Why long-term brand building is still aways about conversion with Julia Hornaday

Read the full transcript here:

Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast, Truth Lies and B2B Tech. I'm your host for today. So you have to put up with my nasally, brummy tones for the next 40 minutes or so I'm afraid. Thankfully though, we have a much less annoying sounding guest in the form of Julia Hornaday, who is global head of marketing at Turnkey. I'll let Julia talk a little bit about herself and Turnkey in a moment, but Julia has worked across a number of different sectors from not-for-profit organisations to marketing agencies, both here and across the pond.

So Julia has bags of experience producing and delivering content for very different purposes, which will come in handy for today's debate as we're going to talk about content strategy, particularly whether content is best deployed for conversion or brand building activities. So before we jump into all of that, Julia, tell us a little bit about your role at Turnkey.

Julia Hornaday (01:17)
Turnkey is a independent, very important note, risk and security consultancy that works with the world's leading companies. So if you can think of a big brand, it very well may be on our client

I kind of sit across our seven different country entities and support marketing from a sort of core brand level, but also from a local activation level. It's been a really interesting sort of cross-cultural challenge, but also, you know, got a lot of time zones in the mix. So early mornings, late nights. Not that that should define anything. A little bit about me. I am an American, as you can hear, hailing from Kansas City, go Chiefs, who has called London home for the last eight years. So I feel fairly indoctrinated.

But my marketing career started a long time before that. And really as far back as I can remember, like age six or seven, I was called toward human behaviour and what influences it. In particular, how language influences it. And I joke that if I had been like good at biology in school, I would have pursued a career as a research neurologist or a linguist, but I wasn't. So here we are.

Julia Hornaday (02:39)
But I think that foundation is important and it's sort of what makes me like endlessly curious about how the messages that we consume a la content shape our thinking and our actions.

James (02:49)
I think when we're exploring the topic for today, which is whether content is best used in a conversion generating environment or in a brand building one. I think that largely does depend on the circumstances that you're operating in. And of course you've experienced different circumstances, different needs for content, different ways of making it work. And so it's probably a good point now to move into that conversation and ask you where you stand on that debate, whether content is for or best deployed for brand building or for conversion generating activities.

Julia Hornaday (03:25)
At the end of the day, we build brands, anyone, companies, individuals, because we want to sell people something. I, as a person, am grateful to be joining you today because this helps me build my personal brand in order to sell my skills and competencies. We produce content, even if it's, you know, just thought leadership, sort of for the sake of it, ultimately to help us establish a reputation where when the time is right, somebody says, they're the right match for me, right? So I think the reality is, is let's strip back all of the bullshit, if you will. And my goal, by the way, for this is just to not drop an F-bomb because my mom will be mad, but I do tend to. I'm happy to drop all the others, but like I can't upset Heidi, like in real life.

James (04:04)
Mm-hmm.

We're not going to be mad.

Craig Taylor (04:22)
Would actually actively encourage it to be fair.

James (04:24)
Yeah.

James (04:31)
I can think of a few swear words you would probably also upset your mother. But okay.

Julia Hornaday (04:36)
Anyway, I guess the point is that I don't think this is an or, and I don't actually think it's an and either. I think it's brand building is the prerequisite to conversion. And I think like there's a natural tendency, like we as humans, again, see, told you I'm gonna get all philosophical here. We love to label and divide, that's just because that makes things easier for us. If we can make things sort of binary and bucket them, then it's simple to understand, or it's easier for us to explain. And like,

James (04:55)
Hit us with it. Mm-hmm. And to prove ROI on, importantly, you mentioned earlier.

Julia Hornaday (05:16)
Yeah, yes,

Yes, which I think like we're going to get into, right? But like that alone is bullshit and we all should be smarter than that. And so, you know, I think the reality is, is we know that customers are residing in that, that brand building space, just consuming 95 % of the time and 5 % of the time they're...

