Join Taylor Wells in a deep dive with industry experts Rachel Elsts Downey, Sam G. Winsbury, Casey Hill, and more as they unravel the latest trends and strategies in B2B inbound marketing. Discover invaluable tips on B2B podcasting, virtual events, SEO optimization, and leveraging owned media for maximum impact. From founder branding to organic social media, this session is a goldmine for B2B marketers and go-to-market leaders looking to stay ahead of the curve.
00:00:00 B2B Inbound Strategy Insights from 9 Practitioners
[00:00:00] Taylor Wells: Hey, JTM News listeners. Thanks for tuning to this week's episode. This week's episode, we're we're bringing you a recording from an event I just did earlier today around b two b inbound strategy. So this is our 99 series. We have 9 practitioners.
[00:00:13] Taylor Wells: They all get 9 minutes each to talk about different areas of b to b inbound and, what's working, what's not working. And so we talked about everything from b to b podcasting, virtual fence, SEO, owned media, organic social, and it was a lot. I learned a ton. It was super interesting. The speakers really brought a bunch of interesting value, and ideas for you to think about as it relates to b to b inbound and as you go into 2024 and beyond.
00:00:42 B2B Podcasting Opportunities and Strategies
[00:00:42] Taylor Wells: So hope you really enjoy this, recording and the information was helpful to you. Let's tune in now. So our first guest I wanna bring on is Rachel. Hey, Rachel. How are we doing?
[00:00:55] Rachel Elsts Downey: Hey, Taylor. Great to see you.
[00:00:57] Taylor Wells: Good to see you too. Thanks for coming on. So, Rachel, we're gonna talk about b to b podcasting. So first of all, it seems like everyone over the past couple years has started a b to b podcast. So I want to hear from you.
[00:01:10] Taylor Wells: Tell me about, like, where is the opportunity? Maybe a couple takeaways as you're seeing in the market for b to b podcasting.
[00:01:17] Rachel Elsts Downey: Well, so one of the first things I always like to do here is I like to I like to myth bust a little bit. And everyone always says, I I shouldn't start a podcast because everyone else is doing it. And the truth is they're not. They're just not. There's like at this point in the game, there's probably about little less than 10,000,000 podcasts out there, but there are over 400,000,000 podcast listeners, and that number is growing.
[00:01:36] Rachel Elsts Downey: And I am no math magician, but I'm telling you that that's still a massive gap and a huge opportunity for people. So the number one thing I always say is is that. Like, the opportunity is definitely still there. And the second thing I would say is, like, it's never just a podcast. And so I think one of the mistakes a lot of people do is that they they launch a podcast, but it's a super siloed effort, and they haven't actually done a great job activating and internalizing it throughout the entire organization or integrating it within their marketing strategy.
00:02:04 Podcast Tips and Strategies for Success
[00:02:04] Rachel Elsts Downey: And so if you go into it thinking about it as just a podcast, you're not gonna reap its many, many, many benefits. So So those are some of the top things I would say. The other thing I would say is, like, you wanna have a unique point of view. Your podcast is an opportunity to get attention using the thing that's come so naturally to many of us, which is communication, conversation, using our voice, using, you know, the things that we do, like our hands. You know what I mean?
[00:02:28] Rachel Elsts Downey: Like, it allows you to personalize yourself, humanize your brand, but do it in a way that allows you to stand out by making sure that you have a very unique point of view in the marketplace. And then my 3rd tip for you or 4th if we're keeping track is set a strategic outcome. Too often people say, everyone's doing a podcast, so I need to do a podcast, or we all know that podcasts are beautiful for creating content and then leveraging that content into other forms. But I would say back all of that up and make sure that you have a strategic outcome in mind. And the best way to do that is find out from your CEO what they care about right now.
[00:03:04] Rachel Elsts Downey: What is the one thing that is top of mind for them this quarter, this year, etcetera? And then attach your podcast effort to helping solve that specific outcome. And I would say, like, just to help, you know, everyone listening out there, like, what could a strategic outcome look like that a podcast could support? I really distilled it into, like, 1 of 4. So it could be we wanna build brands.
[00:03:23] Rachel Elsts Downey: We need more people to know that we exist. Right? Another one could be drive demand, which so many people want. Right? It's drive demand.
[00:03:30] Rachel Elsts Downey: That's always gonna be a strategic outcome. 3rd one could be we need to grow our audience. Not enough people know know about us. And then a 4th one that a lot of people don't think about is, like, that that is a top outcome would be, recruiting, like retaining talent. So it's like, what could our how could our show help us accomplish one of those strategic
00:03:50 Launching and Scaling Podcasts for Strategic Outcomes
[00:03:50] Taylor Wells: love it, Rachel. Wow. Packful ideas there. 1st, I love tying it back into strategic outcomes, and I think that's a good advice for any go to market practitioner or leader, is, you know, there's a lot of, like, hey. Let's do TikTok.
[00:04:04] Taylor Wells: Let's do podcast, and let's do that. You know? And a lot of times, we kind of fail to kinda tie back into the business objectives and and actually driving, change and results for the company. Is there any, like, mistakes you see? Maybe a couple, like, things you see, common mistakes folks make when they're, obviously, if they solve all the first three or four ideas you shared.
[00:04:24] Taylor Wells: Just getting started, common things people do wrong, that you have you'd like to share with the audience.
[00:04:30] Rachel Elsts Downey: Yeah. I think one of the things I see people will make a mistake on is they when they go to launch podcast because podcast is a unique thing in that this is a channel, but it is also a content. And so I think a lot of times people go launch the channel and they're like, where's my audience? Why am I not growing? What is happening?
[00:04:45] Rachel Elsts Downey: And they they fail to do the due diligence of saying, where are we already like, where is my audience already at? And have we dominated that channel? And so the reason I say that very specifically is I go, look, If you are not dominating the channel that your audience is already on, let's say it's LinkedIn, and you're not dominating it there, do not make the mistake of neglecting that channel. So use your podcast as a way to create content for LinkedIn. So you can sort of passively stand up this podcast channel, but use it to create content for LinkedIn.
[00:05:18] Rachel Elsts Downey: And the reason I always do that and the reason I started the conversation where, like, this is a channel that allows you to humanize your brand really, really quickly is because you are using your voice, you are in video, you are using content that way. You're in conversation, which is the primary way people create connection. And so I'm like, use the the podcast channel to do that, but make sure you're dominating LinkedIn from a distribution amplification perspective using the content that you can pull from that channel. So I think that's something that people seem, like, get lost in the sauce on, and it's really important you anchor back on where is my audience today? Where are they today?
[00:05:52] Rachel Elsts Downey: And make sure that you're dominating that channel and just leveraging the podcast content to do that so well. And then the second thing I would say there from an audience perspective is, like, knowing, like, who your audience is is critical for creating content that has that unique point of view that grabs their attention. So title and industry is not enough. Like, you have to uncover what they love, what they hate, what they're missing. You want to create content that helps, like, win them over.
[00:06:16] Rachel Elsts Downey: And so making sure you do your due diligence to know what like, how you want them to actually feel when they experience your content helps you make a show that actually can stand out.
[00:06:26] Taylor Wells: I love that. And, first two things I took away from that. Number 1 is sounds like a lot of, obviously, repurposing the content, remixing it for wherever your audience lives, and, maximizing, really all the all the energy you put into creating that long form content. In addition to that, I heard, kind of understanding the, almost if I'm hearing you correctly, almost like the non professional aspects of your audience in the sense of like, you know, if if your audience is into a specific type of, you know, consumer media or different other products or whatnot, understanding them from the the holistic sense. Even the type of humor they enjoy or not humor.
[00:07:05] Taylor Wells: Right? Maybe they don't maybe humor is not a part of of something that your audience enjoys and and integrating that. Because I see some of the best content out there is content that really speaks to the audience, not just from the professional side, but from, you know, just them as an individual and as a human. Super cool. We only got a minute or 2 left here.
[00:07:23] Taylor Wells: I'm curious. Getting started and or scaling, any advice you have for, like, folks that are getting started? What type of investment? I know your organization helps folks, you know, launch and and scale podcasts. But I'm just curious what, what type of investment?
[00:07:40] Taylor Wells: I run my own podcast, so I have some my own own thoughts on that. But just curious your thoughts on getting started, and then where are some places where you're like, hey. This is working, and how should and and and can we scale it? Like, where where should we really invest in it? Where are those signals where where we can scale it from there?
[00:07:56] Taylor Wells: Kind of a 2 part question, if that makes sense.
[00:07:58] Rachel Elsts Downey: Yeah. I will try and be very, very succinct here. So the one thing I would say is, like, make sure that you have a strategic outcome in mind no matter what. We're gonna niche down on that audience. And then the third thing I would say is have a content first mentality when you're shaping the development of the show itself.
[00:08:12] Rachel Elsts Downey: From an investment perspective or resourcing standpoint, this is the question I would always ask. I would say, do I need help end to end? And what I mean by that is, like, do I need somebody who can drive editorial decisions for me? Can't do I need somebody to shape that, or do I have somebody internally who can do that? So do I need help end to end, or do I just need help on post production?
[00:08:32] Rachel Elsts Downey: Because post production is a sort is essentially the administrative to dos off of your plate, including, like, the editing, the repurposing, and all that kind of stuff. So your investment is gonna depend on answering that question. Do I need a producer or do I just need post production support? And then your price range can go from there. The other question I would ask myself from an investment perspective is, like, do am I good being a, a general, a generalist in the sense that I need to, like, run all the plays myself and hire a whole bunch of freelancers who can help me?
[00:09:00] Rachel Elsts Downey: Or do I just want one one to one where I can I get everything that I need done with one resource and that could look like an agency partnership, that could look like hiring a freelancer producer who can do things end to end? But that sort of helps you anchor is, like, do I need postproduction or do I need full support? And sometimes you only need full support upfront in helping, like, shape the idea, etcetera, etcetera, and then you're off to the races. And so that's how I would frame that. And then from a when is it time to scale perspective, to me, it comes down to that thing I said at the beginning.
[00:09:27] Rachel Elsts Downey: Like, have I dominated the channel that my audience is already spending time with us on? If the answer to that is yes, am I now ready to drive them to another channel, which could be the podcast, for example? And then from there, it's like, where am I taking them next? And so I just think about things like deep focus and deep, like, like, consistency there before I start to scale up. But at the end of the day, it is never just a podcast.
00:09:50 Insights on Founder Branding, Personal Branding, and Virtual Events
[00:09:27] Rachel Elsts Downey: Like, have I dominated the channel that my audience is already spending time with us on? If the answer to that is yes, am I now ready to drive them to another channel, which could be the podcast, for example? And then from there, it's like, where am I taking them next? And so I just think about things like deep focus and deep, like, like, consistency there before I start to scale up. But at the end of the day, it is never just a podcast.
[00:09:51] Rachel Elsts Downey: So you launch that channel and then you use that content for all of its gold and all of the other channels that you're needing to be active on.
[00:09:59] Taylor Wells: Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for coming on. Really great insights. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much.
[00:10:07] Taylor Wells: you. Alright. We got Sam next. What's going on, Sam?
[00:10:12] Taylor Wells: Hey, Taylor. I'm doing well. Thanks. How are you?
[00:10:15] Taylor Wells: Doing well. Well, first of all, I wanna make a note that your back background matches the virtual background we have here. So great branding all around. Thanks for thanks for, for making that happen, even though I'm sure that wasn't intentional. Well, thanks, Sam.
[00:10:30] Taylor Wells: I know we only got a a couple minutes here. I want you to come on because I've been following you on LinkedIn around, really, founder branding. Brandy, personal branding in general, and I know your organization helps, founders, do personal branding. This has been a huge kind of movement over the past couple years where folks have been investing in building relationships through their founders or subject matter experts or leaders in their organization to really humanize the brand on one level but also tap into their expertise, and for recruiting, for getting new customers. So lay it all out for us, Sam.
[00:11:03] Taylor Wells: Tell me give me some of your high levels around what are some 3 you know, 2 to 3 takeaways for how to build a founder brand, personal branding in general.
[00:11:12] Taylor Wells: Yeah. So a lot of what Rachel says tied into this really well, and it was so nice listening to that because hopefully this will help you dominate your channel, specifically LinkedIn. That's kinda where where our bag is. There's kind of like a a 3 stage process that we typically take people through and 3 things that you really need to do if you wanna get this right. First thing you gotta do if you wanna build a strong founder brand is have strong positioning.
