Starting over in fintech with Safak Erkol, Yapily

Speaker A: Foreign. Hey there. Welcome to Product Marketing Maestros tales from the front lines. I'm your host Nitin Karthik. As the author of the best selling book Product Marketing Wisdom I what we have found that real world case studies are the true litmus test for the effectiveness of any product marketing strategy. And that is why on this show we dive into the minds of industry titans especially as well as rising stars unpacking their expertise in action packed episodes that showcase the power of product marketing through real world case studies. And today my friends we are joined by product marketing maestro Safak Ercol. Safak is an AI native product marketing leader specializing in fintech and financial services. Based in London, she brings deep experience across product marketing, customer strategy, go to market, digital growth and lifecycle marketing for global brands including American Express, Barclays, ING and high growth scale ups such as Utility Warehouse and New Day. In fact at Utility Warehouse she built and scaled the product marketing function, led positioning across six product verticals and evolved the team towards customer marketing focused on engagement and CLTV growth. She's currently product marketing lead at Yapli and an active Product marketing alliance ambassador and pro member. And with that ladies and gentlemen let's welcome Safak Erkol Safak. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks Nitin, Great to be here.

Speaker A: Excellent, Excellent. Wonderful. So I'm really happy about this and I'm super excited Safak. So today we're going to be taking an experience from your background and we will break it down using the ABC framework. So we'll talk about the antecedents, what were the prior challenges, we'll talk about the behaviors, what actions you took and we'll talk about the conclusion, how things worked out. So with that pick a situation from your experience and tell us what were the antecedents, what were the prior challenges?

Speaker B: Yes, today I want to talk about uh, walking into a scale up as a senior product marketer where the function had been on post for three years and figuring out where we can resume product marketing, how to make impact and what the uh, AI uh influence was during this process. For me uh, I came into the fintech space, uh, back into the fintech space, scale up uh, in open banking initially at a fractional capacity, uh, doing both strategy and execution. And uh, this was a company that has done product marketing before but they didn't uh, have the function, they had it posed for uh three years uh and as you can imagine assets were outdated. The team, the lean team didn't have bandwidth to attend to product uh, marketing work uh and they had been doing well already. Uh, they had good traction in their ICPs, they had strong commercial results. And the challenge set with, uh, how they were doing in specific verticals and segments where they really believed they had a right to win. So it was a case of whether is it the messaging, is it the sales operating model, or is it some old operational friction in our pipeline? So these were all hypotheses that the business said. Uh, and exploring and actually addressing this. Building product marketing solutions was actually, I think, a fundamental product marketing problem. Uh, and I walking into this with a finite engagement at a fractional capacity and a wide limit, uh, you can imagine everything needed attention. Uh, the positioning hadn't been revisited. Sales enablement was quite ad hoc. They didn't have necessarily structured win and loss or customer insights programs. So the question was what to build first and how to sequence it so that it actually works, uh, as a system.

Speaker A: Wow, I can see so many people in the audience, Safak, who may be challenged with that exact issue. Uh, how do you tackle all these different problems you have? So thank you for telling us about the antecedents. Now, Safak, tell us about the behavior. So how did this guide the actions that you took?

Speaker B: Uh, yes, as I mentioned, it was a case of where to start. And also how do you approach this in a way that you're actually building a system and operationalizing it so that actually things are feeding into each other, uh, rather than multiple linear problems to solve. And the first thing I did was scoping and prioritizing and doing this, using this as a real demonstration of my judgment with the leadership team before actually you produce anything. Uh, I ran multiple workshops with key stakeholders. I went deep into their gong calls, their, uh, customer data, their prospect data, what they have published, and the actual sales conversations. And that process built a diagnosis, but it also understood, made me understand how what is the best way to work with this specific group of people for this specific company. Uh, and I think articulating what you're focusing on, clearly showing why you prioritize what gives, uh, a sense to your stakeholders that you really understand or you're making, uh, the sense of progress really transparent. So it actually makes working together and collaboration easier. Uh, they had a good instinct, actually. They actually wanted me to start with messaging, which I did, because the reality of a finite engagement is that you can't just jump in and earn the right to say, hey, we need to revisit our positioning before you can actually showcase the need and the readiness to do that. So I Use that messaging playbook. Very uh, uh, one on one product marketing. But I think the essentials are same as ever, jobs to be done, problems, solutions, how the products map to use cases. Mapping each of them with differentiators and proof points was my starting point and I did this across verticals. Uh, and this in a way surfaced the positioning questions. Anyway, uh, so you could uh, start pressure testing some of the messages. Just you could actually hear from the people in the room why they are using that outdated messaging. And you can really get that context that uh, any LLM tool can't easily reach. And in the process you are getting access to deeper strategic questions. But you are also building that trust, that credibility in the organization which I really think is super important. And uh, I think earlier there was a real tension because strategic uh, work and short term wins, quick wins. But I see that AI is changing the space and you're building a messaging book but you don't need to delay your uh, maybe quick wins or doing an enterprise deck to show that you can actually uh, come up with operationalization next week. You don't need to do these sequentially now. You can actually do them together because what AI enables you to do is in one hand you can build the messaging book and um, it can playbook and you can easily test your messages in the meantime on a deck that you have at hand. So that almost works perfectly because you are able to get learnings uh, which kind of feed into each other. Uh, my motto is starting the most important thing now uh, and focusing on uh, that. So I really think uh, the quick leans and strategic foundations work best, uh, also to kind of build your influence in the organization in that sense.

