Flying Cat Marketing Podcast: Recent Episodes
Maeva Cifuentes
A podcast about creating original, scalable and revenue-generating content strategies for SaaS companies around the world.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Rob Freedman, VP of Marketing at EZO. Rob shares insights from his two-decade career in marketing leadership, including lessons from preparing companies for IPO and navigating high-stakes executive rooms. He discusses how the role of marketing has shifted from brand-led to performance-driven, and why CFOs and product leaders are now calling more shots in GTM strategy.
Rob explains the pressure VC-backed companies face to deliver short-term results, and how that’s reshaping what kinds of campaigns get approved. He also breaks down how marketers can earn a seat at the strategic table by adopting accountability early—well before any IPO is on the horizon.
From failed international campaigns to executive transparency, Rob unpacks the realities of aligning across functions, staying data-driven, and owning the full customer journey. He shares why filtering messaging down to teams does more harm than good, and how applying IPO-level rigor can elevate performance—even for mid-market companies.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Kathleen Booth, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Pavilion. Kathleen shares her perspective on why so many marketers today feel cornered—expected to own revenue without the resources, time, or internal alignment to succeed. She explores the short-termism trap, where overreliance on pipeline metrics erodes brand value and creates long-term risk. Kathleen talks about the limits of “educating up” in VC- and PE-backed environments, and why mindset alignment with the CEO is non-negotiable for long-term success.
She also makes a bold case for why CMOs stepping into CRO roles isn’t a concession—it’s a power move. Kathleen challenges assumptions about marketing’s role in revenue leadership and shares how broader executive support, including structural changes like guaranteed severance, can give leaders the freedom to place high-impact bets.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Rick Egan, chief marketing officer at Beyond Inc., a public marketplace for home goods. Rick traces his path from SEO specialist to leading marketing at a listed company, explaining how that journey sharpened his focus on demand signals, technology fluency and stakeholder management. He unpacks the post-covid demand crash, why falling conversion rates reveal market size—not media problems—and how tariffs and inventory gluts pressure margins and pricing.
Rick shares the hard conversations he has with the board when shareholder expectations collide with shrinking buyer pools, and why discounting is often a last resort. He argues that modern CMOs must be part technologist, part psychologist: pushing AI workflows despite team fears, rewarding early adopters and managing out the refusers. Finally, Rick explains why letting domain experts own their lanes beats micromanagement and how public-company constraints force clearer strategic bets.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Dan Chapman, VP of sales and marketing at DocNow. Dan tells the story of walking into a startup that was generating one or two MQLs a month, then building a 90-day lead-gen engine that lit up the entire pipeline. He explains how owning both sales and marketing forces a single-funnel mindset, why every project must prove its revenue impact fast, and how he justifies brand spend by showing that one closed deal covers the cost.
Dan shares his “north star” spreadsheet of thirty ranked experiments, describes hiring creatives who can tie design to bookings, and details how constant calls with reps eliminate silos. He also digs into measuring success with CAC efficiency, balancing short-term pipeline with long-term credibility, and adapting to buyers who either want total handholding or zero contact. The conversation is a blueprint for making marketing accountable without killing creativity.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Igor Kranjcec, VP of marketing at Farseer and at the Sastanak conference. Igor traces his 15-year shift from traffic-obsessed marketer to revenue-owned operator, explaining how linking every marketer’s bonus to closed-won deals ended budget battles and vanity metrics. He breaks down the mechanics of joint sales-marketing deal reviews, share-of-wallet dinners, and full-funnel KPIs that turn marketing into a genuine profit driver. Igor also digs into the psychology of “leading without authority,” showing how project-management rigor plus emotional intelligence lets marketers influence peers and executives without formal power.
For new leaders, he shares why landing a visible win in the first 30–60 days is non-negotiable and how to manage up by handing execs decisions—not research.
Finally, Igor warns against promoting star performers who refuse to leave execution, and offers a playbook for making support and CS teams accountable for upsell revenue.
In this episode, we talk about:
- revenue accountability
- marketing-sales alignment
- leading without authority
- full-funnel KPIs
- executive buy-in
Welcome to Executive Conversations, where we dig into the gritty realities of leading modern marketing teams. In this episode, Maeva Cifuentes sits down with Janet Jaiswal, chief marketing officer at Blueshift and long-time marketing advisor. Janet unpacks why her team now owns 90 percent of pipeline, how she killed the vanity of MQLs in favour of BANT-qualified “stage 1” leads, and what it really takes to align marketing, sales and CS around the same revenue target.
She explains the hidden CRM and training work that comes with that shift, the dangers of chasing efficiency before effectiveness, and why AI-powered search is rewriting the SEO rulebook. Janet also shares practical steps for surfacing in LLM results—from tweaking robots.txt to publishing Q&A-style content—and reveals how Blueshift is already closing deals that start with ChatGPT queries.
In this episode, Maeva talks with Amir Jabbari, the three-time CMO now steering growth at BimeBazaar. Amir explains how bouncing from FMCG to fintech to insurtech sharpened his creativity and pushed him to blend street-level observation with hard data. He breaks down why posture and facial cues matter more than click-through rates, how a brand-attitude study convinced a data-obsessed board to bankroll “click-and-brick” campaigns, and why scaling an ineffective channel is a fast track to failure.
Expect candid advice on separating efficiency from effectiveness, injecting human touch into digital funnels, and training your team to zoom out and question every best practice.
In this episode, we talk about:
- qualitative customer insights
- cross-industry marketing innovation
- effectiveness versus efficiency
- human touch in insurtech
- critical thinking for cmos
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Rachel Weeks, former VP of Marketing. Rachel shares her experience leading B2B SaaS marketing teams and how she’s adapting to the rapid rise of AI across GTM functions. She discusses why AI should be treated like a junior hire, not a plug-and-play solution, and why marketers today are responsible for training not just their teams but also their tools and their execs.
Rachel unpacks how leadership roles are shifting under PE influence, the blurred lines between marketing and sales, and how org structure impacts your ability to lead. She also reflects on how pressure to perform is rising faster than teams can realistically adopt AI, and why marketers need to stay grounded in strategy, not hype.
In this episode of Executive Conversations Natalie Naik shares her experience launching a B2B marketing function from scratch inside a traditionally D2C-focused company. Natalie tells us how she navigated educating leadership unfamiliar with B2B marketing, especially around handling long sales cycles and fundamentally different KPIs.
Natalie also touches on selecting the right channels for niche B2B markets, advocating for organic growth, ABM, and partnerships over paid channels. Throughout the episode, Natalie provides practical insights into influencing stakeholders, simplifying executive communication, and driving effective collaboration with sales teams in a rapidly evolving marketing landscape.
In this episode, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Malte Landwehr, VP of SEO at Idealo.
Malte shares how SEO isn’t just a channel, it’s the foundation of Idealo’s business model and what it actually means to lead SEO at executive level. He walks through how he filters out 75% of ideas using prioritization frameworks, how he scopes influence across five departments without direct authority, and how he handles being the first call when traffic drops.
Malte also shares how he’s thinking ahead to generative search, what’s working for brand visibility in LLMs today, and why B2B leaders should be watching that space more closely than they are.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Lindsay Kelley, VP of Marketing at Sonar Software. Lindsay talks us through her techniques for advocating for marketing initiatives within the organization to secure necessary resources. They also discuss methods to develop and present budgets that reflect marketing goals and company targets and strategies to identify and collaborate with internal allies who can champion marketing initiatives.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Executive Buy-In
- Long-Term GTM Strategies
- Data-Driven Narratives
- Budget Alignment
- Internal Marketing
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Jordan Hwang, VP of Marketing at OpenPhone.
Jordan explains why marketing leaders must learn to "market marketing" within their organization to secure buy-in for initiatives. Jordan and Maeva also discuss expanding influence across teams and aligning stakeholders around shared goals.
Jordan emphasizes that cross-functional teams should intuitively understand why marketing does what it does.
They also discuss how to cut through noise, establish credibility, and prevent “armchair marketing” from derailing real strategies.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Hannah Garner, CRO at Arctic Shores, about the real work behind getting leadership on board with a marketing strategy. Hannah explains why starting with budget is a losing game—executives need to agree on what "good" marketing looks like before numbers even enter the conversation. She shares how GTM leaders can sell their vision when they don’t have the data, using industry benchmarks and market shifts to make a compelling case.
In this episode, we talk about:
- executive buy-in
- GTM strategy
- marketing budget approval
- CFO alignment
- internal marketing
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Silvia Valencia, VP of Revenue Marketing at Docebo, about her journey from agency to in-house marketing. Silvia shares how her experience at Refine Labs taught her to manage buy-in, present strategic investment cases, and reallocate budgets effectively. Maeva and Silvia also emphasize the importance of starting relationships with clear communication, setting expectations for short- and long-term outcomes, and delivering early wins to gain credibility.
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Charlie Riley, Head of Marketing at OneScreen.
They discuss the importance of establishing trust with internal stakeholders and the need to understand each department’s motivations so you can communicate the value of marketing in their terms.
Charlie also shares insights into the challenges of being the first marketing hire and how to navigate building a marketing function from scratch.
He also shares some practical advice on how to align with sales, customer support and HR to create a unified go-to-market approach.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Internal marketing
- Building trust in marketing
- Go-to-market leadership
- First marketing hire
- Sales and marketing alignment
Mark and Maeva discuss navigating experiment overload in GTM strategies, emphasizing the need for trade-offs.
The conversation covers the importance of aligning marketing and sales efforts, with a focus on multi-threaded outreach to decision-makers.
Mark shares his approach to working closely with the VP of sales to present a united front to the co-founders.
The episode explores how to use data effectively to tell a narrative and gain executive buy-in for long-term GTM motions.
Mark highlights the challenges of getting executive support, especially from CEOs and CROs, and strategies to overcome these obstacles.
He discusses the necessity of long-term planning and how to balance immediate results with strategic growth goals.
In this episode we talk about
GTM (Go-to-Market) strategies
Executive buy-in
Data-driven decision-making
Marketing alignment
Long-term growth planning
Takeaways
Importance of detailed planning: Mark highlights the need for a clear strategy and contingency planning for marketing campaigns to ensure they meet objectives and adapt as necessary.
Securing buy-in: Discusses effective strategies for gaining support and buy-in from executives and other departments for marketing plans.
Budgeting challenges: Provides insights on creating realistic marketing budgets aligned with category benchmarks and total addressable market (TAM) considerations.
Marketing in SaaS: Explores the unique aspects of marketing in the SaaS industry, such as managing free and freemium models.
Using data effectively: Emphasizes the importance of leveraging data, including tools like Google Analytics, to understand user behavior and optimize marketing strategies.
In this episode of Executive Conversations Ana Laura and Maeva discuss the importance of building relationships and connections with leadership and key stakeholders within an organization. She emphasizes the need to bridge the gap between marketing and sales, focusing on mutual understanding and collaboration to drive business growth.
Ana Laura also highlights the role of data in storytelling, using it to align marketing efforts with business goals and demonstrate ROI. We get an insight into her approach to handling resistance and fostering buy-in for long-term strategies, particularly when short-term results are lacking.
The conversation also covers the challenges of budget allocation, using data to justify investment in marketing initiatives, and securing support from executives.
Summary
- Executive Buy-In and Influence: Matt discusses the challenges of gaining executive buy-in and influence in a mid-market SaaS company. He emphasizes the importance of aligning marketing strategies with company goals and demonstrating ROI through data-driven storytelling. This involves convincing stakeholders that marketing initiatives are not only beneficial but necessary for long-term growth.
- Using Data to Tell a Narrative: Matt highlights the critical role of data in shaping marketing strategies. He shares how to use data to craft compelling narratives that resonate with executives and align with business objectives. This approach helps in securing budget allocations and maintaining support from leadership teams.
- Navigating Hard Conversations: The episode delves into the techniques Matt uses to navigate difficult conversations, both internally and with executive stakeholders. He shares strategies for handling pushback and resistance, using empathy and clear communication to drive the right decisions and maintain alignment with long-term goals.
- Long-Term Growth Planning: Matt discusses the challenges of balancing short-term pressures with the need for long-term growth. He offers insights into how to maintain focus on sustainable business growth while managing expectations and demonstrating short-term wins to gain continued support from the C-suite.
- Budget Alignment with Business Goals: Matt provides a framework for aligning marketing budgets with business objectives, ensuring that each dollar spent contributes directly to achieving target goals. He stresses the importance of transparency and clear communication with executives to justify budget allocations and demonstrate marketing’s impact on company performance.
- Building Internal Allies: The episode touches on how Matt builds internal allies to support his marketing initiatives. He talks about leveraging relationships and building coalitions within the organization to champion marketing’s role in achieving overall business success.
- Matt stresses the need for comprehensive planning and contingency strategies for marketing campaigns. This includes aligning short-term goals with long-term objectives and preparing for potential roadblocks to maintain momentum and adapt quickly.
- Effective strategies for gaining executive and cross-departmental buy-in are highlighted. This involves demonstrating the value of marketing initiatives through data-driven storytelling, aligning marketing strategies with business objectives, and clearly communicating the impact and ROI of marketing efforts.
- Presenting realistic marketing budgets based on category benchmarks and Total Addressable Market (TAM) is crucial. Matt discusses how to navigate budgeting challenges by using data to justify budget allocations and showing how these budgets will contribute to growth and target achievement.
- Marketing in the SaaS industry comes with unique challenges, particularly in managing free and freemium models. Matt shares insights on how to effectively market SaaS products by tailoring strategies to customer needs and optimizing customer acquisition and retention efforts.
- Matt emphasizes the importance of leveraging data to make informed marketing decisions. This includes using tools like Google Analytics to understand traffic sources, conversion rates, and user behavior, and applying these insights to refine marketing strategies and improve outcomes.
Summary
- Mohamed Reza shares insights into how he navigates executive conversations and aligns marketing strategies with long-term goals.
- Discusses the challenges of securing executive buy-in and how he overcomes these hurdles using data-driven storytelling.
- Explains his approach to presenting budgets in a way that aligns with company targets, even when they’re challenging to quantify.
- Highlights the importance of creating narratives around data to win allies and gain support for GTM initiatives.
- Shares his strategies for balancing short-term results with long-term growth in a mid-market SaaS environment.
- Offers practical advice on how to show marketing’s impact across the organization through effective tools and frameworks.
Takeaway
Importance of executive buy-in:
- Mohamed Reza discusses the challenges of gaining executive buy-in for GTM strategies and shares strategies for overcoming resistance.
- Importance of aligning marketing objectives with broader business goals to secure support from leadership.
Detailed planning and execution:
- The necessity for detailed planning in GTM initiatives, including clear objectives, timelines, and contingencies.
- Mohamed highlights the need to anticipate challenges and plan for them in advance to ensure successful execution.
Budgeting challenges:
- Mohamed addresses the common difficulties in allocating marketing budgets, especially in the context of long-term growth expectations.
- Discusses methods for justifying budgets based on measurable outcomes and aligning them with company targets.
Data-driven storytelling:
- Mohamed explains how to use data effectively to tell compelling narratives that support marketing decisions.
- Emphasizes the role of analytics in understanding customer behavior, tracking KPIs, and making informed decisions.
Marketing strategy in SaaS:
- Mohamed talks about the unique aspects of marketing in SaaS, including the challenges of targeting different customer segments, managing churn, and maximizing value for users.
- Discusses strategies for adapting GTM motions to fit the SaaS model and driving long-term growth.
SummaryCommunicating value effectively: Emphasizing that communication happens not just at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. It’s essential for marketing leaders to think about how they communicate value to executives and ensure it’s framed in a way that resonates with the listener's perspective.The power of framing and narrative: Marketing leaders must frame their contributions and value in a way that highlights their impact, especially when navigating executive conversations and securing buy-in for long-term initiatives.Navigating layoffs: In the context of layoffs, the importance of demonstrating your value to the organization becomes even more critical. It’s not just about doing the right things, but about making sure that your efforts are clearly understood and aligned with company goals.Strategic value in marketing: Marketing leaders need to strategically show their worth and reinforce their contributions to the company's success, not just through metrics but by aligning with the broader organizational goals.The importance of data and storytelling: Data alone is not enough; it must be used to tell a compelling story that helps executives understand how marketing contributes to business growth and aligns with long-term company goals.TakeawaysEffective executive communication: Lauren discusses the importance of understanding how communication happens, emphasizing the need to communicate value in a way that resonates with executives and stakeholders.Framing value for buy-in: The conversation explores strategies for framing the value of marketing work so it is understood and appreciated at all levels, particularly in the context of securing executive buy-in.Navigating layoffs and value recognition: Lauren reflects on the role of value recognition in organizational decision-making, and how marketing leaders can work to ensure their teams are seen as essential during times of uncertainty like layoffs.Data-driven storytelling: The importance of using data to tell a compelling narrative that aligns with business goals is discussed, including how data can be leveraged to demonstrate marketing's impact.Strategic marketing leadership: The episode covers how marketing leaders can build a strong case for marketing initiatives, even in the face of challenges, by strategically aligning their motions and messaging with the business’s core objectives.
“It’s not just about getting things done, but doing it in a way that doesn’t ruffle feathers while making sure people are on your side. “Shana Haynie, Head of Content & Organic Growth at MoEngage
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva chats with Shana Haynie, Head of Content and Organic Growth at MoEngage North America, as she shares her experience managing content strategy across global regions. She discusses building relationships, influencing without direct authority, and navigating complex content challenges. Shana also details how she drives SEO results, collaborates with web ops teams, and ensures alignment across different regions.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Content strategy
- Organic Growth
- Content operations
Takeaways
- Navigating global content strategy: The complexities of managing content across regions and collaborating with international teams.
- Influencing without authority: Tips for building relationships and gaining support from colleagues and leadership without direct management power.
- Long-term SEO strategy: Addressing technical SEO issues and content overhaul for sustained organic growth.
- Driving process change: Implementing new frameworks and processes to improve content efficiency in a large organization.
- Cross-functional collaboration: The importance of working closely with different departments, like web ops, to drive meaningful results.
Time chapters
[00:06] Introduction
[01:54] Early career challenges: transitioning from content creation to strategy
[06:40] Scaling successful inbound marketing strategies
[10:45] Managing SEO and content strategy across seven global regions
[14:36] Building relationships and collaboration across international teams
[18:40] Overhauling content production and publishing processes
[23:40] Collaborating with web ops and overcoming technical SEO challenges
[26:48] Handling leadership pressure for both short-term and long-term results
About Shana Haynie
Shana is the Head of Content and Organic Growth for MoEngage's North America region and has over a decade of marketing experience helping businesses reach and engage their customers through strategic storytelling. When she isn't writing or editing, you can find her playing pickleball, dancing to hardstyle, singing karaoke, or walking her dog, Dexter.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
“Communicate- Be transparent, set expectations and then mitigate” Lisa Vecchio, GVP of Integrated Marketing from Aircall
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva chats with Lisa Vecchio, former GVP of Integrated Marketing at Aircall. She previously worked with Hootsuite and Expedia and shares her experiences navigating leadership transitions, adjusting marketing strategies, and working closely with executive teams to ensure the success of marketing plans. She talks about adapting to new perspectives, building strong relationships, and using data to demonstrate the value of long-term marketing initiatives.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Stakeholders
- Reporting
- Long-term growth
Takeaways
- Navigating leadership changes: Lisa shares her experiences in adapting to new leadership perspectives and how it influences marketing strategy.
- Crafting effective presentations: Strategies for presenting complex marketing strategies in simple terms that resonate with executives.
- Managing budget expectations: Balancing short-term performance marketing with long-term brand building despite budget constraints.
- The importance of flexibility: How to remain adaptable in dynamic business environments, especially during executive transitions.
- The role of data in decision-making: Using supporting data and anecdotes with marketing strategies and secure necessary resources.
Time chapters
[00:06] Introduction
[01:55] Building marketing skills through stakeholder communication
[03:57] Presenting marketing experiments to leadership
[06:27] Reporting to different executives: CEOs, CMOs, and CFOs
[11:39] Addressing short-term focus in marketing
[14:10] Experimenting with new tactics and channels
[19:34] Training teams for budgeting and resource allocation
[25:46] Navigating rebranding and website launches as a new marketing leader
About Lisa Vecchio
Lisa is a CIM Chartered Marketer with nearly two decades of global experience in B2B marketing. She has successfully led marketing, PR, brand, and growth teams at various SaaS companies including Aircall, Hootsuite, Expedia Group, Wiley, and early-stage startups. Motivated by driving ROI and revenue through creative strategies, Lisa is a champion of brand and community building. She prioritizes strong collaboration with sales, customer success, and partnership teams, and is enthusiastic about the future of AI to enhance marketing practices. A cultural enthusiast and avid traveler, Lisa has successfully built international teams while living in New York, Melbourne, and London.
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"It's about finding creative ways to make an impact, even when budgets are tight. That's where true innovation happens." - Tove Hernlund, Marketing Team Lead at Jobylon
In this episode, Maeva chats with Tove Hernlund, Marketing Team Lead at Jobylon, as she shares her journey from university to leading a marketing team. She discusses the importance of creative problem-solving when faced with budget cuts, the value of mentorship, and how to secure buy-in for innovative ideas. Tove also highlights the significance of being adaptable and prepared when pitching new strategies in the B2B space.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Creative marketing
- Career progression
- Mentorship
Takeaways
- Creative marketing with limited budgets: Finding innovative ways to make an impact even with reduced budgets.
- Value of mentorship: Tove shares how having a challenging mentor early in her career shaped her approach to marketing and leadership.
- Selling internally for new ideas: Strategies for pitching creative and unconventional marketing ideas to leadership teams.
- Balancing proven tactics with innovation: The importance of not just following what competitors do but finding unique strategies that align with company goals.
- Long-term thinking in marketing: Marketing success is a marathon, not a sprint, and the importance of patience and persistence.
Time chapters
[00:06] Introduction
[01:55] The power of mentorship.
[05:23] The art of selling internally.
[08:35] The value of trying unconventional marketing strategies.
[12:44] Success stories: Using creative video marketing in B2B.
[15:10] The importance of a supportive leadership team for innovation.
[17:16] Pitching new ideas with data and preparation.
[19:59] Building a strong network and learning from peers in the industry.
[22:27] Conclusion
About Tove Hernlund
Tove Hernlund, Marketing Team Lead at Jobylon, with both a Bachelor's and Master's in marketing and a strong background within startup SaaS and B2B marketing.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
"Being confident and convicted gives other people the confidence that this guy might know what the hell he's talking about"
Devin Reed, Founder, The Reeder
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva chats with Devin Reed, founder of The Reeder, about architecting the perfect pitch. Devin shares practical tips from his experience, such as starting with a CEO slide, speaking the C-suite's language, using compelling data, and presenting a clear vision. He stresses the importance of confidence and conviction when pitching ideas, ensuring they align with the company's strategic goals. Devin also highlights the significance of audience growth and the challenge of educating leaders on its value, advocating for concise and focused presentations.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Pitching ideas
- Confidence
- C-suite communication
Takeaways
- Importance of audience building: Devin emphasizes the critical role of growing a loyal audience for long-term success.
- Securing executive buy-in: Key tactics for aligning marketing proposals with CEO priorities and company strategies.
- Presenting with confidence: Strategies for conveying confidence and conviction during pitches to executive teams.
- Clear and concise communication: The importance of avoiding jargon and speaking in terms understood by the C-suite.
- Handling skepticism: How to encourage and address skepticism constructively during presentations.
Time chapters
[00:07] Introduction
[01:04] Devin Reed's background
[03:00] Challenges in gaining buy-in for marketing
[05:29] Understanding and aligning with CEO priorities
[07:10] The concept of the CEO slide and its significance
[10:58] Building and leveraging audience trust
[12:35] Dealing with skepticism and objections
[15:24] Organizing presentations for executive audiences
[19:47] Communicating vision and excitement in pitches
[21:09] Importance of confidence and conviction
[22:15] Learning from past experiences and refining strategies
[26:54] Encouraging and handling audience input
[29:38] Wrap up
About Devin Reed
Devin was previously the Head of Content at two billion-dollar startups (Gong, Clari). He’s currently the Founder of The Reeder where he helps SaaS companies design and execute content strategies that grow audience, brand and pipeline. He also hosts the YouTube show and podcast, Reed Between The Lines, and publishes a weekly newsletter about content strategy and marketing.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
“What’s more critical to me than reporting structures is strategic alignment. What is strategically and critically important to the business? “
William Chia, VP of Marketing at Styra
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva Cifuentes interviews William Chia, the VP of Marketing at Styra. They discuss the challenges of getting buy-in from various stakeholders in the go-to-market space. William shares his experience of building the skill of negotiation and persuasion throughout his career as a marketer. They also discuss the importance of strategic alignment and how reporting structure is not the sole determinant of success. William shares a story of disagreeing and committing to a decision that went against his beliefs, which turned out to be a successful move. He also shares a story of influencing a change in the go-to-market motion by transitioning from a traditional MQL-based model to an account-based motion.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Strategic alignment
- Product marketing
- Account-based marketing
Takeaways
- Leadership by influence: How to influence without authority, especially in product marketing.
