Running Lean Marketing Teams Using AI And Talent | Tom Dingwall from Passion Fruit

Kevin: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition Online.
Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies. Intro videos and much more. Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds.
Letting the artificial intelligence do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing on as usual. Check us out on Pathmonk.com. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Pathmonk Presents. We’re really excited for today’s episode because we’ve got Tom Dingwall, AI growth Manager over at Passion Fruit.
Tom, how you doing today?

Tom Dingwall: I’m doing well. Thank you very much for having me.

Kevin: Of course we’re really looking forward to the conversation. So before we dive too deep into anything I wanted to ask, just a little bit of a nice opening easy question. Can you tell us a little bit about Passion Fruit and what you guys are up to over there?

Tom Dingwall: Yeah, of course. So at Passion Fruit, we are the home of marketing operations in the AI century. we’ve been going for about four years now, and particularly working with companies to help ’em access freelancers and, made that move into, the AI space more recently.

Kevin: Okay. And what are these freelancers, mostly helping your clients out with?

Tom Dingwall: so across all areas of the marketing mix. So everything from, we have fractional CMOs, but also everything from P-P-C-S-E-O, everything down to graphic design videographers, and we do the full mix. so bit of everything across the marketing.

Kevin: Interesting. So it sounds like anything across the entire marketing spectrum, you guys can act as.
A little bit of a hub between these, let’s say, clients and any sort of freelancers that might need a little bit of extra work as well.

Tom Dingwall: Yeah, exactly. we currently have just over 5,000 specialists on the platform, and so it’s very easy to connect people in. so we work with the likes of some of the big companies, HSBC and Pepsi, Mars.
if they have a particular project that comes up or they’re like, oh, we actually need to do a little bit more PPC, they come to us and we help ’em get that specialist, whether it’s one day a week, whether it’s five days a week. but we have the pool of talent.

Kevin: With 5,000 to pull from, I’m sure it’s easy for you guys to make that connection.
So congratulations on growing this far. Thank you.

Tom Dingwall: Thank.

Kevin: In terms of how you’re serving your clients, what are the companies or industries that you serve best, and what are the problems that you’re ultimately solving for them?

Tom Dingwall: That’s a great question. I think we’ve, got quite a broad, target addressable market in terms of who can use us.
I think it’s anyone who really like needs. Extra support. They don’t want to use like a, an agency model that like a lot of agencies are a lot slur moving and charge quite a lengthy retainer. And so they want that like more flexibility from a freelancer but also don’t wanna get full-time hires because they maybe don’t need them all the days of the week or want to have.
Where you would have a full-time hire to do five days a week of something, you get a freelancer to do two and a half days and get another freelancer to do the other two and a half days on something else. So you might want to get some graphic design support and at the same time get a videographer. And rather than the sort of briefs that go out that are like, I want a content creator who does P-P-C-S-E-O, pr, like kind of everything, you can get specialists who basically make up that amount of time, but instead focus on, specialize in each of those areas.

Kevin: I, within my experience dealing with agencies as well. I know every time you get an agency, maybe you get them just for PPC or just for SEO or just for web design and development. But every time you do that, it also comes with account managers. It, it also comes with project management. It also comes with all of these other things that also add additional hours and ultimately increase the cost.
So being able to Pick and choose the specialists that you need. Ultimately makes it very precise in terms of solving what you have and making sure that it’s the best cost possible, I would imagine.

Tom Dingwall: Yeah, exactly. And I think, so we don’t work with account managers. We have a customer success team instead.
And so the company works directly with the freelancer. They get that support immediately. They don’t have to go for a middleman to get all that, but they still have the same support of a customer success manager who goes, how’s it all going? Do you have any questions? Anything we can help with, anything we can push the specialists to do more of.
And same, for the specialists as well. They have that support, just as equally. so yeah, it’s a better way of doing that I think.

