Episode 193 / Kristina Lagerstedt / Wolters Kluwer / Marketing Director Scandinavia
Podcast: Becoming More Human in B2B Marketing
Before anything, marketers need to remember that they are addressing a human being – essentially engaging in “business to human” marketing, Kristina Lagerstedt’s Shiny New Object. Kristina advises all marketing professionals to focus on understanding the end consumers, and especially how they speak and what matters to them. In all industries and settings, this helps create actual relationships.
Kristina Lagerstedt is the Marketing Director for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting Scandinavia. She loves using data and logical thinking in equal measure to creativity and the arts, so she found marketing to be “the magic land” for her career. By focusing on the person at the end of the message, she believes marketing can be elevated and personalised.
Focus on humans
When putting together a marketing campaign, regardless of whether you are targeting B2B or B2C customers, you should remember that there is a person who receives the output. This means they need to be understood and to understand you easily. Marketers should find out how their target audience speaks, what is important to them and how they like to be reached.
Buying is emotional
Switching focus to more human marketing is more effective because – in all scenarios – a buying decision is primarily emotional. People will decide on products or brands based on how these made them feel and on how well they’re treated by the sales or service staff.
This is why personalisation is also important, since a generic marketing message doesn’t show consumers that you care about them. In B2B, the language of advertising needs to target a decision maker and not a generic company to be effective.
Simple is better
When it comes to good, effective copy, Kristina believes that being simple and “to the point” is always better. She thinks marketers need to stay away from complex words, overly long sentences and too much jargon (especially as the latter can be generic and feel completely hollow to the person you’re pitching to).
Brands who do this really well include Oatly, who don’t speak so much about their own product and don’t waste marketing copy on details that consumers won’t pay attention to. Instead, their advertising speaks clearly and to the point, to the human.
Hear more about how Kristina thinks the “business to human” approach should work, as well the worst and best marketing advice she’s ever received, on the latest podcast episode
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Kristina Lagerstedt 0:00
Make the customers curious and educate and delight and inspire I mean, I think human being behind the screen are receiving your email or seeing your ad. So that's kind of what it means for business to human.
Tom Ollerton 0:17
This week, we are brought to you by Attest. Attest is a consumer research platform that enables brands to make customer understanding a competitive advantage with continuous insights by combining unparalleled speed and data quality with on demand research guidance, the platform makes it simple and fast to uncover opportunities with consumer data and grow without guesswork.
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative and this is a weekly podcast where I have the privilege and the pleasure of interviewing our marketing industry's leaders about their vision for the future of our industry, I'm on a call with Kristina Lagerstedt, who is marketing director of Wolters Kluwer tax and accounting Scandinavia. Kristina, for anyone who doesn't know who you are, and what you do, can you give the audience a bit of a background?
Unknown Speaker 1:15
So loosely and first of all, thank you, Tom, for having me, I'm super excited to be here and be your guest and to discuss the wonders of marketing with you. And as you just presented, I'm Kristina, I am a marketing director for Wolters Kluwer tax and accounting in Scandinavia. And we're a global leader in Information Services in solutions in health, legal, finance, compliance, and many other sectors. And I'm still pretty new in my role, I joined the company just before the summer, before that, I spent the last 10 years in different marketing leader roles, working in many different industries from startup to scale up to global giants. So my background is pretty broad, I would say. And often people ask me, you know, how did I get myself into marketing, and both my parents have PhDs in natural science subjects. So I was pretty good at math and using data and logical thinking. And there was a bit of expectation for me to go in the same direction. But I was creative. As a child, I like to express myself through creativity. I did dance classes, played the piano, the flute, and then you know, liked to write stories and poems. So for me, the magic land was marketing. So I can use my math skills and logical thinking and also be creative. So I went to university to become a marketing professional, and I never regretted it.
Tom Ollerton 2:34
So in that varied career, and with that interesting mindset of creative and logical, what are the bad recommendations that you hear in our industry that you think? No, that's not?
Unknown Speaker 2:49
I think from my side, it is that you need to have a background from the same industry when you're applying for a new marketing job. Because I often see that as a requirement in job ads. And in my past, I was rejected a few times in interview processes, because I hadn't worked in the same industry before. And I think in our in some roles, like specific technical knowledge limited industries may be crucial, or you need to bring your client network into the business. But when working within marketing, I think the most important skill is to master the art of marketing. So if I, for example, look for social media expert, I won't refuse a candidate based solely on the fact that they previously posted recent stories about you know, the industry they previously worked in, I want them to understand social media, the industry and the product portfolio, they will learn. And I also think if you like narrowed down your pool of candidates to people in the same industry, you will have the same group of professionals just like moving between roles and companies. And, you know, then everyone is asking why nothing new ever happens in their industry? And why are we doing the same old. So to bring innovation and new ways of thinking and new ways to produce like social media, advertising events, or whatever you need to consult people have done it differently. So that's how we get creativity and innovation in your marketing department. And, you know, that's also something I really appreciated with Wolters Kluwer, that they focus on this diversity diversity. So my marketing team is quite diverse, you know, when it comes to gender, age, and background and team members that have been there for 30 years in the tax and accounting industry, and then others like me, who just joined and that kind of gives an advantage. I mean, it simply does challenge status quo. When I think about how to do things differently than our competitors. And everybody has different backgrounds and way of doing successful marketing and paths. And I haven't had two jobs in the same industry. I've always switched, you know, between industries and by that I brought new ideas and way of thinking into my new employer and the tax and accounting industry that I am now it's completely new to me and I find that super exciting and by that you know, bringing in, you're learning from my past experience. So I'm saying no to having, you know, requiring industry background when you're applying for marketing jobs.
Tom Ollerton 5:09
Well, you might have just got yourself a whole new slew of CVs with that comment, so we shall see.
So, that's an excellent hiring and team building bit of advice. But I'd like to get to some marketing advice specifically now, what is your top marketing tip that you find yourself sharing most often?
Unknown Speaker 5:32
I would say that we are not the customer. That's something I've heard. So I mean, don't assume that your customers will behave like you, or like the same things like you do. Because I think let's face it, I think many marketers are kind of at risk of making this mistake. And I'm certainly guilty of it from time to time, you know, things like we shouldn't go on TikTok because none of my friends use TikTok or, of course, everybody has Apple Pay because that's, you know, how me and my colleagues pay for our daily Starbucks coffee. So it's easy to kind of, you know, assume that it's like you, people using the product like you do or acting like you do. So, of course, marketing is like somewhat based on gut feeling where your gut takes decision based on previous experience with, you know, what the target group reports you read, and so on. But I don't think you should never expect your customers to behave like you and your friends or like a group of marketing experts do, so really use data, ask your customers, observe, understand that they have different needs and behaviors and preferences like you. So you know, using segmentation, customer journeys, data insights, and just ask the target group and for sure, this is a no need use best practice. But I think we all need to remind ourselves of it from time to time because it's easy to use ourselves as like the reference group.
Tom Ollerton 6:51
So moving on now to your shiny new object, which we've never had before. I don't think. But it is business to human. What does that mean? Explain it to me in the audience. I'm keen to find out more.
