Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Ilia Markov, content marketing manager at ChartMogul, on SaaS marketing:

Shaheen Samavati 0:14
Hi everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here with Ilia Markov. He has six years of experience in content marketing for B2B companies, and he’s currently content marketing manager at ChartMogul. Thanks so much for joining us.

Ilia Markov 0:28
Thank you for having me.

Shaheen Samavati 0:30
So where are you right now? Where are you based?

Ilia Markov 0:32
I’m based in Bulgaria. For those of your listeners who don’t know where that is, that’s in southeastern Europe, close to Greece, Turkey, some of the bigger, more known countries around us. And I’ve been back here ever since I finished my degree in the States. So I came back from the States, back to Bulgaria, and I’ve been living here ever since.

Shaheen Samavati 0:56
So you’re experienced at, like right now you’re working remotely for a company that’s based in Berlin, and in your previous work, you were also working remotely, right? So how did you get that first remote work experience? And how did you end up being a remote worker?

Ilia Markov 1:13
So ChartMogul, we have an office in Berlin and some of my coworkers work out of that office, but actually, we’re a fully distributed company. So we have, I have teammates all over the world. Our founder lives in South Korea. We have people in Japan, people in Canada, in Germany—not just in Berlin, where the office is—Portugal, all over the place, really. And I’ve actually been working remotely for the last five or six years. When I came back, my first job was like a traditional in-office job doing like general digital marketing, tech marketing stuff for a hosting company, web hosting company, based here in Sofia. But I actually wanted to make a switch doing, like focusing more on the content side, for one thing, and then also getting that remote work experience. I managed to do that, managed to make that switch, first by, I actually started doing some freelancing work on the side even, while I was still working for that company that I mentioned. And then I managed to, like, land a full-time job with a company called Hubstaff, you know, as a content marketing manager there as well. And that was my first experience with, you know, full-time remote work for a product company. And the rest is history, as they say.

Shaheen Samavati 2:36
I see. So I’m curious, how did you get that first job at an American company, being in Bulgaria? And I imagine there’s just like tons of, because I imagine that initially the work was in English, right? So you’re competing against all these native English in the US. How did they end up hiring someone in Bulgaria?

Ilia Markov 2:53
Well, I guess, you know, the right person to ask would be the co-founder of Hubstaff who hired me. But I think, you know, a big part of my success, so to speak, was, you know, having that initial experience; going out there and doing some of the work, getting some experience and some knowledge and building the skills that you want to develop. Even when it’s like a freelancer, or in some cases, it could be even like doing some volunteering work, just to build up the skills, and then having something to show for them. So having like, your blog, your blog is actually a very good idea because it’s not just something that can serve as, you know, as a supporting evidence for your resume. But it can also be used as a marketing material because, you know, putting content out there is the best form of marketing you can do for yourself, I think. Although I must admit I’m not great at like the personal blog and the you know, blogging for my own brand. And it’s something that I wanted to invest more time in for a long time. But I think it’s a, especially for people who are getting started, it’s a great way to develop their skills.

Shaheen Samavati 4:16
Definitely. I was just gonna mention a fun fact: my agency, VeraContent, our first hire, who was a English content writer, was from Bulgaria. So shout out to Kaloyan. So there seems to be great content talent there!

Ilia Markov 4:29
Interesting. Yes, I know a few people, I’ve worked with a few people. Like I’ve, you know, Hubstaff, I was running the content program and we had, like, we were working with some freelancers. And I was actually working with some freelancers from Bulgaria as well, who I wanted to work with not just because they were you know, Bulgarian, but also because they were, they are very good writers. And I still work with them sometimes.

Shaheen Samavati 4:57
Yeah, so I guess you have great English education in Bulgaria.

