A marketing platform and content library purpose-built for the Accounting profession | Ian Christie

Today I’m speaking with Ian Christie, CEO & Founder of BOMA Marketing

In this episode, we talk about . . .

• How the BOMA platform works, and how it intersects with Xero.
• How businesses can differentiate themselves if they’re all accessing the same content
• The impact on SEO if multiple businesses are using the same content.
• How accountants and bookkeepers can support their clients through digital marketing
• The origin story, and the lead up to and their huge launch at Xerocon.
• How can they entwine digital marketing and their online presence, to help clients appreciate their value?

In the interests of transparency, I’d like to let you know I do work with this team, though I believe I have still delivered a measured and interesting interview. You can read more about the way I work at EndorsementDisclosure.com

Heather Smith:                  Hello, Ian. Thank you so much for joining me on Cloud Stories today.

Ian Christie:                        My pleasure.

You have written a book called In the Groove, Applying the Principles of Jazz to Business. So what has happened is your book has been selected as the book of the month, and the book club are going to send it to all of their subscribers in a box, with three things. The three things are an item connected with a book, a drink to set the mood of reading the book, and a treat to enjoy while reading the book. So can you tell me what those three things will be?

Ian Christie:                        Okay. So the item that they could put in would be a small, plastic harmonica. So the inner musician in them can come out, and even if you just blow on it for a couple of minutes, I’m sure something will happen. So that’s great. A drink that I would put in there, well, Miles Davis, who was my inspiration on Jazz music, he was a big fan of a martini. So I think that a prepackaged martini would be appropriate. It might also make the harmonica playing a wee bit easier. As far as a treat is concerned, I think you can’t go beyond a chocolate biscuit, because it’s a fairly indulgent thing to have, and maybe it’s a nice chaser after the martini.

Heather Smith:                  Excellent, thank you for that, Ian. Give you some inspiration to productise your book a bit further.

Ian, can you share with our listeners a bit about your background?

Ian Christie:                        Sure. I’m not from a software background, I’m from a marketing background. After leaving school, and going to university, I got an MBA because it was a general business degree at the time, and it gave me sorts of options. I majored in marketing, so got taken in on a graduate programme by BBDO. Then I moved to the Saatchi Organisation, which I spend most of my time in. I worked in New Zealand for a wee while, and I becomes the CEO of the New Zealand operation, then I moved to the UK. I specialised in telecommunications. So I ran the telecommunications portfolio in London. Then I moved to a company called WPP, which is the largest, it was then the largest marketing services company in the world. Again, working on telecomms, spending all my life in an aeroplane. Essentially, I’d spent pretty much my whole career flying all over the place, which sounds good, but was quite tiring.

Ian Christie:                        Got to a point where I decided that marketing was, in its traditional form, because I was a broadcast guy, brought up on making television commercials, and billboards, and those sorts of things. The internet was increasingly becoming part of the new landscape. I decided I had a choice to either be part of the past or part of the future. So I decided I’d like to be part of the future. So left WPP and set up a video on demand company, called Channel Flip, which grew very quickly. That was bought by a news corporation.

Ian Christie:                        Then I started, I’m getting involved in software, and I ended up working within a company that was headquartered in San Francisco. Through that process, I got to understand how the whole world of online marketing was working, how it was playing out. I saw that smaller businesses, particularly, were served by some rather large players, but also underserved in a lot of ways as well. I had a conversation with Rod Drury, the founder of Xero, and showed him what I was doing. He encouraged me to take it from what essentially was a mark up to a proper piece of software. So that involvement with Xero at the get go pushed us towards the accounting profession. So that’s the Reader’s Digest version of where we’re at today.

Heather Smith:                  Thank you for sharing, Ian. So you spent a long time working at leading international advertising agencies, both in New Zealand and internationally, as you mentioned.

How does a global operator need to adjust their marketing to reach a New Zealand audience?

Ian Christie:                        Well, these days, it’s actually all about targeting. So essentially, targeting any country or any jurisdiction is something that you can do from your desktop, whereas previously, everything was essentially so segment geographically that you really had to have a lot of on the ground experience to be able to maximise an individual market. These days, if you’re targeting a country like New Zealand, for example, you can do that from anywhere, in the sense of being able to have the tools to execute. But also what you can do is access a lot of information about the habits of that particular audience in that particular country, and there is a lot more data points available.

Ian Christie:                        So I think that what it is, is that the how is essentially getting the right platform that you think is going to carry your message in the most effective way. Depending on what sort of reaction you want your customers to give you upon looking at your marketing message, is essentially what type of platform or what type of channel that you would use to get that reaction. So for example, you don’t want to be advertising, let’s say, on something that is very popular in the sense of trying to find a small audience within a large group of people, because that’s very difficult to do. It’s best off to say, “What do my audience do? Where are they, irrespective of the country, in the sense of what’s important to them? What do they like reading, and looking, and listening to?” Therefore, try and find an outlet that is as close as you can get it to the habits of that customer or that customer cohort.

Heather Smith:                  Thank you, thank you for sharing that with us. Can you share with our listeners, and I know you have touched on it,

Can you share with our listeners an overview of what Boma Marketing actually does?

Ian Christie:                        Sure. So we’re a platform, a content marketing platform, which essentially allows a user to select the audience that they want to target, and the content that they want to use to target it with, and then essentially match those two things up, and easily and quickly get that content out to their target. So essentially, what it saves them from doing is having an email provider and going, and loading all of this stuff into email, and then going into their social media channel, and loading all their ads up, and doing that. Essentially what Boma does is aggregates all of the channels that you have available to you in one place. Also, what it does is that it allows you to select from the-

Heather Smith:                  Content library.

Ian Christie:                        Content library, and be able to actually then extract content that you think is the right message, and brand that, and send that out. So it’s essentially allowing someone who is not a traditional marketer, or hasn’t had any marketing background, to be able to actually put together really professional campaigns, get them out into the channel of their choice, and then get a report back on how that marketing message performed against their audience.

Can you explain where Boma Marketing intersects with Xero, and if it does intersect?

Ian Christie:                        Yeah, sure. So we have an API with Xero, with their HQ ecosystem, which we’re a part of. Essentially, if you are a Xero user, you can have a one click integration between Boma and Xero, where all your customer contact records will be taken straight out of Xero and straight into Boma. So you don’t have to upload a CSV file, or you can if you want. But essentially it’s just a one click integration, again, super seamless, really easy. It gets you up and running really quickly.

How can accountants and bookkeepers use digital marketing to support their clients?

Ian Christie:                        Well, I guess there is two parts to it. But when you use the word support, I think that makes it, actually, a really, really interesting place, because when you want to support your clients, essentially what you’re doing is you’re using your more advisory hat to allow those clients to not only understand some of the forces that are working with or against them, but also to inform them about the sorts of things that you would love to talk to them about, but maybe don’t have the time or the opportunity through availability or whatever.

Ian Christie:                        So essentially, when supporting their clients, it’s around these are the types of things that me, as your accountant, believe are necessary for you to maintain your business, prosper as a business, and watch out for things as a business. Therefore, using the content, and being able to go into our library and select from the four or 500 different articles, something that is relevant to the situation that you believe your clients are facing at the moment. That’s where we see a lot of the use, and I’m really glad to hear you use that word support, because support is part and parcel of creating a great, engaging relationship with your customer base. Often times, that can be things that people maybe didn’t know they wanted or needed, but you’re able to actually provide it for them, therefor adding some value. Potentially, particularly in these tough times, giving someone a piece of information that they really did need, but probably didn’t know where to look for it.

