Why You Need to Treat Your Startup like a Media Powerhouse - with Anna Furmanov

Are you tired of cold calls, emails and decade-old marketing tactics? grimacing face
 
Marketing as an industry needs a DRAMATIC mindset shift. 
 
Too often business leaders, specifically startup founders, use outdated marketing strategies that just don’t work in today’s post-COVID digital age. 
 
Here’s the good news: there are fresh ideas and creative perspectives out there that will not only work better for your business, but help you quickly connect to your ideal customer—and you’ll find them in a video podcast. studio microphone 
 
In our most recent episode of B2B Podcasting, Kap sits down with Anna Furmanov, founder of Furmanov Marketing Consulting and host of the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. 
 
She brings her incredible experience as a marketer and podcast host into this episode, helping thought leaders and startups alike. light bulb 
 
right arrow If you’re looking for a way to freshen up your marketing strategies or start with the right foot with your startup, this episode is for you. 
 
 
 
Main Takeaways:
gem stone Marketing needs a general mindset shift to evolve in today’s digital age
gem stone Learn how to find your ICP (ideal customer persona) and what questions to ask
gem stone Why you should start your own thought leadership video podcast
gem stone Video podcasts help you reach your ideal audience 
gem stone Your business will grow through the influence of your video podcast
 
 
Timecodes:
alarm clock 00:00-06:10 | What are the typical problems startup founders face? 
alarm clock 06:10-11:48 | The biggest issues startups have in their marketing
alarm clock 11:48-17:39 | How should startups view marketing? 
alarm clock 17:39-23:14 | How does storytelling impact startups? 
alarm clock 23:14-32:17 | Your target audience can drive your video podcast
alarm clock 32:17-38:57 | A video podcast can contribute to the growth of your business
alarm clock 38:57-44:10 | Why do people turn to podcasts to grow their thought leadership? 
 
 
Quotes:
speech balloon “There's more to marketing than just enabling sales, and that's the mindset shift.” - Anna Furmanov
speech balloon “A marketing therapist makes sense, because you're dealing with people, and you're also helping people do their marketing.” - Anna Furmanov
speech balloon “A marketer, a really good one, knows what questions to ask.” - Anna Furmanov
speech balloon “Cold calling people and cold emailing people is so far from what marketing is.” - Anna Furmanov
speech balloon “Now is a great time to treat marketing at your startup like a media powerhouse.” - Anna Furmanov
speech balloon “There's two types of content on the internet: there's the content that you want to consume and then there's the content that interrupts the content that you want to consume. One's a show and one's a commercial.” - Kap Chatfield
speech balloon “Building an audience really comes down to creating a compelling story for the brand.” - Kap Chatfield
speech balloon “Story is what connects people to companies and even more so what connects people to people—because there are people that work at companies.” - Anna Furmanov
speech balloon “If you're getting too hyper-competitive in your space, eventually the only competition becomes a race to the bottom for pricing.” - Kap Chatfield
speech balloon “Marketing 101 is really understanding and having empathy for your customer.” - Kap Chatfield
 
 
 
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Reach out to Rveal Media:
 
Connect with Anna Furmanov
 
210501_RM_B2BP_Ep_Why you need to treat your startup like a media powerhouse - with Anna Furmanov_QG1

Full transcription:

Kap Chatfield  00:20

Hey gang, welcome back to B2B Podcasting. I'm your host, Kap Chatfield CEO of Rveal Media. And today we have Anna Furmanov. She is the founder of Furmanov Marketing Consulting. And she's also the host of the Modern Startup Marketing Show available on anywhere that you can get your podcast. She's extremely interesting to listen to, particularly if you are a founder of an early stage funded startup, and you're just in this place where you're like, "I don't even know where to begin when it comes to marketing". I mean, Anna I'm sure that you could agree that digital marketing, it can be extremely confusing and even overwhelming, because it's changing all the time. And, and we're going to talk a little bit about how you are, quote, unquote, a marketing therapist for your, for your clients. But before we get into that, I just want to thank you for joining us. And I'd love to ask you, so what got you into marketing for this specific area of the market?

 

Anna Furmanov  01:15

Thank you, Kap. I'm so happy to be here. What got me into this startup world and helping startups with their marketing, I did not really know that that's where I would end up as I'm sure many people like, they don't really know where they're going to end up in their career. But I was able to kind of like have both experience, what's it like to do marketing at a larger company with resources with more money, and what it's like to do marketing when you're at a startup. And so once I had that experience of what it's like to do marketing, when you're at a startup, I was hooked. I super loved how and not everybody loves this, but it's very messy. And that I liked, it's it's also a place where you can, there's nowhere to hide, right? Because you're essentially like, if you're at an early stage startup, you're the first marketing hire, maybe the second or the third. And that's it. Like you, it's your little team, and there's nowhere to hide. But the benefit is you, if you do a great job, then the impact is very much visible. And that's really exciting. So that's kind of how I fell into it. It's not for everybody, for sure, it's risky. Startups are risky places to, to go to. You don't know if it's, you know, it's going to be successful or not. But it's definitely a fulfilling experience, and very exciting.

 

Kap Chatfield  02:44

So I'm sure that there's the fulfilling side of it, too. As you know, this will go into this, this phrase that you shared on the pre show call, you said that your clients have said to you that you're like a marketing therapist, and I'm just even thinking about the founder of these companies of these small teams. You said there's nowhere to hide, it's messy. This is the this is the stage of a company where it's almost like the the either like the preteen years, or the teenage years, the adolescent years where companies are really trying to find their identity, like who are they? What's the narrative they're trying to communicate to the market? And that can be, for marketers that are more specialized, that can be kind of overwhelming, because it's like, "Hey, I don't have a track to run on. We have to like kind of come up with a narrative". But what you're able to do it sounds like is you're able to help those founders really interpret the meaning behind their product or their service and what that story is. I don't want to take the words out of your mouth, but I'd love for you to explain to us like how you found like, you enjoyed that part of the process with helping a company and and what are what are the problems that you end up helping your, these founders that you serve? What are, what is the problem that they typically face?

 

Anna Furmanov  03:53

Yeah, great questions. So since I've worked at different startups, and helping them with their marketing, and since I have had different clients, and I get kind of the same challenges over and over again, it's typically like we know we need to do marketing, we're not sure where to start. We're not sure what to prioritize, we can't do everything. What's a strategic approach that we can take? So that we know that when we're getting into, like, when we when we figure out our marketing foundation, we know that it's the right one, we know that this is our target audience. This is what they care about. These are the problems they're having. We understand their challenges, we understand how we can help them. And it's not just assumptions, right? It's like we feel really good about this. And then it's time to think about testing marketing channels. And since we know so much about our target audience, we know where they're playing, we know where they're hanging out, what they're talking about. So then you're more relevant, and you get into those channels that are more relevant based on who your target audience is. So that's really the big challenge that I help with, and I've heard a couple times now and I really actually like it. Because marketing is you're dealing with people. Right? So and then, having heard that feedback of like, Anna, thank you so much for helping me you're, you're like a marketing therapist, it kind of makes sense, because you're dealing with people, and you're also helping people to do their marketing. So, yeah, it just kind of makes sense to go to someone and say that, and, and I like that. It's not just like, help me do some marketing apps with HubSpot, or with MailChimp, or, you know, because that's definitely something that needs to be done, right? The execution part. But the strategic stuff is hard and, and requires thought and requires methodology. And you don't get that from folks that are just starting out. Which is fine, right? It comes with experience. So so that's why I kind of like that, that came up, it really meshes well with how I'm trying to help startup founders.

 

Kap Chatfield  06:10

When you say, "marketing therapist", I imagine you like in a like, I guess when you do a lot of your stuff digitally. But I can imagine your client calls through zoom, your client is laying down with their feet propped up on a couch, and you have a notepad. And you're just like, asking them all these really deep questions. And they're just kind of sharing with you the deepest crevices of their heart, which I'm sure is definitely over exaggerating what that experience looks like for them. But the reason why I say that is because that comment, you're like a marketing therapist, that I think there's something really deep there, it's pretty profound, because, you know, beyond, you know, you mentioned, you know, you go beyond the execution, the operations, and you get very strategic, but for someone to make that comment to me says that you're, you're helping them tap into something, and understand something that goes so much deeper than the company. But like almost helping them understand themselves. I guess the question I want to ask you is what's like, what's an underlying problem that you see these founders face that is, that at surface level might look like a marketing problem, but there's something deeper going on?

 

Anna Furmanov  07:21

Oh, this is so interesting. I've never really picked this apart or unpacked this. But what I bring is confidence. I think it's like confidence in in the in the right approach, right? And I typically, especially at the start of my client relationships, I ask questions. That's why I have a podcast, it's like, so seamless. You know, a marketing a marketer, a really good one, knows what questions to ask. You know what questions to ask when you're when you bring guests on the podcast, like you're doing with me, you know, what questions to ask in your voice of customer research. You know what questions to ask when you're talking to a new, you know, client, to figure out what is the big thing that they want from their marketing efforts. What's their goal? So, I think it's less of, so that's kind of like therapy, right? Because a therapist asks questions, right? And kind of like helping the founder or helping the marketing leader, figure out what is their marketing mindset. Because a lot of marketing does, like is successful because of the marketing mindset that the leadership team has or that the marketing team has. And there are different marketing mindsets out there. This is something else that I've learned. There are marketing mindsets out there that are like well, HubSpot told me that I need to gate my content, or I need to put up a lead gen form. And I need to get these contacts to subscribe. And that's how I'm going to do lead generation. And that's how the marketing team is going to work within this company, helping the sales team with, you know, getting marketing qualified leads, and then throwing it over to the sale. That's a marketing mindset. There's other marketing mindsets out there too, which, which is more like less of marketing as a sales support role and more of having the marketing team be revenue generating. Right? Closely tied to revenue, which is, which is hard. Especially given that, and I love HubSpot, I use HubSpot. Given that the martech vendors have kind of like supplied this way of thinking, this mindset of this is how you should do inbound marketing. So then of course, a lot of people are going to follow that approach. But it but it is a, mark one marketing mindset and there's many out there. So kind of helping the founder or the the leadership team, the marketing leadership team come to what you know, answer the questions and figure out like, what does marketing mean to them and how do they want to approach it at their company? Do they want approach it the way that it's been done, like from 2010, 2015? Kind of in the way that I just described? Or do they want to approach it where they want to see results from marketing and digital marketing? There's no reason why, you know, a lot of our marketing efforts have now come online. And there's no reason why marketing can't be tied to revenue. It should be tied to revenue, right? I've talked to startups where it's like, some of them most of like, 90% of their revenue is marketing generated, or 50/50. Right? Marketing is 50%. Sales is 50%. So there's no reason why that shouldn't be happening. And, and I think like, my, that's where I come in, and I kind of help the founders figure out, what's that mindset? Where, how do you want marketing to work for you? What's your goal? And then from there, we can uncover like, well, in order to get there, and also just wanted to say that sometimes the founders that I talk to, or the leaders that I talk to say, "My goal is to get more people to come on the site, and schedule some sales calls". And that's my goal, or, or I want to like increase conversions, or I want to have, you know, to get to revenue, but a lot of the when I actually like dig under the hood, and look at what their messaging looks like, look at their website, and talk to them more about about like, do you actually understand who your target audience is? What they care about? Have you built out a solid marketing foundation? Then I uncover that that hasn't actually happened. So we can't go to Step 10 when we haven't done step one or two.

210501_RM_B2BP_Ep_Why you need to treat your startup like a media powerhouse - with Anna Furmanov_QG2

Kap Chatfield  11:48

I'm curious in your experience, uh, there's so much we can unpack with the marketing mindsets, which it's great. I love that that's, that's really what you're hitting on when you're doing marketing therapy for your clients as you're helping them uncover like, hey, what's the, what's the true motivation behind what we're trying to do here with our marketing? Let's be objective focused, and reverse engineer a strategy that actually works towards what your organizationals, organization's goals are. So a question that I want to ask you and I don't want you to be spammed with a ton of hate mail. So if you want to send Anna any hate mail for this question, you can send it to Kap at Rveal dot media, don't send it to Anna, because I don't want to throw you under the bus. But because you're on the show, I want to give you the stage to answer this question. What would you say typically is a broken marketing mindset that a lot of founders have? Not that we're gonna throw them under the bus, but something that you you just see, like this common pattern, and you want to help them redirect? So let's start with before we go to the winning marketing mindset, what's the typical broken marketing mindset?

 

Anna Furmanov  12:48

Yeah, I actually posted about this, it wasn't my content. I had Chris Walker on my podcast, and there was a clip, 

 

Kap Chatfield  12:57

Chris Walker? Who's that? Never heard of him.

 

Anna Furmanov  12:59

He's a CEO of Refined Labs. If people don't, don't know of who he is.  But and there's a Tuesday night Demand Gen Live that I try to come to every, every week to kind of get with that community. Very forward thinking marketers and taking, he's taking, like he's propelling the marketing community towards what I think is something better than then agree, than what we we're all kind of used to. And that ties into what my experience has been with marketing. Back in, you know, 2012, 2014 is marketing is there to create case studies, marketing is there to set up a booth at the trade show, marketing is there to work with the SDRs on like, the messaging and and get people into the funnel so that then hopefully, they're if they're qualified, they can talk to the sales team. And so kind of, you know, more lead generation. Actually, I just, I was talking to a prospect the other day, and I asked them, what marketing have you done? What marketing campaigns have you run? And they answered me, and I love early stage startups because I get all sorts of answers for this one, but they said, you know, we hired a company to do cold calling. And I was like, Oh, that doesn't sound like marketing. Okay, what else have you done? Well, we hired another company to do cold emailing. Well, that doesn't sound like marketing either. So that is, but that is the place where a lot of people are thinking like outbound. You know, calling people, cold calling people, cold emailing people. And to me that's like so far from what marketing is. That it's like instantly I would never approach it and say like, that's, that's what we're doing from running marketing campaigns. I put that into like sales, outbound sakes, right.? But that's how people think. Right? And so so that's maybe more so the old way. And the new way is, you might still want to do like, the quick wins stuff, like running paid ads, for example, is is quick. You might get direct to purchase, right? You might get people to schedule a call right away with the sales team, that's fine. There's a place for it. But the harder part of marketing is not the performance marketing stuff. I think the harder part that people struggle with, and especially early stage startups is how do we do the long term thinking marketing? Which requires more thought out kind of prioritized approach to like, organic? What channels are we going to show up when we don't necessarily have to pay, right? We're going to just get there, we're going to, and also content. What content are we going to start to produce and make it systematic, because we don't have a lot of resources? So like a podcast, for me personally, for my business, like I'm a one person show. And I was able to get it just like you Kap, right? You're able to actually, you're not even a startup. I'm not venture backed. I have contractors that work with me, but I don't have like a big team, but I'm still able to get a podcast up. That's my pillar content. And then from there, I decided like, well, what, where am I going to show up on social where my target audience is? And that's LinkedIn, that was a no brainer. And so I can put my thought leadership, my expertise, my content there. Chop up video clips, audio clips, whatever, from the podcast. And then I also send out like, I have an email subscribers, and I send out a monthly newsletter. So that's kind of how I come, how I make it all integrated and work together. And I think that's a hard approach or a hard mindset for startups to get to. Because they're still saying things like, well, we need lead generation. We need to go to that trade show, set up a booth and like hand out flyers. Or we need case studies like that's yes, you do. You do. But there's more to marketing than just enabling sales. And I think that's the mindset shift.

 

Kap Chatfield  17:39

What would you say, what would you say storytelling plays in the role of marketing in this new mindset? Because what I hear you saying is, you know, there's this, it's so funny, because I was saying tongue and cheek, who is that? Of course, I know who Chris Walker is, we all know he's, he's crushing it. Their whole team is doing such a great job. We had him on the show, actually, a little while ago and he made he made a comment very similar to what you said. He said, a lot of businesses are doing, think they're doing marketing, when they're really doing digital sales, in how they're communicating their product and just trying to bring bring themselves to the market. The way that we describe it at our company, we say that there's two types of content on the internet, there's the content that you want to consume and then there's the content that interrupts the content that you want to consume. One's a show. and one's a commercial. And still today, too many b2b brands are focusing on being a commercial, when commercials get skipped, and they get muted, and they get bypassed, but shows they actually build audiences. And I feel like building an audience really comes down to creating a compelling story for for the brand. Making, you know, people in the organization feel like they're buying into something. They're buying into, like an actual, an actual narrative and actual journey. And then that obviously, it can become contagious to the customer. So I just want to ask you personally, how how valuable in your consultation processes is, is creating some sort of story for, for your customers in order for them to communicate their message more effectively?

