March 12, 2024 • 24 mins
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this week’s episode of Scale Your SaaS, host and B2B SaaS Sales coach Matt Wolach sat down with Joe Zappa, the visionary founder and CEO behind Sharp Pen Media, to explore the intricate world of PR, content marketing, and the journey from journalism to running a successful marketing agency. Joe's insights are profound and actionable, providing a roadmap for SaaS companies looking to elevate their marketing strategies.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach
Episode: Episode No. 307, “Why Your Marketing and PR Campaigns Aren’t Working - with Joe Zappa”
Guest: Joe Zappa, Founder & CEO at Sharp Pen Media
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Sponsored by: Leadfeeder
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
- From Journalism to Marketing Mastery
- The Evolving Role of PR in SaaS Marketing
- Strategic Messaging and Audience Engagement
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
- The Power of Consistency and Value in Content Marketing
- Overcoming Hesitancy Towards Marketing Investments
- Key Takeaways for SaaS Leaders
TOP QUOTES
Joe Zappa
[07:11] “You need to ask your customers where they’re hanging out, then experiment for yourself and figure out if you’re getting any traction on those platforms.”
[10:52] “The effective way to get attention is to be in the market, saying helpful things that people find interesting every week.”
Matt Wolach
[09:56] “I know a lot of software vendors, and they don’t go that deep on their marketing process”
[16:03] “The power of a personal brand is so strong.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Sharp Pen Media, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sharp-pen-media/
You can also find Joe Zappa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-zappa
For more about how Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com.
Head over to leadfeeder.com and sign up for a 14-day (no strings attached) free trial: https://www.leadfeeder.com/
Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Wolach (00:00):
Hi and welcome to Scale Your SaaS, thank you very
(00:09):
much for being here. By the way,if this is your first time, our
goal is to help you understandhow to grow your software
company, whether that'sgenerating new leads, whether
that's closing those leads,scaling your team, whatever it
is, that's what we're here todo. So if you want those things,
hit the subscribe button rightthere. That way, you'll get all
of the awesome updates from thechannel. You'll know the best
people in the industry and howthey can help you Scale Your
(00:31):
SaaS and one of those bestpeople is my guest today, Joe
Zappa. Joe, how you doing?
Joe Zappa (00:37):
Hey, Matt, thanks so much for having me on.
Matt Wolach (00:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm super glad to have you here.
Let me know. Let me make sureeverybody knows who you are,
Joe, because you've got anawesome background, you're doing
some great things. So Joe is thefounder and CEO at Sharp Pen
Media. And really what that is,that's an agency that helps ad
tech and Mar tech companies withmarketing strategy, content and
PR. Joe was the editor of themartec media sites Street Fight
(01:00):
before starting the agency, andhe has worked with some
companies such as Freewheel,AppLovin, and FatTail along with
others. This guy knows his stuffknows how to help companies
generate that interest in thatdesire. So Joe, thanks for being
here.
Joe Zappa (01:14):
Thanks for having me, Matt. Let's get into it. Love
it. So
Matt Wolach (01:17):
tell me what have you been up to lately? And
what's coming up for you?
Joe Zappa (01:21):
Yeah, running my agency, we have about a dozen
clients is our third full yearin business. So still figuring
out a lot of things on thatfront. And then, you know,
helping our clients, as yousaid, with strategy, content and
PR. So part of that is figuringout the marketing fundamentals
of what is the message? Whereare we going to distributed? And
how are we going to createvalue, and part of it is just
(01:42):
executing on that stuff. So youknow, creating content that's
abreast of what's happening inthe space and being in touch
with journalists and having afinger on the pulse.
Matt Wolach (01:53):
Yeah, I know you were a journalist yourself. How,
how did that happen? Going fromthat to now posting an agency
running an agency Sharp PenMedia? How did that come to be?
Joe Zappa (02:03):
Yes, I actually got into adtech and martech. As a
freelance journalist in college.
David Hirshman, who founded themedia side street fight, went to
my college, so I was looking foran internship and he hooked me
up. And I stuck with that forlike, eight years. And so I was
freelancing at street fight foryears and became the editor
while I was doing a PhD, wrappedup the PhD was like, alright, is
journalism going to be thefuture? Oh, no, journalism has
(02:26):
all the same problems thatacademia does, there are no jobs
and they don't pay a lot. And sothen I got a freelance gig and
marketing, and realized content,marketing and PR rely on a lot
of the same skills asjournalism, understanding an
industry, what's the story, it'sjust you're looking at it from
the perspective of a specificcompany and figuring out how to
insert them into thatdiscussion, instead of sort of
covering it in a neutral way. SoI got into marketing through
(02:48):
that angle, and then obviously,stacked up some clients. And
before you know, it, you youhave an agency on your hands.
Matt Wolach (02:56):
funny how that happens. But good for you for
doing that. One of the thingsyou do and one thing you help
with is something that not a lotof software companies think
about and something that canactually accelerate. But it's
also hard to account for andunderstand, can you talk a
little bit more about PR, andsome of the some of the ways
that companies are benefitingfrom PR in the help you give?
Joe Zappa (03:18):
Yeah, it's super interesting to think about the
role of PR and contemporary SaaSmarketing, because I think, at
least in my industry, adtech andmartech, the old school way to
do to think about PR is yourlike, you get off the ground
with networking and events andsales, all that like high touch
person to person stuff. And thenat a certain point, a founder
usually says, Okay, well, now weneed to go out there at scale,
(03:41):
right, we need to get in frontof more people, or we have the
paid ads funnel running. Andthat's working. But we want
something that's going to sortof compound and growth over
time, right, that's not going tolead to diminishing returns. And
then the the old school way isjust to say, Okay, we're gonna
go out and get a 10k per monthPR agency, I actually think that
for most software companies, youdon't need to spend 10k per
(04:02):
month on PR, because there justisn't enough media surrounding
your company in your industry tojustify that kind of spend. So
that's how you end up withcompanies in the space that PR
practitioners always make fun offor journalists make fun of
where you're like, I just did apartnership with so and so. And
I know no one cares about this,but please cover it. And that's
(04:24):
not really where you want to befrom a PR on. So the way I look
at it instead is that reallylike our job as like a PR and
content in agency and anyone inthis space, whether you're in
house or in an agency, your jobis to figure out how do we grow
the company by growing itsreputation and authority to lead
to more relationship, morerelationships, which will drive
(04:45):
pipeline like any othermarketing activity, and so part
of that yes is going to be PRit's understanding who are the
journalists and influencers inyour industry? What are they
covering and how can you providevalue to them and in turn, they
will provide you value bygetting you in front of Your
audience, but it's also all theother ways that we consume
content in 2024. So it'sLinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram,
(05:07):
Tik Tok, Slack groups and yourcommunity WhatsApp groups. I
think that PR is transforminginto this more multi channel
discipline. That's it's sort ofan overlap of PR and what we
tend to think of as content.
Matt Wolach (05:21):
I love it. And it's also something where we don't
think of it in a silo, weshouldn't be thinking of it all
just do that. And hopefully thatworks. But it's how does that
relate to our content? How canwe make sure that everything
kind of intermingles together,right?
Joe Zappa (05:35):
Yeah, I think PR and content are of a piece with one
another? Because it all startswith that marketing strategy
question I raised earlier, whichis, what is the message? Right?
That's where you're starting?
It's like, how are we going todifferentiate from competitors?
What are we doing for whom? Howare we going to get our
customers excited? You ask thosethree questions, you come up
with the message, and then yousay, Where are we going to
(05:56):
distribute it, and PR is goingto be one means to distribute
it. But the thing is, whenyou're doing PR, you're relying
on third parties to distributethe message. So 50 years ago,
that was basically all we had,right? It was like advertising
and then relying on the media,that those channels are still
important. But nowadays, you canbe reaching your audience every
day, on social channels, andagain, slacks, WhatsApp, forums
(06:21):
like that. So often, in myindustry, what I need to sell
founders on is like, yeah, PR isgreat, let's do that. But don't
hire a PR firm, and then expectto get like 30 placements, which
is a literal metric. I've heardpeople say they expect them to
be getting them. And I'm like,Guys, we have five trade
publications in our industry. Doyou think they're covering us
(06:42):
six times in one month? We'd belucky if they covered us once a
quarter, right. So it's like,that's a small piece of it. But
then expect that resource,again, whether you're hiring a
PR manager, or you're hiring anagency, expect that resource to
be getting the message out inmore ways than just reaching out
to the media.
Matt Wolach (07:00):
Yeah, that's, that's brilliant insights, for
sure. So what are some of theeffective marketing strategies
and tactics that SaaS companiesshould be implementing to help
scale their business?
Joe Zappa (07:11):
So I think if you're thinking about PR and content,
again, it starts with thatstrategic step that a lot of
people don't take, because theywant to just get right into like
doing stuff, right? It's like,let's just do marketing, or we
just need to get the word out.
That's something you hear a lotin sales calls, when you're in
my position, I bet you hear thesame thing. And what I say is
like, Okay, well, the firstthing we need to figure out is,
what are we going to be sayingto these people? So we we want
(07:33):
to craft sort of two tiers ofmessages. The first message is,
like our crusade, like, what isthe big tent thing that we're
trying to accomplish? So like,if you're an add up software,
that saves publisher ad ops,people time, right, because
they're compliant, they'remanually compiling data from
(07:55):
like, 20 different systems. Andyou're like, I'll get it all in
one place for you automaticallywith software. Like one of my
clients does this. And theslogan we came up with for them
was take back Monday, right? Sothe idea is like, you're we
interviewed their customers, andwe're hearing from their
customers, I'm spending all dayor before I use the software, I
was spending all day manuallyaggregating this data, and it
(08:17):
used to like half my Monday wasjust that, that's how my week
would start. So then that's thesort of overarching message
that's supposed to activate themon a visceral level and help
them understand how we canassist them. Then you have
another tier of messages, whichwe do for every client, we'll
create a doc called like housetopics and POVs. And it's like
three to five hot button topicsin their industry, and then what
(08:38):
their house position is on thattopic. reason this is important
is because like your overarchingmessage, you can't just run
around all the time, like sayingyour slogan, right? Like people
are going to, then you're notgoing to be participating in
organic discussions. So thehouse topics and POVs is a way
of saying, Okay, everyone in adtech is talking about privacy
changes, or they're talkingabout supply path optimization,
(09:00):
like making software moreefficient and between brands and
publishers. So we're going tocreate a stance on that topic
that supports our businessposition. But that also engages
people where they are where theconversation is already
happening. Once you've donethat, the what is our message
part, you got to the distributethe message. And this is really
just a question of where is youraudience? So for some people,
(09:22):
that's going to be LinkedIn, forsome it's going to be Twitter,
combination of them otherplatforms. You just need to ask
your customers where they'rehanging out. And then also
experiment for yourself andfigure out am I getting any
traction on these platforms? Andeventually you're going to hone
in on where do our customerslive? And where are we actually
(09:44):
connecting with them and gettinga response and then you double
down on that and people like tomake it complicated, but really,
that's what content marketingand PR are all about.
Matt Wolach (09:56):
I love it and it definitely resonates with me.
I've talked with hundreds ofdifferent experts on this show.
And it often comes down to ifyou want to be successful, have
conversations with your targetaudience and you related the
same thing. Exactly. Joe, weneed to be talking to those
people. So we understand wheredo they live? And what are they
trying to accomplish? And whatare their struggles? I think
that's fantastic. And the theother thing that I took away
(10:17):
from what you just said, tounpack it further is, instead of
just hey, let's do this, you'vegot a set process, let's make
sure we understand if this iswhat people are talking about,
what's our perspective? And whatdo we want to make sure the
market understands? And how canwe show them? How can we make
sure they get where we're comingfrom? I know a lot of software
vendors, and they don't go thatdeep on their marketing process.
(10:40):
And I think that's a hugeexample of working with an
expert like yourself, how youcan get that next level of
understanding of how to get, youknow, structure and process in
the right place, isn't thatright?
Joe Zappa (10:52):
Yeah, I really liked that point about process for two
reasons. I tend to find thatsoftware companies fall down on
this in two regards. One is thatthere isn't message discipline.
So they don't have that sort offoundational dock, where it's
like, we know what we stand for.
We know what our messages are,we know the topics we want to
comment on. And the reasonthat's problematic is that your
what happens on the ground, andCEOs might not always see this,
(11:15):
but I'm in the marketingmeetings. So I do is your
marketing team ends up in aposition where they're like,
What are we going to say thismonth, and it's like you're sort
of solving the same problem overand over again, and you're also
not doing it in a way that bestsupports the business strategy,
because it hasn't been thoughtthrough in this very deliberate
way. And then the other thing,so that's about message, but the
(11:36):
other thing is aboutdistribution, I tend to find
that a lot of CEOs who don'tcome from a marketing
background, they think aboutmarketing in a very like event
ties way where it's like, oh, wehave our series coming up. And
we want people to to hear aboutthat, or we're going to launch
this product. And we want peopleto hear about that.
Unfortunately, that's not reallythe most effective way to get
(11:59):
your series A covered or to getyour product launch covered. The
effective way to get attentionfor those things is to be in the
market saying helpful thingsthat people find interesting
every week, because people arejust like normal social animals.
And they're way more likely tointeract with your ego centric
news, you're like we did a coolthing announcement, if they see
(12:21):
you every week, and they likeassociate you as someone who has
helpful things to say and who'sworth paying attention to. So if
you have a process to do thesethings, week, in week out,
you're way more likely to getthat series uncovered by
journalists or to have people inyour industry pay attention to
your product arms, than ifyou're just thinking about
(12:43):
marketing once a quarter whenyou have a big thing happening.
Matt Wolach (12:48):
I think that's so true. I see people do that same
mistake where they push thisstuff out once in a while and
like How come nobody reallycared about that. And you're
right, just because you haven'tdone the the ground effort to go
out there share value helppeople all along the way. And by
doing that, you kind of buildthis community and you have
people who are pulling for youpeople who are on your side and
(13:09):
want you to succeed. And andthen when you say, Oh, we just
did this thing. Now you've gotthose people in your corner
helping you out and they careabout you. And it becomes
really, really awesome. It is alot of work, though. So why do
you feel like tech companies areoften hesitant to invest in
marketing support? And and whatare some of the concerns that
they have around that?
Joe Zappa (13:30):
I think the main reason is that we work in the
tech industry, people like data,they like things that can be
measured, they like sure things,all very understandable biases.
But if you're really going toinvest in PR and content, if
you're going to invest in theparts of marketing, that aren't
downloadable assets, whereyou're going to get it, we're
(13:51):
essentially not just lead gen.
And it's not just paid ads,you're going to have to be
comfortable with a portion ofyour marketing budget, going to
something that's not going to beeasily measurable. Now you can
measure it to a degree, thereare two ways there are leading
indicators. So people willsometimes call like engagement
on social media vanity metrics.
(14:11):
I mean, I think that's kind of adumb way to look at it. Again,
it's a leading indicator, it'sshowing, okay, people in our
target audience are engagingwith our content that seems
meaningful, right there. We'rebuilding a community around our
product, or around what we haveto say. And then the other thing
is that you should see pipelinegenerated by content marketing
and PR, but it's probably goingto be more through like a survey
(14:36):
where someone's us, where didyou hear from us and they can
check you know, five boxes andone of the boxes is like I
follow you on LinkedIn, right?