Heather Smith:                  Yeah. I strongly believe that, for me, the marketing that works best is drip feeding education and content out. I never say buy this from me, never says that. It’s the education. I realise my next question is quite redundant for you, because you’re sitting in New Zealand, and I believe lockdown regulations have completely ended for you. So congratulations, and well done.

For the accountants and bookkeepers across the world, who are listening in, how should they be approaching marketing differently during Covid-19?

Ian Christie:                        I think differently is essentially probably … The only thing I think is differently is that maybe you’re restricted physically in the way that you can actually get out and connect with your customers. So let’s just say that’s the key point. But I think it’s more about making sure that you are engaging with your customer or your client as much as possible. It’s essentially about creating conversations. You talked about educating, it’s essentially using these opportunities to say, “We need to engage, and here are the things that we believe are most effecting you.”

Ian Christie:                        But also it comes very much back down to the basics of marketing, which is primarily understanding your audience. Understanding, and maybe you can put your customer base into different buckets, and say, “Look, if I had three or four buckets of the type of clients that I have, here is the type of bucket, basically, that they would fall into.” Therefore, I can then go and talk to bucket one with this particular type of piece of content, bucket two, bucket three, bucket four. So essentially, it comes back to, I think, really good business practice, which is understanding your customer base, understanding what’s important to them, understanding what their needs are.

Ian Christie:                        Then, in marketing, it’s essentially about tailoring the message to that. Which if you look at these marketing messages almost as a proxy for you sitting in front of them, across their desk, that hopefully you will be able to do soon. But because of the physical restrictions, if you can think about what are the conversions I’d like to have, and therefore be able to actually send those out digitally, rather than having to rely on the traditional way of maybe talking on the telephone, which of course you can still do, or physically going to see them, which I think is going to be a little bit more challenging.

How many resources, or what sort of resources should an accountant and bookkeeper be throwing at marketing, or throwing in their marketing area, in terms of time and in terms of money? I guess in relation to the size of their business? How much resources should they be allocating to marketing?

Ian Christie:                        Well, the rule of thumb that’s always been around has been between tow and 5% of your revenue equivalency should be going into some sort of marketing effort. That can be either not much money or too much money depending on, I guess, how you view it. But essentially, it’s really saying that there needs to be an allocation of money in that sort of level of expenditure to be able to support what you’re doing. Bearing in mind that media has become much, much cheaper in the last few years, and will continue, probably, to get even cheaper still.

Ian Christie:                        So therefore, nowadays, if you have the right message, you understand your audience, and you understand where they are, that money goes a long, long way. The point you were making about education is important, because marketing is … It’s not essentially let’s take, let’s say, 2% of my rev, and put all of that into a messaging that says, “Buy from me now.” It’s basically, if you look on marketing as part education, part awareness of you as a business, and also part of it is engagement, and building up a relationship with people. Then you start to see that actually, well, it’s not just spending money on advertising in some way, and not really being able to track what it comes from. I think if you look on marketing holistically, those sorts of percentage numbers actually then make a lot of sense.

Heather Smith:                  Over the years I’ve been in business, probably 15 years, I’ve revamped my branding probably about four times. I’ve always been able to link that to significant price increases that have gone up through that time. So in respect to what happened to me, and I do think one of the areas that accountants and bookkeepers constantly seem to be discussing and talking about is pricing of their services.

How can accountants and bookkeepers entwine digital marketing and their online presence to help their clients appreciate their value, and increase their prices?

Ian Christie:                        So I think it’s really interesting, and brand is something that we don’t often talk about, particularly in professional services and that sense, because when you mentioned brand, people often think about toothpaste, or yoghourt, or a car, or something like that. But actually, professional services are just as much about being a brand as a fast moving consumer good. So therefore, the fact that … So the rule of thumb, again, I guess, is that you can. But if you build a strong brand, you’re able to charge more. That’s the very … But then you go, “Okay, so what goes into that brand?”