Speaker A: I love that, I love that, you know, building influence, uh, not just actually doing the technical work but also building influence. I love that. You know that is such a great lesson that all of us can take away. So now bring it home. So you've taken all these actions. So tell us, how did the situation play out for you given all the moving parts you have?

Speaker B: Yes, uh, six months in uh, to this engagement. Uh, by the beginning of this year we had done strategic work on the messaging playbooks and we had articulated where we sit in terms of the problems and the verticals, uh, that we were addressing. Which products map to which use cases and decks content, uh, sales enablement tools were built at the back of that messaging book with this understanding. And this also as I mentioned gave access to uh, inviting a ICP refinement because our ICPs were evolving and also looking into programs like Win Loss based on the, what we delivered and the impact of that. And in practical terms the conversion rates uh, in the funnel had improved for core verticals, uh, and we were also seeing traction in new verticals that were being shifted by market forces, which also was good news again because once you have that system and you know how to operationalize a playbook or the foundational understanding to be operationalized in a deck, in an ROI calculator, having a new vertical, uh, is actually where you rinse and repeat and learn that. Uh, and also in terms of my role, I now had a well defined view of what I'm focusing on, where do I sit in the organization and what support I needed. So I can say that uh, based on the feedback I received, product marketing was operating effectively and we could see this in the commercial results as well. Uh, I love that Elena Werna has a team, has a term for this uh, like high impact IC along those lines, uh, and I think her argument is that a senior practitioner can walk into an organization now and can own the full scope end to end because you don't necessarily need to have the adjacent executional skill skills of having a developer to build a demo or being a uh, high end uh, data analyst to go into a complex data analysis. But the core is still the same, the core is still deep craft expertise. So I have uh, hands on experience this shift that she mentioned as a high impact IC and uh, the essentials stay the same with the jobs to be done, the positioning, the domain experience. But I think we are living in an exciting time where you can really use AI as that genuine catalyst. It changes what you can do. Uh, and uh, it also underlines the impact of having the people, the human in the loop cause the transparency about the priorities, the workshops that I did, the nitty gritty and very tricky conversations I had and listening and understanding the context of the problem will remain very human, very domain oriented. Uh, so I really think uh, the combination of that and knowing how to use these superpowers, uh, will define the future of product marketing for most of us.

Speaker A: Wow, look at that. The future of product marketing right here. Excellent. I love it, I love it. So thank you Safakh. This was beautiful. I absolutely enjoyed it and I'm sure our audience learned so much from that. So Safak, if people wanted to learn more about you and what's next for you, where can they do that?

Speaker B: Thank you Nitin, good to be here and good to share this uh, with you all as well. Uh, they can find me on, on LinkedIn, I write about, uh, product marketing, the space of fintech and open banking, as that's my core domain. And also coaching, because, uh, I am training to be an accredited coach and I'm really, uh, passionate about coaching in life and at work. I'm also a PMA ambassador. So if any of this resonates and there's things I can support, uh, everyone can reach out to me.

Speaker A: Absolutely fabulous. So folks, there you have it. Please reach out to Safak. She's got so much insights. Just what you saw on this recording. And for even more insights, check out my best selling book, Product marketing wisdom@productmarketingwisdom.com and see you next time on Product Marketing Maestros.