Check out our latest episode today. 
Learn how your B2B marketing can evolve to be relationship-centric Find out how B2B marketing can learn from B2C marketing Discover how you can CREATE demand instead of using existing demand Create organic content that drives your marketing strategy Build your audience with peers that will promote your business for you
00:00-11:07 | How to build your business marketing by creating demand 11:07-18:05 | Learn how to approach a new client with trust to take them to the next level 18:05-26:07 | How to determine a successful marketing campaign 26:07-36:41 | Position your show in a way that stands out among competitors 36:41-44:03 | Discover how a video podcast show can grow your business 44:03-52:35 | Why you need to start a B2B video podcast as a marketing strategy
“Marketing companies forget that they need to have the trust of the client before they start implementing and bringing new things.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “We focus on helping you build a relationship with your customers and the client and then getting to the revenue.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “Chief Vision Officer” because somebody needs to be in charge of the vision—and "CEO” doesn't mean anything. - Nemanja Zivkovic “I aligned all of my decisions to the vision.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “Vision is so important for people to buy in, to feel like they're a part of something meaningful.” - Kap Chatfield “We are focused on relationship-centric marketing, and bringing the revenue by focusing on creating relationships with your clients and customers.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “You need to create the demand instead of using the existing demand, which doesn't exist.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “It's the long term clients that you start building the relationship with through an honest conversation on the podcast.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “I need to create trust and people need to see me and how I'm confident that I know what I'm talking about—I have results to share, and I can go into detail how we implement these strategies for other companies.” - Nemanja Zivkovic “People that are coming in are telling us that they either watch the show, or they get referred or they resonated with the content—they come to us already knowing our philosophy, knowing what we can do for them, and I would say that's a client, not a lead.” - Nemanja Zivkovic- Rveal’s website: rveal.media
- Rveal’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rvealmedia/
- Rveal’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC69p14R2ccMdyUbbmdlWCEw
- Nemanja’s personal LinkedIn profile
- The Funky Marketing Show
- FunkyMarketing.net
Full transcription:
Kap Chatfield 00:20
Hey gang, welcome back to B2B Podcasting. Today, my guest, my special guest, is I'm going to get the name right as I pronounce this Nemanja Zivkovic. He's from Serbia. He is the founder and Chief Vision Officer of Funky Marketing, I love the name, and you're even going to love even more the show that they're doing. It's called the Funky Marketing Show. Nemanja is the host of that show. And that show has really, as I've seen, it's really just made its waves on LinkedIn, and has really impacted b2b marketing and even sales, I'd say, all over the world. So Nemanja, it's so awesome to have you on the show today. Thanks for the generosity of your time.
Nemanja Zivkovic 00:58
Thanks for the great intro. Great pronouncing of my name. And you know, happy to be here and chat about everything.
Kap Chatfield 01:06
Awesome, man. Well, hey, let's, let's start with your your title, founder of Funky Marketing. You also have said in your LinkedIn bio, before that, you're the Chief Vision Officer. If we even talked on the pre show, you said that's not necessarily your formal title, but you used it almost as like a conversation starter. So explain to us what a Chief Vision Officer is and why you why you originally going by that title.
Nemanja Zivkovic 01:33
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I can even say that I'm a C-level executive. Because like, Funky Marketing is not that big. It's five to seven people. But, you know, one of the services that we're doing is marketing and sales alignment. And, you know, so much of it is is old school, and even now, when things are changing, I have a feeling that sales is just renamed to the revenue, people. And you know, to kind of get to the point of, of, you know, the real change that needs to happen. I put the title because, for two reasons, actually, to spark the conversations around it, so people can ask me why you are Chief Vision Officer and I can explain, I can go into the details not to go into why everything's happened, but I think it relates to Simon Sinek. And you know, somebody needs to be in charge of the vision because like, CEO doesn't mean anything. Chief Operating Officer mean something, Chief Financial Officer mean something. CEO, basically, we need something, because that's the leader that can see the wider picture and the bigger picture. And also, because I aligned all of my decisions to the vision. When we started, I said, our vision for the Funky Marketing is we want to change the B2B industry and to actually bring it back where it belongs, when ethics and good practices are the ones that are cherished. And, you know, having that in mind, that's how I hire, that's how I choose the clients. And that's how we do the work.
Kap Chatfield 03:12
So vision, I could not agree more that vision is critical, especially in your seat in the organization. There's a saying that goes without vision people perish. And I would kind of modify that to say without vision, the organization perishes, the company perishes. And so vision is so important for people to buy in, to feel like they're a part of something meaningful. And so the name of your company is, especially because you're in Serbia, it's such a cool name, Funky Marketing. I want I want to hear firsthand from you. What is the vision behind Funky Marketing?
