In today’s interview, I have the honor of speaking with Zineb Layachi, CMO in Residence at Adinton Technologies and expert in strategic narratives. We’re both based in Barcelona, but still have only met through the digital window of Zoom.
In this chat, we cover:
✅ What a strategic narrative is and how to get buy-in at all levels
✅ What her process is for doing customer research
✅ What she does with every client before starting a marketing plan
✅ Steps you can take to include your strategic narrative when presenting your product (when the buyer persona and user persona aren’t the same person)
Enjoy!
Transcript:
Maeva Cifuentes
Absolutely. Yeah, we’ve been chatting for a while now. Like I really have to get her on on my interview. So I’m really excited to talk to you today. So I know One of your passions as strategic narratives as a as a marketing teacher, so why don’t you tell me a little bit about what that means?
Zineb Layachi
Sure. My pleasure. Strategic narrative is one of the first things that I do with my clients. Even if they have their their pitch, whether it be a sales pitch or investor pitch ready, we need to take a step back and reevaluate to make sure that your value proposition is is really bringing out the best of your business. So are we shining the light on on your full value? So that’s the part of the step back. Who’s your target? What’s your value to them? A bigger the strategic narrative is on a on a bigger level. After that from from the strategic narrative, stem or sales pitch or the business pitcher, etc. So that’s that’s the bigger narrative of, you know, Flying Cat Marketing, what’s the bigger narrative and then for each type of audience or type of talk target, you can have a different sales pitch adapted to that. It’s just an a higher level.
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Maeva Cifuentes
Okay, but what is the difference between a strategic narrative and a value proposition?
Zineb Layachi
So the strategic narrative just is the start. It has the value proposition. It’s the core in everything that you do, but it includes the why you’re doing everything. It’s the main story that a CEO will tell. It’s the story of the whole the vision, the why we’re doing this. A big one on strategic narratives is Andy Raskin. He talks about the new game, old game. It’s just a new way of defining the new pitch. Basically, the new game old game. So the, this is the old game. This is why we’re doing things differently now because there has been a shift in the industry. And this is the new game and these are the winners of this new game. So you define that overall in a bigger sense. And then you let that trickle down on the different sales pitches or whatever marketing materials that you that you might have marketing content, etc.
Maeva Cifuentes
So you define this with the CEO. Then, the next steps are branding and training staff.
Zineb Layachi
They have to own it that’s that’s for sure. The CEO has to own it. Whatever strategy you can help define or build, if it’s not owned by everyone then it doesn’t go anywhere. So definitely owning it and believing in it, and then adapting that to some of its sales and they’re doing sales pitches and taking that as a starting point to build the sales pitches, thinking of that particular target. If it’s marketing, for example, then it will apply to your content. So how how, how does that apply? KHow does that inspire? Or at least be coherent and everything that you do?
Maeva Cifuentes
Yeah, that’s something that I find lacks in or there’s a there’s a lot of jumping around. Okay, who’s our audience? What is our branding and what is even our product? I was just in a startup accelerator I was telling you for the last two days, and one of the greatest challenges that I noticed is that people weren’t really sure who their audience was or what their actual pain points were. They’re saying “Okay, so we’re just gonna we’re guessing that this is that this is what’s useful to them. Mm hmm we think this is what’s useful to them” Okay, well what have they told you? Well, we haven’t talked to them yet
Zineb Layachi
That’s a big one that I fight with them about. Not to bring up Pitch Slap, but it’s also one of the reasons behind Pitch Slap, because you’re behind your desk. Your pitch sound great, targets sound spot on ,my interest based audience in Facebook ads sounds great. It’s gonna be the money generating campaign. But once you get out of get out of your head and step outside and start talking to people, then it’s no longer guesswork. You’re actually making decisions based on conversations that you’ve had. And it’s just that if you do have traction, then you’ve got maybe surveys that you can access, you got sales calls, then you can access, just simple emails that you can access. So all that, that tells you a lot. If not, you have, you know, you can always read reviews on review sites about similar products or the competition or alternative products like on G2. So all this, all this and in addition to talking to your customer, of course, and your potential customers, it’s key.
Maeva Cifuentes
That’s a great hack, looking at review sites, and seeing what they say about similar products. What would be your tactic if your product is disruptive if it doesn’t really exist yet, and if you don’t, do you know it has some sort of value but you haven’t quite figured out for whom.
