Apr 2, 2018
Many inbound marketers shy away from leading with product-centric content and customer success stories fearing that they will miss opportunities to capture top-of-the funnel leads. The team at Bedrock Data has seen great results doing precisely the opposite.
In this week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Bedrock Data VP of Marketing Zak Pines shares how the company's approach of creating content focused on product use cases and regularly publishing customer stories has fueled traffic while increasing the volume of qualified leads.
Listen to the podcast to learn more, or read the transcript below.
Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success Podcast. My name is Kathleen Booth and I am your host. This week, my guest is Zak Pines, the VP of marketing for Bedrock Data. Welcome Zak.
Zak: Hey Kathleen, great to be here.
Kathleen: I am psyched to have you here. Tell
the listeners a little bit about yourself and about
Bedrock.
Zak: Okay, I've been in mar tech for a couple
decades now. I work in marketing technology,
analytics, marketing
automation, inbound
marketing, so I'm maybe a bit of a lifer in this industry.
And Bedrock, we've been helping companies sync data
across applications for many years and we have a brand new product
helping people, I'd say, solve the challenge of having data spread
across many different SaaS systems that a lot of us are based in,
and how you can unify that data into one trusted data set for
analytics and other purposes.
Kathleen: Now is that new product, would that
be classified as a CDP, a Customer Data Platform?
Zak: To me that term is a little bit loaded.
The term "platform" gets a little overused. I'd say it's a little
more self serve around the kind of movement and consolidation, and
then ultimately feeding analytics products. We work alongside a
dashboard tool or a BI tool like a Tableau or an Amazon Quick Site, or a Power BI, so we're actually very complimentary to
those tools, helping people solving the challenge of getting data
from all their applications into one data set for BI purposes.
Kathleen: Great. Now I first came across
Bedrock, oh my gosh, several years ago. I want to say, I don't
know, three, four years ago -- probably longer, I have a terrible
memory. But it was when I was an agency
owner and I was looking for solutions for my clients, most
of whom were using HubSpot at the time, and needed to
integrate with other platforms, typically CRM. So we had
clients on SalesForce. We had some clients
on Microsoft Dynamics. And of course,
there were a handful of others as well, and the challenge is
always, how do you build a seamless integration and how do you make
sure that over time what you've created is going to continue to
function smoothly?
I remember, I reached out to somebody at HubSpot, and I think it was with my client who was using Microsoft Dynamics because that's a bit of a beast, especially for somebody like myself who's really a marketer and not a technology person. There was no way we were going to try and take on integrating that with HubSpot. So I called someone in HubSpot and I said, "Who should I talk to, to help this client of mine? Who can build something that can connect these two dots?" And Bedrock was the number one name on the list. And I will say that you guys did build an integration for my client. It worked beautifully. And one of the things I really like about what you do is you provide ongoing support, because obviously these platforms change so much over time and things get tweaked. And every time you tweak something, it has the potential to break things.
So I was excited to interview you because I've been, not
necessarily a user, but I've really brokered the relationship
between Bedrock and the clients I've worked with, and they've been
very happy with the service.
Zak: I appreciate the story and the kind
words Kathleen. And yeah, the HubSpot ecosystem, the Microsoft
Dynamics ecosystem, have been really good to us and we're
definitely supportive of users from both sides. And yeah, at the
end of it we're helping people. By definition, if you're using
Bedrock to sync data or to unify data, you're using multiple
applications and trying to solve that challenge. And it's
definitely a challenge many companies are dealing with these
days.
Kathleen: Can you talk a little bit more
about what some of the different types of integrations you've built
have been? Share some examples. I think that would be really
interesting.
Zak: So we have prebuilt connectors to over
50 different systems. With the Fusion product, we're spanning the whole gamut;
marketing software like HubSpot that you're
familiar with, CRMs, support systems like Zendesk or Salesforce
Service or Freshdesk, financial data
like QuickBooks Online or Xero,
even a project kind of management system like Ezra. Any widely adopted software,
especially one where customer data is living, is one that we're
working with, and we have these prebuilt connectors for. We're
bringing data out of those systems, in a common, consistent way, to
help people have a standard schema for their data that they can use
for analytics purposes. And that's a multi dimensional data
warehouse.
