[Top Agency Series] Mastering Demand Generation in HR Tech With Dilara Cossette

Dilara Cossette is the Founder of Focus Image Pro, a boutique demand generation agency specializing in human resources tech companies. She has a background in HR and a passion for improving workplace culture and employee engagement. With years of experience in B2B SaaS and digital marketing, Dilara has transitioned from a fractional support role to running a full-fledged agency dedicated to her niche. Dilara believes in hands-on involvement in strategy and implementation, ensuring her team grows in alignment with her personal and company values.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:24] Dilara Cossette discusses how Focus Image Pro helps HR tech companies with demand generation
• [04:44] The importance of niching down for business success
• [06:34] How Dilara transitioned from side gig to full-time entrepreneurship
• [08:25] Strategies for effective demand generation
• [12:01] Key hires crucial for scaling a boutique agency
• [13:19] Common HR culture mistakes in growing companies
• [14:51] Dilara shares how to build a thriving culture through core values
• [18:30] What are the common mistakes in B2B SaaS?
• [20:33] Focus Image Pro’s customer success stories
• [23:56] Top tools for project management and team communication

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make a side gig into a full-scale, thriving business? Do you know how company culture and demand generation impact the success of tech-driven HR businesses? Where does authenticity fit into the equation of building a brand?

Dilara Cossette, a demand generation expert, discusses niching down in B2B SaaS, specifically within human resources technology, and the profound impact it has had on her agency’s success. She discusses the evolution of demand generation and why understanding your audience’s pain points is crucial for conversion. Dilara also reveals how nurturing a company culture based on core values leads to better team performance.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Dilara Cossette, Founder of Focus Image Pro, about demand generation and company culture. Dilara discusses Focus Image Pro and how it helps HR tech companies in demand generation, strategies for effective demand generation, and how to build a thriving culture congruent with a company’s core values.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Dilara Cossette on LinkedIn
• Focus Image Pro

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Trello
• Slack
• HubSpot
• Kudos

Related episode(s):

• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Expanding Your Brand Impact Through Social With Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “For someone running a demand generation agency, you have to believe in demand gen, but you also have to be passionate about the industry.”
• “I always say that people don’t work for me, we work together and I truly believe that we grow together.”
• “People buy from people, they don’t buy from companies.”
• “Lead by example: if you want to create a transparent culture, you have to be transparent.”
• “I think appreciation is important, especially in the remote world.”

Action Steps:

1. Embrace niching: This strategy allows you to become an expert in a specific area, providing more meaningful and effective solutions to your clients.
2. Cultivate strong workplace culture: Developing a culture guide based on core values like trust, transparency, respect, and empathy can significantly improve your work environment.
3. Focus on demand generation: By educating and engaging potential customers early, you can create brand awareness and reduce conversion costs.
4. Leverage personal branding for business growth: Encouraging team members to become brand advocates by sharing expertise and engaging with audiences can enhance company visibility.
5. Utilize recognition tools: Implementing employee recognition and reward systems can boost morale and reduce turnover.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Dilara Cossette. You can check them out at focusimagepro.com. And Dilara, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the top agency series, some of the good ones, some of my favorites are Adi Klevit. Adi Klevit has an agency. She does done-for-you SOPs. So she goes in, she helps document, SOPs to smooth out and Client Onboarding, staff onboarding. She’s really good. We geeked out on her favorite software and productivity tools. On that episode was really good one. Another good one was Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey has a Second Bite Podcast, and he helps pair private equity with agencies. He helps sell agencies and second bite because sometimes the agency owner makes more on the second bite than they do on the first when the private equity sells again. It was a really good episode on the business space M&A valuation and the agency space as well. Check that out.

And Duncan Alney was a good one. Duncan Alney, Firebelly, they have a great podcast as well. Duncan, and we’re gonna talk about niching Dilara, of course. They specialize in food and beverage companies, and they do social media marketing for food and beverage companies. And we’re gonna talk about niching, the importance of niching on this as well. Check that one out with Duncan Alney. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and we do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, and, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships.

I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, should you have questions, you can go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. I’m excited to introduce Dilara Cossette. She’s the founder of Focus Image Pro. They’re a boutique demand generation agency specializing in solutions for HR tech companies. They offer fractional demand generation services that includes paid ads, design, landing page optimization, SEO and much, much more. And Dilara, thanks for joining me.

Dilara Cossette 3:06 

Thanks for having me.

Jeremy Weisz 3:08 

I’d love for you to just start off and tell people about Focus Image Pro and what you do. As you do that, there is a video portion for people. I’m going to pull up their website, and we’re going to poke around as she’s talking so Dilara, tell us about Focus Image Pro.

