Emeric Ernoult, Co-Founder and CEO of Agorapulse, talks about how the company grew from a Facebook contest tool into a full social media management platform. He shares the ups and downs of keeping up with the fast-changing world of social media marketing and how B2B marketers can the get most out of their social media platforms.
He encourages B2B marketers to focus on providing value through educational and entertaining content and offers practical advice for leveraging team members and influencers to enhance social media engagement.
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About Agorapulse
Founded in 2010 by Emeric Ernoult and Benoît Hédiard, Agorapulse is a leading social media management platform headquartered in Paris, France. Designed for businesses, agencies, and marketers, Agorapulse streamlines social media workflows by providing tools to schedule posts, monitor conversations, engage with audiences, and analyze performance across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.
About Emeric Ernoult
Emeric is the co-founder and CEO of Agorapulse, a leading social media management platform he grew to $20 million in revenue without external funding. Under his leadership, Agorapulse has distinguished itself in the competitive landscape by ranking #1 across top software review sites like G2, GetApp, Capterra, Appvizer (France), and OMR (Germany). Emeric’s strategic vision and commitment to innovation have set industry benchmarks, including the first-ever social media inbox in 2014 and pioneering ROI tracking and analytics features for social media—patented innovations that help marketers prove the value of their investments.
Time Stamps
00:00:17 – Guest Introduction: Emeric Ernoult
00:02:07 – Differences Between the Bay Area and Europe for Startups
00:04:19 – Agorapulse: Solving Social Media Chaos
00:09:29 – B2B Marketing: Beyond LinkedIn
00:11:02 – Measuring Social Media Success
00:16:21 – The Challenge of Entertaining vs. Selling on Social Media
00:21:47 – Tips for B2B Marketers to Create Engaging Content
00:25:59 – Best Marketing Advice Received
00:28:34 – Advice for New Marketers
00:31:47 – Connecting with Emerick and Agorapulse
Quotes
“Social media is probably the most chaotic channel in the whole marketing world. Compare that to email, super simple… Social is not simple, not easy.” Emeric Ernoult, Co-Founder and CEO of Agorapulse.
“If there’s no proof that this works, it’s not going to get budget, it’s not going to get human resources, it’s not going to get attention.” Emeric Ernoult, Co-Founder and CEO of Agorapulse.
“In order to measure anything, you have to have an analytics framework in place. If you are not defining what are the CTAs you want to track on your website, you’re not going to be able to track anything on social media.” Emeric Ernoult, Co-Founder and CEO of Agorapulse.
“If you are not in constant learning mode, you’re going to be out of place in six months. The assets to learn and to stay on top of your game are here, free, in abundance.” Emeric Ernoult, Co-Founder and CEO of Agorapulse.
Follow Emeric:
Emeric Ernoult on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernoult/?originalSubdomain=fr
Agorapulse’s website: https://www.agorapulse.com/
Agorapulse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/agorapulse/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Emeric Ernoult at Agorapulse
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Emeric Ernoult
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.
Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I’m joined by Emerick Ernoult. Emerick is the co-founder of Agorapulse. Welcome to the podcast, Emerick.
Emeric: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to have this conversation with you today.
Mike: It’s great to have you on. So we always like to understand a little bit about our guests first. So can you tell us a little bit about your career and why you decided you needed to found Agorapulse?
Emeric: Yeah, so to make this, to connect this with what the audience will be interested in hearing from my career, First of all, I’m an eminent lawyer by trade. 25 years ago, I was doing merger and acquisition in a big U.S. law firm, and I moved to entrepreneurship. And I failed and hustled and struggled for many, many years, but eventually made something out of it. So all of you out there, you can change careers. It is possible. It is hard, but sometimes it’s worth it. Agorapulse is the result of several pivots from a previous business that didn’t work out for almost a decade. And it is in itself several pivots, meaning we started by doing contests and promotions on Facebook, and we evolved to a full-blown social media management suite that was not only Facebook, that was everything. We’re not doing contests and promotions anymore, we’re doing inbox management, engagement management, content publishing, analytics, employee advocacy, social media listening, like the whole nine yards. Yeah. And we moved from very, very low touch SMB inbound led go-to-markets to a very much more marketing and sales led go-to-markets, more touch, more demos and white glove treatment and CSMs. We made a lot of changes in our go-to-market, which was very, very challenging, but also very interesting.
Mike: I mean, there’s a lot to unpack there. But one thing you didn’t talk about was location. And that really interests me, because you moved to the Bay Area to found the company. And now you’ve moved back to Paris. So I’m interested, what’s the difference between, you know, the Bay Area and Europe? And actually, can people run startups in Europe and be successful?
Emeric: Yeah, so you need to know about me as well. I didn’t want to go that far in my life history, but I was born in New York. I was raised in West Africa. I went back to France, then I moved back to Washington, D.C., then I moved back to France, then I moved back to the Valley, then I moved back to France. So I am a citizen of the world. My sister lives in London. She’s married with an American. My parents had lived in New York for seven years, in North Carolina. So we are a French-French family, but we’ve been open to the world very early on. And for me, I could live here or where you live or in Miami, I would not feel a foreigner. My brain works like this. And that’s the first thing. The second thing relating to the question you asked, yes, you can absolutely launch a startup and a tech business from anywhere. In 2025, you have to be there to raise money, you have to be there to be with the people, with the networks. I network with American and Canadian SaaS CEOs all the time. I’m members of several SaaS CEO groups from the US, from France, from Canada. I’ve been coached by a Canadian SaaS coach and an entrepreneurship coach for three years. Yeah, of course, if you have a free mind, you can connect with anyone and start a business anywhere. Are there more regulations and laws and some issues to do business in Europe than there are in the US? Yes. But is the US a perfect country for everything? No. So, you know, with what you have, you can do amazing stuff in both countries.
Mike: I love that. I love that really open approach to networking to people around the world. I think that’s a great lesson. Let’s focus on the company now. So you mentioned a little bit about, you know, how Agorapulse is helping people on social. I mean, what problems are people solving by using the product?
Emeric: No, it’s very easy. The first problem that we solve and every other social media management software will solve, like the claim is not unique to us, is to turn social media chaos into something that’s manageable. Social media is probably the most chaotic channel in the whole marketing world. Compare that to email, super simple. Well, you have delivery issues and mailbox warming. There are a couple of tactical and technical stuff that you need to know, but it’s quite simple to understand. I need to build a list, and I need to email them with interesting stuff. Podcasting, also quite simple. I need to find interesting guests, interesting topics, invite them, and spread the good stories to the world. Ads, also simple but easy, but it’s a simple concept, but it’s not easy to succeed at. Social is not simple, not easy. It’s not simple because there are so many channels. Which one do I pick? Why? How do they work differently than the others? Do I need to create different types of contents for all of these different channels? How do I measure if it’s working? What kind of time horizon do I set for myself for success and so on and so forth? And once you’ve decided all these things and you start investing, then you have to create all these profiles or grow them. engage with people there, and they’re all different, and they all have their own sign-ups and their own accounts, like you have one email, like you have one HubSpot or one market or whatever you’re using for emails. You have many profiles, so eventually, without a tool, It is a mess. You can’t work without a tool. In the early days, I would actually advise people who are starting in that journey of trying to find value being present on social. But if you have already started the journey, and you have some level of success, and you have some level of engagement in a team, and more obviously, if you’re a large brand, and you have several brands, several countries, several team members, it is an obvious thing that without a tool, you’re dead. But that’s the main number one problem we’re solving. It is very, very chaotic. We turn this chaos into something you can actually manage in a reasonable time frame. And with AI and all that kind of stuff, it’s getting easier and easier.