Ian Christie:                        So brand is essentially a direct response to value. Therefore, if you build … You can’t look at brand as a design or a logo, because that’s branding. A brand is essentially what do I stand for? That’s important for my practice? What do I want to be known for? Therefore, where can I spend the most amount of my effort making the biggest difference to my customers? Again, from our world, from any marketing perspective, it comes back to the level of engagement and the quality of that engagement. Therefore, I guess if you’re taking it from one extreme, so one extreme being no marketing at all, and just a dialogue, and then the other extreme being lots of marketing. Essentially, the difference between those two extremes is scale.

Ian Christie:                        Therefore, if you are trying to build a brand by having conversations one at a time, that will be very difficult for two reasons. One, you just don’t have the hours in the day to talk to everybody and tell them your story. Secondly, there is nothing for them to actually physically grab onto, or see, or consume when you walk away for them to be left with an impression. Whereas if you go to the other end of the spectrum, and essentially it is completely at scale, and quite disconnected from you as the practitioner, then you get to the point where you could be considered a little bit out of touch, or unreachable, or a little bit cold.

Ian Christie:                        So somewhere there in the middle needs to actually be where the ideal brand is pitched. Therefore, if you have a well articulated reason for being, so this is why my practice exists, and this is what I’m passionate about, and this is what I can deliver really well, plus you can have a suite of products, or a suite of activity, or events, or something that backs that up, then what that does create is a brand presence. Then therefore, that brand presence being well articulated, and well positioned, and well accepted, then allows you to say, “You can have a premium now against that.” Because people want to know what they’re paying for. If they feel like they’re part of something, which is your brand, then I think that they’re much more comfortable in paying those fees, and not getting that blow back that you were mentioning that could result if there is nothing to back up that raise in fees.

Heather Smith:                  Yeah. Absolutely, thank you for that. So Boma runs off a content library, and I’ve explored the library, and agree it’s extensive and quite varied.

What do you say to the person who says, “How am I differentiating myself from other accountants, if we’re all accessing the same content?”

Ian Christie:                        Okay, so firstly, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content in there. So there is more than enough to go around, firstly. Secondly is that the beauty of Boma is that essentially we look on the content as more thought starters, in the sense that that content can actually be the one, or a starter to the sorts of things that you want to say. The ability of Boma is to be able to personalise that content as much or as little as you like. So it’s really a case of saying, “This is something I think that works for me, I’m going to then send it to my customers. But I’ve also got my own particular spin on it.” We have over a million free images in our image library. So by the time you actually take the genesis of the content out of the content library, put your own rights cleared image, high quality modern image on there, and brand it, it’s definitely unique to you.

Heather Smith:                  Thank you.

SEO or search engine optimisation is an important marketing strategy for establishing authority and being found on search engines. If multiple businesses are using the same content, what impact is happening on the business’s websites SEO?

Ian Christie:                        Okay, so I’ll answer that in two ways. Firstly is we were approached by Google about a year ago, who said, “We just love what you’re doing. How can we be a part and help you?” So that’s incredible. The second part of it is that again, it’s about … So search engine optimisation is a very algorithmic art that is very hard for a lot of people to decode. So the idea is what I said about before, is that the high degree of personalisation that you use will essentially get you the ability to actually still optimise for your search engine, or your SEO strategy. I think the thing about search engines is that actually, a lot of the search terms, again, it goes back to your target audience understanding, is that being able to understand what that person is looking for, and what sort of language they use, and what position you’re in to fulfil that request, I think, is actually really super important.

Ian Christie:                        So if you want to be good at SEO, you should be having hundreds of search terms that you believe are the terms that are applicable to your particular expertise. Then being able to go through and optimise your SEO based around that is going to be far more powerful than any other strategy you use on SEO. Sure, the content will help you to be found, absolutely. It won’t forcibly upset the algorithms if you’re using the genesis of content that comes from our library. But if you want to be successful at SEO, it’s a big commitment, and it’s really start at those basic things, which are the search terms. That’s where that’s going to give you the most bang for your buck.

