Christian Klepp  00:00

Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Emeric Ernoult. He is the founder and CEO of Agorapulse, who helps B2B companies define the future of social media management by leveraging social data to rank and score businesses across different platforms. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. 

Christian Klepp  00:26

Okay! I’m gonna say Emeric Ernoult, welcome to the show.

Christian Klepp  00:34

Great to have you on the show, Emeric, and I’m really gonna enjoy this conversation, I think, because it’s about a topic that B2B marketers should be paying attention to. I feel it often gets overlooked, and this is the reason why we’re going to discuss it today. So let’s dive in, right. Cool, cool. So you’re on a mission to empower I’m going to say B2B marketers to showcase social media ROI through innovative solutions driving sustainable business growth and success. But for this conversation, let’s zero in on the topic of how to measure social media success in a complex world. And I think just before I hit record, we were already talking about very complex issues. So let’s try to, like, simplify some of the complexity, hopefully with your experience and expertise now. So I’d like to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them, yeah. So the first one is, from your experience, define what social media success is. And then the second question is, where do you see many B2B marketers fall flat regarding this.

Emeric Ernoult  01:03

Well, Christian, thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here. 

Emeric Ernoult  01:40

Great question, to keep it, think, keep things simple. I think what social media success is, is what anyone using social media to promote their brand and their business feel successful about. If you feel that what you’re doing marketing wise, whatever it is social media included, is successful, then you have success. If you feel that it’s not successful, then you don’t have success. And I’m insisting on that, because for some, success will be linked to the amount of people who react to what they do. Some for some the success will be related to the amount of revenue they generate through a channel. For others, it will be linked to the amount of engagement they get from their employees on social media. So you got to define what feels successful to you, and then that’s what success is for us. 

Emeric Ernoult  02:35

For example, we’re a B2B software, and we sell to mid market and large businesses. So success is how social media allows us to get leads from those kind of businesses. If we can generate leads from those kind of businesses, then we have a successful social media strategy. But for other businesses, for you, for example, it will, it could be different, and it probably is different. So it starts with “what is success?” How feel how marketing activities feel successful to you as a business. And I think that social media is not so much different than the other channels that you’re using. So look at emails, look at paid. For us, it’s the same. It’s lead generation. How does the how do those marketing channel generate leads, qualified leads for us, for sales team to work, and it really does not matter where they’re coming from or what kind of activity generated them, that is the measure of success. 

Emeric Ernoult  03:33

So if you take it as a notch further, like for some type of businesses, the measure of success is the reach, like, how many people are being touched, are being influenced by what they do? For some others, it’s going to be lead gen, like us. For others, it’s going to be revenue generated. And for others, finally, it’s just going to be like, engagement, click back, or visits, or that kind of, that kind of metrics, and whatever you do, even on social media, you should be able to follow up on those for measure of success.

Christian Klepp  04:11

Okay, well, um, thanks for sharing that. I had a follow up question for you, and maybe this is a segue into that question about where marketing teams sometimes fall flat. Why do you feel that companies even in B2B… Why are they so obsessed with metrics such as, like, Oh, look how many followers we have now, or how many impressions this generated? Like, why do you feel they tend to fall into that trap? Is it because they think it’s a numbers game?

Emeric Ernoult  04:39

No, it’s very simple. Those numbers, they come by default. They come out of the box, right? You use a social media platform out of the box, you’re going to get some measurements that you don’t have to work for, not you have to work to get them, in terms of how many of them you get, but you don’t have to work to see them. And import them into your Excel spreadsheet or whatever. Same thing with emails, the things that you’re going to get by default are opens and clicks, right? It’s going to come with any email marketing automation system you’re using. Same thing with paid ads, you’re going to get clicks and visits. All these metrics come without you having to do the work of what is, what do I need to measure next.

Emeric Ernoult  04:39

The real metric, the really important metrics, unfortunately, they take work to get. They are not out of the box. So if you want to see what kind of video views you get on that landing page that you build, showcasing your product, that is something you have to create. You have to use Google Tag Manager. You have to tag the video to say people clicked on the video. Then you have to use a video hosting service like Wistia or another to see how many people viewed home, how much of that video, and so on and so forth. So that means that everything else that you’re measuring that is not out of the box. Well, first of all, everything that is worth measuring is usually not out of the box, or not enough out of the box. 

Emeric Ernoult  06:05

And as a marketer, you have to get yourself accustomed to that. And you got to get yourself trained so that you can trigger those measurement and you can use the tool, the tools and the infrastructure that helps you measure those items. And again, you know, video views, downloads, subscribers, uh, free trial sign ups, like, whatever that is. As a marketer, you’re measuring stuff that means success. Back to the first question you asked me, What are those things? And what do you put in place to make sure that you measure all of them? And then, if you’ve done that, you should be able to get the connection between the marketing activity and the measurement at the end of the day, even on social media, but that’s unfortunately something that I’m probably going to say, something awkward, but the majority of marketers don’t do.

Christian Klepp  06:58

And that’s part of the reason why we have you on the show today to talk about it like it’s, it’s, I won’t necessarily say to call them out on it, but to say like, Hey, listen, this is probably not the best approach, and this is what you should be doing instead. And that was a great way to segue into the next question, which is about key pitfalls that you think B2B marketers should avoid, and what should they be doing instead, most especially, also with regards to social media attribution?

Emeric Ernoult  07:28

Yeah, well, first of all, we just touched on that. They have, and it goes beyond social media, but they’re tracking infrastructure, their measure infrastructure should be in place and should be maintained. And maintained means that, you know, think, when you build things, when you make your website evolve, you’re going to break things, you’re going to break code, you’re going to break attribution, snippets and stuff like that. So keep, keep that in check. That means don’t have too many limit the number of things you want to measure, because if you’re measuring 50 data points on your website, conversion data points, the chances are that 10 of them are going to be broken all the time, and you got to keep fixing them. So try to measure a few things and not too many things, so that the maintenance is not too much of a burden. 

Emeric Ernoult  08:18

And once you’ve done that, have the measurement in place that your visualization, your data visualization, now that the infrastructure is in place, that the data visualization is also allowing you to see what’s working, where it’s coming from. So we’re using, you could use Data Studio. We’re using Metabase that has a free version as well. And I highly recommend that you have someone in your team who is trained with those tools and help you put together the data, data visualization tool so you can actually get the graphics and the bar charts and things that you need to visualize what’s working and where it’s coming from. Very, very bluntly, you need a data person in your team, data/analytics person. Whether you got that data engineer or data analyst, probably combination of both, if you’re just starting up, but if you’re a little bit bigger, you will need both. But I think we got our first data person at a size of 50 employees, something like that. Before that, it was my co founder, or CTO, was dealing with that. As of today, we are a 200 people company, and we have a five people data team. So that’s just give you an idea of the resources it takes to do it right. 

Emeric Ernoult  09:36

And when I say to do it right, I’m not saying to do it perfectly, because we still make mistakes. We still break codes, and we still have things that we realize that, oh my god, this piece is not working anymore. We need to fix it. So if you’re a very, very, very, very small business, the very minimum you should do, and you don’t have, you can’t afford to get a data person or an analytics person. The minimum you should do is choose a Google Analytics 4, because it’s free, so you don’t need to pay for anything, and the free version of Metabase and go on Udemy, or, you know, LinkedIn learnings, or like, find any way to train yourself. So you learn how to configure that right, to configure Tag Manager right. So you can tag those different conversion data points on your website. And again, if you’re on your own. If you’re a very small business, track, very few things don’t don’t go too deep, don’t go too far, because if you do, then you’re going to be quickly overwhelmed. And you can also train yourself on either a Data Studio, which is also a free, has a free version, or a Metabase that has a free version that you can host yourself. 

Emeric Ernoult  10:40

There are a couple of paid solutions that I’m not going to mention here because I don’t know them really well, but that you can probably use. Well, I know two of them, Whatagraph and Supermetrics. I know they have connectors that you can use yourself if you don’t want to learn Data Studio or Metabase, but that is the bare minimum. If you don’t do that, then you’re just giving up on measuring how your marketing is doing. It’s okay, but you have to accept that. It’s important that you are aware of the consequences.

