Market Research Hacks Every Startup Needs to Know! with Paige Arnof-Fenn

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10X ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne. And today I'm very excited to welcome my guest. Now I'm gonna read her bio to make sure I get this right. Paige Arnoff Finn is the founder and CEO of a global marketing and branding firm called Mavens and Moguls. They're based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her clients include Microsoft, Virgin, the New York Times Company, Colgate, as well as venture-backed startups and, and a lot of nonprofit organizations as well. So she's been around the block. She knows what she's talking about. She graduated from Stanford And Harvard Business School. So not— no, uh, no dust on her there. And, uh, she serves on several boards, a popular speaker and columnist, written for Entrepreneur and Forbes. So excited to welcome to the show, Paige. Thanks so much for joining me.

Mark, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you today.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Mavens and Moguls, I love that name. Tell me about what you do there.

So we're basically a virtual marketing department. For organizations that need access to great marketing talent on an as-needed outsourced basis. So we do anything a marketing department, ad agency, PR agency, or market research shop does on an outsourced basis.

Gotcha. And so as people are kind of thinking about, well, should I work with an agency or should I work with someone like Mavens and Moguls? Like, what's really the difference?

So the difference is Everyone in my organization comes from the client perspective. So before I hung out a shingle, I worked at Procter Gamble and Coca-Cola. I ran marketing at 3 successful startups that all had good exits, and all of my colleagues have too. So we are not professional PowerPoint makers. We don't just make recommendations in a vacuum. We've been in our client's chair before, so our recommendations come from tried and true experience, and we're recommending things that we would have done when we were sitting in their chair. And I think that's a real competitive advantage because the client knows that we're spending their money the way we would have spent it if we were them making a decision.

Absolutely right. Like, I love you, you, the phrase, we're not professional PowerPoint makers. Well, and there's this thing that happens in that, you know, a lot of, you know, founders, operators of businesses that, you know, every penny counts and they've gotta generate revenue for every dime they invest. And they've a lot of times been burnt by working with a marketer who kind of just made things look pretty for pretty sake or, you know, spent 3 months debating this color blue or that color blue for the website or, you know, do we use the word innovative Or innovate whore or creative or creator. And like a lot of they've been burnt by those types of things. Whereas, you know, when you've really got to focus on delivering results because you've been in that chair, you have a very different perspective on it. And I always, you know, advise people that agencies are a lot like power tools. They they can help you accomplish a lot, but you got to know how to use the tool or you wind up, you know, losing a finger.

Yeah, I call it marketing malpractice.

Yeah, that's right.

I think a lot of small businesses. Businesses unfortunately have to experience that and get burned before they realize kind of it's a different product. We're not trying to cross-sell and upsell. We're trying to solve the problem and get out of the way.

That's right.

We really prefer to teach our clients to fish rather than fish for them because we don't want them to become dependent on us. We're real happy Being an independent partner to our clients, and we don't want to get into a rut where we're doing the same thing for them year in and year out. So it's a real good relationship because we're teaching them everything we know that can help, and they get to see results. And I think the the best part of it for not just our immediate client in whether it's the chief marketing officer or the president, but maybe the CFO and the board of directors. When you bring in somebody from our team, there's really a return on investment. They spend X and they get Y. So it makes marketing much more tangible than I think it, it can be. A lot of people, as you said, they spend a lot of money and then they don't have much to show for it. Right.

That's right. Well, and so it's such an interesting sort of perspective that you have, having, you know, both within companies, worked at startups as well as, you know, sort of large organizations. And we were talking about sort of that perspective and some of the changes you've seen in the marketplace. You know, you and I talked about, you know, I saw some major changes in the B2B marketing and sales space as a function of the pandemic, talked about that in my book. You know, McKinsey Consulting says that, you know, more than 10 years of change happened in, in less than a year. So, you know, a decade in, in under a year. What are some of the sort of big changes that you saw as a function of that? How is that impacting the, you know, landscape of B2B marketing and sales today?

