Who are the dynamic duo of B2B marketing in the UK?

Hello, welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James, here in the UK. Actually, I've got a pair of guests. I'm very lucky to have Elliot and Dominic Chapman joining me today, who are the Chapman brothers. They are entrepreneurs, they're running a group called Chapman Capital, and Elliot's here in actually sunny Poole, just south of, uh, of where I'm here in Wiltshire. But Dominic's escaped to Malta. Dominic, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

We drew the short straw, Jim.

I know. Well, I'm sure you'd rather be in Poole. You've got sea and fancy boats and everything down in Poole. Malta doesn't have anything that Poole doesn't have, I'm sure.

Not too bad.

Well, look, you guys have not done badly at all because you started off as entrepreneurs, family-based businesses, and then Dominic, you went out on your own, you built businesses and sold businesses, and we're going to talk really about being entrepreneurs and the marketing agency group that you're building, which is serving B2B, and some of the trends that you're seeing and the kind of companies you're buying and some of the ways that companies can get noticed. Elliot or Dominic, whichever one of you wants to kick off first, tell us a little bit about Chapman Capital and about the business that you're building that's got now, I think, 6 different marketing agencies in it.

Yeah. So Chapman Capital was born 2, 3 years ago, which was just an idea at the time. Dom and I were only running one agency at the time, which was an agency called Social Chaps. And that was born out of Dom and I trying to run 2 separate agents or 2 separate companies, struggling, needed to find creative techniques or slightly different techniques to get in front of the right customers. That and those techniques from methodology and also technology led us both to growing 2 separate companies and exiting, starting Social Chaps. And then fast forward a couple of years, Social Chaps was under its own acquisition offer. Dom and I had sort of been blinded by an acquisition offer from a private equity company. which didn't materialize into anything, which is the right thing to do, but it did open up our eyes to how we could potentially grow something bigger and better. So the options were we carry on with Social Chaps and try and sort of get it to $5 to $10 million and exit, or we grow through acquisitions and investments, which is exactly what we decided to do. We had the clients that we wanted to work with and wanted to invest in. We had a specialty that we think a lot of agencies need. So we decided to go down that route, which is fairly unconventional, but it's serving us well and it's good fun.

Good. Yes, ambitious. So really sort of a Martin Sorrell, WPP-style holding group. Is that fair?

Yep, exactly that. Each agency stands on their own, so there's no real sort of cross-collaboration, there's no mergers. I've done mergers in the past in a previous consultancy and I never want to do one again.

Yeah, historically mergers between service companies I've seen, my own PR firm and so on, end up with 2 companies becoming the size of one.

Exactly that.

So Dominic, over to you. You're building a B2B marketing services group there. What would you say are some of the hallmarks of B2B and why is it different to B2C? What should a B2B business owner be doing to get noticed?

Yeah, yeah, really good question. I think first thing is just understanding the difference between B2B and sort of B2C and where your customers sit online and not just online, sort of physically as well. For me, B2C is, you know, a whole nother ballgame. Some people find B2C marketing a lot easier, whereas I definitely find B2B a lot easier. And I think it's understanding, again, where they sit online. But for me, it's B2B is all about building one-to-one relationships, whereas sort of B2C is all about building one-to-many. So it's how can you go and build those relationships and instill trust in those sort of individuals within the organizations to, you know, that they're eventually going to buy from you. So for us, we do that through a range of things, content, events, podcasting, you know, making the actual CEOs and the owners of those businesses look like specialists or, you know, they are specialists, putting them in the room with the right people. And I think that's ultimately it with B2B, it's finding Whatever works for you, which is going to get you in the room with your your you know your prospect.

And it's interesting. So why do you think that B to B is around trust and B to C is around if you like like? Yes.

Yeah. I think because you know with B to C some of its impulse purchases. You know you've got no one else to validate it with. Whereas B to B it's your job. You know you've got people. who rely on you, you've got to let people know why you're looking to buy this piece of either technology or this service and bring it in. So that's why I think so many service-based businesses still focus on networking, which we do as well, maybe just in a more new style of networking. You won't really find us at networking events in the traditional sense, but I do think a lot of B2B relationships are built on network and trust. And I think that's why—

Value, giving that value upfront. Yeah, I think just to add to Dom's point there, it's very different in the B2B space in terms of how you provide value upfront. How do you win that trust? You don't necessarily have to do that in the D2C space, whereas B2B, you're looking at something that is typically more expensive, not always, but typically more expensive. And therefore, by giving that value straight away, it's not just take, take, take. In turn, you're building that trust.