[00:11:34] Taylor Wells: So when I say positioning, what we mean is essentially being able to answer the question, why should people listen to you? You know, there's thousands of people posting content every single day. Why out of those thousands should they essentially give you the time to to stop and consume your content? So actually being able to answer that and to be able to add weight and and substance behind the content you put out is really, really important. How do we do that?
[00:11:57] Taylor Wells: Well, we've gotta get really clear on a couple of things. Firstly, our our message. So that's kind of what actual reputation we wanna build, what do we want people to think off the back of consuming our content, and what sort of things do we need them to think in order to fulfill our goals. So if our goals from our our founder brand or commercial, for example, we wanna current clients, we've gotta be thinking about what kind of impression do I need to create these people for them to see me as somebody worth investing their money in as a, as a solution or a service provider. Second thing is your mission, which really is just your value proposition.
[00:12:27] Taylor Wells: So having a really strong value proposition where people actually see the value out of working with you, and there's a clear kind of transformation that you're gonna take them through both with your solution, but also the content you put out too. And then 3rd and final thing for this is your credibility. Right? So a lot of people posting content. I'm sure you guys have all come across a few people like this putting an awful lot of information out, but when you actually dig deep, there's no real credibility on the back of it.
[00:12:51] Taylor Wells: So if you've got loads of creds, loads of milestones, results, make sure you lean on those. They're really, really important for adding weight to your content. A lot of people when they produce their when they build their personal brand, they're producing content. If it doesn't perform, they normally blame the content. Normally, content problems are just positioning problems in disguise.
[00:13:09] Taylor Wells: So that positioning piece is really, really important on the front end. Then when you do come to create content, it's gonna be so much easier to almost, like, reverse engineer the the pillars and the topics that you want to talk about, and you can share those and and you'll you'll generate far better results from them. In terms of amplifying it, so there's there's 3 main channels we look at for amplifying a a founder brand. Organic social, which is content, PR and media, which is great for for, again, elevating authority and credibility, and then ads, which is, you know, pay to play, but a little bit more scalable if you've got that to invest. So those are the kind of 3 core channels we look to, to to amplify our brand through.
[00:13:48] Taylor Wells: Very cool. I love to, if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about the the PR and, love to dive dive a little bit deeper into that. What are what are some of your strategies? What are what are some things you've noticed work for tapping? I know SEO is and we're gonna have, Brendan later on talk about SEO.
[00:14:04] Taylor Wells: But I'd love to hear from your soft point getting, you know, founders out there. Any any takeaways there? Any things you've learned you can share with the audience?
[00:14:11] Taylor Wells: Yeah. So the thing I love about PR, right, is that, you know, on social, right, everyone can post on social. Anyone can go and post on LinkedIn tomorrow, which is a great thing. It's accessible, but it also means anyone can post. Right?
[00:14:22] Taylor Wells: But it sounds harsh to say, but not everybody is worth being featured in the media. Not everybody is worthy of being interviewed on a podcast, so, like, appearing on other people's podcasts is a great way. Not everybody is worth a feature in, I don't know, Forbes or inc.com or or Wall Street Journal. Not everyone is worthy of that feature because there's a very selective process for that. So if you do manage to land one of those features, the more high profile it is, the more authority you get from that because you're seen as somebody worth interviewing.
[00:14:53] Taylor Wells: And there's just a mindset flick that kind of happens in in a prospect's mind there where they go, you know, this person is, like, one of the the best in the industry. People are coming to them for advice. So that's really, really, like, the value of of PR. And in terms of how you actually land it, remember that these editors, these podcast hosts, they're looking for guests. They're looking for people to feature all the time.
[00:15:14] Taylor Wells: Their their whole business is content production. They need to be producing content that serves their audience. They don't have a business unless they produce content that their audience enjoys. So the easiest way to land these features is essentially to give them the content that they need, that their audience want. Right?
[00:15:30] Taylor Wells: So rather than just kind of spamming out loads and loads of pictures to random people, be a little bit more tailored. I would take a a quality over quantity approach to this and be much more tailored in the pitch that you create. Either give them the topic or give them the piece of content and say, look, I've I've done some research. I know your audience liked this topic, this topic, and this topic. We've just written a piece on x y zed, or I think we could run a podcast where we talk about these three things, and I think it would really help your audience.
[00:15:58] Taylor Wells: That's a surefire way to get into an editor or a host or a journalist's good books.
[00:16:04] Taylor Wells: I love it, Sam. That's great. Yeah. For my podcast, I know almost daily I get, podcast agencies reaching out to me to book book their folks. And I haven't said yes to 1, mostly because they don't meet that criteria.
[00:16:17] Taylor Wells: Right? Either they don't. Kind of the 2 things I look for, number 1 are, do they have a topic like you said, content that's just like really unique, a really unique point of view, content that's really relevant to my audience. So the guests, the folks I have on my show are are that or, and hopefully they have both, or they have, influence. Right?
[00:16:35] Taylor Wells: They're already like you you said, they've already been on other, shows. They have an audience already that's gonna help amplify and provide credibility to the content. Super interesting. So obviously we talked about, how to create you mentioned how to create content on the front end. We talked about kind of the 3 distribution channels, or or ways to distribute content.
[00:16:56] Taylor Wells: I'd love to kind of in the last minute or 2, any, common mistakes you see, like, a founder starting out in, that you can you can help them avoid when they're kinda going through this evaluation. Because it's a lot of work, first of all, creating content. Obviously, they can partner with somebody like you, to to amplify and to to get them started. But in the absence of that, where what kind of advice would you would you give folks?
[00:17:19] Taylor Wells: Yeah. So I'd actually say make sure that the almost back end of your founder brand in your business is laid out really well. Some things that that might relate to, specifically your LinkedIn profile, really important thing. Even things like if you have funnels or or website in place, like, make sure those are watertight because what I see a load of people doing, which is a huge mistake, is putting so much time and effort into creating content and and that content might be really, really good, but then they don't actually end up seeing any real commercial benefit or monetary value from the content. And it's because although that content might be quite good, actually, what's happening on the back end is that, you know, people are landing on their profile after consuming a piece on LinkedIn, and they've got no idea what they do.
[00:18:01] Taylor Wells: They've got no idea how to take the next step towards working with them. They've got no idea what the value proposition is or why they're credible. It's just not clear. And it's the same with you could think about it the same way with funnels and lead magnets. Like, if your funnel isn't watertight or if your website has typos all over it, like, it's these kind of basic things that people really evaluate your your credibility on and and ultimately people use to make the decision to work with you.
[00:18:24] Taylor Wells: These things have to be watertight. I liken it to, to the example of taking someone on a date. If you're producing really high quality content, it's like taking a date to to the fanciest restaurant in town. You put on your best clothes, You spend a bomb on the meal, and and you you impress them on the front end. You're lucky enough to bring them back to to your place.
[00:18:42] Taylor Wells: They get back to your place, and there's there's clothes on the floor, there's plates on the side, like, the the house has a tip. Right? So that's kind of what a lot of people are doing in their content. So I'd say make sure your house is on order before you, focus on on getting the front end good.
[00:18:56] Taylor Wells: Great advice, Sam. It even ties in with Rachel was saying as far as understanding your business objectives, making sure the entire almost go to market strategy, making sure that it fits in well, and it's all tied in perfectly. Well, thanks, Sam, so much for coming on. Really great insights. Thank you much, Drew.
[00:19:10] Taylor Wells: I really appreciate your
[00:19:12] Taylor Wells: Thanks so much.
[00:19:15] Taylor Wells: Alright. The next guest is actually me. So I'm gonna be talking about virtual events. So a little meta here. I know.
00:19:23 The Power of Virtual Events in Inbound Marketing Strategies
[00:19:23] Taylor Wells: I understand, you're hosting this event, but, I one of my still one of my favorite inbound strategies, to this day is virtual events and and and events in general. We've seen, kind of looking back, we've seen from the pandemic, we've seen, you know, a huge shift of virtual events, right? There was a lot of impersonal events. Now, kind of post pandemic, we're seeing a return to physical events, and physical events are amazing, and I still think that's like, you know, next level, especially if you're an enterprise, level sales and you're trying to build those relationships and and you really wanna create something that's bespoke, unique, and differentiated. Micro events, road shows, you know, really in in person, intentional events are still extremely powerful.
[00:20:06] Taylor Wells: If you are looking for more budget friendly and more scalable and and the opportunity to reach more folks, virtual events are a great way to complement that. And so I've done virtual events, you know, probably 100 of them over my career from my own events to my clients' events to the companies I've worked at. And some of the kind of the the most benefits I've seen from them are number 1, is this concept of relationships at scale. So one of the the things I love the most is after I do a virtual event, you know, I'll meet somebody, you know, maybe it's a potential client or whatnot, and they're like, Taylor, I feel like I already know you because they've seen me, you know, speak in an event or whatnot. And I think speaking in general, creating video content in general does that.
[00:20:46] Taylor Wells: Right? So even a video podcast, virtual events in general, provide that, power. But what I think in in in particular is really cool about them is, just the live nature of it. It creates pressure. Right?
[00:21:00] Taylor Wells: Right now where you, it kind of brings out it brings out just an, kinda authenticity to content that you don't really get with recorded content, in my opinion. And just kinda anecdotally from what I've seen where you really have to be on your game. It pushes you to your limit. Right? And I still get butterflies before events.
[00:21:20] Taylor Wells: Right? Because I know the pressure of, like, how to perform and and being really intention about what I say. So I think it's this concept of building relationships at scale. It has that power to do that, and the scale part is is the virtual part. So, you know, things I love about them are it makes people, really, like I said, engage, make really great content.
[00:21:39] Taylor Wells: You get to generate leads out of it. Right? That's one of the few types of content where people opt in intentionally, like an ebook or anything any other type of lead form lead generation, you know, it's kind of, it feels like a bait and switch in some ways. Right? Or or, know, you're giving up your email and you're like, why am I giving my email for an ebook?
[00:21:59] Taylor Wells: Can I just download it? Well, with a virtual event, they actually have to give you it to to get a notification, to get it on their calendar. So, there is there's a more intentionality about virtual events. So it's a great lead generator. It's very, it makes sense as a lead generator.
[00:22:14] Taylor Wells: And then it's an opportunity to continue to provide content long term. Right? You can put them on your newsletter. You can invite them to future events. Great, lead generation.
[00:22:23] Taylor Wells: We talked about building relationships at scale. You can create long form content. Right? This is a long form that you can then repurpose, but then you also get people's attention for a long period of time. And I think the amount of time, the attention you get with your audience, with your potential customers, the more time they spend with you, the more likely you're gonna build that relationship, and then the more likely they're gonna make a business decision down the road.
[00:22:43] Taylor Wells: I've seen that time and time and time, time and time again in in my career. Some quick things to avoid, in virtual events is, don't go slow. You'll notice that my virtual events are especially this one, right, the 99 event. Just looking at that, it's really packed full. We're having multiple guests.
[00:22:59] Taylor Wells: It's fast paced. People's attention span. If you just look at TikTok and short form, short form content in general, people's attention spans are just getting, shorter. I'm not a huge fan of that, and, I think there's, there's negatives to that, but it is a reality we're in. Right?
[00:23:14] Taylor Wells: And so if you wanna get people's attention, especially with, like, b to b content, which generally speaking, we have Balaji, later on talk about owned media, and he's gonna talk about, you know, how to create really engaging owned media content, how to stand out. But it's hard. So it's really hard to be engaged in. So I think pace is one way to combat that. How do you just, like, over deliver value, provide a ton of value quickly?
[00:23:36] Taylor Wells: Because people, you know, they're probably not listening to your you know, they might be listening to your podcast or your event, while they're working out or on the road or whatever. But, you know, if they are looking for it to get business content, right, to solve problems, then you gotta be fast paced. So really big, point there. Another kind of things to avoid is don't no one cares about your intros. No one cares.
[00:23:59] Taylor Wells: Like, you've noticed even on this event, we don't go into big intros. If you provide enough value, people will find you out. Right? People go look for you on LinkedIn. They're like, oh, man.
[00:24:07] Taylor Wells: Rachel shared a bunch of great information. Oh oh, Sam. He he he shared a bunch of great information. So skip all that, get to the meat, get to the value. People show up to live events to learn and solve problems, not to hear about your product.
