Todd Kunsman – Transcript

AMA with Todd Kunsman @ EveryoneSocial

December 3rd, 2020

Thanks for having me in this AMA and I’m looking forward to answering as many questions as I can about being a former marketing team of one, to growing a marketing team, falling into a digital marketing career after college, or anything else digital marketing related! Big fan of:

• Content
• SEO
• Social
• Customer marketing
• Side hustles

I’m definitely not as cool as past guests, but I’ll do my best here (; About me: I’m the Director of Marketing at EveryoneSocial, the employee advocacy and engagement platform that helps teams stay informed, creating, and sharing content no matter where they are located. Some customers include Dell, ADP, Mattress Firm, Veolia, Broadridge, and many others. For 3.5 years I was the only marketing person and now I’m growing the marketing team (4 of us total so far in marketing) after raising our recent $7.6M Series A. I’m also the founder of a personal finance website Invested Wallet and I previously worked at a marketing agency as well, having worked with brands like IBM, Treehouse, Cloud Elements, and more.

Hey, Todd! Current marketing team of one right now looking to hire someone on during a pandemic and budget crunches! How did you start going about growing your team and what do you think is the most compelling argument for growing?

Hi Sammi, thanks for the question! We have ambitious goals for 2021 and to obtain those, there was no way I could do it all myself haha! But the most compelling argument is show a plan: What you want to do in marketing for the next year, how you’ll get there, and results your generating now but could be amplified with additional hires. Show the gaps and how a new hire  would solve that 

Your decision making strategies

Hey Naz, decision making can be tough! But for a team of 1 and now 4, it was about what would drive the most value. What is going to move the needle with our limited resources. Understanding what you want to accomplish, will help  guide your decisions and what strategies to focus on

Hey Todd
Thanks for doing this
I’m a growth marketer for a DM Agency based in Singapore
What do you think should be central in running any campaign?
The copy or the targeting and campaign settings?

No prob and thanks for the question Shiva! I think first, understanding what the goal of your campaign is before thinking ahead. Why do you want to run this campaign? What is the benefit to the audience and your company? From there I think it can help guide everything from copy to your campaign settings/targeting. Otherwise you are just writing copy blindly hoping it sticks

Hey Todd, thanks for being here! I’d love to hear how you work out your Content strategy as you grow your team.

Content is huge for EveryoneSocial and has been since I joined since day 1. We wanted to be the authority of our niche and content was the way to do that. Plus, there was a gap in SEO of most of our competitors so a potential win right there. Meaning, many were missing and still are, good opportunities to drive organic results. That said, the content marketer position was the first one I hired, to not only double down on blog content that provides actual value, but help create new forms of content. She’s managing our upcoming podcasts and live panel discussions too. Organic is our #1 channel, drive 80% of our leads right now.

Hey Todd, what’s your software stack look like?

Surprisingly not insane. On the marketing front we have SEMRush, HubSpot, Terminus, G2, Drift, and Zoom. I think that is honestly it. I might be missing something though.

What is your content marketing strategy?

Hey Michael, that’s a good question that would take a bit to answer concretely. But the basics includes pain points our platform solves, interesting points of view and data (we need to work more on the data yet), making the customers the heroes, finding keywords we can work for but also provide new perspectives and tie in either our product our resources, and being creative. We experiment quite a bit to not just blend in with the feeds.

Hi Todd… What’s your take on the “traditional” buyer’s journey style of marketing (targeting personas, helping users solve problems) vs. more organic developer-focused outreach?

Hey John, I’ve heard many marketer leaders say the traditional buyer’s  journey style is dead. But honestly, it really helped me understand our buyers and audiences. Even though our platform solves marketing and sales challenges, it’s used a lot by recruiters, employer brand, and communications teams too. So there is a lot to go through with our audience and buyer personas and understand their journey was helpful. That said, I also don’t obsess over updating and building out complex journey’s

Thanks for being here Todd. How can I write better copy?

Thanks for joining! And practice, practice, practice. I’m still learning and trying new things. I also like to be conversational, creative, and avoid traditional marketing jargon when you can. It feels more personal and I find buyers (especially in B2B) need more of that.

What’s the last thing that made you think ‘Ahh shit, that’s incredible…’?

Pretty much anything Gong puts out about their brand. Their marketing team is incredible and inspire me. And selfishly, a recent LinkedIn ad I built that generated 46 highly qualified leads in less than 20 hours of it being live, spending less than $1500. It caught me off guard and I said “Holy Shit” about four times haha

What do you think was the secret ingredient for that ad?

A few things, moving to Lead Gen Forms, to make it as easy as possible to get a conversion. While we always prefer business emails, we are getting legit targets we want in our pipeline. Second is the targeting, it was a new group of people and then we used Linkedin’s auto-bidding, which drives the CPC down. And lastly is the copy, I write more than a line and ensure there is value. And of course, make the image stand out.

Hey, thanks for sharing your time with us today. I’m the founder of a business association for creatives. I’m struggling to keep everyone engaged in between online workshops each month, and tips? Target market is women ages 25-45

Hi Aisha, I hear ya there. I think so many are burnt out with the Zooms, Slack, and info overload, etc. My best thought would be what value can you provide them to show you care? What more can you do to be supportive of their interests and needs? How can you highlight them to get them interested in more. Without knowing much about your business and current state of everything, specific ideas aren’t hitting me. Best of luck!

Hey Todd!
Do you have any advice on implementing social strategies specifically Centered on the new social voice platform Clubhouse? 

I’ve been hearing more about Clubhouse but haven’t looked to much into it yet. But just on knowing the basic concept, I think creativity in showing how it’s the better platform would be awesome. Like testimonials from customers/users and uploading native videos of that. Product feature videos that solves paint points of traditional ways, etc. I’m sure I could think of more if I was more involved, but hope that helps a bit!

Hi, my current position sounds similar, I am a marketing director for a small but global firm – however, I am the ONLY marketing person! Often I don’t know where to begin because we don’t have systems in place to funnel leads, follow up on leads, know our conversions etc. What would be a good starting point to focus and grow in the marketing sphere when working in a small firm and juggling so many tasks?

Not knowing your budget, I would get some basic form of marketing automation in place, that way your leads are funneled in one location, you can see information about the leads, and start organizing them. It was one of the first things I did at EveryoneSocial, because they were using Mailchimp as like a CRM, which doesn’t work too great. But then you can automate a bunch of things. Although not ideal, until the team grows it can take some pressure off of you. Other than that, look at what items move the needle the most and what is most important to your firm and focus there. Some things may fall behind, but you want to stay focused on what is drive results most .

Have you always applied your trade in the start-up/corporate sector or have you slogged it out in the mud pits with the masses helping local business or affiliate projects?

I worked for the publisher Rodale which was bought by Hearst. I was in email marketing for about 3 years, then went into a random digital asset role. But after being letgo, I was inspired to work in digital marketing. I started teaching myself, taking courses, I started a music blog to practice on, and then moved into some freelance roles with start ups. That gave me experience in SaaS/B2B and remote work. Then I worked for a marketing agency, because I knew I’d learn a ton and could ramp up my skills fast. Now I also run Invested Wallet, a personal finance website where I do affiliate marketing and run ads

Curious – how’s working with G2?

It’s been great, solid team over there. I started focusing on a review strategy in late 2017. G2 was just starting to become more dominate then and then we upgraded for the paid platform in 2018. It’s been good for our Sales team to see who is on our profile, comparison data, and see if any customers are reviewing and potentially stop any churn if a renewal is coming up as it could be a sign (not always)

Hi, welcome! Thanks for joining us! What’s been your strategy to building Invested Wallet? Do you manage it on your own or do you have help? And which channels have you found to be most beneficial for growing/driving traffic?

Hi Chantelle! First was getting in big publications to help build trust and also get traffic, since SEO can take 8-12months on a new site to kick in. Then do a helluva job promoting it to build traffic. I manage it all on my own, but I have a writer now where I provide the topic and outline of the content, she fills it in, and I’ll edit a bit and do the set up. I still write posts too, but not as much. Since June 2020, I’ve had a run but before that is all me writing. I even did a month in March where I wrote and posted something new everyday! Never again lol I was mentally exhausted

Hi, I’m a former VP in PR and now a freelance content writer for the past 13 years. I’m currently taking a number of digital marketing courses to up my game and be more competitive with the “youngsters.” Do you have any tips for someone who is trying to enter digital marketing, but who is older, wiser, and with management experience?

Love it! I’m a fan of the “Always Be Learning” mentality, no matter how many years experience. And like you said, marketing is changing all the time! But as far as tips, I’d listen to some marketing podcasts, follow some of the start ups you hear about all the time and watch their marketing (Gong, Drift, Outreach, as some examples), and don’t be afraid to try new things and be different. Sometimes the best learning for me has been to try some idea and see what happens.

Thank you! Which marketing podcasts would you recommend?

I enjoy B2B Marketing Leaders Podcast, B2B Growth Podcast, and The Flip My Funnel podcast. There is prob others too, but those have some great topics and guests

Hi ! Have any recommendations for finding an agency to help a startup with a marketing team of one with strategy? Or a specific agency that you love, if relevant!

So we’ve never used an agency personally, mostly at the time was due to budgets and our needs. I worked at SmartAcre, which knows the start up space pretty well and the team there is great. Other than that, I don’t have any specific recommendations but there are lots out there!

Hi, What’s the most important thing to remember for on-page SEO and a blog content strategy?  Thanks for being here and answering questions, btw

SEO – make sure you are answering the intent of the keyword or phrase you are targeting in the content and build a clean/easy to read post structure. Bounce rate is a smaller factor in SEO but if you have bulky and ugly blog pages, people will bounce fast and Google can tell.  And for Blog Content Strategy, always remember what your target audience and customers care about, otherwise your content falls into a void 

Hi everyone! I’m Dixita, a content specialist at Matterapp, and I would love to get some advice on SEO tactics! Early March, I wrote various SEO blogs with trending keywords from Ahref, but they haven’t ranked. What can I do to optimize those blogs so they rank? Also, if I’m applying a keyword to the H1 or meta description does adding a character/symbol impact ranking?For example, if the word “cupcake” is trending, and I create a blog called “Cupcake: How to Make the Perfect Dessert,” would the colon hinder the keyword from ranking?

Hi there! So first, why do you want to only go after trending keywords? Are they related to your company? You want to target topics that don’t just bring traffic, but bring the RIGHT traffic. And ranking goes beyond just the term, what’s the competition look like for the term? What DA do they have? Do they have a lot of backlinks to their posts? What can you add to the post that they don’t have? What type of content is ranking ( count down posts, guides?). So many factors to consider! Also, the colon isn’t going to change if it ranks or not, I use them in titles and they will rank if the content is good.

Alot to digest! But there can be a lot of reasons. Other things include Site speed, content layout, authority in your niche, etc.

Thanks for doing this! Amazing to read through. I am curious about pitching marketing initiatives to Finance/Mgmt, and best way to “sell the case”. Even with an average 23x ROAS (sometimes as high as 52x) for e-commerce, I am struggling to get full buy-in from leadership in regards to investment. I show them the spend, the engagement, get other marketing professional’s opinions, and yet there is still a hesitancy due to correlation vs causality. HELP! How do I get them to see the light!?

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a CEO who gets the value of marketing and especially when there is data to back it up. So the question to you is, do you know why they wouldn’t want to spend if they are making more money than you spend?Seems like a no brainer and if the results speak for themselves, sounds like there is more going on with their finance side. I could be wrong, but I’m curious to hear what the concerns are. If anything, try to address those concerns with more data and how not spending impacts the business negatively. Maybe not the best answer, but without knowing them, the business, or data, hard to say. But if anything sounds like they aren’t see the right proof needed to commit. Maybe ask, what it is they are looking for that would ease their minds? Then get the data and put together a report for them. Good luck!

I am getting 150 conversions a day (Free+paid plan) But users sign-up on paid plan is comparatively low. what would you do to increase users on paid plan?

I would start by finding out how much extra value the paid plan bring and is that extra value actually valuable to the users? Have you spoke to users who converted to understand what made them do so? It might offer some insights that can lead to more clear messaging to free users about why they should convert to a paid plan.

Great session! Thank you Todd Kunsman Very insightful. 

Hey all, wrapping up here, so if there is any other questions these last few mins, ask away! And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, always down to connect with other marketers: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddkunsman/