Unraveling Accounting Software and SEO Strategy | Krinal Mehta from FreshBooks

Ernesto Quezada: Welcome to Pathmonk Presents, the place where business owners and marketers share their insights on digital growth. In every episode, we discuss real strategies, why they worked, and also why they didn’t, getting insights from real experiences to save yourself a whole lot of time and money. Let’s get to it right now.

Before we get started with today’s episode, let’s have a quick look at what Pathmonk is all about. If you are winning leads, demos, or sales through your website, then Pathmonk might be interesting for you. Pathmonk is an extension to your website. It watches each visitor as they’re moving through your page and builds up their interest in your product or service in real-time to deliver a great uplift in conversions from your website. Usually, the buying journey can be divided into two stages: awareness, consideration, and decision-making. Pathmonk figures out in which stage a given visitor is by watching every action they do on the website and provides them with micro experiences such as notifications, case studies, and introduction videos, helping them to move to the next stage in the buying journey towards a conversion.

Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Krinal from FreshBooks, Senior Manager SEO with them. How are you doing today, Krinal?

Krinal Mehta: Doing great, Ernesto. How are you?

Ernesto: I’m doing great. It’s a pleasure to have you on and to have FreshBooks on our episode today. So, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more about FreshBooks?

Krinal: For sure. Hey everyone, my name is Krinal. My pronouns are he, him, and his. I work and manage the SEO team here at FreshBooks, which is a SaaS-based accounting software started sometime in 2003 by Mike McDermott and Levi Cooperman. Essentially, it’s an accounting software that helps small businesses send invoices, receive payments, track their expenses, reconcile with their bank accounts, and give them back more time in their day-to-day by taking care of their financial reporting so that businesses can keep up to date with their financial health. In addition, FreshBooks also offers payroll, expense tracking, mileage tracking, and some other features depending on what market you’re in. FreshBooks has offices in six different locations and customers in more than 200 countries. The company has been around for a little over two decades now, so lots of things are happening on the FreshBooks side of the fence.

Ernesto: That’s important and great to hear. So, to help our listeners get a good understanding of FreshBooks, what would you say is the key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

Krinal: The key problem that we like to solve for small business owners and their accountants is different for these two segments. For small business owners, we solve the key problem of tracking their expenses, sending invoices, receiving payments, and having their books done automatically because all of this is being done on the same platform. On the accounting side, the key problem we solve is managing multiple clients using all different tools and technologies and software, and managing their books all centralized from one location.

Ernesto: Perfect. So, is it fair to say that your vertical, your segment, is usually just small business owners and accountants, or is there an ideal ICP for you guys?

Krinal: In terms of industry and vertical targeting, service-based businesses can take maximum advantage of FreshBooks. Marketing agencies, creative professionals, law firms, IT firms, consultants, and trades and home professionals like contractors are some of our top customers.

Ernesto: Awesome. So, how do these industries usually find out about FreshBooks? Is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Krinal: Search is one of our top acquisition channels, both paid and organic. If you’re a contractor and you search for, “How do I send an invoice?” or “How do I receive money online?” or “How do I manage my books online?” or “How do I file my tax return?” you’ll likely see us somewhere educating you about how to set up, run, and grow your small business and how FreshBooks can help in that pursuit.

Ernesto: Great to hear. And for our listeners who are tuned in, you can always check them out at freshbooks.com. What role does the website play in client acquisition?

Krinal: The website plays a major role in client acquisition. It helps educate our audience about the product and informs them on how to use the product. There is also a 30-day trial period which users can sign up for through the website and then start using the full suite functionality of the product. So, the website is pretty much the starting point in the customer’s journey for us.

Ernesto: Awesome. Is there any tool, tip, or method that you would recommend to our listeners for website lead generation?

Krinal: We’ve made significant investments to ensure that the user experience on the website is smooth and that users can find the information they are looking for without having to navigate complex architecture. For lead generation, we use a tool called Qualified that personalizes the user experience depending on the pages they’re visiting. For example, if you’re visiting a payroll-specific hub article, you’re likely to see more payroll information come up through the chatbot. This makes it easier for the user to see that not only are we educating them about how to set up and run a payroll software, but we also have all these amazing small business resources that a business like theirs could use. This helps simplify the user journey for our audience.