[00:24:20] Taylor Wells: If they're gonna take the time to show up to a live event to actually come live, or even listen to a recording, an hour long recording, then, you know, you have to provide value. If it's just a product demo, you're you're not gonna get the retention you want. Don't just do one. Biggest mistake I see is people do one event and then they stop doing it. Do, you gotta do over a long period of time.
[00:24:41] Taylor Wells: I I I recommend doing 1 a month over a 12 month period because I guarantee you month 6, you're gonna crack it and you're gonna find you're gonna find this, you know, you're gonna have 3 times the registrations. You're gonna have an amazing event. Quickly here in the last kind of 4 minutes before we we jump on to the next, guest here is, here's some kinda takeaways. So first, number 1, things to do. Get a relevant topic.
[00:25:04] Taylor Wells: Find something that's super relevant to your audience, that's, you know, relevant to them right then and there. So this event is right, like, inbound in 2024. So many things have changed, with inbound. It's gotten weird, you know, just all these different strategies was out. They've been supersaturated.
[00:25:20] Taylor Wells: Right? So that's why we're doing an event with all these kind of refresh inbound strategies. Great guess. So what I see so many times with virtual events or webinars is people do it's the same CEO, cofounder doing the same event every single month or maybe different topics, but it's the same guest every month or same speakers every month. No one wants to hear your CEO every month talk, most likely because they've the ideas they've shared, they're kinda just repackaging them.
[00:25:47] Taylor Wells: They're not unique new research or new insights, generally speaking from what I see. So other ideas for guests. Have customers on. You can create content with your customers, and, you can create perfect, like, the perfect type of content I've ever seen is like a social proof content combined with thought leadership. So if you have your customers come on, you around a thought leadership topic, right, they're gonna start providing value to your audience.
[00:26:12] Taylor Wells: And then guess what? They're probably gonna mention your product. So then you're providing social proof. It's like it's a it's a double whammy. It's it's brilliant.
[00:26:20] Taylor Wells: It's it's, probably the best type of content I've seen created from an event standpoint is whenever customers come on. They provide thought leadership, and they provide social proof. Super powerful. The other ones are have your prospects come on. Have influencers in your space.
[00:26:33] Taylor Wells: Have a subject matter expert from your organization come on. Once again, just try different guests. Keep it fresh. Keep it different. Try different formats.
[00:26:40] Taylor Wells: Have a panel format, 3 or 4 people where you're interviewing. Do one off workshops. Do a longer event like something I'm doing now where you have multiple multiple folks. And then, promote the heck out of it. That's another thing I see with events is, like, they'll do it once and they're they're not promoting it.
[00:26:55] Taylor Wells: Or promote it outbound. Go outbound. Invite prospects to your event. Do LinkedIn events. You can have all of your employees invite up to a 1000 people a week from their first degree connections to your event.
[00:27:07] Taylor Wells: I've driven thousands of of leads through LinkedIn events from folks that way. Paid media, influencers, post in communities. There's so many different ways to promote your event. You have to promote it. Think about it as its own product.
[00:27:20] Taylor Wells: It's a great advice in general for b to b content, but think about it as a product in and of itself where you're actually solving a problem. Promote the heck out of it. Last but not least, repurpose it. So Rachel talked about this. Right?
[00:27:31] Taylor Wells: Let your let your podcast live on. Let your webinars and virtual events live on. Repurpose it into your podcast. You could take out snippets and repurpose into your podcast. Repurpose it into short form video for your social media posts, repurpose it into blog posts, repurpose it into newsletters, ebooks.
[00:27:47] Taylor Wells: There's so many great AI tools out there now that can help you accelerate your repurposing. The last but not least, let it live on and continue to, repurpose it. So in general, I still think kind of taking one step back here, virtual events have a still a tremendous powerful way to connect with people at scale. You can, obviously, if you have great topics, great guests and audience similar to, like, what you would with a podcast, you different formats, continue to change it up to different series, like a series like this. Right?
[00:28:16] Taylor Wells: Where you're you're doing a specific series where people can expect more events from you, and they're expecting, you know, like a like a podcast future content, super powerful. Promote the heck out of it. Right? Continue to just, like, promote it. All sorts of different channels.
[00:28:32] Taylor Wells: Put a lot of energy into promoting it. And last but not least, let it live on, continue to repurpose it. So now I know actually what my guest experience with how, how much content you have to give away in 9 in 9 minutes. So, thank you for all my guests. So, I hope that was helpful from the virtual event side.
00:28:51 Insights on B2B Newsletters from ActiveCampaign Expert
[00:28:51] Taylor Wells: I'm gonna bring our next guest on. We got Casey Hill. What's up, Casey?
[00:29:00] Mel Shires: Hey, Taylor. How's it going? Doing great.
[00:29:02] Taylor Wells: Doing well, man. Doing well. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. So Casey works with, ActiveCampaign, and I wanted to bring him on to talk about, ultimately, b to b newsletter.
[00:29:14] Taylor Wells: So we've seen this resurgence of, owned media in general. Balaji's gonna talk a little bit, like I mentioned that later about owned media. One of the ways you can have owned media is a newsletter or some sort of email, cadence with folks. So, I know email newsletters were, like, I think HubSpot really popularized it, you know, 5, maybe even 10 years ago. They kinda got went away a little bit.
[00:29:36] Taylor Wells: Email seemed super saturated. So I wanna bring Casey on to talk about, newsletters and, kinda high level. What what are you seeing working from a b to b newsletter standpoint? So, Casey, lay it out for us.
[00:29:47] Mel Shires: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Again, thanks for having me. So I'm gonna go as fast as I can.
[00:29:51] Mel Shires: There's a lot to cover in in 9 minutes. So I think the first most important thing is to figure out what is your growth lever, what is the purpose of your newsletter. And broadly speaking, I find that b to b newsletters tend to fall into, like, 3 different camps. So the first of those camps is what I would call kind of a bottom of the funnel newsletter. So the focus here is really on your customers, on your trials, and it tends to be content that is really about converting more folks, expanding revenue, reactivations.
[00:30:23] Mel Shires: When I actually joined ActiveCampaign, which is a larger company, I come from the startup world, I was actually amazed at how much, revenue they drove from that bottom of funnel. I find that this is a lever that as your organization gets larger and larger, it's better to have a higher and higher concentration of bottom of funnel because you have more pipeline to kinda deal with. So that's the first kind of bucket, is is that my focus? The second major category is a newsletter that's focused on more top of funnel and the idea is to kinda create pipeline. So whereas that bottom of funnel to give some examples like from ActiveCampaign, the bottom of funnel 1 might be things like comparison articles, use cases.
[00:31:03] Mel Shires: I might link out to a third party deliverability report that puts AC at the top. The second category that's focused on building pipeline, I want to go more system agnostic. So an idea here might be a newsletter that I do every week highlighting the best email of the week and breaking it down and talking about the structure of it and what's really working. That's applicable to pretty much anyone, but it also is still directly topically tied to my product. Right?
[00:31:29] Mel Shires: We do marketing automation, so there's that nice clear kinda connection. A really good blueprint of a company that I think does top of funnel style newsletters very well is SaaStr. So SaaStr runs something called scaling SaaS. And every week on Friday, they drop a thing that says, here's 5 ways that this company went from, you know, let's say, a 100 to 300,000,000 or how they scaled to their first 50,000,000. And they're constantly having kind of in-depth data rich content with that very clear expectation.
[00:31:58] Mel Shires: So we have bottom of funnel, we have top of funnel, and there's actually a third category that's becoming more and more popular and it kinda fits a little bit into that owned media conversation, which is you're building content that is relevant to your ICP, but might not be topically related at all. So let me give you an example. ActiveCampaign, let's say that we started a newsletter where we're talking about hybrid work. We're talking about hiring. We're talking about when should you use an agency.
[00:32:27] Mel Shires: That actually has nothing directly to do with our product. But the play is, if we can grow that to 50,000 subscribers substantially faster than, say, type 1 or type 2, we have an owned asset that we can now advertise with it. So we we own it. So if we wanna put an ad, if we wanna put whatever promos in it so the idea there is you're building an asset and it this is a really important nuance. It has to be your audience has to be the right relevant people.
[00:32:54] Mel Shires: So in my case, I would have to build an audience of marketers, of SMB founders. The readers have to have relevance to the product, but it can be in a tangential category when it comes to own media. And more and more companies are doing that because they see the value in building something that's very broadly applicable to bring folks in. So those are the 3 kind of main categories that I see folks monetizing or or kind of driving growth from a newsletter off the bat. And I think one of the biggest things that I encourage folks who are trying to get more revenue from their newsletters is to have that concise goal.
[00:33:31] Mel Shires: What you don't wanna do, and I would say 50 maybe more percent of companies that I sit down with have this problem, their newsletter is just all over the place. It's like company updates. It's it's like new product developments. It's interesting snippets, and there's so many different places it goes. The problem with that is one of the things you really want is clear expectation matching.
[00:33:54] Mel Shires: That's vitally critical if you wanna drive high high engagement. And the problem is if you're all over the place, people don't know what they're gonna get from you, and therefore, your engagement is gonna drop down in a big way. So I strongly encourage folks to become much more focused in, reduce the number of CTAs, and it's also completely fine to have multiple newsletters. A while back, I worked with John Hopkins who was struggling with engagement. And right now, if you go look at their website, they have like 8 different newsletters now.
[00:34:24] Mel Shires: So one of them might be about women's health and one of them might be about accolades of the hospital and on and on and on, they drive way more engagement from being focused. So that's another option is right on intake. You can give people this ability to opt in to things that are more relevant off of that. So you have a goal. You kind of are bringing folks in.
[00:34:44] Mel Shires: You're keeping that tight and you're keeping that tailored. The last kinda part of that is really important, and this is part of the expectation thing. Tell folks, I am gonna message you every Friday at 9 AM PST about x y z. This one blows my mind. I would say less than 5% of people do that with the specificity of day and time and topic.
[00:35:06] Mel Shires: Those three things. And if you do those three things, I will guarantee you you're gonna get much stronger engagement, higher open rates, and higher activity because people know not only what they're gonna get contacted about, but they know exactly when they're gonna get contacted. And you, as a person building this asset, should refill at least 4 to 5 weeks when you're launching to make sure that you can consistently have that contact content lined up. A lot of the times, the reason that folks are kinda doing it ad hoc because they haven't written it yet. And so then they haven't written it.
[00:35:40] Mel Shires: So always skip 2 weeks here, skip 3 weeks here. It's gonna be a lot harder for you to consistently build a footprint than if folks know exactly when they're gonna hear from you, and you do that on a repeated basis. After that so you've kind of set all this expectation. You have a clear goal. You're bringing people in.
[00:35:57] Mel Shires: The next thing that's super important is you want to ask specific questions during those first couple newsletters. So I only have 9 minutes. I can't go down the whole deliverability rabbit hole with everyone, but I can tell you that one of the major ways you hit primary inboxes is based on reply rate. The people that wrote the algorithms are smart. They know one of the major easy flags for bulk mail is just looking at reply rate.
[00:36:21] Mel Shires: Personal email that you send to your family or colleagues has, like, an 80% reply rate, whereas bulk email that comes out has, you know, again, depends on industry, but let's say, like, 2, 3% reply rate. So if you ask very specific targeted questions off the bat and you launch that up, maybe get a 15, 20% reply rate, that is gonna dramatically help you with your inboxing as you're kind of going through. So I think that's important. Next, underneath that is also don't be afraid to ask questions. This is kind of a controversial.
[00:36:52] Mel Shires: We'll call it a hot take. I fought this battle for many, many years. But don't be afraid to ask those questions that you can personalize around. If you look at top go everyone who isn't opted in to Morning Brew, I want you to go to Morning Brew and opt in, and they ask you like 12 questions. They're one of the most successful newsletters out there.
[00:37:11] Mel Shires: And people say, oh, you can't do it. It's not gonna work. Look at a lot of the top newsletters who are actively doing it right now. So I'm not saying you have to ask 12 questions. I actually think that's a little bit overkill.
[00:37:22] Mel Shires: But don't be afraid to ask 1 to 2 questions that would allow you to specialize so much better. Imagine you just ask someone company size, and if someone said that they were a start up, you sent them an article talking about a use case going 0 to 1,000,000. And if they said they were a company at scale, you talked about a use case going a 100 to 250,000,000. So much more relevant with that one small question that you can tweak as you go in. So coming up a little bit on time, but I guess last 2 bits.
