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Collaborative Marketing: Building Quality Partnerships Online
67 Plays6 years ago
This week on The B2B Mix Show we're joined by Steve Thode, founder of Klusster.com.
Steve speaks with me and Alanna about the importance of working with complementary brands online to grow your small business' digital footprint and improve your marketing reach through collaboration.
Steve touches on
- how collaborative marketing platforms, like Klusster, can help brands work together
- how a collaborative content platform can support employee advocacy
- the benefits of partner marketing online, including SEO wins
If you'd like to connect with Steve online, you can look for him on LinkedIn or connect with him on Twitter.
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Transcript
Introduction to B2B Mix Show
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Elena and Stacey. Each week, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your own marketing strategy. We'll share what we know and advice from industry experts who will join us from time to time here on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
Episode 26 Topic: Online Partnerships
00:00:19
Speaker
Hi everyone, I'm Stacey Jackson. And I'm Elena Jackson. We are the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you still haven't heard, we are also sisters. We're bringing you episode 26 of the B2B Makeshow. Stacey, what's the topic of today's episode? Today we are talking about the need for brands and businesses to build and leverage partnerships online.
The Challenge of Digital Noise
00:00:40
Speaker
And there's a pretty good reason that you need to be thinking about this. It is noisy out there, people. At the time of this recording, internetlifestats.com reports that just for today, and this is just today's numbers, there are over 1.7 million websites, over 3.6 million blogs posted, that's individual blog posts,
00:01:01
Speaker
More than four hundred thirty one million tweets have been sent over forty seven million photos have been uploaded to instagram and on and on. And the amount of information being created is just you know staggering it's insane to try and be heard about all that noise.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's just crazy how many things are out there and how many people are on online
Guest Introduction: Steve Thode of Cluster
00:01:25
Speaker
too. What you've got to do is you got to fight for that attention in all the noisy digital world that's happening right now. And sometimes the fight requires the help of a few good partners. And our guest, Steve Thode is just the right person to talk to when it comes to building and leveraging partnerships online to maximize your visibility.
00:01:43
Speaker
Steve is the CEO of Cluster, a collaborative marketing platform that helps connect small businesses with an online community that can exponentially increase their business online exposure at a fraction of the cost of other current marketing options.
Steve's Journey and Cluster's Origin
00:01:58
Speaker
So Steve, welcome to the B2B mix show. Thank you. Happy to be here. Before we get started talking about building and leveraging online partnerships, would you like to give us a little more background about yourself or details about Cluster and how the whole idea of Cluster got started?
00:02:12
Speaker
I can do my best. So actually, believe it or not, I've been around in since the early 2000s. In fact, the late 90s when the internet was just launched. And so I've always had a love for researching and understanding the internet. And my background actually is in finance. I worked for a wealth management company for a number of years. And while I was working for the wealth management company, I was having fun learning about search engine optimization and
00:02:35
Speaker
we were lucky enough to reach roughly 40 million people. In the early days, you could say we were one of the gurus of building links and that sort of thing. But it was pretty exhausting, quite honestly. So while I was at the financial services company, we had a program where we work with other business owners and we put together a show, effectively. We put together a night or an event where a number of financial services professionals would get together and put together content, a show.
00:03:04
Speaker
The accountant would talk about accounting. The lawyer would talk about legal with respect to wealth. The insurance professional would talk about insurance and so on and so forth. And in the end, this group of businesses all worked together to drive more people to this show or this event. Not one of us was responsible for bringing all 35, 40 people into the room. We were all responsible for bringing
00:03:27
Speaker
you know, five to 10 people to the room. And we put on a good show and the clients benefited. And the way the clients benefited also you knew because they were asking for help from the business owners that put together this show.
00:03:40
Speaker
So that was our very first cluster, if you will. And we just thought, well, how do we simulate this online? And the platform basically was born out of that same concept, is that the consumer wins, businesses work together. And that's a really, really important thing. Right. And a lot of those businesses out there are looking for help.
Combating Digital Noise with Partnerships
00:03:58
Speaker
And that's where you came into play and added that values. Right now, we're kind of in the crazy insane stats like Stacey shared earlier about the noisiness that's happening.