So it's real interesting, Mark. Like, you know, when the pandemic happened, it was a real wake-up call for virtually every industry, every business. But clients really came to me and said, you know, I'm not used to being in a hybrid virtual world. And when people were no longer going into an office and having a storefront was no longer anything that made you unique, special, or different, people realized for like the first real kind of jolt that if I don't exist online, I don't exist at all today.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so being a branding organization, someone who really believes in the power of great marketing, we really rolled up our sleeves and helped our clients solidify their brand and understand the power of great branding. Because if you're not a brand, you're a commodity and commodities compete on price and that is not a good lane to be in. So if you've got a brand, you've got an emotional connection to your customer or client, and people are willing to pay more for brands. They have more of a connection, and a brand is a promise of a consistent experience.

Yeah.

So you really have to live it every single day. And, you know, before people decide if they want to even learn more about your product or service or have a meeting with you, a phone call, a Zoom, coffee, they're going to check you out online. And if they don't like what they see and they don't have any breadcrumbs that kind of lead them down your story, they've lost interest. And it takes a lot more time and a lot more money to get them to come back and look again if they don't see what they're looking for the first time.

Yeah. Well, and it's Interesting. You talked about, you know, sort of as we were chatting before the show that a lot of these sort of leaders of the organizations, especially like they're used to sort of making an impact in person. But then once they didn't have the opportunity to be in person, they had to figure out how to, you know, sort of create that brand around themselves as well as around their company. And that's a big topic today is, you know, sort of founder-led growth and the idea that, you know, the founder sort of lead is the brand. They are, you know, sort of the brand of the company because for many times and, and a lot of my, you know, founder guests have, have called this out that, you know, in your early stages, people are buying you because you don't have a million case studies. You don't have a million clients that you can call on. So they're buying your promise and, and your vision, your belief that you can deliver, you know, sort of results for them. So building that sort of personal brand for founders is really vital. Are you seeing the same thing that seems to sort of align with the title, the name of your company is this sort of idea of building this personal brand for founders, these mavens and these moguls?

Without a doubt. And, you know, the truth is your name doesn't have to be synonymous with the company, you know, to be a brand. I think a lot of people kind of misunderstand that, you know, they think I'm not LeBron James or Taylor Swift or, Serena Williams, Mark Cuban. I'm not a brand. I'm not famous. Why do I care about this stuff? And I couldn't disagree more. I hope all of our listeners today will leave this podcast realizing everyone's a brand today.

Yeah.

And, you know, if people Google you before they return your phone call or invite you to join them on their podcast or whatever, um, if they Google you, It better be some good stuff that pops up, because if nothing pops up, you're not worth the time to return the phone call or have a meeting with. If a lot of digital dirt pops up, that's going to give them a reason to be concerned. They may not want to associate with your brand. You know, if you share a name of a serial killer, that might be a little confusing.

Yeah.

But you need, you need to know that. So if you haven't Googled yourself and realized what's out there on you, I highly recommend it because, you know, everyone is a brand today. And with all the social media platforms and, you know, all the breadcrumbs we leave out, you know, in cyberspace, people are gonna connect those dots their way. If you don't give them the kind of path and the story, they're gonna make one up and it might not be what you want it to be. That's right.

You wanna take control of that story, really own it for yourself rather than letting someone else, whether Whether it's malicious or not, they just might connect the dots in a way that you don't intend.

Right. So if you don't know what your brand is and what you stand for, what you're known for, you really do need to kind of hit the pause button and take a step back because, you know, what, what are the 2, 3, 4 words that come up when somebody says Mark Osborne? What do you know about his business? Or what do you think about him?

Yeah.

Do they say you're an author, that you're in the B2B space? Like, what is it that they know about you and what, what do they believe to be true? And, you know, and if you ask people in different groups, do they all kind of converge in the same vocabulary, or do certain people that know you personally think very different of you than people that know you professionally? And You know, I think social media can either be your best friend or your worst enemy because a lot of people kind of jump into these social media platforms and they just spread themselves too thin and they're everywhere with very disjointed messages. On Twitter, X, they're very snarky. On LinkedIn, they're trying to be real buttoned up and professional. On Facebook, they get together with their college buddies and are You know, they're on the beach drinking, drinking beer and being crazy and scantily clad. And, you know, that's probably not putting your best face forward. I always say to people, pick your lane, pick your platform. What's the most authentic to you? If you don't want to blog, do not start a blog, right? Because if you start a blog And the first week you blog 3 times, and the second week you're busy and you only blog once. The third week you're on vacation, you forgot about it. You came back from vacation too busy. Then a month goes by and you just gave another blog post. What you're doing is you're training your audience to say, I'm kind of flaky, you can't really depend on me.

