This is the second in our www.www series in which guest contributor Michelle Corsano talks Mitch Solway, Vice President of FreshBooks. The first interviews is here.
What impact is the recession having on marketing?
From our perspective and with the freelancer and small business owner in mind there are two key impacts. One is the increasing importance of receivables – getting paid. With cash tightening up in many businesses, getting paid and getting paid fast has never been as top of mind as it is now. That’s good news for FreshBooks as, on average our customers get paid 14 days faster when they switch to managing their invoicing with FreshBooks.
Secondly, the sweeping job losses are creating an accelerated market for freelancers, service professionals and small businesses as people begin to take matters into their own hands and start their own businesses. This is actually a positive outcome for FreshBooks as it is growing the actual marketplace for our services and accelerating the relevancy of our service with respect to running an efficient business.
Which online tools and sources of information do you rely on?
Without a doubt our key sources of information are our customers. We talk with them on the phone, through email, through our forums or in person every day. If this is not your key source of information it should be! As far as online tools we use a bunch – we have a very successful blog, we use Twitter to connect with our customers (and for customer service), newsletters, emails and online advertising are also in the mix.
Where do you go online when you login in the morning?
I usually start with any Google Alerts for FreshBooks to see what is being said about FreshBooks by the media or by our customers.
Who do you follow online?
Personally, I don’t follow many people.
When and how do you measure digital marketing success?
When = as it happens…that’s the value of digital marketing! If the traffic is direct then we simply tag and code all our efforts so we can see the results like website visits, trials and conversions and link that back to the specific efforts. If it is concerning our overall brand, we look at our referral rates, blog mentions and overall chatter online since word of mouth is our biggest business driver.
Why are companies reluctant to embrace social media?
I suppose there are many reasons but if I had to pick one it would be that they are not yet prepared to have an authentic conversation with their customers and market. They are not bad or wrong for that…just that it stops them. And by “them” I mean the company as a whole as surely many people within companies are willing to…but unless it is bought into from the top it “just ain’t gonna happen”. The reality is that social networking is where conversations with your customers are happening – so it is a wonderful way to empower your customers to spread and share the word about your business…that’s the power of social media. But if you are going to embrace social media it can’t be fake or contrived as people see through that and it will work against you – authenticity is key!
Michelle Corsano is a Web and social media marketer with 15+ years experience in business-to-business technology marketing. She is President of 
