For the second instalment of our “Meet the team” series, we spoke to Margherita Maspero, aka Maggie. Maggie is employee nº1 of SoAmpli and our Senior Marketing Manager. Having been the pillar of our Marketing and Comms for the past three years, she is the voice of SoAmpli and our Social Media Dragon Slayer 🔥🐉
We sat down with Maggie to find out what it’s been like for her in the last 3 years, what has changed, what challenges come with marketing for a SaaS company, and how she uses SoAmpli to help us stand out on social media…
Q: Maggie, you are employee nº1 at SoAmpli, you’ve been here since the beginning, can you tell us a little bit about your role and your journey so far?
I started at SoAmpli as a marketing intern three years ago, just a month after the launch of the first iteration of the platform. It’s funny to think about how much has changed since then!
In a way, my role has evolved very much with the company itself. As our pool of clients grew and our needs as a business became more mature, so did my responsibilities and focus.
But if there is one thing that hasn’t changed since day one is the attention we give to developing our own social media presence, actively using it as our source of inspiration, lead generation and PR relationship building.
Going from having to educate people on the impact that your team’s social media sharing and analytics can have on your business, and finally seeing the market embracing this change, has been among the most exciting parts of my job.
Q: What have been your biggest challenges in the last three years?
The #1 challenge is the lack of time, and I’m sure that anyone who has ever worked in a start-up will relate to this. You’re empowered to try different approaches, you have an amazing team with great suggestions and everyone is incredibly creative, but there simply isn’t enough time to do everything. Juggling different responsibilities and road maps while maintaining your sanity is definitely easier said than done.
At SoAmpli, we always say that start-up years are like dog years… the pace is so fast that it affects the perception of time.
Another challenge that, as a team, I feel we’ve learned to address better and better, has been how to adapt to ever-evolving customer needs. Ignoring the fact that a specific message or campaign is not working the way you had anticipated is easy; the hard part is to really learn from every single effort you put out, analyse why things did or did not work and adjust all your following strategies accordingly. It’s a never-ending job, but it’s the only way you can really improve and turn quality into a habit, rather than a lucky strike.
One of the things I like most about working for a start-up is that you get to be involved in every aspect of the business. So, even if my “official role” has always been in marketing, I’ve also had a chance to learn so much about sales, account management, product development and even HR!
Q: How have you adapted your marketing strategy to a product that is prone to changes?
In my experience, the key has to be keeping the client at the centre of everything you do. This is our mantra here at SoAmpli. If your highest priority is, at all times, understanding the client’s challenges, objectives and KPIs, then adapting the marketing strategy to the changing product becomes, if not easier, at least more “natural”.
To make sure we stay true to this, we do our best to always start with the WHY, like good ol’ Simon Sinek teaches us. WHY would our customers be interested in this? WHY should they care?
Only by focusing on the benefits of our solution for the sales and marketing professionals that will actually use it can we create content and share stories that will ring true to our target audience and catch their attention.
Q: How do you make SaaS sexy?
A lot of people associate B2B companies, and SaaS platforms in particular, with very functional and slightly stale marketing messages. However, the reality is that the landscape has changed massively over the past few years, as more and more companies realise that the B2B buyer has the same needs and emotional responses as the traditional B2C consumer.
There are a lot of companies that are absolutely brilliant at speaking to the B2B customer in a very human and engaging way (Intercom, Contently, and Slack are some of the names that come to mind), and for us, it’s very exciting to be at the forefront of this trend with them.
In terms of what you can do to really make your SaaS platform stand out, I would say:
- Always start with the daily challenges of your target audience in mind
- Fine-tune your brand’s language to speak “human”
- Have some fun and unleash your creativity!
Q: How do you stand out on social media?
Our golden rule is to never share something just for the sake of sharing it. With the overload of information we’re all exposed to these days, attention is an increasingly precious currency we should not waste.
The way we are able to share consistently relevant and genuinely useful content depends largely on our own platform. We use our own insights to listen in real time to all the top players in the industry, understand what our clients and customers are talking about, what information they’re looking for and what answers/insights they’re craving the most.
This helps you make every interaction on social media count!
Q: What advice would you give to startup marketing and comms teams?
Keep challenging yourself!
It may sound like a cliché, but pushing yourself hard and being very critical of everything you do is the only way to learn from your mistakes and make your message more and more impactful over time.
Getting stuck in the way you’ve been doing things is a natural tendency, but in order to achieve real results we all need to suppress it.
Also, one thing I’ve learned over the last year is that changing approaches, testing different strategies, getting creative and learning from your mistakes is a lot more fun and engaging than doing the same thing over and over again, especially when you work with a bunch of awesomely creative people that motivate and inspire you every day!
We got our eyes set on the People’s Champion #StartupsAwards! Please help us make our dream come true, vote for us: https://t.co/WjHSuIn1Qc pic.twitter.com/BuoAhql9Fo
— SoAmpli (@SoAmpli) October 11, 2017
If you have a question for Maggie you can tweet her at @MaggieMaspero
Want to learn more about how we help our customers achieve success with our powerful marketing automation and lead generation software? Visit SoAmpli or book a demo to discover how to use social media to increase sales.