James (05:34)
Mm-hmm.

We've got some thoughts on the 95.5 rule, which I'm sure we'll come on to. And Craig, I'll probably hand over to you on that one, because it's your specialist area.

Julia Hornaday (05:45)
Look at me being like simplifying into 95.5. 

Craig Taylor (05:48)
I think that's right. The point you make is that we do oversimplify things, but in the world that we operate in, this complex B2B sales world, when we oversimplify on the seller side, I think it doesn't match up to how buyers actually buy. I think that's, so 95.5 is a very good example of that. Assuming that vast majority of your market aren't in market and only 5 % are, that's way too simplistic as a model. It's useful. But I think there's, there's gotta be some percentage in between that are a tipping point that could be influenced to buy. particularly when it's more of a consultancy sale because, they have issues that they need to solve. And as those become more painful, more important, obviously that's where experts like Turkey come in. I think I, I suppose my question that occurred to me from the very start really as you said, this is a fairly new industry to you. So I'd be really interested to see what you think is quite different from anything else that you've experienced before.

Julia Hornaday (06:54)
Compared to my background, it's a far more growth oriented environment, right? Enter the MQL, that's another day or part of this day. And so the orientation around how marketing serves sales.

James (06:59)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hornaday (07:15)
And that relationship, like, you you hear about it, you feel it to a degree in any industry, but I think it's far more kind of out front and acute for me. and the role of marketing in driving sales, and how sort of quickly that should be, which, which is why that 95 five rule comes into play. And I think largely from an education perspective, Craig, which is if I need to simplify this for a stakeholder that doesn't understand the complexity of what we do.

Craig Taylor (07:44)
It's a great way of doing it. Yeah.

Julia Hornaday (07:45)
It's an opportunity to say, we have to think about this differently. You cannot think that we're going to put out this piece of content and tomorrow you're going to get on the phone with them and they're going to be ready to buy something from you. That is a complete and utter mistake to think that way. But all the same, it is far more growth oriented. And so you have to put on that hat of how does this influence the bottom line in a much more sort of direct.

James (08:02)
Absolutely.

Julia Hornaday (08:15)
And I think for me, how do I build in better, you know, never perfect, but better attribution in order to prove that the work that we're doing is worthwhile at every stage of that 95-5 journey, if you

James (08:29)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hornaday (08:32)
We are not going to manufacture demand. And I see so many fricking ads that are like, you know, we're going to solve all your demand and problems. And I'm like, you are full of shit. You are not going to create that out of thin air. And we're going to waste a ton of money. And, you know, I'm not sorry, disengage.

Craig Taylor (08:59)
We're very much at a time of change in marketing. And I think that's clear in a lot of the debate, not debate, but a lot of conversations surround reporting and attribution, MQLs, that seems to be a big question mark.

James (09:10)
We talk about a lot.

Julia Hornaday (09:13)
Yeah, I'm excited for this one. I'm excited for what's coming here.

Craig Taylor (09:16)
It's a question I asked the previous guests as well. It's just, you know, where do you think things are heading now?

Julia Hornaday (09:22)
So Craig, mean, I don't know how privy you are to the conversations that James and I have been having, but essentially what we're looking at is what I wanna know and see is, so somebody goes through a gated piece of content to sort of enter our ecosystem, if you will.

I wanna know if there's any science behind how many interactions they have with us in all forms before they move into a deal opportunity, right? So is it two? Is it 20? Is it 200? How often are they visiting our website? How often are they engaging with social posts? What sorts of content are they most drawn to? I know for some who are probably listening to this, they're like, oh my God, you don't have that in place? Judge me. Yeah.

But yeah, exactly.

Craig Taylor (10:08)
There's a lot of people that don't believe me.

James (10:10)
Trust

me,

Julia Hornaday (10:11)
But like, I want to understand what that user lifecycle looks like, what kind of quantity of touch points across that spectrum, nature of touch points across that spectrum. So we can do more. So from a marketing perspective, we can do more of what works and helps them move closer to conversion.

