The Story Behind Semrush’s Acquisition Of Third Door Media

Summary

MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth

Episode: The Story Behind Semrush’s Acquisition Of Third Door Media

Release Date: February 3, 2025
Host: Benjamin Shapiro
Guest: Mark Serkin, CEO of Third Door Media

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Introduction

In this episode of the MarTech Podcast™, host Benjamin Shapiro engages in an insightful conversation with Mark Serkin, the CEO of Third Door Media, about Semrush's recent acquisition of his company. The discussion delves into the journey leading up to the acquisition, the integration process, and the broader implications for the MarTech and media landscapes.

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Background of Third Door Media

Mark Serkin provides a comprehensive overview of Third Door Media, highlighting its evolution and foundational roots.

• Origins and Growth:
  "Third Door Media was a longtime B2B media marketing company with roots in search. Founded around 2006 by Chris Elwell and Danny Sullivan, it birthed influential platforms like Search Engine Land, SMX, and martech.org."
  (04:27)

• Shift to Martech:
  The company pivoted from a search-centric revenue model to focus on Martech around 2014, influenced by Scott Brinker's burgeoning Martech landscape. This strategic shift allowed Third Door Media to capitalize on the growing demand for Martech-related content and events.

• Pandemic Impact and Adaptation:
  The COVID-19 pandemic forced Third Door Media to transition from in-person conferences to virtual events.
  "We just put our backs into it and said, you know what, we think we can make this work... that first event registered a ton of people."
  (06:08)

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The Acquisition Process

Mark discusses the motivations and dynamics behind the acquisition by Semrush.

• Motivations for Semrush:
  Semrush sought to enhance its media capabilities by acquiring a reputable media brand with a highly aligned audience.
  "They really saw major synergies in the core Semrush product and Search Engine Land and SMX."
  (09:35)

• Why Third Door Media?
  Third Door Media's established brands, like Search Engine Land and martech.org, provided Semrush with immediate access to a substantial and engaged audience, facilitating cross-promotion and revenue generation.
  "Without that, it's probably very hard to get in the door."
  (26:34)

• Personal Reflections:
  Mark shares the emotional and strategic considerations leading up to the sale, emphasizing the long-standing relationship with co-founder Chris Elwell and the challenges of maintaining growth in a tough media market.
  "It's going to be me at some point. And that was scary and exciting all the same time."
  (13:03)

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Integration Challenges and Synergies

The integration of Third Door Media into Semrush brought about both opportunities and challenges.

• Cultural Differences:
  Transitioning from a nimble 30-person media company to being part of a larger, publicly traded SaaS company required significant adjustments.
  "SaaS and media companies are not the same... it's very different culturally."
  (18:28)

• Operational Adjustments:
  Mark highlights the complexities of aligning third-door media operations with Semrush's data-driven approaches, especially in areas like CRM and marketing automation.
  "There's still conversations around CRMs and email marketing automation platforms and what should be integrated, what shouldn't be integrated."
  (16:28)

• Maintaining Editorial Independence:
  Despite being under Semrush, Third Door Media strives to retain editorial independence to preserve the credibility and trust of its audience.
  "The newsroom's a newsroom. There's no real input... it really is independent."
  (20:25)

• Content Integration:
  Third Door Media incorporates Semrush's tools and offerings into its content without compromising the quality and objectivity of its publications.
  "It's tried to be written as helpful content, good content, that happens to use SEMrush as a workflow to show, like, that's what it looks like."
  (22:14)

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Future of Media and Software Mergers & Acquisitions

The conversation shifts to broader trends and future predictions in the intersection of media and software companies.

• Trend of SaaS Companies Acquiring Media Brands:
  Mark and Benjamin discuss the increasing trend of software companies acquiring established media brands to bolster their content strategies and brand authority.
  "Every brand needs to be a media brand... acquisitions like Semrush and Third Door Media is logical."
  (22:58)

• Challenges with New Media Formats:
  Incorporating podcasts, videos, and influencers poses both opportunities for engagement and challenges in monetization and audience measurement.
  "Podcast, too... it's not gonna a lot of clicks from a TikTok video. It's not gonna happen."
  (29:53)

• Value of Brand in an AI-Driven Future:
  Emphasizing the irreplaceable value of brand and taste, Mark posits that even as AI evolves, the human element in brand building remains crucial.
  "But for now, that's brand... being a tastemaker is hard and unusual."
  (35:24)

• Predictions for M&A Activity:
  Mark anticipates continued M&A activity between media and software companies, driven by the need for robust content strategies and brand building in the digital age.
  "I think brand matters... the path to building an audience is brand and the path to M and A is brand."
  (34:45)

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Key Takeaways and Insights

1. Synergy Through Audience Alignment:
   The acquisition underscores the importance of having a highly aligned and engaged audience. Third Door Media's focus on marketers provided Semrush with a valuable platform to extend its reach and influence.

2. Preservation of Editorial Integrity:
   Maintaining journalistic independence is critical for preserving trust and credibility, even post-acquisition. Third Door Media's structure ensures that its newsroom remains autonomous.

3. Adaptability in a Changing Landscape:
   The ability to pivot from in-person to virtual events during the pandemic showcased Third Door Media's resilience and adaptability, qualities that were attractive to Semrush.

4. Balancing Creativity with Data-Driven Approaches:
   Integrating creative media operations with Semrush's data-centric methodologies presents both challenges and opportunities for innovation and enhanced content strategies.

