The Power of Storytelling in B2B Marketing
In this episode of The CMO Show, we meet Nina Drakalovic – Head of Marketing at Bindi Maps. Nina’s no stranger to the importance of storytelling in B2B settings, particularly when it comes to turning technical information into gripping, emotive stories.
It’s only fitting, then, that we’re releasing it for World Storytelling Day 2024 - a global celebration of the art of storytelling where stories, big and small, can be shared.
Hear Mark and Nina chat about how storytelling might be the missing tool in your toolbox, and take your B2B organisation up a level.
In an era flooded with information, smart and effective storytelling provides a refreshing break from the noise and can transform how businesses connect with their audience.
While sexy, high-budget advertisements mean storytelling is primarily associated with B2C settings, it’s clear that B2B marketers are beginning to recognise its power as well.
For Nina Drakalovic, Head of Marketing at Bindi Maps, it starts with an analogy she’s coined ‘the marketing sandwich’.
“It all starts with the emotional layer – the top bun. You’re bringing in people with an emotional hook,” Nina says.
“For us, that hook is being a platform where people living with a disability can actually talk about their challenges and their barriers.”
Makes sense so far, but once you’ve piqued their interest, how do you keep customers invested in your story?
“The middle layer of ingredients is all your data – your case studies, your product itself, your business goals. But arguably, the most important layer is the bottom bun – another emotional layer,” Nina says.
“Once you have a customer, it’s quite easy for it to become transactional. We really don’t want to do that. We want to keep our customers emotionally invested as to why they use our product and why it works so well.”
We love the analogy, however the real foodies among us know that a sandwich is nothing without a secret sauce. So, what hidden ingredients can we find in the Bindi Maps pantry?
It's time to wrap both hands around this episode of The CMO Show and take a big bite. Bon appetit!
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Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Rian Newman & Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Mark Jones:
Hello, I’m Mark Jones and you’re listening to The CMO Show, a podcast made for and made by marketing professionals, proudly produced by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe.
It sure is noisy out there, and for marketers, cutting through the noise can feel like a Herculean task.
We’re met with information overload at every turn, so sometimes it’s nice to enjoy a direct connection with your audience using the timeless art of storytelling.
While storytelling has often been the darling of big-budget B2C campaigns, it’s far from being the exclusive domain of B2C marketers.
Every March 20, we celebrate World Storytelling Day, a global event dedicated to the sharing of stories, big and small.
On today’s episode of The CMO Show, we welcome a very special guest who has harnessed the power of storytelling to drive marketing triumphs for one very special organisation.
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Today, we’re joined by Nina Drakalovic, the dynamic Head of Marketing at BindiMaps. With her diverse expertise spanning tech, design, and media, Nina is a force to be reckoned with.
Nina and her team at BindiMaps have been transforming complex technical data into compelling, emotionally resonant narratives. And let me tell you, they’re hitting it out of the park.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it – a really fantastic chat with Nina that I think you’re going to enjoy!
Mark Jones
Hello, and welcome back to The CMO Show. Mark Jones here, and my special guest is Nina Drakalovic, head of marketing at BindiMaps. Thanks for joining me.
Nina Drakalovic
Thank you so much, Mark. This is great.
Mark Jones
I am so excited about this. Firstly, because shout out from the top, you guys have been supporting our Disability Expo program for quite some time, and now we get to speak here. We'll get into all of that stuff in a minute. For the listener, we already know each other, at least from a company level. Tell me a bit about yourself though, because actually, radio, let's just start there because it's fun because you've got two radio people.
Nina Drakalovic
Yes. Well, I guess a bit about my background, so I have a background in journalism and radio journalism was something I was really interested in back at school, at university, and neglected that side of myself while I was going through my career. Then a few years ago, I thought, you know what? This is something I want to get back into.
Mark Jones
Connect that side of your life, so discovering your inner journalist and radio announcer with the marketing side of what you do. This is a storytelling theme, I'm presuming.
Nina Drakalovic
It is. Yeah, storytelling. I basically fell into marketing, to be honest. After journalism, I was disillusioned as many young journalists were and rediscovered a second love, which was visual arts. I did a graphic design degree, maxed out my HECS, which was lots of fun for someone in their early 20s.
Mark Jones
Oh, well done.