Unknown Speaker 7:06
Well, we often talk about like business to consumers and business to business and how marketing difference between those two, but I think we should just stop separating the two of them and start talking about more about business to human or B2H. So instead of focusing, if you are selling to a consumer or business, we are targeting a human being so focused on the customer's needs and pain points, rather than targeting a generic consumer or company. I mean, you still base your decisions on more things, some product features or price like, do I like the salesperson, or is the customer service helpful. Do they speak to me in a way I understand? Does this company inspire me to bring out value, am I engaged? So, I mean, when I first heard about business to human, it was like, you know, finding the answer to what I've been preaching for many years that we should not differentiate between business to consumer business to business marketing so much, because, you know, we're selling to human in the end, and during my years as a marketing professional, I realized that b2b marketing is sometimes considered, you know, less exciting than b2c marketing. And, you know, why is that and I think it's because we sometimes forget that human part when we target our marketing efforts to another business, you know, marketing becomes facts and figures and features, but the thing is, so many decisions are emotional, also in b2b. And you know, how can they connect with your brand if they don't feel anything? So B2B customers also want engaging content to be part of their buying journey and it doesn't have to be you know, it doesn't mean it has to be funny or extremely expensive, but make the customers curious and educate and delight and inspire I mean, It's a human being behind the screen receiving your email or seeing your ad. So that's kind of what it means, the business to human.
Tom Ollerton 9:03
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MAD//Fest. Whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect the distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from MAD//fest events. You'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
So who is your business to human hero? Who do you look up to in the industry? Who thinks getting this right?
Unknown Speaker 9:47
That's a good question. Hmm. I think if we're looking to compete with other industry, I think Oatly is a classic, I guess. They really speak to people in, you know, in a human way, they don't talk so much about their brand or about the product or about features. They talk about. They talk to people in a very simple way and things that are on their mind right right now, and usually kind of in that in a funny way. So I think they are quite good at it. I will say.
Tom Ollerton 10:24
You know, it's interesting for you to say that, because we've had Michael Lee on the podcast, a couple of times, he's the creative director at Oatly and he always gets really wound up at the point. It's just like, marketing is just a human talking to a human. That's all you're doing. So that copy that you write on your poster or on your social posts or email, on the website, you're just the human talking to another human, but yet we put an industry in the way.
Unknown Speaker 10:47
So maybe it's already doing it, the business to human or human to human assets.
Tom Ollerton 10:52
They will be very pleased to hear you say that. Potentially even more difficult question, Who do you think does business to human well, in what would be considered the b2b space? Or is it no one? If no one springs to mind, is that part of the issue? And I was just reading through a list of lots of different marketing startups like competitors to us to a to a degree for an event that we're running to get some speakers and it was so interesting to read through everyone's like, one slide description of who they are and what they do. It reminded me of a comment that I heard on a podcast recently, there's the guy from innocent, I think he said that all tones of voices on LinkedIn are the same. I mean, that's not entirely true. But I'd say probably 90% of the posts that you read on LinkedIn are all have that kind of same tone of voice, you know, it's very risk averse. Let's not offend anyone kind of way. So I'm really interested to know who you think who's solved that from a business to human perspective, from a traditional b2b background?
Unknown Speaker 11:51
I think that's actually a good question. Of course, I would like to say my own.
Tom Ollerton 11:57
But you can, by all means, do it. You're on the podcast! Could you give me an example of when you've nailed business to human?
Kristina Lagerstedt 12:05
Yeah, I think what we really tried to do is to talk in, you know, to say, not having one, not to have the same tone of voice like everybody has to say this, I think this will say I think we make it free to, to use other words to kind of bring us the same words like everybody does for you speak in a very generic way because we hoped to reach a lot of generic you know, people like this is the generic company, this is what the generic company cares about, instead of thinking but in the end is just one person I'm targeting, you know, maybe the buyer or the reader so I think but I have a struggle really finding that perfect b2b company who does it really well. And I think also when it comes to business to human it's like broader than just marketing campaigns, it can also be like, the way the sales people approach you or the way their service and support approach you, you know, so it's kind of you feel like I'm, I'm like, they care about me as a person, just like, I'm just not the company contacting them right when I call in their support or whatever, but it's a good thing. I should have thought about are we good?
Tom Ollerton 13:22
One example of a brand I think does it quite well is MailChimp. They sponsored the cereal podcast many years ago. And I don't know if you've ever listened to cereal podcast, but the guy who was sort of wrongly, apparently wrongly convicted, has been released from jail. And so they they followed up with this podcast like seven eight, maybe yes, 8 years later, probably. So there hadn't been a podcast since then and it played this MailChimp advert.
Kristina Lagerstedt 13:45
That's fun.
Tom Ollerton 13:46
That's, that's my view of what a really nice business to human type of ad is right? Like it's natural. It's not in the tone of you know, it's not a sort of classic ad. So what are the challenges with B2H? Right. So I'm also a business to business market. I'm trying very hard myself for my own business, Automated Creative, to be B2H but it's so hard. It's so hard when we've got reasons to believe in automated creative, we want our audience to hear and I want to get them over as few words as possible in a way that makes it sound different to our competitors, right. Like, that's absolutely what part of my role is, but it's so difficult to be human. So what are the steps that you take to make sure that you're being B2H in B2B?
Kristina Lagerstedt 14:49
I agree. I think it's hard because you kind of afraid of losing that professionality right. You still want to kind of be a professional business and it's just you Just because your target group likes, you know, cute cats, you don't want to kind of use cute cats in the adverts, because it has nothing to do with your, your business, right? So you kind of have to stay relevant. So I think it's kind of goes back to what I mentioned before, like my best marketing tips to kind of really look at understanding the consumer, right, and behaviors and how, how do they speak? And even how do they what kind of words do they use what's on their mind and try to speak in the same way. And I think also, when you might think an advert or when you're writing a an article is like, these words we normally use, does this say anything or tell us anything? You know, when you maybe use these buzzwords, right. Does this speak to a way that our.. Do they speak like this at the office? Right? I think that's the way maybe to, to start and really to understand what's really on their mind. You know, what really, interview maybe customers, doing the segmentation? And truly understanding I think that's the way but otherwise, but I think the simple like, well, the first thing is I think it's copy using copy that's so strong, strong, to, to master business to human, I think simple copies tell it as it is. Don't use complicated words, or overly long sentences or what's there actually, you know, often it's like, do you want to maximize your impact while minimizing your efforts or something like that is like, what does it truly mean? Right? Does it mean anything? And really be more clear on that. I think that's one way of being more human, then I think it's your approach in general, like when you meet people, when you go to customer meetings, when you like, the way you approach people, the way you speak to people, the tone you're using, you know, make that more human. But I agree can sound a bit like a buzzword. And like being human like, Okay, I say how?
Tom Ollerton 14:57
So how do you get around it when your customers are using the same BS you are? Like I think about my meetings with some of our clients, you know, they definitely use acronyms and buzzwords and all of that stuff. Like it's almost the language that we create to talk to each other. So how do you get around the fact that your audience, not inarticulate, but as as buzzworthy as you are?
Kristina Lagerstedt 17:38
Good thing, but if they are using the buzzwords, maybe that's how to speak to them, as well, right? They're using the same buzzwords in a meeting or talking in the same way, I guess. You just have to speak in the same manner. But then we're almost going into like a revolution, like revolutionising how to speak in the food industry. But I think quite often we speak in one way and our customers in a complete and other way. I think that's a risk. You know, that's why maybe you have to say you see all these generic posts on LinkedIn, but neither will be a thumb stopper for you because nothing speaks to you in a way.
Tom Ollerton 18:23
So unfortunately, we are at time now. So if someone wanted to reach out to you and talk to you about business to human, where would you like them to do it? And what makes the perfect outreach message to you?
Kristina Lagerstedt 18:35
I would say probably on LinkedIn, so my name is not that common, I don't think it would be too hard to find. And I think, be just genuine, you know, be curious personality, that's usually what catches my eye catches my interest, at least. And you know, it's all about being human right?
Tom Ollerton 18:56
What a lovely way to leave it. Kristina, thank you so much for your time.
Kristina Lagerstedt 18:59
Thank you.
Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.