Farzad Rashidi

Jarie Bolander 07.Apr.2021

Relationships, Not Spam with Farzad Rashidi

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Summary

Hey everyone. I’m going to try something new today. At the end of the interview, I’ll share some actions to try or Advice to Take that I learned from the interview. You can also read these same thoughts in the show notes.

Now on to my guest today, Farzad Rashidi, founder of Respona.com.

Farzad emigrated from Iran as a teenager. After college he took an internship with Visme, which has fast become a major competitor to Canva, offering visual tools for businesses. There he learned and honed strategies in marketing and SEO, becoming its director of marketing. Noting that only 10% of what a marketer does ends up being productive, he learned that SEO and backlinking have been key to helping Visme become more visible and attract more traffic to their site without having to pay for a lot of advertising. It also requires a lot of labor. Like many entrepreneurs, the idea for Respona arose out of a need that wasn’t being filled; in this case, an effective tool for effectively doing personalized outreach to scale for PR and marketing.

Respona is still in its early stages but shows promise. As Farzad explains, much of learning how to be a successful marketer is simply learning, experimenting, and reassessing. One constant he has found is the necessity of building relationships. Unlike other tools, Respona seeks to harness the efficiency of automation and put it to use for personalized connections. Respona makes it more efficient to practice the principles behind marketing: producing good content, building relationships, and being of service.

Now let’s get better together.

Actions to Try or Advice to Take

Rashidi and I share some valuable insights on best practices for PR and marketing, including:

Start early when planning a campaign for your launch; a few weeks is not enough time. Rashidi is starting to build awareness now to launch in six to seven months.
Build authority and credibility by writing blog content, connecting with experts, and showing up on influencers’ podcasts.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. Part of a marketer’s job is experimenting and figuring out what works.