Join us on call with Frank Ng, Head of Marketing at Intellect, Asia’s leading mental healthcare company. With a wealth of experience in growth marketing at companies like Skyscanner and Uber, Frank shares invaluable insights into his journey as a marketing leader, the frameworks and heuristics behind his approach to marketing mental healthcare solutions, and developing a marketing function for a growth-stage company like Intellect. 

Discover the marketing perspective on how Intellect has evolved from a consumer app to a go-to platform for businesses seeking to proactively integrate mental healthcare services for their employees. Don’t miss out on this episode to learn from a thought leader and digital marketing instructor who has played a key role in driving Intellect’s rapid growth.

Learn more about Intellect’s story from zero to one straight from CEO and Founder Theodoric Chew

Timestamps and Highlights

(00:20) A Marketing Leaders Journey: Finding Intellect, Levelling Up Mental Health Festival; 

“I was looking for a new challenge at that point, having worked in MNCs and scale-ups like Skyscanner and Uber, but I never really had a chance to experience that zero-to-one journey…Having advised and helped grow a number of startups from a third-party perspective, I thought, why not actually get my hands dirty and do it?…That’s when I came across Intellect, with its mission to democratize and destigmatize mental health in the region – I couldn’t think of a better fit.”

(09:09)  In and Outs of Marketing Mental Health Solutions: Enterprise and Consumer Business Dynamic, Demand Generation, Localization, Managing Spend, Communicating ROI;

“Creating the demand and capturing the demand both need to be done by marketing. If you want to reduce the budget, you decrease the demand, but that’s a short-term way of thinking, especially in the mental health industry…I always see the importance of ensuring the ‘creating the demand’ budget is well preserved. If anything, cost challenges should lead us to look at the processes that can be changed…Companies invest a huge amount into data and attribution, which is a huge part of growth marketing, but we need to ask ourselves which aspects are important to a business right now, especially in the growth stage…Instead of only driving leads, we need to create the right incentives for our teams to be supporting sales in a way that closes leads, focusing on pipeline size and revenue closed-won.”

(19:05) Maturing a Startup’s Marketing Function: Goal-Oriented Hiring, Aligning on the Right Incentives; 

“It’s essential to start with the jobs to be done instead of focusing on a fixed list of roles and budgets. This approach helps to craft the broader team structure and determine where investments should be made.”

(23:09) #MinuteMasterclass: Cost-Effective Digital Marketing;

“Many marketers and businesses over the past year have been saying, “Put X into Facebook or LinkedIn, other platforms, and get Y out of it.” But the real question is, how many people would have already bought without seeing your ads? Similarly, how many more people have bought because of untrackable things like word of mouth, referrals, or “dark social” channels like WhatsApp and Telegram? These create a positive growth loop around your business. Always look beyond the impact.”

(25:28) #RapidFireRound;

About our guest

Frank Ng is the Head of Marketing at Intellect, Asia’s leading mental healthcare company. As a growth marketing expert, he has an impressive track record in the industry, having worked with notable companies such as Skyscanner and Uber. Frank is not only a seasoned marketing professional but also an active thought leader, sharing his expertise on LinkedIn and providing valuable insights for marketers. Additionally, Frank is a dedicated digital marketing instructor, conducting courses and sessions to help educate other marketers in the industry. With a rich background in various marketing roles, Frank brings a unique perspective to the rapidly growing Intellect team.

Transcript

A Marketing Leaders Journey: Finding Intellect, Levelling Up Mental Health Festival

Paulo: Why did you decide to join Intellect? What did Theo tell you, or what were the external factors that led you to decide to join this company?

Frank N: So, I think I’ve been at Intellect for about 15 months now, and I’ve had a good run with the business, and hopefully, it will last a lot longer.

I first transitioned to Intellect probably back during the pandemic. At that time, I was working in e-commerce, selling well-known, traditional brands and focusing on regional growth. I was looking for a new challenge at that point.

