Once every two weeks, Internet entrepreneurs and heads of Internet companies come to visit Maxim Spiridonov, co-founder and CEO of the educational company Netology Group, for an hour-long conversation. This is how the Runetology podcast is created. The Secret publishes the most interesting excerpts from these interviews.
39-year-old Denis Savelyev was born in Vorkuta. Graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute, headed Internet marketing departments in the Gulf Stream companies. Security systems" and "ByteErg". In 2007 he founded the Internet marketing agency Texterra. He teaches a special course on content marketing at the Higher School of Business Informatics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
An audio version of the interview with Denis Savelyev and Spiridonov’s other guests can be found on the Runetology website.
- Why did you get into content marketing?
In 2004, I came to search engine optimization. I promoted websites with my own hands. In 2005, for example, he brought one site to first place for the request “download mp3.” So I understand how search engines work.
In 2010, I hired my first employees. Even then it was clear that the mechanics used in search engine promotion were dead ends. And business is a cruel thing. If an entrepreneur pays money to an agency, he wants to know what results he will get in what time frame. SEO is currently unable to provide such forecasts with a high degree of accuracy. It was clear: content is actually the only thing a business has to somehow present itself to the audience.
In the late 1990s, everyone believed in design. Then the era of traffic began. And then it turned out that traffic is numbers, and the ability to hold attention and transfer the user from one stage to another is something subtle and difficult to calculate. Some people own it, some don't.
Nobody even remembers who proclaimed: content is the king. But business began to believe in it somewhere in late 2009 - early 2010, and in 2012 and 2013 the phrase became common. The role of content will only increase in the coming years. And the role of the site is weakening.
- What definition would you give to content marketing?
Content marketing is working with a website and a commercial structure according to the principles and patterns of media. We approach the organization and the site, which must earn money for its owners, as a media outlet. This is a set of tools and techniques with content at its core - content that is in demand, interesting to the target audience and, importantly, changes the pattern of its behavior. The task is to engage, retain, convert this or that user.
People are tired of direct action advertising. Content marketing is a mechanism that allows businesses to bypass the barriers that humans erect in their natural desire to filter out the white noise. That is, content marketing is when a business creates additional value of the advertising message.
Typical digital performance marketing is “buy the sneakers” repeated over and over again through different channels. And content marketing is something like: “We did research, and it turns out that these sneakers give these results, and others don’t. In general, running is useful because it affects the heart in such and such a way...”?
Right. Not only that, but you even benefit by being open about how competitive your sneakers are compared to others. This model is good for running, although it is not ours; for tennis, this is our model. With this approach, they begin to believe you. In general, people are very sensitive to identifying the truth, which is important for content marketing. One of its new names is “trust marketing.” You need to create trust, speak honestly, and then the audience expresses loyalty to the brand, including increasing its sales.
- You called Texterra an “internet marketing agency.” Not a content bureau or text factory. Why?
Our task is to explain to the market that content marketing is not just about creating content. If we called ourselves a content bureau or a copywriting agency, it would be inaccurate.
Is this an indirect sign that the time for content marketing as a business has not yet come, or maybe it will never come?
No, it has already arrived. Businesses begin to understand what they want from content marketing and what goals they need to set. It has become easier to work with customers. I think we are at the bottom of the mountain and the market will grow. We ourselves have grown by almost 50% in a year. A year ago we had 30 people on staff, now there are almost 60.
- What services do you offer within content marketing?
We do not offer content marketing in its pure form, but comprehensive Internet marketing with a focus on content marketing. Content is primary, the rest is mechanics.
- How is your team structured?
The content department is not the largest. The lead here is in the accounting or production department, which includes account managers, project managers, and technical specialists: programmers, layout designers, e-mail marketers. The content department is also large: editors, content strategists, and some copywriters work there. For many years we have been collecting a database of external authors whom we attract for one or another project. I don't believe that a copywriter is a universal commercial writer. As in journalism, there must be specialization. To create high-quality material, you need to deeply immerse yourself in business topics.
- Are there basic principles included in the Texterra “genome”?
First, we have full-time content strategists. This is written down in their employment contracts. I suspect there are not very many such specialists on the market. We raised them all from scratch. What is a content strategist? Often this is an editor or another person of a similar profile. In my opinion, a content strategist can be any specialist on the agency’s side who is able to immerse himself deeply enough in the client’s business and translate its tasks, problems, needs - express them in a strategy, based on which content will be created in the future. The content plan, publication schedule, and style of articles largely depend on the strategy. This is the one from whom all the strings come.
Second: it was difficult and painful to decide on this, but when we take on projects for integrated Internet marketing, we by default create a content strategy for them, now not even for a separate budget. We don’t yet know how long we will be with the client, what kind of person he is, or whether we will be able to work with him normally. But this significantly increases our efficiency.
Third: we have multi-level proofreading. It’s unlikely that any other agency on the market is structured this way. Any modern person produces a large amount of text. We don’t notice all our mistakes - stylistic, spelling, grammatical. And they affect the reputation of a business. In addition, if the business is complex - for example, metal rolling - a copywriter, even being in the know, is still not immune from mistakes. Therefore, multi-level proofreading is needed with the involvement of proofreaders, editors, and technical specialists.
- What does your typical customer look like?
It's hard to generalize. From small businesses to fairly large ones, including even multinational clients. Unfortunately, I have no right to talk about them; lately everything has been under NDA. Companies are very different: there is both e-commerce and B2B. More and more often there are customers from whom we receive carte blanche and who agree to deadlines that allow us to demonstrate high efficiency.
- Often do clients say that content marketing is expensive?
Certainly. But such judgments were more common in the past. In 2016, in my opinion, there was some kind of breakdown. Perhaps the crisis had an effect. But there really are more clients, and they are more adequate. Now, in my opinion, it is obvious to everyone that it is extremely difficult to get quick results on the Internet. Unless with a very high overpayment. Therefore, businesses are ready to invest so that the results may be later, but almost guaranteed. Many companies have their own internal editorial offices. It's really effective. If you have a budget and don’t know how to spend it, I recommend not going straight to buying traffic. It’s better to open an internal editorial office, hire at least one journalist and start working on the site as a media project. Costs are recouped if the content is of high quality and in demand.
- Where to find specialists capable of creating high-quality content?
There is a crisis in the media market like never before. I think that in the next five to ten years this area will greatly transform. The media business is freeing up a huge number of personnel. Great specialists can be hired inexpensively. In my opinion, it is better to hire journalists than copywriters with experience working on stock exchanges. The content that dominated five to seven years ago is not in demand. You don’t just have to put letters and sentences next to each other. You need to get the audience's attention. Content marketing is, in principle, journalism, but with a commercial twist. The difference is small: a journalist works for the media, and a content marketer works for business.
Will it turn out that all online industry media will sooner or later become someone’s content marketing channels?
It's hard to guess, given that the media business model itself is fading. The content becomes free for the audience. Offline subscriptions are dying, circulations are falling. The advertising model of monetization does not justify itself. To publish good online media, you need an editor, you need royalties. Facebook and VKontakte provide disproportionately more content. It is of varying quality, but the audience gets it for free, and social networks don’t pay the authors anything for it. While the business compares itself with glossy magazines and large online platforms and suffers from an inferiority complex: “We are not professional editors, we need to sell insurance policies. What edition should we do, and why?” But in fact, business, unlike the media, is doing well. He has, roughly speaking, an “oil rig” - revenue that allows him to support an editorial office that can increase this very revenue in the future.
- How to evaluate the commercial effectiveness of content and content strategy?
The main part of the word “content marketing” is still “marketing”. Content creation should increase revenue and increase the number of leads. Another thing is the evaluation mechanics. Conventional ROI formulas for content marketing are not directly applicable, especially at the start. Even the best content marketing doesn’t work right away, unlike contextual advertising. But every month, every quarter, your traffic increases, because quality content created once always works.
Businesses are accustomed to operating with shorter evaluation periods. Some people measure their ROI monthly. How much did you spend in a month, how much did you earn in a month. This is not very correct, but this is not a content marketing problem. User behavior on the Internet is changing. There are fewer and fewer quick, emotional purchases. In conditions of excess information, people approach choices differently than before. You need to lead a “warmed-up” client from the first thought of buying a product to the transaction. This applies to a large number of goods and services, and the more complex the product or service, the longer the corresponding interval. Content marketing should touch a potential customer's life path as often as possible. Sometimes we offer him our content on social networks, sometimes we show him contextual advertising, sometimes we reach him with e-mail marketing, sometimes he comes to us through a search.
- Can you name a few successful examples of implementing content marketing on the RuNet?
I will not mention our clients to avoid bias. I'll take what's visible on the market. The first example is an amazing case. Whatever Oleg Tinkov undertakes, he succeeds. So it is with Tinkoff magazine. Having appeared just last year, it is rapidly gaining momentum. You can see how professionally the team works. They may be the first of the major players to stop suffering from an inferiority complex in comparison with the media. This is actually an online magazine on any topic related to money.
Other story. We are developing a Content Marketing group on Facebook. And all the time, under our materials, comments appeared in the spirit: “What are you writing about, what kind of content marketing? I have a brick factory." One day, a person unknown to me entered into a similar discussion and wrote: “Well, I’m that same plant. Not a brick plant, however, but an expanded clay concrete plant, which in three years, thanks to content marketing, became a leader in the CIS.” This is the Cheboksary construction plant, a fairly large business. We contacted them later. They actually spend their entire marketing budget on content marketing. It would seem, what kind of content marketing is there at an expanded clay concrete plant? But, for example, they created a “Blocktour” section: they began to go to their clients and photograph objects that are being built from their expanded clay concrete, communicate with the owners and builders, and post materials on the site. And in three years they built a successful business.
- You once said that digital is dead. What did you mean? And is he being reborn?
We live with the feeling that the Internet is a young field. She's actually not that young. In Internet marketing, some schemes for working with clients, standards, and rules have already become established, which in 2016 seem unshakable to us. I wanted to shake up the market and explain that nothing is immutable, everything is changing very quickly. Up to such niches as website creation. We are used to the fact that web development requires a designer, a usability expert, a programmer, a layout designer, and a front-end developer. In reality - no. The “designers” have arrived, and now the sites that are assembled on them are disproportionately larger than those created by design bureaus. Some will complain about their average quality. But it's a matter of time. In a maximum of three years, the “designers” will have no less, if not more, opportunities than any studio. Such services have accumulated a large amount of data, for example, on audience behavior on sites of a certain type, which can be used to immediately give a conversion forecast for the site with high accuracy.
The revolution continues. All forms of online business that we have become accustomed to over the past 15 years, in my opinion, will change greatly. And by digital I mean the digital that has developed. The question is whether it will be possible to call it that when everything changes.
We are drowning today in a huge amount of texts, videos, audios. This is a burden and stress. Will content marketing fatigue set in?
We, of course, are not able to consume as much content as is created. And its number is growing at an incredible pace. But a person adapts and begins to evaluate the content before reading it: by announcements in the social network feed, by headlines. The attention of the audience is increasingly valuable. I assume that already in 2017 a lot of negativity will be directed towards content marketing. And justified: many companies will take up this direction for the first time and realize that no one needs their content. The audience will not do you any favors just because you are releasing content on behalf of a business. The user today does not care who published the content: Forbes magazine, Vedomosti or an expanded clay concrete plant. If he is the target audience and the content meets his needs, if he needs it here and now, he will definitely check it out. You just need to strive to create the best content on the market.
Cover photo: Texterra Press Service
“Digital is dead,” says Denis Savelyev, CEO of the Internet agency Texterra. “They buried the Digital market, broke two accordions” - there is such an opinion. We decided to look into the issue and talked to Denis. It turned out to be more interesting and larger than expected: not only about content marketing, but also about singularity and social privacy. Mastrid: you’re probably thinking not only about the marketing plan for 2016, but also about your Facebook life, which you’re tired of, but you can’t live without it.
Interview: Anastasia Podberezkina
Denis Savelyev
CEO of the Internet agency Texterra. In the past he worked in the media and large advertising agencies. In Internet marketing since 2004. He teaches a special course on content marketing at the Higher School of Business Informatics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Texterra has a popular marketing blog Texterra . Ru/ Blog . The company's portfolio includes cooperation with Saxo Bank, Svyaznoy, Mail.ru Group, Raiffeisen Life, etc.
Denis, you have an interesting thesis that Digital is dead. On the other hand, there is the point of view “they buried Digital, they broke two accordions.”
Denis Savelyev: Here we need to define our concepts. When we say that Internet marketing is dead, Digital is dead, we don't mean that the idea itself is dead. We are talking about its current implementation, display in current conditions through many distorting mirrors. The relationship between clients and digital market agents that existed in Russia until now has died.
The customer is no longer ready to work under the conditions that were recently the norm. This is due to many changes in the market, including globalization: large players continue to grow larger, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for local players to receive traffic. Another reason is that user behavior on the Internet is changing. Websites are no longer so important; people now simply do not notice where they consume information - they consume it everywhere at once. For example, in 99% of cases I consume information through my Facebook feed: news, materials about the market, and much more.
I tend to separate macroeconomic problems from the general crisis in Digital. They influence partly, but the crisis is observed in each market segment. And, in addition to the two main reasons, there is a local reason in each segment.
Let's take that piece of the pie called “website development”. Classic agencies are accustomed to the fact that there is a developer and a customer who pays money. This model existed for 20 years, and it seemed that it would always be there. But we see that the American and British markets, which are ahead of the rest in Internet marketing, are abandoning this model. There is no such thing as a large development studio anymore. The old model has been replaced by cheap cloud SaaS solutions. So far, the corridor of their capabilities is smaller than in the case of individual development. But the number of SaaS solutions is already very large, so they fit different requirements for design, content and layout. And the price range for packages is wide - from zero to hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the USA, the main principle of website development now is Fast Fail, “quick failure”: we quickly launch, test the idea and, if it works, we begin to customize, but if it doesn’t work, we try something else. In website development, SaaS is replacing the individual approach.
Let's take SMM: when social networks began to accumulate a lot of traffic, it was necessary to work with it - and for 5-6 years this tool gave excellent results. Over time, abroad they came to classic marketing in social networks, but in Russia the SMM market in fact belongs to freelancers-cheaters. An unqualified customer sets the task incorrectly and pays to be deceived: his group is manipulated, a non-target audience is brought in, etc. By and large, SMM is already a tool of yesterday.
If we take the search engine optimization market, there are other local reasons for the transformation. First of all, this is the speed and depth of changes in the search engines themselves. The market has existed for 15 years, and it also seemed to everyone that it would always be there. What is SEO promotion? This is an attempt to use search engine vulnerabilities as a pedal: by pressing on it, the site grew in search engines. At first, they used text relevance: to influence the search, they pumped pages with keywords, which led to good rankings. Then link promotion appeared, and then - the promotion of behavioral factors. But at the moment, the amount of accumulated changes and the speed of changes in search engines have led to the fact that search engines have become qualitatively different products. It is becoming impossible to influence search engines quickly and relatively cheaply. At the same time, the SEO optimization market is huge, and it has great inertia. In RuNet alone, it is estimated at 0.5-1 billion dollars a year: someone is still paid money for something, but in reality, SEO is also a tool of yesterday.
The Digital market itself has been and will be, but much within it must change so much that the question arises: should we continue to call it Internet marketing, SEO, etc.? In some cases, there will be a degeneration of practices into something new with different terms. The trend abroad is “SEO is dead.” But that doesn't mean search marketing is dead. The term SEM, Search Engine Marketing, is proposed to replace the term SEO. The difference is in the working methods. SEO has become synonymous with buying links, but search engines do not recommend doing this; they apply filters and ban sites. Agencies and people who refuse to buy links and promote differently - that is, improve the user experience of the site - need a new term so that the customer understands that this is SEO, and this is a different approach.
It’s time to draw a line under the described state of the Digital market, which is, in fact, what’s happening. From the point of view of Internet marketing, everything is simple: if SEO and SMM are an attempt at manipulation, then what remains is to work with paid channels for attracting traffic - contextual advertising and RTB. These are competitive and expensive channels, but there is growth potential there. And the conventionally free channels, which were SEO and SMM, have actually supplanted content marketing. Abroad, many see it as a white, fluffy, human-oriented alternative to developing the SEO market.
If the Digital market has died in its current form, then the logical question is: how to continue to work, what is the way out?
Denis Savelyev: From my point of view, businesses need to understand that a commercial website should continue to exist according to the principles and patterns of media. If this is only a conversion platform for you, then keep in mind that you will need large budgets to purchase targeted traffic; there are no other options. If you want to get traffic and customers cheaper than the market, then the only way is to approach the site according to media principles. In this case, you become a publisher: an editorial team, a content plan, and content useful for the target audience appear. You don’t just have to make people laugh and collect traffic at all costs. It may not be enough, but it will be yours.
The audience - and this applies to any business - needs expert content. People should see the company as an expert, no matter what you do. I teach advanced training courses at HSE, and last week during a lecture on content marketing there was such an example. For a person who is studying on the course, the website for welding products is like a straight-up business. He asks: “What should I write about?” And everything, it turns out, is simple. We look at consumers and their pain points. In this case, these are construction organizations. We start digging and find out that they often make serious mistakes, choosing the wrong electrodes, or simply do not know about new methods. On its website, the company begins to share its expertise, tell, roughly speaking, how to weld steel to cast iron and what technologies have emerged.
The American and British Internet marketing markets are massively turning in this direction. In America, by the way, native advertising is growing along with content marketing, because the audience is growing tired of direct message advertising. This is what content marketing and native advertising counteract.
Zillion: Native (natural) advertising is an approach in which a company attracts attention to itself in the context of the site and user interests. It is perceived as part of the site, takes into account the specific features of the site, is not identified as advertising and does not cause rejection among the audience.
Denis Savelyev: Advertising fatigue is a global trend. The content may have an advertising component, but the usual advertising message is no longer trusted. There is more and more information noise, and people filter more actively - naturally, advertising gets into the filter first of all. Therefore, advertising migrates towards the Cannes Lions and becomes a thing in itself.
There are several ways out of the situation. In 2007, the American agency HubSpot began using the term Inbound Marketing on its blog. Once everyone understood what it was all about, inbound marketing became a trend. Inbound Marketing theory describes the relationship between a brand and its audience both offline and online. In particular, inbound marketing implies that, in addition to the advertising message, the brand has something of additional value to the consumer, so the client himself comes for something he needs. Content marketing, which educates and helps the consumer, is a special case of inbound marketing. A classic advertisement, Outbound Marketing, offers the consumer a banner on the right that says “Buy a vacuum cleaner at a discount.” Not reallyit doesn't work at all, but the efficiency is reduced. And the effectiveness of inbound marketing is high, so here we come back to talking about content marketing.
Another way is Search Engine Marketing, a new approach to search engine optimization: this includes not only organic promotion, but also contextual advertising.
Email marketing will also have good development along content marketing lines. Correct, non-spam email marketing can be a profitable channel, because such mailing contains useful content, and not just messages about discounts and promotions.
There are also problems with content marketing.
Denis Savelyev : The implementation of content marketing is hampered by the fact that content creation is a labor-intensive and complex task.The market for the purchase and sale of text content belongs not to businesses and not to experts, but to copywriting exchanges, that is, to unqualified freelancers. Many people think that to make money from copywriting, a good knowledge of the Russian language is enough. And businesses have a common idea: “Now let’s buy articles on the stock exchange, and everything will be fine.” But you can’t achieve anything with low quality content. Approaching a site as a media does not mean simply publishing content. You have to become a media person in your brain, and this is difficult.
Business is still making concessions to itself: “Well, we are a business, we cannot compete with the media in terms of quality and presentation of information.” The truth is that over time, business will do this even better than the media, because it makes money on its topic. Its financial capabilities to create useful content are potentially broader.
There is a crisis in traditional media all over the world, and the advertising monetization model is dying out. It is becoming increasingly difficult for media to compete with social networks, where the amount of content is many times greater and the user does not pay for it. Demyan Kudryavtsev very wisely says that the media will migrate from journalism of fact towards journalism of emotions. Robots and scripts will gradually begin to engage in factual journalism: they react faster and check facts better. By the way, Yandex recently announced the creation of a platform where robots will produce content. Robots cannot yet create emotion, although someday they will learn to do this.
Expert content is now created by business media, but business itself can do it better if it abandons its advertising clichés: “We’re great, our revenue has grown by 500%, order from us.” When business realizes that this is not what people need, it will quickly begin to replace industry media and increasingly engage in expert journalism. And you need to start today - with the help of content marketing.
Logically, journalists will move from the impoverished media market to content marketing and create professional content for business websites. And this is how content marketing will evolve - there will be less shit content from random people.
Denis Savelyev: The wave of journalistic migration towards business began 2-3 years ago. And in the future, when it becomes obvious that texts from unprofessional freelancers are not a solution, businesses will increasingly hire journalists on staff, fight for the best of them and create editorial offices. Expert journalism will not die soon; it will take a long time to immigrate into business.
What else is dead on the list: you say that “the CPA model is a stillborn trend.”
Denis Savelyev: Let us clarify that it is not the CPA model itself, but its mutation that now reigns in the market. For marketers who are faced with this, everything has been clear for a long time, but this tool is not used by marketing professionals, but by customers - in particular, banks and large e-commerce. Look what major eCommerce is now saying about this mutated CPA model. Having spent a lot of money on it, businesses understand that such leads are not equal to leads from the context, for example. In the existing implementation, this model produces a lot of “wrong honey”, so it will collapse. But the CPA model itself is good - as a lead generation service, and not as a CPA network. But in order for an agency to begin to engage in real lead generation, it must be deeply integrated into the processes of a specific business.
Zillion: CPA, Cost Per Action (“Price per action”) is a payment model for online advertising, in which only certain user actions on the advertiser’s website are paid.
So let's talk about the relationship between customers and clients. You spoke about high inertia - this can be extrapolated to the entire market. People continue to work, order and provide services, pay and receive money. Judging by the picture described - for something of little use. It is logical that your statement caused a discussion. How can those who pay for services and those who earn money by providing them live now?
Denis Savelyev: We received a lot of tomatoes for the statement “Digital is dead.” A common argument: “As long as these services are in demand, the market will not go anywhere.” But we also see something else: there are a lot of positive opinions on our point of view, it’s just that those who agree rarely comment. The message is not that everyone now needs to go from the Digital market to the factory. Whether we like it or not, in its existing form this market is dead, and in its place a qualitatively different market is being formed, because the customer is changing, and there is a need to build his relationship with the agency in a new way. At conferences, the relationship crisis is discussed on the sidelines, but as soon as a person goes on stage, he begins to talk about how satisfied the clients are and how sweet life is.
5-6 years ago, a business chose a contractor and saw the result, but every year the business received several times less for the same budget. The customer has a simple understanding of the problem - the agency or freelancer has become lazy. For a year, the business makes circles around the market, and then returns to the contractor in the hope that by leaving it it has caused a more serious attitude. But the fact is that the previous approaches simply stopped working.
When a customer goes through 10 circles of hell, having changed 10 agencies, he begins to acquire expertise. Typically, the market lacks customer expertise to move to the next level. This year it began to increase rapidly because, due to a combination of factors, the business began to lose a lot of money. Loss of money is generally the strongest driver for the growth of expertise.
The client gains expertise and begins to correctly formulate technical specifications. If we are talking about SMM, then more and more clients understand that banal promotion of groups with bots is not necessary - even if there are fewer people, it is necessary to work with a live audience, with opinion leaders. If we are talking about SEO, then more and more clients are realizing that they should not look for vulnerabilities in search engines, but through content marketing, develop the site in the interests of the user. After all, all this time search engines are trying to convey to businesses: develop sites - and everything will be fine with visibility.
In order to develop websites, the agency must become a structural part of the business. It is impossible to completely integrate the agency into the company, but integration will occur to some extent. And the dividing line will move deeper into the customer’s business processes.
If the client’s expertise is growing, why does he need an agency? It is logical to hire such specialists: for example, lure them away from the same agency.
Denis Savelyev: Creating your own strong marketing departments is a trend: leading companies have in-house teams handling Internet marketing. But full in-house marketing - when customers themselves raise specialists - is very difficult to implement. The agency has technology for growing these specialists, which companies do not have. And besides, in-house means a lot of expense, testing and introducing new tools. Not every customer is ready to do this. Although, in my opinion, this is one of the ways of development, and in-house teams will become stronger in the coming years.
At the same time, there will be a place for agencies in the market, because expertise will cost more and more. Agency services will be cheaper due to working with a pool of clients. It is not intended to be fully integrated into one business. With a stream organization of work, the cost per hour is lower than when hiring a full-time employee. The model of work for digital agencies will be reborn, but in-house marketing will also develop very actively in the next 5 years.
The agency and the company agreed to integrate. What happens the next morning: the guys from the agency come and start studying the customer’s processes?
Denis Savelyev: There are a few basic steps. At a minimum, the customer and client should begin processing customer requests in a common CRM. The words “sales management system” mean a lot of things: dynamic call tracking, application accounting, lead cost and ROI accounting, end-to-end analytics, cost accounting by channel, etc. If the agency does not have access to all the company’s communications, calculate all this almost impossible. To operate effectively, the agency now needs the data that the CEO has.
This is dangerous.
Denis Savelyev: To some extent yes, but these are risks that we must learn to live with. On the other hand, it is no more dangerous than hiring stupid or incompetent people for leadership positions.
Let's discuss another thesis: “creativity is dead.”
Denis Savelyev: Creativity as a phenomenon is here to stay, but its role in marketing has been overrated.
Stages of development of Internet marketing: a technology appeared that was accessible to a select few, then it began to spread and eventually became universally available. At each stage of development, Internet marketing had its heroes. In the era of the formation of Internet marketing in Russia - from 1995 to 2005 - design was the hero. Then the Traffic Era began. Now begins the Age of Attention: we must fight for the attention of the audience, and not just count numbers, traffic, ROI and KPI.
In the ancient Age of Design, not all businesses had an online presence. To make it look better, more beautiful and richer, you had to order a design from an expensive studio. Then it turned out that it doesn’t matter how much you paid for the site, if the product is the same as everyone else’s, there is no USP and no differences in price - the audience does not need this site. Then the value of traffic increased - they began to think about how to bring it. I believe that the Age of Traffic is ending now because for your website, one visitor is not equal to another. In the Age of Attention, a specific visitor can be many times more expensive than thousands of users who do not perform targeted actions. Attracting and retaining the attention of your most profitable customers is the challenge of marketing in the Age of Attention.
And what will happen after the Age of Attention - can we already look further?
Denis Savelyev: Apparently, everything will change quite quickly. This is due to the transformation of the person himself in new realities. We will remain human, but something else will appear in us.
You can take a look, but the reliability of the assumptions depends on the stage. There is a table of Kurzweil's predictions. He believes that at 70 - By the 80s we will already become cyborgs. It is difficult to argue about timing, but a person will change, and this will be reflected in different areas of life and work. It's already changing, it's just not as noticeable. I recently read the news that for the first time in human history, a woman working in a biotech company injected herself and changed her genome so as not to age.
Some time ago I spoke with a futurologist about what the time will be like before the singularity. In the last issue of Zillion magazine, rare pioneering specialists talked about their professions of the future. And now we are talking about how marketing will evolve as we move towards the singularity.
Denis Savelyev: I have been a supporter of the singularity theory for 7 years now, and I also feel what you are talking about. Everything is going according to plan, and since the forecasts are confirmed, this resonates in many areas of life and business.
People don't notice how they change. Do you think it is possible to determine how a person has changed over the past 10 years?
Denis Savelyev: Yes, you can. Look: the same Kurzweil talks about seven-year cycles. There is a sine wave of accumulation of new technologies that leads to a technological explosion. Let's remember: what is the most noticeable thing that has happened to us over the past 7 years? Smartphoneization. Has she changed us? Think back to before smartphones. This is an illustration of how the movement towards the singularity changes us. Before smartphones, there was a seven-year cycle of human internetization. Has the accessibility of the Internet changed us? And before that there was a period of computerization.
The first iPhone appeared in 2007, respectively, now the smartphoneization cycle is ending, and we are on the threshold of a new cycle. I think that by 2020 we will see another technological revolution that will greatly change our lives.
Any guesses as to what it will be?
Denis Savelyev: Yes, and not only for me. I think these changes should be expected from social networks. In the next 7 years they will change our lives much more than they have changed so far.
How?
Denis Savelyev: But this is difficult to predict. If I knew how, I would take advantage of it. But there is food for thought. Social networks know much more about us than search engines, which only know search history and cookies. And social networks know about us all the information that we added with our own hands: education, human connections and much more.
The Facebook audience is comparable to the Google audience, and the VKontakte audience is comparable to the Yandex audience. But for many years, social networks earned catastrophically little money compared to search engines, because users have different behavioral models: they searched for products in search engines, and read content on social networks. But in a few years everything changed. Search engines are interested in developing the quality of search: the shorter the search session, the better - this means that you have found what you need and will continue to use this search. In social networks, the behavior model is different, and this will be their advantage.
But there is a feeling that people are tired of the usual model of presence on social networks. Many people feel the need to separate their small circle of like-minded people from work processes on Facebook, so as not to be left out in the cold, realizing that they shared their sense of life with complete strangers. I wonder how this will affect social media and its business use.
Denis Savelyev: We will have Facebook for work, for our inner circle, and for our family. In 2015 it is no longer possible to create a new social network and, I think, it will never be possible.
There are two problems with what you are talking about.
Due to our slow evolution, we are trying to bring offline norms into the social network - this is a mistake. We are trying to preserve a privacy that no longer exists. Our children's generation will live in the absence of privacy. Once upon a time, a person used stone axes, and then he invented metal weapons and learned to use them. In the same way, we will learn to live in the absence of privacy. Our generation is lucky in this sense: we know how to live both ways. The generation of our parents will never be able to come to terms with the lack of privacy, and our children will never be able to come to terms with the presence of privacy. For the new generation, the lack of closed privacy is simply a reality.
What are social networks? Among other things, this is confirmation of the fact of your existence. This is difficult for our generation because of the phenomena you are talking about. A possible way out is to realize that there is no privacy on social networks by definition. And over time, a person will learn to relate more simply to what happens to him on social networks. We are unlikely to be able to refuse them. Today the state of affairs is this: if you are not on social networks, you are not anywhere.
The second point: social networks will begin to take steps towards users. This will not necessarily be expressed in new privacy installation options. Most likely, our posts will be selectively shown to those who might like them. With the accumulated amount of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the recommendation power of social networks will increase, reducing the intensity of aggression.
How will this relate to the business trends we talked about?
Denis Savelyev: And the devil knows. But I clearly understand that the development of content marketing will be connected with this. Now is the best time to start: every business should start digging into the content marketing field today. After all, the same thing will happen to content marketing that happened to advertising, and faster, in a matter of years. In a few years, we will be overwhelmed by a wave of content - the user will begin to perceive it as white noise.
Photo: Gratisography, Ryan McGuire
The history of advertising has shown us that all practices will accelerate through a cycle of ascension, flourishing and degradation. Patterns that work from project to project will disappear. I would like to ask you as a Growth Hacking specialist: do I understand correctly that this practice will last the longest, since businesses will only have to save themselves by constantly inventing new marketing techniques?
Denis Savelyev: Yes. Look, the point of Growth Hacking is to have a clear mind and not be in the habit of using the same tool. You use what might work in the moment. And this is extremely difficult: professionals tend to replicate their expertise from project to project and use the same techniques. Growth Hacking assumes that you are constantly innovating and trying new things. I’ll say more: because of this, Growth Hacking doesn’t even have a specific definition, the only task is not to stick to the known, but to test, try and implement many new tools. This meets the requirements of the realities in which we will work in the foreseeable future.
Internet marketing in 2016 - what is it like, what should you try?
Denis Savelyev: The most important advice is not to do just one thing, but to do a lot. If a business implements at least 50% of my recommendations, I am sure that the company will achieve an increase in revenue.
– One of the most interesting questions for me personally is the alma mater of entrepreneurs. And graduates of humanitarian and creative specialties are always of particular interest. Denis, I know that you once graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute. How did you get there?
– I got in like everyone else, not on commercial terms. I passed the exams - there was a creative competition at that time. You can say that I followed my interests. Studied at the department of fiction, workshop of Sergei Yesin. He wrote prose and published in various almanacs and magazines. To be honest, I don’t remember much, it was a long time ago.
– Actually, I’m interested because the Literary Institute seems to be a direction very far from marketing and business...
- Why? This is where I disagree. If we remember the cult book for modern advertisers, “Generation P” by Viktor Pelevin, then who is the main character? Graduate of the Literary Institute! In fact, many of my fellow students went into marketing and advertising. The experience I gained at the Literary Institute helped me to some extent, and to some extent hindered me, but still there were some overlaps.
– What about the iconic phrase from the same« Generation P» : « We don't need creators here, we need creators» ?
- Well, everything is correct here. Literary creativity is also, in many ways, a technological work. It is impossible to teach creativity - it is all inside each person. But the sequence of actions, the algorithms for creating works - this is something that can be studied. And it's the same in advertising.
– By the time Texterra was fully launched, you had already accumulated experience in promotion and Internet marketing. How difficult was the transition to entrepreneurship? Still, this is a solution to many problems of a completely different type...
– It’s hard to say here, because by the time I started working on Texterra, I had actually been an entrepreneur for 3 years. I had business competence, or rather, as it was... It was formed in the process. This is a very long way to rethink yourself, your role in business processes. I can’t say that in 2010 I was already a ready-made entrepreneur. Even when I already had 15-20 people working for me at Texterra, I did not identify myself with an entrepreneur, I even avoided it a little.
– In the sense that you tried not to break away from the team?
– I can’t say what exactly I tried. There is a fundamental division now, but it did not come immediately. This is again a long and gradual journey. I never woke up and realized that I had become an entrepreneur. But there is another point. I used to underestimate some things in terms of importance for business. In 2010, it seemed to me that the main thing was the idea. Many people who want to become entrepreneurs believe in the idea. But then it becomes clear that you can work with any idea if you manage to establish business processes. This is the next stage, and I remember that turning point when we went through this evolution and we began to set up business processes at some serious level. And after about three years, the understanding came that even business processes are not the most important thing. The most important thing is people. That is, I had already been in business for 7-8 years, 4-5 of them at Texterra, and only then did it come.
– And another question about personnel: now team building is a very fashionable thing, many companies are introducing some of its elements into their work. I see from your interviews that this is also used - the same weekly “chatters”, as you call it. How can we strike a balance here so that it doesn’t turn into some kind of “obligation”? Do you have any problems with this?
– Our “chat rooms” are called that only conventionally. In fact, their format is constantly changing. This could be trainings, games, something else. There is no recipe for whether you need to use it or not. On the one hand, it is clear that there must be team building in some form. I wouldn’t like to say any big words, but corporate culture plays an important role. But at the same time, all our employees are adults, and I absolutely do not believe that an adult can somehow be re-educated. The only way out is to initially hire those who come to you with some other goals other than material ones. Not only to provide for yourself, your family, but also something else. This is more important. I can’t say that we succeed in this 100% of the time, but we try. Moreover, with us all these events are not mandatory, but optional.
– Let’s talk a little about your field of activity. Your previous interviews were in 2016, and you said that specifically content marketing and integrated Internet marketing are developing and demand is growing. Has anything changed over time, for the better or for the worse?
– There is growth, but it also has a downside. There is some devaluation of the term. It is inevitable because when some new direction appears, it exists in some unstable, uncertain environment. Many people have the feeling that this is some kind of blue ocean where they need to quickly dive in, and everything will immediately be fine. In reality, without expertise, without well-developed work technologies, it is very difficult to drop in somewhere. There are many attempts to do something, offer it as content marketing and sell it. But the client doesn’t need marketing in itself, he needs results. For us, marketing is not a service that we sell. This is a technique for obtaining a certain result. Therefore, our clients and I negotiate only for comprehensive Internet marketing, and content marketing is a form of work that we ourselves use.
– Does devaluation affect the supply market specifically? Is dumping happening?
- Yes Yes. Content marketing is now very often understood as copywriting, something from this opera. Many content studios and even individual copywriters began to sell content marketing because it is fashionable, it is in trend, and the demand is high. In reality, the main thing in this term is still marketing, and the creation of text content is far from the most important part of what we do. And there are very few companies that now do real content marketing. To list them, the fingers of one hand are enough. And the demand is much higher, which is why offers arise that imitate content marketing.
– You yourself said that, in principle, there are not so many professionals. After all, content marketing is not taught almost anywhere; there is a well-known course “ Netologies» , maybe something else. But there is no training in content marketing at the system level.
– When I said so, it really was so, but now the picture is changing somewhat. The same “Netology” has already graduated a certain number of specialists, and this is one of its most successful and expensive courses. The market understands that there is interest in this topic. Nowadays, vacancies periodically appear on many sites like Headhunter. But education has certain difficulties because the market changes very quickly. The terminology is unsettled. Often a business that understands what it wants as a result cannot formulate it correctly. Therefore, for some companies, a content marketer is a person who is looking for some information; for others it is the same as a journalist or copywriter; for others, they are really marketers.
Let's just say that there are problems with education, but I see a positive movement in this direction.
– Question about the cost of content marketing. This is also a well-known myth, or even a horror story,–content marketing is expensive. We recently did material on this topic, and Vladimir Lantsov from« Skobeev and partners» , why this happens and why such work, in principle, cannot cost less than 40 thousand rubles.
– For example, we don’t work with this specific budget at all. Our average cost for a complex is from 150 thousand rubles. But let me clarify, to make it clear, this is the price of the complex. We also have clients for specific jobs: making a landing page, building a “sales funnel.” I think Volodya indicated such a figure so as not to make people too sad. This is a really expensive story, but again, it depends on what you compare it to. The situation when it was possible to get some results cheaply on the Internet ended with the advent of many channels and promotion tools. By inertia, business remembers that at the start, 7-10 years ago, the Internet - as a promotion channel - was quite cheap. But then the law of life came into play. It cannot be that there is one effective promotion channel that is significantly cheaper than others. Budgets and cost of services increased, and gradually the cost of attracting a client through each channel – both online and offline – became equal.
– And if we talk about small business? We have many readers who, after paying taxes, paying suppliers, and some other expenses, are left with 50-60 thousand rubles, and they need to think about where to distribute them. Is this market closed for low-income earners?
– The situation of some new companies, when advertising is not yet working for business, but business is working for advertising, is found everywhere even without content marketing. Don’t we know of cases where a person earns the same 50-60 thousand rubles and at the same time spends 350-400 thousand on contextual advertising? It's such a vicious circle that it's hard to get out of. I believe that with content marketing everything is even a little better. I am personally convinced that the best content marketer is not the one who knows how to write good texts, edit videos, or otherwise present information. First of all, he is an expert in his field. We forgive experts everything: spelling and punctuation errors, some problems with the design of the site. A person who asks a question on the Internet and receives a comprehensive answer will forgive any mistakes. Any entrepreneur either becomes such an expert in a very short time, or he simply will not sustain his business for more than 3 years. If a business has existed longer, it means there is some kind of unique expertise, otherwise it simply would not exist. Therefore, the owners themselves need to spend their time in this direction: extracting this expertise and giving it to the audience. And this will also be content marketing.
There is a good analogy: accounting. At the same time, the business owner does not have to be an accountant, but he must devote some part of his time to it. How much exactly depends on the specifics. Somewhere an hour a day, somewhere an hour a week, somewhere an hour a month. The same thing works in content marketing. You can devote some time to this according to a certain schedule, and it will be much more effective than resorting to the services of an agency, freelancer, or someone else. In our agency, the main people are not copywriters, but content strategists. These are people who literally sit on the phone, communicate with the client and extract expertise. Our contracts stipulate that the customer is obliged to provide us with these experts. Based on this expertise, we draw up content plans, technical specifications for copywriters and everything else.
– Is some kind of advisory help possible? Let's say a person decides to take care of the content component of, let's say, his business, but at some point he stumbles upon some problem. Doesn’t know how to make a publication plan or how to find a blog or media outlet where you can attach an article. What to do in such a situation?
– Now the problem is that there is a lot of information on any issue and it is easily accessible. On the one side. On the other hand, you need to develop the skill of critically evaluating this information. This skill is generally useful to people in general, and it is developed regardless of interest in content marketing.
– Are there any projects in small business that have really taken off lately? you highlighted« Tinkoff magazine" Many, in principle, single him out. It is clear that this is a large project with serious investments, first of all, in the professionals who create it. The format of small and medium-sized businesses is of particular interest.
– Now is the time that it is difficult to single out anyone. There are a lot of such projects. Look at the projects that companies are launching in almost any field of business, and this will be visible. People, in principle, are beginning to consume much more information than 15-20 years ago. There are such people in every niche. Take construction, for example. Good Wood comes to mind, look at what they do in content marketing, how they do it, what their role is in the market. But we must understand that such a result is not a quick story, it is a path that must be followed.
– Since we’re talking about construction, you’re still working on wood concrete blocks...
– Yes, there is such a project, it was launched about a year ago.
- How did this happen? It is clear that advertising specialists can launch any project, but why blocks?
– As they say, one thing caught on to the other, and off we went. Of course, we haven’t reached the breakeven point yet; it’s difficult. But in terms of traffic and leads, we are doing well. We received a large project using content marketing. In general, we have more leads from this direction in this area than anyone else.
– That is, proven methods were used in promotion? Did you use any new products?
– No, no new products yet. Only proven methods. Everything we did for clients was used on this project. I can’t say that everything here is absolutely perfect, there are problems. People often overestimate the importance of marketing in business. A successful business is the sum of many parts. Marketing, of course, is important, but it does not solve all problems.
– We have practically begun to answer the following question: production and agency– these are completely different areas of work, and experience in one helps little in the other. Have you encountered any nuances of production this year?
- Naturally, we collided. Completely different clientele, completely different employees. In general, production in our country is very difficult. Internet marketing standards are such that it is constantly at the forefront, looking for some new techniques and technologies. If we are still behind the West here, it is very slightly, by some 2-3 years. And in working professions, we are actually generations behind in mentality. In our country it is still considered normal if an employee, such a hard worker, drinks and does not come to work. This is a fact of life (bitter smile). I don't know how to deal with this. Let's study.
– And you also said a few years ago that you are used to being deeply immersed in the business you are involved in, and it is difficult for you to give up. Since you launched another parallel business, it turns out that something has changed?
- No, nothing has changed here, everything remains the same as I said. It’s just that throughout the history of Texterra’s existence, we have been carrying out some other projects in parallel, but none of them received serious development. I don’t want to say so, but this is such a “graveyard” of projects. Success in business is not always about doing everything right. Something else is needed, a confluence of some factors, luck, if you like, although I don’t particularly believe in it.
– We are approaching the end, a slightly abstract question: what do you like more – a blank sheet of paper or a finished manuscript? Create something new or work with something already ready?
– It’s difficult to answer. Let’s just say that I won’t be able to go through again the same path that I already went through with Texterra or with my first business. I just can’t find that much moral strength within myself. If we assume a “leave and start something new” situation, a lot depends on whether this idea lights me up or not, whether there is any personal interest in the topic or not. I'm not sure that you can do any business without some kind of personal immersion of the creator, full dedication of all efforts. So far, apart from Texterra, I have never had such a project.
– And the last question–if there is such a thing as« thirst for business» , then what is this?
– There is such a concept. This is a thirst for discovery and a thirst for changing oneself. This is a very important quality, I think. In general, if we talk about business development, it is impossible without the entrepreneur changing himself. All the problems that arise in business are problems of the founder personally, his own “bugs”. Accordingly, in order to develop, you need to eradicate them in yourself.
Our dossier
Denis Savelyev, 39 years old, Orekhovo-Zuevo (Moscow region)
– Internet marketing agency “Texterra”, No. 1 in terms of traffic among digital agencies on the Runet.
– Production company “Russian wood concrete”.
Business is...
...in short, the way.
Money is...
...a generally accepted method of measuring effectiveness, and for me personally - the equivalent of freedom.
Main character trait
Insolence.
Source of inspiration
Creation.
If travel, then...
...I have a long-term “romance” with India, I have already been there twice and, apparently, I will go there for the third time. Not even exactly India, but precisely its northern and northeastern parts, the Himalayas.
If the vehicle is...
...in different ways, on foot, by transport - it all depends on the direction.
How do you see yourself in 10 years?
Difficult. Everything is changing very quickly. Denis Savelyev of 2010 and the current one are two different people, somewhat similar, but somehow different. I think in 10 years it will be the same: partly I will be the same as now, partly I will be different. I hope I will retain my best qualities and get rid of the negative ones.
My first day at FIRM was May 9th last year. Before that, I worked as a hairdresser for two and a half years, but here I realized that this is really mine. In general, he came to the industry from the administrators of a beauty salon - an ordinary salon in Balashikha, with a female team, eternal gossip and an appropriate atmosphere. I ended up there by accident - my friends invited me. But gradually my friends left, and at some point I found myself alone among the aunties. It was very sad.
My girlfriend advised me to study to become a hairdresser, although I wanted to become a designer. But this whole story with men's hairdressing salons always attracted me; it was something new and interesting, especially for a beauty salon administrator. Another world.
FIRM appeared in my life like this: a colleague from a previous job - it was a fairly well-known hairdressing salon - once mentioned that a former employee had left for FIRM after a couple of weeks of work. For some reason I was interested in why this happened - it turned out that he was dissatisfied with exactly the same things that I didn’t like. Well, I thought - maybe I’ll try too? I called FIRM, and one of the bosses answered the phone, who happened to be next to the phone at the reception. We both decided it was a sign.
I was completely confident in myself, but I looked at how the guys worked and realized that I would have to learn a little bit. I was immediately captivated by the attitude - not “teacher-student”, but on equal terms, without secrets. Before this, I had a completely different learning experience - you know, when a famous master says: study for a couple of months, and maybe I’ll show you something else.
And there are no rules adopted in some other places, when the hairdresser should not be in the waiting area, or sit in the hall when the client arrives. No one looks at who is sitting in your chair, how much he left you as a tip, or what your salary is. At FIRM there is only one rule: for the person who comes for a haircut to feel comfortable. And it is important that the client here is not considered an inviolable person, because he pays money. We are equal. Therefore, it’s definitely easier to breathe here – both for me and for the clients.
At first I treat the client with caution - I don’t really like familiarity. But in the process, as a rule, he opens up, and we can communicate about anything. It is interesting to work with any clients. It’s easier, of course, with good hair, but it’s interesting with any kind of hair.
Our colleagues inspire us - we always share new haircuts and new techniques. I myself am looking for new moves, I follow the Instagrams of famous hairdressers, I try to develop. I think it’s more interesting to work in many styles at once, not to do everything strictly old school, for example. And, of course, each haircut turns out different, this is a moment of creativity.
