MAIN:

It Takes Two: Your Part in the Agency/Client Partnership Equation

Courtney Stack on April 26, 2022

Hiring a marketing agency is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a CEO or marketing leader. I’m always grateful when current and former clients thank Karbo Com for the important role we play in the success of their companies. As in any relationship—whether it’s a business alliance or a personal relationship— success depends on the quality of contributions of both parties.

Some companies search for an agency as if they are seeking the holy grail of marketing success. They search for a partner that, once hired, will take the reins, and make success automatically appear. Take this laissez-faire approach at your own peril. As you embark on the journey to find the best partner, do some hard thinking about what your company’s willing and able to contribute to ensure a successful relationship.

  • Before you begin the search, outline the specific results you expect. Are you looking to drive well-qualified prospects to your home page? To effectively position your company against competitors? Ensure you’re included in key analyst reports? A combination of these and more? PR and digital marketing objectives should flow from your business objectives. Articulate your marketing goals as a subset of these business objectives.
  • Ensure the key members of the c-suite have a sincere belief in marketing, PR and any program you hope to undertake. While the marketing team may run the program, other groups such as the product management team, sales, and finance, can derail efficacy if they aren’t committed to what it takes to be successful—time, money, subject matter experts, credible success metrics, and referenceable customers.
  • Karbo Com devotes senior resources to our clients daily, but no agency can run a successful effort without the support of an internal advocate that can get them the information and approvals they need. The main contact for your agency must have the appropriate amount of leverage, access and power needed to drive action.
  • Set your budgets before you reach out. Some companies will use the agency search process to determine budget and seek the lowest price for what they view as comparable services. While this approach might feel like it makes fiscal sense, it leaves you more vulnerable to bringing on a partner who is a less-than-stellar fit for your business goals. You could end up investing even more resources in the long run without an agency that is better suited for your marketing needs. Look at what other companies in your category, stage of growth and market position are spending. Acquire budget approval for the entire year. As Regis McKenna would frequently say when I worked at his seminal firm, “It’s a process, not an event.”
  • Be realistic about the challenges you face. Is it limited sales, lack of awareness among prospects, negative social commentary, a white-hot competitor that’s stealing the oxygen out of the room, or a dated, ineffective website? Recommended narratives, objectives, strategies and programs can vary greatly depending on these factors.
  • Can your team acknowledge the good, the bad and the ugly? While we expect clients to be true believers, smart partners will be fully transparent and honest with themselves and us. Undoubtedly, your team is a source of wisdom when it comes to your company, products, and the market. Your agency assumes a essential position as well. They will conduct research, have market insight and years of experience that will help you take advantage of opportunities and overcome challenges.
  • If your relationship with a previous agency has failed, take an unvarnished look at why. Are there things you learned and want to integrate into your programs? What can you do differently to help your partner succeed? Carry these insights into your agency selection process.

You’ve spent months, probably years mapping out your corporate, technology, product, and business plans. Don’t put all of that to waste by rushing through the agency selection process. Determine your objectives, market analysis, resources and the specific help and performance you’ll need before you reach out to prospective partners. Be prepared to cull your agency options down to an adequate and manageable two to four options, allocate time to brief the agencies prior to asking for a proposal. Give prospects enough time to present a thoughtful, quality response and your team enough time to make a formal decision. If you’re still working with an agency, give them the appropriate amount of notice before terminating your contract. Be aware of how terminating your relationship will affect your business and theirs. Treating them with respect goes a long way towards ensuring a smooth transition between agencies.

Selecting an agency partner is one of the most important decisions you’ll make this year. Don’t short-shrift the process. Finding a PR, content and marketing partner will accelerate the success of your company, making you the hero of your corporate story in the process.

MAIN:

Celebrating Pride

Courtney Stack on June 22, 2021

Happy Pride Month! We proudly donated to the Trevor Project and GLAAD to reinforce our commitment and allyship to the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s important to us to celebrate pride year round by creating a welcoming and inclusive environment and culture. Today, we’re highlighting and amplifying two of the LGBTQIA+ voices of our employees by sharing their stories and recognizing their unique contributions.

How long does it take to truly be considered a San Franciscan? Mark Elkins, Karbo Com’s Head of Human Resources and Operations, has been living here for 23 years and is proud to call the city his home. From his perspective, San Francisco has always been the beacon of what life should be: accepting and supportive. Mark’s story began with a TV show called “Tales of The City”.  At the age of 16, Mark watched the show, connected well with what he saw, and was inspired to move to San Francisco one day. Around this time, Mark came out;  first to friends at 16, next his extended family at 18, and then to his parents at 21. Growing up in Salem, Oregon, a fairly rural and conservative community, Mark knew he wanted to move somewhere where he felt more welcomed and accepted. While attending college in Oregon, Mark witnessed first hand hate and discrimination from organizations such as the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance. Witnessing these hateful groups prosper helped propel Mark to find his voice as an advocate with the community. Every year, Mark donates to LGBTQIA+ organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and Lyric. He also marches for equality, does volunteer work, and socializes within the community, which he truly enjoys.

Mark is grateful to have found an accepting, caring, and conscientious environment and Karbo Com. It is exactly the type of place he wanted to work for, in large part due to the fact that here, in his words “being gay is no big deal”. This sentiment is echoed from the CEO and Founder all the way across the spectrum to every member of the staff.  Outside of Karbo Com though, Mark describes the biggest threat to the LGBTQIA+ community as the lack of true equality that is recognized on a federal level. “If you can be fired from your job, prevented from voting, or evicted from your home for being gay, there’s still so much more left to do”. Additionally, more recent reversals of Obama-era policies and a surging homophobic sentiment in parts of the country have made it clear that for many there is still a lot more work to be done, and the fight for equality is far from over.

For Mark, Pride Month isn’t just a time to celebrate, but should also be a time for political activism.”Things are not where they should be and have a long way to go. It’s time not only to be aware but to take action”.

Lately, you may have been hearing about preferred pronouns: whether it’s seeing them on social media, in email signatures, or it comes up in conversation. Karbo Com’s Creative Director, Courtney Stack, has led the charge when it comes to having open dialogues and discussions on this subject matter. Besides her work at Karbo Com, Courtney is also a multidisciplinary artist, working across painting, photography, sculpture, movement, and writing. Courtney’s  pronouns are she/they. Courtney joined Karbo Com in 2019 to launch the agency’s in-house Content Studio, critically expanding service offerings to encompass visual branding, full service social media, photography and video, writing, and more. I asked her to share with me why pronouns are so important on the most personal level.

“I believe that gender is a spectrum. Gender norms conflate anatomy with gender identity, collapsing that spectrum into a limited, prescriptive binary (male, female). The gender binary doesn’t acknowledge human experiences and identities that fall between or outside of those accepted norms. When we limit our understanding of gender identity to the gender binary, we limit our understanding of each other, and of ourselves. When we share our pronouns, we are claiming an opportunity to be better known to one another. We are acknowledging that a person’s gender identity is not something that can be assumed based on the way they look. We are signaling that all gender identities are valid. We are creating space for a more inclusive, diverse, authentic, and loving future”. Courtney’s use of “we” clearly illustrates how important and timely these discussions are in terms of continuing to foster and build a truly accepting and kind environment around us.

Especially when we find it challenging to understand, being curious, asking questions, and learning is a good place to start. As Courtney says, “As a gender queer/fluid person, I appreciate being recognized as such. As human beings, we understand ourselves, in part, through external affirmation. When my internal identity is seen, affirmed, and accepted by others, I feel that I can be myself and lead a more authentic and fulfilling external life. Pronouns play a role in all of that”. There are many pronouns out there. Most of us are familiar with she/her and he/him pronouns. Gender identity terms also include gender neutral pronouns such as they/them, xe/xem, ze/zim, and sie/hir. There are many great resources like GLAAD and the Anti Defamation League if you’re not sure where to get started and want to learn more.

But, why is this important for companies? Company leaders should encourage employees to share their pronouns as well as respect colleague  pronouns to signal acknowledgement and acceptance of all employees, regardless of gender identity. This creates a more inclusive, humane workplace. Best practices so as not to misgender someone are simpler than you might imagine. Courtney put it best, “Don’t assume that you know another person’s gender. Instead, simply ask them. Then use the pronouns that they have told you they identify with when referring to them. “ It’s no biggie. Just ask, “What are your preferred pronouns?” This question is easily posed when meeting someone for the first time, alongside other standard introductory questions like, “What’s your name?” But it’s also a question you can feel comfortable asking of someone you’ve known for a while: “Hey, I realized that we never discussed preferred pronouns. My preferred pronouns are X. What are yours?”

Finally, as we look to the future, there are several examples of actions businesses should take to “walk the talk” and ensure that they are truly prioritizing diversity and inclusion. Businesses can show meaningful, change-making allyship with queer communities by publicly divesting from the corporations and entities that oppress those communities. They can elevate LGBTQIA+ employees to positions of leadership and authority. Businesses can also commit ongoing funds and resources to queer organizations all year round, not just for Pride Month. When businesses are truly committed to supporting queer communities, there are a great number of opportunities for them to effect positive change.

MAIN:

Zeguro CEO On How To Overcome Cybersecurity Marketing Challenges

admin on September 10, 2020

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition to remote work, the number of reported cyber attacks has skyrocketed, highlighting the critical need for greater cybersecurity adoption. The growth of the cybersecurity industry has soared over the last couple of years with digital transformation, regulatory compliance, increased security threats due to COVID-19, and response capabilities all playing a role, according to a recent Gartner report. Global information security and risk management end-user spending is now forecasted to reach $174.5 billion in 2022.

While the industry is booming, countless cybersecurity companies are jockeying for a piece of that business. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for cybersecurity companies to differentiate themselves in a saturated market, and for many, breaking through means overcoming critical marketing challenges around brand awareness, market education, and building trust.

To learn more about how cybersecurity companies are overcoming these challenges, Karbo Communications spoke to Zeguro’s CEO and co-founder Sidd Gavirneni, and Digital Marketing Manager Ellen Zhang. In a crowded market, Zeguro is managing to stand out. By integrating cybersecurity and cyber insurance, Zeguro is creating a new product category and finding a foothold with small and medium sized businesses. In our virtual “In the Know” discussion, Sidd and Ellen shared Zeguro’s strategies for building trust, educating target audiences, and gaining traction in the saturated cybersecurity market.

 

Tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start Zeguro and how you identified a need in the market for integrated cybersecurity solutions and insurance?

Sidd: I’ve been in cybersecurity for over 20 years. Prior to Zeguro, I was managing Polycom’s product portfolio and served on their information security board when they experienced a data breach. Typical phishing attack, you know, someone asking the HR person to send out employee data and he does. During the aftermath of that breach, I came to learn that dealing with cyber insurance can be a really painful process.

Around the same time, my Zeguro co-founder, Dan Smith, was in the process of renewing cyber insurance for the bank he was working for. It was a nightmare. The whole process was broken and it took him about three months just to renew. Also happening at this time, a friend of mine, who runs a clinic in Houston, experienced a data breach—another phishing attack. The small business need for better cybersecurity insurance was quickly coming into focus. So Dan and I co-founded Zeguro in 2016 to address this clear market need and to help small businesses. 

 

As an insurtech startup, what are a few ways you are positioning Zeguro as a better alternative to the more established and traditional insurance companies?

Sidd: Traditional insurance is sold through brokers. If a small business wants to get a cyber insurance policy, they go to a broker and have to fill out a two or three-page paper questionnaire. Then the broker sends the questionnaire to the insurer, and the insurer either approves or rejects them. If the insurer approves them, the broker sends a quote to the customer, who can then purchase the policy. This whole inefficient process can take up to a week or more. 

With the Zeguro platform, everything is digital and easy for the small business. They can get a quote and purchase their policy in less than five minutes. This is one way Zeguro is bringing insurance into the digital age.

And then the other piece is making insurance easy to understand for these businesses. If you look at our messaging, our website, and everything within the customer’s purview, you’ll see that we take great care to make all of the insurance legalese digestible and that we’re always clearly addressing the pain points of our customers. The same thing goes for security. 

Our approach of making cybersecurity and insurance easy and integrated is what makes us different from any other insurance company.

 

According to experts, cybersecurity is the fastest-evolving threat landscape insurers must deal with. Cyber attacks get more sophisticated and less predictable every day. While traditional insurance companies may struggle to keep pace, Zeguro appears uniquely positioned to succeed because of its integrated model. 

Can you elaborate on your key differentiators?

Sidd: Historically, cyber insurance companies have had a problem with data: no insurance company has enough data to create accurate pricing and better serve the customer by providing a tailored cyber insurance product.

That’s where Zeguro comes into play. Our approach of integrating cybersecurity with cyber insurance helps us better underwrite and provide tailored cyber insurance to our SMB customers in a way that our competitors can’t. Our approach to cyber risk management is uniquely holistic. Zeguro makes it easy for small businesses to understand cybersecurity by making it approachable and telling them exactly what they need to do to also save on their insurance. Zeguro customers who buy our insurance get the security platform for free. And customers who buy our security platform get insurance at a lower premium cost because their risks are lower. It’s this integrated approach that makes Zeguro unique.

 

You have an extensive background in strategic management and product portfolio management working at companies like Polycom and Accept Corporation. How has your previous professional experience influenced Zeguro and its integrated business model?

Sidd: It’s a combination of our team’s professional experiences and personal experiences that have influenced Zeguro to be who we are today. Personally, I grew up in India, moved to the US to Kansas, got my MBA in Spain, and now I’m here in the Bay Area. 

I was a software engineer by profession. So, my education centered around computer science and cybersecurity. I worked as a software engineer at a telecom company, and after a few years of that, I was ready to move towards more of the strategic aspects of business. 

My MBA was very much focused on entrepreneurship, and after my program, I started working more on business strategy and the product portfolio. It’s a combination of all of these experiences that have helped me to get to where I am today, and it’s our diverse, collective experiences as a team that have also helped us shape Zeguro. 

 

We would love to hear more about diversity at Zeguro. How does diversity contribute to Zeguro’s success?

Sidd: Customer satisfaction is central to Zeguro’s branding and identity. The only way the customer can be fully happy is when we best understand their needs and are able to empathize with them and help them achieve their goals. That’s one thing we have done very well. We have brought in that empathy, which we think is a direct result of our diverse team. 

As a team of 12, we have seven countries represented, males, females, LGBTQ, and people of all ages. Having a diverse team helps us work better with each other, but also creates team empathy which eventually flows to our customers. This combination of different views and perspectives is what gets us to keeping our customers happy and satisfied. Through that, we have had quite a few referrals and partnerships develop. Diversity plays a big role in who we are as a company.

 

How does Zeguro successfully attract such a diverse talent pool?

Sidd: We have a set of core values, and it’s those values we look for in a person versus just finding someone that fits into our culture. We believe that culture should evolve over time and everyone coming in helps shape the culture. So it’s more about those core values, and one of them is diversity. All of these values help us attract folks that believe in diversity. One thing that we do is use talent sourcing tools where we can hide the name and picture of the person and be neutral about things like looks and names.

 

 

What are a few of the biggest marketing challenges you face as a cybersecurity company and what strategies are you successfully employing to overcome them?

Sidd: I think the primary challenge, especially with cybersecurity in the SMB space, is awareness and education. Most small businesses don’t know what to do about cybersecurity. Everyone knows that they should be worried, but they have absolutely no idea what to do. And as a result, they just tend to ignore it. One of the biggest challenges that we face is how do we raise awareness without scaring people away from taking action?

Ellen: The other challenge is that we’re creating and defining a new product category by integrating insurance and cybersecurity. It’s not something that people know to search for on Google yet. How do we target the direct consumer? One strategy we’re testing out right now is partner marketing and growing our partnership program.

Sidd: For small businesses, it really comes down to who they know and what they trust. Our partners are already trusted advisors to smaller businesses, and they can be influential. So it’s really the influencer model that we believe will make a big difference in the cybersecurity and cyber insurance space for these SMBs.

 


As Zeguro leverages partnerships to build trust and recognition with its target market, what co-marketing strategies are proving to be most successful? 

Sidd: Zeguro provides full support to every partner that we work with by collaborating on co-branded materials from marketing collateral to webinars to email campaigns. We also have found a lot of mutual benefit in partnering with other security companies to create material that applies to both their customers and our customers in the security space.

 

Beyond partner marketing, what marketing tactics have proven to be most successful in connecting with that target customer? How has Zeguro tailored its approach to speak to them directly?

Ellen: On the cyber insurance side, using Google AdWords and paid search have been a really good way to get consistent leads. We’ve been doing pretty well and getting leads at a cheaper cost per lead than the market average for insurance. I think it’s been particularly successful for SMBs because they normally don’t have a dedicated risk manager who can work with different insurance firms and brokers to find cyber insurance solutions. So these people would be googling “cyber insurance coverage” and looking for solutions via Google. That’s been a good way for us to get in front of people.

 

Narrowing customer focus is one of the top marketing challenges cybersecurity companies face. How did Zeguro narrow in on small to midsize companies?

Sidd: The SMB space is extremely underserved when it comes to both cybersecurity and cyber insurance. While more than 60% of large enterprises have cyber insurance, less than 10% of small businesses have it. And yet, 69% of small businesses had a cyber breach in 2019 — that’s a huge number. Small businesses just don’t have the right tools. The security space is extremely fragmented, and most of those tools are geared towards large enterprises, not the SMB space.

Of course, talking to customers is the number one thing you can do to better understand their unique needs, but we also look at statistics and reports from organizations like the Small Business Administration. We take into account published information about the kinds of risks small businesses face, or FBI reporting on cybersecurity and breaches. We also take into account reports from companies like Symantec, which does a great job on their annual reports on the state of cybersecurity. All of these resources help us better understand and define who within the SMB space we should be targeting. 

To add to that, cybersecurity has different kinds of adopters. Early adopters are typically tech companies, because they often have a better understanding of cybersecurity even if they don’t have the expertise in-house. So we’re also looking at what the low hanging fruit is and where we don’t have to spend too much effort on awareness versus the other categories.

 

For a small business with little to no experience on navigating the complexities of cybersecurity, getting started can be a daunting task. How is Zeguro best positioned to help small businesses start inaugural cybersecurity programs, and how do you incorporate that expertise into your messaging?

Sidd: Businesses expect the same level of functionality and user friendliness from their vendors that they get from their personal apps and tools that they use in their day-to-day life. And that is one way that we make cybersecurity easy for these businesses; it’s all about that user experience of our platform on the security side. We try our best to not make it feel overwhelming for a business owner who has no tech experience to be able to get started with cybersecurity. We provide everything that the business needs to get started within the platform that they would otherwise have to get from a security consultant, who would charge them around $10,000 a year. In comparison, our Cyber Safety solution is as little as $59 a month.

Ellen: We position Zeguro as accessible, as you can tell by the language we use throughout our website and platform. The language is not very heavy on cybersecurity terms, as you would see for enterprise solutions that are speaking to dedicated IT or security teams. We’re really tailoring our message towards people who don’t necessarily understand much about cybersecurity or who are beginning their journey into building a cybersecurity program. 

And we focus on providing educational content on our landing pages. For example, on our cybersecurity overview page, we have statistics around the percentage of SMBs that experienced a data breach, how much an average data breach costs, and particular solutions. We explain why they should care about employee security training when the majority of businesses experience some type of phishing or social engineering attack. We focus our messaging on both the why and the how, but simplify it down so it’s easy to understand.

Sidd: Visual branding also plays an important role in this. Our brand colors — pink, purple, and navy — also make Zeguro fun and accessible, rather than the traditional, corporate-looking dark blue that every security or insurance company uses.

 

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#6cdbf9″ class=”” size=””]I don’t think that there’s any specific area that requires the most education. Every company and every person has a different idea and knowledge level when it comes to cybersecurity, so it’s really about addressing multiple aspects.[/perfectpullquote]

 

On the Zeguro resource page you have a consistent cadence of educational blog posts, ebooks, and guides. It’s clear that providing educational resources is a key component of your marketing strategy. 

What are the top education hurdles Zeguro faces and what tactics are your teams employing to overcome them?

Sidd: I don’t think that there’s any specific area that requires the most education. Every company and every person has a different idea and knowledge level when it comes to cybersecurity, so it’s really about addressing multiple aspects. Because as I was mentioning earlier, cybersecurity is about taking a holistic approach that addresses people, processes, and technology. Ignoring even a small piece of any of these three aspects can cause a breach. In our educational material, we make sure to focus on all three components.

 

 

Zeguro recently hosted a webinar with infosec expert Aaron Kraus on how startups can initiate an SOC 2 report. How effective are you finding these webinars at improving the existing customer experience or earning new business? 

Ellen: We’re really just starting on our webinar program, and as we pioneer this new channel for Zeguro, we’ll look to do joint webinars with each of the partners that we sign on. For example, one of our partners is Graphus, a company that helps protect against phishing attacks, so this fall, we are planning on doing a webinar around identifying phishing attacks and preventing them. And so they’re going to talk about their technology and how they can stop phishing attacks from the email perspective, and we’ll discuss how we can better train employees to recognize phishing attacks, and be more cyber-aware.

Sidd: I think these joint webinars will be important for us because there’s no one solution that can solve all the cybersecurity issues or problems. It will have to be multiple companies coming together in the ecosystem to fix the problems that these businesses face. So for us webinars with our partners is what will be the most fruitful.

 

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#6cdbf9″ class=”” size=””]As a security and an insurance company, the primary criteria that our customers look for is trustworthiness, and PR has helped us create that level of trust among our customers and partners.[/perfectpullquote]

 

What role does PR play in helping Zeguro meet its business objectives?

Sidd: As a security and an insurance company, the primary criteria that our customers look for is trustworthiness, and PR has helped us create that level of trust among our customers and partners. This is accomplished in large part through media coverage and articles related to our product launches, our partnerships with some of the world’s leading insurance companies, and recognition of Zeguro’s award wins. PR plays an essential role.

 

Late last month you published a report on the state of B2B SaaS cybersecurity, which notably highlighted that almost 84% percent of B2B SaaS companies have allocated budget to cybersecurity infrastructure in 2020. 

How do these reports support your marketing efforts, and how are you tracking ROI?

Ellen: We work with an SEO agency and a lot of our early efforts are focused on content marketing and research for the content. Part of the content mix are these big rock assets, like reports with original data. It’s about establishing thought leadership.

The decision to focus this report on B2B SaaS was strategic. Many of Zeguro’s early customers were young SaaS companies, so we figured that would be a good target market as they typically have a better understanding of technology and require a little less education than some of the mom and pop SMB shops. 

Tracking ROI for our content marketing is really about our brand awareness. Are we moving up in organic search rankings? Is our organic search traffic growing month to month, year over year? And are we getting more impressions and clicks for the keywords that we care about?

 

Have you been finding these reports to be an effective method for boosting Zeguro’s rankings?

Ellen: It’s a little too early to tell with this latest report, because we only just published it. But towards the beginning of the pandemic, we published a blog post with free security training resources for SMBs. And since that’s been published, it’s consistently been a top performer for our website and for organic traffic as people are searching for training resources. Especially now since everybody’s working remotely and it’s important to educate your employees.

 

COVID-19 has completely shifted the corporate landscape as many companies have pivoted to indefinite work from home systems. We’ve observed a dramatic surge and increased sophistication of cyber attacks amid COVID-19. 

How has this shift influenced the way Zeguro positions itself to prospective and existing clients? 

Sidd: We did not change the way that we talked about ourselves. However, the pandemic and increase in cyber attacks have only highlighted the need for a product like ours. So we started seeing that customers and potential customers started resonating more with the messaging that we already had. COVID acted as a catalyst for us.

 

Can you talk a little bit more about how COVID-19 has affected Zeguro’s business?

Sidd: Because of COVID, content has been performing very well for us. With very few marketing dollars, we are getting more paying customers and that’s a direct result of all of our content efforts over the last few months within the context of the current climate.

 

What’s on the horizon for Zeguro and the cybersecurity industry as we move into the second half of 2020?

Sidd: The industry itself will keep soaring, there’s no stopping that. Thanks to the upcoming elections, people are even more concerned and there will be even more cyber attacks. We anticipate gaining a lot more traction over the next few months as we focus more on our channels and partners. That’s where we see the industry shifting as SMBs rely more and more on tools and products that provide multiple things in one place. 

Ellen: The biggest thing for Zeguro will be growing our partnership program. I’ll be working with Sidd and Dan on account-based tactics to target potential partners and get them onboard so we can grow that marketplace.

 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity

MAIN:

7 Tips For Creating An Award-Winning Case Study Video

admin on July 16, 2020

Here’s a compelling statistic: 69% of B2B marketers use case studies to help generate leads. Pair that with the 88% of video marketers reporting that video gives them a positive ROI, and the business opportunity for a case study video really comes into focus.

Here, we outline seven tips that have helped Karbo Com create videos that won over the minds of target audiences, (and the hearts of judges and award committees!).

