The Risks of Trying to Rush Quick Marketing Wins
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The pressure to deliver immediate marketing results is intense - especially in today's fast-paced business environment. But what separates truly successful marketing leaders from those who plateau? The ability to learn from experience and evolve their approach.
In this episode, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Bianca Bass, CMO of Privalgo, to explore how smart marketing leaders navigate the tension between short-term pressure and long-term impact. Having transformed marketing functions across multiple fintech scale-ups, Bianca openly shares the lessons learned from her journey - including why her early focus on proving quick wins taught her the greater value of strategic patience.
From her methodology for deep customer understanding to her evolved approach to team building, Bianca demonstrates how the best marketers fail forward to build marketing functions with genuine staying power and competitive advantage.
LISTEN TO KAREN & BIANCA
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ Why the pressure to prove immediate ROI can actually limit your long-term impact
✔️ How Bianca shifted from quick wins to strategic brand building at Privalgo
✔️ The difference between tactical activities and legacy-building marketing
✔️ How to build internal stakeholder confidence without chasing vanity metrics
✔️ The psychology behind why marketers feel compelled to rush results
✔️ Practical steps to transition from reactive to strategic marketing leadership
✔️ Why patience and strategic thinking create marketing functions that truly scale
EPISODE OUTLINE AND HIGHLIGHTS
[05:24] Why coming from outside an industry is a competitive advantage for marketers
[07:24] The shift from short-term tactics to long-term strategic thinking at Privalgo
[08:04] Personal evolution: from proving worth to building lasting legacy
[10:10] How AI tools change what constitutes valuable marketing work and strategic priorities
[13:08] The 3S Money transformation: from scattered focus to systematic customer-driven approach
[13:55] The "thin end of the wedge" strategy for focused market penetration
[19:33] The Friday afternoon call listening ritual that transformed customer understanding
[22:32] The four-phase marketing playbook: listening, positioning, toolkit, and demand creation
[26:46] Team building evolution: why strategic structure beats hiring speed
[35:52] Building internal relationships and making the business case for brand investment
THE QUICK WIN TRAP: WHY IMMEDIATE RESULTS CAN LIMIT LONG-TERM IMPACT
Bianca's transformation from being focused on quick-wins to strategically patient offers crucial insights for marketing leaders feeling pressure to prove immediate value.
"Earlier in my career and part of this is a personal thing, right? I was so keen to want to prove myself and prove my worth and honestly, I had some self-doubt. About OK, I'm being paid well, but they're not sure about marketing and brand and content. I've got to prove it to them instantly... if I come in here and do my old approach of, OK, I'm gonna try and get some ad campaigns out and I'm going to run an event. I'm going to run in this direction, make some website updates. That's fine, but it isn't building legacy."
She identifies this as both a personal and industry-wide challenge, where the pressure to demonstrate immediate ROI leads marketers to focus on tactical activities rather than strategic foundation-building. This approach, while providing short-term validation, fails to create the deep brand positioning and sustainable growth frameworks that truly move businesses forward.
The shift requires confronting the uncomfortable reality that meaningful marketing transformation takes time, but the results - like her success in taking 3S Money from 5% to 60% inbound leads - justify the patient approach.
THE TEAM BUILDING PARADOX: WHY STRUCTURE BEATS SPEED IN SCALING
Bianca's contrasting approaches to building a marketing team - from rapid 2-to-20 person growth at 3S Money to her current strategic hiring approach at Privalgo reveals critical insights about sustainable scaling.
"I've brought people in when I myself, as a leader, have not been 100% clear on what our objectives are. And I vowed to not do that this time... Rather than building out that function, let me nail the positioning first. What is the brand that we want to be? We don't have that clearly articulated... Before bringing more people into that mix and into the equation, let's be 100% clear on - This Is Us."
This shift recognises that hiring speed can actually slow long-term progress when team members lack proper frameworks and clarity. Her current approach prioritises foundational clarity over team size, using agencies to maintain momentum while building the strategic infrastructure needed for sustainable team scaling.
The lesson extends beyond hiring to all aspects of marketing leadership: the temptation to scale quickly (whether teams, campaigns, or initiatives) often undermines the systematic thinking required for lasting success.
TODAY’S GUEST
Bianca Bass is Chief Marketing Officer at Privalgo and a recognized thought leader in B2B fintech marketing. With over a decade of experience transforming marketing functions across high-growth businesses, she has established herself as one of the Top 30 Most Influential Fintech Marketers.
Her expertise has been featured in Forbes, The Times, and BBC World News, and she's delivered marketing talks at Google, PwC, and London Business School. A lifelong learner, Bianca is currently pursuing an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, bringing behavioural insights to her marketing strategies.
Known for her strategic approach to brand building and commercial marketing, Bianca combines deep customer empathy with data-driven results to create marketing functions that drive sustainable growth and competitive advantage.
You can connect with Bianca on LinkedIn and find out more about Privalgo.
OUR HOST
Karen Lloyd is a passionate marketing head-hunter and recruitment expert specialising in marketing and C-suite in the technology sector. With over 25 years of experience in the recruitment industry, Karen brings a unique depth of expertise that sets her apart from most recruiters.
Over her career, Karen has accumulated a wealth of experience that includes serving as a Board Director and being actively involved in growing a business for 13 years. Karen has been a part of five start-ups, giving her first-hand knowledge of the critical importance of hiring the right people.
Currently, Karen is the founder and Director of Armstrong Lloyd. She leads a very special team that partners with businesses and empowers them to build industry-leading marketing teams for some of the most exciting B2B technology brands - from small agile and disruptive start-ups to global giants providing a wealth of product and service offerings.
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