Today we’d like to introduce you to Taline Badrikian.
Taline, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Nothing about my story is brief but I’ll give it a shot! I studied tech in college and got recruited to Fidelity. I spent almost ten years there and was convinced I’d be a lifer! I was in tech first — development then telecom — but, I slowly transitioned to a communications role for the IT organization and eventually into a marketing role in Fidelity’s Venture arm. Looking back, I can admit it was just a job and I loved the people far more than I liked the work. When I got a leadership opportunity at EMC, I left Fidelity. I spent another couple of years at EMC and when I left, I accepted that I just wasn’t made for big companies.
I took pride in my ability to be the bridge between business and tech but big companies didn’t move quickly enough and my hard work didn’t break through the layers of politics and bureaucracy that were inevitable truths of companies that employed 40,000 people.
The next few roles for me were Head of Marketing at small companies where “marketing was broken”. For these companies, I was the entire marketing organization. I stepped in, did the architecture and implemented modern marketing “machines”. I built strategies and then implemented them. When we had the budget, I hired and trained staff and after a couple of years, I worked myself out of a job. I became too expensive for small companies who had the systems they needed with the procedures they wanted and the junior staff to execute the day-to-day.
I enjoy working with small businesses because everything moves at a quicker pace and even the smallest contribution creates an amplified impact. I came to realize I have a real passion for helping businesses at the stage just before and during lift-off, so I founded Laveh: an agency that’s focused on growing startups and small businesses using modern marketing tools and methodologies.
Since I started Laveh, I’ve helped dozens of small businesses meet their goals of generating leads, growing followers on social media, putting their business on the map and even optimize sales and marketing operations.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road is never as smooth as we want it to be but you don’t learn much on smooth roads anyway. Every role has come with its own challenges but the biggest struggle I face is helping clients get out of their own way.
Clients will spend time, energy and budget on marketing experts and then will dictate the strategy and ignore recommendations. Everyone thinks they can do marketing. I had a client tell me their daughter’s friend could do their social media. And the truth is, if you’re daughter’s friend could do your social media, we wouldn’t be talking.
I don’t think I’m alone here. I know marketers hear this kind of talk all the time. The only thing you can do is show them with great results.
Laveh Inbound Marketing – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
My clients call me to “fix” their marketing. They’re struggling with getting people to their website. They don’t know if the right people are finding them. They don’t know if their website is designed to appeal to their target customer. They don’t know how to manage their social — which channels they should be on, how active they should be, should they pay for advertising? There’s just so much they don’t know.
Since I’ve been in marketing for over 15 years now, I leverage my experience and guide clients in all things digital marketing. I work with them to assess what they’ve been doing, figure out the best ways to market their business to get the results they want, build a strategy to get them there and even execute the strategy if they don’t have the in-house resources to get it done.
The difference in working with Laveh vs. other agencies is that every Account Manager is actually a very seasoned Marketing Strategist, so even the people managing your program can offer marketing guidance. We’re also very tech savvy, so when it comes to marketing tools, we know the tried and true and the latest and greatest. I’m most proud of our smarts and our drive — how we’re more than a consulting shop. We’re ready to get our hands dirty and put our recommendations into practice for our clients.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
You know, that’s a really tough question! Traditionally, I’m the person who walks away listing the things I can improve on, so the proud moments are not always top of mind. It takes (read: it’s taking) a lot of practice to not be overly critical of every outcome and to just enjoy the successes.
The easy answer here is when I took the leap to go into business for myself and landed on my feet — getting that first client was so satisfying! But thinking about this question some more, I remembered a time when I worked at a small company on Canal Street in Boston. It was about a year into the job and I was having a conversation with one of the VP’s about all the changes we’d seen over the year and he brought up the time, when I joined the company. He said, “you just came in here with the force of a train and just started going and going and doing stuff”. If the tone isn’t clear here, he was being critical. Now and even at that moment, I was so proud. To me, this meant I was doing my job. That moment made it clear to me that I needed to work with earlier-stage, dynamic companies who are looking to be disruptive, rather than ones that are set in their ways and view disruption as a negative.
Contact Info:
- Address: PO Box 180711, Boston, MA 02118
- Website: laveh.com
- Phone: 617.657.9966
- Email: hello@laveh.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lavehmarketing/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lavehmarketing
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/laveh-marketing/
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