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September 17, 2025 40 mins
David J. Ebner (Founder, Content Workshop), who shares insights and expert strategies on how to make your B2B marketing stand out.David emphasized the need to create unique, insightful, and customer-centric content that doesn’t disrupt the audience’s flow. He also discussed the importance of giving away actionable advice to demonstrate true expertise and build trust.
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Episode Transcript

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(00:01):
With so much digital noise andintensely competitive markets
out there, now more than ever,B2B brands need to go the extra
mile to set themselves apart.Many, however, fall into the
trap of sounding like everyoneelse. So what can B2B brands do
to stand out amidst the noise?Welcome to this episode of the
B2B Marketers in the Missionpodcast, and I'm your host.

(00:22):
Christian Klepp. Today, I'll betalking to David J Ebner, who
will be answering this question.He is the founder and CEO of
Content Workshop, which helpssmall and overworked marketing
teams and transformativeindustries to reach their
business goals. Tune in to findout more about what this B2B
marketers mission is. Mr. DavidJ Ebner, welcome to the show,

(00:48):
Thanks for having me, Christian.
sir.
And David, you know what? Like Ifeel like just talking to you. I
feel like we've known each othera million years.
It does feel that way, yeah.
But this is the power ofconnection, right? Like...
Yeah.
But listen, I'm really lookingforward to diving in today,
because this is a topic that'salso close to my heart. This is

(01:09):
something that you're passionateabout, or should I say to you
know, to make it appropriate forthe show, this is what you're on
a mission on, right? This is,this is part of your mission. So
I'd like to dive right in to thefirst question. And let me just
pull this up here. You're on amission to help B2B companies
and people grow throughstorytelling. So for this

(01:30):
conversation, I'd like to focuson the topic of how to make your
B2B marketing stand out insaturated markets. And let me
tell you, man in B2B, that is sotrue. There are so many
companies that are that arefighting and competing and
markets that are becomingincreasingly saturated out
there, so that's why I thinkthis is so pertinent for our

(01:52):
audience. So I want to kick offthis conversation with two
questions, and I'm happy torepeat them. So question number
one, why do you think it's soimportant for B2B companies in
this day and age to stand outand be the signal amidst the
noise, as it were? And where doyou see a lot of marketing teams
struggle.
Yeah, I don't know how much timedo we have for this podcast,

(02:15):
because we could spend the wholetime on this.
Absolutely, absolutely.
It's really tough. It's alwaysbeen important to stand out.
Today is just more difficult. Ifeel, you know, I've been doing
this now longer than I care toadmit, right there's gray hair
is starting to come to me fasterthan than I like, but it seemed

(02:36):
10, 20, years ago, is a littlebit easier to stand out. Not
only is the market moresaturated now, the marketing is
more saturated now. So you havemore more vendors, more
competition. You have likethese, I don't know, not direct
competitors, but the people thatare like in your sphere of
influence that can be pullingpeople away from, potentially

(02:58):
your brand, certainly yourawareness, awareness of your
brand and your time. And then ontop of that, you have a million
different tools that you can useas a marketer to generate
content faster and more of it,right? We are tying lots, as
they used to say in the scoutswhen I was younger, right? You
know, there's less targetingwith the marketing. So it's,

(03:21):
it's important, and it'sbecoming even more important
because it's harder to do.
I believe that the best way thatyou can stand out is to look for
the option to be interruptive,right? You want to interrupt the
flow. You don't want to disruptit so much. You don't want to
throw people completely off. Youjust want them to, like, have a

(03:41):
little moment of, Oh,interesting like, that's, that's
really what you're trying toachieve as a marketer. And
that's a way to stand out, is tohave more Oh, interesting
moments, right? There's a lot ofdifferent ways to do that. You
can literally just Zig wheneverybody else is sagging,
right? Like, if everybody'sdoing X, you can do Y, something
a little bit different, but notsomething that's going to like,

(04:02):
completely take them out of themode that they're in, the medium
that they're in, whateverthey're consuming content on or
marketing on, whether it'ssocial media or an email or
billboards, I don't know, likeit can really be anything. You
don't want to be completelydisruptive. You just want to
interrupt slightly, and that'show you stand out. And I am
definitely going to need thesecond question repeated,

(04:23):
Christian.
Where do you see marketing teamsstruggle with standing out like
because, you know, at the end ofthe day, people keep saying, Oh,
they all sound the same.
Yeah, that's a great point too.And I do think it has a lot to
do with the question one pointB, right? Which is that there's
just so much more volume outthere right now. And I think

(04:45):
people are following the trap ofmore is more. More is not more
when it comes to marketing,right? If you don't have a
unique opinion about something,you shouldn't be saying
something about it at all.That's always been my opinion.
You know? I love, you know, Idon't mind seeing people post on
social media, particularly likehappy this holiday, happy that

(05:06):
holiday. Happy Thanksgiving.Everybody that's one that goes
across both borders, right?Happy Thanksgiving. But that's
not a unique opinion aboutsomething like as a consumer,
some of you, you want to try topull their attention away from
them. You want the most valuablething they have, which is their
their unlimited resource of timeand attention. You're trying to
get that from people right? Youreally need to give them

(05:28):
something of value in return.And I think we need to just take
a step back every time we'reproducing a piece of content,
and ask us, who is this helping?How is it helping them? And is
the exchange worth it, right?Like the time and energy that
they're going to give you toconsume this piece of content,
this piece of marketing, is itworth that? That value to them

(05:51):
of their time and attention,right? We call it the great
barter over here, but it's valueversus time, and that's, that's,
that's, I think that's a place alot of marketers fall short,
especially in the age of AI, youknow, there's just easy to
produce a lot of stuff, butthere also it gives you an
opportunity to produce greatthing, things of great value as

(06:12):
well, too. And that that couldliterally be the thing that's
the that's interruptive, isliterally the content you
produce is just of higher value.That's really all it could be.
Absolutely, absolutely. I wantedto go back to what you said
earlier about beinginterruptive, right? And it's
not because I want to play thedevil's advocate, but you know
that there's a camp out therethat says, What interruptive if

(06:35):
it's not providing any value tome, if it's not useful to me, if
it's not interesting orinsightful, then, yes, in fact,
it is an interruption to myusual workday and flow. And
yeah, your thoughts on that?
Yeah, you know, so much stuff isjust living in the sea of
sameness right now, right? Like,so much stuff just looks like

(06:56):
everything else. So I thinkactually being interruptive,
whereas in the past, you mayhave said, well, this thing that
produces me no value is actuallythe interrupt development. Now,
because so many things produceso little value, being the thing
of value would be the interruptdevelopment. So it's kind of
flipped itself on its head alittle bit, because there's so

(07:17):
much volume out there right now.So literally, I think just
producing the thing of value canbe that, that interruptive
nature. Now you gotta becareful. It's a fine line to
dance, right? Christian, like,you do not want to cross that
edge of that line into like,into disruption, right? So I'm
what I'm saying is mediummatters, right? So if you're

(07:38):
going to be interruptive, youhave to be in a sphere of
influence of of the medium thatyou're in. So don't like, put a
pop up on your website that justsays, huge value here. Click
here, right? That's disruptive.
Those YouTube videos where theydo this, right? Like...
Yeah, subscribe now, click here,right? Like, that's that's

(07:58):
disruptive, right? That's a it'sa lot. It's a step too far that
takes the person out of the flowof what they're doing. All you
want to do is present a blip,and that blip can be simply just
something of value.
That's fair point. That's fairpoint. You brought up some of
this stuff already, but I'mgoing to move on to the next
question about key pitfalls thatmarketing folks should avoid

(08:19):
when they're trying to standout, and what should they be
doing instead?
There's a lot of key pitfalls,and we're seeing it every day. I
would just ask every marketer togo look at your inbox. Right? I
subscribe to a lot ofnewsletters and various
marketing materials because I'minterested. I'm always doing
like, research, right? What?What? What is a subject line

(08:41):
that I actually click on rightthat I'll actually open from a
vendor. What is something ofvalue that actually gets me to
click on the thing in the emailto go to the following thing?
What's an ad that actuallystands out to me? I would use
yourself as kind of a test onthat front, none of your content
is going to be as interesting toyour audience as it is to you as

(09:02):
the person creating it. I thinkthat's really important for us
to understand. You know, youmight get really excited about
an email or an ad campaign or orsome social media content, but
the likelihood that anybody'sgonna care as much as you is
next to zero. That just showsthat sometimes we're not the
best judge. You know, judgmentof the content, of it being

(09:26):
valuable or not. So I wouldactually test some of the
content that you're producing ifyou have clients that you trust,
if you have maybe even otherpeople in your company that can
look over things and give youhonest feedback. That'd be
helpful. I think a pitfall is,is assuming that people will
care about the thing that we'reproducing. I think you should
probably get some feedback onespecially if you're doing,

(09:47):
like, a long term campaign orsomething, you're investing a
lot of money into AB testing isfantastic. I don't as much as
it's available to us today.Christian, I don't think a lot
of brands AB test, I don't thinkthey're testing as much as they
should.
Yeah. No, no, they're using timeas the excuse, right? Like we
don't. We just don't have time.You gotta get this, yeah? We
gotta get this off the groundpronto.
Yeah, we just don't have time.And I also think a big pitfall

(10:11):
is, is because words are cheap,and content is cheap right now,
because AI can produce it, we,we're just going to flood the
market with it. I've alwaysthought that in marketing and
sales actually, to the idea ofvolume is the more that you can
put in the top of the funnel,the more that has potential of
coming out of the bottom of thefunnel. But it's still a funnel.

(10:33):
It's not a hallway, right? Likeeverything that goes in, it
doesn't have to come out theback end, right? So if that's
the case, and we have theability to put a lot in the top
of the funnel that should makethe things that come out of the
bottom of the funnel actuallyhigher quality, because we
pickier. So if you can have AIwrite you 100 blogs, right?
Well, then pick the 10 Best,right? Why produce all 100

(10:54):
because it dilutes your brand byproducing things of low value.
So anyway, I think that's one ofthe pitfalls too. I mean, AB
testing certainly is one ofthem. Whether it's an email or
an ad campaign, AB testscertainly do that. Get real data
from potential clients orcurrent clients on how things
are performing, ask questionsand then secondarily thinking

(11:15):
that volume is somehow asolution. Volume should be get
to higher quality.
Man, I'm gonna steal that one.What did you say? It's a funnel,
not a hallway,
Yeah, exactly, yeah. Everybodydoesn't get in. This is, you
know, I, as much as it's a crudeTV show, I'm a big fan of South
Park, right? I've always been,since I was a kid, right? And

(11:36):
they're actually, if you wantto, if you want, this is a bit
of a tangent. But if you want amaster class in storytelling,
South Park, oh yeah, so good atthat. Like, everything in an
episode follows like a chain ofevents in a line. There's no
like things that happen thatdon't make sense or like are
just thrown in there forcharacter development. They
don't just do that. Theyliterally everything happens in

(11:58):
concession with the next thing.But anyway, there's an episode
where Cartman opens his own, youknow, theme park, and he tells
people they can't come in, likenobody can come in. And, of
course, there's a line aroundthe block, right? That's a
funnel, not a hallway, right?
I love it. I love it. Yeah.Think they came up with a with
an episode lately that, I'llthat was a, I won't say,

(12:19):
slightly political. It washighly political.
Who these guys? Highlypolitical? Never they. You know,
what I do like about them isthey make fun of everybody kind
of, kind of equally. When theysee injustice in the world, they
certainly point a finger at it,and actually point it in the eye
of the person that is is causingthe injustice as they see it.
But they are, they're open topoint a finger at anybody?

(12:42):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.Absolutely, absolutely. All
right, moving on to the nextquestion. So one way that B2B
companies can stand out in thatsea of sameness is through brand
storytelling. So talk to usabout that and how B2B companies
can leverage brand storytellingfor greater success.
Yeah, that's a great question.Christian, I think a lot of

(13:02):
people kind of have differentdefinitions of brand
storytelling, I should say, soI'll share my definition. None
are particularly right or wrong,but, you know, I like mine, so
I'll share that one. I thinkbrand storytelling is everything
about the audience and notreally about the brand at all. I
think a lot of people willassume that brand storytelling
aligns itself more with thestory of the brand, the history

(13:24):
of the brand, the founders,story, all those elements which
can play into it, certainly. Butpeople like to hear stories
about people like them. Theydon't want to hear a brand just
promote itself, right? They wantto hear something that kind of
excites them, something thatsolves their problems. They want

(13:45):
to hear about something thatsaves them money or it gives
them a better quality of life,right? That's pretty much like
the only three things anyproduct or solution ever does.
With that being the case, youneed to make the brand story a
telling about the people whoselives you're improving. So focus
on that. When you're building abrand story. The brand story,
you start to think through yourpersonas, your target audiences,

(14:09):
you think through their painpoints. You think through your
solutions, and then yoursolutions to their pain points.
It makes almost a mathematicalequation. What's the outcome?
Right? So pain point plussolution should equal x, and
that x should be a better life,you know, saving money, right?
Reaching goals, all those kindof things should be what fits in

(14:31):
that box.
And that's really where yourbrain story should start. Our
story is about helping who? Whodo you help? How do you help
them? How is their life betternow that they've been helped
answer those questions, andyou're on your way to telling a
great story. And there's plentyof great brands who do this, and
they still get plenty of brandrecognition. I think of Nike is

(14:51):
a fantastic, fantastic at this.You know, you look at their
commercials, and they're reallynot about Nike, they're about
empowering people. Who are usingNike products, right? Like the
kid running the, you know,running the drills at football
camp or whatever it may be,right? You might see a Nike
branded asset somewhere in thecommercial, but until the end,

(15:12):
you probably could say that'salmost any brand other than you
know that it's Nike, becausethey're the only one that does
that. So they've got brandrecognition even when their logo
is not showing but it's reallyall about how they're making the
lives better the people who,who's who use their products.
And that's a good place tostart, um, and then you can
build story off of that.
Yeah, yeah. No, no, I love it. Ilove it, and I'm absolutely on

(15:35):
board with that. But, um, youknow the world of B2B, um, it's
not always easy to get buy infor brand storytelling. And you
know where I'm going with this,right? Because, you know, I'm
totally with you, with youthere, man, like you're
preaching the choir here, butlike, for those people that are
in the Board of Directors theC-suite, and people that that

(15:56):
don't even know what brand is,how do you get buy in in terms
of the importance of brandstorytelling to stand out.
That's a great question. I'vebeen spending, you know, half of
my life trying to, sometimessuccessfully, sometimes not, to
solve that, that problem. I liketo kind of point the question

(16:19):
back at the person who's askingit, when that happens. So why
should we invest in brandstorytelling? I would ask that
executive, you know, what theirfavorite? You know, what kind of
car do they drive? Why do theydrive that type of car? Right?
If they drive a BMW, why theydrive a BMW? They think it's a
nice car. It's a high qualitycar. It's got a little bit of
performance baked in with, like,a little bit of luxury. Great

(16:41):
off. You know, if BMW, youalways drive BMW is like, why?
What brought you to them in thefirst place? Like, you know,
when you start to really diveinto how everybody buys products
and consumes things, a lot of itcomes down to trust. We have
some sort of trust built withthat brand, whether it's through
advertising and marketing orwe've used their products
before. Something leads us tothat beginning of that trust,

(17:03):
beginning of that relationship.And that's all brand
storytelling is, is trying tobuild trust between the audience
and a brand, right? Andeverybody does it with
everything that they consume intheir lives, right? So I think
if you get in that meeting roomand you're getting some pushback
from executives, you can justexplain that that's how things

(17:24):
are purchased everywhere, andthey always start with some sort
of relationship, typically. Andsometimes people just randomly
buy things that happens lesslikely today than it used to,
but their interaction with thatproduct then starts to build
that relationship. So no matterwhat, it still comes down to
relationship. And and usuallyyou can correlate that with some
personal experience of theperson asking the question. And
that usually gets you, at leastto the to the next step.

(17:50):
Or at the very least, they'llthey'll look at you and kind of
like, understand, like, Okay,this is what we're trying to
achieve here. This is theobjective of the exercise,
Yeah, exactly. If, when youstart to explain that, when you
right?
can start to build trust withpeople, and they start to see
themselves in as part of yourbrand, and you truly get brand
loyalty. You don't just have acustomer that that buys

(18:13):
something one time, right? Andthe end goal for any business
usually is not to sell one itemto one person, maybe people who
like, I don't know, producecaskets or something like that,
right? Yeah, we're not going tosell two to that guy, right?
But, you know, in the end,almost every product on the
planet, you're trying to getmore than one purchase from an
individual consumer, especiallyif you sell a monthly

(18:37):
subscription. If you're in theSaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
business, you're doing that allday long, right? You're trying
to get them to continue to buy,continue to answer the question,
What have you done for melately? Brand storytelling in
the producing marketing thatcomes from that can answer those
questions and keeps you relevantto those people who can continue
It's funny that you brought thatup, because I find that the SaaS
to buy your products.
space is one that could reallybenefit from from brand

(18:58):
storytelling. I feel that. Like,not all of them again, right?
Like, but many of them are like,the repeat offenders of like,
Yeah, well, look at how awesomeall our features are, and look
at what this, what this littlegizmo here can do, right? And
it, and some of them do answeror address the pain points of
the target audience, but I findthat they make it more about the
product and less about thecustomer.

(19:20):
Yeah.
Right? And that's where it allgoes a bit all right.
Yeah, I agree 100% like, youhave to this is why I honestly
prefer to call everything weproduce solutions and not
products, right? Because itreally puts you in the pain
point or in the mindset of painpoints. See, I was already at
pain points before finished mysentence. But, like, you want to
solve problems for people. Soyou sell solutions, not

(19:43):
products, right? That'sextremely important. You have
benefits, not features, right?We want to call them features.
We're really excited about thisnew thing people can do. But how
does it benefit someone? Howdoes it make their life better
when you promote whatever thatfeature is, it should really be
all about how you makesomebody's life better with with
that piece, right? Not just howyou make more money with it,

(20:06):
which is a veiled sometimescomes through from available
point of view, like, Hey, we'reannouncing, we're very excited
to announce this new launch of afeature set. Well, what, what's
in it for me is the answer weshould always be answering. It's
Exactly, exactly. Okay, soplease provide examples of how

(20:27):
B2B companies can stand out insaturated markets. So
specifically, like, you know,what steps can they take? What
are those components that needto be in that process? And you
brought some of these upalready.
Yeah, I'll actually take alittle bit of a step out and
say, I'm gonna say somethingthat's somewhat unpopular,
right? So I think one way foryou to step out is to give away

(20:49):
the secret sauce. We're bigproponents of this over at
content workshop, we want totell people we want to
essentially demonstrate our ourexpertise, and the best way we
can do that is tell people whatwe do and how we do it. Now,
some could say, hey, likeanybody could grab that then and
then go do it themselves. Surethey can, but it's still really,

(21:11):
really hard to do. It took us,you know, 13 years of being in
business to figure this out, notjust to like we're not solving a
mathematical equation. A lot ofwork goes into it every time to
make it successful so they cando it on their own and try to do
it cheap, they'll probably failif they want it done right and
fast, they're going to come tous right. So I think that's a
great way to stand out, just touse us as an example.

(21:34):
We we sell, you know, contentmarketing services. We do a lot
of backlink building for ourclients to build domain
authority for their sites, andso we we essentially sell that
service to a lot of brands, andwe recently came out with a
series of eight blogs thatessentially explains exactly how
we do it and our theory behindit. It is certainly giving away

(21:54):
the secret sauce, but it'sgotten a lot of attention from
from our target audience onLinkedIn and emails and
different different mediums. Andwe even can ask some of our
customers have come to us, like,why are you publishing that?
Like, and then I turn it back onthem, like you already knew
that, and you still buy stufffrom us. So like, why do you buy
stuff from us? And it alwayscomes back to the same. Thing is

(22:17):
that, you know, we still can'tdo it, even though we know how
right I might be able to look uplike how a rocket sends people
into space. That doesn't mean Ican do it, right? So anyway,
that that's one way to certainlystand out, because you have to
demonstrate expertise or have aspecific opinion about something
in your content. And if you'regoing to produce, produce
marketing that does that, thatwill stand out and giving away

(22:40):
the secret sauce is somethingthat has always worked since the
beginning of time.
I love that. I love that. And Idid read some of those articles,
by the way, yeah, because I saw,I saw the posts, and I'm of
exactly the same opinion that,yes, people can get that and
take that knowledge and start toapply it. But like, you know,
having done some of this workmyself, I can, I can attest to

(23:03):
the fact that it's no walk inthe park, right? I mean, I'm a
copywriter myself, and I andI've run into like, prospects
that say, well, that shouldn'tbe too difficult, right? Like,
website copywriting. I mean, Ican write. I know how to do it.
I'm like, it's an entirelydifferent set of skills and
craft, right? It's one thing ifyou know how to write like,

(23:25):
like, I can write you an email,but like, but writing like copy
that actually will go onto awebsite that will convert
people, like visitors orvisitors into paying customers.
I would argue that that's askill, right? Like anybody can
get up on stage and saysomething, not many people can
get up on stage and move acrowd.

(23:48):
Yeah, you're exactly right. Imean, I literally went to school
for this Christian I have amaster in fine arts, in creative
writing. I studied storytelling,right, right? So, so I can
attest to what you're saying is100% true. We've hired a million
writers here at contentworkshop. You don't knowing how
to write is very easy. It's veryeasy to write. Writing well is

(24:09):
very difficult. Writing Well, inspecific mediums, to move an
audience is near impossibletask, and there's very few
people that can do iteffectively. I mean, you're
probably gonna get today peoplesaying, well, I can't ChatGPT do
that. Like, why? Why would Ihire somebody to do that?
ChatGPT can do that. Words arecheap right now. Words are very

(24:31):
cheap. Good brand storytellingis not and that is part of the
reason that people need to standout right now. It's, it's
because of, words are extremelycheap.
100% 100% and I'm gonna go backto what you said earlier, only
because I'm genuinely interestedin this, like you studied
storytelling. And for those offor those of you out there that

(24:52):
have spent some time doing thistype of work, there are
different types of storytellingtechniques. So I'm gonna throw.
This one out at you, David,like, what? What's your, what's
your, what, I wouldn't sayprefer, but what's one of your
favorite storytelling techniquesto use for customers? And why?
Yeah, well, I'm big on the theaudience, and I'm big on solving

(25:14):
pain points, so I am all daylong. Hero's Journey is, is the
the method of storytelling thatwe try to adopt for for our
clients, it's the best way to todo brand storytelling. Certainly
is to to focus in on acharacter. Have that character
be the people whose whose livesyou make better, and let that be

(25:34):
your main character, right? Andtell the story of literally. You
can tell their story literally,you can you can do a case study,
you can do a testimonial. Youcan do something like that,
where you actually break downthe individual story of somebody
going through the life of havinga problem, searching for a
solution, and in the midst ofall the terrible options out
there, there was a shining ashining star, and that shining

(25:57):
star was your brand. And nowtheir life is so much better,
and now they can do X that theycouldn't do before, right? That
is the flow. I mean, that's, forthe most part, the hero's
journey. There's usually, like,some sort of, like conflict
that's a little bit heavier inthe middle there. But set aside,
it's the idea that, you know,there's, there's a main

(26:18):
character, that main characteris embarking on a task. That
main character, the task isthrust upon them and their life,
they accomplish it, and theirlife is better, right? So you
can, you can adopt that into anytype of content, whether it
actually has characters in it ornot just any through any type of
storytelling, like problem,solution based storytelling is

(26:39):
all heroes journey kind ofwrapped up in a little bit of a
different ball.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Good oldJoseph Campbell.
That's right!
Fantastic. Okay, so based onwhat you've been saying in the
in the past, like 20 or 30minutes or so, like B2B

(26:59):
companies can build trust andcredibility with their target
audience by developinginteresting, relevant and
insightful content. Now herecomes the fun part. In our
previous conversation, youmentioned you had some unpopular
opinions about content marketingin 2025 and just from a top

(27:22):
level perspective, because Iknow you could probably talk
about this topic for like, 10hours, but like, just from the
top of perspective, what arethese unpopular opinions?
Yeah, well, we've talked about afew of them. I'm obviously very,
not very brash about bringing upthe the unpopular opinions, but
I definitely believe givingaway, giving away the secret
sauce, is one of them. On thesame note, I actually do believe

(27:42):
that it's okay to gate somecontent, and I don't think those
two things are mutuallyexclusive either. I think
there's this, this barter systembetween, you know, time and
value, and if the value is greatenough, you certainly can gate
content. The problem is you willhave had to already build trust
with the individual audiencethat they would they would

(28:03):
believe you that the gate isworth, worth handing over the
keys to get in. And that doesn'thappen a lot. You can't just
come out of the gate with agate, for lack of a better
phrase, but there's gatedcontent all over the place. What
do we call Netflix? What do wecall Hulu? Their entertainment
content has always been gatedbecause we believe it provides

(28:23):
enough value that's worth themoney that we're going to
exchange. For brands it's reallyjust about the value for the
content that they're going toconsume and their time that
they're going to give for it. SoI do believe that there is a
place where it can live. It'sfew and far between from
presenting enough value, though,in today's space, another
unpopular opinion. And I guessthere's really two camps on

(28:44):
this. I do believe that SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is
important still. I know that alot of people are losing a lot
of top of funnel informationaltraffic, but I think SEO is
still important.
What's your thought on Well,it's 2025 and you know, I have
to ask you this question, butlike AI search engines, right?

(29:06):
How does that play into thewhole... Well, I would say the
manner and methodology in whichyou craft brand stories and, you
know, create content for AIsearch engines.
Yeah, that's a good question. Iwas recently talking to somebody
on my team about this, and it'slike we get so caught up in the

(29:27):
latest tool and the latestgateway from how are people
going to consume our content,that we kind of lose sight in
what the content should be inthe first place. SEO, you know,
Google was just a gateway. Itwas just a gateway to see our
content. So yeah, we played thegame. We added keywords in
certain places, right? Like weworked around the angles that we

(29:50):
were supposed to work around.But the reason why all of those
elements actually worked isbecause the consumers actually
preferred it that way. Googlewas just giving people know what
they wanted, and they search fora solution, they get an answer,
right? So of course they weregoing to do AI overviews. Of
course they were going to dosnippets. Snippets existed way
before AI overviews. Peopledidn't complain about that. They
all just wanted to be in thesnippet. Why? Because it was

(30:11):
more likely that their link wasgoing to get clicked. So the
same is true for AI overviews.The same is true for LLMs (Large
Language Models), the same istrue for AI search engines.
If you produce good content andyou're an authority on a topic
and people are talking aboutyou, which is all the same stuff

(30:31):
that was true before, it's stilltrue today, it's just a
different gateway of peoplecoming to your content. Now that
doesn't mean you don't have to,again, play the game a little
bit in today's world, it'simportant to have domain
authority and brand authority toget people to see your content
to be more visible. In this zeroclick environment we're in,

(30:54):
there's fewer behavior triggersthat that allow Google and open
AI and other tools to rankappropriately the content. So
it's going to be brand, it'sgoing to be ranked based off of
authority first, and then peoplewill engage in it eventually. So
that being the case, you reallyneed to focus time and energy on
making sure your site, yourwebsite, your your digital

(31:14):
storefront, your home base, hasauthority. Backlinking is a
great way to do that, actually.So it's full circle, but all we
have to do is is keep doing thegood things we were doing
before, which is telling goodstories, having engaging
content, build not justinformational content, build
educational content, right? Likewrite content for people who

(31:35):
seek to understand, not justseek to be informed.
Informational content will beserved up more likely in the AI
overviews. We're talking aboutlike, what is x, right? Like,
what is something definitioncontent which is actually still
extremely valuable to produce.Don't see that ground, because
the last thing we need is AI nothaving informed sites to pull

(31:57):
that information from. We needthat as a society and as a brand
you want to show up in the AIoverview. However, spend more
time and energy, or I would say,probably a larger percentage of
your budget, producingeducational content. When people
are posed a problem, give themthe solution and then show them
how they can solve that problemfor themselves in the future. I

(32:18):
guess that's the same thing asgiving away the secret sauce.
But dive in deep. Don't go wide.Go deep on your content. And I
think that's that's going toserve you in this new
environment. And it's alsobetter for the consumer. And if
it's better for the consumer,then it's, you know, it's going
to make its way to the top ofwhatever search engine the
individual is using.
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean,I'm totally with you on that

(32:41):
one. I guess so many people justget caught up in this whole
aspect of SEO where, like,keyword stuffing, right? Well,
it's gonna have keyword,keyword, keyword, keyword, and
then there's the wholediscussion, which I had with a
guest last week about, like, oh,then they're obsessed with,
they're obsessing with thetechnical SEO aspect of it. And
I'm not saying that that's notimportant, but there's no point

(33:03):
having great technical SEO andthen the contents no good,
right? Or you're developing thecontent for the algorithm, as it
were, versus for the actual toyour point. What purpose does
this content serve? And who isthis for? And how is this going
to help them?
Right? Yeah, exactly. That'sthat's what we should do at the

(33:26):
end of every piece, or whenyou're IDing a new piece of
content, or really any marketingcampaign, yeah. But specifically
content, you should ask yourselfthose questions, who does this
help? How does it help them? Andand I actually like to ask the
question, Who does this hurt? Wedon't think about our content
hurting people, right? It's justcontent. But for you to like,

(33:47):
abuse somebody's time andattention that that is not
something they don't get thatback, that's time they can be
spending with their family, withtheir kids, with on something
more important at work. Sohaving a flashing headline,
having a piece of content thatdoesn't produce any value, not
following up on the promise thatyour content has, that that can
actually hurt people. So youknow, I'm of I'm of the of the

(34:11):
camp of asking those questionson the front end. And one of my
team members likes to ask thequestion, so what? Like we wrote
this thing, we have this piece.So what? And if you don't have
an answer for that, it's alittle intrusive, right? By
Design. If you don't have a goodanswer for that, then you
probably shouldn't have thepiece in the first place, right?
We shouldn't also be askingourselves, like, what medium

(34:35):
should we produce this contenton? Or should it be gated, or un
gated? Like, all of those shouldbe answered before you start,
because you need to build thecontent to meet those metrics,
meet those mediums. Certaintypes of content plays better on
social than it does in an email,right? It's just that's just
that simple. When somebody isviewing content, whatever medium

(34:56):
they're viewing it in, puts themin a certain state of mind,
right? And. Um, some things arescrolls, some things are diving
deep, some things are searching,right? Those are all different
mediums. So they're all lookingfor something different there.
So try to match your contentwith your medium. I think is
it's extremely helpful justmaking sure more people see it.

(35:16):
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutelyokay. We come to the point in
the conversation where we'retalking about actionable tips,
and you've given us plentyalready. So this is almost,
think of this like a like arecap of everything that you've
just said. But just imagine thatthere's somebody out there, a
B2B content marketer, as itwere, that's listening to this
conversation and going, Gosh,you know what? David's right?

(35:38):
And I really want to take actionon this right away. What are
these three to five things youwould advise them to take action
on right now when it comes tostanding out.
Yeah, I would, depending on thesize of your company, find the
person who works in the servicedepartment or operations, or
whatever it is, whoever deliversthe solution to the client, go
to them and ask them, give mesome broad strokes on how we

(36:01):
actually deliver the solution tothe client. That is a great
indicator of giving away thesecret sauce, a way for you to
build an entire series aroundthose things. You can even keep
it super high level. You don'thave to get super detail if
you're really worried aboutpeople taking away that. What
you do just don't go into a tonof detail, but give them the
broad strokes of it. Sure.That's fine. That's helpful for

(36:21):
most people. So looking to youroperations and service team as
triggers for content isfantastic. Certainly, I would
say, from an AI point of view,using AI and developing content,
use it however you best thinkyou can. But don't. Do not let
quality be sacrificed inefficiency. Do not let quality

(36:44):
be sacrificed in efficiency.It's a great quote from Jerry
Seinfeld when he talks aboutwriting Seinfeld, and they talk
about how much work it was andhow demanding it was to write an
episode every week, right? Andsomebody asked Jerry like,
couldn't you outsource some ofthe the writing to another team,
to a consultant, something likethat, and his initial thought

(37:05):
was we could but then itwouldn't be ours. It wouldn't be
our thing. It wouldn't bespecial to us, right? We weren't
just there to sell ad space inour show. We were there to tell
a story, right? So think of AIthe same way too, right? Just
because it's more efficient doesnot mean that it's better, it's
better when it's better, that'sthe that's the rule of thumb.

(37:27):
Doesn't matter if a monkey wroteit, a copywriter wrote it, or AI
wrote it. If it's good, it'sgood, right? Just have your have
your quality metric.
Fantastic tips. Yeah. Sodefinitely like talking to the
people in the front lines, as itwere, that are delivering the
product or the service andgetting their take on. Like,
okay, well, what is it that'skeeping these customers up at

(37:48):
night? Like, what are they, whatare these challenges that
they're dealing with that, youknow, I think it's, I think it's
the design thinking approach,where they ask the question,
suppose we did this this this.How would that help you, right?
What if we did this this this,how would that be useful to you,
right? So it's trying to come atit from a more constructive

(38:10):
angle, versus all the other somany problems. Like, yeah, we
get that right? And then, andthen the the AI piece, I mean,
couldn't agree more. I mean, thefocusing on the quality and not
like the, as you alluded to thevolume aspect of it, because
there is that temptation to justkeep cranking that stuff out.

(38:30):
I'm going to use the wordcranking because that's really
what it is, right?
Yeah, you're winding a machineup. Man. Go!
Exactly, exactly. Okay. Herecomes the bonus question, my
friend and again, only becauseyou speak about this so
passionately, what is it aboutbrand storytelling, right? This

(38:52):
craft that you have honed overthe years? What is it about this
craft that you wish more peopleknew about?
I would want them to know moreabout the emotional impact that
brand storytelling actually has.I think of, you know, I went to
school, I got a Fine ArtsDegree, and then that wasn't
enough, and I got another FineArts Degree, like I got a

(39:13):
Master's in Fine Arts, right?And the difference, I think,
between art and content is aboutemotional connection. But I
don't think there has to be thatdifference. I really do believe
we can build emotionalconnection in the content in the
brain stories that we tell inwhatever medium they come out
in. And when I say that, I meanan emotional connection means

(39:35):
that somebody views something orexperiences something, and then
later, when they're not in frontof that thing anymore or
experiencing it anymore, theycan recall the feelings that
those items brought out in them,and they can feel it once again.
That's what art does to us. Wesee a piece of art, we remember
it. We think of the passion, orwhatever you. Feeling it brought

(39:57):
sadness, or whatever wasdepicted in the art, or however
we view that art, and by beingable to recall it again in the
future is really what definesit. And I think brand
storytelling can do that too.There's plenty of great examples
of brands that can can buildemotion with their audience, and
the emotions are varying,obviously. So I would like

(40:18):
people to to know that that'spossible. I'd like people to
think of ways that they can,they can do that. You know, we
work a lot in cybersecurity, andone of our clients said that he
wants to create content so goodthat that his target, target
audience, cries. And I'm like,Man, I mean, I don't even know
where to go with that, butthat's, that's deep, right? We

(40:40):
can build emotional connectionin the content that we're
producing, and it can be apositive experience for the
individual. So that's, that'ssomething I wish more people
knew that could happen in brandstorytelling, and more people
would attempt to accomplish that.
that. Yeah, yeah, no,absolutely. And it doesn't have
to be emotional in the sensethat it makes you cry, but it's,

(41:02):
it's aspirational, or it leavesyou awestruck, like, wow. Kind
of like when you, you know, you,you brought it up earlier on the
conversation, like the Nike ads,right? Like, and you look at
that and go, Wow, that's kind oflike what I'm going through, all
right? Like, that kind of thing.Fantastic, fantastic. David, um,
this was such a pleasure. Thankyou so much for coming on the

(41:25):
show and sharing your experienceand expertise with the
listeners. So please quickintroduction to yourself and how
folks out there can get in touchwith you.
Fantastic, fantastic once again,David, thanks so much for your
Yeah, I'm so I'm David J Ebner.I'm the President and Founder of
Content Workshop. The best wayto get a hold of me is really
just going to our websitecontentworkshop.com, there's a
little chat window in the bottomthat's not it's a bot that

(41:45):
literally comes to me in myphone right here. So if you want
to get a hold of me or connectwith me, it's a great way just
to chat with me. I tell peoplemy friendship is always free, so
time. Take care, stay safe andtalk to you soon.
go there and take advantage ofthat if you want to, you know,
see what's interesting to me,and what I want to talk about,
feel free to follow me onLinkedIn, and that's David J
Ebner, yeah, I'd love to, I'dlove to connect.

(42:09):
Sounds good. Thanks, Christian.
Thanks bye for now.
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