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How Virtual Events Are Powering Commonsku's Marketing
56 Plays5 years ago
Virtual events have received mixed reviews as a replacement for in-person conferences.
For some companies, virtual events have provided opportunities to connect. But many people have complained about the lack of interactivity and engagement.
For commonsku, which sells software to promotional product companies, in-person events have been a key part of its marketing and sales efforts.
As important, events have propelled Commonsku's community.
With in-person conferences off the table, commonsku has successfully leveraged virtual events to stay connected to customers and nurture prospects.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Graham, commonsku's co-founder and chief brand officer, talks about why and how virtual events have worked so well.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark
00:00:03
Speaker
My name is Mark Evans, and I'd like to welcome you to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers small doses of insight, tools, and tips from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches. By small doses, it's conversations that are 15 minutes
CommonSkew's Origin Story
00:00:17
Speaker
or less. On today's show, I'm talking with Mark Graham, co-founder of CommonSkew, a SaaS-based CRM and order management platform that powers promotional products businesses.
00:00:27
Speaker
Now I reached out to Mark because I wanted to get some insight into how a small SaaS business is approaching marketing from a prospect and customer perspective. Thanks Mark, it's a real pleasure to be here. So maybe to set the stage, can you talk about the common skew journey which evolved out of your own promotional products business?
00:00:44
Speaker
The story of common skew is the classic scratch your own itch story. I had started a promotional products business in the year 2000 called right sleeve and a few years into building this promotional products business, we experienced classic growth challenges.
00:01:02
Speaker
orders were starting to pile up. There were problems that were slipping through our fingers, and we realized that we needed a piece of software to help us streamline the customer experience and the workflow in managing all of our suppliers and employees. We researched some options in the market and found that there was nothing that was available to a small promotional products business
00:01:26
Speaker
And so we decided that we had two choices. One was that we would just hit the ceiling in terms of where we were growing and not continue to grow. Or the other option was that we could go and build our own solution to help us address some of these growth and operational challenges. So that was in 2005.
Commercializing Internal Tools
00:01:43
Speaker
And then we realized that we'd had this great system on our hands that we realized that there was an opportunity to commercialize this and share this platform with other people in the promotional products industry.
00:01:56
Speaker
Now, a lot of service businesses and consultants think about starting a software business. It's the classic route. You are selling services by the project or the hour and you say to yourself, it would be great to have something that I could build and then resell that leverages my skills and expertise, but it's a hard journey. So what are some of the key challenges or some of the obstacles that you had to overcome to turn your business rights leave into common skew?
00:02:22
Speaker
Oh, there were significant challenges. I mean, as you say, RightSleeve
Transition Challenges to SaaS
00:02:26
Speaker
was a services business. We woke up every day and we sold promotional products programs to customers. Reorienting that business to think like a software business was incredibly challenging. And I think that the way that we ended up solving this issue is through a couple of things. Number one is that we built this as an internal tool.
00:02:47
Speaker
So in 2005, we had no intention of commercializing this. We had a developer that was on staff that was exclusively devoted to building this as an internal tool. So we didn't need to think like a software company. We didn't need to think from a support perspective. We didn't need to think of classic engineering challenges. We had a few years of having built this as an internal tool where we gathered more confidence.
00:03:12
Speaker
we started to understand how to think about building software because we had done it successfully with ourselves as the client. And so with a few years of experience under our belt, we then have the confidence to be able to go and take some baby steps into converting this into a commercial enterprise.
00:03:28
Speaker
When you think about the effort that went into the business, would you do it all over again? Was it the right
Reflections on the Journey
00:03:33
Speaker
decision? I mean, it's great in hindsight to say, yes, I would. But when you look at the money or the effort involved both personally and professionally, was it the right move for your company?
00:03:43
Speaker
Of course it was. And this is funny. I often joke with my partner in life and in business, Catherine Graham, of course, a good friend of yours as well, that Catherine and I talk about this a lot. Like would we do this again, noting the mistakes and the money and all of the risks that we took? And the answer would be absolutely yes. And I think the other thing is that with the benefit of hindsight, we often, we often look and say, do you think we could have done this any better or any easier?
00:04:10
Speaker
And the answer to that is often no as well because you think about all the things you learn when you build a product all the feedback you get from customers that tell you they hate your product or the ones that love your product hopefully as well you need to go through that and it's you talk to any successful sass entrepreneur even the giants of sass in canada people like toby at shopify or mike at fresh books just two people who come to
00:04:36
Speaker
come to mind, they started their businesses 20 years ago as well. And they went through a significant amount of pain before they realized that they had a truly winning product on their hands. So I don't think you can shortcut your way to success.
Adapting to Virtual Events
00:04:49
Speaker
Now, like a lot of companies, common SKUs marketing involved a lot of meetings and conferences. I mean, you guys did some really creative things connecting with prospects and customers. So how has the company's market changed over the past four months?
00:05:02
Speaker
So we've done a lot of in-person events to engage our customers and prospects, and we didn't want to give up on that. So we moved fairly quickly into virtual experiences. We've done a number of virtual events in the last couple of months, and they've been
00:05:17
Speaker
incredibly successful, almost so much that we've kind of questioned our in-person event strategy, noting how expensive and how difficult in-person events are to do. When you think about virtual events, they're much cheaper and you can also attract so many more people because they're done on virtual platforms. But that's a side story. But we always recognized that common skew success was in the power of community and connectivity and human connectedness.
00:05:46
Speaker
and we didn't want to give that up when we when we were not allowed to do our physical in person event so we move to virtual so that was one thing another thing that we really double down on was our content and our focus on keeping customers successful i think we've always.
Focus on Customer Success
00:06:03
Speaker
seeing our business as placing our customers' needs incredibly high in the food chain. But in this case, we really spent a lot of time making sure that our customers that were using the platform were successful because there was this unprecedented crisis that hit their business. And if our customers weren't successful, then they wouldn't be renewing their common skew licenses. So there was a bit of motivation in there for us, but the whole company went completely into proactive mode in terms of
00:06:30
Speaker
of how we could connect our customers and how we could empower them with education and content. And it was very successful. Okay. Okay. So let's go back to this whole virtual event idea. So a lot of companies, a lot of SAS and B2B companies heavily depend on conferences. They sponsor a conference, they speak, they meet prospects, they build relationships with their existing customers. And that's their bread and butter. I would, I would suggest that some of the businesses that I've,
00:06:55
Speaker
I've worked on 80 or 90% of marketing budgets go towards conferences, but suddenly that's disappeared. And a lot of companies have been less scrambling because they don't know what to do. They don't know how to connect with their customers. So maybe you can walk through some of the virtual events that common skew has put on and maybe provide some best practices in terms of how you've made them successful. How do you drive engagement? How do you make people feel like they're part of a community? How do you make them feel like the event's going to be interesting, interactive, engaging?
00:07:25
Speaker
So I think for us, whether it's an in-person event or a virtual event, what we've always done is placed our community top priority. So the value someone's going to get by coming to an event that we host, whether it's virtual or in-person, is that they know they are going to connect with other progressive and like-minded entrepreneurial people in the promotion products industry. I'd say that that is the key thing that we offer.
00:07:50
Speaker
then followed following on from that you have great content that is shared by people who have been successful in the industry so these are successful peers that have a lot in common with those that are attending the event we really focus on these inspirational stories also very tactical stories in terms of how people can be successful in either building their e-commerce strategies or how they can build their brand and marketing strategies.
00:08:15
Speaker
Our customers really love that, the ability to learn from like-minded people, as well as the ability to connect with like-minded people. I think that CommonSkew has been very successful in having done this. I think a lot of the ways we've been able to do this is that CommonSkew was designed for people like us. We had started the platform out of our business at RightSleeves, so we understood everything that was involved in running a promotional products business. A lot of these events feel very peer-oriented,
00:08:44
Speaker
as opposed to being organized by random conference professionals that come up with an idea and then go target an industry in our case i think we really tried to do this from the heart very organically and and as a result people have really come out and and it's been a very authentic experience which is benefited everyone.
00:09:03
Speaker
So I've written a lot on LinkedIn about the inadequacies of webinars because you have people and even good people will drone on for 30 minutes or 45 minutes. And one of the weaknesses that I see is the lack of connectivity and engagement and interactivity.
00:09:18
Speaker
people listen, but they don't feel connected. So maybe you can get into how you connect your community because I
Networking in Virtual Settings
00:09:25
Speaker
agree with you. That's the value of a community is if you can encourage relationships, spark new relationships and make people feel like they're part of something bigger. What are some of the tricks that you guys have used to make that happen?
00:09:36
Speaker
So I'll give you one example in this most recent virtual environment. So we have been hosting our common skew virtual events on a platform called hop in hop in has got a great feature within it called one on one networking where you at the time of the networking you have
00:09:55
Speaker
whatever allotted amount of time that allows you to be randomly connected with someone else who is part of the event. It's kind of like speed dating in this respect in that you've got, say, three or four minutes where I would join in and all of a sudden I'd be connected with you, Mark. The two of us would be chatting about our individual promotional products businesses, some of the challenges that were overcoming, so on and so forth.
00:10:16
Speaker
and that has always been a really successful part of our events because it allows for people to connect with each other and share those stories and that's always the feedback we get from the events is how common skew is able to connect like minded people in a way where they don't feel like they're being spoken to.
00:10:32
Speaker
So that's one very minor example. I think that the other part of CommonSkew that has been successful in connecting people is that within our own platform that people use to run their businesses, there is a very robust digital community that is a native part of the platform that connects people right from the very beginning. So as soon as they join, they've got this ability to connect across the entire supply chain that is a native feature that's part of what they get with CommonSkew. So when they get to these events,
00:11:02
Speaker
They already feel like they know each other. They already feel like they're part of something bigger and something that's really making a positive impact on the business. The other part of the business I wanted to talk to you about is prospects. I mean, it's one thing to engage your customers and educate them and help them become more successful amid challenging times. What are you finding in terms of inbound traffic and how are you marketing and nurturing your prospects, given the fact that many of them are being very cautious about the decisions they make and being very careful about their budgets?
Content and Social Media Strategies
00:11:31
Speaker
So the way that we have attracted prospects over the years is primarily through our content and our social strategies. So why don't I break those out into the two things. So our content strategy is we have long had a very popular blog that we have written for years and years. We have been podcasting for many years as well. So where we're producing content, that is not about why you should buy common skew, but it's all about success for the modern promotional products entrepreneur.
00:12:01
Speaker
we have spent a lot of time and energy in making common skew into the preeminent thought leader for the promotional products entrepreneur in the industry in a way that is very authentic as opposed to being very kind of salesy and cheesy. So that's number one. We get a lot of people who come into our funnel because they read our content or they listen to our podcast and they feel like they can identify with the kinds of people that are presented in our content.
00:12:26
Speaker
So that's number one and that's a huge thing because we realize that buying software is not like buying a t shirt buying software is something that is a fundamental decision that has a huge impact on on your business so it's it's it can be a challenging sale but we found out by building this honest transparent relationship with our customers to our content helps them put their hand up and arrive at our doorstep almost ready to buy as opposed to us having a cold call and twist their arm.
00:12:53
Speaker
So that's number one and number two is how it is that we presented our brand and our community and our and the way that we think on social media and this is not rocket science i think for us we've really tried to present our brand as human forward human first a fun that reverent entrepreneurial creative all the things that are.
00:13:14
Speaker
Consistent with our customer base and the ideal customer for us. We present that voice on social the number of people who come in that find us because a they found us on Google or they found us on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or they Read about our read about us or listen to the blog that is by far and away the preeminent way for us to engage and nurture prospects one final question
00:13:37
Speaker
for small SaaS companies that may not have large marketing budgets. Any advice on how to navigate the current landscape? There's a lot of competition, customers may not be as enthusiastic as they were a few months ago. What kind of marketing advice would you give them so they can be successful as well?
Advice for Small SaaS Businesses
00:13:56
Speaker
So the thing that we realized over the last couple of months is, wow, it's a pretty,
00:14:01
Speaker
scary and terrible time to be launching really anything that requires a customer to part with their money if you think about those businesses in the space we are uniquely positioned to help customers that are going through a crisis in their business be successful you think about you know the big companies everyone knows about you think about the success of shopify or the success of zoom or the success of slack kind of that big b to c level there successful right now because businesses.
00:14:30
Speaker
are not able to operate in the normal way so they're moving to this digital environment the same is could not be more true of a business like common skew that allows for these promotion products businesses to thrive while being well being forced to close their offices and work from home.
00:14:46
Speaker
it allows them to unite their whole workforce while everyone is stuck at home. That's been a great advantage for us during this time. Now, you have to be very respectful of that. You cannot come across like you're trying to profit or be cheesy about it, but that's just an interesting fact. It's a unique opportunity for SaaS businesses.
00:15:05
Speaker
So with that in mind i think it's important for a business to recognize that there is this unique opportunity to engage and educate customers at a time when customers. Are more open to considering how they can be running your business in a different way and.
00:15:20
Speaker
better way. So with that in mind, going back to some of the things I was talking about with content, customers are wanting to learn about how they can improve their business on their terms. So if the content is authentic and the content is educational and helpful, that can be an incredibly inexpensive way of reaching prospects. The tools are very, very inexpensive, provided you've got the ability to write or produce compelling content, which presumably, hopefully you can do that.
00:15:49
Speaker
I would recommend that way more than paying for SEO or paying for social media ads because customers don't respond to that as much as they do in opportunities where they can be educating themselves.
00:16:01
Speaker
Mark, this has been terrific insight. I'm fascinated by how you've been able to leverage virtual events. I think a lot of companies out there who are really trying to figure out how they can drive those personal connections, how they can engage with prospects and customers to create community, attract prospects, nurture their existing customers.
Podcast Conclusion
00:16:20
Speaker
The fact that you figured it out provides a lot of other companies, maybe with some ways that they can emulate the things that you've done.
00:16:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review as well as 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 Mark and common skew, visit markevans.ca slash blog. If you have questions, feedback, or would like to suggest a guest, send an email to mark and markevans.ca.
00:16:51
Speaker
To learn more how I help B2B companies as a CMO for hire, consultant and coach, visit markevans.ca. Talk to you next time.