Nemanja Zivkovic 03:46
Yeah, I mean, I basically said it, it's like, doing something different. And practically we are. My background is in b2c. So I'm kind of getting the best practices from b2c, where we are focused on people, focused on the customers and getting them back into the b2b. Like, it's starting to change those things. And I think we are one of the companies that are bringing the change. Like Netflix is doing that by going halfway to the customers, Airbnb as well. And, you know, this is something that we are doing as well and connecting, you know, things that are not just business related, because b2b used to be foggy, mystic. Companies talking about themselves, about the features not about the problems. And you know, and some of them are still thinking about their ideal customers as the objects. It's a company you know, they call it maybe account, but it's, it's totally different. They don't consider them as people on specific positions. And basically, you know, when you bring it down to people that's when you have, you know, funk with it, so a little bit different approach. Music, in my case, it's basketball as well. And, you know, if you have positions inside the company, if you have, let's say, out of five ICPs, you have three that are MBA lovers, then you have some other things that you can talk with them and create relationship with. And this is what Funky Marketing is all about. We are focused on relationship centric marketing, and bringing the revenue by focusing on creating relationships with your clients and customers.
Kap Chatfield 05:37
I love that. That's so cool. And it's so needed in the b2b space. It's so wild. I saw a post on LinkedIn a little while ago, might have been by Dave Gerhardt, and he said, b2c marketing is marketing to people. And b2b marketing is marketing to people in business. But we forget that it's really that simple. That you're not marketing to like this big conglomerate complex organization, you're marketing to people within that organization, you got to speak to them personally. So you mentioned even just right now, a really brilliant tactic of like, how do you, how do you get more contextual? How do you get more relational, more personal, with those people you're talking to? You refered to like, using MBA references and things like that. What's one thing that you help your clients think through in order to to better contextualize their marketing and, and speak directly to that target audience?
Nemanja Zivkovic 06:35
Yeah, a lots of things. This, what I mentioned before comes down to like, I think 2015, when, you know, our, it's my, it was my first time in sales as GM, I needed to take over that part as well. And on LinkedIn we were using, we were using a tool that behaves like a person. So it makes, it comes to the target persona profile, stays for 20 seconds so they can see that you view their profile. If they are interested, they come to your profile, and then you can send a connection request and start connecting, but, you know, you can just do so much over there. And back in the days, it was basically a virtual CV, you cannot create a relationship over there. So I needed to go and find a different way to connect with those people. So outside of business, I needed to find them on Twitter, for example. And I remember the first, the first one that I closed, I closed them over over fishing. I have not, nothing to do with fishing, no idea about fishing, but I saw that the guy knows and loves fishing. So I did the research. And I found out just enough that I can you know, do the conversation. And, you know, that's where I found out what it takes and how some things are going. And also like having in mind the background, from activism and NGO and saving villages from dying, those kinds of things, figure out how people are thinking and that it's always value first. So related to the clients, lots of them, have brilliant people inside the companies that are building the products or doing the services, but not many of them. No idea why inside the tech companies are using those people to get more people like them or more clients. And this is, this is kind of the change that we brought into the companies are creating sort of a hub inside the company, when we empower people from the company, including the leaders to engage, to come up with, you know, their personal perspectives on their own life, on their own business, and then their position inside the company. And transfer that to LinkedIn, to other social media platforms. When you know, everybody's talking about what they know the best. CEO talks about leadership, investments. Copywriter talks about psychology and the way they write. You know, designer speaks with, with on LinkedIn with LinkedIn Decks. Those kinds of things. Even developers, you know, started creating personal brands and bringing in not only the potential clients, but also their teammates, because like, they figure out they love board games. So we're going to bring in somebody that loves board games. So the guy or the girl, they are not bored with us. And when you establish that, it becomes you know, something this helps company take over take over the platform. Because it's people with relevant skills and when you know your potential client, for example are on LinkedIn, and they see okay, this I'm seeing this guy all the time. I know that his content is relevant let me see who else works in the company. So they find aha! This girl they also knows what she's talking about. And then when they connect with you, then you get the comments, then you get meaningful insights, those kinds of things. And basically, the first thing that comes to your mind when you need their services, or the product is one of those people from the company. So they even either reach out to some of them, or they go to Google and come to the website, it's not important. It's important that you know, they are here for for those things. Because most of the tech companies are creating new things, new products with new approach, even it's machine learning, AI, or deep tech, you know, those things people aren't finding by going to Google and searching for that. You need to go before the intent. So that's why we use social media, we use people to create the intent. And then when it comes the time that they need it, we're here.
Kap Chatfield 11:07
So if I'm, if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, the companies that you're serving, particularly in the tech space, because they're inventing things that customers don't really have language for right away. They're not, you're helping them not focus on creating, you know, search engine optimized content, because odds are those people, their ideal customer, they're not going to be searching for that, because they don't even know about that thing yet. So you're talking about using LinkedIn to help build, build relationship, build bridges, so that you can educate your customer first, win their trust, win that relationship, and then educate them about what you're doing. So now that you are giving them language for the new product you're creating, is that right?
Nemanja Zivkovic 11:52
Exactly, exactly. Because like, you know, if people, especially in b2b still think the old way. Like, we can give them the survey and they could give us the answers, but they cannot give the answer if they don't know that it exists. You know, any, if they circle one of the options, and go with it, if it doesn't solve their problem, they will be pissed. And you will be in trouble. So that's what I learned from from back into working into b2c. And those are some things, some nuances that we need to have in mind. Also, like if you're building something new, you know, going on Google and doing PPC, or search related ads, or just going in strong with the SEO, it won't bring anything, because it might be in a few years if you start building it right now. But at the moment, nobody is looking for those things. So you need to create the demand instead of using the existing demand, which doesn't exist.
Kap Chatfield 12:56
I can just imagine people who are still kind of stuck in the old mindset of like, everything needs to be automated, everything needs to be systemized. What you're talking about, I mean, that's such a buzzword as far as scaling, right? How do you scale your operations? How do you scale your marketing? And what you're talking about right now, I feel like there could be some pushback from people saying, "Nemanja, how is that actually scalable?" Can you scale, you know, building these relationships on LinkedIn? Can you scale, doing some research, doing some homework, actually interacting with people? I don't, I don't want to say whether or not you would say that it is scalable or not. But what would you say to that person who's pushing back? And they're saying, how was that scalable? And Is that realistic?
Nemanja Zivkovic 13:44
You know, like, I can always show results that my company made. Because that's, you know, the way that our human done it. So I can, you know, implement what we are doing and then implement that for the clients because we are not doing the things that aren't working for us that didn't try. So we basically got to 25k MRR in 18 months doing the thing that we're selling to the clients. So exactly the same service, and I can show them the stats, I can show them those things. But you know, mostly, I try not to talk with people that that aren't already bought in in what we are doing. Why? Because I don't want to waste waste my time and lots of people are in that place. The ones that are seeing the value in everything we are talking with them. But you know what's, what's interesting here is that lots of people will try to go with that new mindset. I guess people are listening to what I have to say. To what Chris Walker has to say, to what lots of other leaders now in b2b that they're bringing the change has to say. But they forget one thing, that they they needed to have trust before they start implementing and bringing new things. So for example, if we start working with a company, most of the times in the first three months, we'll have to, you know, analyze things, see, but while we're doing that, while we are, you know, crafting the strategy of what we need to do, we need to go the old way, and bringing the results, meaning, you know, if they focus on MPLS, we need to bring MPLS so we can establish the trust, and when we have the trust, then we can go and try to change things. Because if not, if we are promised them, that you know, something, for example, organic content works in marketing, in general. If you start it from from scratch, it needs twice as time as the sales guy that you just hired needs to, to close to close a lead, to close the account. So if you tell them, you know, like, for example, your sales cycle is three months, we need six months to make it work. Does it sound reasonable? And you know that the CEO will invest in it? Probably not. But if you go and explain him the things that you're doing differently, for example, like, using ads to amplify the the content consumption, to serve it to the right people. So to check, what are they measuring, so they can see themselves. If we got them the leads, how expensive are those leads, actually? Because usually, they just follow return of investment, or the ad click, or, you know, those kinds of things, the last attribution. And it's, I mean, it's interesting times we're living in. There are lots of things around us, lots of people saying different things. The trust as, as the agency is always below zero. So that's why we need to, we need people, we need to create content. That's why we record videos, we record podcasts like this one. So we can increase trust and go if not below zero, above zero, then at least on the zero level, because when I talk to the companies, they tell me, like, we talk with at least two or three other agencies or work with them, and they tell me a few things. So started well, but in three months, the service decreased significantly, or, you know, it wasn't good from the start, or they just try to do what they are doing for everybody else. So just general stuff. Right. And, you know, once, like, our existing clients actually told me like, they talked with 21 companies before us, agencies. Well, and we are the first one that are making sense. And I was like, okay, that's like a huge number. And I've been just talking as I'm talking with you so directly and straight from the heart.
Kap Chatfield 18:05
That's beautiful. I love it. It's so clear that I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't surprise me that you're really building connection with your audience. Because that's how you you've described you are doing your work for your customers is you're helping them make real human connections. So it's, it's a, it's a no brainer to me that you're able to do that with your customers. I'm curious just in how, one thing you said that we'll circle back to later. So we'll put a pin in it. But I want you to be thinking about this. You said that's why we do podcasts, it helps us build trust. I'm really, I'm a big believer in that. So we'll talk about that a little bit. But one thing I'm just curious about with your when you do research for your customers and for your clients, and for just better understanding your own market, what is the value to you and to your team of qualitative data, like pulling comments together, and DMS and things like that, versus quantitative data? Because obviously, I'm thinking about the CEOs, the CFOs, Chief Revenue Officers, these people in the organization, they just want to see the numbers, right? And there's a reason why. They want to make sure that things are moving in the right direction, there's a positive ROI. Personally, I think you might be on the same page, there's some information you can pull from qualitative data that is as valuable, if not more valuable than what you can just see in a spreadsheet. So what is qualitative data to understand how successful a marketing campaign is mean to you guys?
Nemanja Zivkovic 19:33
Yeah, it means everything. I mean, basically, it's, it's all that we are all that we are following. So, like, well, if we go quality over quantity, I'm always on the on the quality side. And, you know, like, I was just comparing things. Before we had a call. I had a call with a potential client that, you know, usually we have this thing on the website. And then we ask people like, how did they hear from us? You know, or I ask that in the discovery calls. And usually it's, you know, the company referred to us or a person referred to us, or they come on LinkedIn. And also I can see it comes from messages, you know, so somebody just share my profile or my post to somebody else. But also, like, when I talk to potential client and existing clients, what I hear is, you know, the, they see a post something else, I have no idea about it, or maybe they had a comment. But, for example, just what I'm what I started talking about, there was a checklist of how did I grow my followers on LinkedIn, I don't know, it was 18,000 at at the moment. And the guy saved the checklist. And he was using it the way we connect with people, how do we craft messaging all those things? How do we select the people we are connecting with? Everything. And basically, he saved it and in the last nine months, every three months, every quarter, he's sending that to his team and instance, on his desktop. And today, he reached out to me, he told me all those things. And he said, Would you be willing to work with me and my team to actually, you know, implement those things? Because I've been trying myself, and I need help. But you know, those are the things that that I try to do. And you're the one that started with it, and gave me that perspective. You know, and it's enough to have those things like once a once in a month, sometimes. You know, sometimes somebody said one of the things is like, "Hey, I've been recently connected with your LinkedIn, I'm resonating with the way you're talking with marketing, let's talk and see how we can work together". Or I don't know, one of the more interesting things was like when I connect with somebody, I wait for like two weeks to send them a message. And I don't try to you know, to offer them anything. Usually I just say, Hey, thanks for thanks for connecting. I just wanted to drop a line to say hi. Basically, that's it, because I just wanted to start the conversation. And that lady women responded, responded, just saying, you know, hey, we need a new vendor, can we have a conversation? And I was like, that was that was too fast. So I need to get into that. And I asked her, "How did how did she came up with that message?" So obviously, they they were looking for the new vendor for some time, she was connecting with people. And when I sent her a message, she saw my saw my profile. Saw what we're all about, what the content is, who is reacting to the content, and who are our mutual connections. And that was all that she needed to kind of, you know, have trust for it. And I mean, that's the qualitative data that you need to kind of go and create some things. Also, one more thing. Yeah. There are companies that are doing maybe the similar thing to us. And on LinkedIn, it maybe seems like we are competitors. But when I see their names, as referred from, you know, into, where do they hear about us, you see that, you know, there aren't many companies that are doing what we're doing in trying to actually change things. So we are referring referring clients between ourselves. And that's also a beautiful thing, because we alone cannot change industry. Other company alone cannot do it. But together, we can get the right mindset. In fact, so many people that you know, the the change becomes more and more fast, and it takes over as much space as possible.
Kap Chatfield 24:10
Dude, that is so interesting. So you you had a client that came to you guys asking you guys to help them with some work. You did a little bit of digging, some qualitative research, just in a conversation. And you discovered that this individual particularly, they they wanted to work with you guys because of some content that you were putting out, obviously the things in your LinkedIn bio, things like that. But then there was on on posts that you put out, they looked at who was actually engaging with that content, who was liking it, who was actually leaving comments. And that was part of what made them realize this person is for me. Because they're reaching this audience and they're bringing value to this audience. That is amazing, because you'll not at least at this point, you're not going to get that in a in a like a HubSpot software or anything. Like that is that takes some serious digging and understanding the psychology of your client. That's amazing.
Nemanja Zivkovic 25:06
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, like, when I started Funky Marketing, I didn't know that I'm going to go into the b2b direction. But I decided to talk with as many companies and as many people as possible. Now at the moment, I had, like, I think, nine, 9,000 connections, and I sent to everybody a message, just to introduce myself and to go to mutual coffee. So, in in six months, I had mutual coffees with more than 150 people. And you know, you learn a lot, you see the gaps, you see that people are actually consuming your content, even though you have never seen them in your feed or reacting to anything. But you get also the feedback for the content, you get that you know that they consider you a teacher, which means you are already on another level. And you see the gaps where you can, you know, direct your company and your service towards.
Kap Chatfield 26:07
Man, you're you're a gangster. That's awesome. I'm like, geeking out about some of those things, man. So, okay, let's, let's kind of circle back to what I was asking before about the podcasting stuff. Let's do this kind of soft transition to start talking about your show. Because clearly, I mean, my brother you are, you might not call yourself this, but you are a thought leader in this area. You're definitely doing some unique things. You have a consistent message, your message is pouring through all of your content. It's literally in the name of your company. And it's literally in the name of the show that you're doing. You're the host of the Funky Marketing Show. Tell us why you guys felt like you needed to start doing this. I guess it was a podcast at first, but now, it's also a live show. But what got you guys even doing this in the first place?
Nemanja Zivkovic 26:54
Yeah, let me go back before I published the first episode, when the pandemic started, and the lockdown, like I was using Get Response. And I was thinking about, you know, how I should communicate with people and connect with more people. So I invited ten people to record the webinar with me, just because Get Response decided to give me a free upgrade to record the webinars. Okay, so that was what sparked me to do that. And, you know, by doing it, I grew my email list to 600, 700 people. That was actually the start. It was the third month since I started the company. I got the content from each of those things. So long form videos, published that or my YouTube distributed. And, you know, that was about time that on LinkedIn started to pop up, you know, those short videos with the headlines, with those kinds of things. Like, okay, I can do that as well. So the first person that I hired was the video editor to help me with, with distribution, with creating all things out of it, because I choose carefully the you know, the guests, the people, so I get the value, and I can go the full buyer search cycle, you know, buyers journey out of it. So I asked them all kinds of questions. And basically, by chopping out the episodes, the short clips, I can talk and go and talk to people in different stages of the buyers journey. And okay, so I figured out that that's what I should do, because I get the reactions and everything. What's interesting, before I started Funku Markerting show, I started another show, it's called B2B Weekly, then I'm hosting with Marty Sanchez. Just because we wanted to create content for ourselves for our LinkedIn without wasting so much time on that. And then basically, you know, we recorded it live on zoom with the audience. So we get the feedback, we get the questions, all kinds of things, but it was just two of us. And I use that that podcast to you know, talk about the company, about the way we are growing comparing to Marty's because we were growing similar agency but doing different stuff. And basically that material I'm still to this day using for onboarding new people inside the company. So because they can see the journey and everything. And then okay, I've decided that it's time to go internationally, right? Since I'm from Serbia and to get some people on the podcast, so I think JACC from India was the first one dear friend of mine. Nick Bennett, as well. Interesting I'm having call with Nick after after the recording You know, so I've decided to get to know those people to see on which level my knowledge about about demand, about what we're doing is. And by talking with them, I saw that, you know, okay, we are more or less on the same level, on some things are more advanced on some they and maybe more advanced. And, you know, just wanted to connect with as many people as possible. And I recorded I think, I don't know, like 10 episodes or something like that, and what what was happening at that time, I think that's interesting. I LinkedIn started to roll out the, you know, LinkedIn influencers list of voices, whatever it is called. And talking with people, I see that most of them are kind of pissed, because they are not on the list. And there are some people who are like, for three months, LinkedIn, or something like that. And, you know, I told to my team, let's do something differently. And let's create a Funky Marketing top voices list. Just because because we can. We have that kind of name, we can come up with our awards, and we don't ask anybody who are the top of the top voices. That's why I asked my team, like, each member of the team suggested ten people. We merged them all together and seeing, okay, this guy has three voices, this, this girl has like, two, let's go create them. And what we have done is we I invited them all to the to the podcast, to record an episodes. We crafted an interview out of out of the podcast with all of them, and just connected those things. And it made us as somebody who has a respected voice in the community. It was December, close to New Year. So everybody was excited about things and we came up just in the center of it. And then it did good for our SEO as well. Because so many people connected over there, people were sharing. There are people on LinkedIn, like writing in their headlines like, Funky Marketing top voice. And, you know, and what was great for me is that, you know, Funky Marketing was not about me, like it's not Nemanja, it's people from my team. And it's also other people that are either top voices or are resonating with what we are saying. And then I realized that, okay, we are going towards building a brand. I didn't think about before it needs time for a brand to start creating. But when you see people reacting like that, sharing those things, and resonating, then, I saw okay, this is the right way to go.
Kap Chatfield 32:48
Dude, that's brilliant, nice work. You're doing it, man. That's so cool. I love how you created that Funky Marketing Top Voices list and really gave a voice to the voiceless, so to speak. Just people who are who are being impactful, who are doing a lot of good work, but they might have not caught LinkedIn's attention, as far as LinkedIn HQ. So that's so cool that's come around to help your brand out as well. So let's get kind of tactical for a second, because you did say that you were starting off just doing a podcast. And now you kind of moved it to be more of this of the show the Funky Marketing Show. Why did you guys have to make the transition from being the Funky Marketing Podcast to the Funky Marketing Show?
Nemanja Zivkovic 33:28
Yeah, like, um, I don't know if I'm going to disappoint you. But I'm just the guy that did gets boring, too fast with things. And when I when I just like one day, I'm like, I mean, I'm looking at LinkedIn every day. But looking at that, I see all the people doing the same things. So everybody had like, okay, they have a podcast, but I want to do something that's more fun. So we can go and you know, just gossip, about about things related to the b2b. Just start recording and see what's happening on LinkedIn and talk about those things. Or sharing insights or going really deep into expertise, whatever we want to do. And also, I saw that everybody has the same design for you know, I told you that when I started air, people already have that headline with with, you know, and transcription and everything. So I decided to go and do something completely different. And when you think about the show back in the days, like retro wise, you think about the old school television. So I told the designer, can you dig up the old television and put us inside the TV? So the video the video version of the Funky Marketing Show is actually two people inside the old school framework TV. And on, on the anchor, or the audio platforms it's just the old school TV with Funky Marketing written in it. And we also got the intro, which is also with retro vibes with 50s, those kinds of things. And at the moment, as we speak, we are finishing the website, which will have also the same, the same retro vibes and going even more funky than it was today. But the thing is, we wanted to do things differently, and you need to go being different, and, you know, position yourself in a different way than what everybody else is doing. Also, I told you about relationship centric marketing. Right now, if you see our website, and everything, it's all about demand gen. And you know, we bring you revenue, those kind of things. Now, we are changing everything, we are doing relationship centric marketing, because actually, that's what we were doing, we were doing much more than demand gen. So we focus on build, helping you build a relationship with your customers and the client and then getting to the revenue. Because I saw that so many people are saying, we get you to the revenue, we get you more sales, we get you results, I wanted to eliminate that. So even before right now, if you look cover photos of people from my team, and I, you can see that it says we don't do lead generation, we get you more clients and customers. That's because I've wrote a post saying that thing, and I got so many people resonating with it and reacting and I said, Okay, let's put it on the cover. And you know, there that's the way I'm thinking. And that's the way I'm reacting to the things.
Kap Chatfield 36:41
So yeah, you really use, you put out some organic content too and you use that as like kind of experimentation to see how, how should we position our product or position our service and, and then I love I just wrote down these notes about what you guys are doing to even make your website have that retro vibe as you said, I love what you guys are doing. I think it's really cool. I love the micro video approach with like putting you guys inside the old TV. So you guys are doing some really, some really unique things. I want to I want to go into the business, the you know, the business strategy side, the business development side when it comes to doing a show like this. Because I'm sure you're doing this for a lot of reasons, you mentioned that you there's a marketing, or excuse me a networking element to it, you're building relationships with some really key players on LinkedIn, in the b2b marketing and sales arena. You're also using the show to create a ton of micro content, which is great, because that also helps you build brand build relationship, build and establish yourself as the expert in what you're doing. I'm curious, have you seen any sort of, could you share with us I should say, any qualitative results or any quantitative results about how the Funky Marketing Show has helped you grow your business?
Nemanja Zivkovic 37:53
Yeah, definitely. I mean, look, one thing that we did, we started doing. We didn't do it before, but I always wanted to do it. Because in my previous company, we have done lots of webinars. I think we were the only company in the Serbia that was doing webinars at the time start in the first conference, but you know, those kind of things. So I was really knowledgeable about webinar what webinars can do if done right. So I tried to find the way you know, I told you about B2B Show, even then how I can leverage different approach to those things. I didn't want to manage to, you know, have recording a podcast and do a separate event with specific topic and kind of, you know, get people over there, get the context then nurture them and you know, like everybody else is doing, because, like, I don't have sales, I am the sales. So I need my marketing to bring me in clients. And to be able to do that, I figure out okay, first I try doing over the Get Response webinar over the page creating the events over there, but it wasn't as successful as I would like it to be. It got some traction, but then I realized, "Okay, do I really know LinkedIn?" I know it, so why don't I focus on my personal profile and building events over there? And I made the switch, started creating events and live streaming every episode and it got first the engagement in the real time. Then it got people visiting my profile. And then what happens is a lot of people started to share the show inside the DMS with the other people. I found out about that when you know I'm sending messages, welcome message to the people every every two or three weeks. I started realizing that when I when I get respond for them like Hey, thanks for the message. I would miss the show if you didn't send me this message. Or like, Hey, my friend, then the name, referred your show to me. So I'm kind of watching it, then I reach out to one of the guests on the show. He said, Man, I'm already following everything I would be glad to join you. So and, and the clients, on the other hand, I think not many people are talking about it, the existing clients. They a couple of them reached out to me saying, "Hey, I saw you talk about this on a podcast that you implement that for that company, can we do something like that for us?" So the lifetime value of the clients is, is going up. And we started to do more things. Before that it was happening through my post, but now it's happening, it's happening through the show. And the biggest value of all, is, you know, that still getting the trust, eliminating all the obstacles and everything, because like I'm coming from Serbia, and I'm going towards US based companies, like from Serbia. How many Americans care for about Serbia? Maybe, you know, like, they bombed half of the country, maybe by that, but not by by some other things. And I guess lots of people don't even know that. But, you know, so what do I need to do? I need to create trust, and I need to see, I need people to see me how I'm talking about things that we are doing. You know, that I'm confident that I know what I'm talking about, that I have results to share, that I can go into the details of how we implement some things for the companies, and it brings results. You know, and not only over there, when I, when I share those things, on the email, the episodes, people respond, and they react. And from time to time I, I used to write an email, when I say like, "Hey, guys, like, do you find value in this email, in the newsletter?" Like, sometimes I'm sharing episodes, but I'm always sharing, like, you know, the resume of the episodes, or the most important parts, those kind of things. And I got the response, this is the best newsletter ever, please don't stop doing it. And we were doing it differently in a way that, you know, sometimes is it was me writing it. Sometimes it was other people from the company. And there was always a conversation, like continuation of it. And you know, that's those things are the ones again, qualitative, that we get results, I actually want to put that response on the website as we, as we redesign it. But you know, those are the things that I'm seeing. Also, I'm seeing the increase of the people that are watching the podcast. Because I'm not sharing that much. Okay, I'm sharing on my LinkedIn episodes, I have the community on Facebook, which is called, again, Funky Marketing, it was called like that before I started the company. So, but I'm seeing more and more people from the US, which is where the ideal clients are, is watching the podcast, and they are coming to the website, then they're coming to the Contact Us page. And then they're scheduling the calls. And we don't need that many of them. We need at least just one per month. And you know, all of them that are coming are giving them giving us the information that they either watch the show, or they get referred or they resonated with the content, or something similar. But they come to us already knowing our philosophy, knowing what we can do for them. And basically, I would say that's a client, not a lead. So that's how the whole process is going.
Kap Chatfield 44:03
I love it, man. I love what you guys are doing. And I'm I'm just super impressed by, you know, how you are really doing so much groundbreaking work in this industry. The audience that we're talking to right now, as you have already known is talking to b2b CEOs, brand leaders, sales leaders and marketing leaders. And one thing that I think a lot of people are starting to see, you mentioned it, a lot of people are starting to do podcasts. But there's a lot of b2b brands that are still not embracing this sort of customer centric, value centric, episodic content model, typically in the form of a show. What would you say to these, these people as we close out, who are on the fence or like, do we have something interesting to say? Will our audience really found value in this? How would you encourage those people to really think about creating a show, like you guys have, as a business development strategy and not a sunk costs?
Nemanja Zivkovic 44:58
Yeah, here's something I'm use a couple of examples from from the, from the episodes from the podcast. But when people actually said what we are doing, and it is like, you know, your marketing is talking to the sales or decision makers, and they suggest some things and they said, Come on, like, what can that do to me? And then, you know, when you explain it and says, Okay, I can actually, what what would you say if I can, if I tell you that I can actually shorten the sales cycle for you? And they will say, you can do what now? You know, and how you can do it? Like, all the salespeople, or the or the decision makers have actually the list of their ideal accounts that they want to close. Let's say they have 100 of them. So you put that list over there and what would be the ideal solutions? You do the outreach to get into the conversations with them, so you can try selling them things. But what if you can actually bring them to the podcast to the conversation, possibly with the CEO or CMO? And ask them all kinds of questions that will help your sales sell them something in the future? So how is their buyers journey going? Where do they go to get the information when they need something like your product or your service? How is the decision maker making processing the company going? How many people are involved? You can ask all those questions, because those people coming to the show to talk about themselves, and everybody loves talking about themselves. So and since they are talking about themselves, they will be willing to share it further. And when they share it, people from their company will see it as well. Your team will share it and your team will connect with people from that company. So the visibility will be even bigger. And since you are chopping out the pieces, you're talking about people in different stages of the buyers journey. And you know, and those are not the clients that you will reach out next week and say, "Hey, man, we talked about it, I have the solution. Let's do it". It's the long term clients that you start building the relationship with an honest conversation on the podcast, and then slowly you start building it. But they will tell you that they have a problem or they don't have it. If you don't close them, you will actually know why why you cannot close them. And it gives you give you insights. So you can optimize your value proposition, your product or your service. And even only in that there's a huge value. And you know, on the other hand, if you cannot do that, for example, there are a lot of got lots of companies that are going towards, let's say, technical C-level executives like CTOs, or developers or engineers. What you can do is get them to come to you. How you can do that? I mean, create the podcast in which you will talk about the career of the CTO. Or, like so many developers are the fans of the board games and they are fan of the good humor. Create the community around their Twitter podcasts. Make them come to you, make them hang out around your podcast, and you will have them over there. You can either get them as clients, or you can get them as potential employees. So lots of stuff are included. And also like, the smaller, but not less important thing is you get the visibility on Google. You get the SEO to work if they Google some of the terms that you have over there, you will you will get inside inside the search. So all those things together, can actually do wonders. And I have wanting to say I think we didn't mention it. And when we're choosing the guest for the podcast, it don't necessarily need to be high level guests. You know, that are on every podcast, what you can do each, you can find your peers and it's the way to grow on LinkedIn as well. So already active people that have to say so many things that are more willing to share your podcast and the episodes and information about it, then some high level speakers that are you know, on every podcast. So if you go to this, those people they will recommend you to their CMOS or their CEOs or their CFOs and you will get from the bottoms to the to the C-level and get inside the companies through your peers. And so that's that's another way of looking at the podcast and the growth based on it.
Kap Chatfield 49:57
I think it's, it's such a valuable tool to help all of us grow together. And you're giving voices to people, you're giving a platform, a stage for people who might not be the current thought leader or publicly known thought leader. But there's, there's people out there with really interesting perspectives. And so I want to just give this encouragement to people listening, right now. In order for you to get found and to start building these relationships, maybe the first step isn't necessary to actually start a show. But just to start being a serial content creator on LinkedIn. Start writing your own posts regularly. Start posting short videos. Even with your phone, it doesn't need to be a really big production. It's really about the content, the value you provide. And I'd also say, being somebody that engages well and comments. Nemanja, I'll just say this about you. One thing I'm super impressed by with you, is you make time to leave meaningful responses on other people's content. You don't just do like a "great post" emoji and then comment. You actually, you actually show that you're, you're taking time to consume the content, and you provide me very meaningful insight back. So just want to encourage you with that. It's, it's it's a, it's a differentiator about you in that space, which is huge. We're coming to the end of our episode right now. So Nemanja I just want to thank you again for jumping on the show with us. For those who want to follow Nemanja you can check out the show notes in the description of this episode. We have Nemanja's personal LinkedIn profile. Please make sure you go follow him. His his daily content, there is just it's on fire. We also have a link for the Funky Marketing Show, you can check that out on all different show or podcast platforms. But you should also try to make sure you check out the live version of the show as well. Then finally if you want to learn more about his business, and how they can help you generate more revenue more consistent revenue for your company by doing marketing in a way that's interesting, that cuts to noise, Funky Marketing dot net. We'll also have that link in the show notes of this episode too. Nemanja, just want to thank you again for coming on the show today. You shared so much valuable insight, can't wait for the audience to hear this stuff.
Nemanja Zivkovic 52:02
Thanks for inviting me, man. I hope we get some value to the people in some knowledgeable information that they can use to actually, you know, grow their companies.
Kap Chatfield 52:12
I'm sure they will. Appreciate you man, and we'll have to have you again on the episode or on the show in the future. Thanks again.
Nemanja Zivkovic 52:18
Thanks, man.
