How a Full-Service Agency Can Benefit Your Business with Kim Bratanata

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Kim Bratanata, Director for the US at Mach Media, a full-service marketing and communications agency with offices in Europe and the United States. 

Kim has become a world citizen, she has a BA and MA in Chinese Studies, as well as an MA in European Politics. She spends a lot of time traveling and working with people from different countries. She is Belgian-American living in Orlando, Florida.

In her current role, she helps customers from Europe and the United States, build and develop marketing communication strategies to help brands increase their profiles across digital media. With her unique background, she helps their clients to create comprehensive solutions for specifics audiences. 
 
We discuss the benefits of outsourcing to an agency and what factors to consider when taking a project to an external vendor.  She discusses the importance of culture in communications, helps us understand the importance of analyzing data, and how to create solutions that fit a client's unique situation. 

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meet@machmedia.com

Listener Offer: Get access to resources and tips to recover from Covid-19 for FREE at https://machmediagroup.com/covid19recovery/

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Kim Bratanata and Mach Media can found online at machmediagroup.com, on Twitter @MachMedia, and LinkedIn @MachMedia

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit: https://fiveechelon.com/the-virtual-cmo-podcast/

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com

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Transcript

Eric Dickmann: 0:08

Welcome to season two of The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group. Our goal is to share strategies, tools, and tactics with fellow marketing professionals that you can use to impact the trajectory of your company's marketing programs. We have candid conversations about what works, and what doesn't, with marketing tactics, customer experience, design and automation tools. Our goal is to provide value each week with a roster of thoughtful and informative guests engaged in a lively conversation. So with that, let's introduce this week's guest and dive into another conversation with The Virtual CMO. This week, I'm excited to welcome Kim Brantanada to the show. Kim is the Director for the US at Mach Media of full service marketing and communications agency with offices in Europe and in the U S Mach Media works closely with marketing and executive teams of global companies from branding and change management guidance to on and offline marketing. Kim helps clients by developing marketing, communication strategies, digital media, roadmaps, and value-add creative content that helps brands boost their profiles as thought leaders. I'm excited to have Kim. She's a personal friend. She lives here in Orlando, Florida and I've wanted to have her on the show for a long time. So it's with great pleasure that I welcome Kim to the podcast today. Kim welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Kim Bratanata: 1:46

Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here.

Eric Dickmann: 1:49

I was hoping that we could start out today's discussion by just giving our audience a little bit of information on your background. You know, one of the things that I thought was so interesting is that you've got your undergraduate and your graduate degree in Chinese studies. Where were you planning to go with Chinese studies background?

Kim Bratanata: 2:09

Well, I get that question a lot, obviously. And, there's actually a very logical progression of where I started my studies and where I ended up with my career. I wanted to study something related to culture and languages and politics and Chinese studies gave me the opportunity to combine all of that. I studied in Taiwan for a year, which was great. Cause I got to really. you know, hone those language skills much better than you can from then when you're studying abroad. And, my intention was always to focus on public affairs, and really go into that direction. After I did my master in chinese studies. I got another master in economics. Sorry. I got another master in European politics. And, that's how I ended up working for an agency in Brussels, Belgium. that was really focused on public affairs and public relations. And from there was a small step to marketing communication. And, now I'm in a completely, in a field that sounds like it's completely unrelated to where I started, but yeah, that was very logical steps.

Eric Dickmann: 3:25

And you've always had this very close tie to Belgium, right?

Kim Bratanata: 3:29

I was born in Belgium. I, I grew up in Belgium. I've only been in the United States four or five years. so yes, that my ties with Belgium are extremely close. Machmedia is a Belgian company. So I'm very fortunate to work for a company where. those ties are very present every day. work very closely with a team in Belgium and once a year, except now for COVID, I do try to go home and see my friends and family.

Eric Dickmann: 3:59

Is there a big difference culturally between Belgium and here.

Kim Bratanata: 4:05

Absolutely. I think there's quite a difference culturally, between Europe in general and the United States. I think that often gets underestimated because you know, they're Western countries and a lot of times people think they're very similar. but there's definitely. You know, politically a lot of differences. and you know, when you're in a marketing communication fields, there's a lot of differences That is something that we often tell our clients who are global and who worked both in the United States and in European countries you can't just translate. a piece of text or, even, you know, a piece of marketing material, you have to culturally translate those items as well. Something that. You know, that really works in the United States may not work in France and vice versa. So. Yeah, there's there's subtleties sometimes, but they can be very important.