Mark Jones
You've done a bit of agency side and then now in BindiMaps. What I'm interested then is when we start to think about BindiMaps, firstly, you better tell us what it is and then describe the use case scenario.
Nina Drakalovic
It was interesting, I was reflecting on how I describe BindiMaps because we're actually in a bit of a period of change. How I would've talked about BindiMaps maybe six months ago was BindiMaps is a wayfinding app. It's very much geared towards helping people navigate complex indoor spaces. That's a place we don't often use apps to navigate. We have Google Maps for outside, they're not necessarily indoors, but with a real focus on accessibility. Making sure someone with a vision impairment specifically and wheelchair users or other people with disabilities can actually navigate that space using audio directions. We've actually added more products, more ways of wayfinding. We're not really just an app company anymore. We're a solution company, we're a digital product company.
Mark Jones
What does that mean?
Nina Drakalovic
What does that mean? Exactly. I thought maybe there's a better way to describe what we do. We help people have a really easy and stress-free experience, find their way around indoors, and we help break barriers for people with a disability, for employment, for social and community connection. So much exclusion happens when someone can't access a space, whether it's a hospital or a library, a workplace. That's really actually what we're trying to do, ultimately.
Mark Jones
There are of course people, I'm sure listeners in particular thinking about here, you get lost in spaces. Is one of your lines, the concept of the great indoors, but we get lost? I'm thinking about shopping centres, some of us just, where are the bathrooms? How do I get out of here?
Nina Drakalovic
Terrible.
Mark Jones
Where is that shop? Well, department stores, I get lost in department stores. Which way is out?
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah, 100%. We've actually found that the majority of people who use, let's say the app for example, up people as far as we can tell through the data, able-bodied people, so not someone who's using the audio directions for vision impairment or wheelchair routes. They're using it in the usual map mode just to find a meeting room, to find a toilet, to find their favourite shop.
Mark Jones
I love the concept. Tell me the competitive story. Is it Bindi versus others or is it just Bindi versus Google Maps and something else?
Nina Drakalovic
I actually had a reframe, Mark, on better analysis recently because it's us versus other competitors offering indoor wayfinding. Then it's also us against static signage. It's interesting how many people think as long as there's a couple of signs up pointing where the toilets are, people find their way around, it's fine. We're actually having to convince these places that, that's actually not enough, even for an able-bodied person, people still get lost. I think that's really the crux, is just reminding people that we're spatially challenged, basically like myself.
Mark Jones
How do you build this thing? Because we all have a mental model of Google's cars running around the streets, taking video and the satellites, and so we can get the outside world. How do you do it on the inside world?
Nina Drakalovic
Well, actually, interesting statistic for you. We're actually 10 times more accurate indoors than Google indoor mapping.
Mark Jones
Why is that?
Nina Drakalovic
Well, what we do is, so the current technology is Bluetooth beacons, and they're put up basically double-sided tape every couple of metres in a space. We have a very smart team who's developed a very smart algorithm that puts all that information together and localises you in a space, which is surprisingly really difficult. Within one to two metres, it knows exactly where you're standing, which for most of us is all we need.
Mark Jones
Let's take a shopping centre scenario. The owners of the shopping centre have got some partnership with you. Would they run around, or you would run around this whole shopping centre and put beacons everywhere? Is that how it works?
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah, essentially. We've got a great partnership with Vicinity Centres, and we've mapped DFO Homebush. We've got a couple of other ones coming up with the new Bluetooth beacons they've set up that we're working off on. That's basically it. We walk around, might take a couple of days depending on the space and Bob's your uncle, basically.
Mark Jones
Well, that sounds simple and complicated at the same time, and props to your tech team who are doing all of that. On the storytelling side. If we think about your role as a marketer and the storytelling we were speaking about before, what's unique about this? Obviously, there's an education challenge that we're talking about. You're defining and shaping the narrative of a category and you're also needing to drive demand.
Nina Drakalovic
Yes.
Mark Jones
Tell me about your strategy, how you think about this. Because I think we've got a lot to learn from how you're picturing this. If you could forgive the pun.
Nina Drakalovic
I think it can be quite challenging because the accessibility space, there are a lot of people who don't have all the information. Before they even understand what they need in their space is actually educating them on the importance of having accessible initiatives, projects, and tools within their workplace or their building. You're starting even before, if you think about the funnel, even before they're in there, we're having to educate them. We're talking about content, we're talking about videos, it's events as well. Speaking to them around the value of investing in accessibility. We're showing clients that they can impact the world. They can change the world by having a service like ours.
Mark Jones
How do you drive demand for it? What are the channels you're using? What's working, what's not working?
Nina Drakalovic
We're actually rethinking a little bit around how we do the storytelling. Now, we're a scale up, but when we're a startup, it was very much around the product, the product and the features. This is the product, we're selling an app, we're selling a kiosk. I have realised over the last couple of years that it's reached a limit of that. That's not really what captures people. What I'm currently working on is I'm calling it the marketing sandwich, basically, which is, you start off with the emotional layer, which is the top of your bun, I guess, or a burger. You're bringing people in with an emotional hook. For us, that emotional hook is being a platform for people with a disability to actually talk about their challenges, what are their barriers when they are trying to get a job or access a shopping centre or go to a hospital.
That's going to form a really big part of the strategy for us going forward. The middle part is all about your data. It's about your case studies, it's showcasing how it works, how it impacts your business goals, whatever your goals are in a business. Then actually, finally, you finish off with another emotional bun bottom, basically. Why that's important, because I feel once you have a customer, it can be quite easy for it to become transactional. Thanks for signing up. You might send an email about subscriptions or your contract is coming to an end. That's not really what we want to do. We want to keep people emotionally invested in why they've bought BindiMaps. It's again, sharing stories of people with a disability.
Mark Jones
The storytelling will be done where, and how will you get that engagement?
Nina Drakalovic
At the moment, it'll be, we're calling it user stories. It's capturing videos of people using BindiMaps in a location. People with a disability, looking at how it's really helped them navigate that space and a bit of a testimonial as well. That's something we'll be putting out on our website, putting out on our social media as well and sending to existing clients. Clients love seeing the impact they're making on an individual.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Nina Drakalovic
We have these things called product run-throughs in a space where we have an amazing community of people with disabilities and vision impairment who we can engage to run through a product in a space. When they see someone being able to find their way around using the app from an entrance to a meeting room, the client is like, this is amazing. How can we get this into more locations? That's really that piece we're going to highlight a lot more.
Mark Jones
Part of that is the validation aspect. I imagine from a social media point of view, there would be, if you think about the way that Reels work, it's the attention span of a small animal. You've just got to show me this thing, give me a wow factor. Then the other part of that is probably more of a tutorial side of thing. You've got the, how do I download this thing for people who are, it's a bit complex, so address that friction. You've got a few things to work on here.
Nina Drakalovic
There's quite a lot.
Nina Drakalovic
We want to be the hero, the everyman hero in terms of, when we think about brand archetypes, standing up for people who don't always have a voice in corporate Australia to say, I need assistive technology, I need help. That piece is very much around why it's important to invest in accessibility and we're doing that through content. A lot of articles, we're doing a lot of that through, we've got a new thing coming up with webinars as well, which is educating people. It's that kind of first step.
Mark Jones
What's the business model? The all-important question for a startup.
Nina Drakalovic
Well, I guess for us, the user doesn't pay anything. We don't make money through someone using the products. It is very much the client side. It's getting them to support to pay for the installation, and then it's a subscription for the length of the contract. That subscription allows us to make everything work, update changes as well. Let's say in a shopping centre, if a store closes, we actually update that change for them. We're a self-managed service. It's a, I guess easy business model in that sense, that the hard part is convincing clients that this is the right thing that they need and that wayfinding and also accessible wayfinding is the right thing they need.
Mark Jones
I had a suspicion that is where we were headed here, and exactly right. You've got to convince them. Are you at the point yet where you can show business cases where it increases foot traffic, for example? I mean they're the things that will help justify the expense.
Nina Drakalovic
Exactly. It is something that we are doing a big piece on. I've got a whole research plan around what are some of those proof points that we are missing and how can we get them. For example, someone laying out a big cost to do a wayfinding strategy using static signage, actually they can have something that can be dynamic, updated real-time, and for a fraction of the cost. It's starting to put those cost comparisons in front of clients. They go, oh, actually that does sound like a better solution. It can be really hard, to be honest, to get some of the time saved using this app.
Mark Jones
The data.
Nina Drakalovic
That data. Our app is very clean. We don't do any pop-ups or anything. We don't want to fragment the experience, especially someone who's relying on audio navigation.
Mark Jones
That was honestly my next question.
Nina Drakalovic
We don't want to hit them with this random thing that suddenly speaks through their voiceover and they're like, what? I need to fill out a survey, or what's this about now?
Mark Jones
This canteen is brought to you by. It's like, what?
Nina Drakalovic
We've had certain clients before go, can we put an ad kind of thing? It's like, look, if we write a hundred words, what's going to happen is someone who's using audio directions, a hundred words will be read out to them halfway through them doing that navigation, so we cannot do that. There are some interesting challenges around what clients want in the product and what is best for the user.
Mark Jones
This is why I think it's such a fascinating story because this is where purpose meets profit. This is the balance, and you're right there in the middle. From a marketing storytelling perspective, you're trying to satisfy both ends, aren't you?
Nina Drakalovic
It's a very big job. I will not lie.
Mark Jones
What are you learning so far? I'm thinking of a listener who in marketing or is a CMO, maybe they're launching a new product into a new space. There's an interesting parallel here with lots of unknowns. At the same time, an exciting opportunity to be quite creative.
Nina Drakalovic
You have to really spend a lot of time doing research and really drilling down into what the barriers are. Because I think that's the point where you find something really interesting. It's easy to go, well, of course, someone's going to buy this product because these are the five benefits. Do those benefits outweigh the barriers of the product or how they'll get the product? Sometimes they do, and you don't actually realise until it's, I'm not saying in this case, but potentially too late. We're like, wait a second, maybe that's why that's taking much longer for uptake because the barriers are overwhelming. I would say that's really important. Understand the barriers as much as you understand the benefits.
Mark Jones
The barriers, obviously, one of them will be cost, I presume.
Nina Drakalovic
It can be quite difficult because no one really understands how much a digital wayfinding app really costs. People actually, you'll be surprised how often people think it might, oh, is it 2,000, is it 100,000? It's quite difficult to find any of that information.
Mark Jones
Yes.
Nina Drakalovic
Sometimes when you go into those conversations, you either have people, which we do have, clients going, oh, that's nothing. That's fine. Then the flip side, maybe people who expected it to be really cheap going, oh, okay, that's a little bit more than we thought.
Mark Jones
You mentioned competitors, so presumably there's a competitive set running around to shopping centres and corporates as well.
Nina Drakalovic
Yes.
Mark Jones
Are we starting to see an interesting set of market dynamics playing out there?
Nina Drakalovic
There are competitors which we've been aware of for a few years, and they're still there and there are new ones always cropping up. We're actually innovating our technology over the next few months. We have a big release coming, which is actually going to blow everything out of the what? I mean, not to really just set myself up.
Mark Jones
This is a marketing show, so you're allowed to say that though.
Nina Drakalovic
Honestly, it really is going to be.
Mark Jones
There's a big upgrade. Presumably, that will set you ahead. Is there a race on? How many buildings can we sign up, is that what's happening?
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah, that's a big part. It's the market.
Mark Jones
Because I think, again, when you think about these types of narratives that play out for any organisation, you've got a market leader, and if you're the market leader, you have to capture as much of that greenfield space as possible. How are you taking that strategy and embedding that in your thinking around tactics and measurement and all those good things?
Nina Drakalovic
For us, it's just really pushing through A, that we're Australian. It's quite interesting how many overseas competitors or offshoots are coming in. Not for this to be support Australia only conversation, but we are a local team. We're servicing local communities, clients that are Australian, we understand what the need is, the team is here. We can do the installations, we can talk to someone face to face. We're finding that's actually working.
Mark Jones
That's important.
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah, and being really transparent as well around what we can do and can't offer. Because again, there's nothing worse than promising big things, like I just did about a minute ago.
Mark Jones
No, you're right.
Nina Drakalovic
And delivering on it.
Mark Jones
Well I’m sure you will. Wayfinding, this is new to me in terms of how do you adjust your thinking for different cultures? Are there differences that you've thought about?
Nina Drakalovic
We get a lot of requests for language, so other languages within the product, and that's something that's on the roadmap, but it can be quite complicated to work on that first additional language feature. I think once we have that, we can no doubt roll it out across a whole bunch of different languages. We find hospitals and airports are most interested in multilingual, for obvious reasons. What we were able to find is iconography is actually really important within the product. Someone who doesn't know English as well, trying to find directions as we had recently in a big hospital, we actually use their insights to adjust the icons. Even though they couldn't understand, maybe toilet or cardio ward or whatever they're looking for, the icon gave them indication like, okay, well, I have a heart issue, that looks like a heart. I'm going to go and use that. There's little things that we can do from a design perspective that's helping. At the moment, we are English language, just from the nature of what we've been able to roll out.
Mark Jones
What are you learning about working with the disability community?
Nina Drakalovic
They're just so generous with their time. It's amazing. People are just very excited to see a product that is for them. It's designed with them, for them. They can't wait to give us good feedback, bad feedback, ideas, appear in our videos. It's amazing. We honestly could not do half, I mean the whole thing, basically, without engaging them, but from a marketing perspective, getting their voices, showcasing them in videos. There's never a shortage of people going, oh, I'd love to be in your video. Let's get that up. We wouldn't exist without that help.
Mark Jones
As a marketing professional, what are you learning? What's the biggest thing that's standing out for you? We talk a lot about customer experience. We talk about really understanding from a data perspective, what's going on. Because again, this is very much I'm enjoying the startup to scale up journey. What's standing out for you most in that context?
Nina Drakalovic
For me, sales and marketing, we have to be one team, one dream. It has to be the same coin. I've had various experiences where sometimes we are the same coin, sometimes we're not. That's the most important piece of advice for someone who's running a marketing team, a sales team, a company, we need to be working towards the same goal. That's the only way you'll be effective as a marketer when you're talking around that B2B side. Obviously, different B2C.
Mark Jones
Can you give me an example of what is working well?
Nina Drakalovic
What's working well is making sure that there's a lot of communication both ways. For example, communicating to the sales team what marketing campaigns, tactics are coming up so they know when they're prospecting, when they're talking to clients. Great, there's a white paper coming out. There's some new blog posts that might answer some of those FAQs I've had recently. I'll put that in my arsenal to share, to send, whatever it is, and then vice versa. I need to constantly know what are you hearing, what are you hearing from the market when you have your sales conversations, what isn't landing? What isn't closing a deal and what is? You'll be surprised how often that changes. You think you're all set with that kind of message three months ago, suddenly, it's not working, so what's going on? Unless they tell me that, I'm not going to know. I'm not having those client meetings.
Mark Jones
Has that been easy, hard?
Nina Drakalovic
It can be challenging. We're so busy. We're a smallish team, and you're just focused on what's next, what's the next thing I need to do. I'm guilty of it. Sometimes you don't communicate everything to the right people enough times.
Mark Jones
What else would you say to a CMO or a marketer who is doing something for the first time in terms of a new product, a launch of some kind, a new service?
Nina Drakalovic
I would say get to know the users intimately. The first thing I did in my role at BindiMaps was actually do a research piece with, I think Askable. They're like a research company. It was quite an expense of someone who had just started. I'm like, I requested a few thousand dollars just to do this. It was, I need to understand for myself firsthand what are the challenges people experience navigating a hospital, navigating a shopping centre and navigating a workplace. I needed to hear it. I sat in hours and hours of interviews with people, both with a disability and not, to understand their challenges. For me, that was a no-brainer. I don't want to rely on third-party information, some deck someone wrote three years ago. I need to hear.
Mark Jones
I'm wondering whether that's a bit of your inner journalist coming out too. The questions, I got to know this, I got to hear it for myself.
Nina Drakalovic
I think that's important. We cannot rely on other existing collateral that exists that we may have legacy leftovers from some deck or some research paper. Talk to people, get on the ground.
Mark Jones
That's amazing. When you look ahead and you start thinking about measurable impact, you're going to want to be going back to these clients and saying, not only here's the traffic numbers, but to borrow from the digital world the engagement so we know that they spent this much more time, or either some sort of macro and micro trends that you can start to reflect back. What's your thinking around how we move towards that?
Nina Drakalovic
A big thing for us is I've talked about how we break barriers for people with a disability, but how do you measure that? A big thing that we hear from clients who are engaging in accessibility is they want to hire more people with a disability. For me, it's starting to measure well. Has BindiMaps helped? Over the last year or two, has advertising promoting that, putting that new recruitment, job ads, have you been able to hire more people with a disability? The flip side of if someone with a disability is looking for a job and BindiMaps is on offer, does that sway them towards that company versus another who doesn't to offering these assistive technology and getting that other side? How important is it to have these assistive tools in a workplace?
These are the things that we will start measuring a lot more. Surveys, talking to people, talking to clients as well. Really, how are we making that impact in accessibility space? Also, just from ROI, what are the cost savings?
Nina Drakalovic
In six weeks, we can be up and running. It's dynamic. If you need a change, we can change it. It's done. It's starting to measure the literal cost savings. Then this is the really big one for us, is a lot more around the product itself. Is it reducing, say the stress of someone navigating a space, someone with a disability, or we're finding people with sensory sensitivity, so on the autism spectrum. They love to plan ahead before they get somewhere. Is having a tool or some of the other tools that we have helping ease that anxiety, going to a hospital or shopping centre or workplace for the first time or a place they're not familiar with? There's some things that will never have a hard number against it, time saved, for example, but it'll have these bigger, broader emotional measurements.
Mark Jones
Well, you've got the opportunity through the app, I presume, and other channels to capture some of this.
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about data insights, there's some really interesting ones that I can share. Last year, our most searched for location, just across any location was toilets.
Mark Jones
I knew that. That was good.
Nina Drakalovic
Obviously, but it's just interesting.
Mark Jones
It's always my question in Bunnings, by the way.
Nina Drakalovic
Yes, where's the toilets. It's that kind of sense of urgency, literally.
Mark Jones
I need it now.
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah, where the app plays a really interesting role of, now I'm playing around with different marketing statements around get to the toilets in 30 seconds with BindiMaps, as opposed to going, oh, where is it? I'll ask someone.
Mark Jones
When you've just got to go.
Nina Drakalovic
I'm about to pee my pants.
Mark Jones
That's another, yeah.
Nina Drakalovic
Where is it? It's like 30 seconds, you're done. Off you go.
Mark Jones
Another one in many department stores that I've been in is, where's the cash register?
Nina Drakalovic
Oh, interesting.
Mark Jones
How do I pay for this thing? Myer? There's no one.
Nina Drakalovic
Exactly.
Mark Jones
Kmart? Can't find it. It's hid in the middle-ish. That sort of thing. Where is the something?
Nina Drakalovic
We love shopping centres, and like I said, we have some great partnerships with Vicinity Centres and others, but also, if you think about a retail environment, they sort of want you to get lost.
Mark Jones
It's true. That's a great insight.
Nina Drakalovic
There's a little bit of a friction around what we can deliver, which is efficiency, stress-free, get to A, to B, most efficient route, versus them going, well, can they get to C before they get to B, so they can check out the sales?
Mark Jones
You are never going to sell this in casinos. I'm sorry to break it to you.
Nina Drakalovic
No. That's okay. We don't need casinos.
Mark Jones
No, we don't. We certainly don't. Well, isn't that fascinating? I love the way that you've brought together insights, a really creative approach to getting alongside your customers. I think it's been really important, so that research piece. Then just probably the last thing I want to know a bit about is around how you see your marketing channels evolving over time. What are you thinking about? You seem like quite a creative person. What's the channel landscape for BindiMaps is going to look like?
Nina Drakalovic
I'm a big believer in streamlining your channels. There is nothing worse to me than a dead channel. Because I do this all time, I get very excited about the newest thing, AI, TikTok, podcast, whatever. We should totally do this, everyone. Oh, my God. Yes.
Mark Jones
Yeah, it would be the best ever.
Nina Drakalovic
I recently had to cull a couple of things that we had, and people in the company going, well, why? I was like, we don't have time. Capacity, it was not delivering what we needed to. We may revisit in the future, but right now, what we have, I want to make that work. That is very much Facebook, it's Instagram, it's LinkedIn. Each one has a very clear objective, why do we have that? We had Twitter/X, neither here nor there. We tried to make it work. It wasn't communicating to anyone, really. That's it, done, cull. You're out. Voted off the island.
Mark Jones
That's a great lesson right there, is get rid of your tired, sad, deep channels.
Nina Drakalovic
You can still explore. I'm still exploring AI. I'm using it just in my own workflow, seeing how that works. Is that something we might want to use in the future? Potentially. Before committing, before putting the BindiMaps brand and a handle and organising people's time around it, just see if it is the right thing for you.
Nina Drakalovic
I just wanted to share if it's all right.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Nina Drakalovic
Just a couple of other really interesting little data insights.
Mark Jones
Factoids?
Nina Drakalovic
Which I thought were really cute stories.
Mark Jones
Okay, go.
Nina Drakalovic
Just within our app and all the products that we have, we can both show what people are searching for in a workplace, hospital, wherever you are, shopping centre, different stores, meeting rooms, toilets. Also, we can show what people are searching for and they're not getting a result for. What that actually is, is what people want in that space.
Mark Jones
Interesting.
Nina Drakalovic
What are they looking for, but you are not offering?
Mark Jones
That's part of your sell, isn't it? This is what people want in your, this is an opportunity.
Nina Drakalovic
This is intent. This is a way for you to actually listen to your visitors or your customers or employees and what you might not be delivering. How can you give that to them? Just a recent example, a few months ago, one of our big corporate clients, they were seeing a lot of searches for prayer room. It was coming up, no search results. They came back to us and they said, okay, why is this not coming up? What's happening? Is there a glitch? What's going on? After discussing it, we realised, they have a prayer room, but it was a multipurpose room. When you searched for it, it didn't actually say anything in what they'd given us within that kind of category what that room was for, alternate names, that this was also a prayer room. Therefore, they were able to actually change it, make sure people were aware and could use it and could find a prayer room.
Mark Jones
Fix the sign on the digital door.
Nina Drakalovic
Yeah, basically. It was just really interesting that then they knew, okay, this is a really important space for people that work here, so let's make sure it's well-attended, it looks good, we give them whatever they need. Then just a second thing, people can actually pin a location to get back to within the app. For example, if I want to find this podcast studio again, I can pin it and when I'm here, I can just find it again, I don't have to search. There is a gentleman with a vision impairment who works for one of the big consulting companies that we have on our books. I'm going to call him Dave. Dave, who is legally blind, has a guide dog, has pinned his desk in the office as Dave's place.
Mark Jones
Amazing.
Nina Drakalovic
That place, basically. It came up, because we were looking at some of the biggest searches, it's like, what's Dave's desk? Who is Dave? What's going on here? We realised, and he found it really handy. If he was in a rush, trying to get someone to find him, for example, he would just send them the pin. This is Dave's desk, and that's done. I think that's so interesting. It's the way you can customise it as well, particularly with someone with a disability.
Mark Jones
Part of your future opportunities will be around how you improve employee experience. There's another whole sell there, right?
Nina Drakalovic
100%. Look, we don't want to offer the laundry basket of what you can with an office management app. A lot of products exist where you can book meeting rooms. That's great, they can have that.
Mark Jones
Yeah, do that.
Nina Drakalovic
We will focus on what we do best. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but although accessibility is a big factor, the majority of our users are able-bodied. I think 97% use the visual map to navigate, which is just fascinating, I think.
Mark Jones
Thank you so much for sharing your story and giving us a bit of an inside run on how BindiMaps works. I don't think many of us are going to think about inside spaces again in the same way.
Nina Drakalovic
That's great.
Mark Jones
Which is a good thing. How can we stay in contact with yourself and BindiMaps?
Nina Drakalovic
Nina@bindimaps.com, that's it. If you want to send me email, love hearing from people and we are in the process of refreshing our website, getting all those stories up as well. It's going to be very exciting when all that launches.
Mark Jones
Excellent. Well, all the best to you and the team as you scale up. Look forward to tracking your story.
Nina Drakalovic
Amazing. Thanks so much.
Mark Jones
Pleasure.
That was Nina Drakalovic, Head of Marketing at BindiMaps.
Nina underscores the power of emotional resonance in storytelling. Which as many of you know is my favourite subject in the hold world. It’s not just about distilling your business achievements into bite-sized stories, but about stirring emotions that set the wheels of engagement in motion.
A massive thank you to Nina for gracing today’s episode of The CMO Show, made possible by our partnership with Adobe. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you with us next time.