So we’re adding more and more peace of mind into the process, especially when there’s teamwork. So that’s problem number one. Obviously, if you start looking at what makes you unique in that, I’m not going to get into that because we do some things that others do, but others do things that we don’t do. It’s becoming complex. It’s really the keys to define what is the actual need and the specific needs and make sure that you address those well and not some other tools. The other problem that we started to look at is how do you measure success? How do you make sure that this thing is worth your time and your money and your team members’ time and so on and so forth? So for the past three years, we’ve started to be very, very obsessed about how do you measure ROI? How do you measure business impact? And that’s the one thing that I think we do better than anybody else, because we are very focused on this. As a founder and CEO working in social media, I am very, very acutely aware that if there’s no proof that this works, it’s not going to get budget, it’s not going to get human resources, it’s not going to get attention. And it’s not going to get C-level and exec team time and priorities. So that’s the thing that I really wanted to push the company towards. And yeah, that’s it.
Mike: Something there’s an awful lot to talk about there, an awful lot of chaos to kind of unpack. But I mean, let’s just start off with platforms, because I think we’re all guilty of going, yeah, it’s social media. But actually, TikTok is very different from Facebook, which is very different from LinkedIn. So which of the platforms do you focus on at Agora Posts?
Emeric: Well, as a software, it does all of them. We don’t do one better than the other. We do all of them with all the APIs that they offer us and everything that you can do through the API of YouTube and TikTok and LinkedIn and Thread and Blue Sky and so on and so forth. It’s something that we offer. But obviously, it’s not because we can allow for comprehensive coverage of all the social networks that you should be present on all the social networks. There’s definitely an audit and a brainstorming you should do before deciding which one you’re going to be present on because As with everything, if you’re not laser focused on where you believe you can get the most value, especially as long as you have not yet nailed the value and the value measurement, it can be quite risky to go too broad and spread yourself too thin.
Mike: And I mean, that’s an interesting challenge. And I think if you look at B2B, which is where our listeners will be, you know, quite often, B2B marketers, they gravitate to LinkedIn, because I think partly it’s less chaotic, it feels more controllable. But obviously, you offer great capabilities on platforms like Facebook. Do you think B2B marketers should be looking more widely across more platforms? Or is it just LinkedIn in the only place they should be?
Emeric: Yeah, we’re probably kind of an exception. We’re also heavily invested on Facebook, but that’s because our ICP is on Facebook. Our ICP and personas, the people we talk to and we want to help, are champions in the accounts. They are on Facebook because they’re social media managers. They spend their time on Facebook and Instagram and for their own job. So they have to do that. It’s a requirement of the job. So for us, it makes sense. But if you’re selling nuts and bolts, it probably does not make too much sense to be present on Facebook or invest a lot on Facebook. So it’s going to depend on where are the people you’re trying to reach? Where are they spending their time? For us, they’re kind of spending their time in all these places. But for you, probably, I’m not sure. For an agency, I’m not sure Facebook would be a good place. If I was an agency, I would heavily lean on LinkedIn, but I would also lean on video, giving advice, providing useful, practical advice through video and probably short form videos. And maybe Meta could be good for retargeting, but that’s a paid play. That’s not an organic play. For an organic play, I would probably go podcast, which you’re doing amazingly well. And I will use the video of the podcast to go short form videos on YouTube. And why not TikTok? I am not a big heavy user of TikTok, but I have a lot of friends who are heavy users on TikTok and they consume B2B content on TikTok. So it is not to be entirely discounted. It’s something that’s worth testing.
Mike: And I mean, that’s really interesting, you know, that there’s lots of options. I guess one of the ways to work out what’s best is to actually test it and see where you get return from. So you talked a lot about measuring social media. Perhaps you can, you know, go into a little more detail about the kind of things you measure, the metrics you’re getting to help marketers understand which of their social campaigns are working the best.
Emeric: Yeah. So when it comes to measuring, A couple of things I want to highlight. Number one, in order to measure anything, you have to have an analytics framework in place. If you are not amazing at measuring everything that comes from your email campaigns, from your ads, from every other type of marketing activities, if your website is not equipped with Google Analytics 4, or Adobe Analytics, or whatever types of analytic framework. If you are not defining what are the CTAs you want to track on your website, using Google Tech Manager to create those CTAs and track them. If all I’ve just said is Chinese to you, you’re not going to be able to track anything on social media. Because the problem is not social media. The problem is you have not equipped yourself to track what’s happening on your website once you’ve sent traffic to it. If you have done that, then social media is no different than any other channel. The main difference between social media and email, for example, or advertising, of course, is that the purpose of email and advertising is to drive the biggest purpose. The most obvious purpose is to drive traffic to the website for some kind of specific value or specific event or specific download or specific content or go to my website and do this. This is not going to be the case all the time on social media because if you go on social media and behave like it’s an email and like go to my website and check this out or download this or register my webinar or go listen to my podcast and that’s all you do. you’re going to wear and tear your audience is going to say, OK, that’s it. You know, I I don’t I don’t want to like this. I don’t want to share this. I’m not interested by this from what I see here. And social media will require you to have an approach where people on social get enough from you without having to go to your website. And once in a while, like 25% of the time or 30% of the time, there will be something that leads them to the website. But they will be so much more likely to go on your website and download that webinar or subscribe to that webinar or watch that video or download that white paper or whatever that is. If before, for like a week or two or three, they’ve seen super interesting insights and content and you’ve shared value with them directly on social without asking them to go grab it on your website.
But you have to combine both. I mean, be the entertainer, be the educator on social, be all these things that are of interest to the audience, 75% of the time, 70% of the time, and those 25, 30% say, hey, You’ve loved everything I’ve shared with you for the past two weeks. We are organizing this webinar. Go ahead, go on my website, and make sure you register, because we’re going to share so much more there. And it’s one hour. It’s a full thing. It’s exactly what you need, and so on and so forth. And if you’re a B2B, that’s basically what you’re going to measure on social. You’re not going to measure revenue. We can measure revenue generated from social media. But if you’re selling a $15, 15 euro, 15 pound pop, small thing that people can buy in, you know, in a in a snap. So I want this buy. OK, then you can measure revenue. But if you’re buying a 500 a month or 800 or 1000 a month piece of B2B service or B2B software, there’s no way you’re going to generate a ton of revenue from Snapchat. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to be a lever of influence for the eventual purchase. And that’s how you need to consider your presence on social media. You’re on the educational phase and helping them to make the right decision as to what they need to choose when they are ready to choose for the solution or the product you’re selling. And what you’re going to track and how you’re going to measure business impact in a B2B environment with social media is like leads mostly. It’s going to be, okay, how many MQLs did we drive from our social media activities? And that’s why your analytics framework needs to be really, really nailed. and connect it to your CRM and so on and so forth. So that way you can measure precisely, we got that many webinar subscriptions, we got that many e-book downloads, we got that many blog posts read, that many YouTube video of you or podcast downloads and so on and so forth. And that’s how you’re going to track business impact in a B2B environment, not through revenue. We do have customers in the e-commerce space who are tracking revenue and are doing amazing at allocating revenue to social media activities. But in the B2B space, it’s going to be very rare.
Mike: That absolutely makes sense. And I really love this idea of, you know, spending three quarters of your time being the entertainer rather than 100% of your time being the salesperson. I guess the question now that marketers will be asking is, so I’ve got to stop selling on every post, I’ve got to start entertaining. How do I know if those entertainment posts are any good? Because they’re not going to drive people to the website for registrations. So how do I know they’re going to make people be more likely to click on that webinar post in the future?