Right.

I'm not gonna respond to any of your comments. That is not a, a rock-solid brand. That's not what you want to be known for and associated with. So if you're not going to be committed to blogging, find the blogs in your category or industry that are well-trafficked. They have a huge audience and just be a regular contributor on the things that you know about and you love talking about. And if every time I see your name, I think that Mark Osborne, he is so smart, you know, He's made 3 comments this month and every one of them I agree with. I'm going to check him out. And if you've got your contact information in the signature of your blog post, that's brilliant because you've made a great impression. They can follow up with you directly and you've really got a quality platform. People want to hear more from you. They think, God, this guy's so smart, I should maybe talk to him and maybe hire him directly. He's the guy I listen to the most on this blog anyway. That's a great position to be in. I mean, I know what all the platforms are, but for me personally, LinkedIn is the one that makes the most sense.

Right.

It's a great platform for, you know, business building, thought leadership, very professional. So I've really put all my eggs in the LinkedIn basket. My clients are not looking for me on X or Pinterest or Instagram. That's just not a priority for me.

So, so many interesting things that, uh, from what you just said that I want to double-click on. Uh, and the, the first is around, you know, sort of this idea of, you know, maybe on one platform you're kind of all fun and games, and on another platform you're snarky, and on another platform you're all, you're all business. One of the things that, that we see to be so important is Certainly different platforms have, you know, sort of different sort of use cases. Like people go to YouTube to learn things. People go to, you know, LinkedIn to, you know, sort of research things and find people that they should listen to. And oftentimes people go to, you know, X or Twitter for opinion. But if you've taken the time to really understand who your ideal customer is, like building out an ideal customer profile and then understand the persona of the buyers that are likely to, you know, be in the market and looking for you and then understand sort of what your competitors' positioning is and what's unique and different about you, you can craft a positioning statement that guides how you act on all of the platforms and it's still authentic and real. But you can do instructional videos on YouTube, but that align with that positioning strategy. You can, you know, have information sharing and, you know, sort of articles on LinkedIn, but that aligns with that strategy. You can do something else on X or wherever else you, you know, Reddit, wherever else you wanna be. But having that consistency is what builds the trust and credibility from your customers that, you know, really they, they depend on in order, especially in B2B, no one does any business with someone without sort of credibility and trust. And having that consistent message really builds that credibility and trust.

Bingo. You are spot on. I mean, people buy products and services from brands they know, like, and trust.

Yeah.

And if you, um, if you are not consistent, if the message is really kind of all over the place, they don't know what to expect. And it's just gonna cost you a lot more time and money for them to come back and look at you again. You get one chance to make a great first impression. So don't blow it. And everybody needs a web— a website today. And if you're, if you're gonna build a website, make sure it's search engine optimized. You know, what are the keywords? Be real clear. You know, you can't stand for 10 different things.

That's right.

Pick 1, 2, at most 3. And those messages need to be reinforced in everything. On your website, on your blog if you have it, you know, it all, you know, how you look, how you dress, what you drive, everything should kind of sync up so that no matter if they see, if somebody bumps into you at a networking event, on the soccer field, watching your kid play, at the grocery store, if you're giving a talk, you want the same person to show up. You know, how they look, what they talk about, the whole thing really needs to be consistent because, you know, you just, you get one chance to really earn that trust. And if you blow it, it's just, it's such a missed opportunity.

Well, and that's the other thing about trust that you hit on before that I think is really Interesting, because you talked about, you know, if you're building a social media presence, call it a blog, and you do it inconsistently, and then you're— and maybe you have high hopes. You start at the beginning, you're like, hello world, I'm gonna be here every week sharing my ideas and sort of make that promise. And then, like you said, you do it a couple of weeks and then you miss a week and then you miss a month, or the next one is, sorry, I don't have a lot of time to write the article that I intended to write. What are you up to? then that you're sort of training your audience that you're untrustworthy. And, and I actually, you know, sort of use the analogy a lot, and, and you and I chatted about this before, that, you know, when you're in, you know, sort of your online presence is almost like, you know, hosting a party. And you don't wanna sort of like send out invitations to invite everyone over to your house for a party, and then they show up and you don't have any plates or cups. That's, that's a really bad party experience, even if you've got lovely food. So you might have great things to say, but you're not doing it in a way that makes you a good host, then, then you're really sort of like making them think that you don't know how to throw a party. And the same thing's true in business. Maybe you don't know how to run your business if, if they show up to your blog and it's inconsistent.

