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Marketing, Success, and Risk-Taking: Mano Guiragossian
49 Plays4 years ago
In marketing, nothing is guaranteed. Sometimes, it’s about taking risks and leaps of faith.
In a data-driven world, data doesn’t deliver all the answers. Marketing is an unpredictable and often surprising creature.
Last year, a lot of B2B wanted to de-risk marketing. They pulled back on spending, chopped staff, and counted every dollar.
But that approach only works for so long. At some point, you need to get back in the game and take risks to succeed.
On the Marketing Spark podcast, Mano Guiragossian talks about how he has navigated the risk journey with clients.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers insight, tools and tips from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches in 20 minutes or less.
Challenges for Marketing Agencies in 2020
00:00:11
Speaker
For marketing agencies and marketing consultants, 2020 has been, well, interesting.
00:00:18
Speaker
that many of us started the year well, then saw business disappear, and then saw clients start to return.
Insights from Mano Giragosian on Navigating 2020
00:00:25
Speaker
To get insight into how our marketing agency has been doing business this year, I reached out to Mano Giragosian, who heads up Giragosian Media. Mano offers some great insight on LinkedIn about a variety of topics, so definitely follow him.
YouTube Strategies and Video Marketing Insights
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to Marketing Spark. Thank you, Mark. It's my pleasure to be with you today.
00:00:45
Speaker
Among the many things marketing related that you talk about on LinkedIn, video seems to be a very common theme. And I've really learned a lot from you in terms of how to approach video and how specifically to take advantage of YouTube.
The Evolution and Importance of Video Marketing
00:01:02
Speaker
So maybe you can talk a little bit about
00:01:05
Speaker
how you envision video in 2021. Everyone says that video is king and that we should all be embracing video, but the ball seems to be moving all the time. What's your take on how to take advantage of video next year?
Repurposing Video Content for Engagement Benefits
00:01:21
Speaker
yeah so you know when it comes to marketing for me like everything works and when people say like video is king okay i agree with them that it's one of the most important formats to do content in but it's not for everyone for example i do videos but i don't
00:01:39
Speaker
do it too much because it's not the best format for me I do for example more written texts than videos but yeah I mean when it comes to video it's really important and it's more efficient to do videos because you know when you do like when you shoot a video for example
The Potential of Live Videos and YouTube Shorts in 2021
00:01:55
Speaker
you can
00:01:55
Speaker
like transform it into a written text into graphics and like repurpose it into different pieces of content and whether if you are doing like organic marketing or paid marketing for example for paid advertising on Facebook you can even create more custom audiences from videos from people who watch the videos and those stuff so yeah I really think that video is like one of it's it's really big because also like people
00:02:23
Speaker
feel you more than when they read your post like when you are talking with them directly to the camera they feel your passion they interact with you so. I think it's going to stay in twenty twenty one it's going to be big again as platforms are pushing it as well and few things that i'm also focusing on is more like doing live videos.
00:02:47
Speaker
I think live videos is going to be like huge in the next year because like people are staying at home so they would like for example to open your live video and engage with you and especially if you are a big influencer I think people love interacting with people who they like for especially if it's live so yeah I think live videos would be huge next year so that's my opinion about videos
YouTube's Advantage Over Social Media for Traffic
00:03:16
Speaker
What's your opinion about YouTube and the ways that people can take advantage of that platform? You've talked a little bit about YouTube Shorts. Can you talk about what you expect from that format and maybe perhaps best practices in terms of driving your audience, getting engagement, that kind of thing?
00:03:36
Speaker
YouTube is one of my favorite platforms because they reward the good content in a way like no platform does it. What I mean by that is when you publish a content, if it's really a good content and people are enjoying it,
00:03:55
Speaker
they will keep pushing it for years and years like you will keep getting traffic on it organically without spending anything on it and that's really huge because on social media for example on facebook instagram or linkedin when you publish a piece of content it might like keep getting engagement for day two or maybe for one two weeks and maximum for one month
00:04:17
Speaker
but after that it will die but when it comes to youtube it's a it's not a social media it's a search engine it's the second largest search engine in the world after google and it belongs to google as well so like when people are searching for content that's the first way that they might come across your videos
00:04:37
Speaker
and you will keep getting traffic on it. And the other way is that there are suggested videos on YouTube, which means that if your content is really good, YouTube will keep suggesting it to people. So for example, for my clients that I do YouTube managing to them, like they have videos before, like it's published before a year or two and it still gets
Engagement through Videos on LinkedIn
00:04:59
Speaker
traffic.
00:04:59
Speaker
When it comes to YouTube shorts, you know, they launched it recently. It's not available for everyone now. I think it's just available in the US or maybe some other countries as well, but they just launched it for a small audience to test it.
00:05:14
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe it works. Maybe it will find some success. But in my personal opinion, I think people are not on YouTube for those type of videos. People are on YouTube for now. I mean, they are used to watch longer videos and it's not a social media platform. That's why I think like
00:05:35
Speaker
It won't be convenient for people to watch such videos on YouTube and especially like now Like many platforms are doing that including tick tock was the first one and then Instagram launched its reels now YouTube and maybe we can see in the future more companies doing it I think so. It's not something different in my personal opinion it might work but I think it won't find a huge success, but again, no one knows like
00:06:05
Speaker
One of the things I wanted to talk to you about when it comes to video is video on LinkedIn.
Content Publishing Trends and LinkedIn Stories
00:06:10
Speaker
You and I are people who like publishing texts. I do some videos, I just don't find that they get the same engagement when I do them on LinkedIn. What's your take about videos on LinkedIn? A lot of people do them really well, like a marketer like Chris Walker. Are they effective and if so, what kind of videos should people be doing on LinkedIn?
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely effective. And you know, like the engagement you are getting on video, for me, it's more quality engagement than text. Let me tell you why, because when you are seeing like in your dashboard that, let's say 500 people are watching your videos, they actually watched it, they spent time on it. But when you take, for example, a written text might get
00:06:57
Speaker
2000 reach on it but it doesn't mean that those 2000 people spend the same time like they spent to watch your videos. I mean like reading your text might take from them maybe one or not even one minute but your videos might be three minutes four minutes and if they are actually continuing watching it and they are completing it
00:07:22
Speaker
It means like you are filtering your audience, you are getting more quality traffic from videos. So if you have a call to action at the end of your video and call to action at the end of your written text and you get traffic from both those pieces of content, the traffic you will get from videos, I think it's more of a quality traffic than the one you will get from written text because actually those people
00:07:46
Speaker
spend more time within you and the same way like for example everyone tells the audience you get from podcasting are more high quality audience for you because those people are loyal to you and they are spending more time listening to you so the video works for sure definitely but again it doesn't work for everyone so if you are good at it of course do it if you are not so good at it and you might find like your
00:08:13
Speaker
Best format, for example, you might do photos, you might do, I don't know, audio, written text or something else. So while we're going down the LinkedIn rabbit hole, the other thing that I want to talk to you about is LinkedIn
Audience Behavior and Problem-Solving Focus
00:08:25
Speaker
stories. So I haven't used them very much, although last week I did a little bit of experimentation to see what kind of engagement I could get. And to be honest with you, it was at best minimal.
00:08:37
Speaker
I'm you know maybe i got on one post and i've got no twenty five views but i didn't see the ry and i still don't understand why people would use linkedin stories it definitely would work on instagram or snapchat but linkedin strikes me as a different piece give me thoughts about linkedin stories.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't spend too much time on it, but I think it works. It doesn't work to attract new audience to you, like new followers. Maybe for some people, it works for that specific objective as well. But for me, I did it for a short time.
00:09:15
Speaker
the same way you mentioned like i didn't get too many views on it but you know one thing that i would use the stories for is not to attract new follower but to engage my existing followers and audience and to warm them up if i'm going to sell them something.
00:09:30
Speaker
For example, as I provide marketing services, for example, I share in my stories some of my stats from my clients. Like if I work for some clients, I share some pics from the dashboard to show them the stats that I got for my clients. It's something that I don't like to post about because it's not a piece of content.
00:09:54
Speaker
I mean, I just like to do it in a quick way in a stories. So it's a way to engage your followers with you and at the same time, warm them up to prepare them like to buy from you later in the future. So actually you can use it. I think there's no single feature that I hate on any platform. I like all the features.
00:10:17
Speaker
And if I don't like it, I just don't use it. So there's no reason like to hate it. I think you can find some interesting ways to use it. And if not, you are not losing anything. It's there and it's for free.
00:10:30
Speaker
Well, the other thing that a lot of marketers have embraced this year is content. We've all become publishers and brands that were publishing before are publishing even more content and brands that weren't really into content marketing have jumped on the bandwagon. What have you seen from your clients and, and maybe you can talk about best practices as far as making your content stand out. Cause there's so much content these days that it's hard for any of it to capture the attention. Any thoughts about that?
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So the best way to stand out is to actually be attentive to the audience's behavior. For example, now, during the COVID, the pandemic,
00:11:12
Speaker
Many companies as you saw that started posting content about what to do during the lockdown and this stuff. So actually that's smart because you don't have always to talk about your product. Even no matter what you sell, always talk about the customer's problems and then engage with them and build that relationship and then start talking about your product.
Giragosian Media's COVID Challenges and Services
00:11:35
Speaker
So one of the things I'm doing currently for my client is no matter what product they sell, I always
00:11:41
Speaker
for the first like for the first phase of my content i always talk about some different stuff which might not be related to their products but it would it would like attract the right type of audience to their page or brand which might buy from them in the future.
00:12:00
Speaker
and for example for some of the brands we do some funny memes for example which attracts the right type of audience for them so for example if we are selling a fashion product let's say we do funny memes about fashion so only people who are interested in fashion products would understand those memes and engage with it
00:12:21
Speaker
And in this way, like we attracted more people to the page and brand, but we didn't sell them anything yet. And in the second stage, we'll start like introducing them our brand or talking about our features and products. So yeah, I think everyone is talking about their products.
00:12:39
Speaker
But no one is like producing engaging content. I'm talking about brands specifically. So no one is like producing content which is like talking to the audience's problems and what they face in their daily lives. Everyone is busy talking about their own products.
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's easy to be product focused because we're all desperate to attract the attention of potential prospects and really start to deliver value in terms of how they may be able to help them. So that's really great insight. I do want to ask you about, I do want to ask you what it's been like to run an agency this year and how you're, how it's been different to work with clients and vice versa. But maybe we could start by giving me an explanation of what your agency does.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah, so currently we work with e-commerce businesses and we have some personal brands that we work with. We mainly provide Facebook advertising services to help those brands generate more leads and sales through Facebook advertising. And on the other side, we do content marketing like content strategies, distribution systems or social media managing.
00:13:47
Speaker
So basically those are the two main services we provide. And if our relationship with the client is successful, we offer them more services like email marketing and YouTube management as well.
00:14:00
Speaker
So, but mainly we start working with those two services, Facebook advertising and content. On the other side, I do some consulting as well. I help people who are willing to start a new YouTube channel to like give them insights about YouTube, how to leverage the algorithm, how to start their channel the right way. So to get their videos suggested by YouTube more and those stuff. I also provide like consulting services for
00:14:30
Speaker
personal branding through content, how to leverage social media to produce content and etc.
Building Trust and Client Conversion Strategies
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, so basically this year was a little bit hard to work as an agency because you know clients are looking for more safety. I mean before the pandemic, like before this economic situation, people
00:14:54
Speaker
We had an amazing growth in the economy for the last maybe 10 years. So people were trying to test different stuff. If you tell them that you have paid this much, they would pay it. For example, if you ask them, let's say for a payment, they would do it just to test it and test your services. But now they are more like not willing to take risks because of the economic situation.
00:15:23
Speaker
They are trying to go for something which is where they have guaranteed results. And that's really hard in marketing because you can't guarantee anything in marketing. You have to always test something. You have to lose money. You have to do different stuff until you find what's working. So that's been one of the hardest things to convince business owners or brands to do it because of the risks they will face.
00:15:52
Speaker
But I mean when you educate your clients about it, when you tell them that's how marketing works and you explain them everything. And you have to build this trust with them. For example, we started like providing processes through PDF files. We started doing more demo calls with them.
00:16:13
Speaker
to show them what we have done for different brands or what we can do for them. We started offering some free tests to them so they will feel that safety in them to work with us.
00:16:28
Speaker
So it sounds like you've got a lot of people who previously would have jumped into marketing, would have been happy to launch campaigns and become a long-term client, but now there's maybe some skepticism. Perhaps they want to see examples of ROI. They're looking for results. They're looking for fast results because every marketing dollar counts these days.
00:16:49
Speaker
So how has it been to actually turn prospects into customers? Like how long does it take and what are the things that you've had to do to ensure people that they're going to get good service, that their marketing is going to work. And if they make the investment, they're going to get ROI.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it depends on the client. For example, I have clients that I close them within two or three days. And I also have some clients that I have been like this negotiating with them for months. And after that, they like start working with us. So it depends on the client. But the average is if it's a new client, it's from one to two weeks for us.
00:17:30
Speaker
And at the same time, it depends on what the services they will take from us. For example, when it comes to something which is simple and they don't have like big payments to do for us, it doesn't require a lot of thinking from them. So it would be faster. But if it's something for long term, for example, we provide Facebook advertising for e-commerce businesses. And there are companies that we have been working with for over like a year now
00:17:55
Speaker
they invest like monthly ten to twenty thousand dollars in ad spends for those type of clients it would take a little bit longer because they are they are like going to a little bit of risk they are investing more money.
00:18:11
Speaker
and our fees are higher for those clients so it requires a lot of thinking for them a lot of negotiations so for those clients it would take longer but if it's something for example I get too many consulting clients so I can consult them in terms of content and personal branding those clients won't take too long like they like they ask few questions and how the program will go and what about the sessions and those stuff and it will take few days to them to consider
Mano's Personal and Professional Journey
00:18:41
Speaker
that.
00:18:42
Speaker
Now I know you get asked this question a lot, but you've got a very interesting background. Your personal journey is really fascinating. A lot of challenges and ups and downs. Maybe you can give me a snapshot of where you've come from and where you're at now. I find the personal stories to be the most interesting because entrepreneurs come from, these days come from anywhere and everywhere. And even the fact that we're talking and we're doing this podcast demonstrates that we live in a global economy where connecting with people has been
00:19:11
Speaker
easier than ever. So I'd be interested in a little bit about you and where you're at now. Yeah. So I was born in Syria. I'm Armenian, but I was born in Syria. And in 2014, I had to immigrate from Syria to Armenia because of the war. And I came here to Armenia. Now I'm living in Armenia as well. And when I came here in Armenia, it was too hard for me. I didn't know English.
00:19:34
Speaker
English is not my native language I used to speak Armenian and Arabic in Syria so I came here I had to learn a new language I didn't know anything about marketing I had to go work for free for six months just to learn marketing
00:19:49
Speaker
And then when I got into the marketing world, I started working for one of the agencies here in Armenia. And there I learned everything. And after I had great results there, they promoted me to lead the marketing team in that company. And I worked there for three years. I led over a 10 people team there.
00:20:12
Speaker
After that I decided to launch my own agency after I had more than three years of experience in the area and I had amazing results and passed here like we did over a million dollars in sales for different companies and
00:20:27
Speaker
We know what's interesting. From 2014 to 2017, I didn't know English. I didn't know anything about marketing. After that, to now, 90% of my clients are from the US, Canada, and those countries. It's really interesting. I live in Armenia, and I don't have clients from Armenia. I work with people from the US and Canada, as you mentioned.
00:20:54
Speaker
because thanks to the internet there are there are no limits now you can work with everyone and wherever they are so yeah basically that's briefly about me
00:21:04
Speaker
I had a lot of challenges. It's hard. I had some financial issues because of immigrating. I immigrated for three times because of the war and those stuff. But now we are living in the internet world and there's nothing impossible. You have the chances to learn everything for free. You can do a lot of tests for free. You can communicate with a lot of people.
00:21:29
Speaker
The same way we communicated through comments on linkedin like you can just go on linkedin or facebook instagram on any social platform and you can just communicate with different people and have some insights from their like from their experience build a relationship with them or even like partnership with them and then you start your business so basically the internet
LinkedIn Strategies: Communication and Engagement
00:21:53
Speaker
was
00:21:53
Speaker
the game changer for me because i didn't have too much money before so it was the reason like i could start my business at no at low cost or no cost at all.
00:22:06
Speaker
That's a really interesting and inspiring story. I'm really happy that you've, you've found personal and professional success. One of the, one of the last questions I wanted to ask you is just maybe talk about your approach to LinkedIn because you've got a very solid presence. Your content is great. You've got lots of connections and obviously it's working for you. So what is your approach to LinkedIn? How do you leverage content comments? How do you make connections with people? I'd be really interested to know your, your personal approach.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I will tell you my personal approach, but again, it depends on your goals and your business. So you might have to change it a little bit. If someone is listening and wants to apply it for themselves, they might have to change it a bit. But the concept is the same. The only thing I do on LinkedIn is communicating with people. Social media is a platform where you have to communicate with people.
00:23:04
Speaker
If you are there just to sell your product, it won't work. So what you have to do is like to continuously produce content and provide value to the audience through it and not just sell your product. For example, you know my content. There's nothing that I write which sells something from my product. I just talk about marketing.
00:23:26
Speaker
I just provide value to people. And then once I start communicating with them or knowing them better, know their business and this stuff, I maybe start offering them my services. So the first thing you have to do is to provide value to your content without selling anything.
00:23:43
Speaker
And you can just, for example, do some sales in the comments section. For example, you add some call to actions. Those are okay because it's not like hardcore sales. You can do that. And the other thing is that I communicate with people through comments. I engage with their content because people are always willing to give back. If you engage with their content, they would come back and engage with yours as well, which will increase your reach.
00:24:10
Speaker
And the more people you reach, the more potential clients you might have in the future. So that's the second thing I do is that I engage with different people and you can divide them into three types of people you engage with. One of them are people with a big presence on LinkedIn. So if you comment on their posts, they might not reply you.
00:24:31
Speaker
but they have too many people in their comment section and like big percentage of those people might see your comment and come visit your profile and engage with you as well and the other type of accounts are the average accounts like
00:24:47
Speaker
They might not have too much engagement on their posts, but again, they have some sort of traffic there so you can engage with them. And those people might again come back to your profile and engage with you. And there's a lot of potential to partner with those people because they are in the same level as you. So they might be interested to work with you, for example. And the other type of accounts are the accounts with low influence, for example.
00:25:13
Speaker
Not the low influence, but they don't have too much engagement on their posts So those are again people that you have to support again They might come back to engage with your content and actually they might reach out to you to help them In something so those are the three types of accounts I engage with and
00:25:32
Speaker
And the third thing to do, which I don't do it too much, but I'm like planning to spend more time on it, is to communicate with people through DMs. So you don't have just to comment on their posts or like it and that's it, but you have to also DM them and message them, ask what they do and communicate with them and build that relationship. That's something I don't do too much now because I'm not finding the time for it, but I'm definitely willing to spend more time in it.
00:26:03
Speaker
That's great advice because I think everybody should be looking to leverage LinkedIn and there are a lot of things around best practices and how you write content and comment and engage with people and accept connection invitations. So I really appreciate that insight.
Connecting with Mano and Engaging with Marketing Spark
00:26:17
Speaker
Manu, where can people find you on the web?
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, so actually the best place is LinkedIn. It's where I'm mostly active. I'm on every social platform. I have Facebook. You can connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. I also have a podcast where you can listen to my interviews with different people from different industries. It's called the Perspective Podcast. So yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and let's talk about that.
00:26:48
Speaker
Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you heard, please rate it. For show notes of today's conversation and information about Metal, visit marketingspark.co. If you have questions, feedback, would like to suggest a guest, but want to learn more about how I help B2B companies as a fractional CMO, consultant, and advisor, send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you next time.