Zineb Layachi
So the first thing I would do, which is something that I do with ones that are not that disruptive. But in the sense, it’s hard to explain their value, you know. So it’s, there’s always, and when I start working with a client, it’s I’m not a magician, you know, I have to do the work. So I have a process that I go through, and I do the work. So it’s not that I could just jump in and say, That’s it, you know, this is what you do. And boom, no. I read a lot and I have to look at all sorts of sources of information. But I would definitely start bouncing it off at people in my network, seeing how they how they react. LinkedIn post is a really nice way to validate stuff. So I do that once in a while. Well, I’ll validate the headlines. Those are specific ways to describe projects that I’m on and see how People react to it does that, you know, does that get more engagement or not? So just start talking to people. Definitely. And in pitching, you know, even this morning I had, I was having a conversation with a with a LinkedIn contact. And we were saying that networking events are great. And I always use them to test my pitch. So I’ll just present myself as you know, I’ll have one pitch. And then the next networking in networking events, I’ll present myself with something else and see which one gets more you know, either generates more interest. So I test. I send mass messages to my to my marketing network, asking them for help. On what do you think this one or this one, does this talk to you or does that talk, you know, really just just talking to all sorts of different people and then the same thing Maybe I’m getting into too much detail and stop me I’m because I get really excited about this stuff. So you’ve got a you’ve got a product and you have a features list, right? In your in your roadmap. How do you decide which feature you’re going to work on? Okay, because your customers are asking for so many things, right? How do you prioritize? So you have to look at who’s really a user, you know, because you can’t listen to someone who’s not going to use and not gonna pay. You’re not. You just listen, listen, listen. And then you figure out okay, so which of this feedback I going to listen to?
Maeva Cifuentes
It’s not only who’s going to be your paying user, but who’s going to be your best paying user, like, which users are lasting the longest. Which one’s the least amount of headache?
Zineb Layachi
Yeah, that goes into lifetime value margin. What does it really cost me to maintain this? This user? Yeah, definitely.
Maeva Cifuentes
So what is your process look like? Let’s say you’re taking on a new client. Obviously there’s going to be different things that you’re doing for different clients, but do you have some kind of skeleton procedure for defining their their audience?
Zineb Layachi
It definitely is something that I do with them that I like them to be in the process, part of the process, but there definitely is. There’s groundwork, an immersion period that I have to go through on my own. And that is just something that just comes naturally. I’ve tried to put it down in a process because I’m very organized and I love processes. But this just has to come out naturally. But yeah, that immersion period for me is really important. So I try to understand, what are the alternatives to this business? For example, let’s say I just signed you on as a client. You’re super happy, I’m excited, right? I’m gonna I’m gonna ask you to pass on knowledge okay to me, because I need to know at least you know as much as you do, okay. So we go through all that and all that. It’s the basics from a from an investor pitch or a sales pitch you already know pretty much where where the company is and what the company needs know. So, then I look at all the alternatives to this product or service. So alternatives not competitors. Okay. alternatives. Then I looked at all the main competitors and I just start reading. I just started reading landing pages, reviews, social media, maybe if they use specific hashtags, what do they use in their in their meta description? What keywords do they use? And then from those keywords, I look at what kind of results those Google generate. And just trying to get a sense of what the language is. What people are talking about and what one thing means. Really just that immersion. I use social media. LinkedIn, definitely a little bit of Instagram too. And Facebook. And Google.
Maeva Cifuentes
And these resources are right now you’re looking up the competitors and the alternatives. Going on their social media accounts to see what what their messaging is.
Zineb Layachi
Yeah, but you have to be quick because you could spend six hours on that. You have to learn how to skim and you know, take in the most important. During that that immersion process, start connecting stuff, you know, so just jot down notes. Watch for patterns. So connecting stuff and grouping ideas, like in a brainstorming session know, pretty simple. I’ve used Quora many times. That’s that’s really good. I’ve had to use Reddit a few times on some specific cases. LinkedIn, definitely a big one for me. Yeah, those are just to name a few. Facebook. Of course, if that company has ads, then I’ll look at and see the the ads, they’re running ads that they have running ads on LinkedIn.
Maeva Cifuentes
So yeah, exactly are you looking for? If you’re skimming your eyes trained to catch specific things, and what are the things?
