SaaS Marketing Makeover with Casted's VP of Marketing, Holly Pels

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, hello everybody. And welcome, to another episode of the SaaS Marketing Makeover. I am excited to be joined by the VP of marketing at a company that we went through an extensive RFP process for in their industry and we actually chose them, so it's very cool to see her here today. It's Casted and how they amplify your content, regardless of what medium or channel you're using. So welcome to the show Holly Pels, VP of Marketing.

Holly Pels: So happy and a little nervous to be here.

Garrett Mehrguth: Do not be nervous you're going to crush it. I always get nervous, but this is going to be fun. As for everybody tuning in for the first time, I do not know who's on the wheel, Holly does not know who's on the wheel. Let alone who the wheel is going to land on. I would like to ask Holly, who do you hope, it is? Who do you want to audit today? Who do you kind of want to provide some positive inspiration to?

Holly Pels: Man. I don't even know. I have watched... I told you I watched a few of these and they were so different every time. I did see Gusto, I love Gusto as a brand, love to see them but I know they won't come up on the wheel because I've already, seen them.

Garrett Mehrguth: I know, and I love their stuff too, I'm like man, that was one of my favorite. Because they own their positioning, they own their marketplace. And I used them I think for six years without one complaint, from over a couple hundred people. I mean, that's a pretty powerful system.

Holly Pels: Yeah. We, I mean, we use it here. We have conversations all the time about, oh, I didn't even know if they could do that. And so I do think, I could give some strategy there, but I know that one won't come up, because I just saw it on another one of your shows.

Garrett Mehrguth: All right. So let's see who we thinking, let's see. Shaley give us the wheel, let's see who it is today. So I believe Freshworks is like SMB Accounting, let me see if I got my head on straight.

Holly Pels: But Gusto was on the list, also Zoom's on the list, which I could have done Zoom, we could have had it.

Garrett Mehrguth: All right. So let's see FreshBooks. All right. It is FreshBooks Accounting Software Built for Owners. So I'm going to start off with a question Holly.

Holly Pels: Mm- hmm(Affirmative).

Garrett Mehrguth: Can you be even more SMB than QuickBooks?

Holly Pels: Fun, fun story, I told you earlier before we got on, that I worked for an SEO agency for four years. And for over a year, my biggest client was into a QuickBooks. So I did so much work. I helped them launch their small business source center. I did so many things.

Garrett Mehrguth: Nope.

Holly Pels: So, no. I don't think you can be, but I'm guessing, they're trying to compete with this. And QuickBooks is such a-

Garrett Mehrguth: That's interesting though, right? It's a interesting conundrum in the sense that, if you're in the FP& A function, if you're in the accounting world, everyone treats QuickBooks as well. They're great if you're an SMB.

Holly Pels: Yep. But SMB is also-

Garrett Mehrguth: But SMB owners, all use them too. Don't they? My dad had QuickBooks, my business partners dad, who's a plumber. He has QuickBooks. I come from blue collar, SMB family QuickBooks. So it's very interesting.

Holly Pels: It's such, an interesting, and it's such an interesting model for them because Intuit is such a big company. And Intuit has so many different variations and QuickBooks is almost their, product led piece. Right? Because as a small business, I... Right out of college I work today, small, small, small company and help them do some side, stuff and they use QuickBooks, and it was free for them because they were such a small business. But then obviously as you get bigger, there's the bigger options to move up and upgrade and do all that. So, very interesting.

Garrett Mehrguth: So that's our context and I think that context is important. So the context is right there. Now let's look at this. I think this is quite clever. So how do you beat QuickBooks then? I think it is a great question. Right? You have to figure out what does QuickBooks, leave you wanting. Right? And so I think one of the cool parts about what FreshBooks is doing is they are trying to niche it into the vertical, into these verticals. Now, businesses with employees I mean, we are really talking to a certain type of size right now, which I think is smart of them. Right? So are you a business with employees? Are you self- employed? Are you a freelancer or do you use contractors? Now I think my question is, let's see if they actually execute this. Because I've always found niching like this, is really hard to actually execute the content on. So that someone who is self- employed, believes that you're uniquely better for them. Your billing struggles end here. So they have it like billing is a pain point, right? Get a complete picture of your client and business health, build relationships through great client experiences. So they're really pushing the billing side of it. What do you think about that? Do you think billing is an error? That is an opportunity compared to let's say a PayPal? Right? Because I would imagine at this point, if you're either, if you're like a, what is this, self- employed, you're using PayPal probably for billing or something like that. Right?

