Redefining Marketing: Customer-Centric Strategies for Agency Growth in 2025

Real revenue growth happens when the entire organization understands
how marketing works and is really aligned around
supporting marketing efforts to help grow the company.
Let’s find out how one marketing agency
helps their clients create the right environment for that.
In this episode of Closing Time,
Thanks so much
for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for go to market Leaders.
I’m Melinda Prescher, senior director of marketing at Insightly.
I’m really happy to introduce my friend and trusted colleague, Tony Mohr.
Tony is the former CEO of a strategic marketing agency, Quarry,
and he’s now managing director of marketing services at Marketbridge.
Tony, it’s so great to have you here today.
I mean, you and I have known each other
a long time and I won’t share exactly how long.
But what I will say is that our working
relationship was really valuable to me at a critical step in my career.
What we’re going to be talking about today
is how organizations can really rally around the marketing function.
And the reason I wanted to have you join me specifically,
is that you and I actually collaborated on a program
that led to a measurably better experience for our customers.
And if I remember right,. I think we even won an award for this.
The changes that we were making were really, in a way,
culturally challenging for some parts of that organization,
and it was great to be able
to demonstrate that the work we were doing was making an impact.
I’d love to hear your impression of that time to.
Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Hello. And, it’s great to be here.
I really do appreciate the invite.
It’s always a pleasure to connect with you.
You’re right.
You and I met, and work together on what was really a pivotal, and,
I think, influential marketing initiative for your company and brand at the time.
While our
our time working together on that particular project was probably about,
nine months in length, during a, you know, a longer tenure.
The work we did in that specific project, led to a repositioning
of your company’s flagship brand, in the cybersecurity space.
And, I think that had a much longer impact, in a positive way.
Over a much longer, time frame.
I think what I and,
we at Quarry are so proud about is that despite that project
receiving a lot of questions
and some doubt initially because it was a new approach,
and it was relatively radical inside the walls of the company at the time.
Once we had really implemented the strategy and, and demonstrated,
using a quantitative data approach, that it could have
a really positive impact on subscriber churn.
We saw the company really get behind the strategy wholeheartedly.
And, you know, there were there were quite a few facets
of innovation within that project, which are super exciting to to reflect back on.
And I think that’s why it received a lot of the industry attention
that you’re referring to.
I think about how we sparked a massive shift
in the value proposition framing for that flagship brand.
When you think about where we were when,
you know, where the brand was when we initially met,
the industry standard really was about creating a sense of fear and uncertainty
and doubt in the minds of subscribers to antivirus and cyber security products.
And we brought a completely different lens to it.
We looked at it from a customer experience perspective
and, we looked at it from the idea that people
want to feel that they’re protected when they are online.
And so rather than creating a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt,
which went so far at that time, to including
images of like grenades and knives and guns, even in the advertising.
We flipped that
on its head and we said, okay,
we know people can feel vulnerable when they go online, but
what if we flipped that and said, you’re so protected,
you can do anything online because we, you know, we’ve got your back.
And that was, fairly transformational at the time.
But when we started to show through running a pilot
that it was projected to have, tens of millions of dollars
positive impact on churn, the company really got behind it,
and it led to the company rethinking the whole brand positioning.
And that was just such a thrilling thing to be,
part of and and to really spark.
I mean, Tony, to your point, this was a real sea change in the way
that this particular organization was thinking about how to reflect
what it did in the marketplace and how to brand, really.
I think that, you know, to your point, fear, uncertainty and doubt is a,
it’s a certain way of going about, that positioning.
How do you feel about that as a long term strategy?
Yeah. Great question.
It works for a period of time, particularly
in this situation when someone has just been hacked
or is feeling very vulnerable about being online.
But you, we, others, we fundamentally believe that the better path for the long
run was to really position the product in a positive way.
Position the service experience based on the positive value that it creates.
So another way to think about it is,
if you think about your electrical, your water or your gas utilities,
the challenge that your company had
was that your cybersecurity offer is very much like a utility.
No one thinks about the value you’re creating
until it’s no longer working.
And so it’s only when they’ve
been disrupted that you start thinking actively about the service.
And is it problematic?
Is it giving me good value?
And so the hesitation within your firm was,
how do we create the sense of need for this service
if it’s working really well and people are just feeling positive.
Right. So they were creating this fear, uncertainty and doubt.
But that feels like a short term sort of approach to it.
And so I think what we did together was argue successfully that if you,
brought a positive frame,
you could influence retention, you could influence subscriber renewal.
And in the specific frame that we brought was
if you are equipped with, you know, world
class cybersecurity service, then you don’t have to be fearful.
You can be digitally equipped to live your life online knowing you’re protected.
And that foundational brand insight and positioning then became the basis for,
a brand refresh that I think really connected with people.
It started moving away from showing products
and screenshots to showing people engaging in online
activities and being positive and happy and safe.
And so that was a great innovation, and I think it was much more aligned
with the notion that people want to be, affiliated
and aligned with things that brands that are positive, that are inspiring.
The other thing that was really great, just to,
you know, to your earlier question
about the innovation that that project brought as well, was
that was the first, responsive website that your company had built.
And, you know, it’s multi-billion dollar company.
You had over 30 global sites at the time.
And this was right around the time when RWD was entering
into, the lexicon and we were having mobile sites
that were becoming the, the priority over the desktop sites.
And so that was another innovation
that you and your team led, which was, deeply satisfying.
And, and the final thing that I thought,
as I was thinking back on, that time period,
by approaching this more from a customer centric perspective
than a product centric perspective,. I think we really together
achieved something that, today we take for granted.
But, you know, that far back, we didn’t
and and that was then that if you, think about the people first
and how do you create additional exceptional value for them
that by helping them rather than selling to them,
you can build stronger relationships and they in turn will reciprocate
by remaining loyal to you rather than, you know, making it all about the product
and what it can or can’t do relative to the competition.
And so I think that was
a major achievement for, for, your company and your brand at the time.
Yeah, I think so, too.
And I’m really glad you brought that up.
Because I think as a marketer, it’s so much more gratifying
to have a focus on customer centricity
and really trying to understand and advocate for the customer.
And I think it’s so good to see so many companies put much more
of a focus on on the customer and not just on the product messaging.
So, yeah, you’re taking me way back.
That was that was great.
You know, I’d like to pivot a little bit
and talk to you about your perspective as an agency leader.
And I think, you know, we went through a lot together in trying to create change
at that organization and kind of change how people were thinking about marketing.
And in a way, marketing is it’s no easier today than it was back then.
I mean, I think it seems to get more difficult by the day, maybe.
Sometimes I feel like everyone wants to be a marketer
until they see how difficult it really is to execute and get things done, and
as you and your team work with clients, what are you seeing, actually?
Yeah.
Really appreciate that reflection.
I think there’s so much validity to that.
We worked with some great marketers, particularly
on what I would refer to as the brand to demand spectrum.
So very much in the, the buying journey.
And so we’ve got some fantastic
B2B marketers at our clients that, you know,
are actively navigating this very challenging landscape.
And I think they do it with a lot of skill and a lot of competence.
We do see through the jobs that they’re being asked to achieve and accomplish.
There’s very much, an added pressure to do more with less.
So amidst all of the challenging environments
itself, the imperative from the C-suite
is to you know, use fewer resources to achieve more in the marketplace.
So that even increases the pressure more.
I think that is in part
one of the factors that explains why CMOs was
have such a short life cycle, at any, you know, given corporation,
there are challenges that we see, everywhere we look and everywhere
I think the market, marketers are looking,
I don’t think, to be fair
to those folks, that the reality and the complexity of what they navigate
every day is really appreciated by the other functions
in the modern organization.
And, you know, if I think about it at the most broadest level,
just bringing a marketing vision to life is, is a
is a really difficult thing to to achieve.
And then you’ve got to add
in things like the stack, the tech stack has gotten out of control.
People’s roles are broader, but they still need to remain
deeply rooted in a unique, degree of expertise.
So lots is being asked of everybody.
The way I sort of think about it is if I go around the
the circle and think of all the disciplines that we offer our clients,
we bring in experts in each of those areas.
But the marketer is really at the center of that,
and they’ve got to understand and be able to navigate each of those things.
So I’m thinking about branding, you know, identity development,
positioning, messaging, thinking of communications.
