Great Marketing Starts With Clear Business Goals: Jennifer Kelly

If you run a tech or engineering company and your work feels like a “best kept secret,” the problem is probably not effort. It is direction. We sit down with marketer Jennifer Kelly to unpack why tactics like posting more, trying new ads, or refreshing a website can still fall flat when the marketing strategy is missing or disconnected from what the business actually needs.

We start with a simple but hard truth: visibility comes before engagement, and engagement comes before revenue. Jennifer explains why waiting for the next RFP, referral, or relationship to pay off is not a forecastable plan, especially when you are trying to hit quarterly goals or grow into new markets. From there, we walk through what strategy-first marketing looks like for technical firms: beginning with leadership goals, identifying competitive pressure, and building a plan that clearly supports sales and growth.

One of the strongest takeaways is how customer interviews sharpen brand positioning and messaging. Jennifer shares how clients often reveal the real reasons they stay, including surprisingly “mundane” details like invoicing, process, and day-to-day interactions that reduce friction and build trust. Those specifics can become your most defensible differentiators, making your company harder to replace and your marketing far more authentic.

We wrap with two practical actions you can take today: check your Google Analytics to understand where your website traffic really comes from, and consider starting a LinkedIn newsletter as a simple email marketing and thought leadership channel without extra software. If you want marketing that feels grounded, measurable, and aligned with your business goals, subscribe, share this with a technical leader who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest visibility challenge.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Okay. So I have to get close to be able to see what I'm talking about. So here we go. All right. Uh get a little we'll get a little room tone. I'll edit all this later and and put you know music and a hook in the front and music and thank you in the back and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Jennifer Kelly is our guest today on the commission code. We're really excited about having Jennifer here because she takes an interesting look at marketing, which is so much better than just, hey, look, try these different tactics. And man, I tell you what, any tactics going to work if you implement it well and properly. But wouldn't it be nice to have that aligned with what you're really trying to achieve with

Room Tone And Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:44

your business? And that's exactly what Jennifer does and what her philosophy is on marketing. And I'm glad to have her here to talk to us about that. Jennifer, tell us a little bit about you and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Sure. It's great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. So I'm a marketer who works with tech and engineering companies that are sick and tired

Meet Jennifer And The Real Problem

SPEAKER_00 1:04

of being a best kept secret.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Marketing and engineering are engineering tech companies that are sick. That's all you had to say. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Well, my team and I come in and we help them get known and uh land bigger and better contracts and clients that they're capable of landing. But uh, you know, right now no one knows about them or not enough people know about them. So we help them out with that. So that's what we do. And yeah, you were talking about the the, I guess, the opinion or the point of view on marketing. And it it really is strategy first and then tactics, meaning that um it, and you're right, any old tactic will work for anybody. Um, or what any any old tactic will work not for anybody, that's why they're all out there. I mean, for goodness sake, skywriting even works for some, but not for all, right? I mean, it's all there for a reason. But the thing is, if if you don't have your strategy or your plan uh at the front end, that's when you're gonna start getting frustrated and then come to the conclusion that marketing just doesn't work for us, doesn't work for our company, and that would be uh, you know, a sad thing because uh we can't take your company to where it really can go.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Exactly. And and that's the purpose. I mean, the the whole purpose is

Strategy Before Tactics For Visibility

SPEAKER_01 2:18

visibility and then uh engagement and getting people to engage. But first of all, you have to be visible. And it I I've said this way too many times. And if there are folks out there that listen to me more than once, you've heard it a hundred times. But Scott came on my show and he said, Morris, it's no longer about who you know, it's about who knows you. And I thought, man, how do you take something and make it simple? Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

