EmXcore podcast Episode 5: Talking It marketing, recruitment developments and a new datacenter content platform

In this episode we talk to Mark Karsch about his new platform Edgedatacenters.nl filled with datacenter related content, marketing changes in IT and developments in IT recruitment.

Lisa:
Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The EmXcore podcast. A podcast where we will invite customers, partners or any one of whom we think has something interesting to say, or has some interesting views on the internet and networking industry. Today we are talking to Mark Karsch, about marketing and all the developments that he sees in the industry. So Mark, welcome. How it going?

Mark:
It’s going, it’s going. I’ve got a second kid on the way. But at the same time, business is booming. Everybody is gearing up for third quarter, infection rates across Europe due to Corona are going down. And there’s a general positive atmosphere going on in the market. I have a number of business relations that are planning the next events. So I mean, market is jumping and projects are happening.

Lisa:
Yeah, you can see a big growth now, especially now everything is coming back to a normal life. Can you tell a little bit about yourself.

I have a core team of six people with whom I do different lead generation, and marketing positioning programmes all around the world, varying from helping and consulting with DevOps companies to a managed services company in Israel that wants to set up a distribution channel in the Netherlands. And currently, I’m running LinkedIn advertising campaigns in the United Arab Emirates, and Brazil, all focused around networking equipment and internet exchanges.

Lisa:
Cool. And does your background comes more from the marketing side or the it technical side?

Mark:
As my wife says, I’m a special kind of person. My father was a hardcore engineer. Me Myself, I’ve always been a salesperson at heart. But I learned at a very early stage that as a salesperson, if you don’t know the answer, it’s best to shut up and let the smart people in the room talk. And so far,that has helped me to play both sides of the aisle, because I know when to shut up when talking with engineers. And they can appreciate that.

I have a sales background. I studied marketing communications in university. And I quickly got into sales. I was I was picked up as an inside sales rep by a company called Psi net and Psi net was a managed hosting and conductivity provider. Throughout my professional IT career I’ve lived through two data centre migrations.

And after that I was kind of done but still kind of young. So I thought, well, why not go into something entirely different so I got more and more into marketing, and talking to companies on a strategic level. And having a bit of a technical background that went fairly easy. And I started working for different hosting providers in the Netherlands.

Lisa:
And over the years, how did you see the marketing in this in this field change?

Mark:
The IT markets has a tendency to repeat itself. I think if you look at the traditional market in communication processes, nothing really changed. I think the approach in which we’re currently selling hybrid the hybrid propositions or the container propositions is basically the same way as we used to sell virtualization ten or so years ago.

What is currently changing is the way how things are being communicated. For example, 10/15 years ago, we would purely talk about the problems that clients would face, we would write those out on a white paper, and that would be it, we would go to our events where we would meet potential clients, and we would cold call potential clients. And that was it.

And I think nowadays, if you’re a salesperson 2.0, LinkedIn is your biggest friend. Rather thinking inside out, people are thinking outside in. Meaning, if you’re reaching out to that IT manager at Philips, you get inside his problem area, you define certain key criteria that match with the product portfolio that you’re offering. And you base your social media outreach on that.

I think it’s much more interactive than it used to be. And it needs to be more interactive than it was, because the offerings are just so diverse and the competition is so, so heavy. So I’m always looking out for curious companies and companies that like to try new things.

I was very impressed with the podcast that you guys are doing, I was immediately fascinated. So I dug deep into those numbers tried to see who’s running podcasts nationally and internationally and that number is very little. So I think it’s very cool that you guys jumped in into that niche.

Lisa:
And now you’re on it!

Mark:
And it works. You’re trying out new, different sorts of stuff, and it’s really, really cool.I haven’t seen too many misses, but I have seen a lot of brands that get stuck on some very, very small numbers.

What I’m curious to see is, there’s a big event coming up in March, Cloud fest. Those guys are always on the forefront of renewing their philosophies and approaches. With regards to IT communication skills. I’m wondering what these guys are going to do with new media. Such as Instagram, such as Twitch. Is Instagram really new? No, it’s not. But relatively from an IT point of view. Yes. I really would like to see what’s going to happen. And, see some numbers. I saw Nutanix doing a lot, a lot of live streams during Corona. And I’m very curious what the ROI is on those channels and how interesting it is for the different engineers out there.

Lisa:
Yeah. And of course, you’ve seen the last, especially the last year that there were loads of the big events that went to an online format, where they would do live streaming and those kind of things. Do you think that will stay, like some sort of hybrid between live and online events? Or do you think everything will just go back to completely life?

Mark:
I think, initially, everybody who has the possibility to get out of the office will get out of the office. I mean, IBC, the international broadcast conference, has moved their live events to later this year, December. So that IBC. I’m doing with one of my clients, the Dutch cloud community, we’re doing a summer barbecue on September 2nd. Everybody check out www.dutchcloudcommunity.nl or sign up. It’s a completely free event. Also another fantastic events we are going to be throwing servers. It’s like the Olympics, but then instead of a disk, we’re going to be throwing a server and it’s a lot of fun.

And other life events that I see coming up: Info security, they’re going to be doing a hybrid event. You saw, world mobile Congress in Barcelona going on right now finishing up today, those guys had a hybrid event. I think there will be a lot of people that are just trying to get out to different events just to socialise, and get their network up and about. So there will be a lot of opportunities for data gathering and data mining within GDPR guidelines. Whether or not that will actually lead to a lot of sales conversion, I have my doubts. I think if you want to do proper lead-gen, white papers, LinkedIn marketing, Google ads, I think those are some of the more interesting ways to go.

I like your podcasts. I’m very interested in seeing how lead-gen comes off off that. I’ve been seeing some good results with some of my business partners in the US. Hybrid events yes, live events no. I think for now the investments doesn’t match the amount of leads that you’ll get out of them.

Lisa:
I think it’s right, people want to get out again and start talking to real people, instead of to a computer screen. And of course that still worth it because you want to have that little interaction. And it’s always different speaking to somebody in real life, than through zoom or through the phone

Mark:
And then again, if you are a marketing manager who has a KPI to get new people into the database to start selling into, you know, like top of the funnel. Then those live events would be great.

I think you told me a story about how you guys went to different data centres to hand out ice creams?

Lisa:
Now what we did, we went to AfricaCom in South Africa. And what we did there is we rented a big Vespa with the best ice cream of Capetown or South Africa even, I think. And people just come to your stand interested first about the ice cream and then after that, they come to listen what you have to say and you can have a real conversation.

Mark:
II seeing this and I gotta say one of the reasons why we kicked this off and why we hit it off is because I like your innovative style as a marketeer. I think your managers are sheer brilliance for hiring you. And I like this sort of stuff. You know, we were talking earlier about marketing 10 years ago, I think what a lot of young marketeers in the industry are bringing is newfound respect for clients and trying to figure out non traditional ways of doing things. Playing around with content, thinking about it in a 360 degree approach if we have something that works, hey, what are the spin offs?

Lisa:
Exactly.

Mark:
I did a couple of client brainstorms earlier this quarter talking about events and event strategies. And these clients that were dead settled on holding events, and they wanted to bring all sorts of complicated content omn stage. And I said no, no. What do we want at this point? We want to shake hands, have a laugh.

Lisa:
Meet people

Mark:
Have a drink.

Lisa:
What is some interesting stuff that you saw latelly in marketing on IT?

Mark:
Interesting stuff that I saw standing out during Corona was the enormous uptake of online advertising campaigns. Online webinars, that actually worked, were the ones were people invested heavily into obtaining the right databases within GDPR guidelines. I think the winners coming out of COVID-19 are the companies that have not just upsold into their existing portfolio, but that have also invested in growingntheir business intelligence. Because now, there will be a possibility to start reaching out to these people.

I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the market right now. I’ve been talking to a couple of my clients. There’s an enormous uptake on salaries. A senior Microsoft engineering, the Netherlands was making about 4500 gross a month. Now the average Microsoft engineer in the Netherlands, the salaries are running up to 5500 a month.

I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the market right now. There’s an enormous uptake on salaries for Microsoft engineers and network engineers.

Lisa:
Wow, that’s a massive increase. Well because next to the marketing you also ( for the people who forgot about the beginning) have a recruitment company.

Mark:
Yeah, I also have a recruitment company. What I’m slightly concerned about is the companies that are staying with their current business models. Because of the necessity to maintain your team members, you’ll need to start paying them more. And I’m wondering what that’s going to do for the business models out there.

You see the same happening with network engineers. Their salaries are going up enormously as well. The nuance with network engineers is that those guys need to invest in DevOps skills as well. Linux engineers, strangely enough, marked more or less on a standstill. Pre-Corona, I had 10 Linux vacancies in Amsterdam at any given day of the week. While these days, I might have one or two. But the amount of Microsoft and network engineers has multiplied by 10.

Lisa:
Wow, is that just in the Amsterdam area or?

Mark:
That’s throughout the whole of the Netherlands

The amount of certified Juniper engineers on the market. It’s not even 10% of the amount of Cisco engineers available on the market. Whereas I see the amount of Juniper engineers requests are going to the roof.

Lisa:
yeah, okay.

Mark:
Yeah, it’s really interesting.

I’ve been investing a lot in LinkedIn advertising. I’m doing a lot of advertising work with carriers doing lead generation. So for instance, now I’m running campaigns, in UAE and in Brazil. And we’re seeing click throughs and procurement going up a little bit, there’s a convergence of about 2% of the people that we targeted on.

I’ve been really interested in trying something with Facebook, but I haven’t been able to find the right client.

And one of the other things that I find really interesting is the enormous uptake in companies seeking opportunities abroad. I currently, got four of my clients that need help with building channel strategies. Two companies from Israel, one company from the US one company from the Netherlands, these guys are looking not to grow their sales efforts in certain countries, but they’re really looking to partner with other companies in order to explore growth opportunities. I know that EmXcore, you guys do a lot of work abroad as well, right?

Lisa:
Yeah, we work with basically companies all over the world as well.

Mark:
And you guys then built networks, inside data centres or you don do those at all?

Lisa:
What we do, for companies that have for instance, there’s loads of companies from abroad, let’s say the US that want their equipment installed in a data centre in the Netherlands. For them, it’s a lot of hassle to fly their own engineer to the Netherlands and then they have to book a hotel and food and everything. And what we can do, we can offer remote hands.

So what we can do if a customers from abroad buys their equipment from us and they want to have it installed in any Dutch data centre we can offer a remote hands service so we can take that out of their hands which makes it a bit easier for them to grow in different parts of the world basically.

Mark:
Familiar.

I’ve got a Israeli company that’s at Dataplace in the Netherlands and they’re growing quite well. So I’m helping these guys develop their channel strategy and trying to find the right channel partners for them. I’m working with other freelancers to set up lead gen programmes to set up direct and indirect channel. So that’s a lot of fun.

What’s missing for me? And what I find strange is that I’m seeing this enormous uptake in foreign companies coming to the Netherlands. I don’t see a lot of traditionally Dutch companies going to other countries, that have foreign market ambitions. My last project that I’ve done was I took a MSP to the Baltic States, where they started looking &a processes to buy other companies start to develop an IoT proposition as such.

I will promise this to any client of MX core listening to this, and tagging and sharing this podcast conversation. We’ll set up a free consult for you to discuss your foreign go-to market strategies.

I will promise this to any client of MX core listening to this, and tagging and sharing this podcast conversation. We’ll set up a free consult for you to discuss your foreign go-to market strategies.

Lisa:
Wow.

Mark:
I think also looking at the European markets, I work a lot with the Dutch Cloud Community, GaiaX is something that all cloud providers should investigate. Pan European cloud, check out Dutchcloudcommunity.nl for information on that.

But I think there’s not enough successful Dutch entrepreneurs looking at commercial possibilities in Belgium, figuring out how to go to Germany. What about Denmark? I mean, the people in Scandinavia, on average, have more to spend than Dutch people. So why are there not many Dutch entrepreneurs doing anything in Scandinavia?

If you guys are looking for something like that, and you’re already buying with EmXcore, send me a DM, we’ll get on a call. And we’ll try and figure something out. I’ll at least give you a couple of pointers.

Lisa:
What I was thinking is well, we haven’t even talked about the fact that you have a website as well with loads of data centre related content, right?

Mark:
We are doing a couple of 100 ventures per month. We’re not yet a publishing house. But we’re getting there.

Lisa:
You said ‘yet’, so who knows

Mark:
we’ll see what happens there. I might have a couple of surprises there. But at least I’m broadcasting the right podcast on my platform.

Lisa:
And what kind of content can people find on the platform?

Mark:
We’ve got industry news coming out of the Dutch market, we’ve got industry news coming out of the global markets We’ve got technical YouTube videos, working with Arrow, working with the Dutch Cloud Community. I’m working with one of my cloud partners to publish some information.

There’s a lot of recruitment stuff on there. Junior guys that are not an entrepreneur, check out the vacancy update. If you are an entrepreneur also push me your vacancies because I have no problem with finding the right people. Not necessarily from a recruitment point of view, but if it’s happening in the Dutch market, I want it to be happening on my platform.

If it is happening in the Dutch IT market, I want it to be happening on my platform

Lisa:
Exactly. That’s a good goal. So everybody should definitely check it out. It was www.edgedatacenters.nl

Mark:
Lisa thank you so very much

Lisa:
Thank you Mark. And for everyone listening thank you for listening to this episode. Please let us know what you thought about it or if you’ve any suggestions for the next episode, hopefully until the next one.