Agency Owner Greg Elwell shares his experience with Zerys For Agencies, and how the platform has enabled him to scale his content business.
Q&A with Greg Elwell: Founder and principal of B2B Inbound, a HubSpot Certified Partner
What challenges were you facing in your business?
It was a matter of scale and I really needed to build my business around content. I love to write, but I can’t write for 10 or 15 or 20 clients. I have to have writers that do that; I have to have a management platform.
How did you come across Zerys?
About a year and a half ago, Pete Caputa of HubSpot connected me with Steve Lazuka and Interact Media. I needed a platform like Zerys to manage this business.
What was your initial reaction to Zerys?
When Steve [Lazuka] started to show me what he had built and what he was going to put into it, I was really excited. That’s a great thing about Zerys, Steve’s always improving it and innovating. I just decided right then and there that ‘I am going to take this on, I’m going to learn this and master it and I’m going to use this to serve clients and just really make it work to their benefit as well.’
How has Zerys specifically impacted your company?
Maybe 20 percent of my business was writing for other clients: doing web pages, news releases and content projects. When Zerys came along, I would say within the first six months, between 50 and 60 percent of my business had shifted to content because the platform enabled me to do so.
What are some of the qualitative benefits you’ve experienced while using the system?
There’s an efficiency factor because it’s a system based approach and it has built-in tools. It just goes from point A to point Z. It has all these pieces built-in that just make it more efficient from a time standpoint so that one person, or maybe a couple people, can handle multiple projects simultaneously without dropping the ball.
One thing that it has allowed me to do is sharpen my focus on my strategy of blogging and content creation, and what really makes for good high quality content. So I’ve been able to put time and effort into that aspect of it, versus having to do all the operational things or do all the creation aspects. One of the keys of being able to do content well is to educate your client and educate your writers.
You can spend time on education, honing the craft of it, putting the time into that aspect of it versus putting the time into manually producing all this stuff because Zerys does all that stuff for you.
Would you recommend Zerys over other content management platforms and content services?
I know others are out there, but I decided to wrap my arms around Zerys, stick with it and not get wrapped up in new flashy platforms. I decided to make it or break it with Zerys. It does take commitment, dedication to one platform, and it’s paid off.
