Interview with Head of International Partnerships, SEMrush – Fernando Angulo

“If corrections are needed, we make them. And then move on. ”

1) Tell us about your role at SEMRush and how you got here?`
Head of International Partnerships and Global Speaker
I have been with SEMrush since the beginning of company’s marketing efforts building all marketing teams from the idea to the creation of actual teams and I helped built its all-star marketing team. Right now I’m one of the most recognised faces of the brand, creating new partnerships with brands and speaking at 50+ top conferences worldwide each year. My specialization is in B2B search marketing, e-commerce, influence marketing and I have trained marketing teams of companies such as Expedia, T-mobile, Prestashop and Bing.

2)  What’s the most fascinating aspect of working with SEMRush .We would love to see some pictures/combinative video of your smart and pep work culture
A great number of opportunities to put your ideas into practice

3)  How is the adtech and martech industry different from when you first started?
Approximately 10 years ago, I worked as a travel agent for an American company that took the whole process of sales of tours with digitized systems. Most travel agencies at that time, took a lot to create a roadmap to make the entire sales process faster, and travel agents were responsible for finding customers, promoting tours, making offers to customers ,creating the programs, negotiating prices with local services and many other tasks that made it very difficult to close a sale without working 12 to 14 hours a day. Without the help of a relationship management system, agencies that continue to work this way are lost. We, however, dedicated ourselves to selling tours exclusively, and with the help of detailed online information about clients, we could create personalized offers for each visitor to our website. The implementation of technology, automation and customization in classic business models, were essential to bring a new company of about 10 people to be leaders in an established industry. That was my start and it was 100% Martech.

4)    Given the changing dynamics of advertising research and marketing specializations, where do you see SEMRush coexisting and accelerating with this budding ecosystem?
SEMrush has walked through a long way – we started as a tool for SEO competitive research, and after e 10 years of expertise we turned into an online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform that enables marketers/businesses to be front-runners in their industries.. We base our insights on petabytes of data from all over the Internet, apply the most modern and effective, machine learning and Big Data algorithms and come up with probably most comprehensive set of data on your rivals’ digital marketing activities, as well as the online presence and strength of your potential partners before signing the contract.

5)  What are some flourishing Digital and content marketing apps which has caught your attention lately and why?
SEMrush Writing Assistant –  a smart extension for the Google Docs service, using recommendations straight from our SEO Content Template (SCT) to help you ensure your text is written in SEO-friendly style. Our recommendations and analysis are based on your Google top 10 rivals for a given keyword.
SEMrush CPC Map -The tool that allows you to compare PPC costs and search volume of keywords on a local level in multiple industries.
Google Keep –  an excellent omnichannel tool to catch the ideas or prepare for your day and work seamlessly
GetPocket – allows me to keep my market knowledge up-to-date and read a lot

6)  How do you build an actionable customer interaction and communication model? Can you give us an insight through a fun video?
Move fast.
In order to have a deep understanding of customer journey, we analyze customer’s behavior through a great number of analytical instruments, such as mailchimp reports, Google Analytics, CRM, search requests trends and many others. This allows us to come up with a hypothesis in regards to how to promote a product which we later on check through the promotion per se. If corrections are needed, we make them. And then move on.

7)  What tools would recommend to CEOs and CMOs as a Sales Hack in 2018?
Beyond any doubt, competitive intelligence and market intelligence tools + marketing analytics to scoop out and gather valued data.
….
Competitive Intelligence 2.0 is tailored to needs of business development managers, sales teams and affiliate managers, who will be able to evaluate new markets’ feasibility when developing go-to-market plans and quickly evaluate the potential of new partners and prospects (as well as better convert them into profitable deals)

8)  How do you think your approach as a market intelligence catalyst different in helping a marketing specialist’s outreach to the client?
We stick to a more comprehensive approach  when reaching out to our customers while most marketers are used to picking just few channels for product promotion.

9)  Which startups in the martech and adtech industries are you keenly following?
Openview (it is a VC which helps startups). I’m very fond of their product-led growth idea.

Also, Marketo. They’ve got a really great product

10) As a market research evangelist how do you measure the performance and growing traction of usage of a particular product among your marketing specialists?
Tableau, Google Analytics
All the decisions we make are data-driven hence we do put great emphasis on measuring the performance, indeed. We usually track it through Google Analytics and Tableau, those are very effective instruments for that.

11) What do you think is the main reason behind SEMRush becoming such a major brand name in such a short duration even though it basically started trailblazing to ease out its in floor complexities?
Flexible and energetic agile approach and faith in people working in the company

12) What book are you currently reading?
●   Product Led Growth Playbook
●   Mastering Product Experience (in SaaS) With Product-led Strategy
By Nick Bonfiglio, Mickey Alon, and with Myk Pono
●   Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want
By Alexander Osterwalder

13) One piece of advice you always follow irrespective of circumstances
“It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.”
― Roy T. Bennett

14) What according to you is the Mantra for a sound mind especially in the marketer’s world of chaos?
“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”