Kevin: It’s nice that passion fruit provides that level of support, even though you’re just prov, even though the freelancers are specialized themselves, right?
So you don’t have to assume okay, this person doesn’t necessarily have any sort of management on top of them because you guys can be the ones providing that type of management, which is nice. yeah. I know that you guys have been in the marketing industry for quite a few years now. supporting marketing teams with resourcing, using freelancers and things like that, but I think you guys have been making a move a little bit into the AI world.
Is that right? Maybe you can tell me like what prompted that.

Tom Dingwall: Yeah, absolutely. yeah, we’ve just launched our new, AI tool, so it’s our marketing co-pilot, called PIP ai. I think there’s kind of two reasons. I think the main one is because we’ve been in the industry for four years, we hear the same things over and over again, which is.
I just don’t have time in my day. Like I’m spending so much of my time on very repetitive tasks, very manual tasks, and particularly as the AI industry is coming in and more companies are saying, let’s do something with ai. Let’s start implementing AI work and we implement it. Marketing teams are left in this space of what AI is out there for.
And I think, ’cause the other part there is there’s a lot of very generic tools that already exist. So you’ve got your chatt, bts, your Geminis, you’ve got your Claudes and they’re great for very sort of baseline work. they do work very efficiently and I use them even just to check if I’m doing a go search.
I actually now go to CHATT a lot of the time. For marketers, you need something very specific for them. So in the same way that Lara’s built for legal teams, cursor’s built for software teams, we’ve built pip ai for marketing teams to resolve that issue. So you’re not working on this generic tool that doesn’t really have everything you need, but it’s very specialized and very much built around marketers for their, yeah, their customized needs essentially.

Kevin: It’s interesting, I like to see that you guys are evolving with the times, right? being able to act as this marketplace between clients and the specialists, or freelancers that they have. And then realizing that you can use AI to make this even better and more efficient.
It’s really nice to see you guys evolving with the times. I wanna ask another question, but a little bit more specific on the marketing side of things. how does your audience find out about you guys? are there any sort of top acquisition channels or, let’s even say this, are there different acquisition channels for the clients that you’re looking to bring on?
the companies that are paying you guys, or is there a different acquisition channel for the freelancers that are looking for some additional work?

Tom Dingwall: yeah, on the freelancer side, we have a team of a sourcing team that work very much directly to bring them in. And some will hear about us just through word of mouth and brand awareness pieces.
And so that’s on that side. on bringing in the clients, I would say our. Our sort of three main areas to bring in, like customer for customer acquisition are content events and our SDR unit.
content we have, our, VP of marketing, Henry Hayes, post loads, of like really wacky, really stuff.
he calls himself the. The Willy Wonker of marketing, he just does the most ludicrous stuff. he put out an eight minute video on LinkedIn, called Marketing actually, which is a take on love actually, but specialized marketers.
and it’s things like that that’s one of our big drivers, to get people to, yeah, in, into passion fruit.
We also run something called the Passion Fruit Club. And and from our team run that, and they do. Probably about eight events now a month, eight to 10 a month, to bring in CMOs, VPs of marketing, heads of marketing who come together for dinner, chat about marketing. but then ultimately we then speak to ’em about what Passion Free does.
And it’s one of the big drivers for us. and then the final part is our SDI unit, which cold calls and emails, and we get a load of stuff coming from that.

Kevin: yeah, those are definitely three great channels. I love the Willy Wonka of marketing. That’s such a good take. I guess I would love to come up with a nickname for our own team, but that’s such a good one.

Tom Dingwall: I’m not sure where it even came from. I think someone like, I, I feel like it’s probably one of those Republican, Democrat things where they, they had the donkey and they decided to take it as their own, or the Tory party taking that as, their name. It’s probably something along that.

Kevin: it’s such a good catch though. Everyone will remember. Remember that? Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit about your website. in terms of, client acquisition, all of these different channels are ultimately driving people towards the website, right? And this is where they’re gonna learn about what you guys are doing and how you perform and how you can help them.
But what are like the major strengths or weaknesses of your website at the moment? And how’s it performing in terms of client acquisition?

