Why should your process start with understanding your customers.
Short answer: a process built on anything else is a process built on assumptions. When you know what the customer is trying to do, which words they use for it and what stops them, the steps write themselves. When you do not, you end up with a tidy workflow that produces work nobody asked for. That is the thread running through this conversation with Yaagneshwaran Ganesh.
What the conversation covers
| Topic | What the interview covers |
|---|---|
| Personal brand and team | How he built a personal brand, a reliable team and long-term client relationships |
| Process | A concrete example of a process, and where it comes from |
| Career | What he sees as the next big step in his own career |
| Learning | Where he studies today and how he keeps up |
| Knowledge sharing | Whether marketers share enough of what they actually know |
| Advice | What he recommends to the people who follow him |
The full interview follows, in his own words.
We’re living in a world where the demand for marketing services is high, but the results aren’t there. Mostly, it’s because of how we think and do marketing, but also because there are, because of the high demand, many companies and “professionals” that do things in a way that won’t bring desired results.
That’s why Funky Marketing ran this series of interviews with worldwide professionals doing marketing and business in a different way, the right way, with a bit of funk, to help the wider auditorium get to know what great marketing is and how it is done.
In this interview we’re talking with Yaagneshwaran Ganesh (popularly known as Yaag), an award-winning marketer, author, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. He is recognized by The World Marketing Congress as one of the Marketing Mavericks, in association with the World Federation of Marketing Professionals.
At the time of this interview he was the Director of Content Marketing at Avoma and he enjoys helping early-stage startups with their content, more specifically in building their narrative and category.
He is also a best-selling author of 8 books, the latest at the time titled ‘The Collaborative Crow’.
Yaag is also the host of The Modern SaaS Podcast, the podcast for SaaS founders and operators, where they discuss how to build and grow B2B SaaS in a modern way.
He also speaks at international business forums such as TEDx, Performance Marketing Moscow, Chamber of Commerce Netherlands, The World Marketing Congress, and academic institutions such as the IITs, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, and more.
Today, we have an amazing opportunity to learn more about Yaag and his views on marketing, branding, and business so let’s not waste any more time and get right into it.
How to build a personal brand/reliable team/continuous quality/long-term satisfied client?
Personal brand as a concept is very misunderstood. Look, I’m not against the idea of personal brand, but very much against what’s propagated in the name of it.
Behind all the comparisons of Elon or CR7 or Lebron being a personal brand we often forget the body of work, and their achievements. Merely making noise is not the way to become a brand. There needs to be a body of work or happy customers or some outcomes. The layers on the cake make the cake. Not the cream.
But that said, should you market your expertise? YES! Absolutely. As long as you don’t believe that expertise is all marketing.
The simplest way (though it needs effort) is to keep going above and beyond the expectations of your customer, and also keep sharing those stories with the world via social media. Your brand is a combination of who you are, what your PoV is, and the impact you create for your clients/customers with your unique PoV and who you are.
Let’s talk about processes. Give us an example to help us understand how you think about marketing campaigns.
Campaigns should always offer the opportunity to connect to the larger goal and ensure it takes customer experience into account in every step.
For example, if you take a look at Avoma’s blogs (let’s use “How to run an effective sales pipeline review” blog for example), you’ll see that we don’t have the standard social media sharing icons you see with most other SaaS blogs.
Also, you see a sequence of topics and subheaders on the left side, where we have listed the topics in the journey of how someone consumes this piece of content.
Why did we not use the regular social sharing icons? Because, based on my conversation with the readers (at least 25+ readers), we realized that no one wants to share some SaaS company’s content on their social media.
Instead, if they find it really useful, they share it with their team to learn from it – via Slack, email, etc. Therefore, we simply added a TOC for their skimming and a copy URL button for them to share where they want.
Also the “Also read” suggestion in most blogs is a random algorithm based on the topic category. So, we decided that instead of making people find the content they are looking for, we can offer a sequence of topics by listing them in one place (the left list under “Sales Playbook).
Net takeaway: Your process should stem from your understanding of customers, and should be an iterative process of making it better one day at a time to achieve the results you want without compromising the CX.
What do you consider the next big step in your career? Why?
Honestly, titles don’t matter, and I’m in the best role I’ve had in my entire life. I would love to go on to become the biggest evangelist Avoma will ever see. In the long term, however, I would love to get into teaching marketing as practically as possible.
Where are you studying today?
My favorite learning hangouts are podcasts State of Demand Gen Podcast and Exit 5. Also, I derive a lot of inspiration from the works of Richard Feynman (although he is not from the world of marketing).
What do you think, are we sharing enough knowledge? Why? And how is it impacting the way companies think of marketing today?
I would say – there is a balance between “are we sharing enough” and “are we sharing meaningful things?” Today, social media, for instance, has become a noisy attention-seeking space like advertisements.
The point is we need to build trust for people to consume what we share.
For instance, The Modern SaaS Podcast is one of our steps at Avoma to share meaningful learnings from the SaaS journey, rather than coming across as yet another organization talking about their products and services.
The impact, in my view, in simple terms is asking yourself: “Are we being truly useful, or is it merely self-serving?”
What do you recommend to those who follow you? What is it that helped you to be where you are?
The key learning/message is: Be curious and always be open to learning.
FAQ: understanding your customers
What does understanding your customers actually mean.
Knowing the job they are trying to get done, the words they use to describe it, and what has already failed them. Firmographics tell you who they are. Only conversations tell you what they are dealing with.
How do you learn what customers care about.
Talk to them, read their support tickets, sit in on sales calls, and read the reviews they leave for competitors. Most of what a marketing team needs is already recorded somewhere in the company.
Where do most marketing processes go wrong.
They get copied from someone else. A process that worked for another company carries that company assumptions about its buyers, and those assumptions rarely transfer.
How often should you revisit customer research.
Whenever the market moves or the product changes, and at least once a year regardless. Research goes stale quietly, and the first sign is usually that the messaging stops landing.
Related reading: creating content and building your personal brand, the secret to building your personal brand, and content marketing strategy for B2B SaaS.
This article is from the Funky Marketing blog archive. The work continues at Funky Enterprises: positioning, demand generation and commercial systems for B2B companies.
If you want to look at your own commercial system, book a 30-minute needs assessment. New conversations with people who build revenue are on the Funky Enterprises Show.