Most recently our client, Penguin Computing, came to us to help promote the company’s involvement in Director Ang Lee’s blockbuster film Gemini Man in advance of the film’s world premiere. Karbo Com harnessed the power of a video case study to highlight the company’s solution and convey how it was essential to making the film a reality. 

Managing the entire video production process from conception to completion, the Karbo team developed a project plan and led the initiative smoothly, ahead of schedule and within the scope of the budget. The final videos were strategically released on social media, online, and at Penguin Computing’s biggest trade show event of the year. In recognition of the Gemini Man case study videos, Karbo Communications was awarded a Gold 2020 Hermes Creative Awards and won the 2020 Silver Telly Award.

 

1. Define Your Target Audience

The foundation for any case study starts with clearly defining who that target audience is and what drives their decision making. Honing your message to cater to a clearly defined audience will propel your case study video to have the greatest impact possible. 

Don’t know where to start? Ask your comms team to assist in developing personas to outline actionable insights about your target audience. Communications teams are experts at understanding where your message should land and how to get it to stick. 

 

2. Precisely Outline What You Want to Accomplish

The next step in the development process is crystalizing your communication goals and objectives. Begin by understanding what compels your target audience to take action by answering the following questions:

  • How do we outperform competitors in our market?
  • What are the key messages that will most clearly convey our benefits?
  • What do we want the audience to know, feel, and do after having watched the video?
  • What key elements of our messaging lend themselves well to video?

Once you have a firm grasp of what your goal is and what your objectives are, gather assets such as white papers, customer testimonials, and statistics to help illustrate your points. Having a specific goal and clearly articulated objectives allows you to evaluate materials you can use to support your “case,” and eliminate what’s extraneous. With those materials in hand, your communications team can begin crafting questions that guide your subjects to tell a compelling story.

 

3. Ask Leading Questions To Craft Your Story

When spearheading the development of a case study video, you’ll need to coax the right answers from sources. Guide your subjects to help tell your story by developing questions that cut to the chase. 

Ask questions that provoke your subjects elaborate on the following aspects of the project:

  • The situation
  • The problem
  • The solution
  • The outcome

Keep in mind that questions should always remain open-ended to stimulate interview subjects to expound on their thoughts. Follow that protocol and you may find yourself with some additional soundbites you didn’t even know you wanted!

 

4. Storyboard & Script the Narrative

A storyboard is a visual representation of a film sequence and breaks down the video’s elements into individual panels. Storyboarding your case study video will allow you to clearly establish the flow of the narrative and visualize how shots will flow and work together. It’s important to keep your visual brand identity in mind throughout the process to keep the video’s look and feel consistent with your brand. Ensure you have complete internal alignment on language, tone, and visuals before starting on the storyboard. The last thing you want is to discover the need to pivot halfway through production, wasting both time and money.

In the script, clearly articulate the opportunity, the solution, and the positive outcome. Support those key components with exciting and engaging visuals that illustrate, give color, and provide visual context to the story told by your interview subjects. Substantiate your successes by including data points in the script that highlight the impact your solution provided.

Lastly, include a “call to action” in your case study that drives your target audience to engage with your brand or your product. Remember, the greater goal of your case study video is to support marketing efforts, ultimately contributing to your bottom line.

 

5. Project Management is Critical

Assign a project manager to lead the planning process and handle day-to-day coordination to streamline production. Their role will be crucial in developing a production schedule and anticipating any roadblocks that could hinder progress. There are many moving parts from scheduling interviews and securing b-roll, to managing budget, location and props. It only takes one broken link in the chain to disrupt the entire production. Avoid that unnecessary headache by setting a realistic production schedule, emphasize production design and experienced direction, and secure buy-in from key stakeholders.

For the case study we orchestrated for Penguin Computing, the Karbo Com team assumed the role of project manager, setting the project budget, developing the storyboard and scripts, hiring a production team, and creating a launch plan that was ultimately executed and measured. Organizing all those components under one management umbrella allowed for a seamless production.

 

6. Keep It Brief

Video length matters! In fact, there’s a significant drop in viewer retention for videos longer than 2 minutes. Of course, length will vary depending on the content and the platform you are publishing to, but keep in mind that less is often more. 

The best practice is to create cuts of varied length to best suit your website and social platforms. We’ve aggregated the optimal lengths per platform:

  • Instagram — 30 seconds or less
  • LinkedIn — 30 seconds to 5 minutes
  • Facebook — 2 minutes or less
  • Twitter — 20 to 45 seconds
  • YouTube — 2 minutes or less
  • Website — 5 to 10 minutes

For Penguin Computing, we developed a number of videos at varying lengths — allowing us to optimize each video for the specific platform it was published on and maximize engagement.

 

7. Launch Strategy

You’ve just finished your video. How do you decide when, where and how you’ll use it in your marketing efforts? There are a couple of ways you can boost visibility right off the bat:

  • Use company social accounts to promote the launch (you can even create a specific hashtag)
  • Optimize the video content for SEO by ensuring an SEO-friendly headline and appropriate meta descriptions and tags
  • Encourage internal teams and relevant contacts to share and engage with the case study from their own social accounts

To drive further visibility, work with your PR team to gauge where, when, and how content like a video case study should be promoted. Leverage your PR team’s expansive network of relationships with reporters, analysts, and influencers to get your message in front of the right people at the right time.

MAIN:

How To Create Unbeatable Brand Positioning That Moves Markets | 5 Tips from Karbo Com’s CEO Julie Karbo

admin on June 30, 2020

Last week, our CEO Julie Karbo led a Coaching Circle at the 2020 Women in Technology International Virtual Summit. A marketing expert who has helped thousands of craft successful brand narratives, Julie shared pages from her playbook on how to successfully move markets.

 

Branding & Positioning: Why It’s Important

Why is branding important? If you’ve got a better product it will sell itself, right? If only it was that easy. The streets of Silicon Valley are littered with failed companies that had great products, but didn’t tell their story in a way that moved hearts, minds and wallets. We’ve all seen examples of messaging that fails to accurately communicate a company’s value, differentiation and vision.

Branding exercises lay the foundation of a company’s communications with customers, partners, investors or any other entity that has a stake in what they do. The branding exercise itself is complex, time consuming and rigorous. It requires a commitment from the CEO to participate wholly and she or he must mandate the same from other members of the C-Suite. It’s critical that there be a commitment to unflinching honesty and self evaluation, with an exercise leader that asks the right questions, keeps the process productive, moving forward and free of arrogance and power plays. Those are just table stakes. Then comes the hard part.

 

Nailing Your Message

Branding is never a one-meeting-and-you’re done proposition. It takes a great deal of internal and external research, the ability to audit key audiences, collaboration across the highest levels of the organization, and a willingness to test its efficacy. Without this commitment companies can fail to craft the right narrative. It’s not as rare as you think. According to Forbes, only 1 in 4 corporate brands is perceived as different from their competitors.

Effective positioning: 

  • Speaks to the needs and motivations of key stakeholders
  • Demonstrates strong, specific differentiation
  • Includes compelling language that is tied to current trends
  • Accurately describes the company’s mission, vision and products/services
  • Drives results

 

Know What You Need to Know

Where does it all begin? With the customer. Do you have robust persona(s) of your target customer(s)? What are their demographics? What do they read? How do they make product purchase decisions? What do they do in their spare time? What keeps them up at night? What’s causing and alleviating their pain and what’s not?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. A quality persona profile reflects the prism by which your customer judges you. Many executives believe it’s based solely on their product features. This is partially true, but remember your solution isn’t simply your technology platform and product, it includes the quality of your management team, what reporters, influencers, partners, your support teams and the competition say about you and more. At Karbo Com we call it the Whole Product Prism.

 

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#6cdbf9″ class=”” size=””]”Executing the branding exercise flawlessly is one of the most important things you will do as a company. Devoting resources is important. But just as critical is making a commitment to truth, introspection and collaboration.”[/perfectpullquote]

 

Getting Branding & Positioning Right

Once we have our foundational research done, we begin to craft the narrative. At Karbo Com, we manage the overarching process, and will craft the first draft of straw man messaging according to three categories: market, technology/product and company.  These straw man messages are discussed with the whole team and once these narratives are finalized they are tested with customers, partners and other influencers.

 

How Do We Know It’s Working?

Measuring branding efficacy requires accountability, and accountability starts with the identification of qualitative and quantifiable KPIs. Karbo Com then uses analytic platforms to help determine success metrics. One size doesn’t fit all. Measurement is a function of the unique needs of each company. Key components can include sales leads, sentiment, competitive response, influencer concept tests, share of voice and a host of other metrics. 

Executing the branding exercise flawlessly is one of the most important things you will do as a company. Devoting resources is important. But just as critical is making a commitment to truth, introspection and collaboration. Finally, you have to pledge loyalty to your narrative — to tell your unique story in a way that moves markets.

MAIN:

In The Know | Photographer and Influencer Pei Ketron

Courtney Stack on February 12, 2019

Photographer and influencer Pei Ketron knows a thing or two about visual storytelling. As one of Instagram’s earliest adopters, Pei helped pioneer the meteoric rise of photo-driven social media, amassing an audience of nearly one million followers. Her images have been used by companies like Apple, Google, American Express, and Mercedes, and she’s been named a top Instagram photographer by countless publications. When she’s not busy shooting photography, she’s often speaking about it at premiere events like SXSW, Adobe MAX, and Today at Apple. 

Karbo Com joined Pei in San Francisco’s Sunset District to get her advice for brands interested in leveraging the power of photography and digital storytelling.

 

Let’s hear a little bit about your background

I’ve been a full-time freelancer for seven years and a photographer 18 years. My style and interest is not in those super large scale shoots with the massive crew, huge productions. I like to just show up with my camera, get what the client needs, and call it a day.

In fact, I used to shoot a lot more with my iPhone. For the first six and a half years, my Instagram feed used to be iPhone-only, even though I had been shooting with a DSLR long before joining Instagram.

That’s how I began working with Apple. An inquiry came directly to me from someone at Apple who had been following me for a while. They were looking for photographers who were adept at using iPhones to capture photos for some shoots they were doing. Apple was looking for images to demonstrate the capabilities of their new phone camera.