And, you know, I have clients who say, you know, it seems like I need a blog. Everybody's blogging. And I, I always say, if you prefer writing a newsletter, if that's— don't think that like, oh, newsletters are dead. Nobody pays attention. You don't have to do a weekly newsletter. It can be biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly. But like you said, you train your audience to— and let them know you're going to hear from me on this interval, and you're going to stick to that interval so that every other Friday or the first Monday of the month or the end of every quarter, you're going to share your insights. And they look forward to it. You're an invited guest into their inbox.

That's right.

And they might not read it as soon as you send it. Maybe they wait till the weekend, but they know they can count on you and they appreciate your perspective. And again, you're reinforcing the core messages and your core values in everything that you do. And a newsletter can be incredibly valuable, but if that's too much of a commitment, Again, find those newsletters of simpatico organizations that are targeting the same audience that you do. And you can say to that company, can I contribute an article once a month to your newsletter? You know, you and I are talking to the same people, and I have the perspective, and the person would probably be thrilled because that's one less article they're going to need to write a month.

That's right.

Again, you put your contact info in it, and it's very, uh, collegial, collaborative, and people will notice that, you know, that, that's— I love this guy's, uh, article every month. I read it. It's great. I've learned so much. I'm gonna follow up with that guy because, you know, 3 months in a row I've used his idea. I should maybe talk to him directly. And if you do that, that is a lot less work for you, not as much heavy lifting, but it's great branding. And so it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't need to be tough, but it needs to be authentic to you for it to work. Because, you know, customers and clients are very savvy. They can tell when it's not authentic. And that's like the worst thing you can do is to try and be something that you're not. That's doing A lot more damage than good.

Yeah, so true. So true. That authenticity is really vital. So tell us about something that's on the horizon for you, Mavens and Moguls. What's something that you're excited about?

You know, that's the beauty of running your own business. I'm excited about everything that we do because if I'm not excited about it, we don't do it.

That's great.

We just sold our biggest piece of business ever. In the 22-year history of my firm, in last month, and I am so excited. It's a nonprofit. They need market research. They need branding. They need a lot of the tools in our toolkit. And it's interesting because I met the executive director years before the pandemic. We hit it off. We really were like very simpatico. He, he interviewed us to work on a project, and for a whole host of reasons, it never worked out. But he remembered us. And again, you make a good first impression and you own real estate in your customer's brain so that when they have that problem that your product or service can help them solve, that they think of you first. And he reached out a few months ago and said, You know, I loved meeting you a few years ago. I know the world's changed a lot, but I have another opportunity, and I think y'all are going to be perfect. And we got the business this time.

That's great.

So it's going to be really, really fun. And I just, I love, um, I feel like, you know, this is an Olympic year, um, it's an election year. There's just a lot of momentum in the economy right now. People are very excited, energetic, upbeat. You know, they're spending money again, even though COVID's still circulating and probably will be for the rest of our lives. We've kind of, kind of at least gotten more comfortable with the fact that we're just going to keep moving forward together.

That's right.

And so I feel like clients are really excited to talk again. They've got a lot of energy. And I think for the brands that got through the pandemic, you know, alive and kicking, they've got so many great stories to tell.

Yeah.

And we do a lot of PR and there are just so many good stories to share in so many different categories. The other thing that's really happening now, which didn't happen so much before the pandemic. So as I said, I started my marketing career at Procter Gamble and P&G is probably the most data-driven marketing company in the world. They do market research for everything. All, you know, it's not what you think or I think, right? It's what the customers think. And when P&G does research, it's statistically significant. They talk to thousands of people. My clients are not P&G and Coca-Cola mostly. They can't really afford the time or the money to do that much research when you're working with a lot of venture-backed startups and small businesses. They want to, you know, put a stake in the ground, figure out if that's going to work and keep moving forward.

That's right.

But I think we all learned a really important lesson during COVID which is a lot of the assumptions that we made before the pandemic aren't necessarily true anymore.

That's right.

You know, we wear to work, where we go to work, how we vacation. Everything has changed so much. So it's really, uh, great for our business. And I think it's great for my clients' business that people now really understand the value of market research. I think I always felt like I was pushing it before the pandemic, but now it's more of they're pulling me toward them saying, Yeah. I need, I need to talk to my customers. I need to know what's working and what's not working. I need to know how my, my competitors pivoted and what real estate do they own? What real estate's open, open game? How do they think about me versus them? So we're doing a ton of market research right now to help clients get the right words and pictures to tell a compelling story. And that's just fun because you learn so much about your strengths, your opportunities. Your weaknesses, and again, what's working, what's not working. You know, you want messaging, you want a narrative that really stands out and sticks in your audience's brain. And it's important to understand the difference between your primary audience, your secondary audience, your tertiary audience. You know, sometimes they're gatekeepers, or somebody in finance or procurement. that has a say, but they're not really your direct customer. But your customer, the president of the company or the head of marketing, can't make a decision without that person on board.

That's right.

So you've got to get the right message to the right person at the right time. So it's fun. It's like a real puzzle that you're trying to figure it all out. And we just love rolling up our sleeves and jumping in. And I just think it, you know, now that I feel like we've gotten the worst behind us and, you know, we've got our annual vaccines now and we're just going to keep moving forward. I think it's just really fun to have all this momentum and energy with people really wanting to, you know, get out there again. It's a really exciting time, I think, in the world of marketing.

Absolutely. And I love this emphasis on research and You know, I've worked with research companies and I'm such a big believer in using data to make decisions instead of gut. And it's so, you know, oftentimes, especially for smaller companies, like you say, to take the time to actually get the voice of the customer and to actually do that research. So it's not just them sort of navel-gazing, as they say, or, you know, coming up with, oh, well, I know what the market wants. That's not always true. And so taking the time to do that research is super valuable.

Well, it's interesting. We've had clients come to us and say, I don't understand why we're not selling more of our stuff because everyone loves it so much.

Oh yeah.

Have you done research? And they're like, well, I've done kind of my own research. I'm like, great, who did you talk to and what did you ask? Right? They said, I talked to my neighbor, my mother, friend. And I said, are they your target audience? And they're like, no, but they love the idea. I just can't imagine Why we're not selling more of it. I'm like, well, I've got some bad news for you. People love you and care about you and don't want to tell you the baby's ugly. But I'm afraid you don't have a good product or service. You've got the packaging or the pricing. There's something wrong and they don't know what it is because they're not the right audience.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think it's with research, it's garbage in, garbage out. You gotta ask the right questions, but it doesn't have to be super expensive. You can use SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. You don't need to spend a lot of money. You don't have to talk to tens of thousands of people. You just gotta talk to the right people and ask them the right question in the right way.

Yeah.

I think, again, where people screw up is they kind of, uh, lead the witness, if you will. They'll ask a question like, You know, so Mark, tell me all the things you love about my product or service. That's not really a good objective question.

That's right. So true. So true. Well, Paige, we could talk all day. We're obviously both passionate about these topics, but I got to be respectful of your time. But for folks that have been listening and, you know, want to learn more about Mavens and Moguls and working with you, how can they get in touch with you?

So the best way— there are 2 ways. One is the website, mavensandmoguls.com.

Yeah.

It's M-A-V-E-N-S-A-N-D-M-O-G-U-L-S dot com. Or as I said, LinkedIn is my platform of choice. Even though my last name is hyphenated, LinkedIn kind of smushes it together. So A-I-G-E-A-R-N-O-F-F-E-N-N. And as one of my clients always says, with my hyphenated last name and the ampersand in my company name, She can never get all the words right. Google Paige and Mavens. Thank goodness my site is search engine optimized. I pop right up number 1. So you can always find me that way too.

Well, awesome. Well, Paige, thanks so much for joining us. I got a lot out of our conversation. I'm sure the audience did as well.

Well, thank you for having me, Mark. This has been really fun.

Yeah, thank you. Talk to you soon.

Take good care. Bye-bye.

Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform, and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story, send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.

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