Ernesto: Perfect. Let’s switch gears a little bit, Krinal, and talk about you as a leader. You being the Senior Manager of SEO at FreshBooks, what are some key tasks you focus on in your day-to-day work?

Krinal: Great question. I’ve been with FreshBooks for a little over three years now. It started as a one-person SEO team, and now I have two direct reports working with me and with our partners, vendors, and contractors. The day-to-day looks something like this: In the morning, I look at our numbers and check if we are on track to hit the targets for the month in terms of traffic, trials, and upgrades. Are all the projects on track? Does anyone need any help? Are there any technical issues that may have come up given the size of the website, which is a few thousand pages? In the afternoon, we have meetings with different cross-functional teams to discuss new features that FreshBooks is launching and how the organic team can help increase our footprint for that feature in that specific market. We wrap things up with meetings with our vendor partners to ensure everything is on track.

Ernesto: Sounds like you have a full plate, but you’re making it grow after three years, so kudos to you for that. How do you keep up with all the new trends in your field?

Krinal: Especially with AI, it’s becoming harder to keep up with things. I subscribe to a number of different newsletters and try to spend some time during the weekend going through top content on the internet across those newsletters. A couple of my go-to resources are TRDR, which is a tech newsletter that gives a quick summary of the top things that happened in tech yesterday, and Growth Memo run by Kevin Indig, who used to be the SEO head at Shopify. It gives good summaries and insights into how big brands are leveraging search as a channel and how the search landscape is evolving.

Ernesto: Awesome. Let’s jump into our next section, Krinal, which is our rapid-fire question round. Are you ready for them?

Krinal: Ready, let’s go.

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

Krinal: The last book I read was “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. I love the book. I’m more of a nonfiction reader myself.

Ernesto: Great read for our listeners. Next, what is the one single thing that your company is focused on the most at the moment?

Krinal: FreshBooks Payroll. It’s a feature we launched in Q1, and it’s the one biggest thing the organization is focused on, making sure our existing and new prospect customers have the best experience migrating their payroll over to FreshBooks or starting their payroll with FreshBooks Payroll.

Ernesto: Awesome. If there were no boundaries in technology, what would be the one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Krinal: Wow. I’m already starting to feel like I’m in a different place, but I would love 100% transparency from the users that visit the website but do nothing. A typical website has a sub-one percent conversion rate. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the other 99% left us with something to say, “Hey, this is what I was looking for. This is what’s missing on your site. I’d love to have it in this format. I’d love to consume it in that way.” It would be amazing to start serving users the way they want it.

Ernesto: Definitely. Next, if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Krinal: Reporting/insights. We do this every week, and there are a number of different reports that we run. Most of these are insights that by now should have been automated by some sort of AI or machine learning. I did try launching a startup to solve that problem back in 2017, and it gained some traction, but then Google gave that away for free called Google Insights inside of Analytics. But I still think there is some opportunity to solve that problem because many marketers do the same type of analysis every single week and generate the same type of insights. If that could be automated, it would be pretty handy for the execs to look at that.

Ernesto: Awesome. Lastly, you already have a lot of experience in the marketing world. What would be one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Krinal: If I were to restart my journey as a marketer today, one advice I would give myself is to talk more to sales and support teams. As much as you can try and learn from your customers what they’re looking for and how they’d like to receive that information, the more you know about your customers and their pains and challenges, the better you can market to them. Your marketing is completely dependent on how your users want to receive the information you’re trying to share with them.

Ernesto: Awesome. Some great advice there. We’re coming to the end of the show, but before we do, Krinal, I want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about FreshBooks?

Krinal: If you are looking for a product where you don’t have to spend time and money buying and subscribing to seven different tools, come to FreshBooks. You can do all of your invoicing, accounting, expense reconciliation, all in one package, and not have to pay for seven different tools. If you’re looking for efficiency, think about FreshBooks.

Ernesto: There you guys heard it. You can always visit them at freshbooks.com. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you, Krinal, for being on and bringing FreshBooks. It’s been a pleasure. I’m looking forward to listening to our podcast and our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Krinal.

Krinal: Thanks so much, Ernesto. Have a good one.