Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of the The Content Mix podcast interview with marketing expert Nadine Leighton on the importance of localization in marketing and more:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from The Content Mix. And I’m excited to be here today Nadine Leighton who’s responsible for marketing LexisNexis tech solutions across the EMEA and APAC regions, and has over 12 years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome Nadine, thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Nadine Leighton 0:36
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to talk to you today.

Carlota Pico 0:41
I’m excited as well. Let’s get this interview started off then. I would love to learn a little bit about your background a bit about LexisNexis and also how you got into your current role.

Nadine Leighton 0:52
Okay, so as you said, I’m a marketeer. I’ve been working in marketing for a while. I originally started as like a digital marketeer here, and kind of moved over across into kind of like more wider strategic marketing, which is always interesting. I’m definitely not a person who understands, like paperweight or any of that kind of stuff. I always think digitally first. I think that’s really helped me throughout my career. And just to tell you a little bit more about LexisNexis and my role, so I work on the marketing tech solutions predominantly on a CRM platform for both legal and professional services, marketing to those sectors and industries. LexisNexis is a provider of legal and regulatory business information analytics and we’re a global organization, and I’m part of the kind of tech marketing team marketing those kinds of technology products to support the back office functions in a legal firm. I joined LexisNexis at the end of last year, and I’ve previously worked in technology marketing roles within both consulting firms, but also other organizations. I’ve also worked across different industries, but predominantly in b2b marketing roles. And I think that’s given me like quite a good kind of interesting background and has always made me think more about like the customer there and their needs versus kind of just the industry, which I think is actually really useful as a marketer.

Carlota Pico 2:32
Definitely, I did take a look at your background online said and did see your very extensive experience in the tech industry across several different types of companies even at PwC as well, which is consultancy firm that you were working at a few years ago, along with your experience now at LexisNexis. And I couldn’t agree with you more that at the end of the day, there’s always a human on the other side of the computer or there’s always humans running around. Well, until the robots start taking a more dominant role, there will always be a human on the other side of a screen and also at a business. So the human approach is extremely important when it comes to mark your marketing activities, regardless of if you’re at a b2b or b2c company. So I do you want to ask you what inspired you to pursue a career in marketing in the first place?

Nadine Leighton 3:26
So it was actually when I was at school, so I was working on a project, our class was kind of divided into two groups. And we both had to develop a project or product, sorry, and launch it to market. And so it being involved in that project, really made me think of marketing as a potential career option for me. I’d always thought I’d be a lawyer. I’d watched like legal programs, and now I want to be a solicitor and I thought it was, like, way more interesting than maybe perhaps it was it looked very glamorous to me, and I knew that you could earn a good salary too. But I think what really stood out for me from that project was really being able to understand the best route to take a product to market, and to encourage people to buy it. And at that time, that’s totally what I understood marketing to be. And it kind of resonated with me as the right kind of career. And something that would interest me and was it kind of fitted the things that I… the skills that I thought I had and where I wanted to go further on.

Carlota Pico 4:33
Okay, sounds like a very entrepreneur type of response, right? Like, you start off with an idea, then you build your MVP, then you market that MVP?

Nadine Leighton 4:44
Most definitely. I mean, I agree. And I think, like for me specifically, as well, um, you know, there’s different… I think marketing…there’s different types of marketers and different aspects of the role that you can do and how you fulfill your skill set. And for me, it is about like, really understanding the product, understanding the customer, how we’re going to sell it, how you make it really engaging and exciting. So all of those things kind of at that stage even as, I don’t know what I was, like 13/14 I was like, okay, if I could do this as a job, I would love to do it. And the other thing is, I always say this to people, but I’m kind of bossy like, I like people to do what I want them to do. And so it’s really interesting to me, what makes people buy things and therefore, those kind of levers that you can pull to to get to get them to be interested in your product or service. But also, like, you know, someone who, who doesn’t know they want a new camera, how do you get them to buy a new camera, right? And I think there’s some people just think marketing is like creative. There’s some science behind it. There’s some analysis, there’s some data, listen, what’s the best route, so I think it’s like, it’s quite interesting. It’s exciting when you meet your achievement or your objective. And I think that’s what I love about it too.

Carlota Pico 6:03
Yeah, definitely. I love how authentic you are. Woman power! Okay, because you are responsible for marketing in the EMEA and also APAC regions, I do want to ask you about the marketing actions that your team takes across each region separately to increase your sales team win rates.

Nadine Leighton 6:27
Yeah, so, I think, and I talk about this more as we talk, I think but like, it’s definitely for me about really take tailoring your marketing to meet the needs of each region. And so although we have a global strategy, so as I said before, you know, I look after these regions, but that’s part of a global go to market strategy. We have to ensure that it’s really relevant, whatever we deliver whatever we set forth with, in terms of the needs of the market and who we’re marketing to, and so that means that we work really closely with the teams that look after that market. Right? Because they know that they’re on the ground. So we have people who sell in AsiaPAC, for example, and obviously EMEA. And so you know, we engage with those in country marketing teams, we consider the right channels, the right market and the audience to achieve the best outcomes. But whatever we do has to reflect those specific needs. And by doing that we help our sales team win because we’re not, you know, I would never suggest a strategy that is just right for one market. It needs to be nuanced to the specific needs of that area or market region, however. And so that’s really important. And so because we’re able to do that, and because we kind of make sure that we understand the different personas and needs market needs, then that’s what helps us win. So making sure that it’s tailored is, yeah, like really key to us being effective.

Carlota Pico 8:02
Content and UX wise, what cultural nuances should a marketer keep in mind when addressing the EMEA region versus the APAC region? For example?

Nadine Leighton 8:13
Yeah, I mean, for me, marketing should, like I said, you know, should always consider how people do business and the channels they use. So I think, you know, an example that’s often referred to around Asia is that in some markets, you know, messaging apps are a really popular way to do business. And if that’s the case, just because you’re based in another region, like you use the use of route to market that works. So you know, if we need to incorporate that into our campaign or for that specific market, you know, we need to use those messaging apps and those tools, then we can’t be siloed in our thinking. And that’s, as I said, you know, that’s really the benefit of understanding your market, speaking to your local teams who may be closer to you—I’m based in London—So that really helps to bring that knowledge and experience that we can then leverage to make sure that, you know, we’re thinking, not just from a UX perspective, but also totally from a route or how we deliver the campaign or what it looks like or how whatever content or platforms we create, to really be focused on the needs of that market and be the right channel so that we are successful in meeting our objectives, or the the outcomes of the campaign.

Carlota Pico 9:35
I love how you’re talking about channels, I used to be a professor of cross cultural communications negotiations at a business school here in Spain. And within my course, I always spoke about the importance of choosing the right channels when it comes to marketing your products overseas, because as you rightly pointed out, for example, we’re looking our Asian market and specifically we’re looking at our Chinese market. We—it’s all about WeChat—whereas in Europe we would never talk about WeChat we would always be talking about traditional social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. And also we’re seeing brands now incorporate TikTok into their strategy. Although in the US President Trump has made it controversial. So, of course, it’s really about understanding your audience, also understanding the politics on the ground. And then again, understanding how your consumers or potential clients actually consume that content and embrace that content.

Nadine Leighton 10:31
I think, you know, I think he wrapped it up this so succinctly, but that’s what makes you successful. Like if you do not do those things, you will not be successful. It’s, it’s to me, it’s black and white—it’s not gray—like, you has to be relevant to your audience, and the market and the channels. And if you don’t do that, that’s when it kind of doesn’t work. And then you kind of ask why, but it’s pretty simple at the start. You have to work those things out before you decide what you’re going to do. I think so often we decide what we’re going to do, not really taking in all of that information, all of the relevant markets that we’re trying to target.

Carlota Pico 11:09
Absolutely anyone within one market there can be sub markets as well. Just because I’m in Spain, doesn’t mean that all companies in Spain are going to act the same way that my company is acting. So I think it’s also really important to zoom in to your potential clients and to really talk to them on a one-to-one level.

Nadine Leighton 11:27
Yeah, segmentation and targeting are so important.

Carlota Pico 11:30
So important.

Nadine Leighton 11:31
You know, it is, you see people talk about like, one to one marketing, and we see that more right with account based marketing and things like that. But I think you can decide to what level you segment you could be one-to-one if that that’s, you know, it makes sense for your business model. But I think yeah, like really thinking about who’s going to buy it, who do I need to speak to? What are the problems they kind of have and then what you know, there’s levers you need to pull to do that that’s…that’s what’s going to make the difference.

Carlota Pico 12:03
I do want to talk about maturity levels because you’re behind EMEA and APAC region marketing, which is very different when it comes to digital transformation. So whereas Europe tends to be very advanced when it comes to b2b corporate standpoint, and within their digital transformation plans, Asia—some markets in Asia—are steps behind, others are much more advanced. So from a marketing standpoint, how do you or would you cater for different marketing maturity levels?

Nadine Leighton 12:35
Yeah, I think I mean, we definitely consider it. I think it’s interesting also, because I’m really marketing to like legal and professional services. And so potentially, those clients may not be as mature as other sectors. You know, for us, it’s not just a matter of region, we also have to consider more broadly. I think that technology…there’s definitely a scale of technology adoption and maturity. And when we think about the audiences that we want to market to, we map them against that scale. And like we talked about before, just around like markets and those segments, we also map them across that scale in terms of like early adopters, maybe, depending on the language used, I know people use this word laggards, which I don’t really like, but I think in this conversation it’s useful for people who might not be, you know, there might be at the end of the scale, they’re not going to, it’s going to take them a while before they transform or adopt. And so in terms of that marketing journey, when you’re thinking about your marketing plan, you have to consider that those challenges you have to overcome, to be, really be able to be successful in your marketing. And so you kind of balance that out by thinking about a couple of different things. So for me, and then I think this is where content can play a really great part is you may actually be educating your potential customers around why they should be where you need them to be, so that you can sell to them. You know, you’re doing that pre market activity. So that could be one way. The other thing that you could be doing is saying, just say what we’re talking about an Asian market, you might have specific segments that you choose who may be more advanced than others. And so you would focus on those as your primary like target audience. And so I think there’s different ways around it, it depends where you want to be if you need to basically educate the market to win, then that may be something that you choose to do, depending on what your outcomes are, or you may kind of just be, we’re not going to engage with that audience, unfortunately, because it’s not going to help us achieve our outcomes and I, both of those have done in, in my time as a marketer.

Carlota Pico 14:53
I’m a big fan of educational tools. I work at a content creation and translation localization company Which is called VeraContent. And it’s the mother of The Content Mix. And oftentimes, I need to educate my potential clients on how important it is for them to localize their content. And what I mean by this is sometimes that what works in Spain will no work necessarily in Latin America, although we speak the same language, because culturally, we’re completely two different markets, continents, everything. And that’s very obvious and a very obvious thing to say to a professional or to potential lead but oftentimes, you just don’t really think about it because you’re like, “Oh, they speak the same language. So of course, I can use the same material.” But no, it’s really important to localize that material so that it’s consumed in the way that you want your, your content to be consumed.

Nadine Leighton 15:49
Yeah—

Carlota Pico 15:50
I do—

Nadine Leighton 15:51
Oh sorry, carry on

Carlota Pico 15:52
Please, go ahead!

Nadine Leighton 15:54
I just wanted to say I think also like at this current time, like COVID-19 is a real change agent. So there are, you know, organizations who have faced limited disruption at this time because they have that technology in place. And so I think over the coming like years, we’re going to see, like we, you know, you were saying around that kind of where the transformation piece, we may see organizations transform more to prevent that. Where are you know, to prevent this way possible, and so that everyone can, you know, we’re in a better place, we wouldn’t have to educate them.

Carlota Pico 16:29
Yeah, I think COVID-19 has also forced us to emphasize a lot more with our audience as well, and to create that human connection, and not necessarily to just sell our products as marketers, because at the end of the day, what do we want to do, we want the person on the other side of the computer to bite on our content and then later on to buy our services or products, etc. But because of COVID-19, we’ve had to emphasize with our potential clients who don’t necessarily have those resources right now to buy what they would have bought 10 months ago. Which does lead me to my next question. Steve Olinski from CMO network published an article on Forbes in 2017, about content and its significance. He said that good content attracts people rather than interrupt them, and that it’s important to center content around your audience rather than around a company, which is why I would like to talk about your market content marketing strategy, or other content marketing strategies that you’ve seen in your previous experiences. So how are you distributing your content and ensuring that it provides your audience with value rather than just like advertising your services?

Nadine Leighton 17:41
Yeah, so I would just say, always think about the type of content that we would like to engage with, right? So there will always be a mix of the content that we create. So and it’s dependent on where your buyer is in their journey. So if they’re top of funnel, I think you’re always going to have more thought leadership content. You’re always going to be trying to build them into your…those nurture campaigns and things like that, versus when they’re either reviewing a solution or service in my, in the role that I work in. In terms of that interruption point, I think, you know, I always think why would someone read this? What value does it bring to them? And then, you know, that’s how we kind of think about when we’re developing our content strategy and our content plan around the kinds of content that we would create, where’s the value of? So the LexisNexis interaction team, we’ve recently published a report confronting the 2020 downturn, and lessons learned by law firm marketing professionals during this time, and that this report really looks at how law firms, marketing teams can navigate—have navigated—previous economic downturns and what they can do now to move forward post COVID-19 and the economic disruption that’s been caused. Now, that’s, you know, that’s not about our product. It is about it is relevant to our audience because we predominantly mark, you know, the people that we engage with our marketing professionals at law firms, but it will help them navigate the future. And firstly, it’s like you were talking about before, you know, COVID-19, we need to be more empathetic, we need to think about where our customers are, we will need to understand them and if they’re ready to buy now we need to be able to engage them. So that’s how we do that. And then in terms of this distribution, you know, we use both owned and third-party channels, different formats. So written and visual, short form versus long form, because we know people engage in different ways. And so like you said, you know, marketing isn’t one size fits all. It’s really kind of understanding the nuances between those different audiences and then making sure that the content that we create around the theme or around the floor, and how we distribute that in the right way to engage those different audiences and then on the channels that are most relevant to them.

Carlota Pico 20:04
Okay, Nadine, that LexisNexis report just made me really excited. Can you tell us about what we learned or what we should have learned during Coronavirus times as marketing professionals?

Nadine Leighton 20:18
I think definitely, in terms of this report, I think to be more authentic right. I think that’s one thing that we’ve all learned. I think that we’ve seen brands be a lot more authentic. I think for law firm marketers, especially, they potentially weren’t using some of the channels that other marketers may have been using, maybe not so much webinars and thinking about how they can engage people in a digital format. I think a lot of the marketing they would have done would have thought about like face to face marketing, and a lot of like, you know, like that one-to-one, but in a very kind of in-person engagement. And so to think about that, differently, I think they’ve had to think about different tools. But I think some of the things that we’re all going to have to be thinking about is how to be more segmented, how to be more targeted, how to really think about who’s going to buy from us now, who’s going to be challenged? How is our market going to change? And we all I think, I’ve always worked in a way that is, you know, you have quarterly plans, and you’re always planning and reviewing your plans. I think, you know, it’s come, I didn’t even kind of understand that people didn’t work in that way. I’ve spoken to different people and they’re like, so we had an annual marketing strategy. And yeah, we never looked at it. And I don’t think anyone could work in that way. We’re having to be a lot more responsive. And so I think that is one of the big changes that we talked about in this report is that everybody now is going to have to be more agile and more flexible and more responsive to market leads in their marketing activity.

Carlota Pico 21:57
Okay, is that report available online?

Nadine Leighton 22:00
Yeah, so you can find it. If you go to interaction.com there was a link to it, I think on our front page, but yeah.

Carlota Pico 22:07
Excellent. Well, I’m sure your advertising team will love that little shout out. Okay, our last question of today’s interview will be some of the practical example of a marketing project that you’re particularly proud of, its results, and how you made that happen. And the objective of this question is to really put some of the theory that we’ve been speaking about today into practical examples. And I, although I did say this was our last question, it’s actually our last question before our rapid-fire set of questions, which would be your recommendation to our audience.

Nadine Leighton 22:47
I guess, one project that I’m really proud of is something called the Retail Agility Challenge, which is like… kind of… what is that? I guess, I’ve worked in roles around digital transformation, especially around cloud technology. And so this campaign, which was a mainly content campaign, was looking at how you could engage people who probably would not be interested in cloud technology with how it could transform their organization. And I had worked at the time at PwC, an organization that obviously engaged with people from lots of different industries. And so it was really about thinking about how could we promote this new offer? Obviously, how could you generate leads and opportunities with clients? And how could you do that in an interesting, informative way? If I talk to you about cloud technology and how it can transform your business, I don’t think that’s the most interesting topic, you know, even as someone who marketed it. What we actually did was create a pop-up shop where people could come and visit, be walked around an experience that showed how cloud technology can make the difference, improve service, deliver better customer experience, be more efficient and overcome those operational challenges that many stores have. I think it was something that was relatable to anyone, whether you were a retailer, whether you had, most of us have been to stores—it was a department store. So it was something that was relatable. And then we could use the content that was created from that. So we created videos, blogs, a playbook, you know, lots of different pieces of content from that one pop up experience. And it was so you know, it was really well received. I could call remember we had, you know, many firms visit the experience where people come from overseas to come to the experience, to come and see like how it could truly transform their organization and then obviously, we can see that pipeline in terms of opportunities. So I think, for me, you know, we…we understood that we had a big market, but we really dialed down on one idea, we really thought about an idea that was relevant to all of those different audiences that could meet the different needs that we had both internal external, we wanted to educate our internal teams as well as our external clients. And we wanted to bring it to life in an exciting way, and be able to utilize that content. And I think it’s all of those things like we talked about, like really thinking about what we want to do what we need to achieve those routes to market, but also making it super relevant and engaging and exciting for someone so that they want to consume that content. And then you can move them further down your funnel to talk to them about the nitty gritty or the technical aspects. We weren’t really trying to focus on that there. We were trying to really excite and engage them.

Carlota Pico 25:54
That’s so exciting. So it was a pop-up store about cloud technology?

Nadine Leighton 25:59
Yeah. But it was like, it was like a department store. So you came to the store, there was like… It looked like a store, right? So it had like a short window of mannequins in the door, and then you would walk in. And there would be things like—so things that now are pretty common, right? But you know, for instance, if I can’t get something in a store, sometimes you can use a QR code or you can and then it will say to you, it’s not available here, and it’s available somewhere else. So it was saying those kinds of things, it was showing how you manage logistics, how you manage, like, I don’t know, you know, your global… you have a store with a great business with a global footprint. How do we make sure all the windows in the stores all across the world are changed, because you’ve got this big campaign or, or product you want to launch? How simple could that be using technology to do it? So they were the kind of challenges that lots of businesses face. And especially now when we talk about COVID-19, right, everyone knows about the operational challenges that business have had, but cloud technology made it like really seamless to be able to overcome those. And so it brought it to life in a way that was, you know, I think was engaging and I you know, I think the feedback and also the number of people that attended made it so. Who has people fly in just for an hour to come and see like a pop -up shop in your in your building? Like, I think it’s unheard of.

Carlota Pico 27:25
No. And also talk about converting a really boring topic—sorry—into a really exciting… exciting plan and really exciting, just project.

Nadine Leighton 27:38
Yeah, I think it’s something I’ll always look back on fondly as something that I worked on and is always it always makes me think around, you know, how can you make something that may not be the most exciting thing, actually be really interesting and engaging and that’s about really understanding the clients because the people that we were speaking to were not technologists. So they didn’t really want to understand the technology. They want—they needed to be able to go back into their organizations and say, this will make…this is what we could do. And we were able to show them that. And so that’s why it worked really well.

Carlota Pico 28:16
Oh, wow, I wish a pop up store like that still existed, because I could definitely, I could definitely use some of the education that I’m sure you offer through that store. I’m not a technology expert either. But I constantly consume technology and just really offering that type of content through a way that I can definitely engage with would be extremely valuable. Moving into our set of rapid fire questions, because unfortunately, we are limited in time. We are coming towards the end of our interview. To get the section started off I’d love to learn about your source of inspiration. So an influencer or business role model?

Nadine Leighton 28:58
So I think as a marketeer, like Bozoma who has just become CMO at Netflix, she just kind of is someone that resonates with me and I kind of look up to and I follow her career. I love the fact that she’s so authentic, but also she’s just really done some amazing things and worked in some amazing places. So, yeah, that’s definitely someone I’d recommend.

Carlota Pico 29:24
Yeah, I agree. I totally admire her as well. What about a book or a publication?

Nadine Leighton 29:30
So a book I read a couple of years ago, and I still always mentioned it to people, whether they’re marketers or not, I use it. People that say to me, they want to set up a business I, I suggest it to them, it’s called Marketing in the Groundswell and basically, it’s all about how by really engaging your customer set, you can really understand what their needs are, and then develop products and services that meet them. And basically, it’s like a cycle of marketing because you keep on listening to them, you get the insights, and then you know, it just goes on round and around and round.

Carlota Pico 30:01
Excellent. Okay, and last but not least, an event or a hashtag that you would like to recommend.

Nadine Leighton 30:09
That’s a difficult one, I think at the moment, anything about equality, and how brands can do that. So what I’ve been following a lot is the #PullUporShutUp hashtag. And that’s all around how beauty brands are being asked to show that they support you know, one of the common themes of this time around equality. And I think it’s a really good one, actually, because it’s interesting to see how about brands respond, and I think that marketers can learn a lot from it around authenticity, but also about, you know, we don’t understand everything, we can actually say, you know, we haven’t got this right yet, but we’re working on it.

Carlota Pico 30:54
That’s excellent advice. Okay, Nadine, thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix and for sharing your insights with us and also for those really great tips.

Nadine Leighton 31:05
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Carlota Pico 31:08
The pleasure has been ours. And thank you everyone for listening in. 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 week. So keep on tuning it. Thanks again. Have a fantastic weekend and see you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai