Fredrik Selander is the CMO at SuperOffice. Before that he was Director of Marketing Nordics & Global Partner Marketing Director at Quinyx.
On this episode we talk about:
Are you ready to join the movement? Join our free slack community where some of the best demand marketers in the world share knowledge on demandgenerationmovement.com.
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Fredrik Selander is the CMO at SuperOffice. Before that he was Director of Marketing Nordics & Global Partner Marketing Director at Quinyx.
On this episode we talk about:
Are you ready to join the movement? Join our free slack community where some of the best demand marketers in the world share knowledge on demandgenerationmovement.com.
This episode is brought to you by our great sponsors Albacross & HockeyStack.
The best b2b SaaS companies in the world have made the shift towards a demand generation strategy focused on revenue and revenue. And Europe is falling behind. What about you? What about? Isn't it about time you made the shift? On this podcast, we interviewed leaders at the forefront of modern demand generation to help you make the shift and join the movement join the movement, we need to drop the MQLs and focus on what matters leading you into the future. This is the demand generation movement. And this is your host, Adam Holmgren.
Adam Holmgren:Okay, welcome to the first ever episode of the demand generation movement. And it's my pleasure to welcome Frederick cylinder, the CMO at SuperOffice. To this first episode, thank you for joining us.
Fredrik Selander:Thank you, Adam. What a pleasure. And yeah, I'm so excited to be here. This is really a big topic close to my heart. Yeah, that's
Adam Holmgren:great. I when I first had this idea of creating a demand generation podcast in in Europe, you were actually the first name that came to my mind for someone in the in Europe that I at least know have a lot of thoughts and ideas around demand generation and revenue driven marketing and so on. So it feels very fun to have you here. Yeah, thanks. Likewise, my question but to kick it off Riddick Yes, to hear from your perspective, what is demand generation to
Fredrik Selander:you. So demand generation, for me is the overall concept, the more holistic approach that defines the strategies put in place by marketing and sales, to increase the pipeline of opportunities within a company. And if you want me to elaborate a bit more, I mean, this for me includes brand building, I mean, creating, in my case here, creating affinity for Super offers. I mean, adding social proof foot leadership taking a stand on social issues, for example. So brand building, it's demand generation, demand creation and demand capture. So demand creation is basically educating the market at scale and influence buying decisions. And demand capture is converting in market buyers who are ready to buy. Yeah, those are in our case, we're looking for a CRM solution today.
Adam Holmgren:And we'll just say if we, if we compare that to the maybe more traditional lead generation that that had been in marketing for many, many years, I would say what are like, what are the main difference? You see? And have you always worked with only DemandGen? Or have you like started off with Legion and you know, had come to the conclusion that revenue focus strategy is better or how has it worked for you.
Fredrik Selander:I have a like sales background that works with direct marketing, it was cold in there a like 10 years ago, but basically was a BDR role and the aura Sales Hunter roll. So, I've been doing a lot of prospecting work in that work leads were important to have at hand. But if I tried to just elaborate on how I see the difference between lead yet and demand generation, I would like to say that lead generation for me is ultimately seeks to grow the number of leads at demand generation in contrast, aims to grow the business and most of it often with sales, qualified pipeline or even revenue as the main KPI. So, leads are basically contact information of a person who have indicated some form of interests maybe often defined by the company. And this is often a person have converted on a website or visited exhibition booth, for example, in a trade show. So lead generation tactics in this case, could be for example, implementation of lead magnets, it could be ebooks could be ROI, calculators, templates, etc. Even a fishbowl in an exhibition stand or booth, you have a fishbowl, put your business card, and you might win an iPad or I don't know a gift car of some kind, but those are treated as leads in many companies and because some sales rep will will make a phone call that I'm RBDR
Adam Holmgren:Yeah. So in in your in your mind, would you say that there is a place to do both or is one better than the other in that sense?
