ERP014 - Digital Marketing w/ Continuum

Welcome to Evolved Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the evolution of marketing. My guests are senior members of the Continuum marketing team. Continuum has a strong and diverse marketing approach that is geared towards the digital age. Some of the topics we're going to cover are social media, content marketing, and how to get noticed amid the noise of the internet. This episode will give you some actionable advice on how to mature your digital marketing strategy in order to drive success. Also remember to subscribe to Evolved Radio podcast so you won't miss any future episodes. Now let's get started. Joining me today is Nate Teplo, a senior product marketing manager with Continuum and Joe Tavana, senior content marketing manager with Continuum as well. Thanks for joining me, guys. Yeah, thanks Todd for having us. Great to be here. Wanted to have you guys on to to chat about uh marketing strategy, especially around kind of the the evolution of marketing towards the digital age. And I've uh noted that Continuum has a very, very strong presence in in their marketing strategy and figured you guys would be great to to connect with and and chat on this. So, appreciate you coming on and uh. Maybe if you want, uh give me a sense of how you feel the rise of social media is influencing the evolution of marketing. Yeah, it's uh it's it's interesting. It's really changed the game. I I I think, um. You know, the marketing it's it's I I think people have a misconception around marketing. They they think it's it's you stand at the top of a mountain and shout as loud as you can about your company. Right. And that's not really what it is. I think it's it's really a conversation through and through. And I think social media is a great way for you to inject your voice into that conversation of the web. It's no longer big media buying, you know, going on TV and buying a TV spot, radio spot, newspaper spot. It's really about connecting with with the people. You know, especially online when it comes to social media, content marketing, web marketing. You really want to take part in that conversation and social media is, you know, the conversation stream, I guess you could say of the web. So if you're not on social media, if you're not pushing out content, if you're not engaging with people, if you're not uh making yourself present and and and searchable and findable on social media. I think you're really missing out on a key opportunity when it comes to uh web online marketing. Yeah, I think one of the major shifts that we've seen. Is that in the past it was, you know, definitely like Nate was saying, shouting from the mountain or shouting from that bullhorn, talking at people really. And I think with the advent of social media, we've begun talking with people and starting those conversations as as we previously mentioned. So, in a sense where it's a much more fluid feedback and response, um, circuit that we have and we can, you know, communicate and respond on the fly. And uh, you know, change and adapt our messaging based on that feedback as well. Well, well, the other shift is that the the voice and the power is really in the buyer and the consumer. 100%. Um, when it comes to reviewing and and talking about products. So before, when again, you were at that mountain top shouting with a bullhorn. You could control the message, you had complete control over what you were saying about your brand, your product, your company. And now with social media and the way things can go viral and the amplification of of consumers and users voices. That power is in their hands now. So you have to be there in order to engage with them, to listen to them, to respond to them. But uh you can't control the conversation anymore. Yeah, I guess everyone has their own mountain, right? There's a democratization there. Where. You know, everyone's voice can be equally as strong depending on uh their social media following. And, you know, the message they're able to get out. Right. Yeah, it's one of the parts I I find a little intimidating. For people that are just sort of starting to dip their toe in this, you know, you guys describe it shouting from the mountain. I call it kind of screaming into the darkness. Uh similar idea. Yeah, do you have any suggestions for people that are just getting started in social media? One of the the suggestions I've heard rightly or wrongly is that you you want to participate in a conversation. Because if you know, you're just starting, you have 20 followers, you know, your close friends and your mom, uh you know, getting that message out can be a lot tougher. Is it do you find it's easier to start gathering your tribe by conversing first and then starting to to produce your own content? Well, well, I think that's what it is. It's a conversation. And if you're not taking part in the conversation, then no one's going to really follow you. I mean, think about it like this is a common analogy kind of among marketing folks, but think of it like a cocktail party. I mean, if you're. If someone's there and all they talk about is them, them, them, I do this, I do that, this is my business, this is how successful I am. No one's going to want to go talk to that person. They're all going to be, you know, behind their back talking about what a jerk they are. So I think if you're at a cocktail party, you want to engage in conversations, you want to ask people about what they do, you know, what their interests are, things like that. And social media is kind of the same way. Where, you know, you want to take part in that conversation and people are only going to start following you and engaging with you if they like what you have to say and if you're responding to them and and engaging with them. So, I think that's the first big thing. You don't want to just start a a Twitter page and then start tweeting out every new thing that your company does. Oh, we renamed this, oh, we renamed that and we just did this, this is a new case study from us. I think it's got to be mixed into the regular conversation that you're having on social media. So a lot of that is, you know, requires retweeting other people, following them, having them follow you back. Um, you know, sharing good content, you know, useful content that people find interesting. I mean. They're not going to follow you unless they think that the stuff that you're publishing is interesting and worth following. So a great place to start is to. Start promoting stuff that you think your audience would like to follow. Yeah, and I I think to your point about shouting into the darkness. It's really important to make sure those conversations you're especially when you're starting out, you're tailoring who you're talking to. And who is seeing your your work to influences that you've already targeted. So it's great to, you know, maybe make a list of 10, 15, 20 people who you really identify as influences in your market and in your industry. To make sure that you're sharing this these pieces of content that you're creating with those people. So get it on their radar. Maybe they can share it. Maybe they can talk back to you. Next thing you know, you have a great conversation with people who are going to be influencing and sharing your content with a larger audience. Uh and that sort of networking grows your own base. That's great, great advice. I appreciate that. I love the analogy of the cocktail party because it it kind of hits on exactly what I was I was talking about. Is if if you're you're only talking to yourself, you're not talking to those people in that analogy, you're the guy standing in the corner talking to himself. No one's going to come approach you and start talking to you. So you need to insert yourself in that circle and start chatting people up, yeah. Yeah. Uh one of the things that I find Continuum has a particularly strong presence in in our IT channel field. Is the content marketing. So I guess uh in large part uh Joe, we're going to attribute that that work to to yourself and your team as well. Uh can you describe what content marketing is? Yeah. Uh. Like we were saying before, we were talking about the older form of uh shouting from the mountain and shouting from that bullhorn. Uh we like to think of it more as a magnet, right? So we want to pull in people to what we're creating and the content that we're driving. Uh we like to think of it as inbound marketing is is another term for it. So we're trying to inform people and attract people to uh pieces of content that we create. That also are helping them learn a little bit more about what they're seeking on the internet. So. People don't go and search, you know, they're not going to be searching for uh continuum out of nowhere if they weren't familiar with the company already. So we want our content to speak for that. When they search for uh manage IT services for backup and disaster recovery. We want our uh blog to come up. For instance. We want to make sure that uh we're creating relevant topics with our content that we're putting out there to inform and uh no I wouldn't say entertain. But we want to make sure that we're. Well, engage. I think that's the word. Engage is really the right word. We want to make sure that we're engaging uh those people with the type of information and content that they're looking for. And also at that point, turn them over to uh, you know, what we're what we what we do. Well, I think going back to that shift we discussed earlier where the power is in the buyer's hands now. You know, the way that, you know, the web works and the way people can search for information. You need to be able to provide the answers to their questions. And that's I think the the core of of content marketing. Is that people are searching for answers. I mean, people have problems and they turn to Google to actually find those answers. And by pushing out content, content is kind of how you tell Google like this is what we do, this is what we're about and when you can match, you know, people's questions with your content and provide the answers to that, Google's going to rank you higher and higher and you're going to get found more easily. So. I think when when you think about your content strategy and content marketing, it's really about, let me try to figure out what people are actually searching for and and what questions they're looking for. And let me provide the answers to that, so they start to build trust in my my brand, my company. That's going to end up making them more inclined to maybe start a demo or a trial or talk to a rep or engage with your company further. Because they feel like they've they've started to trust and uh appreciate the