Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Hugo Faria, EMEA marketing manager at Kemp, on optimizing the customer journey and nurture marketing:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here today with Hugo Faria, who is EMEA marketing manager at Kemp technologies and has over 12 years of experience in international marketing and communications. Welcome Hugo, and thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Hugo Faria 0:34
Thank you very much. Thanks for the invite. And yes, very excited to have this interview.

Carlota Pico 0:40
We are as well okay, let’s jump straight into the interview then. Hugo, could you tell me a little bit about your background and also a bit about how you got into your current role? You’re from Brazil but you’re now working in Ireland. Is that correct?

Hugo Faria 0:56
Yeah, that’s correct. So it’s a long story, but long story short, so I started my career like 12 years ago. I started with Schneider Electric. So Schneider Electric, it’s a big corporation and like they are over like, over 100,000 employees in like different cultures. So I started there as an apprentice, so internship, and yes, I just…it was a very good experience that I had because I could like go through like status upgrades. So I learned a lot. At that stage I was studying so I was at school. And then we could like learn a lot from all the activites. They changed like, when I first started their digital marketer wasn’t that big. And then I could go through like this change in the marketing going moving from like the, I would say like the automatic activties like conference and all this kind of different activities, for social media marketing, digital marketing, email marketing, so was a very good experience and I think that was where like pretty much where I learned a lot. And then after that, after almost 10 years at Schneider Electric, I just decided that I wanted to, to go for a differential adventure, for a different challenge and then that’s why I decided to move to Europe. So that was pretty much five years ago. So I have been living here in Ireland for over five years and here has been like a different experience and very good experience, to be honest, because I what I love most about Europe it’s I mean, like Brazil, it’s a big country, we have like different of course, ways to to generate leads and to do marketing but Europe like it’s, it’s a continent, where every country is much different, we have like different ways to generate leads in each county. So I…what I love most about Europe, it’s this, like this way that you have this diversity in different countries. So I think that’s what I love most here.

Carlota Pico 3:09
From a marketing perspective, what’s… what have you—what has your experience been so far on a professional level when it comes to having worked at Schneider Electric for over 10 years in Brazil, and then transitioning to a European market, working for a technology company?

Hugo Faria 3:27
Yes, it was a hard change because I was so used to like work, in different markets and I think the main difference with IT marketing, it’s, it’s very fast, you know, like, I mean, with marketing like everyday it’s different, I think all the marketers, we are used to every day, it’s a different day. But especially with IT, it’s very dynamic. So like especially for lead generation. So that was like a good change like I think was.., it’s nice to have this kind of have this kind of fast environment. It’s in a good way I think. So that was very good to be honest. And then as I mentioned, like I think like special, like the different kind of countries and cultures. So I think that was good to see like things that probably work in German, it’s not going to work in the UK or the other way around. So I think all this learning was very good. So I started that like five years ago when I first started work here in Europe. And they I was working at VoxPro, and then I moved after that I move with LiveTiles, thats an IT company and their main product would be intranet. So they work with SharePoint and intranet, and now with Kemp, it’s we are pretty much in the same business. So it’s IT and we’re talking about load balancers. But it’s good because all the experience that I got from Schneider Electric and all the companies, like it’s pretty much… you can use with IT. I think the idea about marketing is the same, so you just need to apply it for the IT business.

Carlota Pico 5:08
Okay, Hugo, how has COVID-19 impacted your marketing strategy so far?

Hugo Faria 5:16
Yes, I think like it has…well, we were hit like almost all the companies in the world, I think were hit by the Coronavirus. So I think like, it has been like, challenging times. To be honest, like, if we go back, I would say the last years for marketers has been like a challenge. If we go back to like 2018 when we started with the GDPR. That was like, the first barrier that we found, like as a marketer, because a lot of companies, they lost all the database and they had to change the database and to change websites and everything to be GDPR compliant. But the way that I see, I see it as an opportunity, because I think, like all the problems—of the crisis, like the GDPR, that we’ve got to change things, and now with the, this pandemic—I think, if you find a way to see that as not just as a problem, but as an opportunity, I think you can make things better. So for instance, GDPR, a lot of companies lost like, databases and like audiences, but I think it was a good way to filter, to clean up the database. So this way you can get like more qualified leads. So a lot of companies I know that especially the company that I was working at during that stage, we did that work, we cleaned up the database and pretty much we started from scratch again, but that was a good way to get more qualified leads. And I think the same thing’s happening now with the Coronavirus. A lot of companies they have to change for digital marketing. So that’s good. Like, for instance, I know companies where I’ve worked, for instance, Schneider Electric and other companies like old comapnies, I know that they usually they spend a lot of money just with conferences and they don’t do like a balance between digital marketing or different kinds of marketing. So I think that’s a good opportunity now for companies to invest in digital marketing and to see the how good is digital marketing right now. So I think that has been change for all the companies. And I mean, like, it’s, of course the business is not as it was before the pandemic, but it’s good to see that a lot of companies they are changing the way to do marketing, in a digital way, and I think that’s something that could be good for the future, even after the pandemic.