Emeric: That’s why you’re not gonna like my answer. And most people are not gonna like my answer. It is really, really hard. And in order to convince yourself that it’s really, really hard, be honest and look at the last time you watched a B2B company entertain you on anything, a video, social media, or a B2B consultant, or a B2B agency, or a B2B marketing guru, or whatever, like someone talking about B2B. When is the last time that person blew your mind? and made you feel like, wow, that’s great. I want to follow them. I want more from them. I will subscribe to whatever they’re selling me next. And when you do that, you’re not going to come up with a lot of people or a lot of companies. You’re just going to come up with a few. And those few will have something in common. What they have created to trigger that into you will be out of this world. And usually you will be unique. You will be intrinsically linked to their experience and their deep knowledge of the ecosystem or the deep knowledge of whatever they blew your mind with. And that means that you have to have built that expertise and poise and experience and examples and use cases. It has to be something that feels like, oh my God, this person knows what she’s talking about. And that’s hard. It is really hard. And that’s why there are so few brands and marketers who are doing amazing on social media, because this is really hard to do. But let’s not lie to ourselves. It’s also really hard to do in email. It’s also really hard to do in paid. I mean, paid is going to give you the mirage of it’s easy. But it’s not easy. What’s easy is to waste your money. What is not easy is to make it work for you. Being good at any kind of marketing channel is always a huge, humongous challenge.
Mike: And I think this leads to a very unfair question, but I’ve got to ask it. So, at Agora Pulse, what are you doing to actually entertain and engage and do those amazing pieces of content that make people want to follow you?
Emeric: So first of all, go check our social profiles to see for yourself. We have an amazing social media manager. It took me a long time to find her. The ones I had before, I was not crazy about. The one we have now, I absolutely love her. She’s amazingly funny. She constantly comes up with those crazy, fun video ideas that she does at the office with other people. Frankly, if you ask me, she’s entertaining. I actually watch her because she entertains me. And she really delivers a good mix of, let’s have some fun. And of course, I’d say, you could do that. We’re talking to social media managers. I think what we do is really okay with social media managers. We can be a clown from time to time. That’s okay. If you’re talking to Fortune 500 CEOs, my content is probably a little bit too funny. But for the audience that we have and the target that we have, she’s doing an amazing job. And in that example, the goal and the mission that we gave her is like, we want you to be really enjoying yourself doing this. If you’re not enjoying yourself, it’s not going to last. people are going to feel it. Do something you really enjoy. It has to be something fun for you. If it’s fun for you, it’s going to be fun for them. And as you think about what you want to do fun-wise with this social media content, try to think about at least 20%, 25%, 30% of the time, how can you connect that to the problem we solve. Because that’s one of the things that I’ve learned in marketing. If you’re not connecting your marketing with the problem you solve enough, then everybody will know who you are, but they will have no idea why they should care. And that’s a problem eventually.
Mike: I love it. I mean, I know, you know, on your LinkedIn post, for example, there’s lots of short, really fun videos, perhaps, you know, a little bit edgy, but certainly very fun. But I think the great thing I see in Agorapost’s kind of feed is the social media marketing manager, the person you’re selling to, they’re actually always the hero, and they’re always the star. And I love the way you really boost up that role. So it’s a great feed. I think your social media manager is doing a great job there. Yeah, she’s lovely. So I guess, you know, do you have any tips? I mean, you’ve talked a little bit about what you’re doing. But if you’re sat there in an enterprise, you know, working on the social media feed for a big b2b company, what can you do that, frankly, isn’t going to get you fired tomorrow, that’s going to make your feed a little bit more entertaining, that’s going to start, you know, getting people more engaged? Is there a process or an approach that people could take?
