Digital Transformation: Tailored Tech for Business Growth and Efficiency | Steven Robyn from Div Notes

Ernesto: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversion by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Steve at marketing operations director there with Div Notes

Steven Robyn: How you doing today, Steven, how are you doing? Excellent, Ernesto, thanks for having me.

Ernesto: It’s great to have you on and we’re talking a little bit beforehand, but let’s jump into why our listeners are tuning in. Tell us in your own words, Steven, what is Div Notes all about?

Steven Robyn: Div Notes is your custom software innovation partner. We work with you to collaborate on establishing a solution for your particular business. Whether it be a mobile application, custom ERP for your large enterprise, or a government solution for transportation, logistics and other sorts of problems. We are your problem-solving partner.

There isn’t really a limitation to what we can do, whether it’s Chrome ends, Chrome extensions or anything in between. The only limitation is we just aren’t your WordPress developer. So anything custom, anything bespoke, anything unique just for your needs or your partner.

Ernesto: Yeah, that’s awesome to hear. And so that way our listeners can get a better understanding of Div Notes, Steven, what would you say is a key problem that you saw for trial?

Steven Robyn: Every client and every particular industry that we serve is unique. I would say that Div Notes and our particular skillset is industry agnostic. The particular problems that we solve are those digital transformation issues.

For instance, where you have a business that’s been operating five to ten years and they’ve been stuck in a particular way, they’ve been expanding, they’ve been growing, but their particular business procedures haven’t updated themselves to lend to the more streamlined way that they could operate. Or perhaps they need to introduce technology to increase their efficiency or improve those workflows.

Where we come along is we can digitize what a lot of they’re doing on Excel spreadsheets or whatever it may be. Or we can take their existing solution, proof of concept beta, and turn it into an actual MVP that is sustainable and scalable for long-term growth.

Ernesto: All right, awesome. So I mean, talking about, Vernon for segment, is there an ideal ICP for you guys?

Steven Robyn: I would say the ideal customer that we’re trying to identify would be a funded startup. The keyword being the funded part is I do speak with lots of entrepreneurs, and I think they’re great to have great conversations and ideas with. However, the roadmap of being a tech entrepreneur is long and it is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

There’s this phrase that I like to say which is: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. It’s great if you are a startup who is going alone, trying to figure it out, but in our opinion, you need to partner with us or you need to have co-founders to really have that long-term solution success.

So the ideal customer profile that I’m trying to identify here is one that has co-founders on the startup side, the one that is backed by either friends and family that have something to spend, and they have already put together the business plan, they’ve already put together their exact roadmap in terms of where they want to go. They’re clear, they’re concise, they know what they want to do and they’re organized.

On the enterprise side, really, we find that after about 500 employees or greater, they tend to be a bit too big because things move a bit slow. So those enterprises with 500 employees or less, we come in and again, we can alleviate your software engineering challenges, whether they’re being bottlenecks of your existing team, your existing operations. We have fractional CTOs on our team that will come in and help work with you.

And we’ve even done work for governments in terms of the City of Vancouver or OLG, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission. So we do lots of work for various different clientele. The key is just, I think, the right client is who we’re looking for.

Ernesto: All right, interesting. And so those right clients—how do they typically find out about Div Notes? Is there a top client acquisition channel that you guys have?

Steven Robyn: Absolutely. So, I mean, we do have account executives and inside our firm, and we are doing outbound efforts. We’ll see you at a networking event, possibly. Please say hello. We’re more than happy to engage in a conversation and just share some advice and share some ideas and possibly share a referral or two. But the real clients, the real acquisition of clients is coming from inbound.

Steven Robyn: It’s coming from our referrals, it’s coming from word of mouth. It’s coming from the relationships that we’ve established over the last ten years that continue to work with us. We have a very high client retention rate here at Div Notes. We do not tend to hand over very often. And that’s not because we’re not supportive of that. It’s because typically when we get ourselves involved in these projects, we are thinking very long term and we’re thinking strategic with those clients in a partnership that makes sense for them long term.

Ernesto: All right, awesome. And so that way our listeners can check you guys out, you could visit them at duke notes.com dot. Steven, what role does a website play for client acquisition?

Steven Robyn: Well, I would say that your website is a little bit of your menu and it’s a little bit of your storefront. In the age where brick and mortar businesses are critical today, a lot of us are now finding our success from online and digital solutions.

And in an age of technology where we have smart applications on our phone and on our wristwatch, the invasive, pervasive nature of technology is that it’s going to continue to expand. Well, you need to be where your customers are. If your customers are a technology-based clientele set, then advertising to them online is probably the way to go.

Your website truly is your new version of your storefront. It’s your sign and it is your menu as well. When they come up to the navbar, they hit services dropdown and they see all those items that you might provide or all those various different products that you might serve—so and so forth. That is your menu inside the store. The idea is to get them in your store, get more business.

Ernesto: Definitely would agree with that. And on that, is there any rules or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners as far as some website lead generation?

Steven Robyn: Website lead generation is something that needs to be accomplished with an omnichannel marketing solution. There is no one way of wax on, wax off of marketing. I really think it is industry specific. It is case by case specific.

