Building a Marketing Flywheel: Momentum through Community w/Chris Delany, CEO of Semgeeks

I’m talking with Chris Delany, the CEO of Semgeeks, about how the world of B2B digital marketing is changing. We look at the transition from basic SEO tactics and website design, to a full-bore strategy focused on creating a community across multiple channels.

Chris explains how he’s shifted to a more integrated, multi-touch approach that focuses on a complex customer journey instead of the more traditional sales funnel. This reflects a broader change towards building a community, that keeps potential customers interested with everything from short-form videos to live events.

And so we dig into the idea of a marketing 'flywheel' – using an integrated strategy to build momentum over a period of time, leading to deeper customer loyalty.

And at a time when live events are struggling (at least, in terms of pay-to-play sponsorships), Chris talks about the bet he’s placed on creating the New Jersey Digital Marketing Conference.

Resources:

• Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
• Check out Chris’s agency, Semgeeks
• Sign up for the NJ Digital Marketing Conference

Transcript

Steve: 

Today I'm talking with Chris Delaney, CEO of Semgeeks. They're a digital marketing agency working across a range of marketing tactics. And Chris and his team also run the New Jersey Marketing Conference, which is coming up in June. And today we'll be digging into the changing landscape of marketing for B2B companies and how the value that agencies can deliver is changing with it. So Chris, welcome to the Marketing Mix.

Chris Delany: 

Steve, thanks for having me. Great to chat, great to collaborate here.

Steve: 

Very cool. So I have to start by asking, you know, digital marketing, right? It is a broad term. Um, probably back in the day, it was really just websites and SEO, but it's, it's constantly changing and expanding. So, so how do you define digital marketing?

Chris Delany:  

Right.

Chris Delany:  

Yeah, digital marketing today, and again, I'd say in the last three to five years, I've changed my perception, right? We used to be very proud that we were in digital before, you know, when traditional was leading the pack. And today, the word digital marketing, I think, leans more toward marketing, right? It's more of a general statement, although it is digital. Everyone has really embraced it as the most important way to get in front of your consumer.

To that degree, there's a plethora of different ways to do that in the digital sphere. And those themselves have changed a lot over 10 years. So when I look at digital, there's the website component, the marketing component of driving people there.

Content creation has become a huge piece of the pie, right? And all these little pieces that were hits over the years, search engine optimization had its run, paid media had its run, social is probably the last one to have a nice run, and really they're all, the game is now is how do you unify them, improve a multi-touch approach that builds community.

around the customer, the potential customer, right? And I don't feel that it's a linear journey, the way marketing was of the sales funnel, right? It was kind of this straight down thing, we're gonna bring them down a pipeline, right? We're gonna have a funnel. And...

I want to say that society is almost smarter than that funnel today, if that makes sense to you, right? We all know when we're inside that funnel, whether it's a B2C or B2B journey. And so having experience across the various B2C plays and the B2B plays, what I see is that you better be very tuned in to building a community of your customer and the touch points you need to... digitally be in front of them. it's also nice to have an event component still. And so it goes back to that multi-touch. Digital marketing has changed. I, myself, am trying to use it less as its independent tactic and more position our company, ourselves, in marketing and strategy around it with a high emphasis on the digital component. And that's the key thing. And that's what a lot of companies across all verticals are dealing with is the fact that everything has changed quickly, not just from a marketing standpoint, but from a consumer journey standpoint, from a knowledge base, the consumer is smarter than they’ve

ever been and they're getting smarter. So you can't realistically think a funnel that you're going to step someone down is going to be thought of by them as a good way to do it. 

And so we've re-envisioned things and the way that I like to describe it is a funnel to flywheel approach if that makes sense to you, right? It takes the concepts of driving people down a funnel. But instead of getting always to the closed section of a deal done and then we go back to the top of the funnel, we see it more as the funnel leads them into a flywheel of our community. That's knowledge base, that's events, that's webinars, that's paid media, that's search engine optimization, all these little pieces.

interact with the flywheel and building that rapport with the potential client. 

And that, I would say, is the biggest roadblock that we're helping clients achieve now and get around, is the idea that these touch points systematically will build relationships and rapport.

Steve: 

Right. A lot of pieces to your answer. I mean, I'm writing notes here as you go and I'm thinking, well, there's like five things I wanna dig into here. 

Your one thought is you were saying, well, it's not really digital marketing anymore. I mean, that resonated with me. I remember probably, maybe 10 years ago now, I did a mini MBA at Rutgers on digital marketing, right? And at the time it was the other, it was one module for YouTube and one module for Twitter. Like they had each of these digital techniques as a separate module that you need to do because everybody was trying to understand what digital marketing was. And you're right, now it's redundant because there's very little marketing that isn't digital, even events, there is a digital element to that. 