Christian Klepp  11:10

Well, at the end of the day, it’s not necessarily about being okay, but you have to explain to somebody outside the marketing role, why isn’t it working right? What’s causing this? Right? And most likely, in a B2B situation, those people that you’re going to have to have that conversation with are probably either a CFO level or or CTO or something, something of that nature, right? So…

Emeric Ernoult  11:37

I can tell you for sure that we’ve had a marketing we’ve had marketing leaders in our company several years ago who didn’t know about all this and didn’t learn about all this. And they had my CFO on their back, and they had me on their back, and they had the sales leader on their back. And eventually, the fact that there, they were unable to prove that what they were doing, marketing wise, and not only social media, everything, because what we’re talking about today is not only about social media, social media is just going to be part of the failure or part of the success. The infrastructure is in place, and that these persons were not successful in our company, for sure, and the ones we have today, they have this knowledge. They are doing these things, and they have much more credibility with the other departments, because now they can show things. And even if things are not successful, at least they can say, this is not successful. Let me show you why, and let me, let me show you what we’re doing instead, where, when you’re completely blind, well, you’re not successful. Do you know why? No, I don’t. Okay, good. What else? 

Christian Klepp  12:47

Right. 

Emeric Ernoult  12:48

So that’s, that’s the issue. When you are not measuring anything, it’s the reason for your failure is always the an outside reason. You know, unfortunately, an outside reason is never a good reason. 

Christian Klepp  13:00

No, no, no, absolutely not, absolutely not. Because, for sure, this budget is coming from somewhere and the people that are spending this budget, and this is probably the reason also why marketing, for a long time, has been seen as a cost center, right, and not a profit center.

Emeric Ernoult  13:16

When it’s done wrong, it is a cost center. Let’s face it, yeah. And when it’s done in a way that you can do more what works and do less of what doesn’t work, then it becomes a profit center, right? But there, there is no middle ground. It’s either or…

Christian Klepp  13:33

Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. So moving on to the next question, which I call the Lego question, you know, like, break it down for us. So what approach, based on what you’ve been saying, what approach would you recommend B2B marketers use to generate better results on social media, just from a top level perspective? Because I know this can get quite, quite granular.

Emeric Ernoult  13:54

Yeah. So assume, assuming you have Google Analytics installed on your website, and you have the two, three or four main conversion events that are tagged so they are being triggered in GA (Google Analytics) when people land on your website and do activities, click on buttons and do things and interact with your website. If you have done that, then we’re going back to, okay, now we’re going to go out to the world and we’re going to do things that are going to make them come back. So obviously you can do ads and say, Hey, try my software. Or you can do a LinkedIn post and have all your employees share it on their LinkedIn that says, hey, we have this new feature. It’s a great opportunity for you to give us a try again. So you have all this super bottom of the funnel, which is, you know, try my stuff, buy my stuff, which can work somehow, but it’s probably not the best way to do marketing, because you exhaust the number of people who are ready to try your stuff today, right? 

Emeric Ernoult  14:51

So the rest the other things that you’re going to do is more top, more higher on the funnel, the higher on the funnel, which is going to be okay, you’re not ready to… You don’t know my stuff yet. You don’t know me yet. Let me help you with a piece of content that’s going to help you learn more about my industry, learn more about the solutions that our industry provide, the type of value and benefit that we give out to the market. So that’s going to be for us. A good example is we provide marketing assets that help you choose your next marketing, social media marketing platform or social media management platform. So we’re going to say, okay, all the things that you need to check when you’re choosing your next software are all this long list of things that you need to verify, and it’s really hard to choose software. So we’re going to help you choose what is the best piece of software for you. And we’re gonna provide that downloadable that you can use. And you don’t have to pick us. You can pick anyone you want. But as you’re doing this research, here’s a document that’s gonna go through the whole list of things that you need to verify, and you can download it and use it. So the download, those downloads, are gonna be leads for us. Obviously, you’ve got that you’re a marketer, and this is the kind of stuff we’re going to measure. 

Emeric Ernoult  16:04

Then we also have, like, a two minute video demo that we don’t ask for any email, we don’t ask for any company information, like, no nothing. Just go in there, view that video, and then we track the number of views. And we have a de-anonymization software that we use as well that’s going to tell us what organization visited this page, not what person, which we know the organization. We know the brand, we know the company, and from the brand and the company, we can start digging and say, okay, based on our persona, who should we contact this brand, at this company, at this organization, that may have been in the list of people who viewed this, or at least, can find out or is connected to the person who viewed this. So these are the kind of things that we track and in when we promote these using social, paid, email, like all the different channels, and it’s, you know, usually you don’t do marketing on one channel. You do a mix. You’re always doing a mix, because if you’re not doing a mix, you’re probably not reaching the right people in the right places. Everybody likes to be reached in different places. And I you know, some people are Tiktok, some people are YouTube, some people are Facebook, some people are LinkedIn, some people are emails. Probably less and less these days, because we get so many, some people answer calls. I don’t look it’s gonna really depend on maximizing how many channels you’re using. So you have maximize your chance to touch the people that you want to, you want to influence those activities. 

Emeric Ernoult  17:40

And when you’re going to do that, everything you’re going to every time you’re going to share, you’re going to make sure that the links that you’re sharing are tagged the right way. The most well known way to tag links is to use UTM (Urchin Tracking Module). But UTM is going to basically be question mark. UTM, underscore, you know, source medium campaign, and you want the source, the medium of the campaign, to be well defined in those UTMs. And that is a pain in the butt. I know it’s a pain in the butt. It’s 2025 it’s still super manual. The biggest mistakes people make all the time with these is that they start using different names, like social capital S, social not capital S, social media in one word, social_media. Whatever you’ve seen, you’ve probably seen that yourself, that there’s no consistent naming of those sources, mediums and campaigns, and because the way all the analytics software work like Google Analytics in particular, but others work the same. If they’re, they’re gonna count a source, social capital S, as a different source than social not capital S. 

Emeric Ernoult  18:55

So like you have to have across the marketing team a naming convention for everything you do, for every campaign you run, for every promo you run, and that naming convention should be adhered to and stuck to, so that when you look into GA or any other analytic software that you’re using, when you’re filtering by source and by page or by asset, what you’re seeing is one piece of data, and you don’t have to look at, oh, my God. We call social media five different things in our UTMs. Now I have to think about this and re add those five different things so I can get a unique view of what social media is giving me, or email or paid search or paid social or, you know, whatever, whatever that is. 

Emeric Ernoult  19:42

So, long story short, get your infrastructure in place, one that is in place by at least learning about how it works, the basics. And that’s something you can do even, even if you’re a small business. You can learn how to set up Google Analytics and Tag Manager so you can tag. The right activities on your site. And the second part is make sure that when you’re sharing links that are driving traffic back to your site, there’s a naming convention for all these UTMs that are going to give you a consistent view of where they’re coming from, when they’re coming on, when they’re landing on your website and doing activities that is valuable to you, and when you think about marketing attribution and marketing measurement, this is how it’s done. There is no silver bullet. There is no magic rule. If you look at how paid social or paid search software are working, like Google Ads software or meta software. That’s what they do. They add tracking parameter in their links. That’s it. There’s no magic formula behind it. Anything you look at HubSpot, when they send emails, that’s exactly the same thing they do. They put tracking parameters. They have their own stuff. It’s not UTM based. It’s their own, their own tracking system. But it works exactly the same. There is no way to do marketing measurement or attribution. There’s not a link, and if in that link, there’s not something that attribute to a source to an activity that was done initially. So it’s simple, not easy.

Christian Klepp  21:18

No, exactly, but thanks for sharing that with us. And it goes back to what you were saying earlier. I think there definitely needs to be some kind of like structure, some kind of like system that definitely needs to be a plan. This has to be thought out. This isn’t something you go and do on a whim, right, especially if you’re planning to do it for the long term, right? 

Emeric Ernoult  21:37

Yeah, obviously software can help. When you’re using HubSpot, you’re not going to have to add tracking parameters into each of your email link. You could, but you don’t have to. And when you’re using Agorapulse, we do the same thing, like we do What software do for email marketing or paid we will manage the tracking parameters ourselves, so you don’t have to think about them. But if you add your own stuff in there, then you’re going to get, you’re going to be able to get the level of granularity that you want, not necessarily the one that I provide. So it’s good to rely on software to help you with that, but it’s also important that you do your own thing, and you’re in control, so you know exactly how it’s being set up. And when you look at the analytics software, you understand what you’re saying, because you defined it.

Christian Klepp  22:23

Absolutely, absolutely okay. So for the next question, you’ve probably gotten this before, but like, how do B2B marketers get buy in from a senior management that doesn’t really know much about marketing? Number one, number two. I hate to say this, but they might not even care that much either. How do you get buy in from senior management for to deploy social media activities? Walk us through those critical steps that marketers need to take to get to get to a YES.