Understanding the competitive landscape to align with your marketing strategy that works best plays a part here. There’s certain things like advertising spends where you’re doing basically a brand awareness campaign. If someone comes to my social media page and they like one of the posts and perhaps they come to the website, well, the second they hit the website, I’m going to be tracking them and sending them advertisements for a while.

The idea is that I’m creating this brand awareness so that when they do eventually get the email campaign or the drip campaign or whatever I’m doing—whether it be a voicemail drop or what have you—when they hear the name Div Notes, it’s a brand they’ve already been exposed to. This is called the mere exposure effect in psychology.

So in terms of how to generate that website traffic, I think it’s got to be aided to the particular business in play. But there are a lot of different common tools and common practices, such as advertising spend, in your omnichannel marketing campaign approach to leverage.

Ernesto: Yeah, great. Thank you so much for those tips and recommendations, Steven. Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about you, being the marketing operations director—what big tasks do you focus on in your day to day work?

Steven Robyn: I think a lot of entrepreneurs that might be listening might relate to this. Any high functioning manager leader in any organization is going to be wearing multiple hats, and I’m no exception. My title might be marketing operations director, but I oversee the product development efforts. I deal with product strategy.

I’m operations director and looking at the workflows and the standard operating procedures of our organization, as well as consulting on others for the clients that come across and providing that advice, in addition, of course, the marketing and the sales. Those are two other director roles that I’m wearing.

My day-to-day tasks get eaten up by meetings a lot, where I do not get to my own tasks so much. I’m spending a lot of time explaining and delegating to other members of my team. I’m grateful that I have a talented team, but it does take time to flesh out ideas, look at edge cases, boundary cases, and problems that perhaps weren’t clear at the onset of implementation.

This is why due diligence and planning is critical. Failing to plan is planning to fail. And planning to succeed takes serious diligence and care. Outside of meetings and delegation, I’m constantly looking at the strategic side of things, looking at workflows, and finding more efficiency.

Ernesto: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Let’s jump into our next section, Steven, which is our rapid fire question round. Are you ready, Tim?

Steven Robyn: I’m ready. Fire away.

Ernesto: First off, what is the last book that you read?

Steven Robyn: Last book that I’ve read would be Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference. Absolute stellar read. I recommend the audiobook as well—getting his tonation and the way he communicates and delivers his lessons. Very valuable for anyone in sales, anyone in marketing. Always negotiate and always find a way to uncover that black swan.

Ernesto: Next up, what is one single thing that your company is focused on at the moment the most?

Steven Robyn: The most right now, in terms of operations, we are looking at scaling. The last four to five years of our ten-year journey have really been to stabilize and expand our core team. We’ve introduced a lot more managers in the middle level and with this, we are preparing for large scale in the next five years. Operationally that’s where the focus is: preparing for that scale and that growth coming in our pipeline.

Ernesto: All right, awesome to hear that. Next is: if there were to be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer?

Steven Robyn: If there was no boundaries in technology, then I could think it and it would be done. But as a marketer, what I find is there is no automation for establishing this marketing campaign that we’ve asked about—how to generate more converting website traffic.

I don’t think I’ve come across an AI technology today that can generate a complete marketing funnel strategy, campaign strategy based on the various different tools that I’m using. If there was something like that, perhaps someone listening is getting the idea—please build it and then sell it to me.

Ernesto: All right, there you guys heard it. Next up, Steven: if there is one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Steven Robyn: I think our estimation process is something that we’ve been looking at as a means of shortening the buyer cycle.

Engineering custom solutions takes time to do due diligence. It takes time to plan. It takes time to establish your blueprint to build a house, let’s say. Clients want a lot of things, and some requests create big technical implications. There’s a lot of due diligence that comes into the nuances of those moments where we’re looking at what you want to build, and making sure it’s engineered correctly from the onset.

So if I could automate anything, it would be that entire process—estimating it, consulting on it. If you could input a few things in a form and I could spit out a quote in 60 seconds or less, we’d all be happier. But unfortunately consulting isn’t like that. We do need to think about edge cases and boundary cases, and “if this, then that.”

Ernesto: The implication for every decision on the end—some great points there from you. And this last question: you have a lot of experience already, Steven, but what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Steven Robyn: Marketing has shifted in the last decade. The power of a brand has been diminished and the power of the influencer, the power of the individual has become king. It’s not just content is king—it’s the content creator is king.

People are doing business with individuals they resonate with. That shift is something I would have wanted to tell my younger self: invest earlier in establishing my own personal brand before trying to establish corporate brands that I’m associated with.

Ernesto: Definitely important. I would agree with you. Before we end, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about your company?

Steven Robyn: The one thing you want to remember about Div Notes is that we are persistent and we are collaborative and that every situation takes a unique touch. Talk to us. Let’s figure out what your unique needs are, and let’s find a unique path forward together that will make sure that your business solution lasts for years to come.

Thank you, Ernesto, for your time, for the great questions, as always. I’ve been really enjoying the Pathmonk podcast so far, so I’m grateful and proud to be a part of it. Thank you very much.

Ernesto: No, thank you, Steven. And to our listeners, you could always check them out again at divnotes.com—your software innovation partner. They build the solution for tomorrow, for today’s problems… right? Thank you so much, Steven. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Steven.

Steven Robyn: Thank you.