Who is Catrina?
Catrina Clulow is a seasoned business consultant renowned for her meticulous approach to market segmentation and customer persona development. With a focus on empowering her clients to achieve precise targeting, Catrina advocates for an in-depth understanding of potential customers by creating detailed personas. She encourages businesses to go beyond surface-level insights by identifying characteristics such as age, job titles, earning potential, and qualifications. By understanding where personas gather information—be it on social media platforms like Threads or X—and their roles within decision-making units, Catrina helps companies tailor their messages effectively. Her strategic guidance enables businesses to position their products successfully, ensuring they meet the unique needs of users, budget holders, and technical advisers alike. Through her expertise, Catrina Clulow has become a trusted advisor for companies striving to refine their target market strategies.
Key Takeaways
00:00 Need detailed client personas for targeted messaging.
05:59 Technical experts struggle with effective communication skills.
08:33 Free resource for identifying target customers available.
11:59 Katrina provides foundational insights for impactful change.
14:51 10 minutes boosted their order without cost.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at https://TCA.fyi/newsletter
Find out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguest
Subscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcast
Help us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!
Here's how you can bring your business to THE next level:
If you are a business owner currently turning over £/$10K - £/$50K per month and want to grow to £/$100K - £/$500k per month download my free resource on everything you need to grow your business on a single page :
It's a detailed breakdown of how you can grow your business to 7-figures in a smart and sustainable way
https://scientificvaluebuildingmachine.online/
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
marketing executive, fractional marketing director, small businesses, medium sized businesses, international technology marketing, start-up technology businesses, tech founder led, ideal customer, marketing services, target market, decision making unit, engineering side, defining client, marketing budget, marketing journey, commercial side, technical adviser, marketing budget effectively, technology sector, customer experience, verbiage explanation, product marketing, promotional aspects, marketing process, sales process optimization, software as a service, order completion, purchase process, buyer drop-off, marketing foundations.
SPEAKERS
Catrina Clulow, Stuart Webb
Stuart Webb [00:00:31]:
Hi, and welcome back to It's Not Rocket Science, 5 questions over, coffee. This is my coffee, which I have in front of me. I shall need this today to keep me, caffeinated. I'm here, and I'm delighted to be joined by Katrina Clulo. Katrina is a, marketing, executive and and fractional marketing, director for small businesses, mid medium sized businesses. She's got over 30 years of experience in international technology marketing. So I'm really looking forward to having a discussion with Katrina about how she helps those small and medium sized businesses really make a difference and understand how to use their marketing budget effectively. So welcome to the podcast, Katrina.
Catrina Clulow [00:01:14]:
Many thanks, Stuart. Glad to be here.
Stuart Webb [00:01:17]:
Terrific. So, Katrina, let's start by, the obvious question. So to to who is the sort of, ideal customer that you are trying to help with your marketing services?
Catrina Clulow [00:01:29]:
Yeah. My ideal client tends to be start up small technology businesses. That's why I've got my 30 years experience. They're typically between seed and series a, and they are typically a tech founder led. So on the engineering side, they're very well defined. But on the more commercial side, they find they have an issue really defining who their ideal client is.
Stuart Webb [00:01:55]:
Mhmm.
Catrina Clulow [00:01:55]:
They don't have the budget for full time CMO. They may be flirting with the idea of a fractional CMO. But at the time I start to work with them, they typically start off with a target market of everyone or all b to b businesses, and that is just not gonna give them the knowledge of the hurdles that their clients face and they won't know where to place the messages or the type of language to use. So it's those companies that are just starting out with their on their marketing journey.
Stuart Webb [00:02:29]:
It's a it's a it's a common problem, isn't it, Katrina? Too many people think they could be all things to all people, and yet Yeah. Effectively, what they're doing is they're diluting their marketing budget by throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that some of it sticks. And Yeah. You know, I know from, I know from from from experience that, you know, spaghetti, unless it's properly cooked, doesn't stick at all, or, you end up in a situation where it's just a mess and you can't actually work out what you're supposed to be doing. So it is a it is a problem to try and market to everybody, which too few people recognize as a problem and think of it as a strength.
