Jim James 0:00

I get to say, Goedenmiddag? Frans Riemersma Have I said that correctly? Frans.

Frans Riemersma 0:06

Almost it's who cares?

Jim James 0:09

You and Gary V share very complicated names to say, but you and Gary V also know how to leverage technology. It's the great effect. And you're on the show today with me from Harlem, because you are a marketing technologist, a futurist, a speaker, and a top 10 MarTech influencer in Europe. So thanks for joining me

Frans Riemersma 0:29

today. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor. Thank you.

Jim James 0:33

And I'm going to stick to your Christian name because I don't want to insult anybody again with my bad Dutch now. SME's small business owners can really be helped by technology. That's my big belief and you're one of the people that help us to identify which ones they could use and what they can use them for. Do you want to start giving us some insight into what should people be thinking about in their business when it comes to marketing tech?

Frans Riemersma 1:01

Yes. I would love to give some technology advice, which we'll start with. Please don't look into a technology first, try to understand what you're trying to solve. And that's a very common mistake where people say, okay, I like this tool. It's almost feature gadget driven. And I would like to give a very simple tip a hint, how you start looking for the right tools, if you know what you want formulate it in one sentence, let's say a goal or a definition of success. I want to set up a calendar I want to set up a LinkedIn campaign. I want to get a better view on who's visiting my website. If you have that, then with that focus go online and only take 30 minutes, no more 30 minutes, three zero, go into some tools that you find just by Googling. And try the free trial, even though if you have the money to pay for a big solution. I even recommend this to corporate organizations please do your homework, educate yourself, understand what comes with the territory. So you go in 30 minutes and then you stop it. Even if you're halfway you're in a flow, stop it, and then look at your goal and see if you achieved it. If you can't do it in 30 minutes, it's probably, or not intuitive or not doing the job for you.

Jim James 2:16

Great so Frans to the 30 minute rule, that's really good because I also get excited by all the features and the functions and then you're not doing what you set out to do. What are some of the sort of big trends that you see that if entrepreneurs are not getting with it, they might be missing out.

Frans Riemersma 2:35

It's basically again a non-technology advice, but that's how you always can look at technologies. They have to do something for you, Um, so here we go. We have clients, we need them in a database CRM. You need to have your clients in one place, and that's where money comes from. And that's how you can cross an upsell. Full-stop. And this is by the way, I'm just by explaining this, I'm also explaining how the history of MarTech evolved. So the next step is, Hey, we have our clients in place with a CRM. And in this case, you can go for free a tool like agile CRM or close IO. Very simple tools do the job and you can use them free trials, sometimes three forever with the basics. And that's what you need. Even HubSpot offers a CRM that is pretty for free and you can do a lot of stuff as a small business and entrepreneur. The next step is go into automation, LinkedIn, or LinkedIn automation as possibility, but just the normal email type of automation. So you have your clients in place and CRM. Now you need to have your leads in place. The ones that are not yet client, but want to be client or potential clients, and you need to learn how they talk, smell, read. Browse the web and that's where you need your a lead management tool or marketing automation as they call it. I don't like the word marketing automation so much. I think it's confusing. It's like we're automating marketing. Oh. But social publishing is not a marketing automation. It's It's the same confusion I have around the Oktoberfest in Germany. It starts in September. So why do you call it October 1st? But that's my, my, my confusion. So lead leak management is the next one. And again, you can go for the HubSpot also agile CRM support, that kind of stuff. And there are many great tools out there that are offer free trials or freemium models. The third one is better understand what your client is doing across the channel. So let's say this is the third step in your maturity. And this is where for the big corporates CDPs commonplace customer journey tools to understand across the entire spectrum of your channels is three, four, five for your small business. You need to understand how do they flow from one to another, so you can catch capture them and give them the right message. The short ones on mobile, the bigger ones on on the web and they should do with Yeah. With a customer journey tools, there is heap IO for instance, or a Woopra and they help you for free already get an idea of how this flows. Mixpanel is another one. They have just another and offered and launched a new module called flow. The name says it and you can go for the big, expensive tools, but these offer you the opportunity to understand what's what's going on. And these are the three big trends that I see for corporates, but also on a small scale for everyone. The fourth trend is something that has not been surfacing a lot yet, but imagine now we know who our clients are. We know who our leads are. Now we know how they flow through our communication channels. The two of them, now we need to talk back. So content, how can we create content on the large scale? Personalized. And that's where yeah, for instance, tools like monkeylearn comment, it's an AI tool. You can just, for instance use all the reviews or comments that people leave or the emails that they send to you, put them in a Google sheet, just use the free version of a monkey learn IO. And it just tells you if those comments are positive, negative, or neutral, or what are the five, six, 10 topics that they talk about most. And there you go. So this is what I would say is really the core stack of what you would need.

Jim James 6:17

Wow. Yes. So this is really starting to sound already though. Quite complicated. Isn't it? What about, excuse me? What about this idea of staying in touch with the customer? Because there's so much technology. The danger of automation is it somehow becomes autonomous. How do people stay in touch with the feelings and the pulse and the emotions of their customers along that journey then France.

Frans Riemersma 6:44

Who, and that's the fourth wave I was talking about. So how can you make sure that your content is reflecting what the needs of your customers, the tone of voice? Even the gender specificness because there are tools out there that can create copy that is gender specific or neutral. Text metrics is a tool here in Holland and they do just that

Jim James 7:05

Yes. There's a company. There's a company in Holland called unless that generates a specific web page or the specific user. In fact, it's getting that granular, right?

Frans Riemersma 7:16

Absolutely. Yeah.

Jim James 7:17

What about the measurement at the management of it? Friends? Because. Any of us have put in CRM systems, I've put one in as well, and I'm struggling with all the data now that I need to try and manage and analyze to look at the performance is that must be the next part of it, the evaluation cycle. And how do you help people with that then? France?

Frans Riemersma 7:41

That w that is basically what I would call the third wave in terms of CD CDPs, customer journey, the Woopra and the heap io but it's a very good question. I get it often where people say, I have a lot of data now, what I have no clue where to start, and you should start with the client and the client is normally, so who is your clients? What do you know firmographics really democratically about them? B2B, B2C. The next step is then what is the clicking BA here across those channels? And the third one is what words are they using? Because those words, like I just said with monkeylearn, and you can pull out the keywords and use them in your Google AdWord campaign, because that's basically it, but generated by the public, by your audience, by your clients.

Jim James 8:28

Wow. This is really clever then isn't it. Do you need a PhD to figure all this stuff out?So Frans, because most of us are trying to do a day job. Is it possible for the solopreneur to manage this on their own? Or do you think people really have to have help?

Frans Riemersma 8:45

There's a lot. You can do yourself. And in preparation of this cold call we were at and podcasts, we were talking about. Democratization of marketing and that's the beauty of it. And I'm sure Scott Brinker also mentioned it that more and more we are commoditizing technology. So in the old days we needed a developer. And then to brief this developer, by the way, this is where I come from. I was a marketer started developing myself because I was sick and tired of briefing them. I might as well do it myself, but no less than less I code because everything is on online in no code and low code tools. There are some clever tools like if this, then that or Zapier or blender IO from Belgium. Great tool. And what they do is basically allow you to create workflows to make your workflow literally, and your data flow of your customers. So what does he do for instance, I get a new website visitor from a specific country or background. You can enrich this data, other tools like lead info. And they help you enrich that data. So you understand which company it is based on IP address order. And then you make sure that with Zapier or blender IO, you say, okay, if. It ends as my website submits a form, please send it to my agile CRM and populate it there and make sure it goes into specific buckets. So it receives that person receives an email or the next time they show up. And this is an important one. You can address them on the chat function. So I would recommend on your website to do automated chat function.

Jim James 10:18

Yeah. And I was going to say, that's one thing that I notice a lot of companies not embracing yet in, in Europe, but in Asia where I was living for the last sort of 13 years online chat is prevalent, especially in China for online shopping. Yeah. Can you, what do you think in terms of having a strategy online, which is real simple website, plus a chat tool only how light do you think a website. Can be for a company or do you think there needs to be really content heavy to answer all the questions that someone might have? Because that seems to be a trend as well, friends, isn't it, that most of us have a website and only the help page or the job page is looked at and the front page. And a lot of it is not needed. Where do you see that going in terms of website? Apps and so on.

Frans Riemersma 11:07

If you put it this way and it looks like, so if you do a it looks like we're doing these websites for search engine optimization and marketing, so we can be better found. So this is basically like social media, we're screaming and yelling. Hey, we're out there and we have something to offer it's just to draw attention. So probably the content heaviness has nothing to do. I repeat nothing to do with informing the audience. It's just attracting it, which is a completely different task. If you look at the Aida model, like attention, interest, desire, and action is it's a separate thing. So it's probably just to, make sure people come to your website. What you really want is in the chat, engage with people. That's when they have a question and, drift. Is a brilliant chat program. It's a tool you can use. I think they're also a freemium model. I believe even they use some AI in there and what they depicted in in, on their website was beautiful. They say, you can create a chat flow, just like you create an email flow, meaning you send an email or you open up a chat and say, Hey, how are you doing? And then you can respond accordingly. So if they don't respond, you can remind them or you can, if they respond to certain answer, you can put them in a separate box, give a different answer. I do this on my own website. For instance, I'm not a very big company. So what I do is how many people do you have in your marketing team? If it's below 10, I have to make sure they follow a training. If it's above 10, I have to make sure I offer them MarTech audit. It's as simple as that. And that's how you can, on the fly dude, you can always break in into your own chat and say and overrule it, but it doesn't have to mean that you have to be awake 24 seven. The two will do it for you and they can leave a comment. It's Hey, what's your name? Can I send you a message later on? And this brings this whole interaction back from, let's say couple of days, or sometimes weeks in an email flow. Two, just a couple of seconds or minutes in a chat flow. So you win a lot of time and even more importantly, with a chat, you are catching your people right there. And then when they're engaged, they have the question now, not in two days from now.

Jim James 13:15

And is that what you'd call a chat bot or is that slightly different to a chat bot?

Frans Riemersma 13:21

I would call it a chat bot and I've seen many different variations. So Intercon, for instance, offers also a chat functionality, and it really helps what it does. It allows you to set up automated conversations. You could call that a chat bot, but I can also break in. So I can also take over overwrite the bot when I'm at my desk and see it happening.

Jim James 13:44

But that's also good, especially for companies like my own that have got offices in Asia and Europe. And I have clients all over the world and many companies and many individuals like yourself are operating globally with their skillsets. So that kind of 24 seven is really important without. Try to stay awake 24 seven, right?

Frans Riemersma 14:04

Exactly. Excellent. And the beauty is you catch the people really right there. And then and that I cannot stress that enough. That's very important that I have the same, I don't have, I don't want to answer two days. I want it now. Not because I'm impatient because that's the easy way to easy thing to sale. People are impatient. No, I'm in the flow now I'm engaged. Now I'm looking for the answers. I would like to have my answers now. Because then I can make up my mind and I can decide maybe today and not because I'm in a hurry or we're in a consumerism and society. No, it's just because I'm busy with it. And otherwise I have to chop myself up in pieces with attention. It's a natural thing that we don't like, it's not so much hate. And I think we're also focused on getting a solution for that problem there and then against the timeline probably. Now what about the impact of video friends? Everyone's now on zoom, what's your view on the use of video on people's websites, on tools like bonjoro for example, the embed that you can now do with Vimeo, do you think it's all worth the effort? Do we all need to get in, get into TV production mode? It converts really well, and that also has been recognized by Google. So it's again, a SEO type of thing as well. So you get rewarded for putting videos online. But I do think also our, yeah, we're getting more used to the concept now due to COVID and immersive th the rise of zoom and go to meeting. To yeah, to be in a kind of a TV set talk to each other. I look at the kids with tic talk. They're all over the place. It's common for them. Everybody is a star. So I think that, and it converts better. So it gives an idea of you're a genuine person. You're a real person and yeah it's also corresponding with the global village idea. I think so. Yes. I can have somebody across the globe who thinks alike but doesn't have to be a big corporate with the money to cover worldwide TV, commercial.

Jim James 16:03

Yeah, it's got a lot more accessible. Hasn't it? What about worldwide? Many companies are operating across languages. Do you see companies that need to operate with say Mandarin and Spanish and English and maybe Russian and so on a mix. Do you see them at a disadvantage with technology or is technology kind of creating a level playing field for exporters?

Frans Riemersma 16:25

What I see happening and that's so I'm also publisher of the European super graphic. So we supply new tools to Scott Brinker, and this is a global version and very much inspired by him. And yeah, we have a large group of people here in Europe that provide us with technology and what is really. Clear to me is that the type of technology from the U S is really different from what we have here in Europe. So in Europe, and I'm going into the topic of multi-lingual, for instance, we, in Europe, we are very much very much involved with content creation. Localization regionalization, because we have multi strategies. One brand can be top of the bill somewhere and really low end somewhere else a, in a different country. So th these are things that in America, you don't really have, we have different languages. And if you don't speak the language, forget it. You won't sell. So currencies in many cases, what we do after Euro, but still we have currency. So metrics different metrics systems. We're very much in scaling content and creating that yeah, in bulk. And that's not an easy task because if you talk about video, for instance, the rendering of videos is it's taking a lot of processing power. So that's. I think European tools can do a great job and I'm crafting now the new version for 2021. So it will be launched in beginning of March 1st week of March, probably. And which is what we see is really a lot of new video platforms coming up. And it has to do with COVID, but it also has to do with the fact that, yeah, I think we were here involved with the multicurrency strategy lingual situation.

Jim James (2) 18:04

And what's also inspiring about that as well, is that if you're a, an international oriented company from Europe, there are going to be some solutions that are not just, one language only, so it really helps you to go global with that. You've mentioned your amazing MarTech chart. How can people reach out to you? To get hold of a copy of that and to learn more from you.

Frans Riemersma 18:25

I would just recommend them to reach out to me through LinkedIn films with an unpronounceable surname.

Jim James 18:31

I'll put that in the show notes for your

Frans Riemersma 18:33

please do. And then they can just request the latest version. And we now have the version 2020. We do have also, and this is how we source the different new tools. We will publish also the local version. So the Dutch, the Belgium, the French, et cetera. And then we source a lot of new tools on top on the website, MarTech tribe.com. You can also find a submission form.

Jim James 18:55

Frans R, thank you so much for joining me all the way from Holland.

Frans Riemersma 19:00

Thank you so much for the conversation. Very inspiring as always. I like the question because now after this podcast, I will do some more research. Well,

Jim James 19:10

We're all learning together. Thank you so much for sharing your business to do Frans Riemersma far. Who is a marketing technologist, author and speaker, and a top 10 MarTech influencer here in Europe. So thank you and have a good day wherever you are, stay safe and do tune in and subscribe to this podcast and write to us Jim, at east-west pr.com. If you've got any questions or any people, you'd like us to feature on the show. Thank you so much. Once again for listening.