Heather Smith:                  Yeah. In all honesty, many of the accountants and bookkeepers I know appear to run off referrals for their lead generating their clients. But it is the digital marketing, the platform, the branding that emphasises the type of clients that they are working with. So I do question, for some businesses, how important SEO is actually for them, when there is a plethora of accountants and bookkeepers out there. Many targeting the same sort of key terms.

Ian Christie:                        Yeah, exactly.

You said Google approached you and said that they really liked what you were doing. What about what you were doing did they like?

Ian Christie:                        Our ability to deliver an all in one platform with ready made content. They could see the uniqueness of it. I guess we were flattered by the sense that they must see the inside of a whole bunch of business, and our one happened to pop out, and they were very complimentary about what we were doing. So essentially, a lot of the smart money, at the moment, is about how can you power SMEs, or small to medium enterprise? How can you get those small businesses, and particularly post Covid, how can you get them to resuscitate themselves, and give themselves a profile, and guide them to doing the things that they need to do, rather than potentially something that they might think is the right thing to do?

Ian Christie:                        So the way that I’m looking at the interest in Boma from these large businesses is because of our ability to connect people to the small business, and be able to actually provide them … The way we talk about it internally is that a lot of the accountants are actually come out of … This is the superheros of small business, you know? A lot of those accountants stepped in at the darkest of hours, and said, “This is what you need to do, why don’t you try this?” I think that this was the defining moment for the accountancy profession. I think everyone stepped up to the plate brilliantly. We have anecdotes about all sorts of things that accountants were going above and beyond to help their small businesses. So we see ourselves as the, I guess, one of the important links in the chain for the accountant to maintain that momentum and maintain that authority that they’ve been able to drive out of the challenges.

Heather Smith:                  Yeah. Absolutely. The accountants and bookkeepers have definitely stepped up globally to support small business, and we’re very grateful for that.

What mistakes have you seen accountants or bookkeepers make, either using the Boma platform, or just using digital marketing in general?

Ian Christie:                        That’s a really good question, because I think one of the biggest mistakes is actually the expectation level of what marketing will actually do for them. I think the biggest thing is that you can’t make the mistake of thinking, “I’m going to switch marketing on like a light.” Then it’s going to immediately transform your fortunes. It’s an iterative process, and it takes time. If you think about it as a reputation. I need to build my reputation, and I can’t build it over night, unless I go on X-Factor or something. So I need to do it through these things.

Ian Christie:                        So firstly is don’t think it’s going to be an instant fix. The second thing is I guess it’s not so much a mistake, but it’s a thing about confidence, is that there is, in marketing, you’ve got to just start somewhere. Get out there and try it. The biggest mistake is actually being afraid of doing something. Being afraid to put yourself out there. Being afraid to actually send something that hasn’t got numbers in it, it’s got some visual or …

Ian Christie:                        So I think what’s really important is don’t make the mistake of just not doing anything. Don’t make the mistake of thinking, “I’m not a marketer, I can’t do it.” Because in these days, particularly with software like ours, we actually take all of that, we do all of the heavy lifting for you. Put it as part of your stack, approach it like other stuff. You may not be using Boma, you may use something else. But I just implore all accountants to actually get out there, because it’s not as scary as it may first seem. Also, your client, and your customers, will love you for it.

Heather Smith:                  Yeah, absolutely. I will add to that two of the mistakes that I see people making, and you may have an opinion on that, is social media is called social media. If people engage with you on it, you need to jump in and respond to them. Sometimes it can be difficult to actually find that they have communicated with you sometimes, even I can’t work out how or where to respond. But if someone does, if you’re putting out the content maybe via Boma, or something else on Twitter or Facebook, and someone asks a question, respond to them. Because that engagement is part of the community and the process of building the business.

Ian Christie:                        Yeah.

Heather Smith:                  The other one, which especially at the moment, seems to really come … It has been a problem for some people I’ve seen out there, is the blurring of their professional and their personal lives on marketing platforms, in terms of there is a lot happening, and they have a lot of strong opinions. They maybe need to be aware that it can get merged with what their business is doing. So you may have some opinion on-

Ian Christie:                        Those are two very good points. I think it’s … This should not be a burden. But once you start on social media, you have to, as you say, you have to keep that up, because conversations, every … Before even social media was invented, the biggest thing that marketers wanted from their customers was a conversation. That’s why, in the old days, they would drive people into shops, because that was the role of the advertising, drive them into the shop, for example, so a conversation could take place between the person and the shop, and the customer walking in the door. It’s nothing indifferent on social. Once someone … So liken it to the fact of this person who has made a comment on my social feed is actually likened to someone walking into your office, and talking to you. You’ve got to take it that seriously.

Ian Christie:                        Also, yeah, the thing about the blurring, a lot of people tend to migrate to Facebook for business, because they’re most comfortable with it in their personal life. The rules do change because the fact is there are certain things that people want to know about on Facebook, and some of the, let’s call them, the wider aspects of your life, they probably don’t want to know about. So I think that what is right is that you should actually have, your business has a personality and a persona of its own.

Ian Christie:                        You cannot, even though it may be you being the principle of that business, it doesn’t necessarily mean that brand needs to be just a pure extension of your personality. It’s more about the fact of going back to the brand, what does my practice stand for? What do I want my either existing or potential clients to think about me? So if you look on it in those terms, rather than, “I’m always on Facebook, I’m always commenting on something, and so therefore I’m just going to do that again with my business page,” is, as you say, a big mistake.

Ian Christie:                        Also, can I just say another thing? I think in email as well, email etiquette is just the same as a social etiquette in the sense of the frequency of emails, the language that you use, and the response that you want. I think it’s quite a privilege to have somebody’s email address, and be accessible to their inbox whenever you want. Therefore, I think that it’s, again, it’s a great …

Ian Christie:                        Look on it as more of a privilege, and every time you exercise that privilege, you’re going to really think about what you’re doing and saying. Then again, think about what the reaction is. Oftentimes, people are so concerned with what they are going to say, they don’t actually spend enough time thinking about what the reaction is going to be at the other end. That can go from, “What do I want this person to do as a result of my message?” But also, it can be, “What do I want them to think?” So those are two completely different need states, and often people get them confused, or they just apply some of their other social media habits into email, for example, and it doesn’t often work.

Heather Smith:                  Yeah. Absolutely. I do agree with that. I think also, we haven’t really touched on this, but during this highly stressful time, we need to be mindful of the mental health and wellness of the recipients, and of our clients that we’re talking to, and potentially pull back on dramatic or overexcited language, to ensure, as you said, when they receive it in their inbox, we’re not overwhelming them, and we’re not pushing that bad space, bad headspace into an even further bad headspace. Providing some comfort in there.

Ian Christie:                        Exactly.

Heather Smith:                  Which is a very, very difficult road to navigate. But, being there, and available, and just pulling back, sometimes, can assist. So Ian, I’ve been to a lot of Xerocons.

When BOMA was launched several years ago, the endorsement and the launch from the Xerocon stage was huge. Never before and never since has, I think, such a fuss been made over one app in the ecosystem at a Xerocon. What are your memories of that time? What led up to that launch?

Ian Christie:                        So my memories are of, “Wow, I can’t believe this is happening,” in the sense of I was new to the Xero world and community, and hadn’t … Until you go to a Xero con, it’s pretty hard to describe the level of enthusiasm and engagement that the people have that attend that. We were also, I think, quite overwhelmed because, essentially, we went there with unbelievably low expectations, bearing in mind that we were, in software terms, what’s called an MVP, which is a minimum viable product. Essentially, we were probably unprepared, I would say, for the reaction. Look, it’s a good problem to have, right? But we had some great plans, and we were very happy with the fact that we were … It validated all of our thinking around, “Wow, there is a real need for this.” We had people at our stand, 20 and 30 deep. It was incredible.