Zineb Layachi
Yeah, some things I spend more time than than others, but I’m trying to look at the language that they use. So definitely that because you know, when you have a target audience you need to speak in their language. So you need to learn the language. I’m trying to see who they’re who they’re talking to. So that’s a that’s, that’s another one. And what it is that the shine light on? Is it “stop wasting time”? Is that is that their main selling points? What are the selling points? Yeah, so I’m trying to get all that and mixed with. I’ve been told that I was a control freak by frequent collaborators, but in a nice way, because whenever I sign on a new client, I do my own little bit of customer development on my own because, I believe sure I you know, I believe what you’re saying, but I need to see it and hear it.
Maeva Cifuentes
When you say that, you mean after the client tells you who their customer is, you say, “Okay, nice, but I’m gonna go talk to them myself.”
Zineb Layachi
I talked to them myself, I find a few, maybe on LinkedIn reached out to them jump on a call and see, you know, see in my network, is there someone that fits that profile and then I go validate that on my own and make my own opinions. That’s really enriching. Not because I hold you know, the truth here, but it’s just my point of view, my objective external points of view is, you know, it just adds another perspective. And that adds value now, just to double check.
Maeva Cifuentes
Also in this in this persona development. Part of my process as well is to either survey or talk to customers directly. I encourage the customer to do it, or at least I record the calls that I have with customers and then after I encourage them to listen to it, because there’s always so much insight that comes out of it. But what I do find challenging is actually getting on the some of my clients have very high level, super busy clients, some C-levels, and it’s very challenging to get them on the phone, or to get them talking. Or if I do have some of my network, maybe they don’t have the same problems as the target of my other my client. And in this case, it’s taken me like a month at once to create a buyer persona because it took me so long to get on the phone with some of these customers of theirs. Do you ever face that and what if you can’t actually talk to this kind of persona? What do you do?
Zineb Layachi
I’ve been there. I’ve been there. Once. And to be honest, it’s I think it’s never gonna happen to me again, because I learned that lesson. The first time, I just took it as a barrier. And I was I just wasn’t used to it. So I just paused for a few days and also just stalled. Because I didn’t know. My process was shook up. What do you mean, I can’t talk to them? It’s as easy as that. Yeah, definitely. In the case of b2b, you’ve got certain companies and I’m sure that your place was b2b, right? There are certain certain companies when they’re big enough, and their targets are big businesses. You know, when I’m talking Telefonica, I’m talking Vodaphone, BBVA, you know, that gets a bit more complicated unless your own personal brands and your network has those people in there. I’ve been lucky to have these types of people in my network. But if you don’t have those, it’s just a cold call or cold message. You need an intro. You need something warm? Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. That’s a tough one.
Maeva Cifuentes
It is. It is a challenge. And sometimes I’m thinking yeah, you can actually go instead of talking to their direct customers, like you said, you can do like somebody who’s in the same position. Sometimes I find that the customer persona, the buyer persona, the person who makes the decision about whether to purchase this product or not, is not the same person who influences the decision or is not the same person who’s going to end up using it, or who’s ending up benefiting from the product. And then this, what do you do in that kind of case? How do you define the persona and how to how to communicate with the person when it’s kind of two different people with two different goals, but one is going to use the product and it’s actually person, but they got to get the yes from a different person who doesn’t see the value in it as much.
Zineb Layachi
One of the projects I’m on right now, is, has exactly this challenge, which is and it’s just not one user. It’s actually two groups of users within the same company. So there’s a decision maker and then you’ve got the users. It’s a tool that brings benefits to marketing and sales. Okay, but the message is different to marketing and then you know, the message you’re gonna, you’re gonna send marketing is different than the one you sent sales. Right? So there’s one challenge there. Then you have the decision maker depending on on the structure of the company, it could be the the CEO, directly. If not, it could be the the CFO, and depends on the structure of the company. Right. So here, what I try to always do is first go to the ones that actually have the problem. Yeah, ultimately, if it’s something that’s going to reduce costs, or increase revenue, the whole company should care about that. If your CFO hears about something that’s going to reduce costs, then they’re going to jump on it. So ultimately, I think it should resonate with everyone. But in this specific example, I have a different way pitching it to someone that’s in marketing than someone that’s in sales. For example, marketing, it could be just one of the fun things: sales is gonna fist bump you, they’re gonna love you, they’re gonna high five you, because of the wonderful leads that you’re giving them, because they’re tired of wasting their time. Stuff like that, and then sales, it’s a different pitch. Right. I didn’t answer your original question is doing my best to talk to everyone: the decision maker and the user. Talking to all three in your material a proposal, there’s something for every departments, okay? This is for your CFO, this is for your CMO. This is for your head of sales, right? And there are benefits for each. So it explains not only does it explain that, you know, you can get started in no time, which is great for your developers. So and then there’s, you know, what are the benefits for your marketing team? What are the benefits for your CFO. So we’re making it easy for those users to pitches internally. You’re making it easy. All you have to do is forward this or forward this video. So it’s just I think it’s about knowing them all if you can, if you can access them and then seeing how you can enable that, we talked about sales enablement, but I think there’s a enabling the buying process.