Eric Dickmann: 5:03

Culture is so much more than just language. It's really ways of doing business and, customs. There's just a lot more to it, isn't there?

Kim Bratanata: 5:12

Absolutely. my previous job, we were making these flyers for events, for both European and US audiences. And Europeans were always so astounded at the kind of language that was being used for the American public which had a lot of, we're very excited to introduce and everything was a very exciting. And European posting that's a little odd, especially for, you know, trade events. And I even had a colleague joke with me once he said, I don't understand why they're so excited over a trade event, I'm excited when my wife takes her clothes off. And so I think that just really shows, you know, this kind of cultural difference that you can't really translate just by plugging things into Google translate. Some other cultural differences that are very prominent, for example, in the United States, a lot of marketing copy uses sports references from baseball, from American football and those things just don't translate to European audience. cause you know, a lot of countries in Europe, they're big sport is soccer. And if you're starting to use baseball references, people will not really get what you're talking about. Even if they do speak English.

Eric Dickmann: 6:31

Knocking it out of the park doesn't have the same meaning for somebody in Europe.

Kim Bratanata: 6:36

Absolutely not. And then vice versa. There's some funny English phrases that sometimes pop up. And, you know, in Brussels is a very international community. You have NATO headquarters, you have European commission. You have a lot of big companies multinationals that have their global headquarters, European headquarters in Brussels. And so you start having this kind of. Ex-pats English. And so there's some phrases that are used all the time. Like you're invited to a walking dinner. And an American would not know what a walking dinner is. And essentially it's a buffet. But. You would never see that on a invitation for an event in Europe.

Eric Dickmann: 7:24

I think for businesses who are looking at taking their products global, there's a lot more to it. Let's say you have a software product. It's more than just translating that product from English to German. As you said, there's this cultural difference that you need to be aware and how you're going to have that product fit in with the new culture.

Kim Bratanata: 7:46

Absolutely. There's also a very big difference in how people perceive and deal with risk. I think in Europe, people are a lot more risk averse and people want to take a lot more time to process things, to analyze, et cetera. So when you're creating material, especially in a B2B environment, You can put a lot more data on detail and kind of things that people can model over and consider. Whereas I think Americans are, are, you know, more. They're more willing to take risk. They're very entrepreneurial. And not saying you don't have entrepreneurs in Europe, obviously, but there's, there is a difference in how comfortable people are with. You know, taking decisions quickly versus, you know, looking at all the facts and all the data. That's the, That's available to them. So that is something else to keep in mind. you know, when you're creating marketing assets for American versus European audience. The, the level of detail, the approach, the type, the tone of voice, the language used, all of that comes into play, even if both copies are in English, they're just not going to be able to be the same.

Eric Dickmann: 9:06

One of the questions that I had for you is many businesses have never worked with an agency before. So I think it would be helpful to talk a little bit about the kinds of services that are offered by a marketing agency and why that relationship is really a good fit, especially for certain kinds of businesses.

Kim Bratanata: 9:26

Yeah, absolutely. So there's lots of different types of agencies. and Mach Media is a full service agency, which means that really do strategy and execution. and we like to see projects through from start to finish, meaning we start working with you on, developing your brand, your brand framework. We can do communications audit to see where you're at. And then really help you build your messages. Define your target audiences. Come up with an editorial plan. A strategy for which marketing and communication tactics you're going to be using, and then do the execution of all of that. Certain agencies would specialize, for example, in public relations. We do not, but if you need public relations and you would look for such an agency, because they would have the relationships with the press, they would have the tools. and so different agencies can offer different things. The benefit of working with an agency for any business is that agencies have the manpower, the skills, the experience, the knowledge, that a lot of times, in-house marketing teams don't have, or simply don't have the time for. So if you're looking to expand, if you're looking to professionalize how you do marketing and communication, it's a great idea to reach out to agencies to help you with your marketing strategy, to help with your marketing execution, because to do everything in-house can be quite demanding in terms of resourcing.

Eric Dickmann: 11:11

Do you have an ideal customer for an agency? Is there a certain size or a certain spend that makes the economics of that agency relationship make sense?