5. Future of Brand-Centric M&A:
   As software companies recognize the value of owning media brands, future acquisitions will likely focus on enhancing content strategies and building robust, authoritative brands.

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Notable Quotes

• Mark Serkin on Acquisition Challenges:
  "Dealing with a publicly traded company is not the same as a 30-person company... it's been a really interesting transition for me personally."
  (08:39)

• Mark on Content Independence:
  "From a news standpoint, there really is no input in a programming standpoint... it's independent."
  (20:25)

• Mark on Brand Value:
  "What matters is I'm going to go back to what I said earlier, I think brand matters... the path to building an audience is brand and the path to M and A is brand."
  (34:45)

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Conclusion

The acquisition of Third Door Media by Semrush exemplifies the strategic mergers happening at the intersection of marketing technology and media. Mark Serkin's candid reflections provide valuable lessons on navigating acquisitions, maintaining brand integrity, and the evolving landscape of media within the Martech ecosystem. As the industry continues to evolve, such integrations highlight the critical role of content and brand in driving business growth and sustaining market relevance.

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Connect with Mark Serkin

• LinkedIn: Mark Serkin
• Twitter/X: @mssirkin
• Company Website: Third Door Media

Subscribe and Follow

• Podcast Website: martechpod.com
• Social Media: Available on YouTube, Instagram, and X
• Host LinkedIn: Benjamin Shapiro

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Transcript

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com from advertising to software.

[Mark Serkin]

As a service to data across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate. Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

[Mark Serkin]

If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that you technology.

[Mark Serkin]

To drive business results and achieve career success.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro. Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Shapiro and today we're going to discuss the Martech acquisition landscape. Joining me today is Mark Serkin, who is the CEO of Third Door Media, which is a media company that was recently acquired by Semrush, a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that empowers over. Well, it's millions of digital marketers worldwide. And Third Door Media is the creator of well circulated marketing publications including Search Engine Land, Digital Marketing Depot, and of course martech.org and today Mark and I are going to discuss the story behind Semrush's acquisition of Third Door Media. All right, here's my conversation with Mark Serkin, the CEO of Third Door Media. Mark, welcome back to the Martech podcast.

[Mark Serkin]

Hey, hey, hey. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It's great to have you here. And first and foremost, congrats, buddy. Lots of news. I know it's not exactly brand new, but you got acquired. I'm so excited for you.

[Mark Serkin]

We got acquired. Absolutely. I appreciate the excitement and the congratulations. Yeah, October 16th, I think the deal officially closed after about a year of trying to get it done. So it was a long journey. As they say, deals die a thousand times and this one died that many times, if not more. But here we are, we're three or so months into it and loving it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I want to hear the details of every death and every revival and I got to hear the whole story. And I appreciate you coming on the podcast and telling everybody the hairy truth. You were one of our earliest sponsors. Obviously we work in very similar Spaces in media focused on Martech. And I also have an SEO podcast. You do the SEO conferences as well. I feel like we've been standing next to each other for a long time and now I feel like you're leaps and bounds and steps ahead of me and you became the president of the company. So multiple congratulations.

[Mark Serkin]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Let's start off. Just give me the context. For anybody that isn't familiar, tell me a little bit about the background of Third Door Media, what it was as a standalone company.

[Mark Serkin]

Third Door Media was a longtime B2B media marketing company with roots in search. 2006 or so, founders of the old SES started Third Door Media as a venture. Search engine was born. SMX followed quickly. There's a site that a lot of people used to really love called Marketingland followed that. And we're into let's say 2014 timeframe and martech happened, or I should say Scott Brinker kind of godfathered Martech.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The godfather of the Martech industry. Scott Brinker.

[Mark Serkin]

That's right. So Chris Elwell, who was one of the founders along with Danny Sullivan of Third Row Media, I think the story goes Christmas or something, he's Chris is reading Martech, a chief Martech and is like, this is a space that seems happening. We should maybe talk. So he had a conversation with Scott in the Martech conference in Boston in 2014. I think it was. Was sort of born. And that led to lots of things. You know, our revenue model flipped from search to Martech. Money was rushing in as the Martech landscape got built. We've all seen Scott's landscape graphics. It's 14,000 companies or whatever. So we kind of rode that wave and continue to ride that wave to some extent. Creating Martech.org as a sort of combination of marketing land which had been dropping in traffic. We really weren't servicing social media and broader marketing topics. And the old Martech Today news site kind of combined Those Together into Martech.org linked it with the conference and off we went right into the pandemic.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

So your business model has changed as well during that time where you had the media publications which were primarily written content, right? Blogs for the most part. And then you were also monetizing through in person conferences. Obviously Covid impacted that business. Tell me a little bit about where the money was coming from.

[Mark Serkin]

So the revenue streams are fairly simple and it's mostly lead gen and I'll describe what I mean by that. But lead generation in as much as white papers, webinars, all the standards Right. All the big hits including events and then advertising revenue obviously on the sites. As the sites grow, you eventually earn a way to monetize through advertising. And then we would sell across the network again, pretty traditional media, digital media company value across the network. Our philosophy is that they're all marketers. Your search marketer, Martech marketer are all marketers. It's kind of what led to the Martech tagline of Martech is marketing. But ultimately from a lead gen standpoint, they're all marketers. And our sites tend to attract mid market to enterprise marketers. We have a few creators and solopreneurs and agencies but it's really designed and written for kind of enterprise marketers. That's the niche that we carved out. It's what enabled us to run these sort of higher end event experiences. Smx not a cheap conference. Martech, not a cheap conference to attend, but you go and you have that kind of premium experience. So it's sort of across those lines that we built and monetized the media company. Again, nothing super fancy, they're pretty basic but we executed it pretty well.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

And then post Covid the in person events has changed. Tell us the story about that.

