You submitted your questions, and we got them answered by Ilias Tsatalmpasidis, Head of Growth at Superscript!
A bit about Ilias
Ilias Tsatalmpasidis is Head of Growth at Superscript, an Insurtech that offers flexible cover and a unique monthly subscription.
As well as supporting over 1,000 types of small businesses with an online quote and bind experience, Superscript offers a dedicated brokerage service for innovative businesses in industries such as cyber security, digital assets, and IoT.
Ilias’ mission is to establish Superscript in the UK, the Netherlands, and beyond by focusing on the net growth of customers. He leads a team of marketing specialists across paid and organic search, CRM, content, and social media – embracing automation and testing to increase customer acquisition, retention, upselling and cross-selling.
Ilias’ work has been recognized with the award for Best Use of YouTube for Performance Marketing and the Digital Marketing Award at the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Excellence Awards.
What are your best content distribution tips for B2B?
“I’ve recently seen really good success with using LinkedIn blogs and especially their newsletter features. You do get very good reach with it organically. We had very good success with our weekly SME news called The Shorthand.
“Blog and newsletters are the best formats on LinkedIn at the moment in my experience! As sharing on the feed has a very limited reach.”
What kind of automation tools is your team currently using? What has been their experience so far?
“Our business both from a sales and marketing point of view is engrained with HubSpot, with deep integration with our data lake. So I would definitely recommend it for businesses with good data habits. The opportunities are endless with it.”
Follow up: As an ESP ourselves, in our demo calls lately we've mainly been hearing customers are switching away from Hubspot and Intercom due to their pricing. Do you feel the pricing is fair compared to the value they bring to you?
“Pricing is quite subjective as you need to have actual experience comparing it with the alternatives. And then you need to add the implementation costs and potential business interruption to the equation too.”
How do you use branding in your marketing?
“We have great and unusual branding here at Superscript so we try to use it to our advantage to cut through in a very crowded market with some brands having years of awareness through their history and their B2C brands.
“There are times that it creates some friction (like when I ask to A/B test an idea etc). I recommend consistency and patience with the brand teams and try to give them the credit they deserve.”
Do you have any advice on developing a clear feedback loop between marketing and sales teams?
“The sales team has the privilege to talk to the customers more often than we do in marketing, they know the hooks that close a sale, etc. I recommend having regular meetings and trying to align as much as possible. From the marketing POV, you can help them with their outreach, emails, call scripts, etc to reciprocate.
Follow up: How regular would you recommend the meetings to be? Or is that largely dependent on the volume of sales calls being made?
“I guess one size won’t fit all. It really depends. I think minimum monthly but maybe more often especially to start with. Ideally, you can devise a common operating plan, and a common dashboard to connect to each other objectives to make it relevant!”
What are some ways that you brief sales teams on marketing campaigns?
“As above, it has to be a collaborative effect. Work together, try to align it to their objectives (commission, etc), and celebrate their involvement. Also, engage and get their buy-in as early as possible to avoid conflicts of interest!”
What advice would you give to someone who was moving into a revenue marketing role?
“I think the same principles of marketing apply, just the aim is a bit different, focusing not just on awareness but more on lead generation and how well these convert. It’s all about the customers again, just focus more on the ones that have a higher intent to purchase.
“Everyone’s journey is quite different and should be like that. I think the most important is to be happy to get their hands dirty with the data BI tools to understand in depth what’s happening, be unafraid to experiment, test and learn and scale. And most of all, to be always honest with your results and your learnings. There are no failed tests!”
What do you think are the key components of a great revenue marketing strategy?
“All in all good content, social presence, and a good network of people and partnerships helps a lot, alongside a great test-and-learn approach on paid media.”
What do you think are the most important metrics to track for an effective revenue marketing strategy?
“I think that reach, engagement, cost per lead, cost per conversion, return on ad spend, and brand demand (i.e. searches) are good starting points in my experience.”
Do you have any advice on how to conduct customer research?
“I think you should use any kind of opportunity. From recording user journeys with tools like FullStory, to email feedback, to arranging proper focus groups they’re all useful.
“I’m not very keen on exit surveys.
“Trustpilot and Feefo can also be a good goldmine to find people that have experienced a specific problem. Don’t be afraid to just give a ring to people or send an email to active customers or prospects with a £50 reward you’ll be amazed how many would like to talk to you for 30-60 minutes.”
How are your revenue goals communicated across different teams and departments?
“I always try to use the same language or KPIs definition that the other teams are using to avoid revenue double counting or debates on who drove what. Sometimes that understates the impact of your efforts and you will get questions like how do we grow the “direct” channel, but it’s worth the tradeoff if they “believe” in the data you share.”
How do you, in your job, develop marketing goals based on overall business revenue goals?
“My approach to this is always trying to translate the business goals to short and long-term marketing goals. Be it leads, sales, revenue, etc. In my POV it’s very important that you align with the business measurement as much as possible to build credibility.”
Any final pieces of advice?
“Marketing is all about experimentation and learning so please don't take anything I said as gospel. Get learning!”
There we have it! A big thank you to Ilias for joining us for an insightful AMA.
Make sure you catch the next one by joining the Revenue Marketing Alliance community today.