Holly Pels: Potentially. But then you might run into what if you have to 10- 99 people, what if you have to do some of those things that are outside of maybe the typical one off payment or small, when you start getting taxes involved, that's where billing, I think kind of overruns, which is, I think where like the QuickBooks and maybe, and making an assumption that this is going to also solve because it's saying accounting. Probably, might be more than a PayPal, but I don't know enough about PayPal, for business to say that.

Garrett Mehrguth: I completely agree. Let's just see how they position small business. So let's just understand pricing. So you can start at 7. 50 a month. Okay. And they offer 70% off, over here.

Holly Pels: And they did 60. And they had it right on the top. 60.

Garrett Mehrguth: 60. But for six months I think QuickBooks is only doing three.

Holly Pels: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: But the numbers bigger.

Holly Pels: Mm- hmm( affirmative).

Garrett Mehrguth: They also offer free trial, for 30 days. Oh no. I see. You can either give them all your money or you can test them. That's actually quite clever.

Holly Pels: Yeah. I've never seen, that before. Is this with or without the free trial? Sorry I'm trying to crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: No negotiation. All right.

Holly Pels: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: You're leveraging the trial with the buy now. What does QuickBooks do? So, for FreshBooks.

Holly Pels: FreshBooks. Oh they have the same thing.

Garrett Mehrguth: A little cheaper.

Holly Pels: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: You can buy now and save or you can do the yearly. That's a confusing, pay 60% off for six months, 10% off yearly price. So then you pay, that's, not as simple as I think they think it is. I'm not alone.

Holly Pels: Yeah. I'm a little confused and because this model of pay monthly, show the really low price, that's common across all of these. Small, think of all the social one off tools, all those things. That's pretty common. Right? But now we have made it more complicated by adding, an additional value on top saying you could get 60% off we could do this. Do they have a free trial? I can't see if that's the crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh yeah they do. So try it free, is right here. I like this page, by the way, this is best try free page I've seen in an audit recently.

Holly Pels: I love save up to 7, 000 a year in billable hours. I love a value prop right away that you know what you're going to get out of it.

Garrett Mehrguth: This is really, really strong CRO in the sense of how they're writing their copy. They've got single click signups. They've got email plus password, try it free, get 60% off buy now. They still have the upsell that takes you back to the buy now and save. Create your account to purchase a plan. I mean, I think they do a really good job of taking your money. I got to give that to them.

Holly Pels: Which is what they want to do.

Garrett Mehrguth: No. I mean, yeah, that's what we're all trying to do. Right? We're all trying to get people to give us their money to a certain extent. I think they do that, quite well. I don't think this copy's very good though. This 10% off. I think if... Watch what happens if you delete this and then you get rid of, so if you get rid of that and you get rid of this, I think their conversionary goes to the roof.

Holly Pels: It's a little too small for me to see what it said. It said save 10%?

Garrett Mehrguth: It did. It said, it says 10% off yearly price. But with the 60, I can't tell if they're just screwing me on the back half of the contract and they're only giving 10% off. Or if I'm actually getting 60% off, I think what they do is they just give you 60% off for six months and the prices, goes up and then you end up only saving 10% on the year, but I'm not sure, because the way they wrote it.

Holly Pels: And I think that's, I mean you want to take the guesswork out of it. If you're going to give people a deal and you're going to say, it's this and you're going to save money and you want them to go towards this. Which is obviously what they want you to do. Hence, the 60% off for six months, clear as day. Let's just tell me how much it is otherwise if I have to sit and do math, that makes it a little bit less attractive.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, when it is unattractive I just realized, I just saw something new too. If I was FreshBooks. So this is how they quote, this is how they scope you. They scope your butt on... I thought that this was some weird language that you could resell the platform. No, you can send invoice is the only five people at this price, point.

Holly Pels: Oh. Oh, that's an interesting model for how they're breaking down.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. So they're using usage. So it's actually based off of, invoices sent. See how they even cap it at 50. Let's see how QuickBooks is capping it. Are they, it doesn't look like they're, I've never heard anyone cap invoices. That's a very cheeky-

Holly Pels: Well clients, I guess. So it's not invoices. It's how many clients you're managing within the system. Is that seem-

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, I think it is correct. So unlimited invoices to up to five clients. But I mean, that's, they're now more expensive than QuickBooks in my mind, pretty quickly.

Holly Pels: Yeah. So I would also be curious with other options. So you said like PayPal earlier, is that something, are you limited on?

Garrett Mehrguth: I know, I use PayPal for any... If someone wants to pay me a speaker fee or something like that, I just send a PayPal link and I run all my independent consulting stuff through PayPal, for example.

Holly Pels: Oh, well. So if you're a bigger business that might be more complicated. So there would be value here.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Because this would give you an accounting system of record. But if you look at the yearly price point, you see what I'm saying? You're at 180 on the year, versus I can't even do it because I only do months. What is it after the discount? After that's what I'm trying to say. I don't like, they're so good taking your money, but they're also quite good at confusing you, if you want to actually know what's going on.

Holly Pels: And even when you do the... So they have, see upper details above, if you go to the actual promotion above and it still doesn't necessarily give you a clear answer, into what, how much you're paying.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh yeah. Holly cow, this is by their legal team for sure.

Holly Pels: Because even, yeah, right. I think right now I'm looking at it and I'm saying, it says was 25, save 90. So is what I'm looking at right now, this$ 10 a month or this$6 a month? Is that the 60% off or for six months? Right? Or is it, well that must be it. Because I, otherwise that doesn't make sense, right?

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, yeah. Because I think$ 10 a month, get 60% off for six months. But I don't know if, because 60% of, you see what I'm saying? It's very complicated to figure out what the price actually is.

Holly Pels: So you can tell we're not mathematicians, right?

Garrett Mehrguth: No, we're marketers. Okay.

Holly Pels: I also think this is interesting to do it this way to have kind of switching back with between monthly and yearly, have this offer on top of it because what you would usually see, I'd say here on this type of a pricing page, right? Is$ 10 and then it would say underneath that.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah.

Holly Pels: Or-

Garrett Mehrguth: Like this.

Holly Pels: ...Yes. Or like this amount of money, for a yearly price or something like that to give you kind of the... So it's almost counterintuitive to I guess what you would normally see in my mind, because it's making it more complicated just because they're trying to show you the lower number. Even this-

Garrett Mehrguth: crosstalk They go to my idiot brain so well, they really do get me excited. 60% off six bucks a month. I'm like, heck yeah. But then I, and I don't catch, oh five bill clients. Oh, I can only send invoices to five people. I look... They somehow get me to not fully realize it. And I, they get me excited. It's very promotional, if that makes sense.

Holly Pels: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Which is good. I just think, I wonder what that does the churn later. So who is it for? This is what we kind of looked at already. So they're doing a lot of who is it for. Doesn't... Integrations is pretty critical. Right? So, they work with everybody. It looks like right? Stripe will do your payment processing. Gusto can do your payroll. Bench can do your CPA accounting. Seems they got the right partnerships, but why do I choose them? I don't, I still don't get that part. Why do I use FreshBooks, instead of QuickBooks?

Holly Pels: And what's interesting is they don't even have a like why, I wonder if they do at the bottom, do they have the footer, about us, our story, careers. I think usually I feel it's a really common thing, especially in software companies now, that we want to buy for a reason. Right? So why are we choosing you more than just about us, more than about your company? What's the value, in this specific thing? And I know not everybody does the matrix, sees to say, compare us to something like that. That can be very picky and choosy. I bet I would be curious if we did a search. Do they do comparisons FreshBooks versus QuickBooks? Or does QuickBooks own that and the search?

Garrett Mehrguth: I'm sure they do, let's see. HubSpot just to chime in. Let's see this one.

Holly Pels: That's smart.

Garrett Mehrguth: Nobody loves to rank more than them. So I can't read all that.

Holly Pels: But isn't it strange that we just did that and the first thing that you clicked on was a HubSpot. That feels like a pretty intuitive article that a FreshBooks would want to write or at least have floating on the internet, even if it's not necessarily findable. Even if it's just a searchable piece of content, because people are going to search for that. Intuitively, we're having this conversation of bringing up FreshBooks. The first thing you thought of is why would I choose this over QuickBooks? So why would we not make that, an accessible piece of content? Is this on FreshBooks site or is this on...

Garrett Mehrguth: This is nerd wallet once again. Yeah. I don't. I think if I go in here, let's see. So if I go to site, you know this because you're a SEO and I go and play a little. Whoa, get out of here, say it. So let's go, site FreshBooks and then when we go QuickBooks. Just to see at a very high level, how they think of this. Looking for a QuickBooks alternative. Cool. So billable hours, okay. Expense categorization. That's not totally true. Team roles probably not true. Simultaneous users doesn't care about. Proposals, actually I do care about this a lot. That's a great way that they're better, from 2016. You're right they're not using this at all. And it's very hard for me to understand. And I just don't understand when I get to FreshBooks, how they expect me to buy this when the thousand pound gorilla is in the room and they just pretend that that gorilla doesn't exist.

Holly Pels: Yeah. Because, and obviously there are things that you can focus on and pinpoint, but think about how people go out and do things. We want to go look for reviews. We want to look for comparisons. We want to understand the differences. And so you said, I know SEO. I don't love it. It's not my favorite thing. It's not what I love creating content for. But like you... It's a necessary evil because you know people are going to go search for that. And they clearly have. So I wonder, are they using that for ads? As a bidding page that they're competing against? Are they using it for nothing? They probably need, it to rank a little bit better in some of those capacities so they probably need to be linking to it. They probably need to be doing lots of different things because that feels like a pretty important piece for them, when someone would be researching. Am I going to use FreshBooks over QuickBooks?

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. And I don't understand. They just don't talk about it. And I don't think they FreshBooks, I don't know how you could not, talk about it. If that makes sense.

Holly Pels: They do have under helpful links, a QuickBooks alternative. So that's where the page is, so we found it now. And that's yeah this is the page that you found. They have that review up top. Yeah. But I would think, and it doesn't even have to be, because I also understand the concept of, we don't really want to put our competitor up front. We don't want that to be the thing that we're kind of.

Garrett Mehrguth: For most industries.

Holly Pels: Correct. But for something like this, I would say nine times out of 10 you know that's going to be the conversation that comes up and you're trying to break through the mold. So I think you have to make it a bigger part of the outward of the amplification strategy even. Right? So how are people getting to this page? If they're scrolling to the bottom, they might not be thinking as intuitively as we are, to say, I'm going to go to the bottom and find this in the links. Right? Because who would do that?

Garrett Mehrguth: No, they're not doing a live show. Right. So I mean, I think my thing here is what if we, and I can, I respect not calling out QuickBooks. So what if we did it potentially like this? I'm going to start showing an option. Why us or... Software.

Holly Pels: Yeah. Why-

Garrett Mehrguth: That gives me the... And you can call them the other guys, right? This is how the other guys think about accounting software and why it screws you Mr. And Mrs. Small business owner. And here's what we're doing to change the world. And you give me that story. I'll eat it. I just, I don't know if there's any for me to eat here. It's so cut and dry. It's almost like they are pretending they don't exist while also simultaneously being a little brother. I like mileage tracker.

Holly Pels: Especially. Yeah, I do like this too. I like their, oh, I love it when you can show us.

Garrett Mehrguth: crosstalk these in the blue collar space, like their driving is one of their biggest tax credits. So this is a huge value prop. So if you showed us why us and you saw here's three ways we help you save 25% more than the competition on taxes. You see what I'm saying? There's a real story.

Holly Pels: Oh yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: That we haven't told, because it's just so matter of fact, dish. Proposals, remember the proposals for SML. For sharp proposal software. Okay. Well this isn't quite proposal file. No offense to FreshBooks, but you might, I mean, this looks like an invoice, not a proposal. So I think we might be a little wrong on that one. Yeah. Oh. But they do have the contract, which is a big part of it. See how they have stuff notifications, e- signatures, reuse. That this stuff is what they need. I just, I don't know if, how do, you have to click on this. How do you get to their story? What story are they telling us, Holly?

Holly Pels: Yeah, I think what's interesting. And I think that this is a crux of all marketers, right? When you're looking at our all companies, trying to tell a story on a website, right. Is focusing on the features of solutions. So right now they're focusing on features. I think the who is it for, is supposed to be the solutions, but even when we clicked into who is it for and we went through, whichever one we were on, right. We saw some of that stuff a little bit more buried and kind of picky.

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, they say things that don't matter, know your business and how it's changing.

Holly Pels: Instead of the maybe-

Garrett Mehrguth: Or maybe billing. It's like it's 2022 man, everybody has automated billing. You see, why? Why do we exist? I want to feel that, I want to know why does the world need FreshBooks?

Holly Pels: And even that, under features, as it kind of showed you where that fits into kind of the overall, hierarchy of what you're doing. Right? So what were we on? We were on, proposals, I think. And at the bottom, you saw it sits here around with all these other different things. Being able to see that as a solution. So how do all of our features fit into a solution that you would use as a small business owner? I think is a lot more, see exactly like, and it's showing you, it connects to e- signatures and different things. Being able to show how maybe it connects to integrations. So, that this is going to be an easy slot in to all the tools that you're already using. I think solution based, especially when you're attract, trying to attract small business owners, who already are strapped for time, who already are doing all of these things who are already trying to run a business, I think is, a way to go, if you're trying to sell a solution like they are. Which is what it feels like they're trying to sell an alternative to QuickBooks, not just features and functionalities. But you're not going to necessarily win on one off tools that way. Right? You need to win on the full, takeover because you're not going to go use QuickBooks and then say, okay, and we're going to integrate with FreshBooks to get mileage. Right? It's going to be a one or the other.

Garrett Mehrguth: I have a thought, Holly. So I'm FreshBooks, I'm the, let's say chief marketing officer or CEO. And I'm looking at the whole thing. Isn't it easier, to make QuickBooks the bad guy? Because it's kind of the buy you, for you, how it's always people are, we were all gym rats and so we built a inaudible for gym rats.

Holly Pels: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: We are the underdog. And we built an accounting software for the underdog. I don't know why can't they play the underdog card and get, create an emotional connection with the SMB owner who doesn't want to use, the big corporate Intuit QuickBooks. Because they don't feel... This is a very unemotional, I mean, QuickBooks is by accountants for accountants boring by, it is boring. You get what I'm saying? Why not go and be bold and tell your story and create an emotional connection too. Because that's what missing. It's like, I don't know why I need, I go on FreshBooks to be FreshBooks instead of like a worst version of QuickBooks, in their positioning.

Holly Pels: Yeah. I mean, again, they're leading with features functionalities, instead of leading with a story or a value or a solution they're not connecting necessarily directly with the audience, which is what, and we talked about this even before we started, right? That kind of that's the future we as humans want to connect with other humans. We want to know empathetically, how is that going to help me? How are you going to help me? So, yeah. And I think that there's a way you can do that without having to say, no QuickBooks crosstalk Right? You can still do it in a way that says, I mean I love the concept too, if they are people who are small business owners that are creating this because they have this problem, that's a story. Why would you not be talking about that? They need to get on a podcast.

Garrett Mehrguth: That's exactly how I'm kind of singing it. And my point being here is you don't beat Salesforce with features. That's the premise of their product. You beat it with simplicity and usability, but I don't ever get that messaging out of FreshWorks. Do you see if your Pipedrive and Pipedrive's actually been quite successful. Oh wow. That's freaking hilarious. The first CRM design by Salesforce, I'm literally crosstalk finding it in every other industry where you're competing with the behemoth. How do you differentiate? Right? That's what I'm trying to look at. They only have 95,000 companies. And I think we said FreshBooks, has 30 plus million users?

Holly Pels: Yeah. Let's go to there about us page. Let's see. Is that where the story is hidden.

Garrett Mehrguth: The FreshBooks story. Once upon an invoice. Flashback to January 2003, Mike was running a four-person design agency and when it came to billing clients, Word and Excel were frustrating. It is there. Yes! It's buy, a SMB owner for SMB owner.

Holly Pels: It's an actually you want-.

Garrett Mehrguth: This is why I want to use this photo.

Holly Pels: Yes. I love this. And if you actually go to the actual about us page, because this is the story. So, and actually I love the timeline here. That they are giving you how this all happened. How this developed. On the about us page. They have over 24 million people have used FreshBooks. Over 60 billion invoices paid through, so they, oh, is it... So they have some of that stuff that you would think would be really impactful. What was, what we saw on that when you signed up page where it said right away, save$7, 000 and some of those. Those are some of the values too, that I think people connect with because people connect with the instant savings. People connect with seeing that other people have done it. Other people have trusted money through this. People spend time in here, they have a philosophy.

Garrett Mehrguth: They have philosophy. Their team.

Holly Pels: People want to buy from people. People don't want to buy from the big, I mean they do, want to buy from the big companies because they know they can trust it. But I think that headline right there could be exactly what you said earlier.

Garrett Mehrguth: Watch this.

Holly Pels: I love that you-

Garrett Mehrguth: What if you made the accounting software built, built for underdogs? Now let me do it. Huh? An interesting day to day. Okay. But essentially I would have a county software built for underdogs and I would tell my underdog story to everybody and make them fall in love with me.

Holly Pels: Yeah. I think-

Garrett Mehrguth: You can go on QuickBooks and you beat them. I think I could totally tell that story. We took on QuickBooks and beat them you can take on your competition and beat them too. Here's how FreshBooks is the ultimate partner for SMB owners around the world. Now I got a story.

Holly Pels: Or its matter.

Garrett Mehrguth: It does. It really does because we went after QuickBooks by being as boring as they were. This not the quote, the founder and tax director from McCormick tax group. Jessica's not my quote, helped tremendously with cashflow. That's not my quote. My quote's more like before FreshBooks, I was struggling to win. After FreshBooks we've took market share and became the most successful business in our neighborhood or whatever. It's like, wow. I want to be the most successful business in my neighborhood.

Holly Pels: Customer quotes are hard. I'm getting one from you as soon as this is over for Casted's website.

Garrett Mehrguth: Good. I got you. I'm just, my point being here is, I love the fact that fresh, FreshBooks is built exceptionally, successful business. I just want them to be FreshBooks.

Holly Pels: It's, to be their own thing. Right? But, and it's but even we kind of even addressed the elephant in the room though, is they know that they're going to be compared to other people. So if they use some of that stuff that we saw earlier that we went and found at the bottom of the website in a smart way, that people can find it when they search for it, that people are looking for the alternative that people are. Well, that was crazy. That kind of saw of some of that issue. And that opens the way for you. I think it's an interesting conversation to talk about, how you can use storytelling and content and it can serve all these different purposes without it taking away from the message. Right? So you can go and use storytelling. You can go and do all these different things. They could have a podcast, where they sit and talk like we are, about how they started things, how they did that. And that could fuel so much of the story that we're seeing, the content that we're creating and they can still go create those comparison tracks that they can SEO. They can add, put ad, spend towards, they can do all these different things that when people are searching and people are looking for that, they're getting that. But then making it, more enticing to click through and learn more about, well, why is this different? Why outside of features and more functionalities would I want to choose something like this and use it. Storytelling is so important. It's so important because people want to buy from people, they want to buy from humans.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love that. And I want you to synthesize that for us all first off, Mike, if you're out there, have you ever see this call me, I want to help you because your story is awesome. And it's also buried and you're competing with QuickBooks by being QuickBooks instead of being FreshBooks. And I don't think that makes any sense, but congratulations, Mike, you've just hired Holly as the new CMO and she has three core pillars that she wants to implement in 2022, to help reposition, retail FreshBooks story and game market share. Well, what are those big three things you want to do Holly?

Holly Pels: Starting with brand. I would say storytelling. So kind of reconfigure what we're looking at from a content perspective. I think you can look at brand and separate that outside of every other thing, because when you're thinking about a business initiative and want you to do, brand drives demand, right? So if you take what we just talked about and you say, we're going to take that brand story and we're going to center it around everything that we're doing, you already have a better story. You have better content, you have better things that you can drive people to. I would say this. Yes. And it's, it again, humans want to buy from humans. So if you can also then go and talk to people and he can tell his story, about all the different things he can do. And I have experienced that and I talked about-

Garrett Mehrguth: They may want to work for people. He needs the engineers from QuickBooks to help improve his product roadmap. They want to work for Mike. They don't want to work for Intuit. There's a real sense there.

Holly Pels: They're and brand the storytelling piece, the culture piece, all of that should be from, because we just saw that was buried kind of within the bottom. You couldn't even get to it from the top. Right? So I would say that's one, I'd say from a demand perspective, thinking a lot more through searchability on some of the things that you're creating, because you know people are going to compare you to that. And so you can't necessarily go apples to apples with them. But if you create those comparison charts, if you create articles and different things that are specifically for, when people are searching for this, to bring them into your story. I think that that changes things pretty drastically. So I would say a better search, friendly strategy here within kind of the content and the demand piece that you're doing. There's so many things. I would also say solutions. I want to touch on pricing because I think it was a bit confusing, but I don't know that's necessarily the end all be all because the price point of those are crosstalk.

Garrett Mehrguth: It was really good as long as they didn't, as long as didn't slow down and evaluate.

Holly Pels: Correct. As long as you-

Garrett Mehrguth: Until I started, going good yeah.

Holly Pels: As long as you're not getting into it. But I do think solutions, them focusing a little bit more on how all of this stuff helps a small business owner or the different businesses they were going after. I think that clarifies some things and it helps them understand and envision, how can I actually use that product a little bit better. Than saying, looking at all the features because looking at a feature list like that can be incredibly overwhelming and can turn people off pretty quickly. So I think those are the three I would focus a little bit more on brand with storytelling. Demand with searchability and comparisons and then, solutions.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love it, Holly. That was amazing. I think my only feedback would be, they don't have enough pages to not just hire one copywriter and have it be the best ROI they've ever had. If they have one copywriter at that company, full time.

Holly Pels: I'm going to watch you on a secret. You don't even have to do that. Just have somebody sit and ask the CEO a million questions, transcribe it and put it all over the... Put it into blog post, put it, pull that out and put it into the out badass page. I have worked at so many businesses where I was the sole person creating content. And that's what I did. I mean, I even did it at an organization where I led a team of five. I still sat with the founder and I said, I'm going to ask you 10 million questions and we're going to talk for three hours. And then we're going to transcribe that and turn it into things, because it immediately takes out some of the guess work and it gives you word for word exactly how they would have it. Exactly how they would say it. And you just get so much more value out of that. So conversations.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love it, Holly, thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone, thanks for tuning in. It's another episode of SaaS Marketing Makeover. FreshBooks. I think, genuinely I do think the world of view, taking on QuickBooks is not a remotely simple thing. I just want you to tell your story because you have an amazing story and I had to really scroll to find. So thanks for being our muse today, FreshBooks and everyone else. Thank you. That's another episode, Holly, how can people follow you? Find you. Learn more.

Holly Pels: Sure. You can find me on Twitter at @hollypels. I never tweet. So I'm so sorry. But you can also find me on LinkedIn, Holly Pels. Or you can find us at Casted.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love it. All right. Well thank you so much for being on the show. And that's another episode. Bye everybody.

Holly Pels: Thank you.