Inbound, a HubSpot production, will bring thousands of professionals to Boston for three days of marketing-focused events and discussions. I will be joining a panel on Wednesday, Aug. 29, titled The Future of Outsourcing Content & Campaigns.
In the spirit of #Inbound12, we recently had the chance to talk with Zerys for Agencies customer Tom Telford. Below Tom shares his experiences with inbound marketing, and how content has redefined his business strategy and led to new opportunities.
Q&A with Tom Telford: Founder and owner of 98toGo and Cedar Creek Cabin Rentals
What challenges did you face with your own content strategy?
I wrote my first 30 blogs [for Cedar Creek] and I realized that, as a business owner, to write the content has ended up taking a lot more time than I really wanted to a lot to it. Unless you’re a natural writer, being able to come up with that on your own is not as easy as you might think.
So the pain point for me as a business owner was trying to find a solution to writing content for me with good writers, and that’s where we locked in on Zerys. And ever since that thirtieth blog, that’s been it; I’ve had really great writers.
When you first started using Zerys, what did you experience?
I was fortunate that Steve [Lazuka] reached out to me, which I thought was kind of unique that the owner of the company was trying to help me. I had some questions and he definitely helped, and there is a lot of online training and videos to help you.
It’s like anything else; If you use HubSpot, it’s the same thing. The software enables you to help market, but that software alone - if you don’t work it it's not going to work for you. I found that getting in there and working it was absolutely worth it.
Since you started using Zerys, have there been any noticeable changes within your company?
We’ve got nearly 95 clients [98togo] and what we're finding is that the ones that put out the most consistent content are the ones that are winning. Those are the ones that are getting the most significant traffic increases.
And with Cedar Creek, it’s given me peace of mind. I’ve got a system. I know that I’ve got writers; I know that I’ve got content. And with that content, I’ve already seen that that’s going to increase my traffic because that’s what Google and the search engines need is good content. I know my business is going to thrive because I’ve got a consistent content creator that’s going to write some great content about my business and that’s going to drive traffic, which turns to leads and customers.
Did Zerys give you any long-term benefits?
It’s given us a scalable way to provide content to many many businesses. We can scale our company as large as we can go. The sky is the limit.
Would you recommend Zerys to others?
I looked at some of the other ones and I just wasn’t as impressed, so yes.
Visit the Inbound Preview from Interact Media to learn more about the upcoming event.