I mean, it's true. It's true. The thing is, and so our focus is uh is on the tech companies. And so what I mean about that is tech products or services. We leave SaaS alone. There's you know a million marketing companies servicing that area, and then uh over on the other side with consulting engineers, and you know, they're doing great things, uh, really contributing to either your your town, your city, the world in general, uh, but they're not very good at talking about it. They're not really good at promoting themselves, they're not really good at going into a situation where there is the problem and saying, hey, we can do it. I mean, a lot of them are sitting back and waiting for that RFP to come in or relying on relationships and and referrals. And and I have nothing against relationships and referrals, but you cannot tell me a referral is coming in next week at 2:30 on Tuesday, and you know, that'll help us make our quarterly goals. Yeah, like you know what I mean? So you like it or not, you need that pipeline filled and you need a different way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Exactly. And you need to be able to do something that's intentional so that you're not just sitting around sitting around waiting for the phone to ring is is probably not the best marketing strategy one has ever come up with, is it?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Makes for a long day, let me tell you. Makes for a long day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Isn't that the truth? So so where do you begin with figuring out what the strategy needs to be for my marketing plan, Jennifer?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Uh where we figured out, so we have a whole process which probably doesn't surprise you, but uh what might surprise you a little bit is we tackle it a little bit deeper than just marketing. Um, so what we want to make sure of is that the owners and the team that we're working with at the client site that they really understand their marketing strategy and really have bought into it. And at the end of the day, we want them to be able to say, oh, I see how marketing is growing our business. I see how marketing is helping sales. And the only way to do that is to uh dig in and find out what's going on with the company. So we start there. What's the goals? Uh are you planning to launch into Texas and next year? Are you planning to launch a new product? Do you want to grow by X percent? Is there a competitor

Build Marketing Around Business Goals

SPEAKER_00 4:58

coming in that you're concerned about? What's going on with the business? What are the business goals? And then from there, that's how we start and figure out what the marketing strategy will be. Once we understand what's going on with the business and what the leadership wants to do with the business, we go and talk to the the our clients, so that clients, their customers, and figure out why did you hire this company? Why are you working with them? What are they doing well? How did you find them? How did you hear about them? Why do you stay with them? And uh this is this is this can be quite a hurdle. Uh the pushback we often get is, you know, we're we're very close to our customers. We already know that they think we're great in this area and that area, you know, like you don't need to talk to them. We already know what they're gonna say. But there's there's there's something about the way that we will ask the questions, and there's something about, you know, if you if you've heard that um uh, you know, the stranger on the train, right? You're gonna spill your guts to someone that you don't really know as opposed to, you know, someone that you do. Uh, it's a little bit different

Customer Interviews Find Real Differentiators

SPEAKER_00 6:03

for a marketing interview, but still we do end up getting a lot of the gold uh from the customers about why they stay. And they will tell us things that um that are quite interesting, meaning that they will say things about how uh that company is acting in a great way. Let me give you a very boring example. Um, the way these guys invoice us is really convenient to how our uh accounts team works. Never in a million years would the client have ever said, you know what, forget about our product or service. The way we invoice is amazing. It keeps our clients really happy, but it is sort of like boring information that comes out like that. That is something that's really very, very interesting to uh to our marketing strategy. And it's information like that that we can weave into the messaging and we can weave into the positioning of the company and at the end of the day, have them come out with the positioning, the messaging that is unlike anyone else. And particularly, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure you've seen this in in um in business. You could take a logo from one company and swap it with the website of another company, and it wouldn't matter, right? We want to avoid that. We want to make you irreplaceable. But the thing is, getting that information out of those client interviews, you have this authentic information. You have the, you know, this, the certified, this is the way we work, this is what our clients like about us, this is how we operate. And so even the most um anti-marketing person in the company can say, you know what, that's how we operate. That's that this is authentic, and really get behind it. So those are a couple of things that we do with uh our marketing strategy uh to make sure that it really fits the company and that it's different than just saying, hey, let's let's do some billboard ads today.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Isn't it amazing how important authenticity is and integrity and actually doing what you say you're gonna do? And it it's it's like, well, folks say, well, yeah, I can create this this picture and this this visual that's gonna make us look like that. But in reality, it's that authentic picture of who we are and what we do that's gonna do so much more for our company than anything we could AI or graphic or generate somehow or another.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Very, very true, very true. The thing is as well with these uh these client interviews or that the clients, so our clients' customer interviews, it's always a little funny you're trying to keep that straight. Um, we one of the questions we do ask, and this is with the you know, the approval of the client, um, is there anything, is there anything, you know, ABC company could be doing better for you? And you would be surprised how much um uh positive challenges that their company or the clients will give back to them. Well, they could be doing this better, I would like it if they did that better, this, that, and and and so and so. And the the point I wanted to make about that is that these people are wanting to help you. These people are interested in taking the time to give you their feedback. And the fact that any company decides, you know what, uh, we need to get better, we need to see what we're doing, you know, well, what are we doing right? What we're doing not so well, what are we doing wrong, and be open to that feedback. Um, if you get the right the right client on uh on the interview, they do want to help. And and that's uh that's a really neat thing. Um, and those clients can feel flattered that uh they were part of the part of the team that uh were asked for their opinion.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, oh a hundred percent. I can and certainly understand that. And yeah, that's interesting information. It's like the the invoice story you you mentioned. Not only does it tell me, well, that's a good thing, but it also says, hey, let's throw out that idea about changing our invoice plan.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Very true. Yeah, but it also shows you, you know, some of the more boring or mundane or typical ways that you are interacting with your client, those matter too. It's not just, you know, your shiny new product.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So so what do you what do what give me something practical that our audience can do today to improve their marketing? When where would they where should they start? Yeah, I'm sitting out here, I'm running a business, and uh, I'm doing some social

Authentic Messaging And Useful Feedback

SPEAKER_01 10:40

media stuff, and I'm doing some of this, some of that. What you hadn't got all day to do the whole shooting match, but where would you point them? What what direction would you move them in, Jennifer? What direction would I move them?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

That this is a tough one. Uh, two things come to mind, and I think it'll appeal to um to either the analytical kind of person or the person that just wanted to wants to get out there and in front of their customer. So I'm sure we got a little bit of both in the audience. Uh, for the analytical folks, um I would like you to check what's going on with

Quick Wins Analytics And LinkedIn Newsletter

SPEAKER_00 11:13

your website. In the back of your website, there's Google, something called Google Analytics, and some of my favorite things to look at in there will tell you where is the traffic to your website coming from. And this is very important because um oftentimes we we have uh we have clients that uh, oh, I don't want to do anything with social media or oh, I don't want to do this or that. Turns out some of those social media sites send me a lot of traffic. So you might want to see where that traffic is coming from before you decide to, you know, uh cut that off completely. So if you're analytically analytical, I'd say get into uh the back end of your website, have a look at you know, you know, where your traffic is coming from. If you're on the other side of things, I would suggest if you haven't already, um, start a newsletter. And uh LinkedIn has a very free, uh, very practical and very easy to implement a newsletter service. It's basically like writing a post. I'm sure we've all posted on LinkedIn. Uh and the neat thing about that is that uh it gets you uh a newsletter without you having to go and get MailTramp or any of this software set up at all. Um, it goes out to folks on LinkedIn who have uh connected with you. And the neat thing about that is uh it hits them two ways. If they're on LinkedIn, they can see your newsletter come out. If they're not on LinkedIn, they get it in their inbox. And so it's uh it's a really practical way to start uh email newsletters, email marketing if you haven't done that before.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

So if I have my own email list and my own newsletter that's going out and I do that, some folks are gonna get duplicated. Would that be true?

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Not necessarily. No, I mean, uh I guess depending on where you are in the world, so here in Canada, you have to exclusively sign up for the newsletter in order to be on the newsletters list. Uh and with LinkedIn as well, you have to sign up for it. You'll have to say, Yes, I want this newsletter. So um, it's not just um everybody that knows you is going to get this.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Good, good, good, good. All right, that's uh it makes good sense. And those are great ideas because you sometimes you're out there and you don't you don't have time or resources to to hire an expert like yourself to come in, but you'd like to start doing something, but you just don't know where to start. And I think that's that's critical, being able to look at the analytics and then just being able to do something different. Maybe if you're not doing a newsletter, doing that and then test it. Test it and get out there and see what kind of results and engagement you get, how many people are opening it and how many are are looking at it. I'm sure there's a way to look at that with the LinkedIn piece. There certainly is with all the the email marketing uh platforms you can go to get into. Mine tells me how many people opened it, how many clicks, and how many of this, that, and the other. Yeah, I don't pay any attention to that, Jennifer, but I see it. Oh jeez. I need somebody to teach me how to look at it and what to what to think about what I see. But in any case, Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us today on the Commission Code. Really appreciate your time and your your input and your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Thanks for having me. It was a great time.