Olga Andrienko -- VP of Brand Marketing at Semrush

In this episode of YouShouldTalkTo, our host Daniel Weiner welcomes Olga Andrienko, the VP of Brand Marketing at Semrush. Olga and Daniel get into the concept of gated content and the importance of agencies. They discuss building a brand, building a personal brand, and the difference between big agencies and smaller, specialized agencies.Guest-at-a-Glance💡 Name: Olga Andrienko, VP of Brand Marketing at Semrush.💡 Noteworthy: With her team, Olga has built one of the most substantial international communities in the online marketing industry and has expanded Semrush’s brand visibility worldwide, entering the market in over 50 countries. In 2018, Olga was named one of the 25 most influential women in digital marketing by TopRank. In addition, Olga speaks at major marketing conferences, and her quotes on user behavior appear in media like Business Insider and Washington Post.💡 Where to find Olga: Linkedin l WebsiteKey Insights⚡ The concept of gated content. Gated content is any type of content that viewers can only access after exchanging their information. Users must fill out a form before they get access, and the form may ask for the user's name and email address as well as more information like their company and job title. According to Olga, gated content is excellent at the specific stage of the bias journey, but it's not great if it's the centerpiece of your campaign. "Let's say we have a track stage landing page, and then they register, they didn't convert, or they just visited the page, and then they left. So, we still have their information, and then they're not clearly engaged. This is where we might send them a state of the search-like report, which is also a huge report of a hundred pages. So we can put it anywhere else. And then, in PDF, that's digestible, and also we know that they have more interest towards us. Or there's a webinar, and for a webinar, we need registrations, and this is also something that I see as gated content."⚡By building a community, you will build a brand. Building a brand — not just a business — will give you massive growth and fans, but it is a process that requires a strategy. As Olga says, the easiest way to build a brand is through people by creating a community. "Every startup wants to build their community, and then they don't know how. It requires certain people, but also it just requires you giving a lot of attention to people who already know you. And then, the community grows, but it's still not visible to the business. And then suddenly, there's a tipping point where your community's so big, and suddenly, you have a brand."⚡The importance of agencies. An agency partner is powerful, and an agency partnership can increase your marketing reach, help you earn referral business, create variable revenue, provide value to current clients, etc. However, there are both positive and negative agency experiences. Olga sees agencies as an extended team and an essential part of her work and explains where she finds vendors. "I am judging a bunch of awards: European content awards, global content awards, social media awards — and usually agencies submit for their clients. So, this is the best way for me to learn about the campaigns of others; I don't go to the media outlets that share the campaigns because it's all restricted, and then I'm not able to share it. And so, they share everything; they share budgets, how it was done, the strategic goals, and the outcome — also screenshots from Google Analytics or any revenue numbers. So those are the best entries. I also save the entries in the folder — the ones that caught my attention — and then I ask my team members to reach out to those agencies if we have something that we could work with them on."