So with your Chapman Capital Group companies, how are you leveraging the overall umbrella for your individual companies so that clients are getting, if you like, a more consistent service offering? Because I think for many companies, one of the tiring aspects of being, for example, a marketing manager or the company owner is shopping around, right? And trying to get all these different vendors to kind of play together. How are you solving that problem?

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question because within our group we have a full-service marketing agency and then we have an agent, you know, the rest of the agencies are very niche and they only solve specific problems. So I guess I see both sides of it and why an owner might want to shop around or they want to go to a full-service marketing agency. One, I think it depends on the size of the business. I think the bigger the business, so if you're working with, I don't know, the BTs of this world, full-service marketing agencies make sense.

Yeah.

Whereas going in and just trying to do maybe just email marketing within BT, it just wouldn't work because there's so much that goes around working with a large business. I mean, the things that we do and we focus on is staying close to the clients, making sure that they are happy with the service. And then I think for us, it's just optimizing across the group, which just means we have to have a finger on the pulse. And if we see something working within one of the businesses, it's right, how do we implement that across the others? And just constantly raising the standard, you know, across the businesses.

And so for Chapman Capital, are you going in as a brand to these big companies in the same way that Martin Sorrell used to get involved, I think, in the really big deals like Dell, and he would bring in all of his other brands? Just wondering from a getting noticed point of view, the role that Chapman Capital can play for these companies?

Yeah, so we typically support our portfolio in quite a sort of finite way really. So it is very much geared around how do we improve everything from a day-to-day perspective. So delivery, onboarding, making sure that all SOPs, like standard operating procedures, are all up to date and the team are fully optimized from that perspective. And then also from lead generation, sales, anything that is commercial. How do we support these bigger deals? We'll never sort of be in the room leading the conversations. That is very much the team's responsibility, but they'll, they'll be reporting back to us on the feedback, the process, constantly improving and tweaking that outbound and sales process. So it's, I guess, two-pronged and quite siloed. We're not getting involved in all the nitty-gritty on team decisions, or, you know, you've got a disgruntled employee, for example, that should be looked after by line managers and people who've got a better view of the situation. However, anything that's maybe a little bit more serious will sometimes get escalated up, but it's as little and as much as needed, really. It is quite a sliding scale in terms of mine and Dom's involvement.

Yeah, great. I'm sure for the clients, it gives them the reassurance that these holding companies have got the assets if they need to grow, and yet you're leaving them to be the companies that they wanted to work with in the first place. Where do you two see some of the trends? Because Dominic, you mentioned about trust and about content and networking. What are some of the trends that you're seeing in B2B that are going to carry us forward? And I guess specifically the impact of AI.

Yeah.

Again, another very good question. I think content's gonna play a massive role in the next couple of years within B2B. It's just constantly being consumed now. And I think video, everyone's been doubling down on video over the next, the last couple of years anyway. But for me, If you're a B2B customer and you sort of get into the sort of marketing lifecycle, you're consuming content in so many different ways. You could see a video of me and then sign up to the newsletter, and then you're getting the sort of monthly newsletter, and then you can join a webinar, and then eventually you're gonna sign up as a customer and spend, you know, sign up to maybe a 12-month deal. Which is maybe a £30,000 contract. So that investment upfront of showing yourself in all those different formats is really important. And I think the real thing that people are going to need to figure out is how to do that efficiently because it's quite an overwhelming thing creating content. And I think that's one of the important things that we figured out is we can do it at a pretty low lift level and we are leveraging AI. So for example, we're We'll throw in the podcast into a couple of AI tools and it'll pull out all the best bits of the podcast and then it'll turn, with a team, it'll turn that into clips. There's certain things that we're doing.

Blogs, articles.

Yeah, blogs, articles, white papers, all of the different things. Again, I don't think AI is truly the answer. I think it still needs that human touch to make sure it all makes sense and it feels feels right, but it can help with the heavy lifting of creating content.

Okay, Dominic, you've mentioned a couple of tools. Can I ask you which tools you're recommending or using? Am I putting you on the spot there?

Yeah, you've put me on the spot. If I can link them, I'll send them after and you can link them in the show notes just because I don't want to say anything. Sure.

Yeah, I caught you on the hop there because I mean, there are some like AssemblyAI and Podium as well is very good and also the Otter. Uh, one is great.

Yeah, I do use Otter. I do use Otter quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Where do you see companies going wrong in B2B marketing? Because you've sort of outlined where people need to be moving into positions of authority, creating content across multiple formats and across multiple channels, which of course is a huge ask, especially for smaller companies. Um, any guidance or ideas on where you see people Business owners going wrong with their marketing?

Yeah, 100%. For me, it's figure out the channel that your sort of customer sits on, which if it's B2B, it's going to be either LinkedIn or Twitter. Forget about posting on Instagram, Facebook, any of that stuff. Honestly, like just don't even worry about it as like a, you know, if it's the first thing you're doing, because again, it can become overwhelming and also pretty pointless if you've got 50 followers on Instagram who are your sister, your brother, and your mother, it's not going to be much help. So for me, it's focusing on LinkedIn or Twitter and just being really silo-focused on that. And don't try and do too much.

Elliot, anything to add to that or is that— Dom's cleared that up?

No, I would completely agree. We actually see this a lot. Dom gave a specific example there, but I actually had a conversation with a potential client this morning who instead of B2B, purely go after B2B, large, big corporates. So sort of mainly FTSE 250 companies is who they sell to. And they've just signed off on a 12-month contract with a social media agency. Who are going to be posting 3 times a week. And you can well and truly imagine the type of content that it's going to be. And this is not knocking social media agencies, um, there's a space for them. We part-own one, so that, you know, not knocking them, but you've got to understand who your target market is. And is the CEO of a FTSE 250 company going to be sat really signing something off because you've posted 3 times on Instagram? It's just not the reality. So I think you need to almost be a little bit ruthless on what you need to focus on. Time is short, money is tight. Focus on where your customers are gonna sit.

I think that's really good advice and reassuring as well that, you know, if you're trying to manage all formats and all channels, you spend all your time doing that, not actually running the business. Now with Chapman Capital, You know, switching gears slightly, you've been buying into companies. And, you know, this is a show about communication and there's external customers and then there's customers, there's partners and also employees. Can you just talk about the communication aspect of the acquisitions you've been making and any lessons that you've learned there?

Yes. Yep. So I can, we can tell you sort of about an interesting acquisition. So our first acquisition, um, as an acquisition goes through, there's, there's a lot of communication back and forth between acquirer and seller, and hardly ever are the employees mentioned in terms of how this is going to be communicated to them. There's a lot of talk around, you know, whether you're going to look after them, what's the plans, because essentially you have to sell to the seller on what your plans are for the company to make sure that they're fully invested into the idea as well. But for us, how things were communicated to the team was probably a secondary thought. And I'll explain why that is the case because it wasn't necessarily an oversight. It's more that in the acquisition journey, it is such an intense process. Um, and actually quite an emotional process because there are lots of ups and downs. You've got 2 parties who are trying to do something and trying to get a deal over the line, and then you've got accountants in the middle, you've got auditors in the middle, lawyers in the middle. And I love all 3 of those groups of people. However, um, if you're not that sort of bureaucratic or, um, if you're not used to being bound by red tape, it is You're just not used to it. So the whole process is quite intense. And the minute the acquisition goes through, the minute everything is signed, it is such a relief for about 5 minutes. And then you realize that you've actually got a load of work to do. And then that is when Dom and I started thinking about, okay, how does this need to be communicated? So we had a scenario where the company that we acquired wanted to lead the message to the team, which I completely get, I completely understand. And Dom and I were kept in a Zoom room for sort of 10 minutes whilst they told their team and their staff. And then we were introduced into this Zoom meeting, like the whole sort of magic trick, ta-da type thing. In hindsight, we wouldn't have done that. And I think maybe the The sellers, again, in hindsight, probably wouldn't do that again because the team don't actually have time to adjust to the news. They were told the news and then straight away were in the room. So it was quite an awkward process. In turn, what we had to then go and do was we spent a lot of time over the next 2 weeks having one-to-ones, heavily communicating to the team. And also then just, we had to win hearts and minds really, really quickly. So Dom and I had to demonstrate that we were good operators and had to really provide a strong vision for the company over the next 3 to 6 months really, because we didn't actually have long to get the team bought in. We actually sort of spoke to the team about this recently, sort of on the 6-month anniversary, and laughed and joked about how we literally had 2 weeks to win them over because it was such an emotional, strange sort of 2 weeks. And the company had laid off some people sort of a month prior, then they were pulled into this Zoom meeting. So a lot of the team were expecting to be laid off again. We didn't have that sort of prior knowledge of how that's how things were carried out. So yeah, my takeaway from that is now that we've done these additional investments and we're in talks with other acquisitions, the effective communication and clear communication to provide— all the team want in the first instance is a sense of strong vision and also reassurance that their job is safe. Anything else beyond that in the next couple of weeks can then be told, but what the team really want is What's the vision for the company? And is my job safe? And if you can provide clarity on those 2 things in the first interaction, all the rest of it can wait.

Elliot, I think that's really, really sage advice. And you're going to get better and better at this the more you do, aren't you? That people, their employees, they want reassurance. I've found the same when I've done my own M&A as well. So that's wonderful. really, really great wisdom for anyone that's going into an acquisition, either as the company buying or selling, right? Both sides need that in mind.

Yep.

In terms of getting noticed, I mean, you have a unique position working, you know, as brothers. Is there anything that you can share that, you know, you found works in terms of sort of getting noticed and as a team that you could share going forward?

I think you're right in that we do have a unique positioning in that we're brothers, we're good mates as well, we're business obviously involved in 6 other businesses. So, we know each other fairly well, I would like to say. And what that means is If we are having good day, bad day, not really feeling up to it, it means we can actually sort of be quite honest about how we're feeling, um, and therefore give each other space to unload, de-stress, whatever it is. Um, we can do that, meaning that anything that is team-facing or client-facing, acquisition-facing, it means that we genuinely bring our best selves. Because that frustration or whatever the particular issue is has somewhat been strategized. And we can actually sort of dive into, I guess, high level how we make decisions or how we deal with certain situations. We will often bring it to the table and that's just typically either over a voice note on WhatsApp or just a message. I've got this issue, don't necessarily need anything from you right now. I'm just planting that seed. We'll then come back to it in— it could be 5 minutes, it could be a day or two where we bring up the issue and then actually talk about it. And then off the back of that, we will strategically— one of us will do draft one of comms. It's then down to the other one to iterate, change, sometimes remove the emotion, sometimes add the emotion depending on the scenario. And then it's the final sign-off between the two of us. And that's the same for communications with the team, with clients, with partners, whatever it is, whether it's a meeting, whether it's an email, it is the same process for everything.

Wonderful. So you have sort of two minds but one voice as Chapman Capital.

Exactly.

Elliot and Dominic, thank you for joining me. If people want to find out more about you both and get involved in some way in Chapman Capital and the businesses that you're growing, how can they do that?

Yep. So head over to the Chapman Capital website, which is chapman.capital, or you can drop me an email, which will be linked into the podcast notes, which is elliot@chapman.capital.

Elliot Chapman here in Poole, sunny Poole, just south of me here in Newgate, Dorset, and Dominic Chapman in slightly less glamorous Malta. Yeah, I hope you're not feeling too jealous, uh, Dominic. Thank you for joining me, both of you, today.

Jim, thanks very much.

Appreciate that.

Great. So we've been listening to the brothers, uh, the dynamic duo, the Chapman boys there, uh, who are building Chapman Capital. And it's fascinating how they've managed to build this business where they're really starting with the, the holding company and growing out, but leaving these individual agencies as autonomous but connecting them when they need to ensure the clients are getting the best service from the group. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode, another enlightening episode I'm sure you'll find. And so if you've enjoyed it, please do share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thank you for listening.