[00:37:51] Mel Shires: Last thing I would say is include as much data and context as you can. There is so much generalized content on podcasts, on newsletters, on social. There's so many frameworks. There's so many, here's how you think about it. One of the ways you cut through the noise, and if you look at top newsletters, Growth Unhinged, SaaS, or Mutant, these are top newsletters in the b two d space.
[00:38:12] Mel Shires: One of the common threads you're gonna find throughout all of those is they're bringing in very specific data. And therefore, they contextualize, they build trust around that use case and around that application. So hopefully, that gives people a few takeaways that they can kind of use, to write more effective b to b newsletters.
[00:38:31] Taylor Wells: Casey, thank you so much. Great great insights, and right on time. I love it. And, great takeaways. I love that final thought of, like, contextualizing it and even, getting specific, insights from from your data, and really tie it in and providing some sort of proof, right, behind your thought leadership and your your theory.
[00:38:49] Taylor Wells: So super cool stuff. Casey, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate you taking the time.
[00:38:54] Mel Shires: Thank you.
00:38:57 Insights on Building Communities from Circle, Including Leveraging Webinars and Making Customers Advocates
[00:38:57] Taylor Wells: Alright. Great. We're moving right along here. We got Mel coming on. Hey, Mel.
[00:39:04] Taylor Wells: How you doing?
[00:39:05] Travis Tyler: How's it going?
[00:39:07] Taylor Wells: Doing well. Thanks for coming on. Mel works with Circle, a community, platform, and I'm I'm a customer of Circle. And, a very, interesting world you all live in, Mel. I'm excited for you to to to share some insights around it.
[00:39:23] Taylor Wells: But as we've seen, first of all, the saturation of all inbound channels, communities and really micro communities have become really popular. Slack groups, Facebook Facebook groups probably started it all, but Slack groups, and now all these, you know, unique, private, groups that you can build on Circle and other platforms. And the reason why from what I've seen is because, first of all, all the macro networks like LinkedIn and Facebook and whatnot, super saturated, and super competitive. And, ultimately, it's it's hard to create something that's really unique, number 1, on those big platforms. And these micro communities, I think everything's niching down, like, especially with globalization.
[00:40:03] Taylor Wells: Any any type of product, yeah, service, content in general, all of it is so saturated, and there's so many different varieties of it. And I think the folks that are winning are are niching down. Right? Niching down on their content, niching down on their products or their services, and and really kinda fine tuning. So kinda as an opener for you, my love for you to to share what what are some insights or some thoughts you have, that you've seen working at Circle for how to build a community and really kinda building those those micro communities.
[00:40:29] Taylor Wells: What have you seen work, and and, yeah, what do you have to share for our audience?
[00:40:33] Travis Tyler: Awesome. I actually I'm old school, so I put together a quick slide deck in Canva. So I'm gonna share my screen. Hopefully, I can figure it out, but couldn't agree more with everything that you just said. Can you how do you
[00:40:48] Taylor Wells: I can see your screen. Yeah. If you click on, on your Canva window and just start presenting, I think that will feel good.
[00:40:58] Taylor Wells: Head on. It looks great.
[00:41:00] Travis Tyler: Cool. So I think that you alluded to a lot of it, but I I really believe that community can be a growth driver in any business and can really fuel and as well as underpin some strategies that you probably have already in place. So, Circle is a community platform. We love building authentic connections at scale, but today I'm really going to hopefully inspire you all to learn about community foundations, understand how to leverage your own community blueprint, and get inspired with some real life examples, and I promise to do it all in 9 minutes. I also have a downloadable that I can share with the audience for the second part so that you can actually take it away and build out your own strategy from what I talk about today.
[00:41:41] Travis Tyler: At a high level of what is community, I usually kind of setting this the stage here when I have these kinds of chats because community is defined by so many people in so many different ways. But really at its core, it's about people. It's about multiple connections and multiple communities and communities within communities. And I think, you know, niche communities or nested communities. And the structure often varies, of how people have these forms of relationships, whether it's formally or informally.
[00:42:08] Travis Tyler: And why people usually get together is to create relationships over a shared interest, to fuel or accelerate their growth or personal development, or have some impact on the bigger picture of that connection that they all share. So if you're thinking about this as an inbound marketer of why the heck do I, you know, why do I care about this, I truly authentically believe that this is your unfair advantage to fuel your brand reach and fuel your growth. At Circle, I am so lucky that we have a thriving community that fuels over 50% of our inbound funnel. Just by making and nurturing, and building that community, that's actually our kind of unfair advantage to our own growth funnel. It's efficient.
[00:42:46] Travis Tyler: It makes everything else efficient. I've seen the math. I've applied this at my last two companies. It makes your paid ads a lot more efficient. It's defensible.
[00:42:54] Travis Tyler: It's hard to copy. It differentiates you. At my last company, I was in a commoditized space, and people would join our product because of the community. And it's a lot more sustainable than fueling all your growth by by just spending. In terms of the blueprint, I'm going to walk through kind of how you can form, a strategy, but essentially, what you're trying to do at scale is take strangers and acquaintances, acquaintances into friends, and friends into fans, and this all fuels each other.
[00:43:20] Travis Tyler: You have strangers that drive friends, acquaintances that drive friends, and you have this kind of growth wheel. I have a note here here, and I can send it out, a link so that you can build this on your own as I mentioned. So when you're defining your growth strategy, where we usually tell our customers to start is think about the story so far, figure out what's missing, and then mapping out a path forward. So in terms of the story so far, you probably have a community offering but you might not think of it that way yet. You might have a formal customer community or some form of micro community that you're running but you probably also have these other touch points but you've never thought about it at that lens.
[00:43:53] Travis Tyler: We just talked about newsletters, we've talked about webinars today, all of those can be touch points where you're creating that relationship or creating those places where people can interact. And as you kind of map out this model, figure out or think of yourself what value are you giving and what value are you getting. And the beauty of community models is if you're not getting you're probably not giving. These things are always in balance with each other. So to ask yourself, are you giving the right value?
[00:44:19] Travis Tyler: Are you being authentic? Are you adding as much engagement? Are you having the right segmentation? Do you have, like, a generic email newsletter for everybody? Or have you actually talked or spoken or connected with your audience?
[00:44:30] Travis Tyler: And then the next thing you're gonna think about is, what does your audience actually want from a community? We have a lot of people come to us and they think they want a community because they want one because it's you know the cool buzzword but imagine you're actually creating this as a product for your target audience because you actually are. What are the needs that you're fulfilling? What are the alternatives in the space and what are the gaps? Do people are your people in your ICP, are they looking for personal growth?
[00:44:52] Travis Tyler: Are they looking to connect? How are they currently doing this and and how is the current constructs failing them? And then from here you'll probably get some some idea of how you can kind of all map at this all together to either iterate or maybe adjust some existing strategies that you have, or build net new to kind of build out that that growth flywheel. To bring it into like hardcore practice, practical tactics, I've kind of split out 4 examples here. The first is at my former company.
[00:45:21] Travis Tyler: I worked for a childcare software, and we marketed to childcare owners. And they had this desperate need to connect and learn to, from other leaders just like them because they got lonely. They're, like, running a business by themselves a lot of times. Right? They were currently spending a lot of money in these in person conference that they couldn't afford.
[00:45:38] Travis Tyler: They wanted things more frequently, and they just found, like, that these types of constructs were expensive and out of reach. So when we launched our webinar, we didn't just, like, launch a webinar. We actually highlighted community voices. We had a host who was a child care owner director. We made sure that the interactive sessions were free.
[00:45:57] Travis Tyler: We integrated growth rituals between badging, welcoming new attendees, certifications. We had his own branding and actually created its own community and space for folks every single week to connect, as well as had tons of great by product products of content, downloadables, etcetera. As of the in the last year that I was there, our average attendance rate was 5,000 people live every single week. And if you think within how small that market is, that's a lot of people. 80% of audience we rate would retain every single week.
[00:46:29] Travis Tyler: So we almost had this, like, growing snowball week over week. At its peak, 25% of people learned, better products through that webinar, and 24 people attended every single session over 3 years. Didn't meet miss a single week. So really taking that need or want to tell our story and and launching that tactic. At Circle, we do this all the time because again, I have the unfair advantage of our amazing customer community.
[00:46:55] Travis Tyler: We know that within especially our entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, they wanna know where they stand as community builders and there's really no reference in the market. Our want, we wanna position ourselves as thought leaders. So we partnered with our community to launch a comprehensive benchmark report. It's 48 pages of qualitative quantity of data. We feature 24 of our best customers.
[00:47:17] Travis Tyler: And within this 1st week, we had over 3,000 downloads, and naturally, we're seeing this being shared on, social channels organically all over the place because the content is so authentic. In terms of our community, again, we invest a lot in customer education. And, again, their need, our customers, they really wanna be confident that they're doing it the right way. Our want we want them new new use our new features, probably share about it, and become fans. So when we launch new features, we actually go with boot camps, within our our customer, community.
[00:47:50] Travis Tyler: This was when we launched courses just over a year ago. We had 8,000 customers enroll in the course, 21 lessons. 98% of people who took the course adopted the feature, and this also fueled a lot of organic, user generated content for us as well. Last but not least, we just launched this campaign at Circle, and this is one you can easily steal. We decided that we always want our best customers to share why they love your product.
[00:48:15] Travis Tyler: And every time marketers always think they want a referral program, I we took the opposite approach. We said let's just tell our best customers they're awesome and why. So we took our best customers using math, I don't understand, and outsource, and we basically told our best customers, hey. You're the top 10% of our customer base. You have one of the best communities.
[00:48:35] Travis Tyler: We gave them little badges, and we've been overwhelmed by, like, these massive posts that they're putting on, mostly LinkedIn that, like, we're not prompting any of this. All we did was we told them that they're special because we wanted them to tell our story through theirs organically. And this has been wildly successful, incredibly cheap, and pretty easy to implement. My elevator pitch because I just can't help myself. If you have any interest in community building, feel free to reach out to me.
[00:49:03] Travis Tyler: Also, if you want to take advantage of that blueprint that I shared and, like, wanna show me what you did or have any questions, feel free to hit me up as well.
[00:49:12] Taylor Wells: Awesome, Mel. Wow. You really, laid out a bunch of great insights there. One of the two things that stood out to me, number 1 was, you leverage your ongoing webinar events and then piggyback the community and created that that, community off of a long form, you know, event, which was, super cool. And I love how that kind of can be an extension of something you're already doing.
[00:49:34] Taylor Wells: And then the other thing, was really making those advocates, you know, your customers that were in your, in your community and then amplified through, made them advocates as they, as you recognize them and as they, you know, felt special and felt recognized. So really cool insights. Yeah. Folks, reach out to Mel if you'd like the downloadable or or or send me an email. Happy to pass it on.
[00:49:53] Taylor Wells: Thanks again, Mel, for coming on. Appreciate it.
[00:49:55] Rachel Elsts Downey: Thanks so much. Bye.
00:49:59 Insights on Organic Social and SEO Strategies for 2024 and Beyond
[00:49:59] Taylor Wells: Alright. We got Travis up next. What's up, Travis? I think we got a issue with the microphone.
[00:50:10] Brendan Hufford: Can you hear me now?
[00:50:12] Taylor Wells: There we are. What's up? What's
[00:50:14] Taylor Wells: How you doing?
[00:50:16] Brendan Hufford: Good, Taylor. You are a patient person. You you sit there and you listen. You're a great host.
[00:50:22] Taylor Wells: I appreciate that. Thank you. Super fun. I learned so much myself, from these events, so I'm super grateful and, excited for you to talk about organic, social. And, I fall I think kind of a testament to why I brought you on was you create a bunch of great, like, first video content is what I noticed, a lot about what you did done on LinkedIn for different brands you've worked for.
[00:50:46] Taylor Wells: And so I wanted to have you come on because organic social is one of those things that, is very frustrating because it seems like it's like this, elusive, thing that we're all chasing, trying to get go viral or whatever. And so and the things algorithms constantly change and whatnot. But I know it can still work and I know, you know, even from this event, right, people talk about repurposing content and and leveraging it. So I'd love to hear from you. What are you seeing, working from organic social, and video content in general?
[00:51:18] Taylor Wells: And, Yeah. So I'd love for you to lay that out for us.
[00:51:21] Brendan Hufford: Absolutely. Well, thanks for the the warm welcome. And, yeah, social media is it's a beast. It's a career path that's only been around for like 20 years. Right.