[Mark Serkin]

So we are almost literally getting on a plane. I think this was March or April, March I guess of 2020. In fact, I'd flown back from Iceland and I was in Boston and it was like in Iceland we didn't really know what was going on. It was like there's some news and then you land in Boston, it's like, oh, the world's on fire. What the hell's going on here? So in the face of that, our event was going to happen in San Jose and it was a daily thing. Are they going to shut California down? Like are we going to actually be able to not do this event or are we going to be forced to do this event? And eventually it happened and they shut everything down. And within probably about two weeks I'm going to guess we started pivoting. This concept of a virtual event had been around for a number of years. Nobody had really pulled it off very well. We just put our backs into it and said, you know what, we think we can make this work. We work with our customers to give them credits to sort of transfer from the in person experience to the virtual experience. And we took a shot. And that first event registered a ton of people. I think it was a Martech event. Was the Martech event. I think we registered nine or 10,000 people online. It was like, oh, this is Great. People were home and they were interested in that event. It became a free event. Obviously you can't really do a premium in person event through an online format. But the sponsors that we had were interested to see how was it going to work. And it worked pretty well. We then rolled that out for SMX and then continued all the way through Covid. Coming out of COVID what's interesting is, you know, there's a big desire. It's a human level thing like people want to get back and be with each other and we get it. It's not really breaking news. But we're going to come back, we're going to do in person SMX in Boston in June. We just got approval to do it like yesterday. So SMX advance for the first time ever is going to be in Boston in June, June 12th, 13th. And it's really interesting because all those old muscles come back. It's like, oh, right, all that planning, all that stuff, food, like WI fi costs, all that nonsense. But that's what it is, right? That's how you put on a great experience. And so we're launching that. We're looking at launching Martech in person at some point. I have no imminent date. Let's let me survive SMX first.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I look forward to the announcements. I think what you're describing is in the consumer section it was revenge travel and now it seems like there's revenge conferencing where people just want to go to conferences and actually get together with people in person. Because it's been years since we have all gotten together to wrap up the background of Third Door Media prior to the acquisition. Give me a sense of the scope and size of the company.

[Mark Serkin]

I mean, we're tiny. I mean, I like to say, I kind of got known for saying internally, like we punch above our weight class. We're a 30 person company and we have been for a very long time. It's a group of really dedicated, really smart, really intelligent, really scrappy marketers and operators. I mean that's the media business today, right? Like there's no two martini lunches.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

You're preaching to the choir.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah, Exactly. So there's 30 of us and it's a range of skills. Everyone wears a lot of hats, which is always interesting, especially. And we can talk a little bit about Semrush, but coming into Semrush, where I don't want to say people don't wear a lot of hats, but it's not the same as in a 30 person company where you're Pretty much doing everything.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

You're part of a publicly traded company now, so.

[Mark Serkin]

Exactly. And still doing everything in part of a publicly traded company. So it's been fun. It's been a really interesting transition for me personally. I had worked into companies before, so I've been really being careful with my team and people who haven't. Like this is kind of what it's like with expectation setting and all the stuff you do, all the stuff in big companies.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Mark Serkin]

But yeah, I mean, really scrappy organization. Chris Elwell, a guy who, I think I couldn't think more highly of his navigation of COVID and the things that we went through to make sure the company survived and the care he took and making sure that everybody was okay. Really remarkable leadership lessons that I hopefully have absorbed and take forward into the future. So, yeah, learned a ton. And we had been trying to sell the company for a while.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Truth be told, I want to get into that, but first I want to talk a little bit about Semrush, your acquirer and talk a little bit about what you know, now that you're on the other side about their motivations. Why would Semrush, a technology company, want to buy a media company like Third Door Media?

[Mark Serkin]

I can give you my interpretation from the conversations we've had. Obviously I've been through the acquisition. So what they were saying to us and what has proven to be 100% true, guy's name is Nick Eubanks who approached us. They really saw major synergies in the core Semrush product and Search Engine Land and smx and kind of where Semrush is headed, broadly speaking is like a lot of platforms, but this is public information. Right. Like they are building and they've just now launched an enterprise product. So like we said earlier, we have this enterprise audience. There's some synergies there. And ultimately Semrush is a Martech company. They're in the universe. They make technology for marketers. They're Martech. And so having their arms and legs around a brand like Martech with their content sensibility, which is to say Martech and Search Engine Land remain independently run news organizations, which we're doing. And we were skeptical, but okay, let's see what happens. And they've left us alone from a news standpoint, but they've added all these resources and capabilities to us to improve content, reach, scope, scale, resources, you name it. It's really been interesting to see and now with the launch of smx, it's really all coming true. We're really aligned with where Semrush is going. And I think it works in a really nice way in terms of us helping to build and give extension to the Semrush brand in the universe and also giving us the resources we need to continue what we were doing. Right. Which was becoming increasingly difficult as a small media company in this environment.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

We've all heard the adage, every company is a media company now, or all the successful companies are. And I think the question for me is Semrush. Lots of resources, lots of talent, lots of people, and they're going through an acquisition and there's a build versus buy discussion. Thoughts on why they weren't trying to build and promote their own content.