Think of it as you're a contact Kathleen. You're part of a given
account. That account has certain sales opportunities, certain
support tickets, certain projects...maybe there's products that
you've purchased from a given company. So all that data gets
unified for analytics purposes, because that's the data that holds
all the insight that companies are looking to mine and visualize
the key intelligence around.
Kathleen: Is it fair to say that a good
client or prospect for Bedrock is a company that is suffering the
pain point of having their data in different silos, regardless of
what those silos are, and you're kind of building the bridges
between them?
Zak: Yeah. That's a huge point. Siloed data
is definitely one of the underlying problems, one that we hear
about quite frequently. So yeah, that's a huge point.
Kathleen: Got it. So now, when exactly was
Bedrock founded?
Zak: Bedrock goes back to 2012, so six years
now.
Kathleen: Okay. And you started out as any
company does, and the challenge becomes finding those first
customers. And then, over time obviously, growing that customer
base. And anybody who listens to this podcast knows that we like to
talk about marketing, and what has really successfully worked for
companies that are practicing inbound marketing. Can you talk a
little bit about, just broad brush first, what have been the
marketing approaches that you've used with Bedrock, and what have
worked well for you?
Zak: So Kathleen, we've been very use case
focused with the problems that we help people solve. So that's
going to fuse a lot of our content talking about the problems we've
solved. And getting very specific, things like if we're helping
people connect HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics, or syncing HubSpot
data to Power BI, building out content, building out videos,
building out landing pages, and
even paid search
campaigns and SEO
optimization around that specific use case or that
specific problem -- that's been a common theme to where we've
generated strong demand and success.
Kathleen: That's really interesting to me
because I talk to a lot of people on this podcast. And I would say
the majority of them tend not to see success with very
product-focused content. And I think that's because, in many cases,
those are the types of companies where the right prospect maybe
knows they have a pain point, but they don't really know what the
solution is. Whereas, it sounds like in your case, if I'm
understanding you correctly, your prospects have the pain point and
they know that what they need to do is to connect these two things.
They might not know that you're the one to do it for them. Or they
might not know that there's a connector. But it sounds like what
you're saying is there's enough people actively out there
searching, "How do I connect Microsoft Dynamics and Hubspot?" for
example, that you can optimize for that very specific search. Is
that right?
Zak: Yeah. And not saying that's the
exclusive focus of the efforts, but I do think ... back to your
point about product ... I'm all for top
of the funnel. I'm all about leadership content. But you also
need to balance that with, "Lets be very clear with how we can help
people." And if people are actively searching for a solution, or
looking for a specific solution, you want to be there to capture
that demand as well.
Kathleen: Absolutely, yeah. You don't want to
slow down their buyer's
journey if they're already at the middle
of the funnel, don't send them back to the top.
Right?
Zak: Yeah.
Kathleen: When you and I first started
talking, I asked you, "What's worked really well from a marketing
standpoint for Bedrock?" and you had several different examples,
but one that really intrigued me was customer stories. And on the
surface, it doesn't sound like there's anything flashy or new about
that because lots of companies do case
studies. But you have a really interesting approach, and I'd
love it if you could talk a little bit more about how you guys look
at customer stories and how you use them.
Zak: Yeah. Great topic, one I'm passionate
about. I wrote a blog on my personal blog, Kathleen. It was over a
year ago. And I titled it, "Arms Tied Behind My Back, If I could
Only Do One Marketing Activity, It'd Be This" so I'm a big
believer in customer interviews. Let's start there. So the thing
that I have found really interesting is many marketing teams I've
been part of, they've struggled to get the volume of customer
stories or case studies. It's often times a battle with sales. How
can we find these customers? How do we get them to speak on the
record? So the process that we've put in place is once a customer
is successfully onboarded, I'm reaching out.
It's a very light ask. It's basically, "Hey, I'd love to hear from you, love to chat for half an hour, learn a little bit more about how we're helping you, what you're doing with it. Maybe it'll be an opportunity to share your story." And just start with that conversation. In that conversation, I'll wind it back to how their buying journey started. What problems were they facing? How did they talk about those problems? Who was involved in the project? How did they discover Bedrock Data? Straight through to what it was like getting onboarded with the software. What problems did they solve? How would they characterize the problems that Bedrock Data is solving for them today?
