and what didn’t work. You look at the data, you change what you do. There was a recent quote from Business Insider, they said less than 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceed their first year sales, which is super, super tough. But then if you focus on the marketing side of where businesses have used it to their advantage, if you look at Carlsberg, for about 40 years they spoke about probably the best beer in the world. And they got slated and slated and slated and then in 2019, they used that consumer insight and turned it on its head to probably not the best beer in the world. And they did such a fantastic job. They use a social media resources to promote messages that said, so for example, one guy put my point of Carlsberg taste like naan bread. And they paid and promoted it. And it worked for them. They took a negative element, utilize that kind of social media for their product launch strategy and changed it in such a fantastic way. But it got people talking. It got people sharing, and they ended up doing so well they started building another sort of prestige brands that they built in the value and kept the kind of Carlsberg basic at a cheaper price. So there are so many examples that we could speak about forever but this one just makes me giggle.

Carlota Pico 16:20
I know, made me giggle as well. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. So Kayleigh basically to relaunch a failed product your recommendation would be to rely on data. To zoom in to the data that you have at the moment and figure it out understand it and then tweak your messaging according to those stats.

Kayleigh Thomas 16:39
Yeah, data driven decisions always. You know, it could be from the emails when you’re open and click rates if people convert well, which links worked, A B split testing, social media, ones with images, did they work, ones without images, did they work? Is it regional, when you translated it did the message translate well, did it really not hit a point? Do we use the wrong colors in there, with red and China you got to be very careful with and utilization of some terms and when you translate don’t always work. So, there is always a way to turn stuff around, but you just need that data to go where did I go wrong? And some of it can not always be data, some bits instinctive where you’ve done things in previous roles and ask for help. There is no harm in asking a fellow colleague and someone of your team or asking someone you worked with previously or you know, sometimes you’ll ask LinkedIn and go, hey, I did this campaign and what the hell did I do wrong? And sometimes it’s bad luck,, getting more minds on it and more ideas can only help.

Carlota Pico 17:48
What about like, emotionally speaking, how do you recover from a failed product launch?

Kayleigh Thomas 17:55
So there’s my non business head which goes a glass of wine does a lot. So definitely a glass of wine. But that initial hitter, oh, I’ve spent this money and I’m not seeing the numbers and I’m getting that those emails and going, what’s happening, what’s happening, what’s going on and you have that sinking feeling and you go, Oh, you just want to cry sometimes, but you just gotta grieve. And then go back to the numbers. Okay, so what went wrong? I am only human, but don’t come to your management or your team with the problem, come with a solution always come with a solution. So if engagement was really low on this go you know, I think engagement was really low because we didn’t do polling, or we chose the wrong type of content or it just wasn’t strong enough. How about we try this way? How about we look at doing this, I’ve seen in previous roles or done with previous campaigns. This has worked quite well. What do you think? Allow people to collaborate and feel part of the solution as well. And you get people behind you 110%.

Carlota Pico 19:09
What about talking to like your sales team or your commercial team as well, people that have their feet on the ground to better understand how that audience is going to resonate with the product? Do you also talk across your different departments to come up with solution?

Kayleigh Thomas 19:21
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, whether it’s our inside sales team that are calling up on the back of campaigns, whether it’s our Field Sales Team, you see the bottom funnel, and it sees it come through. But that 360 degree feedback loop is so important. So I have two weekly calls with my sales leader for EMEA, I have bi weekly calls with my leader out in Australia. And it’s really important to understand what they’re seeing in the market. What struggles are they having because it’s not just about marketing isn’t just about launching campaigns, its also enabling sales. Hearing sales, what do they need? Are they having trouble in the RFP? Do they need some collateral supporting information that helps them with their conversations and deals? It’s important you listen to sales, if you don’t, you’re going to fail. And they will not follow up and support you either. It’s a mutual collaboration. Without us, they don’t get sales as much. Without them we don’t get our Marketing Leads followed up on and sales off the back of it. So it’s definitely a symbiotic relationship.

Carlota Pico 20:33
Yeah, it’s a two way street.

Kayleigh Thomas 20:35
Absolutely.

Carlota Pico 20:36
Okay. Well, we are going to finish this section up on a happy note. So can you walk me through some of your proudest marketing moments and what made this project stand out? What made them special?

Kayleigh Thomas 20:50
Yeah, sure. You know, I was thinking about this this morning, and it actually just made me smile. So I used to work for a welding security company. And I remember coming And as a little bit junior, but they never use webinars as a power for marketing avenues previously at all, which was quite strange to be coming into an enterprise and I thought I was a bit worried actually that there’ll be so established, there’s nothing I can do to contribute, actually. And they paid for this platform that really just sat there. And so I sort of stuck my little hand up and said, Can I take over this? Can I, I’ve got some ideas, and they said, Okay, go on, see what you can do. And I mean, the results speak for themselves. I’m more than happy to share those results. But it comes down to delivering the right content to the right people. I’m so super proud that even when I’ve gone now, it’s still frontloader to a lot of their marketing activities. And in a few years, subscribers to our content went from 3000 to 35,000. We drove $3 million of pipeline. And it was just one of those things which just always made me smile when anybody asked me about numbers. I never worried. And there was, you talked about visualization on the live chat just prior to this video, right? And so there we worked with seven different core countries and we need to read like region lights, and I worked with the Italian team, a lovely girl, Isabella. And with the security side of things, we have the threat of viruses and hacks and things like that. So we would have a response and one’s called dragonfly and working with the Italian team because they got hit rather hard. And we created a just in time threat response webcast and email experience alongside a LinkedIn advert social strategy, and it’s been my all time highest ranking webinar with 1042 registrations and nearly 1500 views at the time. It was insane, and I still have it as one of my campaign highlights. And again it comes down to the right time, the right content to the right people. And yeah, I still look on that very fondly.

Carlota Pico 23:24
Oh, congratulations on that. Kaylee must be a response also to give it an interview, right? Like, tell me about your accomplishments. Well

Kayleigh Thomas 23:35
Oh, it was really nice to reminisce and just going back to those days of covering the track response and long hours, but just really, really good reward really, really good reward and I worked with such an amazing team. So it was nice for me to go down memory lane actually.

Carlota Pico 23:52
Amazing. Well, I’m glad you enjoyed that part of our interview. Okay, we are going to be moving into our set of rapid fire questions which are basically your recommendations for audience. To get this section started off, I’d like to ask you about your source of inspiration. So for example, an influencer or professional role model that you really admire and or has inspired you?

Kayleigh Thomas 24:13
That’s a great question. I’ve worked with many superb male and female leaders across my time, especially in tech. But there’s two very strong female leaders in a very male dominated industry that I would like to push up. Sarah Tookey, I learned a lot from her concerning business strategy, thinking about the wider business aspect and not just the marketing element. And more recently, Jessica Garrett, she really really understood the power of demand generation and programmatic marketing and really good to bounce a lot of ideas off so in two different ways, learned some immense things from those two ladies and I know they’re doing very, very well.

Carlota Pico 24:51
Excellent, excellent. Okay, and what about a resource so for example, book, publication, an event, community, something that you find out extremely valuable?

Kayleigh Thomas 25:02
Absolutely. So, in my role as I’ve touched on point marketing, I do end up following a lot more thats industry led, so IoT, IoT Evolution, IoT Now, loads of stuff with IoT in the name, but I do like MarketingWeek.com. It gives a lot of flavored articles and interest across the business and the consumer world.

Carlota Pico 25:24
Yeah, I’m very much like yourself as well. Since I lead our podcast, I’m right now reading larry king’s autobiography, because obviously, he’s an excellent interviewer. And my next book will hopefully be Oprah’s autobiography.

Kayleigh Thomas 25:39
Okay, do you quite like the auto, bio pics and things?

Carlota Pico 25:42
I’ve never been into it until I started doing interviews just two months ago for podcasts. And now I’m all about these autobiographies from these excellent interviewers. Okay, and what about your favorite app at the moment, Kayleigh, what would that be especially during corona times?

Kayleigh Thomas 25:59
Yeah. Absolutely. So I mean, my personal favorite app is probably Amazon Prime at the moment. While I’m walking the dog I like to listen in to a lot of TV and films and stuff, but I can’t always watch them at home. But I’m not gonna lie, Teams. It’s so heavily used at the moment, whether it’s Teams or Go To, Zoom, or what have you, it’s just become an absolute lifeblood of business communication and having this sort of interaction, where I can see your face and feel a bit more real. It’s certainly been one of my favorite apps.

Carlota Pico 26:34
Me too. For us, we use a lot of Google Hangouts and Slack. I mean, I just I love it. Also Basecamp has been used a lot right now. But in my former life, I used to use Basecamp in my everyday job because I would be managing projects remotely. And it really helped me to manage my team in different markets from the other side of the world basically.

Kayleigh Thomas 27:00
Oh, absolutely. There’s Basecamp, Monday.com, Air Table.

Carlota Pico 27:07
all of those. Well, excellent. Kayleigh, thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix. It was a pleasure to meet you, and to talk about product launches and so many other marketing topics.

Kayleigh Thomas 27:16
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Carlota Pico 27:18
Oh, thank you. And also best of luck with your LinkedIn campaign.

Kayleigh Thomas 27:21
Cheers, thank you.

Carlota Pico 27:23
And to everybody listening in today, thank you for joining us on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one. Every day. Keep on tuning in. Thanks again. Have a fabulous day and I’ll see you next time. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai