How To Increase Marketing Performance On A Budget - With Charlie Whyman

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Charlie Whyman.

A bike collision with a lazy driver turned her into a better leader.

Leaving an engineering degree to make and sell Sardinian Olive Oil sparked her interest in marketing and...

doing sales demonstrations down the world's deepest gold mines made her realise that you don't have to have a marketing degree or wads of cash to be really good at it.

Our guest is B2B Marketing Strategist Charlie Whyman who works with businesses to increase their marketing performance and confidence with an OTTERly effective and simple marketing plan.

Why you've got to check out Charlie's episode:

- Discover how Charlie works with businesses who are typically doing their own marketing and working hard to get themselves out there.

- How marketing is typically the biggest challenge for these businesses, and without marketing how they are left as the best kept secret in their industry.

- Learn how this negatively impacts sales and how they are unable to create any consistency when it comes to cashflow and revenue, and what impact this can have on your mindset as a business owner.

- Understand what Charlie means when she talks about marketing injuries and how difficult these can be to recover from for business owners.

- Why you should keep your marketing simple, based on clear goals and clarity around what you want to achieve.

- How you can get FREE access to Charlie's quiz for business owners to review how you perform in each different area of sales and marketing in your business.

Resources / Links

https://www.curiousmarketingquiz.com

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Charlie Wyman, who is the founder of curious B2B marketing and is a business to business marketing strategist. So, Charlie, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Charlie Whyman: Thank you very much for having me.

Tom Bailey: I really appreciate you being here and just out of interest for me and the listeners, whereabouts in the world are you?

Charlie Whyman: I'm in, Nottingham in the UK.

Tom Bailey: Thank you so much. I went to university in Nottingham, actually. So, I know it very well and especially a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Charlie has a background in engineering, marketing, and sales, and now works with businesses to increase their marketing performance and with an utterly effective and simple marketing plan. The title for today's episode is How To Increase Marketing Performance On a Budget. And Charlie is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So, no pressure at all. Question number one is who are your ideal clients?

Charlie Whyman: My ideal clients businesses that are predominantly doing their own marketing and wanting to, to get themselves out.

Tom Bailey: Great. Perfect. Nice and succinct. I love it. What's the biggest challenge they typically face?

Charlie Whyman: Marketing. So yeah, my target audience typically are the best kept secret in their industry. So, I work with kind of purpose driven companies that are targeting other businesses. So, in the B2B space and they are really good at what they do. They've got a great product, great service, but nobody knows about them.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. And it's so important and critical, like you said, to get yourself out there and known in your industry. If they are the best kept secret, what is ultimately the impact this will have on them or their business?

Charlie Whyman: Well, the biggest impact is sales. So, a lot of businesses typically driven on referrals. So, feast or famine leads and sales come in fits and starts. And there's no kind of consistency or consistent approach when it comes to marketing. Which means that you can't predict your sales. It's not consistent. And there's a lot of certainty that kind of creeps into the business, which then breeds some like negative thinking or lack of confidence. And also like you just don't have a plan. You end up wasting mental energy on the things that you, you don't really need to be wasting mental energy on. So, there's a few impacts on that.  

Tom Bailey: Got it. And do you find that they tend to jump from marketing strategy to marketing strategy and to try and find that golden nugget?

Charlie Whyman: Yeah, well, I'm doing a research project at the moment that I want some funding from the university of Nottingham to look into the attitudes of business owners, towards marketing, to try and sort of dive into this a little bit further. But what I find is that a lot of businesses or too many businesses are experiencing marketing injuries. So, you know, feeling let down by marketers, by agencies, losing money, going down the wrong path, feeling cheated. You know how it is? I think we've all been there, and one of my goals is to, to stop businesses from experiencing these marketing injuries and helping them enjoy marketing. Because, you know, at the end of the day, they've got into business because they're excited about helping customers solve particular problems. So, if we can bundle that excitement into what it is that they're doing and help them communicate that in a really simple way, that resonates with the people that they want to work with the most, then that's. The magic happens, so to speak.

Tom Bailey: Absolutely fantastic. So, if anybody listening that does want to get more excited and enjoy marketing, what's that one piece of advice that you'd give them to help them get started?

Charlie Whyman: I keep it super simple. A lot of people tend to over-complicate marketing or think that it's something much bigger than it actually is, but, you know, keep it really, really simple. Just saying, what are you trying to achieve? What is the quickest and easiest way of doing it?

Tom Bailey: Yeah, I love that. And, and like you said, sometimes we try and put in place marketing strategies, which may be seven figure strategies, but you know, when we starting a business, we don't necessarily need that funnel or that, but really complex marketing strategy to begin with.

Charlie Whyman: I hate funnels.

Tom Bailey: Okay, fantastic. And the next question for me today is what is one valuable resource that you can offer or share with people to help them solve this?

Charlie Whyman: So, the resource is a quiz that I have on my website. So, you just go to curiousmarketingquiz.com and basically I'll ask you a series of questions on how you feel you perform in each different area of sales marketing. So, what it will do is it'll generate a personalized report and a score so you can understand where you need to prioritize. That will make the biggest difference in your business and give you the biggest return. Right.

Tom Bailey: Excellent. I'm just curious. Where did, where did you get this word curious in all of your marketing? Where did that come from?

Charlie Whyman: Well, I was that kid. I went to a school that were being curious was a bad thing. So, I used to get told off for asking loads of questions. Yeah. If I look back to all of the successes that I've had in my life and my career all then as a result of being curious and, you know, I've done some incredible things. I have been down the world's deepest mine, I've, you know, sort of organized conferences and platinum minds. I've traveled around the world. I've done loads of really cool things, but just because I've been like, oh, there's an opportunity there. I'm going to ask questions and say so yeah, just being curious, it's a super power.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, yeah. Next question for me today. And this one is about yourself. So, you've had lots of different experiences. What would you say is one of your greatest either mistakes or failures that you've made either in life or business and what did you learn?

Charlie Whyman: I don't really see anything as a failure, only a learning opportunity. And it sounds very cliche, but it's always, always learnings in everything. But I think it's that, you know, periods of not believing in myself and having to rely on other people to remind me how good I am at certain things it's not to do with ego. So, I think. Just a learning point is to always believe in yourself because more often than not, we know exactly what we need to do.We know exactly where we want to go. We've just got to trust in the process and trust in us.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, that's so important. And you know, you mentioned it briefly there, but surrounding yourself with people that can, you know, support you along the way as well is, is also critical in business. Yeah. And the last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked that also brings some great value to that audience?

Charlie Whyman: Should have asked me, what is that otter doing behind me?  

Tom Bailey: I can see two otters behind you actually, what is that?

Charlie Whyman: So, otter is my framework and it was built as a way to help people and businesses avoid those marketing injuries I talked about. So, it starts with O which is objectives then goes on to teach. Tools. So you know what tools you need to achieve your objectives T training. So, you know, where the gaps in your skills, knowledge, experience, and confidence lie, E expectations really important and R review, always schedule time to review, find out what's working, what's not working and optimize and improve.

Tom Bailey: I love that. Fantastic. And if any business owner needs help with that process, I'm assuming they can reach out to you to find that little.

Charlie Whyman: Yeah, absolutely best way to contact me is through LinkedIn or via my website. Curious B2B marketing.com.

Tom Bailey: Amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much, Charlie. And also thank you so much again for coming along today and sharing such great value with our audience.

Charlie Whyman: You're very welcome. Great to be here.