CII Lunchtime Lecture – 08/01/19

Roger started his career in 1987, the same day that the stock market crashed. After that auspicious start, where Roger read product literature for a week (everyone else was manning the phones), he worked on adding complexity and flexibility to the originally simple, if rigid, protection policies.
Roger went on to become involved in the development of the first critical illness policies in the 1990’s, which were called “Dread Disease” policies to those in the know.
By 2015, Roger had left Bright Grey, where he had worked as the MD. Roger then worked for the Independent Consultancy Protection Review as the MD. This Independent Consultancy was established by the Co Chairmans, Peter Le Beau and Andy Couchman, so it’s safe to say that Roger has worked with industry giants.
Roger now has his own consultancy and helps small businesses with Marketing Strategy, Marketing Content and Social Media.
Being an industry expert, coupled with an open and engaging style, enabled Roger to captivate his audience. He explained what content marketing is and how it is the opposite to the current trend of marketing to bombard prospective customers with endless emails that do not answer the questions customers want answers to! The result is deletion of the endless emails or texts and considerable unsubscribing.
Roger said although Marketing can be described as including customer focus, research, segmentation, targeting, profiling, strategy, product, pricing, distribution, people, brand and communication, but the most important facet of engagement tends to be forgotten.
Googles “zero moment of truth” results in 70% of purchases starting with a google search by individuals. They will also ask specific questions to reach the most accurate answers particular to them.
It is safe to say, the old way of annoying and interrupting customers is not effective, but that content marketing, the “marketing that teaches, entertains and inspires people to know, like and trust you enough to do business with you” is.
Roger continued by saying that Marketing is about gaining a deep, almost obsessive understanding of your target audience by asking three questions:-
Who is our customer?
What is their problem?
How do we solve that problem better than anyone else?

Roger added it is also good to be as different as you can and as simple as you can. He then gave an example of a company’s strapline which became complicated when accountants got involved, and further complicated when consultants were involved, to such an extent, that nobody could remember the original easy to remember strapline. An example of this that everyone remembers is “Domestos kills all known germs …dead”.
Roger finished by giving examples of how businesses have flourished by keeping their marketing simple and concentrating on content marketing, not old fashioned intrusive volume marketing.
He quoted Michael Ferguson’s of Nucleus important words “think big, act small and be humble” and said these words should resonate with all and that to make our marketing successful, we should all know how to win the zero moment of truth.
Roger can be contacted via Twitter, @Roger_Edwards or on the web https://rogeredwards.co.uk/