‘You just get up to speed as fast as you can, through any means possible’: Ellie Skinner on marketing technical products

Casla Conversations with Ellie Skinner, Marketing Manager, Magnetics & Measurement at Spear & Jackson Group Millie Hurst, 3rd November 2026

How do you market a complex product that people don’t know they need? That’s the question at the heart of Ellie’s work.

‘I’ve got a book called Metrology for Engineers on my bookcase at the minute,’ Ellie says. ‘I’m not going to say I understand all of it, but I’ll often look up a specific term and do some research on it.’

Originally from a sleepy town in South Lincolnshire, Ellie came to Sheffield to study English. Then, after graduating, a random conversation with the head of journalism at the University of Sheffield, over the bar Ellie was working in, inspired her to apply for a Magazine Journalism Master’s.

And it was there that she learnt some of the core skills she’d need for her current role, leading the marketing team for some of the most established names in magnetics and measurement. These include Eclipse Magnetics – the company behind the iconic red horseshoe magnet.

From asking ‘question after question after question’ to sausage-roll bribery and having the courage to go right back to basics, Ellie knows how to lead a team taking a niche, complex product to market.

Look for the hook, not the spec sheet

Content often ends up being neglected by busy founders and CEOs, but it’s key to building trust with customers and prospects. Ellie and I agree that the best marketing content is about a shared problem and a solution, and that finding the best content takes some digging.

‘If you’re marketing a technical product, you’re breaking down all that technical information into compelling arguments as to why you’d buy it. Translating those technical elements into content that makes sense for marketing purposes – that came quite naturally to me.’

She describes visiting clients to learn about how they were using products like vision systems: ‘As part of the journalism training, you look for that hook – eventually they would say, “Actually, using this has cut our inspection time down by 50%.”’

This source material would then form the basis of a case study demonstrating how the equipment was making a difference for businesses – gold dust for the sales teams. ‘I’ve never been afraid to say, “Explain this to me like a lay person. Go back to basics for me. Not because I need you to explain it to me like that, but because I want to pick out the bits that are going to be important for customers,”’ she adds.

‘People fall into the trap of being too product-focused,’ Ellie continues. ‘It doesn’t matter that this particular machine has all these bells and whistles, it’s how it benefits the customer. People lose sight of that all the time.’

And sometimes, the best content is buried in a 100-page whitepaper. Ellie embraces the challenge of finding it: ‘I really enjoy that, but it’s not for everyone. My brain hurts sometimes. But there are no barriers to the amount of information that you can take in if you’re committed enough to trying to understand a subject.’

Unconventional marketing and sales alignment techniques

‘When I started my role, I thought, “I need to get this sales team on my side.” So I used to turn up at the office for a sales meeting with homemade sausage rolls.

‘All of a sudden, they were all my friends.’ We often hear people talk about the sales and marketing silos in large companies, and not once have we heard someone mention a fix this small. The version of this where she doesn’t turn up with sausage rolls is a version where marketing and sales spend years not quite trusting each other, but nobody ever says anything.

Whether it’s the pastries or the trust built over time, the sales team now go out of their way for Ellie, and there’s a constant conversation between sales and marketing. Ellie runs regular customer profiling sessions with sales, which are crucial to the marketing efforts.

‘It means sitting down with sales and asking, “What does your ideal customer look like? What are the problems they’re having? What are their pain points?” Getting everyone in the room and actually initiating that conversation, along with snacks. You get way more out of people than you’d think,’ she says. She could do lots of research and get 90% of the way there, but having the sales team’s input on how to market a technical product is key.

‘I’m mindful of the fact that the sales team has got to go out and sell, though,’ Ellie says. ‘Sometimes they’ll say, “Are you kidding me? Where am I going to fit that in?”’

Going back to basics

A common theme in our conversation is doing things that are simple but effective. Going back to basics. Ellie shares a story about a recent email and LinkedIn campaign that was such a success that the company is now rolling it out for every area in the UK – a campaign she initially didn’t have high hopes for because of just how simple it was.

Ellie’s team at Magnetics and Measurement regularly attend MACH, which is the biggest manufacturing exhibition in the UK. After attending last April, they had a huge influx of leads. Then, when things quietened down, Ellie set up a series of geographical campaigns.

‘Starting with contacts in the Midlands (the show is Birmingham based), I ran a marketing campaign reintroducing the relevant salesperson for that proposition area, outlining their expertise and explaining what they can do.

‘One sales guy said it was amazing and that it led to six site visits. We also inputted all the postcodes for that particular sales area and ran geographically targeted LinkedIn sponsored posts to people within that area, making sure they were the right job titles, levels of seniority, industry and so on.

‘It might sound like something super basic, but after we’d come out of planning this enormous exhibition, I had all these other things I had to do, but I just thought, “They need more visits, so we’re just going to have to go right back to the beginning.” And it worked.

‘It was also really cost effective because it was really highly targeted.’

Marketing misconceptions

Ellie was keen to ensure that her team wasn’t being used as a reactive service function, and again, she spotted a structural problem most people would just live with, and fixed it with a no-frills solution: an online form.

‘I spoke to the commercial director at length about how we could start setting boundaries,’ she recalls. Ellie introduced a marketing request system which filters out any requests that aren’t going to make an impact. It means sales team members have to fill out a form explaining exactly what they want and the ROI they expect to get.

Now, the requests that Ellie gets from sales have been thought through, they have a deadline, and she can discuss them with a director and sign it off if it’s something they can fit in.

Ellie feels marketing is one of the most misunderstood areas of a business. ‘People assume that because I’m a marketing person, I’m a graphic designer, a website developer and technical SEO expert rolled into one. I’m never going to be an expert in all those things.

‘Bringing those specialisms together and doing the best that we can with the skills that we’ve got on the team is enough. People’s perceptions of that are what needs to change. The idea that we’re here to make things look nice irritates me because marketing is such a wider and more complex discipline.’

Quick-fire

Best leadership advice? ‘Early in my career, I felt like I needed to prove myself all the time by knowing everything about everything. But I shouldn’t be expected to have all the answers.

‘Leading my team is more about asking the right questions of everyone around me, listening to what they’ve got to say, and bringing all of that together to solve problems, rather than pretending I’m the fountain of all knowledge.’

Favourite marketing buzzword (you secretly love)? ‘“Thought leadership” is really overused and it annoys me when people say it, but the fundamentals of it are correct and sound. We’re putting some content together for magnetic filtration at the minute. It’s really complicated, and there’s a sales guy I’m pushing forward as an ambassador for that area of the business.

‘It’s attributing that content to somebody who has the experience and depth of knowledge that makes thought leadership effective.’

Tool you can’t live without? ‘Planable. We use it for scheduling all our social media content.’

Best walk in the Peak District? ‘The walk around Derwent Dam. I did that on repeat when I was training for a charity trek last year. Every time you walk around that reservoir, you see a different view and it’s just stunning. I always get an ice cream at the end.’

To learn more about Spear & Jackson Group, you can head to their website and follow Ellie Skinner on LinkedIn.