Catrina Clulow [00:03:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it as you say, it just dilutes everything. They just really need to get into the nitty gritty of who they're targeting. And I tend to suggest to my clients that they really go down into detail as in the so far as that they'll actually give a name to the persona. And once they've got that name, they can visualize in their minds, they know their age range, their job titles, their earning potential, their qualifications. Do they are they on threads? Are they on x? Are they on blue skies? You know, where are they sitting? Where are they getting their information from? What are the main issues that they face? And where do they sit in that decision making unit? Are they a user, a budget holder, technical adviser? Because everybody needs slightly different messages so that you can get your product in in front of them and successfully ordered. So a lot of companies don't go into enough detail on building these ideal clients.
Stuart Webb [00:04:19]:
And it's so important to understand the language they use as well, isn't it? Otherwise, you're talking to them in a language which they don't recognize. They they don't recognize themselves in the way that you're they're with the way that you are projecting to them.
Catrina Clulow [00:04:32]:
Yeah. And I've consistently said even when I was working as an IT reseller back in 19 nineties, I remember turning around to the MD and saying, look, I translate your technical speak into finance director speak. I make it more commercial. They understand it because if you just do go off with your technical jargon, they switch off, you've lost the sale. Actually, work out how you're making their lives easier, how you're making their business more profitable, they're going to listen, they're going to invest. So, yeah, there's a lot of that translation needs to happen, especially in the technology sector from bits and bytes into what that actually means. Nobody really cares if you've written the back end in c plus plus or Python or whatever. Yeah.
Catrina Clulow [00:05:30]:
They just wanna know that it's gonna do the job that you say it's gonna do. And you so that's why you really need to know your ideal clients inside out.
Stuart Webb [00:05:41]:
And and what are the things that you found that these business owners that you were speaking to, these these founders, these excellent engineers that you come across that that are they try to do for themselves and have somehow failed to manage to make make real until you've you you come look up come along and help them.
Catrina Clulow [00:05:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. I tend to find because my background's really weird. K? My first degree is in German. That's an arty farty subject, isn't it? My master's is in computing. It's like, okay. That's a sciency person. And I tend to find that those that are the technical don't necessarily have the skill set to do the the verbiage, to do that ex explanation because they understand it inside out, but they don't know how to put that across and that's, a bit of a a bit of an issue and that's why they need somebody or they're too close, too up close to the what they're dealing with that they forget to take the step back and see it from their customer's point of view, because they get so down in the dirt making sure that the tech's working, they forget to take that step back to work out how they're actually gonna take this to market.
Catrina Clulow [00:07:11]:
Brilliant.
Stuart Webb [00:07:12]:
Katrina, I think you've got a a a an offer that you've you've made available to people watching us that that's gonna help them with this, Yeah. This problem. And that's to understand who it is that they're trying to work with. And and as you say, the the incredible value behind actually understanding who it is you're talking to and and what the solution that you have for them so that you can explain this in their language is is is the basis of all of marketing.
Catrina Clulow [00:07:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. And so the, URL that's flying across the screen at the moment, people go there. That's a PDF downloadable workbook that actually takes people through step by step. Some bits are b to c related, some bits are b to b related. There is one page which is specifically for technology companies, but you do all these relevant sections for you and so it ends up so that in your head, you'll know that you're actually marketing to Katie and Steve, but the other campaigns out there for for Ricky and James or whatever. So it is it's there. Free of charge.
Catrina Clulow [00:08:26]:
Go download it. What have you got to lose? It'll help you walk you through that process.
Stuart Webb [00:08:33]:
And I'll just give you the URL, which will be in the show notes for this, for this for this podcast, but that's www.cutthrough, and that's c u t t h r o u g h dot marketing slash ideal hyphen customer hyphen profile. So that's www.cutthrough.marketingidealcustomerprofile. Go down, go download that, an excellent free resource which can help you to really get clarity on who it is you're trying to speak to so that you can get your service or product in front of them. Katrina, I mean, is there a particular I mean, you've given us a very interesting sort of background to your to your to to your journey to how you became this chartered marketer. But, tell me, what is it? Is there a particular book or a particular course or something which took you from German student to science, computer science graduate through to, through to somebody that actually now helps organizations to do their marketing?
