Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we're back for another session today, again with 10 speeds. Ryan Sargent, VP of Product.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Thanks for having me again.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Yes, doing a little double feature today. So excited to chat through another topic.
The other one we want to talk about today, the big one is differentiation and how we do that in B2B marketing today.
The core of what we've really talked about is for a long time your ability to do things at a high volume was a big differentiator and that was budget scale. So many different things.
With AI, volume is really not a differentiator anymore.
And on top of that, we've seen that everyone, even before AI, we saw everyone has access to a SEMrush account and clear scope. So, you know, like people have access to the same tools.
A lot of that has been democratized. AI has made that even more and kind of eliminated volume as a differentiator. So at that point, you know, from a content marketing standpoint and just marketing overall, how do you differentiate?
So, getting started, I think one thing that I've talked a bit about is how much inputs matter, you know, so you can have again, you have access to the same AI model, what's ChatGPT, or, you know, one of Claude's models or whatever, how you prompt it, but it's not just prompt engineering, but like the data you can give it.
So if you're doing something for a client, understanding what you can get from them, that can help shape that. And so inputs matter and that's really the biggest part of how you get better outputs. I think it's kind of the first piece that I wanted to help us up with.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, the models are both. They have training data and they're using search APIs to go get new stuff, but none of that counts what you can give it. And so the more kind of like first party internal stuff you can give it, the more it's going to be able to tailor something to your audience. And then I do think the prompt engineering actually is a piece of it.
Not because everyone should race out to LinkedIn and comment course at the bottom of some guru's post and get a bad slide deck about how to prompt AI, but.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Or feel like you have to hire a prompt engineer.
[00:02:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: I think learning and testing how best to communicate your data to the model is worth doing and being able to do that in a repeatable way so that you can produce volume when you choose to.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's weird because it's still similar to just human behavior, but because I'm not the Best prompt creator. I just like, it's a huge brain dump. But like it's like it's very, it's a lot of detail, it's a lot of context. And like, I think that that's still what's important. But formatting it and figuring it out in a way that can be repeatable is important. But like the more detail the better. The more context the better is gonna be the thing that gets you a better end result. Ultimately how you, how you format it and all that stuff is a whole other thing in terms of like prompt engineering. Yeah.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: This isn't new. Like. Yeah, it's always been about how you use the tool like forever. So totally nothing has changed there. The differentiation just becomes even more reliant on it.
But we've always talked about someone's skill with the tool as being a really critical piece of the puzzle.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think that maybe not so much from the client perspective, but if you're in house marketing and working through that, you know, it's. You can. It makes me think of the Wistia did that cool thing where they, they produced ads.
A thousand dollar budget, $10,000 budget, $100,000 budget. I do remember that I think were the increments.
It kind of makes me think of that like prompt and ask it just say Write me a 1200 word piece of content on this.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: And then there's this one that's like the $10,000 version. And then there's one that's like $100,000 version with your own data and all this stuff and you're really just building it out so much more. I think you can, to your point, testing it, you could just look at the exact same outputs and how much they change from that being a really big, big difference.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Other analogy I love here is the Matrix. Right. AI basically lets us all say you
[00:04:59] Speaker C: love action movie metaphors.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: I love action.
AI lets us all say I know Kung Fu.
But then we get loaded in and we fight Morpheus. And what's the first thing he says? The problem is not your technique.
We all have the same pieces of data about Kung Fu.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: But the art of weaving that together in a dynamic real time environment is how you beat Morpheus on the training floor. Yeah. And so that piece of it becomes the differentiator because we all know Kung Fu.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: Totally. Yeah.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: That's a great one.
I want to talk also about like the role of the website as it, as it pertains to differentiation at this point.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I just wrote about this. The.
I think that there's a lot of overwrought talk about how websites are dying, especially on LinkedIn, that soon agents will just talk to agents and there will be no need for humans to visit your website. I think that's baloney. I think that today your website is more important than ever.
And the decline in search traffic or search impressions only makes it more important because now your website has to do more heavy lifting. It has to really seek to convert the people who do eventually visit. And most of all, I think as much as we are using LLMs to inform buying journeys today, and as much as that is growing as fast as that is growing, especially for complicated B2B purchases, no one asks ChatGPT three questions and then is like, oh yeah, let's sign the 12 month deal.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Right. That's just not how the buying process process works. And the conversion happens on your website still.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Like the part where the real human decides to write the big check is happening on your website. So you better have a damn good website.
And that's a big piece of it for me.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: Yeah. And then, I mean we talked a little bit about this too. But like then that brings into still like the necessary need or the need for like fundamental skill sets around having a great website. The technical aspects of that and how it also feeds all these other things which gets into like the SEO AEO stuff. But user experience. Right. Like people still like interact with brands through these touch points. It's like, you know, physical stores still exist and even if they're just showrooms. Right.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: The same, it's the same principle Exactly. With the physical stores.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. And like we do have that like there was a thought that like stores should go away.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: So E commerce is the way we're going to sell our products. But then like they people realized, oh no, we actually still need to have a place where people can go touch and like feel our products and like see what they are like. And that's an experiential thing. And I think that that's like kind of, that's a part of what you're getting at too is like there's an experience and a connection that you need to make with someone through those required and necessary touch points. They're not going away. Yeah.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: And all the more reason your website has to be differentiated.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Because if your brick and mortar store in this case. Right. This is the analogy, looks exactly like everyone else's and is a generic faceless thing.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: It's not going to convert anyone and unfortunately, I think we are kind of drowning in a sea of sameness around B2B homepages. They all look the same.
[00:08:23] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: How many homepages have you been on where you just can't even tell what the company is doing? Oh yeah, like so. So having that really clearly defined bold differentiator front center on your website makes a big difference.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Take swings too. Like I remember.
I think B2B marketers in particular like have gotten really bad habits. I've had it at some point, but I did a presentation to the previous at a company I was at before 10 speed and it was literally on this where I presented like five different competitor websites and they were all the same color scheme. It was like it was to show us how we could differentiate ourselves. But it was all this, everybody chose the same thing at the same time because everyone was copying each other. It wasn't because like, oh like you know, this is the Pantone color of the year type thing or something. You know, it was, they were literally someone made a choice and then you could see it bleed into all the other marketers going like, oh, that's our competitor. Let's try and emulate that.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Every fashion brand now has the all caps sans serif. Right. They just all look exactly the same.
I think that is born out of fear.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: It's. This is working for a competitor.
I can't be the person that gets this wrong.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: So I'm just going to be the thing that make the safe choice.
Marketing isn't about the safe choice though. Fundamentally. Like at a very 30,000 foot conceptual level, you can't persuade and influence someone as marketers need to do. If you're just going for the safest, most vanilla option.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: And that's why the differentiation is required. Like you have to, you have to stand out.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
I do think I completely agree. You guys talked quite a bit about kind of like the brand side of it and the UX and navigation and conversion side of it. I also think you mentioned a couple prompts into an LLM to kind of like do some research.
I think that's also a big part of it is, you know, understanding what and how is being from your site is being pulled into the LLMs that shapes that. Exactly. You know, and like shaping that narrative. And so if you're like, you know, historically like here's our product page and it's headline and then this and then this side and then this side and, and our copy is very minimal and it's very high level and it's like somewhere in some way you have to provide the detail. You have to provide the data points, the case study, the quotes, these things that are going to be material for that discovery and that research is that place to do that as well. On top of everything else.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I think actually super timely. I don't know if you guys saw, but I think Kevin Indig released a study like yesterday or this week that was basically about. It's really related to what you're talking about, which was a serpent. It was basically breaking down how much of your website an LLM looks at before it drops off. But what feeds into the LLM, but it's speaking exactly to this. Like, it's like you know, it, it likely would inform some bad behavior from a website standpoint and marketing standpoint, which is what we're talking about. But like, yeah, it's like the top 25% and I'm misrepresenting this. So I apologize to him because the data points, but I think the gist is just like, I think he called it like a ski slope, but they drop off like it looks at like the top 25%. If you don't have like your like key points and whatever you're trying to make in that top 25%, you're going to not get what you need into the LLM potentially to represent your brand. Top 25%, meaning of your like page. Yeah, like exact depth. Yeah.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Thing.
[00:12:17] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Well just send me the link. I'll put it in the show notes.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'm trying to make it clear we're not, we're not ripping that. Yeah. But it's a, it's a good study because like just shows again the importance of your website but also being thoughtful about how you structure your information and all that.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
Yeah. And then so then there's, you know, some other aspects around case studies too. And you know, the, even just the approach to case studies being a few of them that are very broad versus some different ways and some of the stuff there that I think we also have talked about from a differentiation standpoint, if you want to jump in on that.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
Case studies are so important, they're often overlooked. They're this thing that marketers come back to over and over again. It's like, oh, right, I was supposed to do that. And they're one of the most valuable pieces of bottom of funnel content we can possibly create.
They're always authentic.
They tell a story that truly very literally helps a prospect be in an Existing customer's shoes.
Very, very valuable content.
We can differentiate through case studies and when we differentiate through case studies, that looks like being very hyperspecific with the use case, with the type of company.
Often these case studies are harder to get approved. They're harder to write because they're like, well, but this doesn't apply to everybody. It's like, yeah, that's the point. I want one very specific segment of our audience to absolutely find a perfect match with this case study.
[00:13:53] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: And I want to produce more case studies that are more highly targeted.
That way we have a better chance of converting like we're actually speaking more closely to their needs.
The analogy I've used in the past is if we want to get maximum coverage through our case studies, it's not one size fits all. It's having every size in stock so that when someone shows up, they're going to find what they're looking for.
One size fits all never actually quite fits.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: So yeah, make your case studies every size in stock.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: Yeah. It's incredibly overlooked. The. And I, I get it, they're diff, they are difficult to make. But it's so important. The harder things are usually worth the squeeze.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then we've obviously talked quite a bit at this point on this podcast about this. But like first party data was another area that we'd said this is a big point of differentiation and I think, I think we've seen that a lot. I agree across, I mean even just your point, like, I mean, Kevin Indig's been doing stuff like that for a while, but like it's not just companies, you know, it's, you know, individual creators and whatever. It's like there's a lot to lean on and that's, you know, if you're a product, that's a consumer product or even just a high volume B2B product, you should have a ton of data on how people use your data and when and how and cut, slice and dice a million ways.
But there's other more simple things that you can do and you can also do stuff with third party data, but just take your own aggregation or combine data sources. There's so many things you can do and I think we're seeing a lot of that coming up. But first party data is I think, a big one that we've talked about.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah, there's all sorts of ways to get very, very granular with data, especially from your product.
And that doesn't, that can inform pieces of content and can inform like how you, how you approach the marketing can also just tell you where to work. If everyone who does thing X in your product is in a SaaS world more likely to renew, it's like great, let's build stuff that helps them do that thing.
[00:16:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Even if that means I'm a product marketer for the next month. Like they're, they're the first party data informed the internal strategy.
Publishing the first party data as a piece of content also I think more and more valuable and more and more kind of prevalent across especially B2B.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Yeah. I think the specificity too and it is good. Like and we're not talking about like your state of type research reports necessarily where you're speaking on the industry like can be valuable but like the more really targeted and like granular, granular you can get especially around your own data is going to be end up becoming something super valuable to an audience.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: The state of reports can be great.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: They can also be a big investment.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: It is not all or nothing.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: There's so many ways to use first party data productively in your content without needing to go that far.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Totally.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: And you can work up to it.
[00:17:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: You can, you can flex the muscle and then publish the state of report when you have even more data to work with.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: When you know exactly how you want the visualizations to appear. How interactive do you want that page? Like yeah, you can, you can get into the weeds tactically in a way that builds you up.
[00:17:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: I want to go back to something you said because I think it was good. I think a lot of the focus has been on using first party data as the content. But you were talking about a good example where first party data could actually help inform the strategy and where to focus and you know what to be creating. And I think that's a really valuable piece of that as well. That is probably worth just a little more discussion because I think to your point it's not only like topically where it could guide you, but even that topic then can shape what types of content you're creating and how you're to your point. It may be, oh, we actually need to build a ton of integration type of content or documentation type of stuff or case study. It's not just like which blog posts are we going to write. Let's look at our first party data, letting that data show you some of the topics. And then I think your example is product marketing. Even so maybe your website isn't properly speaking to that and whatnot. So that's A really good point because I think most of the focus lately on first party data and the point that I was making initially was more about that as the content.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Documentation I think is the perfect example because one of the ways to differentiate your website is to make it deeply helpful for existing customers.
Nothing sucks worse than being a paying customer who can't get an answer to your own freaking question about the product.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So having robust documentation, updating it is time consuming, resource intensive. It's annoying.
I think there's some creative ways around that. It's a different topic.
Having that on the website provides a valuable experience. It's not just like user experience.
I feel like UX often gets into the nuts and bolts of we'll put the button here, not here. And I've started thinking about it more and more. This is a little cheesy but like as vx, what value are we providing with the experience on this page or on the site? And documentation is extremely valuable.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: And it's an important way to differentiate yourself and it. I think it sends signals to future customers as well. If, if I'm not yet a customer and I see that there is robust documentation to support me as a user, I'm more likely to buy like. Like that is a signal to me that this company is going to take care of me on the other end.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I is a great point because I think to go even further on the, the documentation part and the value you're providing. I think one thing that developer docs have come a long way where it's not just all written out.
The really good ones are like, okay, here's this API endpoint that you're wanting to use.
On the same page, here's a modal with like tabs. Do you want Curl? Do you want php? Do you want Python? Select that. Now here's the, you know, the headers and the. Everything you need here. All the specifics around authorization.
It's like you don't have to keep going down or go to a different page. That's for Artist section for Python. Like they've done a very good job of saying like, okay, the endpoint, like we know what you're trying to get and here's all the variables. We're going to put this in a way that's usable and on the page. And to your point, like the value experience I think is a great example of that being there.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: I think there's a lot of potential for AI to help with this in cs. Chatbots are like level one on this and eventually we're going to hit level three, four, five where a custom GPT is supplying real time support in a way that is helping for example, developers revise code.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Instead of going to figure out what's on the documentation and then going back to Claude. Right. That there's streamlining still to happen there in the ecosystem.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And also just benefit of that at the end of the day with that documentation is also just associating, bolstering brand. Like if you have that really great and it's really thorough and people are using it or it's really resourceful, like it does wonders for, I just think brand visibility, brand awareness, brand authority.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah, we went like straight to the technical example when like for me this is ultimately about experience and kind of more on that like creative side of marketing in a lot of ways. Even though we're talking about technical documentation.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, well that's a great segue because the next thing on the list was like unique experiences.
[00:22:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: You know, and you, you talked about like free tools which have. The concept of free tools has existed for a long time, but like sort of in a new era. I think of like again, volume is not a differentiator. Everyone has the same tools. But like. Yeah, you know, spending the time or you know, having a unique idea or understanding of your customer to build something that is unique or valuable.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: Totally, totally. And like I think, you know, there's, I probably have pretty simple, maybe not the best examples but like I wish when I was coming up as a marketer that like the AI tools were available to be able to make tools. Right. So like, like you can create, you know, you always talked about calculators and templates and things. Right. So like that's like, that's level one.
But like there's so many other things. All right. That's a whole like sandbox that you can start to try to create things. And I get that there's probably a potential that people can just go create their own tools. But I think if you're a strong enough marketer, understand the pain points in the audience that you can provide some real valuable resources now with the tools available. And that is differentiation on steroids.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: I remember calculators. The perfect example 10 years ago I had to go request dev time to manually write the JavaScript to make.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: The calculator even function.
[00:23:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: And then every time I wanted to change that page, other than like a simple copy change in WordPress, I had to go back to the dev.
[00:23:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: And of course in those I had to literally walk over to his desk and ask very nicely and offer to buy him a coffee and. Right. And now I. I would ask Claude to do that end to end. Right. Like not. I would not even worry about the devs. Yeah.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: You were already going way above and beyond. I was like doing just. I'll do the calculator, Google sheet and link to it from blog post.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that was.
[00:23:53] Speaker C: Yours is better. Yours was actually more.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: I was going to say you used way less resource. You probably got it live faster than I did.
[00:24:00] Speaker C: Questionable logic behind it though.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: But we've had I think some good discussions around this. I think your point a moment ago on like VX or Value Experience, I think even just ties to that a little bit. But even like we have.
We're going to be at a couple conferences coming up. B2BMX and also SAS talk. So if you're there, say hi. We were talking about things we wanted to do and of course there's an ebook or all this stuff and came away with. We actually just have a lot of information.
We've done on podcasts, we've done on our newsletter and on the blog and we felt like we could take a lot of that and turn it into an actual physical book, you know, and so it's not like that's super novel. Like brands have been doing, you know, books or print materials and stuff, but like just different things like that. That's like, you know, just a different take on something that's ultimately. Yeah very similar to an ebook but it's just short printed book instead.
But I think that that's where we'll see a lot of that moving forward. And I don't have like more good examples. Some of you guys do.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: I feel like you do off.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Off the top of your head. But like it's not. It's not swag and it's not necessarily like one off things like. But it's like, you know, what are some of those repeatable things that again people are going to come to your website, they are going to want to understand you and the brand and their brand loyalty is still very much a thing. And so like just kind of understanding that we do think that overall unique experiences in one way or another will. Will continue to be a big part of differentiation for brands.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: One of my favorite examples because it is entirely digital and I like not everyone has the resources to throw a dinner. That's the new big one in B2B. Right?
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Or to produce physical things for events. Those are good. Differentiators Having some digital stuff in your back pocket can be much easier to implement.
My favorite example from my past, I created a fake award for Teacher Appreciation Day. I gave it to teachers who were our customers.
I posted about it on social. I made it look really, really legit. I made it look so legit that a superintendent of a school district in California tweeted on the district account, like, congrats to this teacher for winning this super important award.
I think the teacher even knew I made it up, but it didn't matter. Right. Like, now social proof. Reach all of the stuff. And at the end of the day, we were marketing the teachers.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Better way to show our audience that we cared.
I required virtually nothing. I wrote some copy. I built a landing page.
[00:27:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: I used the gold medal emoji a lot. Like, this was not very hard. Yeah. And that. It was so different.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Wasn't. It wasn't another blog post or another e book.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
That's great. I love that. That's like the. I remember when badges were, like, the thing then that was like a weird backlink strategy thing. But it's like, that is the. That is the.
Maybe you tell me if you agree, but that is like, the actual, like, authentic version of that.
Like, you're. You're giving something out to your.
Your audience.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:37] Speaker C: In a way that is, like, recognizing them. And it's not, like, disingenuous or anything. No, not at all.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Like, not at all.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Well, I would say I'm having trouble understanding how, like, very thin margin between a real award and fake award.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: It sounds like a real award.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: It does. Just not, like, from some broader.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Like, it's like, not from a trade
[00:28:03] Speaker A: association or something, but, like.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it.
I think there's a lot of overlap here with, like, certificates, training type stuff.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Air Ops is doing a ton of this right now. Right. Like, with.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Certified content engineer thing.
That also counts. That's a little bit more structured and a little bit more focused on, like, skill development. But that is also a good one. Differentiator.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: When people are learning, they're actually, like, going through something to get that I went through. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I agree. That's a really good, tangible and valuable example.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And I do think there's more. So in B2B, I'd say, like, there's more and more just, like, small, intimate events that are very curated.
Seems sometimes maybe a bit more just, like, just want to hang out with peers. But, like, not that there's not value in that, but yeah, so just like even that, I would say unique experience and you know, put that in that bucket too. That it's not, it's not a dinner, but it's also not. We're going to put on the huge conference and that kind of thing. There's some kind of that middle ground type stuff.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: I think the theme there is that UGC represents differentiation in a really natural way, that when your users are providing some of the content, you get to tap into their experience.
It doesn't feel as contrived. And I think the dinners in B2B are after the same thing because ultimately that's like user generated content. If I invite 12 people to a dinner, I'm depending on them to make conversations with each other. I'm not like giving a lecture.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: So that's like the new B2B user generated content.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: It's a good way to frame it. Yeah. And are you also hoping like, you know, there's some distribution there too, right?
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Like social. How long until those are being filmed?
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Repurpose our dinner?
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
Cameras set up in every corner of the.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: I think it would be a dining room. I feel like it's pretty naive for us to think that it's not already happening.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Well, you can, you can of course build a custom GPT.
So if you want to like, you know, query any of the stuff that we talked about at our dinner, just, you know, here you go, here's the, here's the AI tool.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Oh, totally. Oh, and then, hey, make sure everyone knows that maybe there's an AI recorder there. And that's like, just like some, like, then you can summarize what happened and break it out into a bunch of different pieces of content.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: All right. We just created a dystopian.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: I was going to say the reason we're all smiling is because that would defeat the purpose of the dinner.
[00:30:47] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: The reason those are working is because they are user generated. They are opportunities for community, for authentic interaction. And to repurpose them would take some of that away.
[00:31:03] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, it sounds like you have taste. And that's the last piece we're talking about.
Judgment Matters, I think is kind of where we're landing this.
You talked a little bit about people hiring storytellers and having taste and all that stuff. And I think that that's a good place to, to land because I think in some ways it kind of wraps all the things we've talked about under that umbrella, so to speak. So it'll let you kind of open that one up.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's the prevailing narrative right now. Is that narrative used intentionally in a conversation about storytelling?
The way to differentiate yourself is to have taste. It's to have storytellers as part of your marketing team and helping build your content.
I think every content marketer on LinkedIn has now seen people posting about how AI companies are hiring storytellers. Storyteller in the title.
I agree taste and storytelling are important, but I think what they're really driving at is judgment.
There are lots of people who know how to tell a story and there are lots of people who have taste.
Putting all of that together in a package that fuels your marketing requires judgment.
And I hope that these people that are being hired as storytellers are empowered with decision making authority so that they can actually judge. We should talk about X, not Y.
That's the much harder thing.
Telling every story is going to overload them. They're going to have too much work to do.
Telling one story perfectly is. Isn't going to generate a marketing engine.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: It's not going to actually do enough to move the needle. Yeah. So being able to dial that piece of it in requires judgment. Being able to connect the dots between your audience and the subject matter, all of that stuff is where the marketing happens. And that is, I do agree, will become a point of differentiation. The companies who make those decisions wisely and quickly have a lever and have an advantage over their competitors.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:22] Speaker C: Yep.
I think that's well said.
I'm like, do I have good taste and judgment?
But I agree, I think, like, that is a really.
It's a needle to thread.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:37] Speaker C: It's hard and we'll see if it plays out well. I mean, like, storytelling is, I don't know, you can interpret that in a variety of ways. And the intent behind it is kind of confusing to some extent. Because marketing, we went through its period where people were like, marketing. We're storytellers. Even. Like, I've listened to a lot of like, you know, celebrity actor podcasts, interview stuff and like, there's a lot of, like, you know, actors, storytellers and like, you know, there's a commonality amongst a lot of them that are like.
Or actors.
We are a vessel for a story. But I just hope it's done with the best intent in terms of storytelling.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Well, and since volume isn't a differentiator, all the more reason you have to pick the right stories to tell.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: You tell every story.
You're just part of that sea of sameness again.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that there's the the common thread there is through not just like telling a story or creating a piece of content.
I think that's a lot of what we're just seeing across all of marketing and all of business to the same point we made earlier have access to all the same tools but which parts the human does which parts you where and how you use the tools and the inputs you give it like all of those things that's all judgment and knowing the order the sequencing all the that I think is going to be that important thread not just in content creation but across all of that marketing.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Cool.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Well I think we're pretty much at time there and another great discussion around what differentiation means today. So glad we did that. Check out newsletter.10speed IO you get a monthly newsletter from us on substack plus the podcast episodes so easy way to get those there. Otherwise on any podcast platform be sure to like and subscribe and with that we'll wrap it up. Thanks guys.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:35:50] Speaker C: Thank you.
