Any entrepreneur needs to be somewhat adept in marketing and, having been CMO at Quidco, Chris Hutchings is taking these learnings forward into his latest venture – eOpinion.
Playing the Long Game & Keys to Cutting-Through with Founder of eOpinion, Chris Hutchings – Episode 17
Across the numerous, varied experiences Chris has been through en route to becoming a Founder, he’s learned the keys to cutting through to the forefront of the survey space.
In this month’s Scale of One to Tech, Chris shares how he shapes his approach to polls for maximum engagement, his focus on long-term success, and when to work hard vs when to work smart.
This episode covers:
- Takeaways from Chris’ CMO experience at Quidco
- The survey experience that influenced the start of eOpinion
- Chris’ biggest career challenges and turning points
- How authenticity is essential in modern marketing
- Advantages of an external network, such as our own ‘CMO & Marketing Director Forum’
This episode of Scale of One to Tech is sponsored by eOpinion, and Chris has a very special offer for our listeners: not only can you get a half price Speedy Poll at https://eopinion.org/alex/, but the first to sign up will get it completely free!
Links & references
Alex Marriner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/digitalmarketingrecruitment/
Acquire Digital Talent:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-marketing-recruitment-london/
https://www.acquiredigitaltalent.com/
Chris Hutchings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisjhutchings/
eOpinion: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eopinion/
The 12 Week Year: https://www.amazon.co.uk/12-Week-Year-Others-Months/dp/1118509234
Episode highlights
“Marketing is obviously a very important part of what I do in my background, and every entrepreneur needs to know how to market to some degree. Otherwise, it’s an expensive process to get stuff out there.” – 3:15 – Chris Hutchings
“I went to work at Quidco, my reasoning being what I could learn from someone like that, who’d done what I wanted to do. I’d never had that before, I’d always worked for companies, well down the pecking order of the founder. So I gave him a year to do what he wanted to get done, but also for me to learn and to see stuff from that angle. It was really good and I thoroughly enjoyed it.” – 12:45 – Chris Hutchings
“If you go to your users, employees, customers, or whoever else to say, ‘Can you spare 30 seconds of your time?’, I’ve got data points to back up that the response rates are 50-100x more than if you say, ‘Can you spare five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes?’. Nobody’s got a spare 15 minutes these days.” – 17:15 – Chris Hutchings
“Whether it’s warranted or not, I will happily give people advice all day long. For some reason, when it comes back to doing my own stuff, I don’t seem to advise myself in the same way.” – 21:35 – Chris Hutchings
“If I said to you, ‘Work for 15 years and you could sell your business for £100m’, you’d bite my arm off. A lot of people, myself included, are very quick to look at short term stuff these days. But I think staying in things for the long game is the biggest takeaway – although I will caveat that by saying, knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em is a huge question.” – 25:25 – Chris Hutchings
“I think hard work is a very topical phrase at the moment. Everyone’s talking about hustle culture and this and that, I won’t go into that too much. But I think that I know when to work hard, and when to work smart. A lot of those junior jobs have taught me that, which you then bring into your later career.” – 32:00 – Chris Hutchings
“God knows how much marketing experience there is in your group. I’ve seen people ask questions and get unbelievably detailed responses within minutes – that’s something you can’t even put a price on.” – 38:25 – Chris Hutchings
“The reason I have a flat fee for surveys is because the first question people ask is ‘How much is it?’, and I hate nothing more than when I get wishy washy answers from people. I don’t want that.” – 45:35 – Chris Hutchings