We did a five day shoot in Tahoe and Yosemite with the Apple crew shooting on an iPhone that hadn’t even been announced yet. It wasn’t a huge production, but it really felt like the shoot was a big deal. There were lots of people around and, of course, the phone was totally on lockdown. They would hand it to me when it was time to photograph and take it back when I was done. It was the first time I captured photos on a device and then just handed over that device at the end of the shoot.

So that’s how I first started with them and now they’ve come to know me as a local photographer they can call on for certain things. And from there it’s evolved to me presenting at the community building creative sessions at Today at Apple.

 

Tell us more about Apple’s approach to community building. What do you think brands can learn from their approach?

What Apple’s trying to do, especially with the Today at Apple program, is to offer something of value to their community without it feeling like there’s a direct ask on the community to come buy a product. They have started thinking about the fact that retail marketing stores seem like they’re not long for this world given how powerful online commerce has become.

So I think they are trying to anticipate a time when people aren’t really going to want to go in to the stores and buy their products—but they have this whole infrastructure of stores around the world, so how is it that they can use these physical spaces to serve the people in another way? They’re now leveraging these spaces as community building tools. And this creates a way for Apple to encourage people to become advocates for their brand because Apple as a brand is doing these really cool things.

I think it’s a really innovative way of thinking about it. You know, companies do well when they can anticipate the needs that haven’t yet arisen and I think that this is one of those instances. Apple has positioned itself very smartly to anticipate the changes of the market in the future.

 

The community events you lead at Apple are photo-centric. Do you think imagery is an especially powerful community building tool for brands?

Absolutely.

I don’t think imagery is a requirement in building community, but it’s certainly a very helpful piece of it. I think it can be a great instigator for people coming together. The age old saying “a picture’s worth a thousand words” really does hold true here. It can take a lot to verbalize an idea and you can convey so much more in an image much more quickly than you can with text. I think that because it’s such a powerful communicator that it’s much more engaging and emotional in a way that words sometimes aren’t. Because images are so emotional, so raw, they can help brands tell their stories really well in a way that gets immediately people engaged. I’ve seen how it can be a really powerful motivator for people.

 

What advice do you have for brands that are interested in better leveraging the power of photography?

Some brands don’t recognize how powerful good imagery can be for them. Images are often the very first touchpoint people have with your brand and if you don’t have them or have them and they’re low quality then that reflects poorly on your brand. I’m seeing an interesting trend now within companies: I’ve been getting approached by companies—some small companies, and big companies too—who want to hire me to teach iPhone photography classes to their employees so that they can handle photo coverage of all the events they do.

Sometimes this solution works and sometimes it doesn’t.

I do a lot of photo documentary of art exhibits. A few weeks ago, I photographed a new exhibit at Fort Mason. I was talking to the woman running that show and she was telling me how she wished she had someone to help her document not only the finished show, but the setup process too—the building out of the space, people bringing in the art. She was saying, “It really all just falls on me. There’s no budget for it, and I’m the one who needs the images so I’m the one who needs to try to capture it, but at the same time I have so much other work to do.”

And she’s not a photographer so how do you make that work? Companies need to know when to bring in help from professionals like myself or the Karbo Com team. These employees can’t realistically be expected to do everything.

 

What trends do you see emerging? How are companies being smart about using photography to their advantage?

More and more these days brands are recognizing the real power of actual storytelling. So more than just paying a photographer to do a nice commercial shoot, there’s a tendency now for companies to build and share a more robust story behind their brand. Who are the people behind the company? How did they get where they are?

There’s a leather goods company based out of Nashville called Nisolo and they work with artisans down in South America to make their goods. It’s important for them to tell the story of those artisans; these are the people who create the products. The message it sends is that by buying Nisolo’s goods you’re supporting these people who are now able to afford housing and education. It tugs at the heartstrings a little bit more, so it serves as a really effective marketing tool that in the end drives sales, even though Nisolo is not directly saying, “Hey, buy our stuff.” The end result is that people are more motivated to make a purchase because they’re more invested in the people behind the brand and they know their full stories. That kind of brand storytelling is happening more and more. And strong imagery is essential to sharing those stories effectively.

 

What is the role of social media in this kind of brand storytelling?

You know, I get hired for massive photo shoots by people who have never met me before and never asked me to prove to them that I can execute on whatever shoot they’re wanting to do. Because these clients have watched my feed over time, sometimes for many, many years, they already know exactly what I can deliver, they know exactly what I’ve done for other clients. It all kind of speaks for itself because I’ve essentially built and maintained that relationship with them for years. And that’s why social media is so powerful these days. It’s so important for brands these days to have that really great social media presence, for them to have really good images.

There’s a lot of aspirational following on social media. Even if these followers aren’t in the market for whatever it is that a brand is selling right now or can’t afford it, people nurture the aspiration that one day they will buy that product—and then they do! I’ve seen it over and over again. I’ve even done it! I’ve followed you for three years and never bought anything, but when I do buy that one thing I know I’m going to buy it from you.

It’s playing the long game, right?

You can find Pei on Instagram here.