Ilia Markov 5:01
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been lucky to, you know, have had the chance to study abroad in the UK and in the US as well. So I spent quite a, you know, quite a long time living in, like English-speaking countries. So I guess that’s, you know, part of the secret to my success. But there are people, I know people in Bulgaria who’ve never like lived abroad, or maybe they’ve lived for some time, but not for like a very extended time, but they still have a very good level of the language. But I think the language actually, I think the language is just part of the picture. It’s understanding how content works. And content marketing is interesting because you have like the writing element to it, and then you also have the marketing element to it. And like having someone who understands both is what makes it hard. And then depending on like the niche that your company operates in, you need another element, which is like the domain knowledge. So, I mean, ChartMogul is a SaaS company, and a large portion of our customers are other SaaS businesses. So in order to be able to produce good content for ChartMogul, you need to understand SaaS as an industry very well. And subscription companies in general, like what’s the, how the subscription business model is different, you know, in order to be able to write good content on the topic. So I think that’s an interesting part of, to me at least that’s one of the most interesting things about being a digital marketer who focuses on content.

Shaheen Samavati 6:51
Absolutely. So for those who don’t know what ChartMogul is about, could you just give us a brief on that?

Ilia Markov 6:57
Sure, of course. ChartMogul is a subscription data platform, which, companies that operate on, you know, using the subscription business model can use to plug in their data, their subscription data, their revenue data, get metrics such as MRR, ARR, churn, lifetime value and others, calculated out of the box. And then they can use that along with other features that we have, such as customer segmentation and so on, to understand their customers better and to grow their business.

Shaheen Samavati 7:38
So I know in your previous roles, you’ve worked for some really well-known technology companies. And I was curious, well first of all, what made you decide to join this new project, which seems to be maybe at an earlier stage than some of the other projects you were part of? Or maybe I’m wrong, correct me if I’m wrong. But then, and also just kind of like…

Ilia Markov 8:03
Probably not… Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Shaheen Samavati 8:08
No, no, go ahead. And then secondly, just like what you learned in your previous roles and how you’re applying that now, and that kind of thing. So I know that’s a really long question.

Ilia Markov 8:15
Sure, yeah. It’s a great question. And sorry to interrupt, again. So ChartMogul is not that early stage actually. We’re almost six years old now. We’ve been around for a while. The platform has been taking shape. Actually, we launched the subscription data platform earlier this year. Before that, we called it, like, revenue analytics product. And now like, it’s a subscription data platform, because we allow people to bring data from, not just from, like, if they’re using Stripe or PayPal or something like that for their billing, they can, that’s like the main data they bring into ChartMogul. But they can use other tools to enrich that data and bring more data from other places for it. So if they’re using something like HubSpot, they can maybe bring data about what sales rep works specific customers, and they can compare how different sales reps, how successful they are, what type of customers they bring, and so on. But to answer the first part of your question, what really attracted me to ChartMogul was the opportunity to work for a company that’s really focused on the SaaS industry. I’ve been working in SaaS for the past five, six years. And I’ve, you know, I’ve realized that I’m actually quite interested in it. So that was a, you know, a great chance to learn even more, get even more entangled in the industry and like, develop even more connections and relationships in it. The second piece was that ChartMogul actually had a great, very high-quality basis for the content program. And even though the person who built that basis is not with ChartMogul anymore, unfortunately, I was very lucky in that sense that I had like a very good basis to, a very good foundation to build on. And things I’ve learned at other companies… So it was, every SaaS company is different in some way. And it also shares a lot of like, common things with SaaS companies. It doesn’t matter like what kind of vertical they operate in. So I mean in like, I mentioned Hubstaff, it’s like, productivity software, I guess. I’m not sure what exactly to call that vertical. I’ve worked for a content agency, and I’ve also worked for, like, Groove, which is another company in customer service, customer support space. And these are all very different, but like, there are also some very common things. Especially in how you run marketing, how you run growth, how you use content to, you know, to build your company and to, you know, to attract more customers. So I think there are quite a few things I’ve been able to bring from those companies I’ve been lucky to work with in the past. But at the same time, something that’s interesting, it doesn’t really matter how much you learn, because it’s changing. The space is changing so fast that once you learn something, sure you can bring it to a new place, but you need to like have an open mind and keep learning, and keep developing and changing what you’re doing based on like what’s changing in the market.

Shaheen Samavati 12:00
Yeah totally, like it’s something, even though that strategy worked great a couple of years ago, now things have changed. And if it’s been done, it’s probably not going to work now.

