September 10, 2024 • 30 mins
James Carbary (founder of Sweet Fish Media) sits down with Lexi Croisdale, Tyler Lessard, and Kellie Davis to have a conversation about all their lessons learned as marketing leaders, and much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I feel like the burnout factor comes from trying to
be who you think people want you to be is
because they're chasing the algorithm. And I think when you
do that a lot of times you lose that authenticity
because it no longer becomes just pure value and just
pure human and human engagement.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
There are forty four years of collective marketing wisdom around
this table right now, and we're about to share it
with you.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Kelly. We were talking last night about you being a.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Creator and a former life solopreneur, entrepreneur, and you were
in the fitness space, you had a blog, had an audience,
wrote a book, did all the things. What have you
learned from that season of your life as a creator
that has made you a better marketer today?
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
And I will have to preface this was back when
blogging was a thing, so like that's where that's where
creators started, right, And we didn't know that we were influencers.
So I think generationally reflecting back, like the creator market
has changed, but the gold standard has not. And I
think what we learn as being creators is that you
(01:13):
have to wear all the hats. You don't just come
in as a specialist and raise your hand and say,
I know performance marketing, I know demand gen I know design.
Like you have to dabble in a little bit of
everything and be a master of none when you are
a creator. But it's all about getting curious and staying
curious and just building a strong community of your peers,
(01:38):
but also building that community within your audience. And that's
to me, that was the biggest takeaway is we all
have talked all day about having that human element within
your brand, and I think reflectively, as a creator, I
always paid attention to what blog posts, what newsletter topics,
(01:58):
what social post got the most engagement, And that was
always when I was vulnerable and I was human, and
people would respond to me like, oh my gosh, I
thought it was just me, or I've been through something
similar and I'm so glad you're talking about it, and
people tend to soften because even as a creator, right
you're seen as a business and a lot of times
(02:21):
people if you don't invite that into the conversation, people
don't feel that you're approachable. And you know, it's almost
like like I talk about in the past when I
would go to fitness events for speaking or whatever, and
people would like bring my book and ask me to
sign their book, and I was like really, like, I'm
just like you, Like we're the same people, Like why
(02:41):
do you want my autograph?
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And then I started realizing like, well, maybe I'm not
presenting myself as down to earth as I am in
real life. So you kind of have to invite in
that like who am I as a human being into
your brand in order to build that strong community and
to identify with the end person. Because at the end
of the day, we can talk about D two C
(03:03):
creator brand to brand, you know, SaaS companies, but it's
always that human to human interaction that we're looking for
and that the end user of your product or service craves.
And I think being a creator really helps you humanize
yourself as a brand.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You guys have thoughts on that.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
I mean, I would just double down on everything that
Kelly said.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I think this.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
You know, we have so much to learn as marketers
from the creator world. It's been the most inspiring thing
to me over the last few years has been watching
that space watching I mean, frankly, watching my kids watch
creators and follow creators like obsessively and like really understanding
what are they tapping into like what are they doing
(03:48):
differently that you know the rest of us aren't, Like
how is this like one individual Vitual is doing something right.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, it's like it's fits parents with two year olds.
It's wild she is.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
She is mastered brand marketing. Yeah, at a level that
I don't think most marketers will ever be able to comprehend.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Yeah, So that's like that's just been an incredible space.
And again I think for you know, all of our
all of our viewers out there, if you know you're
still not really like trying to embrace that and like
trying to learn from that creator market the best. You know,
what YouTubers are people in your audience following, What social
channels are they following, Which TikTokers are they following, and
like really understanding like what makes that so compelling? Like
(04:28):
why do they tune in every time they post something?
And like learning so much from that. So it's very
cool to hear like how that became a part of
where you you came from, Kelly, and like it shows
in terms of how you think about marketing and how
you think about the opportunity to create these new teams.
So it's really inspiring.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
What about you I have a little bit of a
creator past too, I would say, looking at a YouTube channel,
but please don't.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I'm embarrassed about that out there.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
And I think I heard you talking about this a
little bit, but I'm like, I want to hear a
little bit more on the burnout because I think you know,
when you have this creator mindset and you're used to
doing all of the things, it's very hard to turn
that off when you don't need to do all of
the things, which most times in our professional settings, we
don't have to do all of the things. We have
a team or you know, we have other people that
(05:16):
are responsible for that facet of what comes into creatorness
and burnout is definitely something that's very present I think
amongst all creators. Like there's creators that I watch that
take huge breaks from you know, posting on YouTube, for example,
and then they come back and they've really like rebranded
themselves in a way like you're saying, to be more
(05:36):
authentic and live into the values that they want to. So, yeah,
I guess my question back to you would be like,
how do you balance that creator mindset with being a
professional that doesn't always have to do it all?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, And I feel like the burnout factor comes from
trying to be who you think people want you to be.
And I listen to a podcast recently on Boxes Explained,
and they were specifically talking about how all these therapists
are now on TikTok and they're calling it tick talk, right,
(06:09):
because they're realizing, like, I have a larger captive audience,
I can make more money doing this versus like having
that one to one engagement with clients and then battling
insurance companies and stuff. But a lot of them are
super burned out. It's because they're chasing the algorithm and
they're chasing the trends, and I think when you do
that a lot of times you lose that authenticity because
(06:31):
it no longer becomes just pure value and just pure
human to human engagement, and it becomes about gaming the system.
And we're never going to win that game, right, The
system is rigged against us. So if we put that
aside and we just really focus on who I want
to be and how I want to represent my brand,
(06:51):
I think that that helps it burn out because you
don't always just have to be one thing. Like you said,
you can reinvite yourself all the time. And there's a
lot a lot of creators that went online and started
talking about one thing and then they realized, like, I
don't really want to be that, I want to be this,
and they just kind of play around with that. And
I think brands don't allow themselves at liberty as much
(07:13):
as you can as a creator. But another thing that
I learned, and I think we were talking about this
as you are building your team from the ground up
and you're starting to realize, oh, I used to have
a person that did this, and now we kind of
have to re engineer how we're doing things.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Is I find a really good.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Way to reduce or mitigate the risk of burnout in
my own team is to allow them freedom to work
outside the box.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
You were hired as a content marketer. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I know you can write, I know you can edit,
but like, where who do you really want to be?
Where do you want to go? And I have continued
education plans for everyone on my team and it doesn't
necessarily relate to the thing that I hired them for.
I have content writers that want to learn design, that
want to be videographers, that want to be project managers,
that want to be strategists, and I think we need
(08:02):
to move away from being specialists, especially in marketing. Our
budget's always cut first, We're always you know, having to
reduce resources even though our numbers get higher, Right, we
need you to make a couple million dollars more but
have ten less people, or like you know, your budget's
getting slashed. And I think that we need to become
(08:23):
more generalists and become more creative and curious and stretch
our boundaries and learn and iterate new things, not to
the point where we're like a creator and all of
a sudden you have fifteen different jobs, but like expand
who you want to be as a creative and a
content marketer within the brand that you work for.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
The thing that I'm always fascinated by every time I
hang out with the creator. They seem to be exceptionally
gifted in two areas.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
One is human psychology.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yes, and I think from a I don't think I
agree with the generalist perspective because of what I'm about
to say next, but I think every marketer on your
team should be at least trying to skill up in
their understanding of human psychology. It's an area that I
struggle with. My wife got a psychology degree, I shouldn't
suck at.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
It as bad as I do.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
But if you get good at understanding how human emotion
works and how people receive things and process things, and
it makes you naturally a better marketer, and I think
it is a required ingredient to be a successful creator.
The second thing that I have observed, which is what
makes me kind of bristle at like we need to
(09:35):
be more generalists. I've found that every creator I know
understands the nuances of the platform where they have it's
usually a single platform, may be two platforms where they
have blown up and really built an engaged audience, and
the nuances that they understand about that platform boggle my mind.
(09:57):
Like I'm like, like you understand and that level of
granular detail about how the algorithm on this platform works.
And I think they're like, you have to be a
certain level of obsessed to be able to get the
kind of results that these creators get on these platforms
because they live and breathe in them. And so I
just wonder if this kind of call to be more generalist,
(10:20):
do we sacrifice the obsession that it takes to like
singularly understand one of these.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Platforms, and so I think there's a combo there.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's like, yes, generalists in the sense of like, if
you understood psychology better, you would absolutely like if everybody
on our marketing team had a good understanding of human
psychology and customer understanding, that would across the board, touch
everything and be awesome. But you you seem to really
really love Reddit. I want you to really really love
(10:49):
Reddit and figure out how it works for Impact dot
com and how we can show up on Reddit in
a better.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Way they like.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So it gives them some area to be obsessed with
that aligns with what they're already interested in. So it's
not this thing that they're having to like, oh God,
and how are going to figure out this new thing?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
So that's that's my.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It's more like, like you said, than natural gravitation towards
you don't necessarily push your people into areas like hey,
I need coverage on this, it's now your job. It's
like you allow them to be curious and ask them like, well,
what are your aspirations five ten years from now? And oh,
you want to be a creative director, Well, how do
you feel about playing around with design?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Is that you know? Or let them lead the conversation.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And it's not necessarily that everyone has to be a
jacker jill of all trades because that also creates burnout,
which is what happens with creators. But allowing that natural
curiosity of like, hey, you know what, you were hired
for this specific role, but we have some opportunity for
you to expand your creative outlets. I want to get
curious and see what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker 6 (11:51):
Yeah, And we did exactly that with my team for
our sales feed media network back at Vidyard at a small,
pretty lean team was you know, three people in addition
to myself. But each of those folks, I think to
the same point you're both making, had a specific deep
barrier of expertise and were cross skilled to be able
to support all the other aspects of what we were
(12:12):
doing to create a high velocity kind of continuous delivery environment. So,
for example, one individual on my team was he was
our YouTube guy. Like he just he loves YouTube, knows
the algorithms, loves making the right thumbnail image planning those out.
He was our YouTube guy and oh he was also
our meme maker. But he would also do some you know,
sort of video production and editing as well. But his
(12:35):
depth was our YouTube channel, you know, will was our
TikTok you know, that was his depth. But he also
crossed over did video production, he did content for our
LinkedIn channel and so on.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And then our editor is also a former sales guy,
so he had deep customer understanding.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Yeah yeah, but again he like was cross skilled to
be able to do all these but like whenever there
was something like you own the link, you own the
TikTok channel, right, you also support these others, but you
own them. And then our editor in chief, who was
a phenomenal writer, she owned our newsletter, but again she
would also help out on video editing, on podcast production,
on podcast planning. So I think that's a model that
(13:11):
can really work, and I think it supports kind of
both of your points of we need to have the
ability to do more because these things are much more entwined,
but having folks with like their area of deep expertise
that they can really lean in and be like, I
can really help have an impact here still matters and
still make the difference.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, Lexi, we had you on a content crew live call,
which is like a monthly call that I've been hosting
this year, and you talked about how you built an
employee advocacy program at Varonas, which is this four point
eight billion dollar giant data security company. Talk to us
(13:51):
about how you built out that program, because I think
a lot of marketers are trying to figure out how
do we get our people engaged on social and we
have some really good feedback on what you shared on
that call.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
Yeah, starting an employee advocacy program was something that I
kind of, you know, crossed my fingers and hoped that
it took off. And it did, and I'm really thankful
for it.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
But I think in.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
Terms of starting it, it kind of was the reverse
approach where we had to know our customer and for
us that was our sales team, Like how are we
going to get our sales team to install another platform,
you know, add some other part of their tech stack
at something else that they have to do in their days,
but also show them like the why and why it's
(14:35):
important because I think, you know, you can say like
post this on social media. A lot of people get that,
they get the importance of I need to post this,
but then there's that like scary part of how do
I do that? You know, I know how to post
a picture of my kids, you know, for my grandma
to see, but I don't know how to post content
about my company to get somebody that's a lead interested
(14:56):
in this company. And we actually went through some internal
training before we even launched, even mentioned that we were
starting an employee advocacy program and it was centered around
social selling. So here's what social selling is, Here's why
it's really important. Here's all of this research and this data,
some of it probably from HubSpot that backs up why
(15:18):
social selling is out of it from sales for well,
why why it's such a huge driver on the in
today's digital communities, and starting it with like that you know,
idea that this is important, this is something that we
need to invest in, and then saying oh, hey, by
the way, we purchased this platform because there's honestly a
(15:39):
lot of platforms out there now for employee advocacy which
let you host your content in it and create ready
to go social media captions that take that you know,
that pain and that fear of am I going to
say the right thing?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Am I?
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Am I going to post the right you know piece
of content that my team wants me to promote because
you know, we all have our library blog posts that
are just sitting on your website. You don't want every
single one of those going out right now.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
You want the new.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Stuff, the fresh stuff, the stuff that's tied to your
key initiatives and really going to drive that pipeline. But
sales teams don't know how. So we got this platform,
We put it all in there. We went through the
importance of social selling, and now it's you know, about
keeping it up. So we try to keep it really fun.
That's I think a big key part of it. Our
platform that we use has a leaderboard so people can
(16:27):
get points for the different actions that you know, maybe
they share a post and that gets them a couple points,
but what we've really put our point system into is
the engagement that they get on these posts. So it's
not just about going in and posting so you can
win a prize, you know, that gift card so you
can buy something for your at home office. It's really
about if I share this, how am I going to
(16:48):
get people to comment on it? How am I going
to get people to like and engage with it or
click with it? And we also made it in a
way where you know, people can suggest posts for us
to put on there now too. So we have a
pretty large team, and we're global. There's a lot of
things happening within North America that aren't happening in a
mea market for our company. But we're able to let
(17:09):
our EMA marketers suggest content for us to put in
there that really moves the needle in that region. And
now we can see like such a growth of that
community in our brand following. And that's what's fun too,
is you know all of those little details about social
media that like your social media managers like tag me
in a post, use the right hashtag. We have control
of putting that in these posts even though they're natively
(17:31):
going out buying point.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Is it and is it an actual fleshed out post
with you know, here's the caption. They can obviously edit
it in combination with like here's a prompt, like write
a story about a time that you overcame a failure
in work.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
It's a little bit two prongs. We do employee advocacy
and the platform is pretty much like ready to go.
We encourage personalization as much as you can because we
know that that's going to actually build you an audience
and make people invest in you versus just seeing Varona's
content in their social feeds. But we also look at
thought leadership a little bit differently too, and that's where
we sit down with employees that are really like, you know,
(18:15):
making a difference. They're interested in social they've shown that
they have a craft for it outside of just posting
what we're telling them to post, and we have them,
you know, kind of figure out what their niches. What
are those like five things that are really important to you.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
They don't even have.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
To be about data security, but what are those five
things that are really important for you? And I went
into this program at first just kind of you know,
being on the team that's running it. I want to
know how it works. And I instantly was like, oh,
I want to try this, and I've built it into
my own model. You know, I care about content marketing,
I care about video and social media specifically as two
(18:51):
very big important mediums. And then for me, I'm also
a working mom and that's really important to me and
something that I infuse within my work. And so I
now have this kind of you know, those four points
for me to go back on and think about how
I'm going to intertwine those in every single LinkedIn.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Post that I do.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
So it's making people realize, like, hey, out of those
four things, like I said, marketing and that's like one.
But like video doesn't always have to be about cybersecurity.
My human life of being a working mom can interfuse
with my professional life.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
There's a lot of comparisons.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
You know that I can draw from my profession and
put it online and somebody's going to relate to that
and they're going to see me as Lexi. They're gonna,
you know, want to follow me, get to know all
of the things that I'm doing, and you know, magically
they learn about cybersecurity at the same time, which is
really cool for me because you know, I'm not the
cybersecurity engineer. I'm not the technical person, but I still
(19:44):
do a lot to you know, share the information of
how you can protect your data from today's spreads and
things like that. So it just kind of shows that
it doesn't always have to be on your brand. Like,
while you think that me talking about content marketing online
isn't really making an impact for CyberSecure company, it is
because now I get to infuse that in all of
the different things that I'm promoting for myself.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
All right, So, Tyler, you just spent ten years at
vidyard a sales email tool probably a fancier way of
saying that, but that's a video email tool and selling
it to sales professionals. You got to for the last
several years build a media brand called sales Feed to
engage that audience. You're now the CMO of Technology Advice,
(20:29):
so it's a media company, but the media company's audience
is a more like technical buyer. The company's audience are
the marketers at companies that want to reach the technical buyers.
So you're in an interesting spot and you all just
launched a media brand at Technology Advice called Marketing Insiders.
(20:49):
I'm really excited to follo along with it. Based on
the success that you had with sales Feed. I think
over one hundred thousand followers on TikTok really good YouTube channel,
ten thousand plus subscribers to the sales Feed newsletter. You
executed that media brand playbook so well at sales Feed.
What are some of the lessons from building that media
(21:11):
brand the last several years at sales Feed. Maybe some
wins and some losses that are going to shape how
you build marketing insiders for technology advice.
Speaker 6 (21:21):
So I'm going to boil this down into I think
three big areas that in reflecting I really learned in
running sales Feed and building it and experimenting, and these
are all now becoming sort of foundations for marketing insiders
as this thought leadership brand, media brand, call it what.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
You will at the end of the day, our goal.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
Similarly, when we launched sales Feed, the goal there was
to create a highly engaged audience of sales professionals who
would become followers, fans, and future customers. And the very
same mission here to create a highly engaged audience of
marketing professionals who will become followers, fans, and future customers.
(22:03):
And in order to do that, whether it's a media brand,
whether it's a content strategy, to me, doesn't really matter.
The premise is the same. And the first lesson that
I learned that I'm bringing to marketing insiders is to
be very intentional about the framing, the strategy, the purpose,
and the promise of what you're going to be delivering
(22:24):
as part of this media brand, if you will. And
it's something we did do early on with Sales feed
like from the beginning, and I was very happy that
we did, because sometimes it can just kind of like
self form and you're like, I assume we're going to
do this, and we're going to do that, and you
don't necessarily have like a north star or like guiding principles.
So I think it's really important to if you are
(22:45):
going to have this sort of like sub brand, as
media brand or just this evolved content strategy, be intentional
in who are we as this, right, not the company
because it's very different. Right, So the company's mission, the
company's purpose, the company's promise are very different from what
our media brand or thought leadership brand is. So we
started there, we said, what do we want this to be?
(23:06):
Who are we and what is our purpose? And then
most importantly, what is our promise? And the promise is
like what we're going to deliver to our audience. If
you were in our audience, what can you expect from us?
And that was really important to get right, and we
went through some time and iterated on that and sort
of figured out as part of marketing insiders, what is
(23:26):
our promise to our community? So I think that was
number one. Is that pre planning and really thinking through
that Number two is the power of personality lad and
creating that ability to create real personal connections with your
audience and have them get to know the.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
People that the name that shaped the name, actually it did.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
It's Marketing Insiders, right, not Marketing Insider.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
And it's interesting because with Sales Feed, though, I still
love the name and I think the brand was great.
You know, in hindsight, we really named it after the
promise of being your go to resource on a day
to day basis, Right, We're going to be there in
your feeds because that's what we found salespeople wanted, right.
We interviewed lots of folks and we found I don't
(24:10):
go like find blogs to read. I don't even read
like I want the content to find me on social
maybe in my inbox or whatever, and so we're like, okay,
So that sort of shaped our promise, and then the
brand Sales Feed was really around that we're going to
be your feed. We're going to confine you in this
time around. You know, we really thought through, how do
we want to make sure that this is going to
(24:31):
be very kind of personality driven, and we landed on
this brand of Marketing Insiders and you know, like the
being in the idea of insider sort of very clear.
Part of our promise is that we're going to bring
you sort of exclusive insights and things that we're seeing
from our vantage point in the market because we have
access to some exclusive things. But the idea of the
(24:52):
Marketing Insiders is that we are a team. We are
the insiders who are going to bring you these insights,
these ideas, yes, these memes and other things that are
going to help you stay ahead of market trends and
stay ahead of your pipeline goals. And that becomes our promise.
And so when we like sort of bring that brand
to life Marketing Insiders, if you go to our it's
(25:15):
called Marketing Insiders buy TA and TA is Technology Advice.
If you go to our LinkedIn channel, you'll see, like
the LinkedIn banner is all these people right, and we're
all like, you know, somebody is like doing a yoga
pos and I'm like doing my like selfie shot, and
there's like that energy that's just a part of it.
So you don't feel like you're following a brand. You
feel like you're following this group of people. But also
what I learned from sales feed. And this is important
(25:36):
is that it's not just one person, right, It's not
just the one insider. Because of that one insider, you
know something happens. Who is this yes, And so it's
very intentional in saying this is a team of people
and yeah, it's going to ab and flow. Right, who
are the marketing insiders a year from now might be
a little different from who it is today.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I hope not. I hope it's just growing.
Speaker 6 (25:54):
But that gives us the ability to create these different
personalities and have the opportunity to also talk about different
topics that have subject matter experts. So one of the
people on there is Mason Cunningham. He's our product marketer
and he's going to talk a lot about like product
marketing related topics.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Right.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Tanya is our audience development content leader. She's going to
talk about content related topics. And so that I think
is a really important piece and that's going to come
through not just in video and in others, but the
written content that we do. Those people will be directly
associated so you can get to know them as the
marketing insiders. So I think that's really really important and
something that was really successful at sales feed.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Are all of the marketing insiders in house or are
you also tapping external creators.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
I hope to go in that route so as launch,
it's all of it's folks in house. And for the record,
it's not just people who are part of our marketing team.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
We have folks from other.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
Parts of the business because they're always being exposed to
you know, we have folks from our sales team because
they're talking to our customers about their marketing strategies all
the time. Sidebar here for those who are thinking, oh, Tyler,
it's easy for you because you target marketers, so you
just get your team of marketers to be the front people.
But I think all of us can find more than
one individual in our company who can act as experts. Lexi,
(27:08):
we were talking about you. You target cybersecurity professionals. Your
marketing team isn't a group of cybersex professionals, right or experts?
So like, who would become your if you were to
do cybersecurity insiders?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Who would those people be?
Speaker 6 (27:20):
But I would bet you have folks on your product
team who know cybersecurity inside and out, like they're constantly
researching the market. Who would have a point of view
you probably have people who are like running or monitoring
threat networks who are like in the know on those
and that can be that person your CEO. Right, So
it's probably a cluster of people across your business in product,
in sales, in different areas that know your audience really
(27:43):
well or know the market who can be these individuals.
So I'm really excited about that approach and this idea
of like really humanizing this channel so it doesn't just
feel like a corporate brand. And now the third thing
that is like the maybe the most important to make
sure that we can still be doing this a year
or two from now is being intentional about creating the
(28:03):
conversion paths for the audiences that we're building. And this
can be tough sometimes for people because you also want
to be able to say, hey, we just like we're
out there, we're brand building, we're creating an audience. You know,
we all know it's good if we have more of
an audience, but a lot of us of course then
struggle with like you know, and then the board asks
and the executives ask, Okay, how are we converting those people?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
And you're like, just.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
Trust me, it's happening. Like of course, it's a good thing.
That's why we're the first to get chopped from the budget.
And so being really intentional about how we create those
conversion paths and the way that I did it at
sales speed, which I'm carrying over to marketing insiders, is
a really simple framework called if you like this, you'll
love this, and you might need this. If you love
this is the open content. It's stuff that we're doing
(28:45):
each and every day to build the audience. If you
like this, you'll love this component are the things that
are intentionally gated pieces that enable us to get to
know our audience. There are newsletter right, if you like
our content on these channels, you'll love our newsletter. You'd
be silly not to subscribe. If you like this, you'll
(29:05):
love this new checklist we just launched, right, and being
really intentional about what are those things people would love
to be a part of that are the conversions to there.
Once they're in there, now we have an opportunity to
be like, oh, and you might need this, which is
now talking a little bit more about us in our
products and saying in that checklist you loved, yeah, there's
probably going to be something in there that's going to
be you know, if AB and C technology advice could
(29:28):
help if you happen to be in the market right
And the newsletter every once in a while is going
to be sharing things that are related back to us
as if we're basically the exclusive sponsor of that newsletter.
So that framework of if you like this, you'll love this,
and you might need this gives us really clear conversion paths.
And we're always trying to move people from here to
here to here, and we can track that really explicitly
(29:50):
as a media brand. So those are a few of
the big things. Being intentional about your promise personality lad
and being intentional in those conversion paths and building them
in from the on day one
I feel like the burnout factor comes from trying to
be who you think people want you to be is
because they're chasing the algorithm. And I think when you
do that a lot of times you lose that authenticity
because it no longer becomes just pure value and just
pure human and human engagement.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
There are forty four years of collective marketing wisdom around
this table right now, and we're about to share it
with you.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Kelly. We were talking last night about you being a.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Creator and a former life solopreneur, entrepreneur, and you were
in the fitness space, you had a blog, had an audience,
wrote a book, did all the things. What have you
learned from that season of your life as a creator
that has made you a better marketer today?
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
And I will have to preface this was back when
blogging was a thing, so like that's where that's where
creators started, right, And we didn't know that we were influencers.
So I think generationally reflecting back, like the creator market
has changed, but the gold standard has not. And I
think what we learn as being creators is that you
(01:13):
have to wear all the hats. You don't just come
in as a specialist and raise your hand and say,
I know performance marketing, I know demand gen I know design.
Like you have to dabble in a little bit of
everything and be a master of none when you are
a creator. But it's all about getting curious and staying
curious and just building a strong community of your peers,
(01:38):
but also building that community within your audience. And that's
to me, that was the biggest takeaway is we all
have talked all day about having that human element within
your brand, and I think reflectively, as a creator, I
always paid attention to what blog posts, what newsletter topics,
(01:58):
what social post got the most engagement, And that was
always when I was vulnerable and I was human, and
people would respond to me like, oh my gosh, I
thought it was just me, or I've been through something
similar and I'm so glad you're talking about it, and
people tend to soften because even as a creator, right
you're seen as a business and a lot of times
(02:21):
people if you don't invite that into the conversation, people
don't feel that you're approachable. And you know, it's almost
like like I talk about in the past when I
would go to fitness events for speaking or whatever, and
people would like bring my book and ask me to
sign their book, and I was like really, like, I'm
just like you, Like we're the same people, Like why
(02:41):
do you want my autograph?
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And then I started realizing like, well, maybe I'm not
presenting myself as down to earth as I am in
real life. So you kind of have to invite in
that like who am I as a human being into
your brand in order to build that strong community and
to identify with the end person. Because at the end
of the day, we can talk about D two C
(03:03):
creator brand to brand, you know, SaaS companies, but it's
always that human to human interaction that we're looking for
and that the end user of your product or service craves.
And I think being a creator really helps you humanize
yourself as a brand.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You guys have thoughts on that.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
I mean, I would just double down on everything that
Kelly said.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I think this.
Speaker 6 (03:28):
You know, we have so much to learn as marketers
from the creator world. It's been the most inspiring thing
to me over the last few years has been watching
that space watching I mean, frankly, watching my kids watch
creators and follow creators like obsessively and like really understanding
what are they tapping into like what are they doing
(03:48):
differently that you know the rest of us aren't, Like
how is this like one individual Vitual is doing something right.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, it's like it's fits parents with two year olds.
It's wild she is.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
She is mastered brand marketing. Yeah, at a level that
I don't think most marketers will ever be able to comprehend.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Yeah, So that's like that's just been an incredible space.
And again I think for you know, all of our
all of our viewers out there, if you know you're
still not really like trying to embrace that and like
trying to learn from that creator market the best. You know,
what YouTubers are people in your audience following, What social
channels are they following, Which TikTokers are they following, and
like really understanding like what makes that so compelling? Like
(04:28):
why do they tune in every time they post something?
And like learning so much from that. So it's very
cool to hear like how that became a part of
where you you came from, Kelly, and like it shows
in terms of how you think about marketing and how
you think about the opportunity to create these new teams.
So it's really inspiring.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
What about you I have a little bit of a
creator past too, I would say, looking at a YouTube channel,
but please don't.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
I'm embarrassed about that out there.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
And I think I heard you talking about this a
little bit, but I'm like, I want to hear a
little bit more on the burnout because I think you know,
when you have this creator mindset and you're used to
doing all of the things, it's very hard to turn
that off when you don't need to do all of
the things, which most times in our professional settings, we
don't have to do all of the things. We have
a team or you know, we have other people that
(05:16):
are responsible for that facet of what comes into creatorness
and burnout is definitely something that's very present I think
amongst all creators. Like there's creators that I watch that
take huge breaks from you know, posting on YouTube, for example,
and then they come back and they've really like rebranded
themselves in a way like you're saying, to be more
(05:36):
authentic and live into the values that they want to. So, yeah,
I guess my question back to you would be like,
how do you balance that creator mindset with being a
professional that doesn't always have to do it all?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, And I feel like the burnout factor comes from
trying to be who you think people want you to be.
And I listen to a podcast recently on Boxes Explained,
and they were specifically talking about how all these therapists
are now on TikTok and they're calling it tick talk, right,
(06:09):
because they're realizing, like, I have a larger captive audience,
I can make more money doing this versus like having
that one to one engagement with clients and then battling
insurance companies and stuff. But a lot of them are
super burned out. It's because they're chasing the algorithm and
they're chasing the trends, and I think when you do
that a lot of times you lose that authenticity because
(06:31):
it no longer becomes just pure value and just pure
human to human engagement, and it becomes about gaming the system.
And we're never going to win that game, right, The
system is rigged against us. So if we put that
aside and we just really focus on who I want
to be and how I want to represent my brand,
(06:51):
I think that that helps it burn out because you
don't always just have to be one thing. Like you said,
you can reinvite yourself all the time. And there's a
lot a lot of creators that went online and started
talking about one thing and then they realized, like, I
don't really want to be that, I want to be this,
and they just kind of play around with that. And
I think brands don't allow themselves at liberty as much
(07:13):
as you can as a creator. But another thing that
I learned, and I think we were talking about this
as you are building your team from the ground up
and you're starting to realize, oh, I used to have
a person that did this, and now we kind of
have to re engineer how we're doing things.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Is I find a really good.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Way to reduce or mitigate the risk of burnout in
my own team is to allow them freedom to work
outside the box.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
You were hired as a content marketer. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I know you can write, I know you can edit,
but like, where who do you really want to be?
Where do you want to go? And I have continued
education plans for everyone on my team and it doesn't
necessarily relate to the thing that I hired them for.
I have content writers that want to learn design, that
want to be videographers, that want to be project managers,
that want to be strategists, and I think we need
(08:02):
to move away from being specialists, especially in marketing. Our
budget's always cut first, We're always you know, having to
reduce resources even though our numbers get higher, Right, we
need you to make a couple million dollars more but
have ten less people, or like you know, your budget's
getting slashed. And I think that we need to become
(08:23):
more generalists and become more creative and curious and stretch
our boundaries and learn and iterate new things, not to
the point where we're like a creator and all of
a sudden you have fifteen different jobs, but like expand
who you want to be as a creative and a
content marketer within the brand that you work for.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
The thing that I'm always fascinated by every time I
hang out with the creator. They seem to be exceptionally
gifted in two areas.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
One is human psychology.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yes, and I think from a I don't think I
agree with the generalist perspective because of what I'm about
to say next, but I think every marketer on your
team should be at least trying to skill up in
their understanding of human psychology. It's an area that I
struggle with. My wife got a psychology degree, I shouldn't
suck at.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
It as bad as I do.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
But if you get good at understanding how human emotion
works and how people receive things and process things, and
it makes you naturally a better marketer, and I think
it is a required ingredient to be a successful creator.
The second thing that I have observed, which is what
makes me kind of bristle at like we need to
(09:35):
be more generalists. I've found that every creator I know
understands the nuances of the platform where they have it's
usually a single platform, may be two platforms where they
have blown up and really built an engaged audience, and
the nuances that they understand about that platform boggle my mind.
(09:57):
Like I'm like, like you understand and that level of
granular detail about how the algorithm on this platform works.
And I think they're like, you have to be a
certain level of obsessed to be able to get the
kind of results that these creators get on these platforms
because they live and breathe in them. And so I
just wonder if this kind of call to be more generalist,
(10:20):
do we sacrifice the obsession that it takes to like
singularly understand one of these.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Platforms, and so I think there's a combo there.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's like, yes, generalists in the sense of like, if
you understood psychology better, you would absolutely like if everybody
on our marketing team had a good understanding of human
psychology and customer understanding, that would across the board, touch
everything and be awesome. But you you seem to really
really love Reddit. I want you to really really love
(10:49):
Reddit and figure out how it works for Impact dot
com and how we can show up on Reddit in
a better.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Way they like.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So it gives them some area to be obsessed with
that aligns with what they're already interested in. So it's
not this thing that they're having to like, oh God,
and how are going to figure out this new thing?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
So that's that's my.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It's more like, like you said, than natural gravitation towards
you don't necessarily push your people into areas like hey,
I need coverage on this, it's now your job. It's
like you allow them to be curious and ask them like, well,
what are your aspirations five ten years from now? And oh,
you want to be a creative director, Well, how do
you feel about playing around with design?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Is that you know? Or let them lead the conversation.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And it's not necessarily that everyone has to be a
jacker jill of all trades because that also creates burnout,
which is what happens with creators. But allowing that natural
curiosity of like, hey, you know what, you were hired
for this specific role, but we have some opportunity for
you to expand your creative outlets. I want to get
curious and see what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker 6 (11:51):
Yeah, And we did exactly that with my team for
our sales feed media network back at Vidyard at a small,
pretty lean team was you know, three people in addition
to myself. But each of those folks, I think to
the same point you're both making, had a specific deep
barrier of expertise and were cross skilled to be able
to support all the other aspects of what we were
(12:12):
doing to create a high velocity kind of continuous delivery environment. So,
for example, one individual on my team was he was
our YouTube guy. Like he just he loves YouTube, knows
the algorithms, loves making the right thumbnail image planning those out.
He was our YouTube guy and oh he was also
our meme maker. But he would also do some you know,
sort of video production and editing as well. But his
(12:35):
depth was our YouTube channel, you know, will was our
TikTok you know, that was his depth. But he also
crossed over did video production, he did content for our
LinkedIn channel and so on.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And then our editor is also a former sales guy,
so he had deep customer understanding.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Yeah yeah, but again he like was cross skilled to
be able to do all these but like whenever there
was something like you own the link, you own the
TikTok channel, right, you also support these others, but you
own them. And then our editor in chief, who was
a phenomenal writer, she owned our newsletter, but again she
would also help out on video editing, on podcast production,
on podcast planning. So I think that's a model that
(13:11):
can really work, and I think it supports kind of
both of your points of we need to have the
ability to do more because these things are much more entwined,
but having folks with like their area of deep expertise
that they can really lean in and be like, I
can really help have an impact here still matters and
still make the difference.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, Lexi, we had you on a content crew live call,
which is like a monthly call that I've been hosting
this year, and you talked about how you built an
employee advocacy program at Varonas, which is this four point
eight billion dollar giant data security company. Talk to us
(13:51):
about how you built out that program, because I think
a lot of marketers are trying to figure out how
do we get our people engaged on social and we
have some really good feedback on what you shared on
that call.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
Yeah, starting an employee advocacy program was something that I
kind of, you know, crossed my fingers and hoped that
it took off. And it did, and I'm really thankful
for it.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
But I think in.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
Terms of starting it, it kind of was the reverse
approach where we had to know our customer and for
us that was our sales team, Like how are we
going to get our sales team to install another platform,
you know, add some other part of their tech stack
at something else that they have to do in their days,
but also show them like the why and why it's
(14:35):
important because I think, you know, you can say like
post this on social media. A lot of people get that,
they get the importance of I need to post this,
but then there's that like scary part of how do
I do that? You know, I know how to post
a picture of my kids, you know, for my grandma
to see, but I don't know how to post content
about my company to get somebody that's a lead interested
(14:56):
in this company. And we actually went through some internal
training before we even launched, even mentioned that we were
starting an employee advocacy program and it was centered around
social selling. So here's what social selling is, Here's why
it's really important. Here's all of this research and this data,
some of it probably from HubSpot that backs up why
(15:18):
social selling is out of it from sales for well,
why why it's such a huge driver on the in
today's digital communities, and starting it with like that you know,
idea that this is important, this is something that we
need to invest in, and then saying oh, hey, by
the way, we purchased this platform because there's honestly a
(15:39):
lot of platforms out there now for employee advocacy which
let you host your content in it and create ready
to go social media captions that take that you know,
that pain and that fear of am I going to
say the right thing?
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Am I?
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Am I going to post the right you know piece
of content that my team wants me to promote because
you know, we all have our library blog posts that
are just sitting on your website. You don't want every
single one of those going out right now.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
You want the new.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Stuff, the fresh stuff, the stuff that's tied to your
key initiatives and really going to drive that pipeline. But
sales teams don't know how. So we got this platform,
We put it all in there. We went through the
importance of social selling, and now it's you know, about
keeping it up. So we try to keep it really fun.
That's I think a big key part of it. Our
platform that we use has a leaderboard so people can
(16:27):
get points for the different actions that you know, maybe
they share a post and that gets them a couple points,
but what we've really put our point system into is
the engagement that they get on these posts. So it's
not just about going in and posting so you can
win a prize, you know, that gift card so you
can buy something for your at home office. It's really
about if I share this, how am I going to
(16:48):
get people to comment on it? How am I going
to get people to like and engage with it or
click with it? And we also made it in a
way where you know, people can suggest posts for us
to put on there now too. So we have a
pretty large team, and we're global. There's a lot of
things happening within North America that aren't happening in a
mea market for our company. But we're able to let
(17:09):
our EMA marketers suggest content for us to put in
there that really moves the needle in that region. And
now we can see like such a growth of that
community in our brand following. And that's what's fun too,
is you know all of those little details about social
media that like your social media managers like tag me
in a post, use the right hashtag. We have control
of putting that in these posts even though they're natively
(17:31):
going out buying point.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Is it and is it an actual fleshed out post
with you know, here's the caption. They can obviously edit
it in combination with like here's a prompt, like write
a story about a time that you overcame a failure
in work.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
It's a little bit two prongs. We do employee advocacy
and the platform is pretty much like ready to go.
We encourage personalization as much as you can because we
know that that's going to actually build you an audience
and make people invest in you versus just seeing Varona's
content in their social feeds. But we also look at
thought leadership a little bit differently too, and that's where
we sit down with employees that are really like, you know,
(18:15):
making a difference. They're interested in social they've shown that
they have a craft for it outside of just posting
what we're telling them to post, and we have them,
you know, kind of figure out what their niches. What
are those like five things that are really important to you.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
They don't even have.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
To be about data security, but what are those five
things that are really important for you? And I went
into this program at first just kind of you know,
being on the team that's running it. I want to
know how it works. And I instantly was like, oh,
I want to try this, and I've built it into
my own model. You know, I care about content marketing,
I care about video and social media specifically as two
(18:51):
very big important mediums. And then for me, I'm also
a working mom and that's really important to me and
something that I infuse within my work. And so I
now have this kind of you know, those four points
for me to go back on and think about how
I'm going to intertwine those in every single LinkedIn.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Post that I do.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
So it's making people realize, like, hey, out of those
four things, like I said, marketing and that's like one.
But like video doesn't always have to be about cybersecurity.
My human life of being a working mom can interfuse
with my professional life.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
There's a lot of comparisons.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
You know that I can draw from my profession and
put it online and somebody's going to relate to that
and they're going to see me as Lexi. They're gonna,
you know, want to follow me, get to know all
of the things that I'm doing, and you know, magically
they learn about cybersecurity at the same time, which is
really cool for me because you know, I'm not the
cybersecurity engineer. I'm not the technical person, but I still
(19:44):
do a lot to you know, share the information of
how you can protect your data from today's spreads and
things like that. So it just kind of shows that
it doesn't always have to be on your brand. Like,
while you think that me talking about content marketing online
isn't really making an impact for CyberSecure company, it is
because now I get to infuse that in all of
the different things that I'm promoting for myself.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
All right, So, Tyler, you just spent ten years at
vidyard a sales email tool probably a fancier way of
saying that, but that's a video email tool and selling
it to sales professionals. You got to for the last
several years build a media brand called sales Feed to
engage that audience. You're now the CMO of Technology Advice,
(20:29):
so it's a media company, but the media company's audience
is a more like technical buyer. The company's audience are
the marketers at companies that want to reach the technical buyers.
So you're in an interesting spot and you all just
launched a media brand at Technology Advice called Marketing Insiders.
(20:49):
I'm really excited to follo along with it. Based on
the success that you had with sales Feed. I think
over one hundred thousand followers on TikTok really good YouTube channel,
ten thousand plus subscribers to the sales Feed newsletter. You
executed that media brand playbook so well at sales Feed.
What are some of the lessons from building that media
(21:11):
brand the last several years at sales Feed. Maybe some
wins and some losses that are going to shape how
you build marketing insiders for technology advice.
Speaker 6 (21:21):
So I'm going to boil this down into I think
three big areas that in reflecting I really learned in
running sales Feed and building it and experimenting, and these
are all now becoming sort of foundations for marketing insiders
as this thought leadership brand, media brand, call it what.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
You will at the end of the day, our goal.
Speaker 6 (21:42):
Similarly, when we launched sales Feed, the goal there was
to create a highly engaged audience of sales professionals who
would become followers, fans, and future customers. And the very
same mission here to create a highly engaged audience of
marketing professionals who will become followers, fans, and future customers.
(22:03):
And in order to do that, whether it's a media brand,
whether it's a content strategy, to me, doesn't really matter.
The premise is the same. And the first lesson that
I learned that I'm bringing to marketing insiders is to
be very intentional about the framing, the strategy, the purpose,
and the promise of what you're going to be delivering
(22:24):
as part of this media brand, if you will. And
it's something we did do early on with Sales feed
like from the beginning, and I was very happy that
we did, because sometimes it can just kind of like
self form and you're like, I assume we're going to
do this, and we're going to do that, and you
don't necessarily have like a north star or like guiding principles.
So I think it's really important to if you are
(22:45):
going to have this sort of like sub brand, as
media brand or just this evolved content strategy, be intentional
in who are we as this, right, not the company
because it's very different. Right, So the company's mission, the
company's purpose, the company's promise are very different from what
our media brand or thought leadership brand is. So we
started there, we said, what do we want this to be?
(23:06):
Who are we and what is our purpose? And then
most importantly, what is our promise? And the promise is
like what we're going to deliver to our audience. If
you were in our audience, what can you expect from us?
And that was really important to get right, and we
went through some time and iterated on that and sort
of figured out as part of marketing insiders, what is
(23:26):
our promise to our community? So I think that was
number one. Is that pre planning and really thinking through
that Number two is the power of personality lad and
creating that ability to create real personal connections with your
audience and have them get to know the.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
People that the name that shaped the name, actually it did.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
It's Marketing Insiders, right, not Marketing Insider.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
And it's interesting because with Sales Feed, though, I still
love the name and I think the brand was great.
You know, in hindsight, we really named it after the
promise of being your go to resource on a day
to day basis, Right, We're going to be there in
your feeds because that's what we found salespeople wanted, right.
We interviewed lots of folks and we found I don't
(24:10):
go like find blogs to read. I don't even read
like I want the content to find me on social
maybe in my inbox or whatever, and so we're like, okay,
So that sort of shaped our promise, and then the
brand Sales Feed was really around that we're going to
be your feed. We're going to confine you in this
time around. You know, we really thought through, how do
we want to make sure that this is going to
(24:31):
be very kind of personality driven, and we landed on
this brand of Marketing Insiders and you know, like the
being in the idea of insider sort of very clear.
Part of our promise is that we're going to bring
you sort of exclusive insights and things that we're seeing
from our vantage point in the market because we have
access to some exclusive things. But the idea of the
(24:52):
Marketing Insiders is that we are a team. We are
the insiders who are going to bring you these insights,
these ideas, yes, these memes and other things that are
going to help you stay ahead of market trends and
stay ahead of your pipeline goals. And that becomes our promise.
And so when we like sort of bring that brand
to life Marketing Insiders, if you go to our it's
(25:15):
called Marketing Insiders buy TA and TA is Technology Advice.
If you go to our LinkedIn channel, you'll see, like
the LinkedIn banner is all these people right, and we're
all like, you know, somebody is like doing a yoga
pos and I'm like doing my like selfie shot, and
there's like that energy that's just a part of it.
So you don't feel like you're following a brand. You
feel like you're following this group of people. But also
what I learned from sales feed. And this is important
(25:36):
is that it's not just one person, right, It's not
just the one insider. Because of that one insider, you
know something happens. Who is this yes, And so it's
very intentional in saying this is a team of people
and yeah, it's going to ab and flow. Right, who
are the marketing insiders a year from now might be
a little different from who it is today.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I hope not. I hope it's just growing.
Speaker 6 (25:54):
But that gives us the ability to create these different
personalities and have the opportunity to also talk about different
topics that have subject matter experts. So one of the
people on there is Mason Cunningham. He's our product marketer
and he's going to talk a lot about like product
marketing related topics.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Right.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Tanya is our audience development content leader. She's going to
talk about content related topics. And so that I think
is a really important piece and that's going to come
through not just in video and in others, but the
written content that we do. Those people will be directly
associated so you can get to know them as the
marketing insiders. So I think that's really really important and
something that was really successful at sales feed.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Are all of the marketing insiders in house or are
you also tapping external creators.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
I hope to go in that route so as launch,
it's all of it's folks in house. And for the record,
it's not just people who are part of our marketing team.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
We have folks from other.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
Parts of the business because they're always being exposed to
you know, we have folks from our sales team because
they're talking to our customers about their marketing strategies all
the time. Sidebar here for those who are thinking, oh, Tyler,
it's easy for you because you target marketers, so you
just get your team of marketers to be the front people.
But I think all of us can find more than
one individual in our company who can act as experts. Lexi,
(27:08):
we were talking about you. You target cybersecurity professionals. Your
marketing team isn't a group of cybersex professionals, right or experts?
So like, who would become your if you were to
do cybersecurity insiders?
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Who would those people be?
Speaker 6 (27:20):
But I would bet you have folks on your product
team who know cybersecurity inside and out, like they're constantly
researching the market. Who would have a point of view
you probably have people who are like running or monitoring
threat networks who are like in the know on those
and that can be that person your CEO. Right, So
it's probably a cluster of people across your business in product,
in sales, in different areas that know your audience really
(27:43):
well or know the market who can be these individuals.
So I'm really excited about that approach and this idea
of like really humanizing this channel so it doesn't just
feel like a corporate brand. And now the third thing
that is like the maybe the most important to make
sure that we can still be doing this a year
or two from now is being intentional about creating the
(28:03):
conversion paths for the audiences that we're building. And this
can be tough sometimes for people because you also want
to be able to say, hey, we just like we're
out there, we're brand building, we're creating an audience. You know,
we all know it's good if we have more of
an audience, but a lot of us of course then
struggle with like you know, and then the board asks
and the executives ask, Okay, how are we converting those people?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
And you're like, just.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
Trust me, it's happening. Like of course, it's a good thing.
That's why we're the first to get chopped from the budget.
And so being really intentional about how we create those
conversion paths and the way that I did it at
sales speed, which I'm carrying over to marketing insiders, is
a really simple framework called if you like this, you'll
love this, and you might need this. If you love
this is the open content. It's stuff that we're doing
(28:45):
each and every day to build the audience. If you
like this, you'll love this component are the things that
are intentionally gated pieces that enable us to get to
know our audience. There are newsletter right, if you like
our content on these channels, you'll love our newsletter. You'd
be silly not to subscribe. If you like this, you'll
(29:05):
love this new checklist we just launched, right, and being
really intentional about what are those things people would love
to be a part of that are the conversions to there.
Once they're in there, now we have an opportunity to
be like, oh, and you might need this, which is
now talking a little bit more about us in our
products and saying in that checklist you loved, yeah, there's
probably going to be something in there that's going to
be you know, if AB and C technology advice could
(29:28):
help if you happen to be in the market right
And the newsletter every once in a while is going
to be sharing things that are related back to us
as if we're basically the exclusive sponsor of that newsletter.
So that framework of if you like this, you'll love this,
and you might need this gives us really clear conversion paths.
And we're always trying to move people from here to
here to here, and we can track that really explicitly
(29:50):
as a media brand. So those are a few of
the big things. Being intentional about your promise personality lad
and being intentional in those conversion paths and building them
in from the on day one
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