I had worked at scale-ups like Skyscanner and Uber before, but I never really had the chance to experience the zero-to-one phase. Usually, I’d work on taking something from 10 to 100 or something like that. So, I was looking to get my hands dirty in that area.

As you pointed out, I’ve been an instructor for quite a long time and also a growth advisor to a number of startups, but I hadn’t actually joined or dug into the trenches just yet. Having advised and helped grow several startups from a third-party perspective, I thought, “Why don’t I actually get my chance to do it?”

When I was looking for startups that fit that profile, I came across Intellect and its mission to democratize and destigmatize mental health in the region, which I thought couldn’t be better. Being in large businesses that do have access to mental resources but don’t openly discuss or share them within the company, I thought, “That’s quite a difference in perception, right? We do have access, but no one talks about it.” So, I decided to look at a new business model and join one that actually brings that to the forefront.

Paulo J: And what was your first day like, or the first few days when you joined the company? You mentioned you hadn’t really gone through early-stage companies before. So, was there any kind of whiplash when you joined, or what was the feeling like?

Frank N: I can see why that might usually be the case, but it didn’t feel that way for me. I do have a bit of a funny story, though. In my previous business, we had a typical shiny headquarters, 30-plus stories at the Marina Bay Financial Center in Singapore. Naturally, with many startups, we’ve moved since then, but we used to be in a shophouse in Singapore, which is a common starting ground.

On my first day, I wanted to be early and punctual, so I was at the doorstep at 9:00 AM. It turned out no one was opening the door for me because Theo was already on a call, and people usually streamed in afterward. I wondered if I had gone to the right shophouse or if I got caught in some sort of prank. But about 10 minutes later, someone opened the door. That’s how my first day began, and I remember those first 10 minutes thinking, “Did I show up at the wrong place? What happened?” So, that was a bit of a funny story.

After that, things progressed pretty well. It wasn’t so much about adjusting to the startup environment but more about the team aspect, as the marketing team wasn’t in place before I joined. The first week was mostly about figuring out what the structure should look like moving forward.

Paulo J: Actually, that’s an interesting point. We’ll get back to how you put that team together and how you “institutionalized” marketing within Intellect. You’ve been at Intellect for 15 months now, and a lot has happened since I last spoke to Theo on the show. 

From a marketing perspective, what has been the project, initiative, or change that you’ve been most excited about, and how has it impacted Intellect’s business?

Frank N: If we look at a project, I’ll use the Mental Health Festival we held last year in 2022 as an example. It was the second iteration that I was grateful to inherit from the previous team. As I mentioned, marketing wasn’t a function at that point, so people from all across the business put together something interesting back in 2021. In 2022, we wanted to make it bigger, grander, and reach out to the audiences we wanted to serve: employees, HR audiences, leaders, and people managers.

It was exciting because we had the chance to establish something new by bringing in the right people from different spheres, not just in business but also in government, public, and nonprofit sectors, to lend their credibility and expertise to the discourse. We wanted to create a huge summit that reaches many people and serves to educate and destigmatize the conversation around mental health.

We had a lot of great speakers and, most importantly, a great attending experience. We had notable celebrities in Singapore, like Adrian Pang, a longtime active playwright, and sportspeople like Quah Ting Wen. We also had government representatives, which was great because the Singapore government is now engaging more in the mental health discourse in Parliament. 

Most importantly, we brought it back to the business aspect, where leaders like CEOs, managing directors, and chiefs of HR gave their views on topics such as vulnerable leadership and how mental health benefits are great. They also discussed how leaders can enable the managers under them and the HR teams working on these benefits to push them out to everyday employees and everyday discourse.

It was an exciting project to work on, and although I can’t reveal too much, this year we might be doing something different with the event.

Paulo J: How has the festival impacted Intellect? What were the metrics you were looking at, and has anything changed since the festival?