Emeric Ernoult  22:57

Yeah. So it really depends the type of C-level that you’re talking to, there are C-levels. If you’re in a B2C Company, the C-level is going to be brand minded. They’re going to be reach minded, impression minded, you know, repetition, like, how many times people see us? What do they think about us? What’s our reputation with them? And that kind of stuff. If you’re talking to a C-level that’s selling to businesses and, you know, large organizations, they’re probably going to be sales driven. So their mind is going to be in a different place. Is it’s going to be, what’s, what sort of cost of sales? How many times does it take to get payback on the cost of sales? How does, how does marketing can support the sales team. So I’m taking those two examples on purpose because they’re drastically different. And the C-level and the kind of buy in you’re trying to get is going to be vastly different because you’re not trying to convince them with the same things. 

Emeric Ernoult  23:53

So if you take the B2B example, the one that’s normally self led, what you need to prove is that when marketing touched the sales prospects, the conversion rate are much higher. That is what you need to prove. So if you, if you, if you’re starting up in the marketing activity, in the marketing organization, or you want to get more budget or more credibility, and you don’t know where to start. What I would do is, I would pick a region. Let’s say if you’re, if you’re big already. Let’s use a big region. Let’s use California or New York, you know, New York State and I or France or Italy, whatever, wherever you are, it depends. I would could be a country or could be a state, depending on, obviously, the size of the country at State. And I would choose those, and I would focus all of my marketing activities, or at least most of my marketing activities, on that region. And then I would look at all the opportunities, sales opportunities that are coming from that region over time. And I would look at. Hope the conversion rate for those versus the rest. And I would, I would look at a cohort based analysis of my sales opportunities and and ask the software that I’m using, okay, show me all the opportunities that came during all these cohorts, like from September to January, if you’ve worked really hard on Q3 and Q4 with your marketing in those regions, and show me what conversion rate we got from MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) to SAL (Sales Accepted Lead) to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) to SQO (Sales Qualified Opportunity) to close one. 

Emeric Ernoult  25:38

And I would prove that when marketing is involved in a region like and then very focused. And let’s assume you did nothing in Arkansas and Texas and like the other States or Canada. And you can prove by the data that you don’t the beauty of this, you don’t even, you don’t even have to track anything. You just have to be very focused on the region. And then look at that, how that region behaves sales wise, against the other. I can guarantee you one thing, 100% you’ll have better conversion rates in that region, and that will be it’s, I bet my salary on this. Every time we’ve done that over time, it’s always successful, because when people have heard about you, they’ve seen you, they’ve been invited to your event, they’ve been exposed to your ad, they downloaded some of your content, and obviously that, the prerequisite is that your content is amazing, right?

Christian Klepp  26:28

Yeah. 

Emeric Ernoult  26:29

You’re providing value. 

Christian Klepp  26:30

Tiny little detail, no.

Emeric Ernoult  26:31

Tiny little detail. You’re providing value. What you’re doing is interesting, and your product is solving a real problem. Obviously, all these are given. If you don’t have all these, work on these first right? But if you have these, and you focus your communication, like your presence, towards a specific region in that region, sales payback will be much faster, and sales conversion won’t be much higher. That is what I would do if I was in B2B, wanting to prove the value of marketing to a C-level, who doesn’t understand what marketing can do for them. 

Christian Klepp  27:01

Fantastic, fantastic. That answer alone shows me that you’ve had this conversation with senior management before.

Emeric Ernoult  27:09

I did. I did. Let me give you one example from a long time ago. Okay, but it was, and the funny thing about this example is that it is from something that is normally supposed to be very, very trackable. It was about Facebook ads at the time. We were in 2013 and I wanted to get bigger in Mexico, I started to run Meta ads towards Mexican targets who were managing Facebook pages and were interested in Facebook for business. And I, when I looked at the conversion rate on the ad itself. And you know how ads work. They work with pixels. So basically, you’re telling them show me conversion. Ie people who subscribe to my software that many days after they clicked on my ad, or after they viewed my ad. So you can choose it’s a post view or a post click for to be very accurate. I always chose post click because I want I really. I wanted to be sure that, especially when I was targeting free trials, I didn’t want to get false positives with all my free trials, would have signed up anyway. I would have paid anyway. 