Maeva Cifuentes
Yeah, that’s, that’s brilliant and provide them so you’re not only addressing objections of the person that you are really targeting but you’re addressing the objections of the person that they want to convince. Yes. Oh, that is that it’s definitely brilliant and how does this tie in with the strategic narrative.
The strategic narrative is there to guide you in everything. So, if, if just just imagine marketing works on content, right? So they’re usually in silo, right? Yeah. So marketing works on content that they think sales is gonna, you know, it’s gonna love or it’s gonna help sales. Okay, so we know the story, right sales works on these pitches and they probably don’t even use the right logos and the right formats and the written know all this stuff. Yeah. And they’re, you know, one is bringing out one selling point, the other one is bringing out another selling point. So all this information is very siloed. There’s no alignment. And the CEO ultimately is just demanding results. So if the CEO from the from the very top just establishes this line. This this this narrative, this general narrative that we can build upon for everyone. I think it ultimately what I love most about this work is that it helps marketing and sales speak the same language. Right? And I’m a big fan revenue marketing, right? So just the marketing being more intentional, and being more co owned revenue and sales. So it’s not that marketing just does the awareness stuff and sales does sales. So having a strategic narrative that’s pushed down from the top, so that’s something they all believe in. It really helps align all departments actually.
Maeva Cifuentes
How do you balance revenue driven marketing with something that’s attribute to revenue. But in the end, it’s still important for your narrative for your branding, to build this trust that ultimately, who knows when and who knows and walk away what ultimately will drive revenue, but it’s hard to measure. What percentage of that kind of marketing and that kind of communication? Would you recommend doing versus marketing that’s focused only on the bottom of the funnel and driving more MQLs?
Zineb Layachi
Well, that’s the thing, you don’t stop doing awareness. So you need you don’t I mean, there isn’t a source of sales qualified leads that you could just tap into. That would be awesome, but you have to take a step back and look atyour targeting. So that’s where intent comes in. We focus on audiences that have intent. We sometimes do interesting campaigns on Facebook, that don’t necessarily have intent. That comes later on so that they watch 50% of the video then you do a remarketing and what did they do on my landing page, etc. So this part of the intent, I think, is very important because it shows that we as marketers are being more intentional with our marketing, because at the end of the day, marketing is there to drive sales. At the end of the day, the CEO wants sales. I’m doing a course on predictive marketing, right. So if I put it out on LinkedIn, and people can sign up for free. Right. So those are those are all leads that I get. But are they all qualified? Because we all like free courses, right? So how qualified are they? It also just taking a step back and I think thinking about about this stuff. Yeah. And but it but it’s important to put out content. Like I’m not saying that you should not put out content you just need to be aware of where You’re putting that content out. You know,
Maeva Cifuentes
Also the content that you’re creating, I feel should be specific enough that it is, to an extent qualifying the people that are signing up for it. It should repel people that wouldn’t be like they should look at this course and be like, Oh, no, that’s not that’s not interesting for me, because that’s for somebody else.
Zineb Layachi
Linda would love that, you know, but they would say yes, but my friend Linda would love that. I’m gonna let me forward that to her.
Maeva Cifuentes
Yeah, exactly. Did you say that you’re giving this your course or you’re taking the course on predictive marketing?
Zineb Layachi
giving the courses of course in Addington. We worked on on the course launched in Spanish and we’re doing we’re really visiting the whole curriculum and doing it in English.
Maeva Cifuentes
When is it going to be released? No pressure.
Zineb Layachi
Hopefully in the next in the next month, yeah.
Maeva Cifuentes
Well, I think that by the time this interview is released, your course will probably be launched. So it’ll be perfect timing.
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