[Mark Serkin]

It's been an ongoing dialogue since November 2022, when ChatGPT was launched for us. Because when ChatGPT was launched, we all said, oh, my God, what does this mean? What is about to happen? And back two years ago, I don't think we were completely right, but we were somewhat right about how important brand is in this universe. And we live in an attention economy. That attention economy is brutal. We see what the social platforms are doing. They're preying on negative emotions, they're hijacking human brains, and they're sucking wind out of a lot of the attention that you can get. And increasingly all of us are having to do things that maybe we wouldn't normally do to say, okay, we want to get attention. How do we do it? The reality is that brands are really hard to build. Good luck. You want to try and build a brand like Search Engine Land. I don't know how you would do that today, to be honest. Like, I don't know where you start or how long it would take or how much investment it would take.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

There's something to be said for independence, too. All right, this is an established brand that has credibility, but is also has always been an independent publication. Now, obviously somebody else is paying the bills, but it's been established to be an industry rag, not a branded piece of content. Which I think probably factored into Semrush's decision is having some sort of authority over the publication, but also allowing you to have some autonomy as well. Let's double back, and I want to talk to you now that we kind of have an understanding of what Semrush was thinking. Hey, we want to acquire some media. We don't want to build it ourselves. There's the independence and credibility already established. Cool. You guys are the bell of the ball. What's in it for you. Why were you thinking? And honestly, this is a selfish question. Because I run a media brand.

[Mark Serkin]

Oh, I know. I know what you're doing here.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

No bs. Why did you get to the point where you're like, you know what, as an organization, organization, we're ready to get acquired. We're going to cash in some chips. Obviously you're still working there. You still have goals and motivation. But why was it the right time to go through and exit?

[Mark Serkin]

I can only speculate about Chris's mindset three or so years ago. The original founder, Chris Elwell. Yeah. The other founder, Danny Sullivan, had left in 2017 and he still owned a minority shares, but he was not involved literally at all. Like I hadn't spoken to him since pre Covid.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Silent partner.

[Mark Serkin]

Silent partner, yeah. And Chris and I started talking about succession. What's going to happen? Like, Chris is of a certain age and wants to step back. And I've been with Third Door 10 years in February and if you look at my LinkedIn, you'll go, how do you survive 10 years? I was like a lot of professionals of our age. Right. Like, I jumped around a lot and tried to figure out where I belonged. And I really felt home at Third Door Media for a lot of reasons. And it became evident that this was going to be me. It was going to be me at some point. And that was scary and exciting all the same time. And Chris and I have a great relationship. And at some point it was like, what do we want to do? Do we want to sell it? Do I want to buy it? Can I buy it? What would that look like? We went through all of the conversations, all of them, and we started shopping and seeing who was out there. And the truth is, I honestly less than 5% what I thought anybody but another media company would have wanted to merge or buy or acquire us. When semrush. Com knocking it was a real head spinner. I was like, oh, this does make a lot of sense in a lot of ways. Hmm. Hadn't thought of that before. And when we were trying to sell Third Door through Covid, it was hard because. And I don't know how you run your business. Media companies are hard to be high growth. It's tough. The multiples aren't great. No one's paying big. You know, it's not a SaaS company. So we just struggled with growth. We just couldn't find consistent growth. The search space has been tough for a lot of years. Not that many enterprise companies in the space. Martech up and down over the last couple of years. And the story didn't really hang together from a growth standpoint. So it really needed to be two plus two equals four. It became very evident. And like I said earlier, deals die a thousand deaths was really interesting. Put it this way, my wife at some point said, you know what, do me a favor, don't give me updates.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Yeah, I get that a lot.

[Mark Serkin]

Like 90% and then 1%.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Mark Serkin]

And then like 18%. It was wild. It really was wild. And my emotions were like, up and down, up and down. Do I want this? Do I not want this? It's what we agreed to do. Chris and I agreed years ago, we're going to sell it. This is the path, and then I'll run it if I can, and if not, I'll get bought out or whatever. It's fine. So it was very up and down. It was very scary. And of course, I was not able to share any of this with my team. So I'm asking for all this information. Like, I need this, I need that. Why do you need that? Oh, we're redoing the strategy. Whatever nonsense I was saying, I don't even know like, half the time. I was like, I don't know what's going on. So it was really emotional. And Chris put his life into this company. Like I said, he's a hero and a mentor of mine and I'm so happy that he was able to sell it, but it was hard. And like, I think part of the message I had for the Semrush team was this is a family business, is what it is. And that's weird because from the outside looking in, I don't think third door media sounds or feels or seems like it might be that, but that's what it is. So it's just. It was interesting. I'm still processing some of it in my head.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Yeah. And in my head, I'm benchmarking it. All right, well, Chris started this and he probably did it for 15, 20 years, and he was a certain age and then always thought he was going to sell it and got to the point. And I'm benchmarking against my experience running a media company. And I was like, all right, I've been independent, but the media part of our business is five, seven years old. And I'm in my 40s, I'm like our 50s. At some point there, I'm putting myself in your shoes and being like, all right, is the juice worth the squeeze? Talk to me. About going through the process and then the integration into a media company, being inside of a software company, what's that like?