[00:51:35] Brendan Hufford: And the oldest people who are in it are like in their forties. And a lot of us who got here into social media didn't necessarily plan on ending up here. And I think that's a testament to the willing to take a risk. And, I love taking risks. And sometimes I get in a little bit of trouble, but usually not.
[00:51:59] Brendan Hufford: It pays off. But I've got a couple of tips I wrote down. We can go over them, But I'm also happy to make this more, like, free flowing and just chat with you about your favorite social media and talk about some themes and stuff. But I think one of the golden rules that I try to live by is, like, I'm gonna take it from my good friend Christina Lee, which is, like, be social. Like, you can't ghost and post.
[00:52:27] Brendan Hufford: Or excuse me, post and ghost. You can't just like just because, you know, all of us as people, we have inherent value just by being alive. Right, Taylor? You have value. I have value.
[00:52:39] Brendan Hufford: But just because we have inherent value doesn't necessarily mean that we inherently get people's attention. And
[00:52:49] Brendan Hufford: the name of the game in social media. And you gotta make friends. You have to support others with kind comments. You need to ask thoughtful questions. Maybe learn a little bit more about the people who are posting and what they posted about.
[00:53:05] Brendan Hufford: Add in some humor if you want to. Right? Like these are social media platforms. And a lot of times people are going to them to be entertained, to escape whatever it is in their real life they don't want to pay attention to. And we can't forget that.
[00:53:19] Brendan Hufford: So if you're posting comment, content, you really should spend twice as much time plugging yourself and your brand into other conversations with your ICP from an authentic place, right? Like not just being like, I agree, you know, these like, chat GPT comments we start seeing,
[00:53:36] Brendan Hufford: know, like, dude, what is this?
[00:53:39] Brendan Hufford: know, if you don't have anything to say, that's, that's fine too. But I think that's one of my golden rules with social is social media. You gotta be social, just like you would try to be social in
[00:53:48] Brendan Hufford: Same same rules apply to social media. Another rule I like to live by is, like, when others zig, try to zag a little bit. You don't need to hop on trends and just try, you know, to try to be successful on social media. I think you need to be authentic and show up consistently. We keep hearing that.
[00:54:08] Brendan Hufford: People say it all the time. I feel like authenticity has lost its meaning at this point, But it's, again, it's like making friends in real life. If you just copy whatever everyone else is doing and you show up to hang out, like, everyone's going to see right through it and be like, bro, you're not being your genuine self. Another big part of of, you know, zigging when others zag or zagging whenever others zig is like you need to shed your fear of embarrassment and you need to have some fun with your content. So one of my kind of good barometers of checking if content is gonna resonate with other people is, like, am I smiling or laughing while I'm making it?
[00:54:45] Brendan Hufford: Because if I'm not, chances are nobody else's gonna when they engage with it either.
[00:54:53] Brendan Hufford: think the last kind of piece of advice to help people get started, especially if like, they're taking over a corporate account. A really good trick is to and it's a trade secret that maybe people are like, well, yeah, I know that. But, like, do you actually do it? Partner with somebody who already has a really big following. And, ideally, it it's a following that could overlap with yours without, like, stealing from that person or that company.
[00:55:22] Brendan Hufford: And that'll help get things snowballing. And you can work with them in a paid capacity. Right? Like, you pay them, like, hey, we'd like to try out, you know, partnering with you for the next 3 months, and we'll pay you, you know, x amount of dollars per month. If you could start commenting on our posts, if you could come, you know, help support us, give us ideas on what we need to be posting, you know, helping us come up with different fields of content.
[00:55:49] Brendan Hufford: But it's not an engagement pod, and I think it's a paid agreement that will help increase more eyeballs into seeing your content. And if it resonates with the audience, the algorithm will help it pop off.
[00:56:04] Taylor Wells: Great insights. And I love yeah. Finishing there as far as leveraging influencers and and or folks that have a a similar or an ideal audience that you want to to partner with, especially getting started. And you probably learn a lot. Right?
[00:56:17] Taylor Wells: Just just, working with that that person. I you mentioned something at the very beginning, which, I just wanna to hit on and maybe you can tie in is, you haven't gone to trouble too much. And I think one of the the biggest fears of content creators in general, especially when they represent the company. Right? And you're creating content that's interesting, and especially in b to b where, you know, we have the the age old joke that b to b is boring.
[00:56:42] Taylor Wells: Yeah. How do you how do you, what type of, compass? What's your compass for, like, understanding or or guidelines you have for understanding, like, how to push the boundaries to be interesting, entertaining, stand outside the box, but, not so much that you're gonna misrepresent your brand or or get, you know, legal upset or or whatever. Any thoughts there or anything you've learned over the years?
[00:57:05] Brendan Hufford: Lots of thoughts and lots of experiences. I've had my hand slapped. I've been asked to take Post down, both from a brand, you know, page and from a personal page. I've got a couple of good tips for you, and I learned some of them from improv comedy. Did it for a couple of years, but there's a there's a lesson in in improv where it's like blue it's called blue humor, and it's lazy humor.
[00:57:30] Brendan Hufford: It's bathroom humor. Right? It's like talking about farts and poops and boogers and things of that nature. Usually, best to stay away from that kind of stuff just because, again, it's like it's a cheap laugh, and there's no artistry to it. It's fine in the context of hanging out with your friends or whatever, like, you know, making your niece or nephew or kid laugh, but it's a different story when you're trying to do it with social media.
[00:57:52] Brendan Hufford: So that's one rule. And then the other is like, you have to build trust, within your organization before you come out swinging. Whether that was it my current employer, my my former employer, like, I didn't just come out of the gate, like being like, oh, I'm gonna do something wacky and zany, like, like, I built trust over time and kind of eased into it. And you don't know where the line is until you cross it. And so when I did, you know, like, hey, we need to have a talk or whatever, I took it in stride.
[00:58:21] Brendan Hufford: I was embarrassed. But at the end of the day, I think you need to build a good relationship with those who are, you know, at the leadership level of the company. And best way you can do that is by getting them involved, if they're willing to. I know not everybody has that luxury. I know not everybody has organizations where leadership wants to do anything on social media.
[00:58:41] Brendan Hufford: If that's the case, then maybe lean on other people inside the organization. But yeah, I've, let's see. I I took, like, too much of a thirst trap photo, Taylor, of me, like, shirtless and, like, posted it on LinkedIn. I was asked to take that one down. To be fair, it was from, like, here up.
[00:59:01] Brendan Hufford: But that was a funny one. Let's see. Oh, yeah. I made a booger joke on a podcast and was asked to, like, not do that anymore. I was asked not to use a meme with a controversial person in it.
[00:59:15] Brendan Hufford: And I was like, okay. I don't think they're that controversial, but to each their own. We'll see. I think you just have to feel it out. And like I said, you don't know until you cross the line if you've crossed it.
[00:59:28] Brendan Hufford: And it's not a reflection of you and, like, your ability to be good at the job. I think it says more about the people who get a little upset or or their feathers ruffled. But, yeah, it's tough. It it can be, like, really frustrating to work in an organization where you feel like everything is being censored. I personally wouldn't take a job like that.
[00:59:50] Brendan Hufford: And I don't think it's fun. So that's my if you're like, in that situation, like, I don't have a choice. Sorry. A little bit less boring, a little bit or a little bit more boring, a little bit more less less edgy than you'd like to be.
[01:00:04] Taylor Wells: Yeah. Thanks for sharing, and I appreciate you. I know we're out of time here, but appreciate, what you said about zigging when others are zagging or or vice versa. I think that's another big takeaway for me, and I think, we all get on these trends, whatnot. And, I really appreciate that.
[01:00:19] Taylor Wells: In, like, 30 seconds, any thoughts there on zigging versus zagging before we close-up?
[01:00:23] Brendan Hufford: I think that, I have a tendency to see what others are doing and be like, I wanna do it, but I wanna stand out and be a little bit different. I think if you can adopt that mindset instead of just being like, I'm just gonna copy what everybody else has done and, you know, okay. What did that offer the world? Did you, like, have a different spin on it? So I think being perceptive and self aware enough to say, like, am I adding to this in, like, a complementary way?
[01:00:48] Brendan Hufford: Or am I just adding to the noise?
[01:00:52] Vinod Varma: I love it. Perfect.
[01:00:53] Taylor Wells: Well, thank you. Thanks so much for coming on.
[01:00:55] Brendan Hufford: This is, like, a heroic effort for you to do these, like, 9 minute interviews. So,
[01:00:59] Taylor Wells: so much fun. I appreciate Travis. Everyone, go check out Travis on LinkedIn. Thanks again, Travis. Alright.
[01:01:07] Taylor Wells: We got Bert Brendan. What's up, Brendan?
[01:01:11] Vinod Varma: Hey, man. I'm excited. You got you got big, big plant energy right now.
[01:01:17] Taylor Wells: Oh, thank you. I've been I've been working on it. That's okay.
[01:01:23] Taylor Wells: it's a compliment. Alright. Oh, good. Good. Well, I live in Oregon, and so I try to make my my my office feel like California because, you know, Oregon and rain and whatnot.
[01:01:33] Vinod Varma: nice to see. I feel like I need just to, like, compensate. I feel like I need to, like, over here or something, and we're like, alright. We're good. We're good now.
[01:01:41] Taylor Wells: You get an you get an extra 2 minutes on your session now. Good job.
[01:01:46] Vinod Varma: Yeah. You get an extra 2 minutes for every plant in the back.
[01:01:49] Taylor Wells: Okay. Pay to plant or something like that. I don't know.
[01:01:53] Vinod Varma: That's awesome. I love it.
[01:01:54] Taylor Wells: Well, thanks for coming on. I know we only got a couple minutes here, and that you've actually been on on my podcast. And, I definitely share share a bunch of great content on LinkedIn and and whatnot around SEO. So SEO is one of those it's probably the weirdest of any of the inbound channels, especially with AI and SGE and all the fun stuff there. So I'd love to any takeaways you have for folks in 2024 and beyond, like, what to focus on, areas they can win in SEO, and maybe some things to avoid.
[01:02:25] Vinod Varma: Yeah. So I think, like, look, I can also, like, present some stuff too if that's helpful. Like, whatever way this is the most awesome, I'm game. I think, first, we all have access to the same keyword research tools. Every like, Ahrefs, like, Semrush.
[01:02:40] Vinod Varma: We're all using them, which means we are all singing from the exact same sheet of music. And if the only reason you are adding pages to your website is because something you know, you did the thing where you did the export of keywords and you sorted for, like, highest volume and lowest differ difficulty and that's our content strategy. I think people have conflated a channel strategy with a content strategy. What I mean by that is your social strategy is not your content strategy in as much as your SEO strategy is not your content strategy. And I think people have gotten confused over time, and they think the SEO strategy is the content strategy because it goes on the website.
[01:03:22] Vinod Varma: Your content strategy is everything. Right? It is your newsletter. It is your it is this. It is events.
[01:03:28] Vinod Varma: It is social. It is every like, all of these different channels, and SEO is a distribution channel for things your customers want. The problem is people think if I see people googling it, my customers must want it, which is just vastly incorrect. I'll give you an example. I saw the other day I was doing some keyword research, actually, for a client, and there was all of these weird phrases that were all, like, 2 and 3 like, literally, like, 5, 6 word phrases.
[01:03:59] Vinod Varma: And I've been in the game long enough to go, those are certification questions that people are googling every month because they want the answers for their they're taking an online certification for something related to what this client did. And is there value in being the site? Yeah. If you wanna, like, answer a question and maybe get some goodwill with people entering an industry, yes. Are they your buyer?
[01:04:24] Vinod Varma: Probably not for, like, 5 years. Right? So should we put resources into those first? No. But if you're a keyword jockey and that's how you think about it, you'll probably make those pages.
[01:04:35] Vinod Varma: And then everybody will go, why don't they convert? And that makes more problems for you than, you know, you want, to be honest.
[01:04:43] Taylor Wells: I love it. That's, great insight. And I see that so many times when you go, you know, search for something on Google, and you go to the website. And first, the content doesn't answer your question because you can tell it was just used to rank for SEO. And then it also doesn't tie under the product.
[01:04:58] Taylor Wells: So it's like, it's it's a horrible customer experience, and, I appreciate what you said as far as content. You know, how does it fit into your overall content strategy, not the other way around? And even when I've seen from the folks I've worked with over the years is, like, Google is moving more and more towards content that actually, like, solves a problem, you know, and and whatnot versus just who can who can game the system.
[01:05:23] Vinod Varma: And honestly, it maybe this I've been on I haven't been in b two b for a long time, but I think this is true of b two c as well. People just wanna be seen. They just want to feel seen and heard and especially coming through Google. Google is not a Google is just how we use the Internet. It's how we find things.
[01:05:41] Vinod Varma: It's just it's how we navigate the like, how else would you find stuff you want? Like, you know, there's social platforms and things like that, but, like, the Internet, the web based Internet, Google is our navigation. It is our road map. It is our road system for it. So there is merit in showing up there.
[01:05:57] Vinod Varma: But I think the problem is if I can open the first five search results and they they all feel the same generic because they were all written by some, like, no like, 22 year old marketing manager with no actual expertise. They're just, you know, writing based on some keyword tool or whatever, or or even worse now, just ripping pages out of chat g p t. The problem is that, like, commodity copycat chat g p t content that exists, it it it doesn't actually do the thing we think it does. Right? And you can't retain marketing marketing just for everybody who's in senior leadership, they already know this, but for everybody else, you retain your best marketers on your team by doing 2 things.
[01:06:39] Vinod Varma: Number 1, letting them create stuff they like. That's why we just had Travis on and I was like watching because I like him because he seems to make stuff he likes. Like he has taste and he makes stuff he likes. And you also want them to have impact. If either of those aren't happening, you're not gonna keep good people for very long.
[01:06:55] Vinod Varma: You have to have impact and you have to align with, like, what they like to do. And that commodity, you know, copycat content, like, nobody likes making that. Nobody's psyched of, like, oh, I rewrote 5 blogs on a from a competitor's website today. That stuff sucks. I think what people want when they come in from search, from cold search, they've never heard of you or maybe they've heard of you adjacently or whatever.
[01:07:16] Vinod Varma: They just wanna feel seen. 1st sentence, 1st paragraph. Don't stuff a keyword in there because your SEO plugin tells you to. Like, immediately hook them. Study, curiosity levers.
[01:07:29] Vinod Varma: Study open loops and hooks and things like that. Hook them immediately and show me I have show them I have sat in your seat, even if you haven't. Like, could I create content for managed service providers or DevOps? Maybe not, but if that was my full time job, I absolutely could. I could make those people feel so seen immediately.
[01:07:49] Vinod Varma: I'll give you an example. There's a great company that works with managed managed service providers called MSP 360. And on their homepage, everybody can go look at this right now. On their homepage, they have, an IT guy and IT girl. They are their 2 mascots.
[01:08:03] Vinod Varma: And that is significant because women, like even just simply having female representation on the website, women are historically very underrepresented, in the IT industry. But he's holding a laptop, and that laptop has stickers on it. And I remember, somebody asked their marketing director, like, why'd you choose like, it has, like, Blizzard, and Reddit stickers on there. Somebody asked him, like, why'd you choose those? He was like, because when we go to trade shows, all of their laptops have those stickers on them.
[01:08:33] Vinod Varma: Like, it like, we just want like, that sort of thing of, like, okay. Cool. Now is that an SEO strategy? No. But it is because I'm not gonna bounce if I immediately see a a even if it's a character, a cartoon that looks like the person I am.
[01:08:48] Vinod Varma: Right? An avatar of me. Or I come in and I see a quote from somebody who has my exact job title. That sort of stuff really, really matters when you come in from search, and I don't I don't it's not my experience that when I'm googling stuff, I find that much of that.
[01:09:03] Taylor Wells: That's a great, great story and and, analogy, and I love that for, yeah, really making it, personalized or or contextual to that audience. Super cool. We're almost up on time here. Time flies when you're having fun, as they say. Curious, any thoughts you have on, just the world of AI, s g e?
[01:09:22] Taylor Wells: Probably talk for an hour on it. But any closing thoughts for folks? Obviously, creating content that's really relevant on your website and making it, feel people people feel seen. But anything else in addition to that in closing?
[01:09:33] Vinod Varma: Yeah. I'm gonna give you the real truth. The s g, the goo the AI in Google search will never launch. That's never going to happen. We keep talking about it like it's gonna happen.
[01:09:42] Vinod Varma: It never will. The only people talking about it are people in the SEO industry that are trying to look smart to other SEO people. So they've kind of drilled down into this weird minutiae. It's like if you know people I have friends that are, like, amazing at chess, like globally ranked chess players. And the level of minutiae that they're into, it's all like I don't even know what they're talking about, and I know how to play chess.
[01:10:05] Vinod Varma: Right? So, like, they're talking about move like, somebody one game from 1976 and the 27th move of that game, and it's just like, guys guys, what are we talking about here? And that's what's happened in the SEO industry. So everybody's worried about this SGE, the AI showing up in Google search. Here's why it'll never launch.
[01:10:21] Vinod Varma: First of all, Google never would have even started talking about it if their stock didn't go down. And their stock went down because ChatGPT launched. Right? And they were like, oh, crap. AI is a thing.
[01:10:31] Vinod Varma: OpenAI came out of the gates crazy, and they were like their stock took a hit, and everybody wanna know what's Google doing about AI. And they're like, we're doing stuff. We're busy. Look. We're so busy now.
[01:10:41] Vinod Varma: Look. We're doing this thing, and that's why they've rebranded it 6 times. The other thing is they're not financially incentivized to launch it. Think about it. Like, Taylor, if you have AI, true AI, wouldn't you use that in, like, most of their alphabet, the parent company in Google, most of their revenue is ads.
[01:10:57] Vinod Varma: Wouldn't you put the AI in your ads first to make way more money? Why would you worry about muddying the the search results with an AI result? And also for anybody who's looked at the, you know, who you can turn it on in your account if you want. When you look at it, a lot of times they're just stealing it straight from a website. And as a company who's already under antitrust and could get sued over that, like let's say that somebody does a report and they're like, oh, look, Most of the AI generated results are just grifted straight off a website.
[01:11:26] Vinod Varma: They're gonna get sued for antitrust. They're gonna get broken up by the government. OpenAI is already getting sued by The New York Times and probably more publishers going forward. For all of these reasons, the antitrust, the it could decrease ad clicks, which Google never wants. Like, for all those reasons, I don't see it happening.
[01:11:43] Vinod Varma: So I don't think it's a thing to prepare for. I don't think it matters. And at this point, like, unless their hand gets forced, I'll kinda believe it when I see it.
[01:11:53] Taylor Wells: Love it, Brendan. Great closing thought. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate the time. Yeah.
[01:11:58] Vinod Varma: Thanks for having me, Taylor. I appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.
01:12:02 Exploring Influencer Marketing in B2B Strategies
[01:12:02] Taylor Wells: Alright. We got a couple more sessions left here. We got, Vinod, if I hope I'm not butchering your name here. And I'll get him on the stage. Hey, Vinod.
[01:12:17] Taylor Wells: Can you hear me okay?
[01:12:19] Casey Hill: you doing, Taylor?
[01:12:21] Taylor Wells: I'm doing well. Thanks for thanks for joining us. Did I get your name right?
[01:12:25] Casey Hill: Vinod. Close.
[01:12:26] Taylor Wells: Vinod. It's all. Sounds even it sounds even cooler. Vinod. Appreciate it.
[01:12:31] Taylor Wells: Thanks for thanks for coming on. The reason why I wind you on is I know you, run a influencer marketing platform and, and and whatnot. And the world of influencer marketing is, once again, I think especially because of content, once all the inbound strategies are are getting, super weird, people are leveraging, b to c, it seems very common, and I know your platform, I'm sure, works for for both industries. B to b, it's kind of a newer thing from my perspective, you know, or at least more popular in the past couple years. So I'd love to hear from you.
[01:13:04] Taylor Wells: What are some, practical takeaways people can learn when they're when they're looking to do influencer marketing, hire influencers, some best practices you've seen, and and maybe some things to avoid?
[01:13:15] Casey Hill: Yeah. For sure. I think so for, you know, for me, I've put together a bit of a of a presentation or my team Great. I should say. And, would love to kinda take you take you through it.
[01:13:25] Casey Hill: So let me know if you can see the screen okay here.
[01:13:29] Taylor Wells: Yeah. If you wanna click, share screen. There you go. Perfect.
[01:13:32] Casey Hill: Yep. Awesome. So, you know, hey. Thanks for having me. We are seeing, some significant moves in the influencer space when it comes to opening up more b to b channels.
[01:13:43] Casey Hill: And I felt that some of the, you know, some of the reasons why brands are shifting into this into this channel would be equally as valuable for this for this crowd, as well as some of the strategies. So I thought, you know, to make a case for influencer marketing because I know it's something that I would say b to b marketers are are experimenting more and more with. I wanted to provide a little bit of data to better understand why, a marketer would want to invest their time here or make the case for increasing budget and spend. So, you know, a little bit of background on how Creator was started. We're now one of the leading influencer marketing platforms ranked, I think, number 2 or 3 on influencer marketing hub, 1 by smart sites and etcetera, etcetera.
[01:14:26] Casey Hill: But we cut our teeth really in the CPG space and what we understood was the power of, a subject matter expert or everyday influencer and the way that they connected to their communities. And what we noticed was that consumers would rather buy from someone like them or versus a brand directly, to put it shortly. And so over the years, we've, you know, we work with over 200,000 influencers in our community. We've worked with some of the world's best brands. We've done a number of b to b and b to c campaigns.
[01:15:00] Casey Hill: And we've learned a few things, over the course of of the last 5 years, I'd say, since we launched. 1, the attention economy is a real thing and we need to understand that as business operators because it is getting shorter and shorter. And what we need to focus on is showing up where our potential consumers are hanging out and not trying to force them, you know, if the average attention span is 8.25 seconds for the human, that's actually down 4 seconds, over the last decade according to a survey from Microsoft. And I thought what was really interesting is 9 seconds is actually the average attention, span of a goldfish. So we now officially have less of attention span than the average goldfish, which I don't know if we're progressing or regressing as a species, but that's not my job.
[01:15:55] Casey Hill: My job is to help brands connect with their audience in more efficient ways. So I think this concept of the attention economy and showing up where your customers are is really important. And what we've learned is, more and more marketers are realizing this and they're saying that the leads coming from social media, in this case, particularly LinkedIn, are are more and more successful over time. And, I mean, when you when you pull back the curtain and you think about it, why wouldn't, a regular consumer want to talk to someone like them versus maybe a salesperson or, you know, why wouldn't why would they believe someone's opinion, over a brand created piece of content. Right?
[01:16:37] Casey Hill: Because I haven't seen a brand talk about how mediocre they were in a long time. And I think that sense of humanization and and truth, that stems from from a creator or an influencer can really help brands overcome one of the biggest barriers they face in the b to b space, which would be trust. Right? And so as we move through this, we there's also some headaches obviously in this space in terms of identifying, qualifying, engaging ideal influencers. And that's where I think, you know, we'll have some real strategies towards the end of this presentation that are tangible that, you know, we're happy to send to any of the viewers on this, to explore.
[01:17:16] Casey Hill: But I wanted to hit the nail on a few on a few important things here because in the b to b space that, you know, the when you say the word influencer, you might think about, you know, someone taking selfies or outfit of the day and things like that. We're really in the b to b space. There's this wide spectrum of business influencers that marketers need to, kinda take their blinders off and really look full circle because it's not just, you know, a subject matter expert on social media. It is the employees, it is your customers, It is mainstream talent. It's journalists and media, as well as the obvious, you know, thought leaders in the tech space or whatever vertical your your business might be operating in.
[01:18:00] Casey Hill: So a lot more, you know, that opens up the gamut of who is an influencer for you and and makes it a lot more palatable to find those people. And so LinkedIn is really what's leading the charge here. A lot of subject matter experts in the b to b space, are obviously on LinkedIn. I know I trust a lot of people on LinkedIn. But primarily, we're what we're what we're seeing fundamentally is because more and more people are spending time on social media, the the way they're drawn you know, what they digest in terms of content is really selective.
[01:18:39] Casey Hill: And it's becoming more and more selective. So how do we show up to where our customers are gonna be, in a more effective way? And and that's kind of what we'll dive into here. But the evidence of more and more people using social media, in particular on this graph, LinkedIn, but I also think there's a huge use case for certain blogs, YouTube YouTubers, Instagram, Facebook, as well as TikTok as well. I know personally myself, I'm learning a lot about different AI pro I'm sure AI has been said a 1000000 times in over the 90 minutes, but I'm learning a ton.
[01:19:11] Casey Hill: Or I guess I say I'm learning a ton, but I'm being introduced to a lot of AI and content creation tools and and business ops tools to make things more efficient. I'm getting introduced to a lot of those brands on social media. And I don't think I would have come to know of a lot of those brands, other than the ones that make obviously significant headlines if it wasn't for social media. So, just a good example of showing up where your customers need are already and how showing up in an authentic way is gonna be really, really key. And you can see here that so the rise of social media is really, really increasing when it comes to b to b, programs.
[01:19:54] Casey Hill: So I know that we're probably getting short on time, so I'm not gonna be able to get through all of the 7, 7 examples here that we've put up that we've pull up for you. But we have broken each of them down, to kinda distill for you. So a few different ways that we can go through some b to b strategies. 1 would be promoting events, and this is an example that SAP did extremely well. 2 blog series, so connecting with subject matter experts around your business, around your tool, whatever it might be, and then having them create a blogging series if they're prominent bloggers.
[01:20:30] Casey Hill: Web webinars, podcasts, etcetera, kind of in line with blog series as well, but these are really good channels to give new communities exposure to your brand or your product. Industry presentations. So this is where you can partner with other influencers within the industry or subject matter experts. Think about partnering companies. You know, for a creator, for example, we partner with a lot of different affiliate networks like Heywin or Rakuten, and those are influencers in their own right and partnering with them when we do trade shows and other presentations is is really powerful.
[01:21:04] Casey Hill: Instructional videos. So if you've got more of a of a product type of business, having other subject matter experts talk about using your product, is actually one of the one of the one of the most effective ways to immediately lower trust barriers and and create that curiosity around why an expert is using your product and typically leads to a ton of inbound traffic. Product reviews, probably an obvious one, but definitely necessary. Getting industry experts to review, test, and report on your product. This is one of the most effective ways to scale kind of the long tail of this.
[01:21:39] Casey Hill: And, also, I think as part of this, thinking about ambassador programs or ambassadorships as well. How can you, help incentivize the conversation to happen more than just once or more than just one blog. So implementing an ambassador program or referral program with some of these subject matter experts might be something that, really works for your business. And then finally, nurturing those relationships. So this is kind of like building, a community of ambassadors around your brand, and really leveraging them and empowering them to become part of almost like a think tank solution.
[01:22:16] Casey Hill: And I think this is really a powerful concept because the more people feel connected to your brand, your product, and the more they feel like they're part of the solution that you offer, the more likely they are to actually promote you in a in a more authentic, manner. So 7 really good examples of how you can leverage influencers in a b to b strategy. And in the 7 strategies that we wanted to highlight for this presentation and would really
[01:22:50] Taylor Wells: so much.
[01:22:51] Casey Hill: Yeah. No. My pleasure. And really wanted to just save some room for some questions or from you or or anyone else.
[01:22:57] Taylor Wells: Thanks so much. Yeah. So we have, we're about up on time here, but I will definitely share that presentation with the audience. Send it to me afterwards. I would love to read it myself because I'm sure I'll learn a lot.
[01:23:06] Taylor Wells: Just in closing, is there, like, one big mistake people make? Something to avoid when hiring influencers or starting influencer program. Like, what's, like, immediately come to your mind in closing?
[01:23:17] Casey Hill: Yeah. They view they view the relationship almost as if it was traditional paid media versus a real person on the other side. And, you know, the expectations when you're doing paid media is put a dollar in the vending machine, try to get 4 out. Whereas, when you're dealing with influencers and subject matter experts, it is about of ROI very quickly. And I think it's important to find people who align with the brand, truly engage with the brand, and those tend to be the most successful long standing relationships that yield true ROI over the long tail.
[01:23:58] Taylor Wells: I love that. It's a good good lesson across, go to market in general. Is treat people as humans versus just what is the impact ROI you can get out of them. Super great. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing, and we'll definitely share that presentation with the audience afterwards.
[01:24:12] Casey Hill: Thanks, Taylor. Thanks, guys. Appreciate your time.
01:24:17 Exploring Owned Media and Creating Binge-Worthy B2B Series
[01:24:17] Taylor Wells: Alright. Wrapping us up, the one and only Balaji. What's up, man? I think we got a a mic.
[01:24:29] Sam G. Winsbury: Alright. Let me see.
[01:24:30] Taylor Wells: Does there we go.
[01:24:31] Sam G. Winsbury: Can you hear me now?
[01:24:32] Taylor Wells: How we doing? Fantastic. I can't. Zoodle's weird. Good.
[01:24:38] Taylor Wells: Thanks for coming on. And, first of all, I wanna thank you for manning the q and a and the chat today, this new format of event. I'm still trying to figure out how to integrate the audience better since it's such a fast paced event, and so I appreciate you commenting and and, engaging there. But I wanted you to wrap us up. 1st, you've been on my podcast.
[01:24:59] Taylor Wells: We've talked about owned media and then this concept that's been really popularized over the last couple years. So lay it out for us. What, what are you seeing as first, why owned media? And then maybe some takeaways on on how folks can get started.
[01:25:14] Sam G. Winsbury: Of course. Of course. Let me go ahead and share my screen. I've got some really interesting perspectives on this that I want to share with everyone. All right.
[01:25:23] Sam G. Winsbury: Awesome. Let's see if I can fix this out here. Share screen. K. Let me know when you can see my screen.
[01:25:33] Brendan Hufford: Okay.
[01:25:35] Taylor Wells: It's coming, I'm sure. Don't see it yet. It's all good.
[01:25:47] Sam G. Winsbury: One sec. Zoodle is still downloading the presentation.
[01:25:51] Sam G. Winsbury: Yeah. No worries. I'll download it and present from my desktop. But we'll start talking through it in the meantime. So, this idea of owned media.
[01:26:01] Sam G. Winsbury: I think we're all very familiar with the term, and yet, we we might not be that familiar with how it's relevant to us. So we're familiar with the concepts of paid media, very familiar, thanks to Google and other vendors. We're familiar with, we might have heard rented media. That's what's, become very popular in the past 6, 7 years with social media properties, where you have an audience on their platform, but you don't necessarily own all the keys to the car, so to speak, or all the access to your audience. So it's been really interesting to figure out how owned media plays into that space.
[01:26:40] Sam G. Winsbury: Several of the speakers today actually gave examples of owned media. Casey talked from ActiveCampaign talked about b to b newsletters, which is one very key piece or example, of owned media. I'm gonna speak about a very specific type of owned media, if you will. I'm gonna speak about creating shows. And not just any shows, but serial shows.
[01:27:05] Sam G. Winsbury: Binge worthy shows. Like, deliciously binge worthy. Okay? The type of shows that keep you up late at night, you know, watching after your spouse has gone to sleep. Don't do that.
[01:27:15] Sam G. Winsbury: Don't try this at home, kids. But, this is what we wanna talk about today. Alright. I think my presentation is up.
[01:27:22] Taylor Wells: Yep. I can see it. Looks great.
[01:27:24] Sam G. Winsbury: Perfect. So here's the challenge that we have. A lot of us have been in this b to b marketing game for a number of years, but the ground has shifted under our feet. The old way no longer works. Blogs, even search engine, results pages, like Brenda talked about SEO, just a moment ago.
[01:27:42] Sam G. Winsbury: Ad clicks, traffic, driving traffic to your website, all these stuff. These were tried and true plays. Those plays no longer work like they used to. They're not dead, but they're kind of atrophying on the vine. Okay?
[01:27:56] Sam G. Winsbury: And by the way, I will share this presentation with Taylor. So you guys can take screenshots, but I'll give you the whole presentation so you have all of the details. We're essentially, as marketers, being forced to evolve, Taylor, our b to b content. It's no longer enough to simply publish the most content. Okay?
[01:28:14] Sam G. Winsbury: Anybody who's got AI could keep up with your volume. It's not enough to even be the most helpful, right? Google and chat gpt are helpful now is just a commodity. It it's not even enough to have the best product features because almost any technical features that you might have can be duplicated within 6 months. And even content discoverability has plummeted.
[01:28:39] Sam G. Winsbury: Back in the day, Google was a great source of traffic. Social networks were a great source of traffic. Now if you put a link in your social, network post, you get penalized for it. You get you get the the slap. So we have to evolve the way that we create and think about b to b content.
[01:28:55] Sam G. Winsbury: Now, there's several examples that are actually working in this new world of b to b content. And these are a number of them on here. I screen captured something I saw on LinkedIn posted by Chris Walker today. Many of us will be familiar with Chris Walker of Refine Labs. He posted a comment that someone sent to him, and the the language jumped out to me.
[01:29:15] Sam G. Winsbury: This individual said, chewing through your content right now like a Netflix binge. Pardon the typo there. And love everything you stand for. So some people are starting to figure this thing up, but it's very, very early days still. And just like there was a a an SEO gold rush back in the day, there's a lot of green space, there's a lot of opportunity for figuring out how to create this binge worthy serial content.
[01:29:42] Sam G. Winsbury: What Taylor is doing right now is an example of binge worthy serial content. So we're gonna get a little bit into the qualities of what makes for good owned media. So ideally, you want it to be subscription based. This is not something where you are, tricking people to opt in or give you their email address for an ebook, and then you lead nurture them into oblivion. We're not doing that.
[01:30:06] Sam G. Winsbury: This is a subscription based. It's serial consumption. So one off content is fine. One off content is sometimes necessary. But in this case, a lot of the guests or speakers have talked about how attention spans are dropping.
[01:30:21] Sam G. Winsbury: We want something that's going to hold attention. Right? And so rather than starting to spin the wheel every single time from scratch, we want something that will give us this sort of increasing snowball effect. Right? We want a situation where you own the relationship.
[01:30:37] Sam G. Winsbury: Okay? We don't want LinkedIn to own it or Facebook to own it. And finally, you want it to be audience centric, not brand centric. Taylor is so good about focusing us, centering us on give us some tips that are good, but also give us some of the things to avoid. Don't create product centric content when you are thinking about owned media.
[01:31:00] Sam G. Winsbury: You need product centric content in your whole mix. But for your owned media specifically, we want it to be audience centric. Okay? So those are some qualities. Alright.
[01:31:08] Sam G. Winsbury: Let let's give you guys some tangible examples. If you're trying to plan your own binge worthy b to b content series, here's some steps you could take. I want you to research your ICP. And I know you've already done the persona work and you've got binders and bibles and and and folders and all this good stuff. I want you to do it Anew.
[01:31:28] Sam G. Winsbury: One of the reasons I love podcasting, for example, Rachel talked about b to b podcasts, is that it is secretly, quietly, maybe the best way to get insight into what your ideal customer is obsessing about, what they're worried about, what keeps them up at night, because it's conversational. You're you're almost putting a spotlight on your ICP by putting them into that other chair and allowing them to shine. But while they do so, they're also revealing some of their insecurities. They're revealing where they need help. So that's the type of research that I want you to go do anew.
[01:32:04] Sam G. Winsbury: After you've done 10 or 20 of those, you're going to start to be able to piece together, Wow, these are some of the real pain points. I want you to make a manifesto out of that. Anybody remember the Think Different campaign from Apple? You guys remember that? Here's to the crazy ones.
[01:32:20] Sam G. Winsbury: I want you to start thinking, let me take my customer's language, their pain point language, and put it all together in something that's going to not only spotlight them, but tell them, you know what? You're not rallying around my brand. I'm rallying around you. All I'm doing is I'm just the flag bearer. I'm the flag bearer to say, if you struggle with these issues, this is the flag.
[01:32:44] Sam G. Winsbury: We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore. I want you to get get riled up or riled your audience up. Because in that anger, in that pain, in that frustration, that's where you have the brand affinity. That's where you have the makings of a movement. Right?
[01:32:59] Sam G. Winsbury: When you do that sort of stuff and then you start to curate your taste, right? I'll give some examples in my show of how I've included my maybe very esoteric, very peculiar tastes into the show. When you start to do that, that will then inform the show that comes out. It's gonna be audience based, but it's going to be in your voice. That make sense?
[01:33:21] Sam G. Winsbury: Cool. Alright. So let's get into a specific example. This is a show that I created over the past year called Demand Wars. I've been in demand marketing or demand generation for b to b over the past 15 years.