And equally from a sales perspective, we can say to our lovely business development reps and our sales folks, guys, leave it, leave it alone. You do not need to call that person or maybe you do, but not for the purposes of, know, like, how do you have that conversation? How do you have that call? How can you follow up with them and nurture them in the right way? Like what, what can we do to shape the way the business functions, not just understand

how to make our marketing better. Like that's what I want out of measurement. And I think MQL is important in that. We know that that can't be like an abandoned metric. It is helpful to quantify. We have to be doing lead gen, but equally once that lead exists, what's the life cycle between MQL, SQL, actual opportunity?

James (11:09)
Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

having that data to hand and being able to say, actually on average it takes, and in our case, a lead score of a hundred before they're even open to a conversation, wait till maybe they're at 80.

before you pick up the phone. It helps prioritize the effort of the sales team, but it also helps educate them around that expectation, not just the sales team, but the wider business. Don't expect, as you start this conversation with, someone to engage once and then a deal to be created the day after. It just does not work like that. I think therefore understanding the buyer process and how people engage through that buyer process is really key.

Julia Hornaday (12:04)
What? I'm not... Yeah.

And and equally, I think.

you know, from an operational perspective, ask yourself what kind of organization, what kind of sales organization do you want to be? You know, do you want to be really relationship driven and hands on? Okay. Then yeah, that, that data is helpful, but you might choose on purpose to, wouldn't say ignore or abandon it, but to say, well, actually we feel like an early kind of personal touch point works wonders and the,

that touch point in the life cycle early on, it is critical because it helps to overcome all of the kind of intense saturation of nurture and, you know, sales emails in your inbox and, you know, all the other ways in which we're bombarded. and, know, I'm sure we're going to touch on AI in this conversation and automation and dynamic content and personalization.

And all of those things are incredible assists in doing our work. But equally, think they're not going away. And if anything, there's certainly reasonable expectation that they would continue to proliferate, in which case somebody calling you or texting you and just like asking how you're doing.

you know, might be an incredibly refreshing and in some ways sort of disarming but equally charming way of breaking up the monotony of content at the point where we know and we sort of have permission interest.

So yeah, I don't know, you know, I think there are lots of ways to think about that. Yes, it might validate that our salespeople don't reach out until the 18th engagement. Equally, it might be like, we're gonna call them an engagement too and just see how they're doing.

Craig Taylor (14:16)
That was going to be my question actually, because being true to the podcast, we call it B2B Tech, not just because it's the industry that we serve, but we also work in professional services as well. it's because we talk about technology that supports B2B marketing and sales. Is HubSpot, is Turnkey the first time you've worked with HubSpot?

Yeah.

Julia Hornaday (14:38)
Yes, it is.

Craig Taylor (14:39)
And obviously it's, it's, it's direction of travel now is to really embrace AI and build AI into the platform to the point where you're using it to perform with tasks that you would, you know, we, we, do today in a more traditional way, we speak to a lot of people that have concerns about the use of AI. and given turnkey's role in the world as a risk management security specialist and, and, you know, your, your viewpoint on use of AI, just be good to get your take on..

Julia Hornaday (15:10)
I think that of course there are lots of sort of like rational reasons to have concerns about AI. I think there are emotional and rational reasons to sort of like be disdainful about it. You know, it's gonna take my job or it's gonna, it's like just dehumanizing, you know, everything. It's producing a bunch of slop and wanting to avoid that.

I mean, all these things, right? It's like we have to be on balance.

it's just not as sort of big, scary and maybe robotic as I think it has to be. And I think just about how do I use it to help me along? editing, right? Like I love an edit, but equally I need editing and I don't always have an editor. Like, so using AI to just support and streamline that process where I'm not having to read the thing six times and probably miss something anyway because I've looked at it so much.

I can ignore suggestions and I often do, right? Rather than, for example, having AI create the content for me or the first draft for me, I will use it on the other side to have it do the work to make sure that my point is clear and I'm not gonna look like a fool because I have errors in the mix. Which I think a lot of people have a reverse approach, right? They're like, we're gonna have this do the first draft and then we're gonna take it from there.

James (16:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And that all come back to AI as well, doesn't it? At end of the day, the more shit that's out there, the more you're to have to wade through that shit with high quality content and different forms of content as well, which I think is where the tech debate comes back into this. Diversifying yourself through the subject matter and the quality of content is one thing, but diversifying the format is also going to be really key, I think, because of the sea of sameness that you mentioned earlier. Cutting through with maybe interactive content as we're working on at the minute, Julia, or something that's completely even unique to you as a brand, even better, but that the differentiation and how tech comes into that differentiation of format, think is also going to be an increasingly common objective of organisations as they try and cut through all the shit.

Julia Hornaday (17:25)
Yeah, and with that too, you know, where do you say no and where do you sort of follow where things are going? You know, vertical video. All right. Instagram stories. TikTok. These ways that we consume information. I TikTok is a search engine. You know, for example, like that is the resource for Gen Z, you know, there and many others, right? Like they are going onto TikTok to search for information that is deemed valid. Is that right for, you you have to ask, is that right for our business? Do I do that? But equally, yeah.

James (18:08)
There's probably another conspiracy angle on that one as well.

Craig Taylor (18:11)
Well, that's why I think that's where the, how content should really be measured in very simple terms. You know, there's, I don't actually know the book called the Jolt Effect, but I'm reading that at the moment. It was done by the guys that did, did the challenge of sale research. And they talk about the fact that we've gone through cycles with how we used to have information asymmetry in sales where the buyers had no information.

And the seller had all the information and therefore had all the control of the sales process. Then with the internet, we moved to information parity where everything's more on a level, buyers had more control. Now we're in a situation where it's information overload. so if your content is just purely providing information, that's not going to help a buyer because they've already got too much to consume. It's how you advise them, how you make recommendations that are going to help them move forward and overcome some of this, what they call outcome uncertainty.

Julia Hornaday (19:07)
Mm-hmm.

Craig Taylor (19:07)
Cause ultimately it goes back to the trust piece, the very end of a sales process and someone's going to sign off. The biggest fear is whether they're going to actually make this work, whether the whole thing's going to go completely South and affect their career and their reputation. So that's, you know, it's a challenge sometimes for someone like Turnkey when you're up against some really big brands that you could absolutely, you know, you punch your way above your weight and you'd absolutely do a much better job than some of the, maybe the big four or the

Julia Hornaday (19:28)
Yeah.

Craig Taylor (19:37)
The consultancies, but purely on the basis that you never got fired for hiring Accenture, that's the battle you're up against. But I do think that's changing. But yeah, I think that for me, it's got to be the ultimate measure. Are you actually providing some value that's helping a buyer through their decision making process, or you're just giving them some more information?

Julia Hornaday (19:42)
Exactly.

Well, and I think that's where, you know, the questions that we kind of went through earlier, like, where, what do we want to be known for? What, what do we want to own here? and being discerning about that and putting, throwing a lot of weight at it. you know, theme for the year, do less comma better, important comma. is, it's really focusing in on where do we feel like we can have the biggest impact? There's Lots of spaces where we have developed a strong reputation and like people will continue to come to us for that work. But if we're looking at where we can grow and the challenges that we can help people solve, you what are those areas of greatest opportunity and how do we get that out in all the various ways and see content as that full spectrum of yes, at a high level, you know, you're developing blog content and you're talking about on social, but equally, how are we demystifying the challenge and really giving people some helpful things to think about.