Frank N: It makes sense to measure event marketing by simple metrics like event attendees. While that’s important, I focus more on two things: the attending experience and communication with attendees who want to follow up in certain ways.

For the attending experience, we have metrics like NPS score and qualitative feedback. We achieved significantly higher numbers than in our first iteration. Secondly, we want to communicate with attendees who could be clients trying to use this event to champion mental health within their organizations or prospects interested in finding out more. There were even a large number of people new to Intellect entirely, with this event being their first touchpoint.

These interactions form our core pipeline of MQLs, SQLs, and engaged clients, ultimately bringing it back to the business impact.

“I was looking for a new challenge at that point, having worked in MNCs and scale-ups like Skyscanner and Uber, but I never really had a chance to experience that zero-to-one journey…Having advised and helped grow a number of startups from a third-party perspective, I thought, why not actually get my hands dirty and do it?… That’s when I came across Intellect, with its mission to democratize and destigmatize mental health in the region – I couldn’t think of a better fit.”

In and Outs of Marketing Mental Health Solutions: Enterprise and Consumer Business Dynamic, Demand Generation, Localization, Managing Spending, Communicating ROI

Paulo J: I think it’s pretty clear from the event that you’ve talked about a lot of different segments you have to cover. Obviously, you have the enterprise business, and you’re also trying to get individual users to get on the app and engage. Theo has mentioned in the past how it’s all connected, actually. It may seem like a lot, but the B2B and B2C sides of things are connected. 

So, how does that flywheel of B2C and B2B impact your approach when it comes to marketing Intellect as a whole?

Frank N: Yeah, it’s a really interesting one, right? Not many similar enterprise services exist in the HR world with a consumer-facing function. If you think about the largest purchases that HR teams make globally, these are like Oracle, SAP, HRMS or talent acquisition programs. These are very functional and business-facing. 

So, I think having a consumer app firstly, of course, allows us to further our mission of creating access, but it also helps a lot with the education process. It’s a long discussion, especially in certain businesses where the buyer themselves or the economic buyer often needs to convince regional stakeholders, global stakeholders, local stakeholders, and management. There’s no better way to showcase what the platform and solution look like. So I think that the consumer aspect helps really bridge that access. 

On the other hand, it also provides another route from the employee’s standpoint. We have heard from several partners and buyers who have given feedback that they found out about Intellect through their son, colleague, or friend using it. This also helps drive a word-of-mouth loop that creates natural traction in the market.

Paulo J: And how do this natural attraction and word of mouth impact the way that you budget or allocate resources between these business lines or segments that you cover?

Frank N: I think the way we look at it is less so from a budgetary standpoint, but more so from a content or philosophical standpoint. Like who do we need to educate with what message, right? 

While a significant majority of the budget is very much on the business buyer, the content itself needs to cater for multiple sources. If we’re only catering to the actual buyer, we don’t actually show the impact on the end user, which is your average employee and consumer. 

So, we’ve been thinking about it as a donut model, where you have concentric circles moving from the internal part to the external part. The smallest circle for us is management and leadership-targeted content, then you have broader HR professionals, followed by all employees, and finally, the general population. That’s how we approach layering content from both a social and written basis.

Paulo J: I think it’s an interesting framework and pretty useful if there’s anyone listening in who does especially B2B SaaS marketing and also does marketing for companies that have several layers of products and target market segments, just like Intellect. 

Another aspect that I wanted to talk to you about is, in your career, you’ve done marketing for ride-hailing, e-commerce brands, and travel platforms. How has marketing a mental health platform compared? What makes it unique from the other brands or products that you’ve worked with?

Frank N: In a number of my past companies, these are really established industries. Even though ride-hailing itself might be new, the concept of getting on public transportation has obviously been inherent for decades, and obviously, other industries that I’ve worked in include travel and consumer goods. 

So these are industries that I think of as mostly selling themselves, and the goal of the marketer really is to differentiate against the competition. I think in the mental health space, while competitors do exist, it’s much more about building the pie versus carving out the pie, if that makes sense. 

Building the pie to me is purely about an education game. Realizing and acknowledging that people haven’t spent time buying and procuring mental health solutions in the past decade. If you survey a bunch of HR professionals and leaders, that’s not something that is on their top common list. 

You have your usual HRMS, HRIS, talent acquisition, employee engagement, and employee listening vendors, but not so much on mental health. So that’s where a key play for us has been to look at building education in the market via, as mentioned earlier, the donut model and other frameworks.

Paulo J: One thing that I talked about with Theo and something that we’ve featured a lot on our blog about Intellect is the importance of hyper-localization in terms of not just the language, but even the service providers that you partner with in different markets. So obviously on the business level, there’s that kind of localization. How does that impact the marketing side as well?

Frank N: That’s an interesting question. Localization, of course, is a key question for nearly any business in Singapore with regional ambitions, given the intricacies of the region in which we operate. 

I would say for marketing purposes right now, it has implications but not as significant as on the product side. If I may, I’d even reframe this thought to how we communicate our localization and what it means – the “so what” – to buyers compared to our own localization. 

What I mean by that is a lot of the buyers are still in Singapore or in regional hubs like Kuala Lumpur or Hong Kong that are pretty much interacting with us in the same way – English-speaking, white-collar. How do we help them understand the difference of localization and the presence of the platform compared to the traditional mental health ecosystem, which is predominantly outsourced? 

That is, I think, the key localization play, bringing in, as you mentioned, several layers. So there’s a bit of intricacy – that’s the app itself, and then, of course, the providers – and both of them form a cultural context that allows a user to feel emotionally safe and psychologically safe. So I think for me, that’s the key thing that’s always on my mind.

Paulo J: So communicating the localization as a value proposition is part of the product itself. I wanted to get back to another concept that you mentioned about building out that pie instead of carving it out. Right. And usually, when you talk about market education, it has the connotation of, “Oh, now I have to spend a lot to educate the market.” 

But given the time that we’re in now, where there’s obviously that pressure to cut burn, be more efficient with spending, and usually, marketing is always one of the most impacted segments in the business. 

How has your approach to managing this marketing spend evolved over the past few months that you’ve been with Intellect, and how has it been impacted by Intellect’s unique market and product?

Frank N: Great question. I think this has been quite a predominant discussion, not just in our region, but pretty much globally as well. And exactly as you said, it is tempting in economic situations, which are more challenging to the business, to reduce essentially anything that doesn’t bring direct economic ROI, right?

So essentially, the way I look at things is that you create the demand and you capture the demand. Both need to be done by marketing, right? Sales also captures demand, but marketing starts that process. So in traditional thinking, if you want to reduce the budget, you decrease creating the demand and increase capturing the demand, you get more leads, and you get more sales.

But that’s what I find a very short-term way of thinking, especially in an industry like ours, where creating the demand and capturing the demand are actually not that far apart. And the mechanisms, if you have the right flows and CRM and retargeting processes, are actually quite easy to manage.

So personally, I always see the importance of ensuring your creating-the-demand budget is well preserved. And if anything, for cost challenges, I think I’ll look more at the processes that can be changed. So, for example, two systems, do we need them right now? For example, companies invest a huge amount into data and attribution, which is a huge part of growth marketing, but really, which are important to a business right now at this time? Especially in the growth stage. 

And those are the questions to ask ourselves as marketing leaders. So for me, in short, I think the broad way is very much preserving that building the pie segment of creating the demand and also ensuring a very strong tie-in that we can share with the business about how that relates to the ROI, the capturing demand piece.

Paulo J: You also mentioned needing to actually communicate the ROI well to the rest of the business. I wanted to ask, as a follow-up to that, do you have any advice for other marketers out there, especially those working at growth-stage companies, about how to best communicate their initiatives to the rest of the business?

Frank N: I’ll keep this short. Yeah, I think in the B2B world, we love to communicate lead generation, and I do as well, of course, to some extent. But I would generally say to look to complement that or even redefine that with really the pipeline size that you are driving, the revenue closed-won that you are driving as a business, right?

So it’s all about what are the right incentives for the internal team. So if you, instead of only driving leads, you know, you gain everything, you just pump eBooks out every day. But that doesn’t actually drive sales. That just drives a bunch of very low-interest people that bounce off your sales team right away, right?

So how do we actually create the right incentives for our teams to be supporting sales in a way that closes leads?

“Creating the demand and capturing the demand both need to be done by marketing. If you want to reduce the budget, you decrease the demand, but that’s a short-term way of thinking, especially in the mental health industry…I always see the importance of ensuring the ‘creating the demand’ budget is well preserved. If anything, cost challenges should lead us to look at the processes that can be changed…Companies invest a huge amount into data and attribution, which is a huge part of growth marketing, but we need to ask ourselves which aspects are important to a business right now, especially in the growth stage…Instead of only driving leads, we need to create the right incentives for our teams to be supporting sales in a way that closes leads, focusing on pipeline size and revenue closed-won.”

Maturing a Startup’s Marketing Function: Goal-Oriented Hiring, Aligning on the Right Incentives

Paulo J: We’ve discussed various pieces of advice, frameworks, and heuristics for marketing, especially B2B marketing. Now, I want to shift gears and discuss your leadership approach. You mentioned that one of your first tasks at Intellect was to formalize the marketing team within the company. Could you talk a little about your approach to formalizing the team? After that, how do you ensure the marketing team’s actions align with management direction? Finally, how do you make sure there’s a performance management system in place and everyone contributes to the goals from the top?

Frank N: The big question for startups is always how to get the right people into the most important functions, given the constant changes compared to typical government organizations or large private companies. My approach starts from first principles, focusing on outlining the marketing plan and the jobs to be done rather than just looking at the budget and hiring a specific number of people. Depending on the industry and the stage of the business, typical jobs to be done include communicating a new product, redefining product communications, securing a strong distribution plan, or building an account-based marketing strategy.

It’s essential to start with the jobs to be done instead of focusing on a fixed list of roles and budgets. This approach helps to craft the broader team structure and determine where investments should be made. To ensure success, it’s important to establish a learning and development cycle that encourages team growth, both professionally and personally. Attending conferences can be particularly valuable for junior staff members.

Additionally, sharing thought leadership within the team is important. I share insights from my private digital marketing teaching when appropriate. These elements are key to building a strong, effective marketing team.

Paulo J: It’s really interesting that you bring insights from your other roles into the Intellect team. It seems like you’re trying to run a startup within a startup as the marketing team for Intellect. You mentioned earlier that your role in marketing mental healthcare at Intellect is quite different from your past experiences. Could you share with us how your previous experiences have influenced your approach to marketing at Intellect?

Frank N: I’ll keep this concise. My past role at a large multinational with about a hundred years of history and 50,000 employees had a significant impact on my current approach. The key takeaway from that experience is a strong sales focus.

Unlike many other marketers, my performance was purely based on a revenue goal. There were no other performance indicators, such as teamwork or compassion. This focus allowed me to maintain a strong outcome-oriented mindset, which involves considering the inputs leading to the desired outcome rather than solely focusing on the final target.

This approach helps me plan marketing projections, spending, and revenue outcomes or interim outcomes where necessary. Another important influence comes from my earlier days at Uber and Skyscanner, where I developed a growth and experimentation mindset. This mindset is a crucial component of what we’re trying to implement at Intellect.

“It’s essential to start with the jobs to be done instead of focusing on a fixed list of roles and budgets. This approach helps to craft the broader team structure and determine where investments should be made.”