 

Anna Furmanov  19:09

Yeah, that's a great question. I think story, I look for story. I think that's what connects people to companies and even more so that's what connects people to people, because there are people that work at companies. And so just in general, I try to pull that out wherever I can. For example, if I'm working with a client on their website, and we're doing an "about us" page, that's like, definitely a great place for story. How did this company start? Like, when you're working on content marketing, and like the strategy and what content you're going to wedge yourself into, like, what's your niche area that you're going to kind of be the thought leader in? There's got to be some kind of story that's that's what propels, that's what gets people interested and enticed to follow you and to keep listening to you. That's what Chris and his team has done, right? For all the marketers that are like, we are tired of the old way to do marketing, and we are looking for something better. It's because of the story, right? And he talks about his story all the time, right? And we have similar stories, too. So I think that's something that people just naturally connect to. And it should come through in in as much marketing as possible, right? From your website, to newsletters. Like newsletter, I just had Anne Handley, the episode is not out yet, but Anne Handley is like marketing expert, genius writer. She has a newsletter that goes out, I think every couple weeks. And she had mentioned like, it's called newsletter for a reason. Letter, right, you're writing a letter to somebody. So in that letter, you can make it seem more personal and include stories, right? Doesn't have to be just like, what events are we doing for my company? And where, what press did we get this month? And stuff like that. So and I think people will connect to that more. Um, let me think if I, if there's anything else related to story. There's another approach that I've taken with clients, which is around category design. I don't know if you know of Christopher Lochhead. But he is the, he's, he's one of the leaders, thought leaders, that's pushing category design that has written the book Play Bigger. He's also been on my podcast. And, and so the idea behind category design is very much like, instead of competing with other players in your space, you're going to step out and create a category. And, and, and so you're kind of like, separate from what exists out there, and you're creating the future. Which is what you know, startups, like Airbnb, like Uber, like Salesforce, like SpaceX, even Tesla, right? Like, that's how they started. And they could get so much more accomplished, they could be so much more successful, and they can get so much higher, such bigger market Kap, just by taking that sort of approach versus I'm going to be one of the 1000 martech vendors, yep, and compete and differentiate. So that that's another place where if you think that you're well positioned to the to do that, right, you need to have a story, you need to put storytelling behind, like, what's your mission? Where are you going with this company? Why are you doing this? And what's what are you leaving behind? What's the old way and what's the future that you're building?

 

Kap Chatfield  23:14

Oh, that's so good. Let's go. I love that. I'm like, because I actually, personally, as a business builder, myself, you're a founder of your organization. I'm a founder of my organization, or co-founder. I just, the more that I look at, if you're getting too hyper competitive in your space, eventually the only competition becomes a race to the bottom for pricing, unfortunately. And so I'm a big believer that if you if you're finding yourself as an organization focusing too much on on your competitors, it's because you haven't done enough digging to know, understand like, hey, what's my unique differentiator? What sets us apart? Where are we really going? Let's, how are we going to take this industry in a new direction? Which sounds like you're on the same page. With as far as this category design. I think that's such a brilliant thing for for b2b brand leaders out there that are in that place of like, "Man, I feel like we're just kind of running this hamster wheel of just looking at what our competitors are doing and constantly playing defense." You can start playing offense by thinking, you know, instead of "let's do what they're doing, but do it better". Let's think about driving this industry in a completely new direction. It's beautiful. I want to ask you a question specifically about your show. So you have a show, as we mentioned, called Modern Startup Marketing. you're leveraging this show for a thought leadership tool for yourself. You're also, as you mentioned, you get a couple of people that you talked about on your show, who are definitely thought leaders in their space. What got you into starting doing this show?

210501_RM_B2BP_Ep_Why you need to treat your startup like a media powerhouse - with Anna Furmanov_QG3

Anna Furmanov  24:53

At a very nerdy reason at the beginning? Honestly? Well, part of it was like Chris Walker a year ago put out the challenge, right? It was Demand Gen Labs. We're all talking chatting about demand gen on Tuesday night, and he's like podcasting. Like it is big, and you should do it. And so I'm gonna challenge you guys to just start one. And so I took on that challenge, right? And, and I have not looked back since because it has been so, I look for things that are fulfilling in life. That's why I like startups so much, it has been so fulfilling to start that podcast. I started it because it was a challenge. I like challenges. I also knew that I wanted to bring it like bring in other experts, right? It's not just me, I wanted to kind of create a platform for them to speak. To, to learn from them to get insights, so kind of selfish reasons. But I thought, if I'm going to get some value from this, I'm sure other marketers will get value from this too. That's the place I started. And then the the nerdy part was, I started putting together a spreadsheet, where I would invite the startup founder and marketing leader from that startup. And then I would kind of put in like, this is a seed funded, this is a Series A, this is series B, this is what's working with their marketing, this is what's not working with their marketing, and the channels. And I wanted to see if I could figure out if there's a trend. And so I did that, and dropped after 25 episodes or so. I was like this isn't working, this is all over the place, I am not going to get to any. Because it is, it's like everybody's doing different things. No matter if they're b2b, b2c, seed seed funded, Series F, you know, I've had on the show as well, there's so much being done. And it all works. It all works. Because as long as you have a solid marketing foundation, you understand your target audience, you understand what they care about, you give them valuable stuff, and you show up in the right channels, and you put your all into it, it's gonna work. So what I've learned.

 

Kap Chatfield  27:11

100%, and it's, that's marketing 101 is really understanding, it's having empathy for your customer and your case, you actually turned your customer into an audience, which completely changes the psychology of what you create. It really kind of moves you from a selling mindset to a bringing value mindset, which is going to be what wins trust and ultimately builds your business over time. So you have a very specific target audience that you're reaching. In fact, your target audience is practically in the title of your show, which I think is brilliant, the Modern Startup Marketing Podcast. So what did your, when you started your show, what were you thinking about with your ICP, your audience? And what like, what problem did they have that you wanted to help solve with the show?

 

Anna Furmanov  27:57

The target audience for sure was because you know, I'm a marketing consultant helping startups. So target audience was startup founders, those early stage startup founders, and marketing leaders. And that's kind of like where I simply decided to go. Net, these days, I typically talk to startup founders, because in the early stage, they may or may not have a marketing team. And if they have a marketing team, it might be more of like a junior person, right? So typically, and you know, to this day, it's still stayed that way where it's startup founders. And so you're right, like, that's who my customers are. But that's also who I bring on to the show. And I decided not to just do early stage, because I think it's fascinating to see how the later stage companies, like what what's working well for them, and how they got to that place? I always like to ask, like, what did you do in the beginning, when you were still early? Because they did a lot of things and they made a lot of mistakes. I think there's a lot of learnings to be gained from there. And I keep hearing, you know, I did do that spreadsheet. And I found that like, there is no nerdy way to analyze what's working well and what's not working well for different stage companies. But I do keep hearing similar things. Like what's a big challenge hiring for marketing is a big challenge. Another one is prioritizing, right? Like that still comes up no matter what stage you're in. Just a lot, you know, it does vary when you get more funding, what challenges the leadership faces. But yeah, so so for sure that's that's who's listening to the show, founders, marketing leaders. And I because and the reason that I know this is because of all qualitative data. So a lot of times, a lot of times we focus on quantitative and I use Anchor for that as the podcast platform. And you do get some insights on like age. And what's interesting is looking to see like the age breakdown in my dashboard, just going to go visit it right now to see what it looks like. 

 

Kap Chatfield  30:22

Sure. 

 

Anna Furmanov  30:24

Most people, 40% of my audience is ages 35 to 44. 40% of my audience is 35 to 44, which means it's probably startup founders, right? The next biggest bucket is 28 to 34. And then the next biggest bucket is 23 to 27. So I think most listeners are the startup founders. But then you also have the outer shell of like, who are the marketing people working at startups that also want to learn from these experts that are coming on, right? The qualitative is important, because, well I use it, when I try to invite you know, more guests to my show. And I've gotten qualitative feedback, I take a snapshot of it, and I and I keep it in a safe place so that I can then share it right. As I'm bringing more guests onto the show, I can share like, well, this is what one person said, and they loved it so much and it was such a good experience. And, and thank you for sharing the insights. And all you know, it's valuable. Look how many people like it. So I use it for sharing to get more guests on the show. And I also use it as like, okay, good. It's a signal, I'm getting a signal that I should keep doing this. I think sometimes we lose track of like how important qualitative signals are, especially when you're doing things like a podcast, or social. It's, it's different, right? You you can try to do to get that quantitative. But but qualitative, I would say is just as important, and sometimes even more so in certain channels where you're creating this awareness and like nurturing your audience.

 

Kap Chatfield  32:17

I so, I agree with that. I'm on this kick right now, where I'm trying to better understand, I think you got to have both right? Like, quantitative gives you like a 30,000 foot picture, which is extremely helpful to know, is it moving in the right direction? Who are we actually reaching with this thing? You have data that shows you an audience of basically these ages is going to be who we're really trying to target. It affects the way that you communicate your language, all of that. But the qualitative data is like, is really going deep and understanding personal personal stories. And at the individual level, how is this impacting people? I want to talk about qualitative and quantitative data when it comes to the success of your show. Because obviously, you know, your show is so well aligned with your thought leadership and with your business model. I mean, basically, you're using this as an opportunity, I'm sure to learn a lot more about your industry, how to better serve your other clients. But this is also a thought leadership development tool for you, where you can express yourself and really establish yourself as an authority in this space, which I'm sure helps helps bring in some business in some way. So I'm curious qualitatively and or quantitatively, how have you seen this, this show that you're doing contribute to the growth of your business?

 

Anna Furmanov  33:36

Great question. I mean, podcasting works like, how can I explain this? It works at the quantitative level, like super easy to tell, super easy to see where somebody that was a guest, like shares my information with somebody else. And then we end up having a discovery call. Somebody, I was on someone else's podcast, I tell the story when I'm talking to Ann Handley, if you guys want to hop over to my show when it's actually live. But Ann Handley helped me land a client. And the way she did that is she didn't have to really do anything. I was on somebody else's show. They posted a clip on LinkedIn. They made a joke. They tagged Ann Handley into it. And then she commented, and then the person and then the prospect, which ended up being a client, ad tech client, saw this clip of me talking about my expertise, and said, like, I got to talk to you. And then a few weeks later we started working together. So it works in fast ways. It also works in slow ways, which can be just as good, just as important. On the qualitative side, like I never expect my guests to be clients. That's not my goal. I don't think that should be anybody's goal with podcasting. My goal is to get people on the show to talk about, like, what's those inner workings. Those things that like, we think is a secret but if you give someone a platform, it's not a secret anymore, because they do want to tell you. Because you can't replicate, you can't replicate startup success, just by knowing like, Oh, they're running marketing, you know, that's where they're, the channels that are working for them. It's not that easy. People know that. So. So that's not so that's not my goal. My goal is not to, to get sales. My goal is to learn these things. My goal is also I've been doing 10-minute quick segments, where I want to talk about like, dive deep on a topic. It's not interviewing somebody, it's just like, I want to let you hear my take on this thing. And I'm going to talk about it for 10 minutes. So I've been doing that. So, so that's important. Like, you got to figure out what's your goal was a podcast. My goal is more around like thought leadership, content, marketing for my business, and building awareness around like, me and what I do, and being helpful and offering valuable content. I think that's first and foremost my goal.

 

Kap Chatfield  36:15

That's so important, having a healthy motivation.

 

Anna Furmanov  36:19

That's right. Does it help me land clients? From it, like, can I say that my last five clients, because of this podcast, they became my client? Can I definitively say that? No. Even if I asked them, like, I could ask them, Did you, you know, how did you hear about me? And they'll probably say, either a referral or social media or podcast, because that's the channels that I'm in. So I better be hearing that, right? But can I be confident that I'm a better marketer? And have clients ongoing for the past couple of years because of my podcast? Yes, I feel confident to say that. One quick thing that just came up the other week was, somebody reached out to me, and it was another marketer, that works as a contractor with companies. And she's like, "Do you have any leads for me, I'm looking for clients". And, and so and my answer was, you know, I don't but like, the thing that works for me really well, is when a marketer creates their own marketing, does their own marketing. Because that's first, like a sure way to share like, this is my approach. This is how I do it. Do you align well with my methodology? So I think now is a great time to treat marketing at your startup as like, a media powerhouse. Yeah, there's no reason why, we have the tools we need to create, your you know, to be more of a media company versus just a startup company. 

 

Kap Chatfield  38:07

Oh, right. Yes. Come on. Preach it, Anna. That's good.

 

Anna Furmanov  38:12

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the right approach to take. And it's not, and it's totally doable. And, and so that was my answer is, you know, that that's what really works well for me is, if you can't, if you're a marketer, and especially if you're a, you know, a freelancer, or if you're helping companies with their marketing, then do you should be doing it for your own business. And especially if you can't find clients, right? You should be doing it for your business, because that's how you get better. That's how you can test things, right? How you can speak to what works, what doesn't work, and, and show proof and get that trust, like, I know what I'm doing.

 

Kap Chatfield  38:57

100% what, you put out a post on LinkedIn, I was pulling it up that really stuck out to me. I told you that I would make a post out of it, I will still do it. So just wait for it to come out. You did a poll and you asked your audience, where do you spend your time to get better at your job? And you really gave like, you gave three options and then an "other" category. The first one was conferences slash events. The second one was podcasts. The third one was books. And the and the final one was other please comment. The two highest ones, were podcast in the first in the first place tier with 49%. Almost half of everyone who voted and you got 45 votes on it. So that's a pretty good number. 49% said that podcasts were the number one way for them to get better at their job. And then the second was other and then you also got 24 comments on that. So I'm sure a lot of people give some interesting feedback. I obviously want to talk more about podcasting. So why do you think that's the case? Why do you think people are overwhelmingly saying that podcasts are where they're going to get better at their job?

210501_RM_B2BP_Ep_Why you need to treat your startup like a media powerhouse - with Anna Furmanov_QG4

Anna Furmanov  40:08

Well just look at the world we live in now. Right? Like, I started my podcast in November, like end of October, November last year. Because I knew, like we are living in a different world, and we're not going back. People are working remote. And you have time to go walk your dog randomly, at random times during the day or go for a run, or cook something and listen to something while you're cooking so you feel like you're productive. Right? So that I think that's one of the reasons why people are podcasting is growing in terms of like podcasts that are coming, coming up, right? I think that's growing year over year and listenership is growing as well. It's just one of those trends. Like it's easy. It's easy to find good content, it's easy to find bad content out there, too. So be careful what you listen to. But, but it's a trend for sure. I think that's why people pick it. And also like COVID, I wanted to schedule a date with someone to go for lunch. But they don't want to eat inside the restaurant. Because kids are not vaccinated, and they just want to stay safe. So we're not there yet, like we're still doing in COVID times, and we're developing these habits that are just not going to go away. We've seen the other side, we've seen another world. We've seen how much more effective and how much more we can, how much more knowledge we can gain just by like being at home and listening or reading. And that there's no going back once you've seen that.

 

Kap Chatfield  41:45

Wonderful. Anna, you, you absolutely rocked this show. I'm so grateful to have you on and you've really made a great case for the power of podcasting as well. So thank you for that. I want to give the audience an opportunity to connect with you for sure. I mean, perhaps there's people listening, they're in that position as a startup, depending on whatever phase that they're in. They're thinking, you know what? I need a marketing therapist. Anna a seems to be my gal, how can they get in touch with you? What's the best way

 

Anna Furmanov  42:15

They can find me active on LinkedIn. So you could go to Anna Furmanov. You can go to my website Furmanov marketing.com. I think that's probably, those are the probably the fastest ways and that we can get connected from there. And it's definitely a like if you if things in this show clicked for you and you're like, yeah, that's where I want to go with my marketing, then I think there's alignment and that's a good sign. So. So definitely, if you're looking to be more strategic with your marketing, if you're, you know, you've got your early stage company, it's venture backed, you might have a marketing team, you might not, but you want to be more strategic with your efforts, then definitely reach out.

 

Kap Chatfield  43:01

I'm gonna put all those links in the show notes. If you guys are listening or watching check out the show notes in the description. And this episode, follow Anna on LinkedIn. Her organic content, whether it's a poll, text posts, or even some micro clips from her for the episodes from her show. It's super insightful, and she brings on some really amazing guests on her so, on her show. So definitely check that out, give her a follow, try to connect with her. You can also check out her her website if you want to do business with her right away. But then I also want to put the link for your own show. If you're in a place you're like dude, I just want to see some more of what she's got. I want to hear more of her thought leadership. Check out Modern Startup Marketing. It's her own podcast where she brings on some amazing guests and she gets to show a little bit about what she knows as well. We'll put that link in the show notes for you as well. So thanks again, Anna, for jumping on B2B Podcast today. It was such a fun time chatting with you.

 

Anna Furmanov  43:50

Thank you Kap, I had a I had a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. 

 

Kap Chatfield  43:53

You bet.

 

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