- Strategic alignment: The crucial role of strategic alignment over traditonal reporting structures in achieving company goals.
- Transparency benefits: How transparency, even with competitors, can enhance credibility and SEO.
- Disagree and commit: The value of committing to a strategy even when you initially disagree.
- Transitioning marketing models: Shifting from traditional MQLs to account-based marketing for better quality leads.
Time chapters
[00:01] Introduction
[02:36] Learning leadership skills in marketing
[04:15] The role of product marketing and leadership by influence
[06:45] Reporting structure and its impact on marketing strategies
[10:30] Strategic alignment vs. reporting structure
[13:26] Navigating misalignment in organizations
[18:00] Embracing transparency in competitive strategy
[22:11] The power of Bezo’s disagree and commit
[25:57] Achieving buy-in for strategic changes
[28:31] Conclusion and final thoughts
About William Chia
Product-minded storyteller who's been crafting both code and copy since the late 90's. Obsessed with customers, I leverage both qualitative and quantitative research to make data-driven decisions. With the heart of a teacher, I make others around me better. Proven track record of driving go-to-market strategy, sales enablement, content, messaging, and positioning for new technologies in new markets. Connect with William here.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
“Take risks. Don't be shy. Throw every idea against the wall—you never know what's going to stick.”
- Chris C. Anderson, VP, Head of Content @GleenSlate
In this episode, Maeva chats with Chris Anderson, VP Head of Content at Greenslate. They dive into the art of building executive relationships, presenting data-backed ideas, and navigating the unique challenges of different industries. Chris shares his tips on saving data from past campaigns, tailoring pitches to various stakeholders, and embracing risk in marketing. He also highlights the importance of identifying what resonates with executives and using experimentation to support new ideas.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Content strategy
- Presenting data
- Pitching ideas
Takeaways
- The importance of integrating experience: Chris values his CMO's extensive industry knowledge and incorporates it into his innovative ideas.
- Leveraging past data: Drawing from previous successful campaigns and roles helps in building strong cases for new initiatives.
- Experimentation for proof: Starting small with experiments to gather data can justify budget increases and gain support for larger projects.
- Collaborative pitching: Working with team members and leadership ensures alignment and enhances the quality of pitches.
- Adapting to industry changes: Navigating industry-specific challenges, such as entertainment strikes, requires flexibility and short-term focus.
Time chapters
[00:00] Introduction
[00:50] Chris’s role at Greenslate
[01:20] Building relationships in the remote workspace
[02:33] How past experiences can influence current strategies
[04:50] Pitching ideas and presenting data
[06:26] Bridging industry differences with core principles
[08:20] Experimentation as a proof point
[09:58] Handling long-term initiatives with limited resources
[12:02] How to condense detailed research into effective pitches
[14:04] Collaboration for successful pitches
[17:18] Managing short-term vs. long-term initiatives
[18:37] Adapting to industry changes
[21:31] Building frameworks in startups vs. established companies
[25:10] Challenges in high-stakes environments like banking
[27:38] Final thoughts and advice
About Chris C. Anderson
Chris C. Anderson is currently VP, Head of Content at GreenSlate, a Top Voice on LinkedIn with 105k followers, and he runs a newsletter called Career Forward. With over 15 years of experience in digital content, content strategy, and digital media, Chris has built and led teams, created and executed regional and global strategies, and launched and managed multiple brands and products across various industries and platforms.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva talks with Jakub Rudnik, Head of Content and SEO at Softr, about the beauty of internal marketing, proving ROI for marketing initiatives, and leveraging content to drive measurable results. Jakub shares his experiences from G2, Scribe, ActiveCampaign, and Softr, highlighting the importance of effective experimentation, clear ROI demonstration, and the evolving role of content marketing in different organizational contexts.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Content marketing ROI
- Internal buy-in strategies
- SEO and content strategy
Takeaways:
- Proving ROI: How to demonstrate clear ROI from content marketing efforts to secure internal buy-in and budget.
- Internal Marketing: The need for effective internal marketing and selling strategies to get buy-in from multiple stakeholders.
- Experimentation: The value of running structured experiments with clear metrics to validate new marketing ideas.
- Adapting Strategies: Transitioning from top-of-funnel content to more targeted, bottom-of-funnel content for better conversions.
- Learning from Experiences: Through different companies, Jakub learned the importance of learning from past mistakes and successes to fine-tune marketing strategies
Time Chapters:
[01.27] Introduction
[03.30] Jakub's experience at G2 and the importance of proving ROI
[06.06] Building attribution and balancing short-term and long-term strategies
[10.01] The role of experimentation in marketing at Scribe
[12.48] Moving to ActiveCampaign and bridging PLG with sales-led growth
[16.45] Challenges and strategies in proving new marketing ideas at ActiveCampaign
[21.44] Current role at Softr and the supportive culture for experimentation
[24.30] Best practices for pitching marketing experiments
[26.50] Wrap-up and key takeaways from the conversation
About Jakub Rudnik:
Jakub is the Head of Content and & SEO at Softr.io, a no-code platform for building internal tools, portals, and other apps. He previously was Head of Content at ActiveCampaign, Scribe, and G2, and he advises early stage companies on content and growth. He also teaches digital journalism and communications classes at DePaul University in Chicago where he lives.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva interviews Gustav Wallberg, B2B Marketing Lead & Partner at Republiken. They explore how marketing leaders navigate conversations with CEOs, CFOs, and boards to bring their ideas to life. Gustav shares his experiences and pain points in aligning marketing and sales, balancing short-term and long-term goals, and building brand recognition. They discuss the importance of collaboration, earning trust, and finding the right initiatives to focus on. Gustav emphasizes the need for marketers to understand the strengths of their company and leverage them to achieve growth and he shares his journey from B2C to B2B marketing.
- Marketing alignment
- B2B marketing
- Sales collaboration
Takeaways:
- Aligning marketing and sales: Gustav emphasizes the importance of working closely with the sales team, ensuring both departments are moving in the same direction and achieving common goals.
- Executive buy-in: Getting buy-in from both the CEO and the Head of Sales, with a focus on collaboration and presenting a united front.
- Balancing short-term & long-term goals: Practical tips for balancing immediate performance metrics with long-term brand-building efforts.
- Transitioning from B2C to B2B: Insights into the challenges and learnings from moving from a B2C marketing approach to a B2B strategy.
- Leveraging internal experts: Utilizing internal experts as brand spokespeople to build trust and credibility within the target market.
Time chapters:
[00:06] - Introducing Gustav Wallberg
[01:12] - The pain points of marketing alignment
[03:03] - Reporting structure at Alva Labs
[04:06] - Importance of sales alignment over CEO buy-in
[05:31] - Transitioning from B2C to B2B marketing
[07:17] - Marketing’s role in go-to-market strategies
[09:55] - Collaborative goal-setting with sales
[12:42] - Adjusting marketing strategies based on company strengths
[15:04] - Balancing short-term and long-term marketing goals
[18:39] - Leveraging internal experts for brand building
[20:04] - Practical execution of marketing initiatives
[22:55] - Long-term vs. short-term demand gen strategies
[24:25] - How to build trust incrementally
[27:07] - Wrap-up
About Gustav Wallberg:
Gustav is a digital marketer at heart, first stepping into a CMO role in a high-volume B2C venture before transitioning into B2B SaaS. At Alva Labs, a Swedish tech scaleup in the HR space, he built the marketing function & GTM strategy, helping them grow ARR by 5x over the last 3 years.
CTA Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
"You shouldn't wait until you're in a leadership position before you start going deeper into the operational aspect of a business"- Julien Sauvage
In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva chats with Julien Sauvage, who shares his journey from creative marketer to an accomplished data-driven executive at Clari. Julien discusses the importance of balancing creativity with operational excellence, strategies for getting buy-in from executives, and the impact of effective category design. Julien talks about the need for marketers to understand and use data to measure the success of their campaigns and navigate executive conversations effectively.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Marketing budgets
- Category design
- Operations
Takeaways
- Balancing Creativity with Data: How to combine creative ideas with solid data to ensure successful campaigns and win stakeholder support.
- Operational Excellence: Understanding and managing the operational side of marketing, including data analysis, budget management, and process optimization.
- Executive Buy-In: Strategies for securing executive buy-in by presenting clear, data-driven arguments and committing to long-term goals.
- Category Design: The role category design plays in ensuring consistent messaging and educating the market.
- Brand Measurement: How to measure the impact of brand campaigns using tools like conversation intelligence platforms and social media metrics.
Time chapters
[00:06] Introduction
[02:42] Julien's journey in developing executive skills
[04:39] The importance of tying ideas to targets and budget
[06:09] Operational excellence in marketing
[08:07] Navigating executive conversations and getting buy-in
[10:25] Implementing category design across the organization
[12:25] Challenges in executing long-term brand plays
[15:30] Getting buy-in from executives vs. team members
[17:28] Convincing executives with data and peer validation
[19:23] Mindset shifts in marketing
[21:26] Measuring the impact of brand & category campaigns
[24:29] Successful brand measurement strategies
[27:31] Balancing short-term results with long-term brand goals
[30:58] Introduction to marketing mix models
[32:43] Wrap-up
About Julien Sauvage
Julien Sauvage is the GVP of Marketing at Clari, leading a dynamic team of exceptional marketers.
With over 15 years in tech, including 10 in marketing, his focus is on revenue and AI technologies. He has worked with companies like Salesforce, Gong, and Talend.
His goal is simple yet ambitious – to create awareness around Clari’s category, generate a steady inbound flow, and drive the go-to-market strategy. He aims for his products to become essential for customers.
Beyond that, he’s involved in mentoring and teaching. And, he admits, he has a soft spot for 🥖 too.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
Welcome to Executive Conversations, where we explore how GTM leaders navigate executive discussions, market internally to gain support, and secure buy-in for long-term GTM strategies. In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva talks with Ran Yosef, VP of Marketing at Glassix.
Ran Yosef had extensive experience in various marketing roles before becoming VP of Marketing. He discusses the challenges of gaining executive buy-in, particularly for long-term strategies like SEO. Ran emphasizes understanding your executive team, showcasing the value of proposed marketing strategies, and building trust within your organization. He also provides tips on how to best align your marketing and sales teams to achieve cohesive and effective results.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Data-Driven Marketing
- SEO marketing
- Sales alignment
Takeaways:
- Building Trust: Ran talks about establishing trust and how it’s crucial for getting buy-in for new ideas and strategies.
- Understanding Executive Preferences: Tailoring presentations to the executive team’s preferences increases approval rate.
- Proving Long-Term Value: Demonstrating the long-term benefits of strategies like SEO helps in gaining support.
- Collaborative Effort: Working closely with sales and other departments to align.
- Industry Knowledge: Knowing your industry and competitors make for a strong case when proposing new initiatives.
Time Chapters:
[00:07.202] Introduction
[00:58.467] Ran's journey and how he built buy-in for SEO initiatives
[01:55.454] How to apply SEO as a primary marketing strategy
[02:54.174] The importance of understanding executive teams for successful buy-in
[05:15.838] How to tailor information to different exec’s preferences
[07:42.814] Evaluating tech stacks
[10:15.682] Aligning marketing and sales teams
[13:01.854] Implementing tools to improve processes
[16:38.11] How to pitch long-term marketing strategies
[17:33.886] Demonstrating the long-term value of SEO to executives
[20:09.374] Strategic SEO: Knowing your personas and crafting effective content
[24:08.61] Building trust within your organization
[27:40.354] Closing remarks
About Ran Yosef:
Ran Yosef, Glassix’s VP of Marketing, is a leading figure in AI-enhanced customer communication. With over a decade of innovative marketing strategies under his belt, Ran has significantly contributed to the growth of several startups.
From SEO to PPC, Demand Generation, and Marketing Ops, Ran has helped numerous companies thrive in highly competitive markets.
Hosting the Glassix Spotlight, a leading CX & AI podcast, Ran is deeply committed to the art of storytelling, believing in its power to engage and inspire. Ran’s visionary leadership and unwavering dedication not only drive Glassix’s success but also significantly influence the evolving landscape of AI-driven customer communications.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
“What I learned is that the farther up the chain I went, the more difficult it was to get things done for an end result. I was so used to being at the end result. I didn’t get to see all of the pieces that go into play in the beginning, which of course starts with marketing budget.”- Mick Essex
Welcome to the very first episode of Executive Conversations, where we explore how GTM leaders navigate executive discussions, market internally to gain support, and secure buy-in for long-term GTM strategies. In this episode of Executive Conversations, Maeva speaks with Mick Essex, Head of Growth & Partnerships at POWR.
Mick shares his journey from journalism to sales and marketing, highlighting the importance of detailed planning and setting realistic, yet ambitious OKRs. He discusses the challenges of securing marketing budgets, achieving buy-in from leadership, and strategically planning marketing efforts. Mick discusses the need to align marketing goals with the total addressable market. Mick also talks about the importance of planning campaigns and having contingencies in place, as well as the unique challenges of working in a highly regulated industry. He also offers ideas for creating effective marketing strategies with limited budgets.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Marketing budgets
- Executive buy-in
- Strategy
Takeaways:
- Importance of Detailed Planning: Mick emphasizes the need for thorough planning and having contingencies for marketing campaigns.
- Securing Buy-In: Effective strategies for getting executive and cross-departmental buy-in for your marketing initiatives.
- Budgeting Challenges: Presenting realistic marketing budgets based on category benchmarks and your total addressable market (TAM).
- Marketing in SaaS: Unique aspects of marketing in the SaaS industry, such as tackling free and freemium models.
- Using Data Effectively: Harnessing Google Analytics and other tools to understand traffic, conversions, and optimize your marketing efforts.
Chapters:
[00:07] - Introduction
[00:55] - Mick’s journey from journalism to marketing
[03:46] - The challenges of getting budget approval
[05:11] - Getting buy-in marketing campaigns
[08:06] - Aligning marketing goals with the Total Addressable Market (TAM)
[09:46] - Strategic planning and creating contingencies for campaigns
[12:06] - Unique SaaS marketing challenges and strategies
[14:12] - How to be effective with limited marketing budgets and resources
[17:07] - Learning lessons from previous roles and applying them to current strategies
[18:40] - Challenges within the healthcare industry
[21:08] - The importance of proving your value early
[24:21] - Setting and achieving your OKRs
[26:23] - Closing remarks
Mick Essex is the Head of Growth & Partnerships at POWR where he has been for the past 2 years. POWR works with small businesses and solopreneurs across the world providing them with no-code marketing and sales website tools to help grow their business online. Connect with Mick Essex on LinkedIn.
Need help navigating executive conversations and securing your marketing budget? Book a call with Flying Cat Marketing today and let us help you achieve your goals. Book a Call
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we talk with Alex Ross, a Content Marketing Head, about the tenets for the success of a company newsletter.
Today we chat with Alex Ross about getting your newsletter to feel like a magazine off a shelf. Alex chats to us about her time at Clearbit and how she contributed to the wide success of their monthly newsletter. Alex provides us with practical tips for creating a newsletter that resonates with your audience like lacing in pop culture references, having catchy subject lines, and keeping it light and fun.
Alex also shares her process for producing newsletters, like ensuring there is an editor that goes through everything with a fine-toothed comb and injects the company’s tone of voice into the piece. She also discusses the importance of receiving and incorporating reader feedback. She shares the importance of switching up topics and seeing what becomes most popular with your readers.
Tune in to find out how to write the perfect company newsletter!
In this episode, we talk about:
- B2B Newsletter
- Content Marketing
- Tone of voice
Timestamps:
[00:08] Introduction
[01:10] Alex’s time at Clearbit
[02:08] The wide success of Clearbit’s newsletter
[05:44] The process for writing a great newsletter
[08:19] Coming up with ideas for writing
[12:00] How to engage with your subscribers
[13:08] Understanding what resonates with your audience
[19:50] Improving your B2B newsletter game
[23:09] Wrap Up
About Alex Ross
Alex Ross has been in content marketing since blogs were ranking with just a couple hundred words. Working with several B2B startups throughout her career, Alex is no stranger to building content systems from the ground up. Alex is a Senior Content Marketing Manager for B2B companies.
When she’s not creating content, you can find the San Diego native exploring her city through tacos, craft beer, and Padres baseball.
Connect with Alex Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-suarez-ross/
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
"Everyone internally talks about what we do differently, and that translates to how they communicate their values externally. Anytime there's disarray inside the house, you can always feel it outside the house."
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we discuss with Aaron Janmohamed, VP of Marketing at BoostUp AI, about the transformative potential of a strategic narrative.
In this episode, we chat with Aaron Janmohamed about the development of a strategic narrative and its impact on marketing strategy and organizational success. Aaron shares insights into the process of reviewing and revamping BoostUp AI's strategic narrative, emphasizing the importance of aligning messaging with the target audience's needs and creating internal alignment.
He highlights the significance of customer interviews in shaping the narrative and discusses the role of the CEO in driving its adoption across the company. The episode provides valuable lessons for marketers and business leaders seeking to enhance their strategic narrative and effectively communicate their value proposition.
Tune in to gain insights into aligning messaging with audience needs, fostering internal alignment, and effectively communicating value propositions.
In this episode, we talk about:
-strategic narrative
-marketing strategy
-organizational success
Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Discussing Strategy Development and Proper Marketing with BoostUp AI's Marketing Manager, Aaron Janmohamed
[00:00:53] BoostUp AI's a strategic narrative review
[00:03:02] Aligning marketing through a strategic narrative
[00:06:56] Creating a strategic narrative from ICP conversations
[00:10:46] Making adjustments to the engineering roadmap through customer feedback
[00:12:33] Revamping business narrative and strategy
[00:17:17] Mastering strategic narrative development
[00:22:29] Building a marketing narrative
[00:24:45] Strategic narrative review: Principles and guidelines
[00:27:29] Wrap Up
About Aaron Janmohamed
Aaron is a seasoned marketing leader who left behind a successful career in enterprise sales to become a driving force in the tech startup world. With expertise in building high-performing teams, crafting strategic narratives, and creating desirable brands, Aaron excels in helping Series B and C startups reach new heights. His extensive experience in digital demand, product marketing, content strategy, brand development, and more, combined with his 10+ years in sales, making him a versatile and impactful marketer. Beyond his professional pursuits, Aaron is also a skilled writer, podcaster, and avid skier.
Connect with Aaron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronjanmohamed/
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic sustainably and predictably.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
“You need to know all extraneous variables affecting your audience’s pain point and use the LEMA framework to build content around that.”
Lily introduces us to the LEMA Framework, which stands for Logic, Explicitness, Memorability, and Actionability. She explains that remarkable content needs to engage readers, be clear and explicit, leave a lasting impression, and provide actionable steps for the audience.
Throughout the episode, Lily provides insights on how to apply the LEMA Framework to content creation. She highlights the importance of defining the search intent and target audience, crafting headings and subheadings that address the readers' knowledge level, and creating a thesis with novel ideas. Lily also emphasizes the significance of providing clear actions, breaking down complex information into digestible pieces, and using visuals to enhance understanding.
Tune in to discover how to use the LEMA Framework to create content that captures your audience's attention and delivers value!
In this episode, we talk about:
Content strategy
Lema framework
target audience
Timestamps:
[00:05] Introduction
[01:20] Exploring the LEMA Framework: Logic, Explicitness, Memorability, and Actionability
[06:37] Coined concepts, novelty, and relatability
[09:45] Analyzing a blog post breakdown and defining search intent
[15:00] Understanding the audience's needs and goals
[17:17] Creating an outline tailored to audience interests
[19:34] Crafting clear and specific H2s
[24:50] Applying the LEMA Framework and tailoring content to different audiences
[27:20] Wrap Up
About Lily Ugbaja
Lily Ugbaja is a Content Marketing Consultant who's helped brands like WordPress, Hubspot, and Zapier win more of their best buyers with content. She runs 3 blogs of her own and previously worked as a Content Marketing Manager at Animalz helping brands like SimpleLegal grow traffic by over 500%.
Connect with Lily Ugbaja on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilyugbaja/
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
“Google is attached to fresh content that includes all the latest nuances in information. We focused on our keywords, and made sure that all the reoptimised pieces were up to date with the latest information, as well as the best graphics, latest use cases, SMEs and quotes.”
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we chat with Justyna Dzikowska, Head of Marketing at Brand 24, about effective SEO strategies, targeted keywords, and understanding the customer journey for successful digital marketing.
In this episode, we dive into the world of SEO with Justyna as she shares valuable insights and strategies for creating an effective SEO strategy. Emphasizing simplicity and a narrow focus, Justyna provides practical tips to optimize your website and content, improve rankings, and drive organic traffic. Discover the role of understanding the customer journey, the limitations and benefits of AI-generated content, and gain actionable SEO recommendations for tailored strategies based on your business context.
Learn how to optimize your online presence, enhance user experience, and achieve sustainable growth. With a focus on simplicity, tailored approaches, and understanding the customer journey, you'll be equipped to drive organic traffic, improve rankings, and create valuable content. Don't miss out on these practical tips for optimizing your SEO strategy and staying ahead in the digital landscape.
Tune in to find out expert insights, practical tips, and actionable advice that will empower you to optimize your SEO efforts and achieve remarkable growth in the digital landscape!
In this episode, we talk about:
- SEO Strategy
- Targeted Keywords
- Customer Journey
Timestamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[00:57] Importance of tailoring SEO strategy to the customer journey and products
[02:42] SEO opportunities and growth in keyword ranking
[04:52] Focusing on what converts and optimizing existing content
[09:20] Monitoring performance, updating older articles, and tracking metrics
[13:37] Benefits and limitations of AI-generated content in SEO
[19:18] Balancing AI and human input in content creation
[24:43] SEO tips for creating an effective strategy
[25:44] Wrap-up
About Justyna Dzikowska
Justyna Dzikowska is an accomplished marketing professional with nearly a decade of experience in the field. With a talent for transforming sales pitches into compelling stories and tech products into effective solutions, Justyna has honed her expertise in various marketing tools, strategies, and approaches. Recognizing the power of content, Justyna firmly believes in the mantra "Content is King," constantly adapting to its ever-evolving nature within the rapidly changing IT industry. Her deep understanding of the industry's dynamics and integration with areas like data, social media, and video has enabled her to achieve remarkable results, focusing not only on views but also on ROI.
Connect with Justyna Dzikowska on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justyna-dzikowska-content-marketing-digital-pr/ Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
“It comes down to understanding all the metrics used in your business, not in the SaaS industry as a whole. You do need to understand what’s important and relevant to your business. And most importantly, think like a business owner.”
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Leader Interview Series! This time, we chat with Carter Severns, VP of Marketing at Place, about how to get a seat at the table and what you need to know to go from Marketing Manager to VP of Marketing.
Carter shares insights on thinking like a business owner and gaining financial clarity as a marketer. Carter emphasizes the importance of understanding unit economics, key metrics, and financial terminology to contribute strategically. He encourages marketers to ask the right questions about burn rate, cash runway, average sales cycle, CAC to LTV, and renewal rates to gain transparency into the business. By aligning marketing efforts with revenue goals, marketers can have a seat at the table and drive business growth.
Throughout the conversation, Carter highlights the value of continuous learning and acquiring diverse skills, especially in a startup environment. He recommends building relationships with senior leaders who can provide exposure to broader business discussions. Carter also suggests resources such as Ray Rike's insights on RevOps, Brandon's CEO at Place, and "The Little Black Book of SaaS" for enhancing financial understanding.
Tune in as we explore the importance of financial clarity for marketers and their impact on business success!
In this episode, we talk about:
- Financial education
- Marketing promotion
- Business education
Timestamps:
[00:01] Introduction
[01:14] Carter's background and diverse marketing experience
[03:14] Benefits of working in a startup environment
[04:27] Thinking like a business owner
[06:47] Getting involved in broader business conversations as a marketing manager
[09:27] Gaining financial clarity and asking the right questions
[13:01] Tying marketing efforts to revenue goals for a seat at the table
[15:06] The level of financial literacy required for marketers
[17:00] Dealing with a leadership team lacking financial maturity
[18:59] Expanding beyond
About Carter Severns
Carter is a husband, dad, and marketer based out of Dallas, TX. For the past decade, he has been running growth and marketing for B2B, SaaS, and growth-stage companies.
