“I often seem stupid and tough , but it’s just to hide the fact that I’m an emotional person who writes poems.” This quote from François sums up the complexity of this unique being better than we could. François is the kind of person whose absence is quickly noticed at the office thanks to his characteristic sense of humor and colorful personality. As the head of marketing at Snipcart , an e-commerce solution for web developers, Franck has built a solid reputation in SEO and content. Learn more about him!
Tell us about your journey and what makes you who you are today.
On the personal side, I have always loved writing and reading. This interest, combined with other more “business” interests, led me to a DEC in business management (Cégep Garneau) and a bachelor’s degree in communication, writing and multimedia (Université de Sherbrooke).
I’ve always found writing to be a really powerful medium to connect with people. I found this out when I ran a personal blog for 3 years (RIP backtothefeather ), but also when I applied my communication and writing skills in a web agency and a startup.
Through my internships, I came across Spektrum lithuania telephone number data and thought it might be cool to add a more marketing-oriented guy to their crew of geeks . Luckily, the founders thought the same thing when they interviewed me!More info about my start at Snipcart: Confessions of a Noob: How I Led a Developer-First Startup’s Marketing with 0 Coding Skills
What is your role at Snipcart?
Basically, I handle marketing at Snipcart. Most of my work was inbound marketing (content marketing and SEO), but I have the excellent Mathieu Dionne with me lets demystify open source who handles a lot of that. So I try to focus on product marketing (activation, conversion, etc.). I’ve also done more traditional “biz dev” work, and evangelism at events all over the world: Colorado, New York, Nantes, Paris, and Dublin.
What important figures have had a significant impact on your life?
My mother , because I would never have gotten to where I am today without her love, her patience, her forgiveness, her efforts. She showed me that no matter your journey and your trials, there will always be a strength deep inside you that allows you to move forward. As she often told me: “as long as there is life, there is hope.” Her resilience and humor continue to inspire me.
Georges Saad , because through our projects, Spektrum, our travels , he showed me what the opposite of a “big talker, little doer” was. He, Charles Ouellet and Vincent Girard trusted me enough to give me the chance to break my neck a little, to experiment and to make a name for myself professionally.
What place do you give to work in your life?
A lot of space. I’m not bullshitting when I say that Snipcart/Spektrum is like a second family to me. My challenges, my colleagues, my travels, my responsibilities… all of that has given me a certain rigor and personal satisfaction that has helped me get through the tougher parts. At the same time, it’s easy to give a lot of space to work when you love what you do. I never wake up and say “F*ck, I have to go back to work today”. On the other hand, I try to take more and more clean breaks in the evenings and on weekends.
If you could wake up tomorrow morning as anyone else, would you? Who would you choose?
Yes, if I could become myself again afterwards: I still have a long way to go and work to do with this life.
I would choose Jay-Z for a few weeks. Why? Well…
Tell us about a flop at work and what you learned from it.
In startup, we try to be in experimentation mode as much as possible, so there are several flops! Quickly like that:
- Trying to set up and deploy an influencer outreach strategy that is way too big and not targeted enough: lots of hours in the trash, 0 results.
- Spending too much time at startup events hoping to hit a home run in visibility.
- At first, copy-pasting the storytelling axes of startup blogs that I liked and applying them to our own audience, with whom it didn’t resonate or convert much!
How do you see the content marketing industry evolving in the future?
SEO-wise, I’m really looking forward to seeing how voice search (Alexa/Echo, Google Assistant/Home, Siri) will change the industry. It’s likely to disrupt a lot of businesses that rely heavily on traditional search results. Otherwise, content will simply adapt to new platforms and distribution channels. Marketing isn’t THAT complicated: Who are you talking to? How can you help them? How/where can you reach them? Test, measure, repeat.
What advice would you have liked to have been given before you started?
Don’t be afraid to fail: mistakes build you up and won’t break you. Most people have no idea what they’re doing. Most “experts” are charlatans. All the best ones suffer from imposter syndrome. Do like devs : when in doubt, GOOGLE . Trust the world, don’t be afraid to ask for help.