00:04:08
Speaker
and it's getting tougher and tougher for brands to be heard. Are there ways that you've seen businesses try to combat all the noise that's out there and how they stack up against online partnerships? Because even LinkedIn is becoming very noisy as well, where it used to not be so noisy. Are there ways that you've seen businesses go and stand out?
00:04:31
Speaker
Well, I mean, obviously I get specific, but if you think of our small town that we live in, there's roughly 100 chiropractors. And the search term for chiropractors in this small town is roughly 800 to 900 searches a month in Google. So if only 10 of those 100 chiropractors, 90 to 100 chiropractors,
00:04:50
Speaker
can be in the top of Google. What are the other 90 people? What are the other 90 chiropractors to do? The way we get these other 90 chiropractors to stand out is they effectively form these clusters or these alliances with other business owners and they upload their content to our platform and they work together with other local businesses to distribute each other's valuable content. That same
00:05:14
Speaker
If you do the math, if there's 800 searches for the term, let's say there's actually closer to 2,000 searches for chiropractor related terms and there's 100 businesses, that means on average, each business gets 20
Creating Media Alliances for Visibility
00:05:26
Speaker
clicks. Now we all know that it's skewed highly to the first 10. Within our platform, a chiropractor can deliver between two and 400 clicks to their content in a month by forming an alliance with other business owners. So we have the ability to, how do I say this? Take marketing into our own hands by building our own media property.
00:05:43
Speaker
Because when it comes down to it, Google is a media prop and it's owned by Google. Websites are media properties and blogs are media properties and Facebook are media properties that are owned by the business owner. But 20 years ago, the business owner contributed to the yellow pages or a local newspaper. They couldn't sustain themselves by operating alone.
00:06:05
Speaker
So they had to form these alliances years ago. They just formed these alliances with a third party owned media property. Now what we're saying is let's create a legitimate media property with a group and get critical mass of distribution.
00:06:18
Speaker
I think that's a good point, especially when you think about, okay, in the wild west days of the internet, people could go on and have their own property and get attention, but as it's become a more universal place for businesses to pop up and stake their own claim for a website, you have to depend on one another and build those alliances.
Benefits of Collaborative Marketing Hubs
00:06:39
Speaker
To get attention so i think that was a great reminder of how people used to do business and that need for alliances and collaborative marketing is coming back so when when it comes to building that. Cluster with either complimentary businesses or franchisees or different business units i know we've we see the seo benefit what are some other benefits and businesses could see from having a collaborative marketing hub like cluster.
00:07:08
Speaker
Well, I'm excited that you, you mentioned the SEO benefit. That's something that we learned after creating the platform. We, we didn't realize how, how focused we always focused on greater distribution. We didn't focus on the improved SEO and that has been a real pleasant perspective cluster. We have basically two types of publications or clusters you can create. We have what's called a team publication where a business is strong enough on its own with their staff and their salespeople to create a quality publication.
00:07:36
Speaker
And so we have the ability to add team members to the distribution of our publication. So any business, for example, a local gym where there's multiple trainers and multiple experts in health, they could create a great publication that appeals to a larger audience. And let's say the 10 or 15 trainers in that gym, they can all work together to educate the community on.
00:07:59
Speaker
their collective strength so that's a single team publication and the second one is where it gets really exciting is when multiple businesses form an alliance around a topic for example we have a an alliance called Alfie Waterloo which is a group of health professionals that work together.
00:08:15
Speaker
and all these health professionals use their social media collectively to distribute everyone's content. Just like a local newspaper, you would deliver one local newspaper with hundreds of messages. That's the same concept and the consumer can consume a lot more in a single location. So the major benefit, the two major benefits that we have from use of our platform, actually there's three. Number one is you get greater distribution of your content
00:08:40
Speaker
from the community. And what's really fun about that community is as the community stays together longer, they get to know each other as businesses and as people. The old-fashioned alliance of, oh, you should go see this person starts to form because you're reading each other's content and you're realizing that this person is taking the time to educate the consumer and you're meeting them locally. And then the third, of course, benefit is that we've noticed an increase in organic results because your
00:09:09
Speaker
This health alliance is a bona fide media property and it's distributing the links of health professionals. It's perceived relatively well by Google. We have a local yoga studio that was above the top 10 in Google for the term yoga. They're now number two. All they really did was make a little bit more meat on their website and then consistently create content and get their content distributed by fellow local business owners.