And what it does is it creates some really good authentic
content. In our case, we just call it a customer interview series.
And we're regularly publishing out those pieces of content. I've
found it to be a fantastic foundation for a bunch of specific
marketing deliverables, and a whole lot more. And I'd be happy to
share more about that, but I'll pause there for a moment.
Kathleen: So let's go back to where you
started. Clients hire Bedrock. And after they've been onboarded,
you're reaching out. And at that stage, are you telling them that
this is something that is going to be turned into content, or is it
really more of a conversation and you see where it goes?
Zak: We package it as a customer interview
series, but also let them know, at that point, that we're not
asking for hard permission -- meaning we're going to have a
conversation. If you're comfortable with it, we'll share it back
with you for you to have a chance to review and edit and ultimately
approve, but keeping it as a pretty low bar for what that ask is at
that point.
Kathleen: What's interesting about this to me
is that I think the majority of companies put a lot of pressure on
themselves by waiting until they have a true success story...like
an outcome. And depending upon the type of product or service
you're selling, that can take a long time. At IMPACT, we're
a marketing
agency. And having outcomes from marketing agency work can take
sometimes six months, a year, sometimes longer. So it can take
forever to get a success story, whereas it's intriguing to me that
you're going to them right after onboarding. And it sounds like at
least the first conversation is more centered around what got you
here and what are you looking for us to solve, than it is about
what the outcome is. Is that correct?
Zak: I'd say yes. We may have a conversation
just about the problems, the issues, other trends in the industry.
If there is a strong endorsement at that point, all the better, but
that's not a prerequisite. So there's an authentic content element
to this, but there's also continuously understanding your customer
and their buyer's journey. There is no better time to talk to them
and get insight around why they bought, how they found you in that
point of time.
Another huge benefit to this is if you're always engaging with
customers, talking with them, you're going to really get key
insight that's going to help you inform marketing
strategies connected to that buyer journey.
Kathleen: That's so powerful. And I say that
because right now my team at IMPACT is actually in the thick of
revisiting all of our own audience
personas, and I have everybody on my team calling a couple of
people and asking them all kinds of questions. And it's not
something that we've done frequently, and it's a big effort right
now to try and really learn a lot about our audience. And so, it's
interesting to hear you talk about this because I can see the value
in treating your persona research as a very agile strategy.
Zak: Always on, yeah.
Kathleen: It makes all the sense in the
world, especially when the product you're selling is technology,
things change really really fast. And so I can see that you almost
have to take that approach, otherwise, you could be doing a lot of
work based on assumptions that are faulty.
Zak: Absolutely.
Kathleen: So you're having these
conversations. Tell us a little bit about what type of content
you're creating from that first conversation. What does that look
like?
Zak: So essentially it's a conversation ...
It's like an interview style article, that has typically like a
four part structure. It's about that company and that person in
their role. It's then talking about, in our case, sort of their
sales and marketing approach. So what's your approach to sales and
marketing. And then it gets into underlying things that may have
led them to come to Bedrock. So, in our case, it's, "What
technologies were you using?" We decided to invest in XYZ marketing
automation systems for these reasons.
We were using this CRM and then we stumbled across this need.
How did we find Bedrock? And then getting into the "solution", in
air quotes, so what did they do? How did we help them? I ask
questions like, "How would you characterize what Bedrock Data is
doing for you today, how it's helping you?" And then, kind of
replaying or rephrasing some of that back to them. We'll edit that
up, put it in a google doc, share it with the customer, have them
review it, approve it, publish it to our blog as part of this
interview series. The sales team loves it as well because it's good
authentic content that they can share with prospects that are
facing similar problems. We'll also then mine that content for good
quotes that can be repurposed. I'm very straightforward with
the customer. It's like "Okay, well once this is published, what's
nice is we can repurpose that."
The sales team loves the content Kathleen, because they can use it.
It's authentic content they could share with someone going through
the buying process. It's like, "Hey! You might be interested in
this article 'cause it sounds like it's ... they went through a
similar thing that you guys are discussing right now." Or maybe
even working with those exact same technologies that someone else
is challenged with.
