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 has decided to start this weekly series of interviews with worldwide professionals doing marketing and business in a different way, the right way, with a bit of funk, and help the wider auditorium to get to know what great marketing is and how do we do it.
This week 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.
He is currently 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 with the latest one 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.
Need help with your marketing campaign, strategy, or execution? Funky Marketing can help! From research to execution, we’ll help you get results. Check our pricing page to learn more.
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.
That’s it for today guys! We hope you enjoyed getting to know Yaagneshwaran Ganesh a bit better. If you want to see more interviews like this one make sure to check out our interviews page where you can find interesting conversations with marketing and business professionals from all over the world. And if you want to learn more about marketing yourself, be sure to check our blog for more tips, tricks, and advice. Cheers!
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