Cooperation Challenges and Content Quality
00:09:38
Speaker
Have you seen a lot of people or businesses where they are trying to partner online and why, maybe you're getting asked this question a lot, but why are businesses trying to partner online or offline for that matter? But why is it so convenient for them to do that? And how do you convince them that it's a good decision to do this, especially when they're partnering with other companies?
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah. So that's in the local space or any space. That's not the hard part. Businesses want to cooperate with each other. They're dying to. In fact, local business owners are dying to form a community. The thing that we see as the hurdle, if you will, is having the leader to assemble this group and, you know, putting together contents, not easy for a lot of people, even though there's tons of noise out there, I would argue that a very small percentage of businesses are creating quality content right now.
00:10:30
Speaker
When we form these clusters, it's really important that the community is supported by a marketing professional of some sort that appreciates social media, that appreciates link building, that appreciates quality content, that appreciates the need for concise and clean call to actions. The businesses, they want to work together. They're dying to work together because they feel alone right now.
00:10:53
Speaker
as far as I'm concerned. I mean, if you think of the two of our businesses, we work together, yet we still feel alone. What about the businesses that haven't even got to that point yet? Hey folks, let's take a break to hear about today's sponsor. And we
Using Clusters for Social Selling
00:11:11
Speaker
are back. Do you see people using it in a way where it helps them with like social selling or employee advocacy ways of using it?
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, so right now we're talking with an Akira dealership and the Akira dealership has roughly 50 employees. You can call it employee advocacy, but you can also call it employee participation. And it's a really interesting game. They are connected, that employee group.
00:11:40
Speaker
probably to enough people that business can increase. So how do you produce the content strong enough and accepted enough for the staff to share? How do you reward the staff for sharing content from a business on social media? You know, you can't threaten your employees and your staff. You have to do it as a group, but definitely from an employee advocacy standpoint,
00:12:03
Speaker
people want to say hey like let's work together guys let's not and we all know that over the last four or five years social media has changed significantly and when you talk about noise of social media i'll never forget a conference that i was at in chicago it was a social media conference put on by a local social media professional and they had a great panel of people and at the time they were talking about things like periscope and these apps that
00:12:29
Speaker
never really quite worked. But you know, in that room, all 150 social media professionals were talking over the panelists. That was synonymous to the way the world is right now. We all want ourselves to be heard most. And that's dangerous. So, so that's what we're working on. We're working at like legit, legitimate quality publications like you guys are doing is you're trying to put together deep content and that's what gets read. That's what gets heard. It's really easy to post on Instagram.
00:12:58
Speaker
and it's cool don't get me wrong but because it's easy the volume of content on instagram is overwhelming and you guys remember you remember two and a half three years ago when facebook live was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread right and and it's not and there's a reason why it's not i'm not entirely sure of it but you know people want to consume content when they want to consume it not when you want me to consume it right so it's really interesting podcasting is old technology compared to facebook live but it still works
00:13:28
Speaker
Right.
Managing Clusters and Leadership Roles
00:13:29
Speaker
So when we talk about businesses coming together to form a cluster and manage that shared media property, have you identified or seen examples of clusters and how they're managing it best practices? Is there a single point person that's kind of in charge of creating the brand or managing the editorial process? What are you seeing work out there?
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, so we've learned, we've learned just like everyone else learns. Creating a cluster first feels very salesy. Hey, come on, join our magazine. It's like an advertising vehicle and cluster was not meant to be that way where you give me your money and we'll get you noticed like an advertising vehicle. Cluster was built for businesses to actually cooperate together. So like any relationship in life,
00:14:16
Speaker
One of the things we recognized was two good people in a cluster is better than 20 bad people in the cluster. And there's a reason which I've learned for the term called cluster. You know what I'm talking about, right?
00:14:28
Speaker
So and in real relationships, you can't look after other people until you look after yourself. So our process now when we create clusters is we take care of the individual unit holder. So we would go to a local business owner that wants to get found more online, that wants to build an employee advocacy program and leverage what they have.
00:14:52
Speaker
and we build a team publication. We get them understanding the need to create constant content and distribute constant content on a regular basis. So from there, then we bring in business number two and business number two is doing the same thing. They're creating good content. Their staff is distributing. Now we bring those two businesses together and we double their distribution. And then we bring a third business in that is behaving properly.
00:15:17
Speaker
that they believe in consistent content creation, they believe in consistent distribution, and it's really incredibly powerful at that point in time. So when we first built clusters, we thought we had to build a cluster of 20 businesses, and now we actually build them one brick at a time, and we build that foundation first. Is there like a sweet spot of the number of businesses you might have in one cluster as a best practice for that?
00:15:43
Speaker
I mean, the platform is effectively, if you think about it, it allows a group of businesses to build a dynamic publication or a dynamic group blog or a dynamic e-magazine. So it's constantly changing. So from the consumer who's getting that information, they can only digest so much information at once. The average consumer that goes to one of these clusters views three to four pieces of content. So to answer your question, a cluster of two to 10
00:16:11
Speaker
can be as valuable as a cluster of 10 to 20. We kind of always seem to peek out at 30 businesses. That's plenty because at that point in time, the publication is really strong and similar to kind of local networking groups. You want everyone to have their voice heard. I don't want to get into that right now, but we have a business model where each business is effectively a receiver of influence as well as an influencer. So Stacy, you are an incredible influencer, right?
00:16:40
Speaker
You know within a cluster how much you have given to the group and how much you've received from the group. You know which members of your cluster are sitting and watching and you know which members of the group you want to align yourself with further. And it's really interesting. So the cream rises to the top, right?
00:16:57
Speaker
And if you're listening, you should go check out the allied marketers cluster that Steve has out there. I am a member, but I haven't contributed lately. So I'm not part of the cream of the crop. I need to get my post out. Bad Stacy.
00:17:12
Speaker
So when it comes to B2B, because as you know, majority of our audience is primarily made up of B2B sales and marketing professionals. How do you recommend that B2B marketers approach the idea of a content community or a collaborative marketing platform like yours?
00:17:29
Speaker
Well, I think all of these B2B communities do already participate in these B2B communities. I was just at a conference called the collision conference. They were all software development companies or technology companies that got together and realized that getting together was really positive for the audience that wanted to see them. So anyone who wanted to go to this conference.
00:17:52
Speaker
could see so much at once. So we're already participating in clusters, quite frankly. Most of it is in the form of a conference. But the truth of the matter is, whatever you do, there's somebody else who does something that can complement your business for your clients. And you are providing value add by educating your client on other people's stuff.
00:18:12
Speaker
And that only brings you up in the minds of those clients because you're not an island. You need to show that you're constantly educating yourself on new things. And you're doing this, by the way. You are forming, I see your social media posts where you're trying to bring the search engine journal content to your audience. The problem is, not problem, but that's fleeting, right? Where's that foundation of
00:18:39
Speaker
Place where your clients can go on a regular basis and go. This is great. I want to read here I want to stay here for a while and I want to actually get into some depth for a while
00:18:48
Speaker
Because right now you're sending people to really great content, don't get me wrong. But once they're done that content, where does that consumer of that content go? They go somewhere else. Whereas if you sent them to a quality piece of content in a central location, they would stay there for a while. And that's not how the internet's structured right now.
Vision of Global Collaboration in Niche Markets
00:19:10
Speaker
So with a hub like Cluster has, there's the ability for those business owners to collect leads through the Cluster, right? Exactly. In fact, we built some really interesting things in the technology. Any business that uses the platform has the ability to add their team members to the distribution of content. So we have a
00:19:32
Speaker
a group in Canada where they have one publication, 30 franchise owners distributing the content. The business owner has the ability to assign any of the calls to action to the team members who distribute the content. So a sales team can, they can say, look, I need content for my audience because I'm trying to educate them on what we do and they don't always buy right away. But when they do buy and they do fill out that form, I want to capture that lead. So we have a, a crude CRM table.
00:19:59
Speaker
that allows you to collect your leads. We had one woman who distributed a thousand piece of content and she got 30 leads in that content. And those leads she wouldn't have gotten otherwise because they were from not her social media audience, they were from the audience of others. That's huge because what does everybody want? Every business wants leads. So that's a huge thing.
00:20:20
Speaker
Right. So, so where we are, you know, look, the reality is, is you can use our platform 100% free, just obviously sponsored, you can remove the ads if you want.
00:20:31
Speaker
For some B2B industries that claim, oh, our product or content is too boring, I could see this really being a great way to reach people without having to necessarily talk about a boring widget that could talk about having other businesses come and participate and talk about things that are related. And then they might be like the sponsor of the cluster. Do you have people doing that?
00:20:54
Speaker
We do have kind of sponsorships. You have the ability to pin content. So we even thought about that for that, that health cluster, for example, and I'll get back to your point, but that health cluster, we thought, what if the national drug store wanted to sponsor this health cluster? Our belief was that's that national drug store would still have to create valuable content.
00:21:14
Speaker
that fit the theme of that community. So yeah, you can definitely set whatever rules you want to the cluster and you can pin those people that do want to be more sponsored oriented. And the truth of the matter is, you can build a pay-per-click system within the platform because you know when five businesses get together, you know exactly how much each of those five businesses are getting.
00:21:36
Speaker
and each of those five businesses are giving to the group. That was a big learning experience for us. But yes, you can structure it any way you want. We're just a platform that encourages groups to distribute. Before Stacey hits you with our just for fun question, do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to share or any tips?
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah, I do. So this is my dream. My dream is, and this has to do with maybe a final question, but my dream is that 20 surfing companies around the world that have never met each other, that do great surf lessons in different parts of the world, get together and form a cluster. Could you imagine how incredible the publication would be for those people
00:22:17
Speaker
surf where the owners of the businesses are talking about not only surfing but the communities that they work with and as you know somebody who serves I can read a piece of content from Australia and I want to go to Australia sir and then at the same time I'm like wow there's this Costa Rican surf shop that's also wants to serve.
00:22:38
Speaker
And that community of surf companies around the world could work together and more people would go surfing. And that's the dream, is that all of us now start to read these magazines that are built by the business owners.
Steve's Personal Aspirations
00:22:52
Speaker
that have incredible content, incredible story. And now instead of following 10,000 people on Twitter, I follow 30 cool publications written by 30 amazing businesses. So that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for one place to go and read some great stuff on a regular basis.
00:23:11
Speaker
quick little antidote is, you know, the roadside sign in the United States is great at this, but the road sign, food sign, you've got a sign that has a McDonald, a Burger King, Wendy's, a, you know, a Pizza Hut, whatever, they all work together on that same sign. And you know what happens? The consumer wins because they go eat and they're hungry. And it's those big, those companies are forming a cluster and an alliance with content. It happens to be a logo is their content, but I can tell you without that sign, fewer people would eat. Yeah.
00:23:40
Speaker
Right. It'd be a hungry road trip. Yeah. But they work. And that's all we're trying to do. All right, Steve. So we have one final question. If you weren't the CEO of Cluster and could pursue any career you want, what would your dream job be? Does it have to do with surfing? That's what I was just thinking.
00:24:04
Speaker
So it's close. I love doing what I'm doing, but in the end, the goal is to retire and take people from around the world sailing, not surfing. But I often wondered what it would be like to live in the winter and meet people from around the world and take them sailing and teach them sailing in a relatively big boat in a safe environment. I think I get that from my grandfather who owned a fish and chip restaurant. Oh, that's cool. He was a simple, happy guy making fish and chips. Awesome.
00:24:33
Speaker
All right,
Connecting with Steve and Show Wrap-Up
00:24:34
Speaker
Steve. Well, thank you so much for taking time to speak with us today. If our listeners would like to get in touch or follow you online. What are the best ways to connect with you. Yeah, they can just search cluster Steve and they'll find me either on Twitter or my cluster.
00:24:51
Speaker
portfolio is available to read. I have lots of thoughts and I think we've had a lot of fun building what we're building, so I'd love to meet more people. It'd be great. And it's cluster K-L-U-S-S-T-E-R, correct? That's the only spelling we could get. I just don't want people going and looking for C-L-U-S-T-E-R, Steve. Yes, K and a double S. And we'll put that in the show notes. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. Thank you so much.
00:25:19
Speaker
All right, people, that is a wrap. If you want to get in touch with me or Stacey, you can hit us up on social. On Twitter, you can find Stacey at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X. And you can find me at Alaina underscore Jax. That's A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X. If you're not a Twitter fan, that's okay. Look this up on LinkedIn under Stacey Jackson and Alaina Jackson. And finally, don't forget, you can also leave us a voicemail on the Anchor mobile app. Have a good week. Have a great week. Bye.
00:25:51
Speaker
The B2B Mix Show is hosted by Stacy Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your B2B inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.