[01:33:35] Sam G. Winsbury: I've gone through all kinds of hell and back, and I'm not the only one. A lot of people working in demand generation right now are going through some of the toughest times they have as professionals, because the expectations are just completely unrealistic. The the top down forecast, especially for people working in smaller companies where they have this, venture capital investment, It's just ridiculous. And yet people are burning the candle at both ends trying to make it work. I've dug into that pain to say, you know what?
[01:34:05] Sam G. Winsbury: B2b marketing, as we do it today, is broken. We gotta find a different way or die trying. Welcome to the Rebel Alliance. So if you've been suffering out there, it's not just you. It's us.
[01:34:17] Sam G. Winsbury: People like us are mad as hell, and we're gonna do something about it. Okay, so let me sort of show you all the ingredients that I just throw these things in there. You're gonna see elements of Survivor, The Apprentice, Hunger Games, Star Wars, American Idol, and 1 basketball mix tapes, and more. This is ridiculous. Like, who you know, combine all those things.
[01:34:38] Sam G. Winsbury: And yet, all of those elements are familiar, but I'm mixing them in a way that creates something new. You guys write this acronym down. MAIA, most acceptable most advanced, excuse me, yet acceptable. You want something that is newer than what we've seen, and yet it's close enough to the norm that we can relate to it. When when Taylor said, this 9 and 9 series is gonna be the TikTok of come on.
[01:35:07] Sam G. Winsbury: Already, when he says that, you're like, oh, I get TikTok. It's quick, it's edgy, it's fast paced, it's value, it's entertaining. But he's tweaked it one degree by bringing into b to b marketing and giving us all 9 minutes. Speaking of 9 minutes, I'm running out of my time. I gotta keep it moving.
[01:35:25] Sam G. Winsbury: I gotta keep it moving. Alright. So I have 24, contestants. These are some of your favorite b to b marketers. Come on, Obed, Duraney, you know, we we we got everybody in here.
[01:35:37] Sam G. Winsbury: And I told them I actually told them, okay, this is gonna feel like a podcast. I'm gonna interview you like this is a podcast on the back end. On the front end, it's gonna look nothing like a podcast. So they were like, I don't get it, but I trust you. I've got a relationship with you.
[01:35:53] Sam G. Winsbury: You know, you you've been publishing, on LinkedIn for the x number of years. What the heck? I'll give this crazy thing a try. And so I interviewed all these people, and they put their faith in me, having no idea what the show was gonna look like. I then divided them all into tribes.
[01:36:07] Sam G. Winsbury: So you can see, if you read left to right, the first row is the mastermind tribe, then we've got the charger tribe, then the alchemists, and then the Defenders. I'm starting to feel a little survivor ish. Right? So these are the tribes, and it's actually, kind of, based on, like, personalities. Who's an introvert versus an extrovert, who's strategic versus relational, which demand tribe are you.
[01:36:27] Sam G. Winsbury: The audience can almost put themselves into the contestants shoes. You know when you watch Survivor and you instantly identify with 1 or 2 of the contestants, and then you've got, like, the villains that you can't stand? That's what we're trying to recreate here. No offense to anyone who was viewed as a villain in this show.
[01:36:47] Sam G. Winsbury: So for the 24 contestants, we are creating stakes. From 24 players, we're going all the way down to 1. And this was interesting to me because I knew whenever my kids and I, whenever my family and I watch a reality show, the stakes help us to understand what's important. Help us to understand, oh, we need to care about this thing. There's some money that they can win at the end, and people are getting voted off like flies.
[01:37:11] Sam G. Winsbury: My challenge was as a creator, starting off, not having sponsors, not having a budget, I didn't really have a lot of the, oh, we're gonna give you $10,000 or whatever. And yet, I built the plane after takeoff. I'm like, okay. I'm gonna work this thing out as we go. Taylor made a point when he talked about virtual events and he said, don't just do one offs.
[01:37:32] Sam G. Winsbury: He said, do a series, ideally maybe monthly. And he said, in month 6, something's gonna click from all the mistakes you made in months 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So I've been building this thing in public. It's at times been painful. It's at times been thrilling, but I'm learning along the way.
[01:37:51] Sam G. Winsbury: And I'm going to tell you, you're not going to have everything figured out at the very beginning. Start anyway. Start anyway. Okay. So, these are some examples.
[01:38:00] Sam G. Winsbury: We've got 4 episodes out right now. This is sort of an example of you can see sort of the branding, and I'm gonna talk about this in just a minute, when we start to think about when we start to visualize your show. But I created very specific branding, almost like apocalyptic, cyberpunk, fantasy fiction. I'm starting to inject things I grew up reading way too much. CS Lewis and Lord of the Rings.
[01:38:22] Sam G. Winsbury: I apologize, folks. I apologize. You're gonna have to tolerate that. But, I'm injecting my persona and my personality into the show. Alright?
[01:38:30] Sam G. Winsbury: So, I want to spend a little bit of time on this, Taylor, and then we can maybe talk through it. This is this is like I'm opening the vault for you guys on this one. Okay? You want to create a deliciously binge worthy B2B series, like some of your favorites from Netflix, from Amazon Prime, from Hulu. I'll tell you one that I'm binging right now.
[01:38:52] Sam G. Winsbury: A friend, Ronnie Higgins, put me onto this. The Expanse on Amazon Prime. It's 6 seasons. I actually watched it months ago after 1 season, episode. I couldn't get into it.
[01:39:03] Sam G. Winsbury: He told me, go back. It's a slow burn. Try it again. I'm now on season 5. I can't put this thing down.
[01:39:08] Sam G. Winsbury: How do they make these things so deliciously binge worthy? Number 1. Make a category adjacent. It's like x, but different. We're almost gonna think about this like because we're using the word delicious, we're gonna think about this like a restaurant experience.
[01:39:23] Sam G. Winsbury: So this is like picking a restaurant genre. What do you feel like eating, today, Taylor? Oh, I feel like Chinese. Oh, I feel like, you know, going to a Brazilian steak house. That's where it starts.
[01:39:33] Sam G. Winsbury: People start by picking categories. So when I tell people about demand wars, I say it's survivor meets hunger games. Boom. Category. Immediately, that puts you in a certain frame.
[01:39:46] Sam G. Winsbury: If you were never into survivor or Hunger Games, you tune out. But guess what? That's okay because I don't want to waste your time. It's not going to be interesting to you. Category adjacent, number 1.
[01:39:55] Sam G. Winsbury: Number 2, you got to have a hook. That's the title, it's the branding. Think of the hook as, you know, what the what the the delicious meal looks like at your favorite restaurant. Anytime I go to Cheesecake Factory, one of my favorite restaurants and my wife's favorite restaurant, man, their menu is way too big. But have you noticed how your eyes might gravitate towards some of the menu items that have photographs in them?
[01:40:18] Sam G. Winsbury: Right? We want to be able to hook people instantly just off of them seeing our show and seeing what it's about. That's the hook. Okay. Now the premise.
[01:40:29] Sam G. Winsbury: In the movie business, they call this a log line. Alright. I'm getting fancy on you guys here. It's basically the premise. This is like a one line description.
[01:40:39] Sam G. Winsbury: Think about when the waiter walks up. I've never been a waiter before. But the really good waiters, they'll walk up and they'll tell you, oh, the soup of the day. We've got the asparagus with this and the that. Oh, and the fish and the creme brulee.
[01:40:50] Sam G. Winsbury: And, man, it's like, I don't know what you're saying, dude, but I want 2 of them. Like, that sounds good. How can you in one sentence describe your premise in a way that's going to be compelling to your ideal audience. All of this is like a secret key for your ideal audience. Or to anybody outside of the audience, it might be gibberish.
[01:41:10] Sam G. Winsbury: That's okay. You might almost even want that. But to those people on the inside, when I tell somebody who's been in demand generation, b to b marketing is broken. The look of recognition that they get in their eyes, they give me that head nod like, yeah. I feel you.
[01:41:27] Sam G. Winsbury: I feel you. So you gotta learn that in that internal language. Okay. Social proof. You almost want to secure distribution ahead of time.
[01:41:36] Sam G. Winsbury: This is one of the ones that I sort of stumbled with the first couple of episodes, but that's okay because we're building in public. Think about a restaurant that you go to that has a line outside the restaurant. It almost doesn't matter what food they're serving. You're like, they look like they got it going on. Like, I need to go, you know, let's go check them out.
[01:41:56] Sam G. Winsbury: So you want to secure your distribution. At least think about it. Plan it out before you actually launch the show. Okay, great. Now, the trailer, that's self explanatory.
[01:42:07] Sam G. Winsbury: That's like the smell, the anticipation of of of the meal. We we gotta have a 30 second trailer that really tells the story. It shows the peaks and the valleys, the highs and the lows. You've got to have characters. Taylor talked about the importance of getting good guests.
[01:42:25] Sam G. Winsbury: This is the same thing. You don't want everyone it's tough. Actually, can can can I share this between friends? I have friends in the industry that I did not invite to come onto my show. They're brilliant people, but I needed if we go back to those, tribes, I needed a good mix of extroverted people, of controversial opinions, of insightful people.
[01:42:56] Sam G. Winsbury: You gotta get that mix. And I've noticed that a lot of these reality shows, they have casting departments. Sometimes you'll wonder, God Lord, why do they keep getting these there's always like 1 or 2 wacky, zany people on survivor. Like, why do you even have them in there? They did that on purpose.
[01:43:14] Sam G. Winsbury: You gotta have heroes, villains, allies, mentors, shapeshifter. You gotta have it all. Alright. Then you wanna have a hero saves the cat moment. This is actually a book.
[01:43:25] Sam G. Winsbury: It's a thing in Hollywood. I hope I'm not ruining movies for you now. But whenever you watch a movie, watch the protagonist. In the first couple of minutes, they're going to save the cat. Sometimes literally.
[01:43:37] Sam G. Winsbury: Often, it's figuratively. They're doing something generous, altruistic. It makes you care about the character. So how do you do that in a show? The way that I actually did that, if you go watch Demand Wars, you'll notice that I introduce and this is so funny because, Taylor, you talked about intros and how, you know, they're not really they're not really a value add in most cases, and you're a 100% right.
[01:43:58] Sam G. Winsbury: I flipped that on its head. And I said, I'm going to make these people the star of the show. This is where the Andone mixtapes comes in. If you ever watch an Andone mixtape, go to YouTube. There's always there's a DJ, and that DJ is on the microphone.
[01:44:11] Sam G. Winsbury: And the DJ is going crazy about all the plays and all the players, and it adds to the excitement. I put that as my intros into the show, so much so that the intros might have become like a star of the show. I didn't anticipate that, but that was just one of the many ingredients that I threw in. You're gonna throw some things in that will bomb. You throw a lot of things in that nobody will ever mention.
[01:44:35] Sam G. Winsbury: And then a couple of things that you throw in will take off. You wanna double down on those. And so now, every episode, people are commenting about the intros. Go figure. Couple more stakes development.
[01:44:47] Sam G. Winsbury: I talked about stakes earlier. So what does the hero have to gain? In this case, we want a prize. And what do they have to lose? You could get kicked off.
[01:44:54] Sam G. Winsbury: You could get embarrassed publicly in front of your peers. It's not good folks. It's not good. And then finally, we want a shared experience. What's the good of binging a show on Netflix if you're binging alone?
[01:45:07] Sam G. Winsbury: It's way more fun to binge with friends. These are some elements of a deliciously binge worthy b to b Love it. Series. And I dare say your audience deserves this from you. They deserve more than just ebooks.
[01:45:22] Sam G. Winsbury: They deserve more than just research. They deserve more than just webinars.
[01:45:28] Taylor Wells: Thank you. Balaji, thank you so much for coming on and, great insights. I learned a ton. I'm gonna rewatch, I mean, everyone's, but definitely, please share this presentation with me. I'll share with the audience.
[01:45:39] Taylor Wells: I know we're we're up on time. Thanks again for coming on, Balaji. Really appreciate it.
[01:45:45] Taylor Wells: Alright, folks. We are all done. We've had a packed full, over hour and a half here. Thanks for all the folks that have listened, all of our speakers that shared. I learned a ton.
[01:45:55] Taylor Wells: We'll share this recording with everyone afterwards, so check your email so you can rewatch it, share with your, with your teams. Expect more of these 99 events moving forward. We'll definitely reach out to get your feedback too on how we can make these events better. Thanks everyone for listening. Appreciate your time.
[01:46:09] Taylor Wells: Take care.