Ilia Markov 12:12
Exactly, I’ve actually been a bit… worried is probably too strong a word, but I’ve been thinking a lot about, so is content still relevant? Is it changing, you know, to the point where we need to change something like seriously about it? And I think, you know, one of the things I’ve been thinking about and I’ve been trying to experiment with more is just focusing on putting out content which has a competitive advantage. So it’s something like, could be something like using data that few people have access to. Like, it’s just you and your company have access to, or just putting so much work into a piece of content that it’s hard to replicate. Because everyone, nowadays everyone can write, like a “10 ways to do something” blog post. But not everyone can write—we’ll probably talk about Brian Dean in a few minutes and Backlinko—but he has, I was just looking at it yesterday, that’s why I remember that he has a piece of content which is like a super extensive list of SEO tools. And I’m not sure how many he has, I haven’t checked, but it’s definitely more than 200. And with like, a little description around each. And pretty much everyone can do that, but it takes a lot of time and like it has competitive advantage, like the time you put, the effort, the work you put in that piece of content gives you a competitive advantage.

Shaheen Samavati 13:57
Yeah, exactly. Like you can talk publicly about it, because it’s a lot of work to do it. And even if you say it’s like, you need to do this, this, this, not that many people are probably going to do it because it requires a lot of resources, right?

Ilia Markov 14:09
Yeah, exactly.

Shaheen Samavati 14:12
Well talking about, like, strategy. I mean, what are the platforms that you’re focused on? And like, how do you distribute your content?

Ilia Markov 14:20
I believe we have a newsletter that we send out every week, and that’s probably our most important platform. It’s what we use. So the newsletter is called SaaS Roundup, and it collects like, the most important content in SaaS every week. We try to share fresh and relevant content every week. So we wouldn’t go back to something that was published months or years ago, and it’s, there’s like a very high chance it’s not that relevant anymore. And people know it, of course, because it’s been out for a while. But along with the selection we make, so that’s the added value for the people who read that newsletter, it’s like the curation we make every week. And I’ve seen like, we ran a survey a while back and some of like, probably the most common response was that people enjoyed that element of curation. Like that’s the value we give them. You don’t have to go through a Feedly feed with like hundreds of sources, they can just open the newsletter and find the three most important, most relevant pieces of content from the week. But we also use that to promote our own content. And based on like, what I’ve seen in terms of engagement, and like how many people subscribe and unsubscribe, I think we’re doing a good job and we’re not, like we’re not abusing the trust that, you know, people give us by subscribing to the newsletter. Apart from that, of course we use Twitter, Facebook—not Facebook, sorry. We don’t use Facebook actively. I mean, people share on Facebook and we share on Facebook sometimes, but it’s not like a focus area. LinkedIn, I would say, is a focus area. We’ve experimented in the past and now as well we’re experimenting with platforms like Quora where people, you know, ask questions and like other people respond and they have discussions. And something that I would like to experiment more with is just paid distribution and using, you know, paid promotion on like Facebook or LinkedIn advertising, to drive people to our content. But the important thing with that is that you make sure that you understand how people like engage with the content, and you don’t just attract them for like a quick skim of an article. But you start developing a relationship with them. So maybe you get them to subscribe to your newsletter, or you get them to start a trial. But you understand what’s going on, and it’s not just like eyeballs that you’re counting.

Shaheen Samavati 16:55
Right, yeah, absolutely. Cool, so it’s interesting, ’cause I think a lot of companies take the approach of just like putting stuff out on all the channels. But it sounds like you’ve been very focused on a few, and like trying to put meaningful content out on those.

Ilia Markov 17:09
Yeah, and I think what works as well… Of course we do like the regular, let’s share our new blog post on Twitter and LinkedIn. And that’s, of course, that works, probably not, it doesn’t give us amazing results. We also use some paid platforms like Zest and CUE, which allow you to promote your content, like use other people to promote your content on social media—on Twitter and LinkedIn, specifically, and Facebook and whatever. But I think what works well on Twitter and LinkedIn specifically, since we’re talking about them, is when you… sure, you share the content, but you put something extra. So for LinkedIn, maybe you write like a longer post that summarizes the main topics of the content that you want to share, and then you share it. But you actually do some extra effort. Or like people on Twitter who do these, like the long threads of several tweets, where they like explain the main points of the content they’re sharing, and then the last tweet, they would share it. I think that adds value. Because it’s like, it’s personal, you publish it under your personal account. People can engage with you, people can ask you follow-up questions. I think like Twitter and LinkedIn are the new comments section. Because like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but many blogs don’t have comments sections anymore. And like few people comment on blogs anymore. So I think like social media is a good place to get this kind of engagement.