Fredrik Selander:So I see lead generation as one out of several tactics within the umbrella of demand generation. So now but it is it has not always been the case. So I mean, some some decades back, this was the most important program within companies who wanted to run Predictable Revenue champion by another big serum vendor from the States. And without telling you the names, and especially for large commercial organizations with big teams of sales, bvrs, SDRs, they need contacts, they need something someone to reach out to. So basically, marketing was collecting leads. So sales and BDRs could do outbound. And then this has changed over the last years. So it, it has it has not been as successful around these programs anymore, they are still viable. I mean, there are a couple of thought leaders, I know both of us follow Chris Walker, for example. But it's not always that black and white, I still see an opportunity to do these traditional outbound, and with leads, but I mean, today, it's super easy to source contact information from platforms like I think latia assuming for cognitivism, and different vendors. So it's, it has been much more accessible. On top of that, we have LinkedIn, for example, where we are seeing in Germany where we easily can find DOS, people who want to get in touch with I mean, looking couple of years back, it was if you if you purchased a list of contacts, it was like the CEO, and it was like, the first the middle name and switchboard number. not that useful. But because we want those middle managers or someone who actually a real person and not is not not the chairman of the board. And so, so that access to context has changed, but also, and the reason why it's not working as good anymore. It's basically because the hatred is terrible. It's very close to to cold calling, even if they have downloaded, let's say a template to plan your pipeline planning template or how to create your business card template. It's yeah, pretty far away. procuring a CRM solution, for example.
Adam Holmgren:Yeah, that I think that's so interesting. And one of the reasons why I created this, this podcast also is both you and me have been to, you know, several SaaS companies in the Nordics mainly. And I think, at least from my point of view, it's still it's so easy to talk theoretical about demanding, and sometimes, but it's, it's maybe even easier to fall back on more of a legion approach in a company since it's sometimes easier to measure. Would you say that now? Now you have been that to profit for a couple of months, right? Have you have you been able to focus on these kind of topics at all? Or is it still a bit early in that journey, so to say
Fredrik Selander:that this specific topic has been addressed. I can't share all the details. But this is happening at SuperOffice. But also other companies were in Sweden and the Nordics at this kind of transition. And the good thing with the movement around turning into aligning, aligning sales or marketing on revenues, that because we can start talking about the same language, yeah, pipeline, sales, people care about pipeline, and what they really want from marketing is not a lead from white paper download or exhibition booth, because the hatred is so low, and they need to be mindful of their time, what they really want is ICP customer, or I mean ideal customer profile customer. Yeah, knocking on our door and say, Hey, I would like a demo or free trial or some other kind of high intent conversion point. And then we will be best friends sales and marketing, if we actually bring more of these people to the company, yeah, ready to buy, or as they are in market to procure a solution to they have affinity for our product, or our company, because they came to us for some reason, it might be a recommendation, they have seen our marketing collaterals can be a happy customers, thanks to our great work with customer experience. So these I mean, increasing these number of incoming opportunity is what we are trying to align the company around.
Adam Holmgren:And I think that's, I have previously in my career, as you know, also work at a big Nordic CRM vendor. And, and the problems I saw sometimes there is that, since the sales cycle are so long, it's even harder to you know, prove that certain. Take the brand awareness activities actually provide revenue. But now in the role that I have currently where the sales cycles are shorter, it's easier to like, see that effect short term? And how do you view data now it's super obvious, like proving revenue versus kind of going with your gut more in a sense.
Fredrik Selander:I mean, I guess, here's also, this is a hot hot topic, for many organizations. And there are different views on this. There are, those may be preaching for attribution software, who who want to show that everything can be measured, and into point will be a lot of data points. And a lot of touch points along the customer journey. I've seen various examples of a customer maybe with let's say, 50, touch points might be 14, email opens, it could be free people from the company might have attended a webinar, and one might have got a recommendation to have a look at Superfish, because they were so happy, so happy about us from a previous company. So go check them out. And maybe they Google SuperOffice. And it looks like oh, this was a Google search or paid search. Source, but it was actually a recommendation in then there may be the sixth person might listen to this podcast and do the same thing. Yes to per heart. And the best thing we can do is basically what we are already doing, we asked the customer, so where did you hear about us or try to try to really understand. And with this kind of information, we need to balance this. I mean quantity, quantitative data with quality data and make we need to make assumptions on this and decisions on this that okay, seems like people are happy with our product, they recommend referring us to more customers. Maybe we should start programs to incentivize this behavior? Or to do is more structure for example? Yeah. So and I think we need, Martin, I think, not only rely on on attribution tools.
Adam Holmgren:Yeah, I think that's so, so interesting. And it feels like the key to achieving that is really to have like, an aligned management team, in a sense around these kind of topics as well, that everyone kind of agrees that everything doesn't have to be measured. Because if that's the case, then we we will have a problem some somewhere down the road, when we can't measure revenue, short term, maybe. But yeah, I think that's
Fredrik Selander:yeah, but hopefully, so maybe, even if it's not possible to say measure exactly everything, the whole idea is I mean, if we invest in brand campaigns, or educational content, if we see an uptick in, let's say, traffic, branded search, so many more people are googling for our brand name. Because we have seen we do a lot of maybe important stuff for for the world we are, I mean, we kept for example, about relationships and sustainability. And if we start a movement, I see a huge opportunity, especially in in categories, such as CRM tools, there's an existing demand. I mean, there are a lot of companies already buying solutions in the CRM space. So if we are top of mind, we will be at the table. Yeah, we will be at the table and being invited to, to present our solution, for example. So I mean, a lot like to say brand equals demand. And so that that's how we need to prove that it's important to invest in the brand as well. Not saying it's easy, because you can do all our things. You could I mean, you could do like, you know, the big German ERP vendors, like ASAP or Volvo could be, you know, putting sponsorships on sailing boats or FIFA tournaments. And you could also do you can say events are brand building, so it's rather like okay, where do you put your brand money, time and effort is not easy, but it's possible to link it
Adam Holmgren:and in relation to that at superpose Do you have like a specific marketing function focusing on demand? Yes. Or is that something that kind of happens across all your functions and that you are focusing on so to speak or is it like a team or how does that work with you?
Fredrik Selander:Yeah, so demand generation is something we work with within the whole commercial organization. So I mean, even maybe even the whole company, at least how I see an envision demand generation being it actually also includes how we work with customer experience. For example, Customer Success having happy customers, referring them back three to two to increase your mention of the brand name being happy customers, you tell more, more Friends and colleagues in the business. So it's quite big. But But yes, this responsibility is something I carry in championing in my role as CMO. To help me out, we have several teams working with parts of demonia generation. So I mean, we have brand content, digital, or actually building out these teams as we speak. So centralized teams would focus on different areas. But we also have marketing managers or local demand generation champions, where they have budget and contract specific pipeline goals. So they will craft, craft and execute campaigns and activities to drive demand, build a brand, and then ultimately convert them into business. Yeah. And I've seen many different examples of the Malian ratio managers, and many of them with a strong digital background, for example, within lead gen and performance marketing. But now, I would like to say that a new generation magnet could also come from branded content. So they need to build an audience and create a strong connection to the brand in respective markets. So and especially in saturated market, like both of us work in, so brand really equals to manatee in this case.
Adam Holmgren:Yeah, that's very interesting. It feels like it's like brand is so much on the radar right now for almost all kind of functions in a marketing team also. So it's not only that brand, team, in a sense, that does brand awareness activities. They actually I have a colleague who, who heard that you were going to be on the show, and we're super intrigued by that and had had a question as well in relation to that, because both you and and us at get, except, of course, work a lot with you know, localisation and trying to both do global activities but localize some activities, and so on, how do how do you view their kind of, if you should localize everything you do and over? That's because I think you at SuperOffice are very successful in that in the way in the way you do it. So it would be fun to hear kind of your, your take on localization versus having a global team and so on.
Fredrik Selander:Yeah, so this is also very interesting topic. And, I mean, super office, we are, I mean, we are pressing to our foot on the ground in seven markets. And in a clinics where I worked before, same size office, I mean, scale Swedish scale on both of these companies have local sales teams foot on the ground, and in to be fair, in the Nordics. We are, I mean, we all understand English very well. Although we we, I mean, it's also much more competitive with English language, but it's more scalable. So I mean, this is a constant discussion, we're in, I guess, Nordic teams, where we don't start with English, but we need English. So when looking at some, some, some USA, UK based startups, we do everything in English and and imagine if instead of having to produce seven reports in all the languages, we could produce seven English reports or make them even better and deeper on research. So the localization slows us down. And but it is needed, it is needed. And for some companies, this could be a competitive advantage to be local. Yeah. And this is this is it is not sometimes a potential customer wants a big player. So if the customer is also a global company, they don't want to have a local player, they want to have someone who's also global like them to support them in all the markets. So it depends a bit on your strategy. But I really recognize the need for localization. We do localize a lot at SuperOffice. We did quinyx, too. And you need to be mindful about it, because it takes time. So maybe you can be smart about it could be for example, if you produce, let's say a report or a research study, or some something like that, a 20 page guide. Maybe this could be kept in English, but the promotional content, email landing pages to be localized, so the most short short form so and the reason being that I mean, 20 page ebook, I mean, first of all, not everyone will read the full book. And it's extremely cumbersome, time consuming to localize this huge text that might be a bit deep as well. And on top of this, you might send it to local translators or do the in house, so we need to proofread it you need to add it in the template. And if you work with cleaning or some other language with long words, you need to oh, it messes up the design. So the designer needs to add in all the text you need someone else to proofread again. And yeah, create individual files, individual landing pages and the list goes on, it is really time consuming. So my suggestion would be that global teams creating content that is aimed to be localized needs have this in mind. So, so design with localization in mind, just like I know, IKEA, does they design, the price tag, they know, okay, this, so far, this mean, table top, this is the cost and they they calculate backwards. So in this case, have it in mind from start if it should be localized or not. And
Adam Holmgren:I think that's so it's interesting when you look at, take big CRM vendors, for example, when they are trying to break into the Nordics, for example. That's often very hard, because we are quite used to having things in the local language, I would believe many, many companies that want a CRM, you know, many of them in the Nordics or traditional companies and as you said, might not be as approachable with with English in that regards. But in other businesses, it might be the opposite, that we only target this more modern business in I detect them, it would be a separate thing, of course. But I think that's yeah, it for sure. depends a lot on on your, your business. And I know for a fact, before I knew a lot about SuperOffice, what I knew about you were that you were super successful in SEO in content creation. And that would be fun to hear from your perspective now, when you have recently gotten in how that focus have kind of shifted, because I know that you are like, You are ranking on so many of these very competitive terms out there. And both in the US but also hearing in Europe, of course.
Fredrik Selander:So yes, we are very successful with our work with SEO, and this is has nothing to do with me trying 100 days ago, and and so I'm very humble, to say I'm very proud of what the team has achieved over the years. And but this has been a dedicated work, but by I mean a couple of people and also external, external people who helped us out to achieve that. But this, this was a focused effort over a long period. I mean, because
Adam Holmgren:you're never, you're maybe in the most crowded space in the world, right? It's like, it's maybe one of the toughest things to do in b2b is to, to rank on these kind of CRM related topics, b2b sales topics and so on. It's super impressive.
Fredrik Selander:So I mean, what we're done, we have it, we're focused on it. And we have I would like to say great content, well researched content, long form content, our profile, fast page, technical performance. So yes, I mean, this, this is great. It has taken a lot of effort. And moving forward, it will continue to be important, but on the topic of the money and ration. And I also see a need to be visible even before peoples Google, if people Google Nordic CRM vendors or the best serum and are in Northern Europe, it's too late now, even if we're anchored. I want us to be top of mind already. Yeah. Before that.
Adam Holmgren:Yeah, I completely agree. And that's, that's the hard part sometimes. How do we get into the mind of and I think it's a lot of where we are b2c companies in the past have usually been very good at your stuff, you know, getting a top of mind into people's head, doing more kind of, or maybe only brand activities. Do you think we in a sense are getting closer to that, you know, working more towards like a consumer instead of just a company? Or what is your take on that?
Fredrik Selander:For sure. This is a natural shift and movement and this has been especially championed by product led companies, growth companies. And if we take examples like Slack, for example, Su and other companies where Yeah, it's very close to b2c in some cases is so easy to use. Get started and you get immediate value. And it's do work a lot with branding. And sometimes you already you want to be part of this new kind of communities that those created as well. Yes, for sure. And in even if you're in a company, like let's say you're selling your ERP solution, for example, or some kind of business software, and if you sell super complex, yeah, ERP system, there are still a lot of new startups scaleups competing in different segments, I mean, the best of breed area have locations, and they can often do these applications very sexy, and it can be can look appealing, and they are very boxed solutions where it can get value quite quickly in disgust. So this will pressure the bigger ERP, CRM system. There are so many niche applications around around this bigger system that is really moving the behavior and expectations from the consumers and customers that what that how can this be so hard? I mean, I used to use this just looked at this add on, it was just click, click, click, click, and it was ready. And if you're selling an ERP solution, for example, it's super complex can take years to implement because it's so massive. And and yeah, this this will shift behaviors for sure.
