What's your professional background and how did you get into startups?
I never wanted to have my own business. Why?
Stress, sleepless nights, working more than 80 hours per week, being a psychologist, accountant, business analyst and god knows who else ... Well, everyone's dreaming about it, right? 😀
I always wanted more peace and a stable salary 🙂
But I am a very hard-working person. I started working when I studied in high school. At first it was some odd jobs, but quite stable and flexible temporarily.
For over 13 years I worked for a large advertising agencies for which I was building brands, communication and sales strategies for their customers. But then came the moment when I stopped seeing the future for me.
In the meantime, I met Karol Pokojowczyk (CEO & Founder of Colibri.IO), which I actively supported from the very beginning of Colibri.
After 2 years cooperation I decided to join to Colibri Team permanently.
And now I feel that all my past experience is most useful, when we build reach and brand awareness for Colibri and all the new products in the group.
What does Inbound Marketing and Growth Hacking mean to you?
It means hard work 🙂 Measuring, testing hypotheses, analyzing errors. Search, continuous search for new ways to reach potential customers where they already are. Growth comes from winning a thousand tiny battles.
But it is also the pleasure of building relationships with incredibly interesting people from all over the world.
The entire marketing and sales at Colibri is based on inbound marketing and Growth Hacking.
And this is exploration, active listening and solving the problems of our potential customers.
When should a startup start investing in inbound marketing?
From the very beginning. From the very first line of code.
Inbound is the way, which does not require large budgets. This is the way in which you build your brand image very closely with customers, or users of your product.
This is the way in which you/brand listen to what say your potential customers.
You should create your startup with a ton of tools which helps you outrank your competitors.
My Inbound Marketing Toolkit:
-Buffer - for repost evergreen content
-Tweetdeck - to engage potential customers on Twitter
-Colibri - for overview of SEO, Content Marketing and to understand where customer come from
-Intercom - to communicate with customers
-River - to engage potential customers on Instagram
What are some of the challenges that a founder might face when deploying a growth hacking strategy and what tips would you give them?
The bigger challenge is to step into your customer's shoes. Every Founder should start with creating Buyer Personas because it can help you build better products. When your product is for everyone, you have a BIG problem!
What is Colibri.IO and how can companies leverage it?
Colibri is Inbound Marketing & Growth Hacking Tool which help you monitor your SEO and Content Marketing to understand competitive landscape and win new customers.
Colibri shows you where and what your prospects and existing clients are talking about on Twitter, blogs and a bunch of other social networks. This allows you to inject yourself in these discussions with the aim of building relationships, offering value and increasing awareness of your startup and presence. This works even better when you can publicly solve problems through the use of your product or service, garnering powerful social proof. It also integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics to provide you with insight into how your campaigns perform and identify the best conversion funnels.
What is the startup community like in Malaysia and what are some of your favorite startups in the region?
For me it's a smaller version of Silicon Valley 🙂 In Kuala Lumpur and Penang you can find a lot great startups who work very hard on their success.
Also, the whole ecosystem is growing and there are numerous events for young entrepreneurs. Many large companies are choosing to invest in local startups.
This year, for the first time will be held RISE Web Summit's in Asia (https://riseconf.com/). My favourite startups from Malaysia are myTeksi (grabtaxi.com/myteksi) and Piktochart (piktochart.com) really useful apps!
Anything else that you would like to share about Colibri.IO, yourself, or startups?
There's a lot going on in Colibri IO right now. Did you have a chance to look at the new tools we're cooking up?:
- LEADgenio - automated social media lead generation from Twitter.
- hiKEYWORDS - keyword research for content marketers.
- River - Instagram search, brand building and engagement web app.
- Socversations - tool that helps discovering and participating in conversations about your products, competitors or topics around the web. With built-in AI and reply templates.
Feel free to tweet me (https://twitter.com/