Ian Christie:                        But one of the things that we’ve concentrated on since then is to be able to actually really build out the platform, make sure that we’ve got everything that works, it does what it says it does. Really making sure that we provide a great experience. So that’s been our focus since those really hitting Xero con days. How did that happen? It happened because, I guess, Xero, with their HQ ecosystem, it was a big deal for them. Also, Rod Drury, I’d like to think he saw something in the act that he thought the Xero audience would like, which was correct. He had a lot of faith in us, which we, hopefully, we delivered on. He was a great supporter, which was fantastic, and also the Xero community, at large, were also great supporters of ours. So it was a dream launch.

Ian, what technology tools do you like using, either at work or personally?

Ian Christie:                        Well, I’ve got to say that some life changing things, I guess, for me, other than Boma of course, is I guess Slack is one of the things that we, at Boma, pretty much live on. I would really encourage anybody who is sick of having to troll through emails all the time, and say, “Did you text that to me, or was it an email?” Use something like Slack, where you can have an instant messaging system going, that I would highly recommend.

Ian Christie:                        Of course, Zoom, which we’re speaking on now, is something that we’ve used a lot. But also, you can use things like Google Hangouts, which is free, and a fantastic way of getting either your team or a group of customers together, and speaking together. Those are two really … Another one that I use a lot, personally, is Time Buddy, which essentially gives me, immediately, the time in any city around the world. Great for scheduling, particularly with daylight savings, scheduling meetings and that sort of thing. But yeah, I would say if you want to, Slack is highly recommended. I have no association with Slack whatsoever.

Heather Smith:                  Yes. It is interesting, the navigating all of the different time zones across the world, as we work in this global ecosystem, just bouncing around the world. It’s like, “Where are you? What time are you in? What day is it?”

Ian Christie:                        That’s exactly it, yeah.

Ian, what is next for you? What do you see for the next few years?

Ian Christie:                        So for us, for me, I guess, it’s to continue the Boma journey. We’ve got a lot more that we want to achieve. We really feel like, in a way, we’ve only just started. So like a lot of overnight successes, they take a long time. We also have some great ideas about how we can be more at the centre of what’s going on in accountant’s customer’s lives, in the sense of being able to actually understand what’s happening in their business, and therefore, how can educational content play a role, and not having to actually decipher or interpret that information, have that information actually automatically be surfaced to you.

Ian Christie:                        So we’ve got a lot of stuff that we’re really wanting to get into. Lots of machine learning type functionality. There is so much more to do. So we will just continue to improve our product, continue to develop it, continue to act in the way that we believe we should as a brand, and add some great features that people ask for. We have lots of people saying, “Hey, what about this? What about that?” It’s great to have that level of engagement with people who have thought about our product, and taken the time to actually write a note to say, “Hey, I’ve had this idea, what do you reckon?” Which is amazing from a brand point of view, but also very helpful to us.

Ian, is there anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners? How can they get in touch with you?

Ian Christie:                        The thing I’d love to share with the listeners is if you’re afraid of giving marketing a go, don’t be, and give it a go. It doesn’t matter how you do it, we’d love you to do it with us. But if not, just give it a go. That’s the most important thing, because every journey starts with a single step. How you can get ahold of me is via the Boma website, Bomamarketing.com, and very easy to get ahold of my via that site. Love to chat to anybody, love to answer any questions. Very happy to reach out and engage.

Heather Smith:                  Thank you very much, Ian, for being on the Cloud Stories podcast today. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you, and I’m sure our listeners are going to love an insight about digital marketing, and how they can potentially use your platform in their own businesses.

Ian Christie:                        Thank you very much, Heather. I really enjoyed it, too.