Dilara Cossette 3:24 

Absolutely. And thank you so much for the intro. Basically, we are a boutique demand generation agency, and we work exclusively with HR tech companies. And the reason why, going back to your point about niching down, we niche down recently that HR tech because HR is very close to my heart. I used to work in HR for HR and now with HR tech companies, and I’m very passionate about everything related to workplace culture, employee engagement, satisfaction, performance, you name it. And I truly believe that for someone running a demand generation agency, you have to believe in Demand gen, but you also have to be passionate about the industry. So that’s the reason, that’s where we are. I started my company a few years ago. Now we’re a team of seven people. I’m very proud of the culture that we’re building. And it’s a roller coaster, I would say. Entrepreneurship definitely, it’s ups and downs all the time, but it’s paid out at the end of the day.

Jeremy Weisz 4:21 

Talk about the decision. We’ll go back a little bit, but when you first started the company, talk about the decision and journey to niching. Right now, obviously, you’re in HR, you’re focused on HR tech. When you first started, talk about that thought process of niching, or what were the companies you were serving then.

Dilara Cossette 4:44 

Yeah, it’s a very good question. So when I started, it was always as a side gig. So I used to work on my life in B2B SaaS organizations. I had a little bit of experience with HR, a little bit experience working in an agency as well, but for the last 10 years, I was working in B2B SaaS. So when I started the company, I was supporting B2B SaaS organizations. They basically — that’s how we started supporting other clients. And when I fully shifted from full-time job to running 100% my agency, that’s where the focus already so a few clients that we have, they were all in B2B SaaS, and then we were growing and scaling. We were focusing on B2B SaaS. But when people say B2B SaaS is niche down, it’s still thing, very vague. And there’s a lot of companies, agencies, fraction of folks that really focus on B2B SaaS.

So I really wanted to go even further initial like triple nation. So that’s the reason how we wanted to go after HR tech. And I think, like, it’s helpful for clients, because we have experience and we have an expertise in the specific industry, and kind of like talk the same language, and it also helpful to hire people with the HR background. So it’s kind of like a win-win. Yes, the town is smaller, that’s for sure, but the conversations are more meaningful. I mean, that’s basically the way how I see the things I might be wrong. All right, let’s chat in a few years to see if that was the right decision. But yeah, that’s in a nutshell.

Jeremy Weisz 6:15 

Talk about transitioning from working for someone to actually a side gig, to actually starting your own and maybe your first few clients. What was the idea on the side gig piece?

Dilara Cossette 6:34 

I consider myself very lucky. The company I was working full time, they supported me in my career growth, and when we had this conversation with my manager, we realized I liked his approach, that career path it’s not really within one company. It’s like my career path. And they supported me and became my first client, official, the big client, and that was this transition. To be honest with you, I’m very lucky. It was very smooth transition. So I woke up and I started, like, fully transition this year. So I woke up the beginning of the month January, and nothing really changed, just the contract base. And then I started growing and scaling. But it helped me a lot to set up the processes. At the same time, we revamped the website.

We made so many changes. I started hiring people like getting partnership referrals, so that helped me really to stabilize the processes before I shifted also from fractional to demand generation. That’s what happened somewhere in May. I was supporting a lot of clients on a fractional basis. But then when we started growing, I realized that it doesn’t make sense for people being fractional. You can’t have a team. So that’s where I had to make a decision, and that’s where we transition again, to the agency model.

Jeremy Weisz 7:49 

What was the role at the company? Your role?

Dilara Cossette 7:53 

It was demand gen. So it was the demand generation. And I’ve been working in demand gen for the last five, six years before it was more digital marketing side, more heavily focused on lead gen, and when we started looking at the way, how people convert, how you create a demand, how brand aware, and this is important, I always advocate for creating the demand and capturing the demand after because it will cost you way less when you try to convert people who already aware of your brand.

Jeremy Weisz 8:25 

Talk about demand gen to you. What does that mean? Because I know I’ve heard various people have different thoughts on it.

Dilara Cossette 8:33 

And this is so true. When you ask people, what is demand gen? Even marketer folks fractional CMOS, they will have their own definition. I would say it’s brand awareness. It’s a new term of brand awareness, but brand awareness can be social media. It can be advocacy. It’s pretty much the same, but it was a demand gen the difference is you’re not only focusing on brand awareness, you also just move people through the funnel. Basically it’s how to create a demand, convert it and then to capture it. So when you move the buyers through this funnel by educating, sharing your knowledge, giving before even asking something like for a demo or for a call, they will know where to come and how to convert when they are ready to buy or explore your solution, if we’re talking about the B2B SaaS.

Jeremy Weisz 9:22 

Because there’s a lot, Dilara and you mentioned a few things that go into demand, generation, even just the creating, converting, capturing each one of those, just creating, like each one of those has a laundry list of things under that. So when you were working with these companies as a fractional piece? Were you executing on all these things? Were you advising their team on all the things that they need to do?

Dilara Cossette 9:47 

Well, it’s both. It really depends on the company size. So we focus on small and mid-sized companies, if they already have a marketing team and they need a direction. We’re just like, you know, focused on strategic implementation. We can take over something and implement — but it’s both. When we’re talking about small-size companies, when they are like one-person marketing team, that’s where we come with a strategy and implementation as well, depending on their needs, depending on their budget. There’s so many criteria that’s where before even putting together the proposal. We meet with them several times to understand what they really need. How many people are on the team?

What are their responsibilities? What is the budget? What are their goals? How aggressive they are, what are the tactics? Also, it takes some time to understand what they did, what work, what didn’t work, so we won’t really waste their money and budget for something that maybe implemented, tried and it didn’t work.

Jeremy Weisz 10:47 

And then for you. So when you started off with these companies, when you were working for the company, was there a team under you and you were doing kind of the strategic vision of it and passing it along to the team?

Dilara Cossette 11:00 

Usually, yes. So we’re also growing and scaling at the moment, yes, everything related to strategic and just like management, it falls under me. But obviously it will be a little bit hard when we grow and scale. But at the moment, I really like and enjoy talking to people, especially HR tech. I’m very passionate, so I can’t imagine myself not doing the actual work. There was a moment when I was delegating almost like 90% of the task, and it feel yeah, it’s yeah, I didn’t enjoy it. So I really, like, love, like, rolling the sleeve and get into the stuff, trying to figure it out, analytical point of view. So, yeah, I really enjoy it.

Jeremy Weisz 11:43 

Talk about the evolution of the team a little bit, and some of the key hires. So obviously, it’s you, your fractional for a bunch of companies, talk about the kind of as you go, some of the key hires and people you put in place.

Dilara Cossette 12:01 

It’s interesting. I always say that people, they don’t work for me, we work together, and I truly believe that we grow together. So I see that more as a partnership and collaboration, other than people I hire, and they are like, reporting to me, because we learn from each other and we grow together. I would say it depends really what the company wants. If they’re focused and they really need someone to execute their pay that strategy, there will be people I partner with and we work together to help them to get to their revenue goals. If it’s something like related to email marketing and life cycle stages, there will be people who will work together to make sure we set up the processes and those like workflows and sequences to make sure we convert MQLs to SQL, let’s say or to customers.

Jeremy Weisz 12:54 

Who was your first or position was your first key hire after you bringing other team members on.

Dilara Cossette 13:01 

That’s a good point. It’s a paid media manager.

Jeremy Weisz 13:07 

And then, obviously you were in HR, you work with a lot of HR tech companies. What are some of the mistakes you see people making with HR and culture?

Dilara Cossette 13:19 

When they’re targeting talking to HR companies, or generally, when they are trying to build the culture in, build the culture. Oh, there’s so many things. It’s like such a big topic to me. I think sometimes we do things and we don’t really realize when we’re under stress, it can be affected. Well, I mean, we can talk differently. We can use the aggressive tone we can lose some kind of, like a connection with the team members. What is interesting? I used to work in B2B SaaS later, always 10 years. But I realized that all the companies I used to work, they had a toxic culture before I joined the company. It was a great culture. So I looked back and I’m like, what was that?

That was something, but I didn’t know there was nothing to compare with. So I was thinking, like, this is the norm, and this is, like, the way how people talk. They can use aggressive tone, they can raise a voice and make inappropriate jokes, not well to me, towards me, but you know, I was seeing that, and I’m like, okay, that’s most probably normal. When I joined the great culture where people were so respectful, emphatic, transparent, I realized, wow, that’s how it feels, and it feels awesome. And every time when I hear like stories, when people are treated in a bad way, in another right way, I always try to bring it out. I was like, hey, it’s not normal.

Jeremy Weisz 14:45 

What do you do with your team to maintain a great culture?

Dilara Cossette 14:51 

The first thing that I did, even before the first hire, we built the culture guide. To me, it was very important to set up the core values. And our core values are. Based on trust, transparency, respect and empathy. And I think those company core values should be related at some point to personal values. All those four, this is the way how I live. And I think this is important, because when you try to build something, when you share this culture guide, it’s easy for everyone to refer to those core values and realize the way how we want to talk. I think having those conversations and led by example, this is really good advice that I would give to everyone.

If you want to create transparent culture, you have to be transparent. You have to share your failures as well with the team. You have to let them know if something doesn’t work, and I think that will create the environment where they can come and say, You know what, I made a mistake, and you have to be very flexible with that as well. So it could happen. Let’s try to figure it out. How to solve it together.

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