Inbound underperforming? Go nearbound
A conversation with Eric Sangerma, Head of Growth at Simplesat. TL;DR: partnerships are the unlock you're looking for + how to create better messaging with & through & partners.
Read time: 4 minutes
The following is a conversation with Eric Sangerma, a Thailand-based Marketing leader. Eric’s career started in China as an exchange student in 1999, leading to a career that spanned e-commerce, affiliate marketing & founding a marketing agency in Shanghai. He now lives in Thailand working as the Head of Growth at Simplesat.
What got you interested in nearbound?
I joined Simplesat as the Head of Marketing and quickly noticed our customer base was mainly from referrals and word-of-mouth.
From day one there was a strong focus on ecosystem integrations.
Immediately saw huge potential here in going all in on nearbound & integrating partnerships into every aspect of our growth strategy.
How do you integrate this into a cohesive strategy?
Our endgame is customer needs. Period.
Companies sit there and wonder why their content doesn’t hit. Yet they have writers creating content about niche professions that they have no experience with. Why not rely on partners who know more about it?
Co-creation & co-distribution makes our content reflective of the customer's voice and is reinforced by our partners’ expertise.
It’s been THE unlock for us.
How do you engage partners in co-creating content?
It’s really easy when there’s an existing relationship. Like through integrations or past collaborations.
We did a webinar with ScalePad for MSPs. And we were like “this is great content, let’s turn it into an eBook. And we’ll do all the work.” Our partners only needed to share it in their networks (work they’re excited to do).
It was high-quality (because of partners), easy to distribute (because of partners) & reached the right MSP communities (because of partners).
We have so much unused capacity in our partnerships & networks.
Does this approach lower CAC?
100%.
This attracts leads from our partners’ networks who might not yet know about Simplesat but trust our partners.
We leverage every last ounce of this trust in ways partners love. Building all that trust ourselves through crowded paid channels would be enormously expensive.
Co-marketing, joint sales, an ecosystem expansion into Microsoft's marketplace, these are all things that lower CAC & make the company’s growth sustainable.
How do you stay aligned with sales, product & customer success?
We come prepared, having analyzed call transcripts and customer interactions. We’re not dependent on sales for basic insights.
Since we live in-market & engage partners all the time, we bring so much data and information to the table that it helps all departments. Everything we do aides like 10+ people at once.
Our GTM operating model is just so integrated. And it’s because we approach it as a dialogue, not monologue.
So don’t just write copy out of your ass?
It's about market immersion.
Staying connected to customers & partners earns you a spot at the decision-making table.
Plus not all data is actionable, and we have too much data these days. You gotta figure out which data to prioritize.
What’s your biggest win to date?
Travel, flexibility & maximizing time with my family. Work has never overpowered my life.
Time is more valuable than money.
Final thoughts for our readers?
Build your life around your passions, not just your career. And remember, partnerships are human-to-human.
If you want to future-proof your career, start thinking about the “Who” before the “How”.