BR INTERVIEW. Sweta Patel: “The future of B2B communication will be focused on retention and referral”

Sweta Patel is a startup marketing advisor and founder of Silicon Valley Startup Marketing. She has consulted for more than 200 early-stage startups and high-growth companies. From failures to successes to burnouts, she has seen it all. She loves creativity and anything that involves people and ideas. She has a passion for marketing and advertising and for turning strangers into interested customers. About making passive people totally engaged through interaction. BR met Sweta at Digitalium 2018 and got an exclusive interview for our readers.

By Romanita Oprea

In a male-dominated industry and a place like Silicon Valley, how hard was it to achieve success and what challenges did you overcome?

It’s still a men’s world, so being able to be a woman with ambition, who has goals, it seems like I have to work way harder. There have been situations where the opposite sex would turn in a half-done pitch and they would get funded, while I had all the data and everything needed and still wouldn’t get funded. You definitely have to work harder, but it made me much stronger as a person and a lot tougher. Understanding that is not going to be easy and the fact that you have to put in more hard work that you already see out there, is something one must know. You have to be prepared for that. And be prepared to build your case for everything, because this is what is going to help you get other people’s respect.

Many startups fail. What would you say to someone to make them not be afraid of failing?

When I started I didn’t do too well either, you go through this period when you don’t want to believe that it failed, but if you take it as an experience and you think about how you can improve on what you did wrong, you are going to build something that is better than what you did anyways.

If you are in the mindset of “I’ve failed, I am done”, you are never going to be able to build something better. So, the next phase of your life is doing something better than what you did before.

What about somebody launching a start-up right now, in 2018? What are the main must dos?

I think that one must-do is trying to be unique. We have so much technology nowadays that we don’t have to pay USD 10,000 a month for an office space, we don’t have to pay a lot of money to have a team, we live in an economy where we could get freelancers to get things done. So get scrappy, because this is what is going to help you get the respect you need from investors!

You said that you were focused on “people centricity”. Can you tell us more about that idea and what it means for you?

It’s about the fact that most CEOs have a vision. But this vision is still not able to detect things that are coming up in the start-up before they even start them or before they even go through the process, so my idea would be like: what if I handed you out a pair of these glasses, whether you need them or not, and you can see things happen before they even happen in your start-up, so you can prevent failure, you can prevent your team members not getting along, you can understand the perception of your team efforts with the help of these glasses.

People centricity is about understanding your team members’ perception, being able to serve them better so they can better perform for your company. A lot of CEOs are only focusing on details like hiring these people, telling them the company’s goals and mission, but the team members might wonder what about them, as they have personal goals as well, personal things they want to achieve. Through <> they get to achieve them.

You also said that you have a passion for turning the uninspired into ambitious. How do you do that?

It starts with understanding and connecting with them, making a simple connection with them, wherever they are in their journey and making them aware of something they are not already aware of. Things like asking them: “The place that you are itching your hand every month may mean you have diabetes. Have you recently got checked?” It doesn’t have to be to that extent, but building a connection with that person and really understanding them and helping them out and explaining what you understand about them is something that I haven’t seen before, but it inspires people. It makes them see that you care, because you took all that time to understand them. So that is when they want to listen to you, because they know you have a solution that is going to help them, because you understand them, that they have an issue.

And how long does the whole process take for you?

It depends on the markets and how fast they are, how open they are (because in some markets people are very closed off, they don’t want you approaching them and don’t want to hear from you).

So, there is also a cultural difference and it depends on that as well?

Yes.

What do you think are the biggest mistakes companies make in B2B digital communication and what advice would you give them?

I think that the biggest mistakes they are making are they are not utilizing real-life information from their consumers, they are not focused on retention, they are focused on acquiring new customers all the time and this is the way to fail your start-up, because if you have a customer you have to treat them as a King or a Queen, all the time. If you stop they will stop being loyal because they will not get the same treatment they were getting before. So the focus should always be to retain, not to acquire.

What about the trends in B2B communication in the next year?

I am seeing trends in the area of internal communications between members. I see a lot of companies having social networks, with many channels. They are using them, but if you look at the comments and the engagement, they are zero or almost zero. A bunch of fake people or not their real audience. To really focus and own in on their customers, companies must turn this thing of “let’s get a bunch of likes or followers” into moving away from that situation. That is how I see the communication in the future: focused on retention and referral.

Therefore, research is more and more important, and so is keeping in touch with how the consumers are changing.

Exactly.

Do you prefer multi-channel or rather specialized communication and why?

Even with attribution, I believe in even spread, measuring all the channels that are effective. I believe in multi-channel, because it will allow you to see what is effective and how effective it is, on every channel, versus if you are focusing on just one specialized channel. I am sure you can dominate that channel, but you may be missing an opportunity that the other channels have for you. So, I suggest you start with multi-channel, but then you scale down to the dominant channel.

Takeaway tips from Sweta:

Invest in technical infrastructure, tracking and marketing automation;
Free tools will cost you more in the long run;
Experiment with chatbots – it may make the difference between 6 leads a week to 400 leads a week;
Analyse your campaigns once every three months;
The best way to improve on your products or services? Use them!

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