GE 259: How Brandwatch Gets 80% Leads via Inbound by Focusing on Improving Their Product AND Their Website (podcast)

Hey, everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Giles Palmer, who is one of the co-founders of Brandwatch, a social listening service that lets people track their brands and perform market research.

Tune in to hear Giles share how he went from working at Sky TV to launching Brandwatch that has raised $50M and has 440 employees, how they turned their mantra “Now You Know” into a conference, and the story behind their acquisition of BuzzSumo.

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How Brandwatch Gets 80% Leads via Inbound by Focusing on Improving Their Product AND Their Website TRANSCRIPT PDF

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• [00:46] Before we jump into today’s interview, please leave a review and rating and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
• [01:30] In 2000, Giles was working for Sky TV.
• [02:00] He left Sky and tried and failed at his own business venture. Still, it increased his passion for entrepreneurship.
• [02:33] He built another business creating OSS. He and his partners were “guns for hire”.
• [02:55] They started out saying they would all make the same, but over time, people argued over who had more value and deserved more money.
• [03:15] In 2006, there was a social media platform explosion.
• [03:50] He came up for the idea for Brand Watch.
• [04:05] This became a Brand-tracking search engine.
• [04:15] Brand Watch has been his business for the last decade.
• [04:55] When they started, “social listening” wasn’t a thing.
• [05:25] It took him six years to start Brand Watch after striking out on his own. Now, the company raised $50 Million and has 440 employees.
• [05:43] However, December was the first month in five years that they actually made a profit.
• [06:02] Brand Watch is a subscription service that companies can use to track their brands, competitors, market research, etc.
• [06:20] The cost depends on the amount of data the client consumes.
• [06:31] Average cost is $2500/month.
• [06:43] It is not an enterprise-wide solution. It is not a workflow tool.
• [07:20] They sold the first subscription a month after launch. They didn’t sell the second one until five months later.
• [07:40] To acquire customers, Giles was doing a lot of face-to-face pitching.
• [08:01] There was a lot of customer education involved.
• [08:14] The early adopters tended to be digital agencies, who tend to be more advanced in their thinking compared to brands.
• [08:50] Eventually, they hired a few people to be a sales team.
• [09:05] They gradually built up the marketing side of the business.
• [09:20] The most successful salespeople tend to be recent college grads that they train over the course of a year. Their most successful salesperson was a 24 year-old woman who worked for them for two years. She sold over 100 accounts in 1 year.
• [09:54] Today, they get 15,000 unique visitors per day.
• [10:20] Having the website translated into multiple languages is helpful in achieving success.
• [11:00] They are constantly evolving their website.
• [11:12] They branded “Now You Know” and named a conference after it. It has since become an internal mantra.
• [12:09] NYK is now a 2 day conference.
• [12:30] Masterclasses, webinars, etc. are important to gaining and retaining customers.
• [13:20] Brand Watch acquired BuzzSumo.
• [13:45] Giles thought BuzzSumo was an amazing product.
• [14:32] When they acquired the business, they didn’t have an office or a single salesperson. It was a very efficient business model with a great product.
• [15:05] BuzzSumo has scale.
• [16:03] Giles wanted to have a self-serve product for years, but his team didn’t understand why.
• [16:46] There were so many reasons acquiring this business made sense for Brand Watch.
• [17:10] They have a part-time COO for BuzzSumo, because she is the VP of Strategy for Brand Watch.
• [17:55] They bought BuzzSumo for less than $1 Million (they never went public with the sale and prefer to keep it that way).
• [18:30] The “internationalization” of the business is usually a company’s biggest struggle.
• [18:55] Brand Watch didn’t have too hard a time with this expansion, but it wasn’t lacking in difficulty.
• [19:45] Really nailing the long-term strategy, while also being nimble and agile has proven a challenging balance.
• [20:09] Scaling up the product and engineering departments has proven a great challenge.
• [20:50] The most challenging thing is evolving as a company.
• [21:10] When no one had faith, Giles had to have it and push the positivity.
• [21:40] As they have scaled, he has brought in a senior team.
• [21:55] With each step as a company, his role changes and he tries to step up to each new challenge and phase.
• [22:32] Giles has been coached by 2 different business coaches.
• [22:47] He has deliberately put more time on his calendar for reflection, as the company scales up.
• [23:00] He is trying to be a better human in order to be a better leader.
• [23:36] Giles recommends the books Antifragile, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography.

Resources From This Interview:

• Giles on Twitter
• Giles@brandwatch.com
• Brand Watch
• Must-read books:
  • Antifragile
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
  • Born to Run

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