James (20:29)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hornaday (20:53)
You know, you always want to withhold a degree of information. That's just the nature of these things. But equally, I think when you do disclose the right amount and you kind of help them see that they could do it, but they maybe don't want to do it alone, that can be a real opportunity. And then entering sort of into that sales function, like how can they, you know, I think we have to remember salespeople are often in our business are sometimes SMEs, but sometimes they're not. And helping equip them. And I think this is something that James and I have talked about so much recently with positioning and, you know, go to market messaging that you can understand in two sentences what the benefit is to your business. Equipping people to talk that talk in all forms

James (21:27)
Mm-hmm.

Craig Taylor (21:45)
we always try and get an idea from your perspective of the sort of biggest piece of bullshit that you've come across recently. So that could be some pearl of wisdom from another agency that is just a bit self-serving. It could be a self-professed guru that's got a particular standpoint on the future of marketing. Is there anything that springs to mind?

Julia Hornaday (22:05)
I think the one that is very funny and a lot of will resonate with a lot of people is I need a one pager for that. In terms of in terms of the

Craig Taylor (22:14)
Hahaha.

Julia Hornaday (22:18)
The user dictating the format that you need to deliver in, which is like the thing that sets off the like steam coming out of my ears, like as much as anything does. So it's not exactly the debate between brand building and conversion, but I do think that there is something in that, which is like, you want this one pager because you think it's gonna do the job for you. It is not going to do the job for you. There is hard graft involved, right? So like that would be where I would go with this.

James (22:55)
It dumbs down the importance of content, doesn't it? And it boils it down into...

Julia Hornaday (22:58)
I mean, it reduces you to like, can you just make it pretty and like put some words around it? 

James (23:03)
Yeah, and now that's all I need. that the level of your impact will stop there. Thank you very much. We'll do the rest. It's what I read from that. And I'm sure you do the same.

Julia Hornaday (23:08)
huh. huh. Yeah.

Yeah and also like, why are you creating physical collateral? It's not supporting all of these other needs within your business like SEO. You're wasting natural resources. Like let's not go into that. Why are we printing crap in the first place? Nobody wants it. I don't know. I mean, there's just so many.

Craig Taylor (23:31)
Yeah.

James (23:32)
I'm with you.

Julia Hornaday (23:33)
like come at me.

Craig Taylor (23:33)
It could be useful because the salesperson wants to follow up with a prospect and they want to send them this one pager, but I'd almost be tempted. I wouldn't do this obviously for all sorts of reasons, but almost be tempted just to run it through AI in a few seconds. Cause it's, it's the, it's the risk versus not risk. It's the effort versus the reward, you know, for the marketing team to put the effort in, stop doing other stuff, to put a one page together. It's still quite a lot of effort.

Julia Hornaday (23:41)
Yeah.

Craig Taylor (24:00)
And it's not really, not really going to pay dividends. It's probably just going to be help one salesperson in one interaction with one prospect that won't even move the dial. Yeah.

James (24:07)
It's the good old random active marketing, isn't it? That we talk about quite regularly. It all strips away the strategic nature of the delivery that you're doing so well at Turnkey, Julia, by treating it as an ad hoc support function, which I think is absolutely what it's not. And as Craig rightly points out, anytime you spend on those ad hoc random acts of marketing, you're not spent on the strategic activity that...

Julia Hornaday (24:28)
Exactly. What's opportunity cost is

Craig Taylor (24:28)
on the really important stuff. Yeah, exactly that.

Julia Hornaday (24:31)
Also a really critical consideration if anything, like there are so many aspects of sales that I don't understand and I glean tons of benefit from conversations with them and situations that they're facing and up against. That helps us think about, how do we message this in the right way? Like, how do we clarify our own challenges? How can we make sure that we're developing clear language that actually reflects what they're hearing on the ground? I don't have that opportunity in the same way. I don't have that same exposure. So it is very much like a give get. But equally like, I think maybe this is like, know, Midwestern values, you guys are Midlands, so like you feel this too. Like hard work is like the symbol of your, is basically like your self-worth. Like I should definitely go to therapy for that. But equally, it's something where to me, if it's a matter of effort and it's smart effort, like I'm gonna put in that effort, I don't want to ever sort of default to just like laziness. And I think Craig, to your point there about, you know, okay, yeah, use AI to develop that thing. Like if it's really just about providing the thing that says we can do this, that probably is enough rather than your principles.