So the other thing you talked about, which really caught my attention is this idea of, well, it's no longer a funnel. You know, people have been talking about journeys for a long time. I still believe in the funnel model because I think it's a great way just to sort of do the basic foundational strategy. 

But we all know now that you don't come in at the top and you work through these. So the journey was good because it gives you an idea of the different paths it can take. 

But I'm very intrigued by this idea of the flywheel, which presumably is all about building momentum. So the more of this you do, things speed up. So talk to me more about the flywheel. And it sounds like you're really attaching that to the idea of building a community to build this momentum. Is that right?

Chris Delany:  

Yeah, yeah. Well, it all stems from the B to C side of the industry that we came from, right? And we applied that to the B to B side, right? So the funnel, the flywheel, and the way that we envisioned it is more around the B to B side, right? But I think it derived from the B to C side where the retail customer, whether it's an e-commerce store, really takes care of their customer, right? Because it's a quick transaction, you know, and then you need repeat.

So when you think of that, you apply that over to the B2B side, right? And most of those were kind of one-off deals, right? And relationships are key, but it was a very, the marketing, the way to communicate there was a lot of event planning conferences in the past, which again is more the relationship side and the shaking of hands, and I know Jim, and Jim knows me, and Pam knows me from this company, right? And that...

That brings in business, which is great. But in a digital world, there's less of those, even if you're adding a digital component. So you need to get in front of those people for cheaper, quicker, faster, stronger than you do necessarily in a event. And so, you know, but you still need to feed them into that flywheel. In our world, the flywheel is the relationship massaging, right, and that's education, our product, how we help you, how we help our community, all those pieces of the pie in our mind are very important to the B2B base and that relationship. So there's a piece of that. Now how do you fill the flywheel of that? Well, you still need these advertising, marketing components to push that down there, right? So you still need paid media. So they can see the content piece. Because if they don't see it, you create it, it's not as good. And you use these tactics to push them down, right? You gather, they need awareness, right? To your point, Steve, and I think Gary V said this. I don't buy a product from a brand because they cookied me.

It's very rare that it's because they cookie me. It's all the other things involved that cookie allowed to stay in front of that got them to do it, to do it. So you have to think of that from your brand, your education. I think B2B companies, at the very high level, what I'm seeing the last two years in the work that we've done, is we're re-envisioning who they are to their persona buyers for them. And how do we integrate that in LinkedIn? How do we link that in video, right? Short form video, not big long product experiences that people aren't gonna sit through. What are those little pieces that need to be extracted that move the needle? 

What are the best tactics to get in front of them? Right? That's the funnel at top. And then we don't want to just punch them with ideas and things. We want to actually cultivate them down to this kind of flywheel where they feel a part of our community, even if they're not a client of ours. And so that's what we try to do is to, and again that's different for every company. And it's a large thought to kind of extract but I think we all can understand that concept of I don't work with them yet, but I'm learning from them, right? And that doesn't have to be you're learning everything, but that notion has to be key. And customer centricity, right? Customer centric at the B2B level, I know it's a deal, I know it's this and that. You've got to, the people on that team buying it need to know about your company, not the one person. Because it's such a multi-touch decision, you gain value and authority when you can educate a multitude of people on that team. So how do you approach that? And you're not going to win that because there's multiple people. You've got to bring them all into a flywheel to a degree and let them know about you.

 And with B2B clients, you can do that a lot better than some of the B2C ones today. 

And that's...Kind of the new journey I see a lot of B2Bs trying to tackle, trying to reinvent themselves there. They also have a generational change, right? They have a lot of people who were in the industry for many years, right? And the industry kind of flipped during the pandemic. And so there's a new finding the right teams, right? And this kind of leads down to how we've been brought in a lot more lately on the strategy side. Because they're looking to reinvent the strategy. 

Steve: 

Yeah, yeah, and I want to dig into the strategy bit a little bit later because I think that is a real big change that's happening. But, you know, one of the things you mentioned in there, and again, I'll bring it back to my idea of the classic funnel, right? So one of the reasons, although I like it, the funnel doesn't work so well now is because there are so many channels that you use. So it used to be possible to say, well, if somebody is, let's say, reading this type of blog article there at the top of the funnel, and if they're downloading this white paper there further and further on. But now between the different social media platforms, you got short form video, long form video, blogs, so many, right? It is much tougher to look at something and say, okay, I know once they've looked at this, I now need to serve them this. So that was the idea of the customer journey. But now those customer journeys are very complex as well. 

So. One thing that was rattling around in my head as you were saying that, do you find that, whereas maybe a couple of years ago we would have said, hey, we need to keep it for somebody who is in the consideration phase, right? We're doing this blog for people that are early stage. Does that go away now? Are you looking at every piece that you're creating could be at any point in the journey?

Chris Delany:  

Yeah, I think you're taking a higher view, right? You're taking a higher view because the deals and leads aren't coming in as strong post-pandemic rush, right? So there's an evening out of what's actually there. 

So they're different.

Channels yes, it's kind of made it harder for us to understand what works what doesn't But you have to go off of knowledge of the past Right and I go back to this I go back to this a lot in my career my 20 something years I remember the years when clients weren't on keyword for paid ads right B2B or B2C

Oh, we don't need it. If you got in, you were ahead, right? And you did very well. Social comes around, especially a B2B. We don't need that. It's not our world. We go to conferences. We shake hands. Takes years before it goes by. Oh, we should have LinkedIn. Short form video, I'll call that the new one. And that's the last five years.

that's it's too flashy it's too this right and then we're not going to do it and now it's like it's perfect for a beat up. What a best what a great way to personalize bring in a community drive engagement and maybe explain your product or explain the pain point that person has in the most authentic way possible that everybody loves authenticity today. Right so that idea

Is tough for B2B. How many B2B videos do you see? Right? How many product managers do you see saying, Hey, I'm Jim Smith. Did you know when we built this software we did…? None, right? There are different people. Some are introverts. Some are this. It's never had to be done. So breaking that mindset is where new minds need to come in and drive that through and does that produce results? It does.

Can it not produce results? Sure, it can not produce results, but you need to attempt those things. You need to get in there and not say, what are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? I think it's in front of us, right? It's literally in front of us. If you take a Friday night and you say, how has the world changed and how I can persuade someone's mind? I mean, is it email marketing?

piece, right? It's a piece of the flywheel component for sure. But is video one of these new components through social to really expose yourself? And it's got to be a decent video and I'm not saying a decent production. I'm just saying decent content quality that they're gaining from that. And that's hard for everybody. It's hard for me to do. That's hard for you to do. But that approach is dialing in that, and understanding what channels, given the budgets you have, are going to be best for where you're at this exact moment. 

Not everybody has the, as I talk about re-strategizing this full thing for some companies, some companies don't have that leg way. And they mean, okay, that's great. Let's do a pseudo version of that for the products that we need to get out in front. Let's build a flywheel around that product launch that you're doing so that there's engagement around it and we can drive these people to reasons they need the product. 

So it's definitely, you know, it's not a simple thing and our jobs have gotten a lot harder at the agency side, but it's also all with the benefit of growth and change. We're trying to grow our client and change is happening that's beyond our control and their control.

So you want people that can think that way, you wanna team internally, and you need resources on the external because of that. It's very hard to keep on top of.

Steve: 

It is and I think you know you mentioned budget there I find one of the biggest problems actually is just time because you know let's go back a few years when it was email and blogging. right. It takes some time to write a decent email a decent blog but you can do it if you're doing video now right it takes a lot longer to put a decent video together because you've got to plan the content you've got to twist somebody's arm to be in the video you've got to get them comfortable you've got to set up the gear what we're doing here today a podcast takes a lot longer than Blog writing, it’s a richer form of content.

Chris Delany:  

We have a pre-call. There's, there's, yeah, there's all this stuff that goes to make it good. And yeah, you're right.

And sure, it takes longer to write a good blog than an average blog, but it's still not the same as some of these newer things. And you used to be able to say blogging is going to be our primary, whereas now it really is. Well, we've got we've got to have video, we've got to have audio, we've got to have written, you know, our website's got to be integrated with everything. So I mean, it all comes down to budget, right, because time is effectively budget as well. But I think that's one of the challenges.

Steve: 

just going onto something else you were saying. So, you know, you've really brought out three big things that have changed in the last few years, right? So, we have the pandemic, which, you know, to some extent we've all forgotten about now, but it's not that long ago. And huge, huge transformational change there. We've got all of these new channels that are competing for each other. And we've got the generational issue, which you mentioned as well, right? So, you know, I was talking to a young marketer that's, she's a year out of college.

She's an email marketing specialist, right? And she really enjoys doing it. And I was talking to her and I said, well, it's great, but don't stay in that too long. You know, you've got to sort of move sideways and try some different things. But we have this new generation who've come into the workforce in the last few years. 

But it makes me think about, you know, a few years ago, I would say for a mid-sized company, small to mid-sized company, marketing approach would often be you'd have a couple of junior marketers who could sort of do the day-to-day stuff. And then you would bring in an agency specifically to do SEO, or you would bring in an agency specifically to do product videos for you. That's got to be tougher now because of this whole the complexity, the interrelated part of it.

Chris Delany:  

The complexities are there, but if one, in those teams, right, if they have those teams and those parameters set up, that's great because you can work within that, right? I think really what it comes with is the people up top, whether that's the marketing director or communications marketing director and sales director, whatever marriage there is between those, right? In our opinion, there needs to be a real good conversation of how...this funnel the flywheel approach enables sales teams from hard leads to soft leads to just building our community right a sales team usually doesn't know what the hell a community is they don't care they want leads they want deals you're gonna want to make sure they understand what you're building so they can maximize it so they can ask their prospects as they're trying to sell them

what pieces of this engage them, you know. But those components are still available in there. The thing is they just, again, the difference between somebody with two years experience and three months, light years when things have changed in two years, you know what I mean? The person with three years at least has the knowledge base to be like, all right, it used to be this, and now I'm going over to here, and the person that comes in is the blind leading the blind, they're being trained by people who don't know too, right? And so that's the demand I've seen and there's not enough of it out there. There's not enough people to help bridge that gap for all the different types of people.

Steve: 

Yeah, so I'm curious with that. And this may be just my own personal view of how agencies work in the past. So they were very specific and they brought in for a specific role. Do you now see agencies sort of stepping up to do that strategy piece? Because they're not going to come and say, yeah, I'll do SEO for you because it doesn't matter what else is happening. You can't do good SEO if you're not tying it into everything else.

Chris Delany:  

You can't do that anymore. We won't do it. We will stop doing that, right? And it's tough to turn down business, but if they're not aligned with it, then our SEO strategy is not going to be aligned with their content strategy, which is bigger, right? And so there's more of that. And I'm not saying there is a bigger role for the agency to consult in figuring out that problem for that company.

before you lay out the bigger plan is what I've seen. Because I've seen a lot of them come with plans and while we're getting involved in it, I'm saying, are you guys doing this? Oh, we're gonna do it in Q2. And I was like, to me that's more important than actually what you're hiring us for and it's gonna prohibit us from showing the value, right? Because if you don't have email automation set up off of an SEO strategy that we've outlined and we get you more data captures, but you're not maximizing it through the email automation funnel, you're going to say what we're doing for you doesn't work. 

And that's, you're right, it might not work. It does one part of the goal to what you need to do. And because that might not have been needed in the past to that degree, you've really got to do that. 

Steve: 

I have to say, I give you credit for practicing what you preach because you are building your own flywheel, right? So you have the digital marketing conference and I'll put a link in the show notes so that people can sign up for that. I know you do these sort of local events, SEM Geek events. That's actually where you and I met. So you're building your own community. You're helping the community. And then I'm sure overall it works for you.

Chris Delany:  

Yeah. We're helping people that even aren't our clients, if that makes sense, right? We're helping the community. We have an event that quarterly 40 to 60 people attend, right? These relationships have done wonders for maybe it's new talent that we hire.

Maybe it's other agencies that we meet. Maybe it's new clients who are marketing directors or trying to get advanced. And we're just insightfully educating them on video. Free, good environment, we're at a brewery, all these things. And then we build that up to a bigger conference, where we have Google come, Meta, and they'll come and educate. And we're a part of that.

We're not sitting here saying use us and we're going to speak. You know, if we get up there and say a few things, we're the driver behind it. And what does the consumer think? What is the people, right? So they didn't know us. They hear about us. They might come to the conference because they want to learn. And then all of a sudden, they start to see this company, right? They start to see them in different components. And as their pain points and problems come up, they say, I've seen them solve this. I've seen them solve that, right? Gary Vee calls it trading attention, right? He calls it day trading attention. And I'm not looking to sell you every day. I don't want you to buy my shoes every day or my product or my sass or my this. I want you to know we're here. I want you to know what we do. And I want you to know what we care about and how we interact. And from what we see, that mentality is driving a better result than you need our product, you want our product.

It's about our product and you. It's, you know, society doesn't think that way all the time. And generationally, there's a big shift. So it goes back to that. I know we talked about the people on the marketing side generationally. But when you look at the generation who's going to be buying these components, that's a whole new thing too.

Steve: 

Yep, it is. So you mentioned these events are at a brewery, so that actually links quite nicely to my last question that I ask every guest. We're doing this through a screen, but I always think it would be nicer if we were doing it over a drink. So the next time we're talking about marketing, Chris, what would be your drink of choice?

Chris Delany:  

I would say we're heading into summer. A good margarita right now would be great as we head into spring or summer. Not my normal choice, but it's warm out in Jersey from time to time now. And that's my mindset. 

Steve: 

Well, hey, Chris, I appreciate you spending some time and sharing your thoughts. The New Jersey Digital Marketing Conference is coming up on June 13th, I believe.

Chris Delany:  

Yeah, HubSpot is speaking, we've got some great presenters, we'll be announcing some more next week, but should be good.

Steve: 

Fantastic. Well, I will see you there and I'll put a link in the show notes so that anyone can get a ticket and come join us. But again, really nice talking to you and look forward to catching up soon