Throughout his career, he has built a reputation for executing go-to-market strategy, starting marketing from scratch, and being a revenue-focused leader for high-growth companies.
Connect with Carter Severns on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carter-severns/
Check out Place’s Little Black Book of SaaS.
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
"Using the Realm of Relevancy framework in your marketing efforts can make your content an unlimited resource for you to constantly pull from."
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we chat with Liam Bartholomew, Vice President of Marketing at Cognism**, about creating a framework for the longevity of your content after launching a successful marketing campaign.
Liam shares an exciting concept called the Realm of Relevancy! It's a handy tool used to create a unique point of view for your company. The assessment starts with a big-picture idea that both your consumers and your company can relate to. From there, it branches off into different points of view, each with its own set of mapped-out content.**
This approach creates easy-to-use content, essentially making it an unlimited resource for you and your team. Liam shares how the team at Cognism categorizes the content into specific types: top-down, middle-out, or bottom-up. By doing this, they can tailor their messaging to fit the specific type of content, addressing all the needs and viewpoints of their target market.
Don't miss out on discovering how you can use the Realm of Relevancy to create evergreen content that resonates with your audience!
In this episode, we talk about:
- Content structure
- Realm of Relevancy
- Points of view
Timestamps:
[00:00-01:53] Introduction
[01:55] What is the easy mode content structure?
[03:00-05:10] Fueling your media machine.
[05:10-07:49] Designing a Realm of Relevancy framework.
[07:49] Defining your company’s point of view with your team.
[10:00-11:55] The Realm of Relevancy made simple.
[13:45] Categorize your content.
[14:15-17:07] What to do after you’ve launched a successful campaign.
[17:15] Frame your messaging.
[19:30] How Cognism implemented this framework.
[20:25] Track the right metrics.
[22:45] Wrap-up.
About Liam Bartholomew
Liam is a B2B SaaS marketing leader who is passionate about demand generation. He is shaking up B2B marketing to move it away from traditional lead generation, demonstrating how we can all do more fun, advanced, and buyer-centric marketing. Connect with Liam Bartholomew on LinkedIn.
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
“We use artificial intelligence to connect more people, and that's kind of the way I think of content. So often for organizations, they're just deeply focused on the message that we're all trying to get out to meet deliverables. Human-centric content keeps those people at the forefront the whole time.”
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we talk to Adam Sockel, Content Marketing Lead at Orum, about using AI to inform human-centric content.
Adam emphasizes the importance of creating human-centric content that focuses on solving the pain points of the audience while keeping them engaged. He stresses the importance of prioritizing mental health in content creation, which can lead to happier and more productive employees. Psychological safety is also an integral part of workplace research, and although AI has limitations, it can be used to enhance how we approach this.
Sockel uses ChatGPT to generate ideas and gather data for his content creation process while simultaneously saving time and resources for marketers. Finally, Sockel discusses his upcoming novel, The Ballad of Bonaventure Palmier, a magical realism story set in a circus that follows an old man looking back on his life.
If you’re ready to hear how you can leverage AI whilst still remaining focused on human-centric content, tune in now!
In this episode, we talk about:
- Human-centric content
- AI
- Mental Health
Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:57] The art of crafting human-centric content
[00:07:06] Prioritizing mental health in your content creation journey
[00:11:12] Unpacking mental health in various job functions
[00:15:35] Exploring psychological safety through AI research
[00:19:03] Leveraging AI as a creative launchpad for your content
[00:25:40] Creating compelling content for Marketing
[00:26:31] Adam shares his latest novel
[00:26:57] Wrap up
About Adam Sockel
Adam Sockel is a Lead Content Marketer for Orum, an AI-powered live conversation platform that helps salespeople make more human connections with prospects. Adam has been in SAAS marketing for 15+ years and has also been a podcast host for a decade, interviewing authors weekly on his own podcast, Passions & Prologues.
Connect with Adam Sockel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-sockel-195ab073/
Previous guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlist, Farzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @Banzai
Listen to our most popular episodes:
- A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @Wordable
- How to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds
- How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform
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Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
“Product-led content is any type of content that strategically weaves a product or a service into the story, and uses it to illustrate a point, solve a problem, or help the audience accomplish a goal.”
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we speak to Dr. Fiorenza Dossetto, Brand and Editorial Lead at ActiveCampaign Postmark, about the importance of creating product-led content that successfully showcases your product without sounding too “salesy”.
Dr. Fio shares the importance of weaving a narrative around your product in a way that feels relevant and valuable to your audience, as this ultimately leads to more sign-ups and higher rates of customer satisfaction. She talks about how to create low-effort, high-impact content that aligns with your product, resonates with your audience, and helps them engage with your brand.
**Dr. Fio also shares her experience getting external SMEs for email marketing campaigns, and how service agencies can use case studies to create their own product-led content. Tune in to learn more about how to use product-led content to create a powerful story for your brand!
In this episode, we talk about:**
- Product-led content
- Storytelling in content marketing
- SEO distribution
Timestamps:
00:01: Introduction
[00:01:10] Understanding product-led content
[00:03:37] Benefits of product-led content
[00:06:23] Tips for creating product-led content
[00:08:44] Mentioning products in shareable content: A controversial take from an SEO expert
[00:10:22] Repurposing content
[00:12:00] Creating content that’s relatable
[00:14:08] Common mistakes to avoid
[00:16:12] Getting external SMEs
[00:17:28] Creating product-led content: Tips for service agencies
[00:19:24] Lessons learned from implementing product-led content at Postmark
[00:21:03] How it impacts your marketing strategy
About Dr Fiorenza Dossetto
Fio (fee-oh) is normally quiet but can talk non-stop about product-led content, strategic thinking, and why em dashes are the best punctuation mark of all time.
She works 4 days a week as the Brand & Editorial Lead at Postmark. She often uses her Fridays to write ContentFolks, a content marketing newsletter that is a blend of sticky notes, big content ideas, and small practical examples.
Connect with Dr Fiorenza Dossetto on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiorenzadossetto/
Listen to our most popular episodes:
- A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @Wordable
- How to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds
- How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
"We've started a Global Payroll-themed talk show, which is a video-first podcast. We invite guests on the show, we interview them about topics that are relevant to global payroll leaders—as a way to build a relationship with them and to learn about our market through them, basically."
Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we spoke to Sam Morris, Head of Marketing at Payzaar, about his experience using video content to generate leads for a niche market.
Sam shares his experience in marketing to the global payroll function, a niche market within payroll HR managers, and how their career trajectory impacts their pain points. He discusses the importance of understanding where your niche market lives online and how video content can help bridge the communication gap.
This episode also explores the potential impact of technology on the future of work and how to prepare for it. Tune in to find out how you can target a niche audience, even while under-utilizing LinkedIn!
In this episode, we talk about:
- Global payroll marketing
- Demand generation
- Building relationships with content
- Targeting niche audiences
Timestamps:
[00:00:01] Introduction
[00:02:04] Understanding the career trajectory of a payroll professional
[00:03:04] Selling to a niche market: Lessons from a global payroll company
[00:08:59] How a company is using video content to reach their ICPs
[00:11:25] Prioritizing accounts for guest selection
[00:12:44] Using podcasts to create content and learn about your market
[00:14:33] Building relationships and generating leads through podcasting
[00:16:53] Learning about your market through video content and lead gen
[00:20:53] Emerging technology and the future of work
About Sam Morris
Sam Morris is a SaaS marketing leader and lead generation expert. With experience in video content, digital events, and podcasts, he helps Payzaar learn about its market through engaging content that challenges him to get creative.
Connect with Sam Morris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smorrisrosenstein/ Listen to our most popular episodes:
- A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @Wordable
- How to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds
- How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic sustainably and predictably.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
Meet Sandeep John, Director of DemandGen at Outplay, as he chats about turning branding campaigns into successful lead generation machines. Sandeep discusses the importance of branding in building demand and shares insights on his background in sales and marketing.
Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere
Previous guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlist
Farzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @Banzai
Listen to our most popular episodes:
- A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @Wordable
- How to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds
- How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
Gomada co-founder Julian Schaaf explains how he gained 300 sign-ups in a year via content distribution, operations, and testing strategies. He discusses hiring, wrong SEO hypotheses, and prioritizing customer feedback.
Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere
Previous guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlist, Farzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @Banzai
Listen to our most popular episodes:
- A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @Wordable
- How to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds
- How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
In this episode, we talk about:
- Video content production
- Video marketing
- Video marketing metrics
Connect with Rish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishabhb/
Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere
Previous guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlist, Farzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @Banzai
Listen to our most popular episodes:
- A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @Wordable
- How to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds
- How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
Timestamps:
00:00 - 00:40: Introducing Rishabh Bhandari
00:41 - 01:15: Content Beta
01:16 - 02:52: What kind of video content you should produce for every step of the funnel
02:53 - 04:16: There’s a lack of MOFU and BOFU videos in SaaS
04:17 - 05:20: Why you shouldn’t gate demo videos
05:21 - 07:53: Video marketing metrics per stage of the funnel
07: 54 - 14:56: Low-cost ways to produce video content
14:57 - 17:54: Roles and structure of a video content creation team
17:55 - 19:56: How to keep video content up to date
19: 57 - 20:35: Connect with Rishabh
Hello again listeners! Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Leader Interview Series.
This time, we’re joined by Tara Panu, VP of Marketing at VoiceFlow, the collaborative platform used to build chat and voice assistants, to talk about leveraging customer research like a product marketer.
Every marketer knows the customer needs to be at the center of all their efforts, but how do you ensure that? Tara spent her first 30 days in her role interviewing customers and prospects, jumping into sales calls, and practicing social listening on LinkedIn.
Her efforts revealed new opportunities that she took in to craft her strategy and, finally, her messaging and value proposition started to resonate with them. But that was not her ultimate goal.
As she’s a customer-centric marketer, she made sure that not only Sales and Marketing but the entire company was leveraging from her findings and keeping their ICP close to better execute their jobs.
Tune in to see how she made that happen!
In this episode we talk about:
- Customer research
- Customer-centric marketing
- Marketing strategy
Timestamps:
00:00 - 00:54: Introductions
00:54 - 03:42: How Tara’s background as a product marketer influences her role as VP of marketing
03:43 - 06:36: First challenges when joining VoiceFlow
06:37 - 10:22: The first 30 days knowing the customers
10:23 - 13:32: Why you should go to sales calls instead of listening to recordings
13:33 - 16:14: The emergence of the Conversation Designer role
16:15 - 19:48: Sourcing customer research interviews
19:49 - 24:00: Making sure that customer research findings are used effectively company-wide
24:01 - 28:22: Making the most out of customer research interviews
28:23 - 29:04: Connect with Tara
About Tara Panu
Tara has a passion and obsession for understanding customers deeply. She started her career in customer marketing, then turned to product marketing, and is now leading the marketing department at VoiceFlow.
Connect with Tara on LinkedIn Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website
SEO Roundtable
The SEO Growth Podcast
Hello again listeners! Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Leader Interview Series!
This week, we’re talking to Andrew Davies about his first year heading up marketing at Paddle, a $2.4 billion valued company that helps SaaS businesses set up, run, and scale their payment infrastructure.
We discuss the challenges he’s faced and the changes he’s made to grow the marketing department in three distinct areas:
- Product marketing, including customer marketing and the website itself
- Demand gen, which involves managing business development representative (BDR) teams
- Branding, which deals with the brand’s reputation, reach, and engagement with the wider market
Paddle has grown extremely rapidly, riding the pre-and post-covid wave of software and infrastructure investment. This year, it acquired ProfitWell, an analytics and retention tools business, along with its customer base and teams.
Andrew tells us how he’s helped Paddle get to the next level by:
- Merging the marketing departments of the two companies.
- Broadening marketing efforts across distinct channels
- Expanding the tactics of the BDR team to include direct mail and outbound calling
- Improving branding recognition with an expanded PR strategy
Tune in to find out what it’s like to be CMO during the rapid growth stage of a $2.4 billion SaaS company.
In this episode we talk about:
- Marketing leadership
- Managing business and departmental growth
- SaaS marketing and SEO
Timestamps:
00:06 - 03:06: Paddle’s participation in SaaStock and SaaStr this year
03:06 - 07:22: The challenges Andrew has faced since joining Paddle
07:22 - 11:18: Changes Andrew has made to the marketing department
11:18 - 19:30: Where Andrew has doubled down or cut back on existing marketing efforts
22:49 - 25:34: Wrap-up
About Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies is currently Chief Marketing Office at Paddle. Previously, he was Head of Brand & Digital at Episerver after it acquired Idio, which he co-founded in November 2019. He also supports and invests in early-stage startups, helping them solve issues around proposition development, teams, and B2B/SaaS marketing.
Connect with Andrew Davies on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andjdavies/ Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
SEO Roundtable: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/seo-roundtable/
The SEO Growth Podcast: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/blog/podcast/
“It’s not SEO in-house vs. agency anymore. Having SEO in-house is a must, so the question for the SEO agency option is when”
Welcome to the 4th episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This week we’re again with our founder and CEO, Maeva Cifuentes, jumping again on this popular and endless debate: should you build SEO in-house or delegate it to an SEO agency?
The short answer is… both! Teams are getting smaller, but not goals. Those just keep getting bigger and harder to achieve. And if you’re a B2B SaaS in growth or scaling mode, teaming up the deep product understanding from your in-house team with the technical and industry experts of an SEO agency is an unbeatable formula.
Having a dedicated in-house SEO professional early on is crucial. You’ll need data from them when you want to scale and use bigger impact strategies to generate extra revenue later on. However, SEO is such a vast space that finding someone with all the holistic skills (and capacity) necessary to execute it well is very rare.
Having an agency as your full-stack SEO department to leverage all those in-house learnings can scale up your content operations really fast, and in the most strategic way.
But for the Jack-of-all-trades CMOs that have very little SEO expertise, choosing the right high-quality agency to fit their needs can feel daunting and stressful. How do you separate the average from the exceptional? Hint: pay attention to the questions they ask.
Tune in to find out and choose with confidence! In this episode we talk about:
- SEO agency
- SEO in-house
- Tips for hiring an SEO agency
Timestamps:
00:00 - 05:58: WebSummit Lisbon
05:58 - 10:49: Teams are getting smaller, goals aren’t
10:49 - 14:50: When in-house and agency SEOs complement each other
14:50 - 16:32: When to start looking for an SEO agency partner?
16:32 - 23:46: What good quality SEO agencies should be asking you
23:46 - 25:01: Connect with us on LinkedIn
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Mila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miladibella
Maeva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
SEO Roundtable: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/seo-roundtable/
The SEO Growth Podcast: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/blog/podcast/
Hello dear listeners! Welcome to our third episode of The SEO Growth Podcast.
This week we’re joined by Usman Akram, Head of SEO at Flying Cat Marketing, as he talks us through how we can report our SEO efforts to leaders and stakeholders.
We discuss how it can take time to show the results of your SEO strategy. So it’s important to find a way of reporting to leaders that justifies the budget you’re investing—and demonstrates you’re on the right track.
Whether you’re part of a big company with a dedicated Head of SEO or a smaller company where the Head of Marketing does it all, it’s crucial to show the business impact of your SEO strategy.
To show how SEO impacts revenue, check the conversion rates on the top-performing pages of your website. Often, 50% of conversions come from just five pieces of content. Once you identify which pieces they are and how much organic traffic they generate, you can use this information to guide your content strategy.
You’ll also find out how attribution models can help you report SEO when you don’t have conversion data. By modeling customer touchpoints, you can understand and predict which steps in the customer journey lead to conversion.
A common objection from leadership is how long it takes to see ROI from SEO. We show you how to estimate ROI by setting SEO targets at the beginning of a project. So instead of having a strategy based on the number of pieces of content or backlinks you create, your end goal is an exact timeline for ROI.
By using simple math, Usman demonstrates how you can develop a whole roadmap for your SEO strategy and estimate your results, outcome, ROI, and cost of acquisition.
So tune in to find out how to report the value of your SEO efforts—by focusing on ROI over rankings and traffic.
In this episode we talk about:
- SEO reporting
- SEO strategy
- Calculating ROI from SEO
Timestamps:
04:13 - 12:33: What indicators can you use to show your SEO strategy is on the right track?
12:33 - 18:51: Structuring an SEO report for your leaders
18:51 - 20:59: Using an attribution model instead of direct conversions data
20:59 - 27:17: Attribution models: First touch, last touch, linear, W-form, and U-shaped
27:17 - 32:20: How to calculate return on investment (ROI) from SEO
32:20 - 34:49: Wrap up
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Mila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miladibella Maeva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere Usman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usman-akram5000
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
SEO Roundtable: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/seo-roundtable/
The SEO Growth Podcast: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/blog/podcast/
“I don't think there's anything wrong with running an affiliate blog and going after high-volume keywords. It's just an understanding of what strategy you're after and how you're gonna justify going into content, then reverse engineering your strategy based on the action you want your customer to take”
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Leader Interview Series! This time, we discuss with Ben Pages, Marketing Manager at Feature Upvote, the importance of considering search volume in context with your overall content strategy.
Search volume is highly misunderstood by both clients and SEOs, who often wrongly correlate higher search volume with higher traffic. As Maeva and Ben reveal, that’s a total myth—and you should never choose keywords based blindly on this metric (SEO tools are never 100% accurate anyway!).
Instead, focus on what you want your readers to do according to your overall content strategy and LTV, and base your keyword selection on more relevant factors, like intent, or traffic potential. Also, don’t ever disregard finding opportunities through competitor analysis, variations and semantics, and ol’ good customer research to capture the voice of the customer.
Tune in to find out why you should start looking at search volume from a very different angle to get more qualified traffic!
In this episode we talk about:
- Search volume
- Traffic
- Keyword selection
Timestamps:
00:00 - 00:58: Introducing Ben Pages at Feature Upvote
00:58 - 02:01: When Search volume is irrelevant
02:01 - 03:19: Search volume doesn’t necessarily attract more traffic
03:19 - 05:19: Was it hard to break the search volume habit?
05:19 - 07:09: When traffic isn’t the metric you’re after
07:09 - 12:09: The connection between LTV and the impact of traffic
12:17 - 14:58: The risks of misunderstanding search volume
14:58 - 17:08: An experiment with projected traffic vs actual traffic
17:08 - 23:24: Choosing keywords without focusing on search volume
23:28 - 24:50: Wrap up
About Ben Pages
Ben is the marketing manager at Feature Upvote, a lightweight tool that helps product managers organize and prioritize user feedback. He specializes in producing high-quality content—from strategy and writing to search engine optimization.
Connect with Ben on his website, Benpages.com
If you’re a Product manager, Ben suggests you check out FeatureUpvote.com
“Rankings are obviously very important; people just get too blinded by rankings and forget all the most important things about business and sales.”
Welcome to the 2nd episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This week we’re joined by the founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing Maeva Cifuentes as she walks us through measuring your SEO results.
We talked about how too many people consider SEO or rankings as the end goal, rather than a means to an end. The goal, she explains, is increased revenue—and SEO helps us get there.
A common misconception is that you can use trackers like Hubspot or Google Analytics to measure how SEO contributes to revenue and call it a day. Maeva explains that you need to use other tools, such as business intelligence apps, to get the full picture.
Another overlooked fact is that last-touch data doesn’t tell the whole story—nobody lands on a page and then immediately commits to a million-dollar piece of software. You also need to look at first-touch or assisted conversion data because it tells you how and when customers started interacting with your product.
A common question we get at FCM is: how do I know SEO is working for me? Or more crucially: what do I do if it isn’t working? We break down key metrics like relevance and search volume and things to keep an eye on like correct indexing and search intent.
So tune in now to find out how to correctly measure your SEO results and let us know your tips and tricks in the comments!
In this episode we talk about:
- SEO results
- Sales touchpoints
- SEO strategy
Timestamps:
00:00-04:00: The SEO Roundtable
04:01-06:07: The end goal of SEO
06:08-12:14: How to track SEO results and the associated revenue
12:15-15:10: The critical touchpoints for measuring SEO success
15:11-19:21: How to know when your SEO strategy is working
19:22-24:59: What to do if your SEO strategy isn’t working
25:00-27:00: Wrap up
Connect with us on LinkedIn:
Mila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miladibella
Maeva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhere
Join the Flying Cats
Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change 👊
Follow Flying Cat Marketing for more SEO strategy and content advice from the agency that helped Hotjar, Mixmax, and ActiveCampaign drive more revenue from organic traffic in a sustainable and predictable way.
Website: https://www.flyingcatmarketing.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing
SEO Roundtable: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/seo-roundtable/
The SEO Growth Podcast: https://flyingcatmarketing.com/blog/podcast/
“Building a good distribution plan essentially means that for less total content production, you're able to get that much more actual output.”
Hello hello Flying Fans!
In episode 83 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we sat down with Casey Hill, Head of Growth at Bonjoro, to discuss maximizing your reach by repurposing content.
Casey explains that if you’re just scheduling content, posting it, and dropping it in your newsletter you’re missing out on massive reach potential. He reveals how repurposing your content, and having a proper distribution strategy, is key to expanding your reach.
He’s passionate about communicating with the widest possible audience, by focusing on content that will appeal to a broad audience, and harnessing the power of affiliate partners to magnify your reach.
Having been in the game a long time Casey has faced his share of challenges. He tells us how he overcame them, adapting his content for specific audiences (even when they were less than receptive!), and learning how to measure his success.
So, grab a cup of coffee, get comfortable, and tune in as Casey gives you the ins and outs of content repurposing to save you time and massively expand your reach.
In this episode we talk about:
- Content repurposing
- Distribution strategies
- Affiliate partners
Timestamps:
0:00-5:51: Why it’s worth taking the time to repurpose content
5:52-9:40: What a repurposing distribution strategy looks like
9:41-11:46: How to make your content appeal to a broad audience
11:47-16:13: Using affiliate partners to expand your reach
16:14-22:01: Casey’s biggest trial-and-error mistakes
22:02-24:51: How to measure success when repurposing content
24:52-31:21: How to adapt your content for specific audiences
Connect with Casey Hill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyhill/
Listen to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast on
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7dCyOzFGosoNYJhbDOvfQd
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flying-cat-marketing-podcast/id1535206202?uo=4
- Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=579505&refid=stpr
Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing/
“Really great content and open content that really tries to elicit feedback, I think is a really strong starting point for building a community that actually has substance to it. It's not just a list of blog posts that we're dropping on people.”
Hey there! In episode 82 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we sat down with Alex McQueen, Content Marketing Manager at Klue, to hear about how he co-created his own podcast network - The Compete Network.
Alex talks about how his desire to reach out to people, share knowledge and build a thriving community inspired the network. He knew that simply dumping job postings on the website or creating a Slack channel wouldn’t magically grow a community and sought to bring a personal touch to engagement.
Detailing the challenges and successes of The Compete Network, he talked us through the value of a strong branding team and what metrics he uses to measure engagement. He singles out live shows and events as a key step towards success and gives helpful tips on how to increase participation with follow-up interactions.
Plus, Alex explained the advantages of diversifying content beyond blog posts to encompass podcasts, videos, live shows, newsletters, and courses and the opportunities they offer. He shares some invaluable pointers on scheduling this content and tells us about his “Netflix seasons” approach to podcast episodes.
So, if you’re ready to hear how you can up your podcast game, jumpstart audience engagement, and build a thriving community, then tune in now!
In this episode we talk about:
- Podcast networks
- Audience engagement
- Success metrics
Timestamps:
0:00-1:44: Introduction
1:45-7:23 What is The Compete Network?
7:24-9:29 How it was started
9:30-12:40 Building a community
12:41-15:19 Metrics of success
15:20-16:29 Major challenges
16:30-21:50 Scheduling and distribution
21:51-24:07 Diversifying content
24:08-26:21 Reaching out to the audience
26:22-27:31 Wrapping up
Connect with Alex McQueen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mcqueen-032a5b10b/
While you’re here
Follow Flying Cat Marketing on the following channels to get more tips, tactics, and knowledge on content marketing:
Listen to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast on
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7dCyOzFGosoNYJhbDOvfQd
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flying-cat-marketing-podcast/id1535206202?uo=4
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=579505&refid=stpr
Follow me on
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flyingcatmarketing/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flyingcatmarketing
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing/
“One of the ways that you could discover whether SEO is the right channel for the business that you're working with is basically understanding two questions. First, are the potential customers of your business actually aware of the problem your business is solving? And if so, where are they actually looking to solve that problem?”
Hello hello! For episode 81 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we spoke with Farzad Rashidi, Lead Innovator at Respona and former Director of Marketing at Visme. He gave us the company’s exclusive SEO formula, the same one that was used at Visme to help them reach 14 million users and 3 million monthly organic traffic.