[Mark Serkin]

My Semrush colleagues are wonderful. They are smart and thoughtful and data driven and all good things. But SaaS and media companies are not the same. There's an interesting conversation that happens around things like recurring revenue. Like, well, how come you don't have recurring revenue? Or should you have recurring revenue revenue or does it matter that you don't have recurring revenue but where's the recurring revenue? That kind of thing. And that's not what a media business is. And so we. I find myself educating and helping and I was actually on the phone today with someone in finance. She's amazing. But I was explaining like this is how hotel venues work with hotel room attrition. Like this is like what it means and this is what the contract looks like. But it isn't really that because if this happens, then that happens and there's a rebate.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

And then sometimes at the end they always shake you down right before the event and say, oh, the price is going up. I've heard that's like a regular thing.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah, it's a funny little business, the event conference business. And it's a business that I haven't thought about much since 2020. In fact, I had said to Andrew Warden, our CMO, I never thought this day would come. And the reason I never thought this because he asked me why and I said, well, as third Door media, it was too risky for us to go back in person. It's too risky, we could sink the company. If you are looking to sell with say a thousand tickets at twelve hundred bucks and you're on the hook for half a million dollars of hotel expenses and you miss that number, you could lose 200 grand. And that's a huge problem when you're a small company that's struggling. So we had really honed and sharpened our ability to do very profitable but smaller virtual events. And now, okay, here comes the big budgets, here comes the food, F and B bills and all the stuff. And so it's really interesting and we'll see how it goes. So the integration was interesting. It's still going on. There's still major components of integration that haven't happened. There's still conversations around CRMs and email marketing automation platforms and what should be integrated, what shouldn't be integrated. It's fascinating. I love learning and I'm so curious about things. I've never been through anything like this at this level, so I'm just Absorbing it like, wow, there is a lot going on here. And I'm just trying to identify what's going to. I said to somebody the other day, like, what's going to kill us? And then what's going to make us heroes? Let's focus on those things and then do those things really well or avoid those things. And the other thing I'd say is that Semrush is a very data driven company.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Not new news.

[Mark Serkin]

Not new news. Right. Third Door Media was a intuitive driven company. We go, we got lots of experience. Everyone look around everyone. We got 90 years of experience in the room. What do you think? Do it or nah, it's never going to work. That just doesn't work at Semrush. That's not how it works. You don't make proposals like, we got a lot of experience, let's just do it. No, it's got to be I need a P and L and I need a projection and I need the whole thing. And that's great. It's great for the skills and great for the mind. But it's very different culturally. How do you bring this little merry band of troublemakers into this big company? Not just through the integration and survive, but actually add the value that is the reason that they bought us.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It's funny because it's the world that I live in too. And if anybody understands what you're talking about, it's the guy on the other end of the camera where I think about my experience running a media business, but I try to take a technology centric approach to it. We've built operating systems and automations and all sorts of tech behind the production of our content and try to have the right workflows and use data and all those things. But fundamentally it's a media company and you just don't know what's gonna get resonance because media changes all the time. It's more of a creative pursuit than software development is. And that to me is the most interesting part of this story is not just talking specifically about Third Door Media and its place in my heart, but there is this trend of software companies that are buying media companies. We saw the Hustle and HubSpot and I'm sure I could name a couple others and hearing what it's like and some of the sort of integration pain points to me is really fascinating and hopefully something we'll run into someday as I get into my 50s or 60s or whatever it is and we're ready to go.

[Mark Serkin]

Hope so.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Give me any last words in terms of the integration, I guess the big question is independence. I think that's probably on the mind of a lot of marketers that have been consuming Third Door Media's content, and how do you keep that sense of relative creative freedom, but also have somebody with corporate interests that you have to answer?

[Mark Serkin]

First of all, the newsroom's a newsroom. There's no real input. They can request whatever they want to request, but we have pretty tight rules around who gets to contribute, how they get to contribute, whether it's a news story that we cover. That's all driven by Danny Goodwin, who runs Search Engine Land, and Mike Pastor, who runs Martech. And you can choose to believe it or not, but, like, it's independent. We're programming the Martech conference and the SMX conference, and there's just no input. I've asked for input, actually. Like, hey, do you know any really great SEO speakers that we can put on stage? Not necessarily Semrush people, just anybody, because they have a huge network.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I've got a list of them for you.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah, hit me later. So from a news standpoint, there really is no input in a programming standpoint where there is input. But it's interesting because it's not what I thought and it's really fascinating. So they have kind of proven, with a site called Backlinko and their own blog, this kind of SEO evergreen rich content strategy. And we've applied it to Search Engine Land and Martech through some additional resources and some internal resources. And you'll see things on the website, not really Martech yet. We've kind of started with Search Engine just because the affinity is so high. But you'll see, like, there's a new section on Search Engine called Guides, and there are these guide pages that are written by combination of our people. And basically they're not really Semrush people. They're kind of contractors that are in the mechanism, in the thing. And what you'll see is things like, and I think this is totally fair. I think when you think about it, you go, this makes a lot of sense. Like, you'll see an article about, like, here's a guide to X, Y or Z. And it happens to be something that Semrush can do. It's a, you know, it's like a media monitoring article. Okay, well, what you're going to see is workflows from Semrush and you're going to see offers to try Semrush on it. Fair enough. The content isn't really skewed towards Semrush, as much as it's tried to be written as helpful content, good content, that happens to use SEMrush as a workflow to show, like, that's what it looks like, which I think is fair and I don't think is a big deal. So we're navigating that. Right? That's part of what you'd expect to have happen. And I think it's also part of the challenge of what we're trying to accomplish.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

To me, it's expected.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah, I think so too. And again, I'm hedging a little bit only because I think we were truly independent for so long and we had our own rules. And it's like, it really is. I mean, honestly, from a growth standpoint of my whole team, myself included, it's like, oh, right, I get it. Light bulb came on. And so I think it is expected. I think there's other things on the site that we're testing aggressively, like offers for Semrush and some advertising. We're testing it all and at the end of the day, look, there's a reason a software company would buy a media company, and that's that it can drive revenue. Ultimately, we see that search engine and Martech have a lot of affinity to the messages that Semrush has on the marketing side. And we're just trying to figure out how to wire those together to get maximum return on that investment, while still, as we said earlier, like building and maintaining the brands that we spent 20 years building. It's really important that we don't destroy those brands. And that line is an interesting one.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Fundamentally, in my opinion, it's a content play, right? Every brand needs to be a media brand and you need content to be relevant in media. And if you're a software company, sometimes the easiest thing to do is not go on upwork and hire writers that don't really know. You have to find experts and people that have been writing about the space with experience over time. And that's, to me, where an acquisition like SEMrush and Third Door Media is logical. And of course there's going to be some integration pain points. Of course there's going to be some times when Semrush wants to be promoted. It is their asset, fundamentally. I think that this is natural and it's interesting to see that it's an ongoing trend in the Martech space.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah, I agree. And like you mentioned, the Hustle and some others, I haven't found that many others, to be honest, but it is Interesting. Just coming all the way back to the beginning of the conversation. You can try to build these brands yourself, but that's a tough road to hoe, as we know. And we could probably spend an hour talking about should software companies think of themselves as media companies? It's a terrific soundbite. I think it all depends on how you want to measure it and how you're going to fund it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I have bet my entire career and my company on the idea that software companies need help becoming media brands. And that's really at the basis of what I do on the daily basis. But without turning this into a sales pitch, let's move on to our lightning round where we answer Martech questions related to this week's topic, which is Martech acquisitions. Mark, are you ready?

[Mark Serkin]

Sure.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Okay, let's start off with Game plan. Let's start off with game plan. Having gone through the acquisition process, if you were coaching a CEO of a Martech media company that was looking to be acquired by a Martech company, what plays are you calling to position your team to be attractive for M and A?

[Mark Serkin]

I'll start with a term that I obviously knew the word affinity, but I heard it in the context of the acquisition from Nick Eubanks at Semrush, who again was the guy who introduced us affinity to the audience. So Semrush sells software to marketers. Third Door Media is a media company for marketers. Alignment there, I think at a very high level and a very specific level is probably one of the first filters is my guess. When you go talk to somebody like, oh, it's the same audience. Search engine lands. Audience is literally the Semrush core audience. There's no air between those two things. So you can imagine the landscape of who's out there, who they may or may not be talking to. It starts there. And then the second thing is, is it big, right? Does it have the ability, is it large enough to drive enough value based on what we might have to pay for it, that we even consider doing it?

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Let me ask you a follow up question. You're saying you need customer alignment, you need scale. There's also the sort of depth of the relationship, the engagement. How good is your audience? How much does that matter? Or is it really just body count that larger Martech companies are looking for?

[Mark Serkin]

I think body count matters to start the conversation. If you're an author and you have no followers, I don't know if you're getting the attention of a publisher in the book space. I think that having a good Size and I don't know what the number is. It's X. If you have a good size email list, you have a lot of traffic to the website. Again, scales depending on the audience. Also, how niche the audience is. I think body count counts at that first level. But when you start doing due diligence and you get into like, well, what are the relationships with our customers, readers, attendees, all that stuff, I think ultimately matters. What's the retention rate for your enterprise customers? What's the revenue mix of the products? Those things matter. And when you get into due diligence. But getting past that first conversation is a weird alchemy of the right timing, which, good luck trying to guess the timing and body count, I think is a good way to think about it. And just audience affinity, like that just starts the conversation. Like, without that, it's probably very hard to get in the door.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Body count affinity. And then there's also the value extraction piece. How do you think about when you're going through the acquisition concept conversations? It's not just about what revenue you've driven, it's what value you can create for the acquirer.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah. So as long as we keep this to a software company buying a media company, I can speak to it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Sure.

[Mark Serkin]

I won't really speak to a software company buying another software company because there's different math there. Right. The math here is really interesting. Right. It's okay. So there's a high affinity of the audiences, which means if we turn attention to Semrush, some big number of our audience is going to go, oh, I want to try that. That sounds good. And that will generate revenue for Semrush. So it's a weird alchemy again. Like, when they approached us, we were like, oh, actually this does make sense. And Nick saw it right away. And then we're like, oh, okay, we understand. Now we get what this is. Because to be honest, internally, and Nick doesn't know this because I never told him this, but he'll hear this. Chris and I were like, do we even keep talking to this guy? How does this even make sense? They're going to acquire us and then what again? That's why I took a year. Like, a lot of conversation. Oh, we understand. Oh, they understand. So the synergies are going to be different on the type of acquisition, but I think from a software company buying a media company, again, it's like, we all know what HubSpot pulled off. A minor miracle. They really embrace content. I don't know the numbers, but let's assume for a second that they were very successful in driving revenue to HubSpot. I think that's kind of the play. But again, it's a weird alchemy. And by the way, how many sites like Search Engine Land exist? How many sites like Martech even exist that have any scale whatsoever? That's my long winded quick hit answer.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I think that the takeaway here is obviously you have to have the body count, you have to have a sense of engagement, you have to have a loyal audience, you have to have a community. But fundamentally what the acquirer is looking for is a way to extract value out of that audience. And you need to be able to turn the fire hose towards them and have a clear path to whatever their KPIs are. Let's move on to our next lightning round question. We're going to call this one Large and in Charge. Now that you are the CEO of Third Door Media, you're the man in charge. How do you think about incorporating different new media formats, let's say podcasts, video influencers, into your established media properties?

[Mark Serkin]

That's a great question and one that we are thinking hard about and long about and doing something about. Not sure what exactly yet, although we've got a bunch of experiments in place. Here's the thinking Video consumption is on the rise. It's been on the rise for years. I'm guilty. I'm on TikTok all the time. I think it's great. I hope it doesn't get banned. If it does, I'll go to YouTube, whatever. But I like consuming video. I think it's great. I think it's hard to create, it's expensive to create. It's pain in the ass to create. But it's good when it's good. It's good and you know it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Preach.

[Mark Serkin]

Yeah. I am also a huge focus group of one. I love podcasts. I love podcasts and I work out with podcasts and I go for drives with podcasts. If I'm not talking to chat GPT, I'm listening to a podcast. Basically. I don't think I'm alone. I don't have a lot of time to read long form articles. I think I'm down to probably reading one or two long form articles at this point a week. Maybe. Like if someone sends me something, you gotta read this. Okay, I'll do it. I might summarize it with ChatGPT. I might do it because I'm really, really busy. But short form video gets me and I like it. And I think if it's done well. I think it's really powerful. Here's the problem. Podcast, too. And you and I have talked about this over the years. You're not gonna get a lot of clicks from a TikTok video. It's not gonna happen. In my world. There's a lot of discussion over, you know, is lead gen dead? What is GTM these days? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Brand. What is brand in today's world? How do you measure it? I have no idea how to measure it, but I definitely know it when I see it.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

There's this huge black box when it comes to, let's call them, alternative formats of content. Your videos, your social, obviously podcasts as well. And the attribution is the problem. It's not that they're not effective formats of media. It's not that people don't consume them. Obviously they do. The hard part for the marketers is understanding who's consuming them because they're off platform and then trying to drive some sort of trackable, tangible interaction. And there's this chicken or the egg. Do we build the media to figure out how to evaluate it, or do we try to evaluate the media so we can rationalize building more? And for established brands like yours, I understand why there's a need to try to diversify into alternative formats, but it also is inherently risky because you have something that is proven ROI and is something that is repeatable and that you can and have scaled.

[Mark Serkin]

The audiences are not portable, is what I would say. Meaning just because I launch a martech.org podcast or a search engine land podcast, doesn't mean the audience is going to suddenly be there. So from a commercial standpoint, I can't monetize it right away, right? Because sponsors go, oh, great, there's a search engine podcast, right? There's not. But if there was the first question, body count, how many listeners, how many clicks can I get? I don't know. Do you want to be on it or not? You want to talk to Danny on camera or not? I don't know. And I think it's the brand thing that's got a lot of people really frustrated, especially in light of whatever the heck is going on with Google right now. SEO is under some kind of weird once in a lifetime shift or something, or maybe not, who knows? But in the meantime, we're all looking around going, the water rushed out and I'm here in my underwear. What do I do? Where do I go? And again, I think about my own media consumption. I have a 29 and a 27 year old. I think about their media consumption, I think about the next generation of marketers consumption. And I'm like, you better make those investments on those platforms now because you might find yourself truly standing in the mud going, I don't know where everybody went. So that's really tricky. That's why I get paid the big bucks, man. Right?

[Benjamin Shapiro]

You heard it from the man himself. Hey, you own the properties that produce martech.org and search engine land and all sorts of other great properties. And even you're voting for the new media stuff. All right, let's move on to our next next lightning round question. Double down or diversify. As the CEO of a martech media company, would you advise SaaS companies to double down on in house content that they're producing or diversify into partnerships through media and acquisitions?

[Mark Serkin]

I think there's probably no one answer here, right? I mean, I think the lightning answer is diversify. I would add color to it by saying, and I'm going through this right now, I'll be vulnerable and I will be transparent. Semrush wants things from us on the brand side that we don't normally do that we hadn't done in the past. A little more aggressive, a little more fun. Semrush has a terrific social media team, a great brand team. These folks are pros. I'm not saying we're not pros, but like they have a different look on the universe and they're pushing and I've said multiple times on calls, hey, when I resist, ignore my resistance and just keep trying to get me to turn. Because third door media had a very specific way of doing what we did and we're in a different context now. Let's have some fun.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I hate answering it depends to my own question, but it depends. I know, right? And I think it's not just it depends.

[Mark Serkin]

You probably should do both.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

You should do both. Right. There's some things, and I'm sure that this is already happening, where Semrush is creating their own content. Right. They're not necessarily just their thought leadership, but the how tos and the product related stuff and the real technical SEO stuff that only the Marcus Tobers of the world can answer those questions. Sure. Create your own in house content. When it comes to building an independent media brand, it makes sense for the acquisition and if you don't want to go through an acquisition partner with someone else. Right. And I think that there's ways to get scale in media through the diversify portion of this question. Which is find a partnership or go through an acquisition, but you can also still carve out and own your own niche. That is something specific to your company. And that's where you might want to double down and diversify.

[Mark Serkin]

All right, we agree. It's both.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, I'm going to move on to our last lightning round question, which is called crystal ball. I want you to look into the crystal ball and predict the future. Tell me, do you see more M and A coming between media and software companies in the next three to five years?

[Mark Serkin]

As you were reading it, I was thinking the answer is definitely yes, but maybe not. It depends.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I think it depends how you do it. Might.

[Mark Serkin]

But in two years, if the SEO landscape is remade and AI does whatever the heck AI is going to do with agents, the rest of stuff, and we just live a different world, I'm not saying that's going to happen, but if the whole thing is turned upside down, I think things are going to change radically. And I think that what matters is I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. I think brand matters. So if you have an existing media brand, it might be that that's the most value that you have, even more than the body count, to put it bluntly.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It's interesting that you think about AI being what's going to impact mergers and acquisitions between media and software companies. And to me, it's like artificial intelligence is going to make all the commodity knowledge available and accessible and f to consume. But the things like opinions and foresight and taste, those are the things that artificial intelligence, at least that we've seen so far, cannot master. Maybe we get into the era of agentic AI and all of a sudden the tastemakers become robots, God forbid.

[Mark Serkin]

But for now, that's brand, though. That's what I mean by brand.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Exactly.

[Mark Serkin]

And by the way, being a tastemaker is hard and unusual. I don't know that most media companies are tastemakers, but we are.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Absolutely you are.

[Mark Serkin]

We're tastemakers when it comes to search and martech. Yeah, but I mean, the reality is that there's a lot of junk out there. How you build brands is harder than ever. So I think that we're seeing the same thing. I mean, ultimately, I might be extending the definition of brand a little bit further, but look, a personality like Scott Galloway, the brand value of what Scott has built, along with the Pivot and his other podcast, it's all wrapped up in one. That's the brand. So I keep coming back to the defense against the robots is brand. And the path to building an audience is brand and the path to M and A is brand. So like, if you're not good at building brands, and by the way, brand building takes a long time, so plan ahead. I think that that's the thing that has the opportunity to distinguish you in the marketplace and that's where I would double down brand. And that's what we're doing.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

My answer is totally colored by hope because I work in the media space and we've built and are building media brands. That's fundamentally what we are selling. We don't call them podcasts, we call them media brands. And my hope is that software companies realize how challenging it is to work in the media space. And also great companies like Third Door Media prove the value of the media brands they've built. And that leads to more M and A over the next three to five years for, you know, the upstart podcast producers and you never know. Anyway, as much as I joke around, my real true thought as we look at brands like the Hustle and HubSpot, like Third Door Media and Semrush as the bellwethers and they will establish what the power of content, of media, of brands are within these software companies, which makes the rest of the media space look more attractive.

[Mark Serkin]

I have to tell you, I just never really, until that moment, I never really thought about it that way. As a bellwether, I'm so focused on delivering value that we promised our community, we have an implicit agreement with the community. Like we're going to write great content every day if we can. Sometimes we miss, but we're going to do the best we can. We're going to put on the best possible virtual Martech conference. We're going to go back and do SMX events in person in Boston and hopefully blow you away. We're going to have a great time and drink some beers together. I'm so busy focused on that that I probably missed the fact that we might be a bellwether in that standpoint. But I don't feel bad about it because the community is what matters. It's what built the brand in the first place. And there's a reason why I love the search engine lands. SMX tagline obsessed with search because you sort of have to be obsessed with these communities or you can't be part of them.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I'll leave the conversation on this. You've said, well, I didn't realize we were at Bellwether. Oh, we're a small company. All the slightly self deprecating stuff. And there are the rest of us in the industry who look at Third Door Media, a 30 person company that withstood the test of time and survived things like basically the death of one of their core business models through Covid as a lasting company that means something, that's built great work, it supports 30 families. And the acquisition is something that means a lot to the rest of us in media, mostly technology and business focused media. So stick your chest out. You're the CEO now, you're the boss. And the rest of us are very much rooting for your success. And congratulations on going through the acquisition and I really hope it is successful. So best of luck.

[Mark Serkin]

I appreciate it. Kind words. Thank you so much.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, and that wraps up this episode of the Martech podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Mark Serkin, the CEO of Third Door Media. If you'd like to contact Mark, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes. You can DM him on X. His handle is mssirkin. That's mssirkin. And of course you can visit his company's website, which is thirddoormedia.com you could also visit our [e-mail] if you'd like a summary of this podcast or if you'd like to apply to be our next guest speaker, you can head over to martechpod.com you can also find video recaps on YouTube, Instagram and X. And if you'd like to contact me, let's connect over on LinkedIn. My handle is Benjschapp. B E N J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feedback, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy. Foreign thanks for listening to the Martech podcast and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a.

[Mark Serkin]

Podcast like this one for your brand?

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Then visit iheareverything.com.