And then also, once that article is published, then we as Bedrock,
we could compile them. We could mine from them. We could repurpose
from them, and even quote quotes from them and use for other
purposes. But like I said, it's sort of that nice first step with a
customer. The other thing it does is it's the start of a
relationship with that customer. So we've had many cases where once
you get that article out there, and I've actually been amazed that
some people really latch on to it. They post it to their website.
They post it to their LinkedIn. They post it to their social
media.
So you can tell once people are really engaged around it. And
then, those people you can do more with. So then once they are
engaged with us, once we have that relationship, then talk about
doing a webinar program with them. I've had cases. I had a customer
where we did a joint speaking session at the MarTec
Conference in San Francisco last year that got born out of
this process. We've had customers from agencies that have written
about the experience on their own blogs that were born out of this
process. So it's an organic process that can lead to more and more
things over time from this sort of initial spark.
Kathleen: Now, how often do you approach
customers about doing this and get turned down?
Zak: I've hardly ever been turned down,
meaning a very high success rate. There's been definitely some
where the timing isn't right. But if I had to pin a success rate,
it's gotta be around 75 or 80 percent of people that are reaching
out to having the conversation.
Kathleen: That's great. So obviously you have
some people, as you've said, who become almost evangelists in their
sharing of the content, which is such a fantastic end result from a
marketing standpoint. That's what you look for when you have any
kind of content that mentions other people. What type of promotion
do you do of the content yourselves. You've said you put it
on your blog, and your sales people share it. Are
you also putting it out there through your social channels, through
any kind of paid promotion?
Zak: We're putting it out through our social
channels. So the blog posts themselves we're putting out through
social channels. For us, that's largely LinkedIn and Twitter. We
will send it to our email subscribers if the piece fits their
profile. For example, for Bedrock, a lot of our segmentation is
based on what systems you're using. So if it's a story about a
HubSpot or Dynamics customer, we would share that out with people
that are working with similar systems or facing similar challenges.
So there's an email sharing element to it. We'll also compile
multiple stories around certain topics.
So one of the series of content we did in my first year at
Bedrock, which was 2016 and 17, we created a series of guides. We
called it "The Mega Guide to HubSpot
Integrations," "The Mega Guide to Marketo
Integrations," "The Mega Guide to Pardot
Integrations." And a lot of that source content fed into
those pieces. Those became like CTA assets promoted through paid
search and other channels as well.
Kathleen: So were those pillar
content pieces?
Zak: Yep. Those were pillar content pieces
that were compiled from these original interviews.
Kathleen: Interesting. I would love to hear,
do you have any data around what kind of traction these posts get,
or what kind of traffic they pull to your website? How are you
measuring success for this content?
Zak: I would say a good percentage of our
leads touch this content in some way in their buying journey,
whether it's the initial touchpoint for some, whether it's the
engagement touchpoint for some, meaning they were already engaged
but this sort of moved them forward, whether they were part of a
nurturing process. A good percentage of leads and opportunities and
ultimately customers are being touched or influenced by this
content.
Kathleen: Great. Any plans to change the
format as you go forward? Do you ever check back in with somebody
after that initial conversation and do the part two sequel?
Zak: We've done some of that, but what I do
want to do more of Kathleen is definitely more video or multi
media content. That was one of the things that's been bugging me
about this. We've strictly kind of repurposed it as articles, where
I think there's a big opportunity to ... whether it's audio
versions or video versions, that's something I'd like to do as part
of that part two follow up in the future that we have yet to
do.
Kathleen: Great. I love all of that. I think
that's really interesting. I think I might actually try it. If
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then consider yourself
flattered.
Zak: I'd love for you to try it. I want you
to try it. And I'd love to hear how it works out for you
too.
Kathleen: Well I'm sitting in the same shoes
you are. I'm VP of marketing for IMPACT. I like the idea of
reaching out to new customers shortly after they start working with
us, and learning more about what brought them to us. Even if you're
not creating published stories from that, I feel that there has to
be so much value in keeping your finger on the pulse of what really
are these pain points, and what did somebody go looking for when
they started their journey, that ended with you?
Zak: Absolutely.