Shaheen Samavati 18:53
Yeah, there definitely seems to be a shift of people spending more time on social media and expecting all the content to be on social media, where they can comment on it directly rather than having to like go to an external link, right?

Ilia Markov 19:05
Yeah, and I think that makes sense. And I think that people are, like, in the past, many people counted, looked at comments as like an engagement signal, kind of like how many shares did we get, how many comments we got. And I think comments are about discussion and like engaging with the people who are in your audience, like you want some people, you just want to be in your audience, maybe they’re not a good fit for customers of your product, of whatever you’re selling. And some, of course, you want to turn into customers. But like when you look at social media, it should be about discussing and being open and like talking to people. Because content, you know, content is about building trust. You know, it’s like one of the main, this is how I see content; it’s like building trust with the people who you want to turn into customers tomorrow. And talking to them is one of the best ways to build trust, and like showing that you’re approachable is another way to do that. And if you notice, sorry to interrupt again, but if you notice like there are many people on LinkedIn specifically, Twitter of course. But they are now, like you have people like Dave Gerhardt, who used to be at Drift, and now he’s, I think he’s at a different company—he was like the head of marketing at Drift. And he’s very active on LinkedIn, but in his own capacity, as Dave Gerhardt, not as… Or David Cancel, who’s the CEO of Drift, he’s like active on LinkedIn as David Cancel, not Drift. And, you know, building the personal brand is also building the company brand. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s like the personal brand, it’s easier because it’s personal and people like to talk to other people, not to like a logo and a brand name.

Shaheen Samavati 21:04
Yeah, that’s definitely a trend that’s been coming up a lot in the interviews, and this whole trend of like social selling, of, you know, building up your salespeople or the people you want representing your brand on social media, so that they’re kind of being the face and actually interacting with people. That’s an interesting trend. Well, so just a couple more questions left. I just wanted to touch base on, if you had any opinion on kind of the state of content marketing in Europe, I know you’ve been working with a lot of American companies. So just curious if you have any perspective on how things compare in the US versus Europe when it comes to content marketing.

Ilia Markov 21:42
It’s true. Most of the companies I’ve worked with are at least nominally based in the US, even though all of them have had, because they’re like distributed companies or fully remote companies, they’ll have people in different locations. I think the European technology scene, and like SaaS industry, is developing very fast, you know, making big strides and developing very fast. So to be honest, I don’t see any big difference between, like a US-based company and a company based in Europe anymore. And I think it’s like, because it’s such an open market and your like competition is, it doesn’t really matter where you are. Like your competition could be based in, you could have like three companies in one, doing pretty much the same thing, the same product, one based in Europe, one based in the US and one based in India, for example. And because they all compete for the same market, it’s like they have to be, each of them has to be efficient, they cannot just rely on being in a specific location to, like, control that market. So I think that makes companies very similar in that sense. Like they have to find ways to be productive, they have to be doing the things that work in order to succeed. To be honest, I think like, if we’re comparing different companies, I think a lot comes down to the culture that the founders of the company want to instill in the team. So it’s not so much a question of are they based in Wyoming, or in Berlin, or in, I don’t know, in Seoul, doesn’t really matter. It’s about the culture they want to have inside the team. With remote companies, you usually see some elements of the culture that are very similar. It’s like, it’s a lot about accountability and just owning what you do and like not being afraid to take ownership of it, and like be responsible for driving the piece of the company that you own, be it product or content marketing or some other aspect of it. And I think it’s, those things tend to be very similar between companies, and it doesn’t really matter where they’re based.

Shaheen Samavati 24:25
Yeah, it’s interesting. Sounds like the companies you’ve worked for are like truly global, and also your audience is global. So it’s a big shift from, I mean you used to think about marketing being a lot about segmenting by region. But I suppose, in the kind of industry you’re in, it’s not so much about region; it’s about, you know, you’re targeting people all over the world, right? And they have things in common even though they’re in different places.

