Marketers of Technology
00:03:31 · Cristina Bunea, Andres Figuera
[00:03:31] S0: Yeah, I would say for us, the number one channel has been content. I think that was a very sort of intentional decision that we made when I joined about almost two years ago now. I think we were quite early to the AO, GEO, I don't know what the term is this week, but I would say we were very, very intentional with that. And we're a PLG product, so developers can just self serve and try the product without really having to talk to us, but we do have a sales motion as well. And it's how a lot of the larger enterprises sort of start interacting with us. But we do like our marketing team does a lot of that work before they even need to talk to us because we educate them quite a lot before they even try out the platform. So, would say for us content has been probably the highest driver of growth. Right now we have more, and I know it sounds crazy, but we're quite a small team. There's only 22 of us and then quite a small marketing team. There's only three of us on the marketing team, but we have more inbound than we can really manage. So hiring is like top of mind right now. But yeah, I would say content for sure is up there. [00:04:38] S1: And what type of content? Has it been more like educational in order to explain what you guys do or more like storytelling on behalf of customer experiences or have you done like everything and it's more of like a...
00:04:38 · Andres Figuera, Cristina Bunea
[00:04:38] S1: And what type of content? Has it been more like educational in order to explain what you guys do or more like storytelling on behalf of customer experiences or have you done like everything and it's more of like a... [00:04:50] S0: It's a mix. It's for sure a mix. So we have everything from thought leadership, our product being very technical. Developers love to read all of these in-depth sort of stories about how the technology behind, for instance, our sandboxes works and things like that. So a lot of very technical content. Obviously, have our docs, which is an extremely good source for knowledge and understanding the product. But I would say the biggest chunk is just in our SEOAEO content. So, all of the articles we write for Top of Funnel. So, how do people discover us? I would say we've got a pretty good handle on all of the LLMs now recommending Northflank for a variety of use cases that we serve. [00:05:31] S1: Wow, that is very nice when you reach that sweet spot where the LLMs are scraping the internet and you guys already have enough content for them to really understand that you're a key player in this type of area and in the industry. And that way people really, you get in front of them before they even know your name because the AI just comes out and recommends you because they found you. And I feel that is very special when you're able to obtain that in the marketing funnel.
00:05:31 · Andres Figuera, Cristina Bunea
[00:05:31] S1: Wow, that is very nice when you reach that sweet spot where the LLMs are scraping the internet and you guys already have enough content for them to really understand that you're a key player in this type of area and in the industry. And that way people really, you get in front of them before they even know your name because the AI just comes out and recommends you because they found you. And I feel that is very special when you're able to obtain that in the marketing funnel. [00:05:56] S0: Yeah. And the nicest part about it is that those people are the most highly qualified. Like everyone who comes inbound from that type of content, they already know what we do because we've given them the context. They've already done their homework to the extent where people now get on the phone with us and we don't really have to pitch or sell anything. We're just like, hey, how can we help? And they're like, I've read most things that I can on Northflank. I want to understand commercials. I wanna understand if you do this, if you do that, if you do X, Y, Z. So, it is quite nice because I think it has for our go to marketing generally, it has really shortened the sales cycle as well and it has made selling infinitely easier.
00:05:56 · Cristina Bunea, Andres Figuera
[00:05:56] S0: Yeah. And the nicest part about it is that those people are the most highly qualified. Like everyone who comes inbound from that type of content, they already know what we do because we've given them the context. They've already done their homework to the extent where people now get on the phone with us and we don't really have to pitch or sell anything. We're just like, hey, how can we help? And they're like, I've read most things that I can on Northflank. I want to understand commercials. I wanna understand if you do this, if you do that, if you do X, Y, Z. So, it is quite nice because I think it has for our go to marketing generally, it has really shortened the sales cycle as well and it has made selling infinitely easier. [00:06:38] S1: Of course. And I also believe that the ideal customer and your customer base per se is a knowledgeable one when it comes to these types of products, and they have no issue and they actually enjoy reading technical articles or reviews about what worked with Northflank because I've spoken with a lot of companies, like tech companies and they have a, what's it called? They have like a little challenge where they need to simplify what they do in order for the bigger market to understand them. But I don't feel that has been the case here because your customers really do their homework, as you mentioned.
00:06:38 · Andres Figuera, Cristina Bunea
[00:06:38] S1: Of course. And I also believe that the ideal customer and your customer base per se is a knowledgeable one when it comes to these types of products, and they have no issue and they actually enjoy reading technical articles or reviews about what worked with Northflank because I've spoken with a lot of companies, like tech companies and they have a, what's it called? They have like a little challenge where they need to simplify what they do in order for the bigger market to understand them. But I don't feel that has been the case here because your customers really do their homework, as you mentioned. [00:07:11] S0: Yeah. I like I've heard it so many times now. It's just like someone says, oh yeah, I just had an agent running in the background doing lots of research on Northflank because it seemed really interesting when I first came across it. And it was clear from the research that I had to talk to you guys. [00:07:25] S1: Okay. I love it. I love it. And before the AEO, you guys also did SEO. What other type of other strategies have you implemented as well? Or do you feel that that is enough? Because if you already have enough inbound that you can't even manage it, I believe you must not be like opening many more channels. Or are you guys?
00:07:44 · Cristina Bunea
[00:07:44] S0: I would say we do a couple of other things. My philosophy at Northflank specifically, and this has varied across the board when working with other companies, but at Northflank, because our buyer is very, very senior engineers into large enterprises. Although we have like smaller startups and sort of self-service developers, those people usually don't like to be told to. So, we try to be exactly where they are. And that is like the LLMs because it's in their workflow, they search for these things. We do paid advertising as well. So, we've had quite a lot of success with paid advertising, like really, really good conversion. We do events. I would say our events are a bit different than most other dev tools out there. Think I have a bit of a controversial opinion about how a lot of dev tools market themselves. I think there is a very fine line and a bit of a trap that a lot of them fall into becoming a bit too consumer. I think it really depends on who you want to sell to and what's the ultimate goal. For us, the ultimate goal is to take on giant companies like VMware and OpenShift, IBM OpenShift and things like that, which is we have to appeal to the large enterprises. At the same time, sure, it has to be easy enough to self-service and things like that. We, if I have a pretty strong opinion about not doing sort of community at Northflank, because I think that would potentially scare away to some extent, some of the enterprise buyers. Now that doesn't mean our marketing is boring or is like stuck in the past with the enterprise. A lot of the enterprises we work with are quite forward thinking and quite modern. But I think you can fall in the trap where the team is spending maybe a bit too much time on the solo developer deploying a toy app versus the large enterprise deploying serious workloads at scale that needs that type of more intensive support and things like that. So I personally do not think we will ever do sort of like the community, like open source and then having like an open channel for everyone to put in their feedback and things like that. We work with customers very closely, but it's just not community in the general sense of the word and how people apply it today. I don't think it's the right channel for Northflank.