Emeric Ernoult  28:13

So always after post click, and when I looked at I spent probably five or 6000 euros at the time or in a two month period. And when I looked at my results, they were disappointing. The cost per sign up, the cost per client was very high, and the conversion rate was not really good. And then I looked at the revenue for the country of Mexico during the same two months period, and it grew crazy, like 3x compared to what it was growing before. And then I was like, Aha, interesting. So I’m doing my ads, and I’m measuring the results, and I see no no reason to believe that this is working, or at least at a reasonable cost. And then I looked at the revenue that’s generated from that region, and it’s tripled. It has tripled in the same period of time. And then I started to think, Why could that be? Oh, maybe it’s because they didn’t use the same device and the tracking was lost. It happens all the time these days. Maybe they got to the office in the morning and they told their colleague, Oh, I saw this ad this morning. You should try this tool. And you know, Hey, John, can you try? You should do this. And then John, on his computer goes and type the URL and try the tool. No way to connect the two. Word of mouth is interesting and traceable. 

Emeric Ernoult  29:28

And I started to realize that there are so many things that can happen between the ad and the click on the ad, and then the person on another device, or another person in the same office being the one that eventually does the trial and the in the subscription that tracking the direct the direct consequences of a click on an ad, or anything for that matter, was not enough to really have a big clear picture of the impact of the activity I was doing. So I did that again in another country at the time and same. Results exactly the same. And that’s when I learned that, you know, correlation between activities specific to a region, a state or country, and the conversion and the revenue, the growth you can have there was, was the best way to prove when that something is working when you’re not sure it is.

Christian Klepp  30:19

Very interesting, very interesting to a certain degree. It wasn’t it, you know, it was an expensive lesson to learn, but, but, but sometimes, you know, these, these things happen, and hence the importance of being able to measure all these initiatives and to understand, like, he’s like, Why didn’t this work, right? And based on that, like, what can we do in future, which I think was the point in the conversation, right? What can we do in future to ensure that we will have success by learning from these past mistakes? Right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we get to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips, and at this stage, you’ve given us a lot. You’ve given us a lot of things to pay attention to and steps to follow. But I’m specifically thinking about that B2B marketer out there that’s listening to this conversation between you and I and wants to take action on this right away. So what are three to five things that you know you could recommend them to take action on like immediately after listening to this interview.

Emeric Ernoult  31:26

Yeah, so beyond everything we’ve just mentioned, obviously that’s indispensable in a bit in a B2B marketing environment, my take for B2B marketer is that the marketing you’re doing is not here to close the deal, most of the time, unless you’re targeting super small business and your price is very low and it’s very transactional, and it’s which, which is how we grew our business in the early days. So I understand that can work too. But most of the time, when you’re a B2B marketer, you’re selling to a price point that’s not self serve, and that has some friction, that requires some sales process and sales people to be involved. What you’re going to do as a marketer, you’re going to grow the willingness to the purse, to the prospect, to listen to you, and to engage back with you. That’s what you’re trying, that’s your goal. That’s what you’re trying to do. 

Emeric Ernoult  32:19

And in order to do that, obviously you can, if you focus on social media, you can do that on your own, with your own social presence, but it’s very, very, very challenging. So what I’m usually advising B2B marketers to do is like to gather stakeholders who have a genuine interest to help you promote your brand on social media and set up a program where they have some kind of incentive to do that. The most obvious stakeholders are your employees, if you’re a company, right, if you have employees and they enjoy working for your company, and they like what you do, and they believe in the mission, then obviously they will be happy to help you spread the word and share whatever you are trying to share, to get those prospects interested in what you do. So that’s the obvious low hanging fruit. 

Emeric Ernoult  33:14

But you may also have ambassadors or people that like you and will help you promote what you have,  what you’re pushing on social media. But if they don’t know, they’ll never, they’ll never do it, right? So you also need a program and a person who is animating that and hosting that, and tools that are helping you. So in B2B, if you’re trying to do everything on your own, it’s going to be, it’s going to be very challenging. It’s not impossible, but it’s more challenging. It’s more difficult if you’re leveraging a community around you to spread the word and share and share the mission in the form of, you know, content and events and videos and downloadables, it’s going to be much easier. So that’s, that’s where I would start, and that’s something I’m very passionate about, because I believe that the next  opportunity for growth is usually a click away. But if you’re not triggering it, if you’re not trying it or and pouring it, it’s not going to happen. 

Christian Klepp  34:17

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I had a follow up question for you, like, on this topic of ambassadors, what’s your perspective on employees, or focusing on employees who are building their personal brand on social media? Like, how can that be? How can that be instrumental in making the social media initiative successful?

Emeric Ernoult  34:39

It’s a part of what you can do to leverage your stakeholders. You have two types of employees. You are the one who are already doing it, and obviously they are working for you give them the means to leverage that presence that they’ve already built for themselves, to talk about what you’re doing and why they care and why it’s important for them, and why they want to talk. About it. So obviously, give them the means and have a program to leverage that, because if you’re not leveraging that, you’re leaving money on the table. It’s silly. And for those who are not who have not yet built their own presence, their own brand and their own voice on LinkedIn, it’s mostly on LinkedIn. You do owe them to help them grow, because as an employer, as an organization, the among all the missions we have for people, one of them is to help them grow and help them build their own career. And you owe them to give them the means and show them the way. And that’s whether they’re already doing it or not already doing it. You need to help them get better at that and get more visibility. 

Emeric Ernoult  35:45

Some will feel like, Oh, my God, if I give them the visibility of my org and then they leave the org, I’m going to lose that visibility with them going somewhere else. Yes, absolutely. The same way, you’re going to lose the context and the memory of the work they’ve done when they leave, unless they have documented everything, which unfortunately, is often not the case. But you know, the game of business is a game where you win sometimes and you lose sometimes, and yeah, some people you’re going to invest in are going to move on to a new job or new career, something that’s in line with their aspiration and something they want to do, and that’s okay. So do not prevent you from benefiting from this value, this, this, this asset, just because you’re afraid that they may not stay with you forever, because they won’t, and that’s okay. You should be okay with that. 

Christian Klepp  36:41

Fair enough. Fair enough. Absolutely, absolutely okay. I mean, you know you can, we cannot, not talk about social media without bringing up metrics. And I know we can go down this very deep rabbit hole. I mean, after all, you guys do a lot of work looking at dashboards, right? But if we were going from a top level perspective, what are some of the top maybe three to five metrics that B2B marketers should be looking at when they’re rolling out these social media initiatives?

Emeric Ernoult  37:11

Yes, it will be defined as vanity by many, but you got to think about your audience like, how many people can you potentially touch, can you potentially be seen by and I know it may sound like a vanity metric to grow your number of followers on social media, but let’s face it, if you have none like you’re nothing else matters like, right? If nobody’s following you, they’re never going to see you in your feed unless you pay and of course, your strategy could be to create amazing content, have your CEO share it, and then do a thought leadership ad on LinkedIn, and then and use the paid push of that content. And that’s a strategy that works really well, and we’re using that as well, but that’s if you have no followers on your own brand profile, then that’s all you can do on social. It’s paid. 

Emeric Ernoult  38:01

So growing a followership on social media is something you got to do, and you got to measure and follow. And obviously, if you got no growth there, it means you get no progress. If you have no progress, you have to ask yourself, why. Is it because what you’re sharing is not interesting? Or is it because your brand is not interesting? or is it because you’re not doing enough like, but there’s always a reason why people are not interested to follow you as a brand, as a company, as an organization. 

Emeric Ernoult  38:29

So once you have a minimum of followership, then obviously you want to make sure that what you’re sharing with them is engaging, is interesting. Like, I don’t like the word engaging, because now it’s all buzz word and stuff. It’s interesting. It’s a content that we created for our audiences and our prospects as always, needed to be interesting. If what you do is not interesting, then you’re not a good marketer. I think most companies don’t have a marketing problem. They have an interesting they have a problem of not being interesting enough. And and it’s our job as marketers to be interesting, and how you are interesting is by knowing really, really well the problems that your target audience has and being genuinely close to that. So when you when you create content, it’s intended to to fix those issues, to propose solutions to those problems, and to make them better at what they do. And if you’ve, if you’ve nailed that, because you’re genuinely care about the problems they’re trying to solve, then all the content you’re going to share via whatever channel, including social media, is going to be interesting. So you’re going to get engagement back. 

Emeric Ernoult  39:40

And obviously, once you have that, you don’t want that alone you want you also want to measure is that translating into website traffic that’s translating into conversions that are meaningful to you. So these are the three components of any marketing activity that’s worth doing that you have people. Like… you’re growing your email list. Same thing. That’s your audience. Your email is getting clicked, is getting open and clicked. That’s your engagement. And your email is driving traffic to your website that’s converting into meaningful conversions, and that’s the conversion events at the end. So at the end of the day, you look at every channel that as a marketer, you’re trying to succeed at, and they all follow the same rule. You got to get people to talk to and then those people have to enjoy the content that you shared. So they have to engage back in in a way or another. In a podcast, it would be a number of downloads, number of listens, and it’s exactly the same thing. And when they interact, and the interaction leads to their to your website, that what’s happening there has to be meaningful conversion to you. It’s not rocket science again, but it’s got to be very disciplined into growing those three things at the same time. 

Emeric Ernoult  40:52

Because if you’re growing an audience at all costs, and everything you’re putting behind is not interesting, it’s a waste of time. Absolutely, if you’re creating amazing content, but you’re not trying to grow the audience at the same time. It’s a waste of your content production time. And if you’re creating amazing content and have an audience you’ve built at high cost, but you’re not giving them any opportunity to go convert on your website. It’s also a waste of resources. So it’s a combination of those three things that have to be balanced and increased at the same time. It’s never at the same time. We’re always pushing one, and then you say, oh my god, I went too far on the first one. I need to start pushing on the engagement one. And you’re balancing things eventually. But it’s always the same logic. Again, it’s simple, not easy.

Christian Klepp  41:41

No, absolutely, absolutely, okay. Here comes the bonus question. So there’s a rumor that you are addicted to kitesurfing.

Emeric Ernoult  41:53

I don’t know where this is coming from. 

Christian Klepp  41:55

Just maybe, maybe social media, maybe somewhere else.

Emeric Ernoult  42:01

Social media can’t hide anything these days. 

Christian Klepp  42:04

Yeah, well, you didn’t hide the kite surfing one now, well, but the question is, if you were to pick any anywhere in the world where you could go kite surfing, where would you go? And why?

Emeric Ernoult  42:16

I have to say that there are many, many spots that I love that I have to say that the spot I have preferred so far is Jericoacoara, it’s in Brazil, in the Northeast of Brazil, and I loved it because it was the place where we stayed for for the trip was, was very lively. There were a lot of restaurants. It was, it was, it was very fun, and it felt like a vacation spot where most kitesurf spot are just for kitesurfing. That’s all you have. There’s nothing else. It’s the beach winds and waves and that’s it. And when you go with friends or family, there everybody else but the kite surfer get bored very quickly because there’s nothing to do in in Jeri there was a lot of stuff to do, and the wind is constantly blowing from July to December, non freaking stop. It’s every day. It’s crazy consistent. And when you, when you put so much on the table, and you put so much money into a kitesurf trip, you really want to have wind every day.

Christian Klepp  43:17

For sure. It will be very disappointing. If you went there and there was only wind on the day that you left. Yeah?

Emeric Ernoult  43:25

That’s happened to me many times. 

Christian Klepp  43:26

Oh no, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s the thing with this type of sport, right? Like, I mean, you can, you have the best laid plants, but then, but then mother nature sometimes doesn’t, doesn’t play ball, as they say, right?

Emeric Ernoult  43:38

Yeah, yeah. Often doesn’t play ball.

Christian Klepp  43:42

Fantastic. Emeric, thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. Quick introduction to yourself and how people can get in touch with you.

Emeric Ernoult  43:53

They can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. It’s probably the best way to get a hold of me. Obviously, they can also email me. My email is easy to guess that’s emeric@agorapulse.com. Just mentioned that you heard me on the podcast. That’s that, at least I know where you’re coming from, because I get a lot of LinkedIn invites every day. Yes and yeah. The quick intro is the co-founder and CEO of Agorapulse. And I started my entrepreneur career in July of 2000 so I’ve been an entrepreneur for 25 years, wow, and running Agorapulse for almost 13 years this year. And it’s definitely, definitely a ride, for sure. So it’s fine. It’s been fine. 

Christian Klepp  44:33

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And like, like, like a lot of other things, social media has evolved so much since then, it’s already getting to the point where I’m already having trouble trying to think about like, what the old version of Facebook looked like.

Emeric Ernoult  44:50

For sure, our product has evolved a lot as well. It’s what we do today has nothing to do is not comparable to what we did in 2012 it’s very, very different…

Christian Klepp  44:58

I can imagine, I can imagine. Emeric, once again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. 

Emeric Ernoult  45:05

Thank you. Christian, it was my pleasure. 

Christian Klepp  45:06

Thank you. Bye, for now.