Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of the The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Carlota Pico and public relations expert and EMEA marketing manager Juan Feal:

Carlota Pico 0:13
Hi everyone, I’m Carlotta Pico from The Content Mix. And I’m excited to be here today with Juan Feal, who is EMEA marketing manager of Lewis Global Communications and has over 15 years of experience in marketing and communications. Juan, thank you so much for joining us today on The Content mix and welcome.

Juan Feal 0:34
Hi, thank you very much for inviting me to the podcast.

Carlota Pico 0:37
Wonderful, The pleasure is completely ours. I’d like to get started with a very general question just so that our audience knows a little bit about who you are and how you got into your current role. So if you could tell us a little bit about your background, a bit about the company that you’re currently working at and what led you to get into a career of marketing and communications?

Juan Feal 1:02
Yes, well, I studied advertising and PR in Spain, I started working as a creative in an agency, but the experience was not very good. I don’t know why but it didn’t work very well. So at the same time, I started to write for some tech and video game magazines in Spain. So I realized that I liked very much the writing. The writing experience for me was really good during that time. So I decided to study a master’s degree in communications management to have a better understanding of corporate communication. So after the master is when I started to work for agencies, I started to work in PR, basically for multinational companies and as soon as the social channels started to get popular in 2008, I started to integrate them in all the PR plans. So, it was very easy for me that transformation in 2008. But after that, you know, in 2014-15 things changed a little bit. So, multi digital marketing was starting to be very important for clients. So, I get a lot of requests from clients to integrate these types of tools and technologies in the plans. So, I decided to tell you another masters regarding digital marketing because I saw that, you know, like SEO paid campaigns is totally different from social media, transformation is different. So, you have to get, you know, the funadamentals right, to apply this in the plans. So, in the last five years, I’ve been managing the digital team in Spain. And lately since a year and a half ago, I’m coordinating the marketing team in EMEA. So I’m working with different colleagues around Europe. Basically, we try to develop awareness and lead generation campaigns for the agency. We try to increase the business opportunities and we try to be relevant. So these are the basic campaigns I do right now.

Carlota Pico 3:33
I do want to ask you and confirm – Lewis has 24 offices around the world, right. Okay. Yeah. And those 24 offices, some of them also located in the FMEA region. So do you have to coordinate across offices often?

Juan Feal 3:52
Yeah, I mean, we work together. Each country has independent plans, but at the same time, we have, you know, like a basic plan for global and also for the different regions and for EMEA, we have a marketing plan. So, we try to coordinate with other countries and different contact activities, industry surveys, that we can deploy in the different countries.

Carlota Pico 4:23
Okay. And one last question about Lewis, what makes your agency special or stand out amongst the crowd of agencies available?

Juan Feal 4:33
Good question. Well, I think in our case, our ADN is a communications agency, but we have transformed from communications agency to a marketing agency. So we are very experienced with content. We understand that content is the most important thing of a campaign. But right now we have, you know, like new people that came to a company that are expert in digital. So they also know about analytics, they know SEO. So we have more powerful tactics to get to the objectives. So I think it’s a little different for us, we understand content and we have the people to to do.

Carlota Pico 5:24
So well, content is king. So yeah, definitely a very valuable asset to offer to your clients. I would like to talk about COVID-19 marketing, and take into consideration your extensive PR and marketing experience in the tech industry specifically, and also the current health crisis. How can companies communicate with their clients during these very difficult times without sounding too self promotional?

Juan Feal 5:54
Yeah, I think it’s something complicated. I think the pandemic affected all industries. It of course affected agencies and marketing. So the budgets are lower. And you see that the people have less money to buy. So its a bit of a complicated situation right now, in terms of an agency, you have to be more flexible with the client because their budget is not the same. So you have to be very smart in terms of what to offer, what they should be doing. And right now, we are seeing a lot of clients that have problems with digital, because they are doing digital transformation. So this is a really good moment to push that digital transformation. So this is something that we are trying to help clients with right now to try to push digital and try to sell online if they’re not doing it, because we know that maybe there’s a pandemic right now but we are opening in Europe maybe in September, we’ll have to come back to our houses. So at least its a way to maintain your profit. Most of the business today have a very good position in digital. And I think it’s also important that you have to maintain brand, you have to maintain brand awareness, you cannot stop it hundred percent. Because at the end, and we hope that this is only, you know, a descent in the situation right now, but we hope that people start going out and doing things as they used to do, buying things and having a normal life. So if you are still doing marketing, you’re going to be on the top of the minds for the next month.

Carlota Pico 7:59
As a marketing professional myself your response is music to my ears Juan. Let’s hope that brands do not cut their marketing budgets throughout the health crisis. I do want to ask you about how you are helping brands to digitally transform their products or services, their websites, what tips would you give to those companies that have yet to embrace the digital transformation?

Juan Feal 8:23
Well, it depends on each situation of course, because we have companies are b2b, we have companies are b2c. So their needs are different. So basically, we start doing an audit of the situation of the company, what are their competitors doing online. So from that point, we offer some advice. Because the situation can be extremely different. So basically, we start yeah, with the audit and we try to – at least if they don’t have any brand awareness online, we have, you know from little to medium to large. If you don’t have social media channels, we start with that. We look at the page, we see if we can do more with a web page, if it can sell online or not. So, we see if we can set up ecommerce or not. If it is a b2b company, we see if they get any leads around the site, around the web. There are some companies that don’t even get any leads online. So this is a very good starting place for some companies to getting organic or free leads coming directly from a site. So yeah, these are the main things, I guess.

Carlota Pico 9:55
Okay. So during the health crisis, your advice to companies worldwide would be to really empathize with their customers or potential clients to really humanize the brand and to be able to connect with them on a person to person level much more than a business speaking down to a person.

Juan Feal 10:16
Yeah.

Carlota Pico 10:17
Okay. Very interesting. Very interesting. Okay. I do want to touch upon PR campaigns, since your former role was leading public relation campaigns for tech companies specifically, what metrics, do you think, matter the most when it comes to PR campaigns for the tech industry?

Juan Feal 10:39
I would say that normally the companies like to look for the number of coverage. But I think most of the time, the most important thing is the type of media that you cover. Because I mean, you can get 50 articles in a month. But I mean, you want to get in the right places, depending on the company. If you are a b2b company, a software company, its good to be in El Pais, for example. Its a big newspaper in Spain, but maybe it’s better for you to be in a very techy software magazine, for example. That is great for your potential visitors, CTOs, you know, people that are going to decide if they deploy the technology in the company. So it depends. In my opinion, I think it has to be a mix of if you want to do more brand, you want to be in more general media, but if you’re a niche company or a b2b company, you have to make sure that you have to be in this type of media.

Carlota Pico 11:59
Okay, So it’s a mix of quality, but also numbers.

Juan Feal 12:05
Yeah. Okay.

Carlota Pico 12:07
Fair enough. Fair enough. What about tools that you use to help guide your activity and highlight value to your customers, especially now more than ever, because, unfortunately, we’ve seen brands very tight on their marketing budget, and therefore their marketing expenditure as well. And that means that they probably won’t have a lot of money to be spending on PR campaigns. So how are you going to transmit that their investment will provide them with a good ROI? What tools will you be using or would you use in your former role?

Juan Feal 12:40
Yeah, we use different technologies to show our report, but one of the ones we use is Google Data Studio. I don’t know if you know it. But it’s a very good technology. Free, but also other options; you can include different ones, you can include different reports, different data sources from other places. So, normally you have to use sometimes supermetrics for example, there is a online service that you can connect directly to Google Data Studio. But basically, you can show whatever you want. So you can connect it and develop a dashboard about your online situation, where is the traffic coming from, what is going on on your Twitter in terms of engagement, so you can set up whatever you want. The leads coming from Twitter or from from the website. So we use a lot Google Data Studio because we think that it’s a great service to show what are you doing, What are you getting?

Carlota Pico 13:52
Okay, very interesting. Do you have any other PR hacks that you would like to share with our audience?

Juan Feal 13:59
Hacks? For the traditional PR, I would say no but for the digital, today we have a lot of hacks. There is a service called Zapier, for example, I don’t know if you know it. But it’s also very interesting to connect different services. So if you are getting, for example, the circulation for different magazines and you want to get it in a google spreadsheet, automatically and get the outcomes of the magazine or a e-magazine or blog and get the visitors to the same place and show it in this data studio, for example. You can do it with Zapier, in this case to connect different services so you don’t have to do it yourself basically and don’t lose time doing the report. That is one of the biggest problems, I think, the time that you spend reporting. Yeah. And I think you have to do it because it’s very important, you have to show that you’re doing is getting any results.

Carlota Pico 15:17
Yeah, well, time is money. One definitely. I do want to touch upon one of the comments that you made earlier on, which was about content and how important content is when it comes to marketing, PR campaigns and everything that we do as marketing and communication professionals. When it comes to content, HubSpot CEO said the following, “What separates good content from great content is a willingness to take risks and push the envelope”. Because of your experience and promotional campaigns. I want to ask you what separates great promotional campaigns from just good ones?

Juan Feal 15:58
Well, I think, I think we have to two views over here. I think you have to be creative, of course. Creativity is important, but it has to be based on something, on data, basically. So I can research today especially with online – you have to understand what is your target looking for? What are you willing to read? So today I think we have the tools to find that information about the keywords or the content that people want to read about. So I think that’s a big you know, biggest step in terms of okay, these are the things, the content that these people are going to be interested in. So you have to mix both things. Okay I know that this is content that is going to be interesting for my target and then mix it with creativity. Because I think one of the challenges for the content marketers today is that they have to push on both things. I mean, today, its not enough writing on good content. I mean, you have to write good content, but it has to be searchable. Because if nobody finds it doesn’t matter. So even if you just are writing, you have to do this bit of research about, okay, this is a keyword, this is the content that I should be writing to get to these people, you know, and this is the main idea.

Carlota Pico 17:42
I think that’s really good advice that you just offered to our audience because oftentimes as marketeers and communication professionals, we’re really interested in storytelling and storytelling, of course, is key. But it’s the basic. That’s the basic thing that we need to do as professionals in this industry, and then on top of that, we need to add an extra layer, which are keyword searches. Because as you rightly said, if you’re not online, you don’t exist.

Juan Feal 18:11
I think insights are very interesting and very important. The way we have to develop content today, we have to be basing these insights to develop good content. Yeah, it’s very important today.

Carlota Pico 18:27
What about culture? What role do you think culture plays in developing content? Because on the one side, of course, we need to be storytelling, but it’s very important to keep your audience in mind. And for example, what works in Spain may not necessarily work in the UK, and vice versa. And as EMEA marketing director, culture must play a huge role in your day to day challenges and also opportunities to communicate with local audiences.

Juan Feal 18:54
Yeah, in our case, we develop a lot of global and European campaigns for our clients, and normally what we do is we have one point of contact, mainly in Europe, and then all the offices have their main objective, they have the main goals, they have the main topics of the campaigns, but they have to adapt the content to their local stories, you know, the local trends, to use the local hooks to adapt content to the people in the country because, you know, a global story, you know, is just a global story. You have to include in all the special details for your country to make it work better.

Carlota Pico 19:45
Absolutely. So you are localizing your content in order to zoom into particular niche communities in different markets?

Juan Feal 19:54
Yeah.

Carlota Pico 19:55
Okay. So we are coming towards the end of our interview before we go into a rapid fire set of questions which are basically your recommendation to our audience. But before we finish up this section, I want to ask you about what you would have loved to have known 15 years ago when you first started off in your career in marketing and communication. So a piece of advice to recent graduates who are just getting into the industry during these very uncertain times.

Juan Feal 20:27
Well, I think things have changed in the last 15 years, things are very different, because of the transformation from paper to digital. So, what started in the beginning, you know, like in 2005-2006, is nothing like what is happening today. So, I will say that the most important thing is that you have to be open minded. You have to like what you do. So the main thing is that you like to test things, you like to do different things, you like to play with different options, with different technologies, especially for social media. You know, every day you have new updates in the channels, every day there is a new social channel that you have to check out. But I think something very important is that you have to like to play with things, you have to like to be creative.

Carlota Pico 21:34
I love that response because I completely agree with it. I actually started off in print campaigns, in print media just like yourself over 10 years ago now and I’ve had to digitally transform myself as a professional as well embrace the era of digital awareness and digital campaigns, which I’m very happy about because I’m a big fan of social media. I still have to learn the ins and outs Tik Tok though, I’m still playing with Tik Tok because it’s beyond my generation.

Juan Feal 22:05
Yeah, me too. Me too. For me Tik Tok, I think it’s too much right now.

Carlota Pico 22:10
Little by little right. Rome was not created overnight. So I guess we have plenty of time to figure Tik Tok out. Okay, we are moving into our set of rapid fire questions, which is basically your recommendations, as I mentioned before. To get the section started off, I’d like to learn about your source of inspiration. So for example, influencer or your role model?

Juan Feal 22:34
I follow different people on instagram and you know, on Twitter. But I think, for me the most important source of information where I learn a lot are SEMrush, the tool SEMrush, you know? They have a very good blog. So they talk about SEO content so I I learned a lot from them. And also, Moz. It’s another SEO and content tool. And they have, you know, like a great blog, where they talk about different techniques and hacks for a day to day. For me, they’re the best sources.

Carlota Pico 23:21
Yeah, I’m actually a former entrepreneur, former tech entrepreneur, and because of my background and personal interest, I’m a big technology follower of different technology influencers. But to just spin off of what you were saying right now about SEMrush, I attended their party last year after the web summit, I went to the web summit for professional reasons on top of my personal interests, of course, being a big fan of technology and technological advancements. And their party was just fabulous.

Juan Feal 23:54
Right, where was it? The party?

Carlota Pico 23:56
In Lisbon, right after the web summit.

Juan Feal 23:57
Oh, yeah, Lisbon, yeah.

Carlota Pico 24:00
Yeah, let’s see what happens with events this year because I’m afraid that the majority of these events will have to be digital ones going forward, especially until we have a COVID-19 vaccine. Juan, thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix. It was a pleasure to have you on the show, and I can’t wait for coffee in person one day.

Juan Feal 24:21
Sure. Thank you very much to you.

Carlota Pico 24:24
And thanks, everyone for listening in. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out The Content Mix. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one. So keep on tuning in. Thanks again, have a great weekend and see you next time. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai