(40) Kandji’s CMO Shares Their $1B Content Strategy - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSZtINSp7oQ

Transcript: (00:00) 95% of your buyers aren't in market. But when you think of the splits of how marketing budgets are generally allocated, the vast majority of most marketing budgets are going to the 5% that are in market. How would you know when you sort of reach that max 5% sort of inmarket tam? When you raise the budget and you're not seeing the incremental results from that, my entire focus right now is the 95%. (00:31) If I could, you know, rewind the clock and change something, that's what I would have done. I would have started this a lot earlier. There's a difference between creating content that is able to get attention and then content that can drive future intent. How do those strategies look for you all today? The one thing that's working really well right now is [Music] Well, Sylvia, thank you for joining me for an episode today. Super excited to chat. We are uh working together. (01:10) I've been looking into and following your all's work for a while. And uh for context for everybody, you are the CMO of Kanji. Kanji is a Apple device management uh platform and security platform. You've had incredible growth over the last you could probably clarify but I think it's you know five six years or so you you've been with the company you were employee number four coming in as head of marketing and you know been there from basically day one like through this entire journey um now to you know close to a billion dollar or (01:42) more valuation and uh you know there's a lot I'm sure we could talk about for many many hours we'll obviously confine this to you know an hour or less in terms of like the marketing and content strategies you all have done and how those have evolved. (02:01) But yeah, I'm I'm really excited to kind of dig into how you all are thinking about um obviously there's two camps, you know, in in many ways these days with like marketing philosophy of like marketing to the 5% who are in market at any given time. They're going to Google, they're going to chat GPT, they're actively searching out a solution like there's others who are like representing that that full TAM of like the the rest of the 95% of those potential buyers who aren't necessarily looking for a solution, but maybe in 6 months when they're out of a contract with a competitor, they now can actually (02:40) explore a little bit more. And the goal there is like kanji is already top of mind for them. And so I know you all think about you know all that a lot as well. And maybe to start, could you give just like maybe a high level on like that journey from how you all were thinking about marketing and content and the 5% versus the 95% like in those early days and years compared to now like what that evolution has looked like. (03:12) I love the way you frame that question and I actually I love the name of your podcast being 95% and the way that I've been thinking about this a lot recently is 95% of your buyers aren't in market but when you think of the splits of how marketing budgets are generally allocated the vast majority of most marketing budgets are going to the 5% that are in market and obviously you need your budget to go to places that are going to generate a pipeline number so that you can prove yourself and get more budget and grow the company. And I (03:42) I understand all those dynamics, but I do think it's a major missed opportunity that I've seen here that I've seen at many other companies where the budget is not remotely uh distributed in alignment with the percentage of the buyers and where they are in that stage. And so how our journey has evolved over time. So I started as employee number four. We had absolutely nothing. We had no customers. (04:06) We had um no website. We had no brand. you know, it was really starting from the ground up. Uh, and I really love that stage of a company because and I've done this a couple times in my career. I actually did it before I did at a company called Flowcast that's now they're actually now worth 1.6 billion. They're eyeing an IPO. They're killing it. (04:28) Um, I also came in as the first marketing hire there and really built zero to one. So that zero to one playbook is one of my passions. I think it's evolved so much over time, but that's something that I think you just have this incredible opportunity to just deeply understand your buyer and have this blank slate of how you get to build the way that you speak to that buyer. So, back to your question of kind of how this has shifted over time. (04:51) So, in the very beginning when we first launched Kanji, we were very focused on the 5%. because you're new in market, there's going to be people out there that are just, you know, ready and they're looking for something that you're offering. And so, in the early days, we did, we had a lot of success with LinkedIn ads specifically, like LinkedIn ads driving pipeline, which was really interesting. (05:19) So, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, you know, those classic uh targeting the 5% and and the ads honestly that worked best were just here's what we do and that that was it. It was very cut and dry. We we managed and secure Apple devices and we would get demo requests from those. But over time that play didn't work as well and we kept scaling it and we kept trying to optimize it and find ways to make you know the Google ads and that bottom ofunnel LinkedIn ad play work but it just didn't scale and it didn't keep delivering at an efficient level for us at scale and over the long term. And that's exactly because of, you know, (05:54) that that intro that you said of the the 5% we were basically hounding that 5%. We maxed that out and then we, you know, are now pivoting into the the 95% in a much more focused way. So my entire focus right now, my entire team's focus is the 95%. and in building brand and building community and building something that's going to last and building something that's going to take us on this path to profitability. (06:22) I believe this is the play that's going to get that company to get our company to the next level. But I think we spent a lot of money on the 5% over the first few years hoping that we could optimize it and get it to this efficient place, you know, without necessarily making that pivot to the 95% as early as honestly we should have. So that's where we are now. (06:44) And so yeah, the tricky part is it's hard to measure. It's takes time. And so my recommendation to anyone who would, you know, was back there where I was in the early stages would be to start as soon as possible and do it based on conviction. Do it based on a deep understanding of the buyer. (07:09) And the data may not always tell you what you want to hear in terms of the ROI of those types of investments, but you have to make that investment early on or you're going to hit a point where the 5% budget isn't giving you the ROI you need and then you're going to be starting from scratch building something that does take time. (07:27) Um, so you'll be a little bit behind the ball. So if I could, you know, rewind the clock and change something, that's what I would have done. I would have started this a lot earlier. This is such a good topic that is not talked about enough which is like what timing of the sequencing of that because I think it does make sense especially when you're going from 0 to one like let's go capture those that are in market right now. (07:53) Like that is I mean that's a to me that's a no-brainer place for us to start because we got to prove the model. we got to generate our our first initial customers and like get that flywheel going. How would you think about that decision today in terms of like how would you know when you sort of reach that sort of max 5% sort of in market TAM to know okay we got to really like let's not go two years past this and then realize we should start the 95% strategy like h how would you look at kind of knowing when when to flip that switch? The way I would think about it is you're going to start spending some (08:35) budget on that 5%. And then it's going to work and then you're going to start scaling that budget and you're going to scale it and you're going to scale it some more. I think the the biggest flag or catalyst for being like, "Okay, we got to start investing in the 95%. (08:52) " Would be when you raise the budget and you're not seeing the incremental results from that. Yep. And that could be a budget amount like you you have only a set audience that's in that 5% bucket. They're saturated and you've maxed it out. Or it could be a time thing as well. (09:14) The people that you know are are going to respond to that initial trigger have already converted and now you're targeting the same people over time with this bottomal ask that's not building the connection relationship that's leading to that that immediate return and pipeline that you're looking for. So, I'd say, you know, once you stop seeing the incremental returns as you're increasing that budget, which I think that honestly happens pretty early on, then I think that's a flag to start making that pivot and really investing in the 95%. But I think I think that's the latest possible time. You should (09:45) probably do it earlier than you think you should. Yeah. At least getting like some form of that motion started. Obviously like the content ecosystem and we can go into some of the content strategies and stuff but like that ecosystem can can grow over time but you don't have to start with like doing everything YouTube newsletter short form LinkedIn like there's a lot of different things you could stack you know over time but yeah to your point like at least like getting started with the base foundation. So yeah, within that in mind, like how do those strategies look for you all today, (10:21) you know, in terms of like the the content strategies, the 95%. Yeah. How are you all, you know, thinking about that or what what sort of levers are you pulling that you're liking these days and, you know, what what your vision is for it? Yeah, I can mention one thing that's working really well and then I can talk through just our journey of how we started on this 95% path because I think we did a couple things early on that were very foundational to making sure we were on the right track. (10:51) For sure. The one thing that's working really well right now is people on LinkedIn. So, not your corporate LinkedIn account, but the people at the company. Almost this this play of building internal influencers at your company. And I think this is in large part because the LinkedIn algorithm just favors people content more than company content. (11:15) You can post the same thing on the company account, a person's account. The person's account is going to do a lot better even if that person has a much smaller following than the company account. We um so we've been building these internal influencers at our company. We support them. We help them. We record videos with them. Video specifically on people's accounts. (11:32) That's working really well. And we're measuring a lot of our early success on this journey just by impressions. We need a simple way to be like is are the early indicators there that this is working. So we're measuring that just based on impressions. I think a lot of people try to over complicate the measurement of brand. (11:50) We'll get there eventually, but you got to start somewhere. And impressions is just a nice leading indicator where you get that immediate response, you know it's working. So when we look at the spread of just the impressions we're getting on the brand overall that's organic, the people's accounts are what's growing and what's working the best. So that's huge. (12:12) But going back to just kind of our journey, so like where we started, what we did early on as we embarked on this n you know 95% journey. One thing we started with was we did a buyer journey research project and we did this with an external agency which you know maybe not everyone will have the budget or the resources for that but it was helpful having an external agency do that and they essentially did a survey. (12:37) They interviewed some customers they interviewed some internal folks and they came up with an entire buyer journey which included what are the catalysts the the things that happen that become buying triggers for what you're selling. And so for us, an example of this would be like an audit. So if you need to be compliant with a certain compliance regulation, and they're different in every geo. Yep. But if you need to be compliant, then you have a requirement to have security and management systems in place for your devices. Yep. And so that's a buying trigger because it creates urgency. (13:07) There's no there's no no decision for those customers. They need it. And so whether it's you or a competitor, they're going to get something. And so that's a great example of a buying trigger. So that's something we and we got many of these buying triggers. (13:24) So now these are all things we can create content around that will speak to people that are on the path and on the journey to needing something that we offer and it can be an immediate trigger, it can be a longer term trigger. So that was really helpful, the buyer journey research project. The other thing we did, we have a pretty decent blog following u on our blog actually that we have built over time. That's one of the things we have done for a very long time. Yep. (13:49) And we ran a survey where we just asked them where do you get your where do you get your content? Where do you go for new? What events do you go to? What social accounts do you follow etc. And but we framed it in hey we're we're collecting this data and we're going to put together a report that we're going to share with you. (14:08) We're going to share the results of this with you because people want to know where their peers are getting that information. So it wasn't just hey we want this data because we want it we wanted it to inform where we meet people and where they hang out but we also wanted it to be to create some value for them and so we got just an incredibly high like engagement on that survey because people and people would write in the notes oh I follow this person but I'd really be curious what other people who other people are following and so that worked really well and that (14:42) basically gave us a road map of you know should should we focus on YouTube should we focus on LinkedIn should we focus you know there's many channels the ones that roast the service for us LinkedIn YouTube Reddit those were the top three these are IT and security folks they're very technical those are the the mediums that they prefer for every company it's going to be different but that just gave us so much clarity on okay we we would like to be everywhere but where are we going to put our intention and that made (15:11) it just very clear what we were going to talk about. Um it also just power you know what events are we going to go to check like who what you know influencers might we potentially part with partner with check. (15:29) And so that was very foundational as well to just giving us a lot of conviction and a lot of clarity on on the the brand plays that we were making. And I think that's really the key to all of this. I think going back to the customer and understanding your buyer so deeply and I describe it as like hearing the music. (15:49) Are you close enough to them that you can hear the music? If you can hear the music, you're going to be able to speak to that buyer and it's going to make your whole brand strategy incredibly obvious. And that's so helpful because like we talked about the measurements difficult. you're not always going to get the measurement feedback loop that you want. (16:09) So you need to that conviction needs to come from somewhere and when you have some data behind it between the buyer research thing and the survey we had so much clarity and conviction around what we were building and that helps in lie of having perfect data. This is so good. Um there's a lot we could go into on all of this. The first thing I'll mention is like I really like how on the LinkedIn side for the organic like thought leadership play is starting with a simple metric to know if we are going the right direction and not overanalyzing and trying to overscrutinize more bottom offunnel metrics from that right out the gate. A lot of people will say, "Well, impressions is a vanity (16:55) metric." And I I don't agree with that because like the whole point of this is for this content to get viewed. If yes, you can maybe gify it and stuff like that, but you'll feel if it's working and like if we're getting more impressions week over week, month, month over month, that is a sign that this content is resonating and this is working. And that's the directional sort of top offunnel sign. (17:26) And then how that content then helps create the memory association with those potential buyers at those buying trigger moments. That's where the that plays out over the course of the future when those buying moments occur. But if we overanalyze that stuff too quickly, then like it may lead us to the wrong conclusions. (17:51) That's a sort of a common thing that a lot of people talk about is like oh impressions don't matter and you know all that stuff and so I like how you you simplified it to that. I'd like to go into actually like this the buyer journey research a little bit and the survey a little bit. So, this is actually a topic that we haven't covered much yet on the show and it's also one that a lot of teams I feel like maybe not necessarily because they don't want to. (18:17) Maybe they to your point they don't necessarily have budget to like go get some external help or what have you, but uh which I empathize with, but it's something that seems skipped over a lot like and I understand like we want like time is of the essence like let's just go go. What what I often find though is that the marketing teams and the content teams have a really good sense of their audience and like what might resonate and what content series you know to move forward with. (18:50) But then when there is some of this validation or invalidation from the from the customers and the audience themselves, even if it's just a like 10% directional chain, like change in direction from what the original assumption was, it ends up creating like a 100x the outcome just because we're saying the right things and positioning it in an even more resonant way. (19:11) So yeah, in terms of like if you were recommending, you know, with um like tactical advice on, you know, another CMO or head of content, how to go about, you know, doing that in a way that um gets the best result like so we know our audience even better. We know what problems they have. (19:37) We know how we can connect those problems to our product in a non-salesy way through the content. Like all of those things. Yeah. any other details you could share on the survey and the uh buyer research? Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to do this really scrappy and so I'll start with the buyer journey thing. We actually did a scrappy version of this maybe two years ago. (19:54) So I can share what we did there because it actually worked really well for and and the the one with the vendor was even more deep and that was great. Yeah. But one thing we did was we have, you know, notes in in HubSpot on the first call that the reps have with somebody. (20:12) And generally the reps are going to have questions or asking about, you know, what's the pain? And they're always trying to identify like the story behind why someone's there. And so I would say in a lot of cases, this data probably already exists somewhere in your systems. In our case, it was this first call and it was the notes that this rep logged on that first call. (20:30) You could maybe also get it from call record, you know, analyzing gong or or Apollo recordings or something like that. But for us, it was that note where the rep was specifically required to write notes about the pain points and the catalysts that were leading to the conversation. And so I actually had one of our product marketers just go through 20 deals and read those notes and look for patterns. And it was just 20 deals. (20:52) It was not, you know, this wasn't like a crazy data project. This was literally pulling them up one by one, taking notes and finding patterns. And that alone was was enough. And so I'd say that's my recommendation. If you don't have the resources to go and do the agency thing, just ask yourself where does this information already live? And it could be in someone on your team's head as well that you go and talk to. In our case, we had these notes. And so I think that's really helpful. (21:18) And yeah, it doesn't have to be a data thing even. it can be a little bit scrappy and a little bit like we're just going to read through these notes and look for patterns. And I think that's that alone is really helpful, right? The other thing um so for the survey, we actually did the survey really scrappy. So, but I think you get even scrappier with it. (21:37) So, the way we did it, we had a type form survey and we just emailed it out to our blog readership list, our emailable database, which is pretty engaged. And I do think letting them know we were going to share the results from that with them was a huge key part of making the survey successful. So would absolutely recommend doing that. (21:56) But we just had simple type form survey and they were all open-ended questions. Who do you follow? You know, what mediums do you prefer? I think the mediums one was like a drop down of options, but all of the rest were just open open text fields because we weren't looking for something incredibly, you know, analytical. We just wanted a list of ideas. Yeah. And so that I think was key because you don't want to be giving people like drop downs and options. (22:20) You just want them to give you as much as they're going to give you. And so that was really helpful. So the the way we phrased the questions was just like what uh social accounts do you follow? What events do you attend? You know, open-ended questions. (22:39) Um and then at the end we took all of the raw data which was very messy and we wrote uh you know a whole blog post on it. We included some charts where it made sense, but for the most part, it was just like here's a big list of people you can follow. And people really appreciated that. Uh I think an even scrappier way you could do the survey is instead of doing a survey, you can just send an email to 10 customers. Yes. And ask them. And I think that's completely fine as well. 10 customers that you have good relationships with. (23:03) Send them those open-ended questions and bullet points. I think that would have been a great start as well. So yeah, I think there's many degrees to the scrainess that you can pull these off. And I agree with you, the re the research always tends to to fall to the back burner because you feel like you understand your customers pretty well. (23:22) And so you're like, do I really need to go and ask them, right? But I do think there one there was some new things we learned and two even if you have an idea in your mind of what your customers thinking or what the buyer buying triggers are who they follow something about seeing it on paper so to speak and getting that kind of like validation that you're even if it's just validation that you're on the right track that alone is valuable even if it doesn't change a single thing you were going to do right the level of conviction it gives you and clarity it gives do and the way you can (23:57) go to other team members and be like here's why we're doing this cuz we got this information here is just validation validation that you're on the right track that alone is worth doing the research 100% and like I feel like this is actually getting even it's always been very important but it's getting even more important in like the AI content creation like world era it which is like if we are the closest to our customer or prospect in their heads, what they think, what they feel, who they pay attention to, what problems they have. And then we've also got our internal (24:34) subject matter expertise, which is like domain expertise that's not necessarily in an LLM. somebody competing against you who is who is not doing those things and they're just kind of doing the old playbook of like trying to round up already available content into ways that can get in front of them or what have you. (24:59) But like it's not really solving the problems that's inside their head and it's not really it doesn't have too much like true domain expertise or proprietary data or things like that. you're now like at a serious advantage when you when you do those things. And to your point, it's like I think it does sound sometimes like scary. (25:17) It's like we need to go do this monthsl long project to like understand our buyers better or whatever. But we recommend the same thing all the time, which is like before you start your content series, like what if you get on a call with five customers, just five, and just ask them open-ended questions about what content they consume, what platforms it's on, who they learn from, what do they like to learn, what do they think is missing that they would like to learn more about that that's like not readily available in the market. and like the gold that comes from just those subjective like this is not statistically (25:47) valid data you know like you can't like run a statistical you know um confirmation on this across your whole like cohort but you get these great subjective you know opinions on stuff that really I think open up um like with much m much more conviction to your point uh your ability to go and execute on on an idea that you have. (26:13) So yeah, I I do think like yeah, we could get like the 80% solution of this is like just like you said, it's like send an email to some customers, maybe get on a phone call, three to five of them. That's a two week at max, you know, project really. And like you've got 80% of that like full maybe whatever couple months, 3 months, whatever project that's going even deeper, but you're 80% further ahead than you would be just based on your own assumption. So I agree. And the agency that did the buyer journey research project, it was (26:43) so funny. They interviewed five customers and then they did this giant survey. I think it was like 300 people filled it out, whatever. The results didn't change between the fiveing conversations. And then when they supplemented it with 300 more, it was exactly the same. Incredible. (27:04) So I think you can go a long way with a small sample size. Our data team would probably yell at me if they heard they saw our survey, but they but it really does work. It's so it's so effective. And I think you you're talking about this difference between like a LLM repurposing content that's already out there versus this different type of approach that's a lot more, you know, attached to the source, so to speak. Like it's a little more raw and original. (27:30) It's actually original versus just repurposing. I think another thing that this research allowed us to do was have strong opinions and we're really shifting our brand right now. In the past, we were very educational. We were very helpful. Now, I think it's table stakes to have an opinion because if you're just putting something out there that's helpful, that's what everyone can do based on the content that's already out there with AI and they can just put out something that's helpful. And I still think it's important to be helpful, but if you (28:01) don't also include some kind of opinion, I think your company should have opinions. I think the people, if you're building LinkedIn influencers internally, for example, they bring in their own personal opinions. And the opinion is original and unique and human. And I think that's what stands out in the sea of AI content right now is a person with an opinion or even a company with an opinion. Yes, very much agree. (28:33) How have you gone about helping to sort of formulate those for kanji, but also maybe there's like some some specific ones with some of the internal thought leaders that you have as well that are related but maybe not exactly the same. (28:51) But yeah, what's been your approach to developing those? Yeah, we actually did something really really cool around this. So what we wanted to tap into was what are the opinions that our product team has when they're building product. Mhm. And so we got our product leaders in a room and we asked them a lot of these questions. things like what do you believe about the industry is completely wrong that everyone thinks is a certain way but you think it's a something different or what's a something you believe for a long time that that changed maybe when you joined and you started building and we really got to the heart of the (29:24) product principles like when they go to build something yep how do they build that in a way that's different and some really clear themes emerged through that conversation that then we could take into our content. So an example was instead of uh you know like if someone customer comes to us and asks like we need this feature and so okay we have to customer feedback we got to build this feature instead of you know doing you know competitor research or seeing how what other people have built and rebuilding it or trying to (29:53) just check a box and being like hey customer I built this thing for you I'm checking this box they go so many layers deeper and they look at what do you what is this person trying to achieve and what is the most efficient path to that outcome and they really there's a lot of things we built that are just completely different approaches than anyone's taken because of that philosophy of I want to get this person from A to B as efficiently as possible. I want to abstract out all the complexity that's maybe snuck in over time because (30:24) something used to be a certain way 10 years ago. And so now there's all this like legacy baggage around how people do work. And so if we take a fresh look and a blank slate at it, we can find an easier path to the to the solution. So the the opinion that comes out of that is, you know, we we're anti-complexity. (30:43) We we abstract out the complexity. We try to get to the outcome as quickly as possible. And I think a lot of people in this industry find a lot of safety in complexity because it's a form of job security. My job is complicated and therefore I need to do this job, therefore I'm safe. But our encouragement to people and our opinion that we have is that it's those that are able to uh get their way out of complexity that are going to rise up and sort of be the the the winners in this next era. I think AI is obviously a giant example of (31:26) this. I think a lot of things are being abstracted and simplified right now and it's the people that learn to lean into that and you know let go of the complexity that they maybe take some security in and find a path to a least least complicated way of doing something so that they can do even more. (31:50) Those are the folks that are going to rise up in their careers that are going to make an the biggest impact on their companies. So, we kind of took this product principle around complexity and we we turned it into like what's the mindset that people need to have in this time that we're in to be able to win and be able to, you know, advance in their careers and have a big impact. (32:10) This is great because I always believe like in order to have content that has like differentiated content that is successful. It needs to be aligned with those POVs and the narrative that the company like that is generated from the company strategy. Yeah. And sometimes that's skipped. Like we could create content just like for our audience cuz like there's a difference between creating content that is able to get attention and then content that can drive intent, future intent. And so like we need to be memorable at those future buying triggers. And the only way to do that is (32:55) if our content is m having that connection point between the company POV problems it solves narratives and then what the content is saying and that's a that's a difficult balance to make but to your point I love this this approach you took because you started with what is our opinions about the product like and the problems that the product is solving and then we can figure out how to translate that into the content. (33:28) content in a non- salesy, in an opinionated way that stands out and is interesting. So, how have you then thought about translating that messaging into the content itself? Whether that be like the content series vehicles that you're doing it in or like how, you know, we need to hit these topics because these are the main points we want to champion like. Yeah. Any way you thought about translating that into like the content itself? Yeah, that's a great question because we had all these inputs, right? We had the survey, we had the research project, we had this conversation with product and so it's (33:59) like how do you take all of that great source material and turn it into a content strategy that's, you know, executing efficiently and you're able to ship that. So, we do a lot of hackathons. We we'll basically get in a room and we'll we'll build something as a team. And this is a format that I really love. (34:18) We've done a lot of actually AI hackathons which has been really cool because everyone gets to share that AI information with each other. But I would say that's like the the that's the step we went to next. So we had all these inputs and so we would do these hackathon projects where um you know some of them were creative brainstorms, some of them were like okay we've latched on to an idea and now we need to build out the workflow for this content stream. So, I'd say like getting your team together in a hackathon is a really great way to like accelerate that (34:46) process of taking all the source material and and turning it into something actionable. Um, but one one like core concept that we had that was really helpful was this idea of anchors and and distribution. So, in our content, I call this the content flywheel. (35:06) We have we have all these anchors that power these distribution channels for us. I think this is the best way to set up your practical content strategy because if you're content teams can feel really disjointed sometimes. It's like the social person's trying to get their stuff over here and then the email person's doing their thing over here and blog is doing their thing over here. (35:23) When you when we incorporated this sort of anchor distribution concept, it really helps unify everything and bring it all together and it saves you a ton of time because it it's like your content anchors are powering this whole distribution engine. So an example of this would be like our podcast. Okay. (35:38) So our podcast is a major anchor for our entire content flywheel. It's going to power so much of our content. And so instead of taking all these source inputs and looking at the whole content engine and being like how do we talk about these things? Yeah. (36:00) We can take these inputs and then we can focus on an anchor like the podcast and we can ask ourselves how do we bring these themes into the podcast? Can we interview someone that has experience with, you know, an audit, for example, so we can speak to that buying trigger? Or can we interview somebody who on our podcast who has taken something really complicated and they've found a way to simplify it and they can tell the really tactical story of that journey. (36:18) Yes. So then that podcast then becomes our newsletter. It becomes our blog post. It becomes our social posts with the clips from that podcast. It becomes even things that sales reps can send to prospects who may not be ready to buy. Y it really powers the entire the entire content engine. (36:42) And I think that really simplifies it a lot because if you're trying to connect the dots between all these inputs and all this content you have to make, it's just going to get way too complicated. But the ability to take that source material and point it at a specific anchor is a lot simpler. And then we would get together in a hackathon and we would build okay we have our podcast how are we going to build our process in we use a sauna for project management okay how are we going to take that podcast now and use it to power our entire content engine a way to do it where you can keep your sanity and it gives you a lot more clarity on how to be creative with it without uh (37:14) getting all twisted up in the different channels and how have you thought about the team structure within that then you know whether that be the the content team or you know who owns some people own social newsletter like you were talking about before because yeah to your point you know depending on how the org chart is structured there may be like almost conflicting goals between different team members almost or they're like we're not all driving towards the same thing like everybody's got their own KPI but to (37:44) your point it's like not necessarily bubbling up to like a north star together so this inherently I think helps this this process, the anchor and the distribution um delineation like helps inherently just with that. (38:03) Um but yeah, any other ways you've thought about like just the team structure to help execute on all that? Yeah, the main thing we do is every anchor has an owner. Okay. And then every channel has an owner. Yeah. And so sometimes those things mix and match, right? the person that owns the podcast isn't going to own all the channels that that podcast gets distributed onto. (38:26) But I do think that helps clarify who's owning just who's owning what, right? If if every anchor has a clear owner. So then the the content anchors are getting created and then every distribution channel has an owner. So we can make sure that if we don't have enough content for a specific channel that someone's raising their hand and saying that. Yeah. or if um if an anchor is you know we're behind on something then someone owns that. (38:49) So I would say at it at the simplest level that's the way we have it set up. Every anchor every distribution channel has an owner and our team is pretty we I think we work very much on a project basis. I have had times in the past where the team has been the roles are incredibly clear and I would say the roles right now are blurriier than ever. This is probably common on marketing teams. (39:13) Yeah, like job titles and what that person is doing, I think, is less clear than ever because we're constantly throwing new creative projects and ideas and anchors into the mix. And, you know, assigning those to whoever's passionate about working on it. And so, I'd say honestly, it's pretty fluid right now. (39:31) We do have, you know, kind of groupings and owners of different uh areas of the marketing engine, but I would say it's probably more fluid now than it's ever been. Yeah. It's almost like approaching it from like the structure standpoint is not necessarily the roles, but it's the strategy. And then maybe who is owning what and like who's helping with what. (39:57) That's a little fluid, but the strategy is the anchor, the the content anchors and then the distribution or the channel like level. Exactly. And I think that's really smart because like things are evolving very quickly. The platforms are evolving very quickly, like what levers you might want to pull on each platform, you know, what content strategies are working right now. (40:21) like all that stuff is, you know, we went through like 10 years or whatever of like basically doing SEO keyword optimization and like that was pretty much one of the like the main content strategy and now it's like you've got 10 different platforms you could create stuff for and within that each of those have their own like strategies that you could do. (40:47) So, I think just clarity around how your your content strategy looks and then like who you fill in and what parts to own what um can be a little bit more fluid. I think that's very smart. Yeah, it's been really helpful. And yeah, it's funny you mentioned SEO because this question keeps popping up recently. People keep asking me AI SEO, how do we do this? How do we optimize for the LLMs? And I have yet to talk to someone who has a very deep answer on this. The best answer I've heard so far is from Dave Kellogg. (41:18) I don't know if anyone follows the Kell blog. It's um he does these predictions every year. One of his predictions was around this focus on uh AI basically AI SEO. I don't know what to call it exactly, but it's like how to optimize so that you show up well if someone's like searching for your company on Jad GBT. Yeah. (41:38) And his hypothesis was the LLMs value reputable sites. Yep. And they view reputable as like something that's that's like raw community. So like reviews, Reddit, they value those things because they're they're authentic. They also value reputable sites, which news sites are, you know, some of the highest domain authority, the most reputable. (42:02) And so PR is almost kind of having a comeback I think because PR is sort of the play to get that content on those more reputable sites which are valued by the LLM. So that's the best answer I've heard so far. But I'm asking everyone else the same question because I I need to dig further into it. (42:19) But I think everyone's wondering do we keep investing the same in Google ads for example as we've done in the past you know or do we pivot more to uh you know optimizing for the LLMs. Why I share all of this is because I think this whole concept of investing in the 95% building your brand building community that's all going to help with that. Yeah. (42:41) And so regardless of, you know, the specific strategies of how to optimize for the the LLMs to say nice things about you, the the bottom line is like this the 95% play is going to help with that because it's going to mean more people saying good things about you and you're going to have more content out there. So yeah, it's that's been an interesting one that's been popping up recently for me. Yeah, for sure. (43:05) And and the good thing too is like if somebody didn't have to go to the LLM or Google or review site to find out about you when they're in that moment of like I need to I need to buy something in this category, but they actually already knew about you. (43:26) You already tucked away on this list uh you know of like one of the three vendors in that category they already knew. Then they also go to the LLM and they also go to Google and they like round up some other names. Yep. You are at an advantage immediately already because like you're a known entity to them, you know, in some way, shape, or form, like inherently in the in the fact that they already know you. (43:45) There's some level of trust already there. Um, and so you have a leg up against somebody just like them showing up on a demo cold to somebody that, you know, found out about them. So, it's like, yeah, even the 5% strategies with like the LLM LLMs mentioning you and stuff, those are changing. And then same thing with 95%. (44:06) So I I think like I know it can sometimes be a little scary right now with like you know all the all the AI changes that are happening for for marketers and stuff like that but like I try to look at it positively like we have more tools available to us than ever before in terms of where we can reach our audience. (44:26) There are more people to sell to to than ever before. Like I kind of feel like it's the best time ever in history to be a marketer and we just like can reframe our thinking around that. Um and and I know there's all these fear-mongering posts, you know, going out on like LinkedIn every week, but like I've Something's dead. Something Everything's dead. (44:48) Everything's dead. Um so, no, I think it's an exciting time. But when it comes to like that flywheel for you of the content anchors and then the distribution points, how how do you you mentioned impressions earlier for LinkedIn. What other ways are you thinking about the measurement of like this 95% side? Because this is a this is a big reason why companies don't move too quickly into it and too heavy into it. (45:17) Um so yeah, I'm curious how you think about it. The best I think next step for us is going to be sales call recordings. Nice. I think this is like the next level. So I think impressions is number one. Yep. Are we getting engagement? Are people looking at things? Are they consuming it? What's working? What's not working? That's a great feedback loop for the content part. (45:41) Y I think the next measurement level for us is going to be setting up some more sophisticated tracking within our call recording tools to find out are people mentioning this on calls. Yeah. And you know it's it's I think that's one of the best uh ways to find out if things are working because you know if the name of the podcast starts popping up on calls then that's another indicator that it's it's working and people are listening to it. (46:11) The uh the next thing I think we'll do is implement some form on the website like a how did you hear about us? Yeah. And you know every e-commerce site ever does this right? And I think there's some ways to do that right and ways to do it wrong. I think you have to pick a limited number of drop downs. You can't have like 27 options on there. You have to make sure they're auto rotating so that people aren't just picking the top one, you know, whatever. Make it optional. (46:31) Make it after they've submitted the form um already. So, it's not, you know, another step in the filling out the form process, but I think an optional nudge after someone fills out a form that says, "How did you hear about us?" has some very limited options on there with a write in field because you'll get some interesting stuff in the writing fields. (46:50) Um, and I think making it optional will get you better data because then people will only fill it out if they actually want to give you that information. And so, those are the next steps for us working further down the funnel. Yeah. (47:08) And so, um, you know, again, it's not going to be you super analytical probably, but you'll at least get some very clear patterns about what's coming up in conversation. And so, that that I think is going to be the next step for us. I'm a big believer in the concept of like create the problem where, you know, we could solve that now. We could put up that form now. We could have done it on day one when we started, you know, really investing in content, but I'd rather create the problem. (47:31) Let's let's start with impressions. and start at the top of the funnel, get that flywheel going. Once that's going, then we can move to the next step in the funnel and get that measurement better. Then we can move to the next step and get that better. So I think it helps to like solve one problem at the time and create the next problem. (47:49) You don't need to start collecting that data when your content's not, you know, that visible. Like you need to start collecting it later on once once that flywheel is going. So I'm trying to solve one problem at a time basically, but we'll get there. So good. Yeah. Looking at measuring this 30, 60, even 90 days on the bottom of funnel side after starting the strategy is and then evaluating that on if we should keep doing it or not on the sales call recording side and on the self-reported attribution side. (48:23) That is very likely going to lead to the wrong conclusion. to your point, the impression side, the engagement side, that's what to look for in those windows. And then yeah, I like that being like a phase two and just knowing that going in. Yeah. And the same thing with like that stuff showing up in self-reported and on the sales calls. (48:43) It's also like I think almost like looking at any of those distribution channel sort of indicators like if they mention newsletter, LinkedIn, podcast, YouTube, it's almost like that entire ecosystem together like they all those things all help each other. So if they're mentioning any of those, it's like this strategy is working. Yeah. (49:09) And obviously the podcast is like the anchor of it all. And so maybe they don't think of it as a podcast, but they saw the clip on LinkedIn and that came from the podcast. So if they say LinkedIn, a big part of that was the podcast clip driving that, you know, for LinkedIn. (49:27) So uh yeah, it all it all kind of works together. Yeah, I think that's what's so great about this the anchor content flywheel strategy is that the anchor itself doesn't necessarily have to have a huge following. The podcast itself doesn't have to have a huge following, right? But if it's powering all of these other things, these clips for social that are getting tons of engagement and impressions, then it's working. (49:51) And it it's not necessarily about the anchor piece itself getting that following. It's about the flywheel that it powers. Yes. And it's very important to decide on that in my opinion in the beginning. Do we want to create a number one podcast on Apple Podcasts or do we want this to be the anchor source material that we care about? We care about the Apple podcast and Spotify podcast, but the source material to power our entire content engine and the success of that to be seen as a thought leader and expert and number one player in our space. Those are two different (50:20) goals. Y but I think sometimes like that decision's not made and so it's a little blurry on like what the success looks like for it. I agree. I mean, I think the the world is littered with podcasts that companies started that did 20 episodes and then they gave up probably because people weren't following the podcast downloads. Yeah. (50:44) But they probably missed the second part of the flywheel that powered everything else. Exactly. And then they were, you know, just weren't clear on the intention of it. Exactly. And yeah, for us very clearly, our intention is powering social, powering our blog, newsletter, and if the podcast gets a following, cool. But that's not a metric that's going to be on my like top dashboard. (51:06) This is great. Uh, we could talk for a very long time. I know we're pretty much at time. Last quick question. if you have any thoughts like just the future in general, uh, content in B2B outside of anything we've talked about, we've obviously talked about a lot of those things, but anything else like super interesting to you, trends, like you're excited about um, studying right now? Yeah, we talked about LinkedIn influencers already, but one thing that really comes to mind is I think marketer marketing teams are really evolving a (51:38) lot. One of the things that I'm really interested in and passionate about is this idea of full stack marketers. Yes. I feel like this world of, you know, I work on this one area and then I hand this thing over to this other team and then I hand it to this other team and then it kind of works through this like conveyor belt uh of people to get to completion. (52:05) I think that age is kind of over because a lot of these AI tools are making uh skill sets accessible to marketers that weren't before. And that could be something as simple as copywriting. It could be design. It could be an even things like animation, uh, video, etc. I think marketers are going to have more of those skills at their fingertips. (52:24) And so, you're not necessarily going to need all those different teams and people to do one thing. I think uh marketers will be able to have more ownership over a specific area because they can do all of the inputs that create that that output on their own with the help of some of these AI tools. So I think like I mentioned the roles are getting blurriier. (52:46) I think they're going to keep getting blurriier and folks are going to be more focused probably on owning maybe it's specific you know channels or audiences. I think the way that we segment marketing teams is going to change because a lot it's it's going to be less based on skills and more based on a focus area or a passion. And I think that's actually great because I think it's going to allow us to move a lot faster and then someone's going to be able to look at something they've created and be like, I built that versus being one piece of the of the puzzle of, you know, shipping that thing. And so I think it's actually a really great shift, but I do think it's gonna require (53:20) people to learn a lot of new skills that maybe they thought that they couldn't, but those skills are going to be a lot more accessible. Such a good me message. And uh yeah, definitely agree that we're we've got a positive spirit here about the future. I like that for marketers and content teams. Uh Sylvia, this was awesome. (53:39) Thank you for the time. Um, I'd recommend obviously anybody, uh, looking into, you know, Apple device management, uh, to go to kanji.com. Um, and I'm assuming like if anybody kind of wants to follow along, you're creating a lot of content yourself. I I believe mostly on LinkedIn, so follow follow you on LinkedIn. Um, and connected with you there. But anywhere else you direct people? LinkedIn. Absolutely. (54:03) And I need to post more to be honest. I really want to share this journey that we're on because I talk to so many other CMOs about it and it's what everyone is talking about. So, um, but I do share quite a bit on LinkedIn. That's definitely the the place to connect and yeah, just excited for this journey to continue. (54:24) And I just feel fired up about it. I feel like I'm working on something that I'm really passionate about and I'm working on something that's the future of where the marketing industry is going and so I'm just really genuinely excited about it and I can't wait to just kind of keep seeing how this unfolds. Same. (54:48) And everybody who wants to follow along, go follow Sylvia on LinkedIn and uh yeah, thank you again. Appreciate it. Thanks, Eric. [Music]