Craig Taylor (25:50)
Yeah, sometimes I just think salespeople want some kind of, they want some sort of tangible thing they can put in front of someone just to prove, yeah, we actually do this. you can turn it around quickly with AI, but yeah, yeah. That's why I just use AI, use AI. Here's a template, whack it into that.

Julia Hornaday (25:56)
Yeah.

James (25:57)
You could spend your entire career though, turning around the different tangible things that sales want. absolutely. 

Julia Hornaday (26:03)
Yeah. A win is a win is good enough, good enough, right? And sometimes AI is good enough, you know? And we should embrace that as opposed to resist it. Yeah.

James (26:08)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Craig Taylor (26:20)
Yeah.

James (26:20)
So I think we can very clearly agree that we need a one pager for that is definitely in the bullshit category. This is like room 101 now, by the way, we're going to decide what goes in and what doesn't. And that one's definitely in.

But I think if we summarise the key topic for the audience, which is content for a brand building purpose or best use for a brand building purpose or a conversion-driven summarising your words, Julia, what you think the answer to that debate is.

Julia Hornaday (26:46)
I think the point for me is that it is always about conversion, even if that is a very distant objective, right? And to claim it's not would actually diminish the value of brand building.

If brand building is not in service of conversion at some level, why are we doing it? And so again, it's not a linear path. It's not an or, it's not exactly an and. Brand building is an essential pathway to conversion. And I would argue it is the most important part of conversion.

James (27:10)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Hornaday (27:39)
You can apply growth strategies all day. You can switch on and off paid ads. You can do, you can import a bunch of bullshit contacts into your database and hope for the best. You can do all of those things, but if you are not memorable, if you don't have a clear message, if people can't find you when they're looking to solve their problems and if they can't buy from you because there isn't clarity around your offer, you're screwed. And all of that is brand building. So essential to conversion, mic drop.

Craig Taylor (28:11)
There's just, there's just conversion with hugely different ends of the spectrum. There's the immediate conversion and there's a long-term conversion. You know, even companies like car manufacturers that do advertising to try and snare, you know, kids in their very early teens, you know, they will buy at some point, maybe 30 years down the line. That's, that's, it's still conversion.

Julia Hornaday (28:31)
Fun fact guys, I had that feeling when I was 13, I really wanted a Chevy Malibu. Didn't get that ever and wouldn't. Some of these things we grow out of. it like, okay. I knew an Americanism would come out at some point and we've landed there. Like think of a car that you would not want as a teen, like in real life. It was that.

Craig Taylor (28:37)
There you go.

James (28:41)
We don't know what that is, Julia. We don't have Chevy Malibu's over here.

Craig Taylor (28:55)
What car would that mostly be?

James (29:01)
I'm gonna Google it.

Julia Hornaday (29:01)
It's like a family sedan. Like why, why was I obsessed with that age.

James (29:06)
Well, on that note, I think we can probably end. Craig does his normal outro at the end of this, which I absolutely could not do.

James (29:13)
The thing we should have finished with though is obviously thanks for your time, Julia. Really appreciate you joining. It was a blast. I'm not gonna say, let me say that again. It was fun. A blast sounds a bit cheesy.

Julia Hornaday (29:21)
first of all, James, I'm pretty sure that it was a blast. So, okay. But no, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you supporting my brand

No, this has been awesome. And obviously thanks for all your support both in championing me, Turnkey and helping us navigate our many marketing challenges.