Tom Dingwall: yeah, it’s a great question. we’ve done a lot of work on our website. I think recently we’ve got, a couple of freelancers who do that for us.
I think one of our big strengths is we have a lot of client testimonials and case studies, and it’s good for two reasons. One, when people are on the website, they can. They can view that, they can check out, oh, this company’s quite similar to me. or they’re, looking for similar thing.
Like we have a mix of both different types of companies and also different specialisms. And so if someone comes in, they’re like, I need a graphic designer. Oh, here’s a case study about graphic design work that someone’s done for a company. Let me check that out. And it gives a really good flavor of kind of what we can offer and what we can do.
and I think that’s probably one of the best things we have. And, the, whole thing that it is very much passion for aesthetic and throughout, we’ve had a graphic designer working on that quite a lot.
In terms of weaknesses, I dunno what the specific weakness would be. I think.
We don’t get a lot through our website actually. So with events that actually from the events, because we’ve got the contact details, we actually reach out directly and book those meetings in. And, similarly almost from content and from SDRs, we get a little bit like to just decide to turn up in here.
we get a little bit that comes through on the website, maybe about 10% of what books in actually comes in through the website. but.
Probably we don’t actually really invest a lot in SEO because we, focus a lot on organic content. We don’t do an awful lot of SEO and so there’s maybe not as much people coming in to, to view the website, as, we’d like.
yeah, I’d say that’s probably one of the big things to work on for us.

Kevin: Okay. Good answer. I want to switch the conversation a little bit away from Passionfruit and a little bit more towards Tom as the marketing AI individual. so maybe you can tell me, is there anything that you’ve personally learned in terms of what does make a great converting website?
Like any sort of tips or tools or anything you might recommend

Tom Dingwall: for a great performing website?

Kevin: More so a great converting website. something that really grabs the attention and makes sure that they ultimately hit that conversion. Whether it be filling out a form, scheduling a demo, purchasing a product, what is the thing that actually grabs a user’s attention and makes sure that they convert?

Tom Dingwall: That they convert. I think there’s probably two, two big ones. So the one that I already mentioned about case studies, I think that is a really big one. Once people get onto the website. They want to get information on stuff and I, think oftentimes it’s up to the sales team to provide that information.
it’s often easier to explain what we’re able to do and how we’re able to support on a call. Because a lot of it is if you’re looking for a videographer. You can, you could get a videographer like quite easily, but what you want is a specific videographer who can do a specific style and that’s gonna come out in a call.
So I think one of the big things is how do you share that information that would be on a sales call, how do you share that on your website? And case studies and testimonials are a really good way of doing that because not only is it, these are some logos we work with, like we’ve, got a list of our logos on our website.
Not just, here are the logos, it’s actually, here’s what we’ve done for them and here’s some specifics of what that actually looked like in terms of improving their marketing setup. So that’s probably one of the big ones.
I’d say the second one is just making it as easy as possible. I saw a post on LinkedIn, which.
That an issue that I always have. But when you go into Sainsbury’s, when it, when you go to pay, it automatically decides that you’re gonna pay with cash. It doesn’t choose you to pay with card and so you have to press that extra step to go onto card payment and then tap your card.
Where websites are good is where that conversion piece really easy is one step to just click to start booking that, that time in to speak. and oftentimes where people get stuck is. You click something on the website and it takes you to another page, which is a booking site. Yeah. And that takes you to another site.
And it’s like you just get trapped in this. And I think you often do lose people, through that process.

Kevin: Yeah, if the conversion journey itself has too many steps yeah, you’re, ultimately gonna lose ’em. And each step that, that percentage gets lower and lower. So you need to make sure that conversion process is ultimately as seamless as possible.
So I think that’s a really good answer. staying on you for a little while. I wanna know a little bit more about. What your day to day looks like. as AI Growth Manager as a title, I’m really interested in that. So maybe you can tell me like, what does a typical day look like for you?

Tom Dingwall: Yeah, of course.
my, my day varies. It’s one of those things that like, it’s not a, it’s not a routine job as such. my, my job is essentially to organize, to have conversations with people, to talk about pip ai, and then to sit those conversations and have those conversations. My job is ultimately to help people understand how AI can be implemented in their marketing team, and then to make sure that it’s implemented well, and, using pip ai to do that.
so part of my day I’ll spend on, like I, I’d cold call with the rest of the team. And part of my day is sending out emails. Part of my day is on LinkedIn. I, try and consistently post on LinkedIn. it doesn’t always happen. it’s a harder, one to keep up, but it’s a great way to build relationships with people rather than just completely cold outbound into people.
Building relationships on LinkedIn as well, through, through content and through, through messaging. and then sit in those meetings. I, have a lot of chats with people throughout the week, from like CMO to head of marketing to director of marketing, to chat through what issues they’re facing when it comes to time wasted or ultimately on, on different activities.
And then how ai, what a, what the AI would look like really to implement in that situation.

Kevin: Got it. Yeah. Making sure. So it sounds like a lot of making sure that pip ai is being heard as much as possible and bringing that to the forefront and really putting a spotlight on that and making sure that people understand what it’s

Tom Dingwall: Yeah, and I think so we have, yeah.
my, my role is bit of both. It’s, it is that definitely, it’s a very much a brand awareness piece from that, and then it’s also lead generation piece in terms of actually just booking in those meetings. so it’s, yeah, it’s split across the two.

Kevin: Got it. in terms of growth, but more, let’s say personally and professionally, where are you going in terms of the types of content you wanna read and learn and grow and stay up to date?
are, there any sort of, LinkedIn channels or people you like to follow? Are there any sort of podcasts that you listen to regularly? what are the, where are the places that you go to stay up to date?

Tom Dingwall: So for me, I find that I don’t read as many books for, like for marketing and sales.
I, it is probably, it’s probably ’cause I’m in the younger generation of, I’ve grown up on social media and now like it’s easier to get content in like soundbite pieces. I actually do get quite a lot just from Instagram because I’ve almost set up the algorithm, so it gives me like, here’s a helpful idea for marketing.
Like here’s a helpful way to start making videos and stuff. so I actually do use quite a bit there.
on LinkedIn I follow people like Jason Lemkin. I follow, some like sort of industry leaders in marketing or I guess they wouldn’t always be counted as industry leaders. In my head, they’re industry leaders.
a lady called Ma GOs who, Was working as vp of marketing for Pay Hawk. she used to post quite a lot and then went freelance for a bit as well and posted quite a lot. And I’ve learned a lot from her. I actually had a bit of time to chat with her as well, which is really nice and learned quite a lot from her.
but then even some of the big, like really big names like Rory Sutherland as well. Like I, I try and get a mix of, those and take information from that.
I think the other thing I’d say is I’m really blessed in being at Passion Fruit, where we do have people who really invest time to try and understand marketing and also have worked in marketing for a bit.
so people like Jenna and Henry who like really know their stuff. they’ve both worked in the interview before and, Henry’s always pushing the boundaries and then Raffi. Our CEO worked at WPP, set up the marketing team over into Miami, like, really knows this stuff as well.
So we’re very blessed in having that real mix already internally and then externally that those are the other places I’d go.

Kevin: What a team to be a part of. Huh? That sounds awesome.

Tom Dingwall: Yeah.

Kevin: I want to move this into what we call the rapid fire round is like the final section of questions we’re heading towards the end.
So far it’s been awesome and thank you for joining us. These last couple questions are gonna be a little bit more fun, thought provoking, a little less work oriented, but I’m hoping we can have a little bit of fun with it. question number one, nice and easy. I know you said you’re not much of a book reader, but.
What’s the last, book or a documentary or movie or anything that you’ve been consuming for work?

Tom Dingwall: work related would be selling with, by Nate Nara, all about enterprise selling.

Kevin: Nice. Love it. okay. Next. if there were no boundaries in technology and snap your fingers, anything is possible.
Yeah. What would be the one thing that you would want to fix for your role today?

Tom Dingwall: I didn’t, if it completely counts my role, I’d love to, I’d love to fix how line bikes work, so it’s always, I can guarantee you getting a really good bike ’cause it’ll save so much of my time in the morning. maybe more specific to work is actually finding good accounts to go after and having the research already built in for, that.

Kevin: No, that would be awesome. But I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone answer, get a new bike before for the answer. That’s a good one. okay,

Tom Dingwall: next. It’s, difficult locking up your bike in London and thinking someone’s gonna nick it. But also at the same time, I can

Kevin: imagine

Tom Dingwall: using something like line bikes.
They’re always broken when you get to them, say, Always, something in between that.

Kevin: Yep. okay, next one. If there was one repetitive task that you would, that you could automate, what would it be?

Tom Dingwall: list building. List building would be great.

Kevin: can you gimme a little bit more? why is it dis difficult and why would you wanna automate it?

Tom Dingwall: So specifically, like we, we try and be very targeted with the people we speak to and we go after. And like both connecting on Instagram, on emails, on calls, like across the whole board. We’re trying to be as targeted as possible to people that we already know, roughly what problems they’re gonna be facing, roughly what problems we’re gonna be able to fix, rather than just this sort of spray and pray that a lot of teams will face.
but what that means is very targeted. not just they’re in this industry or they’re this size, which are very like specific filters you can do on LinkedIn. we try and go more granular of what sort of ownership is the company and what sort of. Style of marketing setup is it?
And like we, we try and go quite granular and that takes a lot of quite manual hours. if that was automated, that would save a lot of time.

Kevin: I could imagine. Yeah. Okay. And the last one, what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey within marketing today?

Tom Dingwall: I have to restart my journey.
I actually think, don’t be like. Don’t be scared to move out of the blob. I think like we talk about it a lot here at Passion Fruit actually, particularly because of Henry’s style of content, is like really pushing boundaries of what’s possible. And I think oftentimes, particularly working in a professional industry, you, do worry that like you’ve gotta be really presentable.
You’ve gotta you’ve gotta fit what everyone else does. your emails have to be perfectly polished in a particular way. And I think maybe it’s a post COVID thing. Maybe this is just a a general thing, but you don’t have to do everything that everyone else does. Really try and push the boundaries and see what’s possible.
whilst not, don’t push it too far. ’cause there are definitely limits of, what’s, polite. But, don’t be scared to push those boundaries out a little bit and see where you can go that’s a little bit different from others and, trailbla.

Kevin: Yeah, I would ag I would 100% agree with that.
And. I think also something you hinted at a little bit was, just getting out of the block to begin with, right? Like that hesitation that stops people from even getting started in the first place. just taking that first step, right? And yeah, to your point, trailblazing down a different road that someone maybe hasn’t gone before, awesome.
But take that first step. Even if it is in that direction or in any other direction, but get that foot started, really appreciate the time today. Todd, thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure having you on the show of, before we wrap up, thank you very much. Up. Maybe you can just give us one last, sign off.
tell us, one more time. what is passion fruit and where can they find you?

Tom Dingwall: Sure. so Passionfruit is the go-to platform for accessing both freelancers and AI technology, to, support your marketing team setup. if you want to get in touch, you can find us on use passionfruit.com.
once you get to the website, hope you convert well. but also feel free to message me on LinkedIn. You can find me at Tom Dingwall on LinkedIn.

Kevin: Thanks for the time, Tom.

Tom Dingwall: Thank you so much. Take care.