Carlota Pico 7:57
Okay, you mentioned GDPR. Did you use any tools to clean your database when your company became GDPR compliant?

Hugo Faria 8:07
Not, I mean, like, it was pretty much like… the way that it worked, like you, you were using marketing at that stage, so a CRM, and like the way that we work is pretty much like after when they first released the GDPR, we had to send an email to our database to see if they accept to stay in the database, to share their their data. And like, most of them, they didn’t even reply the emails and we know like email marketing, so we don’t get like a good response for email marketing usually, like around 10-15%, so that was pretty much like the response that we got from from the audience. So the… I would say the database was cleaning itself like, just like did not email back so they didn’t want to stay in the data, like in there in the database.

Carlota Pico 8:58
Okay, so those people that did not respond to your email, you deleted them from your database?

Hugo Faria 9:05
Yes pretty much, like that was something that you didn’t import. Once again, like I know that there are there are different ways, of course you can reach them by phone and different ways to try to get this this knowledge to stay in the database, but that was something that we did like on purpose was because the idea was to clean up like the database, to stage us with the leads that they want to be contacted because that would be their loyal leads, the leads that they are already hot leads or warm up leads and they move ahead. The idea was to create like a new database but with more qualified leads, so to change it a little, like the cold leads or qualified leads. And that worked very well, like after like six months with it, we started to create this new database like the open rates and click through rates in the emails they got, like over like it was something like 10, 15% got like after that like something or 30 or 35%. So we got like a very good increase in the open rate and click through rate and in business as well. So I think that was, as I said, was a problem at that stage, but we converted it in an opportunity. And it’s the same thing that we’re trying to do now, with the pandemic. It’s of course…it’s for the business, it’s not the same, but we’re trying to covert with like different ideas to create/generate more qualified leads.

Carlota Pico 10:30
Okay, excellent. We are moving into sales and the customer journey, which I understand you have a lot of experience in. Let’s first explain what the customer journey is. So the customer journey is a complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with a company and a brand. So instead of just looking at just a part the transaction or experience, the customer journey documents the full experience of being a customer from start to finish. So, Hugo, tell me: why is the customer journey relevant to content marketing?

Hugo Faria 11:08
Yeah, no, that’s a very good question. I would say like, it’s totally relevant. It’s like very important because if you think about the customer journey, like every customer, they are in a different journey. So if you don’t know where is your customer, what your customer is looking for, what they are like, you can’t create content for them. Like, that’s the main point, like because I think the main thing about creating content, it’s—you don’t create like genetic content, you want to create content that’s relevant for your audience. That’s the best way to catch up to them. And the best way to do that it’s to use like the customer journey so you can understand where your person is, what your customer is looking for. So yeah, we always try to work like so if, when we think about the funnel, the leads funnel, we always try to have like three different openings. So for the top of the funnel that leads that they don’t, no problem they open, or they are just looking for, like, what they need. Or sometimes they don’t even know what they need. They’re just looking for something and you can show them that they might like something different. So for this kind of content, we always try to use like ebooks and different kinds of material, like not talk about your company like your like, but talk about pain points. I think that’s the main point is like, we need to educate this lead to so you can like, you can understand a little more about what like he needs, his needs and what is important. And then we move for the middle of the funnel, so it’s like when they know already what they need, and now they starting to like look for, like competitors and see what they need. So for us like what worked very well, like in my experience, like this part of the middle of the funnel, it’s webinars, you can do webinars, demo videos, any kind of content that you can show, like because they already know what they want so you can show how you can help them. So at this point, we always try to talk about pain points but also show how your company can help them to solve these pain points. And then after that, when they move for the bottom of the funnel, that’s when they are ready for the chance to to buy something, the, you can go like with more like tailored content, you can give like free trials, demos, or live demos. You can go through, like, show exactly what you can offer. So you can offer like discounts. That pretty much depends like for b2b I would say like, it’s different from b2c. So for b2c, you see like they offer discounts, vouchers, or different kind of activities. For b2b, I think like demo, if you do like a personalized demo something like special for the customer, I think that’s the best way to get into the last part of the funnel.

Carlota Pico 14:08
Okay, so in terms of the first stage is more about ebooks, the second stage, you would recommend webinars because they’ve already, they already know what they’re looking for, and then the third stage when you’re really trying to seal the deal, it’s more about free demos or different ways that they can trial your product or your service. Is that a good summary?

Hugo Faria 14:30
Yeah, pretty much. Yes. So just answering your question like, that’s why you need to know what stage your customer is in to create the content. So that’s why it’s so important to the customer journey when you’re creating the content.

Carlota Pico 14:45
Okay, Hugo, would it be possible to zoom into any real life examples? Putting some of this theory into action?

Hugo Faria 14:54
Yeah, I mean, like, I think like, what I could give for example like, I think like nurture campaigns, we have like, have done a different kind of nurture campaigns that I think that it’s a good example. So you can get leads like from Google, like Google AdWords, or even like SEO—like any kind of lead that you can get from digital activities that sometimes you can go through and that’s why it’s very important not just about creating content, but you need to track the leads. So I think that’s very important. Like most of marketers, sometimes they are very worried about creating content, but they forget that tracking the leads is very important too, because sometimes they can just be a lead, that’s in the top of the funnel. These leads can go silent for a while, and they can come back after a while. So you need to see exactly where this leads is, what part of the funnel. And that’s why I think it’s, tracking the leads—it’s very important. But in another campaigns, as an example, so we had run like different kind of campaigns that we get through the top of the funnel, so we start with digital activity you can get this lead from a digital activity and they will have this campaign where you can go through like first like blog posts, ebooks, as I said, like just educational content for them and you can see like pretty much the lead coming through the funnel. So after that, you can see this lead is clicking a few links is kind of interacting with a few parts of this material so that’s important as well because if you can track like this, you can see exactly what what he’s looking for. And so if you have an ebook, like you can have like ebooks for the another campaign, have ebooks for different verticals, so you have for education, healthcare, or for different parts of the product. So if you can see where these leads, click, you can go through like for the next step, and then go for webinars, different kinds of marketing activity, like demo videos for example. It’s very good as well. So but the you can see like in the nurture campaign exactly why these leads come in. So right now like I think like nurturing campaigns, it’s always good, but especially right now if you can do like a proper good like nurture campaign to go to your digital marketer activities, it’s the best way to to generate leads, like to warm up the leads, not to generate, but warm up the leads right now.

Carlota Pico 17:22
Okay so what is a nurture campaign?

Hugo Faria 17:25
So a nurture campaign, I would say that’s pretty much where we start, when you get the lead and you walk the lead through the top to the bottom of the funnel. So you want to nurture these leads and go through until that leads becomes the opportunity or even a business closes. So it’s where you go through like the lead and pretty much you say like warm up the leads to become a lead opportunity, basically.

Carlota Pico 17:49
Okay, excellent. So, Hugo, do you use a tool to track your leads?

Hugo Faria 17:55
We do, yeah. So pretty much at all the companies that I’ve worked at, we use Marketo. So I think Marketo, we have different tools, but Marketo, for me in my experience has been working very well. So you can track everything in a lead so you can see everything that you need, any kind of data that you need from this lead you can use with Marketo. So, for me, like Marketo it has been worked very well like at you know, the companies that I have worked, so that would be my advice.

Carlota Pico 18:27
Okay. Does that tool also allow you to track the lead throughout the customer journey? Or are you using other other tools to track the performance of your content marketing campaigns?

Hugo Faria 18:39
You can, yeah with Marketo, you can actually. Like I think the best way, if you can have your work like for instance like in the companies that I used to work, they use like usually Salesforce and Marketo, because this way you can pretty much you can track you can see the leads where this lead came from, what they are looking for, what links they click, what they like… what are the needs right now? And then you can track these leads to see like for for instance if these leads just go silent and after some time just revive, so you can see exactly like what revived this lead, so what he’s looking for now. Sometimes could be something different that he was looking for before. So with Marketo and Salesforce I think if you can link the these two tools, you can get everything that you need just about tracking leads if you have all the data that you need.

Carlota Pico 19:34
Okay, very interesting. So then, according to that data, are you creating different personas as well?

Hugo Faria 19:42
Yes, yes, exactly. We have like, we have like the main personas that we are targeting so you can get from, same thing, from Marketo and Salesforce. So usually, when you create a nurture campaign, you have this nurture campaign targeted for different personas.

Carlota Pico 19:58
Okay. Okay. Excellent. Now I do want to zoom into another real life example and finish this section off with a marketing campaign or project that you’re particularly proud of, its purpose, and what made it so special?

Hugo Faria 20:15
Alright, so I think I can give you two examples. First before, talking about a marketing project that I have done. I think like, as you mentioned about COVID, and like, how much it’s changed now. I have like a few campaigns that I think it’s, it’s nice the way that they are doing because again, like it’s not just about talking, not just going to digital campaigns. But I think like now with COVID and all this pandemic that happened, I think, like the way that—the message for the customer has changed. So I think you need to be more positive, you need to be more human. So there are different ways to reach the audience, like in this time and now with pandemic. So I think like there are companies that have been falling, like Budweiser and Dove, so different companies that I know that they are pretty much changing like even like the the marketing like in cases that they took off, like they say like they took off like they changed all the images, domain search—everything in the campaign—and you can see that they are trying to to help the community. So the marketing campaign, it’s always about like helping communities, and being positive and changes like that. So I think like there are different marketing campaigns right now that they are doing. I think they’re doing like great with this change of message in showing people like that you can be positive, you can help the community, you can like hold on in these times. And so about the campaign I have done like so many campaigns, it’s hard to pick out one like that would be like special. But there is one that I did like when I was back at Schneider Electric and that was about energy efficiency. So that is like in marketing, it’s the most of the the energy efficiency. So it’s all about like, not wasting electricity and how do you use your energy, and like how to be more like green, like for the planet. And then for this campaign, we were like, a monthly campaign that was pretty much the the most of the energy efficiency. So would you do like a complete campaign, a marketing campaign, not just a digital marketing campaign, but with events and workshops, and like, we like engaged with the community as well, so it wasn’t just about like, generating leads, but also to help save energy and to help to the planet. So we did like a complete campaign to try to not just as I said, generate leads, but pass the message that as a company we can help in the planet and we are, like, we are worried about the environment, and everything. So I think that it’s not just about generating leads, but it’s about like the message that you pass to your audience, especially now that people are more sensitive, more emotional. So I think if you pass the right message for your audience, you are more likely to get like, not just leads, but loyal leads that people that it’s going to identify somehow with your company.

Carlota Pico 23:34
Okay, Hugo, so what made that campaign so special? How did you get that? How did you—how did you create emotions out of that campaign?

Hugo Faria 23:41
I think pretty much about like, I think like, as I said, the message that you pass, so for instance, like, you organize like, different kind of achievements. So for instance, like we had one day that we need to go for a parking, that was back in Brazil in San Paolo. So we would go for a park, and you would go for cycling that use electrical bike. So this way we are going to not use your car so you could go to your work using the electrical bike and you could take pictures and share it on Facebook or social media so we had like some sponsorships and also had some agreements with electrical cars. So people would go for a drive with like an electrical car to see how that works. So we had like different companies working for us to show like people that you can help like the environment in an easy way, though, It’s not that hard. You know, with small things you can change the world and help the environment. And that’s, so I think that was about the message, but about the compaign itself, I think what was good like, I think it was one of the first times that we managed to do like a campaign where we we pretty much involved everything—so it was press release, digital marketing, we went up the company with a big conference were we invited more than 500 people to go to this conference. And that would be like, not just specialists, but like different companies to talk about how you can use your energy in an efficienct way to save energy. So I think like all this, like, what we got from this campaign, we got, like, many leads that came through, especially from the digital activites and for this conference that we did in the end of the campaign, but also we got like, I think more about it, as I said, like it was more about the message that we passed, like so the leads, of course, when you do a campaign like that, you can get all these leads, and you can generate leads. And so we generate leads back to this campaign. So the campaign was paid itself just by the return of the investment, but was more about the message, like all the media that we got like a press release, newspapers, and all the media attention that we got from this campaign. I think it was important as well as brand awarness campaign, not just like a lead generation campaign.

Carlota Pico 26:11
Okay Hugo so basically you used what was in your city already, so electrical bikes, electrical cars; you give your channel over to your employees, I understand. So you ask your employees to go to work on electrical bike, using electrical cars, etc. You took visuals of that, so videos, photos, etc. And then you used those visuals as part of your digital marketing campaign. And then on top of that, you also organized a press release, and that help you to generate awareness around your brand and at the same time and it helped you to bring leads into your business funnel.

Hugo Faria 26:47
Yes, pretty much but not just employees. We worked like with clients and customers as well. So the idea was not just use like the employees but also to use like people, like real people. So we released at social media a campaign, on Facebook, a Twitter campaign, to invite people to use these channels. like to use like these tools. like electrical bikes and electrical cars to see how that works and to see how it could help to be more efficient with energy usage.

Carlota Pico 27:17
It was financed by the company?

Hugo Faria 27:19
Yeah.

Carlota Pico 27:20
Okay. Okay, very cool, very cool. So the company decided to use the tools that were around the city and empower people to go green.

Hugo Faria 27:31
Yeah, pretty much like, because you have the tools but most of the people they don’t want to use (them). So I think that’s important in a way, you know, like that you can help, and now show like, how important is to use like the energy efficient in an efficient way. If you can show that like you I think like people they are more likely to use these tools and start like thinking about change.

Carlota Pico 27:55
No, definitely, definitely. Okay, moving into our set of rapid fire questions which are your recommendations to our audience. To get the section started off, I’d like to ask you about your source of inspiration, Hugo. So an influencer or professional role model that you admire?

Hugo Faria 28:11
Alright, like there are a few that I admire that I use like I, I like I have done a lot of trainings in the LinkedIn Learning session. I think they are fantastic like you can get like professional trainers there. And so most of the influencers that I’m following right now they came from from this LinkedIn Learning session that you can get on LinkedIn Premium. But like one that I like, I followed like for a long time is Brad Batesole. So he’s the chief learning officer at Madecraft. So Brad, like you can, if you follow him, you can see like he has plenty of experience with marketing, B2B marketing, especially, and how to generate leads how to warm up leads. How to work with the funnel of the leads. So yeah, so it’s one of the influencers that I’m always following. There’s another one that’s it’s not totally about marketing. But he’s a storyteller. So he’s very good with like creating content and how to create storyboards and how to tell a story—not just about creating content, but the way that you tell the stories. This guy is Stefan Mumaw, so he’s a director at First Person, so if you follow him, you can see he has like, a lot of content about creating content and like, as I said, like the way that you can tell stories, and he has even like workshops and webinars that you can go to and you can learn a little more about that. So it’s very good.

Carlota Pico 29:49
Excellent. I love how sales focused you are. I’m also a very commercially focused person and everything that I do I measure in commercial terms. So I really apprecaite that part of your response and, and your insights. Okay, and to finish the section off, I’d like to ask you about your favorite book or app at the moment, and why?

Hugo Faria 30:15
Yeah, so I can show you like, it’s one of my favorite books, but I just finished reading this book like a few months ago. The name of this book, it’s “Contagious: Why Things Catch On.” So what like this book for me it’s amazing because it’s just like you can go through like it’s about why there are things that goes viral in there are other things that doesn’t. So how—what you need to do, like what kind of story you need to create, what are the things that catch on when you want to get something viral on social media. So it’s, it’s it’s a very good book like that are a little about like marketing, but not just marketing, but psychological, science. So it’s a little about everything. So it’s a it’s a very good book, like so I would definitely recommend this book.

Carlota Pico 31:08
Okay, interesting. So give me the executive summary. What makes things catch on?

Hugo Faria 31:15
So yeah, as I said, like, there are different ways but like, it all goes through like about understanding your audience , I don’t know, like, so again, like there are things that can go through like, there are sometimes things that go viral that you don’t even know like, you just got lucky, you know. So there are a lot of videos that you just see that just go viral like you don’t, you weren’t planning that. But we are doing that as a business. It’s about like, the message. So how you get people like emotional,you know, what you can do to understand your audience and go through the emotional parts of your audience. It’s all about like, not use much like, you don’t use like you can see like most of the videos that goes viral, it’s not about opening products. No, usually they have like a beautiful message, something like cute, like they put like dogs or like kittens, some kind of you know… It’s all about like the way that it touches the people, you know. So I think that’s it’s a very good reason, like you can understand a little more than the way that you want to create your content to catch on.

Carlota Pico 32:20
Okay, excellent, Hugo. Well thank you so much for sharing those insights with us. It was awesome to meet you and great to have you on the show.

Hugo Faria 32:27
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure for me. And yes, thank you very much.

Carlota Pico 32:32
And to everybody listening in today, thank you so much for joining us on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like every week, so keep on tuning in. Thanks again, have a fabulous day and see you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai