S 01 | Ep 45 How to Thrive in the Ever-Changing Landscape of Social Media Marketing

With the Chief Marketing Officer of Planable

Miruna Dragomir is the Chief Marketing Officer of Planable, a content collaboration tool for social media teams. Miruna has been leading the growth efforts at Planable for the past six years and in that time the company went from 50 to 6K active customers. Prior to Planable, Miruna was part of Uber's marketing team and Oracle's social media team.

Key Takeaways

(00:01-06:52) The Complexity of Social Media Marketing

(06:52-14:11) Mastering Marketing Strategy

(14:11-21:20) Effective Marketing Strategies and Customer Retention

(21:20-27:57) Strategies for Engaging Valuable Customers

(27:57-34:38) Developing Tools for Different Agency Needs

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Navigating Social
Media Complexity

Miruna Dragomir emphasizes the evolution from simply posting content to managing multifaceted teams and tailoring messaging for each channel. The conversation then shifts to broader marketing strategy, where Miruna shares Planable's journey of learning the critical importance of content distribution alongside creation. She stresses the need for thorough research and planning to ensure content reaches the right audience through effective channels like SEO and PPC. Finally, the discussion addresses customer retention, particularly in managing a diverse user base with varying levels of engagement. Planable employs targeted communication strategies to avoid overwhelming less active users while empowering engaged creators. The challenge of feature adoption is also discussed, with a focus on integrating guidance within the product to facilitate user understanding and prevent churn.

1. The Complexity of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has become increasingly complex with new platforms emerging regularly, such as TikTok and Instagram Reels. The complexity involves managing various types of content and coordinating a team of designers, copywriters and other creatives.

Planable helps marketing teams streamline their social media processes, making it easier to collaborate and maintain consistency across multiple channels. The tool is described metaphorically as a combination of Buffer and Asana, indicating its role in both scheduling and project management. The importance of personalizing content for each platform while maintaining a cohesive strategy across all channels is emphasized. Managing multiple brands and their respective channels can lead to chaos without proper tools and organization.

When Buffer ages started, the biggest issue for social media people was just getting content out there. Because it was something that people had to do besides other tens of jobs. And so it was just about saving the links, saying something very briefly about whatever the content was in the blog they were sharing, and putting it out there. Now it's like tens of people behind the scenes: the design, creative, copywriter, script editor. (Miruna Dragomir)

2. Mastering Marketing Strategy

Alex and Miruna delve into the intricacies of marketing strategies and the evolution of Planable's approach. Miruna shares her experiences and insights from her six years at Planable, focusing on trial-and-error learning, the importance of distribution and how to effectively target different audience segments.

Miruna reflects on her journey at Planable, where she experimented with various channels and tactics to find what works best. Initially, Planable focused heavily on content creation but realized the need for a robust distribution strategy to ensure effectiveness.

Miruna emphasizes that successful marketing requires more than just producing content. It demands proper research and planning for distribution. Planable now focuses on channels that drive results, such as SEO and PPC, and aims to create valuable content rather than simply high volumes of content.

Alex and Miruna discuss the common issue of producing content without a clear distribution plan, leading to insufficient awareness and engagement. Miruna underscores the necessity of having a detailed plan for distributing content across various channels to ensure it reaches the right audience.

We try to stay away from quantity. You can do 10s of webinars, you can do ebooks and reports all day. But a lot of them can fail if you don't put in the work for research. And plan the distribution properly, which was a project of mine. (Miruna Dragomir)

3. Effective Marketing Strategies and Customer Retention

Miruna shares her insights on managing a diverse user base, the importance of tailored communication, and how to maintain customer engagement, especially during challenging economic times.

She explains the different user personas within Planable, such as creators and approvers. Creators are highly engaged with the product, while approvers use it less frequently. To avoid overwhelming less active users with information, communication is targeted primarily at the more engaged creators who can act as ambassadors within their organizations.

Planable adapts its communication strategy to suit the needs of different user personas. For example, approvers receive only essential information, usually within the app, to avoid unnecessary notifications. This approach ensures that users receive relevant information without feeling bombarded by excessive updates.

Alex and Miruna discuss the importance of continually educating users about the value and new features of Planable to prevent churn. Miruna acknowledges the challenge of getting users to adopt new features, especially when these changes require altering established workflows.

Miruna shares an example of introducing annotations and suggestions, similar to Google Docs, which faced slow adoption due to users’ ingrained habits. Planable aims to facilitate feature adoption by integrating guidance within the product, ensuring that users encounter help precisely when they need it.

Product discovery will beat anything anytime: emails, experiences, webinars or any other type of content, as long as it lives in the product and is timed at the moment when the person needs it most. (Miruna Dragomir)

4. Strategies for Engaging Valuable Customers

Miruna explains that many of Planable's customers are agencies that experience significant fluctuations in their client portfolios. This variability can lead to involuntary churn, especially during economic recessions when marketing budgets are cut.

Planable aims to help agencies retain their clients by providing a smooth and effective user experience, making it more likely that clients will stay with the agency unless forced to cut budgets.

Miruna emphasizes the importance of focusing on the early stages of the customer journey to prevent churn. This involves ensuring that new users fully understand and utilize the product from the beginning. Planable has a dedicated onboarding squad that works on improving the onboarding process continuously. The goal is to set up workflows correctly from the start, which helps users see the value of the product and reduces the likelihood of churn.

In-product discovery is crucial for driving feature adoption. Miruna highlights that users are more likely to engage with new features if they are introduced contextually within the app, rather than through external campaigns. Well-timed, in-product prompts can effectively guide users to explore and adopt new functionalities.

Miruna shares an example of introducing annotations and suggestions in Planable, which faced slow adoption due to users' ingrained habits. Despite these features making workflows easier, users were slow to change their established methods. The adoption of new features requires educating users and integrating guidance within the product to ensure they encounter help at the right moment.

In our experience with churn, what I can say is that focusing on churn itself can be demoralizing. Because that's the end point of the journey and that's usually where your hands are tied. (Miruna Dragomir)

5. Developing Tools for Different Agency Needs

Miruna discusses how Planable caters to agencies that experience significant fluctuations in their client portfolios, a situation exacerbated during economic downturns. These fluctuations can lead to involuntary churn, which is when clients leave due to budget cuts rather than dissatisfaction. Planable aims to assist agencies in retaining their clients by ensuring a smooth and effective user experience, making it more likely for clients to stay unless forced to cut budgets due to economic conditions.

Miruna highlights the creation of tools like the social media pricing calculator, designed to help beginner agencies and freelancers determine how much to charge for their services. This tool addresses a common pain point identified through extensive research with agency professionals. By providing resources that meet the specific needs of different types of agencies, Planable enhances its value proposition and helps agencies navigate their pricing strategies more effectively.

The conversation shifts to the distinction between premium and beginner agencies. Miruna notes that Planable's most successful customers are premium agencies focused on social media. These agencies value the detailed, collaborative features of Planable that allow for meticulous content review and approval processes. Planable's visual and collaboration-centric design is particularly appealing to agencies that prioritize high-quality, on-brand content.

Check the episode's Transcript (AI-generated) HERE.