Ilia Markov 24:50
Yeah, exactly. And like when you’re selling to people, like you’re selling online, you’re selling a digital product, the people who are in your audience, a lot of them share, like of course not the same, like there are differences in culture between different places. But like a lot of them share some traits, like you can use some—even with things like jokes, like you can use a joke from Friends. And you can be pretty much confident that people anywhere, doesn’t matter where they’re based, they would understand it because they have this baseline culture that they share, and like, that comes from books, TV shows and other things.

Shaheen Samavati 25:36
Yeah, absolutely. Super interesting. Well, let’s move to your recommendations.

Ilia Markov 25:43
Sure.

Shaheen Samavati 25:44
So yeah, we’re reaching the end of the interview. So we always do this, rapid-fire recommendations. They don’t have to be that rapid, but just an app or a tool that’s essential in your work, that you recommend?

Ilia Markov 25:59
I think the most essential for me, like if I have to be honest, it’s WordPress, because it’s what I’ve like always used to run content and blogs. But I’m actually a big fan of, and a big advocate of, Trello for content marketing. Because it combines two elements that I find very important: one is like simplicity and ease of use, even though they’ve been building it up for the last couple years, I guess, now. That’s one thing, but it also allows you to streamline a lot of the processes that you use. And when you’re running a content program, especially if you’re like contributing or working with other people and cooperating with other people, it’s really important to have a strong process. Because it can save you a lot of time, really a lot of time that goes, like I mean content is time-consuming in the best case scenario. And if you’re not well organized around it, it’s even more so. So I think like Trello is great for that.

Shaheen Samavati 27:10
Yeah, and Trello is so easy to start with, but then it has like so many ways you can automate things and like use the advanced features. I’m impressed when I see someone who’s like a really advanced user of Trello. There’s amazing things you can do with it.

Ilia Markov 27:22
Yeah, absolutely.

Shaheen Samavati 27:25
And then, well, a marketing influencer in Europe who you follow, or otherwise, an influencer?

Ilia Markov 27:30
So I already mentioned Brian Dean. His website is backlinko.com, I believe. I think he’s like, he’s really good on… so he comes from an SEO background. But he’s like, really strong on content as well. So I would really recommend people checking him out, reading his content. He publishes a lot of content that is completely free. He also has paid courses that I would also recommend. So in terms of like content specifically, I think he’s very good. He’s based in Germany. I think he’s American but based in Germany, so that’s why I think it counts in this case. But I would definitely recommend people check him out.

Shaheen Samavati 27:41
He’s as European as I am. I’m also American, if you couldn’t…

Ilia Markov 28:28
We’re all European. It’s one big family, no?

Shaheen Samavati 28:32
Definitely, yeah. And then, well, an industry group or event you recommend?

Ilia Markov 28:38
I would say SaaStock, which is very focused on SaaS, not so much on content or marketing. But I think it’s a great place to like learn what’s happening in the industry, and like how people think about how it’s developing. So you can hear many things around like how marketing is changing, how growth is getting more difficult, and like how people need to think about growth and what they need to do about it. And you can like hear some of the best people like Des Traynor, the founder of Intercom, was at the last one in Dublin last year. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to be a while before we see another one, although they did have a virtual event last week or two weeks ago, I believe. And they had a great lineup as well. And there’s so many virtual events now, happening place, because it’s so easy to make one. So it’s really hard to put together something that’s really relevant and valuable. And I think they managed to pull it off last week. I think it was so, I was really impressed with SaaStock. So I would definitely recommend that as well.

Shaheen Samavati 29:53
Yeah, awesome. Cool. So well, we’re ending the interview, but if you have any parting advice for content marketers, in Europe specifically or otherwise?

Ilia Markov 30:05
Sure. Don’t be afraid to, you know, dip your toes in content marketing. Don’t be afraid. Don’t think that just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t really, like you shouldn’t try it anymore. It’s not worth it. It is, I believe it is. But just don’t, at the same time, don’t, you know, do the same thing all over again. Try to find new ways to produce good content and new ways to promote your content. That would be my advice.

Shaheen Samavati 30:39
Okay, great. That’s a great tip. Well, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

Ilia Markov 30:45
Thank you.

Shaheen Samavati 30:47
And thanks everybody for listening in. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out TheContentMix.com, and keep tuning into the podcast every weekday. See you next time. Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai