Martin Raamat — Marketing is a mix of rocket science and creativity

Thanks a lot to Martin for taking the time to do this Interview. “Marketer Interviews” is a interview series catalog where we interview the top marketers out there and present it in an organised and categorized format at interviews.observely.net .
Martin Raamat is Co-Founder / CEO at Mediamodifier. To learn more about Martin’s work go to https://mediamodifier.com/.

Question: Where are you working now, what is your role and how did you get here?
Martin Raamat: We’re currently building a startup company called Mediamodifier.com which is also a tool for marketers and entrepreneurs. I am the co-founder and content producer with a few million other tasks. The idea for the product came from my own need — as an entrepreneur, I often needed quick marketing visuals for my company website or social media channels, but creating such content is very time consuming and requires design skills or specific software. Thus, an idea was born to create an easy to use tool which helps anyone sell their products and showcase their designs.

Question: What is your favorite marketing area? (Social, SEO, Sales etc.)?
Martin Raamat: Mostly SEO, because I like the challenge of coming up with creative content for the actual users while also feeding the search engines with enough important data to get ranked for the right keywords.

Question: Why do you love marketing?
Martin Raamat: Because marketing is a mix of rocket science and creativity. There’s the technical side of gathering information, experimenting, measuring and analyzing data, and then there’s the creative side of advertising. In the end, you can see how one word or image can make or break a marketing campaign.

We all hate it when a stranger knocks on our door and tries to sell us something we don’t need. Now imagine that someone who’s selling protective iPhone cases knocks on your door just 15 minutes after you’ve unboxed your new iPhone. What a coincidence?

Good marketing gives you a great chance to find the right people, so you could sell them something they actually need.

Question: What are your favorite books?
Martin Raamat: I love books with great stories, mostly inspirational biographies of other entrepreneurs. It’s fascinating to read how people got started and developed their businesses.

Question: What marketing related blogs, magazines etc. do you read to keep your skills up to date?
Martin Raamat: I don’t specifically follow any marketing related blogs but instead a lot of entrepreneurs and investors. They often try to sell you something, so if they get my attention, I often analyze their campaigns to see what they did right… or wrong.

Question: What brands do you like or follow on social media and why?
Martin Raamat: None. I don’t want too much noise on my social media accounts. When I’m curious and want to see what a company is up to in social media, I go to their pages and scroll down to see what they’ve posted for the last six months to see if they are active or not.

Question: How do you find good content?
Martin Raamat: By reading articles and following newsletters of creative people and entrepreneurs.

Question: How do you get to know your target audience?
Martin Raamat: At first, you simply guess who they are. Once your business gets more serious, then you must find out who they are. Basic tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights (Lookalike Audiences) also give you a good head start.

Question: What tools do you use for social marketing?
Martin Raamat: Buffer for the management side and keeping things together. Also, I cannot answer this question without mentioning the very same tool we’re building — Mediamodifier. It’s great for all DIY marketers who need visual content for their social media channels. We made it because we needed it our self to showcase various product shots and website mockups.

Question: What tools do you use for analytics?
Martin Raamat: Mostly Google Analytics, Mailchimp and data from Facebook Pixel.

Question: What CRM tools do you use?
Martin Raamat: The CRM features of Mailchimp.

Question: What’s your #1 advice for people starting to get into marketing?
Martin Raamat: Know what you are doing, and why you are doing it! Before doing any marketing, make sure you set yourself goals about what you wish to achieve in the end. It’s not a good idea to start a marketing campaign without thinking about the results first.

If you don’t know what the real value of the product you are selling is and to whom you’re selling it to, then you aren’t selling at all — you’re most likely just wasting time.

Be creative.

This interview is part of the “Marketer Interviews” catalog project. A service by observely — your automated competitor analysis delivered to your inbox