answers that you provide with your content. Yeah, Google is absolutely the engine for for everything we do. Right. And uh making sure that uh your content is honed and, you know, optimized for Google to to make sure it's it's driving up to at the top of the rankings is absolutely essential to content marketing. Right. So I guess it's a marriage between kind of that brand awareness of if you didn't know this is a company that does what you're looking for on the web, here's a company that's doing this. And then as well as some thought leadership. Is there is that sort of the the summary or is there some other additions that would go in there? The the brand awareness and the thought leadership of of that content. Yeah, I'd say that's I mean, those are probably the two main buckets. I mean, when you think about the way people search online. Again, going back to Google. They're either not familiar with your company and, you know, just in the context of continuum. We're a we're a IT management platform. Sure. Uh for MSPs. So if if you're an MSP and you search, you know, let's say, uh remote monitoring and management solution for MSPs, we want to rank well for that. And that's where the thought leadership comes in. Because if we have uh a lot of content that refers to remote monitoring and management that refers to MSPs. That's how we're going to get found for a search like that. But if somebody is familiar with continuum and the continuum brand, they're probably going to search for continuum IT management platform. And we want to rank well for that as well. So there's there's, you know, you want to build a brand around yourself and the way people find you is how you help build that brand. But you also want to provide thought leadership because that's how you actually go and get found in the first place. One thing though I do want to uh make a point to mention though at this point. Is that we don't just want to say, oh yeah, continuum, that's interesting. That's a that's a brand I recognize. Or just become that leader like, that was a very smart article, I really appreciated that. We want to make sure that there's actionable steps at the end of all this content that people can uh put in their information. And we can give that to our sales team to create leads. So we want to make sure that everyone who's interested and is driven to our website from that piece of content from Google's engine. Is also being turned into a lead that we can pass off to our sales team and say, hey, this person was very interested in our product. Interested in our content, might want to have a conversation with them and start talking about it. If they are, um, let's say, if they maybe check out so many pieces of content. We have maybe they they say they check out maybe five blog posts. We say, hey, this is a person that's very, very interested in these three different areas, let's let's have a conversation with them. That's a really important point. I appreciate that Joe, that the marketing in nowadays needs to be actionable. Everyone always talks about, you know, what's the one action that you want out of out of the the result from this engagement, right? Mhm. Um. Another piece that that I find interesting about the the content marketing piece. Is is uh it kind of sets up for this remarketing strategy so that other companies are redistributing the content that you guys are producing. And on its face it seems a bit strange that, you know, a company that's trying to get some awareness and and create some thought leadership is then distributing content from other companies. Uh how what's the the sort of the the thought behind how uh re content or remarketing content can be benefit beneficial for your business independent of the content that you're producing yourself? Well, I think it goes back to that cocktail party analogy. Where, you know, you don't just want to talk about yourself. And um everything that that you have, I think when you pull on other content. And the other thing is you don't have the answers to everything either. Sure. And and and to develop the expertise. And the other thing is, you know, a lot of people are generating content now, there's a lot of different blogs you can follow, a lot of places you can find these answers. So, if you're going to actually go and provide thought leadership, it's it should be thought leadership. It shouldn't just be content that you're throwing around and and just trying to publish and push out there. So, in order to make sure that you are leading the industry with what you're publishing. You need to sometimes bring in third parties or or vendor partners or, you know, whoever that is. To help contribute to that thought leadership. So sometimes it's a little bit about, you know, maybe we're not. You know, fully versed in, um, I don't know, let's say like remote control, you know, programs or how to best leverage remote control to optimize, you know, um, truck roll expenses or whatever, uh, let's bring in a partner who knows a lot about that. Um, that can really speak knowledgeably to it as a way to drive engagement for both of us and and give us both brand recognition. And the other piece of it going back to that cocktail party. Is, you know, you want to mix in other conversations. I mean, again, if you're at a cocktail party, it might be cool to reference a piece of news you saw that, you know, is a funny story that somebody might find interesting. It doesn't have to be all about you and and yourself and your experiences. There's other things you can pull from that contribute to your conversation and how people interact with you. Yeah. One of the best ways to set yourself apart and make yourself stand out as a leader in your industry and an expert. Is also being able to recognize the expertise and the leadership in others. So being able to remarket or republish or curate uh other great pieces of content. Shows you have a keen eye and shows that people should be interested in the things that you are also interested in. That's great. Yeah, I appreciate that that's uh I was nodding a lot as you guys were talking. So. I appreciate it. We could feel it, we could we could we could we could feel your nods. Yeah, awesome. How do you know what to focus on then? You know, obviously you get driven by, you know, what are the searches that people land towards and, you know, what do you hear in in the industry as well. But one of the things that I see as as difficult is people are trying to get into this strategy is the internet is a really big place. And a lot of people are contributing their ideas. And in a lot of cases, you may have something that you want to say, but largely it's already been said. Uh so people always suggest, you know, you kind of look for, you know, how you put your spin on it, what are some some portions that might require some polish. So that it's a it's a better uh piece of content than maybe what else already exists out there. Any other ideas on on sort of how you differentiate yourself as far as the content production? Well, I think one thing and this might be a bit intangible, but is the the voice. Um that you use. And sometimes I I think and, you know, going back to our industry and I think this is where a lot of MSPs and and IT solution providers struggle with. Is they they try to sound really big and corporate and, you know, formal in their in their messaging and they want to sound like they're bigger they're they're bigger than they are. But I I think it's it's important, you know, you know, again. We've talked about this shift, the the the buyer has a lot more control now. And I feel like they want to they they want to feel like they are interacting with people and and building a relationship. And if you're your your content, your voice is coming off as, you know, big, corporate, distant and formal. That's not a very inviting voice. And someone who's who's pretty much, I think when it comes to, you know, blogging and and and creating content. You want to feel like you're having a conversation with somebody. And if you can make your tone and your your your content more conversational, you know, speak in the first person. It's okay. It's okay to inject your opinion. I think when people are reading and looking for new blogs and new sources of information, they want people who are going to give their opinion. I mean, that's what thought leadership is. Is you are a thought leader, you're providing your opinion. So. I guess first, don't be afraid to be, you know, a first person and and inject your opinion into the conversation than just be fact-based. Um and the other piece is just look at, you know, what people are searching for. And and, you know, sometimes you can pull that from your existing uh customers or clients or prospects. I mean, if there's a question they're repeatedly asking you, there's a good chance somebody is asking that question online and you have an opportunity to go and provide an answer to that. The other thing is, you know, go to conferences, go to events, go to, you know, um places where you can meet people in person and again, if they're asking a lot of questions, if there's topics or themes that you're seeing at those events. There's probably those topics and themes that are being asked and discussed on the web as well. So, again, you can inject your your voice into those those conversations as web conversations. If you kind of see that happening in person as well. So those are a couple places you can start. Yeah, there are a lot of different ways to start this. But I think that you you want to make sure that you're writing about things that you know. As well as your opinions as well. Everyone is good at something. That's a good point. You want you want to talk about what you know. Everyone is good at something and everyone has a lot of ideas and a lot of experience that they've built up. So you want to make sure to get that out there when you're writing on your blog. Uh for many MSPs like us, like like our partners, they. Know how they may not know about, let's say like the internet of things or they may not know about the leading, you know, VR out there. Maybe they do. They many of them do. But maybe they're not totally up to speed. You don't want to introduce yourself into a conversation that you're not uh. Totally versed. Ready to, yeah. Speak knowledgeably about. But I'm sure they have a ton of recommendations on Windows 8. Windows 10. What, you know, when, you know, upgrade cycles on a lot of software, cyber security. Things that are going on in their world. Write to that content, write to what you know. And people are going to be, you know, looking for answers for that, you're going to set yourself up as a as an expert. Um and to Nate's point, you definitely want to be able to take questions from your client base. You want to make sure to be answering those questions in your content. So, you know, always keep a running list of those questions to make sure that. You are answering those and you can find that and once you start it. And you set time aside, uh, you know, every week, every month. You're going to be creating a rolling effect. Where you're going to be creating more and more. And you're going to be able to more effectively answer those questions. That's great feedback. Appreciate that. One of the other things I find interesting is uh, you know, the number of social platforms can be a bit overwhelming for people. And uh, you know, the web obviously being kind of this primary vehicle. To carry the message, but you definitely want to contribute on on that social avenue as well. And now, you know, it it never ends uh on the different platforms that you apparently need to be on. You know, you need to be on Pinterest, you need to be on Instagram, you need to be on Snapchat. And all of these these platforms continue to grow. Uh I I guess uh maybe I'm I'm dating myself in the fact that I still kind of reserve the business activities to to LinkedIn, Twitter. And I'm I'm starting to to grow into Facebook as well. And I've actually been impressed with it as a social vehicle. Do you guys give any thought around the newer platforms and how that plays a role or is there some distinction around the consumer market versus the business market and how those social vehicles might might serve you better? I I mean, I think in general, go to where your your market is and where your audience is. I mean. Right. If you're a consumer product, then maybe Pinterest, Instagram. Those are probably better platforms for you to start exploring. Snapchat maybe. Um but if, you know, if you're B to B, definitely LinkedIn. Um I think and especially when it comes to. I mean, our universe of MSPs and and actually service-based companies. I think it's really important to build your personal brand there as well as your business brand. So definitely have a corporate um or, you know, company site or profile page that people can, you know, like and follow. But you should also build your your personal brand. Especially if you're the CEO or the, you know, face of your business, people want to know who they're working with, you know, in a service-based organization like that. So that's really, really important to take into consideration. Um. Twitter, I think is pretty good, it's um, you know, for sharing content for kind of engaging in those quick conversations. For seeing what, you know, what's going on and what those conversation trends are on the web. That's a good place to be involved at least to at least follow things and see what's going on. Start to partake in the conversation too if you have the bandwidth too. Um. And I think Facebook, you know, I it's I think it's getting better for for business purposes and um they've done a good job of that as a business platform. And again. It it helps connect the dots, I think Facebook's kind of a hub for a lot of social media. You can connect a lot of things to your Facebook profile. So, when it comes to building that personal brand, you probably want to have a Facebook profile and connect that to, you know, your your business profile and and kind of sync things up, you know, between your different social media accounts. So. It's it's you don't want to stretch yourself too thin. But I think, you know, you still want to make sure you're present across these platforms and can put the most focus and concentration on those ones that your audience are really are really engaging with the most. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to discount Facebook. Even though there may be some people who don't always engage on a person on a personal basis. It has the largest audience by far in comparison. That's very true. Yeah. In comparison to every other social media network. It is absolutely dominant and absolutely huge. So, I think that your presence on Facebook should absolutely be there. Um and also you like Nate said. You do not want to make get the make sure you do not want to make sure this is overwhelming. And to do that, there are a lot of different applications these days, like Hoot Suite, like Buffer. Um even Hubspot has a great integration with social media. Yep. That you you absolutely want to make sure that um you can leverage these to make sure that none of this becomes overwhelming. Schedule your posts, make sure you get your word out there, but don't let it overtake your your your time too much. Appreciate that. Uh we're coming up towards the end of the show and using the previous advice. Let's make this actionable. So, you know, from from you guys, what are kind of two or two or three quick things that you would recommend a business doing if they're looking to start some uh to increase the maturity or just getting started on their either a content marketing strategy or a social strategy? Any any tips or tricks that you would you would throw out there? I I think the biggest place that people uh screw this up. Is they are not consistent enough. You I I think, I mean, it's it's important to start a blog. I think it's important to be present on social media. Um but if you're going to start a blog, you've got to contribute to it. And that's where a lot of people fall dead in the water. Is they're like, oh yeah, I'll start a blog. Nothing's coming to it. Well, it's like, yeah, well, you're not publishing, you're publishing once a month to the blog, which is not enough. I mean, Google uses your blog and the new content you publish to basically say, okay, cool, they're still publishing stuff, they're still publishing stuff, let me check their site out again, let me rank them a little bit higher each time you publish. So, it's important to be consistent with it. I know it's really hard to go through every single week if you try to write two blog posts a week, you're going to end up killing yourself. But there's a lot of ways you can actually go and and take content that you're producing on your own and turn it into blog posts. The the other piece of it that I think is important to know and understand. It's just don't be afraid. I think if you are a business owner, um if you're looking to get into this, you probably have a lot of knowledge that you've built up over your career. And you just don't know how to share it necessarily, but you have that knowledge. And don't be afraid to just go and start blogging. If I mean, there there are things you know about. And I think again, going back to our industry, MSPs, there is a lot and a lot of collective knowledge. That our partners have, that MSPs have. And they just don't tap into it. They just don't know that tapping into it can even benefit them. So, don't be afraid to share your expertise because that's what people are looking for. If you know what you're talking about and can show that you know what you're talking about online, people are going to trust you more and more. And I I think tap into your knowledge, that's that's kind of one, don't be afraid to to share your expertise. And be consistent with it, that's the other piece. So, sometimes it takes, you know, maybe you just block off, you know, four hours at the end on a Friday at the end of the month. And you write, you know, try to do four consecutive blog posts or whatever. And then you spread that out over time. You don't have to do a new blog post every single week because it's just going to fall off. It's going to go to the back burner. Something else is going to come up, you're not going to get it done. But if you can set aside time, maybe three, four hours just to go through and map out the different topics you want to cover and actually just write the blog posts, then you have your content, you know, for the month. And the other thing you can do is tap into your employees too, encourage them to contribute to your blog and uh to your content. They've got a lot of collective expertise that you can tap into. So. Again, if you have five employees and you say each of you write two blog posts per month. That's 10 blog posts, you know, per month that you have that you can do, you know, two per week pretty much, uh, you know, even more. So. Tap into your employees, tap into your own knowledge and just be consistent with it. Because that's where people uh screw up the most. Yeah, I mean. You said it great and I think the one last thing I would say. Make sure you have forms at the end of all your blog posts. That's true. Yeah, make sure you actually have ways to capture those names and and uh get their contact information as well. Calls to action. That's right. Calls to action. Yeah, something I've been thinking a lot about lately is discipline over motivation. Because motivation you you can't bank on that. You can't get up in the morning and be like, okay, today I feel inspired, I'm going to write this awesome blog post. But you absolutely kind of have to maintain that consistency and and and just sort of force yourself to do it. Like it it's a part of something that you've you've set upon yourself and you're there's a there's a justification for why you're doing it in the first place. And you you owe it to yourself to maintain that consistency. So I think that's that's excellent advice. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Yeah, definitely. All right, guys. Well, I appreciate uh you taking the time and giving us your your thoughts on effective marketing strategy. Uh if uh people want to learn more about what Continuum's doing and and uh sniff around the the marketing that you're doing, where where would they go and find you? Uh check us out online, continuum.net. That's our website. There's a whole resource center there that has ebooks and webinars and uh our blog is all there. So I think the website's probably the best place to go. Another thing to to point out is Joe and I host a a podcast, another content channel for us at Continuum. So if you go to continuum.net/podcast, that is our our podcast network page. And we've got all our shows there, we publish a couple different shows. So, check it out there if you want to listen. And if you are an MSP, IT solution provider, uh we hope you subscribe, um there's a lot of good stuff there for MSPs. So hope you check it out. Yep. We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter at follow Continuum. And the Continuum Podcast Network is at Continuum Pod. Great, guys. Well, have a great one and appreciate you coming on and uh we'll talk to you later. Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks for having us. It was a lot of fun.