Kim Bratanata: 11:24

That all depends on who you are as a business. There are agencies of all sizes. There are agencies with you know, a lot of different skills, lots of different specialties. Agencies also often specialize in certain sectors. There's also a big difference between agencies that do B2B versus B2C. Those agencies really work at different speeds and an agency that always does B 2 B. Might have trouble doing B2C because the speed's so different. There's agencies that specialize in nonprofits. So you have to find as a business to agency that really matches. first of all, the sector that you're in and that can offer the services you're looking for.

Eric Dickmann: 12:07

You mentioned earlier that you like to be part of the marketing strategy design. Are there some common problems that you see clients coming to you with? Or do you like to really just start from the ground up and build a marketing plan for a client regardless of their current situation?

Kim Bratanata: 12:28

We have clients who come to us with already, you know, a brand framework in place who already have a great idea of who their audience is. and what they want to do. Some clients don't have that foundation in place yet. So usually the first thing we do, you know, when we start with a kickoff meeting and we really do. Deep dive into what is does business already have? What are their business goals? And how would the marketing communications support those business goals? One thing that we sometimes see is that people would come to us and say, I need. You know, something very specific, like a video or a brochure. And then we always like to ask more questions on what are their business goals so that we can help them assess if they're putting their money in the right place. Because maybe they need a video, but maybe they don't. Maybe what they need is some is a social media strategy and it would be a shame if people would invest in something that is not going to reach their ultimate goal. So that's where we really see. That an agencies. A key function is to help guide the business to also invest in the right thing, an agency that just says yes to everything. Is not going to be a right. A good partner for you. You want someone who helps you decide and who helps, who also pushes back when you ask for certain things? You don't want an agency to kiss accepts every request that you ask for, because then they're probably not advising you in the best way possible.

Eric Dickmann: 14:09

The video was a good example because a lot of businesses do get into a mindset where they say, Oh, I need to run some Facebook ads or, Oh, I need a video on my website or, Oh, I need this particular promotion without really taking that step back, looking at their whole strategy, understanding what their goals are and then what is the most effective marketing tactic to reach those goals?

Kim Bratanata: 14:32

There are two big things that need to be separated. One is brand awareness and the other is lead generation and the strategies and tactics for both are very, very different. So. If we're asked for a specific deliverable, we're going to ask the question,"what is your business goal and what is your communication goal?" Is it brand awareness or is it lead generation? And then depending on the answer, we would guide you in the right direction.

Eric Dickmann: 15:01

Do you think companies really understand the time it takes to significantly increase their brand awareness in the market?

Kim Bratanata: 15:10

No. we do see that. You know, sometimes we start small, we start with, you know, kind of limited projects with a clients and we always do our best to give them advice. Even if we're not the ones executing, we would, you know, just. Try to give them ideas and give them suggestions for things that they can do. And sometimes clients will start. W we'll try to do things on their own first and then quickly see how time consuming, all of this stuff can be because it's, you know, you're developing the messages you're developing, you're writing the copy. You're designing, you're doing digital implementation. And then I would hope that you're also cracking and looking at the analytics. And then, you know, pulling reports so that you can learn from which. which marketing efforts are working for you and which are not.

Eric Dickmann: 16:08

Marketing is the engine that drives demand, but too often it takes a back seat to other priorities. Awareness, fails to materialize demand drops in sales falter. Don't wait until it's too late to build your brand awareness and demand generation programs. If your company is struggling with their marketing strategy, we want to help let's schedule a call to talk about your unique situation and what options might be available to get your marketing program back on track. To learn more text C M O two(407) 374-3670 that's C M ho two four zero seven. Three seven four three six seven zero. And we'll reply with further details. We hope to hear from you soon. Many businesses out there have a model where they have some in house resources and they have a lot of other work that is farmed out to freelancers or other small companies to do an individual piece of their marketing strategy. What it really sounds like you're saying is that the benefit of working with somebody like Mach Media is that you take a more holistic approach rather than having all of these different pieces and parts being managed separately. You take all that under management and create a more comprehensive strategy. Is that of a good way to look at it?

Kim Bratanata: 17:28

Definitely. We look at, Well, when you work with an agency, You have an account lead. And you haven't a whole account team and we. You know, we find out what are the client's business goals from there, we developed a strategy. We develop a production plan and an editorial plan. And. As we're going, you know, a month, a month. We track, we measure, we give them reports and every month we can look at those reports and based on the results we can say, let's invest more money here. For example, let's put more money in to thought leadership versus, social media. let's put more money into, let's shift money from Google ads, responsive ads too maybe just straightforward display ads and by doing so we're, we're keeping an eye on the full picture of everything the client's doing in terms of marketing. For a lot of our clients, we also connect to marketing to the sales so that we can see the full picture of how marketing efforts are contributing to sales efforts and sales results. I think that is really important to do because you want to know how is, for example, the effort and the time, the money that I'm spending on a LinkedIn campaign. How is that helping me ultimately sell my product? And if you have different people that are not connected, that do not communicate with each other, that may not even know each other exist work on different pieces, then you yourself need to do the work of connecting the dots and coming up with a plan. Maybe a way to think about it is. Let's say you're remodeling your home. You can work with a contractor who has a view on who's laying the floors and doing the painting and, laying the tile in the bathroom. Versus, you know, if you have to do it all yourself, You know, maybe that those items are not performed in the correct order. maybe there are in each other's way. Maybe sometimes they might overlap. So you want to have that person that has a holistic view on what the ultimate goal of your project is. And drive all the different pieces and have really that solid project management plan in place.

Eric Dickmann: 19:58

Kim, why is having a communications plan so important as part of your overall strategy?

Kim Bratanata: 20:05

It's important because you want to know that you are communicating the right messages to the people that you want to be selling to. and you want to be able to reach those people in the places where it's going to have the most impact. And if you just kind of start doing random things, You know, You may be wasting that effort. So with a communication plan, you're going to be looking at. Again, what are the business goals? How does the communication, how did communication goals aligned with those business goals? Who am I targeting? Where are those people, present? Are they mostly on LinkedIn? Are they mostly on Instagram? Is this an audience that really still reads the newspaper? It all depends on what your product and your service is about. And by getting that communication plan in place. You can fine tune those elements. You can find in your key messages with proof points, create stories. We do a lot of storytelling, because you don't just want to push your product on the people. You want to give it a story so that people can relate to what you're. Doing, you know, Almost. I don't an emotional level. And by creating a story. Around your product, you can be credible as well as convincing. So those are all things that we would lay out in our communication plan. before we get started on the actual execution.

Eric Dickmann: 21:37

A lot of what you just outlined there is an external communication plan. Is there an internal communication plan as well?

Kim Bratanata: 21:47

Actually, we do a lot of internal communication for multinational companies where they have, employees in. Lots of different countries that speak lots of different languages. you have people that have desktops, you have people who are in the field and. The communication plan is not that different. Yeah. You know, ultimately you still have, need to have all of those same touch points. You want to retain your staff. You want to build community. You want people to be engaged with what's happening in your company, and you want to turn those employees into brand ambassadors for your company. if there's big changes taking place. You need to do change management so that everyone understands what's happening, why it's happening. And so that they buy into the changes that are going on and going to be affecting their jobs. So in the end, it's a different message maybe, but the structure of a comms plan should, you know, it's pretty similar.

Eric Dickmann: 22:52

Keeping all the stakeholders on the same page is so important and you can see you regularly work companies do not do that. And people just are not on the same page in terms of the messaging. You know, another thing that you mentioned earlier in the conversation was just around the importance of data so that you can set your goals, your objectives, and you have something to measure. Do you think that most businesses, especially when it comes to marketing, have the data that they need so they can actively track the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Kim Bratanata: 23:26

I think a lot of businesses may have the data, but may not know how to access it or may not know how to interpret it. So for example, if you have a website you really should have Google analytics set up correctly and you should have it set up with goals. And we see that a lot of times people may have opened a Google analytics account. But may not have set it up correctly to track goals, from their website and by goals. I mean, every time someone fills in a form or downloads a PDF. Or clicks on a mail to link. That should be tracked. Another thing that I see is that there's all this data, but they're not doing anything with it. They're not actually on a regular basis. Pulling a comprehensive report. They're not analyzing what those numbers mean. And so they're really missing out on, you know, looking at trends, looking at. The successes and the misses. so. It's it's so important to be on top of your data. Machmedia has a product called marketing health check. And what we do is we use Google data studio. to connect Google analytics, and other, sources that clients want. And we create these monthly dashboards so that people can see. what is, how, what is the traffic like to my website? How am I doing on conversions? how, what is my blog doing? Is my blog contributing to conversions? It may,if what we're seeing is that a lot of times good thought leadership well-written blog posts that add value to a reader will add to assist us conversions. Same for social media. Don't just look at how many followers you have, or, you know, if you got a certain number of likes on the platform, also look at the other side. How is the social media traffic coming to your website and what is it doing on your website? We also track links that are sent out by sales teams with UTM codes. We track our email marketing, to see which campaigns were successful. You can do AB testing to see if a nicely designed email night be more successful or less successful than a plain text email sent out by an individual sales person. So there's a lot of benefit to tracking your data and, We just try to make it more accessible and more easy to understand for the marketing teams and the C suite people that are involved in the decision making.

Eric Dickmann: 26:05

I think what you're really outlining here is just how complex marketing has become. There was a time when, if you had a website, if you were running some ads, great, but it's so much more than that now. Everything you do there's a way to do it. There's a way to track it. There's a way to optimize it. And it's a full time job, just keeping track of all of these things. And when you start to spread your message across multiple channels, you start to have different content, marketing strategies, et cetera. It's a lot. And I see this as a real benefit of having a team of people that are working on your behalf because for an internal team, unless it's of a significant size, all of this stuff becomes pretty heavy to manage over time.

Kim Bratanata: 26:50

Absolutely. And, You know, it's, it's painting so much. For example on SEO, which is search engine optimization. The rules change on that all the time. Google will change. Its algorithms will change the way that they index websites. So you have to stay on top of this. you know, part of our role as an agency is to stay on top of all these trends. All these changes stay on top of the knowledge of different tools and software that's out there. and we often have. Close relationships with people on, You know these provider side. So if, you know, for example, we have, consultants. At Google that can, you know, tell us more about how to make the most out of Google ads, for example. And these are contexts that maybe as an internal team, you wouldn't immediately be able to get but then also there's just so much work and so much, as you said so much complexity, it can really. Consume an internal team. That maybe should be focusing more on. You know, aligning with their product managers and aligning with our sales teams. and then they started getting bogged down into technicalities of how to set up Google analytics or how to design a good landing page.

Eric Dickmann: 28:14

You know, I think this has been a very fascinating conversation, especially for people who aren't as familiar with the work that agencies do. But before we wrap up for today, I did want to get your thoughts on the economic situation. We're recording this at the end of June in 2020, economies are reopening, businesses are starting to really get their marketing back on track. Do you have any specific recommendations or advice or things that you're seeing in the marketplace as businesses are starting to reopen?

Kim Bratanata: 28:46

Things have been very difficult for a lot of companies. But it's also an opportunity for companies to really look at what they're doing and how they're doing it. And use this time to better their internal processes, to really you don't see how can we came to the status quo, cause maybe the status quo wasn't working, and you know, just I would say grab this time. to really look at how you're doing things. And if. You've been successful you know, for those who would be interested on our website, which is MachMediaGroup.com we have a link for a specific COVID 19 page where people can get some free resources, some tips on how to guide their brand through copy waters rethinking their communication strategy. And we also offer free consultation. So. I would say, you know, just have a look and see if there's anything there that might be able to help you.

Eric Dickmann: 29:49

That's great. I appreciate you sharing with that. And I will also have that linked up at the show notes for people so that they can access it. There. Kim. What's the best way for people to get in contact with you or Mach Media, if they want to follow up and have some specific question s

Kim Bratanata: 30:06

You can email us at meet@machmediagroup.com. That's probably the easiest way on our website, you can also find a phone number and of course you can also engage with us on social media, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter.

Eric Dickmann: 30:20

That's perfect. And I'll have all those links in the show notes as well, so that everybody can find a Mach Media. Kim, this has been very insightful. I really appreciate you taking the time today to go through not only what your agency offers, but the benefit agencies can provide customers. I think that's very helpful for our audience.

Kim Bratanata: 30:38

You're very welcome and happy to have helped out.

Eric Dickmann: 30:45

that wraps up another episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. As a reminder, if you'd like to learn more about Virtual CMO, strategic marketing consulting services, or anything else discussed here today, please visit us at fiveechelon.com. There's a link in the show notes. If you'd like to send us comments, feedback, guest inquiries, and your five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts are always appreciated. If you'd like to reach me. I'm EDickmann. That's E D I C K M A N N on Twitter. If you'd like to connect on LinkedIn, please let me know. You heard about me through The Virtual CMO podcast. I look forward to talking with you again next week and sharing some new marketing insights on The Virtual CMO.