Emeric: Yeah, We’ve talked a lot about being entertaining and being fun. You don’t have to be entertaining upfront. You can be educational. You can be interesting. Interesting and serious is okay. As long as people are like, Oh, I want more of this. What you want to trigger is I want more of this. So I’m going to like, I’m going to share, I’m going to subscribe. I’m going to be a follower, whatever. And. You can get that trigger into people’s brain in different ways. You don’t have to run a circus all day long. I follow a bunch of people in the business space who are business people and share their business knowledge that they’ve acquired through hard-earned experience and expertise. And they are not funny, but they’re so good at what they do that I’m following them and I’m listening to every of their YouTube videos. And a couple I like very much are Alex and Leila Hormozy, which I was lucky enough to meet when I was doing my coaching in the US three years ago. And their YouTube content is just out of this world. It’s crazy, amazing. And they’re not funny, but they are really, really good. I think you have to think about what can I deliver to an audience that’s unique to me and that nobody else can really deliver as good as I will. And for Evic, our social media manager, it is that because she’s really good at that and she enjoys it. But for someone else, it’s going to be something different. And obviously if you’re in B2B marketing and all you can think about delivering to an audience is how you do gardening, it’s probably not going to be super helpful with your business. Even though that’s a passion of yours, then you probably should do that, you know, for personally, but not as a, as a marketer for the B2B company. So think about what do I know? Or what do I master or what do I enjoy that I can share with the world in a way that’s fun for me or interesting for me so it can last? Because if it’s not, it’s not going to last. You’re going to give up quick because you run a podcast. You know how long it is to get to a place where you have dozens of downloads and subscribers. It can take a year. It can really take a lot of time. So you have to feel like, I enjoy doing this podcast. I’m going to keep doing it. I’ll do it for me. And if you do it for you, then you’ve already won something, that you’re having a good moment. And obviously, if you cannot come up with any of that, then don’t force yourself. There’s no obligation to be present on social media, you don’t have to do something else, which leads me to another thing that I’ve seen a lot in B2B. Sometimes it’s not you, the B2B marketer for social media, on social media for your company. Sometimes it’s your team. It’s the other employees. Sometimes it’s influencers that you work with. Sometimes it’s people you invite to a podcast who can be that for you and so on and so forth. And one of the things that we’ve discovered and kept developing in our software is the advocacy piece. It’s like, as a B2B marketer, how do you use others to be your ambassadors, to represent your brand, to be the ones who will do the thing that will make people think, wow, that’s interesting. I want more of this. That’s not coming from you because you’re not the best person to do that. So thinking outside of the box of, OK, I don’t feel I’m going to be that guy or that girl. think about who else in the company can be that and I’m going to make them work. I’m going to be the orchestra chief and I’m going to make sure that I’m making this like a project manager.
Mike: I think that’s amazing. I think if there was a record for the number of great ideas in one answer, you’ve probably just broken it for the podcast. That was, you know, so good to see there’s so many ways. There’s not a fixed way you have to do this. Emerick, this has been fascinating. I feel I could talk to you, you know, all day on this, but we’re limited on time. And I know you’re busy as well. So we’d like to finish with a couple of quickfire questions. And the first one is, you know, really simple. What’s the best marketing advice that’s ever been given to you?
Emeric: The best marketing advice that I have ever figured out, eventually, after having seen a lot of mistakes around me and from my own team, was something I mentioned earlier, which is don’t do marketing to create noise and to be visible and to be seen and to have views and reach and all that kind of stuff. Do marketing to connect the dots between the pain your customer have and what you do. Always think about how does my marketing help connect the pain that I’ve identified, that I know because I’ve done my discovery, I’ve done my market research, I’ve talked to a bunch of customers, obviously mandatory. I’d connect that pain with the solution. And I remember telling my team a year ago, it’s like a triangle. You need to know the pain really, really well and be an expert on the pain. You need to know the solutions, all of them, not yours, all of them, really, really well and be able to talk about them, write content about them, go on social media and share insights about them, do webinars about them, create e-books about them, podcasts about them, all these things, and then introduce yourself in those solutions. All these solutions are possible. You could use a spreadsheet to manage social, but that’s going to be really painful. It’s going to be free, but really painful. Or you could use a piece of software, and we are a piece of software that can help you do that. Embed yourself in the solution. So identify the pain, help them with the solutions and embed yourself with the solution. If you do that, if you keep that simple triangle framework in mind when you create your marketing strategy, you’re always going to be ahead of the pack, like 90% of marketers are not even doing that. And it felt crazy to me that most people I’ve seen doing marketing were thinking about creating noise. And like I said earlier, people knew who they were, but they didn’t know why they should care. Because those people had not connected the dots between my pain, the solutions to my pain, and actually yours feels really great. Really, probably the best among all these solutions. So that’s the best. I have many, many, many more, but we don’t have time for that.
Mike: That’s brilliant. I love that concept of the triangle as well. The other question we always like to ask is if you’re talking to someone who’s just starting in marketing, just starting their career, what advice would you give them?
Emeric: Invest in yourself, read books, listen to podcasts. I have spent the last 18 months listening to three podcast episodes per week during my gym sessions, 45, 40 minutes, 45 minutes each. There is Marketing Against the Grain from Heffat CMO. There is the Exit Five from Dave Gehart. There are plenty of good, really good marketing podcasts that are either from the host, because the hosts are really good, like marketing Instagram, they’re very obsessed about AI right now. If you want to know how you can leverage AI for marketing, go listen to them and try to take notes for every episode that you’re listening to. And do that for like a full year. I can guarantee you 100%. In one year, you’ll be 2x, 3x as good as you are today in terms of understanding. This is what the best people in the market in that space. This is how they talk about their marketing. This is how they describe how they achieve results, how they build a team. how they prioritize. And this is people underestimate how much we have to invest in ourselves in our own training in this day and age where chat GPT 4.0 is a hundred times better than chat GPT 2.5. That was like six months ago. And if you are not in constant learning mode, you’re going to be out of place in six months. I’m not going to say you’re going to be useless, but you’re on your way to be useless in a year or two. So the assets to learn and to stay on top of your game are here, free, in abundance. They’re very easy to get.
Mike: I think that’s probably great advice to everybody in marketing, not just people starting their career.
Emeric: I’ve learned so much by educating myself. You have to understand, I’m a marketer by trade. When we started the business 25 years ago, my co-founder was a CTO, a product builder, and I was the everything else doer. Finance, accounting, marketing, and eventually sales. The job I kept the longest before I stopped doing any kind of operational job in the company was marketing. And I did marketing for, like I said, InBel, PLG go to market, no touch, no sales, and so on and so forth. So SEO, influencers, like all these things, driving traffic to the website and converting them into free trials. And I haven’t learned how do you do marketing when you sell to the enterprise or you sell to mid-market or you sell to larger businesses. And that is something I had to learn. And I was amazed by how much I’ve learned to be better at that in the past 12 months, because all the stories, all the experts are out there for free waiting for you to listen to them.
Mike: It’s great advice and such a positive piece of advice as well. You know, everyone can learn. It feels great. Emre, this has been amazing. I’m sure people would like to know more and perhaps learn more about Agorapulse. So where would be the best place for them to go next?
Emeric: Well, obviously, if they want to connect with me, they can find me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to accept LinkedIn invitation. If there is a note that says, hey, I heard you on Podcast X, loved it, love to connect because I get dozens of invitation per day and I disregard most of them. I don’t want my LinkedIn to be a zoo of strangers. But if they came from a podcast, at least they know who I am and they know why they want to connect with me and what I care about. So that’s the way to connect with me and ask me questions or if they have any follow-up questions, that’s the place to go. And if they want to learn more about Agorapulse, there’s a free trial. The product starts at $79 a month, so it’s really, really affordable for a user. And they can go to the website and start a trial and see what’s in there for them.
Mike: That’s amazing. I mean, Emeric, I really appreciate it. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Thanks so much for being a guest on Marketing B2B Technology.
Emeric: My pleasure. Thank you.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favorite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