Kathleen: We often have to rely on sales to
give us that information. And we certainly do talk to our sales
team, but if you can cut out one step in that loop and talk
directly to the audience, I think that's even better.
Zak: I really totally agree Kathleen. And it
really is ... it's a good time to reach out as well because it's a
net positive experience for the customer as well, I've found,
meaning it's a positive interaction with your company. So don't
feel like you're burdening them or you're kind of inserting
yourself. Maybe there's an outstanding issue. Maybe there's
something that's going to come up. But don't be scared about it,
because I've got to tell you ...
And in this post that I wrote, I had eight points. And my eighth
point around why do it is, it's fun and rewarding. And it really
has been excellent to connect with people, learn more about their
situation, build these relationships, springboard, like I said,
these other projects, webinars or even events where we're working
with people. So it really has been fun and rewarding, and a great
way to kind of build those personal relationships and insights into
your marketing.
Kathleen: I imagine that it also must have an
impact on the quality of your relationship as a company with the
client. I think one of the things that I've been really interested
in is how the conversation in the world of marketing is shifting. I
think historically it's been so focused on everything that we do
before we do a deal. You know what I mean? It's like, how do you
track somebody in at the top of the funnel? How do you get them to
convert? How do you get them to close?
And then after that, in the past at least, it felt like the marketing conversation kind of stopped. And that does seem to be changing. And there's more tools being put in place that help marketers to look at the entire life cycle a customer has with the company, and including while they're working with that company.
And that seems like such a healthy direction to go because one
of the big challenges I see with all the marketers I speak to is
not just how do you first attract a new customer, but how do we
capitalize on opportunities to cross sell and up sell, and extract
the maximum lifetime value out of a client. And that sounds really
cold and kind of calculating, but as a marketer, honestly, that's
your job. And then how do you also build a strong relationship so
that when that client leaves and is no longer a customer, they're
singing your praises and referring you to other great prospects?
And so, it's an interesting approach that I think could lend itself
well to solving for those challenges as well.
Zak: Yeah. And we've seen that exact
scenario. It's a strong connection with your customer success or
your account management function, whatever you might call it. So in
my case Luke Owen runs that team, and he knows that this is a key
thing that we want to do together. So he's making that initial hand
off. But then, I'm also feeding back to him. So I'm bringing back
to him, "Hey, here's the finished interview." He's involved. So
it's a close partnership between marketing and customer success.
And to your point, it's a net positive for customer success. He
knows once someone, a customer, has been through that process,
they're actually considered much closer to being an evangelist for
the company, which is one of his goals as well.
Kathleen: The other thing that's interesting
is, I find that the fewer individual people that a customer forms a
relationship with, the higher the risk that client is, because
their perception of their relationship with the company rests so
strongly on the shoulders of that one person who's their account
rep.
For example, whereas if you're able to expose that customer to
more people from within the company, which this process does, then
if something goes wrong with their account rep ... which
inevitably, problems happen in any working relationship. But if you
have other people that that customer feels they can talk to or they
have a relationship with, that somehow serves to cushion and
safeguard the overall relationship with the company.
Zak: Great point. I think, again, it's sort
of a modern approach. The more ways to relate to a customer ... the
more mediums too, which is now you're sharing content on Twitter,
you're tagging them, they're sharing content. So it's more people
and even more mediums to forge that bond with a customer.
Kathleen: Yeah, which is unusual in my
experience in SaaS, because I feel like so many other SaaS
companies I work with, the model is either totally touchless if
you're a lower priced SaaS, and then they never talk to anybody.
Or, if you're enterprise SaaS, you have your success manager or
your onboarding person that you have your relationship with. The
goal seems to be deliberately minimize the contact with the
customer for scalability reasons, which makes a lot of sense.
Zak: Right. Good point. Good point. Different
trends at play for sure.
Kathleen: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing
all that. That was so interesting. I'm curious. There's two
questions I always ask each of my guests. And I would love to get
your answers to these.
The first is: Company or individual, who do you think is doing
inbound marketing really well right now?
Zak: Well, I'm not sure if it's inbound marketing technically
speaking. But in terms of companies that I notice and I
admire, Drift does an outstanding job. What David
Cancel's done with Drift is the whole organization is oriented
around communicating the value of conversational marketing. So
whether it's HR or whether it's customer success, engineering, you
see those folks constantly getting the word out through social
media and other channels. They had a product launch today in fact,
and just tons and tons of video content out there from Drift.
I think they've struck a chord around some of the key problems
they're solving and they've done a nice job with creating
content.
Kathleen: So you're referring to
their Drift email product launch.
Zak: The Drift email product launch was the
one that hit today. Yes.
Kathleen: Yeah. I just saw that
on Product Hunt. And I have to tell you, it's very
funny. The Universe is screaming at me to have somebody from Drift
on this podcast, because I think you're the third or the fourth
person in a row that I've interviewed who has answered this
question with Drift.
Zak: They're doing a good job. And Kathleen,
I'm sure they'd love to be on your podcast.
Kathleen: I was gonna say David Cancel or
David Gerhardt.
Zak: Gerhardt.
Kathleen: If you're listening David Gerhardt,
the universe is telling you and me that we need to talk. That's so
great and obviously they're doing a lot right, because a lot of
people are talking about them and saying really exactly what you're
saying, which is that they have the messaging down. So if you're
listening and you wanna see a great example, check out Drift for
sure.
Second question: With the world of marketing changing so
quickly, how do you stay up to date? How do you educate yourself?
What are your go to sources for information?
Zak: I think I'm gonna give you a different
answer than your past guests, although I don't know for sure. I'm a
huge proponent of live events. I think I've read every blog. I've
seen every article. But for me, how I actually get values these
days is user groups. I'm part of the Marketo and HubSpot user
groups and others here in the Boston area.
There's a really nice meet up called MarTech that happens every
two or three months. So for me, I really like getting out there and
spending time with colleagues and comparing notes, chatting up and
just kind of learning what people are seeing and what they're up
to. That for me is the best way to keep on the pulse and to keep
learning.
Kathleen: Well you are in fact the first
person to say that.
Zak: Yes!
Kathleen: You win some kind of a badge. I'll
have to make it up and I'll send you a little Inbound Success
Podcast Original Answer Badge. And I would second that because I
actually am the leader of the HubSpot user group in my hometown of Annapolis
Maryland. And we're small. There's probably between 20 and 30
people that show up to any given meet up. But those are some of my
favorite events. You get to have really good in depth conversations
with people who are in the thick of it with the software. And
they're doing real work and have very interesting questions and
problem sets that need to be solved.
I just think there's so much that can be gained from peer
learning, which is how I would characterize that, and those
relationships.
And having that ... meeting those people, knowing who's out there
using it, and having the virtual Rolodex that you can call when you
run into something you can't solve yourself is incredibly
valuable.
Zak: Yeah. And by the way, when I attend
events, I will often, again depending on the type of event, I'm
often actively tweeting at events, sometimes doing a write up post
on my blog. So there's a nice tie in from the event back to social
media and content as well. And often times that part's a lot of fun
too.
Kathleen: Great. Well thank you so much for
sharing everything you did. I definitely would like to include a
link to your blog that you did on customer interviews in the show
notes. So I'll make sure to put that in there. If people have
questions about this and either want to learn more about Bedrock,
or want to learn more about this customer interview process that
you use, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Zak: Yeah. Reach out. My blog
is moneyballmarketer.com. On Twitter, I'm @moneyballmktr, so feel free to follow, tweet at me,
and then might as well throw in my email address Kathleen. It
is zak@bedrockdata.com , and
it's just Z-A-K, just Z-A-K for that one, which is not usually the
way people spell Zak unless I tell them. So
zak@bedrockdata.com.
Kathleen: Terrific. I'll put all that in the
show notes. And by the way, I do love the moneyball marketer
moniker. That's great.
Zak: Yes! And there's a story there for
another day as well.
Kathleen: I bet there is. Well thank you so
much.
Zak: We'll keep that as a teaser.
Kathleen: Yeah. Thank you so much for joining
us. If you are listening and you like what you heard, please do
leave a review on iTunes or Stitcher. And if you know somebody
doing kick as inbound marketing work, please tweet me
at workmommywork because I would love
to interview them. Thank you Zak.
Zak: Kathleen, this has been so much fun.
Thanks.