#MinuteMasterclass: Cost-Effective Digital Marketing

Paulo J: As I mentioned earlier in the introduction, you’re also a digital marketing instructor. That leads me to our next corner, which is the minute masterclass. Since you already teach classes, this might not be a hypothetical question. So, if you were to give a masterclass to light marketers and entrepreneurs specifically on the cost efficiency of digital marketing initiatives, what would be the one takeaway you would want the students of this class to take away?

Frank N: The simple takeaway would be to know the impact of your sales and marketing’s incremental effect on the business. Additionally, set up the right measurement procedures and systems that help you get there.

Many marketers and businesses over the past year have been saying, “Put X into Facebook or LinkedIn, other platforms, and get Y out of it.” But the real question is, how many people would have already bought without seeing your ads? Similarly, how many more people have bought because of untrackable things like word of mouth, referrals, or “dark social” channels like WhatsApp and Telegram?

These create a positive growth loop around your business. Always look beyond the impact. For example, if you are doing a lot of demand creation, how do you know the overall positive growth you’re creating around your business? The more referrals and happy customers you have, the more new customers you get, and so on.

A great way that big businesses do this is through a process called Media Mix Modeling. But for small businesses, a great way to ensure that all your analytics is set up and that you’re getting more information about how someone is [supporting] your company is to use whatever form you can.

“Many marketers and businesses over the past year have been saying, “Put X into Facebook or LinkedIn, other platforms, and get Y out of it.” But the real question is, how many people would have already bought without seeing your ads? Similarly, how many more people have bought because of untrackable things like word of mouth, referrals, or “dark social” channels like WhatsApp and Telegram? These create a positive growth loop around your business. Always look beyond the impact.”

#RapidFireRound

Paulo J: How have you used ChatGPT as a marketer, and what are your immediate thoughts on it?

Frank N: The immediate thoughts are that GPT-4 has been released, so use it. Don’t be like a mathematician who refuses to use a calculator. You can probably calculate something in your head, but the question is should you? And of course, it’s important to consider how it supplements your work as well.

Paulo J: What’s the most interesting thing that you’ve inputted into ChatGPT for you personally?

Frank N: What I find very interesting is that ChatGPT knows quite a lot about Intellect. Whenever I give it prompts without telling it what Intellect is, it knows way too much about the company.

Paulo J: If you were invited to produce a show on Netflix or an OTT platform, what would the title of the show be?

Frank N: I think a travel series taking people to uncommon hiking places in Asia. It’s very offbeat to what we’ve spoken about today. But I think what’s missing out there is everything on Netflix and Disney Plus. So, you know, Western-centric really interesting places, but, you know, the chance of me hiking, Glacier National Park, or the Alps on a weekly basis is not there. So I think people around this region feel a lot more inspired to visit their backyard.

Paulo J: What’s your favorite activity to de-stress?

Frank N: The much more common thing I do on a daily basis is interact with my child. I have a child who is less than a year old and it’s just amazing.

Paulo J: Anything that you’ve read or taken up recently that you’d like to recommend?

Frank N: One book that comes to mind now is a book called “4000 Weeks.” It’s about a guy who has written a lot of time and productivity books in his lifetime. And he’s now looking at the idea product, the whole discussion around waking up at 5:00 AM, all productivity hacks not as important as really just how do you envision your life playing out? It’s kind of asking you to take a step back, asking you to think about yourself. And I think it’s just a great accompaniment to being in my early to mid-thirties. It always allows you to take a bit of an overarching aspect and always think like, what is important today? What is important this week?

Paulo J: And that spirit of figuring out what is important to you is definitely a theme of this whole conversation, whether it’s for your own life or marketing. On that note, thank you so much, Frank, for coming to the show. It’s definitely great to get another perspective on Intellect, a leading mental healthcare company here in Asia. Also, really excited to see how the festival shapes up this coming year since you’ve teased a little bit about how things might be a little bit different this time around. So I’m definitely looking forward to it. And if you want to connect with Frank and tune in to his insights and share, I’ll leave his LinkedIn in the podcast description so you can connect. And in the meantime, thanks so much again, Frank, for coming on the show.