Farzad broke down this keyword prioritization formula, which is calculated using CPC, traffic potential, and keyword difficulty. He also explained the three types of content they publish at Respona and Visme: content for SEO purposes, link content, and conversion content.
Plus, he explained how the company distributes its marketing efforts: according to Farzad, teams should be devoting 20% of their time to content creation and 80% to content promotion. Farzad explains why this approach was crucial for helping Visme achieve its success.
This is just part one of two of Farzad’s interviews. In the next installment, we’ll be picking his brain about off-page SEO and link building. But for now, tune in to learn how to build a solid SEO content creation and distribution strategy and determine whether SEO is the right channel for your business.
In this episode:
- How to know if you should prioritize SEO as a marketing channel
- The “Opportunity Score” formula for keyword prioritization
- The three types of SEO content the Respona team creates
- The importance of off-page SEO for an overall content strategy
- The balance you should strike between content creation and distribution
About the guest
Farzad Rashidi is the lead innovator at Respona, the all-in-one link-building outreach software that helps businesses increase their organic traffic from Google. He previously ran the marketing efforts at Visme, where he helped the company gain over 14 million active users and pass 3M monthly organic traffic.
Timestamps
1:15-4:24 How to know if SEO is the right marketing channel for your business
4:25-6:31 Farzad’s first attempts with SEO at Visme
6:32-8:52 How Farzad and his team make SEO to work for Visme and Respona
8:53-12:36 Farzad’s formula for keyword prioritization, the Opportunity Score
12:37-13:28 The importance of “staying in your league” when choosing keywords
13:29-16:09 How to use the Opportunity Score to prioritize your keywords and plan your content strategy
16:10-19:51 The three types of content Farzad and his team creates
19:52-22:36 The journey to 14 million users and 3 million monthly organic traffic at Visme
22:37-25:31 The importance of link building for an SEO strategy
25:32-26:43 How to organize your content marketing efforts
“At the end of the day, we’re not trying to say we do magic. We're just trying to say, ‘we'll take all the information that you have first-party collected inside of your company, and we'll make it available for you.’”
Hello, hello! In this episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we’re joined by Steffen Hedebrandt, CMO and Co-Founder of Dream Data to talk about how to properly use attribution to see ROI from content and SEO.
We start by discussing the question that has all of LinkedIn fired up: How accurate is attribution, really? How can you use it to get people like the CEO, or CFO, on board the content train?
Steffen explains that there are two different types of content you can focus on, and if you can clearly differentiate between the two, you’re able to make data-driven decisions and drive the most ROI.
“There's two buckets of content. There's content that drives traffic to your website, and then there's content people look at as they're buying your product. And if we start with the articles you write for Google - where you're trying to get people to your website - the content that has the highest intent of actually making a buying decision about your product are ones you should spend time on.”
So what does this actually look like in practice?
Get caught up with this and more in the full episode!
In this episode we talk about:
- Keyword 1 for this episode
- SEO
- Keyword 2 for this episode
- Attribution
- Keyword 3 for this episode
- Content
Timestamps:
02:15-06:53 Are marketing attribution software worth the hype?
06:54-10:21 The difference between attribution data from CRMs like Salesforce and actual attribution software
10:22 The different types of attribution models and how they help track ROI
13:16-14:17 Can you implement hybrid attribution models?
14:18-23:10 Steffen’s biggest discoveries about content
23:11-26:23 What’s one thing Steffen wishes more people knew about attribution?
Connect with [Steffen Hedebrandt] on [LinkedIn]: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/steffenhedebrandt/]
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His last name was difficult to pronounce, but it was extremely easy to have a valuable conversation with marketing and growth expert, Vukasin Vukosavljevic.
During this interview, we chatted about which marketing interventions can lead your company to grow organically. Vuk shared insights based on his experience in his previous role as Head of Growth at Lemlist, where his initiatives leveraging the Lemlist community led the company to cross $10M in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
This week’s Flying Cat Marketing Podcast highlights the importance of
- Building a community at the very beginning
- Creating marketing activities for each stage of the funnel
- Repurposing content natively for each platform and adapting pieces to each channel
In this episode, we first talked about differentiating marketing activities through the different stages of the funnel and overlapping content between the bottom and middle parts of the funnel. Some of those activities can include cold outreach, blog post creation, webinars, and templates.
Then, Vuk shared some actionable tasks a content marketer can address to capture prospects and get them into the top part of the funnel. Repurposing content, creating an online community, and building employees' personal brands on LinkedIn are some of those efforts.
We realized it was easy to overlap initiatives at different funnel stages. But, as Vuk explained, “how you label it is less important than how it performs.”
Get caught up with this and more in the full episode!
In this episode we talk about:
- Growing businesses organically
- Different marketing initiatives throughout the funnel
- Organic Growth
Timestamps:
- (01:05) Meet Vuk and his work at Lemlist
- (3:17) The Lemlist’s organic growth strategy
- (4:42) How they started creating webinars and leveraging the community at the BoFu
- (8:54) How content plays a huge part of in-app initiatives
- (11:20) Content is king. How value beats highly produced content
- (12:25) The way you distribute content can make the same information address BoFu or MoFu
- (16:23) How repurposing content natively and building personal brands can attract leads at the ToFu
- (19:49) The process of adapting content to different channels
Connect with Vukasin Vukosavljevic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vukasinvukosavljevic/
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“So these were super important milestones that we were able to achieve thanks to this combination of real strategic SEO and really high-quality content, that our sales team had a direct impact on with their advice.”
Hello hello! For episode 78 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we sat down with Andrea Skarica, Growth Marketing Manager at Mixmax, to discuss Mixmax’s collaboration with Flying Cat Marketing, and the results they were able to achieve through combining subject matter expertise with an SEO framework for predictable growth.
Mixmax is a fast-growth sales engagement tool that allows sales professionals to automate and personalize their cold email outreach and win more replies and meetings by turning email from a static experience into a more interactive one.
In this episode, we deep dive into how, through their collaboration with Flying Cat Marketing, Mixmax was able to
- Define their tone of voice.
- Create enjoyable content their Ideal Customer Profile could relate to.
- Increase and improve their SEO profile.
- Increase their sales-related keywords.
According to Andrea, “[Mixmax is] ranking on page one for Outreach alternatives, SalesLoft alternatives, and some other [keywords] like email sequence software, even best sales engagement platforms.”
“So when I arrived [to Mixmax,]” says Andrea, “I had quite a small budget, [and I was told] "Okay, so what are you gonna do to improve our growth organically rather than investing in paid?”...I decided; Okay, let's go and build a content strategy backed by SEO."
By collaborating with Mixmax’s own sales team and gathering their Subject Matter Expert advice, we were able to achieve results like a 548% increase in sessions.
Tune in to learn more about combining SEO and thought leadership content can achieve huge results for businesses.
In this episode we talk about:
- SEO
- Organic content marketing
- Subject matter expertise
Timestamps:
00:35-04:11 Mixmax and Flying Cat Marketing: Where it all started
04:12-06:10 Building thought leaderships content distributed through SEO and social media
06:11-11:40 What results did Mixmax achieve through organic content marketing?
11:41-13:47 The importance of understanding the ICP pain points
13:48-16:11 Why was nailing down the tone of voice a priority for Mixmax?
16:12-17:49 How to set your sales content apart from competitors
17:50-22:31 How Mixmax and Flying Cat Marketing built a seamless subject matter expert process
22:32-26:25 How to use LinkedIn to connect with your ICP
Connect with Andrea Skarica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaskarica/
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Follow Flying Cat Marketing on the following channels to get more tips, tactics, and knowledge on content marketing:
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flying-cat-marketing-podcast/id1535206202?uo=4
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Is customer retention the new acquisition? You betcha, says Firaas Rashid, CEO & Founder of Hook, a predictive data platform that empowers customer success teams.
This week, the Flying Cat Marketing podcast caught up with Firaas to learn about customer-led growth and how to upsell for success.
Firaas kicked off by outlining the challenges inherent in “low-risk” SaaS subscription models in terms of customer retention and building relationships. That makes retention rates increasingly interesting for investors as an indicator of future revenue, especially in the current tech downturn.
He then shared his tips for marketing to existing customers and maximizing revenue from them.
- Run targeted marketing campaigns to large accounts to sell into new departments.
- Incentivize adoption with competitions.
- Use customer advocacy to generate new leads by hooking your champions up with other potential customers.
Next, he identifies the need for startups to create relevant, useful content beyond just plugging your product. “Your customers aren’t buying your product,” he explains, “they’re buying the solution to a business problem. Your product is a tech delivery platform to make that happen, and they’re interested in how you can facilitate other solutions to that problem”
Finally, Firaas explained why companies should use in-app data to identify customers at risk of churning or ripe for upselling to a new feature or plan. And how Hook helps you do that. “We find that product behaviors can predict about 85% the likelihood of someone spending more money, without including any other data,” he says.
All this and more in the full episode!
In this episode we talk about:
- Keyword 1 for this episode
- Customer-led growth
- Keyword 2 for this episode
- SaaS upselling
- Keyword 3 for this episode
- Customer retention
Timestamps:
03:03 Why upselling and retention are essential in SaaS
06:30 How to upsell with account-based marketing
07:15 How to incentivize adoption
08: 15 How to use customer advocacy to generate new leads
10:00 Why startups need to create more useful content for customers
12:05 How in-app data can identify customers at risk of churning or ripe for upselling
13:14 The difference between product-led and customer-led growth
17:02 Why simple data points are best to measure customer-led growth
Connect with Firaas Rashid on: https://www.linkedin.com/in/firaasrashid/
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This week, the Flying Cat Marketing podcast caught up with Kate Erwin, Head of Content at Contractbook, to learn three ways to use social media for organic B2B growth.
Kate kicked off by telling us how she makes the fleeting nature of social media work for her by using it as a testing ground for content ideas and formats. And why she believes conversation starters are more important than likes.
She went on to explain why you don’t have to be a teen to use TikTok, before telling us how she leverages content partnerships to grow her audience. And how you can totally punch above your weight by leaning in on partnerships with bigger fish.
She finished up by explaining how she uses social listening to validate keyword research and get topic ideas, and how to find the right people and grow your network.
All this and more on the SaaS Marketing Podcast.
Don’t miss it!
In this episode we talk about:
- Social media
- Content partnerships
- Social listening
Timestamps:
1:17- 6:57 How to use social media as a content testing ground
6:58-8:17 Why conversation starters are more important than likes
8:18-9:57 How social media can help you figure out what type of content to create
9:58-18:17 How to leverage content partnerships
18:18-22:11 How to use social listening to validate keyword research
22:12- 25:08 How to find influencers and build your network on social media
Connect with Kate Erwin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateerwin/
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“Marketers have always gotten the unfortunate rap of being not as impactful as sales. So now, it becomes a lot harder to get buy-in from the rest of the organization to do the things that we need to do.”
Hello hello and welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast! Today, we’re here with Ashley Levesque, VP of marketing at Banzai. We talk about building marketing and revenue teams, and why the current marketing team playbook is outdated.
Ashley Levesque grows teams and strategies that empower employees and transform businesses. In her time as a marketing and communications professional, she's built departments and functions from the ground up in industries ranging from manufacturing to SaaS.
At Banzai, Ashley's responsible for empowering marketing teams with the skills, tools, and confidence they need to connect more deeply with their prospects and customers.
She walks us through the current marketing playbook, why it’s outdated, and how modern marketing teams should approach their goals.
“Marketing generates leads and kicks them over to sales. We all know that's not the way the buyer's journey works, but our organization is still set up that way.” Ashley reveals her top plays when it comes to building efficient teams, which include creating pods and bringing sales and marketing together.
Do you have the right metrics in place to measure success in your business? Are you communicating these metrics when onboarding new marketing hires? What happens if the expectations for your team aren’t laid out clearly?
During this episode, we talk about tips you can implement this month to ensure your marketing and revenue teams are going in the right direction, and with the least resistance.
In this episode:
- Why is the playbook for creating revenue or marketing teams outdated?
- How should you approach building a marketing team?
- How knowing your weak spots can help you hire better
- Is your onboarding process setting up your new marketing hire for success?
- Output, Outcome, Impact: What is it and how can you use the framework?
- Meeting best practices for remote teams
About the guest:Ashley Levesque grows teams and strategies that empower employees and transform businesses. In her time as a marketing and communications professional, she has built departments and functions from the ground up in industries ranging from manufacturing to SaaS. Her experience turning strategy into action makes her a vital asset for companies looking to grow quickly. At Banzai, Ashley is responsible for empowering marketing teams with the skills, tools, and confidence they need to connect more deeply with their prospects and customers.
Timestamps:01:27- 02:55 How is the marketing team at Banzai structured?
02:56- 08:45 Why is the playbook for creating revenue or marketing teams outdated?
08:46- 10:01 How can you build a marketing team the right way?
10:02- 13:21 How can you set a new marketing hire up for success?
13:18- 13:22 How should you NOT go about onboarding new hires?
13:23- 15:09 The importance of documentation culture in businesses
15:10-21:31 What is the Output, Outcome, Impact framework and how is it used?
21:32- 25:11 How to best stay on top of your goals using the red light, yellow light, green light approach
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“Organic is this new big channel because it scales and you pretty much get an infinite return on investment if you rank well… When you're small and you don't have resources, you're kind of trying to do everything, and that's not the way to go. So I would wholeheartedly advise every small startup these days to just focus on the one thing that is really driving leads.”
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing Interview Series. Today you’ll hear our conversation with Emilia Korczynska, Head of Marketing at Userpilot. She helped the company go from publishing four pieces of content on their blog to 40 in under six months? How did she do it? Userpilot’s Content Epics System.
When Emilia realized that building an in-house team wasn’t going to work for the company, she designed a way to streamline the brief creation, writing, editing, and proofreading processes. The new approach uses in-house brief creation and editing while outsourcing writing, using tools like Surfer SEO and StoryChief to automate the process.
In this episode, Emilia explains the Content Epics System approach and shares how Userpilot got to where it is today with content creation. She also touches on some of the challenges the business still faces with its content strategy and discusses where AI can be useful (and where it falls short) when creating content for a SaaS company.
Listen to the episode to get an inside look at how content production and organic growth happens at Userpilot, with bonus insights from Maeva about Flying Cat Marketing’s content production strategy at the end of the episode.
In this episode we talk about:
- Organic growth
- Content strategy
- SaaS marketing
Timestamps:
0:00-1:20 Introduction
1:31-3:45 The relevance of organic traffic and why it’s so valuable for smaller startups
3:46-6:10 How Userpilot drastically increased the amount of content it publishes and how other startups can better direct their efforts
6:11-8:53 Why Userpilot decided to take the content team in-house (and how)
8:54-11:40 Userpilot’s Content Epics System and how it works
11:41-12:49 The role of Userpilot’s Head of Content and how they fit into the content strategy
12:50-15:52 What Userpilot’s content creation process looks like, from writing to proofreading to SEO to editing
15:53-17:23 Why Userpilot manages all content in StoryChief
17:24-19:23 How Userpilot creates briefs and why they are so detailed
19:24-23:11 The writing and editing challenges that Userpilot continues to face and how they are being addressed
23:12-26:13 The problems with AI writing and where it can be useful for B2B SaaS content creation
26:14-27:37 Userpilot’s subject matter expert interview process
27:38-28:27 What Emilia wished she had known when she started doing organic content
28:28-30:30 Flying Cat Marketing’s content creation process and how it’s different from Userpilot’s
30:31-32:43 Where you can find Emilia and outro
Connect with Emilia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emiliakorczynska/
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“One of the biggest issues when you only focus on leads is that you don’t have any Marketing-Sales alignment.”
Hello hello! For episode 72 of the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast, we sat down with Max Eiden, founder of hey.ad, to discuss why marketing should not focus on generating leads, why people are overly focused on lead gen today, and how we can change marketing to be more customer-centric.
Hey.ad is a lead generation company based in Hamburg, Germany. They help B2B SaaS companies increase their pipeline growth, and attract qualified users with their approach to holistic marketing and focus on demand generation.
In this episode, we deep dive into holistic approaches to marketing, lead generation, and customer-centric marketing. Marketing has always been expected to deliver leads to sales—but our responsibility in this model usually stops after we hand over those leads. Max explains why this model is broken and how we can improve our marketing to match today's B2B buyer behavior by making it more customer-centric.
According to Max, “[if marketers] only have the responsibility of generating leads, [they] don’t know how much of the pipeline [they] generated, how many qualified ops [they] generated, or how much revenue [they] generated, because [they] think it’s not [their] responsibility to be aware of this.” It’s important for marketers, salespeople, and companies to think about lead generation in new ways because they’re working from models created in previous decades. Tune in to understand how they should approach it instead, and why.
In this episode we talk about:
- Customer-centric marketing
- Holistic marketing
- Demand generation
Timestamps
00:00-00:46 Introduction
00:46-06:56 Why marketers shouldn’t focus on lead generation
06:56-08:40 Lead generation touchpoints vs. marketing touchpoints
08:40-09:16 Differences in buying intent based on channels
09:16-10:20 Why are we still so focused on lead generation today?
10:20-11:13 What marketers should focus on instead
11:13-13:05 How does creating content on awareness channels influence word-of-mouth marketing?
13:05-15:10 How to get your message across more often and more effectively
15:10-17:22 Differences in lead generation and demand generation
17:22-19:51 How sales and marketing can work better together
19:51-21:53 How to better understand your funnels and touchpoints
21:53-26:05 How to make the buying journey more customer-centric
26:05-27:13 Outro
Connect with Max Eiden on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilianeidenheyadsaas/
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“A good interviewer makes sure the conversation goes down a great rabbit hole that could have never been scripted. Those candid moments, right? It's like an art, you get to pull it and play with it and make it like a beautiful shining pearl.”
Hello hello. Welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing Interview Series. For episode 73 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we’re with Wil Slickers, founder of Hospitality.FM, a podcast network for hospitality businesses.
When Wil first started podcasting, he was working full-time as a hotel manager. In 2019, when his podcast started really taking off, he was doing up to 5 episode recordings after a full day’s work at the hotel. That’s when he started thinking about monetizing.
Want to know how he did it? In this episode, we talk about establishing a voice within your podcast niche and attracting paying partnerships through guest appearances. You’ll hear how Wil went from having zero content structure to running a 10-episode podcast series with top names in the vacation rental industry and hospitality tech space.
We discuss how Chili Piper’s Demand Gen Chat podcast is getting it so right, how you can use podcast interviewing strategies to get the most out of your guests, and whether content quality or production quality is more important. To wrap things up, Wil shares how he built Hospitality.FM from the mic up.
In this episode:
- The difference between a podcast as a marketing opportunity and as a business
- How to monetize a podcast
- Chili Piper’s Demand Gen Chat podcast: What makes it so good?
- When to plan your content vs allowing for candid moments
- Whether production quality is more important than interesting content
- How Wil built Hospitality.FM to support business owners
Timestamps:
02:32-04:51 When does a podcast become a business?
04:52-08:31 How Wil began to monetize his podcast
08:32-11:46 Example of a podcast doing it right: The Demand Gen Chat podcast by Chili Piper
11:47-14:08 Why choose different voices to platform on your podcast?
14:09-17:06 How much should you plan your content?
17:07-19:37 Giving space to candid moments while interviewing
19:38-21:39 Is quality production more important than interesting content?
21:40-24:12 How Wil built the Hospitality.FM network
Connect with Wil Slickers on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wil-slickers
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“Rather than hire direct salespeople, you can accelerate your sales by going through a third party who's already got a customer base. They've already got that reach. They've already got a marketing program, so they can take that product out for you really quickly.”
Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing Interview Series. Today, I'm really excited to speak to Stewart Townsend, who is the co-founder of Podcast Hawk and also works as a consultant for Channel as a Service.
Stewart is the expert on channel remarketing, and supported SaaS household name Zendesk to find resellers for its products and grow the business into new markets. He was first brought into Zendesk in 2013 to build out a channel program across Europe. One of the biggest challenges he faced at Zendesk was educating people internally on what channel remarketing really meant.
Still not sure yourself? In this episode, you’ll get the lowdown on channel remarketing, why finding resellers is a great marketing strategy for your B2B SaaS company, and the most important thing to remember when building relationships with them.
Most importantly, you’ll hear how Stewart overcame his initial challenges with Zendesk to create a channel remarketing strategy worth at least $10m of revenue.
In this episode we talk about:
- B2B marketing strategies
- Channel remarketing
- Zendesk
Timestamps:
01:00-01:34 What is channel remarketing?
01:35-02:18 Channel remarketing vs white-labeling: What’s the difference?
02:19-03:33 Channel remarketing as a business model
03:34-06:13 Why choose channel remarketing?
06:14-07:25 Can you use channel remarketing alongside other marketing activities?
07:26-13:13 Case study: How Stewart selected resellers for Zendesk
13:14-16:17 What is a reseller looking for in a partner?
16:18-18:27 How do you make the partnership successful?
18:28-20:10 How does the relationship differ from integration partners?
20:11-22:03 Stewart’s biggest challenge: Growing his brand in the reseller market
22:04-24:46 Working with Zendesk: The results
Connect with Stewart Townsend on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stewarttownsend
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“If content works, and all of the processes that support that content work, then content has this ability to have a huge impact, not just in marketing, but across the business and the brand as a whole.”
Hello hello and welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast. Today we spoke with Lauren Lang, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Constructor, as a part of our SaaS leader interview series.
Constructor is an AI platform that helps e-commerce companies personalize their site experiences. Before entering the world of B2B content, Lauren was a college English instructor, but since 2014 she has been working as a content marketer and B2B SaaS brand and content strategist.
Lauren starts by explaining the role that content should play for a business, and why it should cut horizontally across every one of an organization’s functions. “Content is really this connective tissue, this glue, that connects all of the marketing functions, and it at least touches most of the different business functions too.” She highlights how much of an impact content can play when it’s done right and everyone in the organization participates in its creation.
She talks about what needs to occur for a content team to be cross-functional and what types of tasks content teams need to prioritize, as well as how content marketers should talk with leadership teams to get everyone at an organization on board with a cross-functional content strategy.
Lauren also touches on what KPIs organizations should track to determine whether or not their content is making a difference for their business, and she details some quantitative and qualitative metrics that you can look at to measure the success of your content.
Finally, she explains how cross-functional OKRs can help content teams have success, as well as how to be strategic when getting other teams involved with the work of the content team.
How has Lauren managed to implement a cross-functional content strategy at Constructor? How can your content teamwork with other departments for content to have success?
In this episode we talk about:
- Content marketing
- Cross-functional content
- Cross-team collaboration
Timestamps:
0:53-3:30 The role of content in an organization and the impact it can have
3:31-5:45 How small content departments can prioritize and make content creation easier
5:55-8:36: How content marketers can incorporate positioning and branding into their role
8:37-10:45 Lauren’s evolution into a cross-functional role as Senior Content Marketing Manager at Constructor
10:46-12:02 How Lauren directs conversations with leadership on what needs to be done to get everyone on the same page
12:03-15:57 What should an organization measure to see if their content is successful?
15:58-17:32 How (and why) other departments should invest in the content function of an organization
17:33-23:54 Constructor’s content team and how they collaborate with other departments
23:55-24:55 The importance of being strategic when getting other teams involved with content
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asklaurenlang/
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“Marketers have always gotten the unfortunate rap of being not as impactful as sales. So now, it becomes a lot harder to get buy-in from the rest of the organization to do the things that we need to do.”
Hello hello and welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast! Today, we’re here with Ashley Levesque, VP of marketing at Banzai. We talk about building marketing and revenue teams, and why the current marketing team playbook is outdated.
Ashley Levesque grows teams and strategies that empower employees and transform businesses. In her time as a marketing and communications professional, she's built departments and functions from the ground up in industries ranging from manufacturing to SaaS.
At Banzai, Ashley's responsible for empowering marketing teams with the skills, tools, and confidence they need to connect more deeply with their prospects and customers.
She walks us through the current marketing playbook, why it’s outdated, and how modern marketing teams should approach their goals.
“Marketing generates leads and kicks them over to sales. We all know that's not the way the buyer's journey works, but our organization is still set up that way.” Ashley reveals her top plays when it comes to building efficient teams, which include creating pods and bringing sales and marketing together.
Do you have the right metrics in place to measure success in your business? Are you communicating these metrics when onboarding new marketing hires? What happens if the expectations for your team aren’t laid out clearly?
During this episode, we talk about tips you can implement this month to ensure your marketing and revenue teams are going in the right direction, and with the least resistance.
In this episode:
- Why is the playbook for creating revenue or marketing teams outdated?
- How should you approach building a marketing team?
- How knowing your weak spots can help you hire better
- Is your onboarding process setting up your new marketing hire for success?
- Output, Outcome, Impact: What is it and how can you use the framework?
- Meeting best practices for remote teams
About the guest:Ashley Levesque grows teams and strategies that empower employees and transform businesses. In her time as a marketing and communications professional, she has built departments and functions from the ground up in industries ranging from manufacturing to SaaS. Her experience turning strategy into action makes her a vital asset for companies looking to grow quickly. At Banzai, Ashley is responsible for empowering marketing teams with the skills, tools, and confidence they need to connect more deeply with their prospects and customers.
Timestamps:01:27- 02:55 How is the marketing team at Banzai structured?
02:56- 08:45 Why is the playbook for creating revenue or marketing teams outdated?
08:46- 10:01 How can you build a marketing team the right way?
10:02- 13:21 How can you set a new marketing hire up for success?
13:18- 13:22 How should you NOT go about onboarding new hires?
13:23- 15:09 The importance of documentation culture in businesses
15:10-21:31 What is the Output, Outcome, Impact framework and how is it used?
21:32- 25:11 How to best stay on top of your goals using the red light, yellow light, green light approach
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How do you create thought leadership content at scale even if you don’t have access to leaders?
By broadening your definition of what a thought leader is, and taking a holistic approach to content creation, that’s how.
This week on the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we talk to content marketer Brooklin Nash about how he takes expert voices and elevates them through B2B SaaS brands. Brooklin is a six-figure freelancer, aspiring seven-figure agency owner, and trusted by companies like Mixpanel, Skillsoft, and CloudShare, so we figure his advice is worth listening to!
Thought leadership has become a bit of a well-worn phrase in recent years but, as Brooklin explains, genuine thought leadership is way more than CEO-driven opinion pieces. He defines it as “Putting expert voices front and center in your content that match who your audience is and who you're actually selling to, whether they're your business users, end-users of your product, or decision-makers.”
With that out of the way, Brooklin walked us through his approach to getting time with subject matter experts, and how he makes the most of it to produce a true content web of knowledge that drives demand generation. Finally, he explained when and why content should be divorced from demand generation, and how to improve sales-marketing alignment to create sales collateral that can be used at all funnel stages.
All this and more in the full episode!
In this episode:
- Brooklin’s definition of what thought leadership is
- His content creation process, and how he scales it
- How to avoid asking the same 101 questions in interviews with subject matter experts
- How to improve sales and marketing alignment
- His experience creating content for Mixpanel and Hopin
- How he gets time with internal and external experts
- When and why content needs to be divorced from the product
About the guest:Brooklin is a content marketer for B2B SaaS companies. He became an "accidental" six figure freelancer, and is now working to become a "purposeful" seven figure agency owner. He works with companies like Mixpanel, Skillsoft, and CloudShare, usually out of his home in Antigua, Guatemala.
Timestamps01:37: Brooklin’s definition of what thought leadership is
03:29: His content creation process, and how he scales it
04:01: How to avoid asking the same 101 questions in interviews with subject matter experts
07:40: How to improve sales and marketing alignment
11:03: His experience creating content for Mixpanel and Hopin
14:36: How he gets time with internal and external experts
16:41: When and why content needs to be divorced from the product
Connect with Brooklin Nash on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooklin-nash/
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flyingcatmarketing/
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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing/
Hello hello! We’re about to show you that account-based marketing (ABM) can also be done without fancy technology.
While at the beginning you might need to focus on every single detail to get accounts to convert, ABM can be highly scalable.
In this episode, we invited the Director of Evangelism at B2B gifting company Alyce, Nick Bennett, who grew their whole business by following an ABM approach. He definitely knows a thing or two about targeted marketing.
ABM has become a buzzword, and people are calling it all different kinds of names. Some refer to it as targeted, outbound, or account-based marketing. But it all amounts to the same thing: getting to know the person behind each account you want to close.
This means finding out who they are at work, but crucially what they like to do after they close their laptops: what Nick calls the “five to nine”. And then, working those marketing qualified accounts (MQA) when they’re almost ready to convert.
Whether you’re approaching accounts on a one-to-one, one-to-few, or one-to-many basis, ABM, is much more than making targeted events or buying them gifts. It’s about really targeting those people, “we have a blueprint for every single account. And we know exactly what type of messaging to use,” Nick explains.
Doing ABM without an expensive tech stack to make personalized messages at a larger scale can be exhausting but not impossible. Nick explains how he made over 30 personalized landing pages by himself to close accounts, and how they’re doing it differently at Alyce today.
To get a better understanding of how ABM works even without a lot of dedicated resources, don’t miss Nick Bennett’s episode.
In this episode we talk about:
- Account-based marketing
- Scalable ABM
- Targeted marketing that converts
Timestamps:
- 00:52 What does ABM really mean?
- 08:24 Focusing on all the parts of the funnel
- 10:00 An alternative to measuring MQLs.
- 13:06 Alyce’s ABM set up walkthrough
- 14:30 Actually setting up an ABM process can help CAC
- 16:03 Making ABM scalable
- 22:41 Insights on Nick’s new role as director of evangelism
Connect with Nick Bennet on LinkedIn
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“Readers are smart and they're doing their own research. So if you just give them a copy-paste approach to comparison pages, they're going to call you on that.”
Hello hello! In this week’s episode of the Flying Cat Marketing interview series, we’re here with Federico Jorge. Federico is the founder of Stack Against, delivering SEO-optimized comparison pages for SaaS businesses.
Federico tells us all about his best practices for creating competitor pages that drive revenue and challenge the status quo.
We discuss the best ways to distribute competitor pages, what mistakes to avoid, and how you can establish yourself as a thought-leader in your industry by devising the correct strategy.
Federico walks us through the exact workflow he and his team use at StackAgainst to create personalized competitor pages for companies like Cloudways, a cloud hosting platform. “We first created five comparison pages, which now have a combined lead count of 993 free trials and 926 sales.
How exactly did Federico and his team achieve these results? What can you learn from Stack Against’s workflow and strategy and how can you implement your findings?
In this episode we talk about:
- Competitor pages
- Comparison pages
- Strategy
Timestamps:
0:36 What are competitor comparison pages?
02:10 The different kinds of competitor pages
03:33 A new way to look at competitor comparisons: challenging the status quo
07:27 Examples of successful competitor pages: classic vs. roundup articles
11:32 How to best distribute comparison pages
14:06 Stack Against’s workflow for making competitor pages stand out
18:30 What to avoid when creating a new competitor page
20:42 Best practices for creating competitor comparison landing pages
Connect with Federico on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicojorge/
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“Product-let growth is basically just putting your product at the center of all that you do… In the product-led world, you’re letting the customer choose what’s the best journey for them.”
Hello hello and welcome back to the Flying Cat Marketing podcast! In this episode, we had a conversation with Breezy Beaumont, Head of Growth at Correlated, on what product-led marketing is all about, how the role of a marketing team shifts within a product-led organization, and how you can make it work for your company.
Correlated is a product-led revenue platform targeted towards teams who want to expand through PLG and gain a better understanding of where to focus their efforts. Breezy walked us through the basics of product-led marketing (a strategy we’ve been hearing plenty about recently) and gave us some tips on the types of strategies you should employ when taking a product-led approach.
Breezy revealed her top product-led growth plays, such as social selling, product virality, and post-conversion tracking and we also talked about the link between a community-led and product-led approach.
Plus, she dove a bit deeper into the concept of social selling and how you can encourage your whole team to get involved when utilizing this method as a growth strategy. Finally, she touched on how to ease into a PLG strategy if you aren’t currently a product-led organization.
If you’ve been seeing product-led growth pop up all over the place recently but still don’t fully understand what it’s about, you do not want to miss this episode.
In this episode:
- What product led-growth is
- When PLG can work
- How marketing strategies and roles shift in a product-led company
- What is social selling
- How to get your whole team involved in a social-selling initiative
Timestamps
0:47-2:02 What is product-led growth?
2:03-4:44 Differentiating your messages based on your brand vs. your product, and when product-led growth can work
4:45-7:08 Where does marketing fall in a product-led company? Do PLG companies still need sales and marketing teams?
7:09-9:55 How the role of a marketing team shifts in a PLG company
9:56-12:05 Preparing yourself for success in a product-led organization and what types of marketing strategies/skills are essential in product-led company
12:06-13:49 Breezy’s best PLG plays
13:50-17:17 What is social selling and how do you encourage your whole team to get involved?
17:18-18:25 Is there a tie between a community-led and product-let strategy?
18:26-19:19 How to ease into a product-let growth strategy
19:20-20:19 Where to find Breezy and how to access Correlated resources
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How do you manage a large remote team while motivating your employees to take great care of your customers? By treating them as you’d like them to treat your customers, of course.
In this week’s episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast series, we catch up with Adam Harris. He’s the CEO of property management software company Cloudbeds and tells us all about his experience virtualizing human connection while managing a remote team.
Adam walks us through the challenges of managing and scaling an entirely remote global team of 600+ people. He also lets us in on how to build an award-winning company culture that’ll set you apart in a crowded marketplace.
According to Adam, it all comes down to creating a community where people feel valued, celebrated, and supported. This results in fired-up employees who are not only aligned with the company mission and inspired to support each other, but also motivated to take excellent care of their customers. “Your number one asset is your people,” Adam says, “so you better take care of that greatest asset, develop it, give it things that lead to additional incentive.”
Adam goes on to explain how he gets people to “bleed blue” right from their very first interview, and shares his tips for hiring smart, motivated, and humble people for the Cloudbeds team.
To wind things up, he walks us through how he handles the challenges of juggling multiple tools and communications channels, and why prioritizing open, two-way communication ensures company values are transmitted directly to employees.
In this episode:
- How Cloudbeds went from a team of 3 to 600+ in 10 years
- How their processes and communication strategies have evolved along the way
- How to build a company culture that gets people fired up and aligned with your mission while setting you apart from competitors
- How to match people with environments that will make them thrive
- How to hire for the qualities you want in your team
- Why the C-suite has to be on board with your company culture
- How Cloudbeds handles the challenges of managing and communicating with an entirely remote team
About the guest:
Adam is the CEO and Co-fouder of Cloudbeds. He has a diversified finance, transmedia marketing, and web technologies background ranging from being a technology investment banker, a technology consultant to emerging business, and the founder of numerous technology startups.
Timestamps:00:52: How Cloudbeds got started
01:51: How their processes and communication strategies have evolved along the way
03:47: How Adam defines the Cloudbeds culture
05:14: How and why the Cloudbeds team has grown over the years
05:48: How to build a company culture that gets people fired up and aligned with your mission
08:32: How to match people with environments that will make them thrive
10:26: What self-care resources Cloudbeds makes available to their employees
11:39: How to hire for the qualities you want in your team and transmit your values in the interview process
12:26: Why the C-suite has to be on board with your company culture
15:25: How Cloudbeds’ company culture sets it apart from competitors
17:58: How Cloudbeds handles the logistics of managing and communicating with an entirely remote team
21:35: Cloudbeds’ approach to building their tech stack and collaborating internally
22:23: What’s next for Cloudbeds
Connect with Adam Harris on LinkedIn
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“If you're ever contemplating gating content, you need to make sure it's something that you would personally be comfortable giving your own information for, or maybe even paying for.”
Hello Hello and welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast. On episode 64 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we’re with Erin Balsa, Founder and Chief Picky Editor at Erin Balsa Content Marketing, where she works with B2B companies whose content needs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Before founding her own company, Erin Balsa Content Marketing, Erin led content teams for 7 years—first as a managing editor at a content marketing agency, and then as head of content and marketing director at a high-growth B2B SaaS company called the Predictive Index.
If you’re looking to learn more about how Erin has been balancing high and low-intent leads and how you can do that in your own marketing strategy, then this is the episode for you.
During our conversation, we talk about content marketing metrics and how content marketers need to follow their users on their journeys, serve them the right content, and make sure they’re being nurtured throughout.
Should you only focus on high-intent leads? Why is pursuing low-intent leads seen as the easiest way to reach your marketing metrics? How sustainable would that be? We answer these questions and more on our episode with Erin.
Tune in and be ready to change up your approach to content marketing!
In this episode:
- Why businesses should move away from the MQL model
- The dos and don'ts of content gating
- How to balance high-intent and low-intent leads
- Successful content plays
- The positive effects of Splash pages
Timestamps
02:08-06:14 Why are businesses moving away from the marketing-qualified lead (MQL) model?
06:15-08:15 Content gating mistakes you should avoid
08:16-11:00 Should you just focus on high-intent leads and hand-raisers?
11:01-12:26 Shifting to the AIDA model and doubling high-intent leads
12:27-17:16 What’s the purpose of strategic gating?
17:17-19:55 More of Erin’s content play recommendations
19:56-21:22 How can Splash Pages affect your customer retention and expansion?
21:23-22:58 The next steps for Erin
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“Relying on your product marketer to be the only person that understands and talks to customers is a mistake.”
Hello Hello! On episode 63 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we sat down with Camille Trent, the head of content marketing at Dooly, to discuss product marketing, its importance, and how content and product marketers can work together closely to bring value to the whole team. We start by asking the question: Are all content marketers product marketers?
Dooly is a sales enablement platform for revenue teams. The platform helps sales leaders, frontline managers, and account executives to close more deals and be more productive by making it easy for them to collect the right information and ask the right questions.
In this episode, we do a deep dive into product marketing and answer questions like: What is product marketing? What exactly do product marketers do? What makes them an essential part of any company? And what can content marketers learn from them that would enable the content team to have a better understanding of the company and their clients?
According to Camille, “both product marketers and content marketers are storytellers and they should be working together to figure out what story they want to tell.” It’s important for content marketers to deeply understand their audience and product just as much as product marketers do. Content marketers need to ask themselves questions like: “what problem are we trying to solve and who are we trying to solve it for?” Tune in to understand the why behind this piece of advice and learn how these two teams of marketers can work together better.
Camille also tells us about how she provides the writers on her team with subject matter expertise. Making sure to point the writers in the right direction, building a content matrix, and making sure the writers understand the essence of the company are just some of the ways you can help writers out.
If you’re interested in learning more about how marketers can be more product-driven and what content marketers need to learn from product marketers, then this is definitely the episode for you.
In this episode:
- Are all content marketers product marketers?
- What is product marketing and why is it crucial?
- How to help writers with gathering subject matter expertise
- Can product marketing be outsourced?
- How can copywriters work more closely with the product marketing team
- Ways for marketers to be more product-driven
Connect with Camille Trent on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillehansentrent/
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“Another growth play that I think is very underrated and not many companies utilize, is having a really good understanding of your pricing strategy.”
Hello Hello! Welcome to episode 62 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast. Today, we’re here with Jay Desai, the Head of Marketing at Captivate Talent, a company that connects SaaS companies with sales, marketing, and customer success talent.
Before Captivate Talent, Jay founded products like Swpely, a modern content tool, and GrowthKit, a site that shares top tools and resources for startups. Before this, Jay helped grow Talent, an influencer marketing platform, from 6 paying customers to 400 in one year.
If you’re interested in learning more about how exactly Jay grew and drove not one, but three, companies to success, then this is the episode for you.
The growth strategies we talk about range from deeply understanding your pricing strategy to implementing waitlist and referral systems. Jay uses companies like PostScript, Stacker, and MarketerHire as examples to discuss growth plays and what you can learn from them in order to grow your own company.
We also answer questions like: How can I best automate my workflow? What technologies can help me scale my team? How can I produce high-quality content without a large team of writers? How can I use Webflow to rotate content and drive growth?
Lastly, we talk about how you can up your internal linking game and how that can prove to be an extremely useful method to optimize growth.
In this episode we talk about:
- Airtable
- Task automation
- Growth strategies
Timestamps:
01:07-03:22 How Jay went from Trend to founding a couple of startups, and now being Head of Marketing at Captivate Talent
03:23-04:14 How big is the marketing team at Captivate Talent?
04:15-06:26 What's going to be Jay’s first big play at Captivate Talent?
06:27-08:47 How Airtable can automate tasks
08:48-09:37 How to learn how to work with Airtable: is it all about experimenting?
09:39-15:05 Jay’s top three most successful growth plays
15:06-17:24 How does the content rotation with Webflow work?
17:25-20:26 Jay’s strategy about creating lots of unique content without many writers
20:27-24:53 Examples of cool growth hacks that big companies currently implement
Connect with Jay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayanishdesai/
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“If you’re in it for the long run, start with SEO, and do it strategically. SEO is the gift that keeps on giving ”
Hello hello! During this episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we sat down with Foti Panagiotakopoulos, the founder of GrowthMentor, to discuss the ins and outs of bootstrapping a start-up and managing the workload with a small team.
GrowthMentor is a platform that lets solo marketers and solo founders receive one-on-one mentoring from vetted growth-marketing, start-up, and marketing mentors. The platform allows you to “get on-demand mentorship from people who have more experience in the fields that you’re struggling with,” says Foti.
In this interview, we talk about why diving straight into raising funds isn’t the best way to make your start-up successful. We also discuss the importance of knowing your strengths and those of your team, upskilling yourself, and how SEO can be your strongest tool if you use it right.
Foti has boot-strapped GrowthMentor and, although he was aware of the risk he was taking, he and his team were able to make the platform a success. During our conversation today, Foti shares his experience with growing his platform and how he was able to make it happen.
As a solo founder, it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed by fear and doubt. Should you hire more talent or should you do the task yourself? How can you upskill yourself if you’re focused on managing a team of freelancers? How can you keep yourself and your team from burning out? Is it possible to focus too much on raising funds? What happens if you do?
If you’ve ever asked yourself any of these questions, you’re not alone. Tune in to this episode and give yourself the chance to walk away less overwhelmed and with some actionable tips on how to grow your SEO.
In this episode we talk about:
- Upskilling
- Raising Funds
- Growing SEO
Timestamps:
00:00-02:00 What is GrowthMentor
02:02-03:30 Don’t obsess about raising funds prematurely
03:30 -05:15 How difficult is it to raise funds?
05:16 - 07:58 How to not burn out your team in a start-up
07:59-08:59 Upskilling yourself vs delegating or hiring somebody
09:00-11:31 Does the desire to hire ever end?
11:31- 12:52 How did SEO become your biggest channel?
12:53- 17:25 Talk to people before you go to Ahrefs (JTBD)
17:25-18:48 Other ways to grow SEO as a one-man SEO team
18:49-23:30 Backlinking Strategy
23:31-25:50 Takeaways on bootstrapping and SEO strategies when you're a very small team?
Connect with Fotios Panagiotakopoulos on LinkedIn: Foti Panagiotakopoulos
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Want to know how to build a product so good it sells itself? Listen to this week’s episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast!
This week, we bring you insights from Richie Khandelwal, founder of Pricelabs, a SaaS pricing solution for the SMB and mid-market Airbnb and vacation rental space.
We caught up with Richie to learn how Pricelabs got started when he was looking for a way to ease his own rental pricing pain back in 2014. From there, it’s gone from strength to strength, scaling all the way to reach customers in over 95 countries and pricing over 100,000 listings!
All without raising single funding round!
Richie reveals how Pricelabs’ unique approach to understanding their customer, hiring, and finding product-market fit has been key to their success. It even helped them survive and thrive during Covid. He also outlines how their seemingly unscalable processes paid off in the long run and give his take on why SaaS companies should never be led by sales.
We round it all off by hearing about upcoming plans to take Pricelabs to the next level in the near future, and Richie's advice for other SaaS founders.
We hope you find it as enjoyable and instructive as we did!
In this episode: (write out the main sections in bullet points)
- How a personal need led to the growth of a SaaS solution with international reach.
- Pricelabs’ unique approach to understanding the customer.
- Finding product-market fit.
- Scaling unscalable processes.
- Eliminating information silos.
- Why SaaS companies shouldn’t be led by sales.
- What the future has in store for Pricelabs.
Richie Khandelwal has been working in SaaS GTM roles for the last 5 years.
He is the co-founder of Pricelabs, a SaaS revenue management platform for Airbnb and vacation rental owners and property managers. At PriceLabs, Richie looks after GTM and Operations. PriceLabs targets the SMB and mid-market segment in the hospitality space, has customers in over 95 countries and has priced over 100K listings.
Prior to PriceLabs, Richie was VP of Business Operations and Finance at MindTickle (now a Unicorn as of 2021) - raised >$80 Million in funding, led employee growth from 40 to 400, worked closely with CEO and investors to chart growth plans into enterprise space.
Richie has also worked as Management consultant with Bain & Company and Engineer with Shell.
Richie has an engineering degree from IIT Madras and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.
Find him on LinkedIn.
Hi there and welcome back to the Flying Cat interview series! In this episode, we get the lowdown on the differences between B2B and B2C SEO from Marcos Sabino who heads up the SEO team at TravelPerk, a B2B business travel software.
Originally from Portugal, Marcos recently transitioned from B2C e-commerce at Myprotein, a sports nutrition brand based in the UK, to B2B SaaS at TravelPerk in Barcelona. He explains how, while the basic principles of B2C and B2B SEO are similar, he’s encountered big differences in terms of stakeholder involvement, keyword search volumes, and the number of websites he has to manage at a B2B SaaS company vs B2C e-commerce. He also outlines the practical implications of those differences when it comes to creating an SEO culture, managing stakeholders and expectations, doing keyword research, optimizing content, and getting results.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Marcos also gives us his take on keyword mining and why Google Search Console wins over third-party SEO tools any day when it comes to evaluating demand for “zero volume” keywords. He signs off with some insights into how TravelPerk ranks for localized searches and deals with the challenges of researching keywords and creating content in languages other than English.
Don’t miss it!
In this episode:
- The differences between SEO for B2C e-commerce and B2B SaaS.
- Zero volume keywords and why Google Search Console is an SEO’s best friend.
- How to optimize your existing B2B pages for low-volume keywords.
- How to rank for localized queries even if you don’t have a physical presence on the ground.
- SEO and content creation in languages other than English.
Timestamps
- 03:00 How Marcos scaled e-commerce through SEO at Myprotein
- 03:20 How B2C SEO differs from B2B
- 03:37 Stakeholder management and training in B2C
- 05:40 The challenges of B2C vs B2B and how to overcome them
- 07:45 Search volumes in B2C e-commerce vs B2B SaaS
- 09:07 Real demand vs estimated demand in SEO tools
- 09:23 Keyword research in languages other than English
- 10:31 Differences in organic traffic in B2C vs B2B
- 11:27 The SEO culture at TravelPerk
- 13:07 Zero search volume keywords
- 14:27 Traditional keyword research and Google Search Console keyword mining
- 16:50 How to optimize existing B2B pages for low volume keywords, and spot up and coming keywords
- 20:07 The impact of Google updates on B2C rankings vs B2B
- 22:00 Tracking keywords and optimizing content driving MQL and SQL leads
- 23:10 How TravelPerk successfully used Google Search Console for keyword mining
- 25:18 How to rank for localized queries even if you don’t have a physical presence in a country
- 27:30 TravelPerk’s approach to ranking content in languages other than English
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In today’s episode, we’re peeling back the curtain and talking with Flying Cat Marketing’s very own Head Content Editor Robert Beames.
Rob has hired over a dozen freelance writers in the last year but had to test triple the amount to find his team of writers. With that sometimes quite painful experience in mind, he shares how he now casts his net so he gets to the creme de la creme of freelance writers without having to waste time on disappointing test pieces.
Aside from figuring out a way to filter through writer applications faster, he also shares how he chooses between decent writers with industry-specific expertise vs. amazing writers who might come from a different background.
Don’t skip this episode if you’re looking for actionable, tried and tested strategies to get your freelance or in-house writing team up to speed to deliver high-quality thought leadership content that stands out.
In this episode we talk about:
- The challenges of finding good SEO content writers
- How to find writers that reach high-quality standards
- How to choose between a writer with heavy subject matter expertise vs really great writing abilities
- Why your writers need a living TOV document
- How to best manage a team of 10-15 freelance or in-house writers
Timestamps
00:70-3:26 Introduction
03:36-07:56 The challenges of finding good SEO content writers
07:56-11:13 How to find better writers
11:13-12:32 Subject matter expertise vs a really good writer
12:31-15:47 How to get your writers to produce thought leadership content
15:47-19:07 Why you need a living TOV document
19:07-22:58 How to manage a team of freelance content writers
22:58-27:33 Why your SEO content needs an editor
27:33-28:44 Major Takeaways
28:44-30:00 Outro
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The content marketing industry is fast-paced: you need to be up-to-date on tools that can help you outperform competitors. We’re joined with Pankil Shah, who tells us everything you’ll need to know about using AI to help write content.Hello hello and welcome back to the Flying Cat Marketing interview series!
This time we caught up with Pankil Shah, co-founder of Outranking.ai, an AI writing assistant for content marketers.
Pankil gave great insights about how to use AI for writing marketing content, from assisting you with research to helping you nail your client’s tone of voice.
AI can be such a powerful, time-saving tool that can still help you publish quality content—so long as you’re using it correctly. Pankil explains the limitations of AI and how to train it to become a valuable asset, as well as everything else you’d need to know in order to successfully start using this writing tool!
In this episode we talk about:
- How to get AI to do research and train it to apply your clients’ tone of voice
- The right way to use AI while writing marketing content
- What is active guidance and why does your AI need it?
- Why being lazy with AI gets you bad content
Timestamps
01:31: The right way to use AI while writing marketing content
03:27: The time it takes to write good content
06:04: Giving active guidance to an AI
10:16: How to use an AI for research
11:30: Going from research to writing with the AI
13:55: Getting the AI to apply tone of voice
18:24: The time saved using an AI as a writing assistant
20:30: Does AI take away from the ability to be creative?
24:14: Advice and key takeaways on using AI for content writing
25:10: Free trials for Outranking.ai
You can connect with Pankil Shah on Linkedin.
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Hello hello! Welcome back to another enthralling episode of the Flying Cat Marketing interview series. This week, we get to learn all about sales—and how CEOs can hire great salespeople to get out of it! For that, we’re joined by Ryann Dowdy, co-founder and CEO of Social Sellers Academy.
Along with her co-founder Kelly Roach, Ryann helps businesses scale by giving them the systems in place to recruit the best sales reps and the training to turn them into successful teams. They’ve helped hundreds of business owners escape being the sole revenue generators in their businesses and we were lucky enough to get great insights into how they do it.
Ryann sharpened her own sales skills in the corporate world for many years until 2018, when she started Uncensored Consulting, as a sales coach helping women to start their own businesses.
She later joined Kelly after being called upon to train a rapidly growing sales team. It was then the two realized the extent of the need that existed within sales recruitment and training and they could see they were well-placed to provide those services to other businesses. So they founded Social Sellers Academy and have gone from strength to strength on a mission to liberate CEOs from sales.
In this episode, Ryann shares her expertise on hiring the right salespeople, the importance of creating a proper system, and building the ideal sales team.
She also highlights common mistakes made by CEOs when it comes to hiring salespeople. She also shares a formula of success for getting sales hiring right.
If you’re looking to hire your own sales team, or just learn more about a brilliant female entrepreneur, this episode is for you. Check it out!
In this episode we talk about:
- Ryann’s move from the corporate world to running a business
- The beginning of Social Sellers Academy
- Mistakes made by CEOs when hiring salespeople
- Building the right sales team
- Defining the level of activity to be assigned to a salesperson
Timestamps
00:12 - Introduction to Ryann Dowdy
01:48 - How Social Sellers Academy came to be
04:06 - Must-haves for CEO’s in building a sales team
10:18 - Mistakes that companies often make
16:22 - A lightbulb moment for Maeva
21:52 - Understanding the desired activity level for a full-time salesperson
You can connect with Ryann Dowdy through her LinkedIn. You can also check out their website here.
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“My start in the vacation rental industry was six years ago. In my initial days, I wasn’t really introduced to reporting and other things. Soon enough, I started wondering where the system was and that’s when I realized that there wasn’t one...and it wasn’t my company’s fault, it’s just where the industry was at the time. Aside from knowing the term ‘revenue management’ there wasn’t a lot of knowledge behind it. So I got the freedom to figure out what that was.”
Hello hello! Welcome back to another insight-filled episode of the Flying Cat Marketing interview series. This week, we’re joined by Sarah Franzen, director of revenue management at Natural Retreats.
Natural Retreats is a luxury vacation rental management company operating in some of America’s most iconic destinations, from Palm Springs, California to Sea Islands, South Carolina.
Sarah started her career in the hospitality industry in the sales department of a hotel, and through that journey, she discovered a passion for revenue management.
She moved from sales to revenue management and also jumped ship from the traditional hotel industry to the growing and innovative world of vacation rentals.
In this episode, Sarah shares her thoughts on the evolution of revenue management tools in the vacation rental space over the years, the advancements of technology in the short-term industry, and more.
She also touches upon the importance of tech stacks to property owners and the differing levels of buy-in across the industry. Some owners take an active interest in the tech being used to get their properties featured whereas others aren’t as curious and focus only on revenue generation. Sarah talks about catering both these types of audiences.
This episode is an eye-opener for those interested in learning more about revenue management in the vacation rental industry.
We got a lot of takeaways from it and are excited to share the full episode right here!
In this episode we talk about:
- Sarah’s journey in the hospitality sector
- Deep understanding of revenue management in the vacation rental industry
- Developing a RMS from scratch
- Advancements in tech for revenue & data management
- How tech impacts property owners
- Key people reshaping the industry
Timestamps
00:18 - Introduction to Sarah Franzen
00:38 - Sarah’s journey in the hospitality industry
03:00 - Expectations vs reality
05:43 - Understanding revenue management in vacation rental industry
08:00 - Building a revenue management system from scratch
14:05 - Sarah’s view on upcoming tech in revenue & data management
20:13 - Challenges along the way in the tech space
22:58 - The impact of tech stacks on property owners
25:30 - How she leverages tech at Natural Retreats
26:55 - If Sarah would ever switch her RMS
30:20 - Biggest thought leaders in the vacation rental industry
You can connect with Sarah Franzen through her LinkedIn. You can also connect with her on s.franzen@naturalretreats.com
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In this week’s episode, we chat with Sara Stella Lattanzio, anti-buzzword marketing strategist and marketing manager at 1plusX—the company behind the fastest AI-powered marketing intelligence platform for marketers.
She started with 1plusX as the sole member of the marketing team for a year, focusing on events and other low-cost ways to successfully promote the company.
If you’re trying to expand your marketing team, or maybe find ways to integrate their everyday tasks with the rest of the team’s, then you don’t want to miss this!
Sara explains her process for doing just that, as well as a couple of tips and tricks on vetting new recruits to see if they’re the right fit for your team.
She also touches upon the importance of a marketer’s capacity to really do marketing, beyond just throwing around different buzzwords with minute differences between them.
In this episode we talk about:
- The importance of establishing a secure brand image and vision before strategy
- Keeping the marketing department in communications with the rest of the business, specifically customer success, sales, and product teams
- How to accept ideas from people in different departments and the differences in idea generation in smaller businesses versus larger ones
- Why marketers should take advantage of LinkedIn as a platform
- The problem with buzzwords in marketing today
Timestamps
00:18 - Introduction to Sara Stella Lattanzio
00:47 - How Sara’s changing things up at 1plusX
01:23 - How she took 1plusX’s marketing team from zero to global
04:02 - Planning events during the pandemic
04:39 - Attracting audiences to webinars with zero marketing budget and no team
06:16 -The importance of branding in B2B and the challenges for a one-person marketing team
08:28 - How to align the whole business with marketing
09:57 - The 1plusX content strategy from the beginning and why they’re focusing on revenue
11:32 - Why you need to get your marketing team to interact with the rest of your company
13:53 - The benefit of keeping the sales team updated on the marketing strategy
15:33 - How to deal with too many people having opinions on the marketing strategy
16:29 - Why publishing on LinkedIn as a marketer is important for your personal brand
18:25 - Sara’s aversion to marketing buzzwords
Check out Sara’s movement against buzzwords in marketing on LinkedIn.
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“I made every mistake one can possibly make. I took the long way round and now I’m just hoping that If I can help give people a shortcut to success, save somebody a headache, and most importantly give them their time back, that to me is an incredible feat in itself.”
Hello hello! The Flying Cat Marketing interview series is back after a short summer break and we can’t contain our excitement for the amazing interviews we have in store for you in the coming weeks!
Joining us this week is the very talented and successful Julie George, author of ‘Million Dollar Host’ and now a renowned consultant in the short-term rentals Industry.
She went from listing a single property in 2016 to managing over 130 properties within three years and complied her experiences into a bestselling book. ‘Million Dollar Host’ is the personal story of how she built a property management portfolio using Airbnb, and why she now aims to help others achieve this kind of success.
In this interview, we talk about Julie’s experience of growing a property management business through her own special methods and about the importance of building a team with the right people, sharing the vision of the business—as well as the profits.
If you’re running your own business and looking for inspiration on how to take it to the next level, we’ve got you covered. All you need to do is watch this episode and thank us later :)
In this episode we talk about:
- Julie’s experience of listing properties on Airbnb
- How she went from 1 property to 130 properties in a few years
- The success of her book, ‘Million Dollar Host’
- Building trust and delegation in a company
- Profit sharing within a business
- Potential gaps in the short-term rentals industry
Timestamps
00:10 - Introduction to Julie George
02:35 - Julie’s journey towards success
06:43 - Going through the growing phase
09:38 - Establishing delegation and trust
15:34 - Deciding on profit sharing within a business
19:52 - The success and impact of her book - ‘Million Dollar Host’
23:39 - The trick to becoming an expert in the STR industry
30:01 - Julie’s opinion on tech in the vacation-rental space
You can connect with Julie George through her LinkedIn. You can also check out her website right here.
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“From a very personal perspective, I’ve got a big interest in being inclusive. My dad set up a company 40 years ago and it was all about creating technical and communication aids for people with difficulties. Even when I was 12, I was writing reports for school about how we can create technology that’s gonna support people who are physically challenged. This has always been a part of my blood.”
Hello hello! Welcome to an all new episode of the Flying Cat Marketing interview series. Joining us this week for a very insightful conversation is Kelly Odor, Marketing Director at Bookster.
Bookster is a property management software for holiday rentals. It works as a tool to help you create your own website, take bookings, take payments, manage bookings, and market your properties.
Kelly talks about her journey of having worked in different industries and how that helped her take bits and pieces from each industry and continue to transfer those skills wherever she has worked.
In this interview, we talk about promoting inclusivity through work, branding efforts at Bookster, different types of feedback and its process, the importance of email marketing, and much more!
The idea of inclusivity is something Kelly has been passionate about since childhood. She has always aimed to incorporate technology to support people with special needs and that's something she aims to prioritize at Bookster as well.
Kelly also shares the key to creating an effective company newsletter by sharing her own process and some secret recipes that have been helping Bookster achieve a higher response rate on their newsletters.
If there was just one key takeaway from this episode, we would mention it right here but there are just so many wonderful insights that you’ve got to check out the full episode right away!
In this episode we talk about:
- Kelly’s journey
- Inclusivity at work
- Getting valuable feedback
- How Bookster stands out
- Importance of email marketing
- Getting newsletters right
Timestamps
00:06 - Introduction to Kelly Odor
00:38 - Kelly’s background in the industry
01:58 - Skills that Kelly took forward in her career
05:19 - Working on increasing inclusivity
08:31 - Taking initiative on inclusivity
10:52 - The journey of the property listing tool
12:39 - The Bookster way of getting feedback
18:33 - How Bookster is unique in the industry
21:35 - Approach to email marketing
27:13 - Key aspect of Bookster’s newsletters
You can connect with Kelly Odor through her LinkedIn. You can also check out the official website of Bookster here.
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“Outbound marketing is more like a search team with flashlights. You can see what’s in front of you but you’re going out in a certain direction to try and see what people are in that direction. So you have to play a quantity game up front and then a quality game as you go forward.”
Hello everyone! Welcome to another exciting episode of the Flying Cat Marketing interview series. Joining us this week is Adam Lambert, Director of Marketing at RevBoss.
RevBoss is a sales prospecting company that helps its customers get customers. They help marketing agencies, SAAS companies, and other such firms convert more leads.
In this interview, we get into a detailed discussion on what the company does best, and that’s outbound marketing. We listen to Adam talk about the process of outbound marketing and share his perspectives as well.
We talk about his role as director of marketing; recent involvement in onboarding and educating; customers on outbound marketing; and plans for the near future with the company.
If you’re interested in understanding outbound marketing and its process, then you’ve landed at the right spot. Find out more in this episode!
P.S, Buddy the flying cat makes his cameo after a long time by trailing around in this episode...or should I say ‘tailing’ around?
In this episode we talk about:
- Outbound Marketing
- Inbound vs Outbound
- Adam’s role as a director of marketing
- Social media platforms that Revboss focuses on
- How important is content in outbound marketing?
Timestamps
00:09 - Introduction to Adam Lambert
00:15 - What is RevBoss?
02:24 - Inbound vs outbound marketing
03:17 - Outbound marketing in detail
10:10 - Adam’s role in the company
12:10 - Main channels used by RevBoss
19:37 - Adam’s journey of becoming a marketing director
21:34 - To dabble between channels or focus on just one?
23:18 - Importance of content in outbound marketing
27:25 - Keeping it casual in the cold emails
You can connect with Adam Lambert through his LinkedIn. You can also check out the official website of RevBoss here.
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Hello, hello! Welcome to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast Summer Edition. During the month of August, I'm republishing some of the earlier conversations I've had and post clips from them on our social media channels.
Today's replay is with Hostfully's Co-founder & CEO, Margot Schmorak. Hostfully started off as a free, personalized guidebook for vacation rental guests, then pivoted twice, before becoming a powerful SaaS company for vacation rental hosts. There’s a reason why Ross Geller’s “pivot...pivot...pivot!” moment in ‘Friends’ became so iconic. We bring you an episode that talks about the journey of a company that pivoted their way to success.
In today's episode, we chat about how:
✅ Building a brand is a long-term commitment
✅ Hostfully's pivots were necessary for growth
✅ Listening to customers helped drive their decisions
✅ Customers know what they want - you just have to ask them
Timestamps
00:58 - Introduction to Margot Schmorak
00:35 - Challenges while pivoting
02:04 - Beginning at Hostfully
05:53 - One thing they could have done better
08:22 - Biggest takeaway from this experience
10:09 - Role of content in the Hostfully’s growth
13:22 - Understanding customer needs
15:22 - Barriers faced as a woman in a male-dominated industry
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Hello, hello! Welcome to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast Summer Edition. During the month of August, I'm republishing some of the earlier conversations I've had and post clips from them on our social media channels.
Today's replay is with Inna Shevchenko, CMO at iGMS. We talk about how she grew iGMS from a 1-person marketing team with a very small budget to the highly trusted property management software they are today.
Launched in 2015, iGMS now helps customers from over 49 countries oversee the management of almost 90,000 property listings worldwide.
In this interview, we discuss:
✅ How iGMS used their blog to generate leads
✅ How search intent guided their content strategy
✅ Why higher traffic keywords aren't necessarily better
✅ How to make sure your content truly resonates with customers
✅ How they got direct feedback on their content and product
✅ Why you always need to segment your audience for success
Timestamps
00:58 - Beginning of iGMS
03:25 - SEO strategy applied by the company
07:15 - Horizontal internal process at iGMS
10:39 - Hiring people aligning with the goals of the organization
13:04 - Communication between teams for better user experience
16:10 - Regular research and feedback
21:24 - Effective ways to prioritize marketing efforts
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Hello, hello! Welcome to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast Summer Edition. During the month of August, I'm republishing some of the earlier conversations I've had and post clips from them on our social media channels.
Today's replay is the one and only Dot Lung, the Mother of Social Media Dragons about how to build your personal brand to turn it into your greatest lead generation tool.
It doesn't matter if you're a freelancer or the CEO of a 500-person tech company. Your personal brand matters and people want to do business with people.
In this interview, we cover:
- Why and how to build your personal brand
- What a personal brand can do for your company
- Why you should support your employees in building their personal brand
- How to set up a culture that creates brand ambassadors
- Dot's DRAGON formula for branding via social media.
Timestamps
00:08 - Introduction to Dot Lung
03:45 - Global social media
05:19 - Getting into details of personal branding
13:15 - Possible outcomes of personal branding
16:29 - Encouraging people to build a personal brand
21:29 - Importance of a good work culture
26:43 - Personal branding: your own vs the company’s
29:04 - DRAGONS formula course
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Hello, hello! Welcome to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast Summer Edition. During the month of August, I'm republishing some of the earlier conversations I've had and post clips from them on our social media channels.
Today's replay is with Vanessa de Souza, Rentals United co-founder.
Rentals United, now a market leader in the vacation rental tech world with $6.5 million in Series A funding, once began as a small B2B company with zero budget.
In fact, before they were B2B, serving short-term rental operators, they were B2C - competing with OTAs.
They were a completely bootstrapped property management agency. When Airbnb was born and scaled to the Goliath of a company it is today, they realized their marketing budget just wouldn’t be able to compete.
So they changed models and became the channel distribution manager that we all know and love today.
Vanessa had a background in content marketing. She knew the value that a blog can have on lead generation. But she faced a challenge. Nobody knew who they were. Why would they care about what they had to say?
Her strategy? Talk about other companies in the sector.
In this episode we talk about:
✅ How focusing on helping instead of selling led to more sales
✅ What kind of content they created to become a trusted authority
✅ How they grew their brand with zero budget to start with
✅ What happened when they changed market segments
✅ How they changed their content to match high-level, professional hosts
✅ What their content strategy looks like today and how you can model it
Timestamps
00:06 - Introduction to Vanessa de Souza
00:45 - Rentals United: How did it all start?
03:57 - SEO mistakes
05:00 - Cold calling days at Rentals United
07:15 - Marketing to help, not to sell
11:05 - PMS quiz that went around
13:21 - What performs best with the new audience?
16:46 - Providing value to a high-level audience
21:50 - The content team at Rentals United
26:30 - Aligning marketing with sales in an organization
Hello hello. Before we dive into today's episode, I have a quick announcement:
During August I'll be taking a summer break, where we won't be recording any new episodes. But I'm excited to republish some of the earlier conversations I've had and post clips on our social media channels.
If you've been enjoying this podcast so far, you will definitely enjoy these old/new conversations.
And now, let's start with episode #50!
We’ve made it to the 50th episode of the Flying Cat Marketing interview series! For the ones who have been watching or listening to us, and have been a part of this journey, a big thank you to all of you.
Joining us this week on the new episode is Raul Galera, Partner Manager and Chief Advocate at ReferralCandy.
ReferralCandy is an app that allows brands to turn a customer base into their marketing team by the method of referral marketing. The company helps in getting more customers by incentivizing referrals.
In this interview, we get into the details of referral marketing. The strategies involved, the different kinds of affiliate & referral programs, the types of incentives available, and much more.
Raul mentions what it’s like to turn your customer base into a marketing team and how it always works best for a business when the process of achieving incentives is made easy for the customers.
All we can say is, refer to this interview to know everything about referral marketing!
In this episode we talk about:
- Referral marketing programs
- Incentives for customers in referral marketing
- Different kinds of affiliates involved
- Building customer loyalty
- Turning customers into your marketing team
Timestamps
00:08 - Introduction to Raul Galera
00:45 - How to specialize in referral marketing?
01:44 - Best ways of incentivizing
03:17 - Referrals incentives in B2B businesses
05:25 - Working with affiliates in marketing
08:45 - Optimizing customer experience for better referrals
11:57 - Basics of referral strategies for a business
17:12 - Discounts or Cash; the better incentive?
19:22 - Turning a customer base into a marketing team
You can connect with Raul Galera through his email and LinkedIn You can also check out the official website of ReferralCandy here.
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“I always think of brand messaging as the backbone of marketing. The message strategy is at the core of what any business is. Things like your vision or brand purpose aren’t really messages that you’re gonna slap on your homepage because it doesn’t really resonate with the customer.”
Hello hello! What happens when a Flying Cat meets the Lion Words? A great podcast episode of course!
Joining us this week on the latest episode of FCM Interview series is a woman of many skills & talents: Diane Wiredu. She’s a brand message strategist, a copywriting expert, and she’s also the founder of Lion Words. Oh, and she’s also fluent in 4 languages if that wasn’t inspiring enough already.
Diane offers various services through her website which includes creative copywriting as well as market insights, along with a research-driven process to help businesses connect with their audience.
In this interview, we talk about understanding the value of brand messaging and how it’s a core aspect of marketing for a business. We also discuss the ‘voice of customers’ and the importance of businesses aligning their values and product/service with them accordingly.
Diane also mentions the ‘five stages of awareness’ approach inspired by a book called Breakthrough Advertising, which she regularly applies for the conversion copywriting process.
If there’s an episode that can add more clarity in getting your brand messaging and copywriting right, this is the one for you.
In this episode we talk about:
- Understanding the process & details of brand messaging
- Aligning brand messaging with core values
- Voice of the customer
- Awareness in copywriting
- Conversion copywriting
Timestamps
00:07 - Introduction to Diane Wiredu
02:13 - Getting to know brand messaging
05:34 - Brand messaging as a driving force
08:32 - Voice of the customer
14:12 - Stages of awareness in copywriting
23:11 - Tips for conversion copywriting
You can connect with Diane Wiredu on LinkedIn. You can also check out the official website of Lion Words here.
You can also subscribe to the newsletter here.
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“I just felt that so many B2B podcasts were putting me to sleep and they were the same old dried-up conversations, and so I said let’s put our own spin on this and let’s infuse some comedy segments, sketches, and TikTok videos. Make it more like ‘The Daily Show’ kind of sketch comedy.”
Well hello everyone! We’re here with another episode of the FCM interview series and joining us this week is Travis Tyler, Digital Content Producer at PandaDoc.
PandaDoc is an all-in-one document automation software that streamlines the process to create, approve, and e-sign proposals, quotes, and contracts.
This very organization which revolves around the functioning of e-documents also has a fun side to it through its podcasts and video sketches. Now you don’t see that too often from a B2B business!
Travis is one of the key people running the show at PandaDoc. He shares with us his journey at PandaDoc which started with him as a copywriter and how he went on to become their digital content producer and go-to guy for video-related content.
In this interview, we discuss PandaDoc’s strategy for marketing & conversions and also the company's long-term goal that is in alignment with its core values: L.I.F.E’.
An episode filled with learnings, laughter, and logic. You don’t wanna miss this one!
In this episode we talk about:
- Travis’s journey at PandaDoc
- Blending comedy into a not-so comic environment
- Inspiration behind a comedy business podcast
- SEO efforts at PandaDoc
- Conversions through YouTube videos
- Benefits of podcasts
Timestamps
00:07 - Introduction to Travis Tyler
01:01 - Shift from copywriter to content producer
02:20 - About PandaDoc
05:47 - Blending comedy into B2B content creation
09:20 - Learnings along the way
11:20 - The SEO efforts at PandaDoc
13:16 - Major conversions through YouTube
16:49 - Long term goal for the company
24:27 - Podcasting journey and experience
You can connect with Travis Tyler on LinkedIn. You can also check out the official website of PandaDoc here.
They also have a podcast called ‘The Customer Engagement Lab’ available on all platforms. Check it out.
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“So many expectations are put on in-house marketers because everything just gets dumped on them. Even jumping from a social to page search to SEO to emails. All those things are so different and take so many skill-sets but yet, a marketer is expected to do all these if they’re in-house.”
Hello hello! Welcome back to yet another exciting episode of the FCM interview series and joining us this week, all the way from Denver, Colorado, is Steve Lamar, Founder & CEO of PromoPrep.
PromoPrep is software with an intuitive calendar that improves the marketing & promotion planning process for marketing teams of all sizes.
While working at marketing agencies for over a decade and being part of a fast-paced and unpredictable environment, Steve felt the need to have a better way of handling multiple calendars/spreadsheets. Eventually, he decided to take the matter into his own hands and kickstarted his own company.
Steve has quite a profile on Twitter as well. I mean, not everyone manages to jump from 150 followers to a whopping 17k followers in a couple of days. We get into the details of that story too!
In this interview, he also shares a different perspective talking about the plight that marketers go through from time to time and what his company is doing to make the situation slightly better.
Watch this episode to find out more about Steve, the person as well as Steve, the marketer.
In this episode we talk about:
- Reasons behind starting PromoPrep
- Running a bootstrapped company
- Steve’s viral Tweet and its aftermath
- Organic marketing strategies
- A marketer’s point of view towards marketing
- Importance of ‘micro moments’
Timestamps
00:07 - Introduction to Steve Lamar
00:25 - Steve’s journey of starting PromoPrep
02:50 - To run a bootstrapped company
05:05 - Turning into a Twitter sensation overnight
08:41 - Keeping the momentum going on Twitter
12:00 - Organic marketing strategies used for PromoPrep
13:28 - Setting ‘micro-moments’ as goals
16:35 - Most effective content play at PromoPrep
18:00 - A little about the marketing team
You can connect with Steve Lamar on Twitter as well as LinkedIn. You can also check out the official website of PromoPrep here.