Catrina Clulow [00:09:37]:
Well, there are a variety of people, and they tend to be the people that tell me something is not possible. So for example, I wanted to study computing at school, and my headmaster, mister Hague, sat me down and told me that I couldn't study computing at school, and this is going to date me because it was only available as a CSE, not an o level, and I needed to select another o level. And, it was anyway, it was a subject for boys. He literally said that. We are talking in the mid eighties. I was the only girl in the computing club, the school. And I never got that out of my system. So when I graduated from my German degree, it was in that 1991, 1992 lovely recession and there weren't a lot of graduate jobs around.
Catrina Clulow [00:10:37]:
So I was offered a conversion masters into computing, and I went and did it. But what I found was I really enjoyed computing. I really enjoyed what computing could do for us. I really hated the actual programming bit. It was just translating from English into computing speak. So that's why I went into the marketing side and used my computing knowledge so I developed a CRM before CRM was a term that people had heard of for the first company I worked for. So that is I have had a variety of people through my life. I've had careers advisers at university tell me, you know what, Katrina? You should women aren't list literally said to me early nineties, women are not successful in business.
Catrina Clulow [00:11:34]:
Why don't you go into teaching? So when somebody tells me something that's not possible, then I just go out to prove them wrong, and I really enjoy the work I do with marketing. It's translating from text speak into people speak, and it's actually helping the organizations I work with be successful, but also their clients be successful.
Stuart Webb [00:11:59]:
Fantastic. Fantastic. Katrina, you've given us a a great insight into the importance of, well, I was gonna say niching down, but that's a that sounds like it's a bit of a bit of jargon. So I'm gonna avoid saying that immediately because, I don't want people to think as we're talking talking jargonization. But you've given an an insight into to the real foundations of how you you make a a difference. But, there must be one question that I haven't asked, which you would have really liked me to have asked at this point. So is there something that you're saying to yourself at the moment internally? Gosh. I wish you'd get to the point or I wish you'd get to this question so that I can answer it.
Stuart Webb [00:12:39]:
And and, obviously, now that you've got I've externalized that, you're now gonna have to ask that question and then answer it for us, please.
Catrina Clulow [00:12:45]:
Yeah. I think that there's a lot of confusion about marketing. A lot of people think that marketing has to cost a lot of money. They equate marketing with advertising and promotional activity, but the answer is definitely not. Marketing doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. There's an awful lot that you can do with the various marketing piece for wanting for an a bit of jargon there that doesn't cost any money. And getting those elements right, whether it's the people, the processes, the physical evidence, how you're going to market, which route you're going to market your product and plan it. Okay.
Catrina Clulow [00:13:30]:
I that's a p I tend to slip in these days. If you get all of those right, you don't need to spend as much money on promotional aspects. But all of that builds on the customer experience and they don't cost any additional money. So I can give you one example of a client I work with. Typical engineering company. They've developed this software as a service. People were starting the purchase on that website but then were dropping off before they got to the end of it. I took a very quick look at their process and they got 14 steps.
Catrina Clulow [00:14:07]:
No no buyer is gonna go through 14 individual steps. And then to just to buy the software. And then they, they've got about 7 drop off points. So I reworked their process, got rid of anything that really didn't need to be there, automated as much as I could so that we got down to a process of 5 steps. There were 2 drop off points. The first one was the company name that was making the purchase, and you can't get away from that. The second one was the credit card details or invoice numb or purchase order number. And again, you can't get away from that.
Catrina Clulow [00:14:51]:
But me spending, and it was literally was 10 minutes of my time, me spending that 10 minutes increased their order take. Didn't cost them any money. There was no great big Google Ads campaign out there. It just was what
Share this post