So the framing of your of your product or your brand, the
the word choice, the cycle logical perspective that you need to bring to it,
how are you engaging humans
that are engaged in a buying journey and how do you drive action?
These marketers have to know about how do you frame up information,
how do you package it into the right sort of asset type?
How do you get it out there and disseminated
that calls on technology?
So what are the optimal technologies to deploy?
And they’ve got to also not only use them, but oftentimes
they’re needing to interact with IT, and the finance group
to make an argument for why they need one technology over another.
They need to know how to work with data, and derive actionable insights from it.
And that’s not just quantitative data, but qualitative.
And people spend their whole careers learning how to do those things.
You know, qualitative research, quantitative data mining
and, and, you know, deriving insights and reporting on it.
So that’s just I’m touching on just some of the complexity there.
I think the list does go on.
And it’s why a firm like ours at Marketbridge, I’m so excited about
because we have a purpose built strategy where we brought together,
specialist firms and we’re really knitting them together
in a call it a vertical value chain, where we’re able to support our clients
from marketing strategy through to campaigns
and building the assets, deploying the actual,
customer experiences and then reporting and measuring on that effectiveness.
And looping that back to strategy so that you’re you’re iterating and optimizing.
So, it’s a very difficult job.
And, you know, that’s why organizations like ours really have a, have an ongoing
purpose is to support the,
the CMO and, and their teams in and being more effective.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think what you’ve summed up,. I would say probably every single marketer
on our team feels all of that so acutely and that in a way, it is.
It’s the challenge.
And and in a way, it’s also the fun of trying to figure it all out, actually.
A consistent theme in our discussions has also been
that there can be so many voices in the room and so much pressure
on the CMO and his or her team.
So I’d love to have you elaborate on that a little bit.
Yeah, sure.
You’re absolutely right.
There’s a foundational reason for that, in my view.
And I think, it’s something
that a lot of people overlook or perhaps,
maybe just haven’t slowed down and fully admired in its in its complexity.
Now there’s a, you know, a luminary that I hesitate to invoke here
because it does feel cliche
and I don’t want to just being one of those other commenter,
you know, people commenting
by borrowing, credibility from another thinker.
But Peter Drucker’s view of the job of the business is so relevant here.
He said that the job of the business is to create and to keep a customer.
And for him, the job of a company, then, is not just to maximize profits.
Obviously, that’s incredibly important.
But he believed that if you satisfy the needs and desires of customers
first and foremost, then revenues grow
and profits, result from that.
And so he said, then how you keep,
a customer, how you create and keep a customer really is through two
and only two corporate activities: market and innovate.
So how do we make sense of that?
Well, the way to make sense of that is to recognize
that when he says the word market, he had a much more robust
and expansive definition of what marketing is relative to what
we’ve done in the modern organization with the concept of marketing.
We very much assigned it to a specific functional group.
If we
were to relax that though, step back and think of marketing as what everyone
in the market, the modern corporation should conceive of what they do,
we start to get at the heart of what he actually meant.
So marketing comprises everything from pricing.
Packaging, product development, distribution, sales, customer support,
tech support,
communications and promotions, people selection and training, the processes
that you use to support and engage and communicate with your customers.
So if you take that kind of lens,
then you start to see that when he says
the job is to keep and create a customer or create
and keep a customer, and marketing is one of the main activities,
you realize that marketing isn’t what the marketing communications group does,
it should really be what the modern enlightened corporation does.
And so if we look at it from that perspective,
then everyone needs to think about the way that, you know, they interact
with customers or if they’re not directly interacting
with customers, what is the role that they play?
Their contributions play in impacting the customer experience.
So if I’m in research and development and I’m thinking of what
features and benefits would be beneficial,
it has to be relative to what the customer would want.
Otherwise,
I’m just creating features and benefits without any real purpose in mind.
So I think my advice to marketers, to truly create,
more successful
products and services is start with the customer at the center,
and you can then serve up a truly great customer experience.
And I mean that in the most sort of robust way of defining that
from the messaging and the product and the packaging and the way you price it
and what distribution channels, if you start with the customer,
I just don’t see how you’re going to go wrong.
Yeah, absolutely.
We are really living and breathing this every day.
Given that our product line really focuses around CRM and marketing,
and then also our service application
and, you know, diving even more deeply, my team really sits at the heart
of that in many ways, because we’re tasked with customer advocacy
and then capturing customer feedback that then is disseminated
through the entire organization and figuring out ways to make sure people
can create enough space to get that information and then action it.
And so we are right there with you on this.
How do you as, as an agency leader,
think about this specifically for your own teams?
Yeah.
So, you know, we have this phrase, it’s called looping.
And it’s, it’s a quarry-ism.
But the concept of looping is the idea that,
you know, information needs to be disseminated.
It needs to be shared,
that the power doesn’t lie in holding it close, but sharing it.
And by sharing it, you’re equipping people to be more effective in their day-to-day
responsibilities and activities because they’re more informed.
And so this applies very much in our business
because the conversations,
that are somewhat atomized with our client teams,
if they’re not brought together,
and people aren’t sort of like reflecting on, well, I spoke with this person.
These are some of the key takeaways today from that,
oh, and how does that connect to a conversation with the CMO last week
and the director, you know, in the course of the last couple of days,
then we run the risk of looking like
we’re not creating a cohesive client experience.
And so it’s very important for us to put in
what can be heavy lifting of
not just like verbatim saying what
each person said, but drawing those connections and being deliberate
amongst particularly our account teams with, keeping an ongoing
dialog and conversation going on around what’s important to the clients.
What is the feedback they’re giving us, how do we continue to improve?
Because if we don’t do those things, ultimately the relationship will decline
and they’ll want to work with another firm.
So, that kind of like shared information and having a shared lens
on our specific client accounts, and then the people inside of them
is the lifeblood of being a successful agency.
You know, you brought up something really important, in that
I think to be a successful marketer, you really have to have empathy
for the customer.
But you also have to have empathy
for everyone you’re working with within the organization.
Because to your point, if you don’t think about the information
that your colleague needs to really be able to do their job properly,
they really won’t be able
to receive the message in the way that you intended, actually.
So, I think that’s such a good point that you brought up.
We’re getting about to the end of our time together.
This has been so great.
Anything else?
Any final words you would like to share?
Yeah.
You know, we’re here in 2024.
And it does still strike me as somewhat
a little crazy that we’re still seeing the term
marketing as what people in essentially marcoms do.
And for me that’s just an unsatisfying definition.
And conceptualization of what marketing really should and can be.
Marketing as a holistic concept is absolutely thrilling to me.
And, perhaps in a second career here, I will, you know, endeavor
to perhaps teach at a university or something, because I’d love to, like,
really unpack further this, you know, more holistic view of it.
If we approach it as being
what we all together do in the modern corporation,
and that it starts from deeply understanding our customers
and what they need and want, and then we innovate using that.
That, to me, is the pathway to revenue, revenue growth.
And that means that everyone’s involved in revenue growth, not just
sales and and marketing communications.
And so, I mean, I’m probably being a bit idealistic here.
And if I bring it down and I think more pragmatically
and I just think about marketing and sales,
this gives an impetus
to push even harder to make marketing and sales,
siblings rather than, you know,
competing cousins, kind of within a system
that if they work together and they have a shared view of what
that customer’s buying journey is, what information they need
along the way, what conversations they want to have.
And I don’t just mean verbal, but through the assets we produce,
I think we can just be much more successful together
for cooperating as marketing and sales rather rather than competing.
And I that’s I think the, you know, probably the more pragmatic view
than thinking that everybody’s going to rally around being a marketer
is if we can get marketing and sales working together
in even greater alignment, much more success will come.
Tony, this is such a great conversation.
It was fantastic to collaborate with you.
And you know, in a way, this is when work is no longer work.
It’s really, truly fun.
That’s all the time that we have today for this episode.
Thanks so much, Tony, for these insights.
Thanks to everyone for joining the show.
If our audience wants to learn more
about your company, Tony, how can they find out more?
Yeah. We’re at Market bridge.com.
We’re also on LinkedIn.
So welcome, people reaching out, learning more about us.
And thank you so much,. Melinda, to you and your organization
for this opportunity.
It’s been an absolute pleasure.
You are so welcome.
Thanks to everybody for tuning in.
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We’ll see you next time on Closing time.