Adam Holmgren:Yeah, yeah, for sure. And if we, if we look into now we are we're almost closing out q4 Now and heading into into 2022. What would you say? Are some of your like, from your perspective, most important focus areas to cater for this growth that you obviously already have, but want to have going on? And maybe also send? Send a few tips along the way to our listeners on what, you know, 2022? Could something that could help them along demand generation?
Fredrik Selander:Yeah, sure. I will, I would like to go back to was it 2018 or 19? Where GDPR just landed in GDPR? Yeah. And everyone was afraid what will happen now and we can't do any marketing anymore. And but the good thing is that GDPR forced marketeers to start doing great marketing. We need to start doing content of real high court, we need to add value, and it's not possible anymore, just spam crap. And then yes, low quality touchpoints. And for many reasons. Now, it's for other reasons. I would like to say it's because it's, it has been increasingly competitive, niche players coming, competing on everyone's I mean, I guess, in I mean, in the CRM space, there are a lot of add ons and ecosystem partners that can add capabilities, but but it's also I mean, everyone is aiming for the same buyers, let's say sales leaders and I guess it's the same for maybe get except you know, what to sell to sales leaders do and who might be software to do prospecting work and might be software for for doing handling commission. I mean, there's so many categories fighting for it for us. And, and to win this battle, we need to start doing real, really good marketing. So it's really I mentioned other polls like Champions League for marketeers because I don't really think we're in the category we're in. It's so competitive. So we need to continue investing in really good content, insanely good content. And so we have something to say. And we have a good story around it. But but we also need when it comes to brand and I mean emotional we need to do fun stuff. People want to be entertained at the same time. So we knew we need to be marketeers and I mean marketeers from the b2c space they already noticed that they know we need to do we need to move emotions too. And and then when it comes to a lot of buzzwords like ABM are they are like programmatic and so much tech did I mean a couple of years back it might be a competitive advantage today's more like us need to have its we can't afford to waste money on ads not performing or cetera. So we just need to put this into place.
Adam Holmgren:No, I like it. It feels like you're almost saying like we need to, in a sense get back to get back to the basics of of marketing. In a way and just focus on doing that well, and maybe less on these new things that are popping up all the time. And I think that's great. And I
Fredrik Selander:want one of the maybe a quite techie marketeer who loves new tech, but maybe it's because I mean, getting older, I mean, families starting to think, Okay, we need to, maybe it's not the tech, that is the most appropriate thing. It's what we want to achieve. But tech can help. But but it's not everything. That's awesome.
Adam Holmgren:I wanted to end this episode with one one kind of final question. And that is, what is one company in Europe that you see that are kind of crushing it in demand yen or revenue that are doing or in content, doing everything right, that we could all learn from a bit in? In your view? Is there something some companies you are looking towards for inspiration, for example?
Fredrik Selander:In Europe, that's a good can,
Adam Holmgren:of course, be one in the US, as well. But it will be fun if we can find anyone in Europe.
Fredrik Selander:To two companies that are quite good. I would like to say Cognis. If I pronounce this correctly, yeah, I think are UK based. And Dooley, they're also quite good at producing really good content. I mean, I'm also a big fan of Gong, but they're Israeli and like, most European, and what can be seen all of these free companies that they produce. Content is actually it's actionable is valuable. Could be Yeah, they're providing data that actually helps helps me my job. And they're also doing and doing it in a way that is, is easy and approachable, in depth feels like they have designed their whole go to market and brand around being visible and approachable and like him, so yeah.
Adam Holmgren:Yeah, that's awesome. Love it, go check them out. But thank you for that. Well, this was so great. Thank you so much for joining the demand generation movement.
Fredrik Selander:My pleasure. Good. See you later. Looking forward to to the next episode on the see who who will join the show. Yeah, thank you.
Outro:Thank you for listening to this episode of the demand generation movement, the podcast where you can learn everything about demand gen and how to make the shift towards revenue. Are you ready to step into the future and join the movement? Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn? This is your host, Adam Holmgren, signing off