Or I see your content, orthey're going to tell you in the
sales call. You know, I love thestuff you guys are sharing on on
Twitter. That's how you're goingto find out but it's going to be
more qualitative and you need tohave a process set up to
(14:57):
ascertain that. I mean, thereare parts of content marketing
and PR that are more Legionoriented. And again, that's
going to be like the classic awebinar or a white paper that
they have to download. Butpeople are also really leery of
those tactics because like,everyone knows what you're doing
at this point. They know if theyput in the white paper that
they're gonna get a call from anSDR in two days, and they might
not want that. So that's what Ithink it is. I think, like I was
(15:20):
on, funnily enough, I was on thephone yesterday with an ad tech
CEO. And he asked me the samequestion. He was like, okay, so
how am I going to understand theROI of this? And I gave the
answer, I just gave you theleading indicators. And then you
should see people coming inasking, you should see inbound
links, and they should raisetheir hand. And they should say,
you know, I saw your content onTwitter or whatever. And he had
(15:41):
found me and was coming to me,because he had seen my social
content. And so he himself waslike, I guess it's kind of funny
that I'm asking you aboutwhether this stuff works,
because we're literally on thephone, because they worked on
me. And now it's like, ding,ding, ding. Yeah,
Matt Wolach (16:03):
I think that's fantastic. The power of a
personal brand is so strong. Andit's something that took me far
too long to realize, but you'reright, probably 80% of the stuff
that comes to us, comes throughmy personal brand. And it's
something that we work reallyhard on as a team to make sure
that my name my face, and allthat is out there enough. So
people follow that they knowthat they come to know you, they
(16:25):
come to know what you're about.
And when it's time when they'reready. They come to you they
reach out. And so I think thatthat's something that even as a
as a company, as a brand, peoplewithin your company can work on
that personal brand, the sharingthe value, and and and create
this powerful kind of communitywhen you agree.
Joe Zappa (16:44):
Yes, we should also stipulate that it varies based
on the company and what you'reselling, right. So if you are
selling like a $10 a month, SASproduct, you're probably going
to get very far with paid adsand stuff that's more like
direct response, because it'sjust not that big a decision.
Right? They don't need to, theydon't need to be persuaded, they
(17:06):
don't need to trust you thatmuch. They can just say, I'm
gonna sign up for it and see howit goes. And if I don't like it,
I'll just stop paying the $10every month. But so like
everything I just said, I thinkit applies to those kinds of
SaaS companies, but it's alittle less relevant. But a lot
of companies call themselvesSAS, and they're actually like,
it's like a six figure deal,right? Like it's a quite a bit
(17:27):
of budget. And it's it mightrequire a lengthy
implementation. And there is aheavy service component again,
even though it's called SaaS.
And so for those companies, Ithink those are the companies
where PR and content are reallyrelevant and where you're really
cutting, selling yourself short,if you're not participating in
some of that trust, buildingoriented marketing tactics that,
again, are harder to measure,but are really how you build a
(17:53):
reputation and authority and getpeople through the door for
those higher value deals.
Matt Wolach (17:58):
I love it speaking to my soul, Joe, I love all this
stuff. So tell me, what are somemistakes? If you're a software
leader, you're out there, you'retrying to do these things? What
are some of the mistakes you seethese leaders making when they
go to market and use PR?
Joe Zappa (18:12):
So I think one big thing is you're talking about
yourself too much. We've sort oftouched on this from various
angles. But very often, when Isee CEOs posting on LinkedIn,
it's I'm so pleased to announcethat this good thing happened to
(18:32):
me. And that's fine. You canhave those posts. But that
should be like 5% of your posts,right? Because every for every
one of those posts you do, thereshould be 10 to 20 that are just
helping your target market, justlike you would do in a sales
call, right? Like in in a goodsales call. Like it's
consultative, right? You're notjust like jumping down someone's
(18:53):
throat at from the very firstminute being like, let me tell
you all the reasons wereamazing. And all the awards
we've won and the cool things wedo. You're like, what are your
problems like tell me about yourbusiness, you're that's
essentially that thatconsultative. I'm not going to
be didactic. But I want to helpand I want to listen and
understand is the persona thatmost companies should be
(19:15):
cultivating with content. And sothat's the content angle, from
the PR angle. I think we're mostpeople go wrong is similar, but
it manifests in a slightlydifferent way. It's like your,
your cadence, the what's the wayyou're reaching out to
journalists in your industry isdetermined by your product
(19:37):
roadmap and your partnershipsand all of the things that you
have going on, which journalistsare always going to be less
interested in unless you're sucha big deal, like an ad tech,
right? If you're Google, oryou're the trade desk, which is
like the biggest independent andtech company, then journalists
might be interested in somethingyou're doing just because it's
your product and your product isso important. But for nine
(19:59):
percent of the companies in theindustry, the better way to go
about it is to be super pluggedin to what all of those
journalists are covering. Andwhen they do a story where
you're like, hey, this is areally cool story. But I think
this angle is something youhaven't explored yet. And I
could see another story aboutthis that is called best. And
here's the here are the insightsor the data I can provide to you
(20:22):
about that. That's really howyou want to be going about it.
So in both cases, it's aboutbeing less company centric, or
less egocentric and thinkingabout what does the audience be
it your customers on social orjournalists in the case of PR
need from you? And how can youprovide value though? I
Matt Wolach (20:39):
love it. Yeah, that's exactly something that
has taken me quite a long timeto learn. And fortunately, I
have been able to learn that butsharing that value is, is
fantastic. Now, I want to makesure that other people don't
share or don't take quite aslong to learn as I did. So they
need to talk to you, Joe. Sowhat is the best way for our
audience to learn more aboutwhat you're doing at Sharp Pen
(21:01):
Media and yourself? Yeah,
Joe Zappa (21:03):
Yeah, you can find me at Joe underscore Zappa on
Twitter, Joe Zappa, LinkedIn,you'll find me pretty quickly,
or just at sharppenmedia.com.
Matt Wolach (21:12):
Okay, perfect. So we'll put all that into the show
notes. So if you're listening orwatching, go ahead and grab that
there. Go see Joe, and he canhelp you out. He's got a lot of
great stuff. Joe, thanks so muchfor coming on. I really
appreciate you sharing all thiswith us.
Joe Zappa (21:24):
Matt, thanks so much for having me on. It was great.
Matt Wolach (21:27):
Absolutely. And everybody out there. Thanks for
being here. By the way, we arelooking for reviews. If you
think that this is helpful, whatJoe just shared, which I think
it's amazing. Please review thesoftware, please review the
program, I should say, and thisepisode in particular and show
people that this is somethingthat they need to be listening
to. So thank you very much forbeing here. We'll see you next
time. Take care. Bye.
Hi and welcome to Scale Your SaaS, thank you very
(00:09):
much for being here. By the way,if this is your first time, our
goal is to help you understandhow to grow your software
company, whether that'sgenerating new leads, whether
that's closing those leads,scaling your team, whatever it
is, that's what we're here todo. So if you want those things,
hit the subscribe button rightthere. That way, you'll get all
of the awesome updates from thechannel. You'll know the best
people in the industry and howthey can help you Scale Your
(00:31):
SaaS and one of those bestpeople is my guest today, Joe
Zappa. Joe, how you doing?
Joe Zappa (00:37):
Hey, Matt, thanks so much for having me on.
Matt Wolach (00:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm super glad to have you here.
Let me know. Let me make sureeverybody knows who you are,
Joe, because you've got anawesome background, you're doing
some great things. So Joe is thefounder and CEO at Sharp Pen
Media. And really what that is,that's an agency that helps ad
tech and Mar tech companies withmarketing strategy, content and
PR. Joe was the editor of themartec media sites Street Fight
(01:00):
before starting the agency, andhe has worked with some
companies such as Freewheel,AppLovin, and FatTail along with
others. This guy knows his stuffknows how to help companies
generate that interest in thatdesire. So Joe, thanks for being
here.
Joe Zappa (01:14):
Thanks for having me, Matt. Let's get into it. Love
it. So
Matt Wolach (01:17):
tell me what have you been up to lately? And
what's coming up for you?
Joe Zappa (01:21):
Yeah, running my agency, we have about a dozen
clients is our third full yearin business. So still figuring
out a lot of things on thatfront. And then, you know,
helping our clients, as yousaid, with strategy, content and
PR. So part of that is figuringout the marketing fundamentals
of what is the message? Whereare we going to distributed? And
how are we going to createvalue, and part of it is just
(01:42):
executing on that stuff. So youknow, creating content that's
abreast of what's happening inthe space and being in touch
with journalists and having afinger on the pulse.
Matt Wolach (01:53):
Yeah, I know you were a journalist yourself. How,
how did that happen? Going fromthat to now posting an agency
running an agency Sharp PenMedia? How did that come to be?
Joe Zappa (02:03):
Yes, I actually got into adtech and martech. As a
freelance journalist in college.
David Hirshman, who founded themedia side street fight, went to
my college, so I was looking foran internship and he hooked me
up. And I stuck with that forlike, eight years. And so I was
freelancing at street fight foryears and became the editor
while I was doing a PhD, wrappedup the PhD was like, alright, is
journalism going to be thefuture? Oh, no, journalism has
(02:26):
all the same problems thatacademia does, there are no jobs
and they don't pay a lot. And sothen I got a freelance gig and
marketing, and realized content,marketing and PR rely on a lot
of the same skills asjournalism, understanding an
industry, what's the story, it'sjust you're looking at it from
the perspective of a specificcompany and figuring out how to
insert them into thatdiscussion, instead of sort of
covering it in a neutral way. SoI got into marketing through
(02:48):
that angle, and then obviously,stacked up some clients. And
before you know, it, you youhave an agency on your hands.
Matt Wolach (02:56):
funny how that happens. But good for you for
doing that. One of the thingsyou do and one thing you help
with is something that not a lotof software companies think
about and something that canactually accelerate. But it's
also hard to account for andunderstand, can you talk a
little bit more about PR, andsome of the some of the ways
that companies are benefitingfrom PR in the help you give?
Joe Zappa (03:18):
Yeah, it's super interesting to think about the
role of PR and contemporary SaaSmarketing, because I think, at
least in my industry, adtech andmartech, the old school way to
do to think about PR is yourlike, you get off the ground
with networking and events andsales, all that like high touch
person to person stuff. And thenat a certain point, a founder
usually says, Okay, well, now weneed to go out there at scale,
(03:41):
right, we need to get in frontof more people, or we have the
paid ads funnel running. Andthat's working. But we want
something that's going to sortof compound and growth over
time, right, that's not going tolead to diminishing returns. And
then the the old school way isjust to say, Okay, we're gonna
go out and get a 10k per monthPR agency, I actually think that
for most software companies, youdon't need to spend 10k per
(04:02):
month on PR, because there justisn't enough media surrounding
your company in your industry tojustify that kind of spend. So
that's how you end up withcompanies in the space that PR
practitioners always make fun offor journalists make fun of
where you're like, I just did apartnership with so and so. And
I know no one cares about this,but please cover it. And that's
(04:24):
not really where you want to befrom a PR on. So the way I look
at it instead is that reallylike our job as like a PR and
content in agency and anyone inthis space, whether you're in
house or in an agency, your jobis to figure out how do we grow
the company by growing itsreputation and authority to lead
to more relationship, morerelationships, which will drive
(04:45):
pipeline like any othermarketing activity, and so part
of that yes is going to be PRit's understanding who are the
journalists and influencers inyour industry? What are they
covering and how can you providevalue to them and in turn, they
will provide you value bygetting you in front of Your
audience, but it's also all theother ways that we consume
content in 2024. So it'sLinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram,
(05:07):
Tik Tok, Slack groups and yourcommunity WhatsApp groups. I
think that PR is transforminginto this more multi channel
discipline. That's it's sort ofan overlap of PR and what we
tend to think of as content.
Matt Wolach (05:21):
I love it. And it's also something where we don't
think of it in a silo, weshouldn't be thinking of it all
just do that. And hopefully thatworks. But it's how does that
relate to our content? How canwe make sure that everything
kind of intermingles together,right?
Joe Zappa (05:35):
Yeah, I think PR and content are of a piece with one
another? Because it all startswith that marketing strategy
question I raised earlier, whichis, what is the message? Right?
That's where you're starting?
It's like, how are we going todifferentiate from competitors?
What are we doing for whom? Howare we going to get our
customers excited? You ask thosethree questions, you come up
with the message, and then yousay, Where are we going to
(05:56):
distribute it, and PR is goingto be one means to distribute
it. But the thing is, whenyou're doing PR, you're relying
on third parties to distributethe message. So 50 years ago,
that was basically all we had,right? It was like advertising
and then relying on the media,that those channels are still
important. But nowadays, you canbe reaching your audience every
day, on social channels, andagain, slacks, WhatsApp, forums
(06:21):
like that. So often, in myindustry, what I need to sell
founders on is like, yeah, PR isgreat, let's do that. But don't
hire a PR firm, and then expectto get like 30 placements, which
is a literal metric. I've heardpeople say they expect them to
be getting them. And I'm like,Guys, we have five trade
publications in our industry. Doyou think they're covering us
(06:42):
six times in one month? We'd belucky if they covered us once a
quarter, right. So it's like,that's a small piece of it. But
then expect that resource,again, whether you're hiring a
PR manager, or you're hiring anagency, expect that resource to
be getting the message out inmore ways than just reaching out
to the media.
Matt Wolach (07:00):
Yeah, that's, that's brilliant insights, for
sure. So what are some of theeffective marketing strategies
and tactics that SaaS companiesshould be implementing to help
scale their business?
Joe Zappa (07:11):
So I think if you're thinking about PR and content,
again, it starts with thatstrategic step that a lot of
people don't take, because theywant to just get right into like
doing stuff, right? It's like,let's just do marketing, or we
just need to get the word out.
That's something you hear a lotin sales calls, when you're in
my position, I bet you hear thesame thing. And what I say is
like, Okay, well, the firstthing we need to figure out is,
what are we going to be sayingto these people? So we we want
(07:33):
to craft sort of two tiers ofmessages. The first message is,
like our crusade, like, what isthe big tent thing that we're
trying to accomplish? So like,if you're an add up software,
that saves publisher ad ops,people time, right, because
they're compliant, they'remanually compiling data from
(07:55):
like, 20 different systems. Andyou're like, I'll get it all in
one place for you automaticallywith software. Like one of my
clients does this. And theslogan we came up with for them
was take back Monday, right? Sothe idea is like, you're we
interviewed their customers, andwe're hearing from their
customers, I'm spending all dayor before I use the software, I
was spending all day manuallyaggregating this data, and it
(08:17):
used to like half my Monday wasjust that, that's how my week
would start. So then that's thesort of overarching message
that's supposed to activate themon a visceral level and help
them understand how we canassist them. Then you have
another tier of messages, whichwe do for every client, we'll
create a doc called like housetopics and POVs. And it's like
three to five hot button topicsin their industry, and then what
(08:38):
their house position is on thattopic. reason this is important
is because like your overarchingmessage, you can't just run
around all the time, like sayingyour slogan, right? Like people
are going to, then you're notgoing to be participating in
organic discussions. So thehouse topics and POVs is a way
of saying, Okay, everyone in adtech is talking about privacy
changes, or they're talkingabout supply path optimization,
(09:00):
like making software moreefficient and between brands and
publishers. So we're going tocreate a stance on that topic
that supports our businessposition. But that also engages
people where they are where theconversation is already
happening. Once you've donethat, the what is our message
part, you got to the distributethe message. And this is really
just a question of where is youraudience? So for some people,
(09:22):
that's going to be LinkedIn, forsome it's going to be Twitter,
combination of them otherplatforms. You just need to ask
your customers where they'rehanging out. And then also
experiment for yourself andfigure out am I getting any
traction on these platforms? Andeventually you're going to hone
in on where do our customerslive? And where are we actually
(09:44):
connecting with them and gettinga response and then you double
down on that and people like tomake it complicated, but really,
that's what content marketingand PR are all about.
Matt Wolach (09:56):
I love it and it definitely resonates with me.
I've talked with hundreds ofdifferent experts on this show.
And it often comes down to ifyou want to be successful, have
conversations with your targetaudience and you related the
same thing. Exactly. Joe, weneed to be talking to those
people. So we understand wheredo they live? And what are they
trying to accomplish? And whatare their struggles? I think
that's fantastic. And the theother thing that I took away
(10:17):
from what you just said, tounpack it further is, instead of
just hey, let's do this, you'vegot a set process, let's make
sure we understand if this iswhat people are talking about,
what's our perspective? And whatdo we want to make sure the
market understands? And how canwe show them? How can we make
sure they get where we're comingfrom? I know a lot of software
vendors, and they don't go thatdeep on their marketing process.
(10:40):
And I think that's a hugeexample of working with an
expert like yourself, how youcan get that next level of
understanding of how to get, youknow, structure and process in
the right place, isn't thatright?
Joe Zappa (10:52):
Yeah, I really liked that point about process for two
reasons. I tend to find thatsoftware companies fall down on
this in two regards. One is thatthere isn't message discipline.
So they don't have that sort offoundational dock, where it's
like, we know what we stand for.
We know what our messages are,we know the topics we want to
comment on. And the reasonthat's problematic is that your
what happens on the ground, andCEOs might not always see this,
(11:15):
but I'm in the marketingmeetings. So I do is your
marketing team ends up in aposition where they're like,
What are we going to say thismonth, and it's like you're sort
of solving the same problem overand over again, and you're also
not doing it in a way that bestsupports the business strategy,
because it hasn't been thoughtthrough in this very deliberate
way. And then the other thing,so that's about message, but the
(11:36):
other thing is aboutdistribution, I tend to find
that a lot of CEOs who don'tcome from a marketing
background, they think aboutmarketing in a very like event
ties way where it's like, oh, wehave our series coming up. And
we want people to to hear aboutthat, or we're going to launch
this product. And we want peopleto hear about that.
Unfortunately, that's not reallythe most effective way to get
(11:59):
your series A covered or to getyour product launch covered. The
effective way to get attentionfor those things is to be in the
market saying helpful thingsthat people find interesting
every week, because people arejust like normal social animals.
And they're way more likely tointeract with your ego centric
news, you're like we did a coolthing announcement, if they see
(12:21):
you every week, and they likeassociate you as someone who has
helpful things to say and who'sworth paying attention to. So if
you have a process to do thesethings, week, in week out,
you're way more likely to getthat series uncovered by
journalists or to have people inyour industry pay attention to
your product arms, than ifyou're just thinking about
(12:43):
marketing once a quarter whenyou have a big thing happening.
Matt Wolach (12:48):
I think that's so true. I see people do that same
mistake where they push thisstuff out once in a while and
like How come nobody reallycared about that. And you're
right, just because you haven'tdone the the ground effort to go
out there share value helppeople all along the way. And by
doing that, you kind of buildthis community and you have
people who are pulling for youpeople who are on your side and
(13:09):
want you to succeed. And andthen when you say, Oh, we just
did this thing. Now you've gotthose people in your corner
helping you out and they careabout you. And it becomes
really, really awesome. It is alot of work, though. So why do
you feel like tech companies areoften hesitant to invest in
marketing support? And and whatare some of the concerns that
they have around that?
Joe Zappa (13:30):
I think the main reason is that we work in the
tech industry, people like data,they like things that can be
measured, they like sure things,all very understandable biases.
But if you're really going toinvest in PR and content, if
you're going to invest in theparts of marketing, that aren't
downloadable assets, whereyou're going to get it, we're
(13:51):
essentially not just lead gen.
And it's not just paid ads,you're going to have to be
comfortable with a portion ofyour marketing budget, going to
something that's not going to beeasily measurable. Now you can
measure it to a degree, thereare two ways there are leading
indicators. So people willsometimes call like engagement
on social media vanity metrics.
(14:11):
I mean, I think that's kind of adumb way to look at it. Again,
it's a leading indicator, it'sshowing, okay, people in our
target audience are engagingwith our content that seems
meaningful, right there. We'rebuilding a community around our
product, or around what we haveto say. And then the other thing
is that you should see pipelinegenerated by content marketing
and PR, but it's probably goingto be more through like a survey
(14:36):
where someone's us, where didyou hear from us and they can
check you know, five boxes andone of the boxes is like I
follow you on LinkedIn, right?
Or I see your content, orthey're going to tell you in the
sales call. You know, I love thestuff you guys are sharing on on
Twitter. That's how you're goingto find out but it's going to be
more qualitative and you need tohave a process set up to
(14:57):
ascertain that. I mean, thereare parts of content marketing
and PR that are more Legionoriented. And again, that's
going to be like the classic awebinar or a white paper that
they have to download. Butpeople are also really leery of
those tactics because like,everyone knows what you're doing
at this point. They know if theyput in the white paper that
they're gonna get a call from anSDR in two days, and they might
not want that. So that's what Ithink it is. I think, like I was
(15:20):
on, funnily enough, I was on thephone yesterday with an ad tech
CEO. And he asked me the samequestion. He was like, okay, so
how am I going to understand theROI of this? And I gave the
answer, I just gave you theleading indicators. And then you
should see people coming inasking, you should see inbound
links, and they should raisetheir hand. And they should say,
you know, I saw your content onTwitter or whatever. And he had
(15:41):
found me and was coming to me,because he had seen my social
content. And so he himself waslike, I guess it's kind of funny
that I'm asking you aboutwhether this stuff works,
because we're literally on thephone, because they worked on
me. And now it's like, ding,ding, ding. Yeah,
Matt Wolach (16:03):
I think that's fantastic. The power of a
personal brand is so strong. Andit's something that took me far
too long to realize, but you'reright, probably 80% of the stuff
that comes to us, comes throughmy personal brand. And it's
something that we work reallyhard on as a team to make sure
that my name my face, and allthat is out there enough. So
people follow that they knowthat they come to know you, they
(16:25):
come to know what you're about.
And when it's time when they'reready. They come to you they
reach out. And so I think thatthat's something that even as a
as a company, as a brand, peoplewithin your company can work on
that personal brand, the sharingthe value, and and and create
this powerful kind of communitywhen you agree.
Joe Zappa (16:44):
Yes, we should also stipulate that it varies based
on the company and what you'reselling, right. So if you are
selling like a $10 a month, SASproduct, you're probably going
to get very far with paid adsand stuff that's more like
direct response, because it'sjust not that big a decision.
Right? They don't need to, theydon't need to be persuaded, they
(17:06):
don't need to trust you thatmuch. They can just say, I'm
gonna sign up for it and see howit goes. And if I don't like it,
I'll just stop paying the $10every month. But so like
everything I just said, I thinkit applies to those kinds of
SaaS companies, but it's alittle less relevant. But a lot
of companies call themselvesSAS, and they're actually like,
it's like a six figure deal,right? Like it's a quite a bit
(17:27):
of budget. And it's it mightrequire a lengthy
implementation. And there is aheavy service component again,
even though it's called SaaS.
And so for those companies, Ithink those are the companies
where PR and content are reallyrelevant and where you're really
cutting, selling yourself short,if you're not participating in
some of that trust, buildingoriented marketing tactics that,
again, are harder to measure,but are really how you build a
(17:53):
reputation and authority and getpeople through the door for
those higher value deals.
Matt Wolach (17:58):
I love it speaking to my soul, Joe, I love all this
stuff. So tell me, what are somemistakes? If you're a software
leader, you're out there, you'retrying to do these things? What
are some of the mistakes you seethese leaders making when they
go to market and use PR?
Joe Zappa (18:12):
So I think one big thing is you're talking about
yourself too much. We've sort oftouched on this from various
angles. But very often, when Isee CEOs posting on LinkedIn,
it's I'm so pleased to announcethat this good thing happened to
(18:32):
me. And that's fine. You canhave those posts. But that
should be like 5% of your posts,right? Because every for every
one of those posts you do, thereshould be 10 to 20 that are just
helping your target market, justlike you would do in a sales
call, right? Like in in a goodsales call. Like it's
consultative, right? You're notjust like jumping down someone's
(18:53):
throat at from the very firstminute being like, let me tell
you all the reasons wereamazing. And all the awards
we've won and the cool things wedo. You're like, what are your
problems like tell me about yourbusiness, you're that's
essentially that thatconsultative. I'm not going to
be didactic. But I want to helpand I want to listen and
understand is the persona thatmost companies should be
(19:15):
cultivating with content. And sothat's the content angle, from
the PR angle. I think we're mostpeople go wrong is similar, but
it manifests in a slightlydifferent way. It's like your,
your cadence, the what's the wayyou're reaching out to
journalists in your industry isdetermined by your product
(19:37):
roadmap and your partnershipsand all of the things that you
have going on, which journalistsare always going to be less
interested in unless you're sucha big deal, like an ad tech,
right? If you're Google, oryou're the trade desk, which is
like the biggest independent andtech company, then journalists
might be interested in somethingyou're doing just because it's
your product and your product isso important. But for nine
(19:59):
percent of the companies in theindustry, the better way to go
about it is to be super pluggedin to what all of those
journalists are covering. Andwhen they do a story where
you're like, hey, this is areally cool story. But I think
this angle is something youhaven't explored yet. And I
could see another story aboutthis that is called best. And
here's the here are the insightsor the data I can provide to you
(20:22):
about that. That's really howyou want to be going about it.
So in both cases, it's aboutbeing less company centric, or
less egocentric and thinkingabout what does the audience be
it your customers on social orjournalists in the case of PR
need from you? And how can youprovide value though? I
Matt Wolach (20:39):
love it. Yeah, that's exactly something that
has taken me quite a long timeto learn. And fortunately, I
have been able to learn that butsharing that value is, is
fantastic. Now, I want to makesure that other people don't
share or don't take quite aslong to learn as I did. So they
need to talk to you, Joe. Sowhat is the best way for our
audience to learn more aboutwhat you're doing at Sharp Pen
(21:01):
Media and yourself? Yeah,
Joe Zappa (21:03):
Yeah, you can find me at Joe underscore Zappa on
Twitter, Joe Zappa, LinkedIn,you'll find me pretty quickly,
or just at sharppenmedia.com.
Matt Wolach (21:12):
Okay, perfect. So we'll put all that into the show
notes. So if you're listening orwatching, go ahead and grab that
there. Go see Joe, and he canhelp you out. He's got a lot of
great stuff. Joe, thanks so muchfor coming on. I really
appreciate you sharing all thiswith us.
Joe Zappa (21:24):
Matt, thanks so much for having me on. It was great.
Matt Wolach (21:27):
Absolutely. And everybody out there. Thanks for
being here. By the way, we arelooking for reviews. If you
think that this is helpful, whatJoe just shared, which I think
it's amazing. Please review thesoftware, please review the
program, I should say, and thisepisode in particular and show
people that this is somethingthat they need to be listening
to. So thank you very much forbeing here. We'll see you next
time. Take care. Bye.
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