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“Without clients, without giving, or without helping others, why are you in business? I know a lot of people that are chasing; chasing money, fame, titles, and whatever it is, I just want to help people. People that are good and hard-working.”
Hello everyone! Welcome back to yet another exciting episode of the FCM interview series and joining us this week is John Vuong, the founder of Local SEO Search.
Local SEO Search is an SEO company based out of Canada that offers its services to small businesses, especially family-owned traditional businesses that aren’t well-versed in the digital marketing space.
John talks about his professional journey of working in advertising & sales for about ten years and then shifting towards the digital side of the industry. Later, he went on to work at Yellow Pages and, in those five years, interacted with thousands of local business owners.
This experience made him realize that he really enjoys working with local business owners and wanted to do more for them, which led to the beginning of his own venture with Local SEO Search.
In this interview, we mainly discuss highlighting the value of people and how the whole purpose behind owning a business is essentially to give back to the ones that matter the most, i.e, the customer.
We also talk about the lessons he learned along the way in terms of hiring decisions and John adds a fresh perspective to it by suggesting to enjoy the process while hiring someone and things will eventually fall into place.
You can find out more in this episode as there’s surely a lot to take away from it.
In this episode we talk about:
- John’s professional journey and experiences
- Reasons behind starting Local SEO Search’
- Bridging the gap between business owners and their digital presence
- Simplifying digital marketing for traditional businesses
- The ups and downs of hiring decisions
- People-oriented approach
Timestamps
00:04 - Introduction to John Vuong
00:24 - Story behind starting Local SEO Search
03:46 - Does social media count as an SEO?
06:11 - Educating clients along the way
07:14 - People over everything else in a business
09:59 - The management structure at Local SEO Search
16:03 - Nurturing a team of 30 people
18:40 - Customer is always the focal point
You can connect with John Vuong on LinkedIn. You can also check out the official website of Local SEO Search here.
They also have a podcast called ‘Local SEO Today’ available on all platforms wherein they share valuable insights on things you can do or prevent from doing while running and growing your business.
Hello hello everyone! We’re back with an all-new episode of the FCM interview series and joining us this week is Thibault Masson, the founder of Rental Scale-Up and also an expert analyst in the vacation rental industry.
A little bit more about Rental Scale-Up: it’s an online platform that shares best practices to help owners and managers of short-term rental businesses grow their revenues through articles, online conferences, reports, and more.
In this interview, we get into the details of the recent changes and updates in the vacation-rental market, in particular Vrbo’s rebranding and Airbnb’s approach towards property managers.
Through this episode, you can find out facts, news, and also key takeaways from industry giants like Vrbo and Airbnb. Find out what’s being implemented at these organizations from somebody who has been on the front lines for some of their rebranding efforts.
In this episode we talk about:
- Thibault elaborating on Vrbo, a short-term rental platform
- Insights on the Vrbo’s journey and its rebranding
- Strategies used by companies in the vacation rental business
- Vrbo balancing between existing hosts and potential ones
- Airbnb’s strategies for boosting ambassador programs
Timestamps
00:07 - Introduction to Thibault Masson
01:09 - What’s going on with Vrbo?
07:46 - Branding towards the hosts
11:05 - Vrbo’s ‘Fast-Start program’
12:14 - How do hosts at Vrbo earn twice as much as Airbnb?
13:43 - Lessons for new entrants in the industry
18:47 - Experience + Rebranding = ?
22:40 - Airbnb’s ambassador program
You can connect with Thibault Masson on LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to the Rental Scale-up’s weekly newsletter here.
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Well hello everyone! Two things are certain in this world, the sun rising from the east and a new episode of the FCM Interview series every week!
Joining us this week are not one but two guests, who are equally sweet and hard-working at the same time, Joy Ritter and Wes Melton, the creators of Pulse Nokori.
Pulse Nokori is a social media platform for property managers and everybody else in the short-term rental industry.
In this interview, we chat about the thought process and decisions that went into bringing this idea into execution in the form of a social network.
Whether it’s choosing to create a separate social network rather than being a part of an existing one, or opting for marketing methods that involve direct communication rather than just increasing customer databases without much of an involvement, they’re making bold choices based upon strong values.
We discuss the marketing that goes behind such a platform for its growth and also Joy & Wes speak in detail about the values they strongly believe in, for creating a user-oriented community that benefits everyone from this particular field.
You can watch this episode to know more about creating a platform of its own and the learnings to take from it.
Alsoooo, you don’t wanna miss Buddy the flying cat doing parkour, do ya?
In this episode we talk about:
- The beginning of Pulse Nokori
- The decision to create an individual platform
- Not following the herd mentality for marketing
- Building and valuing the community
- Lessons learned along the way
Timestamps
00:05 - Introduction to Joy Ritter and Wes Melton
00:35 - How it all started
04:09 - Creating a platform rather than a group / page
05:08 - Bringing tech experience into this industry
06:52 - The marketing behind Pulse Nokori
10:57 - To grow through what you go through
12:31 - Building a user community
15:07 - Moderation of users on the platform
22:40 - What’s next for Nokori?
23:10 - Mutual respect and admiration
You can connect with Joy Ritter and Wes Melton on their created platform by downloading the Pulse Nokori app. You can also check out the official website of Pulse Nokori.
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“Don’t fight for things that you’re not going to be able to win in the short-term. Content overall is a long-term play, but if you can’t rank for something within the next 3 or 6 months, then don’t bother doing it. Go find less competitive, lower volume work you can rank for because you do need to get bigger as a site before you can go back and go after those super competitive queries.”
Hello everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the FCM Interview series. Joining us in this new episode, all the way from Hawaii, is Brad Smith, CEO at Wordable.
Wordable is a handy tool that saves a lot of time by exporting Google Docs and HTML to WordPress, HubSpot, and other platforms instantly.
Brad Smith has many feathers in his cap when it comes to his professional career. In addition to his work at Wordable, he is also the co-founder at uSERP and founder & CEO at Codeless Interactive.
In this episode, Brad talks to us about managing multiple businesses at once and where his current focus is. He also shares his journey of acquiring Wordable and restructuring everything from scratch in order to take the company in an interesting direction.
We discuss in detail the process that goes behind hiring and nurturing ideal content writers and why it is so important to have the right kind of people.
Brad also elaborates on various content approaches that work best for a business and how to simplify a content system for achieving outstanding results.
In this episode we talk about:
- Establishing a content system
- How to find and nurture good writers
- The value of having a process
- Content approaches that work
- Understanding the right team mix
- Considering revenue status before outsourcing
Timestamps
00:05 - Introduction to Brad Smith
00:48 - Current work update
02:02 - Brad’s most effective content asset
03:14 - Simple content system that delivers tangible results
06:45 - The need for good writers and how to find one?
12:21 - Creating a win-win system for the company and the writers
20:08 - Structure of the team at Wordable
21:51 - Role of the editors
25:12 - Successful content strategies that B2B companies can build
27:55 - Understanding revenue and need for agencies
30:16 - Effective content plays by Brad
34:25 - Topic clusters type methods
You can connect with Brad Smith as well as check out the official website here at Wordable.
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We’re back with an all-new episode of the FCM interview series and joining us today is Stephanie Grawehr, Marketing Manager at Alaya.
Alaya helps companies engage their employees to drive participation at work and in the community by conducting activities like volunteering, fundraising and making it easier for employees to have a positive impact in the world through their work.
In this interview, we mainly discuss purpose-driven employment, which is to engage employees in an organization through initiatives that may not necessarily be related to their work tasks but bring everyone together for a common cause. It could be in the form of volunteering, donations, or even friendly competitions from time to time.
We talk about everything revolving around the ‘purpose’ subject from a professional viewpoint.
There’s often some confusion about initiating purpose-oriented activities during work hours and even misconceptions among smaller organizations, who often doubt they have time to promote any activity beyond their day-to-day work. Stephanie sheds light on all these aspects with her charming smile and solid reasonings.
If you’re an employer or an employee looking forward to initiating a purposeful environment at your workplace, this interview might just give you the exact clarity and motivation you need.
Also, for the ones who are looking to start somewhere and need some assistance, the team at Alaya has prepared a comprehensive guide, known as The ultimate guide to Purpose-driven CSR, which will surely come in handy.
In this episode we talk about:
- Defining a purpose-driven employment
- ‘Purpose’ becoming trendy/going mainstream
- Using technology to power purpose
- Empowering employees at work during their work hours
- ‘Purpose knows no size’
- Infusing social purpose through friendly activities
- Finding the right motivation
Timestamps
0:04 - Introduction to Stephanie Grawehr
1:04 - Stephanie’s volunteering work background
4:09 - A shift in trend towards ‘purposeful employment’
9:12 - How do companies choose their purpose?
13:47 - Empowering employees while at work
15:23 - How to establish a common cause?
18:38 - ‘Purpose knows no size’
22:16 - Prioritizing different kinds of initiatives
25:24 - Finding a balance in challenges or initiatives
28:38 - Factors involved other than the basic inherent values
34:04 - ‘The ultimate guide to purpose-driven CSR by Alaya’
You can connect with Stephanie Grawehr on LinkedIn and you can also check out the official website of Alaya.
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“What we find really important is to hire people who want to grow, they want to grow themselves, the thing they’re working on, people that are not afraid to speak up. That’s the best, and we then stimulate that by anytime somebody speaks up, you take it seriously, you do something with it and you don’t just push it away because then people stop doing that, obviously.”
Hello everyone. Welcome to yet another interesting episode of the FCM Interview series. Today we have Jeroen Corthout, co-founder, Salesflare, joining us and sharing his valuable experiences.
Salesflare is an intelligent sales CRM automation tool that mainly allows one to focus on customers instead of just data. Jeroen talks about the idea of Salesflare coming into execution and then the process that went on to make it the #1 CRM today.
After being a guest on more than 160 podcasts and counting, Jeroen also shares his learnings and observations of this particular journey of his professional life.
In this interview, we also discuss personal brand building through podcasts, managing a remote team & building a work culture within, and lots of other relevant aspects in running a growing startup.
That is just the tip of the iceberg, watch the complete episode to find out more!
In this episode we talk about:
- The podcasting experience
- Thoughts on Conferences vs Podcasts
- Beginning of Salesflare
- Role of the team at Salesflare
- Understanding the impact of marketing vs the product
- Forming a culture and managing a remote team
Timestamps
0:07 - Introduction to Jeroen Corthout
0:26 - The podcast experience of Jeroen
01:22 - Podcasts: a new way of personal building?
02:53 - Conferences vs Podcasts
05:52 - ‘listennotes.com’ - a search engine for podcasts
07:12 - Jeroen’s own podcast journey
10:19 - Content distribution strategy at Salesflare
12:47 - The first meeting of co-founders and beginning of Salesflare
15:48 - Impact of marketing vs the product
17:12 - Managing a remote team
You can connect with Jeroen Corthout on LinkedIn and you can also check out their official website here at Salesflare.
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“I actually, funnily enough, found a lot of my success as a freelancer helping companies with products that typically wouldn’t be considered “very sexy” and finding ways to get people to care. The single most important thing I say to all of them is, it’s never about what your technology does, it’s about what it enables people to do and that’s where I see storytelling as being the number one thing.”
Hello hello everyone. We’re now at the 40th episode of the FCM Interview series and let’s just say that we’re only getting started!
Joining us in today’s episode is Jon Thor Sigurleifsson, whose enchanting superpower is storytelling and he certainly manages to weave magic with his words.
Jon is the Content Marketing Lead at Scrive and is also known as a ‘Corporate Punk & Creative Nerd’ on LinkedIn.
In this interview, we mainly discuss highlighting the value of storytelling, which is usually a buzzword in the field of marketing and is yet considered undervalued by Jon as he further explains his point of view.
This episode surely has a lot to take from, especially if you’re looking for some clarity in building a brand or finding the right tone of voice for your project or company.
In this episode we talk about:
- Shifting of scales between two different organizations
- The basics of building a brand
- The ‘sexiness’ factor in a brand or a company
- Importance of storytelling and establishing a narrative
- Content marketing; a four-pronged strategy
Timestamps
0:07 - Introduction to Jon Thor Sigurleifsson
0:54 - Starting off at Scrive
4:52 - Impact as a Content Lead
7:46 - Content creation over everything else
13:33 - Finding the product appeal at Scrive
17:03 - Defining storytelling in the world of marketing
23:40 - A single story or multiple narratives. What should a brand opt for?
26:31 - ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy’ - an analogy
27:46 - Scrive’s content marketing approach
30:28 - A tactic used at Jon’s previous organization, ‘Syzygee’
You can connect with Jon Thor Sigurleifsson on LinkedIn and you can also check out the official website of Scrive.
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“People are obsessed with keywords and I don’t understand why? I think it’s narrow minded to obsess about one keyword and once you get to that top ranking, you move to that keyword, obsess over that keyword, like...where does it end? Well, a topic cluster, it’s kind of ambitious because you want to own that whole topic, you want to own the term, not just one keyword inside that term”.
Hello hello! In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of talking to the very passionate and very energetic, Chima Mmeje.
Chima is a Nigeria-based freelance SEO copywriter, content strategist, and Founder of Zenith Copy.
We discuss in depth the SEO community at large and the need for more inclusivity around the world, especially in developing countries.
We also talk about topic clusters and how they impact the overall content execution. The passion with which Chima speaks about her work and her future plans is nothing short of inspiring.
You’ll find some valuable insights and possible mentorship options from this episode, especially if you’re looking for growth in the field of SEO.
In this episode we talk about:
- Inclusivity in the SEO industry
- A freelancer coalition project in the works
- Lack of opportunities in the developing African countries
- SEO mentorship programs
- Content strategy over content writing
- Topic clusters; the process and its advantages
- Addressing the comparison with competitors
Timestamps:
0:06 - About Chima Mmeje
0:52 - Inclusion in the SEO & SaaS space
4:36 - Current status of the coalition initiative
5:43 - Details about the mentorship program
7:30 - SEO, a closed-off community?
13:23 - Current working style of Chima Mmeje
15:42 - An overview of ‘topic clusters’
20:14 - Chima’s process of building out a topic cluster
26:58 - Dealing with competition
28:17 - Strategy used by Transferwise
You can connect with Chima Mmeje on LinkedIn as well as through her website Zenith Copy.
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“It would be really painful and exhausting if I didn’t love the drill. So yeah, don’t get into marketing, especially growth marketing, if you aren’t really obsessed about it!”
Hello hello! Welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast! In one of our recent podcasts, we had Nick Jordan, CEO, ContentDistribution.com talk to us and in today’s episode, I have with me, the one-man army of their marketing team, Ognjen Bošković, Growth Marketer, ContentDistribution.com.
Watch us chat about community building & engagement through organic methods and also the importance of having an active presence on LinkedIn to grow your network. For someone who was initially a copywriter to becoming an expert growth marketer at present, Ognjen certainly has a 360° approach to content marketing.
So if you’re interested in growing your social network organically or understanding in depth about growth & content marketing, then you’ll surely find some incredible insights in this episode.
In this episode we talk about:
- Organic social networking
- Process of community building
- Distributing content
- Importance of email marketing
- Biggest case study at contentdistribution.com
- “Tropi-copy”
- Content marketing as a bigger picture
Timestamps:
0:10 - Introduction to Ognjen Bošković
1:10 - What is ContentDistribution.com up to?
2:38 - Active presence on digital platforms
3:58 - Building a community through organic social
6:58 - Creating a process and pushing smart content
9:30 - Rookie mistake in the world of marketing
11:20 - Converting Linkedin posts for email lists
17:46 - His team’s online presence
21:28 - Day-to-day activities as a one-man marketing team
25:02 - Potential impact of an individual’s network
27:25 - Looking beyond content marketing
You can connect with Ognjen Bošković on LinkedIn. You can also check out the company website ContentDistribution.com.
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“Our main goal is to educate on the necessity of having some sort of security process in place to avoid any potential incidence of parties, fraud, or criminal activities that could be detrimental to any business.”
Hello everyone! In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mackenzie Kearnan, Marketing Manager at Autohost and what a delightful conversation this was.
She had some wonderful observations and insights to share with us about the working style at Autohost and their role in the industry.
We also discuss the importance of building a personal brand. Let’s just say that if a personal brand could be defined as a car, one should aim to be a ‘Brand Rover’!
Keeping puns aside, she also elaborates on their marketing team’s approach to increasing awareness among their audience about cyber-security.
Also! ‘Buddy’ the flying cat makes hisr appearance very evidently once again on the podcast after being seen last on the special bucket-hat episode.
Well, this episode has a lot to offer and you just don’t wanna miss it out!
In this episode we talk about:
- Autohost entry into the market
- Filling a void in the property management industry
- Need for security processes and guest screening
- Personal brand building
- “Done is better than perfect”
- Finding the right balance in personality development
Timestamps
0:12 - An introduction to Mackenzie Kearnan
1:20 - Beginning of Autohost
3:00 - Transition from Quickstay to Autohost
6:09 - Marketing organically
7:30 - Building a brand identity
8:15 - Role of the marketing team
10:42 - Categorizing content strategies
12:42 - Development of personal branding
15:36 - Having a dedicated routine
18:15 - Dealing with perfectionism
21:15 - Evolving your personality
You can connect with Mackenzie Kearnan on LinkedIn for more updates and information on the cybersecurity business. You can also check out their company website here at Autohost
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“Internally, one thing I’m trying to push is not really getting comfortable with things. Something that’s very easy to do is, you get defensive of the way you do things and your view of the world... which prevents you from evolving, especially with SEO & content!”
A big hello to all of you once again! In today’s special edition “bucket-hat episode” of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, I chat with Nigel Stevens, CEO of OGM (Organic Growth Marketing). He shares with us his experience of working with big start-ups, taking ownership for the right reasons, and his approach towards striking the right balance when it comes to hiring on both ends, the people he works with as well as the clients associated with OGM.
Nigel has this special gift of being chilled out and quite profound at the same time in how he expresses himself, which makes our conversation so interesting from the get-go.
The icing on the cake in this episode is that it also features ‘Buddy’ the flying cat, who apparently agrees with Nigel’s ideas from time to time!
In this episode we talk about:
- Tips for landing new clients
- Importance of sticking to basics
- Regular introspection of work as an agency
- “It’s not done for you, it’s done with you”; a perspective
- Setting strategic directions to review the work being done
Timestamps:
1:11 - About Nigel Stevens
3:18 - Strategy before landing a client
5:29 - Team onboarding strategy at OGM
8:46 - Relationship building with companies
12:12 - How to choose a client for your business
15:24 - OGM working style
17:23 - Delivering ‘peace of mind’
18:56 - Setting expectations along with the client
21:08 - Taking ownership
22:40 - SEO or PPC, what’s better?
29:22 - Nigel’s opinion on Google ads affecting SEO
31:50 - ‘Einstellung effect’; an ideology
You can connect with Nigel Stevens on LinkedIn. You can also check out his website Organic Growth Marketing (OGM).
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“If you look at my career, I think it looks like a guy who has just been failing upward again & again!”
In today’s episode, I chat with Nick Jordan, CEO of ContentDistribution.com. Nick walks us through his roller-coaster of a journey from being a founder of two not-so-successful start-ups, what he learnt from that experience and how that eventually led to becoming the CEO of a successful content marketing agency.
With a career span of 13 years and counting, Nick’s mantra to move forward in life despite all kinds of challenges is to believe in the idea to work with more & more people, learn new skills and move on to doing something bigger the next time, every time! At present, Nick utilises his experience in helping organisations build massive audiences through organic search with the help of his online tool known as ClusterAI, a super efficient component of contentdistribution.com.
In this episode we talk about:
- Challenges in running a start-up and learning from setbacks.
- Process of creating a lot of content but also maintaining quality.
- Key people involved in content strategy & execution.
- The ongoing transformation in the way people use keyword search.
- Features of ClusterAI and how it automates keyword research to simplify the overall process.
Timestamps:
0:10 - An introduction to Nick Jordan
1:15 - Setbacks in the initial phase of career
3:20 - The journey before starting ContentDistribution.com
4:55 - Story behind Nick's two failed start-ups
6:10 - Key takeaways from initial failures
7:14 - Beginning of contentdistribution.com
7:27 - Transition from Business Development to SEO specialisation
9:20 - Succeeding in SEO with both quantity and quality content
12:20 - Finding the right people
15:36 - ClusterAI — a component for success
19:02 - Targets for 2021
21:27 - A visual demo of how ClusterAI functions
32:53 - Working with airtable
You can connect with Nick Jordan on Facebook or LinkedIn. You can also check out his website ContentDistribution.com.
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“If someone is truly in a bad way, you can’t just say ‘look after yourself.’ It doesn’t work like that. As a company, you need to decide what are the set of tools we are going to provide so they are better enabled to look after themselves.”
Hello hello! In today’s episode, I have Sançar Şahin, the founder of Oliva, which offers online therapy to those juggling high pressure jobs and relationships.
He’s been in the marketing game since 2014 including working as the VP of Marketing for Hotjar and Typeform, where he scaled their marketing team from 0 - 25+. After experiencing burnout himself he recognized the importance of mental health, especially for those working high-pressure jobs, which was one of his inspirations for co-creating Oliva.
We chat about the importance of setting boundaries in your business that allow you to balance growth and also the personal health of both you and your staff. It’s not about giving more breaks, it’s about setting realistic expectations, offering tools to support that, and providing a safe space to ask for help when it’s needed.
We also discuss some valuable content marketing tips and insights. Content marketing isn’t just a blog post, a video, or a podcast. It’s all of the above and more. The perfect recipe for good content is mixing all available mediums together to create an interactive experience for the consumer. Each person consumes content in a different way and you could be excluding potential customers unless you cover all your bases.
In this episode we talk about:
- The elements of a content marketing team
- Creating effective content marketing strategies
- The importance of prioritizing your mental health as a business owner
- How to hire staff who prioritize mental health
Timestamps:
0:42 - Intro to Sançar
3:45 - Building a team without experience
6:20 - The essential pieces of a content marketing team
9:00 - How to align content writing with creative design
10:50 - High-quality content over quantity
14:45 - Mixing content formats
16:28 - Businesses need to become media companies
20:44 - Transitioning through Hotjar
24:31 - Sançar’s introduction to mental health
28:02 - Prioritizing your mental health as a business owner
32:00 - Providing tools to support the mental health of your team
35:40 - How to hire those who prioritize mental health
Connect with Sançar on LinkedIn and be sure to check out Oliva for mental health support.
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In today’s episode, I chat with Tawni Sattler at Hotjar. Though Tawni holds the title of content writer, her role has transformed into a manager of a growing remote team. She works on the performance side of their content marketing strategy, which targets their audience at the middle and bottom of the funnel. Hotjar’s team operates 100% remotely as we do here at Flying Cat, and we talk about what that looks like and strategies for doing so effectively.
When you operate remotely, you need to be more strategic with your content marketing process. You aren’t sitting across the desk from your colleagues, so being as thorough and explanatory as possible with each task is essential. I talk with Tawni about using tools like Loom to record video briefs and what to include in content briefs to eliminate the back-and-forth.
In this episode we talk about:
- Creating effective content briefs
- Working with a 100% remote team
- Overcoming imposter syndrome
Timestamps:
0:10 - Intro to Tawni Sattler
2:40 - What does demand generation mean to you?
4:35 - How Hotjar breaks up their content team
7:21 - The process of creating briefs for content
12:04 - The goal of customer and product marketing
12:40 - How to move your audience from TOFU brand marketing to MOFU performance marketing
15:16 - Highest performing channels in the current market
18:20 - Working with a growing team that operates 100% remotely
21:37 - Getting started in the marketing industry
25:35 - Overcoming imposter syndrome
Connect with Tawni Sattler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tawnisattler/
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In today’s episode, I chat with Josh Spilker, a B2B content marketing consultant and founder of Growthcontent.io. He just launched his own consultancy but has been working in content marketing with companies like ClickUp, Toptal, and Workzone for years.
Josh says that in content marketing, there are three main genres: brand, thought leadership, and education/search. They all play together but are usually not very well coordinated. There are also different expectations for how the different genres should perform. Each type of content is essential but understanding the jobs of each type, and what goals they can help your business reach, is essential to the success of your strategy.
In this episode we talk about:
- Growth hacking vs. content marketing
- The balance between the technical side of SEO and having good content
- Balancing topic clusters in your content calendar
Timestamps:
0:58 - Josh Spilker and his journey into content marketing
4:50 - How does content marketing drive companies with a long sales cycle
6:32 - The three genres of content and their role in strategy
9:40 - The first step when setting up content marketing for a startup
10:58 - Growth hacking vs content marketing
13:00 - Growth hacking experiments
16:00 - Finding balance between technical SEO aspects and quality content
18:25 - What’s next for Growthcontent.io?
22:52 - How do you balance out topic clusters in your content calendar?
25:45 - Are you building a publication or are you building a library?
27:45 - Is the word blog becoming outdated?
30:18 - Making changes to evergreen content because of COVID
Connect with Josh Spilker on LinkedIn and check out his website Growthcontent.io.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Ryan Holiday - Growth Hacker Marketing
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Damian Sheridan joins me on today’s episode. He’s the director of The Book Direct Show, an event for property managers who want to learn how to generate more direct bookings. He’s also an SEO consultant for short-term rental and property management companies and has nearly two decades of experience in the industry.
In the short-term rental industry, business owners know that SEO is something they need to do but don’t know how to do it. It’s a long, ongoing process involving optimizing content, recycling it, link-building, and data-driven decision-making.
In today’s chat, we talk about setting achievable goals with SEO, how to approach your content depending on those goals, and what a healthy approach to content-driven SEO looks like.
In this episode we talk about:
- What “good SEO results” actually look like
- The best type of content to start with (BOFU!)
- Vacation rentals and email marketing
Timestamps:
0:50 - An intro to Damian Sheridan
3:30 - The SEO process in the short-term rental industry
5:05 - Content quality vs content quantity
6:45 - What’s the definition of “good SEO results” with content?
9:03 - Email marketing in the short-term rental industry and where people go wrong
10:40 - How to balance SEO between TOFU, MOFU and BOFU content
14:00 - Diversifying from OTAs in the short-term rental industry
17:37 - How Damian gets experts to speak at The Book Direct Show
Connect with Damian Sheridan on LinkedIn or find him at seoconnect.co.uk.
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In today’s episode, I have Chris Maughan, founder of I-PRAC, a verification platform for the short-term rental industry. I-PRAC was born from the need for a reputable way to certify rentals to prevent consumers from becoming victims of fraud. They are now the leading global certification for the short-term rental industry. Chris is also the CEO of AES events group in Cannes, providing accommodation and event management for corporate clients like Twitter, Spotify, Microsoft, FOX and Disney.
Building I-PRAC was no walk in the park for Chris. He made mistakes, as all business owners do, but stresses the importance of learning from those mistakes and moving forward. As his mother always said, “don’t make the same mistake twice”. Continuous learning, whether from mistakes made or still stacking is the key to becoming a successful business owner. Chris walks us through his journey in building his business, and the lessons he learned along the way.
In this episode we talk about:
- The importance of outsourcing when building a startup
- Biggest lessons learned in the beginning stages of your business
- Why skill stacking is so important as a business owner
Timestamps
1:30 - An intro to Chris Maughn and I-PRAC
5:00 - Fraud in the short-term rental industry
8:10 - Marketing & fraud-prevention
11:27 - Challenges and lessons in starting I-PRAC
15:57 - How to identify whether your outsourcing is the problem or your own systems
21:05 - Choosing what components to outsource
23:30 - I-PRAC - Skillshare partnership
26:35 - Importance of skill stacking and consistent learning
Connect with Chris Maughn on LinkedIn or reach out via email at chris@i-prac.com.
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In today’s episode, I talk to Oren Greenburg, the Chief Growth Officer for Kurve, a marketing consultancy helping enterprises and startups navigate growth through digital marketing. They’ve worked with many big names like Canon, Investec and Lifecake, plus have been featured in publications by HubSpot, Zapier and Adweek. Digital marketing is, in Oren’s word, “his cup of tea”
Almost every channel can be validated in a shorter time frame by using paid advertising. It allows you to quickly identify whether a channel is the appropriate one for your audience based on the results. If your ad campaign flops, then likely your audience isn’t using that specific channel. There are a few levels of where things can go wrong: the channel level, the audience level, the message and the conversion funnel. Oren talks deeper about each level and how to avoid the most common mistakes.
In this episode we talk about:
- How to find the right marketing channel for your business
- How to identify if you’ve picked the wrong channel
- How to start marketing once you’ve chosen an effective channel
Timestamps
0:35 - Fun facts about Oren Greenburg
3:09 - About Kurve
4:27 - Finding the right marketing channels
7:15 - Did you pick the wrong channel? Or are you just using it wrong?
11:15 - The 4 areas where things can go wrong
11:38 - Writing a good CTA
13:50 - Mistakes that SaaS companies make
20:07 - What’s the RIGHT way to start?
24:25 - Funnels vs channels
27:00 - Restructure your concept of brand building
31:34 - Identifying if your marketing sucks, or your product does
To connect with Oren Greenburg follow him on LinkedIn, and be sure to check out his consultancy, Kurve.
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Today, I chat with Mark Simpson. He’s the founder of Boostly, which offers website design and content creation coaching for people in the short-term rental industry. He’s spoken at various events and conferences, such as the Short Stay Show, and has won the “Best Use of Social Media” award at the Shorties Awards. He also hosts The Boostly Podcast, which is now in its 9th season.
Over the 9 seasons of the Boostly Podcast, Mark has had to consistently come up with topic ideas that resonate with his listeners. Content needs to be relevant, engaging and include notable guests who can provide valuable insight into all aspects of the industry. Mark gives us tips for preparing for podcasts, including how he comes up with the content he’s going to discuss. We also dive deep into the process he uses to get notable guests onto his podcast and how it’s contributed to a 200% growth in traffic.
In this episode we talk about:
- The steps to prepare for your podcast
- How to get big-name guests to come on your podcast
- How to repurpose your podcast into other content
Timestamps
0:01 - Intro to Mark Simpson
3:38 - About the Boostly Podcast
7:40 - The power of podcasts
11:19 - How to prepare for a podcast/come up with questions
17:30 - Building relationships in any industry
18:50 - How do you approach big name people to be on your podcast
24:00 - Engaging on social media to build connections
29:00 - Incentivizing your guests audience to connect with you
32:20 - Repurposing your podcast
37:30 - How to ensure your team repurposes the right part of your blog
43:00 - Getting more guests through your guests
44:45 - Letting go of control - the importance of outsourcing
Connect with Mark Simpson on LinkedIn and make sure to check out Boostly on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also listen to the Boostly Podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Traffic Secrets by Russell Brunson on Audible
How to Find Great Virtual Team Members - Blog post by Tega Diegbe
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In this episode, I talk with Christophe Salmon, Co-founder of Revyoos - the only review aggregator in the vacation rental industry and winner of the VR Tech award.
He started in the short-term rental industry as a property owner in 2006 and started his own property management company in 2016, managing 40 units in Costa Blanca.
As the owner of a property management company Christophe was looking for ways to get the most out of his property reviews, and struggled to find a platform or solution that would give him control over his reviews. Thus, Revyoos was born.
Like with any startup, there are always challenges getting it off ground. The biggest challenges that Christophe faced with Revyoos were:
- Finding the right team to work with/build the product
- Finding the time to market the product
After the product is rolling, you can shift focus into creating partnerships with companies, collecting feedback from users, and using that to develop new and improved features.
In this episode we talk about:
- The challenges of getting a new platform off the ground
- Developing a product roadmap using user feedback
- The biggest lessons learned launching a startup
Timestamps:
0:01 - An introduction to Christophe Salmon
2:26 - How Revyoos was born
5:00 - Creating a software that addresses everyone's needs
7:39 - Challenges with getting a new platform off the ground
11:00 - Strategies and future plans to grow Revyoos
12:27- New features coming soon on Revyoos
14:02 - Developing your product road map
15:05 - Biggest lessons as a startup founder
18:30 - Don’t wait until your product is “ready”
Connect with Christophe Salmon on LinkedIn, and be sure to check out Revyoos.com!
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In today’s episode, I chat with Carla Chicharro, the marketing manager and head of the content team at Lodgify. She built their content strategy from the ground up and now they have content that outranks Airbnb! So, how did they create an effective strategy that not only drives traffic but conversions as well?
When you’re building a content strategy from scratch Carla suggests focusing on the quantity first. Create as much quality content as you can, using extensive keyword research and research through forums, articles and competitor blogs. Even to this day Lodgify still gets 60% of its monthly traffic from their old content.
Lodgify splits their content between the three stages of the sales funnel: TOFU, MOFU and BOFU, though they now focus on quality over quantity. Carla talks us through all the steps of creating and implementing a content strategy that works!
In this episode we talk about:
- Building a content strategy from scratch
- Optimizing old content
- Adapting your content strategy as you grow
- The importance of lead nurturing
Timestamps :
0:45 - Introduction to Carla
2:30 - The structure of the Lodgify content team
4:06 - Planning out, and implementing content strategy
6:15 - Quantity, then quality
7:35 - Re-optimizing old content
10:45 - Defining leads
11:33 - Content strategy experiments gone wrong
14:50 - Content strategies that work!
18:35 - Lead nurturing tips
21:20 - Importance of lead nurturing
22:44 - Using content software and applications
Connect with Carla Chicharro on LinkedIn or email directly at carla@lodgify.com.
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In this episode, I am speaking to Simon Lehmann, the CEO and Co-Founder of AJL Atelier, a consulting firm for the short-term rental industry. They consult tech companies and operators in hospitality and vacation rentals, help them build their strategy and recently partnered with Hotel.School to launch a series of hospitality courses. They are the go-to partner in the vacation rental industry.
For tech companies in the short-term rental industry having the correct strategy is paramount. This is especially true in the current global climate, as COVID continues to make its mark on the tourism industry. It’s essential for companies to understand how the market is structured and have a clear image of what they want to achieve. Simon challenges tech providers to think about what their future role is in the industry and how they will expand and grow. Survival is going to be difficult, and leaders need to step out of their daily wheel to look at their companies from an outside standpoint. How does the industry see your business, how do investors see your business, and what are they looking for?
We talk about:
- Whether tech companies should specialize in one service, or do a bit of everything to target more customers
- What strategies are working well?
- How to leverage user forums to get insight into your clients' needs
Timestamps:
0:02 – Intro to Simon Lehmann
1:26 – Adapting strategy during COVID
5:30 – How AJL works with tech start-ups
6:50 – What tech startups need to think about when building their strategies
9:02 – Finding balance between specialization and doing a bit of everything
12:00 – Understanding your core and what you should outsource
14:57 – What are the current tech needs in the short-term rental industry?
17:54 – Why do PMSs keep changing their strategy?
20:00 – What strategies are working well?
23:15 – Leveraging user forums to find out customer needs
26:16 – How to incentivize customers to actually talk to you
Connect with Simon on LinkedIn, via email, or check out his website ajlatelier.com
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In this episode I interview Jasper Ribbers, the CEO of Get Paid for Your Pad, co-founder of Short-Term Rental Legends and co-founder of Short-Term Rental Profit Academy.
Success or struggle in the short-term rental industry right now is highly based on where your listings are in. Urban listings are struggling while traditional vacation destinations—especially secluded ones, are flourishing. Since everyone wants to leave the city, operators that have remote properties are seeing a huge influx of bookings and having a record year.
As operators grow from a few units up to 50+ units, operators who work with Jasper and his partner Eric grow small business owners to the CEO of a large company. In order to scale, they have to take themselves out of the equation and leverage software that is available to them. They have to become more efficient, or there are other players who will take their market share. That’s where SaaS companies have an opportunity to help operators:
- Save time
- Optimize task management
- Improve their customer service
In this episode we talk about:
- what short-term rental operators are looking for in terms of tech,
- and what new tech companies can do to break into the inner circle.
Timestamps:
0:01 – An intro to Jasper Ribbers
1:12 – The current situation for short-term rental operators
4:00 – Connecting the community of short-term rental operators
5:19 – Discussing new tech in the industry
7:37 – The biggest software needs of operators
10:35 – What the tech stack of larger operators looks like
12:51 – How can new tech get into the inner circle
15:00 – What kind of content is resonating with high-level operators?
17:25 – Current trends in the STR industry
Find all of Jasper's short-term rental resources at Get Paid For Your Pad, STR Mastermind and the Short-Term Renal Profit Academy. Or connect with Jasper Ribbers directly on Instagram.
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Today I talk with Florian Montag, the CEO of HotelHero, a platform that helps hotels to buy new tech. He’s also one of the creators of the Smack podcast, where they interview other leaders in the hospitality industry. HotelHero came to life because of a need for hotels to find tech that works for them.
It’s still a very current problem. There’s been a very recent shift from on-premise tech to tech that is cloud-based. Where vendors needed to be local in-order to serve their customers' needs, they no longer need to be. They can now use 30+ apps, from guest experience to marketing, but they need help locating the most effective options.
Hoteliers will seek changes to their tech stack in order to stay competitive in the industry or address any operational issues they are facing. These could be staff-related, guest-related, or may help them to reduce their costs. If tech offers an opportunity for increased revenue, then hotels are looking to jump on board. Florian breaks down how tech companies can stand out and get in front of hoteliers who are seeking new tech.
In this episode we talk about:
- Why hotels struggle to find new tech
- What makes hotels want to change their tech stack
- How tech companies can stand out from hotels
Timestamps:
0:30 – An intro to Florian, HotelHero and Smack
4:35 – Choosing authorities to interview
6:00 – How COVID has impacted the podcast/content
11:00 – Why do hotels struggle to find new tech?
13:53 – What drives hotels to want to change their tech stack?
16:00 – What should tech companies do to stand out to hotels?
19:50 – The HotelHero index
24:00 – Are hotels buying more tech because of COVID?
27:05 – Effective tech strategies
30:30 – New tech tools that are taking off during COVID
Connect with Florian Montag on LinkedIn, or via the chat on HotelHero.tech. Also, tune into his podcast, Smack, for all things hospitality tech.
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Today I chat with marketing expert Laurie Kelly about creating content that your audience wants to consume and identifying where you may have gaps in your current marketing efforts.
Today I chat with Laurie Kelly, a marketing expert with 17-years of experience in the marketing world. Laurie is the chair of the RevGenius marketing channel on Slack. We dive into demand generation, the new trends in marketing and why we shouldn’t get caught up in them.
At its core, marketing has always remained the same. You need to identify what types of content your clients want to consume and feed it to them. Additionally, Laurie says “you don’t want to necessarily feed somebody who is not going to be eating. We want to make sure we are feeding those who are actually hungry and coming to the club.”
Everyone in an organization has a role to play in marketing, regardless if it’s in your job title or not. That shift in mindset is essential if you want to create a cohesive approach to marketing and identify where the gaps are.
In this episode we discuss
- Identifying what content clients want to consume
- Demand generation vs. lead generation
- How to see your marketing from your clients' point of view
- How to identify gaps in your marketing efforts
Timestamps
1:47 How do you market to marketers?
5:15 What do your clients want to eat? What content do they want to consume?
5:40 How to re-engage people who have dropped off
8:55 The biggest trends in marketing right now
10:45 Demand generation vs. lead generation
12:45 How to get into the mind of your client
13:50 How an accountant is also a marketer
18:50 Bad news travels faster than good news
20:30 Word of mouth marketing – using your customers as marketers
22:14 Shift in mindset – everyone in a company contributes to marketing
25:30 Identifying the gaps in your marketing efforts
28:40 What to do when your description of your product doesn’t match your clients
Join the RevGenius slack community by applying here.
You can connect with Laurie via her LinkedIn.
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In this episode, I talk with Belinda Aramide, a LinkedIn sales coach teaching service-based entrepreneurs and sales executives how to generate more sales by using their LinkedIn Networks. Before you can even start reaching out to potential buyers it’s important that you optimize your LinkedIn profile so that when people land on it, they get a good sense of what it is that you do and how you help people. Then, you can start creating content so that people can see the depth of your understanding and knowledge in that area because it helps build trust.
Belinda lets us in on her system for crafting the perfect DM on LinkedIn. You’re not making a cold sales pitch. You need to build a connection first and do it in a genuine way, and Belinda tells us how to do that.
In this episode we discuss:
- How you should be spending your time on LinkedIn
- Getting the foundation of your LinkedIn right
- Steps you can take to generate more leads (in a genuine way)
Timestamps
1:26 – An introduction to Belinda Aramide
4:45 – When should you start using your LinkedIn for sales?
6:05 – Getting the foundation of your LinkedIn right
7:12 – Initiating the sales conversation
9:05 – How you should be spending your time on LinkedIn
13:42- Get to know the people you’re pitching to
18:30 – Have multiple plays for initiating a conversation
20:50 – Identify their objections
22:00 – LinkedIn is no longer just a database
23:55 – Should the CEO and their teams be behaving the same on LinkedIn?
25:30 – Getting employees to buy-in to LinkedIn sales tactics
28:45 – LinkedIn current trends
31:10 – The secret is showing up
33:30 – Where to start with your LinkedIn sales strategy
You can connect with Belinda Aramide on LinkedIn, or check out her website BelindaAramide.com for more resources on generating sales with LinkedIn.
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Today I chat with Matt Wolach, a sales coach for SaaS companies and SaaS leaders. He’s been in the SaaS industry for 15 years and helps companies to remove their roadblocks when it comes to closing deals and making sales. He has helped his clients double their close rates with his deal processes and we talk about how they make that happen.
The perfect deal process can be broken down into 4 main parts:
- Discover
- Educate
- Associate
- Lead
The entire process needs to be evaluated, from when a lead comes in all the way to close. Matt touches on some of the biggest struggles that he notices companies facing when it comes to their deal processes, and how to overcome those to create a process that actually works.
In this episode we talk about:
- What the perfect deal process looks like
- How to apply the D.E.A.L. principals
- Biggest challenges in sales
Timestamps
0:47 – An introduction to Matt Wolach
2:25 – What is the perfect deal process
5:00 – How to educate your potential buyers
8:36 – Using video in the deal process
10:22 – Applying the D.E.A.L. principals
12:24 – When does a lead enter your sales process?
14:00 – When does marketing hand off leads to sales?
16:30 – Defining leads
17:40 – Biggest challenges in sales
20:20 – Lead the call
23:00 – How to open a call
You can connect with Matt Wolach on LinkedIn, or check out his website Xsellus.com
While you’re here
Follow Flying Cat Marketing on the following channels to get more tips, tactics and knowledge on content marketing
Audio – Flying Cat Marketing Podcast (Spotify) (Apple Podcasts) (Sticher)
Visual – YouTube
On today’s episode we chat to Ajay Kumar, the CEO of TheHouseMonk, a company focused on solving problems in the real estate industry using technology. They help real estate businesses sell and manage their real estate profile, and serve over 100 clients in 12 different countries. He ran a property management company for many years prior to shifting into the software space so he understands the industry from both sides. He offers some interesting insights on how technology actually impacts the real estate industry from an insider perspective.
As real estate is a touch & feel industry, it relies on offline interactions and relationship building. That said, there are many forms of technology that can help real estate businesses to operate more effectively. Ajay gives us his predictions on how technology will develop in going forward, and which types of software will be most useful.
In this episode we talk about:
- The impact of technology on the real estate industry
- How the industry has changed since the pandemic
- What the future of tech looks like in real estate
Timestamps
1:25 – An intro into Ajay Kumar
3:43 – How property management and real estate compares to other top industries
8:48 – The impact of tech on the real estate industry
10:10 – The importance of having an extremely valuable product
11:15 – Networking and word-of-mouth marketing in the industry
13:00 – Don’t compromise on your team (hire experts)
14:10 – Using LinkedIn to capture attention
16: 35 – How TheHouseMonk gets customers
17:50 – How things have changed since the pandemic?
19:44 – The perks and struggles of having a remote team
21:50 – Solving the culture problems of working remotely
23:15 – Predictions for technology in real estate
Connect with Ajay Kumar on LinkedIn, TheHouseMonk and his blog RealEstatexTechnology.
While you’re here
Follow Flying Cat Marketing on the following channels to get more tips, tactics and knowledge on content marketing
Visual – YouTube
Audio – Flying Cat Marketing Podcast (Spotify) (Apple Podcasts) (Sticher)
Today I’m chatting with Ed Jaffe, a presales expert from Demo Solutions. They provide demo training, demo consulting and demo pitch decks; basically, everything for SaaS companies to get their demos right and stop losing leads.
Forget everything you thought you knew about pitching your software. It’s not about bigging up your product, poking at client pain points or comparing yourself to competitors. So, how do you successfully demo your product? Many SaaS companies face similar challenges when it comes to effectively demoing their products. When you have 45 minutes at best to run a demo, you need to use that time to the fullest, and Ed tells us how to do that.
In this episode we talk about:
•Demo audits
•What companies are doing wrong in demos
•What your demo should actually look like
Timestamps
0:40 - An intro into Ed Jaffe
2:13 – What is presales?
4:18 – Where people are going wrong in demo
7:10 – Things that drive customers to make a change (invest in new software)
8:17 – Customers already know their own pain points
9:14 – What should a demo actually look like?
12:00 – Using cultural references to connect with clients
13:45 – Demo audits
15:45 – How do you salvage a bad demo?
17:37 – The most common challenges SaaS companies experience with demos
19:20 – When you should make your big claims
21:16 – Tips for getting your clients to buy-in to your demo
You can link up with Ed on LinkedIn, or visit his website DemosWinDeals.com.
While you’re here
Follow Flying Cat Marketing on the following channels to get more tips, tactics and knowledge on content marketing
Visual – YouTube
Audio – Flying Cat Marketing Podcast (Spotify) (Apple Podcasts) (Sticher)
We speak to Matt Landau, founder for VRMB, about vacation rental tech and what short-term rental operators are looking for.
It turns out, they are still buying. He gives his tips to founders about how to stand out in this niche industry and how to make property managers trust you.
Today we chat with Inna Shevchenko, CMO of iGMS, a property management software about how she built a team and scaled her SaaS company.
From www.flyingcatmarketing.com
Connect with Inna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inna-shevchenko-58564a24/
An interview with Ugljesca Djuric, Head of Content at lemlist. We talk about how he manages linkbuilding and the SEO content strategy of bootstrapped lempire.
lempire went from 0 to $1M in ARR in under 2 years, with no funding. Find out how content played a huge role in that and how to model your own linkbuilding strategy for your own startup.
Connect with Ugi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ugljesadj/
A chat with Zineb Layachi, CMO in Residence and co-founder of pitch slap, about how to use strategic narrative to solve your customer's pain points.
A chat with Tanya Hayles, founder of Black Moms Connection, as well as an events producer and freelance writer, about running large Facebook groups.
A chat with Joe Sullivan, founder of g76, a content marketing agency for the manufacturing industry. We talk about getting your C-levels and subject matter experts involved in content creation.
www.flyingcatmarketing.com
A chat with Vanessa de Souza Lage, CMO of Rentals United, about how they grew their vrtech business.
In this video, we talk about:
- Content marketing for vacation rental SaaS
- How to generate more leads with content marketing for SaaS companies
- How they changed their strategy when their avatar changed
www.flyingcatmarketing.com
A chat with MJ Peters, VP of Marketing at Firetrace. We chat about customer avatar development and how she got her whole team involved.
Connect with MJ Peters on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjpeters1/
A chat with Jake Stainer, co-founder of Outreach Humans, about SaaS sales funnels and where startups should focus their acquisition strategies.
By www.flyingcatmarketing.com
Connect with Jake on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestainer/
Outreach Humans: https://www.outreachhumans.com/
A chat with Kevin Markowski, CEO of Spitche, a community engagement platform that helps you overcome the Facebook algorithm.
www.spitche.com
www.flyingcatmarketing.com
A chat with Max Brigada, founder of ADA On Cloud and convergent marketing.
We talk about how to use conversational chatbots, what convergent marketing is and how it compares to inbound marketing, and more!
A chat with Italo Viale, co-founder of Outreach Humans, about backlink building and how to prioritize keywords and external links.
A chat with Larry Long Jr, sales coach, about the best way to align marketing with sales goals.
In this video, we chat with George Bell, Marketing Manager at Sanctus, which is a startup whose mission is to make mental health mainstream. We talk about how to create a positive mental health space in a remote team to increase performance, profit, and to be a good company!
Sanctus: https://sanctus.io/
Connect with George Bell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-bell-10317184/
www.flyingcatmarketing.com
A chat with Margot Schmorack, CMO of Hostfully, about how they listened to customers to help them pivot and grow into the company they are today.
A chat with Dot Lung, the Mother of Social Media Dragons, about building your personal brand even if you want to grow your company revenue.
Connect with Dot:
https://www.instagram.com/dotlung/
https://il.linkedin.com/in/dotlung
A chat with Alex Antolino, Creative Director of Typeform, about their brand story and how experimenting helped guide their interconnected branding, product and content strategy.
Connect with Alex Antolino online:
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/AlexAnto...
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexantolino/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/antolino/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/alexantolino