Episode 282: Creating a Successful ‘Marketing Tripod’ with Steve Pollak of Banyan Hills Technologies

Episode Summary

When Steve Pollak describes his marketing philosophy, he uses a baseball analogy.

“You can’t hit a home run from the dugout,” says Steve who is the Director of Marketing and Design Services at Banyan Hill Technologies, a firm specializing in the Internet of Things (IoT) for a range of industries.

As a result, Steve spends a lot of time in the top and middle of the sales funnel, focusing on increasing brand awareness so that when prospects are ready to execute a project they go with Banyan instead of other companies.

In this episode of Tech Qualified, Steve, who started his career as a newspaper journalist before making his way into SEO and marketing, details how he juggles marketing priorities across brand awareness, lead generation, and customer retention.

Plus, he discusses how the lengthy customer journey — which is at least six months long — affects marketing. “You’re really getting married to the person when you sign up with Internet of Things software — this is pretty big enterprise relationship,” he says.

Guest Profile

Name: Steve Pollak
What he does: He’s Director of Marketing and Design Services at Banyan Hills Technologies, an IoT company with full-stack software capabilities.
Company: Banyan Hills Technologies
Key quote: “I like to say, ‘You can't hit a home run from the dugout.’ And so I'm trying to get my sales folks out there onto the field to get a hit or hopefully a home run.”
Where to find Steve: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Steve and his team create content to support sales that is specific to the prospect’s industry. For example, they’ll create a PDF or a brochure to describe the benefits of IoT for prospects in retail or in the industrial space.
When it comes to juggling marketing priorities, Steve says he focuses on supporting the upper and middle part of the funnel — including emails, retargeting ads, and social media. The goal? Keep brand awareness high so that prospects feel compelled to get in touch with Banyan Hills.
As part of his top-of-the-funnel focus, Steve focuses heavily on ensuring that SEO and website traffic is increasing monthly and definitely year-over-year.

Episode Highlights

“[I]nstead of having to think of data as water flowing through the pipes, right now, maybe we have a quarter-inch pipe that water is flowing through. When 5G comes down the pipe and becomes more and more prevalent, it’s really going to open up that pipe and go from maybe a quarter-of-an-inch to … maybe, two inches wide. So a lot more data will be able to flow through the pipes and what that means is that you’re going to have a lot more information that’s going to be coming through and the data will mean more and more prevalent applications.”

“I’m always on the search for story ideas … I’m trying to figure out what’s resonating with people. A lot of times I’m going through social media and seeing what other people are writing about — both from an industry perspective, as well as my competitors. So I do a lot of reading. Again, these ideas can come from most, anywhere. Sometimes they come from surprising places. I may get an idea for something from a completely different industry … And I think of a way that I can apply it to my industry.”

“This is stuff that may not appear on the website itself. Most of the content would be delivered to the prospect via email. So that’s where I’d say we may take a little bit of a deeper dive, especially in drip campaigns … you have someone who will get the email number one on day one, and then email number two, maybe seven or eight days later. And then email number three, eight days after that — [that’s when] I’ll take, a deeper dive … into the IoT and technology and those kinds of things.”

“They want to understand what we’re going to do, how we’re going to do it — the pricing becomes a pretty big discussion point as well — and so there’s a lot of education that goes on [with] both sides because we’re teaching them about our software and about how we work and how the team operates when we are building the software for them and who the counterparts are on the other side. At the same time, they are also educating us about what’s important to them and what’s going to be the key data … what are going to be the important KPIs … So it’s a pretty lengthy educational process that goes back and forth.”

“I’m a big believer that you have brand awareness and then lead gen, and of course, customer retention — and that those are the three legs of the tripod for marketing. I spend a lot of time on brand awareness because when some of our sales folks go and call on different companies, I want these companies to already know who we are and to make it a more friendly approach for our salespeople.”

Episode 282: Creating a Successful ‘Marketing Tripod’ with Steve Pollak of Banyan Hills Technologies

Episode Summary

Guest Profile

Key Insights

Episode Highlights

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